Sociology, Anthropology, and the Study of Human Societies

Abstract

In his attack on my proposal for revamping the introductory course in sociology, Vivelo proposes to swallow much of the historic heartland of sociology in his own discipline of anthropology. Sociologists, he argues, should stick to teaching about contemporary American society and leave the rest of human experience to the anthropologists. Unfortunately, many sociologists s'eem willing to do just that, but one wonders what Auguste Comte, Herbert Spencer, Emile Durkheim, Max Weber, William Graham Sumner, or Lester Frank Ward would have thought of such a proposal. One also wonders what Vivelo thinks of comparative and historical sociologists such as Reinhard Bendix, Barrington Moore, Alex Inkeles, Immanuel Wallerstein, Martin Whyte, Charles Tilly, and hundreds of others who have built their reputations on the study of societies other than our own. Vivelo apparently would like to create an unfortunate aberration in recent American sociology a defining and delimiting characteristic of the discipline. Were sociologists to accept Vivelo's view of sociology, the future for our discipline would be bleak indeed. I trust, however,9 that most sociologists are not prepared to do this. Most sociologists today look to Durkheim, Weber, and Marx