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DANY
COHN-BENOIT
Why are they in such a state of ferment, while other departments
do nothing, at best, but follow their example?
Why the theoretical uncertainty, and why is there such a problem
about job opportunities?
A Short History of Sociology
For our present purposes we shall consider only dominant trends
which must await a more detailed study for completion:
all boycotting
of classes on this subject will be welcome.
The problem must be approached from an historical point of view.
In
this respect the key date is 1930, the period of Mayo's experiment at
Hawthorne in the United States.
When Mayo demonstrated the importance of affective phenomena
in limited groups and suggested the concept of regulating human rela–
tions to improve the productivity of workers, he did much more than
open up new terrain for sociology. He ended the era of social philosophy
and of speculative systems which embraced society as a whole and
ushered in the glorious age of empiricism and of the "scientific" collect–
ing of data.
Similarly, in hiring
out
his services to the management of a business,
he was initiating a period of large-scale collaboration between sociologists
and all the powers of the bourgeois world, which were struggling to
rationalize a capitalist system that had been profoundly shaken by the
crisis of 1929.
The transition from an academic sociology which was the vassal
of philosophy to an independent sociology with scientific pretentions
corresponds to the transition from competitive cajJitalism to organized
capitalism.
Henceforth the inspiration of sociology will always be more respon–
sive to the social demand for a rationalist practice to serve bourgeois
ends: money, profit, the maintenance of order.
Evidence abounds. Industri al sociology sceks above all the adjust–
ment of the worker to his job. The possibility of any other approach
is limited, since the sociologist who receives a salary from management
must respect the goal of the economic system: to produce as much as
possible in order to make as much money as possible. Political sociology
advocates vast research projects, usually propagandistic, which are based
on the assumption that the electoral choice is today the arena of politics,
without ever considering wheth er politics might not be located else–
where. Stouffer studies the best conditions for the "morale" of the
American soldier without raising
til('
fllndamrntal questions about the
