Histories of Australian Sociology
Histories of Australian Sociology
Edited by
John Germov Tara Renae McGee
MELBOURNE UNIVERSITY PRESS An imprint of Melbourne University Publishing Ltd 187 Grattan Street, Carlton, Victoria 3053, Australia
[email protected] www.mup.com.au First published 2005 Copyright © for this volume, John Germov and Tara Renae McGee 2005 Copyright of individual chapters rests with the authors, with the following exceptions: Chapter 17 © Sage Publications Ltd 1989 Chapter 18 © Greenwood Press 1994 This book is copyright. Apart from any use permitted under the Copyright Act 1968 and subsequent amendments, no part may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted by any means or process whatsoever without the prior written permission of the publishers. Cover design by Geoff Burmester Typeset in Calisto MT Printed in Australia by The University of Melbourne Design & Print Centre Copying for educational purposes Where copies of part or the whole of the book are made under Part VB of the Copyright Act, the law requires that prescribed procedures be followed. For information, contact the Copyright Agency Limited. National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry
Germov, John. Histories of Australian sociology. Includes index. ISBN 0 522 85224 6. (paperback) ISBN 0 522 85225 4. (e-book) 1. Sociology - Australia - History. I. McGee, Tara Renae. II. Title. 301.0994
Contents Preface
ix
Acknowledgments
xii
Contributors
xiii
Abbreviations
xxi
Part 1: Contemporary Reflections on Australian and New Zealand Sociology Introduction
1
1 Australia and World Sociology
3
R. W. Connell
2 Some Reflections on Australian Sociology and its Political Context Lois Bryson
29
3 Sociology: Some Notes on the Early Years
43
Sol Encel
4 Some Notes on the History of Australian Sociology
49
John Western
5 Sociology’s Roller-coaster Ride in Australia
57
Katy Richmond
6 Australian Sociology: An Authentic Voice?
65
Cora Vellekoop Baldock
7 History of Sociology in New Zealand
67
Charles Crothers
Part 2: Proponents and Opponents of Australian Sociology Introduction
81
8 Sociology in Australia: A Plea for its Teaching
83
Francis Anderson (1911)
9 The Need for Sociological Research in Australia
89
Adolphus Peter Elkin (1943)
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Histories of Australian Sociology
10 Discipline and Labour: Sociology, Class Formation and Money in Australia at the Beginning of the Twentieth Century Angela Mitropoulos (1999)
101
11 Society Economised: T. R. Ashworth and the History of the Social Sciences in Australia Michael Crozier (2002)
123
12 Social Scientists as Intellectuals: From the First World War to the Depression Helen Bourke (1988)
145
13 The Social Survey and the Puzzle of Australian Sociology Graeme Davison (2003)
171
Part 3: Professional and Institutional Settings of Australian Sociology Introduction
201
14 Australian and New Zealand Sociology
203
Kurt Mayer (1964)
15 Sociology, Anyone?
209
Leonard Broom (1964)
16 The Teaching of Sociology in Australian Universities, Past and Present Jerzy Zubrzycki (1971)
17 Australian Sociology and its Historical Environment
219 245
Diane J. Austin-Broos (1989)
18 Sociology in Australia and New Zealand
267
Cora Vellekoop Baldock (1994)
19 Refashioning Sociology: Disciplinary and Institutional Challenges Sharyn L. Roach Anleu (1998)
vi
307
Contents
Part 4: Australian Sociology in the Early 21st Century Introduction
321
20 The Most Influential Books in Australian Sociology (MIBAS), 1963–2003 Zlatko Skrbis & John Germov (2004)
323
21 Disciplining Australian Sociology? Charting a History of Theory Use in Sociology Kirsten Harley
22 Australian Sociology: Recent Trends and Prospects
343 355
John Germov & Tara Renae McGee
23 The State of Social Sciences in Australia
387
Peter Beilharz & Trevor Hogan (2004)
24 Change, Uncertainty and the Future of Sociology
419
Stephen Crook (2003)
25 Researching the History of Australian Sociology
429
Tara Renae McGee & John Germov Index
439
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Preface A central tenet of the sociological enterprise is that an understanding of the present is predicated upon an appreciation of the past— something that applies equally well to the study of the sociology discipline itself. A sociology of Australian sociology, therefore, necessitates an examination of the unique historical developments underpinning the discipline’s establishment and continuance. Hence the rationale for this book, which for the first time assembles accounts of the resistance to, establishment of, and ultimate success of sociology in Australia. As many of the chapters in this book document, the proto- or prehistory of Australian sociology was a tumultuous affair. After a number of false starts in the early 1900s, and in the face of resistance from competing disciplines and a conservative cultural and political climate, as well as the agency (and rivalries) of prominent individuals, it was not until the 1960s that Australian sociology took hold in the academy. The impetus for this book arose in 2003 when the Australian Sociological Association (TASA) celebrated its 40th anniversary. As part of those celebrations, the then TASA President, John Germov, convened a ‘history panel’ at the annual TASA conference held at the University of New England (Armidale). John enlisted a number of past TASA presidents, who have been key players in the establishment of the discipline in Australia, to present their thoughts, reflections and varying accounts of the history of Australian sociology. The panel papers, by Lois Bryson, Sol Encel, John Western and Cora Baldock, created considerable discussion among conference delegates and the consensus was that they deserved a wider audience; they are published here for the first time. In addition, Histories of Australian Sociology aims to bring many of the key historical sources together in one comprehensive volume to make them accessible to a wider audience. We have assembled previously published and unpublished papers of historical significance that deal with Australian sociology and the social sciences generally. Original publication details are given for each chapter that is a reprinted paper, and we have kept the text and referencing format intact as much as possible (correcting only for obvious typographical errors). This includes the stylistic conventions and expressions commonly used at the time the papers were originally written, in the belief that we would make poor historians by editing the papers in the context of prevailing ix
Histories of Australian Sociology preferences. The guiding editorial philosophy was to reproduce these seminal papers as accurately as possible. The editors also commissioned some papers to fill gaps in the literature, but, inevitably, given limitations of time and space, we made both intellectual and pragmatic judgements over what to include. While no doubt other papers could have been commissioned or included, we trust that the final compilation provides a sound foundation for understanding the development of Australian sociology. As always, history will be the judge! The book is structured in four parts:
Part 1: Contemporary Reflections on Australian and New Zealand Sociology
Part 2: Proponents and Opponents of Australian Sociology
Part 3: Professional and Institutional Settings of Australian Sociology
Part 4: Australian Sociology in the Early 21st Century
Cumulatively the chapters in this book expose much of the hidden and forgotten history of Australian sociology. This includes an account of the development of New Zealand sociology and the initial inter-relationships with Australian sociology that were the result of the formation of the Sociological Association of Australia and New Zealand (SAANZ) in 1963, the precursor of TASA. As the title suggests, Histories of Australian Sociology does not propose a unifying thesis, but rather offers an anthology of multiple perspectives and arguments about the major issues, debates, controversies, and determinants of the late onset and ultimate rise of sociology in Australia. The discipline’s tumultuous history is both colourful and fascinating, from fierce opposition by rival disciplines such as economics, history, and politics in the early 1900s, to allegations of a ‘communist plot’ and ASIO surveillance in the 1960s. It is our hope this book will enhance Australian sociologists’ appreciation of the history of their discipline and serve as a useful teaching and professional development resource for postgraduate sociology students. Indeed, as the papers here show, many of the professional issues and debates that beset the discipline today have a considerable lineage. More broadly, this volume will be of interest to anyone seeking to understand the history of the social sciences in Australia. Our primary aim, however, is to make the history of x
Preface Australian sociology accessible to future generations—who may use its lessons to help shape continuing generations of Australian sociology. John Germov and Tara Renae McGee October 2005
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Acknowledgments First thanks go to the contributors, of both original and reproduced papers and chapters, for their support of the project, working to tight deadlines, and checking drafts. Thanks also to authors and publishers for permission to reproduce previously published and unpublished work, the original sources for which are acknowledged with each chapter throughout the book. Thanks also to Matthew Thomson for his technical assistance in transferring reprinted articles and chapters from paper to electronic format and Donna Fegan for indexing assistance. We would like to thank the following people for their suggestions of papers to be included in this book and assistance in tracking down authors: Robyn Arrowsmith, Cora Baldock, Peter Beilharz, Katherine Betts, Dorothy Broom, Lois Bryson, Eileen Clark, Fran Collyer, Penny Davies, Carmel Desmarchelier, Janet Doust, Sol Encel, Ann Evans, Suzanne Franzway, Kirsten Harley, Brian Head, Frank Jones, Geoffrey Lawrence, Jane McMahon, Ingrid Muenstermann, Katy Richmond, Sharyn Roach Anleu, Ned Rossiter, Jane Shoebridge, Daniela Stehlik, Zlatko Skrbis, Frank Vanclay, Yoland Wadsworth, James Walter, Ruth Webber, John Western, Gary Wickham, and Jerzy Zubrzycki. Invariably, more papers were suggested to us than could be included in this volume, and we have listed these resources in chapter 25. Biographical information on the following contributors was drawn from the listed sources (accessed Wednesday, 8 September 2004): Francis Anderson:
www.electricscotland.com/history/australia/anderson_francis.htm Leonard Broom: www.assa.edu.au/Directory/listall.asp?id=34 Adolphus Peter Elkin: www.usyd.edu.au/arms/archives/elkin/biog.htm Jerzy (George) Zubrzycki: http://nla.gov.au/nla.ms-ms6690
Every effort has been made to trace the original source of all material reproduced in this book. Where the attempt has been unsuccessful, the editors and publisher would be pleased to hear from the copyright holder concerned to rectify any omission.
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Contributors Francis Anderson emigrated from Glasgow in 1886 and was appointed lecturer in philosophy at the University of Sydney in 1888, and was the first Challis Professor of Logic and Mental Philosophy from 1890 onwards until his retirement in 1921, after which he became Emeritus Professor. Anderson was President of the social and statistical science section at the meeting of the Australasian Association for the Advancement of Science held at Adelaide in 1907. At its 1911 meeting in Sydney, he delivered a paper on ‘Sociology in Australia: A Plea for its Teaching’, after which the meeting unanimously passed a resolution recommending the establishment of a Chair of Sociology in Australia. Anderson was the first editor of the Australasian Journal of Psychology and Philosophy (1923-1926), published a monograph on Liberty, Equality and Fraternity, and was involved in the Workers’ Education Association (WEA) movement. He was knighted in 1936 and died in Sydney on 24 June 1941. Diane Austin-Broos is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Sydney. She has worked in both the West Indies and Central Australia. She is interested in culture and change, with a focus on changing constitutions of the person. Various aspects of her research have been concerned with the phenomenology of conversion, racialisation, and theories of culture and class. She is especially interested in the cultural interpretation of economy. Cora Baldock is an Emeritus Professor of Sociology at Murdoch University. She has written extensively on the history of Australian and New Zealand sociology. Her current research is in migration studies, specifically regarding transnational relations between migrants and their parents ‘back home’. Peter Beilharz is Professor of Sociology and Director of the Thesis Eleven Centre for Critical Theory at La Trobe University. He cofounded the journal Thesis Eleven in 1980. His books include Trotskyism (1987), Labour’s Utopias (1992), Postmodern Socialism (1994), Transforming Labour (1994), Imagining the Antipodes: Culture, Theory and the Visual in the Work of Bernard Smith (1997), and Zygmunt Bauman: Dialectic of Modernity (2000). He has edited ten books, including Zygmunt Bauman: Masters of Social Theory, xiii
Histories of Australian Sociology four volumes for Sage. He is working on a new four-volume collection on American Postwar Critical Theory, again for Sage. Together with Trevor Hogan, he is editing a new introductory text for Oxford University Press, Place, Time and Division, and is trying to work on a book on Australia, to be called The Unhappy Country. Beilharz has been Visiting Fellow and Professor at the International Institute for Social History, Amsterdam; UNAM, Mexico City; North Carolina, Chapel Hill; University of Sao Paolo; Hitotsubashi University, Tokyo; RSSS, Canberra. He was awarded the Harvard Chair of Australian Studies, 1999-2000, and the W. D. Howells Fellowship, Houghton Library, Harvard, 2002. He is Associate Fellow in Sociology at Yale. He was elected to the Academy of Social Sciences in 1996; and has acted on the editorial boards of the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Sociology (ANZJS), International Journal of Politics, Culture and Society (New York), and New Zealand Sociology. Helen Bourke is a former teacher in Australian history and education at Australian Catholic University. She has published several articles in the field of Australian intellectual history, with a particular interest in the development of the social sciences in twentieth-century Australia. Leonard Broom is Emeritus Professor of Sociology, the Research School of Social Sciences, Australian National University, and Research Associate in Sociology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. His research interests centre on historical episodes that deeply influence the nature of social structure in so-called advanced societies, with a recent focus on wealth distributions in several societies, and the changing attributes of industrial sectors within which great wealth holdings are generated, preserved or inhibited. Lois Bryson is Emeritus Professor of Sociology, University of Newcastle. She retired in 1997, but is Director of the University’s Research Centre for Gender and Health and part of the research team undertaking the Australian Longitudinal Study of Women’s Health (Women’s Health Australia). She is also an Adjunct Professor, School of Social Science and Planning, RMIT University. She has published extensively on social policy, gender, welfare state, work and health. She wrote, with Faith Thompson, An Australian Newtown (Penguin 1972), Australia’s xiv
Contributors first sociological study of a suburb and, with Ian Winter, undertook a restudy of the suburb thirty years on, which was published as Social Change, Suburban Lives (Allen & Unwin 1999). Other books include Welfare and the State, Who Benefits? (Macmillan 1992) and Women and Survival (1994), an edited collection of women’s stories of surviving violence. She was TASA President in 1976 and has been an editor of the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Sociology (ANZJS). R. W. Connell is University Professor at the University of Sydney. Author or co-author of eighteen books, including Ruling Class Ruling Culture, Making the Difference, Gender and Power, Schools and Social Justice, Masculinities, The Men and the Boys, and most recently Gender. Co-editor of Handbook of Studies on Men and Masculinities and editor of Men, Boys and Gender Equality. A contributor to research journals in sociology, education, political science, gender studies and related fields. Current research concerns social theory, changing masculinities, neo-liberalism, globalisation and intellectuals. Stephen Crook was Professor and foundation chair in Sociology (est. 1998) at James Cook University. He played a key role in TASA and Australian sociology generally, having been TASA President (1999–2002) and co-editor of the ANZJS (1993–1997). His research interests were in social theory, the sociology of culture and political sociology. Major publications include: Environmentalism, Public Opinion and the Media in Australia (coedited with J. Pakulski, 1998), Adorno: The Stars Down to Earth and Other Essays on the Irrational in Culture (editor, 1994), Postmodernization: Change in Advanced Society (co-authored with J. Pakulski and M. Waters, 1992), and Modernist Radicalism and its Aftermath: Foundationalism and Anti-foundationalism in Radical Social Theory (1991). Professor Crook passed away in September 2002. Charles Crothers is Professor of Sociology at Auckland University of Technology, having previously been Chair of Sociology at the University of Natal, Durban. Earlier postings included periods in the Departments of Sociology at Victoria University of Wellington and the Ministry of Works and Development. His interests lie particularly in the theory of social structure, its history and the sociology of its production, and its applicability in xv
Histories of Australian Sociology the analysis of settler societies, such as New Zealand and South Africa. Related writing is on Robert K Merton and recent trends in sociology, including its traditions. Michael Crozier teaches in Political Science at the University of Melbourne. His research includes contemporary political communication, history and theory of the social sciences, and garden theory. His publications include: The Left in Search of a Center (1996) with Peter Murphy; Australian Politics in the Global Era (1998) with Ann Capling and Mark Considine; and After the Garden? (South Atlantic Quarterly 1999). He is currently working on a study of political consultancy in Australia. Graeme Davison has taught at the University of Melbourne, at Harvard University, where he was Visiting Professor of Australian Studies, and at Monash University. He is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences and the Academy of the Humanities and an Adjunct Professor in the Research School of Social Sciences at the Australian National University. His main interest is in the history of cities in Australia, Britain and the United States. He is the author of The Rise and Fall of Marvellous Melbourne, The Unforgiving Minute: How Australia Learned to Tell the Time and Car Wars: How The Car Won Our Hearts and Conquered Our Cities, and an editor of Australians 1888 and the Oxford Companion to Australian History. He has been active as an advisor to heritage bodies, museums and in other fields of public history where his publications include A Heritage Handbook and The Use and Abuse of Australian History. His current projects include a collaborative history of the Powerhouse Museum and a history of suburban Australia. Adolphus Peter Elkin completed a PhD at University College, London in 1927, on Aboriginal myth and ritual, and by 1934 was appointed Professor of Anthropology at the University of Sydney. Between 1933-1962, he was President of the Association for the Protection of Native Races, a body which aimed to improve the living conditions of indigenous Australians. He was also a Fellow of the Royal Society of NSW, a Trustee of the Australian Museum (1946-1972), its President (1962-1968), a Fellow of the Australian and New Zealand Association for the Advancement of Science (ANZAAS), a Fellow and Trustee of the Australian Social Science Research Council, a Fellow of the xvi
Contributors University Senate from 1959-1969, and a member of the Council of International House. In 1970 the University of Sydney awarded him an honorary Doctorate of Letters. Elkin’s research focused on understanding social and kinship groups, particularly in Aboriginal communities in the Kimberleys, Arnhem Land, and South Australia, but he also published on indigenous groups in New Guinea and Melanesia. He retired in 1956, but continued to edit the journal, Oceania, which he established in 1933, and remained as editor until his death in 1979, aged 88. Sol Encel was Professor of Sociology at the University of NSW from 1966 to 1990. Since then, he has been Honorary Research Associate at the Social Policy Research Centre, UNSW. He has written or edited a number of books on a range of social issues, and is currently working on a volume dealing with the implications of an ageing population. He was founding Vicepresident of the Sociological Association of Australia and New Zealand (SAANZ), and President 1969-1971. John Germov is a Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Newcastle. John was TASA President (2002-2004) and VicePresident (1999-2002), having been on the Executive Committee since 1995. He established the TASA website and e-list in 1996 and was its web editor until 2005. He was the 1995 TASA Conference Convenor, held at the University of Newcastle, and was a member of the Local Organising Committee of the XV World Congress of Sociology, held in Brisbane in 2002. His research interests include workplace change, social determinants of health, food sociology, and the area of his doctoral research, managerialism in the public health sector. Recent publications include: Second Opinion: An Introduction to Health Sociology (Oxford University Press, 3rd edn, 2005) and A Sociology of Food and Nutrition: The Social Appetite (edited with Lauren Williams, Oxford University Press, 2nd edn, 2004). John is an Executive Committee Member of the International Sociological Association and an Editorial Board Member for the Journal of Sociology. Kirsten Harley is undertaking a PhD on the use of theory in sociology at the University of Sydney. She has an honours degree in sociology from the University of New England, for which she received the university medal, and a science degree from the
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Histories of Australian Sociology University of Sydney. She has previously worked in broadcasting and communications policy and audience research. Trevor Hogan teaches in Sociology and Anthropology, La Trobe University, where he completed his Doctorate in 1995. He has degrees in economics and environmental science, and theology. Prior to commencing at La Trobe University he worked as freelance social researcher for various church, welfare, international and government organisations. He is a coordinating editor of Thesis Eleven (Sage) since 1995, and is Deputy Director of the Thesis Eleven Centre for Critical theory, La Trobe University. He is also the founding Director of PhilippinesAustralia Studies Centre, a joint project of Ateneo de Manila and La Trobe Universities. He is Board Member of the Far Eastern University Centre for the Study of the Urban Environment. He has co-edited three books and published articles on religion, socialism, social theory, history of ideas, poverty and social policy, and comparative urban sociology. He is currently working with Peter Beilharz on an ARC-funded intellectual biography of Jean Martin (1923-1979), a leading twentieth-century social scientist, as well as co-editing a new Introductory Sociology text for Oxford University Press: Place, Time and Division. With Professor Judith Brett he is overseeing the work of two postdoctoral researchers on a key non-government welfare institution in Australia: ‘The History of the Brotherhood of St Laurence’. Recent essays include work on Southeast Asian cities; Australian suburbia and the enculturation of nature; Christian Socialism; and European Romanticism. He acts on the editorial board of Social Movement Studies. Kurt B. Mayer was a Professor at Brown University in the United States in the early 1960s when he visited the Research School of Sociology at the Australian National University (ANU). He became one of a number of invited visiting professors, who contributed to the development of sociology at ANU. Mayer had written on social class and social stratification, a later focus of the ANU group when it was finally established. In 1966 Mayer left Brown University and returned to his native Switzerland, where he was Chair at the University of Berne. Tara Renae McGee is a Lecturer in the School of Justice Studies at Queensland University of Technology. Tara worked as a xviii
Contributors Research Officer at the former Criminal Justice Commission 1997–2000, TASA Executive Officer 2001–2004, and has held casual research and teaching positions at the University of Queensland. During this time she was also a PhD candidate at the University of Queensland. Her main research interests are criminal careers and developmental criminology, policing and criminal justice research, longitudinal research methodology and lifecourse determinants of mental health and behaviour outcomes. Tara is a TASA Executive Member in 2005–2006. Angela Mitropoulos is a graduate of La Trobe University’s Department of Sociology and Anthropology. She currently writes on border policing, class composition and changing forms of jurisdiction. Katy Richmond graduated in history from the University of Melbourne. In the period 1960-4 she tutored in history at Melbourne, Monash and the ANU. In 1964 she enrolled in the coursework MA in Sociology at the ANU. In 1966 she was appointed to a lectureship at La Trobe University, where she has remained. In 1967 she was Business Manager of the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Sociology (ANZJS). Over a period of nearly four decades she has served as President, Vice-President, Secretary and Treasurer of SAANZ/TASA. She organised sociology conferences at La Trobe University’s Bundoora campus in 1976, 1989 and at the Beechworth campus in 2004. Sharyn L. Roach Anleu is Professor of Sociology at Flinders University, Adelaide. She was President of The Australian Sociological Association from 1997-1998 and was continuously on the Executive of the Association between 1991 and 2004 in various capacities, including Vice-President, Secretary and coeditor of the Journal of Sociology (2001-2004). Sharyn convened the Jean Martin Award judging panel in 1995 and 1997. She is the author of Law and Social Change (Sage, London) and three editions (with a fourth in preparation) of Deviance, Conformity and Control (Longman, Sydney). Sharyn is currently undertaking a national research project with Kathy Mack (Law School, Flinders University) on magistrates and their courts in Australia. Zlatko Skrbis is a Senior Lecturer in Sociology and Director of Postgraduate Studies in the School of Social Sciences at the xix
Histories of Australian Sociology University of Queensland. He has research interests in the areas of social identities, nationalism, immigration, and ethnicity in the the context of transnational mobilities. His publications include a book entitled Long-Distance Nationalism (1999) and various articles published in journals such as Theory, Culture and Society, and Nations and Nationalism. His most recent research project explores life pathways and belief formation among children in Queensland (ARC Discovery 2005-07). He is the Vice-President of TASA and the Vice-President of ISA Research Committee 05. John Western received his undergraduate and masters degrees in psychology from the University of Melbourne in the mid-1950s. His PhD in sociology, which he received in 1962, is from Columbia University in New York. He has taught at Columbia University, the Australia National University, and the University of Queensland, where he has been since 1966, and is Emeritus Professor. He has been a visiting researcher at the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations, London, the University of Ottawa and the National University of Singapore. His research interests are: professions and work; criminal justice system; class and social inequality; and quality of life. He has been President of SAANZ and TASA and has also jointly edited the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Sociology (ANZJS) on two occasions. He is a fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia. Jerzy (George) Zubrzycki immigrated to Australia in 1955, taking up a post in the Research School of Social Sciences at the Australian National University (ANU), after which he founded the Department of Sociology in 1970, where he stayed until his retirement in 1986. He has written extensively on immigration and contributed to many government reports and inquiries on Australian immigration and multiculturalism. He has also been involved in a range of organisations, including Lifeline, the Australian Family Association and the National Museum of Australia. In 1984 he was made an Officer of the Order of Australia.
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Abbreviations ABC AIC AIFS ANU ANZAAS
Australian Broadcasting Corporation Australian Institute of Criminology Australian Institute of Family Studies Australian National University Australian and New Zealand Association for the Advancement of Science ANZJS Australian and New Zealand Journal of Sociology ARC Australian Research Council ASA American Sociological Association ASIO Australian Security and Intelligence Organisation AUC Australian Universities Commisson AUT Auckland University of Technology CHASS Council for the Humanities Arts and Social Sciences CIS Centre for Independent Studies CU Canterbury University CURA Centre for Urban Research and Action DEST Department of Education Science and Training FASSO Federation of Australian Social Science Organisations FIST Feminism in Sociological Theory FoNZSSO Foundation of New Zealand Social Science Organizations GDP Gross Domestic Product HSR Health Sociology Review ISA International Sociological Association IWW Industrial Workers of the World JOS Journal of Sociology MIBAS Most Influential Books in Australian Sociology MU Massey University OU Otago University SAANZ Sociological Association of Australia and New Zealand SPRC Social Policy Research Centre SSRFC Social Science Research Fund Committee TASA The Australian Sociological Association UNESCO United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization VEF Victorian Employers Federation VET Vocational Education and Training VUW Victoria University of Wellington WEA Workers’ Educational Association WU Waikato University xxi
Part 1 Contemporary Reflections on Australian and New Zealand Sociology History is the version of past events that people have decided to agree upon.
Napoleon Bonaparte
T
he chapters in this first section represent personal reflections and recollections by key players in the formation of the discipline in Australia. The careful reader will enjoy the subtle differences in these historical accounts, and as editors we have not attempted to position one version as more accurate than any other. In chapter 1, R. W. Connell provides a historical overview of the formation of Australian sociology in a global context. Drawing on many of the seminal historical works reproduced in later parts of this book, Connell outlines initial dalliances with evolutionary sociology in the late 1900s, where Australia was a source of raw data for broader theoretical exegesis in the intellectual ‘metropoles’ of Europe and the USA. He then discusses the formalisation of the academic discipline of sociology from the 1950s onwards, highlighting the ways in which the sociology of the ‘metropole’ has unproblematically been applied to Australian contexts, and calls for a reassessment of this approach. Chapters 2 to 4 are based on the history panel papers from the TASA 2003 conference. Lois Bryson, in chapter 2, describes the alleged sociological ‘communist plot’ of the early 1960s and her own ASIO surveillance experience, as well as the perceived controversy surrounding her appointment as the first elected editor of the then Australian and New Zealand Journal of Sociology (ANZJS). Bryson notes that the rise of Australian sociology coincided with the rising influence of social liberalism and expansion of the welfare state, particularly the growth and increasing democratisation of universities. The study of social change, especially issues of urbanisation and its associated social issues, came to the forefront of the public agenda, and sociology was well placed to capitalise on the renewed interest. 1
Histories of Australian Sociology
In chapter 3, Sol Encel describes the difficulties experienced in establishing sociology in Australian universities, as well as his experience of the formation and early years of the Sociological Association of Australia and New Zealand (SAANZ). In chapter 4, John Western discusses SAANZ and its precursor—the Canberra Sociological Society—as well as describing the split from New Zealand in 1988, the name change to the Australian Sociological Association (TASA), and the seemingly perennial issues of professionalisation, sociologists working outside universities, sociology’s engagement with public issues, and debates over core teaching curricula. In chapter 5, Katy Richmond presents what she describes as the ‘antihistory of Australian sociology’—the various attempts to curb the expansion of the discipline. In doing this, she reflects on her own engagement with the discipline and with SAANZ/TASA. Chapter 6 is a short reflection by Cora Baldock in which she describes her involvement with SAANZ. Charles Crothers, in chapter 7, discusses the trends and developments unique to the New Zealand experience, including the split from SAANZ and status of sociology in New Zealand universities.
2
1 Australia and World Sociology R. W. CONNELL* Introduction
O
ver thirty years ago, in the early days of TASA, when it was still the Australian end of SAANZ, Baldock and Lally conducted a postal survey of members to find out their research plans and theoretical perspectives. Among the questions was ‘Are you an adherent of any specific school in sociology?’ Of the minority who answered this question and who claimed some affiliation, Three named symbolic interactionism, two functionalism, three Marxist, three Weberian sociology, and another three emphasised the ideas of Durkheim. (Baldock and Lally 1974: 280) That is to say, every Australian and New Zealand sociologist who claimed affiliation, claimed it with either a dead white European male or with living North Americans. (I have to declare an interest here—I was one of the respondents in the survey, and gave a smart-arse answer, claiming affiliation with both, which Baldock and Lally were amused enough to quote but kind enough to keep anonymous.) Baldock and Lally dredged hard for original theoretical contributions by Australian and New Zealand sociologists, but their bucket came up practically empty. It seemed that there simply wasn't a sociological perspective that had developed here. Even the young radicals who were then criticizing the influence of US sociology, Baldock and Lally suggested, were really following US trends. And, to cap it, their own book, Sociology in Australia and New Zealand, was published not in Australia or New Zealand but in the United States, in a series edited by a well-known US sociologist. *
This paper is based on sections of a plenary address given to the TASA 2004 Conference held at the Beechworth campus of La Trobe University; I am grateful to the conference organizers, and to conference participants for feedback and continuing discussions of these themes.
3
Histories of Australian Sociology
Things have moved on since 1974, and the bucket would not come up quite so empty now. But the issue that Baldock and Lally dramatized, the relationship between Australian and New Zealand sociologists and the sociology of the global metropole, remains. We cannot begin to understand the history of antipodean sociology without recognizing it as a story about colonial and post-colonial intellectuals, in a setting that was created by settler colonialism and continues to be structured by marginality in global economic and cultural networks. In this paper I offer some data and observations on these issues, and reflect on implications for the future agenda of sociology. To limit the task, I focus on two moments in the history of sociological writing and research: (a) the Australian colonies' role in the construction of evolutionary sociology in the second half of the nineteenth century; and (b) the making of an academic discipline of sociology in Australian universities about a hundred years later, from the 1950s to the 1970s. Australia's Place in the Making of ‘Classical’ Sociology When respondents to Baldock and Lally's survey claimed to be Marxists, Weberians or Durkheimians, they were following a professional ritual that by the 1960s and 1970s was well established in Anglophone sociology. US and British textbooks of the time routinely began with invocations of a small group of Founding Fathers—almost always including Marx, Weber and Durkheim and sometimes also Comte, Toennies, Spencer, and Sumner. It had become common for sociological theorists to work by bouncing off a small group of ‘classical’ texts, such as Marx's Capital, Durkheim's Suicide, Weber's Economy and Society and Sumner's Folkways. Even data-heavy empirical articles often began with an invocation of some classic, and were regarded as extra-clever if they could tie their findings to some founding father theme. This professional ritual is far from dead (Baehr 2002). It has even been renovated by adding a few extra names (most often Du Bois) to the cast list. What is wrong here is not the concern with old texts, but the utterly ahistorical way they are treated. The cult of ‘sociological classics’ takes the texts out of their social contexts—violating all the principles of the sociology of knowledge—and treats them in an essentially religious way, as timeless objects of exegesis and commentary. 4
Australia and World Sociology
In fact, Comte, Durkheim, Weber and the rest were interesting, passionate, sometimes crazy, flesh-and-blood intellectuals very much involved in the issues of their time. Comte's tremendous world-vision and social marginality finally boxed him in as the pope of a tiny religious cult. Durkheim fought the good fight for the republican cause in France in a period of great political tension (and wound up producing World War I propaganda against Germany). Weber oscillated between reforming zeal and nationalist power politics flavoured by militarism (and wound up as a captain in the Prussian army during the same war). And we all know that Marx wrote Capital as a refugee, who would certainly be interned by the Howard government for suspected terrorist links if he turned up in modern Australia. He had fled his country after a failed attempt at regime change, a few steps ahead of the police—at the same time, and for the same reason, as the young composer Richard Wagner fled. The intellectual enterprise that eventually borrowed a neologism from Comte and called itself ‘sociology’—before the 1890s it was frequently called by other names, including ‘social physics’ and (by Spencer) ‘the social science’—thus developed in a specific historical setting and responded to the currents and dilemmas of its milieu. As I have argued in another paper, a key feature of that milieu was its geopolitical location (Connell 1997). The early sociologists were members of the liberal intelligentsia of the imperialist powers (of western and northern Europe and eastern North America) at the high tide of global imperial expansion. Colonial expansion created cultural dilemmas for the metropolitan intelligentsia, to which sociology—first as an inchoate intellectual current from the 1850s to the 1880s, then crystallizing into an academic discipline in the 1890s and 1900s— offered solutions. These solutions centered on ideas of social progress (sometimes biologised as ‘social evolution’, appealing to the immense cultural authority of Darwin), and a crucial part of their rationale depended on data from the colonized world. The conventional view in modern sociology textbooks, that classical sociology arose as a response to the industrial revolution in Europe, is factually wrong. We can see this in both the textbooks of the new discipline and in its research agenda. A striking proof is Durkheim and colleagues' magnificent L'année sociologique, intended as an annual survey of all sociological knowledge. It was not focussed on industrial society, but incorporated
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Histories of Australian Sociology data from all known cultures across the globe and all periods of history. The colonial world therefore mattered to the first two generations of metropolitan sociology. We should look at early sociological work in the Australian colonies in this light. During the second half of the nineteenth century, metropolitan sociological texts, especially the writings of Comte and Spencer, circulated far beyond the metropole. Spencer for instance had a considerable impact in Japan and India; Comte was read in Iran and had a powerful influence in Brazil. Such an impact depended on the existence of a local intelligentsia capable of working with these ideas. As it happened, the creation of a higher education system in Australia exactly coincided with the invention of sociology in the metropole. Comte's System of Positive Polity, subtitled Treatise of Sociology, was published between 1851 and 1854 in the early days of Louis Bonaparte's regime, the subject of Marx's Eighteenth Brumaire; the University of Sydney opened for business in 1852 and the University of Melbourne in 1855. The colonial universities' curriculum was originally a stodgy amalgam of classics and technical training, but it gradually broadened, and as it did so, it was possible for themes from ‘the social science’ to be included. Colonial newspapers—more diverse and intellectually substantial than newspapers are now—provided another arena in which ‘the social question’, relations between races, the status of women, and other sociological themes were actively debated, without being called ‘sociology’. In the second half of the 19th century, these debates developed more actively in Melbourne than Sydney. Melbourne was then a bigger city, with a more diverse and radical intelligentsia and a much more openminded university. For the social sciences, the most notable product of this milieu was the work of W. E. Hearn, an Irish classicist who became professor at the University of Melbourne in the 1850s and produced an impressive series of books over the next thirty years (La Nauze 1949). The unstructured state of social science at the time is illustrated by the fact that Hearn was professor of history, literature, logic, political economy, and law, most of them at the same time. Sociologists should particularly notice his book, The Aryan Household, published in Melbourne in 1878. If we are looking for ‘firsts’, this
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Australia and World Sociology might be a reasonable choice for the first important text of sociology to be written in Australia. Hearn himself did not call it ‘sociology’—he gave it the subtitle ‘An Introduction to Comparative Jurisprudence’ (he was Dean of Law at the time), and explicitly distinguished it from speculation about ‘the origin or the evolution of man’. It is, nevertheless, recognizably part of the genre of studies of social progress in broad comparative vein that were being undertaken in the 1870s and 1880s by Tylor and Spencer in Britain (the first edition of Primitive Culture appeared in 1871, the three volumes of Principles of Sociology, by instalments, in 1874–77), Letourneau in France (Sociology, Based upon Ethnography, English translation 1881), Ward in the United States (Dynamic Sociology, first edition 1883) and Toennies in Germany (Community and Association, first edition 1887). Hearn explains his purpose clearly in the introduction: I propose to describe the rise and the progress of the principal institutions that are common to the nations of the Aryan race. I shall endeavour to illustrate the social organization under which our remote forefathers lived. I shall, so far as I am able, trace the modes of thought and of feeling which, in their mutual relations, influenced their conduct. I shall indicate the germs of those institutions which have now attained so high a development; and I shall attempt to show the circumstances in which political society took its rise, and the steps by which, in Western Europe, it supplanted its ancient rival. (Hearn 1878: 2) Several things are interesting about this passage: the sober tone—this is intended as a technical contribution to science, not a popularization; Hearn's simple identification with Europeans (‘our remote forefathers’), reflecting the idea of Australian colonists as transplanted Britons; and the presupposition of progress (‘so high a development’). Notable, also, is Hearn's opening of a contrast between two types of society. This is an early example of the technique I have called ‘grand ethnography’ (Connell 1997), which soon became central to metropolitan sociologists' representations of time and progress. A few pages later Hearn gives a very clear summary of this way of representing change:
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Histories of Australian Sociology In all its leading characteristics—political, legal, religious, economic—archaic society presents a complete contrast to that in which we live... no central government... no national church... few contracts... Men lived according to their customs... They were protected, or, if need were, avenged, by the help of their kinsmen. There was, in short, neither individual nor State. The clan, or some association founded upon the model of the clan, and its subdivisions, filled the whole of our forefathers' social life. (Hearn 1878: 4–5) The rest of the book fills out this contrast with concrete examples and generalizations about the two types of society. In doing so it traverses a range of classic sociological themes: the nature of custom, the position of women, the social organization of the household, types of association, types of power, and the relationship between the state and civil society. In terms of method, there are considerable similarities with Durkheim's Division of Labour in Society, published only fifteen years after Hearn's book. (I do not assume Durkheim read Hearn, who is not cited in Durkheim's text; the point is that they were working within a common approach.) There is, however, a notable difference. Durkheim found his ‘lower societies’ and ‘primitive peoples’ partly in the colonized world of his own day, and partly in ancient history; Hearn, although he lived in a colony, found his examples rigorously in the earlier history of the ‘Aryan’ nations. It may be partly for that reason that Hearn's brilliant beginning found few Australian followers; he created no local school of sociological research. His text was, rather, a contribution from the colonies to the metropolitan literature of speculation about the nature and course of social progress, centering on the ideas of Comte and Spencer. There was no institutionalization of ‘sociology’ in the colonial universities, any more than there was at Oxford or Cambridge, which were still taken as models by the colonial academics. When in the 1880s the University of Sydney began to modernize its badly outdated Arts curriculum, it developed modern history, philosophy and political economy but did not try to develop sociology (Turney, Bygott and Chippendale 1991: 271 ff.). That development occurred in North American universities, where an inventive though unstable fusion between evolutionary science, 8
Australia and World Sociology empiricism and an older moralizing ‘social science’ curriculum produced the first university departments of sociology in the 1890s. There followed an explosion of undergraduate sociology courses, textbooks, professional organization, and research output in American colleges (Bernard and Bernard 1965, Oberschall 1972). This met with an upsurge of interest in sociology across the North Atlantic, producing such markers as the first cross-national organization of sociologists (the Institut international de sociologie founded by Worms, a French rival of Durkheim's), and the first chair of sociology in Britain—which was at LSE, not Oxford or Cambridge—in 1907. It was these events that Francis Anderson, who had been appointed to a chair of philosophy during the University of Sydney renovation of Arts, had in mind when he delivered the 1911 lecture that is often taken as the starting-point of Australian sociology. Sociology in Australia: A Plea for its Teaching, published in 1912 as an eleven-page pamphlet, was not a work of sociology, nor was Anderson in any sense a sociologist. He was a professional philosopher who held a Comtean view of the structure of science. In this view, sociology was the ‘mother science’ that stated the broad principles of which specific social sciences such as economics were examples. Sociology's task was ‘to ascertain the natural laws which are manifested in social growth’ (Anderson 1912: 10). Anderson seized upon the recent expansion of economics and commerce teaching at the University of Sydney to argue that the mother science should also be taught, and he seized on the recent explosion of sociology teaching in the United States to provide a model. Anderson's view of ‘sociology’ was, in 1912, already a little outdated—in the US universities he invoked, the great shift towards empiricism was picking up steam (Ross 1991). Within ten years the whole system of evolutionary social science and its search for laws of progress was plunged into a terminal crisis. Nothing like Anderson's program could possibly be implemented, and in a sense we should see his lecture as marking the end of an era rather than the beginning of one. But there was one other feature of Australian intellectual life in the nineteenth century that is essential to explore—a feature that Hearn and Anderson ignored, but Durkheim did not. The expansion of the European empires from the sixteenth to the twentieth centuries brought the empire-builders into contact with a growing number of other cultures. This contact was from the start turbulent, often violent, and marked by contradictory attitudes to the 9
Histories of Australian Sociology colonized (Bitterli 1989). But in all cases it was accompanied by a flow of information about the colonized world. A stream of explorers' journals, official correspondence, enquiries and reports, missionary narratives, travellers' tales, military memoirs, and other accounts of ‘native’ life flowed back to the metropole, where they stimulated great interest and sometimes intense debates. Deliberate fact-finding missions to learn about indigenous societies, pioneered by the French in north Africa, eventually became a major technique of colonial government and policy-making (Burke 1980). During the nineteenth century, this reportage from the colonized world became a major data source for evolutionary social science. In the 1871 preface to his great work Primitive Culture, Edward Tylor made a: general acknowledgment of obligations to writers on ethnography and kindred sciences, as well as to historians, travellers, and missionaries. (Tylor 1873: I, vi) Such observers provided, in the eyes of sociologists theorizing progress, rich documentation of the ‘primitive’ which their grand ethnography sought to contrast with the advanced society of the metropole. The British conquest of Australia was no exception to this pattern. The first governor, Arthur Phillip, was instructed to make contact with the natives and take them under protection, which he duly attempted to do. His reports launched British colonial administration on a see-saw of conciliation, coercion and hand-wringing over frontier violence which lasted until the white colonists had seized the richest land in eastern Australia and persuaded Whitehall to grant them control of the rest, in the form of responsible government. Accounts of this process, with descriptions of the aboriginal communities to whom it was applied, are abundant in the texts about the Australian colonies that flowed back to Britain. To give just one example, though a notable one, being one of the great scientific documents of the age: Charles Darwin's Journal of Researches published in 1839 (better known as The Voyage of the Beagle) contains a chapter about his visit to Sydney and trip over the Blue Mountains and then short visits to Van Diemen's Land and King George's Sound (now WA). Here he witnessed a ‘corrobery’ of the White Cockatoo people. His description ends: 10
Australia and World Sociology
When both tribes mingled in the dance, the ground trembled with the heaviness of their steps, and the air resounded with their wild cries. Every one appeared in high spirits, and the group of nearly naked figures, viewed by the light of the blazing fires, all moving in hideous harmony, formed a perfect display of a festival amongst the lowest barbarians. (Darwin n.d.: 426) Despite the pejoratives, Darwin was not hostile to the Australian aboriginal groups he met. He admired their bushcraft and hunting skills, sympathised with their vulnerability to imported diseases, and did not blame them for the frontier violence. (It is worth noting, given our contemporary New Right's pretence that the British occupation of Australia was a benign process, that even on a short visit and with a mind occupied by geology, Darwin picked up stories of frontier violence and social disruption in both NSW and VDL.) But he did regard the Australian aborigines as a more primitive people than the British, he expected their extinction, and he saw this as an unavoidable consequence of a stronger variety of man meeting a weaker: ‘Wherever the European has trod, death seems to pursue the aboriginal’ (Darwin n.d.: 411). Hundreds of such accounts of native life in Australia, some much more substantial than Darwin's, came back to Britain, and some then circulated further, especially to the United States and France. They became part of the raw material from which evolutionary social science was built. I could give many examples, but will quote just three, all from very well known writers. Tylor, whose encyclopaedic Primitive Culture did much to establish the new genre's claim to scientificity, swept up Australian examples among cases of primitive phenomena from all over the globe. To take two examples, more or less at random, from Tylor's chapters on ‘animism’: It is quite usual for savage tribes to live in terror of the souls of the dead as harmful spirits. Thus Australians have been known to consider the ghosts of the unburied dead as becoming malignant demons. (Tylor 1873: ii, 111) Mr. Backhouse describes a Tasmanian native sorcerer, ‘afflicted with fits of spasmodic contraction of the muscles of one breast, which he attributes, as they do all 11
Histories of Australian Sociology other diseases, to the devil’; this malady served to prove his inspiration to his people. (Tylor 1873: ii, 131) Surveying the races of mankind in his Dynamic Sociology, Lester Ward, a progressive liberal who in 1906 was to become the first President of the American Sociological Society, declared: Among other very low savage races may be mentioned the Fuegians, who, though of rather large stature, are mentally little superior to animals; the aboriginal Australians of the interior, who, along with other simian characteristics, are nearly destitute of the fleshy muscles constituting the calf of the leg (gastrocnemius and soleus)... Many of these tribes and races live almost entirely after the manner of wild beasts, having nothing that can be called government, religion, or society. (Ward 1897: II, 418) William Graham Sumner's Folkways, first published in 1906, was the most influential of all American sociological writings of the so-called ‘classical’ era. Like Tylor's book it is a tremendous assemblage of materials from different periods of history and regions of the world. Sumner makes repeated reference to Australian examples, and like the rest of his collection, they tend to be lurid: Some Australian girls consider that their honor requires that they shall be knocked senseless and carried off by the men who thereby become their husbands. If they are the victims of violence, they need not be ashamed. (Sumner 1934: 109) In Australian cannibalism the eating of relatives has behind it the idea of saving the strength which would be lost, or of acquiring the dexterity or wisdom, etc., of the dead. Enemies are eaten to win their strength, dexterity, etc. Only a bit is eaten. There are no great feasts. The fat and soft parts are eaten because they are the residence of the soul... Some inhabitants of West Australia explained cannibalism (they ate every tenth child born) as ‘necessary to keep the tribe from increasing beyond the carrying capacity of the territory.’ (Sumner 1934: 332–3)
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Australia and World Sociology Needless to say, none of these writers had ever visited Australia or met an Australian aboriginal person, and none of them made any attempt to verify these startling (and in Ward's and Sumner's cases undoubtedly false) claims. Tylor, being a better scholar, seems to have had some concern with the quality of his data, but the other two—like most sociological theorists of their time—had none. Australian aborigines had no human reality for them. They were simply tokens in the construction of a scientific fantasy of the primitive, which in turn validated a doctrine of social evolution and progress that applied to the metropole. Thus, despite the paucity of sociological writing in the Australian colonies, Australia had a significant role in the making of ‘classical’ sociology. Its role, like that of the rest of the colonized world, was to be a data mine, a source of ethnographic examples of the primitive. This was how Australia appeared in works of theory and synthesis such as the three just quoted, and in metropolitan data compilations such as Durkheim's L'année sociologique. Within the colonized world, Australia played a distinctive role for the sociologists. Its role was to be the site of the most primitive of all, to illustrate the extremity of degradation and backwardness. This can be seen in the quotation from Ward, and on this point Sumner—in most respects an opponent of Ward—was in complete agreement. He defines Australians and Bushmen [i.e. the San people of South Africa] as ‘the most primitive forms of life known to us’ (Sumner 1934: 346). This was also the assumption behind the most famous appearance of Australia in the texts of ‘classical’ sociology. In the last decades of the nineteenth century deliberate ethnographic observation was beginning to replace ‘historians, travellers and missionaries’ as the key source of information about non-European peoples, in the intellectual shift that eventually produced modern social anthropology. Some of this pioneering work was done in Australia, and among the most influential was the expedition to the central desert by Spencer and Gillen. Back in Paris, Spencer and Gillen's 1899 report The Native Tribes of Central Australia was read with enthusiasm by Durkheim and his colleagues. It was warmly reviewed in L'année sociologique, and a decade later became the main empirical basis for Durkheim's last great work, The Elementary Forms of Religious Life, published in 1912.
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Histories of Australian Sociology In this book the customs and mythology of the Aranda people as they stood in the late nineteenth century became the main basis for a general sociology of religion. (Durkheim, like most metropolitan sociologists who wrote about ‘Australians’, understood almost nothing of the diversity or dynamism of indigenous cultures in Australia. Durkheim was better than most, he knew there were different regions and communities, but believed they were ‘perfectly homogeneous’ because their societies ‘all belong to one common type’—Durkheim 1976: 95.) The Aranda were used for one specific reason. Durkheim thought he had found, in Spencer and Gillen's ethnography, a detailed description of the most primitive form of religion—and he thought that by studying the most primitive forms, he could reveal the most fundamental truths about religion. There is no ambiguity about it. Durkheim says exactly: In this book we propose to study the most primitive and simple religion which is actually known… A religious system may be said to be the most primitive… in the first place when it is found in a society whose organization is surpassed by no others in simplicity; and secondly when it is possible to explain it without making use of any element borrowed from a previous religion. (Durkheim 1976: 1) ‘Australian totemism’ was what fit the bill, because Australian aborigines had the most primitive documented society. Durkheim sets up his analysis like a chemist choosing the ideal laboratory conditions for a crucial experiment: Not only is their civilization most rudimentary—the house and even the hut are still unknown—but also their organization is the most primitive and simple which is actually known. (Durkheim 1976: 96) Here the crude racism of a Ward or Sumner is transcended—up to a point. Durkheim's prejudice takes a very sophisticated form; his sociology embeds a deeply ethnocentric viewpoint nonetheless. And it conceals a radical misunderstanding of Australian indigenous cultures. This was already visible in his own day. In a biting review of The Elementary Forms, the ethnographer van Gennep, who did know something about Australian indigenous cultures, pointed out that the book was riddled with doubtful factual claims. But more importantly
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Australia and World Sociology it was based on a truly monumental error—an error, I would say, that infected the whole enterprise of evolutionary sociology: The idea he [Durkheim] has derived from them [the ethnographic documents] of a primitive man... and of ‘simple’ societies is entirely erroneous. The more one knows of the Australians and the less one identifies the stage of their material civilization with that of their social organization, one discovers that the Australian societies are very complex, very far from the simple and the primitive, but very far advanced along their own paths of development. (Van Gennep in 1913, quoted in Lukes 1985: 525)
The Formation of Australian Academic Sociology in a World Context We fast-forward two generations. Metropolitan sociology has changed profoundly, in fact has undergone an epistemological break. Social evolution and theories of progress are no more, and the Comtean concept of sociology as a mother science has vanished. In France the Durkheimean program dwindles and disappears, in Germany the quarrelsome but vigorous progeny of Weber, Simmel and Marx is wiped out by the Nazis, in Britain with the decline of classic liberalism sociology fails to thrive, and attempts to create a radical sociology in Russia are stopped dead (literally) by Stalin. In the United States, where alone academic sociology flourishes, it is transformed in the era of the Chicago school and early survey research into an empirical science focussed on social differentiation and social problems within the metropole. In a new academic division of labour, social anthropology takes over as the science of nonWestern societies. From the 1920s to the 1940s, ‘sociology’ becomes focussed on the issues of social integration associated with the Fordist economy and the developing welfare state: delinquency and policing, immigration and ethnicity, working-class life in factories and slums, urban turbulence and poverty, social attitudes, suburban life and the many forms of alienation. The early stages of this transition, with lingering elements of the Comtean programme, are visible in the famous ‘Green Bible’ of the Chicago school (Park and Burgess 1924; for 15
Histories of Australian Sociology analysis, see Connell 1997). The transition is in one sense consummated when the empiricists' American Sociological Review is founded as the official organ of the American Sociological Society, in 1936. It is consummated in another way when Talcott Parsons, purveyor of an ahistorical theory of social integration, becomes the leading sociological theorist in the United States and the world. In Australia, with Anderson's proposal dead, bits of the new welfarestate sociology pop up in odd contexts—the Workers' Education Association (WEA), university philosophy courses, political speculation by progressive liberals, surveys of educational inequalities—but there is nothing like the Chicago school, let alone an Australian Parsons, to pull them together. Gordon Childe, Australia's most brilliant social scientist, leaves the country in 1922, dismayed at the Labor Party's betrayal of the workers, and goes off to Europe to invent scientific pre-history. For the next thirty years his astonishing scholarship is practically ignored in Australia, where it is known that he is a communist (Gathercole, Irving and Melleuish 1995). Other talented social researchers leave the country for other reasons, such as Elton Mayo, who became a founder of industrial sociology in the United States. When something that begins to look like a research programme within the new sociological episteme finally appears in Australia, it is ironically as outgrowths from two newcomers in the academic division of labour: social anthropology and social psychology. The professor of anthopology at the University of Sydney, A. P. Elkin, though his main focus was on Aboriginal cultures, began in the early 1940s to direct some of his students towards ethnographic studies of ‘our own society’, that is, white settler society. He also undertook what amounted to a study of wartime social integration based on survey data. The most notable products of this initiative were a wellobserved though modestly-presented ethnography of a NSW mining town by Alan Walker (1945), and an even better ethnography of kinship and family life in rural NSW by Jean Craig (1957), later known to every sociologist in Australia as Jean Martin. In the late 1940s the new professor of psychology at the University of Melbourne, Oscar Oeser, launched a more formal research programme on ‘social behaviour’ and attitudes which also drifted into the territory of the new sociology. In short order he and a research team, with funding from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and from business, conducted 16
Australia and World Sociology elaborate observational and interview studies in a Victorian country town, in schools and communities of suburban Melbourne, and in seven factories. The topics included class consciousness, job satisfaction, industrial relations, family life, and so on. This style of social-realist field observation was soon given up by Australian psychology, which fell under the influence of laboratory-oriented behaviourism. But the three books of the Social Structure and Personality series (Oeser and Hammond 1954, Oeser and Emery 1954, Lafitte 1958) provided key empirical material for the first Australian academic sociology courses that were constructed almost immediately after they were published. During the 1950s the idea of ‘social surveys’ on the (white) community became quite familiar in Australian academic life and to some extent beyond it. The first Australian market research firm, Roy Morgan's ‘Gallup Poll’, started business in the 1940s and its opinion poll findings—marketed by Morgan as scientific measures—were reported in the press and increasingly noticed by politicians. University-based and welfare-based surveys began to accumulate, describing specific social groups and their problems: the aged in Victoria, surveyed by a University of Melbourne group (Hutchinson 1954); the young in Sydney, surveyed by a University of Sydney group (Connell, Francis and Skilbeck 1957); the leisure problems of a Melbourne suburban estate, surveyed by the Brotherhood of St Laurence (Scott and U'ren 1962). Academic researchers also began to pick up on the national census as a source of data that might be reanalyzed for new purposes; Zubrzycki (1960) thus conducted ‘a demographic survey’ of immigrants in Australia. This generation of social researchers forged a new relationship with metropolitan sociology. Australia ceased to be a data mine, an economy exporting facts (or imagined facts). Most of these studies were published in Australia and remained completely unknown in the metropole. The new generation of researchers did not, by and large, try to be part of the metropolitan intellectual conversation, as Hearn had done. But they implicitly adopted the new American understanding of the subject-matter of sociology, and they adopted the methods of metropolitan (mostly US) social researchers. Walker's Coaltown, for instance, cites no theory and does not compare its findings with any other research, but it is clear that it is modelled on community studies such as the Lynds' Middletown and Warner's ‘Yankee City’ series, and Elkin alludes to this in his 1945 preface to 17
Histories of Australian Sociology Coaltown. The Sydney educationists' Growing Up in an Australian City is more explictly connected with the American sociology and social psychology of youth (e.g. Hollingshead’s Elmtown’s Youth and Havighurst’s studies of adolescence), which became part of the curriculum in education courses at the University of Sydney. For Old People in a Modern Australian Community, the academic and business sponsors actually imported ‘an experienced investigator of social problems’ from Britain to run the study (Hutchinson 1954: v). Australian sociology thus constituted itself as a branch office of metropolitan sociology, importing metropolitan methods and topics in order to address a local audience about local versions of social problems. It is diagnostic of this situation that the commonest formula for the title of an Australian sociological report, for the thirty years from 1950, was X in Australia—where X was a phenomenon presumptively understood in the metropole and for which metropolitan paradigms of research were available. X might be ‘religion’, ‘status and prestige’, ‘social stratification’, ‘divorce’, ‘marriage and the family’, ‘urbanization’, ‘prostitution’, ‘political leadership’, ‘women’, ‘mass media’, ‘immigrants’, or ‘sociology’ itself (all being actual examples of titles from the period, and by no means exhausting the field). The task of the Australian sociologist was to apply the metropolitan research technique, demonstrate that the phenomenon also existed in Australia, and say empirically what form it took here. In some of this writing there was a faint but detectable missionary flavour, as if the sociologists were bringing new light to the unsophisticated Australians. This wave of metropolitan-style studies of ‘our own society’ was the knowledge base on which an academic discipline called ‘sociology’— very different from the enterprise that Anderson had called for— began to be erected in Australia's expanding university system. The action was very fast. Within half a dozen years, from 1959 to 1965, we saw the first named chair of sociology in the country, the first sociology teaching programs set up, the foundation of a professional association, the first issues of its academic journal, and the first general textbook. This brief period even saw the first pop sociology best-seller, The Lucky Country, written by a journalist (Horne 1964). In the following ten years, from 1966 to 1976, another ten departments (or equivalent) of sociology were created around the country. But a collection of social surveys, however well done, was not enough to claim space in the universities as a new discipline. There also 18
Australia and World Sociology needed to be a body of ideas. As Davies and Encel (1965: 1) put it in the first edition of their influential textbook, Australian Society, sociology is ‘an academic discipline seeking to illuminate the results of social surveys (including the census) by systematic thinking about social groups and institutions’. Some means of ‘systematic thinking’ was therefore required. In a vigorously argued paper on ‘The scope and purpose of sociology’, Fallding (1962) insisted that sociology is now an established discipline in terms of its object of knowledge— systems of social action—and its theoretical logic. Since (as Baldock and Lally discovered) no sociological theory to speak of was being produced in Australia, this too had to be imported from the metropole. Fallding's solution was to import Parsonian functionalism in a lump; others imported other frameworks. The result was a characteristic structure of knowledge in the new discipline, where Australian sociologists combined metropolitan theory and methodology with local data and audiences. The hybrid character of this work was reflected in the structure of written texts. They would often start with an exegesis of the metropolitan debate on subject-matter X, adopt a conceptual position within this debate, and then launch on an empirical report of the Australian material they had gathered. Characteristically the ‘conclusion’ section was weak, since local audiences were not interested in the implications for metropolitan debates, and metropolitan audiences were not reading Australian publications. A notable example is Encel's (1970) important monograph Equality and Authority, which might be regarded as an epitome of this moment in Australian sociology. Encel's book traverses the metropolitan (mainly British and US) controversies about class and stratification, adopts a modified Weberian position, and then leaving theory behind, launches on seriatim reports of his extensive compilations of data about Australian elites. Another example (I have to confess, since I was writing in the same genre) is Connell and Irving's (1980) Class Structure in Australian History. This is even more striking in a way, since the book was read as a piece of historiography more than a piece of sociology. Yet we followed the sociologists' formula, and started with a chapter debating metropolitan theories of class, before settling into an exposition of Australian empirical material. Along with metropolitan theory—though this was hardly noticed at the time—came a metropolitan vision of what ‘society’ was and how we might talk about it. ‘Australian society’ was simply presumed to be 19
Histories of Australian Sociology the same kind of thing, for which the same conceptual categories were unproblematically appropriate. The rising quality of Australian sociology actually tended to entrench this pattern. As Australian sociologists became more sophisticated and successful in using the metropolitan tools, they began to publish in metropolitan journals. (For good reasons: as well as the desire to find a wider audience, the prestige attached to ‘international publication’ helped promotion in Australian universities.) To publish in those forums, even with Australian data, Australian writers had to produce texts in a form familiar to metropolitan editors—conforming to metropolitan styles, addressing metropolitan literatures, and offering credible interventions in metropolitan debates. (I am not speculating—these remarks are based on concrete experiences with US and British journals.) ‘Australian sociology’ was thus produced as a professional account of ‘Australian society’ seen through metropolitan eyes. The construction of Australian sociology as an academic discipline in the decades 1950–1980 had thus completely reversed the relationship between Australia and metropolitan sociology that had existed a hundred years earlier. Then, Australia was treated as the site of difference, in fact extreme difference, from the advanced society of the metropole. Now, Australia was treated as the site of similarity, as part of the conceptually homogenous terrain of modern society. Of course this involved a shift of empirical interest from aboriginal to settler society. But the shift itself was occluded. ‘Australian society’ was not theorized in the new discipline as a settler society, it was simply regarded as part of modernity. Indigenous cultures were not now regarded as any concern of sociology, being the business of ‘anthropology’ in the academic division of labour. Anthropology was, in Australian universities, the older and more prestigious discipline. This was a boundary the sociologists could not yet challenge. The relationship between indigenous society and settler/modern society that had been so important for evolutionary sociology simply vanished as an intellectual theme, until it was revived by the historians of frontier conflict, and by anthropologists' re-thinking of their own discipline's connections with colonialism. Aboriginal people did concern sociologists from time to time, but in a new way: as the subjects of processes characteristic of modern society, such as social stratification. For instance, there was a section on 20
Australia and World Sociology aboriginal people in the bibliography of Australian research on social stratification published in two early issues of the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Sociology (ANZJS) (Ancich et al. 1969). More commonly, however, aboriginal people were considered in Australian sociology under the American rubric of ‘ethnic minority’. This is how they were treated, for instance, in Baldock and Lally's survey of Sociology in Australia and New Zealand, in a chapter on ‘studies of ethnic minorities’ whose primary focus was post-war non-British immigration, and which took up issues of assimilation, ethnic identity, etc. The ironic result of the new structure of sociological knowledge was that indigenous groups were understood as being the same kind of thing as the groups constituted by the most recent settlers. With Australian sociology wholly dependent on metropolitan concepts and methods, the question necessarily arose as to what was specifically ‘Australian’ about this. In the 1960s and 1970s the issue of the distinctiveness of Australian sociology was a good deal agitated, without very much clarity being achieved. Australian sociology had, perhaps, a characteristic empirical focus. Issues of migration were certainly very prominent in Australian sociologists' work, more so than in Britain and the United States at the time. Or it had a characteristic irony, because sociologists' documentation of stratification, elites and exclusions was supposed to run counter to a local belief in Australian egalitarianism. Busting ‘myths’ about Australia became a favoured trope in Australian sociological writing in the 1960s (e.g. Taft 1962). In the 1970s there was a short-lived debate among sociologists about giving preference to Australians in appointments to Australian jobs, but no action followed. When Allen & Unwin Australia, with the energetic leadership of John Iremonger, took over from Melbourne University Press as the main publisher of sociological books, Australian sociologists got a major monograph series on the metropolitan pattern. This could have provided an intellectual core to the discipline, and was perhaps intended to. But it is hard to see, in Allen & Unwin's ‘Studies in Society’ series, any intellectual program. It looked more like a shelf of unconnected PhD theses, and that is of course where most of the texts came from. Each book was connected to a different metropolitan debate; few discussed each other. The same was true of papers in the ANZJS. They addressed separate metropolitan literatures, not each other. There were few locally-based controversies in the Australian journal's pages.
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Histories of Australian Sociology A definition of Australian ‘distinctiveness’ from the metropole, then, proved very elusive. Apart from links with New Zealand sociologists, who shared a problem discussed as ‘remoteness’, it was not much noticed that the same issue was bothering other groups of sociologists around the world. This was true even in regions that Australians tended to think of as the centre. When the International Sociological Association (ISA) met in Bielefeld in 1994, local people circulated volumes reviewing the state of the discipline, in which a main concern was debates over the distinctiveness of European sociology, vis-a-vis American (Nedelmann and Sztompka 1993, Schäfers 1994). The issue, it seems, has to do with the structure of the discipline on a global scale, not with any peculiarity of the Australians. Reflections In an earlier attempt to grapple with these problems, I made a distinction between inverted and everted sociologies (Connell 1990). The former are logically self-sufficient, referring to themselves for intellectual warrant. The latter are logically dependent, being structured around their reference to another body of sociological knowledge. In those terms, US sociology is the only inverted national sociology in the world. Australian sociology is, of course, a prime case of everted sociology. That model was too simplified, but it makes one conclusion quite clear. The troubled relationship between Australian sociology and metropolitan sociology is neither an accidental happening nor a sign of the immaturity of Australian sociology. It is an issue built into the structure of sociological knowledge and the institutional organization of sociology on a world scale. As I have indicated in this paper, the relationship between colony and metropole has been formative for sociology throughout its history, though the terms of that relationship have changed and the role of the periphery in the production of knowledge has been reversed. Metropolitan theory and methodology has remained hegemonic in Australian sociology since the formation of the local discipline, though the particular versions have changed. Fallding's functionalism and Encel's Weberianism were displaced by structuralist Marxism and that in turn by post-structuralism and postmodernism; Foucauldians and Bourdieuvians now frolic where Althusserians once peacefully grazed. Empiricism has moved on from counting punch-cards with 22
Australia and World Sociology knitting needles to running SPSS for Windows, but the basic ideas persist. We still do surveys and ethnographies; we have also learned how to do discourse analysis and some of us are data-gathering on the Web. The problems of dependence on metropolitan frameworks, however, are now much clearer than they were. Metropolitan thought (with some important exceptions such as Wallerstein's world-systems framework), being self-referential, does not need to make explicit its own location in the world. This is nowhere more obvious than in general sociological theory, where decontextualization—the claim to state universal principles, the construction of categories intended to refer to all possible social contexts—is practically constitutive of the genre. Modern metropolitan general theory, not as an accident but for what seem to its authors the best of reasons, systematically excludes ideas from the global periphery, and accomplishes a grand erasure of the social experience of the colonized world (Connell 2005). This is a particularly dangerous situation for sociology at a time when this discipline, along with the other social sciences, is severely challenged by neo-liberal politics and ideology in a context of corporate globalization. The open hostility to sociology from the Howard government—explicitly re-stated by the federal minister of education in February 2005—is not an accident. Neo-liberal market ideology colonizes the social, and discredits or marginalizes all forms of social knowledge that do not adopt market forms. With the ascendancy of neo-liberalism, sociology is in danger (along with anthropology, political science, etc.) of becoming a residual discipline, concerned only with social problems at the margin of market society (Connell 2000). In contesting this situation, and finding a role for sociology as part of the democratic self-knowledge of world society, new forms of knowledge, including new forms of theorizing, will be required. An essential part of this is creating a new relationship between the sociology of the global metropole and that of the periphery. An absolute requirement is to make the relationship explicit, to make it clear that in the intellectual world as on the capital market there is a periphery and a metropole and they interact on unequal terms. In Australia, this means disrupting the structure of knowledge that was established at the formation of the sociology discipline in the 1950s and 1960s, that treated ‘Australian society’ as part of, at most 23
Histories of Australian Sociology an extension of, the metropolitan modern. Preconditions for clarity are explicit recognition of being a settler society, recognition of the formative relationship between indigenous and settler civilizations, and recognition of the specific location of contemporary Australia in global population movements, investment, politics and cultural interactions. Recognition of those facts of our situation will certainly trouble our relationship with the metropole—this is not a relaxed and comfortable route to travel. But it will also make it possible to find new resources, as global sociology now must, in the intellectual life of the majority world. This is easier said than done. The non-metropolitan world has unbelievable complexity and Australia's relationship with even its nearest neighbours is fraught. Not surprising—as a country created by settler colonialism, Australia's relationship with the rest of the colonized world is inherently ambivalent. But even this ambivalence opens many possibilities for exploration and mutual learning. Australian sociologists, by opening new dialogue both with indigenous cultures and with other regions in the periphery, have possibilities that are not readily available to our colleagues in the metropole. Australian sociology, I suggest, should come home to the South. References Ancich, M., Connell, R. W., Fisher, J. A. and Kolff, M. 1969, ‘A descriptive bibliography of published research and writing on social stratification in Australia, 1946–1967’, Australian and New Zealand Journal of Sociology, vol. 5, no.1, pp. 48–76; vol. 5, no. 2, pp. 128–152. Anderson, Francis 1912, Sociology in Australia: A Plea for its Teaching, Sydney, Angus & Robertson. Baehr, Peter 2002, Founders, Classics, Canons: Modern Disputes over the Origins and Appraisal of Sociology’s Heritage, New Brunswick, Transaction Publishers. Baldock, Cora V. and Lally, Jim 1974, Sociology in Australia and New Zealand: Theory and Methods, Contributions in Sociology, Number 16, Westport, Greenwood Press. Bernard, L. L. and Bernard, Jessie 1965 [1943], Origins of American Sociology: The Social Science Movement in the United States, New York, Russell and Russell. 24
Australia and World Sociology Bitterli, Urs 1989, Cultures in Conflict: Encounters between European and Non-European Cultures, 1492–1800, Stanford, Stanford University Press. Connell, R. W. 1990, ‘Notes on American sociology and American power’, in Herbert Gans (ed) Sociology in America, Newbury Park, Sage, pp. 265–271. —— 1997, ‘Why is classical theory classical?’, American Journal of Sociology, vol. 102, no. 6, pp. 1511–57. —— 2000, ‘Sociology and world market society’, Contemporary Sociology, vol. 29, no.1, pp. 291–296. —— 2005, ‘Northern theory: the political geography of general social theory’. Under submission. Connell, W. F., Francis, E. P. and Skilbeck, E. E. 1957, Growing Up in an Australian City, Melbourne, Australian Council for Educational Research. Craig, Jean I. 1957, ‘Marriage, the family and class’, in A. P. Elkin (ed) Marriage and the Family in Australia, Sydney, Angus & Robertson, pp. 24–53. Darwin, Charles. Not dated [c. 1898, first edition 1839]. Journal of Researches into the Natural History and Geology of the Countries Visited during the Voyage of H.M.S. ‘Beagle’ Round the World, London, Ward, Lock & Co. Davies, A. F. and Encel, S. 1965, Australian Society: A Sociological Introduction. Melbourne, Cheshire. Durkheim, Emile 1976 [1912], The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, Second edition, London, Allen & Unwin. Encel, S. 1970. Equality and Authority: A Study of Class, Status and Power in Australia, Melbourne, Cheshire. Fallding, Harold 1962, ‘The scope and purpose of sociology’, Australian Journal of Politics and History, vol. 8, pp. 78–92. Gathercole, Peter, Irving, T. H. and Melleuish, Gregory (eds) 1995, Childe and Australia: Archaeology, Politics and Ideas, Brisbane, University of Queensland Press. Hearn, W. E. 1878, The Aryan Household, its Structure and its Development: An Introduction to Comparative Jurisprudence, Melbourne, George Robertson. Horne, Donald 1964, The Lucky Country: Australia in the Sixties, Ringwood, Penguin. Hutchinson, Bertram 1954, Old People in a Modern Australian Community: A Social Survey, Melbourne, Melbourne University Press.
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Histories of Australian Sociology Lafitte, Paul 1958, Social Structure and Personality in the Factory, London, Routledge and Kegan Paul. La Nauze, J. A. 1949, Political Economy in Australia: Historical Studies, Melbourne, Melbourne University Press. Lukes, Steven 1985, Emile Durkheim, His Life and Work: A Historical and Critical Study, Stanford, Stanford University Press. Nedelmann, Birgitta and Sztompka, Piotr (eds) 1993, Sociology in Europe: In Search of Identity, Berlin, de Gruyter. Oberschall, Anthony (ed) 1972, The Establishment of Empirical Sociology: Studies in Continuity, Discontinuity and Institutionalization, New York, Harper and Row. Oeser, O. A. and Emery, F. E. 1954, Social Structure and Personality in a Rural Community, London, Routledge and Kegan Paul. Oeser, O. A. and Hammond, S. B. 1954, Social Structure and Personality in a City, London, Routledge and Kegan Paul. Park, Robert E. and Burgess, Ernest W. 1924, Introduction to the Science of Sociology, Second edition, Chicago, University of Chicago Press. Ross, Dorothy 1991, The Origins of American Social Science, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. Scott, David and U'Ren, Robert 1962, Leisure: A Social Enquiry into Leisure Activities and Needs in an Australian Housing Estate, Melbourne, Cheshire. Schäfers, Bernhard (ed) 1994, ‘Sociology in Germany’, Special issue of Sociologie, no. 3. Sumner, William Graham 1934 [1906], Folkways: A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores and Morals, Boston, Ginn. Taft, Ronald 1962, ‘The myth and migrants’, in P. Coleman (ed) Australian Civilization, Melbourne, Cheshire, pp. 191–206. Tylor, Edward B. 1873, Primitive Culture: Researches into the Development of Mythology, Philosophy, Religion, Language, Art, and Custom, Second edition, two volumes, London, John Murray. Turney, Clifford, Bygott, Ursula and Chippendale, Peter 1991, Australia's First: A History of the University of Sydney Volume I 1850– 1939, Sydney, University of Sydney and Hale & Iremonger. Walker, Alan. 1945, Coaltown: A Social Survey of Cessnock, N.S.W, Melbourne, Melbourne University Press. Ward, Lester F. 1897, Dynamic Sociology, or Applied Social Science as Based upon Statistical Sociology and the Less Complex Sciences, Second edition, two volumes, New York, Appleton.
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Australia and World Sociology Zubrzycki, Jerzy 1960, Immigrants in Australia: A Demographic Survey Based on the 1954 Census, Melbourne, Melbourne University Press.
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2 Some Reflections on Australian Sociology and its Political Context LOIS BRYSON*
I
n 1911 Francis Anderson, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Sydney, addressed the Australasian Association for the Advancement of Science on, ‘Sociology in Australia: a Plea for its Teaching’ (his book of the same title was published in 1912). The meeting unanimously supported his recommendation that a chair of sociology be established (Serle 1949), but the plea fell on resistant, and at times explicitly hostile ears, and there were no chairs of sociology in Australia until the late 1950s. Nonetheless, sociology’s prehistory continued via a range of academic disciplines, including philosophy, psychology, anthropology, political science, criminology, agriculture and social work.1 The Political Context of Sociology’s Prehistory in the 1950s Though the term sociology was not used, half a century later, but still in this prehistory period, hostility to sociological research became a public issue, through an incident at the University of Melbourne where, as with the University of Sydney, sociology did not become an independent discipline until the 1990s. This incident has received some scholarly attention for its effect on the development of social work (Mendes 2001 and 2003) and as an incident in Australian social and political history more generally (e.g. Buckley 1983; McKnight 1994; Horne 2001; Macintyre and Selleck 2003). But here, because I am concerned primarily with its effects for sociology, I have drawn
*
Source: Bryson, L. (2003) ‘Reflections on Australian Sociology and its Political Context’, based on a paper presented as part of the History of Australian Sociology Plenary Session at TASA 2003 Conference, New Times, New Worlds, New Ideas: Sociology Today and Tomorrow, University of New England, Armidale NSW.
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Histories of Australian Sociology mainly on my own experience, as I have been unable to find any published discussion that is specifically focused on this. However a detailed account of the incident, by Fay Anderson, was published in Australian Historical Studies in 2005. Her paper is based on a close reading of a range of relevant documents as well as interviews with a number of people originally involved. It provides an extremely valuable contribution to Australian political history. Dominated by the Cold War, which heightened tensions between the political left and the right (particularly the Catholic right), the 1950s represented Australia’s anti-communist ‘McCarthyist’ phase. Two landmark incidents of the time were the Menzies’ government’s referendum in 1951 to outlaw the Communist Party that was only narrowly defeated, and the Democratic Labor Party’s split from the Australian Labor Party in 1955, essentially over the issue of socialist/communist influence. It was a time when it was considered subversive to even mention the works of Karl Marx within universities. Indeed, even into the 1970s, if a lecturer at Monash University (and probably other universities) mentioned Marx, it was not uncommon for a student’s parent to complain to the Vicechancellor (though Monash’s Vice-Chancellor was not too fussed). Australian universities from the late 1940s to the 60s must be understood against the background of the influx of returned servicemen and women who, supported by the Commonwealth Reconstruction Training Scheme, studied after World War II. These students, some of whom later became staff, brought new perspectives to the university and in 1947 numbered 2600 at the University of Melbourne, roughly a third of total enrolments. As Macintyre and Selleck (2003: 98) observe in their history of Melbourne University: ‘Older, more independent and less deferential, they brought with them something of the impatience for change that associated wartime service with the goal of a new national and international order’.2 This fed into an increasing liberalisation of western societies which included a gradual democratization of universities, both in terms of access and their structure. This is a trend against which we must understand the gradual acceptance of the discipline of sociology in Australia. In their turn the new sociology departments, from the late 1960s on, nourished these changes and often took something of a lead. Change occurred at different speed in each university, as did the amount of student activism (sit-ins, demonstrations, etc). The new universities, less hidebound by their histories than the sandstone universities, generally led the way. But by the late 1970s, even at the 30
Some Reflections on Australian Sociology and its Political Context University of Melbourne, although still not embracing sociology, the ‘god-professor no longer ruled by divine right’ (Macintyre and Selleck 2003: 134). A minor but telling innovation involved the abandonment of formal modes of address in the classroom, where until the late 1960s or early 1970s, formal titles (Mr, Mrs or Miss, Dr etc) were used between staff and students. A ‘Communist Plot’ at the University of Melbourne My student years at the University of Melbourne (1955-1958) were in the midst of Australia’s anti-communist period. At the time activity, including research, that could be construed as critical or on the left of politics could readily attract the attention of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO). Universities, it seems, were not seen as havens for fostering the free interchange of ideas, but as hotbeds of subversion. Macintyre and Selleck (2003: 103-4) record that during this period ASIO agents kept files on 63 staff of the University of Melbourne, including Professor of Law, Zelman Cowan, later to be Governor General of Australia. This, they observe, provides ‘a measure of the fevered imagination of the country’s custodians’. Because it was not officially taught, I only realized later that I did study sociology as part of my Arts and Social Work degree (offered from the Department of Social Studies), under the subject title ‘Social Organisation’. It rested largely on a foundation of Weberian theory, as Marx was blacklisted, and introduced students to social research through both direct teaching and the inclusion of students in research projects. I found the discipline exciting and became hooked on social research for life. After gaining my qualifications, I was offered an appointment as a tutor and research assistant, a regular employment practice to enable graduating students to pursue post-graduate studies, which I did. At the time of my appointment (1959) the Director of the Department, Ruth Hoban, was on study leave and Geoff Sharp, the lecturer who taught me sociology, was acting in her stead. He had attended university as an ex-serviceman and had formal qualifications in ‘collective’ psychology. My time in the Department of Social Studies was productive and the department a hive of exciting research and teaching activity. However, this in itself fanned tensions among staff, who became divided between those drawn to a more democratic 31
Histories of Australian Sociology management style and academically challenging research, and those who supported the status quo and the ‘god professor’ style of management. Hoban was certainly no democrat, as a minor anecdote from my student days demonstrates. During our final year, a fellow student announced that she and her fiancé were soon to elope. Hoban somehow heard about this and, because people under 21 years (the girl was not quite 21) needed parental approval to marry, she informed the parents. We students, outraged at being treated in this maternalistic manner, protested. Two weeks before the end of my first exciting year in the job in the Department of Social Studies, I was informed by the Director, returned from her study leave, that my appointment would not be extended. Extension was the usual practice at the time so, effectively, two of us were sacked, with no explanation. Yet my progress as a post-graduate student had met expectations, my teaching seemed appreciated by students and I had become a member of the executive of the Victorian Branch of the Australian Association of Social Workers. It took many years before it emerged what an ‘Alice in Wonderland’ situation this productive year was turned into by others. During 1959 I had worked on research with staff from both the Social Studies and the Criminology Departments. This later became the subject of accusations that the research was deficient and linked to a ‘communist plot’, aimed at taking power within these departments. This in turn was interpreted as part of a wider infiltration by communist activists aimed at gaining greater control of universities. As Anderson (2005: 60) observes, universities at the time ‘were regarded as bastions of political indoctrination’ of students by staff. Surveillance by ASIO agents followed and ASIO was not only involved in surveillance but also in organising counter operations (McKnight 1998; Anderson 2005). I only discovered the extent of these activities in 2003, when reading my own ASIO file (with identifying data about ASIO’s staff and informants blacked-out). It is around 100 pages of documents. Interestingly, the main section of the file is titled ‘Spoiling Operations’. My name is only mentioned explicitly twice in the file, in lists of subscribers to the scholarly Marxist journal Arena, but my address was kept current until the early 1970s, when the Whitlam government stopped this type of surveillance of academics. During 1961 a so-called ‘communist plot’ at Melbourne University hit the headlines of the weekly magazine, the Bulletin. In May, it made 32
Some Reflections on Australian Sociology and its Political Context the floor of the House of Representatives when MP William Wentworth asked a question about the matter. Week after week, articles appeared in the Bulletin with amazing detail, most highly inaccurate and fantastic, about activities in the Social Studies Department at Melbourne University. The four most discussed protagonists, referred to as Miss A, Mr B, and Miss C and D (see Anderson 2005), were the Director (A) and her Deputy (C) and Sharp (B) and another researcher from Criminology (D) (I did not rate a designation). The ‘plot’ allegations were kicked off by Max Crawford, in a letter to the Bulletin, ‘Communism in Universities’ (April 12, 1961: 44; see also Anderson 2005: 68). Crawford was Professor of History at the University of Melbourne, and husband of Hoban, Director of the Social Studies Department. He was known to be politically left-leaning and had suffered because of this. His involvement therefore reassured some who might otherwise have treated the accusations more cautiously. These included Donald Horne, then editor of the Bulletin and an enthusiastic anti-communist (Horne 2000: 110). Crawford (1961) suggested that universities needed to be vigilant, though preserve free speech, because of a willingness of some academics ‘to fake research, to indoctrinate students and to intimidate colleagues’. Drawing on his, unacknowledged, wife’s account of matters, he stated, ‘I have in recent years seen a dissident group, which I believed to be Communist-led’, through ‘the known tactics of fractional politics, attempt to drive the heads of two small departments and those loyal to them either into acquiescing in the faction’s control of departmental policy, or even into resigning and leaving the field clear’. A series of editorials, entitled the ‘University Communists at Work’ series, followed in the Bulletin. Written by editor Donald Horne, they were informed by Frank Knopfelmacher (Department of Psychology, University of Melbourne), an active anti-communist crusader (Horne 2000: 110). Horne’s articles accused a group of about 6-8 staff (the boundaries were never very clear, though Anderson specifies eight) of intimidating colleagues, stealing administrative files, breaking into offices, attempting to put in an extra switchboard in order to control more phones—among other bizarre accusations. Sharp, later a key founder of Arena publications, was accused, for example, of having accosted the head of department in the street. He is said to have threatened that if she cancelled a phone order (and I quote from Horne’s editorial) ‘something horrible will happen to you next Friday 33
Histories of Australian Sociology afternoon’ (Editor, The Bulletin, April 19, 1961: 12). Such truly fantastic charges represent the basis of the accusation of a ‘plot’. Then there were charges directly of academic misconduct. Following Crawford’s letter, these accusations included: being incompetent, wasting research money, indoctrinating students (I presume I was seen as ‘indoctrinated’), falsifying research results, and delivering a research report—and again I quote Horne—‘quite unrelated to what those who commissioned it wanted to know’ (Editor, The Bulletin, April 19, 1961: 12). It certainly did suggest something that the commissioners may not have wished to know, though it had the potential to inform and improve their professional social work and medical practice. The study was of the social implications of a diagnosis of epilepsy. Horne’s Bulletin (April 19, 1961: 12) version is that: the study ‘attempted to prove that the class of people under investigation was the victim of prejudice engendered by our social system, and that they had to suffer from inhuman employers and corrupt public institutions’. In fact, the analysis of the interview data suggested that labelling theory best accounted for the experience of some epileptics attending a Melbourne hospital clinic. The medical label ‘epileptic’ tended to imply a high level of disability, irrespective of the actual degree of incapacity, which at times resulted in unnecessary institutionalisation. Although labelling theory was to become sociological orthodoxy, this caused a furore at the time; the competence of the researchers was challenged and the hospital medical superintendent refused further cooperation, including entry into the hospital. During 1959 I worked on a project that considered the effects of a mother’s employment on her pre-school children. John Bowlby’s (1951) ideas held sway and the going wisdom was that children should not be separated from their mothers and that having an employed mother caused delinquency and generally harmed children. Bowlby, whose research findings were based on institutionalised children, partly recanted around this time, but this did not immediately affect general enthusiasm for his views. For our study we determined to put the separation-from-mother hypothesis to the test. This involved getting as representative a sample of families as we could and, after extensive investigation, the best way to do this proved to be door-knocking four Melbourne suburbs. This was a tedious, time-consuming, but effective, method of locating a sampling frame of 34
Some Reflections on Australian Sociology and its Political Context families with at least one child under five. But it led to the accusation of time and money-wasting. We paired the families with a mother in paid employment (the vast majority were in part-time work), with families with the mother at home full-time. Pairs were matched for family size, residential area and social class (using father’s employment). We discovered that when mothers were employed, child care was, in almost all cases, provided by family, friends or neighbours, and not child care centres. Despite this, at the time it was usual to draw samples for research from the very few, but readily accessible, child care centres, which, to compound the problem of representation, mostly cared for children from poor, often sole parent, families with multiple problems. Inspired by critical sociological theory, which was not well understood at the time, the research found, as has been confirmed by so much research since, few differences between children whose mothers were employed and those whose mothers were not, with the exception that when a mother was employed, the child showed some greater independence. Such was the conservatism of the time that the organisation that had funded the research declined to publish the findings. It did, however, publish a report of a sister project, which involved children attending a day care centre and which supported the conclusion that children of ‘working mothers’ suffer from developmental deficits. While the clash of research perspectives fed tensions between the old and the new guard in the Department of Social Studies, such confrontations occur often enough in universities, but the effects were massively magnified by the anti-communist fervour of the time. Anderson (2005) points out that one of the many university reports written on the dispute at the time suggested that the differences in the department emerged because ‘Sharp’s group wanted to concentrate on research and academic work’ while Hoban ‘espoused the training of social workers’ (Anderson 2005: 62). This summarises the essence of the matter, but fails to expose the complexities involved, and locate the matter within the wider social trend towards increasing liberalisation. It also skips over the fact that the research findings were important for informing social work practice, so did in fact further the goal of ‘training of social workers’. But such conflicts are common in academic and professional life in a democratic society. Macintyre and Selleck (2003: 121) observe in their history of the University of Melbourne, that Crawford, in writing to the Bulletin 35
Histories of Australian Sociology claiming communist infiltration of the Social Studies and Criminology Departments, had turned a ‘dispute over [the departments’] conduct into accusations of subversion that he took to the national security agency’ (ASIO). McKnight (1998) identifies this incident as one of ASIO’s ‘most serious’ anti-communist operations, despite it really stemming from an ‘academic dispute’ and details the widespread ‘spoiling operations’ that ASIO set in motion (McKnight 1994), including: encouraging anti-communist sympathisers to provide information to the Bulletin; attacking the ‘Left at Melbourne University’; providing financial and organisational support for anticommunist organisations; the surveillance of school curricula; and encouragement of the writing of explicitly anti-communist literature for use in teachers colleges and schools. Information was also provided by ASIO to selected reporters and managers of newspapers (McKnight 1998). The hysteria involved in the Bulletin campaign, and readers’ letters baying for blood, provide a vintage reflection of the suspicions of these times, though there were letters of defense as well. I have since confronted Donald Horne about his zeal in pursuing the issue in the Bulletin, and he expressed deep regret about the incident and indicated that he found it hard to understand how he came to be sucked into such hysteria. The communist plot notion was totally dismissed by a University inquiry—and a normal situation of academic disagreement was pointed to. As Macintyre and Selleck (2003: 121) succinctly put it, ‘A university inquiry dismissed the idea of a communist plot and ignored the anti-communist one’. Despite exoneration by the university inquiry and a liberalisation of the political climate over the decades following, the careers of some who stayed on at Melbourne University were affected. On the positive side, it is possible that had this not occurred, Geoff Sharp may not have been involved in the establishment of the Arena publishing enterprises. Phillip Mendes (2003), a social work academic, has suggested that this political campaign resulted in the social work profession being nervous about active campaigning in support of social reform for many years. He suggests also that my career suffered, though I question this. It did result in my defection from social work to a career in sociology, something I have never regretted. After being ‘sacked’ from Melbourne University, I took a position as a psychiatric social worker. Although I was considered competent at 36
Some Reflections on Australian Sociology and its Political Context my job (and I liked it a lot), I was concerned that my work was not effective, though the clients almost unanimously claimed to ‘feel better’ from, and appreciate, the support I provided. After making a systematic assessment of all the individual cases I had dealt with over a two-year period, I concluded that, with the exception of possibly one person, I had been unable to really assist people with their fundamental problems. This was because I lacked access to appropriate resources (money, jobs, houses, appropriate psychiatric care, etc) to deal with their basic issues. I realized I was offering a ‘band-aid’ service, an issue that later became well recognized within the social work profession. This led me to develop a long-term plan to return to research in order to find out why this was so and why, during my social work training, I had not been alerted to this. At the time I opened a file on ‘evidence relating to the efficacy of social work practice’, a file and an interest that I still retain, over forty years on. I returned to work as a social worker for a period in the 1980s and found I did understand far better the social problems with which I was confronted, having spent almost twenty years as a sociologist. However, as a social worker, understanding was not enough; achieving efficacious social change remained beyond my reach and perhaps this is even more likely to be the case in the twenty-first century. Episodes in the Liberalization Process During Sociology’s Formal ‘History’ Phase Resistance to a more liberal and democratised approach has been common to both sociology and social work. In 1965, soon after the beginning of sociology’s formal history, I joined the staff of the Department of Anthropology and Sociology at Monash University (established 1964). As the acceptance of sociology suggests, universities were becoming less conservative and more democratised, with the all-powerful god-professor under challenge. That the process lingered, though, was illustrated during the AGM of the Sociological Association of Australia and New Zealand (SAANZ) in 1965, held at Monash. Being a junior woman, I was duly assigned the job of minute-taker for the AGM. I recorded in some detail an interchange between the Chair of the Meeting, Sol Encel, and Geoff Sharp, which was critical of decisions of the SAANZ Executive (consisting of powerful males). Despite my delivery of careful notes on an important issue, the details of this interchange never made it to the official minutes. 37
Histories of Australian Sociology
Challenge (unsuccessful) to the professoriate was evident, too, at Monash when four lecturers who objected to what they saw as highhanded management by the Professor of Anthropology and Sociology, all resigned. But despite hitches, the process of democratizing the management of SAANZ and academic departments continued, and by the late 1960s, staff as well as student representatives were taking part in decision-making, at least in the more progressive departments and universities. The changes were accompanied by loud cries of ‘we’ll all be ruined’, but we were not; rather, we were enhanced. This general process of academic democratisation was reflected in 1972 in a change in the management structure of the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Sociology (ANZJS), the previous name of the Journal of Sociology. More radical members of SAANZ, at the AGM in 1972, voted for more control over the Journal, through having an elected editor. More by chance than design, I became the inaugural elected editor. Senior level resistance to the change is illustrated by an extract from a letter by Professor Henry Mayer that I received soon after (8 November 1972): With great effort and diligence Messrs Zubrzycki and Jones [both professors and previous editors] have succeeded in establishing a sociological journal of high quality… I should keenly regret it if you were to destroy this accomplishment, as you undoubtedly will, if you fill it with politicised, pseudo-scientific claptrap. In the event, the nature of the Journal did not change fundamentally and I later happily recommended the publication of a valuable article by Frank Campbell which argued this. Nonetheless, current social issues were more extensively and systematically focused on, through special feature sections in the Journal, including poverty, urban issues, power, development and the professions. A wider group of sociologists was actively encouraged to publish (e.g. through a ‘research notes’ section and considerable editorial assistance) and some important academic issues were raised, including an article on the thorny problem of senior academic supervisors improperly using their students’ work. As editor, I sought replies to the article from the four academics named. Their joint letter of reply threatened legal action. So the paper was published with a blank section and a note that the author had at that point documented his case (see Witton 38
Some Reflections on Australian Sociology and its Political Context 1973). But in the long run, a journal can only print what it has access to. I accept that this changed relatively little, but it was important at the time that the membership gained more of a voice in SAANZ and greater ownership of the Journal, rather than its control remaining with the (largely male) professoriate. Australian Sociology and the Future There are many illustrations of internal departmental tensions of the same ilk as in the 1960s in Melbourne University’s Department of Social Studies. While such tensions will no doubt continue, hopefully state spying, political stifling, false accusations and misinterpretations in the pursuit of political dominance and control will not re-emerge. But we cannot be too sanguine, as the current climate is far less friendly to challenge than was the case from the late 1960s. Then the rights movements had reached a particularly energetic phase and there was a degree of unanimity that social justice was a legitimate pursuit for sociology. This was a nurturing environment for the development of critical and vibrant sociology, and at the same time social work had its own critical phase. What of the current climate? What of sociology’s future? A conservative, market-focused environment, with the issue of ‘combating terrorism’ gripping the political arena, can readily provide a cover for explicitly repressive responses to intellectual and political challenge. We should be concerned that organisations such as the free-market-supporting Institute of Public Affairs (IPA), and the Centre for Independent Studies (CIS) have the government’s ear. The IPA’s campaign, for example, against the advocacy work of nongovernment organisations (Mowbray 2003) has some of the hallmarks of the ‘spoiling operations’ of ASIO during the ‘communist plot’ era. Such organisations also attempt to discredit critical sociology and social work (among other disciplines—note the recent ‘history wars’), though not entirely successfully. And sadly, as politics in Australia has become conservatised, so has sociology. Post-modern theorising in both disciplines has offered some valuable insights, but also fostered an inward and profession-focused approach, weak on praxis. This has added to the blunting of sociology’s critical research and political edge—the reasons I was attracted to it in the first place.
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Notes 1. The nature of sociology was not well understood, as was demonstrated by the 1966 Victorian government’s attempt to register psychologists, as part of an effort to outlaw Scientology. The draft wording of the legislation would also have prohibited most sociological research, as only registered psychologists were to be allowed to undertake ‘the evaluation of human behaviour and cognitive processes’ and the study of people’s ‘interests, attitudes, emotions, motivation or personality characteristics’ (Marwick 1965). A well-organized campaign, led by Max Marwick, then President of SAANZ (and Professor of Sociology and Anthropology at Monash University), drew attention to this and the phrasing was amended. 2. In the 1970s, the student profile changed again, as older students availed themselves, after 1973, of a free university education. Unlike the post-war influx, these older students were mostly female, but as with the returning service personnel, their breadth of experience greatly energized classes and challenged orthodoxies (a godsend for sociology teachers, if a bit over-awing at first for the younger students).
References Anderson, F. (2005) ‘Into the Night: Max Crawford, the Labyrinth of the Social Studies Enquiry and ASIO’s Spoiling Operations’, Australian Historical Studies 37 (125): 60-80. Buckley, V. (1983) Cutting Green Hay: Friendships, Movements and Cultural Conflicts in Australia’s Great Decades. Melbourne: Penguin. Bowlby, J. (1951) ‘Maternal Care and Mental Health’, Bulletin of the World Health Organisation 3: 355-534. Crawford, R. M. (1961) ‘Communism in Universities’, The Bulletin April 12 1961: 44 Horne, D. (1961) ‘The Crawford Letter’, The Bulletin April 12. 1961: 6. —— (2000) Into the Open: Memoirs 1958-1999. Australia: Harper Collins. Macintyre, S. and Selleck R. J. W. (2003) A Short History of the University of Melbourne. Melbourne, Melbourne University Press. McKnight, D. (1994) Australia’s Spies and their Secrets. St Leonards, NSW: Allen and Unwin. —— (1998) ‘News Spies Spoiled for a Fight’, Australian 28.7.98: 5. Marwick, M. G. (1965) ‘Flaws in the Psychology Legislation’, Australian 2.12.65: 22. Mendes, P. (2001) ‘Public Attacks on Social Work in Australia: The two Bulletin Affairs’, Australian Social Work 54 (3): 55-62.
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Some Reflections on Australian Sociology and its Political Context —— (2003) ‘Social Workers and Social Action: A Case Study of the Australian Association of Social Workers Victoria Branch’, Australian Social Work 56(1): 16-27. Mowbray, M. (2003) ‘War on non-profits: “NGOs: What do we do about them?”’, Just Policy 30: 3-13. Serle, P. (ed) (1949) ‘Sir Francis Anderson’, Dictionary of Australian Biography [online], Angus and Robertson, . Witton, R. (1973) ‘Academics and Student Supervision: Apprenticeship or Exploitation?’, Australian and New Zealand Journal of Sociology 9(3): 70-3.
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3 Sociology: Some Notes on the Early Years SOL ENCEL*
T
he story of sociology in Australia is an object lesson in the intricacies of academic politics, not to mention academic skulduggery. It should really be told by a novelist like C. P. Snow, David Lodge, or Malcolm Bradbury, whose central character in The History Man was at least partly modelled on the late Colin Bell. Sociology has both a prehistory and a modern history. The prehistory has been well covered by a number of people, the most recent being Michael Crozier of the University of Melbourne, who has traced the curious history of the Ashworth bequest. I offer this talk as a modest contribution to the modern history. Most people in The Australian Sociological Association (TASA) will be familiar with the general outlines of the prehistory. Francis Anderson, professor of philosophy at the University of Sydney (not to be confused with his successor, John Anderson), introduced sociology as a strand in his department before World War I. The first textbook, Australian Social Development, was written by one of his students, Clarence Northcott, who migrated to the USA after the war. Other collections of essays dealing with sociological topics appeared in subsequent years, edited by people like Meredith Atkinson and G. V. Portus, both of them involved in adult education, where sociology was more welcome than it was in the universities proper. The subject disappeared from the University of Sydney in the 1920s and did not return until the 1980s. At the University of Melbourne, the teaching of sociology lasted
*
Source: Encel, S. (2003) ‘Sociology: Some Notes on the Early Years’, based on a paper presented as part of the History of Australian Sociology, Plenary Session at TASA 2003 Conference, New Times, New Worlds, New Ideas: Sociology Today and Tomorrow, University of New England, Armidale NSW.
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Histories of Australian Sociology a little longer, but its place in the curriculum was taken by political science in the 1930s. W. MacMahon Ball, who had taught some sociology in the 1920s, along with philosophy and psychology, was appointed to teach a new course entitled Modern Political Institutions, which later became a separate department of Political Science, with Ball as the foundation professor. The relationship between political science and sociology continues to this day, as the recently established sociology program (partly funded by the aforementioned Ashworth bequest) is housed in the Political Science Department. For the next quarter-century, the subject was in limbo, although sociological research continued under other auspices. An ambitious social survey of Melbourne was undertaken by the Melbourne Department of Economics shortly before the 1939-45 war, but it remained unpublished until many years later, as the result of the work of Graeme Davison of the Melbourne University History Department. Some interesting research was also carried out by the Anthropology Department at the University of Sydney during the war, sponsored by the Commonwealth Government’s Department of Post-war Reconstruction. The research was conducted under the aegis of the short-lived Institute of Sociology, one of whose members was a young graduate student named Jean Craig (later Jean Martin, foundation professor of sociology at Latrobe University). After the war, the Melbourne Psychology Department undertook another social survey, which was part of an international project sponsored by UNESCO. Its findings, reported in books by Oeser, Hammond, Emery and Lafitte, gave us the first systematic account of class structure and class-consciousness in Australia. University expansion since the 1950s included a rapid growth in the social sciences. Expansion was greatly stimulated by the report of the Murray Committee on Australian Universities in 1957, which saw the beginning of large-scale Commonwealth involvement in higher education. One of the Murray committee’s recommendations related to the NSW University of Technology, which had been established in 1949 as Australia’s answer to MIT. The report recommended that the University of Technology should broaden its scope beyond the natural sciences and technology. In due course, it became the University of NSW, and an Arts Faculty was created in 1959. The first Dean of the new Faculty was Sydney Morven Brown, who moved from Sydney Teachers’ College to take up the post. Brown’s academic 44
Sociology: Some Notes on the Early Years background was, of course, in education, but he had gained a master’s degree in the sociology of education at the University of London under the supervision of Fred Clarke, who was probably the leading British figure in the field in the 1930s and 1940s. Brown was offered the option of a professorship in either education or sociology, and chose the latter, thus becoming the first person in Australia to be appointed to a chair in sociology, a post which he held until his death in 1965. Brown’s achievements as professor of sociology might reasonably be described as modest, and his approach to the teaching of the subject was decidedly old-fashioned. Courses in his department were largely based on American texts, with a strong influence of structuralfunctional theory. He did, however, attract some outstanding students. The best known of these is undoubtedly Tony Vinson, who retired recently as professor of social work at UNSW. Apart from his academic career, Tony Vinson has contributed significantly to public life, first as foundation director of the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and later as Commissioner for Corrective Services. In 2003, he directed a monumental inquiry into public education. Most recently, he conducted a nationwide inquiry into poverty and social disadvantage. Tony provides us with an admirable example of a committed sociologist. By the time Morven Brown died, a second chair of sociology had been created at Monash University, and in 1966, the year of my appointment to succeed Brown, two other professors had been appointed, Jean Martin at Latrobe and John Nalson at New England. Since then, as we know, teaching and research in sociology have continued to flourish, culminating in the last World Congress in Brisbane in 2002. There have been a number of bumps in the road. For instance, when the Research School of Social Sciences was set up at the Australian National University (ANU), chairs were established in anthropology, demography, economics and political science, but not in sociology. The situation was similar at the school of General Studies, which was responsible for teaching undergraduates. The late Mick Borrie, who was foundation professor of demography, lobbied repeatedly for a chair in sociology, without success. He did, however, persuade the Research School and the School of General Studies to co-operate in setting up a master’s program, which produced a number of people who have made significant contributions to the discipline, such as 45
Histories of Australian Sociology Katy Richmond and Owen Dent, among others. The University administration came to the party by providing scholarships. It was not until 1972, however, that a chair and a department were established at the School of General Studies. The Research School, in the meantime, had provided annual fellowships for visiting scholars, the best known of whom would be Leonard Broom, but a permanent chair was not created until 1976. Interest in sociology in Canberra was also manifested in the establishment of the Canberra Sociological Society in 1958, whose members included both academics and public servants. The Society, of which I was secretary for several years, organised periodic lectures on a variety of topics. Its inaugural meeting was addressed by Morven Brown, who had recently taken up his chair. The society existed for seven years, eventually becoming the Canberra branch of the newly established Sociological Association of Australia and New Zealand (SAANZ). Mick Borrie was responsible for calling a meeting in Canberra in October 1963, at which various people reported on teaching and research in sociology in their respective universities and colleges. Among other things, it turned out that sociology was being practised in a camouflaged form in schools of education, social work, agriculture, public health, psychology and anthropology. The meeting agreed that there were enough interested people to warrant the creation of a professional association, and the Sociological Association of Australia and New Zealand came into being. Our original constitution covered just one page, but it expanded progressively from one annual meeting to the next. John Barnes, professor of anthropology at the ANU, was elected president, and I became vice-president. Borrie, who had come to Australia from New Zealand in the 1930s, was emphatic that we should have a transTasman presence, so the constitution provided from the outset for a second vice-president from New Zealand. The first New Zealand vicepresident was Jim Robb, of the Victoria University of Wellington. Of course, things have moved on since then. I succeeded John Barnes as president in 1969, and was in turn succeeded by Jean Martin (1970-71) and George Zubrzycki (1971-72). I remained on the Executive as immediate past president until 1971. The formation of SAANZ was something of an act of faith, as we were a few steps ahead of the game. There were very few trained 46
Sociology: Some Notes on the Early Years sociologists in the country, and there was hardly any sociological literature to draw upon. At the time SAANZ was established, I was collaborating with my friend Alan Davies to put together a textbook, which became the first edition of Australian Society, published in 1965. In the bibliography, only one-third of the references are Australian, and more than half were American. Some years had to pass before we could point to a respectable corpus of Australian sociological writing, and a significant body of local graduates who would provide teaching and research personnel. On other fronts, attempts to introduce sociology into the curriculum of the old-established universities—Sydney, Melbourne, and Adelaide—faced an uphill task. The late Tom Brennan, who became head of the Department of Social Work at Sydney in 1960, carried out a series of academic manoeuvres designed to create a sociology program in his department, without success. He was opposed by a formidable ‘coalition of the unwilling’, drawn from anthropology, philosophy, psychology, and economics. David Armstrong, professor of philosophy, went to the lengths of describing sociology as a ‘bullshit subject’ in the Sydney Morning Herald. The fact that Cambridge University, which had resisted sociology for many years, had finally established a chair in 1968, left Armstrong and others unmoved, despite their usual allegiance to British academic models. For his part Bill Geddes, professor of anthropology, pointed out that his department’s official title was ‘Anthropology and Sociology’, so there was no need for a separate department of sociology. In the end, after most of the ideological backwoodsmen had retired, Tom Brennan’s original scheme came to fruition when Bettina Cass was appointed to a chair of Sociology and Social Policy in the Department of Social work. At Melbourne, the principal source of opposition came from Oscar Oeser, professor of psychology, who maintained that sociology could be accommodated in his department. After he retired, there were proposals to introduce it as a junior partner in the Political Science Department, then headed by Alan Davies. Davies, however, was disinclined by nature to become involved in academic politics, and nothing had happened when he died, prematurely, in 1987. It took a dozen years after his death before a teaching program in sociology was introduced into the political science curriculum, supported by the Ashworth bequest.
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Histories of Australian Sociology It remains only to comment on a few high points during my tenure on the executive of SAANZ. On the whole, it was fairly uneventful, although the arguments about making membership exclusively professional cropped up periodically. In 1965, however, I found myself in a difficult position at the annual conference in Melbourne. John Barnes was overseas, which required me to deliver a presidential address in his absence and also to chair the annual general meeting. I was confronted by an attack from the floor by Geoff Sharp, of the Social Work Department at the University of Melbourne, who accused SAANZ, and sociology in general, of being a home for bourgeois ideologists. It is difficult to counter such an accusation except by denying it, which of course I did. The situation was personally painful because I had known Geoff Sharp since we were both undergraduates in psychology. It was also literally painful because I had fractured my arm a few weeks earlier and was still wearing a plaster cast, which gave me hell while I was in the chair. The other dramatic event occurred during my last year on the executive, in 1972, when the SAANZ conference was held at the University of NSW. The matter at issue was the content and presentation of the Journal, which were sharply criticised by a group of so-called ‘Young Turks’ from Monash University. Like Geoff Sharp, they maintained that the Journal reflected a bourgeois ideology, and wanted something livelier and more committed. (The Journal had first appeared in 1965, with George Zubrzycki as editor). At that time, the editor was Frank Jones, who had taken over in 1970, and had maintained the general style and content established by his predecessor. After an abrasive discussion, a new editorial board was elected. In due course, the Journal acquired a new format, although one can hardly say that its content was revolutionised. I am, however, pleased to see that important social issues, such as the treatment of asylum seekers, have been taken up in Nexus, and I hope that this will continue to be the case.
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4 Some Notes on the History of Australian Sociology JOHN WESTERN*
S
ociology as a discipline is a relative newcomer to the Australian academic scene. Its first chair was established in 1959 at the University of New South Wales, although the discipline existed in a variety of guises beforehand. Writing in the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Sociology (ANZJS), Helen Bourke (1981) argues that the first person to undertake an explicitly sociological evaluation of Australian society was Clarence Hunter Northcott. Northcott, who was a student of Francis Anderson, a Professor of Moral Philosophy from Sydney University, had gone to Columbia University to work under Franklin Giddings and there wrote a doctoral thesis entitled ‘Australian Social Development’. This was both an attempt to analyse Australia’s so-called social experiments and an effort to produce guidelines for continued progress. At the same time, a Meredith Atkinson informally styled himself Professor of Sociology at the University of Melbourne. There seemed to be more sociology in Melbourne than in Sydney in those days, but that was perhaps to Sydney’s good fortune, for the two early harbingers of sociology might, I suspect, have set the discipline back somewhat in those early years. Meredith Atkinson arrived in Sydney in 1913 to take up a position as Rector of Tutorial Classes for the Workers’ Educational Association, an English movement imported into Australia in 1914. It was founded in Oxford in 1903 in an effort to provide university-based education to working class groups (Bourke 1981: 28).
*
Source: Western, J. (2003) ‘Some Notes on the History of Australian Sociology’, based on a paper presented as part of the History of Australian Sociology Plenary Session at TASA 2003 Conference New Times, New Worlds, New Ideas: Sociology Today and Tomorrow, University of New England, Armidale NSW.
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Histories of Australian Sociology Atkinson moved from Sydney to Melbourne in 1918 and became, according to Bourke, the first self-styled Professor of Sociology in the University of Melbourne. Atkinson taught sociology at Melbourne until he resigned in 1922. Bourke comments that ‘not all the intellectuals of the early WEA movement approved Atkinson’s social theory with its conservative messages of social cohesion delivered to the workers from self-consciously elitist heights’ (Bourke 1981: 31). Forty people applied for Atkinson’s post in 1922. The applicants included George Elton Mayo, who left for the United States in the same year, after being unsuccessful in seeking the position. The man selected was a scholar in French philosophy from Liverpool, John Alexander Gunn (Bourke 1981: 31). Rivalry soon developed between Gunn and Douglas Copeland, who had arrived to take up a chair in economics. There was some personal animosity between Gunn and Copeland at that time, culminating in a faculty committee of enquiry into the future of sociology, which concluded that sociology as taught was not consistent with the title of the subject. It recommended that sociology be dismantled and the content of the courses be reorganised into new subjects: political philosophy, constitutional history and international relations, and modern political institutions. Bourke suggests that the failure of sociology to take root at that time ‘may have been due to its failure to speak to the realities of Australian political social life in the way that, for example, economics was able to’ (Bourke 1981: 34). Following the dismantling of sociology in the late 1920s, Gunn became an increasing embarrassment to the University, making claims to the chairs of philosophy and psychology, and being finally unable to perform his duties at all; his appointment was terminated in 1937. He died apparently virtually penniless in an old people’s home in Melbourne in 1975. So much for the very early days, a somewhat dismal picture. In the 1960s, however, things were much brighter. Talking personally, I had returned to Australia to a lectureship in psychology at the Australian National University (ANU) at that time, after completing a PhD in Sociology at Columbia University. There really were no positions in sociology to move to and, as I had been a psychologist in an earlier life, I sought safe haven in the ANU psychology department, where I stayed for several years.
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Some Notes on the History of Australian Sociology My first recollection of an association of sociologists or sociology was in Canberra where the Canberra Sociological Society flourished. It predated SAANZ and comprised academics from ANU and public servants from the Commonwealth government. The president or the first chair was Ronald Mendelsohn, a public servant from Housing and Social Security, and the author of The Condition of the People (1979) and Fair Go: Welfare Issues in Australia (1982). He had a PhD from the London School of Economics. Alice Day, a demographer who had come from Columbia University with her husband, Lincoln, who had a position in the Demography Department, was the secretary of the Society, to my recollection. The Society held regular monthly meetings, but did not do much else. The move to set up an Australasian Sociological Association came very much from the ANU in the early 1960s and Mick Borrie, Professor of Demography, an international figure of quite considerable renown, was prominent in the move. There was a meeting of interested academics in early 1963, initiated by Borrie. Included at that meeting were a variety of persons interested in the formation of a sociological association. Sol Encel was there; Morven Brown, from the University of New South Wales, the head of the only sociology department in the country at that time, was also present, as was Athol Congalton from the University of New South Wales, who was known for his prestige ranking of occupations. George Zubrzycki, Frank Jones, Hans Mol, John Barnes, Jean Martin and myself also attended, as well as others whom I cannot recall. The upshot of that meeting was the establishment of the Sociological Association of Australia and New Zealand, SAANZ as it came to be called. Mick Borrie was nominated as the foundation president. If my memory serves me correctly, Hans Mol was the joint secretarytreasurer, and remained in this position for several years. The decision was also made to establish a journal and George Zubrzycki was the first editor. It was very much an Australasian association, although I do not recall whether any New Zealanders were at that original meeting, although I suspect that Jim Robb may have been. While the intention was that SAANZ should be an Australasian association, the membership was significantly Australian, running at about four to one, I guess, for most of the time. This I suspect was part of the reason the New Zealanders later on wanted to form a New Zealand association. It also appeared to me that they had more of a
51
Histories of Australian Sociology local rather than a cosmopolitan outlook, to coin a fashionable phrase of the time. The association continued along a relatively untrammelled path. There were annual conferences, there were three issues of a journal, there was talk of a newsletter and one appeared. The first major division within the association came in the early 1970s. I was not here on that occasion, being on study leave, but I rather gather the annual general meeting of 1972 saw something of a revolt. Criticism was levelled at the journal, that it was too staid and had a conservative bias. Frank Jones, the editor at the time, was the recipient of a lot of the criticism. The journal editor’s job, I think, is a fairly unenviable one. I have done it in collaboration with people on two occasions, and you are, of course, very heavily dependent on what contributors provide you with. It might not be to the liking of some subscribers to the journal but, in a sense, it is all the editor has. Unless particular articles are commissioned, you are at the mercy of what authors provide. I think Frank Jones might have been a bit hard done by on that occasion. A lot of water has flowed under the bridge, of course, since then. If you look back at some of the early records of the association, perennial problems seemed to have arisen then as they are arising now. Members of the association who work outside of academe have frequently felt that the association does not cover their interests adequately. The extent to which sociologists should professionalise or not has been a continuing issue that the membership has debated over the years. The split from New Zealand took place in 1988. I think there had been moves afoot before that time from New Zealanders to set up their own independent association, but it all came to a head in 1988 when Bob Connell was president. I know Bob had meetings with the New Zealanders, encouraged them to think seriously about staying in the association but, when it was apparent that they were intent on setting up their own association, he very sensibly said that SAANZ would not stand in their way of doing so. So they split off and 1989 saw the emergence of TASA. As it happened, while Bob was the last president of SAANZ, I was the first president of TASA, taking up that position in 1988. In looking through some quite incomplete records in preparing this material, I came across my TASA President’s Report. I was president, Claire Williams from Flinders was vice president, 52
Some Notes on the History of Australian Sociology Diane Gibson and Paul Boreham from The University of Queensland were secretary and treasurer respectively; executive members were Ray Jureidini from La Trobe, Yolande Wadsworth from Melbourne and Gary Wickham from Murdoch. Our public officer was Christine Helliwell from ANU and Bob Connell was past president although, strictly speaking, he probably should not have been. In my TASA President’s Report—and I certainly will not bore you by going through it in great detail—I said that the first year of TASA’s existence, 1989, had been a busy one for the executive. The association came into existence officially with the change in the constitution of SAANZ, which was strongly endorsed by the membership in a referendum that took place earlier in the year, that is earlier in 1989. The executive met on four occasions and a number of actions were undertaken. We formulated a position on the Dawkins White Paper concerned with the amalgamation of the two-tiered tertiary education system, discussed an organisation called the Federation of Australian Social Science Organisations (FASSO) which came and went; we looked at the disciplinary panels which operated under the Australian Research Council (ARC) at that time, formed the view that the humanities and social sciences were disadvantaged—we might say, I suspect: what is new in that connection?—,conducted a questionnaire survey of the membership asking them what they wanted from TASA and some other matters. The professionalisation issue raised its head. The survey suggested that the association was not doing enough for members employed outside universities and colleges; and secondly, the results appeared to indicate that the association needed to adopt a higher profile with respect to public issues of the day, that we needed to look at matters of core curricula and increasing the visibility of the notion of sociologists with employer organisations, in both the public and private sectors. We also discussed the issue of the establishment of a relatively permanent executive office; that last item was on the agenda back in the late 1980s. I expect it is still on the agenda today. In the conclusion to the report I said that ‘I would have to say that the conditions for the social sciences at the present time are more complex than they were a decade or so ago. We don’t provide the easy fix that the technologists are seen as providing. We don’t fit easily into politically designated priority areas. We tend to be more concerned with the critical analysis or appraisal of ongoing systems than what appears to be fashionable today.’ 53
Histories of Australian Sociology
In conclusion then, where do we go in the future? Many of the issues confronting us over the last 40 or so years are still the issues confronting us today. We have an association at the present time which clearly offers more benefits to members than it has in the past. It is an association in which the membership is growing, which is no small achievement given the precarious state of the social sciences in general, and sociology in particular. The discipline itself, I believe, is still divided as to what it is. I have said, on a couple of occasions in which I have been writing about this situation, that this division seems to me to be due at least partly to the extent to which sociology is seen as a cumulative discipline. Have sociologists built up a body of knowledge about society and how it functions so that our understanding today is better than it was fifty years ago? And given that we continue in the same way, will our understanding be better fifty years from now? Not all sociologists would argue for the importance of the accumulation of knowledge as a critical facet of the sociological enterprise. There is, I would suggest, very clearly a tension in sociology between those who see the sociological task as one of providing alternative and, at times, imaginative syntheses of existing understandings and those who see the sociological task as extending the boundaries of knowledge so that more is known and understood about the social structures in which we live. An equally persistent matter which underlies much of the sociological controversy, I believe, concerns a lack of an underlying paradigm. It has sometimes been said that, unlike other disciplines—often economics has been chosen as an example—sociology lacks an underlying and unifying paradigm. Whether this paradigm revolves around the notion of scarcity or a totally different concept as it would be for sociology, or whether or not there is disagreement as to how the concept operates, or what its significance is, it is in a sense still the core of the discipline. The consequences of having an underlying paradigm are important because the notion of economics and, being an economist, carries a shared meaning that is perhaps lacking in talking about sociology and being a sociologist. There is less consensus among practitioners as to what sociology is and what doing sociology means. It is sometimes advanced that no special skills or knowledge are necessary to practise sociology. Any person can be their own 54
Some Notes on the History of Australian Sociology sociologist, providing their frame of mind is right and they are convinced of the righteousness of their cause. This view is perhaps not as common today as it was a decade or so back. What should the goals of sociology be? Many sociologists experience a tension between their academic and intellectual contribution and their desire to engage in social reformist activities. Are sociologists primarily social scientists or can it be argued that their primary responsibility is to contribute to the creation of a more just and/or happier society? This tension should come as no surprise. Sociology has a long history of concern about the nature of society and the possibility, and indeed the desirability, of implementing change. We may be having a similar meeting to this some forty years into the future. Will we be addressing the same or different issues? It needs someone with greater insights than myself to provide a confident answer to this question. References Bourke, H. (1981) ‘Sociology and the Social Sciences in Australia 1912-1928.’ Australian and New Zealand Journal of Sociology, 17 (1), 26-35. Mendelsohn, R. (1979) The Condition of the People. Sydney: Allen and Unwin. —— (1982) Fair Go: Welfare Issues in Australia. Ringwood: Penguin.
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5 Sociology’s Roller-coaster Ride in Australia KATY RICHMOND*
S
ociology in Australia has a history, a pre-history1 and what might be called an ‘anti-history’—the story of the various attempts to stop sociology’s expansion. This chapter starts with the somewhat neglected, but crucial, ‘anti-history’. In a review of sociology’s present place in the world, Connell has argued that ‘it is by no means guaranteed that sociology will continue to exist’ (Connell 2000: 291). Sociology still has no presence at the University of Western Australia, minimal presence at the University of Adelaide, and, though there is now an endowed chair of social theory at the University of Melbourne, sociology is located within the Department of Political Science and has never been a department in its own right. The University of Sydney has prominent sociologists, among them Bob Connell, but still has no sociology department. That the most concerted resistance to sociology has occurred at Australia’s oldest universities is, of course, not accidental. Similar things happened in the UK, where Oxford and Cambridge dragged their feet in appointing chairs of sociology. When these two esteemed universities finally did create chairs of sociology, one went to a theorist in the sociology of religion and the other went to an anthropologist.2 In the early days I had direct experience of vocal and significant antagonism towards sociology. I was a member of the University of Melbourne staff (as a tutor in Professor Max Crawford’s first year
*
Source: Richmond, K. (2003) ‘Sociology’s Roller-coaster Ride in Australia’, based on a paper due to be presented as part of the History of Australian Sociology Plenary Session at TASA 2003 Conference, New Times, New Worlds, New Ideas: Sociology Today and Tomorrow, University of New England, Armidale NSW. Due to unforeseen circumstances, this paper was not presented at the conference.
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Histories of Australian Sociology course in the History Department) when the ‘outbreak’ of anticommunism occurred on that campus in 1960. I was also present at a Faculty of Arts meeting at the University of Melbourne in 1960 when the possibility of establishing a chair of sociology was roundly denounced by senior academics, most particularly by the noted anticommunist psychologist Frank Knopfelmacher. The connection between an outbreak of anti-communism and the denunciation of sociology in the same year is not, of course, a matter of chance. Though I have no direct evidence of it, I am certain that ‘Knopfels’ continued the strident opposition to sociology on that campus for decades. Once I became a sociologist in the mid-1960s, I endured on several occasions the sharp end of ‘Knopfels’ tongue, and my personal experience of his denunciation of sociology continued until 1987. The anti-history of sociology at the University of Adelaide and the University of Western Australia remains to be told, though Encel provides a good, while necessarily brief, account of part of the antihistory of sociology at the University of Sydney. The puzzles are why the universities of Queensland and Tasmania created chairs of sociology when other ‘old’ universities refused to do so. The story of sociology’s development at the Australian National University (ANU) is rather different. Though a chair of sociology was not established at the Research School of the ANU until 1976, the coursework MA in Sociology received strong support from a number of senior academics, notably the professor of demography, Mick Borrie, George Zubrycki, Hans Mol, Sol Encel and the historian Ken Inglis (who personally encouraged me to move from history to sociology). Sociology’s importance at the ANU has now declined, and the Department of Sociology at the Institute of Advanced Studies ceased to exist. It is important to note that even in universities where sociology appears to be entrenched and popular, university management pressure to create multi-disciplinary schools tends to hide sociology as a discipline behind generic labels such as ‘school of social sciences’, and this may well have consequences for the public face of sociology in the future. Antagonism to sociology continued even in the ‘new’ universities which established sociology chairs in the 1960s. Hugh Stretton was on the Council which established La Trobe University, and knowing and respecting Jean Martin from her brief sojourn in Adelaide, encouraged her appointment early in 1966 to the foundation chair of sociology there. I was appointed lecturer a few months later. Partly because we were female, but also because we were sociologists, Jean 58
Sociology’s Roller-coaster Ride in Australia and I ‘copped it’ from many directions in the first few years. Jean did her best to shore up sociology’s future on the La Trobe University campus, but her efforts in the early 1970s to try to appoint a ‘sociology-friendly’ professor of psychology failed and the appointment went to a trenchantly ‘rats and stats’ man. Nevertheless, Jean’s leadership at La Trobe University led to such a successful department that within five years of her departure three chairs of sociology had been established, a level of expansion of academic sociology not matched elsewhere in Australia.3 Despite the vast changes to tertiary education from the late 1980s, what has carried sociology through to the present time has been its popularity among students. I took to sociology in 1964 because it was interesting, in contrast to what I saw as the narrowly focused discipline of history where I had been trained. However, the sociological theory taught to me in the mid-1960s at the ANU was dull and not the slightest bit radical. Marx rated a lecture alongside Machiavelli, and the emphasis was on Parsons, Durkheim and Weber. I was stunned when, in 1966, Jean Martin asked me to prepare lectures on social control, a concept I saw as deriving from a consensus view of the world. In desperation I turned to Geoff Sharp, by then sidelined by the Department of Social Work at the University of Melbourne. Geoff pointed me in the direction of Lemert and Erikson’s view of social control, an approach which looked radical at the time.4 The anti-communism of the postwar era translated, in sociology, to an antagonism to anything Marxist, and Marxist theory stayed underground until the early 1970s. I remember leaping on to Alvin Gouldner’s The Coming Crisis of Western Sociology as manna from heaven—here was theory which roundly criticised Parsons.5 By the early 1970s, it was acceptable to include Marx as part of a sociological theory course. So in the early days of Australian sociology, Marx was ignored, clearly. But also off the agenda was anything to do with an analysis of gender relations. When I enrolled in the ANU’s coursework MA in sociology, I was encouraged to write a thesis on married women in the workforce, but the focus was almost entirely on demographic analysis.6 However, analysing those census figures was enough to turn me immediately into a committed feminist and, by the mid-1970s, I found many feminist friends among SAANZ members. At the 1976 SAANZ conference at La Trobe University, a large number of women delegates met and agreed, after a formal vote, that a Women’s Section should be established.7 This took a year or so to get underway, but 59
Histories of Australian Sociology from 1978 through to the mid-1990s, a period of more than fifteen years, the Women’s Section was an important force in the Association.8 The women involved became a cohesive and supportive group, and close friendship ties led to a number of collaborative research projects and joint publications.9 The Women’s Section of SAANZ probably spawned a number of small feminist sociology groups around Australia but one, at least, was formed in Melbourne. In the early 1980s Feminism in Sociological Theory (FIST) was established among a group of Melbourne feminist sociologists (all SAANZ members), including Johanna Wyn, Tanya Castleman (then Birrell), Anne Edwards, Julie Mulvaney, Anne Seitz and myself. We called ourselves ‘fisters’ and met regularly on the Swinburne campus for two years or so, discussing feminist theory, which at the time was virtually invisible within Australian sociology (and which, to a large extent, still is). SAANZ in the early days was heavily supported not only by academic sociologists, but also by many outside the discipline of sociology, including a number of psychiatrists. Some, such as Stoller and Krupinksi, were conservatives whose main interest was to record statistics of psychiatric admissions and diagnoses, cross-tabulated by social class and ethnic origin. Other psychiatrists in SAANZ were radicals. One was Neville Yeomans, who organised a tour through North Ryde Psychiatric Hospital for SAANZ conference delegates in 1967. Here I saw, for the first time, an anti-psychiatrist in action within a mental hospital setting. Neville Yeomans’ Fraser House at North Ryde was forerunner of a similar unit at Larundel Hospital in Melbourne. This visit, and the fact that Larundel was visible from my office window, led me to research at Larundel and later, in 1970, to study leave with Tom Scheff in London and Santa Barbara. Under the auspices of SAANZ, Rosemarie Otto and I ran a Medical Sociology Group in Melbourne for about five years in the late 1960s and early 1970s.10 This group gathered together a motley group of Melbourne health sociologists, social workers and psychiatrists. On one occasion, because the topic of anti-psychiatry was of keen interest to the group, a large evening seminar was held at the University of Melbourne, and as a keynote speaker, I remember being roundly berated by Graham Burrows, a psychiatrist firmly committed to the medical model. In considering the shape of sociology in Australia in its first half century, the most important feature in my view is the British 60
Sociology’s Roller-coaster Ride in Australia dominance. Not only were Australian academic connections mostly with British sociologists and British institutions until the end of the 1970s, but also the structure of university life and the general ethos about what it was to ‘be’ an academic were British to the core. Academics traditionally left for Britain, rather than the USA, for postgraduate study abroad and, in consequence, few personal links between Australian and US sociologists were developed until the 1980s.11 Australian sociologists’ connections with European sociologists outside Britain were also very limited. Only four Australian sociologists attended the World Sociology Congress in Evian, France, in 1966 and only seven attended that conference in Varna, Bulgaria, in 1970.12 Australian membership of the International Sociological Association (which runs the World Sociology Congress) was minimal until the 1990s, and even now the involvement of Australian sociologists in the ISA’s important research committees is quite restricted. In the wings, pushing sociology even further in a British direction, has been the cartel of British publishers which has dominated not only Australian publishing, but also has been a highly significant gatekeeper, preventing the entry of US sociological monographs and textbooks unless specifically ordered by an individual or an institution.13 This, in my view, has had a profound effect on the trajectory of Australian sociology, closing off the everyday exploration of US sociology books on booksellers’ shelves. In turn, this has largely narrowed the range of sociology research monographs on Australian university library shelves to those reviewed in sociological journals. But times are changing. University libraries are reducing their book purchases and are putting more of their limited resources into extending the electronic availability of social science journals and others. In forthcoming decades this, with the spread of the internet, will move Australian sociology towards a much greater recognition of US sociological research. This is the very moment, too, that British publishers are losing their control, and US publishers are entering the Australian marketplace, along with US retail booksellers such as Borders. In the early years of sociology it was difficult to teach courses with reference to Australian society because there was little available material for students to read. Not only were teaching resources limited to textbooks written by British sociologists, but British publishers showed little interest in publishing sociological research on Australian topics. As teachers we depended for years—long past their 61
Histories of Australian Sociology use-by dates—on the monograph by Western on social inequality and on the books of readings by Western, Najman and Western, Edgar, and Encel and Davies. It was a great step forward when one publishing house, George Allen and Unwin, became—for a period of twenty or so years—the prominent publisher of Australian sociology texts, and even more significantly, an enthusiastic publisher of feminist sociological research. Nevertheless, there is still a striking lack of Australian sociological monographs and texts. Above all, there is no ‘overview’ of Australian society since Western’s monograph Social Inequality in Australian Society, now thirty years old. Canadian sociologists early recognized the need to develop a Canadian sociology specifically focused around Canadian issues. Since 1972 the Canadian Sociological Association has had a Committee on Canadianization (Eichler 2001). There has been no similar movement in Australia. Notes 1.
2. 3.
4.
5. 6.
7.
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To the story of Australian sociology’s prehistory, I would add the name of Professor A. P. Elkin, professor of anthropology at the University of Sydney. He encouraged Jean Martin’s nascent sociological interests and oversaw her research on women in a Sydney hosiery factory and her study of NSW dairy farmers, which was her MA thesis topic. See Richmond (2000). John Barnes, a Professor of Anthropology at the ANU and a very supportive SAANZ member, took the foundation chair of sociology at Cambridge. The three professors of sociology were Claudio Veliz, Alf Clark and Ron Wild. I have vivid memories of a staff barbeque to welcome Ron Wild. There was Claudio in his black suit, white shirt and black tie, Alf in blue jeans and shirt and a bright red jumper, and Ron elegantly but casually dressed and dripping with expensive silver jewellery. A more diverse trio could not be imagined! The anti-communist attack of 1960 marginalised Geoff Sharp as an academic and forced his course on social theory to be an elective rather than a key component of the undergraduate social work curriculum at the University of Melbourne. By 1965 only 30 per cent of final year social work students elected to take this course (Notes and Announcements, ANZJS, 1, 1965: 66). Geoff and his wife, Nonie, have continued to play key roles in Australian academic life through publications in Arena and elsewhere. Charles Lemert refers to Gouldner as ‘a new kind of third-way Marxist’ (Lemert, 2003: 304). The term ‘married woman’ now seems quaint and old-fashioned, but in the 1960s, being a married female was an important status position signifying a decidedly disadvantaged place in the world of paid work. The full story of ‘the marriage bar’ in Australia and elsewhere is still to be written. See Deacon (1989). The Canadian Sociology and Anthropology Association’s Women’s Caucus was formed about the same time, but unlike the SAANZ Women’s Section, it appears to have generated from the start a forceful political agenda within the parent body. Eichler reports that ‘many motions [were] put in annual meetings that improved the status of women within the organization. There was a deliberate effort to ensure that
Sociology’s Roller-coaster Ride in Australia
8.
9.
10.
11. 12. 13.
there would be no discrimination against female candidates in hiring.’ (Eichler 2000). The first issue of the SAANZ Women’s Section Newsletter was circulated in 1979 and was edited by Lois Foster. I am listed as Membership Secretary. Later issues were edited by Shirley Sampson, Cora Baldock, June Fielding, Gillian Lupton, Helen Marshall, Gisela Kaplan and myself, among others. In a survey of SAANZ members, positive responses to the introduction of the Women’s Section came from 47 members linked to 23 Australian tertiary institutions, 2 NZ institutions and the LSE (women from the University of Adelaide, ANU and RMIT were the only notable absences). Lois Foster wrote in that first issue that ‘the only negative comment was from a Marxist woman in a university position who felt that forming a separate women’s section was divisive’. For many years the annual pre-conference Women’s Day organised by the SAANZ Women’s Section provided an important occasion for feminist sociologists to meet. The friendships within the SAANZ Women’s Section not only encouraged research and publications, but also some resistance to male domination. SAANZ was not, to my mind, male dominated, at least until the mid-1970s, as—for example—both Jean Martin and Lois Bryson had served as presidents. But by the late 1970s the association’s executive had descended into a boy’s club, where agenda items were regularly curtailed in favour of an early lunch and executive positions passed routinely from one male sociologist to another and back again. Arranging for Cora Baldock to become the new SAANZ president in 1979 was something I probably would not have attempted but for the knowledge that behind me stood a group of feminist sociologists. The sociology of medicine was of considerable interest to Australian sociologists from the 1960s onwards. The first seminar of the Medical Section of SAANZ was held at the University of New South Wales in June 1967 (Notes and Announcements, ANZJS, 1967, 3: 149). Other major areas of sociological interest in the early days were immigration and education. The History Department at the University of Melbourne, for example, traditionally encouraged its top undergraduates to take up postgraduate places at Balliol College, Oxford. My study leave in 1970 with Tom Scheff was arranged by formal letter. The seven Australian sociologists at Varna in 1970 included George Zubrycki, Frank Jones, John Western and myself. About seventy Australians attended the ISA conference in Bielefeld in 1994. The story of the British cartel and its control of Australian book-buying is largely hidden. Little information is publicly available, but see Benchley (1995).
References ‘Notes and announcements’, Australian and New Zealand Journal of Sociology, (1965-1968) 1-4. Benchley, F. (1995) ‘Hope of flow-on from UK cuts in book prices’, Australian Financial Review, October 9. Connell, R. W. (2000) ‘Charting futures for sociology: sociology and world market sociology’, Contemporary Sociology 29 (2), 291-6. Deacon, D. (1989) Managing Gender: The State, the new Middle Class and Women Workers 1830-1930, Melbourne, Oxford University Press.
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Histories of Australian Sociology Eichler, M. (2001) ‘Women pioneers in Canadian sociology: the effects of a politics of gender and a politics of knowledge’, Canadian Journal of Sociology 26 (3), 375-404. Gouldner, A. (1971) The Coming Crisis of Western Sociology, London, Heinemann. Lemert, C. (2003) ‘Schools and scholars: Durkheim’s ghosts’, Journal of Historical Sociology 16, 3, 303-319. Martin, J. I. (1965) Refugee Settlers, Canberra, Australian National University. Richmond, K. (2000) ‘Jean Isobel Martin’, Australian Dictionary of Biography 15, 315-6.
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6 Australian Sociology: An Authentic Voice? CORA VELLEKOOP BALDOCK*
M
y association with the (then) Sociological Association of Australia and New Zealand (SAANZ) began thirty-eight years ago, when I ‘migrated’ from the Netherlands to New Zealand to teach at Canterbury University. I attended my first SAANZ conference in 1965 at Monash, coming away from that conference as the New Zealand representative on the SAANZ executive. After six years at Canterbury, I moved to San Diego, where I met up with Jim Lally, leading to what is still the only full-length book (albeit now outdated) on the history of Australian and New Zealand sociology.1 I then spent some years teaching at CUNY and ANU, eventually settling in Perth, travelling from there to innumerable SAANZ, and later, TASA conferences. Much of the history of SAANZ/TASA since the 1970s is, in my view, punctuated by efforts to find an authentic voice for Australian sociology. Others have spoken about the 1972 coup regarding the ANZ Journal of Sociology. In 1979 Katy Richmond executed another coup (as important, but carried out more quietly), which broke the stronghold on SAANZ of a small group of patriarchs who had run the Association. The executive that Katy put together had a predominance of women and there was for the first time an active Women’s Section, with a representative on the Executive. I became President that year, and was able, in cooperation with Allen & Unwin, to institute the Jean Martin Award for the best PhD thesis in sociology. The books published as a consequence of that first round all represented this new authentic voice. The winner was Claire Williams, with Open Cut, but a number of other PhD theses, competing in that first round (interestingly, all by feminists) were
*
Source: Baldock, C. V. (2004) ‘History of Australian Sociology’, Nexus, vol. 16:1, March, p. 11. Note: Also see chapter 18 of this volume for another contribution by C. V. Baldock.
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Histories of Australian Sociology published by Allen & Unwin, including books by Clare Burton, Jill Matthews, and Betsy Wearing. It is useful, by the way, to remember the prominent role of Allen & Unwin in the development of an authentic Australian sociology. Between 1978 and 1991 Allen & Unwin published 62 sociology texts, 40 of them in Studies in Sociology (general editor Ron Wild), and 10 in Women’s Studies.2 In this context it was disappointing to find Allen & Unwin absent at our 40-year celebrations in 2003. The Secession in 1988 by the New Zealand branch of SAANZ, leading to the formation of TASA and the Sociological Association of Aotearoa (New Zealand) was also in many respects about finding an authentic voice. NZ and Australian sociology had always been decidedly different, and the 1988 events acknowledged this. In my view, the significant differences at the time were that 1) about 50 per cent of members of the Association in NZ worked for government and the private sector, whereas in Australia most were academics, and 2) NZ sociologists had developed a very strong focus on biculturalism, with a genuine will to understand Maori culture, whilst Australian sociology had a long way to go (and still has today) in its recognition of Aboriginal culture. Notes 1.
2.
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C. V. Baldock & J. Lally (1974) Sociology in Australia and New Zealand, Greenwood Press. See also J. Lally & C. V. Baldock (1975) ‘Contemporary Sociology in Australia and New Zealand’, pp. 453-69 in R. P. Mohan & D. Martindale, eds, Handbook of Contemporary Developments in World Sociology, Greenwood Press; C. V. Baldock (1994) ‘Sociology in Australia and New Zealand’, pp. 587-622 in R. P. Mohan & A. S. Wilke, eds, International Handbook of Contemporary Developments in Sociology, Greenwood Press (this chapter is reproduced in this volume as chapter 18). Of course, other publishers also produced some important Australian texts in the 1980s, such as Penguin (e.g. books by Lynn Richards and Lois Bryson), and Cambridge (work by Kerrein Reiger), but Allen & Unwin dominated the scene.
7 History of Sociology in New Zealand CHARLES CROTHERS Writing Country Disciplinary Histories: Historiographical Issues
T
he history of sociology in New Zealand has not been the focus of much sustained attention, although there is a series of commentaries which (repeatedly) survey the broad parameters, but fail to advance much in filling out the details. (Indeed, already by 1986 Gribben and Crothers warn against the endless recycling of material and undue focus on ‘the sociology of New Zealand sociology’: fortunately a warning partly accepted thereafter). The only significant attempts to pin down the state of the discipline have been Timms’s (1970) very early overview, and the first article ever published in New Zealand Sociology (Gribben and Crothers 1986). Some of the ‘founding fathers’ (all still alive at the time of writing) have published memories (Willmott, Hancock, Robb, Thompson, Fraser: see Hancock et al. 1996; Spoonley 2003), but these are very brief, and no deposit of oral histories has been laid down. Sociology is touched on in various University histories (e.g. Sinclair 1983; Barrowman 1999; Tarling 1999), but usually only in passing. Somerset (New Zealand’s earliest sociologist) is mentioned in Carter (1993), but only as viewed from the perspective of the way his career inter-locked with the career of his more prominent colleague Beeby. No New Zealand sociologist has been honoured with a book-length biographical account (or likely to be). On the other hand, there are some more readily available public sources such as the ephemera of the Sociological Association of New Zealand Newsletter, whose informal tone may better pick up on year-byyear nuances in the development of sociology. Boxes of association records are inaccessibly stored in several accidental sites (e.g. former secretary’s offices), but could feed into more substantial historical work if collated and properly archived. Similarly, proceedings (or 67
Histories of Australian Sociology partial proceedings) of many conferences have made it into the public record and are now a resource for tracking New Zealand sociology. ‘Historical milestones’ are now beginning to be passed, and some of these may occasion some memorialising: for example, the occasion of having a conference at Canterbury University (CU) in 2002 close to the research site of New Zealand’s first major monograph (Somerset 1938) did not go unremarked, but the material from the memorial workshop in Oxford, Canterbury is not yet published. Country histories of any discipline are seriously fickle: being highly dependent on the whimsies of the particular observer who is writing (who quite likely has some axe to grind, or whose angle of observation clouds some areas). Nor is it clear what the foci of attention should be. A good history presumably needs to be very much grounded in a sound description and solid understanding of the ways in which the discipline produces knowledge across its various ‘production sites’. These include the training and education of its academic staff, practitioners and students, and its research and service. In turn, coverage of these processes can take several different dimensions: the particular substantive fields which are covered, whether the material is theoretical vs. empirical, pure vs. applied, local vs. cosmopolitan, and what theoretical or methodological approaches are deployed. However, to cover all these aspects would be a tall order, especially in the absence of properly grounded descriptive material. As well as grasping the dimensions of sociology’s outputs, it is necessary to delineate the institutional structures through which sociologists operate, their characteristics and resources and how these inputs and the outputs are linked. Consideration of these broader issues should then give rise to an agenda of what the interesting historical questions are, and which deserve more focused attention: especially periods of transformation and major events. The history of sociology in New Zealand can be uneasily fitted into four phases: a long and very uneven pre-history of early development, a short sharp development phase, a long period of relatively constant reproduction, and the latest period of re-adjustment.
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History of Sociology in New Zealand
A Long Pre-history: Up to 1960 The early period of development begins with Pope’s (1887) longbefore-its-proper-time civics textbook (see Crothers 2004b). Later, during the turn-of-the-century Liberal government, there were a few social research projects carried out here and there by government officials (e.g. studies of household budgets). The tours of New Zealand by eminent UK social researchers, such as the Webbs in 1907 (Hamer 1974), did not seem to inspire much local social science research activity, although their accounts have some utility. During the interwar period, sociology was somewhat mysteriously included in the federal University of New Zealand’s curriculum for a Diploma in Social Science, and although this was not formally taught, apparently several students each year sat the examination (Timms 1970). In the mid-to-late 1930s, the development of sociology in a broader sense was given a distinct fillip: in part through the establishment of the New Zealand Council of Educational Research (NZCER) with Carnegie money, and under a general influence exuded by the Institute of Pacific Relations (Thomas, 1974) and through visits by American rural sociologists Kolb and de Brunner. Some of the work of the NZCER was distinctly sociological and it sponsored the work and the publication of New Zealand’s first sociological community study—Littledene—a rural centre some 70km outside of Christchurch (Somerset 1938). A social research unit was established within the DSIR and this investigated the living standards of dairy farmers and tramway workers, until it was (somewhat mysteriously) closed down: in part because of the controversial-ness of its findings, and in part because of the general erosion of government energy with the advent of World War II (Robb 1987). Even so, during WWII, an industrial psychology unit was attempted to facilitate New Zealand’s industrial war effort, and rural sociology was developed within the Department of Agriculture (Carter 1986, 1988). During the immediate post-war years, at Victoria University of Wellington (VUW), the ethnopsychology ‘school’ of Beaglehole had a considerable influence.
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The Founding Period: 1960-1970s More formal development of sociology did not really ‘kick in’ until the late 1950s, when it began to be taught at both Victoria University College (VUC, later VUW) and Canterbury University College (CUC, later CU): within departments of social work and psychology respectively. After a few years of only first-year teaching, a more extended sequence of courses came to be offered, and by the mid1960s the sociology programmes acquired independence and the first chair in sociology was appointed (Prof. Robb at VUW in 1967). Then, in something of an unseemly rush, Auckland, the fledgling Waikato University (WU) and Massey University (MU) also plunged into the provision of sociology, and in particular, the appointment of chairs. Sociology expanded rapidly by capturing, to some very considerable degree, the great outpouring of interest in things social that accompanied the student unrest of the 1960s. All the New Zealand departments passed through rocky gestation periods, with high staff turnover and sometimes difficulties with students. Sociology was very much a brash young discipline, somewhat marginalized for its wilder proclivities, and often housed on the edges of campuses in makeshift accommodations. One tale is of the American lecturer who had sailed to New Zealand and unleashed a huge first-year sociology class of some hundreds of students—untrained and unsupervised—onto an unsuspecting downtown and inner city Auckland to carry out field research projects. The horrified university authorities then imposed a rigid ban on undergraduates ever doing field research. In the meantime the offending lecturer had sailed north once more. The early period was bumpy in some part because the new New Zealand sociology departments were competing on a world market gutted by the demands of very many universities for new staff. When staff were hired, many did not stay long. As Thompson (1996: 330) comments: ‘Our first appointments came from the Netherlands, the USA, India and Czechoslovakia. It was not until late in 1969, when we were able to make two good English appointments from one advertisement, that the staffing crisis ended.’
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History of Sociology in New Zealand Timms lays down a definitive description of New Zealand sociology (especially in terms of course contents) circa 1970. Then, there were a mere fourteen staff, but vacancies awaited a similar-sized reinforcement cohort. Unfortunately, not too much can be gleaned from Scott’s update nearly a decade after, apart from his documentation of the growth of postgraduate student numbers and his comment (1978: 10) that for New Zealand departments ‘the main changes have been in the same directions as those indicated for Australian universities—a more realistic introduction at first-year level, increased emphasis on the basics of theory and method, and a widening variety of specialised options in later years’. Timms (1970) developed an ‘Oxbridge theory’ which posited that sociology’s late development stemmed from stonewalling from conservative senior dons with Oxbridge backgrounds. But this interpretation has been hotly disputed by Thompson and more coolly by Robb (see also Hancock 1996). Rather, the latter two claim (and after all they were the founding fathers and thus in a better position to know) that gatekeepers from other disciplines were in fact kindly disposed. Adjudication on this dispute at this distance in time is difficult, and it seems best to accept the Thompson/Robb line of argument, while noting (along with Timms) that sociology indubitably was regarded with some suspicion as a patently exuberantly American subject, which magnetically drew in a nervousness-inducing fringe of radical students and (some) staff. Several ‘sponsoring’ disciplines not only provided assistance at the birth of the discipline, but also continuing nurturance, as many new sociology staff converted over from anthropology, together with a few from geography, education or political science. A community survey tradition dominated research in New Zealand sociology (across all departments) in this period (and extended at least into the 1980s). This examined questions concerning community issues and migration, using surveys conducted, with community support, by class-loads of senior students. At VUW this approach was supplemented by demographic work with census data. (For a partial record of the empirical sociology of that period, see contents of Forster, 1969.) In Baldock and Lally’s survey (1974: see also Lally and Baldock 1974), some respondents saw New Zealand sociology as functionalistic, pragmatic and involved with low-level empiricism, and such comments seem fair.
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Histories of Australian Sociology The Golden Age: Mid-1970s to the Mid-1990s Once the teething problems of the founding period had been overcome, New Zealand sociology settled down for a period of ‘sustainability’—its golden age?—in which the discipline was washed by slow-moving currents, but without any seismic disturbances. Baldock’s broad summary (1994), reprinted in this volume, holds largely true for the whole period of some thirty years between the early 1970s and mid-1990s. Her judgement about New Zealand sociology’s performance, offered later in her review chapter, is more boastful than I would prefer, but is at least a platform for more sober consideration. Baldock argues that an initial flirtation with American sociology was soon displaced by a solid drawing on UK sociological traditions. I am not so sure that this is a reasonable interpretation. CU, for example (as indicated by the above quote from Thompson), included several non-British sociologists, although it is not clear what the consequences of this have been for CU curriculum and/or research. American influence was mainly limited to a scattered handful of American sociologists who had short-tenured stays mainly in the 1970s: the Webb and Collette text collection (1973) is the main trace of their presence. Then, and since then, New Zealand sociology has tended to be broadly UK-dominated, with many staff being imported from the UK, and the academic leaves of many New Zealand sociologists spent in the UK. Baldock and Lally (1974) suggested that New Zealand (and Australian) sociology has been dominated by studies in the following areas (and Baldock repeats this listing in her 1994 treatment): demography and family-related studies studies of ethnic minorities area and community studies social stratification sociology of education study of political behaviour. On the other hand, Scott (1978) and later Gribben and Crothers (1986) show that New Zealand sociology topics sprawl across the full range of topic areas. (For an updated bibliometric study of the whole period, see Crothers, 2004b.) The variety is too great to be readily summarised. In an astute observation in the conclusion of their edited
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History of Sociology in New Zealand text, Spoonley et al. (1982: 379) comment on the lack of a rural sociology focus in more recent sociology which they see as ‘evidenced in early sociological research which was predominantly urban based and overly preoccupied with social pathology. With the more recent growth of social research in government departments and the increasing emphasis on an indigenous sociology, the initial preoccupation with small scale social surveys has shifted toward a more theoretically informed discipline, and …a notable resurgence of ideological disputation’. Later, Spoonley (2003) develops an important argument that New Zealand sociology (albeit developed more by people outside the mainstream) has significant Maori aspects. Gribben and Crothers (1986) indicate some concern with the cumulative quality of New Zealand sociology production, and their observations about the limitations of New Zealand’s sociology literature are still appropriate fifteen years later. (More detailed treatments of specific fields are provided by Mast (1988) and Middleton (1988), and others can be found in more scattered locations.) Beyond the brute fact of its existence, there is no evidence of the construction of any traditions that might constitute a ‘New Zealand sociology’ (cf. Perry 1991). Within the New Zealand context, the fortunes of departments have waxed and waned, and specialties have grown and fallen back. Too much can be made of ‘tendencies’ or ‘subtraditions’ within New Zealand sociology, which seem more the figment of a particular observer’s imagination. Earlier, VUW and CU were the two established and larger programmes. But VUW failed to grow, contributed little in the academic leadership stakes, and fell from national prominence. Later, Auckland and Canterbury have been the two larger, and perhaps somewhat conservative, departments, as opposed to the equally large but more energetic MU department. More recently, it has been more difficult to provide an objective overall ‘institutional cartography’. In the 1980s the MU department was vigorous. In 1981 a multi-disciplinary cultural studies journal, Sites, was established (after an earlier series of working group issues), and there was a range of other research and publishing ventures. Associations: The Australian Link From its early beginnings, sociology in New Zealand has been flanked by supporting associational structures. The Sociological Association 73
Histories of Australian Sociology of Australia and New Zealand (SAANZ) was set up in the early 1960s, with a federal structure guaranteeing New Zealand representation (there was a New Zealand VP and another New Zealand representative). A New Zealand branch of the SAANZ was formed in the early 1970s with an inaugural local conference at MU, and an unbroken stream of annual conferences since, following a vague geographical schedule of circulation amongst centres. A portion of the SAANZ fee was funnelled back to the local branch. The two structures did not entirely fit together, however, with the New Zealand representatives to the parent body not being tightly tied to the New Zealand executive. Several New Zealand sociologists were heavily involved in the coup that overtook Australian and New Zealand sociology in the early 1970s and the period of more indigenously-directed development that followed, and Kevin Clements at CU edited the joint journal, introducing a more exciting format. On the whole, though, intellectual contact across the Tasman was not intensive (and that remains largely true since). The two bodies were able to continue to work with, and alongside, each other for over two decades. Nevertheless, through the 1980s, pressure built for a separation, although it was not entirely clear what the issues were, especially when the vexatious edges of difficulties on the New Zealand side were ameliorated by Australian solicitude. Several issues were on the boil: differences between the two sociologies can be glimpsed: New Zealand sociology then had more non-academic sociologists and emphasised bi-culturalism because of its link to Maori issues; there was an edge of nationalist pride since the New Zealand component was inevitably overshadowed by the wider Australiancentred parent body; there clearly is a ‘size effect’ with Australia able to field a substantial range of sociological expertise that allowed specialisation, depth of development and publishing outlets; there was a ‘class’ angle: while more senior staff had access to the resources required to regularly wing their way to Australian conferences, more junior staff and postgraduate students were less likely to be able to afford the link; the two associations had different cost structures: the SAANZ fee was quite high and was ‘progressive’, whereas the New Zealand component could run on the smell of an oily rag, as it provided minimal services (a conference and an occasional newsletter); there were some unnecessary slights that became the trigger points: New Zealand articles submitted to the joint journal that were 74
History of Sociology in New Zealand rejected for not covering Australian material(!), communication from the SAANZ executive etc.
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Interestingly, and tellingly, the dissolution of the formal tie took place at a conference at MU, which was the most locally-orientated and energetic of the New Zealand departments at that time. It is unlikely that deeper investigation will reveal deeper meanings or machinations about the rupture. Broadly, individual sociologists aligned themselves with either a more ‘local’ or a more ‘cosmopolitan’ standpoint and voted accordingly, once the issue had sufficiently come to a head that a formal vote became required. It is also unclear what the effect has been: those wishing to maintain the Australian link have still been able to do so. It is likely that a detailed investigation would find confirmation of a null hypothesis of ‘no difference’. Clearly, the New Zealand Association had an aggressive jump-start. Aotearoa was added to the name to reinforce an indigenous stake. Within a year a code of ethics had been formulated. In 1986 a NZ sociology journal was launched by the MU department, and alongside the association rather than as part of it (although recently the journal has ‘joined’ the Association). (The laconic introduction by editors Harker and Wilkes is merely ‘This is the first issue of what we hope will be a useful and informative journal, with a major contribution to make to the development of the sociological literature in New Zealand’.) Separate representation on the International Sociological Association (ISA) followed. Thus equipped with the necessary infrastructure, NZ sociology could launch off onto a largely stand-alone path. Circa-Millennium: Down to the Present Since the point in the early 1990s at which Baldock provided the description summarised above, there have been some developments in NZ sociology, but more in terms of style than substance. Sociology is now taught in the School of Social Sciences at (ex-polytechnic) AUT, as well as all three Massey campuses (Palmerston North, Albany and Wellington), within the Otago University (OU) anthropology offerings, and is part of the curriculum in many polytechnics and Wananga (Maori learning providers). However, in many sites, university reorganisation has seen sociology as a discipline absorbed into broader ‘schools’, although it may continue to enjoy some autonomy as a ‘programme’ within the school, such as Social and 75
Histories of Australian Sociology Cultural Studies at MU Albany and VUW; Sociology, Social Policy and Social Work School, MU PN; Social Science, Tourism and Recreation Group in the Environment, Society and Design Division, LU; Sociology and Social Policy at WU. The University of Auckland is the only hold-out with a continuing stand-alone sociology department, and CU almost so: although anthropology has been recently added in. Most recently in the South Island there has been a symmetrical pattern: while CU has been growing anthropology within its well-established sociology department, OU has begun to grow sociology within its well-established anthropology department. The one professor per department rule has now been breached in both directions, with some sociology programmes remaining ‘chairless’ for extended periods (UW, MU at Palmerston North) while others have sprouted several (University of Auckland now with three!). It is always difficult to measure the extent of involvement of sociologists in other ‘disciplines’ or subjects, and I would estimate that there is a considerable interest greater than Baldock’s slighting attention (1994). In this most recent period, sociology has increasingly to fight against a closing-in horde of speciality-interest subjects (women’s studies, criminology, cultural/communication studies etc). One result of this competition, coupled with internal tendencies within the discipline, has been the abandonment of compulsory teaching curricula (except for those intending to pursue the discipline at post-graduate level) so that requirements for compulsory courses in theory and methods have been dropped by many departments, and there is a premium on developing ‘sexy’ courses (or courses with ‘sexy’ titles) to attract recalcitrant student demand. Another cumulating shift has been the development of a more generous funding environment, but accompanied by a heightened pressure to ‘publish or perish’. These larger potential hoards of research funding treasure have allowed the setting up of several important research projects including: New Settlers (Andy Trlin), New Zealand workforce (Paul Spoonley), Local Authorities (Christine Cheyne), Whanau/Family Health (Peter Davis), Urban Maori Disparities (Richard Benton, Charles Crothers), Community Partnerships (Wendy Larner), Housing (David Thorns) and Attitudes to GE (Rosemary du Plessis). However, material from these largescale projects seems yet to have penetrated into the undergraduate curriculum or texts (see Crothers 2004).
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History of Sociology in New Zealand Clearly, the book publishing possibilities for New Zealand sociologists have opened up, and there is a steady stream of sociology collections (cf. Gribben and Crothers 1986: 6). But there remain few proper ‘books’ in New Zealand sociology (in quite marked contrast to the Australian situation). To the earlier bouquet of books by Somerset, Baldock, Pearson, and Pearson and Thorns have now been added works by Beaglehole, Bell, Dew, Pearson, Thorns. (Other, non-New Zealand focused studies have been published by New Zealanddomiciled sociologists: e.g. Bell, Carter, Crothers, Davis, Pearson, Thorns.) New Zealand sociology has long had some flirtation with those in power, especially in national politics (e.g. Margaret Shields, who was a junior Minister in the third Labour Government and now chairs the Wellington Regional Council), and this has perhaps escalated in the recent period, with two senior cabinet ministers with sociology backgrounds (Steve Maharey and Paul Swain), not to mention sociologists who are respectively the Prime Minister’s husband and the Governor-General’s sister (!). Within universities there is a large trend, too, for sociologists to be sucked up into academic bureaucracies. While this should represent a major opportunity for sociology to have a positive effect, there are no obvious signs of that, and indeed it is at least as likely that these links have been distracting to disciplinary progress. Conclusion With the waning of post-modernist influences, it may again become possible to raise questions concerning the ‘progress’ New Zealand sociology has achieved over the forty-five or so years of its formal deployment in New Zealand. The difficulty in raising this question, of course, is that there is only a ‘New Zealand sociology’ in a very loose sense. Certainly, there are no signs that it is other than in good heart: the flows of students, conference-papers and research continue, and some coherence and continuity have been maintained in the face of shifting organisational contexts. But if a higher standard of judgement is to be employed, New Zealand sociology is no further ahead of itself than it has ever been. There are few signs of cumulation, of laying down traditions, of getting any further ahead in tackling key issues in the research agenda or even groping towards some sense of shared research agenda. We know no more than we ever have about the changing social realities of New Zealand, and sociologists are seldom 77
Histories of Australian Sociology seriously involved in policy debates. The requisite level of selfconsciousness, leadership and organisation to tackle such an agenda of tasks just does not seem to exist. And there are few signs that this will markedly improve in the future. References Baldock, Cora and Jim Lally (1974) Sociology in Australia and New Zealand: Theory and Methods, Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press. Baldock, Cora (1975) ‘Australian and New Zealand Sociology’ in Handbook of Contemporary Developments in World Sociology edited by Raj P. Mohan and Don Martindale. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press. —— (1994) ‘Australian and New Zealand Sociology’ in International Handbook of Contemporary Developments in Sociology, edited by Raj P. Mohan & Arthur S. Wilke. Westport, Conn.: Greenwod Press. Barrowman, Rachel (1999) Victoria University of Wellington, 1899-1999: A History, Victoria University Press. Carter, Ian (1986) ‘Most important industry: how the NZ state got interested in rural women, 1940-1944’, New Zealand Journal of History 20: 27-43. —— (1988) ‘A Failed graft: rural sociology in NZ’, Journal of Rural Studies 4: 215-222. —— (1993) Gadfly: the life and times of James Shelley, Auckland University Press and NZ Broadcasting History Trust. Carter, T. E. and E. T. Beardsley (1973) A History of the University of Canterbury, 1873-1973, University of Canterbury. Clements, Kevin (1984) ‘New Zealand’ in UNESCO (ed.) Social Sciences in Asia and the Pacific. Paris: UNESCO. Crothers, Charles and Jim Robb (1985) ‘New Zealand’ in UNESCO Sociology and Social Anthropology in Asia and the Pacific, Wiley, New Delhi: 460-508. Crothers, Charles with Chris Gribben (1986) ‘The State of Sociology in New Zealand: some preliminary observations’, New Zealand Sociology 1(1): 1-17. Crothers, Charles (1994) ‘Introduction: Review Symposium of Recent Works on Political Economy’, New Zealand Sociology 1994 9(2): 380-390. Crothers, Charles, et al. (1999) ‘Ex-Pat’s Symposium: New Zealand Sociology in the New Millennium’, New Zealand Sociology 14(2).
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History of Sociology in New Zealand Crothers, Charles (2004a) ‘NZ Sociology Textbooks: best practise?’ for Conference of Research Committee on the History of Sociology, International Sociological Association Conference, Austria. —— (2004b) ‘American Influences on NZ Sociology’ (for submission to symposium on American Influences in The American Sociologist). —— (2004c) ‘Notes on Early New Zealand Civics and Social Studies Books’, unpublished report. —— (2004d) ‘Characteristics of the NZ Sociological Journal Article Literature’, unpublished report. Gidlow, Bob and Paul Spoonley (1993) ‘Symposium on the funding of social science research in New Zealand’ New Zealand Sociology 8(2). Hamer, David (ed) (1974) The Webbs in New Zealand, 1898: Beatrice Webb’s diary with entries by Sidney Webb, 2nd edn. Wellington: Price Milburn for Victoria University Press. Hancock, Merv, Jim Robb and Richard Thompson (1996) ‘The Establishment of sociology in New Zealand: a founders’ retrospect’, New Zealand Sociology 11(2): 317-333. Lally, Jim and Baldock, Cora (1975) ‘Australian and New Zealand Sociology’ in Handbook of Contemporary Developments in World Sociology. Mast, Sharon (1988) ‘Qualitative Sociology in New Zealand’, Qualitative Sociology 11(1/2): 99-113. Middleton, Sue (1989) ‘Sociology of Education’ in The Impact of American ideas on New Zealand’s educational policy, practice and thinking, edited by David Philips, Geoff Lealand, Geraldine McDonald. Wellington: NZ-US Educational Foundation; New Zealand Council for Educational Research. Perry, Nick (1991) ‘Book Review of New Zealand Society’ Australian and New Zealand Journal of Sociology 27(3): 396-402. Pope, James H. (1887) The state: the rudiments of New Zealand sociology for the use of beginners. Wellington: G. Didsbury, Govt. Printer. Robb, J. H. (1987) ‘The Life and Death of Official Social Research in New Zealand’ VUW, Sociology working paper 7. Scott, W. H. (1978) Australia and NZ Sociology, 1971-78: an introduction, Clayton, Vic.: Dept of Anthropology and Sociology, Monash University and SAANZ. Sinclair, Keith (1983) A History of the University of Auckland 1883-1983, Auckland University Press. Somerset, H. C. D. (1938, 1974) Littledene: patterns of change. Wellington: New Zealand Council for Educational Research. 79
Histories of Australian Sociology Spoonley, Paul (ed) (2003) ‘Special Issue: Graeme Fraser and New Zealand Sociology’ New Zealand Sociology 18. Spoonley, Paul (2003) ‘Island imaginings: the possibilities of postcolonial sociology in Aotearoa’, New Zealand Sociology 18: 55-66. Tarling, Nicholas (1999) Auckland: The Modern University, University of Auckland Press. Thomas, John (1974) The Institute of Pacific Relations: Asian scholars and American politics. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Timms, Duncan (1970) ‘The Teaching of Sociology within NZ’ in Jerzy Zubrzycki (ed) The Teaching of Sociology in Australia and New Zealand. Melbourne: Cheshire. Webb, Stephen D. and John Collette. (eds) (1973) New Zealand Society: Contemporary Perspectives. Sydney: Wiley. Willmott, Bill (1998) ‘Epilogue: 24 years of sociology in NZ’ in Rosemary du Plessis and Geoff Fougere (eds) Politics, Policy & Practice: Essays in Honour of Bill Willmott. Christchurch: Sociology Department, University of Canterbury.
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Part 2 Proponents and Opponents of Australian Sociology Sociology seems destined to be the science of the twentieth century.
Sir Francis Anderson, 1911
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n the journey towards the establishment of sociology in Australia, there have been a number of key proponents and opponents. This section brings together previously published papers by and about these key figures. These chapters provide the reader with a deeper understanding of the conditions, both within universities and society more generally, which led to the late arrival of Australian sociology. Chapter 8 is a reprint of Francis Anderson’s call for the teaching of sociology in Australian universities, made in 1911 to the Australian and New Zealand Association for the Advancement of Science. Lamenting the absence of sociology, Anderson argues for the need of a ‘science of society’, particularly an Australian sociology to explain the unique conditions of the ‘Australian settlement’. Three decades later Adolphus Peter Elkin, Professor of Anthropology at the University of Sydney, published his statement on the need for sociological research in Australia. In 1942, two decades before the Canberra Sociological Society and the Sociological Association of Australia and New Zealand (SAANZ) were established, Elkin founded the short-lived Australian Institute of Sociology and journal Social Horizons. Chapter 9 is a reprint of his inaugural address to the first general meeting of the Institute in 1942 (and published in 1943). In this chapter he discusses the place of psychology, economics, law, political science and anthropology in Australian universities at the time, and makes a case for sociological research and knowledge. The remaining chapters in this section were originally published during the 1980s and 1990s, and present historical accounts of the establishment of the social sciences, in particular sociology, in Australia. In chapter 10, Angela Mitropoulos argues that the rise of sociology in Australia is inseparable from the historical conditions of wage labour and capital. Michael Crozier, in chapter 11, discusses the 81
Histories of Australian Sociology increasing stranglehold that economics had on the social sciences after coming into ascendency in the post-WWII period. He describes specific attempts by economists to prevent the establishment of sociology and the somewhat peculiar Ashworth bequest made to the University of Melbourne for the establishment of the teaching of subjects in connection with sociology, excluding economics. In chapter 12, Helen Bourke focuses on the competition between sociology and economics in the inter-war period. She discusses early attempts to establish sociology in Australian universities as part of the Workers’ Educational Association (WEA) movement. She also highlights the anti-intellectualism, lack of support and absence of funding bodies for social research in Australia and subsequent expatriation of many Australian social scientists during this time. In the final chapter of this section, Graeme Davison documents the tradition of the social survey and those conditions, unique to Australia, in which the tradition developed. He also considers the impact of the social survey tradition in relation to the relatively late arrival of sociology in Australian universities.
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8 Sociology in Australia: A Plea for its Teaching SIR FRANCIS ANDERSON (1911)*
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n a country which claims to be a pioneer in the field of social and political practice, no place is found in the head centres of the national education for the teaching of the science of society. In no university in Australia is there a Chair of Sociology. There is none at Oxford. There is one at Chicago. And some people have no doubt as to which example we should follow. In an English university, however, a new subject has to go through a long period of probation before it is admitted to the academic sanctuary. There are some countries in which the universities lead. In England the tendency is in the main the other way: the universities follow. An original thinker like Herbert Spencer is first ignored by the official teachers of philosophy, then attacked and finally admitted as a proper subject of examination. A new science like Sociology is left to the outsider, the freelance, the popular Press. Only when it has been made respectable by public recognition and foreign example, is it regarded as a safe subject for university teaching. Have we forgotten the old ideal of a university, that it should be a place for learning as well as for teaching, that it exists not merely for the inculcation of the known and accepted, but for the advancement and extension of knowledge? Our Australian universities share some of the defects of the English type of university, an excessive adherence to tradition, and a disinclination to adapt the academic organization to the demands made by changing conditions. They are further handicapped by the inadequate supply of funds. The funds available are not sufficient for the maintenance of efficient instruction in the recognized standard *
This reprinted version of the address is sourced from: Anderson, F. (1943) ‘Sociology in Australia: A Plea for its Teaching’, Social Horizons, July, pp. 16–20, in which the Address is mistakenly referenced as being delivered in 1912. This address was delivered by the late Sir Francis Anderson at the 1911 meeting of the Australian and New Zealand Association for the Advancement of Science, and was subsequently published in 1912 as a pamphlet under the same title.
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Histories of Australian Sociology subjects, or for the establishment of new chairs in departments of knowledge, of a more directly utilitarian nature. Only in the last year, for example, has provision been made for university instruction on a subject so important to the economic welfare of Australia as agriculture. One unfortunate result of the financial cramp, a result perhaps unavoidable in a new university in a new country, is that the time and the energies of the teacher are overburdened by the routine work of class teaching, examination, and the reading of innumerable exercises and essays. He becomes a wheel in a great examination machine until, worn out, he is removed to be replaced by another. Happily, there are signs of improvement and hope for the future. Our greatest hope lies in the awakening of the Australian democracy to a consciousness of the immense importance of higher education in the national life, and in the decay of that old academic jealousy which drew a mystic ring round certain favoured subjects, and opposed the admission of others unworthy of a place in an institution which yet claimed to be a national university. Little more than a generation has passed since the representative spokesman of Sydney University declared in the Great Hall that, ‘there would never be a professor of manures in the University of Sydney’. A great many changes have taken place since the date of that foolish utterance—changes in the academic situation and temper, and changes in the political situation and temper as well. Perhaps the greatest change is one which is not merely local or national, but universal, worldwide in its sweep and significance. Human society has been roused to a sense of its own importance, and of the need of social security through social efficiency and social justice. Customs, laws, institutions have lost much of their sanctity. Even when the new values are simply the old rewritten, with a popular or utilitarian sanction substituted for the traditional class, ecclesiastical, or theological sanction, the fact remains that we are passing through a stage of social criticism, and reconstruction, knowledge and wisdom are often lamentably lacking. Now, wisdom may be a gift of the gods, but knowledge cometh not by prayer and fasting. Wisdom may not be communicated. It is the fair flower of life, or the bitter fruit of experience. It is always personal, incommunicable, and although it is not independent of knowledge, it does not always follow from it. Otherwise our politicians would not so abound, and our statesmen be so rare. Otherwise our schools and universities would not turn out so many fools.
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Sociology in Australia: A Plea for its Teaching Therefore I do not plead for the admission of Sociology among subjects of university instruction on the ground that it will provide a gospel of social regeneration. Sociology, like any other science, may have a more or less direct bearing on practice, but its first concern is with knowledge, with the facts and the explanation of the facts. The fact to be explained is simply society itself, its genesis and growth, and the laws by which it lives and moves and has its being. Sociology is the latest and least developed of the sciences, partly because the sciences on which it most closely depends, biology and psychology, are not yet sufficiently advanced to furnish principles which can supply a valid basis for deductive explanation. The greatness and complexity of the task tempt the investigator as they tempt the social reformer to oversimplify the problem. Sociology is identified with statistics, or economics, or applied psychology. Statistics, however, is not a science at all. It is a method not peculiar to any science, which provides material for investigation and explanation to all the sciences. Sociology is just as much or as little applied biology, or applied psychology, as biology is applied chemistry, or chemistry applied physics. Economics is one of the social sciences, but is not Sociology. It deals with a fragment, and not with the whole. Its results are valid and intelligible only when brought into connection with the larger life of society, of which they form but one partial aspect. To put it shortly, Sociology is a ‘mother science’, just as the fundamental sciences of physics, chemistry, biology and psychology may be described as mother sciences. They are general studies, which are capable of subdivision and ramification, inclusive of many special departments, but each dealing with certain general or fundamental facts, and issuing in the discovery of general laws which govern in subordinate and apparently independent departments. In the history of scientific discovery, it often happens that the subordinate department is investigated and attains the dignity and name of science before the mother science itself. Thus botany and zoology were advanced subjects of study before biology, of which they are both special branches, had even been given its name. Economics, in like manner, has been developed for generations, as if it were a separate and independent study, with no filiation to the general science of society, the science now known as Sociology. This general and fundamental science, this mother science, Sociology, is now in main outline firmly established. There are schools of Sociology in many of the universities of Europe and America, all doing excellent work. In 85
Histories of Australian Sociology Cambridge and in London, advanced work in sociological research is now being carried on with successful results, and various scientific journals of sociology, both English and foreign, need only to be consulted for evidence of the great and growing importance of the new science. As pragmatists would say, the new science has come into being in response to the demands of practical life, rather than to complete an ideal scheme of perfect knowledge. The ideal social schemes of the past were the visions of prophets or the a priori constructions of philosophers. The Sociology of the present is not a scheme at all, but a science. It has arisen, not to provide a new heaven and a new earth, but to enable us to understand the earth on which we stand, and the laws of man’s actual habitation. If it is true, as I said, that the greatest change of modern times is the fact that human society has been roused, as it never was before, to a sense of its own significance, and of the need of social security through social efficiency and social justice, we need not be surprised at the claim made for the new science in the old world as in the new. Biology has been called the science of the nineteenth century. Sociology seems destined to be the science of the twentieth century. To the great protagonist of modern socialism, Karl Marx, belongs the merit of having formulated the problem of Sociology in a way which forced it upon public attention. The importance of Marx’s epochmaking work, like that of Spencer’s, was recognized outside university circles long before it was treated with any respect from within. Unfortunately, the scientific problem was soon lost sight of, by both Marx and his followers, in the heat of revolutionary zeal. The scientific thesis was transformed into a political dogma. The creed of collectivism was preached with the fervour, and its almost invariable accompaniment, the intolerance of the religious devotee. It is probable that the emphasis on the political element, while it served to stimulate party and popular interest, has helped to delay the admission of Sociology within the serene abodes of academic research, where none is for a party, but all are for the truth. I am told that the establishment of a Chair of Economists in Sydney University was blocked for twenty years because it was thought in certain quarters that the Professor of Economics would think it his duty to preach the doctrine of free trade. To such uses can politics descend! It may be that similar objections will be made to the establishment of a Chair of Sociology. It may be urged that it is 86
Sociology in Australia: A Plea for its Teaching tampering with socialism, playing with fire. Better keep to the safe ground of algebra and Latin prose. Yet such objections proceed from the same lips which utter laments over the insignificant part played by the national universities in the national life, and over the small number of university graduates who enter the field of politics. As for the charge of partisanship, all I can say is that in my reading of the works of European and American Professors of Sociology, I have never met with any signs of it. There may be differences of opinion on many fundamental questions not yet settled, but it is the scientific spirit which prevails throughout, and not the spirit of the political or the religious propagandist. What is the fundamental problem of the Sociologist? It is to ascertain the natural laws which are manifested in social growth. The collectivist picks out one factor of the complex social process, selects a single motive from the intricate web of human psychology, and explains all history on the basis of material interests, economic struggle, and class consciousness. The science of Sociology likewise simplifies the problem, but it does so not in the service of any political gospel, but solely in order to satisfy the requirements of scientific research. When we try to arrange human motives and forms of social life in any kind of order, we find that some are simpler, more fundamental than others. There is, it is said, a law of urgency in human effort, through which man waits to satisfy his less urgent needs until he has made some provision for the more urgent. This does not mean that religion is less vital to man than food or raiment, or that a fine sunset is of no importance to a man as compared with a good dinner, or his trade union ticket. It does not mean that the Scottish character has been formed more by oatmeal porridge than by the shorter catechism. All kinds of exceptions and qualifications may be admitted. We may give the utmost importance to the working of the economic motive, and still ask, ‘What shall it profit a man though he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?’ All that is meant is that in the present state of our knowledge, Sociology, like every other science in its earlier stages, has to simplify in order to govern. It has to search for causes and laws, and if it is not to lose itself in the complexity of special problems, it must look first of all for the simpler and more fundamental causes which dominate in the intricate interplay of human motive and outer circumstance, social man and his environment. At the basis of all social phenomena, there remain the great causes which are to be referred to the nature of the territory and population, the mode of the formation of each in given 87
Histories of Australian Sociology cases, the particular forms of production and national economy, the stage of economic development of communities in conflict with each other, and the part played by such economic development, the biological and psychological consequences at each stage for individual and social efficiency. These are, of course, not all the factors to be taken into account, and made the subject of special and subordinate study, but they provide the primary and most fundamental elements to which we must look in our attempt to explain the varied life of nations, their hostile or friendly relations, and the psychological, social, and political results of such relations. Has such a programme of study no interest or importance for those who are concerned with the organization of higher education in Australia? Is this island continent, set far apart in southern seas, to be also intellectually remote, as far as its universities are concerned, from one of the greatest living interests which are exciting older civilizations? We need not go to those older civilizations for the material of investigation. The material is here in abundance. It is so abundant that every year students from the universities of England, Europe and America come to Australia for the special purpose of investigating on the spot the special problems of a new community in course of construction. But so far as I know, there is not a single expert in any Australian university who is capable of taking charge of a School of Sociology. We are engaged in the making of a nation, a new nation. Surely after a hundred years of nation-building, the time has come when the national governments should provide in the national universities for the teaching of the science of society.
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9 The Need for Sociological Research in Australia ADOLPHUS PETER ELKIN (1943)* The Past
I
f we are to live, we must understand our environment so that we may adapt ourselves to it and, as far as possible, adapt it to our needs. Moreover, the quality and richness of our living depend on the degree of our understanding. And since the environment presents two main aspects, first, the material and natural, and second, the human and social, so our understanding must be increased along two chief lines. These are, on the one hand, the physical and natural (including biological) sciences, and on the other, the psychological and social sciences. For well over one hundred years, we in Australia have applied ourselves to the understanding and mastery of the non-human environment. For example, in 1821 the ‘Philosophical Society of Australasia’ was formed, which after various vicissitudes became, in 1866, the ‘Royal Society of New South Wales’. Its object was and is to receive ‘original papers on Science, Art, Literature, and Philosophy, and especially on such subjects as tend to develop the resources of Australia and to illustrate its Natural History and Productions’. The emphases were similar when in 1849 the Legislative Council of New South Wales appointed a select committee to report upon the best means of constituting a University for the promotion of literature and science; and in 1852 the first Chairs established in the new University of Sydney were in Classics, Mathematics, Chemistry and Experimental Physics. Geology and the
*
Source: Elkin, A.P. (1943) ‘The Need for Research in Australia’, Social Horizons, July, pp. 5-15. This is a slightly edited version of the original paper published in 1943. At the time of writing, A. P. Elkin was Professor of Anthropology at the University of Sydney. This article is based on his inaugural address delivered at the first general meeting of the short-lived Australian Institute of Sociology, June 29, 1942.
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Histories of Australian Sociology Biological Sciences were to follow. A reader in Geology and Mineralogy was appointed in 1866, being raised to the rank of professor in 1869. This department was included, in 1882, in the Department of Natural History, with a professor, and this in its turn was divided in 1890 into two departments and Chairs, (a) Geology and Physical Geography, and (b) Biology. Similarly, in the other senior University, Melbourne, the first four professors appointed in 1855 were in (1) Classics, (2) Mathematics, (3) Natural Science, and (4) Modern History, Modern Literature, Political Economy and Logic. Natural Science was gradually subdivided; Chairs were established in Biology (1887), Geology (1900) and Botany (1906).1 The range of these scientific disciplines has been extended and subdivided, as our understanding of the non-human environment has grown. Consequently, there are now specialties within each major science subject (e.g. in Chemistry) and separate departments associated with the application of scientific knowledge, such as medicine and surgery, veterinary science, agriculture and engineering. It was comparatively late in the history of university and scientific life in Australia when the study of the psychological and social factors in our human environment was put on an empirical and scientific basis. But that this would have to be done eventually was implicit in the address of Sir Charles Nicholson at the inaugural ceremony of the University of Sydney. He referred to the foundation of this great seminary ‘at a moment when the colony was developing a political and social organization’, and ‘at a period when the necessity was becoming more and more urgent for educating our youth to the duties of the high citizenship many of them will soon be called upon to exercise’. Psychology In the University of Sydney, Philosophy gave birth to Psychology in 1910, in the form of a lecturer within the department, but a separate department was not founded until 1921. The only other Australian University in which Psychology is a separate department is the youngest, Western Australia. It formed part of Philosophy until 1929, when it became autonomous under the care of an associate professor. In Melbourne2, Psychology is included in Philosophy I and in Adelaide, in Philosophy. In Tasmania, where it has been taught since 1914, the Chair is Psychology and Philosophy, and the department 90
The Need for Sociological Research in Australia also includes Education. Likewise in Queensland both Psychology and Education are subjects in the Department of Philosophy, in charge of a lecturer from 1911 until the establishment of a Chair in 1919. Economics The necessity for Economics, however, has been more widely recognized. There is something practical about the study of and search for laws governing money, production, distribution and exchange. The departments in the various universities have provided training for those to be engaged in business and administrative affairs, and at the same time have provided advisors on economic matters to the Government Treasurers. The first separate Department of Economics and Commerce to be established was at the University of Sydney in 1907. There was in charge as yet no professor, but a three years’ course was designed to lead to a Diploma of Commerce, and in addition Commerce and Economics could be taken as a subject in the B.A. course. A Professor of Economics was appointed in 1912, and a separate faculty was established in 1920. In Queensland and Western Australia a Department of History and Economics was established in 1911 and 1913 respectively. In the latter University the two subjects were divided between two Chairs in 1931. In Queensland, however, the separation has not taken place, although the department became known in 1934 as the Department of Social Studies, as was originally intended. But the department is under the direction of the Professor of History and Economics—a Chair which was established in 1922. In Adelaide lectures in Economics were given by the Professor of Philosophy, 1901–1909, and the Chair became the Professorship of Philosophy and Economics from 1910 to 1916. A separate lectureship in Economics was established in 1917 and a Chair in 1929. In Tasmania, Economics was a subject in the History Department from 1917 to 1920, but a Chair and Faculty of Commerce were established in 1920. In Melbourne, the first attempts to establish a Chair of Economics were unsuccessful, but not devoid of interest. Just about the time that departments were set up in Sydney and Queensland, public pressure was exerted on the Melbourne University Council and the Government to establish Departments of Economics and Political Science. In 1912 the Premier was agreeable, but wished to impose a condition which would limit the choice of a professor and 91
Histories of Australian Sociology almost make him a political nominee. The University Council, in a reasoned reply, stated amongst other things that, ‘the student’s university course must aim first at fundamental knowledge of the broadest kind to enable him to adjust himself to the several problems of Australian life which he will subsequently encounter in politics, commerce, industry, administration or sociological and economic investigation.’ The Council’s arguments did not convince the Government, which would not authorize a contribution for the establishment of a Chair of Economics and Sociology because of the divergence of opinion existing between the Government and the Council.3 The University had to be satisfied to establish an independent lectureship in 1913 and wait until 1924, when the Department (and Faculty) of Commerce was founded with its professor. Then, as though to make up for lost time, thanks to a private benefaction, a research Chair of Economics was founded in 1927, and while comprising the greater part of the Department of Commerce, ranks as a separate Department in Arts. It is interesting, however, to remember that one of the first professors appointed to this University in 1855 was Professor of Modern History and Political Economy. He was W. E. Hearn, who has been described by Professor D. Copland as the ‘first Australian Economist’. It was from this double department that the independent lectureship in Economics was divided in 1913. Law Before either Psychology or Economics had been given distinct academic status, law schools had been established in various universities. One of the functions of the University of Sydney, as explained in the document which legalized its foundation, was to provide degrees in Law. In pursuance of this object, by-laws were adopted in 1855 authorizing the conferring of degrees in Law after examination and providing for the appointment of a Professor of English Jurisprudence. The latter step was not taken, but a readership in General Jurisprudence was established in 1858 and was continued until 1869. Various lecturers in Law were appointed and degrees were conferred, but it was not until 1890 that the Law School and Faculty were established with a Professor of Law. A Professor of Jurisprudence was not appointed until 1921. In Melbourne, too, Law degrees had been conferred after adoption of specific by-laws in 1860. The Professor of Modern History and Political Economy (W. E. 92
The Need for Sociological Research in Australia Hearn) and two part-time lecturers were responsible for the instruction in Law. But in 1873 a Faculty of Law was established with Dr. W. E. Hearn as its Dean; he ceased to be Professor of Modern History and Political Economy. In 1927 a Professor of Jurisprudence was appointed, as well as a Professor of Law. In Adelaide, the Faculty of Law was established in 1883, with a lecturer in charge of the department; a professor was appointed in 1890. Jurisprudence is under a lecturer. In Tasmania the Faculty of Law and a Department of Law and Modern History were founded in 1893. A combined Chair was established in 1896, and a separate Chair of Law in 1901. In Queensland the Chair of Law was established in 1926, but the work in Law subjects was included in the Faculty of Arts until the Faculty of Law was founded in 1936. Finally, in Western Australia a Faculty of Law was established in 1927, with a professor in charge. Political Science In this way training was provided in understanding one group of social sanctions and one method of regulating a limited set of social relationships. Political science, however, was regarded as a side issue, being, at most, a subsidiary activity of the Professor of History, Law or Philosophy. In Tasmania this subject has been taught in the Department of History since 1894, while in Adelaide there has been a Professor of Political Science and History since 1934. In Queensland, Political Science is coupled with Constitutional History, but it is not yet taught in Western Australia. If, however, as is suggested, a Department of Social Studies be established within the Faculty of Arts, Political Philosophy will become a subject in the Philosophy curriculum. In Melbourne and Sydney, however, this subject is getting onto its feet. In the former University, there has been a lecturer-incharge of a Department of Political Science since 1932 and at Sydney a Chair of Moral and Political Philosophy was established in 1939. In addition, at Sydney, a lectureship in Public Administration was established in 1914, raised to a professorship in 1935, in the Faculty of Economics. Sociology Thus the study of the legal, political, psychological and economic aspects of social life has been adopted by Australian universities in varying degrees. But there is still no recognition in any of these 93
Histories of Australian Sociology universities of the study of society as a whole, of the search for its principles of cohesion and change, and of the study of its structure, the relationship of the individuals and of the groups within society to one another and to the whole, and finally, of the relationship to each other of all its elements and factors, economic, legal, local, kinship, political and religious. In other words, there is no recognition of sociology, although many students read the sociological journals and books produced and used in Great Britain and America. The various separate disciplines, however, are moving towards a common sociological background—for example, psychology, law, economics, theology and certain parts of medicine. We are realizing that the content, form and tendencies of these are partly conditioned by the sociological background or matrix, which is present and past, human and cultural. It is a process through time. None of these elements of social life is final or ultimate, nor do any of them function in water-tight compartments. They are aspects of one life, of one process of adaptation and of change. We have tended to overlook this fact. But events are preventing us from doing so any longer. Totalitarianism is but an extreme and supercharged form of this fundamental unity of social life. But apart from this rather forceful reminder, the development of social anthropology in Australia, as well as abroad, with its emphasis on the functional approach to the study of society, has enabled and encouraged us to see the structure and nature of society as a whole, as an integration even though imperfect, of the various elements and institutions which constitute it. We have, therefore, good reason for making a sociological advance. Departments of Social Studies have been established in the Universities of Sydney (1940) and Melbourne (1941) for the purpose of training social workers. The students receive a diploma at the end of a two-years’ course.4 This course is not one in sociology or social science, but the students do receive introductory lectures on various aspects of society and social theory. The motive, however, is purely technical.5 Anthropology A much greater step was taken by the University of Sydney in 1926 when, with financial support from Australian Governments, it set up 94
The Need for Sociological Research in Australia a Department of Anthropology. This had one technical aspect, namely the training in Anthropology of administrative officers and missionaries for work amongst primitive peoples. But it was also designed to train research workers in Anthropology and in addition, to provide courses for the BA, BSc and MA degrees. The emphasis was on the study of primitive peoples, but not wholly so, for the bylaws stated that one branch of knowledge in which a candidate for the MA degree could elect to be examined was Anthropological and Social Science, while the regulations state that such a candidate in the School of Anthropology may offer himself in the subject of Sociology. In other words, since 1926, sociology has found a place, or at least a corner, in the curriculum of the University of Sydney. As a matter of fact, this corner has been a very important and fruitful one. Some very valuable research has been, and is being done, by candidates for the MA degree, into what we may designate the sociology of Sydney and of country towns, while research has been carried out during 1942 by three workers associated with the Department of Anthropology, into specific problems bearing on reconstruction. This latter research was undertaken as part of a Commonwealth Government scheme in co-operation with the universities. In addition, a number of graduates who specialized in Anthropology have assisted in the study of public opinion on matters of national significance, and have thus been able to render good service. In all this research, the special contribution of Social Anthropology is its insistence on intensive knowledge on the part of the research worker, of the people whose way of life, economics, housing, health, religion, etc. he is studying—a knowledge to be gained only by living with and sharing the life of the people (or group) concerned. Unless this knowledge be gained, statistics and budgets are dry bones. Of course, Social Anthropology, the aspect of Anthropology to which attention is mainly given in the Department of Anthropology, the University of Sydney, is really only Sociology writ large and wide. It is comparative sociology, for it is concerned with all peoples, irrespective of colour or ‘stage’ of civilization. The advantages in studying ‘simple’ societies is obvious. We can see them as functioning wholes, and are able to take cognizance of all the significant factors. The segments and factors as well as the relations within and without such communities are fewer than in more advanced and more complex civilized societies. We can thus isolate in 95
Histories of Australian Sociology each case, as it were, the various factors which are essential for cohesion or which make for change. Then, by comparison of different societies, we can endeavour to discover whether there are social principles of wide or general validity. Having got this far, as is now the case, we can turn to our own more complicated society, examine its structure, and see to what extent those principles are operating, and to what degree it is an integrated functioning whole. Moreover, if we have actually done anthropological field work in a culture different from our own, we should have learnt and practised that degree of objectivity which is essential for sound sociological research.6 Thus we come to what is generally regarded as sociology proper, that study which is the foundation of social research of all types. It is the understanding of society based on the scientific principles of observation, analysis, comparison and induction, which in turn is followed by deduction from principles and hypotheses, further observation to test these hypotheses and in some spheres, by application and experimentation and prediction. Such is the fundamental social research—to know thyself as a social being, and a social ‘order’. Scope of Sociology in Australia There is much scope for sociology in Australia; the sociology of city and country town, of the rural areas in general and of the miners and farmers. Moreover, our economic, population and legal problems can only be understood on the basis of this knowledge. This means much research and the training of research workers, but the history of economics and social anthropology in Australia has shown that this can be done. And it will be the task of an institute such as the Australian Institute of Sociology to endeavour to raise funds at home and abroad so that research may be subsidized, its results published, and departments set up in our universities in which knowledge of sociology may be inculcated and research workers trained. Such, I know, was the hope of the late Professor Francis Anderson, who at every suitable opportunity urged the recognition of Sociology in Australia.7 There is another urgent need in Australia connected with, and fundamental to, sociological research: the co-ordination, wherever 96
The Need for Sociological Research in Australia possible and permitted, of all plans for social research, whether to be conducted by government or university departments or by other groups. In this way overlapping can be avoided, and reciprocal help given. This implies also a clearing house for results, past and future, publication of all worthwhile results, as well as discussions of methods used, and when necessary, a means of making the results available to the authorities to whom they might or should be of use. This is necessary not only with regard to community projects, but even more so, with regard to the study of separate elements in, or aspects of, social life and structure. It ensures that we will not lose sight of the picture as a whole, nor run the risk of regarding these elements as existing in their own right apart from the general matrix and life of the society which gives them meaning. This applies, for example, to research into housing, health and social hygiene, the family, education, decentralization of industry, production in factories and mines, reconstruction projects, acculturation of immigrants, assimilation of our own Aboriginal mixed bloods, and such an intangible as morale. With regard to these and other problems, many investigations have been or are being made, sometimes by workers who know nothing of each other’s projects. The methods used and results obtained should be subjected to careful examination, and collated wherever this is necessary. This is no light task, but it should be undertaken by some such independent body as this Institute, through qualified sociologists. Social Research and Reform Emphasis should be laid on the fact that the Institute is not itself directly concerned with social, economic or moral reform. Social research is a scientific discipline. It observes, records and endeavours on the basis of this observation to understand and explain social phenomena. But the results of the research, in published or other form, are available to social reformers. Indeed, no sound reform can be initiated, except on the basis of such knowledge of facts and principles. Social research, objectively carried out, puts the various factors that bear on any desired reform, in their right perspective, be they economic, political, religious or social. The result is that man, who is the object of all reform, may be seen by reformers not merely as an economic cipher, political animal or
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Histories of Australian Sociology religious spirit, but as a complex social being who is striving, even though unconsciously, for integration. Sociology and the Present Time of Change Finally, the present is a period when we especially need sociological knowledge and the scientific attitudes of calmness and patience. Totalitarian war is causing great changes in our social structure and life as well as in individual attitudes. For the most part, it is probably intended that these changes should be only temporary, the result of the accidental necessities of the present war. But even though political and administrative authorities intend that as soon as possible after the war we shall return to the former methods of control, economic system and manner of life, and even though, apparently, we do return to the old ways, nevertheless we shall be changed. It is, therefore, the duty of all social scientists to observe and study the causes of change now and the process of change as the months go by, both because of the scientific opportunity and also because the knowledge so gained may be of inestimable importance in the re-ordering of society in the not far distant future. We hear much of reconstruction and new orders, just as was the case towards the end of the World War of 1914–18, and we realize that the return to life under peace conditions (whatever be the ultimate order), will be fraught with very many difficulties, economic, political, psychological and social. The position of women and the role of the family, profit-making, immigration and decentralization of industry are just a few of the practical problems which we will have to face. Moreover, the openly avowed aim of sincere people is that we shall not return to the unsatisfactory conditions of the pre-war period, in which for example, adjustment of economic difficulties may lead to physical and psychological maladjustment, as it did in the depression, apparently because the fundamental problems were not faced. These folk aim at constructing a more satisfactorily integrated world, in which at least economic security, adequate housing, provisions for health-maintenance and actual social, not merely political, democracy become a reality. This, however, raises a basic sociological problem: can we ensure anyone of these desiderata, without recasting our total social form, that is, without what amounts to a revolution in our social order? We know that the introduction of similar institutional changes in a 98
The Need for Sociological Research in Australia primitive community in Papua or New Guinea causes such a total alteration. If this be so, are we Australians prepared to face the consequences of our desires and planning? Or will we prefer to use palliatives, with many safeguards, and rely on hope? To sum up: social science has a very important role to play in the building of the future, that is, if we do not want to be merely the sport of events, including anti-social persons and forces of one kind and another. For this reason, I appeal to all who are trained in social sciences or are interested in knowing our society and culture, to build up this Institute. If supported well, and wisely ordered, it would help trained social scientists to increase in number and carry out their researches unhampered by any sectional interest. It could guide those who would spend their spare time studying some aspect of social life. It would instil the scientific attitude in, and spread scientific knowledge amongst those who are tempted to regard sociological research as a dilettante occupation. And so, directly and indirectly, the Institute could make a much needed contribution to our national well-being.8 Notes 1.
2. 3. 4. 5.
6. 7. 8.
The University of Sydney was founded in 1850; Melbourne, 1853; Adelaide, 1874; Tasmania, 1890; Queensland, 1909; and Western Australia, 1913. The first professors were appointed in Sydney in 1852; Melbourne, 1855; and Queensland, 1911. Psychology is not mentioned in Professor Ernest Scott’s History of the University of Melbourne, published in 1936. E. Scott, A History of the University of Melbourne, pp. 204–6. A similar course was established in the University of Adelaide in 1941, but at the time did not lead to the award of a diploma. These departments should be distinguished from the Department of Social Studies in the University of Queensland referred to above. The latter is a department directed by the Professor of History and Economics. It has already conducted some social research, e.g. ‘Employment Opportunities in Queensland’. The School of Social Studies within the Faculty of Arts which is suggested for Western Australia also differs from the Departments of Social Studies in Sydney and Melbourne, which are under the supervision of boards, the members of which are not all members of the University staffs. A. P. Elkin, Society, the Individual and Change, pp. 11–12. An address delivered by him to the 1911 meeting of the Australian and New Zealand Association for the Advancement of Science on this very point is reprinted in this volume. I desire to thank the Registrars of the various Australian Universities and also my Research Secretary, Miss M. Collier, for their kind help in compiling the historical facts which are shown in the text. The following books were very useful: Short
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Histories of Australian Sociology Historical Account of the University of Sydney (H. E. Barff), The University of Sydney: Its History and Progress (R. A. Dallen), and A History of the University of Melbourne (E. Scott).
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10 Discipline and Labour: Sociology, Class Formation and Money in Australia at the Beginning of the Twentieth Century ANGELA MITROPOULOS (1999)*
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his essay discusses the conditions of sociology’s institution in Australian universities and, specifically, its preconditions between the turn of the century and WW II. During that time, the motif of ‘social efficiency’ played a pivotal role in arguments for the establishment of sociology and in the construction of its problematic. I argue here the sociological promotion of social efficiency can only be accounted for as an intervention into, and apprehension of, a distinctive moment in the transformation of the social relations of labour (i.e. the socialisation of labour) and the organisation of money (specifically credit), with particular regard for the division and extension of work time conceived as a social matter. This has ramifications for our understandings of knowledge and ideology, state formation and class composition, credit and social planning, subjection and institution, law and violence. It is also illustrative of the need to reconsider the presumption of state, economy and society as distinct fields. Theoretically, this essay draws on analyses of class composition (Sergio Bologna), the emergence of the ‘social factory’ (Mario Tronti) and archeologies of knowledge (Michel Foucault), thereby reworking Marxist understandings of the ‘mode of production’.
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Thanks go to the readers and staff at the Journal of Sociology. Also to Benjamin Rozensweig, John Hutnyk and Beryl Langer—the usual provisos apply. The essay was originally submitted to the JOS in September 1997 and published there in 1999: Mitropoulos, A. (1999) 'Discipline and Labour: Sociology, Class Formation and Money in Australia at the Beginning of the Twentieth Century', Journal of Sociology, vol. 35, no. 1, pp. 77-91. It reappears here with minor revisions by the author.
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Histories of Australian Sociology Introduction For sociology to be instituted in Australia as a discipline, two things had to occur. First, ‘society’ had to be registered as a problem with a designated claim upon the exercise of knowledge. Secondly, the state needed to acquire the moral and technical backing for regulatory schemes and administrative knowledge whose aim was the reorganisation of social relations. This entailed the opening up of a space of public planning, the classification of society into new regions of state (and scientific) authority. It is argued here that a transformation of the social relations of labour and the organisation of money assembled the social state and, in turn, granted the persuasive reason for sociology’s institution after WW II. This essay focuses on the construction of the sociological problematic in that pre-WW II period, when sociology made a first, brief appearance in Australia. More accurately perhaps, this consisted of a campaign in which sociology and social efficiency were tendered as indivisible obligations. In 1911, Francis Anderson, lecturer in Logic and Mental Philosophy at the University of Sydney, gave a speech to a conference of the Australian and New Zealand Association for the Advancement of Science (ANZAAS). In it, he established the central themes of the ensuing campaign to institute sociology in Australia. In 1913, the University of Sydney invited Albert Mansbridge to Australia as a representative of the British Workers’ Educational Association (WEA). Anderson, and R. F. Irvine, an economics lecturer—also from the University of Sydney—sponsored the formation of the WEA in Australia, which announced itself as a ‘missionary organisation’, whose ‘first task … was the cultivation of a closer relationship between the wage worker and the University’ (in Crowley 1973: 199). WEA branches were set up in Sydney and Hobart, with their respective universities appointing Meredith Atkinson and Herbert Heaton to act as tutors of adult classes and organisers of the WEA.1 The WEA henceforth officiated as the organisational structure for sociology, promoting sociology through its lectures and publications. It is my contention here that the rise of ‘society’ as an object of knowledge in Australia, its coming to the attention of intellectuals in the shape that it did, is inseparable from the historic processes of the socialisation of ostensibly ‘economic’ categories or, more precisely, of wage labour and capital. That is to say: that at the beginning of this 102
Discipline and Labour century it was no longer a question—if it ever was—of comprehending the social context of economic categories or, alternatively, of analysing the social significance of those same categories. Rather, those categories of money, labour, and so on, in becoming the mediating elements of social life, as distinct from episodic elements within it, obliged a qualitative shift in the modes of apprehension of such processes. Specifically then, this essay seeks to show that the sociological advocacy of a plan for social efficiency presupposed not only a socialisation of the elemental figures of capitalist production—of labour and capital—not simply the experience and apprehension of capitalist society (as distinct from capital and society) already making itself felt as eternal fact, as assumption rather than historical consequence; but more directly, it presumed an entire program for the reconstruction of the division of work time conceived as a socially comprehensive matter—that is, as a question ‘no longer’ confined to immediate production processes. In early Australian sociologists’ call for social efficiency, labour figured explicitly as the condition of social order and ‘social growth’—that is, as the subject of society’s constitution—and, simultaneously, was pronounced as the clear obstacle to social order and growth—that is, discredited as that subject. In short, labour was cast as an eccentric variable of social formation.2 This contradictory apprehension of labour parallels the contradictory existence of wage workers: as both creators of, and objects within, capitalist production processes and the presentation of capital. These sociologists’ understanding of that contradictory presence as everlasting and natural informed not only their accounts of arbitration, wage regulation and work practices, but also their theory of social order and, as we shall see, their passage, in the shortterm at least, from a progressive liberalism—the urging of a contract between labour and capital—to a conservatism which insisted on workers’ thorough capitulation to objectification in, and under, capital as the condition of citizenship and social improvement. The first section of this essay emphasises the theoretical arrangement of Anderson’s quasi-foundational speech: its theory of social organisation and predication; the elements of society’s emergence as an object for knowledge; and the version of a social pact advanced therein. The second part outlines the circumstances that called forth campaigns for efficiency, and contrasts sociology’s version of social efficiency with other bids for efficiency circulating at the time. Subsequent sections elaborate upon this through the concepts of social 103
Histories of Australian Sociology labour and social capital, with reference to struggles over and within processes of subjectification and class organisation and their implications for an understanding of the relations between law, violence and modes of apprehension. Society Roused To return, then, to Anderson’s speech to ANZAAS where twice he offered the same formula in pleading the case for sociology: A great many changes have taken place… changes in the academic situation and temper, and changes in the political situation and temper as well. Perhaps the greatest change is one which is not merely local or national, but universal, worldwide in its sweep and significance. Human society has been roused to a sense of its own importance, and of the need of social security through social efficiency and social justice. (1943: 17) Committed as he was to a version of Hegelian dialectics (ADB 1979: 53), there can be little doubt regarding the formal presentation of key concepts and their relation here. For Anderson, society originates via consciousness (as in ‘roused to a sense of its own importance’), and this consciousness consists of recognising contradictory elements necessitating reconciliation through their harmonisation. Anderson’s positivist epistemology of society contained a structural plea for reconciliation (or, the assembly of a social contract) between antagonistic figures through a retention of positive terms and, by implication, the restraint of negative, or disagreeable, terms in an ostensibly stable unity: the exchange of social justice for social efficiency in the name of social security. In the above formulation, Anderson omitted the first movement of Hegel’s phenomenology: that the emergence of consciousness is an act of labour. Such an omission, as it turns out, is more in the nature of what Althusser referred to as an oversight.3 It is because of such an ‘oversight’ that Anderson presented the figure of Marx. Anderson argued that Marx had ‘formulated the problem of Sociology in a way that forced it on public attention’ and, due to this particular genesis, the ‘scientific problem’ was ‘consumed by the heat of revolutionary zeal’ (1943: 18). To be clear on this point, Marx is 104
Discipline and Labour (rightly) not credited as a sociologist. On the contrary, he is charged by Anderson with provoking the problem of sociology and—what arouses Anderson’s anxiety—with having animated what ought to be a scientific thing with the intensity of a revolutionary politics. In this Hegelian drama, Marx represented those historical and social forces which, for Anderson the idealist philosopher, could only be recognised as, and attributed to, proper names. Moreover, Anderson’s insistence on the insufficiency of economics confirms the presentation of labour as a social term: economics, unlike sociology, ‘deals with a fragment, and not with the whole’ (1943: 17). In this way, he grasped the difference between labour as circumstantial constituent of social formation (the economy) and wage labour as the historically decisive presence of labour in capitalist society: that is, wage labour which had developed beyond the direct sites of production to become a social labour discerned as a social, not economic, dilemma. Anderson promised his audience that sociology would both master these new facts and do so in such a way as to avoid social disorder. However, in posing the institution of scientific identity on the grounds of what was at once deemed beyond the pale of science, Anderson’s dialectic prearranged the way in which sociology’s claim to scientificity would remain possessed by that which it judged unscientific. Perfect harmonisation through objectification—which formed both epistemic presupposition and practical prescription for Anderson—remained little more than a wish, for both the proponents of sociology and in daily living. The more it became apparent that objectification could not be secured, the more violence would be applauded as a necessary measure to assure the boundaries of acceptable subjectivity. Social Efficiency Toward the end of the 19th century, workers in Australia had placed significant limits on work time and achieved a relatively high rate of unionisation, with the immediate effect of securing rises in wages in the 1870s through to the early 1890s (McFarlane 1972: 36). A reluctant tolerance by employers of wages’ growth prior to the 1890s, premised on the 1850’s gold boom and the surge in agricultural exports in the late 19th century, served an expanding manufacturing industry in Britain and generated massive inflows of predominantly 105
Histories of Australian Sociology London finance (Kaptein 1993: 80-3). During the 1880s, trade union organisation made demonstrative moves toward national organisation and so, the possibility for action that would affect not simply one firm or one state, but the whole continent.4 Consequently, the potential for workers to refuse to work and to resist extensions to work time constituted a crucial difficulty for the warranty of national capitals in relation to international financial constraints, especially given the global (or imperial) character of production, markets and finance and an imperial regime of accumulation experiencing falling rates of profit. By the 1890s, London capital investments began to recede, heightening the resolve on the part of key employers to contain workers’ demands for higher pay, control over the labour process and limits to the working day. Not surprising, then, that the first major offensives against workers took place in those sectors directly linked to London: shipping and wool. The attacks on workers (including the prominent defeats of the shearing and maritime workers in 1890-91) did nothing, however, to secure Australian firms and banks against a massive liquidation in 1893. British capital inflow disappeared, the price of exports plunged and London demanded the settlement of debts in hard cash. For some time, immiseration and repression were to remain the necessary and favoured methods for ensuring accumulation—a strategy which was to prove both immanent, and yet finally insufficient, for guaranteeing that workers worked more and, thus, for reviving accumulation. Between 1890 and 1907, real wages fell (McFarlane 1972: 36). The depression, officially lasting from 1893 to 1906, was followed by a temporary upturn in profits between 1909 and 1913 (Buckley and Wheelwright 1988: 224). An increase in profits at the expense of wages, an increase in the size rather than rate of surplus labour time achieved this momentary boost. In 1915, the WEA provided most of the speakers in a series of lectures on national efficiency hosted by the Ministry of Public Works, with each speaker offering sociology as the means of solving the ostensible problem of social efficiency. The notion of efficiency, if not a new one, was posed in a new way. While the search for means of industrial efficiency was a prominent feature amongst some industrialists and conservative Australian politicians in this period— especially during the term of the Bruce Government between 1924 and 1929 (Blackburn 1996)—Taylorist practices were not put into 106
Discipline and Labour effect in Australia with any significance until the closing years of WW II (Wright 1995). The sociologists’ idea of social efficiency was offered as both an extension and criticism of the proposals for industrial efficiency. In his 1915 lecture on democracy and efficiency, Atkinson argued that: Greater production is essential to maintain a rising standard of comfort. An increase in production can only be secured by increasing efficiency in the factors of production. The factors are land, capital, labour, and business ability… The most difficult of all to convince of the need for higher efficiency is the representative of the factor called Labour. (1915: 27) It was necessary to devise the ‘means to apply discipline from within’, for workers to internalise their role as a ‘factor of production’ (Atkinson 1915: 25). Northcott, a student of Anderson’s, suggested that in ‘social life, inefficiency appears in the operations of a class consciousness which hinders social harmony’ which, he went on to say, made ‘difficult the creation of an aristocracy of labour’ (1918: 244-5). Atkinson likewise lamented the ‘power wielded in Australia by organised labour’ which, tending to ‘favour the bottom dog,’ remained an obstacle to the development of a stratum of ‘skilled’ workers and the ‘introduction of new industrial methods’ (1920: 7). Irvine warned that scientific management was being resisted by workers, who saw it as little more than a ‘new device for over-driving, speeding-up and getting unpaid work out of human muscle’ (1915: 5). He urged an extensively social approach to the task of getting workers to work. ‘Scientific management,’ he contended, ought to place a greater emphasis on ‘human motives and human results’; because people cannot be motivated to work ‘under the lash or fear of starvation’, the ‘expert’ must appeal to ‘the sense of social purpose’ (1915: 6-7). Northcott claimed that sociology could supply the scientific tools for forging ‘a mechanism through which organisation can be affected’ (1918: 275). Society as a whole could be mobilised around this goal of efficiency: ‘All the institutions of social control, religion, education, morality, and laws are available. All have their part to play’ (1918: 275). ‘Society’, Northcott proffered, is ‘an organisation whose functioning is open to a waste of energy and effort’ (1918: 257). So in
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Histories of Australian Sociology a gesture that exceeded any functionalist metaphorisation, society was not presented as being like a factory, but by definition a factory.5 Before Elton Mayo went on to develop an infamous career in the United States as its foremost industrial sociologist, he had been at Queensland University between 1911 and 1923, holding the Chair of Philosophy there from 1919. During that time, in a series of lectures for the WEA, he actively promoted an analogy between war neurosis and working class radicalism, claiming that not only did class struggle occur insofar as workers did not feel that they were working for a social reason but, and by implication, that workers’ militancy was a form of madness, a refusal to see reason. He argued, therefore, that the ‘solution to industrial unrest lies in sociological research and industrial management rather than radical politics’ (ADB 1986: 465). According to Mayo, ‘the sociological standpoint’ allowed one to appreciate that: society is composed of individuals organised in occupational groups, each fulfilling some function for the society... It must be possible for the individual to feel, as he works, that his work is socially necessary. Failure in this respect will make disintegration inevitable. (1920: 129) He bemoaned the fact that the ‘average worker of the present’ regarded their workplaces not as ‘social functions, but as the scene of a “class-war”’. For these circumstances, Mayo urged the introduction of social psychology, social anthropology and sociology—studies that would permit universities to take their proper place as a ‘rational influence in the social organism’ (1920: 131). Without the exertion of such an influence, society, he prophesied, would be ‘rudderless amidst the irrational forces of… class bias’ (1920: 144). To clarify the differences between industrial and social efficiency, it is instructive to compare the strategies advanced by these sociological advocates with those of Fordism and Taylorism. Where Henry Ford, in the US in 1913, applied the fleetingly effective method of coupling a relatively high wage with line-production,6 Anderson was, in 1911, already anticipating the comparable formula of ‘social security through social efficiency and social justice’ (1943: 17). Society, he maintained, could be secured against possible devastation through a virtuous exchange. On the one side, workers would be promised 108
Discipline and Labour justice. Justice clearly did not mean an end to alienation; nor for that matter, did it imply the more limited guarantee of the right to bargain over the terms and conditions of work: the right to strike, form unions, and so on. If it consisted of anything, it was in the diffident concession to claims of fairness in the distribution of social wealth—a concept that was persistently undermined by its own corporatist foundations. On the other side of this shaky transaction, workers would submit to a re-organisation of production: a segmentation of ‘skills’ and the work process and, by implication, the stratification of the working class; the instatement of ‘managerial prerogative’ (that is, relinquish control over hiring and firing); and mechanisation (that is, unemployment for some and the intensification of work time for others). And, unlike Taylor, whose theories of scientific management focused exclusively on the tempo and motions within the work process,7 these sociologists felt compelled to observe the social character of production, furnishing an instance of the theory of labour as a theory of social formation. Needless to say, these early Australian sociologists took it as given that there was a problem to be solved through efficiency, that this problem was to be located in the working class and that the fact of capital was to be granted as eternal. The perspective of capital was drafted in both technical-scientific and moral terms and re-presented as a social normativity grounded in human nature. As Anderson had insisted (1943: 19): ‘the fundamental problem of the Sociologist... is to ascertain the natural laws that are manifested in social growth.’ That is, where Taylorism and Fordism articulated strategies for the intensification of work time at the level of the individual firm, early Australian sociologists regarded the problem of efficiency immediately as a social matter. What these promoters of sociology addressed was—in Marx’s words (1959: 194)—the ‘problem of the productivity of the social labour employed by the sum total of capital’; not specific workers employed by particular employers producing particular products but rather, the social division of work time8 expressed as a abstract concept requiring regulation and management through social (rather than economic) techniques. Social Labour This peculiar notion of social efficiency—sociology’s apprehension of production as a social matter—was only possible given definite historical circumstances. The very idea of social efficiency implied the 109
Histories of Australian Sociology existence of labour as a social figure. Wage labour manifested a social character in a way that convict, slave or craft labour did not: the postulate of ‘natural’ bonds—or a labour compelled—implicit in these latter forms of work gave way to the stipulation of a free exchange between labourer and employer, of a decision made freely. Irvine keenly understood that the lash and fear of starvation (see above), so suggestive of the methods of command of convict and slave mastery, were not entirely adequate to wage labour, with its fiction of a free and equal contract between the owners of commodities: of labour and of capital deemed to be commensurable and equally calculable items. Motivation (Irvine) and the interiorisation of work discipline (Northcott) needed to become pivotal for any strategy of capitalist superintendence, as did the assertion of the index of merit as the seemingly rational principle of labour force segmentation. Moreover, the WEA’s criticisms of arbitration gave an exceptional account of the contradictory forces of the wage and the institutional disclosure of the individual wage as the wage claim of an entire class.9 In 1915, Atkinson criticised ‘legislative interferences with the Wage System’, contending that workers were demanding more than their fair share of social wealth (1915: 28). Mayo argued that arbitration ‘must be held to have widened the social chasm’, since it ‘recognises and legalises social disintegration’ (1920: 141). Northcott was not content simply to blame arbitration for making manifest social polarisation. For him, the ‘demand on the part of the Australian trade unionists for a living wage’ should not be used to encumber production. ‘Quantity of production’, he continued, was ‘the fundamental condition of social efficiency’, a fact of ‘great sociological’ significance (1918: 232). The generalisation of abstract labour,10 while the precondition of capitalist production, also comprised a series of obstacles. On the one hand, the equalisation of labours provided a means for the affirmation of capitalist control over the work process, culminating in the decline of artisanal production and the increase in so-called ‘unskilled’ workers, a widening of the gap between workers and the products of work. On the other hand, this generalisation provided for the assembly of working-class demands around the wage, increasingly defined as a proportion of production rather than the representation of a fair exchange—in other words, around the ratio of work time required for the reproduction of the working class to that appropriated as capital.
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Discipline and Labour Federation in 1901 confirmed the regulation of labour (and money) as the core of the nation’s constitution. Compulsory arbitration (in NSW since 1901 and federally from 1904) gave conventional form to struggles over the division and character of work time, and enshrined such forms in the ‘basic wage’ ruling of 1907. This was not only an attempt to impose a predictable and juridical contract on class struggles, allowing for mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion that served to define what were appropriate and legal ways for workers to organise; arbitration also provided a formal means for the management of the transition from the structures of command of slave and convict forms of labour, to wage labour and an identity centred on the wage. Arbitration gave legal sanction to the wage as the appropriate form of existence of the working class, administering and formalising it as contradictory technique for the systematic deliberations over the social division of work time. By the early 1920s, most workers were subject to some form of wage regulation.11 The weakening of craft sectionalism; the compulsorily arbitrated impoverishment of workers; the intensity of attacks against working class organisation by Labor governments—all these forced a shift in the disposition of working class politics, driving a significant minority of workers outside the state’s perimeters for the management of class antagonisms. When Anderson had made his plea to the ANZAAS conference in 1911, striking workers had violently seized the iron works in Lithgow during a nine-month strike/lock-out, the first Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) branches were established in Australia, and the Labor Party’s loyalty to imperial authority—its attempts to introduce compulsory military service—was propelling working class struggles outside constitutional limits. It did not aid the WEA’s attempt to instill in workers the requirements for social efficiency that Atkinson, as the principal organiser for the WEA, was at the time an active member of the Universal Services League. The IWW was, from 1914 to 1918, registering significant gains against the Labor Party for influence within the workers’ movement and IWWled anti-conscription strikes and ‘go-slows’ contested nationalist constraints upon working class radicalism.12 For Mayo and Atkinson in particular, the IWW figured heavily as the spectre of social chaos and it was, I think, this fear which galvanised a cessation of the progressive side of the positivist and liberal dialectic that Anderson had championed not many years prior. Hostilities between the ALP and the IWW, and the IWW and the WEA, centred on the plausibility of the offer of justice (more pay) for efficiency 111
Histories of Australian Sociology (more work) and, in consequence, the credibility of theories of the wage as an equal exchange for labour. The IWW explicitly rejected the formulation of the wage as the price of labour and in 1916 called for the ‘Abolition of the wage system’ (in McKinlay 1979: 50), publicly mocking Atkinson: social troubles, they insisted, could only be ‘solved by the “ignorant”, “unwashed” mob: the working class, whom you [i.e. Atkinson] and your class despise’ (in Burgmann 1995: 138). For the IWW, the only acceptable trade-off for increasing efficiency was a comparable decrease in work time—this, of course, would entail no expansion of surplus value. Notwithstanding the apparition of the IWW, the disavowal of such worthy notions as democracy and social justice was, I believe, also preconceived by the handling of historical fact as philosophical axiom: the fact of capital rendered as epistemic a priori. In 1915, Atkinson had insisted that ‘the complex questions of politics... can never be left to the will of the people’ (1915: 23). In a few years, this learned elitism worked itself up to a carping authoritarianism: Democracy gave workers the vote, but no instruction on how to use it; the State conceded the right to form unions and to strike, but taught its citizens nothing of human nature and that mutual dependence which is the essence of social organisation. (Mayo 1920: 137) If it is indeed human nature to be a waged worker, if capitalist forms of work are natural, then why the need to convince anyone of this? Working-class radicalism was conceived as insane, working-class radicals as inhuman, and even gracious concessions such as rights were conditional upon their correct use. Atkinson, in a definite reference to the imprisonment and deportations of IWW members, was clear: to ‘cultivate class hatred is to disqualify for true citizenship’ (1919: 5). Social Capital London credit was significantly eased in the years 1914 to 1929. Between 1900 and 1914, the volume of capital inflow increased by $13m; by comparison, between 1914 and 1928, that figure rose dramatically to $103m (Boehm 1987: 18). Contrast previous years (1901 to 1913), where state overseas indebtedness rose from $180m to $210m, to that of the years 1920 to 1929, where that debt soared from 112
Discipline and Labour $360m to $595m (Butlin, Barnard and Pincus 1982: 31). As a means of insulating capital against workers’ disruptions, bolstering firms and the state against default, this provided for a mere suspension of crisis. Furthermore, political repression, carried through from the Nationalist War Precautions Act, momentarily contained working class militancy, but did little to increase the rate of exploitation. Between 1914 and 1919, Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per worker actually declined by 2.7 per cent (Boehm 1987: 18). The drive to increase profits was, once again, in effect little more than an assault on wage levels. Profits and dividends rose sharply from 1918, due to an easing of credit and falling real wages. Inflation spiralled, in turn eroding wages. Towards the end of 1918, industrial conflict exploded. In 1918, the number of working days lost through strikes was 580 853; by 1919, this figure rose sharply to 6 308 226 (Nyland 1987: 28). Overall, GDP per worker registered a zero rate of growth for the years 1901 to 1928 (Boehm 1987: 18). By the late 1920s, global capital movements had become increasingly mobile, speculative and shortterm (Arrighi 1994: 273), which is to say, that finance capital considered the future stability of existent capitals dubious at best. Not only had workers resisted extensions to work time and the widespread introduction of Taylorist practices, but the composition of capital was equally significant for any prospect of the restructuring of work time. For instance, while industrial capital was fairly concentrated in terms of ownership, the degree of concentration of workers in particular firms was relatively low and family-owned and managed firms predominated (Wright 1995: 15-16). Employers operated principally through personalised and direct command and attempts to increase surplus value were predominantly a matter of individual firms seeking extensions of the working day or cuts in wages, as distinct from increases via mechanisation, Taylorisation, line-production methods or decreases in the social costs of the reproduction of the working class that were alluded to in calls for social efficiency. The ability to plan any such re-organisation or even to achieve capitalists’ compliance with, and support for it, required the scope and disciplining power of finance capital.13 In 1929, global money markets collapsed. The assault on wage levels metamorphosed into a comprehensive liquidation. Australia’s unemployment rate in 1930 was exceeded only by that in Germany and the US (McFarlane 1972: 49). The Commonwealth Bank failed to meet its interest repayments to foreign banks and London exerted ‘strong indirect pressure in favour of an orthodox deflationary policy’ 113
Histories of Australian Sociology (Schedvin 1969: 12), that is, for the instatement of monetarist procedures: a balanced budget and the further, systematic erosion of wages. This gave moral credence to a decision of the arbitration system to enforce a 10 per cent reduction in wages and the Labor Government’s contraction of social spending. Roe (1976: 108) estimates that between 1931 and 1935, approximately one-third of workers’ incomes fell below the level of the basic wage. Faced with the apparent randomness of the 1929 financial collapse— its miserable effects, on not only recalcitrant workers but also firms and professional incomes—Irvine was moved to disavow the supremacy of finance capital. For Irvine the crash was the logical culmination of what he dubbed the ‘Age of Credit’, the period from 1880 onwards, which he and many others catalogued as the era of the domination of banking over productive capital (1933: 42). Such a perspective expressed, in moralistic terms, the partitioning of banking from productive capital, the ability of finance capital to command increasing allotments from production through interest, officiating as cashier, steward and, ultimately, liquidator. On the one hand, credit made possible the organisation of social labour and it had been crucial in providing a kind of cushion against episodic working-class insurrections. Easy credit also allowed for a suspension of the gamble involved in production, buffering firms against ‘inefficient’ workers and calming the obligation to sell. On the other hand, such a suspension of monetary constraint could only be temporary, since protection against insolvency is reliant upon the assurance of future exploitation at an increased rate so as to enable interest payments.14 Moreover, it became readily apparent that the problem was not underproduction, but overproduction. Echoing Keynes, Irvine railed against the failure to ‘reorientate our political philosophy’, which would lead, he augured, to ‘Revolution or another World War, either of which may shatter whatever good there is in our present civilisation’ (1933: 214). In a tangible sense, Irvine’s prophecy was misconceived. It in fact necessitated another war in order to carry through modifications in the global regime of accumulation: the destruction of war granted a valuable solution to overproduction. ‘Total War’ provided the means and alibi for the militarisation of society; war gave the Australian state for the first time the constitutional powers and virtuous backing to guide production relations, providing the necessary levels of moral and political coercion under the auspices of nationalism and freedom; and reforms in the social wage apprehended labour as a social presence in 114
Discipline and Labour fiscal categories, permitting the state planning of the social costs of labour’s management and reproduction. Credit required the devising of a plan with which to guarantee the futurity of capitalist accumulation. The restoration of international money (as the US dollar) within an international framework of credit (World Bank, IMF), the restructuring of the nation-state into an executive with command over production, the aggregation of capital through successive debt crises, the constitutionalisation and expansion of the social wage, and finally, the integration of the workers’ movement into the state on a nationalist basis—all this was to open up the horizon for the social planning of the future of capitalism like never before. These were the crucial elements of the re-organisation of the social division of work time that took place after WW II. Conclusion The 1920s was to consist of a ‘rising crescendo of repressive action’, a clamour for the increasing use of violence against disruptive workers (Roe 1976: 109), which invariably fixed upon the newly-formed Communist Party of Australia. Notwithstanding its anti-communism, sociology continued to bear the burden of its epistemological relation to Marxism (a la Anderson), which was to mark even it as suspicious in the anti-communist hysteria of the 1920s. Between 1922 and 1925, there was what amounted to a removal of the advocates of sociology from the universities. Atkinson resigned from the WEA and university life, Mayo left for the US to conduct experiments in labour turnover and productivity, Irvine was forced to resign from Sydney University ostensibly for reasons of adultery, Northcott went to Britain and South Africa as a key founder of personnel management, and Anderson retreated into Christian idealism and the life of an Emeritus Professor. A re-organisation of the conditions of production did not occur until WW II. Until that moment, a tangible basis for social planning did not exist. The quest for the application of science, not only to the immediate processes of production, but more extensively to the society as a whole, as a complex set of practices and means for eliciting a social surplus from social labour, was consummated in WW II. The emergence of social planning, of the very likelihood of sociology as a theoretical and institutional practice, was tied to what Marx referred to as ‘the abolition of the capitalist mode of production 115
Histories of Australian Sociology within the capitalist mode of production itself... which... represents a mere phase of transition to a new form of production’ (1959: 429). Moreover, it was not simply the dilemma of labour as such, labour as an abiding category of human experience, nor for that matter the existence of surplus labour (exploitation), which defined the problematic of early Australian sociology. Instead, the conditions of emergence of sociology were the same conditions of emergence of wage work as the ‘socially decisive premise for the production of commodities’, which was also the point when money-capital began to ‘perform on a social scale’ (Marx 1978a: 32).15 Thus, the promotion of a science of society postulated a succession of regulatory approaches and a form of understanding of the circumstances of reproduction of social labour. Expressly, it touted the need to secure the future of capitalist production and—as a requirement exacted by credit—a restructuring of the conditions of production, notably, the conditions of reproduction of the working class. Crisis stipulated a socialisation of those conditions, in the form of the welfare state, social policy, the social wage, and so forth. This displaced the centrality of the wage demand and allowed for the organisation of the reproduction of labour on a mass basis,16 actuating a decrease in socially-necessary work time and a consequent increase of surplus labour. The passage from more or less hostile depictions of working class ‘unsociability’ promoted by sociology to an exceptional brutality and wretchedness—inflicted globally in the 1930s, 1940s and culminating in WW II—constituted the realisation of the goal of social efficiency in an ecstatic nationalism, the authorisation of state supremacy and the ubiquity of slogans regarding the duty to work. This essay17 has sought to highlight the ideological configuration18 of early Australian sociology, which is also to say that these sociologists registered—through that ideology—actual processes: of reification, of fetishism and specifically, of the historical obsolescence of the postulate of economy, state and society as separate spheres which, somewhat incongruously, is generally applied in discussions on this period as assumption and as the focus for controversy.19
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Discipline and Labour Notes 1. 2. 3. 4.
5. 6.
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9. 10.
11. 12. 13. 14. 15.
For the WEA in relation to worker education, see Friesen and Taksa (1996). Heaton, though nominally a part of the WEA, was marginal to its sociological preoccupation during this period, and so will not be dealt with here. This is a modification and extension of Brunhoff’s formulation (1978) of the relation between economic policy and class struggles, which in turn, is adapted from Aglietta. See Althusser’s discussion of oversight in Althusser and Balibar (1983: 19-21). Until 1901, there was no comparable organisation of employers, nor a national state. Australia was partitioned into a colonial state system established by, and subject to, British government. Conventions on the question of federation had been held for some time, plodding along with little direction or coherence until the 1890s. The absence of structures that could encapsulate trade union organisation and regulate money became critical issues after 1893. Federation in 1901, adopted on a limited franchise, provided a central apparatus for banking, currency, credit, arbitration and a national army. See Crisp (1954: 12 and 22) for comments by conservatives and unionists on the issue of federation. See Tronti (1973) for a discussion on the concept of the social factory. Ford’s line-production was possible because of the relatively high wage he offered to workers under certain conditions. The high rate of absenteeism and turnover obliged Ford, on the recommendation of his Sociological Department, to offer a higher wage to workers who remained in employ for longer than six months and behaved respectably (Shaw 1975: 20). See Braverman (1974) for an account of the emergence of scientific management. I have opted for the phrase ‘division of work time’ rather than ‘division of labour’, since the latter is usually taken as referring to distinctions of skill or, alternately, differences in the allocation of resources or ownership of property or uses of technology. The use of ‘division of work time’ is intended to signal both a minimisation of these inflections and an insistence upon the definition of capital as an estranged segment of work time. See also Negri (1991: 127-150) for a political analysis of the wage. ‘Abstract labour’ is used here to specify the particular condition of labour as it exists in capitalist society: wage work, work which is socially validated through money as the universal equivalent, and hence abstracted into labour-power, or qualitatively undifferentiated; which is also to say that the results of different labours become equalised as commodities; see Rubin (1972). Contrary to received opinion, it is not the case that the growth in unionism at the beginning of the century is attributable to the establishment of arbitration, as Sheldon (1995) has shown. The movement outside nationalist constraint was augmented by the Sinn Fein’s revolt against British occupation in 1916 and the Russian Revolution in 1917. See also Marx (1978b: 360; 1959: 361 and 426-32). See Brunhoff (1978) and Bonefeld and Holloway (1995), from which many of the themes on credit are derived. Marx clearly posed the existence of revolutions in the conditions of production and the complex relations between science, the state, class composition, monetary forms, and the modes of appropriation of nature (Marx 1978a: 173-497; Marx 1976; Balibar 1983: 302-8). Of particular relevance here are Marx’s comments (1978a: 298-9): ‘when surplus-value has to be produced by the conversion of necessary labour into surplus labour, it by no means suffices for capital to take over the labour-process in the form in which it has been historically handed down, and then simply to prolong the duration of that process. The technical and social conditions of that process, and
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16.
17.
18.
19.
consequently the very mode of production must be revolutionised, before the productiveness of labour can be increased... The surplus-value produced by the prolongation of the working-day, I call absolute surplus-value on the surplus value arising from the curtailment of necessary labour-time, and from the corresponding alteration in the respective length of the two components of the working-day, I call relative surplus-value.’ See also Marx (1978a: 283). That is to say, the application of industrial methods and theories to education, food production, households, childrearing and sexuality—a standardisation yielding a whole new syntax of transgression (deviance, dysfunction, delinquency) and the discovery of ‘disadvantaged groups’ requiring social scientific investigation and calculation. The two volumes of Social Horizons produced by the Australian Institute of Sociology (in 1943-44) illustrate clearly this trend. See also Reiger (1986) for a discussion of campaigns to ‘industrialise’ households and reproduction before WW II. This is by no means an exhaustive account of this period of sociology in Australia. Due to the limitations of space, I have not dealt with the intimate connections between sociology and racism during this time. Most of those sociologists referred to here were conspicuous in their support for a ‘white Australia’ eugenics and antiSemitism. An analysis of the relationship between forms of racism (including the move toward assimilationism during WW II) and the specific modalities of wage labour and the promotion of the ‘work ethic’ forms the subject of another essay. As long as ideology is understood as infection or error (in the non-Freudian sense), then what appears to be at issue is the dissolution of intellectual propriety and fortitude. If ideology is understood more modestly as a condition of socialisation and situated historically so that, in capitalist society, ‘knowledges’ are necessarily composed through ideology as the idea, no less, of capital—a multiplication of its particular configuration of denial and projection, of substitution and misrecognition and equally, its structuring of reality and truth, of what passes for knowledge and life or livelihood—then it is not feasible to consider ideology as the Archimedean slight it is often understood to be. For example, Bourke (1988) presents sociology’s themes and fortunes as conditioned by competition between sociology and economics. See also, Haeusler (1996), where he takes Rowse (1978) to task over the latter’s apparent ‘economic reductionism’.
References Althusser, L. and E. Balibar (eds) (1983) Reading Capital, London: Verso. Anderson, E. (1943) ‘Sociology in Australia: A Plea for its Teaching’, Social Horizons July: 16-20. Arrighi, G. (1994) The Long Twentieth Century: Money, Power and the Origin of Our Times, London: Verso. Atkinson, M. (1915) ‘Democracy and Efficiency’ in National Efficiency: A Series of Lectures, Melbourne: Ministry of Public Works: 21-34. —— (1919) Capital and Labour: Co-operation or Class War, Melbourne: Diocesan Book Society. —— (1920) ‘The Australian Outlook’ in M. Atkinson (ed.) Australia: Economic and Political Studies, Melbourne: Macmillan: 1-56.
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Discipline and Labour ADB, Australian Dictionary of Biography (1979) Volume 7, Melbourne: Melbourne University Press. —— (1986) Volume 10, Melbourne: Melbourne University Press. Balibar, E. (1983) ‘The Basic Concepts of Historical Materialism’ in Althusser and Balibar, Reading Capital, 199-308. Blackburn, K. (1996) ‘Preaching “The Gospel of Social Efficiency”: The Promotion of Ideas About Profit-sharing and Payment by Results in Australia, 1915-29’ Australian Historical Studies 27: 107. Boehm, E. A. (1987) Twentieth Century Economic Development in Australia, Melbourne: Longman Cheshire. Bonefeld, W. and J. Holloway (eds) (1995) Global Capital, National State and the Politics of Money, London: Macmillan, pp. 178-209. Bourke, H. (1982) ‘Industrial Unrest as Social Pathology: The Australian Writings of Elton Mayo’, Historical Studies 20: 79. —— (1988) ‘Social Scientists as Intellectuals: From the First World War to the Depression’ in B. Head and J. Waiter (eds) Intellectual Movements and Australian Society, Melbourne: Oxford University Press, pp. 47-69. Braverman, H. (1974) Labour and Monopoly Capital: The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century, New York: Monthly Review Press. Brunhoff, S. de (1978) The State, Capital and Economic Policy, London: Pluto Press. Buckley, K. and T. Wheelwright (1988) No Paradise for Workers’ Capitalism and the Common People in Australia, 1788-1914, Melbourne: Oxford University Press. Burgmann, V. (1995) Revolutionary Industrial Unionism: The Industrial Workers of the World in Australia, Melbourne: Cambridge University Press. Butlin, N. G., A. Barnard and J. J. Pincus (1982) Government and Capitalism: Public and Private Choice in Twentieth Century Australia, Sydney: Allen and Unwin. Crisp, L. F. (1954) The Parliamentary Government of the Commonwealth of Australia, London: Longmans, Green and Co. Crowley, E. K. (ed.) (1973) Modern Australia in Documents, 1901-1939, Volume 1, Melbourne: Wren. Friesen, G. and L. Taksa (1996) ‘Workers’ Education in Australia and Canada: A Comparative Approach to Labour’s Cultural History’, Labour History 71:170-97. Haeusler, E. (1996) ‘Progressivism and the Janus Face of “Efficient Citizenship”: Meredith Atkinson and Australian Democracy’, Australian Journal of Politics and History 42(1): 24-38.
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Histories of Australian Sociology Irvine, R. E. (1915) ‘National Organisation and National Efficiency’ in National Efficiency: A Series of Lectures, Melbourne: Ministry of Public Works, pp. 4-20. —— (1933) The Midas Delusion, Adelaide: Hassell Press. Kaptein, E. (1993) ‘Neo-Liberalism and the Dismantling of Corporatism in Australia’ in H. Overbeek (ed.) Restructuring Hegemony in the Global Political Economy: The Rise of Transnational Neo-Liberalism in the 1980s, London: Routledge. Marx, K. (1959) Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Volume 3, Moscow: Progress Publishers. —— (1976) ‘Results of the Immediate Process of Production’ in A. Dragstedt (ed.) Value: Studies by Karl Marx, London: New Park Publications, pp. 79-194. —— (1978a) Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Volume I, Moscow: Progress Publishers. —— (1978b) Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Volume 2, Moscow: Progress Publishers. Mayo, E. (1920) ‘The Australian Political Consciousness’ in M. Atkinson (ed.) Australia: Economic and Political Studies, Melbourne: Macmillan, pp. 127-44. McFarlane, B. (1972) ‘Australia’s Role in World Capitalism’ in J. Playford and D. Kirsner (eds) Australian Capitalism: Towards a Socialist Critique, Melbourne: Penguin, pp. 32-65. McKinlay, B. (1979) Australian Labour History in Documents, Volume 3, Melbourne: Collins Dove. Negri, A. (1991) Marx Beyond Marx: Lessons on the Grundrisse, London: Pluto Press. Northcott, C. H. (1918) Australian Social Development, New York: Columbia University Press. Nyland, C. (1987) ‘Scientific Management and the 44-hour Week’, Labour History 53: 20-37. Reiger, K. (1986) The Disenchantment of the Home: Modernising the Australian Family: 1880-1940, Melbourne: Oxford University Press. Roe, J. (ed.) (1976) Social Policy in Australia: Some Perspectives, 19011975, Sydney: Cassell. Rowse, T. (1978) Australian Liberalism and the National Character, Melbourne: Kibble Books. Rubin, I. I. (1972) Essays on Marx’s Theory of Value, Detroit: Black and Red. Schedvin, C. B. (1969) ‘The Long and Short of Depression Origins’, Labour History 17: 1-13.
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Discipline and Labour Shaw, M. (1975) Marxism and Social Science: The Roots of Social Knowledge, London: Pluto Press. Sheldon, P. (1995) ‘The Missing Nexus? Union Recovery, Growth and Behaviour During the First Decades of Arbitration: Towards a Re-evaluation’, Australian Historical Studies 26(104): 415-38. Tronti, M. (1973) ‘Social Capital’, Telos 17: 98-121. Wright, C. (1995) The Management of Labour: A History of Australian Employers, Melbourne: Oxford University Press.
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11 Society Economised: T. R. Ashworth and the History of the Social Sciences in Australia MICHAEL CROZIER (2002)*
A
mong the various social sciences, sociology was the late starter in the Australian academy. At the two oldest universities, distinct sociology programs were only established in the 1990s, though sociology had been on offer much earlier in the century at both Sydney and Melbourne. This chapter investigates the circumstances and reasons behind this disjuncture, linking it to the success of Australian economics in the interwar period and beyond. The fate of sociology at Melbourne is utilised to illustrate the connection. The writings of the Melbourne businessman, T. R. Ashworth, and his enigmatically worded bequest to promote sociology at Melbourne are highlighted to underscore what was at stake: the leadership of the social sciences. At the two oldest universities in Australia—the University of Sydney and the University of Melbourne—sociology has only recently become an independent discipline of study. While sociological studies had been offered in other departments for some time, it was only during the 1990s that distinct sociological programs were established at these two institutions. This contemporary development, however, has a long history. For a period of time after the Great War, sociology was offered as an undergraduate subject at the University of
*
Source: Crozier, M (2002) ‘Society Economised: T. R. Ashworth and the History of the Social Sciences in Australia’, Australian Historical Studies, vol. 32, no 119, pp. 125-42. For comments and suggestions thanks to Ann Capling, Mark Considine, Sol Encel, Stuart Macintyre, Tim Rowse and the anonymous referees. Thanks to Nick Bisley and Jon Ritchie for research assistance. Research funded from a Large ARC Grant [A7903328] on the social sciences and nation-building in Australia.
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Histories of Australian Sociology Melbourne. By the end of the 1920s, however, sociology had all but vanished from the University curriculum.1 A similar story can be told about sociology at the University of Sydney, though with an afterlife in the Department of Anthropology.2 Moreover, sociology as an independent discipline in the Australian academy only reappeared in the late 1950s with the establishment of a chair in sociology at the University of New South Wales.3 Yet this is not indicative of a lack of sociological research focusing on Australian society in the intervening period. Indeed, quite the contrary was the case.4 This is especially notable in regard to the impact of those intellectuals with social science inclinations in the planning and management of post-war reconstruction.5 This chapter revisits the question of sociology as the odd discipline out in the Australian academy. Anthropology, economics, demography, political science and psychology began to find their disciplinary feet in the interwar years, even if the latter three only came fully into their own after the war. To the extent that history was considered a social science, it and economics began to flourish as distinct disciplines in the interwar period. The ascendancy of economics in particular says a good deal about the cogency of its analytical capacities for the Australian predicament at the time.6 By contrast, it would appear that the early efforts in sociology, especially at Melbourne, were analytically weak and conceptually deficient. But these inadequacies are only one, albeit important, aspect of the sociology story. The rise of economics is a crucial yet under-examined dimension in sociology’s belated history in the Australian academy. While this involves issues relating to the historical sociology of Australian development, the main concern of this chapter is to highlight the connection in terms of competing approaches to the ‘problem of society’. This entailed differing forms of conceptualisation and analytical reach as well as the grail of social science leadership. These themes will be pursued with special attention to the fate of sociology and economics at the University of Melbourne in the interwar years. Economics at Melbourne epitomised the professionalisation of the discipline, while the brief experience of sociology soured the ground for many years. However, the case for sociology was not completely forsaken. In 1935 a little-known Melbourne businessman, Thomas Ramsden Ashworth, died leaving a bequest to the University. The terms of the bequest stated that the 124
Society Economised annual income generated be used to establish ‘a Professorship or Lectureship on some subject or subjects in connection with sociology, but excluding economics’.7 Ashworth’s enigmatic caveat against economics summons a convoluted string of circumstances in which the two disciplines were entwined. But it also points to the rivalry between two different approaches to society, both of which linked together social scientific research, public policy and social development. Sociology and Economics: A Tangled Story Helen Bourke has traced the beginnings of sociology in Australia in the first decades of this century until its suspension in the late 1920s.8 She highlights the early calls for the teaching of sociology, especially those made by Professor Francis Anderson and Professor R. F. Irvine at the University of Sydney. On the eve of the First World War, Anderson and Irvine argued the case for sociology as a worthwhile addition to the University’s Arts syllabus. Both were imbued with the understanding of sociology as the integrating discipline of the social sciences, the ‘queen’ that draws the various social sciences into a unified science of society. The insight offered by disciplines like economics remained partial and inadequate unless incorporated into a broader science of society. While retaining a strong sense of its humanistic duties, Anderson and Irvine maintained that the collection and analysis of ‘hard’ social data should underpin sociology. The fundamental riddle for sociology was to explain the ‘fact’ of society, its genesis and future development. In general terms, exactly what the scientific investigation of social development or social progress meant remained vague. In the Australian context, it was most certainly coloured by the sense of being inside a ‘social laboratory’, the experience of a progressive liberal experiment in ‘state socialism’ in the decade after Federation in 1901. Anderson, Irvine, and others rued the lack of analysis of this pioneering social experiment. While Australia had seemingly come to lead the way in practical social and political reform, it had failed to generate any systematic analysis of these reforms. If nothing else, this gap between progressive social action and the dearth of sociological inquiry begged Anderson and Irvine’s case for the propagation of sociology in Australia.9 By the end of the 1920s, a number of critical evaluations appeared, marking the beginnings of a genre now
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Histories of Australian Sociology expansive, albeit varied in quality.10 The fate of sociology as a distinct discipline was far less propitious. Sociology was established as a course of study at Melbourne towards the end of the Great War under the auspices of the University of Melbourne Extension Board and the Workers Education Association (WEA). In 1918 Meredith Atkinson was appointed its first director. Atkinson had been director of WEA tutorial classes at Sydney University since 1914. When he assumed his position at Melbourne he became the first ‘self-styled’ professor of sociology in Australia. His conception of sociology was more concerned with the discussion of economic and political issues than with systematic sociological analysis.11 Atkinson’s time as director was not a success and he resigned in 1922. John Alexander Gunn was appointed to replace him, arriving in Melbourne in 1924.12 Recollections by former students and colleagues report that the content of the sociology course in the 1920s was a jumble of wild generalisations and ‘second-hand facts’. Gunn’s approach was a mixture of political philosophy, rudimentary economic history, social psychology and eugenics. And like Atkinson before him, Gunn was not the most agreeable personality. The program was thus bedevilled with disaffection emanating from university staff and students, and its administration was troubled by University/WEA politics. It was finally taken over by William MacMahon Ball in the late 1920s, and transformed into a course on political philosophy. In short, sociology was in many respects stillborn in the pre-war period, the whole experience bequeathing ‘sociology’ a bad name in Melbourne circles for decades to follow.13 Matching sociology’s fraught story is the rise of economics. From the 1920s onwards the economics discipline in Australia went from strength to strength, taking a leading role in social research and public policy.14 It was during this time that academic economists became renowned figures in public life, especially in public service on behalf of the Federal government.15 One of the most prominent was Douglas Berry Copland, who was appointed to the newly established Chair of Commerce at Melbourne in 1924. Copland was an energetic promoter and publicist of the discipline of economics inside and outside the academy. A highly driven and ambitious man, he could impress with charm, but also arouse hostility with his forceful personality. He played a leading role on numerous key government committees and commissions, state and federal, from the late 1920s onwards. He was appointed Australian Minister to China in 1946 and became the 126
Society Economised inaugural Vice-Chancellor of the Australian National University (1948-1953). Further foreign appointments followed and, in his final working years, he was a central figure in the establishment of the Australian Administrative Staff College.16 In the interwar period he was the Australian representative (social sciences) for the Rockefeller Foundation, an important source of research funding at the time.17 His name was synonymous with the ‘Melbourne School’ of Economics, which became a major recruiting ground of graduates for the public sector and the Commonwealth Treasury in particular in the years following the Second World War.18 Copland’s importance to the immediate story is his role as ‘the entrepreneur of the social sciences’ in Australia in the inter-war period.19 In 1926 Copland made a study tour of England, Europe and the United States with the brief of surveying current trends in the social sciences and submitting proposals on their development in Australia. In his travels he took particular note of the state of sociology and found it wanting. In his published report in 1927, he concluded that sociology was underdeveloped as a social science, tending to work in the realm of unfounded generalisation and lacking empirical rigour. Referring to the limited resources of Australian universities at the time, Copland suggested that ‘economics, psychology, and political science are of greater importance’ than the establishment of undergraduate sociology courses. On the other hand, he intimated that he could see a role for sociology at a graduate level, though not by that name. A sociological subject could examine ‘the scope and method’ of the more focused social sciences and ‘encourage research into the general social environment’ that would build up the bank of social data.20 But Copland did not seem driven to act on this possibility, rather the contrary. In 1927 he headed a committee reviewing the subject offerings in the Faculty of Arts at the University of Melbourne. The changes it recommended came into effect in the following year, among them the discarding of sociology.21 Resistance within the University of Melbourne to establishing a separate sociology department continued for many years, well into the 1970s.22 This was partly due to the earlier history, as well as a traditionalist prejudice against sociology per se.23 It also involved the issue of disciplinary lebensraum. Indeed, while the discipline of sociology was eschewed, there was no taboo against sociological research at Melbourne during this period. Wilfred Prest in Economics directed a major social survey of urban Melbourne in the early 1940s, a ‘notable pioneering venture in Australian urban sociology’.24 At the 127
Histories of Australian Sociology same time, a number of research studies in rural sociology were undertaken in the Agriculture Department.25 And not long after his appointment as foundation Professor of Psychology in 1946, Oscar Oeser initiated two wide-ranging social psychological studies of an urban and a rural community.26 There was a detailed social survey of the aged in Victoria undertaken in the early 1950s under the auspices of the Department of Social Studies.27 And from the mid-1960s, the Institute for Applied Economic and Social Research under the direction of Ronald Henderson began its comprehensive study of living standards, generating the widely influential concept of the Henderson poverty line.28 Sociological approaches were also broached in other departments of the University, and most notably in Political Science.29 However, it was not until the middle 1990s that a distinctive sociology program was established and housed in the Political Science Department, partially funded through the Ashworth Bequest. In terms of Ashworth’s caveat against economics, several comments can be made. By the time of Ashworth’s death in 1935, Economics at Melbourne was flourishing, due in large measure to Copland’s efforts. And, indeed, a second Chair in Economics was established in 1927 and taken up soon after by L. F. Giblin. This would indicate that Ashworth was concerned to give assistance where needed, namely to the less developed social sciences and sociology in particular. In the mid-1920s, Ashworth had lamented the absence of social sciences ‘faculties’—sociology, economics and the like—at Melbourne.30 While economics had become firmly established, sociology had not. Ashworth was obviously concerned that this was still the case up to the time of his death. But this is not the end of the story. Ashworth had additional anxieties concerning the newly elevated status of Economics. These can be discerned from a consideration of his published work. Ashworth’s Social Philosophy In a standard reference guide to Victorian history till 1939, there is only one citation of Ashworth’s writings and this is under the heading of anti-communist literature.31 The title listed is The Communist Danger: A Phase of the Ultimate Social Problem (1926), but closer examination reveals a work that is more than simply a denunciation of communism and local communist militants in the 1920s. It takes on a far broader brief, ranging from contemporary social and political 128
Society Economised trends through to the state of the social sciences and issues of social philosophy. This is indicative of Ashworth’s diverse activities and intellectual interests. In the years spanning from the 1890s to the middle 1930s, Ashworth ‘bobs up’ in accounts of the better-known circles of intellectual and public life in Australia. Yet his appearance in these accounts is usually fleeting. Nonetheless, his active participation in Australian political life at all levels, municipal, colonial, state and federal, can be sensed from the pages of the Victorian Parliamentary Debates, the Melbourne Age and the Melbourne Argus, amongst others. His writings attest to a lively if at times eccentric interest in social and political affairs over a period of nearly forty years, reflecting an ongoing concern with both the theoretical and the more pragmatic aspects of social development and politics.32 Ashworth appears to have kept up with contemporary developments in economics, sociology, politics and philosophy, and owned a substantial library. He also seems to have had a driving inclination to share his view of the world with audiences ranging from the Australasian Association for the Advancement of Science through to the readers of the Melbourne Argus. At times he campaigned for politically ‘conservative’ causes: state fiscal restraint and contraction; the reduction of working-class electorates; productivity-based wage rates rather than needs-based ones (determined by the Arbitration Court); and thrift (deflation) against ‘purchasing power’ (as a Depression recovery strategy). On the other hand, he argued a detailed case for greater Commonwealth government power in his minority report for the Commonwealth Royal Commission on the Constitution.33 He also promoted a kind of corporatism in which labour and capital would be reconciled according to binding ethical and rational principles.34 A strong critic of social Darwinism, he maintained that laissez faire capitalism and state socialism were both flawed, simply representing the opposite extremes of anarchic individualism and authoritarian collectivism. It is perhaps no surprise that Ashworth easily upset both sides of mainstream politics, as well as bewildering his fellow members at the Victorian Employers Federation (VEF).35 While all this intimates a certain intellectual if not personal quirkiness, there is a glimmer in Ashworth’s writings that suggests something approximating a social philosophy. His Communist Danger comes closest to offering a coherent insight into this perspective.
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Histories of Australian Sociology In this work Ashworth attacks local communists involved in a waterfront dispute at the time, referring to class warfare to illustrate what he describes as social ‘regression’. However, the work is not an anti-communist polemic per se; rather the underlying argument is concerned with the issue of general social development. Ashworth discusses the work of a wide range of thinkers, including political scientists (James Bryce), geographers (Griffith Taylor), contemporary social analysts (Edward Filene, Austin Freeman, G. V. Portus), ethicists (J. S. Mackenzie) and social philosophers (T. H. Huxley, W. L. Mackenzie King, Karl Marx, Herbert Spencer). He also revisits certain themes touched upon in his earlier book, Proportional Representation Applied to Party Government: A New Electoral System (1900), a work which, amongst other things, engages with Lester Ward’s programmatic vision for sociology. In general terms the Communist Danger and Ashworth’s other writings are redolent of a form of social criticism that arose in response to the rise of class politics at the dawn of the twentieth century in Australia and elsewhere.36 Ashworth considered that the Australian political system had become debased in its subjugation to ‘base’ class selfinterests. His target was not limited to the communists’ invocations of class hatred and class violence. The ‘selfish idle rich’ are condemned equally for aggravating the condition in which ‘savage’, ‘narrow group morality’ finds ground. However, Ashworth did not consider that Australian society had become plagued by too much politics; neither did he lay blame on state action tout court. Rather, he argued that the ‘art of politics is suffering from its inadequate ethical and sociological bases’. Thus in some measure he was in agreement with Anderson and Irvine in the sense that there was a pressing need for sociological analysis and reflection on Australian society. In the Communist Danger, communism and industrial unrest supply the topical pretext for Ashworth’s contribution to this kind of social criticism. Nonetheless, they are illustrative rather than his prime focus. He states at the beginning of the Communist Danger that: Communism is clearly a problem of social science, for it is concerned with the purposive interdependent actions of men in association. Sociology, however, has not yet advanced to the synthetic stage, so that complete pronouncements regarding its phenomena are lacking from the scientific side. These writings are intended to combine common sense conclusions with a measure of scientific analysis.37 130
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Ashworth envelops the specific case of communist agitation and the 1925 seamen’s strike into more general considerations on the processes of social evolution. According to Ashworth, social evolution is a complex process in which there is an ascending scale from the physical to the ‘psychic’, through the interactions of opposing principles. At lower levels of social evolution, ‘savages’ exhibit a group morality that inclines them to help each other but treat outsiders as enemies, often with physical violence. Moving to higher levels, the conflict of opposing principles shifts from ‘the physical to the mental plane’, and in the process social evolution is advanced. Citing W. L. Mackenzie King’s Industry and Humanity, Ashworth suggests that the resort to warfare and class strife arises from a mental blindness, an inability to appreciate opposing points of view.38 Aside from natural dispositions, he notes that this kind of psychological blindness arises out of our social experiences, especially in childhood. Nevertheless, he does not suggest that we are bound to be caught in this myopia, neither at the psychological nor sociological level. Human beings have the capacity to generate new circumstances and institutions that reshape the human environment, which in turn shapes human beings. The progressive or regressive nature of this type of refashioning is dependent entirely upon its moral quality and the purposes of those undertaking the task.39 From Ashworth’s perspective, the revolutionary violence proclaimed by communism is nothing but a counsel of despair and socially regressive. The social sciences, however, offer the capacities to adjust means to new ends, to deal with ‘the conflict of interacting principles’ at higher, more civilised levels. In this sense Ashworth’s call for the need to develop the social sciences is more than simply an appeal for social analysis; he views it as essential for human progress and general social development.40 In line with his more general notion of opposing principles, Ashworth characterises Australian capitalist society as a compound, a mixture, the interaction of socialism (étatism) and individualism (individual liberty). In isolation, he considers either to be detrimental to social progress: socialism tending to state despotism; individualism tending to the chaos of anarchy. The real question is thus where to draw the line, wherein lies a via media between these two interacting opposing principles? Once again, Ashworth petitions the development of sociology and the social sciences in general as leading the way towards some resolution of this question.41 In this connection he 131
Histories of Australian Sociology draws attention to developments in the United States, which he had visited in the early 1920s.42 Here, he cites impressive material progress, but also notes that the social sciences were still trying to catch up. In particular, he mentions the economic scenario of Fordist modernisation in which mass production was integrally linked to mass ‘distribution’ (consumption). He is critical of the model precisely because of its exclusive focus on material prosperity, thus failing to address the more general issue of ‘social machinery’—the broad sociological civilising process.43 Once cast in these terms, Ashworth’s sociological perspective is not quite as eccentric as it first appears. The far better known Australian social theorist and younger contemporary of Ashworth, Frederic Eggleston, engaged similar questions, grappling with the task of a general social philosophy adequate to contemporary times and problems.44 A number of Ashworth’s themes are also highly reminiscent of A. P. Elkin’s writings published during the 1930s and early 1940s. Elkin is perhaps better known as an anthropologist, yet he was also a strong advocate for the development of sociology in Australia, notably through his promotion of the short-lived Australian Institute of Sociology.45 In this period, he cast his Durkheimian eye on society, and specifically on the theme of social harmony.46 Like Ashworth, he was concerned with the disintegrative effects of antagonistic group life in contemporary society, effects that could be addressed through scientifically informed social reform. In his inaugural address to the Australian Institute of Sociology, Elkin took stock of the current academic research in Australia on the legal, political, psychological and economic aspects of social life. He also observed that ‘the study of society as a whole, of the search for its principles of cohesion and change, and of the study of its structure’ remained unexplored.47 Like Ashworth, Elkin held that ‘sociology proper’ is the basis of all types of social research, as the study of society according to scientific principles. Social research so conceived enables the dual insight: ‘to know thyself as a social being, and a social “order”’. The individual social sciences are partial. Therefore, if social research is to be the basis for reform, there needs to be a recognition that the human subject is not merely ‘an economic cipher, political animal or religious spirit,’ but is ‘a complex social being who is striving, even though unconsciously, for integration’.48 While Elkin’s argument was somewhat more sophisticated than Ashworth’s, they shared a broad concern with the need for a comprehensive sociological approach to contemporary social problems. 132
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Ashworth and the Economists Ashworth’s caveat against economics in his bequest can thus be read as more than simply a helping hand in the cultivation of sociology at Melbourne. Like Copland, Ashworth was perturbed by the underdevelopment of the ‘scientific side’ of sociology. On the other hand, unlike Copland, he considered the development of sociology as essential, especially in its role as the queen of the social sciences, as a ‘coordinating science’ synthesizing the specialised social sciences. In this sense, Ashworth’s conception and projection of sociology echoed Elkin’s sociological sensibilities as well as the earlier calls made by Anderson and Irvine. Copland’s antipathy to sociology was most certainly at odds with Ashworth’s sympathies. And Copland’s prime positioning of economics stands in direct contrast to Ashworth’s sense of the need to integrate the social sciences under a holistic sociology.49 In line with his broader social philosophy, Ashworth would come to view the singular ascendancy of Copland’s economic science as only exacerbating what he regarded as the central problem of Australian society—regressive ‘tribal’ self-interest.50 Indeed, he became a lively public critic of Copland’s ‘purchasing power doctrine’ vis-à-vis Australia’s economic malaise in the Great Depression. According to Ashworth this doctrine was an ‘easy road to ruin’, pandering to sectional and entrenched interests. This points to an intellectual antipathy between Ashworth and Copland.51 But this does not seem to have always been the case. Ashworth was involved in the establishment of the Economic Society of Australia and New Zealand, an organisation very much the brainchild of Copland. Copland was the first president of the Victorian branch of the Society, Ashworth a founding committee member. Under the auspices of the Victorian Branch, they both presented lectures, at times sharing the same floor.52 However, a falling-out developed in 1930 over the approach to economic recovery, Ashworth advocating a radically deflationary solution to the crisis. Copland, along with other members of the Society, sought a more measured approach. These differences offer an obvious reason for Ashworth’s disaffection.53 Copland’s 1927 report on the social sciences and its proposals on the future of sociology at the University of Melbourne and elsewhere would no doubt have strained their relationship as well. But underlying all of this is the 133
Histories of Australian Sociology more fundamental issue of the position of economics in relation to the other social sciences: ‘who’ was best qualified to ‘scientifically’ guide society? By end of the Great War and into the 1920s, Australian observers were starting to evaluate the progress of the Australian ‘social laboratory’. One body of thought that emerged was less than sanguine in its judgement. The experiment had set out to avoid the evils of Old World industrial society—social disharmony and class conflict—in its nation-building efforts. However, industrial unrest persisted and sectionalism pervaded the political processes. The political system had become compromised by its attempts to please all the special interests, while the state-sponsored institutions merely amplified social disharmony and courted unrealistic expectations of state action and state finances. The reliance on the state as the vehicle of social integration stripped social equity back to narrow self-interest and societal apathy. And on the economic side, Australia remained vulnerable to world primary commodity markets and had achieved limited industrial growth.54 These types of critical evaluations became all the more resonant in the closing years of the 1920s and in particular with the onset of the Great Depression in 1929. The deepening economic crisis opened up a space in which the Australian economists could make a significant mark. Views among the economists were mixed on the question of Australia’s experiment in ‘protective statism’.55 But the more apposite point is their ascendancy at this time and in particular Copland’s view on the role of the professional economist. During the interwar period Copland was a tireless promoter of the importance of economics for public policy. He impressed upon all who made his acquaintance—politicians, entrepreneurs and academics, especially the influential—the power and utility of economic knowledge. In part, this was a strategy to insinuate the fledgling economics profession into business and political circles, to secure a professional niche with the argument of economics’ relevance to the pragmatic side of everyday life. His aim was to ensure that the profession was positioned to the fore of commercial and political decision-making. However, these manoeuvres were not simply strategic. They were also underpinned by Copland’s more fundamental views concerning the competencies of the properly trained economist. Copland ‘concurred 134
Society Economised with the Marshallian view that the economist was well equipped to deal with the influences which make for sectional and class selfishness and to act as a guide and adjudicator on the resulting conflicts between private and public interests’. His academic training in New Zealand imparted a conception of economics that extended beyond the purely theoretical to include the historical and geographical dimensions, as well as an appreciation of the political possibilities of action.56 During the 1920s Copland emphasised that the time of the economist had come: the economist may at times draw on the insight of the other social sciences, but in many problem areas ‘the economist is really king’. In place of the (unrealised) aspirations of sociology as the ‘queen of the social sciences’, the economist-king could and would deliver the scientific guidance on the big problems of society. Indeed, the primary impetus for the pursuit of economic science was its promise of ‘fruit-bearing’ outcomes rather than simply offering enlightenment.57 Copland proselytised this view of economics and the economist, recommending the benefits for government and business, and emphasising the ability to modify the economic environment. In this promotional quest, he highlighted the realism of modern (quantitative) economics, the parlous state of knowledge about the Australian economy, and the need for sound and wide-ranging research.58 Copland’s view reflected the shared culture of the Australasian economics community in the 1920s. This culture was inculcated with an ideal of service: the economist as educator and as policy adviser. By the late 1920s, the reach of the economist in both guises was extending significantly.59 The crucial points to headline in Copland’s conception are firstly the view that sectional interests are not the social problem per se, and can in principle be ‘managed’ by the informed and prudent economist, the ‘economist-king’. Secondly, and linked to the first, is the notion that key societal problems can be addressed by more adequate economic knowledge and its pragmatic application in public policy decisionmaking. The 1929 Brigden Report on the Australian Tariff illustrates how this conception was enacted. Professor J. B. Brigden chaired the informal committee on the tariff that was set up in 1927 by Prime Minister S. M. Bruce. The other members of the committee were Copland, E. C. Dyason, L. F. Giblin and C. H. Wickens, and its findings were published in 1929 under the title The Australian Tariff.60 The report considered the issue of how 135
Histories of Australian Sociology wage and tariff protection affected Australia’s largely rural-based economy as well as the development of its fledgling manufacturing industry. The free trade critics of Australian state protectionism were in no doubt that the economic effects were adverse and that the market should be freed from government interference.61 However, Brigden and his fellow economists drew a more balanced conclusion. They agreed that protectionism had been utilised far too widely and indiscriminately, not merely in respect of manufacturers, but also in subsidies to certain rural industries. Nonetheless, they recommended that the use of protection should be tempered rather than abandoned outright. On the other side of the equation, they commended the redistributive consequences of the tariff—a mechanism to effect ‘the social goals of population growth and high, stable, real wages’—yet with an accompanying caveat about the artificial inflation of real wage levels. In general then, Brigden and his fellow economists had left room for both manufacturing protectionists and hostile rural producers in the sway of their report, even if they did not satisfy the staunchest free traders.62 The Brigden Report marks a significant signpost in the rise of the economists. Looking back after twenty odd years, Copland certainly saw this as one of its achievements.63 The report’s navigation between the competing interests and demands certainly resonates with Copland’s view of the economist endowed with Marshallian prudence. Moreover, the report signals a crucial moment when the economists—rather than social reformers of earlier generations— started to have a serious voice in Australian public policy. With the onset of the world economic crisis in 1929, this role intensified, though Copland tended to overstate its impact.64 The ideas of Alfred Marshall and his professorial successor, A. C. Pigou, had made a deep impression on Australian economic thinking. Marshall’s advice to his students to go out into the world with ‘cool heads and warm hearts’ captured the imagination of many Australian economists in the 1930s, as did the new Keynesian notion of macroeconomic management.65 For Ashworth, however, this rise to pre-eminence of economics per se, warm-hearted or not, could do nothing but aggravate the problem the economists were being called upon to remedy. Ashworth remained committed to the belief that the problem of interest-riddled society could only be resolved through the integration of the social sciences—a unified science of society which was concerned with the complexity of the human condition rather than just material 136
Society Economised interests.66 In part this echoed a turn-of-the-century optimism about the prospects of a holistic sociology. But it was also motivated by a sense of the partiality of modern economics. Frederic Eggleston pushed for the development of sociology in the Australian academy over many years for not dissimilar reasons.67 Copland was fully aware of Eggleston’s broader horizon, noting in a retrospective that for Eggleston ‘economics was not enough’.68 While far better placed than Ashworth in terms of both government and mainstream intellectual circles, Eggleston, like Ashworth, lacked scholarly status inside the academy. Even Eggleston’s final efforts in this regard on the Interim Council of the Australian National University in the late 1940s were largely snookered by the professoriate.69 In the end, the best Ashworth could do was to bequeath a large part of his estate to the academic development of sociology or the like, but most definitely not economics. Conclusion In early twentieth-century Australia, social thinkers such as Anderson and Irvine rued the mismatch between the enactment of progressive social reforms and the lack of systematic social analysis. From the 1930s onwards, Australian professional economists faced this challenge, injecting social scientific research and analysis into the formulation of public policy. In the process they started to play a significant role in the shaping of Australian social development, especially during and after the Second World War. In this same period, the Australian economics profession readily embraced a form of Keynesianism, one that viewed ‘purposive state action, backed by an appropriately qualified and well-informed bureaucracy’, as ‘essential for the operation of a more efficient, more productive, more equitable and more secure economic system’.70 Left to its own devices, the unregulated market economy was inherently flawed and thus in need of state management. This was not simply an approach to economic policy, but had far wider social and cultural ramifications. Indeed, the economists recognised that the success of state economic management was predicated on a transformation of people’s values into a more community-oriented mind-set, a new social consensus.71 This was the guiding perspective of the Australian economics profession in government and in the academy until the middle 1960s. After this time the profession began to abandon ‘Keynesian 137
Histories of Australian Sociology meliorism’, shifting towards more market-based approaches. This occurred for an array of reasons.72 Nonetheless, there is a continuity here: in the 1990s and beyond, the professional economists still play a central role in public policy-making and thus in the shaping of social development in Australia. Many of the critiques of neo-liberal public policy—economic rationalism—miss this continuity, seemingly unaware of the earlier manoeuvring of Copland and his fellow ‘economist-kings’.73 One consequence is that these critiques tend to remain trapped within the economists’ general domain. Perhaps a better appreciation of the longer history could assist in rethinking social development in broader, more complex terms. Notes 1.
See the University of Melbourne Calendars from 1919 to 1931. In 1929 the subject Sociology is still listed under the Pass degree. In 1930, it has an ambiguous entry under the Honours Degree, ie. as Political Philosophy, and no Pass degree entry. By 1931, Sociology is no longer listed in either the Pass or Honours level entries. 2. See Tigger Wise, The Self-Made Anthropologist: A Life of A. P. Elkin (Sydney: George Allen & Unwin, 1985), pp. 148-149, 194; Jerzy Zubrzycki, ‘The teaching of sociology in Australian universities, past and present,’ in The Teaching of Sociology in Australia and New Zealand, ed. Jerzy Zubrzycki (Melbourne: Cheshire, 1971), 5-6. 3. Sol Encel, ‘Sociological Education: The First 25 Years’, Alumni Papers (UNSW) 1, no. 3 (1984): 4-9. 4. See Stephen Alomes, ‘Intellectuals as Publicists, 1920s to 1940s’, in Intellectual Movements and Australian Society, ed. Brian Head and James Walter (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1988), pp. 70-87; Helen Bourke, ‘Social Scientist as Intellectual: From the First World War to Depression’, in Intellectual Movements and Australian Society, pp. 47-69; Tim Rowse, Australian Liberalism and National Character (Melbourne: Kibble Books, 1978). 5. See Nicholas Brown, Governing Prosperity (Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 1995); L. F. Crisp, Ben Chifley (London: Longman, 1961); Tim Rowse, ‘The People and their Experts: A War-inspired Civics for H. C. Coombs’, Labour History 74 (May 1998): 70-87; Paul Smyth, Australian Social Policy (Sydney: UNSW Press, 1994). 6. Helen Bourke, ‘Sociology and the Social Sciences in Australia, 1912-1928’, Australian and New Zealand Journal of Sociology 17, no. 1 (March 1981): 34; Tim Rowse, Australian Liberalism, p. 124. 7. University of Melbourne Calendar (1988), 746, Regulation 7.124—T. R. Ashworth Bequest. Also see Central Registry (hereafter UM/CR) files, no. 10-2-10 (T. R. Ashworth Estate, parts 1 & 2), and no.1-131-37 (Joint Committee of Council and the Professorial Board: Sub-Committee on T. R. Ashworth Estate), University of Melbourne. There were a number of legal and financial difficulties associated with the execution of Ashworth’s will that delayed the implementation of the bequest for many years. 8. Bourke, ‘Sociology’. 9. Bourke, ibid, 26-30. 10. See F. W. Eggleston, State Socialism in Victoria (London: P. S. King & Son, 1932); W. K. Hancock, Australia (London: Benn, 1930); and E. O. G. Shann, An Economic History of Australia (Cambridge: At the U niversity Press, 1930).
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Society Economised 11. See Meredith Atkinson, The New Social Order (Melbourne and London: 2nd edition, Macmillan, 1920). 12. See Colin Robert Badger, Who Was Badger? (Melbourne: Council of Adult Education, 1984), 53. 13. C. R. Badger, Occasional Papers on Adult Education and Other Matters (Melbourne: Council of Adult Education, 1991), 5-16; W. MacMahon Ball, [recollections] in More Memories of Melbourne University, ed. Hume Dow (Melbourne: Hutchinson, 1985), pp. 13-14; Helen Bourke, ‘Sociology’, 30-35; W. K. Hancock, Country and Calling (London: Faber, 1954), p. 70; Don Watson, Brian Fitzpatrick (Sydney: Hale & Iremonger, 1979), pp. 12-15. 14. See Nicholas Brown, ‘“A sense of number and reality”: economics and government in Australia 1920-1950’, Economy and Society 26, no.2 (May 1997): 233-256. 15. In particular J. B. Brigden, D. B. Copland, L. F. Giblin, L. G. Melville, R. C. Mills, and E. O. G. Shann. See Peter Groenewegen and Bruce McFarlane, A History of Australian Economic Thought (London: Routledge, 1990), pp. 118-146; Paul Smyth, Australian Social Policy, pp. 22-48. 16. There had been attempts in 1912 to establish a Chair of Economics and Sociology, but to no avail. See University of Melbourne Calendar (1912) and R. H. Scott, The Economic Society of Australia, Its History: 1925-1985 (Canberra: The Economic Society of Australia, 1985), pp. 2-3. On Copland, see ‘Essays in Honour of Sir Douglas Copland’, The Economic Record 36, no.73 (March 1960); Marjorie Harper, ‘Melbourne Economists in the Public Arena’, in Victoria’s Heritage, ed. A. G. L. Shaw (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1986), pp. 37-55; Geoffrey Searle, Sir John Medley (Carlton: Melbourne University Press, 1993), pp. 22-33. 17. See ‘News and Notes’, The Economic Record, vol. 2 (May 1926): 138f; Harper, 44. 18. Groenewegen and McFarlane, 136. 19. Helen Bourke, ‘Sociology’, 33; Neville Cain, ‘Monetary Thought in the ‘Twenties and its Depression Legacy: An Australian Illustration’, Australian Economic History Review 20, no.1 (March 1980): 3. 20. D. B. Copland, Studies in Economics and Social Sciences (Melbourne: Macmillan/Melbourne University Press, 1927), pp. 33-37. 21. Helen Bourke, ‘Sociology’, 33. 22. See the University of Melbourne, University Assembly document, ‘Innovation: A Quick Look at Proposals for a New Faculty Grouping for the Strengthening of Teaching in Sociology: 1970-76’, dated 10 August 1977, on the various failed attempts in the 1970s to introduce Sociology. File: 1-131-3, UM/CR. 23. W. E. H. Stanner, ‘The Need for Departments of Sociology in Australian Universities’, Australian Quarterly 24, no.1 (March 1952): 60-73. 24. Graeme Davison and John Lack, ‘Planning the New Social Order: The Melbourne University Social Survey, 1941-1943’, Australian and New Zealand Journal of Sociology 17, no.1 (March 1981): 36; Wilfred Prest, Housing , Income and Savings in War-Time: A Local Survey (Melbourne: University of Melbourne, Department of Economics, 1952). 25. See the various research report entries under Agriculture and Economics in The University of Melbourne, Annual Reports 1939-1946 (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1948). Also see A. J. McIntyre and J. J. McIntyre, Country Towns in Victoria: A Social Survey (Carlton: Melbourne University Press/Oxford University Press, 1944). 26. See O. A. Oeser and S. B. Hammond, eds, Social Structure and Personality in a City (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1954), especially pp. 3-10 on the relationship between sociology and psychology; O. A. Oeser and F. E. Emery, Social Structure and Personality in a Rural Community (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1954). Also see Paul Lafitte, Social Structure and Personality in the[a] Factory, (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul,1958).
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Histories of Australian Sociology 27. Bertram Hutchinson, Old People in a Modern Australian Community (Carlton: Melbourne University Press, 1954). 28. See John Stubbs, The Hidden People (Melbourne: Cheshire-Lansdowne,1966); Ronald F. Henderson, Alison Harcourt and R. J. A. Harper, People in Poverty (Melbourne: Cheshire, 1970); R. F. Henderson (chair), Poverty in Australia, 2 vols. (Canberra: AGPS, 1975). 29. The key figure in Political Science in this regard was Alan Davies. Also see the description of the new Department of Criminology established at Melbourne in 1951 in The Australian Law Journal 26 (22 May 1952): 12-13; and the research entries under History in The University of Melbourne, Annual Reports 1939-1946, pp. 106, 126. 30. T. R. Ashworth, The Communist Danger: A Phase of the Ultimate Social Problem (Melbourne: Wellman, nd [1926]), p. 44. This work originated in a series of newspaper articles in the Melbourne Age (September-December 1925) commenting on the 1925 Waterside Dispute. In the mid-1920s, Frederic Eggleston expressed a similar opinion, advocating the establishment of departments of sociology and economics at the University of Melbourne. See Warren Osmond, Frederic Eggleston (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1985), pp. 119-120. 31. Joanna Monie, Victorian History and Politics, vol.1 (Melbourne: Borchardt Library, La Trobe University, 1982), p. 148. 32. Ashworth was born on 5 December 1864 in Richmond, Victoria, the son of Dr. Thomas Ramsden Ashworth, one of the first medical graduates (1869) at the University of Melbourne. After spending a number of years at sea, Ashworth returned to Melbourne at age 17, where he worked as a carpenter and builder, while studying architecture. In the 1890s he set up a real estate business developing land in the Middle Park-St.Kilda area. During this period, he served on the South Melbourne council and was a Melbourne Metropolitan Board of Works commissioner. An ardent critic of David Syme, he was President of the Victorian division of the Free Trade and Liberal Association in the years leading up to Federation. He ran for colonial and federal parliaments several times before finally winning the Legislative Assembly seat of Ovens in the 1901 Victorian state election. Ashworth’s parliamentary aspirations ended when he failed to win a seat in the 1904 Victorian election. From 1910 to 1917 he was chairman of the Canister Makers section of the Chamber of Manufacturers (Victorian division), a position arising from his canister business in South Melbourne. After practicing as an architect for many years, he was elected a fellow of the Royal Victorian Institute of Architects in 1916-17. In the early 1920s he designed the extant Church Street bridge at South Yarra. From 1920 to 1934 he was President of the Victorian Employers Association. He was the Victorian delegate to the first formally constituted meeting of the Central Council of the Economic Society of Australia and New Zealand in 1925, and a member of the Commonwealth Royal Commission on the Constitution convened between 1927 and 1929. Ashworth died on 23 August 1935. On his life and varied activities, see Australian Dictionary of Biography, vol.7, 1881-1939, ed. Bede Nairn and Geoffrey Searle (Carlton: Melbourne University Press, 1979), pp. 115-116; Phyllis G. Ashworth (niece), ‘Biographical Notes’ on Ashworth, n.d., unpublished, copy in file no. 10-2-10, UM/CR; Geoff Browne, Biographical Register of the Victorian Parliament 1900-1984 (Melbourne: Victorian Government Printing Office, 1985), p. 5; Susan Priestley, South Melbourne: A History (Carlton: Melbourne University Press, 1995); Royal Victorian Institute of Architects, Proceedings, vols.xiii-xxxiii, (1916-1935); E. H. Sugden and F. W. Eggleston, George Swinburne (Sydney: Angus and Roberston, 1932), p. 89; Shirley Thomas, Challenge: The First 100 Years of the VEF (Hawthorn VIC: Victorian Employers Federation, 1985), pp. 99-123. 33. Report of the Royal Commission on the Constitution (Canberra: Commonwealth Government Printer, 1929), 277-293.
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Society Economised 34. Closer cooperation between employers and working people, between the VEF and Trades Hall seems to have been a constant theme pursued by Ashworth in his years as President at the VEF. See Thomas, Challenge, 102. 35. Ashworth’s advocacy of harsh wage cuts, rationing and the cutting of Government service pensions at the height of the Depression forced a ‘Nationalist’ correspondent to the Argus to write that Ashworth’s ‘Ultra conservatism has in the past done more to build up the Labour party than any direct advocacy of its case. Surely the [Employers] federation should check the misguided efforts of its president.’ The Argus (Melbourne), Tuesday, 22 September 1931, 9. 36. There are certain similarities of outlook between Ashworth and his contemporary, and fellow Victorian, Herbert Brookes: a strong faith in science; a deep concern with ‘social questions’; a disdain for the ‘leisured class’; a respect for ‘honest’ labour; and a vision of a socially responsible productive business practice that would temper the evils of capitalism. In the 1890s Brookes found a home for these views in his attachment to the social gospel of Charles Strong and his Australian Church. While Ashworth cites with approval the work of W. L. Mackenzie King, a ‘Christian sociologist’, his writings attest to a more ‘scientific’ sociology. See Peter Cochrane, ‘“How Are the Egyptians Behaving?”: Herbert Brookes, British-Australian’, Australian Historical Studies 30, no.113 (October 1999): pp. 303-318; C. R. Badger, The Reverend Charles Strong and the Australian Church (Melbourne: Abacada Press, 1971), p. 114. On Mackenzie King, see Ramsay Cook, The Regenerators: Social Criticism in Late Victorian English Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1985), pp. 207-213. On the Australian responses to turn-of-the-century class conflict see John Rickard, Class and Politics (Canberra: ANU Press, 1976), pp. 167-201. 37. Ashworth, Communist Danger, pp. 2-3. 38. Ashworth, ibid. 5; William Lyon Mackenzie King, Industry and Humanity [1918], (Toronto: Toronto University Press, 1973). 39. Ashworth, ibid., pp. 42-43. 40. Ashworth, ibid., pp. 1-25. 41. Ashworth, ibid., p. 44. 42. Thomas, Challenge, p. 102. 43. Ashworth, Communist Danger, pp. 45-58. 44. F. W. Eggleston, Search for a Social Philosophy (Carlton: Melbourne University Press, 1941); F. W. Eggleston, ‘Social Philosophy and the Scientific Method’, Social Horizons (July 1945): 25-33. 45. A. P. Elkin, ‘The Need for Sociological Research in Australia’, Social Horizons (July 1943): 5-15. Elkin was one of the founders of The Australian Institute of Sociology in 1942. The Institute gathered together academics and community figures with the aim of training sociologists, advancing research and promoting the understanding of sociological research as ‘scientific’—contra its detractors (Elkin, ibid., 13). The Institute’s life was brief and its only tangible output was the publication of the journal, Social Horizons, between 1943-1945. See Jerzy Zubrzycki, ‘The teaching of sociology’, 6. 46. A. P. Elkin, ‘The Function of Religion in Society’, The Morpeth Review 2, no.16 (1931): 8-16; A. P. Elkin, ‘The Present Social Function of Religion’, The Morpeth Review 2, no.18 (1931): 23-33; A. P. Elkin, Society, the Individual and Change (Sydney: Camden College/Robert Dey, 1941). 47. Elkin, ‘The Need for Sociological Research’, 8. 48. Elkin, ibid., 10,12. 49. Ashworth, Communist Danger, pp. 2-4, 67. Ashworth never published a more fully elaborated theory of society. Also see T. R. Ashworth & H. P. C. Ashworth, Proportional Representation Applied to Party Government (Melbourne & London: George Robertson, 1900), pp. 208-222. 50. Ashworth, ibid., p. 4.
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Histories of Australian Sociology 51. See T. R. Ashworth, An American Economist on World Troubles: Light on the Australian Problem (Melbourne: VEF/Ramsay, nd [1932]). 52. Minutes, 8/5/25, Economic Society of Australia and New Zealand (hereafter ESANZ) Records, University of Melbourne Archives (hereafter UMA); ‘Notes on the Branches’, Economic Record 1, no.1 (November 1925): 167-68; Neville Cain, ‘Economics between the Wars: A Tall Poppy as Seedling’, Australian Cultural History 3 (1984): 79; R. H. Scott, The Economic Society of Australia, pp. 6, 9. 53. Over the course of the Economic Society lecture series in 1930, Ashworth became increasingly agitated by the Copland/Dyason position with its inflation-deflation mixture. He resigned from the Society the next year. Minutes 24/4/30, 10/7/30, 25/7/30, 26/9/30, 26/6/31, ESANZ Records, UMA. On Copland’s recovery strategy, see C. B. Schedvin, Australia and the Great Depression (Sydney: Sydney University Press, 1970) pp. 252-3. 54. This is the general conclusion of Eggleston, State Socialism; Hancock, Australia; and Shann, An Economic History. 55. Rowse, Australian Liberalism, p. 102. On ‘protective statism’, see Ann Capling and Brian Galligan, Beyond the Protective State (Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 1992). 56. G. A. Fleming, The Early Years of the Australian Economic Community, Working Paper 183, Economic History, ANU (March, 1995), pp. 22-23; Harper, 43. 57. D. B. Copland, Studies in Economics and Social Sciences, p. 74; D. B. Copland, ‘The Trade Depression in Australia in Relation to Economic Thought’, Report of the Sixteenth Meeting of the Australasian Association for the Advancement of Science, Wellington 1923 (Wellington NZ: Government Printer, 1924), p. 555; D. B. Copland, ‘Commerce and Business: An Inaugural Lecture (Melbourne: Macmillan/Melbourne University Press, 1925), pp. 5-10 ; D. B. Copland, Credit and Currency Control (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press/ Macmillan, 1930), pp. 41-3. 58. Neville Cain, ‘Monetary Thought in the ‘Twenties and its Depression Legacy: An Australian Illustration’, Australian Economic History Review 20, no. 1 (March 1980): 23. 59. Fleming, 30-31; John Spierings, ‘An Exacting Science: The University and the Beginnings of Economic Policy Making’, Arena 86 (Autumn 1989): 122-135. 60. J. B. Brigden et al., The Australian Tariff (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1929). 61. See Frederic Benham, The Prosperity of Australia (London: P. S. King & Son, 2nd edition, 1930). 62. Rowse, Australian Liberalism, pp. 103-104; Capling and Galligan, pp. 89-95. 63. D. B. Copland, Inflation and Expansion (Melbourne: Cheshire, 1951), p. 18. 64. See D. B. Copland, Australia in the World Crisis 1929-1933 (Cambridge: At the University Press, 1934). Compare Schedvin, pp. 252-3, 374-5. 65. Neville Cain, ‘Economics between the Wars’, 77; Smyth, Australian Social Policy, ch.1; Fleming, pp. 30-31; Greg Whitwell, The Treasury Line (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1986), pp. 66-79. 66. Ashworth, Communist Danger, pp. 5ff. Also see T. R. Ashworth, The Financial Outlook (Melbourne: 1930), p. 16. 67. See especially Eggleston’s sustained critique of ‘political sectionalism’ and its sociological ramifications in Eggleston, State Socialism. 68. Copland, Inflation and Expansion, p. 11. Copland here also claimed that Eggleston exerted ‘a healthy influence on economists who thought…[economics] was enough’. 69. Osmond, pp. 264-277. 70. Greg Whitwell, The Treasury Line, p. 79. 71. Whitwell, ibid. 72. Whitwell, ibid., passim.
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Society Economised 73. See e.g. Michael Pusey, Economic Rationalism in Canberra (Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 1992); Shutdown, ed. John Carroll and Robert Manne, (Melbourne: Text, 1992).
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12 Social Scientists as Intellectuals: From the First World War to the Depression HELEN BOURKE (1988)*
T
his chapter discusses the intellectual foundations of the social sciences in Australia during the period from the First World War to the Depression. It pays particular attention to the early history of sociology and economics and to the group of intellectuals involved in the newly founded Workers’ Educational Association (WEA), but its broader theme is the condition of intellectual life itself in Australia. Why in this period did certain forms of the social sciences take ready and firm root while others were only slowly established or did not thrive at all? The tensions that existed between some of these pioneer social scientists—and between them and the society in which they lived—throw some light on this question. A related question is the response of intellectuals to such tensions: for some of Australia’s most distinguished and creative minds, the choice has been expatriation, a recurring phenomenon in Australia’s cultural history. Two examples of this response are offered as case studies in the final section of this chapter. The Emergence of Sociology To its early proponents, sociology was not just one of the desirable social sciences. It was the central or fundamental discourse. Addressing the 1911 meeting of the Australasian Association for the Advancement of Science, Francis Anderson, Professor of Logic and Mental Philosophy at the University of Sydney since 1890, argued the case. Sociology was the science that gave coherence to all other social
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Source: Bourke, H. (1988) ‘Social Scientists as Intellectuals: From the First World War to the Depression’, in B. Head & J. Walter (eds), Intellectual Movements and Australian Society, Oxford University Press, Melbourne.
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Histories of Australian Sociology sciences: just as the fundamental sciences of physics, chemistry and biology could be described as mother sciences embracing and unifying more fragmented areas of knowledge, so sociology was the counterpart in the social sciences. It welded the knowledge of other disciplines into the whole. Anderson explained that economics, for example, was one of the social sciences, but it was not sociology: ‘it deals with a fragment, and not with the whole. Its results are valid and intelligible only when brought into connection with the larger life of society …’1 Anderson’s view was endorsed by a fellow professor at Sydney, R. F. Irvine, who held the chair of economics. Recently returned from a tour of North America’s universities, Irvine reported, in an address to the Melbourne University Association in 1914, on ‘The Place of the Social Sciences in a Modern University’. Sociology, he too believed, was the subject that alone could make sense of that ‘one great unityhuman experience’. It invaded all territory from which it could get evidence as to the process of human association and social evolution as a whole. In his formulations Irvine drew on American sociologists Albion Small and E. A. Ross; he cited the latter’s Foundations of Sociology: ‘Sociology no longer falls apart into neat segments like a peeled orange. State, law, religion, art, morals, industry, instead of presenting so many parallels of development, are studied rather as different aspects of one social evolution.’2 Accordingly, sociology was proclaimed the science of society. The second claim for the new science was its positive, scientific validity. It was to be distinguished from what had earlier passed for social study, from what Anderson called the ‘a priori constructions of philosophers’ selected to reinforce deduced conclusions. The modern sociology did not have its links with moral ethics, but with the scientism of biology, applied psychology and economics, although for Anderson and Irvine, this was not to absolve social science from its humanistic responsibilities. The great tool and underpinning was to be the use of statistics and the analysis of collected social data. Irvine announced that the methodology of sociology would conform to that of all the positive sciences; he defined it as the analysis of data to discover relationships and the evaluation of facts to determine their worth in the dynamics of human progress. As Anderson put it, the great ‘fact’ to be explained was society itself: sociology would discover its genesis, its growth and the laws that governed it.
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Social Scientists as Intellectuals Such assertions about the holism and positivism of sociology were standard in any discourse about the subject, but there was a particular programme for the sociological task in the contemporary Australia of these writers: the scientific functions of analysis, evaluation and diagnosis were being urged as peculiarly relevant to the young social democracy of Australia. In the decade after federation the new Commonwealth was the source of great interest to foreign observers such as Albert Metin, Victor Clark and Lord Bryce, to name only a few. The glowing terms, ‘social laboratory’ and ‘political and social experiment’, were almost invariably used to describe the cycle of social legislation that had characterized the Deakinite new liberalism. The degree of state socialism, etatisme, or government intervention in the Australian economy—from the arbitration system to the maternity allowance—was widely perceived as constituting a unique set of social arrangements that now demanded assessment. It appeared on the eve of the First World War that this impulse to progressive reform had exhausted itself, but that it had already generated a body of material and a sum of experience that should be amenable to evaluation. Those who urged evaluation aspired to an accuracy and objectivity, and a predictability, that they believed it was possible to achieve in the empirical manipulation of social data. But the very words ‘laboratory’ and ‘experiment’ implied a process that was not taking place; the experiments were not being tested and the results were not being assessed. Anderson lamented the neglect of the science of society ‘in a country which claims to be a pioneer in the field of social and political practice’,3 while Irvine argued that ‘nothing strikes visiting economists and sociologists so much as the meagreness of investigation and criticism by Australians of their own social evolution’.4 F. W. Eggleston also noted that Australia was referred to as a laboratory of social experiment, but that it had not carefully ‘investigated and tabulated the results [so] as to guide its future action’.5 The point was made again in 1916 by W. Harrison Moore, Professor of Law at the University of Melbourne: ‘It has been a standing reproach to the Universities of Australia that in a country that is recognised as the greatest laboratory of economic experiment in the world, they have done so little to influence these experiments or to test these results.’6 These observations, commonplace by 1918, were in part a reiteration of Metin’s socialisme sans doctrines, but it was not an ideology of reform that was being called for so much as a remedying of the gap between social practice and social analysis. It is in this context that the
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Histories of Australian Sociology teaching and methods of sociology were deemed essential in Australia. What these men meant by the scientific investigation of social progress, which they associated with the procedures of sociology, was not at all clearly spelled out. Irvine offered suggestions drawn from American models as the basis of such an activity: it must first of all involve the collection and the organization of social data. In the USA he had been impressed by the private and public funding of repositories of data in research bureaux and by the utilization of such research for community purposes and the formation of public policy. Irvine envisaged a sociology that was at the service of social reform. But as Australia became involved in war, the aim of reform narrowed more pragmatically to one of ‘national efficiency’.7 The first person to undertake an explicitly sociological evaluation of Australia’s progress was Clarence Hunter Northcott, a student of Francis Anderson, who had gone to Columbia University to work under Franklin H. Giddings. His doctoral thesis, Australian Social Development, published in 1918 by Columbia’s Faculty of Political Science, was both an attempt to analyse Australia’s social experiments and an effort to produce guidelines for continued progress. It was the task of the sociologist, Northcott held, to ‘evaluate the ideals and estimate the defects revealed in the development of democracy. In so doing, he unfolds implicitly a programme of social efficiency’.8 His basic assumption was that social forces could be controlled ‘towards a consciously realised social end’ and that it was the task of the sociologist to discern the positive social forces. In Northcott’s terms the desired end was a more moral social order characterized by harmony and not by class conflict. In his words: ‘In the last resort the creation of social values, consciously recognised and pursued, into which divergent purposes are transmitted, alone can produce social harmony. The enunciation of these values is the work of sociology.’9 Northcott’s basic thesis was that the history of Australian social development was the history of the struggle of a social ideal to manifest itself—that of a progressive social democracy. He began by looking at the conditioning forces of that ideal, the interaction between Australia’s immigrant population and the environment. He discovered two mentalities produced in that historical interaction, each associated with region, occupation and the possession of wealth. These broadly translated as ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’, the one derived 148
Social Scientists as Intellectuals from a frontier individualism and property-owning, and the other from a collective, urban workforce. Their respective political sympathies found expression in liberal and labour parties, the latter being the bearers of social reform. In the conflict between these two crudely designated classes, Northcott believed that progress had been generated, but he warned that the hitherto productive interplay of forces was now in danger of widening the class cleavage, the result being what he called social inefficiency. Since sociology, as he understood it, was concerned with the ‘stimuli that prompt to collective action’, it both took the measure of social solidarity and advocated principles and programmes to promote this. The theory of social inefficiency may have been that of F. H. Giddings, but Northcott’s practical recommendations at the end of the book were a blend of conservationism, mild industrial democracy and exhortations to the pursuit of industrial efficiency and worker education. The claims of Northcott’s book to any sociological interest lay mainly in his own conception of his task, in the questions he posed and in his attempt to explain progress in terms of groups and classes. As well, his book was based on statistical and legislative materials such as official year books and arbitration reports, which Northcott placed as scientific data over and against the mere impressionism of travellers’ chronicles and the descriptive history that had passed for much of the study of Australia before the war. However, despite the charts of occupation, strikes, wage rises and the like that raised the status of the work, there was no attempt on Northcott’s part to act as primary investigator and to generate his own social data. He remained part of that secular evangelist tradition which, as Tim Rowse has noted, exalted these sociologists to the position of the ‘new moralists’.10 What was important about Northcott’s work, and what may be the most important thing about all of this failed endeavour, was its attention to the contemporaneous. There was an insistence that Australia in its present state must be studied in the light both of the past and the prospects for the future. Sociology at this time was in many ways a word for the study of the contemporary. This point has force only in its historical context if one looks at the decidedly uncontemporaneous offerings of the universities and if one looks outside them to the world of social criticism and intellectual debate and appreciates its poverty and thinness. The absence of the sort of intellectual life associated with Europe and the USA was frequently remarked on—the paucity of serious journals, books, freelance intellectuals, publicists and so on—and the consciousness of this 149
Histories of Australian Sociology vacuum played a significant part in the plea for sociology as an activity that might fill this gap. This was the particular conviction of the pioneers of the WEA, who were the first carriers into the universities and out to the public of a subject called sociology. Sociology and the WEA The nature and fate of the sociology under discussion was inextricably bound up with the ideology and fortunes of the WEA movement in this period, as indeed was the establishment of both economics and economic history in at least three of the six universities: Hobart, Adelaide and Melbourne. The WEA was an English movement imported into Australia in 1914, following the visit of its founder Albert Mansbridge, who sought to unite the university and the worker, the two streams of labour and learning. He intended to bring to the worker a much more intensive and ambitious education than was offered in the conventional extra-mural lectures. Assisted by what J. F. C. Harrison described as a ‘whole generation of progressive, socially-minded, Oxford scholars’,11 Mansbridge forged a movement that took shape at a famous Oxford conference in 1907. Worker education would be organized under a joint committee composed of representatives of the university and outside delegates from the trade unions and the community groups affiliated in the WEA. A new pedagogical method was to be their hallmark: the university tutorial class. In the university, a director of tutorial classes would be appointed to supervise this education, but he would also undertake some university work. The WEA exhibited a missionary fervour. It spoke of a knowledge ‘saturated with the ideal of social service’, of the moral uplift and transformation of the worker into the informed citizen who would eschew the class war in favour of the social whole. WEA ideology could be described as a compound of the co-operative visions of Robert Owen and the Rochdale pioneers, of the social consciousness of the Christian Social Union and of strands of pluralist, anti-Fabian and guild socialist theory. The first director of tutorial classes to be appointed in Australia was Meredith Atkinson, who arrived in 1913 to take up his post in the University of Sydney, and who in 1918 became the first self-styled professor of sociology in the University of Melbourne. Atkinson announced not long after his arrival that he believed Australia’s much 150
Social Scientists as Intellectuals vaunted social progress to be played out, and that politics and the labour movement had little inspiration left. ‘Nothing’, he declared, ‘but the close study of economics and sociology will give Australia the new ideas she so badly needs’.12 Economics and sociology, along with economic or industrial history, were the basic diet of the WEA’s tutorial classes, since this was the knowledge and understanding with which the worker must be equipped to appreciate his origins and the economic forces that determined his present existence. What Atkinson meant by sociology had less to do with the analysis of social data than with the study of social problems. It was his constant assertion that Australia had achieved the highest social standards, but had contributed no social theory to the world to account for them. For him the anomalous gap was between progressive social action and the poverty of sociological thought. To remedy the gap he embarked on a programme of publication. In 1920 he edited a collection of essays by various social scientists titled Australia: Economic and Political Studies, which he claimed as the first comprehensive and authoritative work on the economic and sociological condition of Australia; its contributors included himself, G. V. Portus, Elton Mayo, W. Harrison Moore, W. Jethro Brown, George Knibbs and Griffith Taylor. Also, under Atkinson’s initial editorship, the Federal Council of the WEA began the publication of a series of books between 1919 and 1928 that were intended to overcome the difficulty of the WEA classes in finding material on social, economic and political problems in Australia. There is no doubt that Atkinson saw himself as one of that breed of publicists, social critics and entrepreneurs of ideas thought to be so scarce in Australia. There had already been some slight beginning of the teaching of sociology in the University of Sydney before Atkinson arrived. Under Francis Anderson, a course called Elements of Sociology was listed in the undergraduate degree in philosophy; but after a year it appeared, until 1925, only as an option for a masters degree in philosophy.13 According to Anderson, the University of Sydney had on more than one occasion put a chair of sociology among the ‘more immediate needs’ of the university, but nothing beyond the passing of resolutions was ever done.14 Apart from the university’s lack of sympathy towards modern studies, the funding of new chairs was an acute problem, especially during the war years. Two classes in sociology were, however, included in the first twenty classes of the WEA in 1915; there was one class in biology and the other seventeen were in industrial history. Francis Anderson and R. F. Irvine were among the staunchest supporters of the new tutorial 151
Histories of Australian Sociology class movement, and it was one of Anderson’s students, Northcott, who took the sociology classes before his departure for Columbia. At the University of Melbourne, developments in sociology had been projected in 1912. One of the foundation chairs of the university, held first by W. E. Hearn and then by J. S. Elkington, embraced the fields of modern history, modern literature, logic, and political economy. On Elkington’s retirement it was proposed to make history into a separate chair and to ask the government for a new one in economics and sociology. Disagreement between the university and the premier over whether or not an Australian must be appointed to the chair led finally to the collapse of the whole proposal.15 A few years later, however, sociology came into the university through the back door of the WEA. When, in 1917, the Victorian government decided to fund tutorial classes at Melbourne, Atkinson agreed to take the job of director provided that he was allowed the title of professor and a seat on the Professorial Board. The WEA had enthusiastic and powerful supporters on the council of the university in the persons of W. Harrison Moore, chairman of the Extension Board, Henry Bournes Higgins and James Barrett, who had actually paid for Mansbridge’s tour in 1913. Harrison Moore hoped to give a stimulus to the teaching of economics through the tutorial class emphasis on this subject, but almost immediately Atkinson appropriated the area of sociology. He was himself an Oxford graduate in education, economics and political science. As soon as he got to Melbourne, Atkinson wrote to his fellow-director in the University of Tasmania, Douglas Berry Copland: ‘I have made a start with the establishment of a school of economics and sociology… I am to take sociology and will probably ultimately take that chair, another man taking economics and commerce.’16 He went on to elaborate his plans for a future linking of economics and sociology, first into a sort of external faculty of social science and then perhaps into a bureau of social science at the Commonwealth level. In view of later events, it may be that these vainglorious schemes haunted Copland’s mind when he became the other man who took the first chair of economics and commerce at Melbourne in 1925. Atkinson taught sociology at Melbourne until he resigned in 1922. It was offered as a pass subject in the School of Philosophy and then in history and political science; a second year was provided for honours work. About a hundred students were enrolled each year. One of these, W. K. Hancock, immortalized the subject in his autobiography, Country and Calling, as the ‘mumbo-jumbo that was called sociology’. 152
Social Scientists as Intellectuals He recalled it as a mixture of ‘second-hand fact, disputable generalisations and a pretentious vocabulary’.17 This was Hancock looking back in 1954, yet there is a case to be made that his own seminal work, Australia (1930), owed much to the formulation of problems first encountered in that course. Nevertheless, it is true that in the melange of history, political philosophy, basic economics or political economy, international relations and moral persuasions that constituted Atkinson’s writings—and, one infers, his teaching—it is difficult to discover the ‘sociological unity’ he claimed for his work. His social theory rested largely on the concept of the ignorant masses that were the legacy of the rise of capitalism and individualist liberalism. They were in his view the poor stuff of a democracy still in its cave-man stage, torn by class cleavage, and managed under perverted notions of the functions of the state. For him the key to the continued evolution of progress and ‘the new social order’ was the degree to which the base and irrational proclivities of the ordinary citizen could be raised up to the altruistic service of the community. The problem, he proclaimed, was how to ‘alter the attitude of mind and the character of the masses’.18 The means of this transformation was to be ‘sociological’ education, which meant a heavy dose of civics for citizenship and ethics. It was specifically a sociology for social reconstruction, a term that filled the air in 1919. Most of Atkinson’s thought was clearly derived from contemporary British and American social and political theory. But he did try to work out this set of contemporary preoccupations in its Australian context. He introduced his students to the problematic of democracy; questions of the relation of the worker to industry, of the citizen to politics and the state; and the problem of where to locate the life of society itself. In Australia, he believed, the reliance of the citizen on the power and functions of the state was a flawed and distorted basis on which to build a new social order. Australians, more than any other people, he maintained, accepted and saw the state as being ‘themselves in social community’, supplanting self-help, group life, local activity and the drives of voluntary associations.19 The core idea of the enlivened citizenship to be achieved by education was, in this sense, a sociological one. It was, then, no accident that those attracted to pluralist social theory and sceptical of the ‘servile state’ of collectivism should be proponents of the relevance of sociology as a subject that centred on the interaction of social life and group experience. Not all the intellectuals 153
Histories of Australian Sociology of the early WEA movement approved Atkinson’s social theory with its conservative messages of social cohesion delivered to the workers from self-consciously elitist heights. He was, in fact, an unfortunate prophet for the new sociology because of his personal reputation for self-aggrandisement, financial wheeling and dealing, and what appeared to be his bourgeois capitalist sympathies. His early proconscription campaigning in 1916 had left unhealed rifts between the WEA and the trade unions, while in both universities—Sydney and Melbourne—his departure was followed by an official inquiry into the affairs of his department. It was not always possible to separate the practitioner from his trade. A diverse array of forty people applied for Atkinson’s post in 1922—a testimony, no doubt, to the slimness of academic employment opportunities as much as to the pressing relevance of worker education. The applicants included George Elton Mayo, whose later work as an expatriate in the USA is discussed below; C. H. Northcott, who did not return to Australia, but went to Rowntree’s in England as a pioneer in industrial management; Herbert Heaton, also discussed below, who soon took up a long career in North America; H. Duncan Hall, who was instead appointed to a chair at Syracuse University and then went to the League of Nations; R. C. Mills, who withdrew to take the chair of economics in Sydney on Irvine’s retirement; and D. B. Copland, still in Hobart. All the applicants had been involved in the WEA movement, but only Northcott had any formal training in sociology. The man selected was a scholar in French philosophy, John Alexander Gunn. His education had been in philosophy and classics, but he had been an active WEA tutor for the University of Liverpool in social psychology, economics and economic history. Copland, the runner-up, was the friend and favoured candidate of the powerful WEA secretary in Victoria, S. D. Thompson, with whom Gunn had to work.20 On arrival from England, Gunn identified his sociology as serving ‘social progress’ (the title of his inaugural address). Sociology was the positive study of the social groups of mankind with reference to the psychological, physical and biological factors involved in the process of social evolution. Social progress was defined in a familiar way as the strengthening of social solidarity; sociology was the subject able to preserve the wholeness of social knowledge.21 The sociologist, according to Gunn, should present society as a complex of four factors: breed, by which he meant the biological factor, population and family; livelihood, which was the economic element; 154
Social Scientists as Intellectuals government, which covered the nature and purpose of the state; and culture or ‘social mentality’, which included ideas of citizenship and morality. Gunn projected a four-volume work entitled Human Society to deal with each factor, but only one, Livelihood (1927), was ever published.22 Gunn’s sociology course was a compound of political philosophy, rudimentary economic history, social psychology and biology (mainly eugenics). Gunn believed that a progressive society must be concerned about the quality of its population. Complete with the scientific paraphernalia of tables and equations, a course in eugenics was offered, pondering the urgency of such matters as the propagation of the unfit, the havoc of venereal disease, the evils of prostitution and alcoholism, and the threat of mental deficiency.23 Gunn was not alone in his enthusiasm for eugenics in the 1920s; study circles proliferating in the WEA reflected the general interest and the shift that was taking place away from the old economics and industrial history diet to the new social psychology. With Gunn a new element entered the teaching of sociology in the identification of social progress with better breeding and higher intelligence. Eugenics was as important as education. The Consolidation of Economics The claims for the legitimacy of sociology in the arguments of Anderson, Irvine, Northcott, Atkinson and Gunn had all rested heavily on the interdisciplinary nature of the subject. Each had asserted its organic wholeness in absorbing the insights of other social sciences. But as the professionalisation and the specialization of those other sciences became more advanced, Gunn’s sociology incurred the charges of being superficial and old-fashioned. The old, accepted nexus between sociology and economics came under particular fire when Copland began the new highly professional School of Economics and Commerce in 1925. Copland was a technical economist, an exponent to business and governments of the scientific accuracy of his discipline. When he moved to Melbourne he became very active in the promotion of the teaching of social sciences and their uses in government and social and economic planning. To Copland, the social sciences were discrete, empirical and trustworthy—with the exception of sociology, which he believed to be eclectic and amorphous. His attitude to sociology at Melbourne was further coloured by a deep personal animosity to Gunn, which he shared with his friend S. D. Thompson, Victorian secretary of the WEA. One of Atkinson’s legacies at Melbourne had been an 155
Histories of Australian Sociology internecine war between Thompson and the WEA on the one hand, and Gunn and the university on the other. It was in essence a struggle over who should run the extension programme of the university. In two inquiries, in 1924 and 1926, Gunn was vindicated and the power of the WEA was limited. As a member of the Federal Council of the WEA, Copland was very involved in the infighting and supported Thompson even against the cooler judgement of WEA colleagues J. B. Brigden, G. V. Portus and F. A. Bland. During this time efforts were being made to strengthen other social sciences. The newly formed Australasian Association for Psychology and Philosophy urged developments in psychology and the foundation of departments of social science in each university.24 In 1925, under the chairmanship of A. Boyce Gibson, Professor of Philosophy, the University of Melbourne set up a committee to consider the viability of these motions. Gunn proposed the need for a chair of sociology in the following terms: The existence of a professorship of Sociology (or Civics, Social Science, Social Philosophy, or Political Science—the choice of name is not a vital matter) would raise the standard and status of this important subject not only in the University but in the community and appears a necessary step to the attainment of that informed citizenship which is necessary in our democracy.25 The dilemma about the name of the subject, which perfectly encapsulated Copland’s objections to it, did not last long. Within the month the chairman of the Professorial Board made it clear that there was no hope of any chair. The publication of Gunn’s economic text, Livelihood, in 1927 did nothing to advance his reputation. He maintained in the book that the status of sociology as the social science par excellence cast no reflections on economics. Sociology took under its purview the whole of society, while economics dealt only with wealth and livelihood in the light of statistics. His own attempt to handle this fragment of human experience drew scornful appraisal from economists. Overseas reviewers and even the WEA’s own journal, Australian Highway, concluded that the book was useless, elementary, out of date and poorly organized. H. Sanderson Furniss pointed to Gunn’s real problem in remarking that economics had now reached the stage where it was doubtful if the whole ground of economics could be satisfactorily covered in a small text.26 By 1927 there was a substantial 156
Social Scientists as Intellectuals amount of pioneering research on Australian economic problems, a body of work that had not existed when Atkinson began his course in 1918. It was clearly galling to Copland that Gunn should presume to include amateur economics in sociology teaching and, indeed, bring the subject into disrepute in his writing. Copland was not in favour of the amalgamation of economics into a department of social sciences as envisaged by Gunn. He believed such a department would encroach on the domain of the separate disciplines—the very antithesis of the holistic argument. Moreover, he warned of intellectual danger in such schemes, in which ‘this tendency to treat the social aspect of a problem before its economic basis has been thoroughly examined would be encouraged’.27 Copland became the entrepreneur of the social sciences in their early phase in Australia. In 1926 he went abroad for the first time as the representative of the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Foundation, which was keen to promote the social sciences in Australia by offering fellowships abroad. Copland was to make a study tour of the schemes in England, Europe and North America, a similar venture to Irvine’s thirteen years before. His task was to collect information and to discuss the problems in the organization of social science studies overseas with a view to making recommendations on their development in Australia. One of the areas in which he took particular interest at each port of call was the status of sociology. He wrote back to G. L. Wood, his deputy in economics at Melbourne, that R. M. Maciver himself had little time for the vagueness of sociology, although he was well disposed to the social sciences; at Yale he reported that he had ‘a little more light thrown on the sociology problem’, while at Birmingham his doubts were further confirmed: ‘I found here as elsewhere great scepticism about sociology and it is clear that some reconsideration must be given to the situation in Melbourne. No doubt I shall have a plan on my return.’28 Copland’s report on his tour and his recommendations on the social sciences suggested that sociology, because of its vagueness, not be an undergraduate subject. Other social sciences, he believed, provided sufficient effective synthesis.29 The denouement occurred the following year, when the requirements for a new honours school of economics within the Faculty of Arts were being worked out. This course was to be under Copland’s jurisdiction from the Faculty of 157
Histories of Australian Sociology Commerce, and he emerged as the convenor of a committee of the Faculty of Arts inquiring into the future of sociology in relation to economics, philosophy and a course called modern political institutions. The report recommended that sociology be dismantled and the content of the course be reorganized into three new subjects: political philosophy, which was to cover the history of political thought and be grouped in the philosophy school; constitutional history and international relations to be taken in the history school; and modern political institutions, which would be an evening course combining constitutional law and political science.30 Gunn’s two former tutors, W. MacMahon Ball and P. D. Phillips, were to be in charge of the new subjects, while Gunn, no longer having a field to profess, was relegated to his extension teaching and ad hoc work in sundry departments such as education, philosophy and French. The changes came into effect in 1928, and by 1929 Copland wrote of MacMahon Ball’s work to G. V. Portus: ‘he has lifted the subject [sociology] on to a decent academic plane. He turned it from a flotsam and jetsam of everything into a well-coordinated study of the history of Political Philosophy.’3 1 In this instance—at the University of Melbourne—sociology clearly had a ‘personal’ history, in the characters of these protagonists, which hindered its permanent rooting. Both Atkinson and Gunn made enemies quickly, even among their WEA colleagues. But this does not adequately explain the ultimate failure of the subject in this period, nor why, as Warren Osmond perceptively asked, it left almost no direct progeny.32 The problem went deeper into the very nature of the subject as it was then conceived and understood, and beyond that to the condition of Australian intellectual life itself. Sociology was viable when Anderson proposed it and when Atkinson introduced it precisely because the questions it raised and the contemporary nature of its concerns were not being studied coherently in the universities. But as this changed with the increasing professionalisation of other social sciences, it became more difficult to make out a case for what was distinctive or indispensable in that sociology. There was no practice of the social measurement in which Anderson, Irvine and others had proclaimed so much faith. Gunn was not ignorant of empirical sociology—he alluded to plans for the applied study of social problems33—but nothing was done towards this sort of inquiry. There were, for example, no social surveys such as those associated in England with Charles Booth or Seebohm Rowntree or the blue books. Except for the reports of the Bureau of Census and Statistics, and perhaps for evidence given before royal commissions, the data for 158
Social Scientists as Intellectuals social analysis and reform remained uncollected. And, if there was no methodology of research to identify the specific nature of the field, there was also no legitimacy deriving from any inheritance from the classical European tradition of sociology, of LePlay, Durkheim or Weber. Early sociologists in Australia were much more indebted to British liberal social theory. Osmond suggests that the demise of sociology needs to be placed in a wider context, maintaining that it was part of a broader cultural shift in Australia after the First World War. The nature of such a shift remains as yet un-delineated, since so little is known about the intellectual and cultural history of these years, although the triumph of political and academic conservatism in the 1920s is commonly assumed. Certainly, beyond the conflict of personalities and the problems of definition, the failure of sociology to take root may also have been due to its failure to speak to the realities of Australian political and social life in the way that, for example, economics was able to. The pluralist emphasis of Atkinson’s and Gunn’s sociology endorsed the devolution of authority—political, economic and industrial—and stressed the vitality and autonomy of groups, yet the dominant political culture in Australia valued none of this. In the statist and centralizing Australia of these years and beyond, the theory of this sociology would have had as little bite as the appeals of the WEA intellectuals urging the trade unionists to embrace moral citizenship. On the other hand, the economics of D. B. Copland and his colleagues achieved their ascendancy in the social sciences and in national life because they did serve the existing and growing needs of central government. Expatriate Social Scientists In the inter-war period a number of distinguished social scientists left Australia to make their careers elsewhere. Among them were Clarence Hunter Northcott, Meredith Atkinson, H. Duncan Hall, A. Radcliffe Brown, Persia Campbell, George Elton Mayo, Stanley Porteous, Herbert Heaton and Thomas Griffith Taylor. Some, like Atkinson, Radcliffe Brown and Heaton, were not native Australians, but they did invest substantial years of their lives here; the significant point is that they did not stay. The circumstances of most of these departures cannot be separated from the nature and newness of the fields they professed or from the relation of those fields to Australian society. The use of the social sciences to which these scholars were 159
Histories of Australian Sociology dedicated was not in their view a cloistered academic activity. By their very nature they sought an extra-mural dimension, an engagement in the education of society at large, and an acceptance of their kind of expertise in public policy and planning. The cases of Herbert Heaton and Elton Mayo illustrate some of the difficulties intellectuals encountered in the pursuit of such goals. Herbert Heaton was one of the leading figures in what was by then the second generation of professional economic historians in Britain and the USA. After his departure from Australia, he was elected in 1926 to the Inaugural Council of the Economic History Society and became professor of economic history at the University of Minnesota in 1927. Heaton, one of the first professional scholars of the economic history of Australia, published articles on the basic wage principle and on land taxation in Australia in leading overseas journals.34 His Modern European History with Special Reference to Australia, written in 1921 and revised in 1925, predated Shann and Hancock in many of its observations about the economic and social order of Australia. But for the circumstances outlined here, he would have been the foundation professor of economics at the University of Adelaide. Instead, he left Australia in 1925 for a chair of economics and political science at Queen’s University in Ontario, before moving soon after to Minnesota. Heaton had come to Australia in mid-1914, recommended by Sir William Ashley at the University of Birmingham and by Albert Mansbridge, to initiate the work of the WEA in Australia. He was to fill the post of director of tutorial classes at the University of Tasmania. Following the programme developed in England, Heaton and his colleagues in Australia introduced the worker to economics, industrial history, sociology and international politics: in short, the understanding of contemporary society. This meant lectures on the growth of trade unionism, the development of socialist thought, ideas about worker participation, the origins of Bolshevism and the Russian Revolution, industrial legislation and the welfare state, the nature of the First World War and the hopes of the peace. Few such topics figured in the curricula of Australian universities in this period; indeed there was little study of the contemporary and the modern. Heaton threw himself vigorously into this work, first in Tasmania and then from 1917 at the University of Adelaide. In both places his lectures stirred controversy and that degree of personal vilification that seemed to accompany public debate in this period. The first 160
Social Scientists as Intellectuals problems arose over his remarks on the First World War. In 1915 he suggested that negotiation for peace ought, as policy, to be preferred to decisive victory.35 The loud censure that this provoked reverberated in the press, in the University Council and in the parliament. The Hobart Mercury had never taken to the WEA idea. It was sure that the workers needed the ‘bread of a higher spiritual culture’ rather than the ‘stones’ of trade union history, and it was quick to demand a parliamentary inquiry and Heaton’s dismissal should he be proven ‘disloyal’.36 In the end the university and WEA supporters like L. F. Giblin stood by Heaton, but after an inquiry, he was warned to abstain from expressing personal opinion reflecting on national policy. In Adelaide Heaton continued to address what he saw as the crucial issues of the day: the war and the peace settlements, Bolshevism, the League of Nations, the problems of post-war reconstruction and industry. He became increasingly critical of the state of public discussion on vital matters in Australia, charging that Australia was committed to policies by Australian statesmen who were duped by the Tory London press. Australia as a nation, he declared, had few opinions.37 We had never formulated any war aims of our own and now in the matter of the peace, ‘this allegedly advanced democracy of ours has sent out no word of hope of a better world, has barked at the heels of those who visualised a new and better international order, and has subscribed to doctrines worthy of a Machiavelli and a Metternich’.38 This was an attack on Prime Minister Hughes’s role at Versailles. Heaton argued that Australia was neither ready nor able to handle any mandated territory or native peoples since her record on her own soil in these areas was not a pretty one. In March 1920 controversy again greeted his exposition of J. M. Keynes’s Economic Consequences of the Peace, which criticized the punitive economic clauses of the treaty with Germany. However, in the public mind the morality and urgency of a harsh peace was firmly fixed, and Heaton was again accused of being pro-German.39 He approached the question of Bolshevism with the same academic caution. His lectures to the public surveyed the history of Tsarist Russia, explored the spectrum of socialist ideas and attempted a distinction between revolutionary theory and the excesses of the Bolsheviks. Such coverage was not appreciated by the masters of industry in Adelaide, faced as they were after the war with chronic industrial unrest, which seemed to them to ripple out from the tidal wave of Bolshevism. 161
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What bearing did this ferment have on Heaton’s professional career? His job was an especially exposed one, making him more vulnerable than most to public criticism and pressure. Apart from his extra-mural work, his appointment within the university was to develop the teaching of economics, and this particular subject was under the continual scrutiny and partial control of the commercial interests of Adelaide. The subject of commerce was surprisingly well-founded in Adelaide. Indeed, after Heaton’s earlier employer, the University of Birmingham, this was the first university in the Empire to introduce commercial training for young business apprentices. In 1902 a certificate course had been established; this was upgraded in 1912 to a diploma, but the university’s refusal to develop it further into a degree course was a direct result of the business community’s distrust of Heaton. The Board of Commercial Studies, which presided over Heaton’s university teaching, was controlled by the representatives of the Chambers of Commerce and Manufactures, in whose interests and with whose support the courses had been set up. The teaching of commercial subjects was what these bodies wanted; the study of economics was dangerously theoretical and disturbed them. In a public address in 1922, J. W. McGregor, president of the Chamber of Manufactures, voiced their view: ‘The University, in its teaching of Economics, had, in the opinion of Manufactures, become, to a large extent, engaged in propaganda work and had been used as a lever by people holding socialist views.’40 As it happened, the field of economics had expanded and flourished under Heaton’s guidance. When he came to Adelaide it was little more than a single course in the array of courses taught by Professor William Mitchell (one of Heaton’s first observations had been that Australian professors occupied not chairs but sofas), but during Heaton’s nine years there had been a steady growth that made it logical for Adelaide to follow the example of Sydney, Tasmania, Melbourne and Queensland in the establishment of a degree and a chair. In 1925 Heaton was offered a prestigious Canadian chair at Queen’s University, and he used it as an opportunity to clarify his position in Adelaide. Would economics be upgraded and could he expect advancement? The University Council, on the advice of the Board of Commercial Studies, replied that neither an honours school nor a degree was possible unless there was a professor at the head of the schoo1.41 As the labour paper, the South Australian Worker, remarked, if Heaton had stayed in Adelaide until Doomsday, he would not have been given the chair.42 Heaton’s academic reputation 162
Social Scientists as Intellectuals was beyond doubt both abroad and in Australia (colleagues such as R. F. Irving, D. B. Copland and L. F. Giblin all lamented his fate in Adelaide) but, as a Labor politician noted, Heaton’s ability, ‘like that of many a good man in South Australia had not been recognised and he has gone to another country as so many have gone to other states’.43 Heaton was by no means a radical thinker; he called himself a ‘Lloyd George liberal’ and might, like Tawney and other liberal intellectuals, have joined the British Labour Party in 1918 had he stayed in Britain. He did not receive the complete support of labour groups in Australia, being attacked by the socialist left and the promoters of the labour colleges as a tool of the capitalists who tried to dull the consciousness of the workers with bourgeois learning. But he did believe, and preach, that economics was concerned with welfare, with the distribution of wealth, and that economic policies must consider social consequences. He was not a technical economist and, unlike Copland, did not find businessmen congenial. Nor did he promise the positivist certainties of the new economic science that allayed the suspicions of commercial leaders. Eventually, in 1929, L. G. Melville, a conservative actuary, was appointed to the first chair in economics. For Heaton, lack of public appreciation had not meant lack of public notice. He was not ignored and, despite some opposition from within university circles, he was to some extent consoled by the support of many colleagues in Australia and abroad. The example of Elton Mayo is evidence of a different problem for the local intellectual in these years: isolation and the lack of opportunity to develop. Yet, outside Australia, in terms of impact on the definition of a whole intellectual and professional field, he became one of the most influential thinkers Australia has produced. Mayo is recognized as one of the seminal figures in the development of social theory and applied social science in the twentieth century because of his empirical research at the Western Electric Company in Chicago—the so-called Hawthorne experiments—and because of his major books, The Human Problems of an Industrial Civilisation (1933) and The Social Problems of an Industrial Civilisation (1949). His work has been subjected to much scrutiny and criticism since the Hawthorne experiments, but it was, nevertheless, the body of data and theory that set the framework for subsequent debate in this area. The opportunity for testing his ideas was given to Mayo in the USA, but the
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Histories of Australian Sociology foundations of his social thought were almost fully articulated by the time he left Australia in 1922.44 Even to this point Mayo’s career had had some false starts. Born into a prominent Adelaide family in 1880, he had twice attempted medical studies, in Adelaide and in Edinburgh, and then abandoned this for some years of living in London, reading, writing occasional articles, and teaching at the Working Men’s College. On his return home in 1904, he went into a partnership in an Adelaide printing firm, but he soon left it to resume his university studies, this time in philosophy and psychology under William Mitchell at the University of Adelaide. In 1911 he was appointed to the first lectureship in mental and moral philosophy at the new University of Queensland. Unlike Heaton, he gained fairly rapid promotion to the foundation chair of philosophy in 1919. Mayo’s interest in political philosophy, his reading of Freud and the French psychologist Pierre Janet, his experience in medicine and in worker education, combined to lead him into new directions: the field of industrial psychology. His personal acquaintance with social anthropologists Malinowski, Pitt-Rivers and Radcliffe Brown, drew his attention to the operation and place of human groups and to the function of work in human society. He also moved into the practice of clinical psychology in Brisbane during the war and was one of the pioneers in the treatment of shell-shock patients. Drawing on all this theory and practice, he began to formulate an analogy between the chronic industrial unrest in Australia and the mental neurosis caused by war. He argued that the individual’s morale, or mental health, was determined by the degree to which he understood the social purpose of his work, felt that it was ‘socially necessary’ and was able to look beyond his task to the larger society. In his long essay, Democracy and Freedom (1919), he wrote that when work signified ‘intelligent collaboration in the achievement of social purpose’, industrial unrest would cease to exist.45 Such a collaboration was, he believed, available to those simpler societies studied by the anthropologists, but the identity between the social code and the individual’s motive had been lost in the disintegrating effects of industrialization. As a psychologist Mayo adopted Janet’s theories of the subrational, or behaviour originating in what he called the ‘mental hinterland’. It was in these reaches of the mind that work dissatisfaction lit up ‘the hidden fires of mental uncontrol’. Following this proposition, industrial unrest was seen as a form of neurosis, the damages of which 164
Social Scientists as Intellectuals could be repaired by psychological techniques allied to the insights of social anthropology. Political and legislative solutions, such as higher wages or systems of arbitration, did not, in Mayo’s logic, attend to the deeper causes of social disorder. In fact, revolutionary theory was consigned to the status of fantasy construction: what else, he asked, is socialism but ‘an endeavour to regain a lost sense of significance in the scheme of things’?46 Thus the key to social harmony, as Mayo saw it, lay in research of a psychological and sociological kind, not in politics or economics. Yet, in Australia, as he pointed out in 1919, there was no co-ordinated attempt to develop such enquiry: Beyond the shores of Australia, the world-storm rages with increasing intensity; our will to internal cohesion is constantly disturbed by social disorder and a classhatred that is fast becoming stereotyped. Yet we alone, of all the civilised nations, give no serious consideration to the deeper social causes of disorder.47 Mayo addressed this message to many bodies and journal readers in the post-war years but, although knowledge of clinical psychology was increasing among medical men, there was no scope or support for the sort of field-work that Mayo wanted, investigating and classifying industrial problems at the factory level. Feeling increasingly frustrated, and also encumbered by his university duties, he simply threw up his job to make yet another start elsewhere. In 1922 he set off for England via the USA, leaving his family in Australia until he could support them. On the west coast of the USA, he arranged a private lecture tour to promote his ideas. Here his talks and articles attracted immediate interest, securing him a Rockefeller grant at the Wharton School of Finance at the University of Pennsylvania. He conducted research there into the reasons for high labour turnover at a textile mill near Philadelphia; his experiments were credited with reducing turnover and increasing output. This work brought him also to the attention of the Harvard School of Business Administration, to which he was invited in 1926 and where he became professor of industrial research until 1947. It was there that he joined, and shaped, the experiments being conducted at the Hawthorne plant of Western Electric; the results of these investigations became synonymous with his name. The successful manipulation of small work groups at the Hawthorne plant appeared to vindicate Mayo’s idea that if work could be perceived by the workers as a social function rather than as a source of personal 165
Histories of Australian Sociology frustration, then spontaneous human co-operation, and improved industrial output, would result.48 Such a theory was particularly congenial to Mayo’s new American context because it both challenged and dissolved the concept of class consciousness and supplanted it with a principle of social integration. Mayo became a major figure at Harvard and a major figure in the development of social theory. What was to him, in Brisbane, a bleak future was transformed into a career that in its trajectory would have been beyond Mayo’s dreaming before he left Australia. The question of the possibilities of career, of diversity of choice and opportunity, is a decisive factor in the choice of expatriation. Conclusion Within the universities in the inter-war period, research and new developments were slow and difficult. The demands of teaching and of running departments that were poorly funded and inadequately staffed made onerous work. Isolation from Europe and the USA was keenly felt, as was the distance from one’s few colleagues in other universities in Australia. The universities themselves stood in a somewhat ambivalent relationship to the community, one of both remoteness and dependency. The very rationale of the university—the pursuit of knowledge—had not, except perhaps in the physical and applied sciences, bitten deeply into the consciousness of a young nation. The organization of the physical sciences was advanced towards the end of the First World War by the establishment of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research and the Australian National Research Council, but the potential of the social sciences in national planning was not usefully employed until after the Second World War, except in the field of economics. In the social sciences Australia had not developed a research mentality. Despite occasional philanthropic bequests, there were no research institutes either privately supported or attached to universities. There were no Australian equivalents of the Brookings Institute or the Social Museum at Harvard, no foundations like the Rockefeller or the Russell Sage, which encouraged and funded the collection and analysis of social data. Without such philanthropy, the social sciences in the USA would never have made their spectacular take-off in the 1920s. Significant developments in cultural and social anthropology were made possible in Australia by Rockefeller funds but, as the case of Elton Mayo demonstrates, the time had not yet arrived when the 166
Social Scientists as Intellectuals social theory acquired through the study of indigenous peoples was seen as having relevance to the urban, industrial society that white Australians were creating. On the other hand, from their beginnings, Australian universities were public institutions financed by state government grants. Politicians sat on their governing councils, making the opinion of legislatures influential and the universities sensitive to outside criticism that might result in questions in parliament or the alienation of sections of the public. Heaton’s case was not the first or the last illustration of the hazards experienced by the academic as publicist and social critic. Those who acted as members of an intelligentsia, making and informing public discussion, courted in Australia the dangers of public reaction and journalistic comment which, in the absence of more sophisticated debate, was more likely to polarize than to refine controversial issues. Although social scientists urged the relevance of their methodology and knowledge to the solution of social problems, they did not all happily accept the more narrow, utilitarian construction that governments and public groups placed on this. A profound suspicion of theory has been a salient part of the anti-intellectualism from which expatriate intellectuals have sought escape. Essentially, the 1920s was the period in which the positivist thrust of the social sciences gained hold at the very point where the specialization of knowledge and the professionalisation of disciplines were beginning to take place. When R. F. Irvine, a decade earlier, called for a new brand of experts to guide the future of Australian democracy, he specified that their education should be liberal and should enable them to take what he called ‘the social point of view’, that is, to see beyond the view of industry and business as mechanisms for profit and productivity to an appreciation of economic forces as agents that ‘may or may not increase welfare’.49 The field of economics was firmly established in the 1920s and that new breed of experts, perhaps exemplified by D. B. Copland, did begin their rise to public power and prominence, but their dedication to the scientism and professionalism of their trade insulated their work from the more humanistic and ethical concerns of the older liberal theorists, early sociologists and political economists.50
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Notes 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28.
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F. Anderson, ‘Sociology in Australia: a Plea for its Teaching’, paper presented at the Australasian Association for the Advancement of Science (1911); reprinted in Social Horizons, July 1943, pp. 16-20, and also as chapter 8 in this book. R. F. Irvine, The Place of the Social Sciences in a Modern University, Angus & Robertson, Sydney, 1914, p. 18. Anderson, ‘Sociology in Australia’, p. 16. Irvine, The Place of the Social Sciences, p. 8. F. W. Eggleston, ‘The Australian Democracy and its Economic Problems’, Economic Journal 25 (1915), p. 347. W. Harrison Moore, Memorandum to the Minister for Education in Victoria, University of Melbourne Registry Records 1916/347. R. F. Irvine, ‘National Organization and National Efficiency’, in National Efficiency [Victorian Railways Printing Branch], Melbourne, 1915, pp. 4-20. C. H. Northcott, Australian Social Development, Columbia University Press, New York, 1918, p. 33. Ibid, p. 272. T. Rowse, Australian Liberalism and National Character, Kibble Books, Malmsbury, Vic., 1978, pp. 43-52. See J. F. C. Harrison, Learning and Living 1790–1960, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1961. M. Atkinson, ‘Democracy and Efficiency’ in National Efficiency, pp. 28-9, 13. J. Zubrzycki (ed.), The Teaching of Sociology in Australia and New Zealand, Cheshire, Melbourne, 1971, p. 1. F. Anderson, ‘The Pan-Pacific Scientific Congress and the Study of Sociology’, Australasian Journal of Psychology and Philosophy I, 3 (1923), p. 161. C. D. Goodwin, Economic Enquiry in Australia, Duke University Press, Durham, NC, 1966, p. 580. See also J. A. La Nauze, Political Economy in Australia, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1949. Atkinson to D. B. Copland, 24 March 1918. Copland Papers Ms 3800, National Library of Australia (NLA). W. K. Hancock, Country and Calling, Faber, London, 1954, p. 70. M. Atkinson, The New Social Order, WEA, Sydney, 1919, p. 16. Ibid, p. 274. Registry Records, 1922/433. J. A. Gunn, Social Progress, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1923. J. A. Gunn, Livelihood, Massina, Melbourne, 1927. University of Melbourne Calendar 1923, pp. 559-60; N. D. Harper, Lecture Notes from Gunn’s Sociology Courses 1925-26. I am grateful to the late Professor Harper for having made these available. A. H. Martin to Registrar, 15 January 1925, Registry Records 1925/408. See also Anderson, ‘The Pan Pacific Scientific Congress’, pp. 159-61. J. A. Gunn’s Report to Boyce Gibson Committee, Registry Records, 29 May 1925/408. H. Heaton, review in American Economic Review 17 (1927), p. 686; H. Sanderson Furniss, review in Economic Journal 37 (1927), pp. 643-4; F. A. Bland, review in Australian Highway (10 August 1927), p. 111. D. B. Copland to Registrar, 31 July 1925, Registry Records 1925/408. Copland to G. L. Wood, 31 August 1926, Copland Papers, NLA.
Social Scientists as Intellectuals 29. D. B. Copland, Studies in Economics and Social Science, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne 1927, pp. 33, 36. 30. Report of the Committee of the Faculty of Arts on Sociology 1929, Registry Records, 1929/561. 31. Copland to G. V. Portus, 3 April 1929, Copland Papers, NLA. 32. W. Osmond, ‘Australianism and the Sociologist’, paper given to SAANZ Conference, August 1972. 33. Gunn, Social Progress, p. 15. 34. H. Heaton, ‘The Basic Wage Principle in Australian Wages Regulation’, Economic Journal 32 (Sept. 192 I), pp. 309- 19; and ‘The Taxation of Unimproved Value of Land in Australia’, Quarterly Journal of Economics 39 (1925), pp. 410-49. 35. Mercury (Hobart), 25 August 1915. 36. Ibid., editorials of 17 April 1915 and 16 September 1915. 37. Advertiser (Adelaide), 23 June 1919. 38. H. Heaton, ‘Australia and the League of Nations’, Australian Highway 1, 3 (1919), pp. 10–11. 39. Registrar (South Australia), 16 and 17 March 1920. 40. Advertiser, 28 November 1922. 41. Minutes of Board of Commercial Studies, University of Adelaide, 29 May 1925; University of Adelaide Central Files, Docket no. 117, 1925. 42. South Australian Worker, 26 June 1925. 43. South Australian Parliamentary Debates, F. W. Birrell, 6 August 1925, p. 335. 44. Mayo’s ideas are discussed more fully in H. Bourke, ‘Industrial Unrest as Social Pathology: the Australian Writings of Elton Mayo’, Historical Studies 20 (Oct. 1982), pp. 217-33. For a biography of Mayo, see R. C. S. Trahair, The Humanist Temper, Transaction Books, New Brunswick, 1984. 45. E. Mayo, Democracy and Freedom, Macmillan, Melbourne, 1919, p. 60. 46. E. Mayo, ‘The Will of the People’, Industrial Australian and Mining Standard, 26 January 1922, p. 160. Mayo elaborated his ideas through five articles in the Industrial Australian and Mining Standard, Jan.-Feb. 1922. 47. E. Mayo, ‘The Australian Political Consciousness’, in M. Atkinson (ed.), Australia: Economic and Political Studies, Macmillan, Melbourne, 1920, p. 144. 48. Apart from Mayo’s own two books, which discuss his work at Hawthorne, the standard accounts are found in F. Roethlisberger and W. J. Dickson, Management and the Worker, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1939, and T. North Whitehead, The Industrial Worker, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1938. For a review see H. A. Landsberger, Hawthorne Revisited, Cornell University Press, New York, 1958. 49. Irvine, ‘National Organization and National Efficiency’, p. 19. 50. This chapter draws on the author’s previously published work, particularly ‘Sociology and the Social Sciences in Australia, 1912–1928’, Australian and New Zealand Journal of Sociology 17, 1 (March 1981); and ‘Intellectuals for Export’, Australian Cultural History 3 (1984). Permission to republish some of these materials in revised form is gratefully acknowledged.
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13 The Social Survey and the Puzzle of Australian Sociology GRAEME DAVISON (2003)*
S
ociology was a late arrival on the Australian academic scene. But its appearance had been preceded, and possibly delayed, by the vitality of an earlier tradition of social investigation— Christian, amateur, empirical, often paternalistic: the social survey. This chapter examines the origins of the survey tradition and its influence on Australian social research especially in the middle decades of the twentieth century, before its relative decline in the 1970s. Social surveys were an important phase in the political education of successive generations of idealistic middle-class youth, a powerful instrument of social reform and publicity, a vehicle for academic empire-building, and a significant conduit for the exchange of expertise between the universities and the wider community. Any account of the history of sociology in Australia begins, almost inevitably, with the puzzle of its long-delayed emergence. Not until the 1960s, four decades after the foundation of the Chicago School, and a decade and a half after the arrival of sociology in British universities, did sociology become institutionalised in Australian universities. Its arrival had been long anticipated but often postponed. As early as 1911 Sydney’s Professor of Philosophy, Francis Anderson, had addressed the Australian and New Zealand Association for the Advancement of Science with a plea for the introduction of courses in sociology. He deplored the ‘excessive adherence to tradition’ that had caused Australian universities, like their English counterparts, to leave this important new branch of science to the ‘outsider, the freelance, the popular Press’. ‘Is this island continent, set far apart in southern seas, to be also intellectually remote, as far as its universities are concerned, from one of the greatest living interests which are exciting
*
Source: Davison, G. (2003) ‘The Social Survey and the Puzzle of Australian Sociology’, Australian Historical Studies, vol. 34, no. 121, pp. 139-62.
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Histories of Australian Sociology older civilisations? … We are engaged in the making of a nation, a new nation. Surely after a hundred years of nation-building, the time has come when the national governments should provide in the national universities for the teaching of the science of society.’1 Sociology, in Anderson’s vision, was a study both theoretical and empirical, objective and useful. Spencer and Marx, he noted, had won intellectual respect outside the universities long before they were studied within. Sociology would not itself ‘provide a gospel of social regeneration’, although it might have an influence upon ‘practice’. Its primary concern, however, was scientific rather than ameliorative; it was concerned ‘with the facts and the explanation of the facts’. The main fact to be explained was simply ‘society itself, its genesis and growth, and the laws by which it lives and moves and has its being’. A Scottish idealist and liberal Christian, Anderson was a lonely Australian prophet of intellectual and philanthropic ideals that had played a formative role in the foundation of sociology in other parts of the English-speaking world. With his wife, the noted feminist Maybanke Anderson, he was among the coterie of socially progressive academics who had recently founded the University of Sydney Settlement as a means of spreading sweetness and light among the poor of Surry Hills and Woolloomooloo.2 In Britain and the United States the acceptance of sociology in the academy had been prepared by an earlier movement of young university men and women from Oxford into the slums of the East End, and from Hyde Park into the immigrant ghetto of Chicago’s West Side. Toynbee Hall, the university settlement founded by Rev. Samuel Barnett in Whitechapel in 1884, became the prototype for similar experiments in social reform and social investigation on both sides of the Atlantic.3 Most of the volunteer investigators recruited by Charles Booth in his massive social survey of London had met in Toynbee Hall. Jane Addams, founder of Hull House, the first of the American settlement houses, had caught the idea when she visited the Barnetts in 1888 and followed Booth’s example in publishing Hull House Maps and Papers, the first of the American social surveys, in 1895.4 In the early twentieth century another philanthropic businessman, Seebohm Rowntree, had conducted an influential study of poverty in York, an example which was followed on the other side of the Atlantic by the Pittsburgh Survey and a host of others.5 The social survey—a reconnaissance of the social landscape— assumes a lofty vantage point and a kind of holistic vision. It was 172
The Social Survey and the Puzzle of Australian Sociology through the act of surveillance, Foucault reminds us, that people were constituted as subjects of charity, supervision, treatment or policing.6 Mapping, counting, naming, classifying are among its standard techniques. The social survey draws inspiration from other kinds of surveys: the military ordnance survey, the geological survey, the botanical survey, but most of all, perhaps, from an almost-forgotten tradition of geographical and social description best exemplified by Sir John Sinclair’s famous Statistical Account of Scotland (1791-99).7 This may have been the model for the paradigm urban social survey, The Christian and Civic Economy of Large Towns, carried out by the Glasgow clergyman Thomas Chalmers in 1821-26. Chalmers’ book was written in the midst of a social crisis, as the numbers of urban poor multiplied under the combined impact of demobilisation after the Napoleonic Wars and the migration of crofters dispossessed by the Highland Clearances. As a parochial minister, Chalmers feared that the collapse of the system of parochial poor relief presaged the total breakdown of moral order in the city. A combination of pastoral concern and moral anxiety shaped the inquiries of many of Chalmers’ followers in the social survey tradition.8 The social settlement and the social survey became formative experiences in the lives of many of the young middle-class men and women who passed from the secluded world of the academy to the social tumult of the late nineteenth-century metropolis. In discovering ‘how the other half lived’, they came to reflect more profoundly on how their own half lived and believed. In the process, the religious impulses of youth were transformed into the professional altruism of the social worker, the social administrator, the politician, and the sociologist.9 Social investigation was an activity that accommodated both the scientific desire for knowledge and the need for personal understanding, the egoistic drive for individual self-advancement and the altruistic imperative of reform. These impulses were finely balanced in the origins of the settlement movement, although, as one of its founders noted, the scientific and egoistic impulses gradually won out. Jane Addams observed that in the 1890s young people were likely to join a settlement saying, ‘We must do something about the social disorder’. But a decade later they came, with just as much enthusiasm, saying, ‘We want to investigate something’.10 This passion for social enquiry among the children of an anxious Protestant middle class gave academic sociology its original impetus and a good part of its clientele. Many of the first generation of teachers and students in the Chicago School had been reared in liberal 173
Histories of Australian Sociology Protestant households, educated in Sunday Schools and seminaries and became converts to the Social Gospel before they surrendered to the gospel of Social Science.11 With the zeal of that second conversion, they would later deride what one of them, the Chicago sociologist Robert Park, dubbed the ‘Sob Sister School of Sociology’.12 Park had himself come to sociology after a long apprenticeship as muckraking journalist and social reformer. He was a life-long member of the Disciples of Christ and a powerful backstage influence in Chicago reform movements. Yet in the classroom he insistently preached the ideal of scientific objectivity and contrasted the claims of academic sociology with what he portrayed as the sentimental and unscientific methods of charity workers and other, mainly female, reformers, such as Jane Addams and Edith Abbott, head of Chicago’s School of Social Service Administration.13 Park recognised in the social survey an enterprise that was itself of high sociological interest. From 1916 to the mid-1920s, he offered a lecture course on the Social Survey in which he reviewed previous examples of the survey, from Le Play and Booth to C. J. Galpin’s rural surveys and Charles Kellogg’s Pittsburgh Survey. Social surveying, he noted, had assumed something of the character of a ‘sociological movement’, especially in the United States, where it had become even more popular than in England. What did this movement signify? he wondered. It reflected an ‘increasing disposition of men to conduct their common life on a basis of fact rather than doctrine’, but gained its special strength from the pragmatism that was the most marked tendency of contemporary American intellectual life. In this sense ‘pragmatic’ would mean that a fact is never quite a fact merely because it is investigated and recorded. It only becomes a fact in the fullest sense of the term when it is delivered and delivered to the person to whom it makes a difference. This is what the survey seeks to do. It seeks to get and deliver the facts; that is, to publish them in such a way as to get results.14 The social survey movement had peaked in the United States in the mid-1920s when almost 200 surveys a year were recorded by the Russell Sage Foundation.15 By the 1930s it was increasingly supplanted by quantitative, lavishly-funded social science of the kind that Park and his colleague Ernest Burgess were busily institutionalising at the University of Chicago. In standard histories of sociology, the social survey was often portrayed as antediluvian, a 174
The Social Survey and the Puzzle of Australian Sociology province of the amateur, the preacher, the pre-scientific dabbler. But, as historians are now realising, it was much less a-theoretical and much more formative, both personally and intellectually, than the self-justifying narratives of the early sociologists suggested.16 The social survey was a paradigm grounded in a framework of belief and action that was as much theological as scientific. For many of its practitioners it formed part of an intellectual apprenticeship to careers that ultimately drew them far from the religious and ethical outlook of their youth. Yet its influence was pervasive and profound. The social survey was not so much the wicked stepmother of sociology, as its unacknowledged parent. The Late Arrival The social survey tradition was planted early in Australia, but failed to take root. Between 1854 and 1858, the future economist William Stanley Jevons had briefly resided in Australia, as an assayer at the Sydney Mint. Born into a well-to-do Liverpool Unitarian family—he was a distant cousin of Charles Booth—Jevons was a bearer of the scientific and reform impulses that led to the first generation of social surveys, those conducted in the 1830s and 40s by the statistical societies in English industrial towns. In Sydney, he carried out a remarkable pioneering social survey of the town that anticipates conceptually and methodologically many of the features of the more ambitious surveys conducted a generation later by Booth and Rowntree.17 But in 1859 Jevons returned to Britain, where he changed intellectual course; his youthful experiment in social investigation bore no fruit in Australia, where it was unknown until the late 1920s. Why did Jevons’s youthful experiment inspire no followers? Were social conditions in Australia simply so benign, and class differences so muted, that middle-class youth could find no challenge in discovering ‘how the other half lived’? In a perceptive study of the relative failure of social Christianity in late nineteenth-century Australian cities, Renate Howe observes the disbelieving response of young men from Toorak to the invitation of the English immigrant clergyman, Selwyn Hughes, in 1891 to come and spend a fortnight living among the poor of Fitzroy. Was it that they had not heard of English social experiments like Toynbee Hall? Hughes wondered. Or were young Australians made of a different moral fibre? The answer, Howe suggests, was a little of both. Despite the efforts of leaders like 175
Histories of Australian Sociology Hughes, Charles Strong and E. H. Sugden, the temper of colonial churchmanship was predominantly conservative rather than liberal. The social contrasts of the Australian city were not dramatic enough to stir the moral imagination of middle-class youth who were more likely to find an outlet for their idealism on the foreign mission field, or—like the young Presbyterian clergyman John Flynn, who briefly served among the poor of Montague (South Melbourne)—in the remote Outback.18 Not until the 1930s, Howe argues, did Australian cities become complex and troubled enough to inspire moral reformers, such as the Methodist slum reformer, Oswald Barnett, to embark on systematic social inquiries. Howe persuasively accounts for the limitations of the Protestant reform movement, but there may have been other reasons for the delayed emergence of the social survey. In Britain and the United States, social investigation was often the personal project of a wealthy philanthropist, such as Booth or Rowntree, or was sponsored, like many American surveys, by foundations or committees of civicminded businessmen. In Australia, by contrast, social enquiry, like social welfare, was usually regarded as matter for the state. The royal commission, the select committee, the inspector’s report, the bureaucratic inquest often fulfilled the investigative role played elsewhere by the amateur social investigator. Historians have often noted the weakness of philanthropic effort in Australia relative to the United States.19 For the first third of the twentieth century, there simply were no large philanthropic agencies able to sponsor large-scale social enquiry. Sometimes, it is true, the bureaucrats produced social analyses of a very high order; consider the social statistics of Timothy Coghlan, the large-scale government commissions into the Basic Wage or the housing enquiries conducted by the Victorian government, but their style—impersonal, factual, bureaucratic—was not a promising foundation for a more reflective sociology. Despite these inhibiting influences, there was a moment, just before the First World War, when it seemed that Francis Anderson’s plea for the introduction of sociology to Australian universities might have succeeded. Advocates could point to the strong tradition of social philosophy in late colonial society represented by the names of Hearn, Syme, Pearson and Alexander Sutherland.20 Both the University of Melbourne and the University of Queensland briefly contemplated the foundation of chairs or courses in sociology; yet the proposals were 176
The Social Survey and the Puzzle of Australian Sociology rejected, apparently for financial reasons. The cause was not revived until the early 1940s.21 Why? The most likely explanation was the dominance throughout the interwar period of two powerful competing paradigms for the resolution of national problems: eugenics and economics. The most imminent threat to Australia’s future, many contemporaries believed, lay not in social dislocation but in ‘race suicide’. Declining middle-class birth rates and increasing rates of physical and mental degeneration among the urban poor seemed to presage a national catastrophe. Heightened international tensions and burgeoning nationalism at home made Australians especially receptive to eugenic ideas.22 Much of the reforming zeal that elsewhere flowed into humanitarian social enquiry and reform was diverted into investigations more biological and medical than social. Idealistic young professionals who might otherwise have carried out social surveys and community studies devoted their careers to anthropometric studies of young Australians’ body weights and chest expansion, or to tracking down ‘mental and moral defectives’.23 An even more potent rival to sociology was a resurgent discipline of economics. From his appointment in 1924 as foundation Professor of Commerce at the University of Melbourne, Douglas Copland embarked on an energetic campaign to entrench economics as the scientific basis of Australian public policy. He took the lead in establishing the Economic Society of Australia (1925) and the professional journal, the Economic Record. With support from the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Foundation, he initiated an ambitious program of economic research in the quantitative style favoured by the foundation and captured the interest of national politicians. All the while, as Helen Bourke has shown, Copland was vigorously repelling the rival claims of sociology, a study he dismissed as a vague ‘flotsam and jetsam of everything’.24 By the end of the 1920s, the economists had already won out, and in the depression of the 1930s, when economic issues dominated national concerns, they reinforced their dominance.25 The Survey in Post-war Reconstruction It was not until the early years of the Second World War that Australia fully embraced the social survey, but then it did so with unprecedented enthusiasm. Between 1941 and 1945 researchers inside 177
Histories of Australian Sociology and outside the universities initiated social surveys of wartime morale in New South Wales, housing and poverty in Melbourne, wheat farming in the Mallee and Wimmera, country towns in Victoria, coalmining communities in the Hunter Valley and educational opportunities in New South Wales gaols. In his lectures Robert Park distinguished between several different styles of social survey: the ‘muckraker’ or sensational journalist who seeks to rouse public indignation over social evils, the ‘expert’ who seeks to diagnose and solve them, and the ‘investigator’ who studies from a strictly scientific point of view. In the early 1940s the Australian social survey was in transition, as the investigators and experts asserted themselves over the muckrakers. Oswald Barnett, the Methodist accountant whose public speaking and journalism led to the establishment of the 1937 Victorian Slum Abolition Board, might be characterised as a combination of the muckraker and the expert. Barnett had been led into the slum campaign after earlier campaigns against drinking, smoking and child neglect, and his writings exhibit an eclectic blend of old-fashioned Methodist moralism, eugenics and under-consumptionist economics. His 1934 University of Melbourne M.Comm thesis, an abridgment of which was published as a pamphlet, The Unsuspected Slums, was designed above all to rouse public indignation about the moral dangers suffered by slum dwellers, especially children. The 1937 Slum Abolition Board report, which he largely wrote, caused a sensation by publishing the names of the largest slum landlords, but also employed the methods of Charles Booth’s famous survey of London to classify and map the main slum neighbourhoods.26 Was the report a publicity document or a scientific investigation? an interviewer asked him in old age. ‘It was both,’ Barnett replied. ‘All the work I’ve ever done I’ve tried to put on a scientific basis, but with publicity to follow.’27 Barnett’s ally in the anti-slum crusade, Father G. K. Tucker, founder of the Brotherhood of St Laurence, adopted a similarly pragmatic approach to the social survey. Like the American settlement movement, the Brotherhood had appealed strongly to the idealism of Christian youth eager to serve the urban poor, although under Tucker’s leadership, it assumed the Anglo-Catholic form of a monastic order of celibate priests and brothers.28 In 1942 Tucker secured the financial support of the Church of England Men’s Society for a social survey of conditions among unemployed single men in the slum areas of Melbourne. The objective was not to investigate a problem so much as to provide authority for what Tucker himself 178
The Social Survey and the Puzzle of Australian Sociology already claimed to know. ‘Often the church has been pushed aside in matters of social reform because of its lack of authentic first-hand information,’ he noted.29 ‘If I said there was hundreds of [poor] people, well, that’s rather vague, isn’t it? … If someone will come and tackle you, you want to know. "Give us some details, Father Tucker.” But of course I couldn’t do it. Until then.’30 Tucker engaged John (‘Jock’) Reeves, a final-year Economics student at the University of Melbourne and a member of the Student Christian Movement, to carry out the study. Reeves resided for the time being at the Brotherhood’s Hostel in Fitzroy and reported regularly to his Anglican sponsors in the suburbs. Underlying the Brotherhood’s approach, and distinguishing it from some other ventures in Christian philanthropy, was its ‘universal perspective’, a belief that ‘all aspects of man’s life are interdependent’ and that social problems must be tackled holistically rather than separately. Reeves’s enquiries ranged widely—touching on housing, juvenile delinquency, prostitution, liquor consumption and unemployment—and his approach to questions of social causation, like Barnett’s, was eclectic rather than critical. The main publication to issue from the venture, a pamphlet entitled Housing the Forgotten Tenth (1944), focused on the intractable issue of the so-called ‘problem tenant’, the ‘sediment of unregenerates, incorrigibles, [and] unemployables’ who seemingly resisted all forms of rehabilitation and environmental improvement. How should these social outcasts be redeemed? Were they products of heredity or environment? Would full employment and better housing rehabilitate them, or was a certain amount of ‘coercive authority’ required?31 These dilemmas pervaded the thinking of liberal Christians in the late 1930s and 40s. They gave the social survey movement both its moral rationale and its psychological impetus. The war against Hitler, in which liberal democrats made common cause with communists, gave new point to these dilemmas. The program for post-war reconstruction launched by the allied governments embodied a social contract through which the privations of war were to be compensated by promises of peacetime betterment. In 1941 the Commonwealth government commissioned A. P. Elkin, Professor of Anthropology at the University of Sydney, to undertake a survey of civilian morale. It was concerned that, even as the Japanese were threatening Australia’s northern frontier, many Australians were apathetic towards the war effort. Recruitment into the armed forces 179
Histories of Australian Sociology lagged behind requirements and subscriptions to war loans were at barely half the level of the previous world war. Elkin recruited some twenty observers, trained in social anthropology, to make observations, carry out interviews and administer questionnaires about people’s attitudes to the war effort, the influence of public media such as radio and newspapers, and the effects of propaganda in both urban and rural New South Wales. In attempting to hold up a mirror to the Australian people, Elkin and his colleagues were following in the path pioneered in the late 1930s by Mass Observation, the remarkable British social survey movement established by Tom Harrison and Charles Madge.32 Elkin was more than a disinterested spectator of the national psyche; his task, as a kind of pastoral adviser to the government, was to ‘diagnose’ the cause and prescribe the cure of a national malaise. His survey findings led him to contest the assumption that the Australian people were simply ‘apathetic’. Often their apathy disguised feelings of uncertainty, isolation, hostility and disappointment, sometimes carried over from the depression years. ‘What is sometimes interpreted as apathy is a cloaked resentment against the failure of those who said they had built a better world but had not done so.’ Some people questioned the claims of liberal democracy to build a better future and expressed yearnings for a ‘real leader’ who could unify the country. Elkin’s analysis confirmed a serious threat of social disintegration. Democracy, he concluded, must be made into a social and ‘spiritual’—as well as a political—ideal. The threat of social disintegration called for social as well as political measures and foreshadowed a continuing program of social research. ‘It should be obvious that all appeals and calls to national effort … should be accompanied by soundly conducted social surveys of people’s reactions and opinions.’33 In June 1942, six months after the publication of his survey on morale and six months before the formation of the Ministry of Postwar Reconstruction, Elkin took the lead in forming an Australian Institute of Sociology. The main objects of the Institute were: 1. To promote a scientific study of society and its problems and to facilitate the study of sociology and to promote the exchange of information, knowledge and thought on sociological questions. 2. To collect, compile, and correlate data of assistance in reaching conclusions regarding the nature, composition and trends of social life and the problems arising therefrom.34 180
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In an address to its inaugural meeting, Elkin recalled Francis Anderson’s plea, thirty years before, for the foundation of a chair of sociology and alluded to the new circumstances that had revived that cause. ‘The present is a period when we especially need sociological knowledge and the scientific attitudes of calmness and patience. Totalitarian war is causing great changes in our social structure and life as well as in individual attitudes … It is the duty of all social scientists to observe and study the causes of change now and the process of change as the months go by, both because of the scientific opportunity and also because the knowledge so gained may be of inestimable importance in the re-ordering of society in the not far distant future.’35 The formation of the Institute marks a watershed in the history of Australian sociology. It divided the era of the muckraker from that of the ‘trained social scientist’. It brought sociology out from under the aegis of the churches and charities and placed it under the monitorial gaze of the university professor. Instead of ad hoc and unsystematic enquiries, it proposed a coordinated assault on the social problems of the day. By 1945 Elkin had formed five committees to conduct surveys of family life, education, religion, medicine and social research.36 Yet, under the scientific forms of an institute, much of the flavour of social Christianity persisted. Elkin, himself an Anglican clergyman, unified the roles of the preacher and the man of science. In his 1943 pamphlet, Changes that Are Upon Us, the scientist no sooner defined the research problem than the preacher challenged his followers to solve it: … the most important and necessary research project is to survey and analyse all evidence, human as well as impersonal, to determine, firstly, whether the abolition of slums, security of useful work and the enjoyment of the fruits of one’s labours, are possible and likely under any form of capitalism; and, secondly, whether under permanent state control, initiative and the urge to invent and pioneer would be thwarted or just disappear. ‘Change is upon us’; gird your loins, ye social scientists, dig deep, and tell us, for our happiness depends thereon.37 The leadership of the Institute included both liberals and collectivists, theists and secularists. Of the twenty members of its Board in 1943, 181
Histories of Australian Sociology seven were clergymen, one a liberal rabbi and several of the others, including Richard Boyer and Samuel Wadham, the Victorian VicePresident, were prominent churchmen. (Interestingly, neither Barnett nor Tucker was among them). Christian Jollie Smith, daughter of a Presbyterian minister, radical lawyer and founding member of the Communist party, was treasurer, and Lloyd Ross, former union official, newly appointed Director of Public Relations for the Department of Postwar Reconstruction and an outspoken socialist, was a member of the Council.38 In a pattern often repeated in the organisation of other social surveys, most of the board positions were occupied by prominent men, most of the secretarial and administrative ones by women. The foundation of the Institute, according to Elkin’s biographer, Tigger Wise, exemplifies the energetic self-promotion and empirebuilding she discerns as a dominating feature of his personality.39 She recognises the undeniable elements of vanity and steely ambition in Elkin’s character, and how his priestly preoccupation with issues of social integration subjugated Aboriginal identity.40 But she fails, I think, to acknowledge his positive influence in overcoming the forces that had so far retarded the growth of sociology. Like his American counterpart, Robert Park, Elkin was an outspoken opponent of racism and social Darwinism. Australians, he observed in 1945, had helped defeat the ‘racial doctrines’ of Hitler, but they ignored the racism practised in their own midst. This was evident, not only in the prejudice towards Aborigines and Negroes, but in ‘the tendency to deduce that people in the slums are predestined biologically to be there’.41 Post-war reconstruction was certainly a godsent opportunity for social scientists, the first significant source of government patronage for sociological research. But while Elkin adroitly used it to build his academic empire, he also helped to advance the careers of several promising younger social scientists, including Caroline Kelly, Jean Craig (Martin) and a young Methodist minister, Rev. Alan Walker. Walker had returned to New South Wales in 1939 after ministering for several years in the United Kingdom, where he came under the influence of the two dominating figures in English Methodism, the evangelistic William Sangster, and the social gospeller and pacifist, Donald Soper. Walker drew inspiration from both, combining throughout his career the twin causes of evangelical conversion and social reform. In England his gifts as a preacher had already marked him out as a young man of promise and, on his return, he had 182
The Social Survey and the Puzzle of Australian Sociology confidently expected appointment to a leading city church, such as the Wesley Central Mission. But the Methodist Conference—perhaps troubled by his pacifism—decided otherwise, sending him instead to the depressed coal mining town of Cessnock. In his recent biography, Don Wright presents this as a time of spiritual crisis when Walker’s personal ambitions for service in a larger sphere contended with his Christian obligation to serve his needy, but often unresponsive, parishioners. For a time he was almost overcome by a ‘flood of bitterness and doubt’.42 His friend Robert Staines, a board member of Elkin’s Institute, suggested that higher studies might enhance his professional prospects. He enrolled as an MA student under Elkin’s supervision and began work on a social survey of Cessnock, which he later published under the title, Coaltown. For Walker, as for many other young professionals, the social survey was a means of resolving the tension between egoism and altruism, the drive to personal advancement and the call to selfless service. While disguising his own clerical role, Walker nevertheless approached his subject from the lofty standpoint of a kindly yet sometimes stern pastor of the flock. He reviewed in turn the family, economic, religious, political, community and leisure life of Cessnock, appraising the temper of social relations and community morale.43 Like Elkin, he finds a society still recovering from the shocks of the depression (Cessnock was the site of the notorious 1929 Rothbury incident when police fired on striking miners), preoccupied with material survival, isolated from other towns, and largely alienated from community institutions, including the church. Like his supervisor Elkin, with whom he shared similar views on the challenge to democracy, Walker writes as a kind of social diagnostician reporting (to whom?) on the health of the body politic. Perhaps the most ambitious social survey of the war years was launched, apparently without Elkin’s knowledge or involvement, by a group of Melbourne economists led by a recently-arrived Englishman, Wilfrid Prest. Prest was born in Seebohm Rowntree’s York, educated at Leeds University and held appointments in Manchester and St Andrews before being appointed to the University of Melbourne in 1938. Booth’s and Rowntree’s classic surveys were part of his student culture and during his undergraduate years, then as a graduate student and young lecturer, the second-generation surveys of Merseyside (1929-31), London (1930-5) and York (1941) also appeared. Arriving in Melbourne he was surprised to find that scientific social surveys were almost unknown and, in conversation with his colleagues, 183
Histories of Australian Sociology including Richard Downing, who had recently returned from Cambridge, the idea of a comprehensive survey of the incomes and housing of the people of Melbourne gradually took shape. By 1942 Prest had secured financial support from the Ministry for Postwar Reconstruction, the University and a group of Melbourne businessmen. ‘This is the first occasion on which a complete survey has been made of living conditions in any Australian city and we believe that our results will be particularly valuable in planning the new social order that it is hoped to build after the war’, Prest explained.44 Compared with the moralising of Barnett and Tucker, or even with Elkin’s scientific probing of civil morale, the Melbourne survey is notable mainly for the rigour of its statistical methods and its austerely economic approach. In other writings Prest displayed a characteristic caution towards the aspirations of post-war planners to adapt wartime methods of control to peacetime problems and the survey was designed, one suspects, to bring the cold reality of fact to the airy theorising of the planners.45 He directed the fieldwork program from on high, leaving the actual interviews to a team of young middle-class women, mostly recent arts graduates, employed on a piecework basis. Finding their way by train or tram, sometimes through the blackout, to distant and unfamiliar corners of the city, knocking at the doors of strangers, inspecting their bathrooms and backyards, and listening to their complaints about the landlord or their difficulties living on soldier’s pay, they gained vivid, and sometimes unsettling, insights into how the other half lived. It was ‘the most impressive political education I ever had in my whole life’, one of the investigators, Gwynneth Dow, recalled.46 Some of the interviewers, like Pat Counihan and Margaret Milner, were Communists or fellow-travellers, who sometimes took the opportunity in their comments on the completed questionnaires to reflect back a more complex social reality than could be summarised in the statisticians’ boxes. Prest was sufficiently committed to the project to turn down invitations to join his fellow economists in the wartime administration in Canberra; but the sheer scale of the enterprise, a one-in-thirty survey of Melbourne households, was daunting and the rate of progress, especially in analysing results, was slow. Prest and Donald Cochrane, who undertook a special study of metropolitan transport, published papers on some facets of the study, but a more comprehensive report did not appear until 1952, and then only as a limited circulation monograph. By then, as Prest humbly 184
The Social Survey and the Puzzle of Australian Sociology admitted, the results were more valuable as a historical record of the effects of war than for any current purpose. Prest and his colleagues had attempted to lift the art of the social survey to a new plane of scientific rigour, but in purging it of the moralism of the muckraker and the presumption of the expert, they had also lost the sense of urgency that first inspired the debates over post-war reconstruction. It was not the first time that a massive social survey, conceived in a moment of passion, was delivered long after that passion had been spent. Charles Booth’s mammoth survey of London originated in the 1880s debate over ‘Outcast London’, but had lost its reforming purpose long before the last of the seventeen volumes appeared in 1903. Robert Park’s massive survey of race relations on the West Coast of America employed a full-time fieldworker for several years without producing a single volume.47 From the investigators’ point of view, it was perhaps the journey that mattered, rather than the arrival. The dilemmas the social survey was intended to confront were often intractable, rooted as much in the riven personalities of the investigators as the society whose ills they hoped to cure. The process of investigation, it seems, was often designed as much to provide an outlet for the anxieties of the investigator as to solve a social problem. The city, especially the slum, was the standard subject for survey research, yet perhaps the most impressive body of survey research to emerge from the University of Melbourne in the 1940s was inspired by agricultural scientists concerned with the problems of the bush. The drought of the early 1940s was the climax of the most severe rural crisis since the 1890s. Samuel Wadham, English-born and Cambridge-educated Professor of Agriculture, had been an astute commentator on Australian rural issues since his appointment to the chair in 1926. His prolific newspaper articles and radio broadcasts cover an astonishing range of topics, from soil erosion to tractor maintenance and from farm management to decentralisation. By training he was a biologist, but as the shocks of the great depression convulsed rural Australia, he found himself drawn to reflect on the economics, and eventually on the sociology, of rural life. In a 1944 ABC broadcast, he observed: It appears that my continuous effort to understand the problems of agriculture have [sic] led me from straightout scientific problems of plants, animals, soils and climate, through local economic problems to those of
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Histories of Australian Sociology the international sphere and finally to a realisation of the need for the more human aspect of rural sociology.48 By the time he wrote these words Wadham was closely engaged in the work of the Rural Reconstruction Commission, the large-scale enquiry established under the Ministry of Postwar Reconstruction, to develop remedies for the problems of the countryside. He knew from long experience in agricultural extension that rural change was as much a matter of attitudes as economics. ‘When trouble comes and some measure of reconstruction is necessary, the mental attitude of the farmers is the deciding factor … ‘49 Wadham’s concern with ‘the more human aspect’ was reinforced by his intensely practical Christianity. ‘It doesn’t seem to me to be satisfactory for the church merely to stand for good living and not at the same time to be leading the movement for those reforms which will give people a chance of living better lives.’ Like other disciples of the Social Gospel, Wadham upheld a non-Marxist ideal of social integration based upon a sense of moral responsibility and mutual dependence. ‘We may not be our brother’s keepers, but we have some responsibility towards him and his opportunity of having a full life.’50 In 1937 two American sociologists J. H. Kolb, from the school of rural sociology at Wisconsin, and Edmund Brunner, from Columbia University in New York, visited New Zealand to make a sociological study of the dairy industry. During a lull in his New Zealand research, Kolb made a flying visit to Melbourne where, as Wadham recalled, ‘some of us were greatly stimulated by his keenness and ability’.51 Kolb was the bearer of the influential tradition of rural surveys initiated at Wisconsin by another former preacher, C. J. Galpin, in his classic 1912 study, The Social Anatomy of an Agricultural Community. Kolb and Brunner were the co-authors of the most popular American textbook, A Study of Rural Society (1937). Wadham’s plan called for studies of both farming life and of the communities in which they were situated.52 Alan Holt, an agriculturalist temporarily seconded from the Victorian Lands Department, surveyed the wheat farms of the Wimmera and Mallee (1946). A visiting American, Maurice Rothberg, studied Gippsland dairy farming (1948), while another agriculturalist, Alan Macintyre, surveyed the fruit and viticulture region of Sunraysia (1948)53. Macintyre combined with his social worker wife Jean to complete the most ambitious survey, of Country Towns of Victoria (1944). The studies 186
The Social Survey and the Puzzle of Australian Sociology were supported by grants from the Danks Trust (established by a Methodist manufacturer), and industrialist Russell Grimwade as well as the Rural Reconstruction Commission. They are probably the most impressive products of the wartime social survey movement. Each broadly follows the style of the American surveys, working up from the ground, so to speak, through an analysis of land tenure, location, economics, transportation and movement, local services, religious and leisure life and attitudes, including attitudes to the war. The approach to sampling and questionnaire methodology is perhaps less rigorous than the Elkin and Prest surveys, but both studies reflect a shrewd and sympathetic appreciation of the farmer’s and town-dweller’s lot. In both studies, the Wisconsin influence is apparent, especially in the perceptive discussion of the relationship between the changing structure of agricultural production, new technologies such as the tractor, the car and the telephone, and the texture of rural and small town life. The Macintyres also acknowledged the influence of the Lynds’ Middletown, another product of the Wisconsin school, and Ruth Benedict’s Patterns of Culture. By later standards they were not sophisticated studies: in a review of Country Towns of Victoria, Jean Craig (Martin) expressed disappointment with the failure of the authors to make a systematic analysis of attitudes in terms of the social position of those expressing them.54 But similar criticisms could probably be made of almost any Australian survey of the period. From Class to Community The war had consolidated the position of the social survey as almost the standard form of sociological enquiry in Australia. It continued to be a popular form of enquiry both within and outside the academy. Indeed, one of the main reasons that established universities failed to found departments of sociology may have been the belief among many of their existing departments and disciplines that they each had too large a stake in the business of social research to allow the development of another competitor. At the University of Melbourne, for example, the faculty of Architecture, the Department of Social Work and the new Department of Psychology all sponsored social surveys during the 1950s.55 Like their predecessors outside the academy, these new social surveys still often drew upon the idealism of the undergraduates recruited to serve as volunteer interviewers. Doing a survey was often a conscious team-building exercise by new professors eager to develop a common research agenda among their 187
Histories of Australian Sociology younger staff, to exploit the research funding now gradually becoming available from private foundations, government bodies and the newly formed Social Science Research Council, and, last but not least, to demonstrate the public utility of their discipline. But the social surveys of the 1950s were markedly different in style and purpose from those of the war years. In his study of public policy debates among post-war intellectuals, Governing Prosperity, Nicholas Brown has shown how the Cold War era drew social enquiry away from the social experimentation of the war years and into an increasing preoccupation with issues of social conformity and integration.56 The planners of the 1940s had sought to make a world fit for heroes; those of the 1950s sought to make young Australians fit for the new world. Typical of these later surveys were the studies of social structure and personality in Melbourne and in a rural community carried out by the Psychology Department at the University of Melbourne between 1948 and 1951, and the social survey of adolescents in Sydney begun by the educationalist W. F. Connell and his students in 1951 and published six years later as Growing Up in an Australian City. This shift in perspective can be discerned in the career of Oscar Oeser, leader of the Melbourne study. A South African by birth, Oeser had taken doctorates in Germany and Cambridge, taught at the progressive school, Dartington Hall, lectured in psychology in St. Andrews and served with the British forces in Germany engaged in de-Nazification, before accepting the foundation chair of psychology in Melbourne (his wife’s home city) in 1946. He had already experimented with the social survey in St Andrews in the late 1930s where, with the financial support of the Pilgrim Trust and the cooperation of colleagues in economics and psychology, he had embarked on a study of the psychology of unemployment among jute workers in Dundee. Among his academic colleagues in St Andrews, accustomed to the Scottish tradition of non-experimental ‘mental philosophy’, the young lecturer’s excursions to the neighbouring industrial town were regarded askance. Oeser himself interviewed the local managers and church leaders, while the workers were questioned by paid interviewers, usually of working-class background themselves. This practice of ‘functional penetration’, as Oeser called it, was designed to minimise the distorting effects of class differences on the interview process; but it also marked a sharp break with the traditions of the older settlement house surveys, which were designed specifically to establish a bond of sympathy between rich interviewers 188
The Social Survey and the Puzzle of Australian Sociology and poor subjects.57 This interesting study was never completed. The data, coded and punched onto Hollerith cards, was unfortunately destroyed in the blitz.58 In 1949 the Social Sciences Research Council agreed with UNESCO to sponsor two community studies in Australia, one urban and one rural, as part of an international study of ‘communities and social tensions’. With its comparative context, lavish funding and high-level academic support, the study represented a new stage in survey research in Australia. Oeser’s reputation as a social psychologist and previous work on de-Nazification made him the obvious leader of the project, although his personal role in the field research turned out to be relatively limited. The key roles were played by two of his younger protégés: Sam Hammond, who led the urban study, and F. E. Emery, who conducted the rural study. As with earlier social surveys, the psychologists reviewed in turn the economic, family and institutional life of the community, but while their predecessors focused mainly on the adequacy of community facilities, the psychologists were more interested in ‘the individual’s adjustment to his social setting’. The study hypothesised a link between ‘tensions’ within individuals and families at the local level and tensions between communities and nations. It gathered some interesting data on Australians’ attitudes toward Jews and new immigrants, on child-rearing practices and political attitudes, but its findings often seem trite or capable of being interpreted only in a longitudinal or comparative context, which a single survey could not itself provide.59 Becoming more scientific, as the psychologists seemed intent upon doing, meant becoming more abstract, more theoretical, more attuned to international, rather than local, frames of reference. The knowledge they sought was not finally about this community, these people, but about adolescent socialisation, the roots of anti-semitism or some other general phenomenon. Surveying this community appealed most strongly to those, such as social workers and ministers, who also wanted to change it. As part of their training, social work students at the University of Melbourne often undertook placements with welfare agencies in the inner city. In 1952 the Department of Social Work invited Bertram Hutchinson, a staff member of the British Social Survey Department, to carry out a state-wide survey of old people.60 A few years later David Scott, Gerard Tucker’s favourite nephew and a former advertising executive, assumed responsibility for the research and 189
Histories of Australian Sociology public relations of the Brotherhood of St Laurence and expanded the organisation’s research activities. Beginning with modest studies of income support and service provision to low-income families in the inner suburbs, the Brotherhood gradually broadened its research agenda to embrace housing conditions, leisure patterns and more elusive questions of community relations.61 The most notable of these surveys were Leisure (1962), a study of people’s activities and attitudes in a new suburban Housing Commission estate, written by Scott himself with the social worker and Methodist clergyman Robert U’ren, and High Living (1967), a contrasting study of life in one of the Commission’s new high-rise housing estates, written by a team of social workers: Anne Stevenson, Elaine Martin and Judith O’Neill.62 Underlying each study, though cautiously expressed, was a concern with the impact of changing urban forms on the quality of family and neighbourhood relations. What effects did the isolation of the new housing estate, or the increased densities of the high-rise estate have on the relations between family member and neighbours? The ‘search for community’ had been a leitmotif in social surveys from Thomas Chalmers to the Chicago School. Post-war planners had often seen the building of ‘community centres’ as an important feature of new suburban estates. But ‘community’, Scott and U’ren began to recognise, was something that often meant more to the middle-class professionals who ministered to it than it did to the locals.63 ‘Perhaps some people have over-emphasised the importance of community life and under-estimated the ease with which it can be promoted’, they admitted, though reaffirming their conviction that ‘active participation in the areas of both family and community life’ was important for individuals and families.64 By 1967, when High Living appeared, the Brotherhood was beginning to reappraise both its mission and its research agenda. From the beginning Tucker had invited agnostics and Jews to participate in its work, while insisting always on its Christian philosophy and leadership. By the mid-1960s, however, when Peter Hollingworth became its chaplain, he noticed ‘something of a shift in our religious and ideological position’. The organisation had always recruited people on the basis of their professional skills rather than their beliefs, and sought to maintain a mutually enriching dialogue, but now, Hollingworth believed, ‘we are in danger of losing the necessary balance between the two groups’. If that happened, he feared, ‘certain negative and destructive forces are set loose’.65 The issue had been dramatised by the declining attendance at the Brotherhood’s annual 190
The Social Survey and the Puzzle of Australian Sociology Foundation Festival Service, but it was also implicit in the energetic internal debates over the Brotherhood’s research agenda. Should the organisation continue to sponsor original research on ‘the quality of people’s lives’ or focus more narrowly on factual research of a more limited kind with a specific policy orientation? The Brotherhood, some argued, was the ‘only organisation with a generalised concern for the quality of people’s lives which arises from its direct experience of palliative service’. But by now there were other researchers, including members of the newly founded departments of sociology at Monash and LaTrobe, who were better able to take up the broader social research agenda. By the late 1960s the Brotherhood had effectively withdrawn from open-ended social survey research and had decided to concentrate its resources on projects arising directly from its client base and services.66 In deciding to abandon large-scale surveys, the Brotherhood was surely influenced by the advent, just a few blocks away at the University of Melbourne, of the largest social survey project in the post-war period, the Henderson Poverty Survey. Ronald Henderson, leader of the Melbourne Poverty Survey of 1966-70, was a latter-day reincarnation of the spirit of Charles Booth and Seebohm Rowntree. Like them, he had been born into a family of wealthy industrialists— the same Dundee jute millers that Oscar Oeser had interviewed in the late 1930s. The Hendersons were devout Presbyterians and Ronald was deeply imbued with the ideals of Christian social duty that had animated other social investigators. As an only child he was educated by a governess, and later—rather unhappily—at a boarding school. At Cambridge he studied economics, later pursuing graduate studies on the economics of finance markets. By the early 1960s he was a senior fellow of Clare College, with good prospects of appointment to a chair in the United Kingdom. But in 1962, with the encouragement of Richard Downing, Ritchie Professor of Economics at the University of Melbourne, he accepted an appointment, as a reader, to direct a new Institute of Applied Economic Research.67 This decision, so surprising at first sight, had both personal and professional dimensions. The Hendersons had strong Australian connections (Ronald’s mother and wife were both Australian) and the opportunity to lead a new research institute in a fresh academic environment was attractive. More surprising, perhaps, in view of his own established academic interests, and the original aims of the Institute, was the decision to undertake a large-scale study of poverty in Australia. One day, it seems, he was walking across the campus 191
Histories of Australian Sociology with his colleague, John Harper, when he asked: ‘What is the equivalent of Rowntree on Poverty in Australia?’ There was none, Harper replied. ‘Then let’s start one’, said Henderson.68 Harper’s reply was not exactly accurate; only thirty years before one of their senior colleagues, another recent British immigrant, Wilfrid Prest, had made his own ambitious attempt to import Rowntree to the Antipodes. ‘It is always desirable to keep Wilfrid on side’, Downing warned Henderson69; and soon the Henderson survey was being described as an updating of Prest. Henderson was a shy man, not inclined to public expression of his feelings, but the idea of the poverty survey unquestionably touched a deep vein of Christian benevolence, and perhaps even deeper emotional chords, in his personality. He largely paid for the inquiry out of his own pocket, committing £6000, or more than a year’s professorial salary70, which was only later supplemented with funds from the Nuffield and Myer Foundations. Like Booth and Rowntree, Henderson seems to have been moved by a deep-seated sense of Christian obligation, a need to somehow compensate those less fortunate than himself. From Rowntree’s famous study, Henderson took the idea of a ‘poverty line’—or simple index of economic sufficiency. ‘It is bound to be rough and ready,’ he admitted, ‘but it will serve as Rowntree’s did’.71 In fact, even while the study was getting under way, the inheritors of the Rowntree tradition in Britain—sociologists like Richard Titmuss and Peter Townsend—were calling this approach into question. Jean Martin, who became one of Henderson’s assistants in the early stages of the enquiry, added some polite but probing questions to her summary of one of the first planning meetings. A study of poverty seems to me to require that one ask additional questions, and to involve a rather different focus for the whole investigation. I think it does require one to ask as well as questions about the adequacy of incomes, as above, further questions about why some people manage to live decently and not [in poverty] on inadequate incomes and why others, with theoretically adequate incomes, are in fact poverty-stricken. In other words, one would need to know about all the adjustments, expedients, extravagances, and extra-
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The Social Survey and the Puzzle of Australian Sociology family liabilities that are irrelevant to a study of the adequacy of incomes. 72 Martin’s sociological questions were quietly passed over; and the senior male economists proceeded to complete the study along strictly economic lines. It was not the first time in the history of the social survey that the men in charge ignored the wisdom of the female assistants. Compared with earlier surveys, People in Poverty, the main report of the Henderson enquiry, impresses by the rigour of its economic analysis. Yet in important ways it remains within the Christian philanthropic tradition that first inspired the social survey. In the concluding chapter on domiciliary services the author, Jean McCaughey, reminds the reader of Rowntree’s arguments in favour of a community-based welfare system. ‘There is a growing sense of responsibility for those in need’, she continued. A community-based welfare system would ‘enable the greatest possible number of individuals to act reciprocally, giving and receiving service for the well-being of the whole community’.73 The Decline of the Survey Tradition By the late 1960s ‘community’—the ideal that had sustained the social survey since its inception almost 150 years earlier—was itself now coming under closer sociological scrutiny. As the new departments of sociology sprang up, they often looked to their own localities as social laboratories, rather as Robert Park and his colleagues had done in Chicago half a century before. Tom Brennan, a veteran of earlier social surveys in Wolverhampton and Glasgow, made a study of Green Valley from his new base as Professor of Social Administration at the University of New South Wales. At LaTrobe two students of Jean Martin, Lyn Richards and Ken Dempsey, another clergyman turned sociologist, would maintain the social survey tradition. In 1966, shortly after the establishment of the Monash Department of Anthropology and Sociology, a group of civic leaders, mainly local clergy, social workers and teachers, requested a study of the nearby Housing Commission estate at Doveton on Melbourne’s eastern fringe. Two social workers, Lois Bryson and Faith Thompson, embarked on PhD theses on community relations and leadership in the area, which became in turn the basis of their joint monograph, An Australian Newtown (1972). In focusing on the local leaders as well as 193
Histories of Australian Sociology the led, An Australian Newtown marks a further important shift in the development of the social survey. ‘Community’—the object sought, often in vain, by so many social surveys—was more a figment of the middle-class professionals than a reality for the working-class residents. ‘It is clear’, they wrote, ‘that the clergy are not moving in response to public pressure in their efforts to create a community. Rather, their goal of trying to convert a working-class population into "a community" summarises the pervasive elements of their approach which makes them external care-takers in the district.’74 The sociologists had turned a sharp, sceptical eye on the ‘care-takers’ who had commissioned their study. In doing so, they had dissolved one of the cherished assumptions of the survey tradition. This new scepticism towards the caretakers had an inevitable impact upon the caretakers themselves. In the late 1960s the future Deputy Prime Minister Brian Howe was appointed Methodist minister in Fitzroy. The old Brunswick Street Methodist Church, just across the street from the Brotherhood of St Laurence, had recently been demolished to make way for the Housing Commission high-rise flats, so Howe found himself in the curious position of being a pastor without a sanctuary and in search of a flock. He had only recently returned from Chicago, where he studied at McCormick Theological Seminary, one of the founts of the American settlement movement, and absorbed the ideals of community power activists such as Saul Alinski. In 1969, in cooperation with other clergy in the area, he founded the Fitzroy Ecumenical Centre, as a ‘centre for urban research, training and action’. From the outset, the Centre sought to distinguish itself from the ‘paternalism’ of earlier Christian welfare organisations, and the ‘self-justifying rhetoric’ of those who pretended to know what was good for others—perhaps an oblique reference to their Anglican neighbours across the street. Yet Howe and his colleagues also knew that ‘men are not always capable of making their own decisions’; they understood ‘the place of the expert in our social structure’. Recognising the need for expertise, and their own desire to effect change, yet declining to impose it from above, put the young activists, as they admitted themselves, ‘in a seeming bind’.75 Could they play the role of the expert, yet place their expertise at the disposal of others? During the early 1970s, the Centre for Urban Research and Action (CURA) made a number of innovative surveys, such as its 1975 study 194
The Social Survey and the Puzzle of Australian Sociology of migrant women in the workforce: ‘But I wouldn’t want my wife to work here’.76 But the contradictions inherent in the Centre’s mission remained, and it was perhaps not surprising that Howe ultimately sought to resolve them outside the church in his successive roles as lecturer in sociology, elected politician and reforming minister for social security in the Hawke and Keating governments. CURA was possibly the last true incarnation of the survey tradition in Australia. The 1970s was one of the great watersheds of Australian intellectual and political history, and the further we advance from that exciting decade, the more formative it appears to have been. The radical critiques of society that swept through higher education during that era challenged the liberal, meliorist assumptions of the survey movement. The accelerated decline of the mainline Protestant churches shrank the traditional recruiting ground of social investigators. The ethos of the survey tradition—Christian, amateur, empirical, sometimes paternalistic—clashed with the secular, theoretical, sometimes anarchic, mood of the time. Not much escaped the radicals’ critique of bourgeois society, certainly not the social reformers’ old-fashioned belief in altruism. More than half a century had passed since Francis Anderson’s call for the introduction of sociology into Australian universities. When at last that call was answered, the ideals that inspired it had all but died. Notes 1.
2. 3. 4.
‘Sociology in Australia: A Plea for its Teaching’ (1911) reprinted in Social Horizons, 1 (1943): pp. 16-20 and reprinted in this book as chapter 8; also compare the plea of Anderson’s colleague R. F. Irvine, The Place of the Social Sciences in a Modern University (Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1914). These developments are reviewed in Helen Bourke, ‘Sociology and the Social Sciences in Australia, 1912-1928’, Australian and New Zealand Journal of Sociology 17 (March 1981): 26-35; idem., ‘Social Scientists as Intellectuals: From the First World War to the Depression’ in Intellectual Movements and Australian Society , eds. Brian Head and James Walter (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1988) pp. 47-69 and reprinted in this book as chapter 12; Michael Crozier, ‘Society Economised: T. R. Ashworth and the History of the Social Sciences in Australia’, Australian Historical Studies 33, no. 119 (April, 2002): 125-142, and reprinted in this book as chapter 11. Roma Williams, The Settlement: A History of the University of Sydney Settlement and the Settlement Neighbourhood Centre 1891-1986, (Sydney: Sydney University Monographs no. 4, 1988), pp. 11-18. Asa Briggs and Ann Macartney, Toynbee Hall: The First Hundred Years (London: Routledge, 1984) ch. 1. Kathryn Kish Sklar, ‘Hull House Maps and Papers: Social Science as Women’s Work in the 1890s’ in The Social Survey in Historical Perspective, 1880-1940, eds. Martin
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5. 6.
7. 8.
9. 10.
11. 12.
13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18.
19. 20. 21.
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Bulmer, Kevin Bates and Kathryn Kish Sklar (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), pp. 111-147. Pittsburgh Surveyed: Social Science and Social Reform in the Early Twentieth Century City, eds. Maurice Greenwald and Margo Anderson (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1996). I am not aware that Foucault dealt specifically with the birth of the social survey, as he did with the birth of the clinic or the asylum, but note his observation that the origins of sociology lie more in the ‘practices of doctors’ than the theories of Rousseau and Montesquieu: Michel Foucault, ‘The Eye of Power’ in Michel Foucault, Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews & Other Writings 1972-1977, (New York: Pantheon Books, 1980), p. 151. The Statistical Account of Scotland: Drawn up from the Communications of the Ministers of the Different Parishes by Sir John Sinclair, Bart (Edinburgh: William Creech, 17911799). Thomas Chalmers, The Christian and Civic Economy of Large Towns (Glasgow: Chalmers and Collins, 1821-26); compare R. A. Cage and E. O. A. Checkland, ‘Thomas Chalmers and Urban Poverty: The St John’s Parish Experiment in Glasgow, 1819-1837’, The Philosophical Journal, 13 (1976): 37-56; Stewart J. Brown, Thomas Chalmers and the Godly Commonwealth in Scotland, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982), ch. 3. Compare Roy Lubove, The Professional Altruist: The Emergence of Social Work as a Career,1880-1930 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1980). Jane Addams, University Settlement Annual Report, 1911, as quoted in Allen F. Davis, Spearheads for Reform: The Social Settlement and the Progressive Movement 1890-1914 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1967), p. 29; compare her personal reflections in ‘The Subjective Necessity for Social Settlements’ (1892) in The Social Thought of Jane Addams, ed. Christopher Lasch (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1965), pp. 28-43. J. T. Carey, Sociology and Public Affairs (Beverley Hills: Sage, 1975). Robert Park, ‘The Survey Method’, Unpublished Lecture Notes, Park Papers, Regenstein Library, University of Chicago; compare discussion in Martin Bulmer, The Chicago School of Sociology: Institutionalisation, Diversity and the Rise of Sociological Research (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1984), chapter 5. Mary Jo Deegan, Jane Addams and the Men of the Chicago School, 1892-1918 (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1988), esp ch. 6. Park, ‘The Survey Method’. Martin Bulmer, Kevin Bates and Kathryn Kish Sklar, ‘The Social Survey in Historical Perspective’ in The Social Survey in Historical Perspective, p. 29. See Martin Bulmer, ‘The decline of the Social Survey Movement and the Rise of American Empirical Sociology’ in ibid., pp. 291-315. Graeme Davison, ‘The Unsociable Sociologist - W. S. Jevons and his Survey of Sydney, 1856-8’, Australian Cultural History 16 (1998): 127-150. Renate Howe, ‘Protestantism, Social Christianity and the Ecology of Melbourne, 1870-1900’, Historical Studies 19, no. 74 (April 1980): 59-73; compare Brigid Hains, ‘"The Last of Lands, and the First": Reviewing the Frontier Ideal in Antarctica and Inland Australia’, PhD thesis, Monash University, 1998, pp. 140-148. For example, Shurlee Swain, ‘Philanthropy’ in The Oxford Companion to Australian History, eds. Graeme Davison, John Hirst and Stuart Macintyre (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1998), pp. 503-4. R. F Irvine, pp. 8-9. Stuart Macintyre characterises aspects of this tradition in his Colonial Liberalism: The Lost World of Three Victorian Visionaries (Melbourne, 1991). Bourke, ‘Social Scientists’, pp. 56-60; John Poynter and Carolyn Rasmussen, A Place Apart: The University of Melbourne, Decades of Change (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1996), 55-56; Malcolm Thomis, A Place of Light and Learning: The
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22. 23.
24. 25. 26.
27. 28. 29. 30. 31.
32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41.
University of Queensland’s First Seventy-Five years (St Lucia: Queensland University Press, 1985), p. 82. Graeme Davison, ‘The City-Bred Child and Urban Reform in Melbourne, 19001940’ in Social Process and the City, ed. Peter Williams (Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1984), pp. 143-174. The career of the eugenicist Harvey Sutton, who returned to Australia from a Rhodes scholarship in 1909 and retired in 1947, illustrates this career pattern. See Grant Rodwell, ‘Professor Harvey Sutton: National Hygienist as Eugenicist and Educator’, Journal of the Royal Australian Historical Society 84, part 2 (December 1998): 164-179. Also see Michael Roe, Nine Australian Progressives: Vitalism in Bourgeois Social Thought, 1890-1960 (St. Lucia: Queensland University Press, 1984); Warwick Anderson, The Cultivation of Whiteness: Science, Health and Racial Destiny in Australia (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2002), pp. 61-70; Stephen Garton, ‘Sound Minds and Healthy Bodies: reconsidering eugenics in Australia, 1914-1940’, Australian Historical Studies 26. no. 103 (October 1994): 163-179. Bourke, ‘Social Scientists’, 56-60. Crozier, 128-30; Nicholas Brown, ‘"A Sense of Number and Reality": Economics and Government in Australia, 1920-1950’, Economy and Society 26, no. 2 (May 1997): 233-256. Davison, ‘City-Bred Child’, 65-7; Alan Mayne, ‘Just War: The Language of Slum Representation in Twentieth Century Australia’, Journal of Urban History 22, no. 1, (November 1995): 75-107; Renate Howe (ed.), New Houses for Old: Fifty Years of Public Housing in Victoria 1938-1988 (Melbourne: Ministry of Housing and Construction, 1988), pp. 20-28. Interview with Oswald Barnett, 18 July 1967 in E. W. Russell, The Slum Abolition Movement in Victoria (Melbourne: Hornet Publications, 1972), p. 33. John Handfield, Friends and Brothers: The Life of Gerard Kennedy Tucker, Founder of the Brotherhood of St Laurence and Community Aid Abroad (Melbourne: Hyland Press, 1980). John H. Reeves, Housing the Forgotten Tenth (Melbourne: Brotherhood of St Laurence, 1944), p. 3. Interview with G. K Tucker, 2 March 1971, Brotherhood of St Laurence Papers, MS 13126, Box 26, La Trobe Library. Housing the Forgotten Tenth, pp. 18-22; also see Church of England Men’s Society and The Brotherhood of St Laurence, Social Survey, 1943 Report of the Social Research Officer John H. Reeves; Personal Communication and newspaper clippings from Andrew Reeves, 20 July 1999. A. P. Elkin, Our Opinions and the National Effort, (Sydney: Australasian Medical Publishing Company, 1941) p. 5; Britain by Mass Observation (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1939); People in Production (Harmondsworth: Penguin,1942). Elkin, pp. 9, 13, 31. Social Horizons, July 1943, ‘Proceedings of the Institute’. A. P. Elkin, ‘The Need for Sociological Research in Australia’, Social Horizons 12. Social Horizons, July 1945, ‘Proceedings of the Institute’. A. P. Elkin, Changes That Are Upon Us (Sydney: Snelling Printing Works, 1943), p. 12. On Jollie Smith see Stuart Macintyre, The Reds: The Communist Party of Australia from Origins to Illegality (Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1998), pp. 19-20. Tigger Wise, The Self made Anthropologist: a life of A. P. Elkin (Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1985). On the integrationist emphases in Elkin’s social theorising, see also Nicholas Brown, Governing Prosperity: Social Change and Social Analysis in Australia in the 1950s (Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 1995), p. 193. ‘Race—Our Tragic Myth’, Social Horizons, 1945: 84-85.
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Histories of Australian Sociology 42. Don Wright, Alan Walker, Conscience of the Nation (Adelaide: Open Book SA, 1997), ch. 2. 43. Alan Walker, Coaltown: A Social Survey of Cessnock (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1945). 44. ‘The University of Melbourne Social Survey’, undated document in MU Archives. 45. ‘Wartime Controls and Postwar Planning’, Economic Record (December 1942), 213217. 46. Graeme Davison and John Lack, ‘Planning the New Social Order: The Melbourne University Social Survey, 1941-3’, Australian and New Zealand Journal of Sociology 17, no. 1 (March 1981); Kate Darian-Smith, On the Home Front: Melbourne in Wartime 1939-1945, (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1990), pp. 83-85. 47. Winifred Rauschenbusch, Robert E. Park, Biography of a Sociologist, (Durham NC: Duke University Press, 1979), ch.12. 48. ‘Life Means This to Me’, ABC Broadcast 12 October 1944, Wadham Papers, 3/1/14, University of Melbourne Archives. 49. Ibid; and see A. W. Martin and Janet Penny, The Rural Reconstruction Commission, 1943-47, Australian Journal of Politics and History 29. no. 2 (1983): 218236; also see J. G. Crawford and Betty E. Henderson, ‘Rural Sociology’, Social Horizons, July 1943: 20. 50. ‘The Church and the Countryside in the Future’, 16 January 1943, Wadham Papers, 3/1/14; ‘My Philosophy of Life’ 23 June 1948,Wadham Papers 3/1/11. 51. Wadham Radio Broadcast 3LO 12 January 1941, Wadham Papers, 6/1/4. 52. S. M Wadham, The Land and the Nation (Melbourne: Stockland Press, 1943), pp. 6366. 53. Alan Holt, Wheat Farms of Victoria: A Sociological Survey (Melbourne: School of Agriculture, University of Melbourne, 1946); A. J. Macintyre, Sunraysia: A Social Survey of a Dried Fruits Area (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1948); Maurice Rothberg, ‘Victorian Dairy Farming: A Social Survey’, Ph.D. thesis, University of North Carolina, 3 vols 1948, (copy in University of Melbourne Library). 54. Jean Craig, ‘Review of Country Towns in Victoria’, Social Horizons, 1945, 90-92, and compare her ‘Some Aspects of Life in Selected Areas of Rural New South Wales’, MA thesis, University of Sydney, 1945. 55. For a cooperative venture between students of all three departments, see R. B. Lewis and Oscar Oeser, Prahran: A Psychological, Sociological and Architectural Study in Town Planning (University of Melbourne , 1950/51, cyclostyle). 56. Brown, 193-205. 57. Video-taped interviews with Oscar Oeser, M.U. Archives. 58. Oeser’s research had sparked the interest of some other researchers, including the Mass Observation Team; see Britain by Mass Observation, 12. 59. O. A. Oeser and S. B. Hammond (eds.), Personality and Social Structure in a City (New York: Macmillan, 1954); O. A. Oeser and F. E. Emery, Social Structure and Personality in a Rural Community (New York: Macmillan, 1954); the psychiatrists Allan Stoller and Jerzy Krupinski later carried out a parallel survey of metropolitan and rural Victoria; see Janice Chesters, ‘Backache and Heartburn to Nerves and Alcohol: Narratives of a Community Health Survey, Heyfield, Victoria, 1965’, Health and History 2 (2000), 79-100. 60. Bertram Hutchinson, Old People in an Australian Community: A Social Survey (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1954). 61. Stephanie Mozer, A Survey of a Large Family, Low Income Group in Housing Commission Homes, November-December 1955; Report on Family Service Project, July 1956-June 30th 1957, September 1957. 62. David Scott and Robert U’ren, Leisure: A Social Enquiry into Leisure Activities and Needs in an Australian Housing Estate (Melbourne: F. W. Cheshire, 1962); Anne Stevenson,
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The Social Survey and the Puzzle of Australian Sociology
63. 64. 65. 66.
67.
68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75. 76.
Elaine Martin and Judith O’Neill, High Living: A Study of Family Life in Flats (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1967). For a perceptive analysis of the pursuit of ‘community’ in a South Australian model town see Mark Peel, Good Times, Hard Times: The Past and Future in Elizabeth (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1995), pp. 85-106. Scott and U’ren, p. 65. Brotherhood of St Laurence Staff Bulletin, March 1966, p. 1; October 1967, p. 1; Staff Memorandum from P. Hollingsworth. c.1967-8, Ms. 13216, 3/12; 3/20, Brotherhood of St Laurence Papers, La Trobe Library, ‘Research at BSL, Memo August 1967, by Judith O’Neill, 7 August 1967; Record of Discussion with Jean Martin and Len Tierney, 19 September 1967; Notes for Discussion of Research at BSL (unsigned); Memo by Judith O’Neill, 15 December 1969, Brotherhood of St Laurence Papers, Ms 13216/20. Duncan Iremonger and Jim Perkins, ‘Ronald Henderson: An Appreciation’ in Peter Sheehan, Bjahan Grewel and Margarita Kumnick (eds.), Dialogues on Australia’s Future in Honour of the late Professor Ronald Henderson (Melbourne: Centre for Strategic Economic Studies, 1996) pp. vii- xiv; Jean and Davis McCaughey, Ronald Frank Henderson 1917-1994: A Tribute (Melbourne: Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, 1997). Jean and Davis McCaughey, p. 10. Downing to Henderson, 5 July 1962, Downing Papers, 2/2/2, MU Archives. Henderson to Richard Downing, 4 November 1963, Downing Papers. ‘Some Aims of the Poverty Survey, 24 July 1964, Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research (IAESR) Papers, Box 23, MU Archives. Fourth Meeting, 8 May 1964, Poverty Survey Mtgs, IAESR Papers. People in Poverty (Melbourne: F. W. Cheshire, 1970), pp. 189-90. Lois Bryson and Faith Thompson, An Australian Newtown: Life and Leadership in a New Housing Suburb (Melbourne: Penguin, 1972), p. 272. Ekstasis, 1 [n.d 1971?] 1-3; also compare ibid, 10 November 1974: 1-3. Des Storer, ‘But I wouldn’t want my wife to work here…’: A study of migrant women in Melbourne industry (Melbourne: Centre for Urban Research and Action, 1971).
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Part 3 Professional and Institutional Settings of Australian Sociology If history repeats itself, and the unexpected always happens, how incapable must Man be of learning from experience.
George Bernard Shaw
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his section of the book includes chapters that focus on the institutional and professional aspects of Australian sociology. These chapters map out the social and political landscape of Australian universities and sociology more generally. Kurt Mayer’s short paper, reprinted in chapter 14, provides an outsider’s view of the early days of Australian sociology. Mayer came from the USA as a visiting professor to the Australian National University in the early 1960s, and on returning to Brown University, published this brief snapshot of the sociological landscape in Australia in Sociology and Social Research in 1964. In the same year, Leonard Broom gave the opening address at the annual conference of SAANZ. His address, previously unpublished and reprinted in chapter 15, draws comparisons between the United States and Australia in terms of their sociological professional associations. Many of the issues he raises are as important today as they were then. In chapter 16, originally published in 1971, Jerzy (George) Zubrzycki discusses the teaching of sociology in Australian universities, drawing on a survey of students and academics in 1969–70. Diane Austin-Broos’ 1989 paper, reprinted as chapter 17, provides an in-depth discussion of the research themes and theoretical traditions of Australian sociologists, such as class, ethnicity, aboriginality, and immigration. This is followed by a chapter by Cora Baldock originally published in 1994, which focuses on documenting the changes in Australian sociology from the mid-1970s to the early 1990s. The themes 201
Histories of Australian Sociology addressed include: teaching and research; key individuals and theoretical trends; overseas influences; and current research areas. Sharyn Roach Anleu’s previously unpublished opening address from the 1998 TASA conference is reprinted in chapter 18. In this chapter she reflects on the previous two decades, during which time, she argues, the traditional boundaries of sociology have become blurred. She takes to task the ‘death of sociology’ prophets and argues for, among other things, a refashioning of undergraduate subjects to make them more appealing, and reconsideration of the professionalisation of Australian sociology.
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14 Australian and New Zealand Sociology KURT B. MAYER (1964)*
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ven though sociology courses have been offered in Australian and New Zealand universities for some time, during recent years it [sociology] has achieved a new status and emphasis. The expansion of sociology and sociological research has accompanied the growth of universities and the social and economic changes during the post-war years. On October 31–November 1, 1963, a Conference on Sociology in the Universities of Australia and New Zealand was held in Canberra under the auspices of the Department of Sociology of the Australian National University. The meeting was attended by 25 social scientists representing nine Australian and New Zealand universities. In three sessions the participants discussed the teaching of sociology on the undergraduate level, graduate training and research, as well as organizational and publication problems. The Conference highlighted the recent emergence of sociology as an academic discipline in both countries. Although some sociology has been taught here and there, often under other names, as early as the 1920s, Australian and New Zealand universities have been very conservative and have not been prepared to grant sociology an independent place in the curriculum until very recently. During the last few years, however, a definite change has taken place. This has been connected with the very rapid expansion of higher education in the post-war period. Thus in 1939 Australia had only six universities with a total enrolment of 14 000 students in a total population of 7 million. Today there are ten universities, several additional ones are in the process of being established, and student
*
Source: Mayer, K. B. (1964) ‘Sociology in Australia and New Zealand’, Sociology and Social Research, vol. 49, no. 1, 27-31.
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Histories of Australian Sociology enrolments currently stand at 72 000 in a total population of 11 million. In New Zealand there are four universities with an enrolment of 12 000–13 000 students in a total population of 2¼ million, and two new universities are currently being established. In turn, the expansion of higher education is linked with major social and economic changes which in the post-war period have transformed these erstwhile agricultural countries into highly industrialized societies, especially Australia. In this ferment and rapid development the urgent need for sociological knowledge is becoming recognized and a number of universities have begun to introduce courses and establish departments. In Australia a new institution, the University of New South Wales in Sydney, led the way by establishing a Department of Sociology in 1959. Headed by Professor Morven S. Brown and seconded by Associate Professor Athol A. Congalton, the department will have a full-time staff of six next year. In addition, Professor J. Montagu, of Washington State University, will serve as a Visiting Professor. This department offers an undergraduate major in both pass and honours courses and is also prepared to offer MA and PhD degrees. The next important development occurred in 1961 when the Australian National University established a Sociology Department in its Research School of Social Sciences. This department functions entirely on the graduate level, offering the PhD degree, and the university has also just established an MA degree in Sociology. The department currently has a staff of three, Drs. J. Zubrzycki, J. J. Mol, and F. L. Jones. The acting head is Professor W. D. Borrie, the head of the Department of Demography, who has been instrumental in the founding and establishment of the new department. Until a permanent head is appointed, a number of visiting professors have been invited to contribute to the development of the teaching and research program. In 1963 Kurt B. Mayer of Brown University was the first to serve in this capacity. He will be followed in 1964–65 by Leonard Broom of the University of Texas and an invitation has been issued for 1965 to T. B. Bottomore of the London School of Economics. The department accepts well-qualified students with first degrees in either sociology or in a related field. Generous scholarships, covering th e entire degree course of three years are available to all qualified students, including those from overseas. A Department of Anthropology and Sociology has just been established at Monash University in Melbourne, another recent 204
Australian and New Zealand Sociology foundation. Headed by Professor Max Marwick, formerly of the University of Witwatersrand, this department will offer a combined undergraduate major in sociology and anthropology. Instruction begins in 1964. Although they do not yet offer a major in sociology, several other Australian universities are now offering sociology courses in various departments. The University of New England in Armidale, New South Wales, established a Department of Sociology in 1962, headed by Associate Professor J. H. Bell, which to date offers only the firstyear course. At the University of Queensland Dr Donald J. Tugby offers in the Department of Psychology both a first-year and a secondyear course which combine anthropology and sociology. Both at the University of Adelaide and at the University of Sydney, first-year sociology courses by T. Brennan, well known for his earlier urban studies in England [sic]. Several advanced sociology courses also form an integral part of the anthropology curriculum at the University of Sydney and at the University of Western Australia in Perth. For example, a seminar in sociological theory is offered by Dr. C. Jayawardena in Sydney. In Perth the Head of the Anthropology Department, Professor R. M. Berndt, teaches courses on social and cultural change and on urbanization, as well as a seminar in the sociology of knowledge. A further step of great importance is impending at the University of Sydney, where the creation of a new chair in Sociology has recently been approved. In view of this university’s leading role in the Australian academic world, its recognition of sociology will provide a major impetus for the further growth of the discipline. Developments in New Zealand have paralleled those in Australia. At Victoria University in Wellington, Dr. J. H. Robb, who holds a PhD degree in sociology from the London School of Economics, instituted a first-year sociology course in the Social Work department in 1957. Next year a second staff member will be added, which will permit the department to add courses on social institutions, collective behaviour, and research methods. At Canterbury University in Christchurch sociology courses have been offered in the Department of Psychology and Sociology since 1958 by Richard H. T. Thompson. The department now has a sociology staff of three, including Charles Gray, formerly of the University of Colorado, and offers an undergraduate major in sociology.
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Histories of Australian Sociology The establishment of academic sociology can be expected to lead eventually to a flowering of research activities. In fact a number of empirical investigations have already been undertaken. Perhaps most widely known abroad are two studies undertaken by the Psychology Department of the University of Melbourne: Social Structure and Personality in a City, edited by O. A. Oeser and S. B. Hammond, and Social Structure and Personality in a Rural Community, edited by O. A. Oeser and F. E. Emery. A number of major studies of migration have emanated from the Department of Demography at the Australian National University. These include W. D. Borrie, Italians and Germans in Australia; C. A. Price, Southern Europeans in Australia; J. Zubrzycki, Immigrants in Australia, and by the same author, a field study among the immigrant population of the Latrobe Valley in Victoria, which is in the process of publication; and R. T. Appleyard, British Assisted Emigration to Australia. In the field of social stratification, empirical work has been done on the social ranking of occupations in both New Zealand and Australia by Ronald A. Taft and Athol A. Congalton. The latter has followed up his earlier study in New Zealand with two recent monographs in Australia: Social Standing of Occupations in Sydney and Occupational Status in Australia. He has also published a related investigation, Status Ranking of Sydney Suburbs. Interesting studies have also been undertaken in political sociology. Several surveys of voting behaviour have been carried out by Alan F. Davies and Creighton Burns of the Political Science Department of the University of Melbourne. Burns’s book, Parties and People: A Survey Based on the La Trobe Electorate, was published in 1961. At the Australian National University, S. Encel, a political scientist by training and a sociologist by chance, has been engaged for several years in investigations of the Australian power elite and his book on this subject will appear in the near future. Some research has also been in the tradition of the community survey. In New Zealand, for example, H. C. D. Somerset published a report on Littledene a generation ago and plans to ‘revisit’ this community shortly. Likewise in New Zealand A. A. Congalton directed a community self-survey, reported in Hawera—A Social Survey. Of particular interest to New Zealand sociologists are the Maori, who are the subject of several demographic studies currently in process at Victoria University in Wellington. The Maori have also been studied by R. H. T. Thompson of Canterbury University in Christchurch, who is particularly interested in the field of race relations. In Australia
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Australian and New Zealand Sociology Joan Tully of the University of Queensland has been engaged in rural community studies for a number of years and at the same university a social area analysis of Brisbane is now in process in the geography department. A substantial research program has been mapped out by the new Department of Sociology in the Research School of Social Sciences of the Australian National University. The work of this department which is already in progress, or which will begin shortly, includes investigations of the Australian class structure and social mobility, studies of social problems connected with the growth of Australian cities, the development and changes in Australia’s social services, and research in the sociology of religion. The department’s work in the study of Australian society will supplement anthropological studies carried on in the Department of Anthropology and Sociology in the same university’s Research School of Pacific Studies, headed by Professor John A. Barnes. It main field of interest is the study of Australian aborigines and some of the rapidly changing societies in Australia’s near north. The School of Pacific Studies also includes an interdisciplinary research unit stationed in New Guinea, which is headed by a sociologist, Dr. David G. Bettison, formerly of the University of Rhodesia. Despite the important research activities mentioned above, both Australia and New Zealand still offer an almost virgin field to the empirically minded sociologist. This should be of particular interest to American sociologists because both of these societies exhibit great structural similarities to American society while at the same time there are also marked differences. They therefore lend themselves particularly well for comparative analyses of social institutions and social processes. At the Canberra Conference a Sociological Association of Australia and New Zealand was founded. W. D. Borrie was elected its first President, J. S. Robb is Vice President for New Zealand, Morven S. Brown Vice President for Australia, and J. J. Mol serves as SecretaryTreasurer. The Association will hold scientific meetings at which papers will be presented at regular intervals. It was decided to hold the first such meeting within a year. The association also intends to publish a Journal to provide an outlet for scholarly publications arising from sociological studies in Australia, New Zealand, and other areas of particular interest to the association. The officers have been charged with undertaking promptly the necessary steps leading to the 207
Histories of Australian Sociology establishment of the Journal. All American sociologists will undoubtedly wish to join this reporter in expressing congratulations and best wishes to our Australian and New Zealand colleagues.
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15 Sociology, Anyone? LEONARD BROOM (1964)*
I
thank you for asking me to open this meeting, although I am not sure whether the honour is a reward for some unknown attributes I possess, is due to the happy accident of being in the right place at the right time, or is a recognition of the fact that I come from a country that has more sociology—good, bad and indifferent —than all the rest of the world. I shall not embarrass myself by inquiring too deeply into the matter, but I was embarrassed about being listed for an opening ‘address’. A ‘talk’, yes. A ‘lecture’, perhaps. But an opening ‘address’ sounds a bit resonant to describe a conversation with a group of inquiring minds. Maybe we could call it an ‘oration’. For the ambiguous title I originally gave this talk I should like to substitute the following equally ambiguous but more evocative title: ‘Sociology, Anyone?’ In the 1920s a novelist named Michael Arlen wrote a number of books of minor consequence. In one, whose title eludes me, the protagonist tells his aunt that he is going to do sociology (I should mention that the nephew is illegitimate). The aunt replies in this vein, ‘Sociology is something that half-educated gentlemen do with badly educated labourers. Undoubtedly what you have in mind is politics.’ What I have in mind is not politics. It is sociology. To the Sociological Association of Australia and New Zealand (SAANZ) I bring greetings of the American Sociological Association (ASA). A few years ago I could have brought the greetings of the American Sociological Society (Alpha Sigma Sigma) but that is no longer possible. The ASS is not the ASA.
*
Source: Broom, L. (1964) Opening Address, Sociological Association of Australia and New Zealand (SAANZ) Conference, Canberra, 22 October. This previously unpublished version of the Address has been slightly revised by the author for publication here.
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Histories of Australian Sociology I take it that your decision to be an association instead of a society is more than a matter of nomenclature: that you are interested not only in scholarly exchange but also in advancing the standing of sociology, the propagation of research and teaching opportunities, the presentation of a public image that will correct false impressions of what sociology is about or that will supply an impression that may be lacking. These are all necessary activities in a society that is characterized by bureaucratisation, interest groups, voluntary associations, and organisational competition. They are mandatory activities for a discipline that has only begun to gain some recognition. Six years ago I attended in this city a meeting to organise a sociological group. I doubt that any of that handful of hardy souls foresaw in 1964 [or even in 1984] a viable Antipodal Sociological Association (ASA) with a membership running into three digits (that puts a favourable construction on it) with the pulling power to bring members across the Tasman Sea and the Nullarbor to a meeting in Canberra, and with a semi-annual journal ready to roll off the press. But we were not reckoning with the fact that one of the characteristics of modern society is the study of society. Sociology is a thing, which if it didn’t exist, would have to be invented, and that is very nearly what has happened in this part of the world. Like the fellow who was surprised to discover he was talking prose, a number of people of diverse academic backgrounds and affiliations have made up their minds that what they are doing is in fact sociology. It is less important that as a result sociology will be legitimised in the antipodes; it is more important that sociologists will now be able to get on with their work with mutual reinforcement and organisational focus. Even in England, where for so long sociology hardly reached beyond WC2, the last bastions are falling; sociology has proliferated in the academic countryside (the bricks, red) and has penetrated the ancient fastnesses (the stones, eroded). Consequently, it is now OK for the Commonwealth to do sociology, and the lost colonies can also have a sort of recognition but not retroactively. Because this is an association rather than a society, one should mention professional and organisational as well as scientific matters. In commenting on sociology in the US, I am aware that the difference in scale between SAANZ and ASA is so great as to be a difference in kind, but that is exactly the point.
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Sociology, Anyone? Today the ASA has nearly 8000 members. Of these about 3200 are Fellow or Active Members, i.e. more or less full-fledged sociologists; and there are perhaps 2000 who lack strictly formal qualifications but are engaged in undergraduate teaching. There may be a few unorganised sociologists in the US, but very few of them actively practise the trade. College and university teaching combined with research in academic settings is the chief occupation, but a considerable and increasing proportion are engaged in research or applied work in government, business, industry, labour organisations, private fact-finding agencies and the like. Although 5000 as a working total excluding students and other dilettantes may seem a large number, it has been apparent for some time and is now abundantly clear that there are not enough to fill the vacancies in several hundred tertiary institutions, much less the jobs opening up in other bureaucracies. The shortage of qualified personnel has been more pressingly felt in sociology than in some other fields, especially the humanities, in which there has been excess supply and in which some secondary teachers are qualified to move into tertiary teaching. There is no reservoir of underemployed sociologists and the inevitable has occurred. A harshly competitive market has generated wild bidding, high mobility, sharply increased salaries, and probably a decline in research and teaching productivity. Those of us who won our spurs in the buyers’ market of the Great Depression observe these events as if we had just arrived from Mars. The condition I describe has a number of bearings on Australia and New Zealand. The market for academic personnel, especially in the English-speaking world, is becoming a single and unified market. There is nothing new about the international mobility of scholars, but its extent is new and the directions of flow have conspicuously shifted. The changes are so apparent that they are perceived by politicians and reacted to politically. Except in times and places of insecurity and extremism when strangers are feared as carriers of dangerous and heterodox notions, scholars seek out their peers and find students across the world. Before Athens and Alexandria, national borders were ignored by scholars and itinerancy is one of the means of learning. The ease of such movement may be the best single measure of international health and national self-confidence.
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Histories of Australian Sociology You need only count the places of birth and training of the personnel in Australian universities to verify the fact that Australia has been a net beneficiary of what has euphoniously been called the brain drain. For the time being the condition has changed and the dearth of qualified personnel in some fields, especially sociology, cannot be easily and cheaply repaired. Unless an embargo is going to be placed on the movement of scholars or the interesting Australian practice of indentured service for teachers is widely adopted, we can anticipate increasing international mobility. Such a movement need not be fatal to higher education in the antipodes, and under discoverable conditions, it may act to your advantage, especially in sociology. First of all, of course, salaries must be brought within competitive range. ‘Competitive’ does not mean identical because above a given break point, considerations other than stipend begin to loom large and that level must soon be reached if depletion is to be prevented. The other considerations for sociologists include research facilities, the appropriateness of the research situation to certain kinds of investigation, ease of access to government and business agencies, relative prestige in the national status hierarchy, and the existence of a corps of colleagues. How do Australia and New Zealand rate on these points? Research facilities are in some instances problematic, but it appears that they can be managed. Some things can be as readily studied in Australia and New Zealand as anywhere else, and a few things can be done more easily here. The countries have good public records, sophisticated and cooperative public services, and excellent censuses with some grave historical omissions that are being rectified. Their sizes permit some possibility of an overview. You can imagine that it is with a sense of discovered intimacy that an American sociologist addresses himself to the population of Australia, which is little more than the size of the foreign-born population of the United States, or the population of New Zealand, which is about the size of the public sector of US tertiary school enrolment. I am impressed by the interested attitudes of officials and their willingness to facilitate social inquiry. The value of such receptiveness is calculable and large. One learns early in the US that frustrations are as the cube of the height of the bureaucracy and that frustrations are cured by a number of dollars equal to the square of the frustration. In
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Sociology, Anyone? some circles these statements are known as Broom’s first and second laws of research management. Although in absolute terms financial rewards for scholars are not as large as in comparable institutions in the US or UK, your status relative to other wage earners is clearly better than in the US and probably better than in the UK. You are also in good shape on the ‘vanity bit index’. This is a scale composed of access to persons in influential positions, ability to affect national policy, and opportunities to comment on topics outside your competence (the last is the ultimate test of celebrity). On this you are far more prestigious than your opposite numbers in the US and again probably in the UK. The existence of a corps of colleagues is another matter, but if this meeting means what it claims, the condition may be on the way to solution. Anyway the community of scholarship is increasingly an international community and the problem is not as urgent as it might be. I do not guarantee that you can go out tomorrow and recruit the sociological staffs you wish you had. I do say that if you are to be toughly competitive, you can do reasonably well over the next few years. I always thought Australians and New Zealanders were pretty good competitors. But sociology comes to these parts late, and it will therefore come more expensively and less easily. Is the late appearance of sociology in this rich and educated society an accident or is sociology being recognised for becoming something now that it was not a few years ago? Even in the academic world things that happen are caused and things that don’t happen are also caused. In 1952 Professor Stanner saw the need for departments of sociology and wrote a compelling case for their establishment. In the light of more than a decade, his argument is well worth rereading. With admirable candour he listed three kinds of obstacles to the establishment of departments of sociology in Australian universities: (1) misunderstanding of what sociology is about, (2) fear of competition and (3) perceived threats to established academic prerogatives. I leave it to you or to an old-fashioned piece of attitude research to test how far Stanner’s hypothesized obstacles still operate. I guess that 213
Histories of Australian Sociology misunderstanding, especially deliberate and contrived misunderstanding, has diminished. I guess that the fear of competition and perception of threat to the establishment have collapsed into a single syndrome. It is now assumed that sociology is going to come to all universities sooner or later, but there is far from unanimous urgency on the matter. I hear the same clichés about sociology that I used to hear six years ago, but I hear them less often and from fewer people. To be sure, in my first fortnight here, four different people told me that they did not enjoy reading Parsons, as if that set them or Parsons off from the rest of the human race. Wholly apart from the merits or demerits of Parsons as a sociologist, or as a stylist in the mother tongue (German?), the important thing about these comments is that they were not offered as definitive and conclusive estimates of sociology. Six years ago they would have been. That is progress. It is a necessary but not sufficient condition for normalising the status of discipline. Mrs Caiden’s recent study shows sociology to be among the worst off of sixteen fields of social science and applied social studies in Australian universities. (It would be interesting to see a parallel survey of New Zealand.) I hope that in the SAANZ sociology, if not charity, will begin at home and that early attention will be given to applying the tools of the trade to understanding the organisation and to guiding its policies. It will be much easier to establish a standing committee on the organisation now than to run a series of rescue operations a few years hence. I could recount tales about the organisational problems of ASA to prove that learned societies do worst those things they are supposed to be expertly qualified to do. This point is frivolously made but not frivolously intended. Consider the opportunities for continuous documentation and investigation on the topics of organisational birth, growth, and reference groups. Organisational Innovation You are near enough to the beginning of your sociological world so that you need not have a mythology of genesis and for some time you could not safely invent one. Organisational birth and early development are not frequently studied and this young organism deserves to be examined—hopefully not at an inquest. The base lines 214
Sociology, Anyone? of recruitment and affiliation can now be accurately described. The inception of the organisation will never again be so easily documented. Organisational Size and Growth What are the functions and activities appropriate to organisations of differing sizes? And in the case of SAANZ, how is growth related to function? How does the formal apparatus of the organisation change in size and functions? What is the viable size of a learned association? How fast can functions be safely taken on? Is a very small three-digit number of members enough to sustain a journal? How soon can internal organisational differentiation take place without damaging the cohesion of the association? These are all good questions in the sense that they can be studied, they are germane, and their answers are potentially useful for conducting the affairs of the association. Reference Groups This organisation is made up of members most of whom are in a sense voluntary sociologists. Their primary academic referents may lie in other fields and their sociological identity may be tentative or tertiary. Some are sociologists faute de mieux. Here and there is un sociologue malgre lui. Is it possible to build a viable organisation of such disparate elements? When do the members behave as sociologists and when do other referents predominate? How do identity problems become organisational problems? Who co-opts whom and to what end? Who experiences role strain in what kinds of situations and what kind of sociotherapy will alleviate the distress? These are also interesting questions, and their answers would be helpful in plotting the best course of the organisation. On the broader questions of research priorities and research strategies in general, I can suggest in the moments that remain only some cautionary notes and few positive suggestions. I did make a list of topics but a new and admittedly insecure field is likely to suffer from the error of premature application.
215
Histories of Australian Sociology Research topics may be chosen as demonstration projects to show the merits of the field and its practitioners, and this may lead to premature generalisation, the impulse to get results without giving due attention to the state of the art. A related error is over-compliance. Topics are selected because of the interest of well-placed persons or ready availability of funds or because of a sense of currency and urgency. As much as any field, sociology is concerned with consequential matters. The sociologist does not need to reach for relevance, it reaches for him and therefore the study is a dangerous enterprise. All the more reason for sociology to defend itself against the errors of premature generalisation and application and the vices of opportunism. Strangely enough, the people who are most sceptical about the merits of sociology are often the ones least cautious about its applications, and specialists in other fields are likely to seize on particular techniques or ideas that strike them as germane and attractive when the sociologist may have serious reservations about them. Sociology must therefore defend itself from the impetuosities of amateurism and its converse, the cultism of the super-professional who trades on dogmatism and private lingo and who alienates sister disciplines. There is a sense in which a degree of professional privatism can be justified. In broadest terms the sociologist is accountable to the society that rewards him, and in the very long run, he must be useful to that society. If he is not, perhaps he will eventually be put out of business, although that is by no means certain. We can think of occupational types even in academia whose chief function seems to be the consumption of excess product. I shall not endorse the notion that the criminal is best understood as an agent in the redistribution and reallocation of goods. But the nature of the sociologist’s usefulness need not be immediate, nor immediately understood by the public, and the justification of his activity cannot rest on popular consensus. Sociology, like any other branch of learning, is entitled to be unsure of the way in which it can be useful and at any point, its practitioners may doubt that it can be useful at all. It must satisfy itself according to the universal standards of objectivity, rigor and verifiability. It must develop an eye for what is feasible in terms of size, time, and cost. It must develop standards for what is most worth doing in the almost infinite range of fascinating topics. It must avoid the temptation of sacrificing replication to petty improvements in technique. These are 216
Sociology, Anyone? general considerations that sociology shares with all other lines of inquiry, but they are always worth reiterating. You may rightly ask at this point if sociology is even possible. The answer to that question is easy. It exists.
217
16 The Teaching of Sociology in Australian Universities, Past and Present JERZY ZUBRZYCKI (1971)* The Search for Intellectual Legitimation, 1909–1969
T
he beginnings of sociology as an academic discipline in Australia1 date back to 1909 when the subject was introduced by the Department of Philosophy at the University of Sydney. The calendar of the University of Sydney for that year lists Elements of Sociology as representing one-third of the syllabus in Philosophy II or Ill. Apparently, however, sociology was not judged suitable for undergraduates because in 1910 it was taken out of the BA curriculum and introduced as one of seven possible alternatives for the MA in philosophy. This course listing continued until 1925.2 The man who first introduced sociology in the BA curriculum was Francis Anderson, who came to the first lectureship in philosophy in 1888 and became the first Challis Professor in 1890. Anderson, who had received his philosophical education in Glasgow, was interested in moral and social philosophy as well as in sociology. He not only lectured on the nineteenth- and twentieth-century sociologists in his courses but also campaigned (albeit unsuccessfully) for the introduction of sociology in the universities in Australia.3 Anderson was also responsible for the introduction of sociology in the curriculum of adult education classes in Sydney. The man who taught
*
Source: Zubrzycki, J. (1971) ‘The Teaching of Sociology in Australian Universities, Past and Present’, in J Zubrzycki (ed.), The Teaching of Sociology in Australia and New Zealand, Proceedings of the Conference on the Teaching of Sociology in Australia and New Zealand, Australian National University, Canberra, 23-26 August 1970. Melbourne: Cheshire Publishing for the Sociological Association of Australia and New Zealand. This is a slightly edited version of the original chapter.
219
Histories of Australian Sociology the subject was Clarence H. Northcott, whose official appointment was as ‘University tutor in sociology to classes of the Workers’ Educational Association’. Northcott graduated BA with first class honours from Sydney in 1905, and in 1916 obtained an MA under Professor Anderson. A year later he left Sydney for New York, where he did his PhD at Columbia University. His doctoral thesis, which was subsequently published under the title Australian Social Development, is an interesting statement of the task of sociology in the service of social planning.4 The beginnings of academic sociology at the University of Melbourne can be established in 1919 when Meredith Atkinson was appointed Director of Tutorial Classes and for one year offered a sociology course in the School of Philosophy.5 In 1920 the course moved to the School of History and Political Science. Sociology was listed as a single unit which could be done at either second- or third-year level, with provision for honours work. When Atkinson left Melbourne in 1922, his successor as Director of Extension Courses was J. A. Gunn, a sociologist by training and social improver by inclination. Gunn combined his appointment with duties as part-time lecturer in social philosophy (1923–28) and parttime lecturer in psychology (1933–38). He came to Melbourne from Britain with a brilliant record from Liverpool, London and the Sorbonne. He was an ardent follower of the Swiss sociologist and philosopher, Henri Bergson.6 Under Gunn’s influence the sociology course changed noticeably. Its curriculum became much more philosophically and psychologically oriented, and in 1926 the course moved back to the School of Philosophy. It remained there until 1931, after which no sociology unit was listed.7 What contributed to the removal of sociology from the curriculum was undoubtedly Gunn’s unfortunate predisposition to mental instability. This was aggravated by his difficulties in the administration of adult education classes. All of this was not helpful to the success of sociology as a respectable academic discipline in the University of Melbourne.8 In conclusion, the two attempts to introduce sociology in Sydney and Melbourne in the inter-war period can only be described as abortive. It appears that sociology made no impression on members of the two universities and was not accorded proper recognition. Of the two universities, Sydney was relatively the more successful one. Whether 220
The Teaching of Sociology in Australian Universities this was because of Francis Anderson’s personal influence or not is something which should be decided in the light of evidence that has yet not been brought to the surface. But it does appear that Anderson had been successful in retaining sociology as a part of the MA in philosophy even after his retirement in 1922. His action, undoubtedly, paved way for the introduction in 1925 of the Department of Anthropology at the University of Sydney under Radcliffe-Brown.9 It would be wrong to attribute lack of support shown to sociology in the Australian universities to the personal misfortunes and idiosyncrasies of those who pioneered the subject on the eve of the First World War and during the 1920s. Sociology was not alone in being denied admission as a distinct department in any Australian university. Other social sciences were also ignored. Economics and commerce achieved recognition as a separate discipline only in the 1920s, following successful pressures by private interests; sociology was only gradually developing out of philosophy courses on the eve of the Second World War; by the end of the war only three universities were teaching social work. The relative neglect of the social sciences was only partially due to the small size of the university system, its relative rigidity and lack of financial support by the federal government. Far more important was Australia’s isolation from the rest of the world, the relatively peaceful course of Australian social development and the homogeneity of her population. There was, in consequence, much less need in Australia for social amelioration than in Britain at the turn of the century and consequently less controversy about the right approach to social policy and about the meaning of reliable social facts.10 Above all, there never developed in Australia a tradition of research sponsored by governmental and other public bodies. There were no enquiries in Australia comparable in their scope and in the detail of fact-finding to the Royal Commission on the Poor Laws of 1905–1909, the Whitley Committee Reports 1917–1918, the Hadow Reports of 1926 and 1930 on Education of the Adolescent, and the Beveridge Report on Social Insurance and Allied Services of 1942. Thus there was never much demand for trained social scientists in the government service and government-sponsored research organisations. I shall return to this point at a later stage. The situation changed rapidly during the Second World War. At the University of Sydney, the professor of anthropology, A. P. Elkin, responded to the mood of self-questioning and the widespread 221
Histories of Australian Sociology commitment to what he called ‘the re-ordering of society’ by stimulating both teaching and research in sociology.11 Under his auspices, a considerable element of sociology was introduced into the anthropology course; from 1945 to 1950 the content of the fourth-year honours course was predominantly sociological and included training in field research methods as well as sociological theory (Karl Mannheim highlighted as the most important of contemporary theorists). The sociological orientation of the Sydney courses had a special attraction for the numbers of extremely able ex-servicemen who took the subject as part of a BA degree in the last years of the ’forties. During the wartime and immediate post-war period, students and staff in Elkin’s department produced some eight MA theses and a number of research reports on, for example, industrial problems, divorce, rural community structure, education and the development of the arts.12 Some of this research was carried out at the instigation of (and financed by) the federal government, most notably, the Department of Reconstruction under the leadership of its far-sighted director, J. G. (later Sir John) Crawford. In this way members of the anthropology staff contributed to the Reports of the Rural Reconstruction Commission and the Housing Commission, which embodied the federal government’s policy on crucial aspects of postwar development.13 One MA graduate from Sydney joined the Department of Post-war Reconstruction (as it was re-named in 1945) as a sociologist. A number of graduates from the Department of Anthropology at Sydney came in fact to be employed as sociologists in Australia and overseas, sometimes having taken further training in sociology elsewhere in the meantime; but the movement towards the establishment of sociology as a university discipline in its own right was once more abortive. In the early 1950s the Department of Anthropology returned to a more strictly anthropological approach. Although a number of other departments at the University of Sydney continued to teach subjects with some sociological orientation, none assumed the responsibility for fostering the new discipline as Anthropology had done. In the meantime, Elkin had also been associated with the foundation in 1942 of the Australian Institute of Sociology, which brought together academics and community leaders with the object of training sociologists, encouraging research and instilling ‘the scientific attitude 222
The Teaching of Sociology in Australian Universities in, and [spreading] scientific knowledge amongst, those who are tempted to regard sociological research as a dilettante occupation’.14 Little came of these fine hopes, and the only tangible result of the Institute’s efforts was the publication between 1943 and 1945 of the journal Social Horizons, the title itself indicative of the Institute’s orientation towards ‘the changes which lie ahead and to all that is denoted by the word "reconstruction"’.15 The war had stimulated the demand for administrative, specialist and professional personnel in the armed forces, public administration and industry. The aftermath of the war, a period of accelerated industrialisation and large-scale immigration, created numerous social problems for the treatment of which the universities had to provide trained personnel. This led, in the immediate post-war period, to the foundation of new departments and the rapid expansion of existing departments of economics, commerce, psychology, political science, social administration, etc. At the graduate level there was also the development in the early 1950s of the Research Schools of Social Sciences and of Pacific Studies at the Australian National University, which furthered the progress of the already established [departments] as well as other social disciplines like anthropology, demography, social history and international relations. But, in spite of eloquent pleas made in favour of sociology by individual social scientists and organised groups,16 the introduction of sociology as a distinct department had to wait while substantial progress was being made in the teaching of other social disciplines. The reasons for the opposition were put forward in 1955 by Partridge: There are several reasons for Australian universities having failed to follow the lead of American, and some British universities, in this respect. Many Australian social scientists judge sociology by the very inferior work that has been produced by some sociologists in other countries, and they regard sociology as a synonym for woolliness and pretentiousness. And there are many others who are not convinced that there is any separate discipline of sociology; they argue that all the important problems dealt with by sociologists can be more minutely and rigorously studied by one or other of the existing social sciences. These are perhaps the main reasons that no Australian university offers courses under the name of sociology.17
223
Histories of Australian Sociology Again it should be emphasised that, during the critical period following the Second World War, the growing demand for social scientists in government service and in industry did not call for the skills of sociologists qua sociologists. While in the United Kingdom the machinery of town planning, social services and the management of various nationalised industries called for the employment of sociologists, there was nothing comparable to it in Australia. Above all, as in the earlier period, there were no government-sponsored enquiries comparable in scope to, say, the Royal Commission on Population or the Royal Commission on Marriage and Divorce or the Ashby Report on Adult Education,18 which would require the skills of trained sociologists. It is not my intention in this paper to discuss at length the reasons for the slow but steady growth of sociology that finally began in 1959 with the establishment, at the University of New South Wales, of Australia’s first undergraduate department of sociology under the late Morven S. Brown, but I want to make just two observations. First, the upswing in the fortunes of sociology coincided with the period of unprecedented expansion of tertiary education in Australia which followed the adoption by the Menzies government of the far-reaching recommendations of the Murray Report (1957). The establishment of the Australian Universities Commission in 1959 and the introduction of triennial financing certainly made for more rational planning of a whole variety of new academic developments, including sociology. The second factor was undoubtedly the development of graduate work in sociology at first under the aegis of the Department of Anthropology and Sociology in the Research School of Pacific Studies at the Australian National University (established under the late S. F. Nadel in 1950) and, later on, with the establishment of the Department of Demography (under W. D. Borrie in 1952) in the Research School of Social Sciences at the Australian National University. The research work of the latter department on the social effects of population growth, and especially of immigration in Australia, attracted at first a number of eminent North American visitors (Leonard Broom, Kurt Mayer, Frank E. Jones) and eventually led to the establishment of a separate Department of Sociology in the School (1961). Parallel developments, favouring the image of sociology, were the establishment of the Sociological Association of Australia and New Zealand in 1963, and the launching of the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Sociology in April 1965. Finally, there was the establishment in 1964 of an MA degree in sociology by 224
The Teaching of Sociology in Australian Universities course work as a result of combined effort by sociologists and demographers in the Research School of Social Sciences, and the political scientists, statisticians, psychologists, geographers and lawyers in the School of General Studies of the Australian National University. In the meantime the establishment of undergraduate sociology departments followed gradually: the University of New England in 1962, Monash (Anthropology and Sociology) in 1964, Queensland (Anthropology and Sociology) in 1965, La Trobe in 1967 and the School of General Studies of the Australian National University (1970). Approval for the introduction of a Department of Sociology was given at Flinders University in 1970 and a number of other universities were planning to establish Chairs of sociology in the triennium 1973–75. Mention must also be made of the establishment in 1961 of a full Department of Anthropology at the University of Western Australia and of the School of Behavioural Science at Macquarie University, where there has been a Chair of Anthropology since 1969. In both of these places some sociological training is given to students although (at the time of the survey) there were no courses called Sociology. The impact of this phase of the development of sociological teaching in Australia cannot be assessed with any degree of accuracy. Perhaps the only tangible evidence of progress is the output of trained sociologists and this is shown in Table 1.19 Two qualifications must be borne in mind while assessing the statistics contained here. First, it is impossible to distinguish quantitatively between anthropology and sociology graduates. In some departments (Monash and Queensland) students receive basic training in both disciplines, although honours and graduate students may or may not specialise in one or the other. In practice, however, there is some evidence (mainly in the titles of honours dissertations and those of MA and PhD theses) that the majority of students enrolled in joint departments have, in the past, favoured anthropology rather than sociology. This particular reservation may not be qualitatively important in the case of first degree students who graduated in sociology at the University of New South Wales, whose School of Sociology has so far produced by far the largest number of graduates. At the graduate level, however, the sheer weight of the Department of Anthropology at the University of Sydney and the Department of Anthropology and Sociology in the Research School 225
Histories of Australian Sociology
Name of department
Pass degree
Masters degree
PhD
Honours degree
Table 1: Graduates in Sociology and Anthropology to December 1969
Anthropology, University of Sydney (est. 1925)
—a
—a
51b
7c
—
—
2
33
163
53f
9
—
400
12
2
1
—
—
—
6
44
—
2
1
Anthropology and Sociology, Research School of Pacific Studies, Australian National University (est. 1950)d Anthropology, University of Western Australia (est. 1956) e Sociology, University of New South Wales (est. 1960) Sociology, Research School of Social Sciences, Australian National University (est. 1961)d Sociology, University of New England (est. 1962) Anthropology and Sociology, Monash University (est. 1964) Anthropology and Sociology, University of Queensland (est. 1965)
65g
6h
4
—
—a
7
1
—
Sociology, La Trobe University (est. 1967)
20
—
—
—
Sociology, School of General Studies, Australian National University (est. 1970)i
—
—
5
—
692
78
76
48
Totals
Notes: a. Not available. b. Indicates the number of MA theses completed since 1947; no information before this is available in the department. A scrutiny of titles reveals that at least 16 theses were of sociological character. c. Indicates the number of PhD theses completed since 1947; no information before this is available in the department. A scrutiny of titles suggests that only one thesis was of distinctly sociological character. d. These departments do not teach undergraduates. e. This department is primarily oriented in terms of social anthropology/comparative sociology and there is no formal distinction between these labels. f. Includes 22 MA Preliminary. g. Total for 1968 and 1969, the first two years in which it was possible to take sociology as a major. h. Total for 1969 only, the first year in which it was possible to do final honours in sociology alone. i. This department was formally established in March 1970, and took over the MA programme. Between 1964 and 1969 the MA programme was administered by a committee consisting of representatives of the Research School of Social Sciences and the School of General Studies (see above).
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The Teaching of Sociology in Australian Universities of Pacific Studies of the Australian National University points to a major contribution that these two departments have made in the training of higher degree candidates. It is equally clear that the majority of those who graduate with an MA or PhD from both departments prefer to describe themselves as social anthropologists rather than sociologists. The Department of Anthropology and Sociology at Monash University produced its first graduates in 1967. In 1968, however, it became possible to select a major in either sociology or anthropology. The figures in Table 1 refer to graduates who chose the sociology option. The second qualification which is obvious from Table 1 is that it is not complete. The Department of Anthropology at the University of Sydney, which has now been in existence for over a half century, has not kept full statistics of its graduates and this, clearly, constitutes a major gap in our balance sheet. Again, there is no complete information available from the University of Queensland. Given the above qualifications, the broad picture that emerges from Table 1 could hardly be described as impressive. Admittedly, only one department (New South Wales) produced six annual cohorts of graduates, while all other departments produced fewer graduating classes. The number of honours graduates is, in absolute and in relative terms, very small indeed and so is the number of higher degree graduates. I shall return to this last point later in this report. The Present Scope of Sociological Enterprise in Australian Universities What is the scope of sociological enterprise in Australia at present? I shall answer this question with the aid of data collated from unpublished reports of the Australian Universities Commission (AUC) as well as from the questionnaires I distributed in 1970 to all sociology and anthropology departments and other faculties and departments where courses with sociological content are given. The information that follows is unavoidably dated and refers mainly to the situation in 1969 and, in a few cases, to 1970. Table 2 gives the numbers of undergraduate students enrolled in the departments of sociology and anthropology. This includes all students 227
Histories of Australian Sociology taking courses offered by such departments, but excludes students enrolled in courses with some sociological content offered by other departments and faculties (e.g. political sociology in a department of political science or government, or sociology of education in a department of education). Table 2: Undergraduate Enrolments in Sociology and Anthropology University
Majorsa
Total
% of majors
Sydney (1970)
60
712
8.4
Western Australia (1970)
37
604
6.1
New South Wales (1969)
96
626
15.3
9
390
2.3
Monash (1969)
68
403
16.9
Queensland (1969)
75
466
16.1
La Trobe (1969)
20
262
7.6
365
3463b
10.5
New England (1969)
Totals
Notes: a. A major is defined as a student in third or fourth year of undergraduate study. b. Of this number approximately 2150 persons are enrolled in sociology. This number can be obtained by subtracting the combined enrolment in Sydney and Western Australia from the grand total.
How many of those enrolled in the departments of sociology and anthropology are likely to graduate with a major in sociology? This is a difficult question to answer at any time. Although students have to nominate their majors when enrolling for first year, it is a well recognised fact that very few students pursue their intended sequence of courses. In the survey of sociology and anthropology departments, only students enrolled in third or fourth (honours) year courses were counted as majors. Therefore, the proportion of majors (10.5 per cent) in Table 2 shows merely the number of students actually taking advanced courses and probably understates the number who are likely to graduate with a major in sociology or anthropology from the total population of over 3400 students in 1969-70. The overall proportion, however, and the percentages for individual departments do show a considerable range from 2.3 at University of New England to 16.9 at Monash. The fact that these differences exist could be, perhaps, a
228
The Teaching of Sociology in Australian Universities reflection on the ability of various departments to retain the students enrolled in the first or second year units. The future trend in total enrolment can be assessed only in approximate numbers with the aid of projections published by the ADC supplemented by estimates of enrolments in the departments established recently. The ADC projection for the year 1972 puts the total enrolment in sociology and anthropology in the Universities of Sydney, Western Australia, New South Wales, New England, Monash and La Trobe at 4970.20 Since the publication of the ADC Report in 1969 two new departments were established at Macquarie University and in the School of General Studies of the Australian National University. It could be safely assumed that the combined enrolment in these two departments in 1972 will be no less than 500.21 This would bring the total enrolment in 1972 to the vicinity of 5500 or more, of which about 3750 would be in sociology.22 The figures showing graduate enrolments in sociology and anthropology in 1969 are given in Table 3. Many of the reservations that had to be emphasised with regard to Table 1 apply with equal force to Table 3. There are the same problems of distinguishing between anthropology and sociology graduates in many departments, and there is no uniform date for which the return has been made. Moreover the broad picture that emerges from Table 3 and from the breakdown of students into full-time and part-time submitted by some departments (and not published here) cannot be described as satisfactory. First of all, the distribution of graduate students is highly uneven when graduate enrolment is related to undergraduate enrolment in various departments. The relatively low graduate enrolment at the Universities of Queensland, Monash and New England stands out very clearly from percentages in column 6. Next is the relatively low proportion of full-time graduate students. While the figures I have been able to obtain are incomplete (and are therefore not included in Table 3), it is clear that the majority of those doing the MA Qualifying and nearly half of the MA students are parttimers. The situation in this regard is much better at the PhD level, where three-quarters of those enrolled are full-time students. But possibly as many as thirty-eight, or more than half of PhD students, are actually 229
Histories of Australian Sociology doing their degrees in anthropology. This can certainly be said of a large majority of those enrolled in the departments of anthropology in the Research School of Pacific Studies at the Australian National University, the University of Western Australia, and the University of Sydney. Finally, there are the implications of the present levels of graduate enrolment for the future of sociological enterprise in Australia. The fundamental fact that must be recognised is the point made by the Sociology Panel of the Behavioural and Social Sciences Survey in the USA: ‘that sociology is a body of ideas that is created, sustained, and transmitted by professionals in social institutions—in colleges and universities, research institutes, and agencies that address social problems’.23 The optimum institutional arrangements for the training of future professionals must therefore receive high priority in the universities. We do not know how many of our graduate students become teachers of sociology in the universities. But assuming that all those enrolled in 1969–70 in the MA or PhD courses in sociology will actually graduate in the triennium 1970–72, the total output of such graduates would amount to eighty-five (fifty-six MAs and twenty-nine PhDs) or about twenty-eight each year.24 This would further assume that all those graduating would become available for university employment. When we relate this calculation to the projected increase in undergraduate enrolments from the 1969– 70 level of approximately 215025 to 3750 students in 1972, it becomes obvious that the need for additional staff necessary to sustain the present rate of growth (both that shown in the AUC figures as well as that coming from the departments established in this triennium) will not be met from the domestic production of graduate students in the foreseeable future.26 There is still another interesting feature of the present picture concerning post-graduate studies in sociology. I refer here to the fact that just under a third of all graduate students in sociology are enrolled in MA Qualifying courses. Again, their proportion in the total enrolment of any given department varies considerably, fluctuating between about one quarter in the case of New England and Western Australia, to nearly one half at New South Wales and Monash. But what is really especially interesting is the phenomenon which has been noted
230
The Teaching of Sociology in Australian Universities by the US Behavioural and Social Sciences Survey, namely, ‘the late blooming’ effect of potential sociologists.27
MA Qualifying
MA
PhD
Total graduate students
Total undergraduate students*
% of graduate students
Table 3: Graduate Students Enrolled in 1969–70 by Type of Degree
15 (3)
41 (9)
16 (2)
72 (14)
712
11.2
Western Australia (1970)+
10
16
8
34
604
5.6
New South Wales (1969)
16
7
12
35
626
5.6
New England (1969)
4
3
4
11
390
2.8
Monash (1969)
3
1
2
6
403
1.5
Queensland (1969)
—
2
1
3
466
0.6
La Trobe (1969)
16
18
2
36
262
13.7
—
—
6
6
—
—
—
—
14
14
—
—
—
16
—
16
—
—
64
104
65
233
University
Sydney (1970)**
Australian National University (1969): Research School of Social Sciences Research School of Pacific Studies School of General Studies Totals
Notes: * See Table 2 ** Figures in brackets show students ‘with predominantly sociological thesis topic’. + No distinction has been made by the department between graduate students specialising in sociology or anthropology.
In the survey of sociology and anthropology departments, I included a question concerning the background of graduate students in terms of their first degree. Although the results of this question did not yield complete coverage of the 233 students in Table 3, it is, nevertheless, clear that about fifty per cent have come from disciplines other than 231
Histories of Australian Sociology sociology. Of the 160 students from whom this information was collected, eighty-six graduated with bachelor degrees in sociology, fifty-nine in the humanities and other social sciences, four in natural sciences, and eleven in a variety of miscellaneous disciplines, including medicine, theology and engineering. Table 4: Teachers of Sociology and Anthropology in Australian Universities Full-time University
Sydney (1970)
Tutors & Lecturers teaching and above fellows
Part-time Tutors & Lecturers teaching and above fellows
Total
11
9
1
10
31
Western Australia (1970)
7
1
2
15
25
New South Wales (1969)
7
2
4
7
20
New England (1969)
6
2
—
1
9
Monash (1969)
5
2
1
6
14
Queensland (1969)
6
2
—
2
10
13
3
—
1
17
6
—
—
—
6
6
—
—
—
6
1
—
6
—
7
4
1
1
3
9
72
22
15
45
154
La Trobe (1969) Australian National University (1969): Research School of Social Sciences Research School of Pacific Studies School of General Studies Macquarie (1969) Total
The information I have been able to collect on the teachers of sociology is barely adequate. Table 4 gives a tally of persons so described, but gives no information on their academic qualifications or whether their background is in sociology or some other discipline. 232
The Teaching of Sociology in Australian Universities As in the case of previous tables, Table 4 includes all members of staff in the departments of anthropology at Sydney, Western Australia, Research School of Pacific Studies; the Australian National University and Macquarie. If the thirty-nine anthropology teachers are excluded, the actual number of full-time teachers of sociology is reduced to fifty-five. An important feature of the position regarding teaching of sociology is the very large proportion of part-time staff (60/154). Whether this is a reflection of the shortage of suitable people for full-time academic appointments or merely a reflection of the spread of the tutorial system is a matter of conjecture. This, as well as the matter of qualifications of full-time teachers, is a problem requiring further study. There is one segment of university sociological enterprise in Australia that lies outside the scope of the departments of sociology and anthropology, that is, all departments, schools and faculties that offer courses with sociological content, together with their enrolments and the number of teachers. One general remark may be in order before I comment further. It must be realised that it would be impossible to assess the extent of sociological teaching if one looked at nothing but labels. As the UNESCO enquiry in 1954 stated: Courses described as ‘social studies’ or ‘social science’ may have very little that is sociological about them; whereas disciplines such as human geography, linguistics, the history of civilisations, of institutions, of religions, or economics, law or political science, may be full of sociology, even though they take no account of the terminology favoured by ‘sociologists’ or their links with sociology are not explicitly recognised.28 The findings of this survey, including analysis of the actual content of courses given under some of these labels, certainly corroborate the UNESCO study. For instance, it is abundantly clear that the main weight of sociological teaching in the University of Sydney is not in the Department of Anthropology but in the Department of Social Work, where the two-year sequence of units in social theory provides a solid introduction to the theories and methods of sociology, and also
233
Histories of Australian Sociology includes work in depth on stratification, urban sociology and the sociology of family. Although some of our respondents attempted to assess the proportion of sociological content in their courses, I have not reproduced this here. Nor have I attempted to add up the numbers of staff and students involved in such courses as the totals would not, in my view be very meaningful. The survey has shown, however, that in terms of gross numbers, the sociological courses in the departments of education provide some exposure to basic ideas and problems of sociology to very large numbers of students. The same is true, though to a varying extent, of social work, psychology, political science and medicine. Again, the full assessment of this trend must await a special enquiry, but the fact remains that sociology in Australia has found and retained a place in the curricula of many disciplines. A great deal of sociology is being done but not necessarily as part of a department of sociology and certainly not in the name of sociology. Some Comments on the Content of Courses in Sociology I shall now turn to a review of the content of what is taught under the name of sociology in the departments bearing that name. In doing so, I shall be concerned primarily with undergraduate teaching as it is on this part of the sociological enterprise that I have collected some data. The evidence is by no means comprehensive and consists of course outlines given in the university calendars or faculty handbooks for 1969 or 1970, together with book lists and samples of tutorial and essay topics. Of necessity, this kind of evidence is incomplete (and will be, of course, somewhat dated by the time this paper appears in print). Ideally one would wish to be able to interview persons responsible for teaching and/or compare, say, the teaching of sociological theory in the Universities of New South Wales, Monash, New England, Queensland and La Trobe. I assume, however, to limit the review to general principles and issues that face the members of our profession in developing sociological teaching in Australia. The survey of course outlines shows that the structure of undergraduate training in sociology in Australian universities tends to be a highly fragmented one. In some departments the average course load allows the student little time to himself—time in which to 234
The Teaching of Sociology in Australian Universities wonder, to speculate, to talk to fellow students, time for undirected reading, time to go to the library to prove that a teacher was wrong, and perhaps to find that he himself was wrong. For education, a process of finding not the teachers’ thoughts, skills and values, but one’s own, can be achieved only in relaxation and leisure.29 I find that these essential conditions for learning are not always present in the departments where sociology is taught in Australia. As far as teaching is concerned, I would like to suggest four basic principles: The first principle concerns the purpose of teaching in the most general sense. This has been put forcefully by Sir Eric Ashby in an address delivered before the Association of Commonwealth Universities Congress in Sydney in August 1968: ‘to teach in such a way that the student learns the discipline of dissent. All fruitful innovation in intellectual matters’, continued Ashby, ‘depends on the mastery of this discipline; the pupil must become familiar with orthodoxy; he must also absorb and understand what is already known about his subject. But this is only the first step in a full university education, though it is as far as many students ever get.’ The great majority of sociology majors never become research workers and have little opportunity to exercise the discipline of dissent, at any rate until their last year at the university. This is not important. What is important, again in the words of Sir Eric Ashby, ‘is that a university graduate should have watched his teacher exercising this attitude of scepticism toward the traditional and orthodox view. He should at least know that there is a technique for testing assumptions and beliefs and for changing them if they can be shown to be wrong.’ The third principle concerns the responsibility of teachers in educating the students who will embark on a professional career in sociology (the future teachers or high-level researchers). It can be assumed that the careers of these students will extend over some forty odd years. A cursory look at the development in sociology over the past forty years leads easily to the conviction that training solely in contemporary research and theoretical procedures will not serve our students in the future. We must therefore emphasise fundamental ideas, concepts and models rather than currently important ideas. For example, it is not terribly important, in my view, that students should be well versed in Blalock’s critique of the status consistency theory or with everything that Lenski, Kenkel or Landecker had to say on the state of that art. 235
Histories of Australian Sociology What is more important is that we tell our students what lies at the basis of the contemporary debate, namely Max Weber’s multidimensional theory of stratification, and everything that goes into Weber’s dialogue with the ghost of Marx, his insistence on rationality, his typology of social action, etc. What I am advocating, I suppose, is that the curriculum in sociology should be a judicious blend of the fundamentals with the contemporary fancies: because of the limited time we have available we must not emphasise the expertise and facility for carrying out established procedures in research at the expense of the understanding of basic concepts. In other words, we must guard ourselves against a confusion of relevance with topicality. Fourthly, and following on what has just been said, the only remedy to fragmentation, in my view, lies in giving greater emphasis to what Smelser calls the ‘core sociological enterprise: accounting for variations and interdependencies of data within a “sociological framework”’.30 In practice this implies greater stress on theory and research methodology than is given at present, and perhaps better integration between the many substantive fields of sociology that are now being taught and the current sociological enterprise of theory and research. The statement of my four principles has two further implications. First, insofar as the teaching of theory is concerned, too often the courses offered at present consist of a rapid survey of people, schools of thought and structural concepts. What I am advocating is a more leisurely examination of half a dozen or even fewer ‘great books’. I can think of no better intellectual discipline than an opportunity for contact with a great mind. It is immaterial whether Aristotle’s Politics, Durkheim’s Suicide, Weber’s Protestant Ethic or de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America is written in a stylistic idiom that is now out of fashion. What matters is that it offers the student, in the words of Shils, ‘a continuous opportunity for contact with an enduring problem, with a permanently important aspect of social existence, as disclosed through the greatness of a mind’.31 I am advocating, therefore, a trend away from the textbook treatment of selected bits of theory, in favour of a curriculum that can be focused on categories of events that are at the root of our social existence. The second implication concerns the need for agreement among teachers as to the purpose of undergraduate training in sociology. Should we perceive our students as future social scientists, social 236
The Teaching of Sociology in Australian Universities engineers, radical actionists or revolutionaries? In my view, our duty is to train future sociologists as scientists and persons well aware of their social responsibility in that role. It is in this context that my plea for guarding ourselves against a confusion of relevance with topicality has special significance. How often today the intellectual curiosity, detailed learning and wide ranging concern of a Weber or a Durkheim give way to the humility of admitting that there is too much knowledge for one man and simultaneously to the arrogant parochialism in search of absolute neutrality and certainty. How often has this kind of reasoning been an excuse for not teaching the discipline of sociology but concentrating on a wide range of substantive fields of sociology not adequately related to the core of sociological enterprise? Finally, when I advocate the need for greater integration in the teaching of sociology and when I stress the discipline of relating descriptive material to the core of theory and research, I want to make it clear that this can only be done gradually. An overdose of abstract theory in the first year of undergraduate study need not be lethal but would be a deterrent to many a student for whom the subject holds a special fascination. An example of this misplaced emphasis on the core of theory is a Sociology I unit in one department in which the students are not only expected to grasp Nisbet’s key analytical concepts of European Sociology, but are also required to use these ‘unit ideas’ to study the nature of sociological explanation. Another example is an essay topic in which first-year students were asked to contrast the explanatory power of ideology in the writings of Marx and Weber. In all these instances the stress on formal theory and the implied emphasis on problems of epistemology come much too early, long before the student has had a chance to familiarise himself with some of the basic concepts of sociology and before he has been taught how to handle such concepts in comparative analysis of simple and advanced societies. Luckily, however, such examples are, on the whole, isolated and the majority of departments provide their students initially with a mixture of analytical concepts and descriptive material. An interesting example of this approach is the first-year unit at La Trobe which is given jointly to history and sociology students and is centred around a study of Mexican society, with special attention to the colonial period. Subsequently, the Mexican materials provide the basis for an introduction to the problems and methods of sociology. 237
Histories of Australian Sociology
There is one other issue which has been raised recently in two American reports on the education of sociologists. Both the Sibley Report32 and the Report of the Sociology Panel of the Behavioural and Social Sciences Survey33 deplore the inadequacy of training in mathematics, statistics and computer skills. To Sibley in particular this mathematical illiteracy is of critical importance, for, without understanding the language of mathematics, sociologists can use statistical methods only in a ‘cook book fashion’. The situation with respect to mathematical training in sociology departments in Australia is not immediately clear from the evidence provided by heads of departments. It appears that all departments provide courses which are variously described as research methods and statistics (New South Wales: two semesters), social statistics and research methodology (Monash: two terms), statistics for sociologists (University of New England: one term), research methods and techniques (University of New England: one term).34 The University of Queensland offers ‘a practical course consisting of sixteen sessions and based on an introduction to the methodology of social science research’. Blalock’s Social Statistics is listed as prescribed textbook for this course. La Trobe University is the only place where sociology students are required to take a half unit in introductory research methods in their second year, to be followed by a third-year unit in statistical methods extending over three terms and offered jointly by the Departments of Sociology and Mathematics. The subject of training in mathematical techniques for sociologists will be discussed in a separate session of this Conference, and therefore I do not wish to raise the issue of what and how it should be taught. But, treated as a general issue, the place of mathematical training in the whole spectrum of undergraduate sociology is one which must be faced now by members of our profession. Sibley and, to a lesser extent, Smelser and Davis, admit that there will always be a place in sociology for insight, intuition and for quantitative analysis. In the words of Selvin’s critique of Sibley: ‘Granting all this, however, does anyone still seriously doubt that formal reasoning and quantitative research are going to be more and more important in the understanding of society? The choice is not between mathematics and intuition or between quantitative and qualitative but between good sociology and bad.’ He continues citing from Sibley: ‘… if sociologists 238
The Teaching of Sociology in Australian Universities will not learn mathematics, they will "find themselves losing ground in competition with scholars and practitioners trained in more rigorous disciplines … who will not hesitate to offer answers to social problems on the basis of most naïve conceptions of the nature of society"’.35 The views expressed in the two American reports as well as in the more specialised surveys carried out in Britain in the last decade36 are concerned primarily with graduate training and research. In my view, however, they present issues which must be faced already at the undergraduate level if the professional content of a sociology major is to be fully developed in the years to come. Conclusion In preparing this survey of the teaching of sociology in Australia, my commission was to provide members of the Sociological Association of Australia and New Zealand, and especially those who teach the subject, with as much definite information about the scope of sociological enterprise in Australia as possible. The paper, then, is essentially a data paper with somewhat limited interpretation. I have painted a picture of sociology in Australia in its infancy, still not recognised in the majority of our universities, with meagre resources and inadequately developed graduate studies. I am not arguing that the survey I have presented is a comprehensive one. I can only hope that this paper will mark the beginning of what should be a continuing reappraisal of sociological enterprise in Australia by its members. Apart from our own preoccupation with the content of sociological training and the relationship between what is taught in the departments of sociology and anthropology and outside such departments, there are many further questions that must be asked time and time again. Does sociology in Australia attract its share of the brightest, professionally motivated students into graduate work, or do they go into physics, mathematics or medicine? Should all undergraduates be provided with opportunities to do empirical research from the start? Will the capacity of our profession to educate and train substantial numbers of students already enrolled keep up with the projected increase in enrolments? What are the employment opportunities of sociology graduates?37 What resources should be marshalled to develop a national survey and a national data system?
239
Histories of Australian Sociology These are some of the many pertinent questions that we must begin to ask now. The first phase in the development of sociology in Australia—the search for intellectual legitimation—is over. We are now in the second stage which, for want of a better term, I want to call institutionalisation. This means a number of things: the setting up of new departments, development of a professional association and, of course, the further development of the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Sociology. The institutionalisation of sociological enterprise in Australia, however desirable, must not imply intellectual rigidity. I would suggest that, in a world which seems increasingly confused as to its purpose, it is critical that we, as teachers of sociology, understand man, how he has developed, what he has achieved, what he is capable of and what he might become. We have come to another of those times in history when the established way of doing things is no longer adequate to the task ahead. Our very success in building an urban, industrialised, enormously affluent society in Australia has made the simultaneous existence of poverty, injustice in the treatment of aborigines, and the degradation of our environment an issue which students find intolerable—as we should, too, if we are not too comfortable to think about it. Our students are looking for a better world, in some sense, and the prospect of trying to establish a model of education in sociology which will help them to find it is, to me, an exciting one. Notes and acknowledgments The helpfulness of Margaret Henty in collating the data on which this paper has been based is gratefully acknowledged. 1.
2.
3.
240
A comprehensive study of the origin and growth of sociology in Australia remains to be done. It might perhaps begin with a period of ‘proto-history’ in which the principal landmarks were Stanley Jevons’ social survey of Sydney in the 1840s, Twopeny’s Town Life in Australia (1840), and Albert Métin’s account of what he called the ‘workers’ paradise’ in his La Socialisme sans doctrines (1901). The next phase would include the first statistical accounts of Australian society in the works of T. A. Coghlan and Sir George Knibbs. Whether the sociology option in the MA in philosophy continued beyond 1925 is not clear because the format of course listings in the calendar was changed after that year and the content of MA courses was not given in detail. It would be of interest to study the archives of the University of Sydney to find out more about the content of this course and to discover how many people actually graduated with the sociology major in their MA and to trace their careers. Anderson’s 1911 address pleading for introduction of sociology in Australia reads as if it had been given only a few years back (Sir Francis Anderson, ‘Sociology in
The Teaching of Sociology in Australian Universities
4.
5.
6. 7.
8.
9.
Australia: a Plea for its Teaching’, Social Horizons, July 1943, 16). The contribution of Francis Anderson is discussed by P. H. Partridge, ‘The Contribution of Philosophy…’ in One Hundred Years of the Faculty of Arts, a series of commemorative lectures given in the Great Hall, University of Sydney, during April and May 1952, Angus & Robertson, Sydney, 1952, pp. 76–7. See also A. P. Elkin, ‘The Emergence of Psychology, Anthropology and Education’ in the same publication, p. 35. Elkin writes: ‘Not only did he [Anderson] lecture on sociology and advocate the setting up of a department of sociology, but he accepted MA theses on sociological and anthropological subjects. One of the latter was on “The Religion of the Australian Aborigines”, incidentally, by myself.’ Clarence H. Northcott, Australian Social Development, Columbia University Press, New York, 1918. Northcott’s style of sociology is almost unrecognisable to the modern sociologist. He works on the principle that, if sufficient facts and figures are available to the sociologist, then principles for the development of the perfect state can be determined and the perfect state can then be instituted. Australia offers every hope to the sociologist as a country which can be developed this way: ‘Government by the people is not necessarily nor usually a perfect form of government. Because its supreme task is that of creating and adjusting institutions which will function for the realisation of ideals, it is beset with difficulties. It will not realise its fullest fruitfulness if the ideals are not conducive to the highest welfare of the state and its members, if the machinery for their realisation is deficient in quantity or quality, or if the people are neither wise enough nor disinterested enough to work the machinery to its fullest capacity and for its highest purposes. It is the task of the sociologist to evaluate the ideals and estimate the defects revealed in the development of democracy. In so doing, he unfolds implicitly a programme of social efficiency’ (Australian Social Development, pp. 32–3). Atkinson was an Englishman born in 1883 and educated at Cambridge University, where he took an MA in 1908. In 1914 he was appointed Director of Tutorial Classes at the University of Sydney, but left there in 1918 to take up the same post at the University of Melbourne. He was very involved in the conscription issue of 1917 and in other political movements. Atkinson left Melbourne University in 1922 to become editor of the Australian Review and returned via Russia to England in 1926, where he died. His publications include The New Social Order (Workers’ Educational Association, 1919) and Australia—Economic and Political Studies (Macmillan, 1920). He edited Trade Unionism in Australia (Workers’ Educational Association, 1915). Gunn’s publications included Bergson and His Philosophy (1920), Modern French Philosophy (1922), Social Progress (1923), Livelihood: Economics for Social Science Students (1927). It might be of interest here to give the names of teachers in sociology who worked under Gunn. The following are listed in the calendars of the University of Melbourne: Philip David Phillips (Tutor, 1922–24), Rudolf Bronner (Tutor, 1927), and William MacMahon Ball (Independent Lecturer, 1928–29). It is perhaps noteworthy that neither Gunn nor Atkinson rate mention in either Ernest Scott, History of the University of Melbourne, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1936, or Norman H. Olver and Geoffrey Blainey, The University of Melbourne: A Centenary Portrait, Cambridge University Press, London and New York, 1956. Nor is there any mention of sociology classes or courses. One can only conclude that sociology was very peripheral indeed. The Department of Anthropology did not, however, emerge directly from the Philosophy Department but was established on the basis of grants from the state and federal governments of Australia for the purpose of (1) providing anthropological training for courses in the administrative service of the Territory of Papua and New Guinea; (2) training research workers for work among the Aborigines and in the islands of South-West Pacific, and (3) providing courses in anthropology to students
241
Histories of Australian Sociology
10. 11.
12. 13.
14. 15. 16.
17.
18. 19.
20. 21. 22.
242
working for the degrees of BA, MA and BSc. An additional source of research funds was the Australian Research Council in co-operation with several American foundations (A. P. Elkin, ‘The Emergence of Psychology, Anthropology…’, pp. 35– 8). On this point see Naomi J. Caiden, ‘The Organisation of Teaching and Research in the Social Sciences in Australian Universities’ in Social Sciences Information, 3 (1), 1964, pp. 1–3. A. P. Elkin, C. R. McRae and K. T. Henderson, ‘Editorial Note’, Social Horizons, July 1943. The following account of the developments at the University of Sydney follows closely the notes kindly prepared for me by Professor Jean I. Martin, who herself was a student and later lectured in the Department of Anthropology. Some of the theses are listed in the bibliography attached to Jean I. Martin, ‘Marriage, the Family and Class’, in A. P. Elkin (ed.), Marriage and the Family in Australia, Angus & Robertson, Sydney, 1957, pp. 24–53. See the following reports of the Rural Reconstruction Commission, all published by the Government Printing Office, Canberra: A General Rural Survey (1944), Settlement and Employment of Returned Men on the Land (1944), Land Utilisation and Farm Settlement (1944), Financial and Economic Reconstruction of Farms (1944), Farming Efficiency and Costs and Factors Relating Thereto (1945), Rural Amenities (1945), Rural Land Tenure and Valuation (1946). A. P. Elkin, ‘The Need for Sociological Research in Australia’, Social Horizons, July 1943, p. 13 A. P. Elkin, C. R. McRae and K. T. Henderson, op. cit. See, for example, W. E. H. Stanner, ‘The need for Departments of Sociology in Australian Universities’, Australian Quarterly, 24, March 1952, 60–73 and Social, Science Research Committee of the Australian National Research Council, The Teaching of the Social Sciences in Australian Universities, 1951, 82 pp. (mimeo). P. H. Partridge, ‘Teaching and Research in the Social Sciences at Australian Universities’, International Social Science Bulletin, 7 (2), 1955, 250. See also his ‘The state of the universities’, in E. L. French, (ed.), Melbourne Studies in Education, 1960–1, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1962, pp. 72–95. For further details of postwar developments in social sciences see S. F. Nadel, ‘Sociological Research in Australia’, in Transactions of the Second World Congress of Sociology, Liege, 1953, International Sociological Association, 1954, 1, pp. 3–6; A. G. Mitchell, ‘The university faculties’, in A. G. Price (ed.), The Humanities in Australia, Sydney, 1959, pp. 56–98; M. Leifer and G. S. Reid, ‘An approach to the teaching of the Social Sciences’, in Adelaide University Graduates Gazette, 3, June 1961, pp. 3–5; Kurt Mayer, ‘Sociology in Australia and New Zealand’, in Sociology and Social Research, 49, October 1964, p. 31; Hans Mol, ‘Sociology in Australia and New Zealand’, The American Sociologist, 3 (3), May 1968, 146–7. The Organization and Finance of Adult Education in England and Wales, HMSO, 1965. The information in this table was collated from a questionnaire survey of all departments of sociology and anthropology in Australia which I conducted in March 1970. All heads of departments returned the questionnaire but some were unable to provide all the information concerning graduates in sociology and student enrolments. Figures derived from the universities’ reports to the AUC submitted in 1968–69 and giving projected enrolment figures for the triennium 1970–72. In 1969, 284 students were enrolled in anthropology courses at Macquarie. The Department of Sociology in the School of General Studies (ANU) plans to enrol 300 students in 1972. In this calculation the combined anthropology enrolment shown in the AUC projections for Sydney (854) and Western Australia (592), together with the estimated
The Teaching of Sociology in Australian Universities
23. 24.
25. 26.
27. 28. 29.
30.
31. 32.
enrolment for Macquarie (300), has been subtracted from the national grand total of 5500. The reader is again warned about the difficulty of separating anthropological teaching from sociology, which was discussed in the previous section of this paper. It could be argued for example that, for the sake of accuracy, only a certain proportion of enrolment in the Department of Anthropology and Sociology at the University of Queensland should be included in the calculation of a net sociology enrolment. In the opinion of the present author, such a refinement would not substantially alter the estimates given above. Neil J. Smelser, James A. Davis, Sociology, Prentice-Hall, New Jersey, 1969, p. 127. In this calculation MA and PhD enrolments in the department of anthropology in the University of Western Australia and PhD enrolments in the Research School of Pacific Studies (ANU) were excluded. Graduate students ‘with predominantly sociological theses topics’ (numbers in brackets) in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Sydney were included. The resulting figures are, nevertheless, probably greatly overstated as they disregard the unknown wastage rate among people who do not complete their degrees. There is also the unknown proportion of MA graduates who proceed to the PhD and the well-known fact that women who do pursue graduate work suffer a considerably higher wastage rate than men. On this point see Elbridge Sibley, The Education of Sociologists in the United States, Russell Sage Foundation, New York, 1963. See Table 2. This argument completely eschews the demand for sociologists with higher degrees by other tertiary institutions, research institutions as well as government departments and private industry. If the demand from these other sources increases greatly in the next few years, the supply of MAs and PhDs available for university teaching will be further depleted. Smelser and Davis, op. cit., p. 133. The University Teaching of the Social Sciences: Sociology, Social Psychology and Anthropology, UNESCO, Paris, 1954, p. 34. In establishing a contrast between emphasis on the subject or the student, I have drawn on Sir Eric Ashby’s Queen’s Lecture delivered at the Free University of Berlin in 1967. ‘The nineteenth-century idea of a university’, said Sir Eric, ‘is a hybrid with a heredity derived from Germany, Britain and America. It is a German trait… to put emphasis on the subject rather than the student. As Humboldt wrote five generations ago: "The relationship between teacher and student… is changing. The former does not exist for the sake of the latter. They are both at the university for the sake of science and scholarship…" It is an English trait… to put emphasis on the cultivation of the student’s intellectual health. "To discover and to teach", wrote John Henry Newman, "are distinct functions"—and he recommended a division of intellectual labour between academies (for research) and universities (for teaching)… It is an American trait to emphasise that there is no wall separating scholar from citizen, or academic knowledge from useful knowledge. The great seal of Cornell University has inscribed upon it these words: "I would found an institution where any person can find instruction in any study".’ (Eric Ashby, ‘Future of the nineteenth-century idea of a university’, Minerva, VI, (1), Autumn 1967, 14–15). See also Talcott Parsons and Gerald M. Platt, ‘Considerations on the American Academic System’, Minerva, VI, (4), Summer 1968, 497–523. Neil J. Smelser, ‘The Optimum Scope of Sociology’, in Robert Bierstedt (ed.), A Design for Sociology: Scope, Objectives, and Methods, Philadelphia, Monograph 9 in a series sponsored by the American Academy of Political and Social Science, April 1969, pp. 19–20. Edward Shils, ‘The Calling of Sociology’ in Talcott Parsons and others (eds.), Theories of Society, one volume edition, The Free Press, New York, 1965, p. 1447. Sibley, op. cit.
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Histories of Australian Sociology 33. Previously cited as Smelser and Davis. 34. The Faculty Handbook of the University of New England also lists elective one term units in Sample Survey Techniques and Computer Programming to be taken in the Department of Economic Statistics and also Research Methodology (Basic Statistics) and Computer in Social Sciences units with the Department of Education. 35. Hanan Selvin, ‘Education for Sociologists’, British Journal of Sociology, xv (3), 1964, 262–6. See also Selvin’s paper, ‘The teaching of sociological methodology in the United States of America’, International Social Science Journal, 15, 1963, 597–615. 36. See Research in the Humanities and the Social Sciences—Report of a Survey by the British Academy 1958–60, Oxford University Press, 1961 and Social Research and a National Policy for Science—a paper of the Council of the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations, Tavistock pamphlet No. 7, London, 1964. 37. We might well follow the example of the British Sociological Association in sponsoring surveys of the employment of sociology graduates. See J. A. Banks, ‘The Employment of Sociology Graduates, 1952 and 1953’, British Journal of Sociology, Vol. 5, June 1954, 161–2; J. A. Banks and O. L. Banks, ‘Employment of Sociology and Anthropology Graduates, 1952 and 1954’, British Journal of Sociology, Vol. 7, No. 1, 1956, 46–51; J. A. Banks, ‘Employment of Sociology and Anthropology Graduates: Final Report’, British Journal of Sociology, Vol. 9, September 1958, 271– 83.
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17 Australian Sociology and its Historical Environment DIANE J. AUSTIN–BROOS (1989)*
T
he idea of national traditions in sociology suggests the application and adaptation of general principles in the face of a particularity; a sociology versed in theories of society and yet sensitive to the issues raised in a particular historical environment. A sense of the particular in Australian sociology has only begun to emerge in the period of rapid expansion in Australian sociological studies since the end of the Second World War. This is hardly surprising and even encouraging given the slow start sociology has had in Australian universities. Although courses in sociology were offered early on by both philosophy and anthropology departments in the University of Sydney, the first undergraduate department of sociology was established at the University of New South Wales in 1959. Other departments followed quickly in the 1960s, especially in the newer universities (Baldock and Lally 1974: 4–6). Interestingly, at the time sociology was founded there, the University of New South Wales was still an institute of technical education, and even to this day undergraduate departments of sociology have been staunchly resisted in Australia’s two oldest and most prestigious universities, Melbourne and Sydney. This situation reflects the relatively low status accorded to sociology in some areas of the Australian academy, due at least in part to the very strong position of relatively conservative history departments. In the midst of this reserve, the older universities have preferred to accommodate professional departments of social work rather than departments fostering a critical science of society. Notwithstanding this slow beginning, Australian sociology is poised now on the brink of very rapid developments in its move towards evolving a genuinely Australian sociology (Austin 1984). These developments have been aided by the very fertile cross-referencing
*
Source: Austin-Broos, D. (1989) ‘Australian Sociology and its Historical Environment’, in N. Genov (ed.), National Traditions in Sociology, Sage, London. © Reprinted with permission of Sage Publications Ltd.
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Histories of Australian Sociology that occurs in Australia between the areas of sociology, history and political economy; and, certainly to date, these latter two disciplines have played an important role as focal points for debate within Australian sociology. My account of the emergence of something resembling a national tradition in Australian sociology will then in part trace sociological responses to initial work done in Australian history and political economy. (I should emphasize that in discussing a national tradition in Australian sociology I will not discuss all Australian sociology, including the many and diverse community studies or the comparative studies in social mobility.) Different types of sociology have their different roles (see my survey, Austin 1984). Rather, I am discussing those forms of sociology which attest to a historical engagement with Australian society. At the outset it is appropriate to make a few observations about Australian society, especially when they seem pertinent to the discussion of a sociological tradition. Australia’s six initial colonies were federated in 1901 under a constitution which recognized Australia’s legislative and (relative) judicial independence from the United Kingdom. On that day, Australians officially ceased to be colonial peoples and became a dominion state. However, this is not to say that on that day Australians ceased to make Britain their major reference point in terms of social, economic and intellectual life. That reference point endured at least until some time after the Second World War and only began to crumble significantly in the 1960s and 1970s. Six major events of differing durations and impact have contributed to the radical diminution of this dependency on a British heritage. The Second World War and particularly its Pacific theatre proved to Australians that they could no longer rely on Britain to protect Australian integrity. As a major foreign policy realignment was taking place, Australia’s participation in the Vietnam War enforced a realization that its major ally was perforce the United States, with which it shared a particular interest in south-east Asia. Another event of enormous importance was the massive influx of post-war migrants, the majority of whom came from non-English-speaking societies with social and political reference points different from native-born Australians. The fourth event to affect Australians in a pervasive way was the entry of Britain into the European Economic Community which gradually forced on many Australians the realization that they could no longer take for granted the security of important export markets for their extensive rural produce. 246
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The fifth event was the minerals ‘boom’ of the 1970s which opened up the north and west of the Australian continent. The industrial developments led European Australians to perceive Aborigines as relevant and integral to Australian economic expansion in a way they had not perceived them since the early nineteenth century. Negotiations over rights to land between Aborigines, the government and the mining companies have reminded at least some sectors of Australian society that Australians have not only been colonists, but also colonizers, Europeans in another people’s world. These events also emphasized that Australia’s imperialism would always be a subimperialism. The mining expansion accompanied a collapse of domestic manufacturing and underlined Australia’s dependence on extensive transnational investment in major export sectors of the economy.1 The final event, or rather process, important to Australian perceptions, has been the increasing development of powerful Asian economic neighbours—particularly Singapore, Korea, Taiwan and Malaysia—which now constitute a more attractive locus than Australia for manufacturing investment from Japan, the United States and around the world (Bulbeck 1983: 223). These events have underlined both an increasing remoteness from a British world and Australia’s inevitable engagement as a European enclave with its Asian neighbours. They also have emphasized to Australians that theirs is a history of vacillating economic dependency rather different from the domestic experiences of the Western European nations. Clearly Australia’s historical path will become increasingly different from the European societies that generations of Australians have been wont to liken to their own. If the initial reference point was Britain, more recent likenesses have been drawn between social democratic societies such as Sweden, Switzerland and Austria, despite the fact that Australia has had neither a congruent history of state formation nor a congruent economy that would make these comparisons more than fleetingly plausible. However, conditions have begun to change in Australia, and as they have changed it has been political economists that have responded most enthusiastically to the new environment. One writer in political economy has had a very significant impact in developing a rather different perspective for Australian social scientists. E. L. Wheelwright (1957 and 1975; Fitzpatrick and 247
Histories of Australian Sociology Wheelwright 1965), who followed in the steps of economic historian Brian Fitzpatrick, has energetically set about drawing to Australians’ attention the fact that, far from being a national economy, Australia has become increasingly dependent on international capital relations (but see Clark 1975). In these circumstances major decisions concerning the development of Australia’s economy are taken offshore or in the midst of complicated offset negotiations between foreign investors and the Australian government (Crough and Wheelwright 1982). Though his initial inspiration came from Fitzpatrick, more recently Wheelwright’s analyses have been informed by theories of dependency and underdevelopment as they were elaborated by Amin (1974), Frank (1967) and Pierre Jalee (1968). Wheelwright’s theme has been developed in a more sociological mode by Malcolm Alexander (1981 and 1983), who has argued persuasively that the relevant comparisons for an Australian political economy are Canada, Argentina and possibly Brazil. Most important, Alexander cuts across a tendency in Australian social science to theorize in terms of a progressive industrial development and class formation which is heading towards a culmination referred to as the ‘mature’ stage (a mature capitalism, a mature industrialism, a mature bourgeoisie and working class).2 This mature stage of Australian industrialism presumably is based on some amalgam of European states, although those who adopt this approach are seldom inclined to elucidate their model. Alexander argues against this approach by citing the 1950s and 1960s, a period of marked prosperity in Australia. For Alexander (1983: 69) these years represented not simply another step forward in Australia’s progressive industrial development, nor a period of hegemonic consumerism. Rather, this was a period in which particular opportunities created by developments in the world economy allowed Australia a sustained, but by no means continuing, span of prosperity. Australia’s subsequent economic difficulties underline the point that its business and trade cycles are magnified by its precarious place within the world economy; a place which, with the demise of its claim to imperial markets, is likely to become more rather than less precarious. Alexander’s parallels with societies like Brazil and Argentina are based on the difficulties they share with Australia as commodity traders in their attempts to build stable manufacturing sectors. Radical fluctuations of price and demand in international
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Australian Sociology and its Historical Environment markets mean that steady domestic accumulation of earnings from commodity exports is never assured.3 At the same time it should be observed that Australia’s very fortuitous mix of metals, minerals and primary produce has allowed a relatively small society to maintain for a significant part of this century relatively high wage levels and a respectable modicum of domestic accumulation. These conditions have supported a much greater spread of service industries and manufacturing for import substitution than has been feasible in many Third World societies with larger populations than Australia. It is this aspect of the Australian experience, along with shared political traditions sustained in part by economic prosperity, that makes the society rather more like Canada and less like Argentina and Brazil. Alexander acknowledges this to a degree when he observes: ‘the ability of the Australian working class to maintain high wage levels and the establishment of the welfare state in this country provide important points of contrast between Australia and other countries at a comparable level of industrial development and technological dependence’ (1983: 66). These introductory remarks will suffice to set the scene for the subsequent discussion wherein I trace some major steps along the path to a specifically Australian sociological tradition. I A book which has stood at the centre of Australian social science debate provides the starting-point: W. K. Hancock’s Australia (1930). Hancock, a conservative, was writing during the years leading up to the Great Depression and, as Rowse (1978) has argued, was writing primarily from the point of view of capital interests in Australia. Yet the book was and remains sufficiently insightful to act as a reference point for a whole range of Australian social scientists. A large part of Hancock’s study focused on the prominent role of Australian state governments, the erstwhile colonial governments, in the management of the Australian economy. He noted at the outset, quoting Metin, that Australia was indeed a society governed by a socialisme sans doctrine. He addressed himself to the prominent role played by state governments in overseas borrowing to finance the expansion of economic infrastructure, particularly railroad building. Hancock suggested that the viability of these public enterprises was constantly undermined by demands for preferential treatment from 249
Histories of Australian Sociology the political constituencies they were meant to serve, not only efficiently but also economically. As a result, the railways, rather than paying for themselves, represented a constant drain on the colonial economies. Where the federal government was concerned, Hancock turned to the issue of protectionism in Australian society. Protection began with the colonial governments, but became ensconced as a federal policy in 1921 after protracted manoeuvres among urban manufacturers, rural producers and the trade union movement. The advent of the Tariff Board in that year signalled a tacit agreement that, in exchange for the protection of manufacturing, wage labourers would be protected from higher living costs by an indexed basic wage, and rural producers would be protected from increased factor costs by bounties and price subsidies within Australia. Hancock wrote at a time when this system had begun to run out of control, a fact attested to by the Tariff Board itself (Hancock 1930: 93). As Australia was drawn into the Great Depression, the slogan of ‘protection all round’ could be happily applied to an economy becoming less and less competitive in international terms. Hancock’s interests, however, were not simply confined to political economy. On the basis of these accounts he also drew a humorous but highly critical portrait of the Australian ethos. He noted that Australia was a society in which extensive state intervention in the daily lives of the people was not only accepted but expected. This situation had developed not from the predominance of socialist doctrines, but from a rampant utilitarianism imbued with individualism and nationalism. Hancock (1930: 73) observed: ‘To the Australian, the State means collective power at the service of individualistic "rights". Therefore he sees no opposition between his individualism and his reliance upon Government.’ Hancock also discussed aspects of Australian racism and the marked tendency to xenophobia in a still very British outpost in the midst of an Asian-Pacific world. These tendencies, Hancock suggested, accentuated an inclination to rely heavily on government protection and ordering of the society. Today Hancock’s observations on Australian political economy and particularly on the role of state governments have been much amplified, especially by economic historian Noel Butlin with his accounts of the relation between public and private sector growth in Australia (Butlin 1983; Butlin et al. 1982). Interestingly the situation to which Hancock referred was soon to change. The state governments 250
Australian Sociology and its Historical Environment had indeed built intolerable burdens of foreign debt at the onset of the Great Depression. When Britain recalled its debts, the states turned to the private sector to balance the account, and thousands upon thousands were thrown out of work. After the Second World War, Australia’s industrial development was funded primarily by privately invested foreign equity capital. The states played a more limited role in infrastructural development, and the federal government with newly won income-taxing powers began to concentrate its efforts in the development of ‘human capital’ (Butlin 1983: 85). This was the beginning of the modern Australian welfare state with its expenditures in housing, education, health and social service pensions. Sociologist Sol Encel’s view of Australia developed not only in dialogue with the work of W. K. Hancock, but also subsequent to his involvement in an Australian public service bureaucracy which, directly after the Second World War, was governed by strongly Keynesian doctrines concerning the necessity of a welfare state for capitalist economies. Encel (1970) argues that the individualist society which Hancock saw in Australia in the 1920s has long since gone, pushed aside by the very expansion of federal bureaucracy which the taxation changes of the Second World War allowed. In his discussion of the ‘bureaucratic ascendancy’ in Australia, Encel emphasizes that regard for authority, especially for political and bureaucratic authority, is unduly high in Australia. In a series of insightful comments on Australian culture, Encel insists that ‘The ambiguity of Australian attitudes towards authority… is itself a reflection of the paradox that the quest for equality has been satisfied to such a large extent by the establishment of bureaucratic institutions’ (1970: 78). Encel observes of Australia, and the bureaucratic legacy which Hancock described: ‘The price of institutionalized equality is institutionalized authority’ (Encel 1970: 79). Like Hancock and Butlin, however, Encel recognizes the historical dimensions of this bureaucratic ascendancy in Australia, and in the process rejects the relevance of classical Marxist theory to analyses of Australian society. Encel observes that neither of Australia’s major political parties is a class party, notwithstanding the close tie between unions and the Labour parties (cf. Kemp 1978). Again, the structure of government, particularly the extensive network of agencies concerned with trade, constitutes an enduring reality relatively impervious to class conflicts and changes in government. This complex apparatus of governmental authorities is part of the normal science of government in Australia and offers a precise index of 251
Histories of Australian Sociology Australia’s cultural reality. Encel emphasizes that this style of economically interventionist government should not be seen as some market economists see it, as a malfunction in economic life, but rather as the inevitable outcome of political pressures in an ‘underdeveloped’ colonial context (1968 [1960]: 47). Australia’s early development was plagued by expensive internal and external transport, and the influence of Chartism in England meant that workers had high expectations regarding wages and living standards (Encel 1970: 63). Revenue derived from the resource-rich continent allowed governments a great capacity to raise capital on British investment markets, and as a consequence governments came to carry responsibility for some of the more expensive aspects of economic development. As Australia moved into the twentieth century, ‘the public sector or government regulation became substitutes for the normal functions of the middle class and capitalist groups as agents of economic development. Inevitably there followed the growth of bureaucracy to run a network of regulation agencies’ (B. McFarlane quoted in Encel 1970: 63). This feature of Australian economic life is hardly unique, though it is distinctive for its early emergence on the Australian scene. It is evidenced by the fact that since the 1950s Australian trade officers have argued that Australia as a commodity producer with a highly protected manufacturing sector has interests quite different from the developed economies of Europe and the United States. (Indeed, the latest trade crisis in Australia concerning the progressive loss of markets for wheat has been precipitated by a price-cutting war between the EEC and the United States in which Australia is unable to compete.) If these factors account for the bureaucratic ascendancy in Australia, Encel argues that it has been conditioned by a network of interlocking social and political groups increasingly well organized, highly educated and prepared to pass between the public and private sectors in the course of one lifetime (cf. Higley et al. 1979). Current debates in Australian sociology concerning corporatist aspects of the Australian economy, especially as represented by the ‘industrial relations club’— peak organizations of labour and employers involved with government in industrial arbitration—have continued the trend of Encel’s analysis (see, for instance, Matthews 1983; Playford 1969; Playford and Kirsner 1972).
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Australian Sociology and its Historical Environment II Encel developed his sociology not only in response to Hancock, but also in solid opposition to labour historians writing in the 1950s and 1960s. Though Encel mentions specifically the work of Robin Gollan, with whom he shared an institutional affiliation for a time,4 it is appropriate also to include the work of Ian Turner and Russell Ward. These three historians painted a vigorous and positive view of Australian labour/socialist politics at a time in the 1950s when Australia’s version of the cold war had most socialist groups in retreat. Gollan (1960) and Turner (1979) traced in different but overlapping periods (1850–1910 and 1910–21 respectively) the progress of the Australian labour movement, from clusters of craft unions based mainly in the major towns of the various colonies, to the first mass industrial unions of rural workers, miners and longshoremen. These latter engaged in aggressive industrial action in the 1890s during a period of major recession which brought radical reductions in wages and the deterioration of working conditions. Both Gollan and Turner agree that, in these initial struggles with Australian employers, the fledgling unions lost and lost quite dramatically, but as a result the unions began to support the formation of Labour parties which would constitute a political arm for the industrial movement. This political arm in turn pursued piecemeal reforms concerned mainly with wages and conditions, eschewing all the while a more radical socialist programme that would aim for a comprehensive transformation of property relations in Australia. As a consequence the truly socialist thrust of the labour movement was confined to particular spheres of the industrial movement and only began to strengthen again after the First World War when labour politicians capitulated to pressures to introduce military conscription for the European war. Although both Gollan and Turner noted the lack of a genuinely socialist thrust within the Australian labour parties, nevertheless their accounts were imbued with an optimism that as Australia’s industrialization proceeded, the industrial unions, including their political arm, would be radicalized into a successful socialist movement. Further, Gollan in particular made it clear that, notwithstanding the reformist nature of the legislation, those measures which introduced industrial arbitration, protection of industry, a restrictive immigration policy to keep out ‘cheap’ labour (also, uniformly non-white labour) and an indexed basic wage were 253
Histories of Australian Sociology nevertheless achievements for the industrial movement. They were achievements, moreover, limited primarily by the political coalitions between Labour parliamentarians and their middle-class liberal colleagues. This particular analysis of the formative history of Australia’s labour and industrial movement has been a second major reference point for contemporary sociology. The first to contest this interpretation of a crucial period in Australian history was Humphrey McQueen (1970a,b). McQueen argued that the nineteenth-century class about which Turner and Gollan wrote was not in fact an industrial working class, but rather a petit bourgeoisie subject to a conservative hegemony and only a forerunner of a true labouring class which would emerge with the development of heavy industry in Australia. Connell (1977) and Connell and Irving (1980) were to take up this theme of hegemony and in an extensive work of historical sociology seek to demonstrate that this hegemony extended in the early twentieth century beyond the petit bourgeoisie to the Australian working class itself. That same legislative process which Gollan had presented as something of an achievement for Australian workers, Connell and Irving represent as an institutional barrier thrown up by the Australian ruling class to curtail the mobilization of the emerging industrial class. This sophisticated state apparatus was bolstered further, Connell and Irving argue, by a cultural hegemony transmitted through three major social institutions: the family, the churches and the various adult-education societies, especially the mechanics’ institutes (Connell and Irving 1980: 127). All these institutions fostered orderliness, responsibility and respect for authority among the working class (1980: 127). In conjunction with a situation where the working class did not have to combat a labour reserve army (1980: 131), and where labour’s representatives were early included in the state government’s procedures, this cultural domination constrained the forms of alternative ideology likely to emerge from the union movement. Connell and Irving then trace the partial remobilization of the industrial movement during the years of the Depression and the Second World War; a remobilization countered once again by a bourgeois hegemony in the prosperous years after the war. As Macintyre has indicated in a number of illuminating articles (1977, 1978 and 1981), the debate between the ‘new’ and ‘old’ left in Australian social science is at least in part a debate about the nature of classes, and class relations in Australia. The old left historians saw 254
Australian Sociology and its Historical Environment class simply as the product of relations of production and made the political efficacy of the working class dependent upon developments in the economy. The new left represented by McQueen, Connell, Irving and others defines class primarily in terms of consciousness and argues very much in the mode of Gramsci that a revolutionary socialist class will be realized in Australia only after a battle ‘from within’ schools and other institutions to overcome the cultural hegemony of Australian society. Macintyre (1979 and 1981) questions whether or not class should be defined primarily in terms of consciousness, and suggests that assertions from the new left concerning false consciousness among the Australian working class reflect their own idealized political stance rather than an appropriate engagement with the concrete history of Australian class relations. This debate along with that concerning the nature of the Australian state are steps towards an Australian sociology. They take areas of sociological investigation well established in Europe—the elaboration of bureaucracy, political economy and class relations—and begin to pursue them with regard to the Australian situation. The issue constantly brought to the fore concerns the complexities of sociological analysis in a situation where older theories of history seem not to apply, and where new theories have not been forged for the region. To date there have been only minimal attempts to grapple with the very important fact that Australia’s ‘industrial working class’, due to a heavy dependence in urban Australia on service industries, is politically probably rather different from some of its European counterparts. Chamberlain (1983) in his study of Australian class consciousness makes a start in this direction. He demonstrates the limited opposition within the Australian working class to private property, and hypothesizes that this outlook may be related to the fact that many Australian workers spend at least part of their working lives in self-employment, generally in service industries (see also Mullins 1981). This, however, is not an expansion of service industries built on advanced industrialism, but a concentration of service industry, more in the style of Third World economies, built on a lack of industrialism (cf. Head 1983: 5). The social and political significance of this phenomenon needs to be explored further. Moreover, the absence of a landholding aristocracy which associated private property with a system of rigid relations of deference is a factor familiar to Hancock which the newer class analyses have not yet explored. If European socialism is at all the antithesis of this type of society, even in its decline, it may be unreasonable to expect that 255
Histories of Australian Sociology such a collectivist movement could be transplanted in toto to Australia. III Class, then, as well as the state, has been a central problematic for Australian sociology. So too has social inequality, although studies of social inequality in Australia have changed dramatically in the past few years. Perceptions of the phenomenon have broadened and diversified radically (Armstrong and Bradbury 1983). For a period it was popular to represent Australia as an extremely egalitarian society. Connell (1974) discusses the manner in which various themes from Hancock’s work concerned especially with Australia’s individualist egalitarianism were taken up by subsequent writers, not only in the social sciences, but also in less formal areas of social commentary. This theme of a relative egalitarianism was also pressed by the war historian Bean (1921), who celebrated the ‘mateship’ among Australian soldiers in the First World War. The notion of Australian society as a community of ‘mates’—egalitarian, loyal, trustworthy and male—was widespread in Australian society by the early 1950s. Russell Ward (1958) in his study of Australian national character claimed this egalitarianism applied not simply to the men of Australia, but to the downtrodden men through generations of Australian society. Ward argued that various groups— the convicts, the Irish (oppressed under British rule), the bush workers, bushrangers and the early union movement—successively embodied the ethos of Australian egalitarianism. Ward’s argument suggested that egalitarianism was not so much a national feature of the society, but rather a feature of a class which in fact embodied a majority of Australians. Connell and Irving of course disputed this common view of Australian society with their sociological analyses of class. However, McQueen was perhaps more important when he argued that the Australian ethos of egalitarianism was also racist and involved in a sub-imperialism. European settlers had brushed aside the indigenous people of the land with barely a consideration of their rights. Moreover, European Australians recruited forced labour from the Pacific islands until union pressure made a ‘white Australia’ policy acceptable for purportedly economic reasons. In the 1970s and 1980s inequality within Australia has slowly been defined in terms other than those related to class. This has involved the fundamental 256
Australian Sociology and its Historical Environment recognition of three different groups of people structurally disadvantaged in Australian society: Aborigines, who suffer the most radical disadvantage; newly arrived non-English-speaking migrants, who concentrate in Australia’s most poorly paid occupations; and women, who through the doctrine of mateship have been made a socially invisible part of Australian life. Indeed, if sociology has done a service to Australian social science, it has been through this tradition of more general studies in social inequality which has sensitized the entrenched historical schools to the broader scope of their subject-matter. There is of course in Australia a very long tradition indeed of sociological studies in Aboriginal society. However, framed within the context of social anthropology departments, these studies for a period focused on recording the nature of traditional society and belief largely independent of its engagement with European society (Elkin 1938; Hiatt 1965; Meggitt 1962; Warner 1937). A number of these anthropologists were at the same time very actively involved in representing Aboriginal interests to Australian federal and state governments. However, it has only been in the period after the Second World War that Australian anthropologists, sociologists and historians have begun to study intensively the relations between Australian Aborigines and the Australian state apparatus. This development was antecedent to and continued after the referendum which gave Aborigines political rights in Australian society (Berndt 1977; Berndt and Berndt 1951; Broom and Jones 1973; Rowley 1972a, 1972b and 1972c). An early attempt cast the Aborigines as the victims of an internal colonialism and proffered a quasi-class analysis of Aborigines in Australia (Hartwig 1978). Later, Reynolds (1982) wrote a history documenting the nature of Aboriginal resistance to the progressive incursions of Europeans into their land. Whether or not Aborigines thought and acted entirely in these terms of ‘resistance’ is open to debate, and more recent studies by Anderson (1983), Berndt (1982), Hiatt (1984) and Toyne and Vachon (1984) begin to offer a more complex account of the relations between groups and cultures radically different in orientation and power. The upsurge of Aboriginal studies in the 1970s and 1980s demonstrates the labour/class history focus of much Australian social science as a limited and Anglophile approach to Australian society which had the arrogance to locate inequality only within the European community. This view, however, has not been peculiar to the academy. There has 257
Histories of Australian Sociology been a poor response on the part of Australia’s trade union movement to Aboriginal attempts to better their wages and conditions of life. Aboriginal strikes at various pastoral stations in 1966, 1967 and 1970 over claims to wages and rights to land saw Australia’s union movement either standing aside or supporting the status quo. This situation, among others, contributed to an Aboriginal scepticism towards assimilation and strengthened the land rights movement. Aborigines in northern and north-east Australia have experimented with out-stations as a means of protecting their culture and regulating contact with Europeans. At least in some areas of social research concerning land tenure, law and industrial relations, Australians have been forced by the phenomenon of Aboriginality to confront the specificity of their own culture and the intricacies of the cultures of others (see Maddock 1982). However, these developments, along with the presence of multiple migrant groups in Australia, have not yet produced a significant Australian sociology of culture. Australia is today and always has been predominantly a migrant society. Migration has been a perennial issue intimately related to Australia’s history as a class society with an active industrial movement. Prior to the Second World War migrant intakes to Australia were geared mainly to accommodate the demand for labour in periods of economic prosperity, including the great gold rushes in the mid-nineteenth century. There were major migrant intakes in the 1830s, the 1850s and the 1920s (Appleyard 1971; Borrie 1949; Lepervanche 1975; Sherrington 1980). After the 1850s these intakes were more and more geared to provide labour to Australian industry whilst ‘protecting’ white Australians from their Asian and Pacific neighbours. The radical expansion in the workforce during the 1950s followed on very rapid industrial expansion, especially in manufacturing. The fears of the labour movement regarding migrations which were the largest since the 1850s were allayed by claims that Australia required rapid population growth to defend the continent from external attack (Collins 1975: 108). Collins (1975) also records how the massive demand for labour in this period of Australian history began to undermine the ‘white Australia’ policy, which was finally revoked in the early 1970s. Notwithstanding the enormous migrant presence in Australia, a specifically ethnic politics has not become evident (Jupp 1984). However, there is considerable debate concerning the manner in which migrants have affected Australia’s occupational structure. Although there is strong evidence of industrial concentrations of 258
Australian Sociology and its Historical Environment southern European migrants in manufacturing, for instance, the degree to which non-English-speaking migrants remain locked into low-paid, unskilled occupations is a matter of current debate (Broom et al. 1980: 43–8; Collins 1975; Lepervanche 1984; Lever-Tracy 1981). These debates which focus on the structural impact of migration on Australian society supersede an earlier style of analysis concerned more with individual and family adjustment to Australia (Jupp 1966; Martin 1978; Rivett 1975; Zubrzycki 1964). If indeed Anglo-Saxon Australians are assuming a privileged position in the work force, these studies of occupational segmentation should be included in assessments of the political orientations of Australian workers. The intensive study of Australia’s large post-war migration and the gradual incorporation of Aborigines as social and political actors in Australian society have underlined various major structural barriers to equality in Australia that earlier historical and sociological accounts of the society seemed disinclined to recognize. The final area of sociological research that has undermined a view of Australia as a society pervaded by an egalitarian, working-class mateship is the area of women’s studies. Anne Summers (1975: 29) begins her discussion of Australian culture and history with the observation that ‘Within a supposedly free and independent Australia women are a colonized sex.’ She continues to argue that, due to a radically individuated view of the family in Australian society, and an extraordinarily ambivalent and puritanical attitude to sexuality, Australian women have been stereotyped and restricted in their options rather more markedly than women in other societies. Dixson (1976) continues the theme that women in Australia have had an exceptionally difficult history due to the excessive male orientation of the society since its early and brutal beginnings. Other sociological contributions to women’s research in Australia have focused on the extensive role of women in the Australian work force as underpaid and part-time workers in less skilled positions, and as unpaid members of the domestic workforce disadvantaged in their own households (Cass 1978; Curthoys et al. 1975; Game and Pringle 1983; Mercer 1977; Williams 1981). As women’s studies have expanded in Australia, they have gradually absorbed the sociology of the family into a more extensive sociology of gender relations (Bryson 1984), and it is this area of sociology that ultimately may determine whether or not women in Australia have faced a special discrimination. Certainly the very large proportion of Australian working- and middle-class women who work outside the home full259
Histories of Australian Sociology time in poorly paid occupations is a phenomenon which should jar beside the history of union organization in Australia. IV How does this expanded view of social inequality in Australian society relate to the other problematics of state structure and class? As yet the threads have not been drawn together in a sociological work which offers a convincing overview of the society. In this conclusion I will suggest how, in fact, these various issues might interlock. I begin with Butlin’s observation that the Australian state since the Second World War has been involved primarily in the expansion of human capital with the development of expenditures not only in education and health but also in less productive areas of welfare pensions and payments. Butlin (1983: 81) also observes that in comparison with other societies, especially the Western European societies to which so many Australians liken themselves, government welfare benefits in Australia have been relatively low. Nevertheless, both social democratic and conservative governments in the post-war period have targeted various groups as worthy of government recognition and assistance (however meagre): migrants through policies of multiculturalism; Aborigines through the land rights movement;5 women through legislation providing pensions for single parents. Both parties have sought to expand their electoral base not only by direct appeal to the recipients of these benefits, but also by appeal to their middle-class supporters. The middle class itself has also benefited through universal child endowment and free university education. The federal government is now experiencing O’Connor’s (1973) fiscal crisis of the state, and in the face of an unstable economy will be forced to arbitrate between a number of conflicting interests pressed by the representatives of capital, domestic and foreign, the rural and urban sectors of the economy, the industrial movement, the social movements (especially Aborigines and women) and the social welfare lobby. Certainly the looming crisis has already challenged the protectionist ethos of Australian society which was based on an outstandingly successful export economy in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and on its return to prosperity in the period after the Second World War. This crisis, importantly, will also challenge the assumption that ‘class’ issues as translated through a now highly bureaucratized union movement are indeed issues of human equality 260
Australian Sociology and its Historical Environment that encompass all Australians. As issues of unemployment are counterpoised beside issues of wages and conditions, the union movement will find itself in an increasingly complex political position. It is inevitable that as Australia’s economy becomes more vulnerable to international fluctuations, the state will be forced to withdraw from various areas of welfare and human capital expenditure and to concentrate its efforts more in areas of economic infrastructure which support export production. Not only the social movements but a broad spectrum of Australia’s working and middle class will suffer disillusion and frustration when this withdrawal begins to occur. If Australian sociology has come of age, it will study carefully the social and political ramifications of this reorganization of the Australian state which could in the long term have serious social implications, as various sectors of the society claim that their protection should be the last to go. Australia has been described as a ‘laboratory’ for social reform, and more recently as a ‘laboratory’ for hegemony. Ultimately it may be most interesting for what it reveals of the strength and weaknesses of the nation-state in a semi-peripheral economy. To date, the conflicts in Australian society have been managed by a negotiated alliance between the state and federal governments. Once those governments in concert can no longer protect Australians from the many vagaries of international markets, that federal system which is the Australian state will itself be placed under pressure. The most likely outcome will be a significant withdrawal of the federal government from the social and economic arena. This development will allow a greater voice for commercial interests and the self-employed, offering yet another challenge to Australia’s collectivist image and its always precarious liberalism. In social institutions and ideology Australia may well assume the social conservatism typical of peripheral nations. Notes 1.
Crough and Wheelwright (1982: 1–2) observe that, of the ‘advanced’ countries, only Canada has a higher rate of foreign ownership of industry than Australia. In 1977 official statistics indicated that three-fifths of Australian mineral industry is under the control of foreign companies, as is half of mineral exploration, research and development, and the advertising industry, and one-third of manufacturing industry, general insurance and non-bank finance (1982: 1).
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Histories of Australian Sociology 2. 3.
4. 5.
Macintyre (1983: 99) resorts to this form of teleological analysis even though in an earlier publication (Macintyre 1978) he castigated Humphrey McQueen for the very same misdemeanour. Despite Australia’s past record of prosperity, Block (1986) reports that the country’s foreign debt-servicing ratio (debt payments as a ratio of total exports of goods and services) was 39.5 per cent in 1984–5. This compares with ratio of 25.4 per cent for the USA, 28.4 per cent for the UK, 15.7 per cent in Canada and 9.2 per cent for Japan. Personal communication with Sol Encel. On 4 March 1986 the Australian government announced that it would not proceed with federal legislation for a national and uniform Aboriginal land rights policy.
References Alexander, M. (1981) ‘Historical social science: class structure in the modern world system’, Australian and New Zealand Journal of Sociology, 17(1): 56–64. —— (1983) ‘Australia in the capitalist world economy’, pp. 55–75 in B. Head (ed.), State and Economy in Australia. Melbourne: Oxford University Press. Amin, Samir (1974) Accumulation on a World Scale: A Critique of the Theory of Underdevelopment, vols 1 and 2. New York: Monthly Review Press. Anderson, C. (1983) ‘Aborigines and tin mining in North Queensland: a case study in the anthropology of contact history’, Mankind, 13b: 473–98. Appleyard, R. T. (1971) Immigration: Policy and Progress. Australian Institute of Political Science, Monograph No. 7. Sydney: Southward Press. Armstrong, W. and J. Bradbury (1983) ‘Industrialization and class structure in Australia, Canada and Argentina: 1870 to 1980’, pp. 43–74 in E. C. Wheelwright and K. Buckley (eds), Essays in the Political Economy of Australian Capitalism, vol. 5. Sydney: Australia & New Zealand Book Company. Austin, Diane J. (1984) Australian Sociologies. Sydney: Allen & Unwin. Baldock, Cora V. and Jim Lally (1974) Sociology in Australia and New Zealand: Theory and Methods. Westport and London: Greenwood Press. Bean, C. E. W. (1921) The Story of Anzac. Sydney: Angus & Robertson. Berndt, R. M. (ed.) (1977) Aborigines and Change: Australia in the 1970s. Canberra: Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies. —— (ed.) (1982) Aboriginal Sites, Rights and Resource Development. Perth: University of Western Australia Press. 262
Australian Sociology and its Historical Environment Berndt, R. M. and C. H. Berndt (1951) From Black to White in South Australia. Melbourne: Cheshire. Block, Ray (1986) ‘Let’s not be ranked with Latin America’, The Australian, foreign exchange special report, 28 February: 6. Borrie, W. D. (1949) Immigration: Australia’s Problems and Prospects. Sydney: Angus & Robertson. Broom, L. and F. L. Jones (1973) A Blanket a Year. Canberra: Australian National University Press. Broom L., F. L. Jones, P. McDonnell and T. Williams (1980) The Inheritance of Inequality. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Bryson L. (1984) ‘The Australian patriarchal family’, pp. 113–69 in S. Encel (ed.), Australian Society. Sydney: Longman Cheshire. Bulbeck, C. (1983). ‘State and capital in tariff policy’, pp. 218–37 in B. Head (ed.), State and Economy in Australia. Butlin, Noel G. (1983) ‘Trends in public/private relations, 1901–75’, pp. 79–97 in Head (ed.), State and Economy in Australia. Butlin, Noel G., A. Barnard and I. J. Pincus (1982) Government and Capitalism: Public and Private Choice in Twentieth-Century Australia. Sydney: Allen & Unwin. Cass, Bettina (1978) ‘Women’s place in the class structure’, pp. 11–41 in Wheelwright and Buckley (eds), Essays in the Political Economy of Australian Capitalism, vol. 3. Chamberlain, C. (1983) Class Consciousness in Australia. Sydney: Allen & Unwin. Clark, David (1975) ‘Australia: victim or partner of British imperialism?’, pp. 47–71 in Wheelwright and Buckley (eds), Essays in the Political Economy of Australian Capitalism, vol. 1. Collins, J. (1975) ‘The political economy of post-war immigration’, pp. 72–104 in Wheelwright and Buckley (eds), Essays in the Political Economy of Australian Capitalism, vol. 3. Connell, R.W. (1974) ‘Images of Australia’, pp. 29–41 in D. Edgar (ed.), Social Change in Australia. Melbourne: Cheshire. —— (1977) Ruling Class, Ruling Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Connell, R.W. and T. Irving (1980) Class Structure in Australian History. Melbourne: Longman Cheshire. Crough, G. and Ted Wheelwright (1982) Australia: A Client State. Ringwood: Penguin. Curthoys, A., S. Eade and P. Spearritt (eds) (1975) Woman at Work. Canberra: Australian Society for the Study of Labour History. Dixson, Miriam (1976) The Real Matilda: Woman and Identity in Australia, 1788–1975. Ringwood: Penguin. 263
Histories of Australian Sociology Elkin, A. (1938) The Australian Aborigines. Sydney: Angus & Robertson. Encel, Sol (1968) ‘The concept of the state in Australian politics’, pp. 34–49 in C. A. Hughes (ed.), Readings in Australian Government. Brisbane: Queensland University Press. Reprinted from Australian Journal of Politics, 6 (1960). —— (1970) Equality and Authority: A Study of Class Status and Power in Australia. Melbourne: Cheshire. Fitzpatrick, Brian and E. L. Wheelwright (1965) The Highest Bidder. Melbourne: Lansdowne Press. Frank, A. G. (1967) Capitalism and Underdevelopment in Latin America. New York: Monthly Review Press. Game, A. and R. Pringle (1983) Gender and Work. Sydney: Allen & Unwin. Gollan, Robin (1960) Radical and Working-Class Politics: A Study of Eastern Australia, 1850–1910. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press and Australian National University Press. Hancock, W. K. (1930) Australia. London: Ernest Benn. Hartwig, M. (1978) ‘Capitalism and Aborigines: the theory of internal colonialism and its rivals’, pp. 119–41 in Wheelwright and Buckley (eds), Essays in the Political Economy of Australian Capitalism, vol. 3. Head, Brian (1983) ‘The Australian political economy: introduction’, pp. 3–21 in B. Head (ed.), State and Economy in Australia. Hiatt, L. R. (1965) Kinship and Conflict: A Study of an Aboriginal Community in Northern Arnhem Land. Canberra: Australian National University Press. Hiatt, L. (ed.) (1984) Aboriginal Landowners. Sydney: Oceania Monograph, 27. Higley, J., D. Deacon and D. Smart (1979) Elites in Australia. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Jalee, Pierre (1968) The Pillage of the Third World. New York: Monthly Review Press. Jupp, James (1966) Arrivals and Departures. Melbourne: Cheshire and Lansdowne Press. —— (ed.) (1984) Ethnic Politics in Australia. Sydney: Allen & Unwin. Kemp, D. (1978) Society and Electoral Behaviour in Australia: A Study of Three Decades. St Lucia: Queensland University Press. Lepervanche, Marie de (1975) ‘Australian immigrants, 1888–1940: desired and unwanted’, pp. 72–104 in Wheelwright and Buckley (eds), Essays in the Political Economy of Australian Capitalism, vol. 1.
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Australian Sociology and its Historical Environment —— (1984) ‘Immigrants and ethnic groups’, pp. 170–228 in S. Encel and L. Bryson (eds), Australian Society, 4th edn. Melbourne: Longman Cheshire. Lever-Tracy, C. (1981) ‘Labour market segmentation and divergent migrant incomes’, Australian and New Zealand Journal of Sociology, 17(2): 21–30. Macintyre, S. (1977) ‘Early socialism and labor’, Intervention 8: 79–87. —— (1978) ‘The making of the Australian working class’, Historical Studies, 18: 233–53. —— (1981) ‘Connell and Irving 1’, Labour History, 40: 107–15. —— (1983) ‘Labour, capital and arbitration, 1890-1920’, pp. 98–114 in Head (ed.), State and Economy in Australia. McQueen, H. (1970a) ‘Labourism and socialism’, pp. 34–48 in R. Gordon (ed.), The Australian New Left: Critical Essays and Strategies. Melbourne: Heinemann. —— (197Ob) A New Britannia. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Maddock, K. (1982) The Australian Aborigines, 2nd edn. Ringwood: Penguin. Martin, Jean I. (1978) The Migrant Presence. Sydney: Allen & Unwin. Matthews, T. V. (1983) ‘Business associations and the state, 1850– 1979’, pp. 115–49 in B. Head (ed.), State and Economy in Australia. Meggitt, M. (1962) Desert People. Sydney: Sydney University Press. Mercer, Jan (ed.) (1977) The Other Half: Women in Australian Society. Ringwood: Penguin. Mullins, P. (1981) ‘Theoretical perspectives on Australian urbanization: 11. Social components of the reproduction of Australian labour power’, Australian and New Zealand Journal of Sociology, 17(3): 35–43. O’Connor, J. (1973) The Fiscal Crisis of the State. New York: St Martin’s Press. Playford, J. (1969) Neo-Capitalism in Australia. Melbourne: Arena Publications. Playford, J. and D. Kirsner (eds) (1972) Australian Capitalism. Ringwood: Penguin. Reynolds, Henry (1982) The Other Side of the Frontier: Aboriginal Resistance to the European Invasion of Australia. Ringwood: Penguin. Rivett, K. (ed.) (1975) Australia and the Non-White Migrant. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press. Rowley, C. D. (1972a) The Destruction of Aboriginal Australia. Ringwood: Penguin. —— (1972b) Outcasts in White Australia. Ringwood: Penguin. —— (1972c) The Remote Aborigines. Ringwood: Penguin. 265
Histories of Australian Sociology Rowse, T. (1978) Australian Liberalism and National Character. Melbourne: Kibble Books. Sherrington, G. (1980) Australia’s Immigrants. Sydney: Allen & Unwin. Summers, Anne (1975) Damned Whores and God’s Police: Colonization of Women in Australia. Ringwood: Penguin. Toyne, P. and D. Vachon (1984) Growing Up the Country: The Pitjantjatjara Struggle for their Land. Fitzroy: McPhee Gribble and Penguin. Turner, lan (1979) Industrial Labour and Politics: The Dynamics of the Labour Movement in Eastern Australia, 1901–1921. Sydney: Hale & Iremonger. (First published 1965 by the Australian National University.) Ward, Russell (1958) The Australian Legend. Melbourne: Oxford University Press. Warner, W. (1937) A Black Civilization. Chicago: Chicago University Press. Wheelwright, E. L. (1957) Ownership and Control of Australian Companies. Sydney: Law Book Co. —— (1975) ‘Introduction’, pp. 1–11 in Wheelwright and Buckley (eds), Essays in the Political Economy of Australian Capitalism, vol. 1. Williams, Claire (1981) Open Cut: The Working Class in an Australian Mining Town. Sydney: Allen & Unwin. Zubrzycki, J. (1964) Settlers of the La Trobe Valley. Canberra: Australian National University.
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18 Sociology in Australia and New Zealand CORA VELLEKOOP BALDOCK (1994)*
A
ny return to the past tends to reflect the preoccupations of the present, and issues which concern us today were not necessarily of concern or visible around twenty years ago.1 This chapter takes a fresh look at the pre-1975 development of sociology in Australia and New Zealand as described by J. Lally and C. V. Baldock.2 At the same time, the chapter does not dwell on that early history. The main concern of its author is to document the changes in Australian and New Zealand sociology since 1975 up to the early 1990s, and in particular to highlight the exciting new directions in theory and research which have taken place in both countries during that time. History of Sociology in Australia and New Zealand Prehistory
There is possibly a subtle irony in the fact that the indigenous people of Australia and New Zealand played such a significant part (albeit not with their consent) in the early history of European social sciences, especially of sociology and anthropology. Would Friedrich Engels have written The Origins of the Family, Private Property and the State if Karl Marx had not read, with approval, Lewis Henry Morgan’s Ancient Society—a study which contained data on Aboriginal culture collected by Australian missionaries? And would Durkheim have written his influential Les Formes elementaire de la vie religieuse, were it not for the same amateur anthropological research by Australian missionaries? In New Zealand the earliest research was also on indigenous people.3
*
Source: Baldock, C.V. (1994) ‘Sociology in Australia and New Zealand’, in R. P. Mohan & A. S. Wilke (eds), International Handbook of Contemporary Developments in Sociology, Greenwood Press, Westport, Connecticut, pp. 587-622. (Chapter) © Reprinted by permission of Greenwood Press.
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Histories of Australian Sociology Research on the European population during the early period of white colonization of Australia and New Zealand was sporadic, and mostly ‘conducted’ by visitors wishing to comment on work conditions in the new colonies. There are famous examples: Albert Metin, who came and declared Australia to be a country typified by socialisme sans doctrine4 and the Webbs, Sidney and Beatrice, who summed up their impressions of Australia by saying that ‘muddling on with a high standard of honour and a low standard of efficiency is the dominant note of Australian Public Life’.5 None of these observations could be defined as genuinely sociological,6 and they were comments made by outsiders. Local sociological research could hardly be expected. In these ‘young’ countries,7 universities were not established until the 1850s: Sydney University, the first university in Australia, dates from 1852; the first New Zealand university, Otago University, was founded in 1869; and sociology as an independent discipline did not appear until one hundred years later. There were a few early attempts to introduce sociology courses in some of the new universities, for example, at Sydney University in 1909, and at the University of New Zealand in 1921.8 In Australia, Francis Anderson, philosophy professor in the 1920s at Sydney University, introduced a sociology course and encouraged his students to take up sociology and anthropology. His course disappeared three years after his retirement in 1925, but his influence lived on through his students.9 At Melbourne University in the 1920s there was a professorship in economics and sociology sponsored by the Workers’ Educational Association (WEA).10 Personal animosity between the incumbent of the post and the professor of economics led to the demise of sociology at Melbourne and may have contributed to the ascendancy of economics as a major social science in Australia.11 In New Zealand, one of the ‘founding’ fathers of sociology was Crawford Somerset, an educationalist by training who campaigned from the 1930s for the introduction of sociology as an academic discipline and initiated important ‘socioeducational’ research in his social survey, Littledene.12 The Late Development of Sociology
Until World War II, Australia and New Zealand remained culturally and geographically isolated. Their main preoccupations were with practical matters (e.g., agriculture and engineering) directly related to ‘pioneering needs’ and the course of development was deemed to be generally peaceful.13 This was notwithstanding the fact that both 268
Sociology in Australia and New Zealand countries experienced severe social problems. Both countries faced serious depressions, first in the late nineteenth century and again in the 1930s. Racial inequality, as shown in the atrocious treatment of the indigenous Maori and Aboriginal people, and the systematic discrimination against any non-Anglo-Saxon immigrants, was rampant during most of colonial history.14 There was also considerable evidence of discrimination against women in both countries.15 Many of these problems of racial, social, and sex inequality were of the same magnitude as those found in other Western nations. Due to pressure from the trade union movement, governments took some ameliorative action to overcome the effects of poverty and unemployment,16 but with patriarchal and racist attitudes dominant in the community, it was easy for policy-makers, unionists, and academics to ignore the problems of racial and gender discrimination. In countries where the motto of ‘she’ll be right, mate’ was invoked for most occasions, there was limited interest in sociological analysis to assess the effects of such social problems.17 Within the university system there was also little interest in sociology.18 Given the longstanding tradition, right up to the post-war years, of hiring senior academics trained in the United Kingdom, where sociology had not been received well,19 knowledge and appreciation of sociology among university administrators and senior professors in Australia and New Zealand were inevitably coloured by the attitudes of the British university system. After World War II, Australia experienced accelerated industrialisation and extensive immigration. New Zealand also had a large influx of migrants, although not on the same scale as Australia. The immigration movement in both countries broke their cultural isolation and created greater cultural heterogeneity. In the hitherto homogeneous white Anglo-Saxon environment created by colonial settlement, these changes were seen as disruptive, with the overwhelming sentiment favouring a policy of assimilation—that is, migrants adjusting to the cultural and political climate of their host countries.20 It was at this time that sociology first emerged as an independent discipline and saw its research efforts taken seriously. In fact, a number of staff members in the newly established Australian sociology departments were themselves migrants or refugees, and several among them took up the study of immigration as one of their first and major research foci.21 While these sociologists were not yet
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Histories of Australian Sociology ready to deal with issues of racial or gender inequality, immigration and population studies were certainly within their ambit.22 Sociology emerged at a time when both Australia and New Zealand experienced a vast expansion of tertiary education, with the establishment of several new universities and large increases in the number of students. When sociology became established in Australia, it was instituted mainly within these newer universities (e.g., the University of New South Wales established the first department and the first professorship in sociology in 1959) and gained little foothold in the long-established tertiary institutions (with the exception of the University of Tasmania). A special stumbling block was the attitude of anthropologists toward the establishment of separate sociology departments, a problem that also occurred in New Zealand. Anthropology had incorporated sociology for so long, especially in the Australian context, that the development of separate departments was seen by some as unnecessary.23 In New Zealand, the first sociology course was introduced within the social work program at Victoria University, in 1957; Canterbury University followed in 1958 with a sociology major within the psychology department. However, Auckland University was late in developing sociology, and Otago does not have a sociology department to this day; in both cases, it has been argued that the competing interests of anthropology held sociology back in these two institutions.24 Another possible factor in Australia was that because of sociology’s failure in the years immediately preceding World War II ‘to speak to the realities of Australian political and social life in the way that, for example, economics was able to’, economics, rather than sociology, had gained the right to speak on behalf of the social sciences.25 It was to economists and not to sociologists that the federal government turned for the task of post-war social and economic reconstruction. Institutionalisation of Sociology as an Academic Discipline The Teaching of Sociology
There are currently seven universities within New Zealand. Of these, five have departments of sociology: Victoria University in Wellington, Canterbury University in Christchurch, Auckland University, Waikato University, and Massey University. The five departments vary in size from six to fourteen tenured staff, and they employ in all approximately sixty full-time staff and about the same number of part270
Sociology in Australia and New Zealand time and ‘junior’ staff, teaching undergraduate, honours, and postgraduate courses.26 There is one professor in each department. These departments have been in operation as separate entities for at least thirty years.27 Other departments—for example, education at Massey University and medicine at Auckland—also employ sociologists. At Otago University, which has no separate sociology department, there are around nine people in areas such as anthropology, community studies, education, and medicine who are strongly interested in sociology. At Lincoln, the newest New Zealand university, four staff members apply sociological perspectives to their work in the teaching of leisure and tourism studies. There are courses in sociology in teachers’ colleges, and even some in secondary schools.28 In Australia, the situation is more complex because of a major restructuring in the tertiary education system (dating from the late 1980s), which led to the creation of a number of new universities and to the amalgamation of others.29 Of the nineteen universities established before this major restructuring, thirteen offer a sociology degree (eight in separate sociology departments offering undergraduate, honours, and postgraduate degrees; three in joint anthropology and sociology departments offering the full range of sociology degrees; and two within an interdisciplinary structure, rather than an autonomous department). They are, in order of establishment, the University of New South Wales; Australian National University; New England; Monash; Queensland; La Trobe; Flinders; Newcastle; Tasmania; Macquarie; Wollongong; Murdoch; and Deakin universities. The departments vary in size from eight to thirty-six full-time staff, to an overall total of about 180 tenured staff members across the thirteen institutions.30 Seven of these thirteen institutions have had sociology departments for thirty years or more. As in New Zealand, each department has only one sociology professor (except for Monash, which appointed a second sociology professor in 1992). In all these universities sociological perspectives are also incorporated in other departments, specifically in education, social work, and where applicable, legal studies, medicine, and nursing. Of the nineteen universities established prior to the recent restructuring, six do not have separate sociology departments nor do they offer a sociology degree (yet). These include Sydney, Melbourne, 271
Histories of Australian Sociology and Adelaide universities and the University of Western Australia— old, well-established universities in which sociological perspectives have remained embedded in departments of anthropology, education, and social work; and James Cook and Griffith universities, which were established in the 1970s as innovative interdisciplinary ventures where sociology is part of broad interdisciplinary programs.31 Since 1987, nine new universities have been created from former Colleges of Advanced Education and Institutes of Technology; while four Institutes of Technology and four University Colleges have remained.32 Some of these have had flourishing undergraduate programs in sociology dating from the 1970s, but generally no honours and postgraduate studies.33 It appears sociology has in all cases been part of interdisciplinary programs in the social sciences in these institutions. New universities which have substantial sociology offerings include Charles Sturt University; Curtin University of Technology; the University of Technology, Sydney; and the University of Western Sydney; among the Institutes, the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology has offered sociology for many years. Most of the new universities are likely to establish honours and postgraduate studies within sociology as soon as resources allow. Research Facilities
Both in Australia and New Zealand, sociologists’ opportunities to gain access to research funding have been limited because research priorities have tended to favour the sciences, to the detriment of the social sciences. In both countries, most of the funding for academic research comes from government.34 In Australia, the main granting body for academic research (except in the area of medicine) is the Australian Research Council (ARC), a Commonwealth organization with five subcommittees, including one for the humanities and social sciences. In 1991 the ARC allocated eight per cent of its budget to social sciences and seven per cent to humanities.35 The costs involved in doing sociological research often appear to be underestimated by the ARC, and the common assumption is that research assistance can be provided by part-time, casual workers rather than by full-time senior research personnel, as is common in the sciences.36 This results in a paucity of people who are researchers only within academic sociology. Overall, few sociologists receive ARC funding, although it is also clear that the number of sociologists applying to the scheme has so far been limited.37 There are, of course, 272
Sociology in Australia and New Zealand other government sources of funding, but these are frequently ‘mission-oriented’—that is, academics tend to engage in specific government-commissioned applied research, usually projects of short duration with no guarantee of continuation.38 In recent years the federal government has instituted major reviews in areas such as social security and housing, providing an opportunity for sociological research.39 In all instances important sociological work is done, but there is limited public recognition of its significance qua sociology. In 1990, New Zealand established a new research funding organization, the Foundation for Research, Science and Technology. A subcommittee of this foundation (the Social Science Committee) deals with the social sciences, which until 1990 had been served by a separate body, the Social Science Research Fund Committee (SSRFC). In its infancy in 1990, only $500 000 of the Foundation’s grant money was allocated to social science research within the university.40 A positive feature is that there are sociologists represented on the Social Science Committee (as had been on the SSRFC), whereas in Australia sociologists are not represented on the ARC as a matter of course.41 In both countries there are research institutes, either governmentbased or attached to universities, with a strong sociological emphasis. In New Zealand the Centre of Labour and Trade Union Studies, the Centre for Population Studies, and the Women’s Studies Centre at Waikato employ sociologists; there is also an independent Society for Research on Women which has produced valuable sociological research. In Australia, the Institute of Family Studies in Melbourne, the Social Policy Research Centre at the University of New South Wales, the Centre of Multicultural Studies at Wollongong University, and the Government Bureaus of Criminology and of Migration Research all have sociologists at work in senior positions. There are also several major non-government welfare bodies (e.g., the Brotherhood of St. Laurence and the Australian Council of Social Service) which have from time to time commissioned sociological research.42 Other Indices of Institutionalisation
Professional Associations An important step in achieving professional recognition for sociology in New Zealand and Australia was the establishment of a professional 273
Histories of Australian Sociology sociological association. In the first instance, this was a joint organization—the Sociological Association of Australia and New Zealand (SAANZ), formed in 1963. This body has been responsible for the organization of annual conferences and the publication of a journal (since 1965), the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Sociology (ANZJS). In 1980 SAANZ instituted a biannual award, the so-called Jean Martin Award, for the best PhD thesis in sociology produced in Australia or New Zealand. In addition, the Association has subsidized several other journals and has produced guides to postgraduate studies and other informational material about sociology. Issues of special concern for the Association have been the establishment of a code of ethics; questions regarding the definition of membership; and whether locally trained rather than foreign-trained sociologists should be given preference in academic appointments. The Secession of New Zealand Sociology Throughout the history of SAANZ, New Zealand had maintained a New Zealand Sociological Association as a branch of the umbrella organization. Within this body, debates became increasingly frequent during the 1980s regarding the possibility of establishing a separate association. Those arguing in favour emphasised the differences between Australian and New Zealand sociology. They expressed an overall concern for the dominance of Australian interests in SAANZ and in the journal, but also argued that there were substantial differences in the membership: more than half of the New Zealand members of the association were employed in non-academic jobs, whereas in Australia the overwhelming majority of members were academics. Another argument was the unique emphasis on biculturalism in New Zealand sociology.43 The secessionists won the debate, and the formal connection between New Zealand and Australian sociology came to an end in 1988 when separate organizations were formed—the Sociological Association of Aotearoa44 (New Zealand), or SAA (NZ), and The Australian Sociological Association (TASA). Membership of SAA (NZ) stands at 170; TASA membership is about 450 (1991 figures). Both organizations are members in their own right of the International Sociological Association. New Zealand sociologists continue to have access to the prestigious Jean Martin Award, although SAA (NZ) has now also established its own award, the Oxford University Press Sociology Prize.
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Sociology in Australia and New Zealand Since the establishment of the SAA (NZ), this organization appears to have made enormous strides. A code of ethics was established within a year of formation; a sociologist became president of a newly established organization of social scientists, the Foundation of New Zealand Social Science Organizations (FoNZSSO); and sociologists have engaged in vigorous interaction with high school teachers interested in the teaching of sociology. Also, as mentioned, SAA (NZ) negotiated with Oxford University Press for the establishment of a prize for the best PhD or MA thesis in sociology. The ‘house’ journal of the association, New Zealand Sociology, is also gaining in prominence. Much of the high level of activity must be attributed to the work of Paul Spoonley from Massey University, founding president of SAA (NZ), and of FoNZSSO. TASA, which went through a downturn in the late 1980s, has regained its strength, due mainly to its energetic 1991-1992 president, Katy Richmond. A code of ethics has been drafted, and recent conferences have been well attended. Several individual sociologists have gained prestigious positions on national bodies, although the sociological association as such does not appear to have reached the same national standing as the SAA (NZ) in its brief period of existence. Textbooks In 1975, when the first edition of this chapter appeared, there were only two introductory sociology texts written for an Australian or New Zealand student readership—although there were more introductory texts in subfields such as educational sociology and political sociology.45 Textbooks were mainly American: for example, Berger, Introduction to Sociology; Homans, The Human Group; and Smelser, Sociology. Now, close to twenty years later, there are at least a dozen Australian introductory texts including several readers, and about half a dozen published for a New Zealand audience. A shortcoming of most texts is that they do not provide an overview of the general body of internationally recognized sociological theory and concepts. They can thus be used only as supplementary texts, or alternatively—if used as main texts—students need to be provided with a great deal of additional reading matter to acquaint them with broader sociological perspectives.46 Of recent Australian texts, only Waters and Crook’s Sociology One and Austin’s Australian Sociologies skilfully integrate general theory with local examples.47 In New Zealand, one of the 275
Histories of Australian Sociology most successful examples of such an interweaving is the text, New Zealand: Sociological Perspectives.48 Several international publishers established local branches within New Zealand and Australia in the 1970s. Of these, Allen and Unwin Australia forged the closest links with sociology in both countries, inter alia through its participation in the Jean Martin Award, and through the establishment of a Studies in Sociology Series, which has more than forty titles so far.49 Other important publishers of Australian sociology texts have been (Longman) Cheshire and MacMillan Australia, while Longman has been active in New Zealand. In recent years, both Dunmore Press, a New Zealand-owned publisher, and Oxford University Press have shown an interest in New Zealand sociological publications. In the case of Oxford University Press, this has led to the establishment of a Critical Issues in New Zealand Society Series, and the establishment of the Oxford University Press Sociology Prize. Institutionalisation and Interdisciplinarity
In summary, it may be said that according to conventional indices, New Zealand sociology has indeed become institutionalised as a separate discipline. There are five well-established, autonomous sociology departments situated in the major universities, and these departments train a considerable number of students at undergraduate and postgraduate levels; there is an active professional association with national standing; and there is a lively production of local texts. Where sociologists engage in interdisciplinary research and teaching (e.g., in women’s studies) or in joint lobbies on policy issues with other social scientists, they come to these projects with a wellestablished identity. That sociology is accepted as a profession, not only within the academy but also within the community at large, is shown in the large number of sociologists employed outside tertiary institutions. The situation in Australia does not appear to be quite as favourable. As in New Zealand, sociologists have been prolific in the production of good sociological texts. As in New Zealand, there are a number of tertiary institutions, eleven in all, where sociology is well established in separate departments or as a strong partner in joint ventures with anthropology. However, four of the most prestigious universities have never recognized sociology in its own right. This may have repercussions not only within those institutions but also in major 276
Sociology in Australia and New Zealand national forums such as the Academy of Social Sciences, the Australian Research Council, and other policy bodies on which senior professors and administrators of these highly prestigious universities are represented. There are twenty-one tertiary institutions (four universities established in the 1970s as interdisciplinary ventures; nine new universities established since 1987; and eight institutes or colleges) where sociology also lacks a separate identity, because it has been incorporated ‘within interdisciplinary programs without a separate department’.50 At its best, such interdisciplinarity broadens the boundaries of sociology and leads to exciting new possibilities in research and teaching. However, in institutions where sociologists are employed in interdisciplinary teaching programs without the benefit of a strong and acknowledged discipline core, and without the support of senior academics trained in sociology, such interdisciplinarity can be detrimental. This is especially the case in some of the new universities where efforts to cut costs and to avoid retrenchment of academic staff have led to the appointment of on-the-cheap casual workers, and to the teaching of sociology by people unqualified in the subject. Current Trends in Theory and Methodology Prominent Contributors and their Perspectives
Centres of Intellectual Leadership: Australia Malcolm Waters and Rod Crook argue that there are three centres of intellectual leadership in Australian sociology, each representing a different theoretical perspective: positivist research at the Australian National University; Weberian sociology at Flinders University; and Marxism at the Macquarie University.51 This chapter uses Waters and Crook’s classification with some modifications, while adding a fourth ‘network’ (rather than a centre), that of feminist scholarship. Research in the tradition of positivism Sociology at the Australian National University has been characterised by large-scale studies of stratification and social mobility, based on the consensual assumption that Australia is an open society without rigid class differences. This idea of a democratic and egalitarian ethos started early within Australian social sciences, in fact well before the establishment of sociology, and was perhaps inaugurated by W. K. Hancock, an influential Australian historian 277
Histories of Australian Sociology writing in the 1930s.52 Bob Connell, a severe critic of positivist consensus-based sociology, showed in an amusing article that Hancock’s ideas have been repeated (but not referenced) in innumerable articles on Australian society by authors trying to demonstrate how egalitarian Australians are.53 It is this tradition which was perpetuated in the 1960s and 1970s at the Research School of the Australian National University, albeit not in anecdote but in large-scale, survey-based research on social stratification, social mobility, and social elites by sociologists Frank Lancaster Jones, Leonard Broom, Jerzy Zubrzycki, and John Higley. The tradition is maintained today in the work of Jonathan Kelley and lan McAllister.54 Whereas early studies of this kind focused nearly exclusively on male, ‘white’ Australian samples, more recent versions have attempted to incorporate data on women and on ethnic minorities.55 An example of such a study is M. D. R. Evans and J. Kelley on the work experiences of migrants: their conclusion is that migrants’ occupational attainments are to be explained by their training and skills levels (especially language skills) gained in their country of origin, and not by discrimination in the labour market.56 Brian Graetz and Ian McAllister, in an introductory text in which they make extensive use of multivariate statistical procedures, sum up the main conclusions of sociologists following this consensual viewpoint: they see Australia as an open society with considerable social mobility, in which privileges transmitted from one generation to the next seldom persist beyond two generations. They acknowledge that there are considerable differences in wages, work conditions, and job autonomy—they note, for example, that clerical jobs require limited training and draw low incomes, but they do not see these differences as being indicative of rigid class divisions.57 If there is any social theory which informs these positivist scholars, it would be Weberianism in the stratificationist sense—in other words, a belief in multidimensional systems of inequality, which can be measured through quantitative analysis. The sociology department at Queensland University, headed by John Western, should rank as a second centre of large-scale survey research in the positivist tradition.58 The interesting aspect of Queensland sociology is the attempt to merge conflict perspectives and quantitative analysis, Erik Olin Wright’s neo-Marxist analysis of class and socialist feminist theories of patriarchal relations being the main recent sources of inspiration.59 As with all research based on Wright’s class analysis, the Queensland studies deal only with paid workers 278
Sociology in Australia and New Zealand and do not provide an assessment of the placement of unemployed and welfare recipients within the class structure of Australia.60 Janeen Baxter and Diane Gibson have rectified one shortcoming of this research by their focus on the class placement of women; in addition they have undertaken research on the relation between women’s participation in paid employment and the extent of their involvement in domestic labor.61 Marxist perspectives on research and theory As Waters and Crook note, Macquarie University is the centre of Marxist sociological analysis. The research methodology employed in the work of the Macquarie school of sociology is generally historical and qualitative, with an emphasis on in-depth interviews and critical analysis of policy documents. The most prominent representative of this tradition is Bob Connell, until recently professor of sociology at that institution. Connell is arguably the only Australian-born sociologist who could be defined as a theorist of international standing in the sense of having developed a comprehensive theory of his own society. Most elements of class analysis are found in Connell’s work. He has conducted historical studies of the development of capitalism in Australia, analysed the ingredients of Australian bourgeois ideology, and studied the role of the school in the socialisation of children within this bourgeois culture. He is possibly the only Australian male sociologist who has engaged seriously with feminist theory: his most recent contributions concern the construction of masculinity, and the relationship between gender and power.62 The most profound influence on Connell’s work, apart from Marx, is Antonio Gramsci; and the study of cultural hegemony in Australian society has been a central focus in Connell’s work. Similar to British historians such as E. P. Thompson and J. Foster, Connell sees the class structure as a set of relations rather than as abstract categories, and the working class not as a victim of the class system but as an active agent of history. A controversial aspect of his account is his emphasis on childhood socialisation, rather than upon union solidarity as a determinant of class consciousness; and the role assigned to intellectuals, rather than the working class, as a revolutionary force. He argues that the Australian union movement has always been controlled by the state, and that Australian workers have incorporated the bourgeois suburban culture of consumerism and welfare.63 Notwithstanding his belief in the working class as an 279
Histories of Australian Sociology agent of history, Connell at the same time assumes the persistence of ruling-class hegemony. Also of significance has been the work of socialist feminists working at Macquarie—feminists such as Rosemary Pringle, who, with Ann Game from the University of New South Wales, conducted research in the tradition of labour process theory.64 Game and Pringle affirm what has been argued by all Australian feminists—that sex segregation is deeply embedded in Australian society. This, in their view, is because the sexual division of labour is intrinsic to capitalism, in fact is a ‘defining feature of it, as central as wage labour or surplus value.’65 This means that even when changes in technology (e.g., technological advances leading to de-skilling) could bring an erosion of distinctions between men’s and women’s jobs, sex segregation in the paid labour force will not disappear. Other feminists at Macquarie have given special attention to the relation between class, gender, and ethnicity, and have analysed the inequalities among women within the sex-segregated labour force when race and ethnicity are taken into account.66 Sociology in the Marxist tradition is not restricted to Macquarie University. Other sociologists who have conducted research on issues of class and class consciousness are Chris Chamberlain at Monash and Andrew Metcalfe at the University of New South Wales.67 Both have tackled Connell’s notion of ruling-class hegemony and have argued for the existence of a clearly identifiable working-class consciousness. Metcalfe’s work is particularly interesting. Using historical and anthropological methods, Metcalfe undertook to study the lives of the coalminers in the Hunter Valley, New South Wales, under the assumption that people make their own history, albeit ‘under social circumstances and social structures beyond their control.’68 His study emphasised workers’ ability to shape (although not control) their own destiny. In this, Metcalfe took issue with both deterministic theories such as Althusser’s and voluntaristic ones such as E. P. Thompson’s. Several socialist feminist researchers are at work in various institutions—for example, Judy Wacjman and Claire Williams, both in the tradition of labour process theory, at the University of New South Wales and Flinders University, respectively.69 Williams’s study forms an interesting contrast with that of Game and Pringle: whereas Game and Pringle assume that male employers and male workers share a common interest in maintaining patriarchal relations to the 280
Sociology in Australia and New Zealand detriment of women, Williams argues, in a study of a Queensland coal mining town, that workers’ acceptance of patriarchal values is a consequence of hegemonic control by the ruling classes.70 There are also a number of Marxist sociologists across Australia who have written general theoretical treatises for international audiences which make no reference to the specific Australian context.71 Weberian traditions in research Several members of the sociology department at Flinders University concentrate on long-term historical studies in the Weberian tradition. This work was started by one-time professor Ivan Szelenyi, continued by Bryan Turner, and is now maintained by Bob Holton.72 Holton has also conducted studies of class analysis using the Eric Olin Wright framework.73 Another Weberian is Anna Yeatman, now at Monash University, who for many years worked at Flinders. Yeatman’s main concern has been the study of bureaucratic structures in government administration and the influence of neo-rationalist and technocratic models of decision-making in government.74 A reference to Flinders University alone obscures the important Weberian tradition initiated by Sol Encel at the University of New South Wales.75 In his best-known work, Equality and Authority, Encel combined Weberian analytical categories of class, status, and power with a multidimensional approach to stratification. Sol Encel’s tradition has been maintained at the University of New South Wales by Ann Daniel in her work on occupational prestige, and, more recently, by the widely acclaimed work of Michael Pusey on the social and political background and ideologies of bureaucrats responsible for the 1980s shift to economic rationalism in Australian federal government policies.76 A Weberian perspective is also clearly discernible in the work done by Malcolm Waters and by Jan Pakulski at the University of Tasmania, and in the research by political sociologist Eva Etzioni-Halevy at the Australian National University.77 Few of these scholars follow the positivist application of Weberian sociology; they favour historical and conceptual analyses, or qualitative studies in the social-anthropological tradition. Feminist theoretical perspectives on sociology In the case of feminist sociology, it is appropriate to speak of a closely ‘interlinked network of scholars who focus on common concerns’. These concerns are fivefold:
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Histories of Australian Sociology 1. a theoretical understanding of, and attempts to overcome, the dichotomy between public and private spheres, with its concomitant divisions between work and welfare, formal and domestic economy; 2. the study of women’s paid and unpaid work; 3. the development of a theory of the state, with special attention to agency and social control; 4. sociology of the family; 5. general feminist theories as critique and construct.78 There are feminist scholars at work in all the mainstream centres of sociological research identified by Waters and Crook. These feminists usually follow theoretical perspectives which deviate from the theories en vogue in their institution: Dorothy Broom, for example, follows a decidedly feminist train of thought in the midst of Australian National University positivism; Rosemary Pringle at Macquarie has moved away from socialist feminism into post-modern feminist theory; and Claire Williams applies a socialist feminist framework at Weberian Flinders University.79 In some tertiary institutions, there are significant clusters of feminist sociologists. This is the case, for example, at Murdoch University,80 where feminists have gained inspiration from the theoretical insights of three overseas feminist sociologists—Mary O’Brien, Hilary Rose, and Dorothy E. Smith.81 The work of political scientist Carole Pateman, who is now in the United States but who still maintains close contact with Australian feminists, has also had a considerable influence.82 Feminist sociologists generally have developed sophisticated critical assessments of mainstream research methodology. The emphasis in their work has been upon action research and qualitative methods, including the use of in-depth interviews. They generally work within an interdisciplinary framework and maintain close contact with feminists in anthropology, economics, cultural studies, history, philosophy, and political science. Several work within, or in conjunction with, women’s studies programs. Feminist sociological research has led to a number of significant publications, and texts written by feminists have been the major academic output of the publisher Allen and Unwin Australia.83
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Sociology in Australia and New Zealand Centres of Intellectual Leadership: New Zealand When in 1987 N. Perry assessed the viability of a separate New Zealand Sociological Association, he argued that it was not possible to speak of New Zealand sociology but only of Massey sociology, Canterbury sociology, or Auckland sociology. In listing these three centres, Perry signified at the same time that these were the only ones with any strength in terms of their research productivity.84 Although arguing that there was no unified national sociology, Perry did not specify how each of the centres differed, other than through what he described as ‘rudimentary modes of specialisation.’85 Massey, he noted, had capitalised on its large number of external students and its political base on campus; Canterbury had gained considerable strength in the area of social policy, with close links to government; and Auckland had maintained and developed strong links with the Pacific and Australia. In evaluating Perry’s comments, it is important to keep in mind that he was an opponent of ‘secession’ and therefore was possibly inclined to underestimate the value of New Zealand sociology. There is no doubt that sociology in New Zealand is small in scale. However, to an outsider what is apparent is an increasingly strong and coherent sociological paradigm across New Zealand universities. This is shown, in particular, in two major publications, both edited works, with contributors from across the country including several from outside academia. One is an introductory text edited by P. Spoonley, D. Pearson, and I. Shirley, the other a book on social problems, edited by P. F. Green.86 Both books are written from a conflict perspective and problematise issues of class, gender, and race. Most authors in both books reject what the editors of one of the texts see as the ‘traditional emphasis on social pathology which has characterised sociological research in New Zealand’.87 Of course, this is not to say that other perspectives do not occur. There is a fair amount of large-scale demographic research in the tradition of positivism at Waikato;88 and there are Weberian sociologists at Victoria University—for example, David Pearson, whose community studies and research on social inequality (with David Thorns from Canterbury) have a clear Weberian emphasis.89 As Pearson and Thorns conclude in their Eclipse of Equality, patterns of inequality in New Zealand emerge from the ‘combined effects of the operation of the labour and property markets, and state allocative practices.’90 This conclusion is in sharp contrast to the views of David Bedggood, a sociologist at Auckland, who over the years has 283
Histories of Australian Sociology maintained an orthodox Marxist perspective and for whom the production of value by labour power remains the ‘essential premise of all social life’.91 As in Australia, feminist theoretical insights inform the work of many sociologists, with especially strong centres of feminist work at Canterbury and Waikato. Feminists include Rosemary Du Plessis Novitz at Canterbury, who has theoretical interests in women and the state and in theories of paid and unpaid work; and Bev James, a graduate from Waikato, who has written on the family and on feminist research methodology.92 An active researcher outside the university system is Roberta Hill, the head of the Social Science Unit at the government Department of Scientific and Industrial Research (DSIR). Hill works in the tradition of labour process theory and has researched technological changes in the print media.93 The theoretical and methodological preoccupations of feminists in New Zealand are similar to those of Australian feminist sociologists: the artificial dichotomy between public and private spheres; feminist theories of women and the state; family policies; the relationship between women’s unpaid and paid work; and the development of a feminist research methodology. The one noticeable difference lies in the greater attention given to issues of race by New Zealand feminists.94 New Zealand society has experienced profound changes in the period following the writing of the first edition of this handbook, and these changes have led to deep social and political divisions. On the one hand there remains entrenched conservatism, but on the other there is outspoken radicalism. Under successive Labour governments, New Zealanders have taken a strong stand on issues of apartheid, demonstrating en masse against South African rugby teams playing in New Zealand; they have argued for a nuclear-free Pacific Ocean region; and they have reaffirmed the original Treaty of Waitangi, drawn over 150 years ago between Maori chieftains and the British colonial government. What appears a unique feature of New Zealand, and of central importance to sociology, is the notion of a genuinely bicultural society which is signified by the recognition of the Treaty of Waitangi. This implies that the Maori population, as the original owners of the country, are granted sovereignty—or at least equal partnership—with non-Maori. The Sociological Association of Aotearoa has taken this concept seriously, and the constitution of the Association contains the clause: ‘The aims and objectives of the Association shall be pursued in 284
Sociology in Australia and New Zealand a manner consistent with Te Tiriti o Waitangi.’ The implications of this for sociological research and theory are at least as profound as those provided by feminism.95 As Miriama Scott, a Maori sociologist, has commented: From the Maori point of view, then, the subjective/objective distinction is a Pakeha myth. Its incorporation into research may lead to an intensification of unequal power relations between researcher and researched, and is likely to produce a predictably biased end result. Ways of categorising methodology often reinforce this bias because they stem from European methodology, also based on the objectivity myth. Sociology as a critique of society becomes oppressive when it is taken into minority ethnic groups without proper awareness of essential and often intrinsic differences.96 There are several sociologists in New Zealand who conduct research on racism and ethnic relations, and the issue of race is of central concern to feminist sociologists. The political challenge of the Treaty of Waitangi, however, if taken seriously, will no doubt have a profound effect on New Zealand sociology as a whole. From Positivist to Anti-Positivist Perspectives
Contrasting theoretical perspectives have been at times a source of division within the sociological community. They were at the basis of a crisis in SAANZ in 1972, when young conflict theorists attacked the predominant positivistic emphasis in the ANZJS, the house journal of the association, and staged a coup ousting the editors.97 Conflicting theoretical viewpoints were the source of an intense debate ten years later in the journal Search; on the one hand were Kelley and McAllister, and on the other Connell—representatives respectively of positivist and Marxist theories.98 Such conflicts also flared up at conferences.99 What is interesting to note is that notwithstanding the ideological differences between these camps, positivists have, in their analyses of social inequality, generally come to the same conclusions as Marxists.100 These divisions have become much less pronounced in recent years. There are few writers left within the Australian and New Zealand context who acknowledge that they are positivists, and there has been 285
Histories of Australian Sociology a clear trend toward an anti-positivist and a conflict perspective. Whatever divisions still exist are muted and largely unacknowledged. For some, no debate is necessary, because they do not take a theoretical stance themselves, arguing instead for the value of a range of discourses. They are sociologists who have embraced postmodernist and/or poststructuralist theoretical perspectives. For them, feminism, as well as the traditional sociological paradigms of positivism and Marxism, are metatheoretical orthodoxies to be avoided. What this signifies is that the debates which do occur are now more likely to be between modernists (working within the tradition of positivism, Marxism, and feminism) and postmodernists, rather than between positivists and Marxists.101 Overseas Influences
In the early stages of its post-war development, sociology in Australia and New Zealand was heavily influenced by American sociology. This situation has changed markedly. With very few exceptions, textbooks are produced locally or come from Britain, and staff members are no longer recruited from the United States. It may be argued that the only American social theorists still used with approval are Harry Braverman, who has inspired local research in the tradition of labour process theory;l02 Erik Olin Wright, who has had an impact on class analysis at Massey, Flinders, and Queensland universities; and writers in the tradition of Ethnomethodology such as Harold Garfinkel, who are continuing to influence sociologists working in communication studies.103 Even within specialist areas, American texts are only used to a limited extent, and then mainly by positivist researchers publishing comparative material in international journals.104 On the other hand, British and European texts are read widely. Of the British authors, Anthony Giddens remains an important gatekeeper due to the influence of his textbooks, and Raymond Williams has had considerable influence in the area of cultural theory.105 A number of Australian sociologists are followers of the Frankfurt School, and Jurgen Habermas is widely read.106 Foucault is another major influence, especially in interdisciplinary centres and within the context of cultural studies.107 British feminist sociologists, such as Michelle Barrett, Hilary Rose, and Mary MacIntosh, are also held in high regard.108 The Canadian feminist sociologist Dorothy E. Smith has gained a considerable following, especially at Canterbury and Murdoch universities, for her complex interweaving of Marxist and 286
Sociology in Australia and New Zealand ethnomethodological principles into a sociology for women. It should be noted also that New Zealand sociologists are on the whole well aware of Australian sociological literature, but the reverse is not always the case. A recurrent problem in the 1950s and 1960s was the lack of qualified staff,109 and full-time faculty were actively recruited from overseas. Many of these overseas recruits have settled in Australia and New Zealand and have made these countries their home, conducting research on local issues, with a commitment to developing a local sociology.110 In recent years there has been a new wave of such immigration. A number of influential British social theorists, already well known internationally, have moved to Australia or New Zealand. All are British men in their early forties who have been appointed to professorships. One of the first in this category was Bryan Turner, who took up a chair at Flinders in the early 1980s (and after an interlude in Europe returned to a chair at Deakin); more recent examples are Barry Hindess at the Australian National University, Stephen Mennell at Monash, and Barry Smart at Auckland. It is rather early to see to what extent the more recently arrived international scholars will become involved in the development of theoretical work which adds to authentic Australian and New Zealand sociology.111 The strength of their contribution may well be considerable—Hindess, for example, has already been a co-editor of the ANZJS, but the fact that these appointments were made remains problematic. This is especially so because there are many very able Australian and New Zealand sociologists, including several wellpublished and highly qualified women, who should have the opportunity to compete for these top positions. The paucity of female professors has been particularly noteworthy. In Australia, there are now eight female sociologists who are professors, but only three of these currently work in a sociology department, and all but one were appointed within the last three to five years. In New Zealand, all professors within sociology departments are male.112 Current Research in Prominent Subfields Overview
Lally and Baldock’s review of Australian and New Zealand sociology in the first edition of this handbook included six major subfields of 287
Histories of Australian Sociology study: demographic and family-related studies; ethnic minorities; community studies; social stratification; political sociology; and sociology of education. Lally and Baldock judged most of the studies at that time to be functionalist and modelled on American examples. Just over twenty-five years later, the picture has altered radically. Sociologists have moved away from positivist to anti-positivist perspectives, and from naive functionalism to a much more sophisticated and eclectic approach to theory and methodology. This shows even in the terminology of subfields used: no longer do sociologists speak of the study of stratification, or of ethnic minorities; rather, they define their work as being in class and inequality, or in race and ethnic relations. There has also been a vast increase in the number of subfields, several new areas of specialisation having appeared since the 1970s. The new areas include deviance and social control; sociology of sport and leisure; rural sociology; work and industry; social policy and interdisciplinary work in cultural studies; health studies; socio-legal studies; youth studies; and women’s studies. Of current subfields, possibly the most important remains the field of class and inequality, which replaced the earlier study of social stratification. This subfield was dealt with at length in the discussion of current trends in theory and methodology. Women’s studies, another subject dealt with in connection with feminist sociology, has also produced a great deal of valuable work. That these two subfields figured so strongly in the overview of theoretical perspectives in this chapter is, of course, an indication that they have had a profound influence on sociology as a whole. Lack of space precludes discussion of each of the subfields mentioned. Having already covered class and inequality and feminist studies, this chapter will now focus on five subfields: demographic/family studies; race and ethnic relations; community studies; work and industry; and social policy.113 Demographic and Family Studies
Demographic studies, still conducted at the Australian National University and also at Waikato University, inform sociological analysis but are much less central to sociology proper than in the past, except possibly in terms of their political implications—demographic data have been used in the Australian political arena to argue for or against restrictions on immigration.114
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Sociology in Australia and New Zealand On the other hand, family studies have gained importance in their own right and have lost their functionalist flavour. As may be expected from the strength of feminist sociology, studies of the family have increasingly scrutinised the concept of the ‘nuclear family’ and highlighted the conflicts inherent in modern family life.115 An important aspect of family studies is their focus on government policies. This includes study of the effect of government policy on the incidence of poverty among women and children in single-parent families, and on the incidence of homelessness among adolescent children.116 A broad conclusion drawn in this research is that government policies reinforce the ideology of the nuclear family, thereby rendering other family types (e.g., the sole parent family, or Aboriginal and Maori extended families) ‘deviant’.117 Some feminist sociologists have extended this analysis of the state to include health and welfare professionals as agents of social control over family life and women.118 There are also a number of studies of the relationship between home and paid work, which highlight the double or triple burden taken on by women engaged in paid work as well as domestic labour, child care, and volunteer community service, and the as yet very limited contribution made by men to child care and other household duties.119 Particularly detailed and vivid accounts of family life and domesticity are contained in Jan Harper and Lyn Richards’s qualitative studies based on in-depth interviews with Australian women and men, and also in Betsy Wearing’s work on the ideology of motherhood.120 Race and Ethnic Relations
Studies of ethnic minorities have continued, but the issue of race, virtually absent from study in the 1970s, is now an integral part of a new field of race and ethnic relations. Again, a critique of government policies on race relations and immigration forms an important ingredient of this research. An example is M. de Lepervanche’s critical analysis of the shifting use of concepts in Australian social theory—a move, in fact, from the use of ‘race’ to ‘ethnicity’—and its ideological connotations.121 Paul Spoonley, writing about the New Zealand situation, has developed a political economy perspective on labour relations as an alternative to the sociology of race and ethnic relations.122 Both de Lepervanche and Spoonley give considerable attention to the role of government in shaping policies which have led to the subordination of indigenous people and non-English-speaking immigrants. 289
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Most of the current research conducted on issues of race and ethnicity rejects the assimilationist stance taken by the sociologists of the 1960s and 1970s, and argues for political autonomy of racial and ethnic groups.123 The commitment of sociologists in New Zealand to the notion of biculturalism has been discussed already. Paradigm shifts in the study of race and ethnic relations unfortunately have not led to a greater representation of Maori and Aboriginal people among academic sociologists. There are a few Maori working within sociology departments now, but there are no Aboriginal academic sociologists. In other words, the indigenous people of Australia and New Zealand have very limited opportunity to articulate their own sociology—in sharp contrast to female sociologists, who have been able to do so within feminist sociology.124 And there are still some sociologists who can engage in theoretical debate regarding the concept of race without once referring to the specific plight of Aboriginal people or Maori.l25 Community Studies
One of the notable aspects of research in New Zealand and Australia is the continued interest in community studies. Among the more recent studies of this kind are Bev James’s Report to the Kawerau Community, David Pearson’s Johnsonville, Claire Williams’s Open Cut, and Ken Dempsey’s Smalltown.126 Compared with earlier community studies, which were mostly consensual in orientation, the community studies of the 1980s have been increasingly conflict-oriented in their approach and incorporate careful analyses of class and gender relations.127 Dempsey, for example, paints what appears to be a chilling portrait of small-town conservatism. In the town he studied, egalitarianism and community solidarity are maintained by men through the rigid rejection of outsiders (especially those who belong to ethnic minorities) and through the subordination of the women in the community. Most members of the working class, ‘no-hopers’, elderly people, women—particularly those who breach the community code of respectability—are marginalised from mateship, from the sporting and work activities of the men, and from the prestigious and major decision-making processes of the town.128 The community solidarity that exists is reinforced through the persistent reiteration of an ideology of community. Dempsey’s study is not dealing with a community which is radically different from those studied in the 1970s;129 it is his interpretation, and especially his greater concern for issues of marginality and gender relations, which is different. 290
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Solidly in the Marxist tradition are small-town studies by Williams and by Metcalfe.130 Their preoccupation is with the study of what are effectively company towns, that is, towns built and run by a single company employing all or most of the people living in the community. It is not surprising that in their studies industrial relations between bosses and workers are given prime attention. But, following the trends of the 1980, they also put gender issues in focus. Some of their conclusions have already been recounted in our discussion of the Marxist tradition in sociology. Work and Industry
As mentioned in the description of feminist and Marxist perspectives, there are a number of sociologists in Australia and New Zealand who work in the tradition of labour process theory. One strand of this research deals with the broad social and economic conditions of international capitalism which have led to changes in the labour process. A prime example of this kind of work is Paul Boreham and Geoff Dow’s Work and Inequality, which they describe as dealing with the dialectic between state power, capitalist production, and economic crisis. Although deeply embedded within the neo-Marxist paradigm, their work has a distinct functionalist flavour.131 The other strand of research in labour process studies has in the main been concerned with the detailed analysis of the labour process through participant observation and in-depth interviews.132 This approach allows greater opportunity for the study of working-class agency. Although not strictly dealing with labour process, an emphasis on agency is also found in recent studies on working-class youth and the school culture.133 There has also been research on the participation of women in paid and unpaid work, with a particular emphasis on the marginalisation of women from paid work.134 An example is Cora Baldock’s research on volunteers, in which she applies feminist theories of women’s work to unpaid workers in non-government welfare organisations.135 Recent changes in the Australian system of industrial relations, which have led to a restructuring of all industrial contracts for the sake of productivity and ‘structural efficiency’, have also inspired sociological research and policy analysis. The focus of these studies has again been primarily on women’s work, with particular attention to the definition of skill and productivity in so-called caring labour, and the increasing casualisation in areas of work in which women predominate.136 291
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Social Policy
Sociologists within Australia have made major contributions to public policy in the areas of social welfare, social security, poverty, housing, and Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) issues; and they have also contributed in the areas of population policy, immigration, and ethnic policies.137 The most prominent sociologist in public policy is Bettina Cass, a sociology graduate from the University of New South Wales who is now a professor in the Department of Social Work and Social Administration at Sydney University. In the late 1980s she was the director of the Commonwealth Social Security Review; currently she is a major contributor to the National Housing Strategy, a policy review of federal government housing priorities, and to the Population Issues Committee of the National Population Council.138 As a feminist sociologist, she has focused on women in poverty; the relationship between family allowance and wage fixation; female unemployment; and women’s participation in paid work.139 Others who have made important contributions to policy studies in the areas of social welfare, social inequality, and social security are Lois Bryson (now professor of sociology at the University of Newcastle), who for a number of years worked as senior policy advisor within the Victorian State Government; Sheila Shaver from Macquarie University, now on secondment to the Social Policy Research Centre at the University of New South Wales; and Patricia Harris, a Murdoch sociologist who acted as a consultant on a major review of child poverty conducted by the Brotherhood of St. Laurence.140 Policy-related work in the area of social welfare has also been done by Adam Graycar, one-time director of the Social Policy Research Centre.141 Feminist sociologists (together with feminist political scientists) have also made major contributions to policies in the field of Equal Employment Opportunity. Most prominent in this area have been Hester Eisenstein, who for many years acted as the director of Equal Opportunity in Public Employment for the New South Wales (State) Government, and a more recent incumbent of that position, Clare Burton. The latter has become an authority on issues of job restructuring, equity, and skills assessment for women throughout Australia.142
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Sociology in Australia and New Zealand In the area of migration policy, extensive research has been done by Lois Foster, currently acting director of the Government Bureau of Migration Research.143 Robert Birrell, a Monash sociologist, who also works in this area, is a current member of the Population Issues Committee.144 One of the most prominent social policy analysts in Australia in the field of criminology is Paul Wilson, one-time director of research at the federal government Bureau of Criminology.145 Of the various research centres which have produced sociological research, the Australian Institute for Family Studies has possibly been most influential in the area of policy studies. Its findings on the costs of supporting children, for example, were of crucial importance to government policies on the amount of child maintenance to be paid by non-custodial parents after separation or divorce; and the specific studies on homeless and unemployed youth have also had considerable impact on policy.146 In New Zealand, sociologists have been acknowledged qua sociologists in policy-making for a long time, and they have occupied prominent positions on major government committees and written extensively on policy issues. Peggy Koopman-Boyden has possibly made the most significant contribution as an expert on the family and the aged; she was for some time a member of the New Zealand Planning Council, the highest planning and advisory body in the country. Her research focuses on family policy and policies in the area of aged care.147 Ivanica Vodanovich, from Auckland University, is on the New Zealand National Commission of UNESCO; Penny Fenwick, a sociologist with the New Zealand government, and Ted Douglas, from Waikato University, were manager and senior researcher with the Royal Commission on Social Policy (the discussion of the Treaty of Waitangi being one of major issues of concern). As mentioned earlier, several sociologists are members of the Social Science Committee of the Foundation for Research, Science and Technology, the main research grant-issuing body in New Zealand. All sociologists in Australia and New Zealand who write in the area of social policy, or more generally on issues in political sociology, recognize the central role of the state in Australian and New Zealand colonial histories. Feminist sociologists’ involvement in policymaking has led them to reflect on the role of the state for women in Australia and New Zealand. Generally, they have concluded that there is a basic contradiction between the patriarchal nature of the state and the reliance of women on the state to ameliorate their 293
Histories of Australian Sociology condition.l48 In this context feminists have also critically examined their own position as policy-makers-in the service of the state.149 Toward an Indigenous Sociology? An Evaluation In her conclusion to Australian Sociologies, Diane Austin puts a case for the development of a truly Australian sociology. More recently, Paul Spoonley has described the specific research agenda required for a genuine New Zealand sociology.150 Both argue that such sociologies must take their starting point from Australia and New Zealand’s colonial histories, histories in which the state has played a crucial role in the development and maintenance of class and race relations.151 This review of Australian and New Zealand sociological literature makes it clear that issues of class, gender, and race would indeed be the central ingredients in the construction of such local sociologies. My own evaluation of the current state of scholarship in Australian and New Zealand sociology is that sociologists in both countries have come a long way toward the development of such local knowledge. Many have broken away from the slavish application of British and American models of society and have began to construct explanations—within their area of specialisation—which are pertinent to the local context. Perhaps the only author who has brought specific insights together in one overarching theoretical perspective is Bob Connell, but others have provided insightful, partial theoretical analyses of their own society.152 There are obstacles to the creation of a genuinely Australian or New Zealand sociology. In both countries tensions remain between the cultural cringe mentality of university administrators who award academic recognition only to those who write for international audiences, and the genuine desire of academics to write specifically about local issues. This is aggravated by the inclination of international publishers to see as internationally marketable those books that are situated in Britain and the United States, but not in Australia and New Zealand. A further manifestation is in the tendency to appoint overseas scholars to senior academic appointments—indicative of a lesser acknowledgment of local products. New trends in sociological theory may also create obstacles to the development of authentic Australian and New Zealand sociologies. 294
Sociology in Australia and New Zealand On the face of it, the poststructuralist and postmodernist rejection of ‘big stories’, and the new interest in the ‘local’, ‘particular’, and ‘specific’ ought to be helpful in the application of specific knowledge to local contexts.153 However, the interest of postmodernists and poststructuralists in the local and specific has not necessarily led to a commitment to the development of an authentic local sociology. What is needed for the development of a local sociology is a close connection between theory and praxis, and the grounding of theory within lived experience. It may well be that an authentic Australian and New Zealand sociology will develop only in particular subfields of Australian and New Zealand sociology—namely, feminist sociology, community studies, or work and industry in the labour process tradition—where this close connection between experience, theory, and praxis is maintained. There is a further obstacle to the development of an authentic Australian and New Zealand sociology. This is the lack of acknowledgment by the international sociological community of Australian and New Zealand sociologies as significant in their own right. When contributing to international publications, I myself have variously been classified under Pacific Rim countries, under Oceania, and Sociology of the East. Such terminological and geographical confusion does not augur well for the recognition of Australian and New Zealand sociologies as separate entities. My suggestion to the editor of the handbook in which this chapter originally appeared, that I write on Australia and New Zealand, was my own—misguided— contribution to the persistence of this obstacle. Notes 1.
2.
3. 4.
This is a slightly revised version of the original chapter. The author is indebted to Victoria Rogers, Patricia Harris, and Beth Leslie for critical comments and editorial corrections to this chapter; to Gary Wickham for bibliographical references; and to Lynne Alice and Paul Spoonley for providing materials on recent developments in New Zealand sociology. J. Lally and C. V. Baldock, ‘Contemporary Sociology in Australia and New Zealand,’ in R. P. Mohan and Don Martindale, eds., Handbook of Contemporary Developments in World Sociology, Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1975, 453–69. See also C. V. Baldock and J. Lally, Sociology in Australia and New Zealand, Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1974. E.g., R. Firth, Primitive Economics of the New Zealand Maori, London: Routledge, 1929. Other eminent social anthropologists who conducted fieldwork in Australasia were Malinowksi, Lloyd Warner, and Radcliffe-Brown. Albert Metin defined Australia as the workers’ paradise in his book La Socialisme sans doctrines, Paris: no publisher, 1901.
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Histories of Australian Sociology 5. 6.
7. 8. 9.
10. 11. 12. 13.
14.
15. 16. 17.
18.
19. 20. 21.
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A. G. Austin, ed., The Webbs’ Australian Diary 1898, Melbourne: Pitman and Sons, 1965, 109. Beatrice Webb defined herself as a social investigator and a first-rate interviewer; but as noted by Austin, ‘one feels that both she and Sidney were so forbidding that they must have inhibited and infuriated many of the Australians they met.’ See Austin, ibid., 13. Australia and New Zealand are often misleadingly described as young countries because white settlement did not occur until the eighteenth century. D. W. G. Timms and J. Zubrzycki, ‘A Rationale for Sociology Teaching in Australasia,’ Australian and New Zealand Journal of Sociology 7, April 1971, 4. See Lally and Baldock, op. cit., 5–6. The most influential of Anderson’s students was anthropologist A. P. Elkin, whose anthropology students Morven Brown and Jean Martin became foundation professors of sociology departments at the University of New South Wales and La Trobe, respectively. H. Bourke, ‘Sociology and the Social Sciences in Australia, 1912–1928,’ Australian and New Zealand Journal of Sociology 17, 1, 1981, 26–35. Ibid., 32. H. C. D. Somerset, Littledene: A New Zealand Rural Community, Wellington: NZ Council of Educational Research, 1938. R. H. T. Thompson, ‘Sociology in New Zealand,’ Sociology and Social Research 51, July 1967, 503; also J. Zubrzycki, professor of sociology at the Australian National University, who argued in 1971 that there is ‘much’ less need in Australia for social amelioration than in Britain at the turn of the century (J. Zubrzycki, ed., The Teaching of Sociology in Australia and New Zealand, Melbourne: Cheshire, 1971, 4). E.g., P. Spoonley, ‘The Political Economy of Racism,’ in P. F. Green, ed., Studies in New Zealand Social Problems, Palmerston North: Dunmore Press, 1990, 128–44; M. de Lepervanche, ‘Immigrants and Ethnic Groups,’ in S. Encel and L. Bryson, eds., Australian Society, 4th ed., Melbourne: Longman Cheshire, 1984, 170–228. E.g., B. James and K. Saville-Smith, Gender, Culture and Power, Auckland: Oxford University Press, 1989; A. Summers, Damned Whores and God’s Police, Melbourne: Penguin, 1975. Francis G. Castles, The Working Class and Welfare: Reflections on the Political Development of the Welfare State in Australia and New Zealand 1890–1980, Wellington: Allen and Unwin, 1985. In New Zealand, a sociological study of the living conditions of farmers in the late 1930s was rejected by the government of the day, and the research bureau which had conducted the study was abolished as a consequence. See R. H. T. Thompson, op. cit., 503. In 1955, P. H. Partridge, an influential Australian social scientist, argued that ‘many Australian social scientists judge sociology by the very inferior work that has been produced by some sociologists in other countries, and they regard sociology as a synonym for woolliness and pretentiousness’ (as quoted by Zubrzycki, op. cit., 7). As late as 1966, a New Zealand psychology professor thought that he would have no difficulty teaching sociology, because he had read his daughter’s sociology textbooks (personal communication to the author). P. Abrams, The Origins of British Sociology: 1834–1914, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968, 152–53. E.g., Spoonley, op. cit.; de Lepervanche, op. cit. E.g., J. Zubrzycki, Immigrants in Australia, Melbourne University Press, 1960; Zubrzycki, Settlers of the Latrobe Valley, Canberra: ANU Press, 1964; E. Kunz, ‘Refugees and Eastern Europeans in Australia,’ in A. Price, ed., Australian Immigration, Canberra: ANU Press, 1966; J. Krupinski and A. Stoller, ‘Family Life and Mental Ill-Health in Migrants,’ in A. Stoller, ed., New Faces, Melbourne: Cheshire, 1966.
Sociology in Australia and New Zealand 22. Sociologists’ policy recommendations, however, were not always heeded. See, for example, de Lepervanche, op. cit., 173–74. 23. See C. V. Baldock, ‘Academic Recruitment and Dependency: An Australian Case Study,’ paper presented at the SAANZ Conference, Brisbane, May 1978, for an account of the resistance in the 1970s to the development of sociology at the University of Western Australia. 24. D. W. G. Timms, ‘Sociology in Auckland’, University of Auckland Gazette 12, April 1970, 2–4; D. A. Hansen and R. J. R. King, ‘Sociology and Social Research in New Zealand’, Sociology and Social Research 50, October 1965, 36–46; see, however, for a dissenting voice on this issue, R. H. T. Thompson, op. cit., 503. 25. Bourke, op. cit., 34. 26. P. Spoonley, ‘The Development of Sociology in New Zealand’, Footnotes, January 1990, 7. 27. In an interesting reversal of historical trends, in 1989 the Waikato department became the Department of Sociology and Anthropology. 28. Information derived from various newsletters of SAA (NZ). 29. The process of restructuring meant the eradication of the distinction between universities and colleges or institutes. The process began in 1987 with the upgrading of the Western Australian Institute of Technology to Curtin University of Technology; all other changes took place in 1989 or after. 30. The Australian Sociological Association, Postgraduate Study in Sociology, 1991. 31. Murdoch and Deakin universities were also established in the 1970s with an interdisciplinary structure; Murdoch developed a separate sociology major in 1990, Deakin in 1991. 32. D. Ashenden and S. Milligan, The Independent Good Universities Guide to Australian Universities, Melbourne: Mandarin, 1991. 33. Colleges of advanced education and institutes of technology have traditionally been defined as teaching-only institutions. Thus, very high teaching loads and lack of time and resources for research have been symptomatic of these institutions. 34. I. Lowe, ‘University Research Funding: The Wheel Still Is Spinnin’, Australian Universities’ Review 1, 1987, 2–12, estimates that 95 per cent of academic research funding in Australia comes from this source. 35. Public address by Professor P. Sheehan, Chairman, Social Sciences Panel, ARC, at Murdoch University, 15 July 1991. 36. A disturbing aspect of this is that women applicants in the social sciences appear to be less successful than men in gaining funds and are awarded more often than men at a lower level than requested. See G. Poiner and D. Temple, The Participation of Women in Academic Research. Research Report No 1, Sydney: Women’s Studies Centre, University of Sydney, 1990, 31. 37. G. Poiner and D. Temple, ibid., 17, found that over a four-year period (1986–1989) sociologists from three universities in Sydney made only 23 grant applications to the ARC; this compares with, for example, 196 applications from chemistry. 38. For example, one medium-sized sociology department with a good track record in gaining grants, that of the University of Queensland, received a total of $323404 in external grants in 1991; 18 percent of these came from non-government sources, 49 percent from ‘mission-oriented’ research, and the remaining 33 per cent from ARC (Dept. of Anthropology and Sociology, Queensland University, Annual Review, 1991). 39. E.g., B. Cass, Income Support for Families with Children, Social Security Review, Issues Paper No. 1., Canberra: Australian Government Publishing Service (AGPS), 1986; ibid., Income Support for the Unemployed in Australia: Towards a More Active System, Social Security Review, Issues Paper No. 4., Canberra: AGPS, 1988; see also Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, Our Homeless Children. Report on the National Inquiry into Homeless Children, Canberra: AGPS, 1989; National Housing
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40. 41. 42. 43.
44. 45. 46.
47. 48. 49.
50. 51. 52. 53. 54.
55.
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Strategy, Australian Housing: The Demographic, Economic and Social Environment, Canberra: AGPS, 1991. Sociological Association of Aotearoa (NZ) Newsletter 2, August 1990, 1. There have been no sociologists on the Australian Research Council since 1986. E.g., P. Harris, Child Poverty, Inequality and Social Justice, Child Poverty Policy Review 1, Melbourne: Brotherhood of St. Laurence, 1989; ibid., All Our Children, Child Poverty Policy Review 4, Melbourne: Brotherhood of St. Laurence, 1990. Spoonley, ‘The Development of Sociology,’ op. cit., 7. See, for opposing arguments, N. Perry, ‘Absent Centre: New Zealand Sociology and the Conditions of Cultural Production’, NZSA Newsletter 2, 1987, 17; C. Crothers and C. Gribben, ‘The State of New Zealand Sociology’, New Zealand Sociology 1, 1, May 1986, 1–17. In bicultural New Zealand, the Maori name for the country is now used with pride in many public documents, and New Zealand sociologists have chosen the Maori name for their professional association. In New Zealand, J. Forster, ed., Social Process in New Zealand, Auckland: Longman Paul, 1969; in Australia, A. F. Davies and S. Encel, eds., Australian Society, a Sociological Introduction. New York: Atherton Press, 1965. Australian or New Zealand writers are usually asked by publishers to specify in the titles of their books that they refer to Australian or New Zealand conditions. The consequence of this is that very few books written by Australian and New Zealand scholars, however excellent, reach an international readership. British or American textbook writers seldom follow such a practice, under the assumption that their analysis has general application. An example is Giddens’s Sociology, a British text with predominantly European and American illustrations, which is widely used as an introductory text in Australia. M. Waters and R. Crook, Sociology One, Principles of Sociological Analysis for Australians, Melbourne: Longman Cheshire, 2nd ed., 1990; D. J. Austin, Australian Sociologies, Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1984. P. Spoonley, D. Pearson, and I. Shiriey, eds., New Zealand: Sociological Perspectives, Palmerston North: Dunmore Press, 1982 (reprinted 1986). The Series started in 1978; by 1991, in addition to books in the Series, Allen and Unwin had published 12 other sociology titles, and about 10 books by sociologists in its Women’s Studies list (personal communication; Robert Gorman, Allen and Unwin, 1991). It appears there are as yet only three full professors in any of these 21 tertiary institutions who are sociologists, at the University of Western Sydney, Nepean, at the Queensland University of Technology, and at Deakin University. Waters and Crook, op. cit., 19. W. K. Hancock, Australia, London: Benn, 1930. While presenting ‘pop-sociology’ in this book, Hancock described sociology as ‘mumbo-jumbo’. See Bourke, op. cit., 30. R. W. Connell, ‘Images of Australia,’ in D. F. Edgar, ed., Social Change in Australia: Readings in Sociology, Melbourne: Cheshire, 1974, 27–41. E.g., L. Broom, F. L. Jones, and J. Zubrzycki, ‘Social Stratification in Australia,’ in J. A. Jackson, ed., Social Stratification, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968; L. Broom and F. L. Jones, Opportunity and Attainment in Australia, Canberra: Australian National University Press, 1976; J. Higley, D. Deacon, and D. Smart, Elites in Australia, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1979; B. Graetz and I. McAllister, Dimensions of Australian Society, Melbourne: MacMillan Australia, 1988. E.g., F. L. Jones, ‘Sources of Gender Inequality in Income: What the Australian Census Says’, Social Forces 62, 1983, 134–52; F. L. Jones and P. Davis, Models of Society: Class, Stratification and Gender in Australia and New Zealand, Sydney: Croom Helm, 1986; Graetz and McAllister, op cit., 46–116.
Sociology in Australia and New Zealand 56. M. D. R. Evans and J. Kelley, ‘Immigrants’ Work: Equality and Discrimination in the Australian Labour Market,’ Australian and New Zealand Journal of Sociology 22, 2, July 1986, 187–207. 57. Graetz and McAllister, op. cit., 176–232. 58. John Western himself has expressed a disdain for social theory; see his Social Inequality in Australian Society, Melbourne: MacMillan, 1983, 10. 59. J. H. Baxter, P. R. Boreham, S. R. Clegg, M. Emmison, D. M. Gibson, G. N. Marks, J. S. Western, and M. C. Western, ‘The Australian Class Structure: Some Preliminary Results from the Australian Class Project’, Australian and New Zealand Journal of Sociology 25, 1, May 1989, 100–20; J. H. Baxter, ‘Gender and Class Analysis: The Position of Women in the Class Structure’, Australian and New Zealand Journal of Sociology 24, 1, 1988, 106–23; J. H. Baxter, D. Gibson, with M. LynneBlosse, Double Take: The Links between Paid and Unpaid Work, Canberra: Australian Government Publishing Service, 1990. 60. E.g., G. N. Marks, J. S. Western, and M. C. Western, ‘Class and Income in Australia’, ANZJS 25, 3, November 1989, 410–27, does not make any reference to income levels of the unemployed. 61. Baxter, ‘Gender and Class,’ op. cit.; Baxter and Gibson, op. cit. 62. R. W. Connell, The Child’s Construction of Politics, Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1971; Connell, Ruling Class, Ruling Culture, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1977; R. W. Connell and T. Irving, Class Structure in Australian History, Melbourne: Longman Cheshire, 1980; R. W. Connell, D. J. Ashenden, S. Kessler, and G. W. Dowsett, Making the Difference: Schools, Family and Social Division, Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1982; R. W. Connell, Which Way Is Up? Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1983; R. W. Connell, Teachers’ Work, Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1985; R. W. Connell, Gender and Power, Oxford: Polity Press, 1987. 63. E.g., Connell and Irving, op. cit., 298. See, for a critical review of Connell’s ideas, D. Austin, op. cit., especially 33–36. 64. A. Game and R. Pringle, Gender at Work, Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1983. 65. Ibid., 14. 66. E.g., G. Bottomley and M. de Lepervanche, eds., Ethnicity, Class and Gender in Australia, Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1984. See on this issue also M. Kalantzis, ‘Ethnicity Meets Gender Meets Class in Australia,’ in S. Watson, ed., Playing the State, Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1990, 21–38. 67. C. Chamberlain, Class Consciousness in Australia, Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1983; A. Metcalfe, For Freedom and Dignity, Historical Agency and Class Structures in the Coalfields of NSW, Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1988. 68. Metcalfe, op. cit., 210. 69. J. Wacjman, Women in Control, Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 1983; C. Williams, Open Cut, Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1981; Williams, Blue, White and Pink Collar Workers in Australia, Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1988. 70. Williams, Open Cut, op. cit. See Metcalfe, op. cit., 187, for a critique of Williams’s somewhat deterministic account of patriarchal relations. 71. E.g., J. M. Barbalet, Marx’s Construction of Social Theory, London and Melbourne: Routledge, 1983; S. Clegg, P. Boreham, and G. Dow, Class, Politics and the Economy, London: Routledge, 1986. 72. E.g., G. Konrad and I. Szelenyi, Intellectuals on the Road to Class Power, London: Harvester, 1979; B. Turner, For Weber, Essays on the Sociology of Fate, London: Routledge, 1981; R. J. Holton, The Transition from Feudalism to Capitalism, London: Macmillan, 1985; Holton, Crisis, Capitalism and Civilisation, London: Allen and Unwin, 1986. 73. R. J. Holton and W. Martin, ‘The Class Structure of Metropolitan Adelaide’, Australian and New Zealand Journal of Sociology 23, 1, 1987, 5–22.
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Histories of Australian Sociology 74. A. Yeatman, Bureaucrats, Technocrats, Femocrats: Essays on the Contemporary State, Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1990. 75. S. Encel, Equality and Authority: A Study of Class, Status and Power, Melbourne: Cheshire, 1970. See, for a critical assessment of Encel’s work, D. Austin, op. cit. 76. A. Daniel, Power, Privilege and Prestige: Occupations in Australia, Melbourne: Longman Cheshire, 1983; M. Pusey, Economic Rationalism in Canberra, Cambridge/New York/Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 1991. 77. J. Pakulski, Social Movements: The Politics of Moral Protest, Melbourne: Longman Cheshire, 1991; M. Waters, Class and Stratification, Melbourne: Longman Cheshire, 1990; Waters and Crook, Sociology One, op. cit.; Eva Etzioni-Halevy, Bureaucracy and Democracy, London and Melbourne: Routledge, rev., ed. 1985; Etzioni-Halevy, The Knowledge Elite and the Failure of Prophesy, London and Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1985. 78. E.g., C. V. Baldock, Volunteers in Welfare, Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1990; C. V. Baldock and B. Cass, eds., Women, Social Welfare and the State, 2nd ed. Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1988; L. Bryson, ‘The Australian Patriarchal Family,’ in S. Encel and L. Bryson, op. cit., 1l3–69; Bryson, ‘Women as Welfare Recipients: Women, Poverty and the State,’ in Baldock and Cass, op. cit., 134–49; Bryson, Welfare and the State, London: MacMillan, 1992; C. Burton, Subordination: Feminism and Social Theory, Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1985; A. Edwards, Regulation and Repression: The Study of Social Control, Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1988; H. Eisenstein, Contemporary Feminist Thought, Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1984; S. Franzway, D. Court, and R. W. Connell, Staking a Claim: Feminism, Bureaucracy and the State, Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1989; E. Pengelly, ‘A Feminist Critique of Max Weber’s Economy and Society’, unpublished honours thesis, Perth: Murdoch University, 1983; S. Shaver, ‘Sex and Money in the Welfare State,’ in C. V. Baldock and B. Cass, op. cit., 150– 67; B. Thiele, ‘Vanishing Acts in Social and Political Thought: Tricks of the Trade,’ in C. Pateman and E. Gross, eds., Feminist Challenges, Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1986, 30–43; S. Watson, ed., Playing the State, Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1990; B. Wearing, The Ideology of Motherhood, Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1984. 79. D. Broom, ed., Unfinished Business, Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1984; R. Pringle, Secretaries Talk; Sexuality, Power and Work, Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1988; Williams, op. cit. 80. These include Lynne Alice, Cora V. Baldock, Patricia Rams, Beth Pengelly, Lynne Star, and Bev Thiele. 81. M. O’Brien, The Politics of Reproduction, London: Routledge, 1981; H. Rose, ‘Hand, Brain, and Heart: A Feminist Epistemology for the Natural Sciences’, Signs 9, 1, 1983, 73–90; D. E. Smith, The Everyday World as Problematic: A Feminist Sociology, Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 1988. 82. E.g., C. Pateman, The Sexual Contract, Oxford: Polity Press, 1988. A highlight for feminist sociology in Australia was the ANZAAS conference 1983, held in Perth, when Hilary Rose and Carole Pateman presented papers, and Murdoch and Monash feminists coordinated a workshop on Mary O’Brien’s work. 83. Since 1978, Allen and Unwin Australia has published approximately 10 texts by feminists in its series, Studies in Society. 84. N. Perry, op. cit. See also Crothers and Gribben, op. cit. 85. Perry, op. cit., 23. 86. Spoonley, Pearson, and Shirley, op. cit; P. F. Green, ed., Studies in New Zealand Social Problems, Palmerston North: Dunmore Press, 1990. 87. I. Shirley, P. Spoonley, and D. Pearson, ‘Conclusion,’ in Spoonley, Pearson, and Shirley, op. cit., 382. 88. E.g., I. Pool and J. Sceats, ‘Population: Human Resource and Social Determinant’, in Green, op. cit., ch. 1.
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Sociology in Australia and New Zealand 89. D. G. Pearson, Johnsonville, Auckland: Allen and Unwin, 1980; D. G. Pearson and D. C. Thorns, Eclipse of Equality, Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1983. 90. Pearson and Thorns, op. cit., 249. 91. D. Bedggood, ‘The Welfare State’, in Spoonley, Pearson, and Shirley, op. cit., 197; see also Bedggood, Rich and Poor in New Zealand, Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1980. 92. E.g., R. Novitz, ‘Bridging the Gap: Paid and Unpaid Work’, in S. Cox, ed., Public and Private Worlds, Sydney and Wellington: Allen and Unwin and Port Nicholson Press, 1987, 23–52; B. James, ‘Taking Gender into Account: Feminist and Sociological Issues in Social Research’, New Zealand Sociology 1, 1, May 1986, 18–33; B. James and K. Saville-Smith, op. cit. 93. R. Hill, ‘From Hot Metal to Cold Type: New Technology in the Newspaper Industry’, New Zealand Journal of Industrial Relations 9, 3, 1984, 161–75. 94. E.g., James and Saville-Smith, op. cit.; see also the journal, Race, Gender, Class. 95. See, for extensive discussions on the implications of this clause, B. Willmott, ‘Contribution to the Symposium on the SAA(NZ) and Te Tiriti o Waitangi’, SAA(NZ) Newsletter 1, April 1990, 23–27. 96. M. Scott, ‘Sociology and the Treaty of Waitangi’ (interview with M. Roth), SAA(NZ) Newsletter 1, March 1989, 2–3. 97. Lally and Baldock, op cit., 453–54. 98. R. W. Connell’ ‘Social Class in Australia’, Search 14, 9–10, 247–48; J. Kelley and I. McAllister, ‘Modern Sociology and the Analysis of Class,’ Search 14, 9–10, 249–52; Connell et al., ‘The Colonial Mentality in Social Science’, Search 15, 3–4, 110–11. 99. E.g., F. L. Jones, W. E. Willmott, R. Wild, ‘Dialogue: Crisis in Sociology’, Australian and New Zealand Journal of Sociology 19, 2, July 1983, 195–215, for a heated debate between positivist, Marxist, and Weberian sociologists. The papers had their origin in a panel discussion at a SAANZ conference. 100. See Austin, op. cit., 84. 101. E.g., Pringle, Secretaries Talk, op. cit.; G. Wickham, ‘The Political Possibilities of Postmodernism’, Economy and Society 19, 1, 1990; A. Milner and C. Worth, eds., Discourse and Difference: Post-Structuralism, Feminism and the Moment of History, Clayton: Monash University, 1990. 102. Braverman’s work has inspired studies by Game and Pringle, op. cit.; Williams, op. cit.; Hill, op. cit; and R. Kriegler, Working for the Company, Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1980; see also E. Willis, ed., Technology and the Labour Process, Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1988. 103. Sociologists in Australia influenced by ethnomethodology include A. MacHoul, Telling How Texts Talk: Essays on Reading and Ethnomethodology, London: Routledge, 1982; K. Liberman, Understanding Interaction in Central Australia: An Ethnomethodological Study of Australian Aboriginal People, Boston: Routledge, 1985; M. Campion, Worry: A Maieutic Analysis, Hampshire, England: Gower Press, 1986. 104. A major model for Australian positivist stratification research has been P. M. Blau and O. D. Duncan, The American Occupational Structure, New York: Wiley, 1967. See, for example, Kelley and McAllister, ‘Modern Sociology and the Analysis of Class’, op. cit. 105. Giddens’s textbook Sociology is very widely used, but his other theoretical texts are also prominent. It does not appear, though, that Giddens’s own theoretical perspectives are given serious consideration. Williams and other authors in the tradition of the Birmingham Centre for Cultural Studies have inspired some Australian research (e.g., Connell, Ashenden, Kessler, and Dowset, op. cit.; L. Johnson, The Unseen Voice. A Cultural Study of Early Australian Radio, London: Routledge, 1988). The recently established Cultural Studies Association follows a ‘soft’ Marxist approach in the Williams tradition. 106. Work inspired by Habermas has appeared in the journal Thesis Eleven, e.g., M. Pusey, ‘Rationality, Organisations and Language: Towards a Critical Theory of
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Histories of Australian Sociology Bureaucracy’, Thesis Eleven 10/11, November 1984–March 1985, 89–109; G. Munster, R. Poole, T. Rowse, A. K. Salleh, and T. Smith, ‘Special Symposium: Australian Intellectuals and the Left’, Thesis Eleven 10/11, November 1984/March 1985, 145–65. See also Pusey, Economic Rationalism in Canberra, op. cit. 107. Foucault is a major influence on the work of the Centre for Cultural Policy Studies at Griffith University. See, e.g., I. Hunter, Culture and Government, Basingstoke: MacMillan, 1988. Feminist sociologists who have made imaginative use of discourse analysis are Edwards, op. cit; and K. Reiger, The Disenchantment of the Home. Modernizing the Australian Family 1880–1940, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985. See also B. Wearing, ‘Beyond the Ideology of Motherhood: Leisure as Resistance’, ANZJS 26, 1, March 1990, 36–58. 108. M. Barrett, Women’s Oppression Today, London: Verso, 1988, is used as a text in feminist sociology courses; see also M. Barrett and M. MacIntosh, The Anti-Social Family, London: Verso, 1982; Rose, op. cit. 109. A continuing problem has been the brain drain of sociologists going overseas for further studies or jobs, never to return. This includes a brain drain from New Zealand to Australia. 110. Even today there are sociology departments in Australia and New Zealand in which the majority of staff come from abroad. For example, in 1990 the eight staff members of one New Zealand sociology department welcomed a new colleague as the ‘only New Zealand born and bred sociologist amongst us.’ SAA(NZ) Newsletter 1, April 1990, 6. 111. Turner’s description of Australian sociology as at the periphery of the global marketplace of sociology did not sit well with Australian sociologists. See B. S. Turner, ‘Sociology as an Academic Trade’, Australian and New Zealand Journal of Sociology 22, 2, July 1986, 272–82; and L. Bryson, M. Emmison, and B. S. Turner, ‘Responses and a Reply’’ 283–90, in the same journal issue. 112. In 1991 there were five female sociologists in full professorial positions in Australia: Lois Bryson, professor of sociology at the University of New England; Jane Marceau, professor of social policy at the Australian National University; Bettina Cass, at Sydney University, who holds a personal chair in the Department of Social Work; Lesley Johnson, professor of communications at the University of Western Sydney, Nepean; and Sophie Watson, chair in planning at Sydney University. Two new appointments were made in 1992: Anne Edwards, to a chair in sociology at Monash’s Department of Sociology and Anthropology; and Gisela Kaplan, head of social sciences at Queensland University of Technology. In New Zealand, sociologist Anna Yeatman held the chair in women’s studies at Waikato for two years, before returning to Australia to take up the second sociology chair in the Monash department. 113. For reviews and examples of the subfields which are not discussed, see the following: A. Edwards, op. cit.; P. O’Malley and K. Carson, ‘The Institutional Foundations of Contemporary Australian Criminology’, ANZJS 25,3, November 1989, 333–55; B. Gidlow, ‘Deviance’, in Spoonley, Pearson, and Shirley, op. cit., 325–52; K. Pearson, Surfing Subculture of Australia and New Zealand, Brisbane: University of Queensland Press, 1979; L. Bryson, ‘Sport and the Oppression of Women’, ANZJS 19, 1983, 413–26; J McKay, ‘Leisure and Social Inequality in Australia’, ANZJS 22,3, November 1986, 343–67; G. Kaplan, ‘Welfare Issues and Rural Economy,’ paper presented at TASA Conference, Perth, December 1991; A. Milner, Contemporary Cultural Theory, Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1991; L. Johnson, op. cit.; T. Bennett, C. Mercer, and J. Woollacott, eds., Popular Culture and Social Relations, Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 1986; P. Davis, Health and Health Care in New Zealand, Auckland: Longman, 1981; E. Willis, Medical Dominance, Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1983; C. Russell and T. Schofield, Where It Hurts, Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1986; Pat O’Malley, Law, Capitalism and Democracy: A
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Sociology in Australia and New Zealand Sociology of the Australian Legal Order, Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1983; B. Wilson and J. Wyn, Shaping Futures. Youth Action for Livelihood, Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1987; P. Dwyer, B. Wilson, and R. Woock, Confronting School and Work, Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1984. 114. A valuable critique of the descriptive nature of demographic studies for New Zealand was given by J. Johnston, ‘Population’, in Spoonley, Pearson, and Shirley, op. cit., 13–38. See, for the immigration debate, F. Lewins, ‘The Blainey Debate in Hindsight’, ANZJS 23, 2, July 1987, 261–73. 115. The best review of the literature for Australia is in Bryson, ‘The Patriarchal Family’, in Encel and Bryson, op cit.; for New Zealand in Novitz, op. cit; or James and Saville-Smith, op. cit. See also Baldock and Cass, op. cit.; A. Burns, G. Bottomley, P. Jools, eds., The Family in the Modern World, Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1983; C. O’Donnell and J. Craney, Family Violence in Australia, Melbourne: Longman, 1982; P. Bunkle and B. Hughes, Women in New Zealand Society, Auckland: Allen and Unwin, 1980; P. G. Koopman-Boyden and C. Scott, The Family and Government Policy in New Zealand, Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1984. 116. E.g., Harris, op. cit; Bryson, ‘Women as Welfare Recipients’, op. cit.; Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, op. cit. 117. E.g., Edwards, op. cit.; James and Saville-Smith, op. cit.. 118. Reiger, op. cit.; Edwards, op. cit.; K. Reiger, ‘The Coming of the Counsellors: The Development of Marriage Guidance in Australia’, ANZJS 23, 3, November 1987, 375–87. 119. Bryson, ‘The Patriarchal Family,’ op. cit.; Baldock, Volunteers in Welfare, op. cit.; Baxter and Gibson, op. cit.; M. Bittman, Juggling Time: How Australian Women Use Time, Canberra: Office of the Status of Women, Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, 1991. 120. J. Harper and L. Richards, Mothers and Working Mothers, Melbourne: Penguin, rev. ed. 1986; J. Harper, Fathers at Home, Penguin: Melbourne, 1980; L. Richards, Nobody’s Home. Dreams and Realities in a New Suburb, Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1989; Wearing, The Ideology of Motherhood, op. cit. 121. M. de Lepervanche, ‘From Race to Ethnicity,’ ANZJS 16, 1, 1980, 24–37. 122. R. Miles and P. Spoonley, ‘The Political Economy of Labour Migration: An Alternative to the Sociology of “race” and “ethnic relations”’, ANZJS 21, 1, March 1985, 3–26. See also Spoonley, ‘The Political Economy of Racism’, in P. F. Green, op. cit., 128–44. 123. In some instances the paradigm shifts led to lively debates. See for example, responses by C. Macpherson and D. Pearson to the article by Miles and Spoonley: C. Macpherson, ‘On the Silences in Emerging Pluralism: A Reply to Miles and Spoonley’, ANZJS 21, 2, July 1985, 267–68; D. Pearson, ‘The Political Economy of Labour Migration in New Zealand: A Reply to Miles and Spoonley’, ANZJS 21,2, July 1985, 269–74. 124. The author is indebted to Patricia Harris for bringing this point to her attention. 125. E.g., K. M. Brown, ‘Keeping Their Distance. The Cultural Production and Reproduction of “Racist Non-Racism”’, ANZJS 22, 3, November 1986, 387–98. 126. B. James, A Report to the Kawerau Community, Hamilton: University of Waikato, 1979; D. Pearson, Johnsonville, Auckland: Allen and Unwin, 1980; Williams, Open Cut, op. cit.; K. Dempsey, Smalltown: A Study of Social Inequality, Cohesion and Belonging, Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1990. 127. See L. Bryson and B. Wearing, ‘Australian Community Studies A Feminist Critique’, ANZJS 21, 3, November 1985, 349–66, for a critique of earlier studies. 128. Dempsey, op., cit., 306. 129. E.g., R. Wild, Bradstow, a Study of Status, Class and Power in a Small Australian Town, Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1974; Wild, Heathcote, Sydney: Allen and Unwin,
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Histories of Australian Sociology 1983; H. G. Oxley, Mateship in Local Organisation, Brisbane: Queensland University Press, 1974. 130. Williams, op. cit.; Metcalfe, op. cit. 131. P. Boreham and G. Dow, eds., Work and Inequality, vols. I and II. Melbourne: MacMillan, 1980. 132. E.g., Williams, op. cit.; Game and Pringle, op. cit.; Willis, Technology and the Labour Process, op. cit.; Kriegler, op. cit.; R. Hill, op. cit. See, for a review of the New Zealand literature, R. Hill, P. Couchman, and B. Gidlow, ‘Work and Technology’, in Green, op. cit., 213–33. 133. E.g., P. Dwyer, B. Wilson, R. Woock, op. cit. 134. R. Novitz, op. cit. 135. Baldock, Volunteers in Welfare, op. cit; Baldock, Chapter 2 in Baldock and Cass, op. cit. 136. E.g., C. Burton, The Promise and the Price, Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1990; C. V. Baldock, ‘Award Restructuring for Women: Tools of Change or Stagnation’, Australian Feminist Studies 12, 1990, 43–49; C. O’Donnell and P. Hall, Getting Equal, Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1988. 137. The distinction between public and social policy made among Australian academics and policy-makers often signifies an artificial division (and rank ordering) between ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ social sciences, as well as between male and female policy-makers. See S. Dowse, ‘The Women’s Movement’s Fandango with the State: The Movement’s Role in Public Policy since 1972’, in C. V. Baldock and B. Cass, eds., Women, Social Welfare and the State, Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 2nd ed. 1988, 204. 138. See notes 39 and 78 for references to her work. 139. E.g., B. Cass, ‘Redistribution to Children and Mothers, a History of Child Endowment and Family Allowances,’ in Baldock and Cass, op. cit., 54–88. 140. For work by L. Bryson and S. Shaver, see, for example, Baldock and Cass, op. cit., Chs. 6 and 7; for Harris, see Harris, op. cit., 1989, 1990. 141. E.g., A. Graycar, ed., Retreat from the Welfare State, Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1983; A. Graycar and J. Jamrozik, How Australians Live, Melbourne: MacMillan; 1989. 142. See, e.g., C. Burton, The Promise and the Price, op. cit. 143. E.g., L. Foster and A. Seitz, ‘Legality and Illegality: The Issue of Non-Citizens in Australia’, ANZJS 22, 3, November 1986, 446–61; L. Foster and D. Stockley, Multiculturalism: The Changing Australian Paradigm, Avon: Multilingual Matters, 1985. 144. R. Birrell, D. Hill, and J. Nevill, eds., Populate and Perish? The Stresses of Population Growth in Australia, Melbourne: Fontana, 1984; Population Issues Committee, National Population Council, Population Issues and Australia’s Future. A Discussion Paper, Canberra: AGPS, 1991. 145. E.g., D. Chappell and P. Wilson, eds., The Australian Criminal Justice System: The Mid–1980s, Sydney: Butterworth, 1986.; P. R. Wilson, Murder of the Innocents: ChildKillers and their Victims, Adelaide: Rigby, 1985. 146. E.g., T. Burke, ‘A Roof over Their Heads’, Housing Issues and Families in Australia, Melbourne: Australian Institute of Family Studies (AIFS), 1984; K. Lovering, Cost of Children in Australia. Working Paper 8, Melbourne: AIFS, 1984; P. McDonald, The Economic Consequences of Marriage Breakdown in Australia, Melbourne: AIFS, 1985; M. Harrison, ‘Child Support Assessment’, Family Matters 21, 1988, 36–40; F. Maas, ‘Homeless Youth in Australia,’ Family Matters 21, 1988, 43–47. 147. P. Koopman-Boyden and C. Scott, op. cit. 148. E.g., K. Saville-Smith, ‘Women and the State’, in Cox, op. cit., 193–210; Dowse, op. cit. See also Novitz, op. cit.; James and Saville-Smith, op. cit; Yeatman, op. cit.; Watson, op. cit.
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Sociology in Australia and New Zealand 149. In the Australian context the term ‘femocrat’ has been used to describe a feminist working in the government bureaucracy. See L. Ryan, ‘Feminism and the Federal Bureaucracy 1972–1983,’ in Watson, op. cit., 71–84. 150. Austin, op. cit., 185; Spoonley, ‘The Development of Sociology in New Zealand’, op. cit., 7. 151. Austin, op. cit., 184; Miles and Spoonley, op. cit. 152. Particularly noteworthy in this respect are the contributions by Diane Austin, Anne Edwards, Andrew Metcalfe, Rosemary Du Plessis Novitz, and David Pearson. See also, for an early attempt, C. V. Baldock, Australia and Social Change Theory, Sydney: Novak, 1978. 153. The author thanks Patricia Harris for her thoughts on this issue.
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19 Refashioning Sociology: Disciplinary and Institutional Challenges SHARYN L. ROACH ANLEU (1998)*
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his chapter outlines some of the significant changes that sociology as a discipline has experienced over the past two decades or so: it has become more heterogenous, dynamic, bold and pluralist (some would say fragmented). Traditional boundaries between the different social sciences have become more porous and this has been a double-edged sword for sociology. As we approach the close of this century some commentators despair of the demise of sociology as a modernist pursuit. There is another side to the idea of refashioning and that is how to make sociology more attractive to undergraduates, in particular, and to other ‘consumers’. I will also point to some centripetal forces occurring within Australian academic institutions, which are forcing sociologists to contemplate the distinctiveness of our discipline (once this was taken for granted) and to propose a defence of sociology’s presence within higher education. Sociology has indeed undergone significant changes over the past two decades—it has become more heterogeneous in terms of practitioners/personnel, subject areas, books, and journals. Disciplinary boundaries being much more porous than they seemed to have been in the past means that sociological perspectives and expertise have influenced the teaching and research of other disciplines, but it also means that other disciplines, and their nonsociologically trained members ‘do’ sociology. There are breakaways from sociology including various interdisciplinary studies such as women’s studies/gender studies; gay and lesbian studies; criminology;
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Source: Roach Anleu, S. L. (1998) ‘Refashioning Sociology: Disciplinary and Institutional Challenges’, previously unpublished Opening Address presented to TASA 1998 Conference, Refashioning Sociology: Responses to a New World Order, QUT Brisbane, 2 December.
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Histories of Australian Sociology and cultural studies. Other disciplines teach and research what looks like sociology—here we have a long list: geography, political science, history, legal studies, even the legal and health professions, especially nursing. Is it that sociology has colonised these areas or the converse? One answer is: it depends on who teaches them—in terms of their sociological background, training and credentials. By the same token sociology has not been reticent to inhabit new territory: new areas/issues of sociological attention include: citizenship and human rights, the body, food and eating, risk, women’s health, feminism, the media, law, consumption and perhaps most significantly, globalisation and consideration of a “global society” or “world order” and its interaction with local issues. We have also missed some opportunities—for example, the area of bioethics; with a few exceptions, we have been slow to enter this field, but it is raises core sociological issues, such as values and decisionmaking, the role of health professionals and the efficacy of legal regulation. The distinctiveness of sociology was once taken for granted, or at least not formulated as a question. However, a sense of turmoil is currently evident in sociology; there seems to be a crisis in the face of centrifugal forces that question its very core and boundaries. Uncertainties and fears for it are occurring at several levels simultaneously: 1. Intellectual: the topics/issues for discussion and the methodologies; 2. Institutional: financial cuts in higher education; the viewing of education as a commodity to be bought and sold on the market; and the arrival of new competitors for students; 3. Vocational: the relationship between sociological training and the labour market; a greater emphasis on skills and training rather than what might be conventionally understood as education. No doubt the impending millennium has made it seem especially appropriate to talk about the shape and future of sociology, which is a theme of many national and international conferences. For some sociologists the greater heterogeneity and diversity of sociology indicates fragmentation, the decline of a sense of shared knowledge and destiny. This sense of loss is not new. It is not difficult to find
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Refashioning Sociology statements made over the past three decades, at least, on the supposed crisis, problems and disenchantment facing sociology. For example, Alvin Gouldner predicted The Coming Crisis of Western Sociology in 1971; Raymond Boudon described The Crisis in Sociology in 1980; and in 1974 Norman Birnbaum delivered a paper to the International Congress of Sociology entitled ‘An End to Sociology?’ in which he started by noting that: ‘No international sociological congress I have attended (and I have been at every one since 1953) has neglected the question: is there a crisis in sociology?’ (1975: 433). And he published a book in 1969 entitled The Crisis of Industrial Society. The list is longer: sociologists contemplate the end of history; the death of the subject; the end of ideology; the collapse of work; the demise of the welfare state. Concepts once the grist of sociology have lost their potency: Some have suggested jettisoning concepts which have been pretty much taken for granted as core sociological concerns and subject matter. Jan Pakulski and Malcolm Waters’ recent book, The Death of Class (1996) argues for the declining utility of the concept, and the demise of classinspired social movements. Also, Colin Sumner’s 1994 book entitled The Sociology of Deviance: An Obituary claims that ‘the behavioural concept of social deviance had run its course by 1975. ... In terms of any kind of coherent theoretical development, it had lost its potency. Fatally damaged by waves of successive criticism and undercut by its own logical contradictions it ceased to be a living force’ (1994: 309). There does seem to be a fixation among some sociologists with endings: death, demise, and lack of utility (interestingly, there is no sophisticated, esoteric psychiatric label in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders to describe or diagnose the fixation with death and/or dying), but perhaps that is more to do with their own careers within sociology than with sociology writ large. In the meantime these prophets of doom continue to publish and not perish. The reference point for this assessment of crisis must be sociology in the United States in the period after the Second World War until the mid-1960s (it can’t really be in Australia because the first chair of sociology was not filled until 1959 and arguably, although of course there is some debate, sociology in Australia did not really ‘take off’ and expand until the 1970s) or between the two world wars when sociology and statistics got together in a period when governments wanted information about populations, sub-populations, in order to 309
Histories of Australian Sociology formulate social and other policies. This was a period of conscious social engineering. In a recent Contemporary Sociology symposium, Patricia Hill Collins (1998) suggests that the golden years of sociology seem to be those of the period directly preceding the 1960s. As Collins observes: ‘As a small and homogenous imagined community, sociology could operate as a quasi-family. Perhaps this new nostalgia reflects the passing of certain types of familial relationships thought to characterize how one does normal sociology’ (1998: 8). It was a period where apparently, everyone [that is trained, male sociologists working in universities or research foundations, including government] read the same books, or at least the same theorists; everyone understood what the sociological method comprised; knew what constituted training in sociology and the content of the curriculum; members of the profession were clearly identified and nurturing or mentoring relationships established. As Bob Connell persuasively shows, it was a period when the socalled canon—a group of discipline-defining classic texts—was delineated primarily in the United States, and these texts and their commentary ‘influence what kind of discussion counts as sociological theory, what theoretical language sociologists are to speak in, and what problems are most worth speaking about’ and of course the converse (1997, p. 1512). Connell goes on to argue that the history of sociology is intimately linked with Western ideas of progress, the structure of empires and comparative perspectives between metropole and other, in which knowledge and expertise was unidirectional. Between 1920 and 1950 sociology only flourished in the United States, and was transformed with the new object of knowledge being social differentiation and social disorder within the metropole. Indeed, Parsons ‘took the empirical problem of postcrisis sociology, difference and disorder in the metropole and made it the theoretical center of sociology’ (1997: 1538). Connell does not explicitly make this point, but it is interesting that the classical texts, as identified by American sociologists, are all European, which resonates with a recurrent theme in literature regarding the nouveau riche American and his search for Western European lineage, wealth and status (see for example the novels of Henry James and F. Scott Fitzgerald). With a different agenda Joey Sprague makes a similar point and argues that ‘sociological theory as currently constructed expresses the standpoint of economically privileged heterosexual men of European ancestry’ (1997: 95).
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Refashioning Sociology This portrait of sociology, while its effects are enduring and was certainly reproduced in my undergraduate and graduate training, does portray an unusual, and atypical period of settlement about sociology which is largely idealised and has become, for many, the calibration against which to measure, often unfavourably, new developments in sociology. Sociology was hardly a settled discipline for Durkheim, Marx or Weber. Because it takes as its brief the understanding of society, as a discipline it needs to accept instability, continual flux, and a need to refashion its concepts and methodologies. Ironically, early sociological theorists drew analogies between society and the body in order to convey notions of vital interrelationships, systemic properties, clear boundaries and stability; now we are more likely to see the body as like society: in a state of perpetual change. It is not rigid or fixed, it provides resources with which to form identities which shift and change, and it can be entirely reconstructed. To return to the title of our plenary: I suggest that sociology has been refashioning, in the sense of reshaping itself, throughout its entire life span. One new stream of interest is in the self—not the disembodied, abstract actor of Talcott Parsons but the embodied, particular individual enmeshed in social relations. The emotions, the body, human rights and citizenship have become central concerns for many sociologists. No doubt Goffman has been waiting backstage for this new performance of the presentation of self in everyday life (1959). The previous sociological fixation with production, which raises issues of technology, ownership, distribution, capital, labour, rationality and inequality, is now replaced by consumption and issues of taste, marketing, lifestyles, fashion and identities—which seem much more ephemeral and less materialist. There is new scholarship on the so-called new social movements (you will know that our absent plenary speaker Craig Calhoun disagrees that the new social movements are really new), which emerge around issues of consumption and lifestyles, rather than production, and are not as collectivist as traditional labour movements. In this new genre of sociology, it is fascinating that the body has assumed central position. Unlike property, capital, social status, and power, everyone has a body, so discussions of the body can seem strangely egalitarian and democratic. (Similarly, some of the discussions about human rights can seem incredibly inclusive, but the 311
Histories of Australian Sociology realisation or exercise of those rights can be problematic.) Some postmodern renderings of the body present it as a resource with which to construct various or varying identities. In revising my book on deviance I am dipping into fascinating discussions of body art, tattoos and cosmetic surgery and fashion that enable bodies to be shaped and presented differently (Roach Anleu 1999). They allow expressions of individuality, resistance, and political statements. But these are all social practices and what is often missing is that these practices are also about conformity or expression of community affiliation. Thus, there are tensions between notions of individual identity formation and normativity or social regulation. While the latter, following Foucault (1979), are dispersed, often invisible and operate at micro levels, their institutional manifestation and the centralisation of social control should not be ignored. I shall take the example of cosmetic surgery. Post-modern discourse emphasising potentialities, the possibilities for multiple and shifting identities combined with consumer culture relying on notions of choice and self-determination, leads to a focus on the capacity of the individual to remake themselves. Undergoing cosmetic surgery, for example, is often couched in a framework of taking control of one’s body, making choices and boosting personal confidence (Slattery 1998: 20). Those who do not choose to remake themselves may be viewed as deviant and stigmatised as overweight, lacking selfrestraint, not caring about their appearance and therefore as undeserving of other social rewards and opportunities. The array of images held out as reference points and as attainable tend to be very restrictive and affirm specific feminine models of appearance, attractiveness and beauty. While men are subject to the same forces, arguably the norms that specify feminine appearance and behaviour are narrower and more constraining than those normalising men’s bodies. Moreover, routine grooming is sufficient to maintain the male body, but women require much more remedial and reconstructive work (Gillespie 1996: 71). Certain types of female body—those evaluated as overweight, aged, or unattractive (to heterosexual men)—are often viewed by ordinary citizens and employers as evidence of lack of discipline and control and therefore as less morally worthy than others who are evaluated as exercising restraint or ‘taking care of themselves’ as indicated by their bodies. The body becomes the target of, but also an emblem of, discipline and moral evaluation. The aspirations of identity formation
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Refashioning Sociology must be seen within a context of materialism, politics and culturally defined notions of normality and conformity. Nonetheless, the concepts of identity formation and identities have wide currency: we can talk about identity formation and construction on multiple levels: individual, local, community, national, ethnic, gender and sexual. Many previously strictly macro issues—social control, politics, socialisation—now are considered in terms of the self, the importance of multiple identities and subjectivities and the capacity to resist larger forces. To some extent, we now conceptualise the world or global society or new world order—which is not a space monopolised by nation states as the notion of international relations implies—as constituted by various movements, actors and local communities. One of the effects of some of the elements of this newfashioned sociology, as I have mentioned, is the difficulty, and some would say the inappropriateness, of prioritising issues and hierarchising political actors as it smacks of modernist or positivist attempts to categorise the world. One consequence is that it is difficult to disentangle issues that can entail a disavowal of politics: in the sense of power and its consolidation and unequal distribution. While we might say we live in a global society constituted by diverse communities, there is no denying the sheer dominance and selfinterest of some nation states. Sociology in the Universities Thus far I have talked about intellectual challenges to sociology, which reflect some centrifugal forces, so that it is very true that people who do very different things in very different ways come under the umbrella of sociology. Given that sociology is the study of social life and social life is heterogenous, plural, complex and not reducible to simple equations between culture and action or structure and action— then the greater diversity within sociology should be viewed as a good thing, as true to the ideals of sociology—and not as the source of concern about fragmentation, crisis, marginalisation and general malaise. What I wish to return to is the institutional location and well-being of sociology. This is another dimension of fashion, namely attracting consumers, that is students; and in Australia this occurs in a context of a predominantly publicly-funded education system and the priorities of the Commonwealth government. I will point to some 313
Histories of Australian Sociology centripetal forces occurring within Australian academic institutions, which are forcing sociologists to contemplate the distinctiveness of our discipline and to propose a defence of sociology’s presence within higher education. This has particular urgency at the moment where a number of sociology departments have been reduced in size, transformed into service departments with very few sociology majors, merged (much like the merger between east and western Germany) with ‘allied’ disciplines or simply dismantled. Part of the rationale for this is the simplistic economic model of demand and supply. The demand for sociology courses (as calculated by student numbers) is in decline, the available financial resources are stable at best; the merit of a department is equated in terms of student demand, and thus the reductions. Why and how has this happened? There are many factors ranging from the spectre of unemployment for university graduates, the debasing of the currency of generalist BA education, new competitors (which are seen as more vocational): legal studies, journalism, nursing, business and management studies; and the changing demography and demands of students. Defence of Sociology Three key areas in which the professional association can be involved in the defence of sociology are: 1. Curriculum changes 2. Research, and 3. Professionalisation. 1. Curriculum changes
Arguably, with a few variations, the curriculum of the sociology major in most Australian (and perhaps everywhere else) universities was relatively settled and standard. This consisted of: a general first year topic with the uninviting title of Sociology 1; second-year sociology constituted by a mixture of more theory and social research methods; a third year composed of different substantive topics: a rather solid and stolid undergraduate training. To return to the fashionable sociological attention to consumption: the first year was like a hot Sunday Dinner—it usually stretched across one academic year; it required presence for the duration; for 314
Refashioning Sociology those who taught it was fairly predictable but hard work; students had to sit through it; and there was not much flexibility for different tastes or needs: eg vegetarians, those with heart problems. In order to entice students back to sociology, as well as make sociology more relevant and up to date, in my department we have refashioned sociology more in line with our consumers—once we never thought about who they are and what would they like to study. We have replaced a single sociology one of a whole year’s duration with several topics with such titles as Youth, Consumerism and Social Identity; Media Culture and Society; Crime, Deviance and Social Control; Self and Society, plus some others, from which students choose two. This is more like a smorgasbord—it caters to different tastes; students can pick and choose what they would like to consume, the duration is ten weeks, and it provides a variety of flavours, and we hope it will be healthy for them (and healthy for us). Moreover, it is most unsettling to discover that one of the most settled components of sociology—the so-called founding fathers—are no longer palatable to students. Theory has become dreaded: much like cod liver oil. And the question has emerged: is it possible to teach sociology without teaching the ideas of Durkheim, Marx and Weber? The answer is yes and no. We don’t have to reel out the theories of the triumvirate but we do need to do something about their appeal and relevance. We can convey their (and others’) central ideas and conceptions, visions of society and perspectives via everyday practices and concerns, which are familiar to our consumers. 2. Research
Research is needed to discover what overlaps and differences there are across various sociology curricula—both in terms of substance, methodological orientation and perspective; who teaches sociology; what career paths exist; the relationship between training in sociology and the labour market. TASA is perfectly placed to conduct such research and I trust it will make such information available in the near future. 3. Professionalisation
Professionalisation is one strategy that some are suggesting as a way of enhancing the public image and status of sociology and thereby responding to the perceived crisis in sociology, especially in institutions of tertiary education. What does professionalisation 315
Histories of Australian Sociology mean? A primary concern is with credentialisation of members and accreditation of courses: the idea being that only those with sociology credentials (as certified by the professional Association) will teach accredited sociology courses. Unlike other professional associations there are few criteria for membership of TASA: the basic one—indeed the only one—being payment of the annual fee. Moreover, membership of the Association is not a criterion for obtaining a sociology position (Najman 1996: 3). There is a concern that people from other disciplines teach sociology but do not have any formal sociology qualifications, or at least only at undergraduate level. This is a real concern, given the current labour market; to use Parsonian terminology there is a lack of integration between the qualifications possessed by the supply side and the demand side: the dearth of jobs available. In contrast, professional societies require members to possess certain qualifications before they can present themselves to the world as lawyers, doctors or psychologists, that is before they are licensed to practise as such. These credentials are also a way of excluding others from what is defined as legal, medical or psychological work/occupations. Another dimension of this is: defining what is the area of professional work and what education or training to practise as a member of the profession must entail. So, issues of curriculum development lead to suggestions about what should be taught in a sociology degree. In part, some of this is fuelled by wider changes in higher education in Australia and the search for relevancy, in particular to the labour market. The idea of professionalisation/professionalism has been and is anathema to many sociologists: it reeks of elitism, privilege, exclusion and self-reproduction. Sociologists have always cast a critical eye on the dominating practices of professional associations. But on the other side, professionalisation is a strategy for protecting scarce resources: academic positions and other types of employment; students; and research opportunities; it is a way of asserting the distinctiveness of sociology in the face of new competitors. Professionalisation would necessarily mean that TASA’s role would change: it would have regulatory and disciplinary functions in terms of recognising credentials and accrediting courses, as well as reprimanding recalcitrant members.
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Refashioning Sociology A trawl through history is always enlightening and as my secondary school British History teacher advised: history always repeats itself. A 1973 article published in the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Sociology (the forerunner of the Journal of Sociology) described the conflict within the Sociological Association of Australia and New Zealand (SAANZ, the professional association pre-TASA which explicitly covered sociologists in Australia and New Zealand) as representing an interesting example of the association between professional meaning system and clique development. ‘At Brisbane in 1971 the Association had voted not to turn the association into an accreditation-based professional group, and a code of ethics, though drafted and discussed was not accepted.’ We do now have a code of ethics. The 1972 conference amended the constitution to provide for the election of the journal editor and full student voting rights: a move to greater inclusion and less professional closure (Hill 1973: 34). History again intervened and the TASA executive now appoints the editor(s) of the journal. Conclusion Arguably, some of the best and most enduring sociology has been formulated during times of crisis, during times of large-scale social, political and economic change. The current climate would seem ripe for a resurgence of sociological thought and analysis. Perhaps the external threat in the form of government funding cutbacks and intervention, and changed social and economic policy across a range of areas, will enhance a sense of collectivism and shared interest among sociologists in Australia, but also a recognition of the diversity of sociology and its practitioners. While it is difficult, even impossible to characterise sociology in terms of its subject matter—what is distinctive about sociology is its perspective or sociological imagination and methodology that entails an interest in and wish to directly study or assess the empirical world. There is also a commitment to social justice (probably more individual sociologists than the discipline writ large) and an interest in activism, in progressive social change and empowerment, the uncovering of inequality and biases in social institutions and social processes. These elements will be highly relevant in considering global social changes in the new millennium. I am hesitant to call this a new world order in the sense of stability and integration; it is more likely to
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Histories of Australian Sociology be a new world order in the sense of dominance and hierarchy, which are longstanding sociological concerns. References Birnbaum, N. (1969) The Crisis of Industrial Society. New York: Oxford University Press. —— (1975) ‘An End to Sociology?’, Social Research, 42: 433-66. Boudon, R. (1980) The Crisis in Sociology: Problems of Sociological Epistemology. London: Macmillan. Collins, P. H (1998) ‘On Book Exhibits and New Complexities: Reflections on Sociology as Science’, Contemporary Sociology 27:711. Connell, R. W. (1997) ‘Why is Classical Theory Classical?’ American Journal of Sociology 102: 1511-57. Elliot, A. (1997) ‘Sociology Takes to Theorising’, review of In Defence of Sociology: Essays, Interpretations and Rejoinders by Anthony Giddens, The Australian, 2 April: 37. Foucault, M. (1979) Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. Alan Sheridan, New York: Vintage Books. Gillespie, R. (1996) ‘Women, the Body and Brand Extension in Medicine: Cosmetic Surgery and the Paradox of Choice’, Women & Health 24: 69-85. Goffman, E. (1959) The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. New York: Anchor Books. Gouldner, A. (1971) The Coming Crisis of Western Sociology. London: Heinemann. Hill, S. C. (1973) ‘Professions: Mechanical Solidarity and Process or: “How I Learnt to Live with a Primitive Society”’, Australian and New Zealand Journal of Sociology 19: 30-37. Holton, R. J. (1997) ‘Four Myths About Globalisation’, Flinders Journal of History and Politics 19:141-56. Najman, J. (1996) ‘TASA: Strengthening the Association’, Nexus: Newsletter of The Australian Sociological Association, 8: 3. Pakulski, J. and M. Waters (1996) The Death of Class. London: Sage. Roach Anleu, S. L. (1999) Deviance, Conformity and Control, 3rd edn. Sydney: Pearson. Slattery, L. 1998, ‘Saving Face’, The Weekend Australian, 29-30 August: 20-1. Sprague, J. (1997) ‘Holy Men and Big Guns: The Can[n]on in Social Theory’, Gender & Society 11: 88-107. 318
Refashioning Sociology Sumner, C. (1994) The Sociology of Deviance: An Obituary, Buckingham: Open University Press. Western, J. (1997) ‘Sociology in the 1990s: Problems and Prospects’, Newsletter of the Academy of Social Sciences.
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Part 4 Australian Sociology in the Early 21st Century A generation which ignores history has no past and no future.
Robert Heinlein
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his section of the book deals with recent history and provides discussion of contemporary issues affecting the institutional and professional organisation of Australian sociology. Together the chapters in the final section provide a summary of the current state of Australian sociology and professional association. Chapter 20 is a reprinted paper that discusses the results of the Most Influential Books in Australian Sociology (MIBAS) survey. In Chapter 21, Kirsten Harley examines the use of theory in Australian sociology, in a paper first published here. She considers the varying ways in which theories can be employed and focuses specifically on the way in which theory ‘disciplines’ and performs boundary work in Australian sociology. In chapter 22, John Germov and Tara McGee provide historical information on TASA presidents, journal editors, professional award recipients, and locations of previous conferences. They also provide a snapshot of the characteristics of the TASA membership in 2004, including employment status, gender, and research interests. The final section of the chapter discusses national data on trends in sociology enrolments and completions, as well as mapping out further areas that ‘future histories’ of Australian sociology could address. Peter Beilharz and Trevor Hogan, in chapter 23, survey some of the broader trends and issues facing the social sciences in Australian universities. Chapter 24 reproduces Stephen Crook’s Presidential Address in which he discusses some of the global social trends impacting on the discipline. In the final chapter, McGee and Germov outline a range of resources available for those interested in further researching the history of Australian sociology.
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20 The Most Influential Books in Australian Sociology (MIBAS), 1963–2003 ZLATKO SKRBIS JOHN GERMOV (2004)*
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ociology is, by any measure, a relatively new discipline. Less than 150 years have passed since the death of its titular founder, Auguste Comte (1798–1857), and all sociology departments around the world are, at the time of writing, less than centennials. Given the institutional evolution of the discipline across the globe and its primary concern with the causes and consequences of social change, a great variety of texts have been produced espousing a wide diversity of methodological and theoretical perspectives. This article focuses on the contribution of Australian texts to the global sociological enterprise. In particular, we discuss the results of a survey of Australian sociologists to determine the ten most influential books in Australian sociology over the forty-year period, 1963–2003. The development of sociology in Australia is a recent phenomenon, even in the context of the discipline’s relative youth. While evidence of the sporadic teaching of courses with sociology in their titles can be found in the early part of the 20th century in Australian universities, the institutionalisation of the discipline began when the first chair in sociology was established at the University of New South Wales in 1959 (Baldock and Lally 1974). The Sociological Association of Australia and New Zealand (SAANZ) was established only four years later in 1963 and its journal, the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Sociology (ANZJS), two years after that in 1965. The Association
*
Source: This is a slightly shortened and edited version of the original paper; Skrbis, Z. & Germov, J. (2004) ‘The Most Influential Books in Australian Sociology (MIBAS) Survey, 19632003’, Journal of Sociology, vol. 40, no. 3: 283–303.
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Histories of Australian Sociology changed its name to the Australian Sociological Association (TASA) in 1988, and the ANZJS became the Journal of Sociology (JOS) in 1998. In the process of preparing for the celebration of the fortieth anniversary of TASA (1963–2003), its Executive Committee decided to commemorate the occasion by asking the members of the Association about the books that have most profoundly influenced them as sociology scholars. It was in this context that the idea of a survey of the Most Influential Books in Australian Sociology (MIBAS) was born. In this chapter, we provide the background information on the survey, contextualise it vis-à-vis some other wellknown attempts to assess the influence of sociological books, and offer some reflections on the MIBAS findings and the process as a whole. The Australian Sociological Association’s MIBAS Survey The MIBAS survey was divided into two stages: nomination and ranking. Stage 1 ran between April and July 2003, through the member-only section of the TASA website. All TASA members were asked to nominate up to five Australian books of sociological interest, books about Australian society or by Australian sociologists (broadly defined) published since 1963, which they considered to have most profoundly shaped sociological scholarship in Australia. Much consideration went into this broad definition to ensure that the list of nominated works was inclusive, though sufficiently bounded in order to produce a distinctly Australian list of scholarly books published since the formation of TASA—a forty-year period from 1963. It is worth noting that given these criteria, edited books, multi-authored works and textbooks could be nominated. The MIBAS process deliberately aimed to exclude the works of sociological ‘classics’ that undoubtedly had an important influence on Australian sociologists, but had no direct Australian content. We also wanted to avoid merely duplicating previous attempts at compiling lists of influential sociological books conducted by the American Sociological Association (ASA) and the International Sociological Association (ISA), even though we acknowledge they clearly inspired the MIBAS process (cf. Clawson and Zussman 1998; Contemporary Sociology 1996; ISA 1998). At the end of the Stage 1 nomination process, a list of 66 books had been compiled, many of which had received multiple nominations. 324
The Most Influential Books in Australian Sociology Table 1 lists the 66 nominated books in alphabetical order by author surname. Notable among the list of nominated books is the wide range of topics and styles, including empirically based works, books on theory and a small number of textbooks. Interestingly, while books published throughout the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s are well represented, only one book published in the 1960s was nominated. Not surprisingly, only three books originally published in the 2000s were nominated. Stage 2 of the survey involved inviting TASA members to rank from 1 to 10 their top 10 books from the list of nominated books.1 The voting process ran from August to the end of October 2003, and once again took place through the member-only section of the TASA website, ensuring that members could only vote once. The online voting process automatically tallied the votes. The results were announced during a MIBAS plenary at the 2003 TASA Conference, held in December at the University of New England in Armidale (New South Wales), and were subsequently made available on the TASA website.2 Table 1: MIBAS Stage 1—The 66 Nominated Books Altman, D. (1972 and 1993) Homosexual: Oppression and Liberation Atkinson, J. (2002) Trauma Trails, Recreating Song Lines: The Transgenerational Effects of Trauma in Indigenous Australia Baldock, C. V. and B. Cass (1983 and 1988) Women, Social Welfare, and the State in Australia Barbalet, J. M. (2001) Emotion, Social Theory and Social Structure: A Macrosociological Approach Beilharz, P. (1991) Social Theory: A Guide to Central Thinkers Bell, D. and R. Klein (1996) Radically Speaking: Feminism Reclaimed Bennett, T., M. Emmison and J. Frow (1999) Accounting for Tastes: Australian Everyday Cultures Bottomley, G. (1979) After the Odyssey: A Study of Greek Australians Bottomley, G., M. de Lepervanche and J. Martin (1991) Intersexions: Gender, Class, Culture and Ethnicity Braithwaite, J. (1989) Crime, Shame and Reintegration Broom, D. (1991) Damned if We Do: Contradictions in Women’s Health Care Bryson, L. (1992) Welfare and the State: Who Benefits? Bryson, L. and F. Thompson (1972) An Australian Newtown: Life and Leadership in a Working-class Suburb Carrington, K. (1993) Offending Girls: Sex, Youth and Justice Castles, S., B. Cope, M. Kalantzis and M. Morrissey (1988 and 1992) Mistaken Identity: Multiculturalism and the Demise of Nationalism in Australia Cheek, J., J. Shoebridge, E. Willis and M. Zadoroznyj (1996) Society and Health: Social Theory for Health Workers Connell, R. W. (1995) Masculinities
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Histories of Australian Sociology Connell, R. W. and T. H. Irving (1980 and 1992) Class Structure in Australian History: Poverty and Progress Connell, R. W., D. W. Ashenden, S. Kessler and G. W. Dowsett (1982) Making the Difference: Schools, Families and Social Division Connell, R. W. (1977) Ruling Class, Ruling Culture: Studies of Conflict, Power and Hegemony in Australian Life —— (1987) Gender and Power: Society, the Person, and Sexual Politics Crook, S., J. Pakulski and M. Waters (1992) Postmodernization: Change in Advanced Society Davidson, A. (1997) From Subject to Citizen: Australian Citizenship in the Twentieth Century Davies, A. F. and S. Encel (1965, 1970 and 1977) Australian Society: A Sociological Introduction Davies, B. (1989) Frogs and Snails and Feminist Tales: Preschool Children and Gender De Vaus, D. (1985, 1990, 1991, 1995 and 2002) Surveys in Social Research Dempsey, K. (1990) Smalltown: A Study of Social Inequality, Cohesion and Belonging Edwards, A. (1988) Regulation and Repression: The Study of Social Control Encel, S. (1970) Equality and Authority: A Study of Class, Status and Power in Australia Game, A. and R. Pringle (1984) Gender at Work Gilding, M. (1997) Australian Families: A Comparative Perspective Hawthorne, S. (2002) Wild Politics: Feminism, Globalisation, Biodiversity Kellehear, A. (1996) Social Self, Global Culture: An Introduction to Sociological Ideas Lawrence, G. (1987) Capitalism and the Countryside: The Rural Crisis in Australia Lemert, C. (ed.) (1993 and 1999) Social Theory: The Multicultural and Classic Readings* Little, G. (1975) Faces on the Campus: A Psycho-social Study McQueen, H. (1970 and 1986) A New Britannia: An Argument Concerning the Social Origins of Australian Radicalism and Nationalism Martin, J. I. (1978) The Migrant Presence: Australian Responses 1947–1977: Research Report for the National Population Inquiry —— (1984) Good and Mad Women: The Historical Construction of Femininity in Twentieth-century Australia McMichael, P. (1984) Settlers and the Agrarian Question: Foundations of Capitalism in Colonial Australia O’Connor, J., A. Orloff and S. Shaver (1999) States, Markets, Families: Gender, Liberalism, and Social Policy in Australia, Canada, Great Britain, and the United States Pakulski, J. and M. Waters (1996) The Death of Class Palmer, G. and S. Short (1989, 1994 and 2000) Health Care and Public Policy: An Australian Analysis Pateman, C. (1988) The Sexual Contract Pringle, R. (1988) Secretaries Talk: Sexuality, Power and Work Pusey, M. (1991) Economic Rationalism in Canberra: A Nation-building State Changes its Mind Richards, L. (1978 and 1985) Having Families: Marriage, Parenthood and Social Pressure in Australia Robison, R. (1986) Indonesia: The Rise of Capital
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The Most Influential Books in Australian Sociology Russell, C. and T. Schofield (1986) Where it Hurts: An Introduction to Sociology for Health Workers Sargeant, M. (1983 and 1994) Sociology for Australians/The New Sociology for Australians Spender, D. (1980 and 1990) Man Made Language Summers, A. (1975, 1994 and 2002) Damned Whores and God’s Police: The Colonization of Women in Australia Theophanous, A. (1995) Understanding Multiculturalism and Australian Identity Travers, P. and S. Richardson (1993) Living Decently: Material Well-being in Australia Turner, B. S. (1984 and 1996) The Body and Society: Explorations in Social Theory —— (1987 and 1995) Medical Power and Social Knowledge Wajcman, J. (1991) Feminism Confronts Technology Wadsworth, Y. (1984 and 1997) Do it Yourself Social Research Waters, M. (1994) Modern Sociological Theory Western, J. S. (1983) Social Inequality in Australian Society Wild, R. A. (1974 and 1978) Bradstow: A Study of Status, Class and Power in a Small Australian Town Williams, C. (1981) Open Cut: The Working Class in an Australian Mining Town Willis, E. (1983 and 1989) Medical Dominance: The Division of Labour in Australian Health Care Wooden, M., R. Holton, G. Hugo and J. Sloan (1990 and 1994) Australian Immigration: A Survey of the Issues Yeatman, A. (1990) Bureaucrats, Technocrats, Femocrats: Essays on the Contemporary Australian State —— (1994) Postmodern Revisionings of the Political * Even though this book did not meet the MIBAS criteria, it remained in the list to maintain the spirit of editorial non-interference.
Other Attempts to Measure the Influence of Sociological Books MIBAS is not the first attempt to rank sociological books and there are some international antecedents that are worth noting at this point in order to appreciate some of the complexities and problems associated with such undertakings. Contemporary Sociology, 1996
In 1996 the editorial board of the American Sociological Association journal, Contemporary Sociology, undertook to list the 10 most influential sociology books as an opportunity to mark the journal’s silver anniversary. The whole exercise reportedly ‘generated more excitement and enthusiasm than anything else [they have] done’ (Clawson 1996: ix). The list was compiled by nominations from
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Histories of Australian Sociology members of the editorial board and their top 10 list is shown in Table 2. The Contemporary Sociology editorial board consisted of 27 members, 14 of whom were women. A vast majority of members of the editorial board were from US universities, with the exception of four members who came from Australia,3 Canada, Finland and Norway. The two obvious features of the Contemporary Sociology top 10 is that all the books were first published in the 1970s and the majority of books are North American in origin. Given that the compilation of the list was restricted to publications in the 25-year period of the journal’s operation, this is perhaps not surprising. In addition, both these characteristics may be explained by the demographic bias in the editorial board. Moreover, judgements about the influence of books are always made at a particular historical juncture, and it is quite likely that the perceived influence of these books could have been altered simply by virtue of an expanded time horizon from which books could be chosen. Table 2: The Contemporary Sociology Top 10 Books 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.
T. Skocpol (1979) States and Revolution H. Braverman (1974) Labor and Monopoly Capital C. Geertz (1973) The Interpretation of Cultures P. Bourdieu (1972) Outline of a Theory of Practice N. Chodorow (1978) Reproduction of Mothering W. J. Wilson (1978) The Declining Significance of Race E. Said (1978) Orientalism M. Foucault (1977) Discipline and Punish Wallerstein (1976) The Modern World System, vol. 1 Boston Women’s Health Collective (1973) Our Bodies, Ourselves
Source: Adapted from Contemporary Sociology (1996)
While the Contemporary Sociology top 10 books provoked controversy and discussion, the process of determining the list could hardly be viewed as transparent, objective or representative. The use of an expert panel, in this case the editorial board of a journal, to compile a list of influential books, resulted in considerable criticism, in the form of claims of exclusionary practice and subjective bias (see Clawson, 1998). Clawson and Zussman (1998) subsequently responded to the criticisms and acknowledged the shortcomings of their list, including the notion that a ranking based on ‘influence’ can be interpreted in a multitude of ways. They also recognised there were other ways in 328
The Most Influential Books in Australian Sociology which the influence of sociological works could be determined. For example, the Social Science Citation Index can provide us with a standard and quantifiable measure of influence, but this index is perhaps more suitable to assess the influence of journal articles than books. The International Sociological Association (ISA), 1998
To mark the last ISA Congress of the 20th century and to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the ISA, members of the Association were asked to ‘list five books published in the 20th century which were most influential in their work as sociologists’ (ISA, 1998). Approximately 16 percent of the ISA membership (455 out of 2785) participated in the process, but only 28 percent of voters were female, and over 65 percent had studied sociology in English (ISA, 1998). The voting process involved a simple tally of the most nominated books and resulted in a list of the ISA top 10 ‘books of the century’, which is shown in Table 3. Table 3: The ISA Top 10 Books 1. M. Weber (1922) Economy and Society 2. C. Wright Mills (1959) The Sociological Imagination 3. R.K. Merton (1949) Social Theory and Social Structure 4. M. Weber (1905) The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism 5. P. L. Berger and T. Luckmann (1967) The Social Construction of Reality 6. P. Bourdieu (1979) Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste 7. N. Elias (1939) The Civilizing Process 8. J. Habermas (1981) The Theory of Communicative Action 9. T. Parsons (1937) The Structure of Social Action 10. E. Goffman (1959) The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life Source: Adapted from ISA (1998)
The ISA ranking represents sociology as a truly international, yet Western (and masculine) discipline; a mix of German, French, British and North American influences. While Max Weber’s Economy and Society (1922) topped the list, half the books are by North American authors, most likely reflecting the dominance of US members among the ISA. Interestingly, there is no overlap between this list and the ranking produced by the ASA’s Contemporary Sociology editorial board. Part of the reason for this may be that the ISA process had no ‘date of publication’ restriction on the nomination process and this is reflected in a number of ‘classics’ on the ISA list. Despite this, some
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Histories of Australian Sociology sociologists might be surprised that the top 10 did not include authors such as Simmel, Durkheim, Foucault, Beck and Giddens. Herbert Gans’s top-selling sociology books
Herbert Gans (1997a) attempted to produce an alternative ranking of sociology books based on a compilation of sociology ‘bestsellers’ (see Table 4). While using a rather different methodology to Contemporary Sociology and the ISA, it is nevertheless an interesting way to measure the influence of sociological books. To make it on to the list, Gans included books which had sold at least 50 000 copies and could be identified as authored by sociologists. However, Gans’s approach raises a number of important issues. He takes ‘sociologist’ to mean somebody who is trained in sociological methods or has some training in related disciplines, particularly anthropology. The sales figures were obtained from editors of commercial and university publishers, and from authors themselves. By limiting his selection to living American and Canadian authors, his list excluded sociological ‘classics’, such as Marx, Weber, Durkheim and Simmel. Additionally, Gans excluded books by journalists because, even though some would have met the conceptual and methodological criteria for inclusion, he does not see them as trained social scientists—a decision that may not always be valid. Considering that the reading of sociological texts often requires some prior training in theory and method, it is perhaps not surprising that the sales of sociology books do not parallel the sales figures in other fields, such as literature or popular psychology. In fact, only one book, The Lonely Crowd (1950) by Riesman, Glazer and Denney, had sold more than 1 million copies. The next two on the list both sold over half a million copies and would also be familiar to most contemporary readers: Liebow’s Tally’s Corner (1967) and Slater’s Pursuit of Loneliness (1970). The remainder of the top 10 can be seen in Table 4. Gans’s list of bestsellers sparked quite a number of responses (see Contemporary Sociology 1997). In addition to published responses, he confirmed that ‘a goodly number of people’ wanted their favourite authors to be included in the list, even though they didn’t qualify (Gans 1997b). Gans (1998: 19) readily admits that his approach underestimates the influence of sociological books, given that people ‘buy books they do not read, and they may also read books they do not buy, by borrowing from friends and libraries’. He also acknowledges that sales of used books could not be taken into account. One last point worth highlighting is that Gans’s list does not
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The Most Influential Books in Australian Sociology attempt to be comprehensive with regard to global sociological publishing and in effect is a list of North American bestsellers. Table 4: The Top 10 North American Sociology ‘Bestsellers’ 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.
D. Riesman, N. Glazer and R. Denney (1950) The Lonely Crowd E. Liebow (1967) Tally’s Corner P. Slater (1970) Pursuit of Loneliness R. Sennett (1977) Fall of Public Man W. Ryan (1971) Blaming the Victim R. Bellah et al. (1985) Habits of the Heart S. Lipset (1960) Political Man L. Rubin (1976) Worlds of Pain —— (1983) Intimate Strangers N. Glazer and D. Moynihan (1963) Beyond the Melting Pot
Source: Adapted from Gans (1997a)
The Top 10 Most Influential Books in Australian Sociology: The First 40 Years As the above discussion indicates, a judgement about what constitutes the most influential work in sociology is always open to contestation. One thing that we wish to stress about the MIBAS survey is that the nomination and ranking processes were completely open and free of any editorial interference. Thus, the survey results are a reflection of the views of TASA members during a snapshot in time, bounded by a focus on Australian works published between 1963 and 2003. Given assurances to protect participant anonymity in the voting process, only minimal demographic information about survey respondents can be provided. Twenty-five percent of the TASA membership (129 of 520 members at the time voting closed) voted for their top 10 books. The gender breakdown of voters closely matched that for the membership as a whole, with 63 percent (n=81) female and 37 percent (n=48) male; compared to the total female and male TASA membership of 67 percent (n=346) and 33 percent (n=174) respectively. Overall, the proportion of people voting from each state and territory was generally representative of the proportions within the TASA membership. It is therefore unlikely that the voter’s state produced any biased effects on the outcome.
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Histories of Australian Sociology Inevitably, the MIBAS results reflect the views of only some Australian sociologists, that is, a cohort of sociologists who were TASA members at the time and voluntarily participated in the survey. Given these limitations, Table 5 lists the top 10 books in order of the number of votes received. Key Features of the MIBAS Survey Results Sociology is a highly diverse discipline and no listing of the 10 most influential books is likely to capture the heterogeneity of the field. Yet even the most cursory look at the top 10 books reveals a great variety of themes: class, the state and power (Connell 1977; Pusey 1991), education (Connell et al. 1982), gender (Connell 1987, 1995; Summers 1975; Turner 1984), work and gender (Game and Pringle 1983), health (Willis 1983) and crime (Braithwaite 1989), as well as the intersections of these topics. In this section we draw attention to some of the interesting features of the MIBAS top 10 list.4 In particular, we focus our discussion on four issues: the prominence of work by Connell in the top 10, whether there is a distinctly Australian variant of sociology, key topics missing from the top 10, and the issue of date of publication in determining influence. Thus, it is not our ambition to provide a systematic account or review of the top 10 books, as each of these books has already received considerable critical attention and acclaim in the literature. The influence of the author
Undoubtedly the most obvious characteristic of the MIBAS top 10 list is the inclusion of four books by Connell. Connell’s intellectual opus is impressive, with 18 books and around 100 refereed journal articles and chapters in edited books. He has made substantial contributions to understanding issues of class, gender, sexuality, the state, power, education, social theory and patterns of social inequality more generally. While Connell’s popularity derives from a combination of the intellectual depth of his scholarship, his timely research interests and appropriate attention to the interconnectedness of various sociological dimensions and problems, it is also worth noting that he has been an intellectual leader in the broader field of sociology for more than three decades. He has had a visible international stature and an iconic status (and following) among several generations of Australian scholars. Connell has played an active role in TASA and 332
The Most Influential Books in Australian Sociology its predecessor SAANZ, having been the President during 1987–8, editor of the ANZJS, and regular participant in the Association’s annual sociology conferences.
Table 5: The Top 10 Most Influential Books in Australian Sociology, 1963–2003 1. R. W. Connell (1977) Ruling Class, Ruling Culture: Studies of Conflict, Power and Hegemony in Australian Life. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2. M. Pusey (1991) Economic Rationalism in Canberra: A Nation-building State Changes its Mind. Melbourne: Cambridge University Press. 3. A. Summers (1975, 1994 and 2002) Damned Whores and God’s Police: The Colonization of Women in Australia. Ringwood, Victoria: Penguin. 4. R. W. Connell (1987) Gender and Power: Society, the Person, and Sexual Politics. Sydney: Allen and Unwin. 5. —— (1995) Masculinities. Sydney: Allen and Unwin. 6. R. W. Connell, D. W. Ashenden, S. Kessler and G. W. Dowsett (1982) Making the Difference: Schools, Families and Social Division. Sydney: George Allen and Unwin. 7. B. Turner (1984 and 1996) The Body and Society: Explorations in Social Theory. London: Sage. 8. A. Game and R. Pringle (1983) Gender at Work. Sydney: George Allen and Unwin. 9. E. Willis (1983 and 1989) Medical Dominance: The Division of Labour in Australian Health Care. Sydney: George Allen and Unwin. 10. J. Braithwaite (1989) Crime, Shame and Reintegration. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Note: For those unfamiliar with the top 10 books, the original version of this paper published in the Journal of Sociology provides a brief description of each of the books.
Is there a distinctly Australian sociology?
The MIBAS process clearly requested the nomination of books that are linked with an Australian sociological production, which raises the question about the interconnectedness between international and local (Australian) sociology. As sociologists, we are aware of global flows of intellectual labour and the international success of some of these books simply reminds us of the intricate nexus between Australian and non-Australian sociological production. Yet is there such a thing as a distinctly Australian sociology? Or should we simply speak about sociology in Australia? To paraphrase Connell (2004: 7): should we think of ourselves as Max Weber, wearing corks on his hat?
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Histories of Australian Sociology Just as a sociologist in India may be more attuned to issues of caste, or a German sociologist about the legacy of the post-Cold War era; is there something specific informing the repertoire of an Australian sociologist? Even in the nascent days of Australian sociology, Baldock and Lally (1974: 285) pointed to what they saw as the emergence of a distinctive sociological style, because of Australia’s unique social mix of ‘egalitarianism and bureaucratization’, ‘the presence of large numbers of ethnic minority groups’ and the speed of urbanisation. There is no doubt that Australian sociological production, at least to some extent, represents a conscious dialogue with a distinct inheritance of colonial encounters, indigenous presence, migrant arrivals and status in the region. Given that the institutional rise of the discipline paralleled Australia’s post-Second World War project of nation-building, we suggest there is a case that this particular constellation of historical and political circumstances has given rise to a particular brand of critical sociology, that inherently strives to relate social issues to power, public policy and social reconstruction. Writing sociology in Australia and taking the specificities of this position seriously is an asset, and the best way to make a mark in the international arena. This is a version of what Connell (2002) has tentatively called ‘southern theory’. The books included in the MIBAS list, with the exception of Turner’s (1984) theoretical work on Body and Society, clearly attest to this continuing dialogue with an Australian context. But they also have an intentionally broader relevance, such as Braithwaite’s (1989) Crime, Shame and Reintegration, Game and Pringle’s (1983) Gender at Work or Connell’s (1995) Masculinities. Furthermore, almost all authors in the top 10 list have had some limited, if not extensive, experience of academic appointments in other countries. Any imaginings of Australian sociologists as parochial creatures can safely be laid to rest. What’s missing from the list?
The purpose of any exercise involving a selection and ranking of books is to arrive at an exclusive list. Allowing only 10 books to be nominated clearly sets limits to thematic pluralism. Furthermore, the boundaries of inclusion and exclusion are often drawn somewhat arbitrarily (for example, why top 10 and not top 20?). Accepting some degree of arbitrariness, we nevertheless need to take notice of not only what is included, but also—importantly—what remains excluded. One should not read too much into these absences: we suggest that
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The Most Influential Books in Australian Sociology they are indicative of the arbitrariness and limitations of the process rather than symptomatic of the lack of scholarship in these areas. Nevertheless, one notable absence from the list is the lack of works on indigenous issues, ethnicity and migration. These themes represent the building blocks of the Australian social landscape and, if Australian sociology wishes to remain relevant, it cannot afford to marginalise their importance. Given that indigenous status remains a key social marker of inequality, particularly in terms of health, education and employment, and that racism remains a reality of Australian life, the study of Australia’s ethnically and culturally diverse society should remain at the forefront of sociological research (see Vasta and Castles 1996). What is more interesting is that only one nominated book in MIBAS stage 1, which formed the basis for the selection of the top 10, deals with indigenous issues in any central way. The most likely reason for this is to be sought in the unwritten rules governing the division of labour between sociology and anthropology. This does not mean that sociologists are not interested in indigenous issues, but that the vast majority of production in the field is confined to journal articles or policy and government reports. The absence of books on migration and ethnicity is perhaps less easy to explain. Migration is inherently connected with the Australian nation-building project and remains one of the key factors in understanding questions of diversity, economic prosperity and social cohesion. Several well-known and influential books were nominated from this field (see Table 1), but did not make it into the top 10, including Martin’s (1978) work on post-Second World War immigration, Bottomley’s (1979) pioneering work on Greek Australians and the work on Australian identity and nationalism by Castles et al. (1992). In the early 1970s Baldock and Lally (1974) noted there was an absence of Australian publications that made original theoretical contributions to the field. While the MIBAS top 10 clearly shows this has changed, it is fair to state that substantive theoretical contributions by Australian sociologists tend to appear in academic journals such as Thesis Eleven (given the limited commercial viability of publishing monographs, particularly theoretical ones, in the Australian market). The MIBAS list reflects both theoretical and methodological pluralism, something that has always been characteristic of Australian sociology (see Beilharz 1995). What the top 10 obscures, though, are the significant Australian contributions to urban and community studies such as Bryson and Thompson’s (1972) An Australian 335
Histories of Australian Sociology Newtown, Wild’s (1974) Bradstow, Dempsey’s (1990) Smalltown, and studies on the welfare state such as those by Bryson (1992) and Baldock and Cass (1983), as well as de Vaus’s (2002) internationally recognised methods text, Surveys in Social Research, now in its fifth edition. Again, one could list a number of other themes and books that have been omitted from the MIBAS top 10 list, but this is not our ambition. Such omissions are an integral part of the MIBAS design and will hopefully fuel further discussion among Australian sociologists. A matter of time
Upon presentation of the MIBAS results at the December 2003 TASA conference, a number of student members of TASA stated that some of these works, particularly the older ones, had eluded their attention and indicated their intention to read some of these books. This response reflects the generational effect that can be observed in the MIBAS list. All books included in the list, excluding multiple editions, were published between 1975 and 1995, which is much less than the allowed framework of 40 years. This is not very surprising, given that only six books from the shortlist (MIBAS Stage 1) appeared before 1975 and the recent books, those published after 1995, have had less chance to make an impact. A similar lack of recent works was also clearly apparent in both the ISA survey and the Contemporary Sociology ranking of most influential books. It is pertinent to note that, unlike the Contemporary Sociology ranking, in which all top ranking books were published in the 1970s, the MIBAS top 10 includes books from the 1970s (two), 1980s (six) and 1990s (two), partly reflecting the recent-ness of Australian sociological book production. Worthy of note is that no books published in the 1960s made it into the top 10. Only a small number of Australian sociological books and journal articles had been published up to the 1960s and it was from this period onwards that a marked rise in Australian sociological book publication occurred. One of the earliest Australian books with sociology in its title was Australian Society: A Sociological Introduction, edited by Davies and Encel (1965)—the first local textbook to be published and the only book published in the 1960s to make it into the MIBAS Stage 1 list of 66 nominated books (see Table 1). We can only speculate on why no other 1960s books were nominated and, furthermore, why 1980s books dominate the list, and why only two were published in the 1990s. The choice of books probably reflects the age demographic of the MIBAS voting cohort; 336
The Most Influential Books in Australian Sociology they are the books that had a significant impact on that cohort’s formative years as sociologists. Moreover, it is likely that the perceived ‘influence’ of a book may take time to develop a critical mass, though there will always be exceptions to the rule, such as Pusey’s (1991) Economic Rationalism in Canberra and Connell’s (1995) Masculinities. A final (and partial) explanation for the dominance of books published in the 1980s is that this period can be viewed as a highpoint in Australian sociological book publication. A fascinating feature of the MIBAS top 10 is that half the books were published by Allen and Unwin. We have no space to discuss the role of publishing houses here, though it is fair to say that Allen and Unwin have made the most significant contribution to Australian sociology. While Macmillan, Cheshire and Longman were also notable early publishers of Australian sociology, it was Allen and Unwin (under their Studies in Society series and Women’s Studies series) that published by far the greatest number of books, particularly during the 1980s (Baldock 1994). From the early 1980s to the late 1990s, Allen and Unwin were responsible for publishing the recipient of TASA’s Jean Martin Award (JMA) for the best PhD thesis. The inaugural JMA recipient and book publication was Open Cut (Williams 1981). In fact, the MIBAS top 10 book, Medical Dominance (Willis 1983), was a JMA recipient. Concluding Comments: Benefits and Limits of the MIBAS Survey There are several important points about the MIBAS process we want to acknowledge. MIBAS was not conceived as a methodologically representative or comprehensive survey. However, unlike some other attempts at compiling lists of influential sociological books, the MIBAS survey involved an open, democratic and anonymous process of nomination and voting, without any editorial interference. Ultimately, the list of the top 10 most influential books in Australian sociology is a direct reflection of the subjective choices of TASA members, which are likely to reflect the demographics and theoretical affinities of the voting cohort. MIBAS was envisaged as an attempt to generate discussion about the Australian contribution to the social sciences in general, and sociology in particular, over the past 40 years. It is important to remember that the key criterion for nomination and ranking was the 337
Histories of Australian Sociology perceived influence of these books, and not whether they were the ‘best’ and/or exemplary cases of sociological scholarship. It is possible that some people voted for a book based on its perceived influence, particularly on subsequent works in a field, even though they may never have read the actual book themselves. Furthermore, textbooks are absent from the top 10, though their sales, readership and influence are likely to have been significant (nevertheless as Table 1 shows, some textbooks did make it into the Stage 1 list of 66 nominated books). One final point worth mentioning is that the MIBAS process excluded journal articles. This is not because journal articles are less significant or influential, but simply because we needed to draw some pragmatic exclusionary boundaries. MIBAS was not conceived as an attempt to create a ‘sociological canon of the Antipodes’, although any ranking of this sort inevitably represents a list that includes and excludes simultaneously. There is little doubt that influence correlates with quality (and popularity), but the MIBAS process specifically focused on the assessment of ‘influence’. We wanted to compile a list of books that were perceived as meaningful and influential by TASA members. After all, where else could one find more competent judges about Australian sociological scholarship than among the members of TASA? However, there is the possibility that such a process can fetishise the books on the list by legitimising them as ‘the’ authoritative texts—imbued with an iconic quality whereby they become cited or regarded as important because they are on the list in the first place (cf. Clawson and Zussman 1998). Such a view ignores the cult of authority that already exists among some scholars, who pay due deference in their literature reviews via occasionally obsequious and often obligatory references to foundational and contemporary ‘classics’ (Adatto and Cole 1981). When it comes to ‘classical’ sociological tradition, most sociologists would perhaps agree that Marx, Weber, Durkheim and Simmel represent the key authors in the sociological tradition (cf. Connell 1997; Mouzelis 1997; Parker 1997). However, to think in terms of sociological canon clearly poses some problems, particularly if more ‘modern’ sociological tradition is taken into account (see Baehr and O’Brien 1994; Tucker 2002). Not even Jonathan Turner’s (1997) attempt to talk about ‘a canon in motion’ sufficiently softens the rigidity traditionally associated with the idea of canon. In our view, the MIBAS survey presented a valuable opportunity to generate discussion of some influential Australian texts. The 338
The Most Influential Books in Australian Sociology publication of the top 10 inevitably puts these books ‘on the map’ for newer members of the sociological academy and may even spur renewed interest in these works. However, it is no definitive statement, but rather an indicative ranking of influence, in a continuously evolving tradition of Australian sociology. Notes We wish to thank Tara McGee for her assistance throughout the MIBAS nomination and ranking processes, and particularly her help with the demographic data on the MIBAS voters and the TASA membership. 1. TASA members could vote for up to 10 books in rank order from the list of 66 nominated books; meaning that not everyone voted for 10 books. For example, it was possible for voters to rank their top 3 or 5 books, up to a maximum of 10. 2. Full details of the MIBAS process, including the original list of 66 books and a downloadable poster of the top 10, can be found on the TASA website: <www.tasa.org.au>. 3. The only Australian Editorial Board member of Contemporary Sociology was John Braithwaite, whose book is one of the top 10 most influential books in Australian sociology, according to the MIBAS survey. 4. Given the nature of the MIBAS survey, it is problematic to offer other than general speculative comments about why the top 10 books were considered influential by TASA members. We do not see it as our task to offer justifications or evaluations of the importance of each of these works. We are also not concerned with a possible discrepancy between the perceived influence of these works as reported in MIBAS and the more objectively verifiable significance of these books through alternative means, such as citation indices.
References Adatto, K. and S. Cole (1981) ‘The Functions of Classical Theory in Contemporary Sociological Research: The Case of Max Weber’, Knowledge and Society 3: 137–62. Baehr, P. and M. O’Brien (1994) ‘Founders, Classics and the Concept of a Canon’, Current Sociology 42(1): 1–148. Baldock, C. V. (1994) ‘Sociology in Australia and New Zealand’, pp. 587–622 in R. P. Mohan and A. S. Wilke (eds) International Handbook of Contemporary Developments in Sociology. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. Baldock, C. V. and B. Cass (eds) (1983) Women, Social Welfare, and the State in Australia. Sydney: George Allen and Unwin. Baldock, C. V. and J. Lally (1974) Sociology in Australia and New Zealand: Theory and Methods. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. Beilharz, P. (1995) ‘Social Theory in Australia: A Roadmap for Tourists’, Thesis Eleven 43: 120–33. 339
Histories of Australian Sociology Bottomley, G. (1979) After the Odyssey: A Study of Greek Australians. St Lucia: University of Queensland Press. Braithwaite, J. (1989) Crime, Shame and Reintegration. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bryson, L. (1992) Welfare and the State: Who Benefits? London: Macmillan. Bryson, L. and Thompson, F. (1972) An Australian Newtown: Life and Leadership in a Working-class Suburb. Ringwood, Victoria: Penguin. Castles, S., M. Kalantzis, B. Cope and M. Morrissey (1992) Mistaken Identity: Multiculturalism and the Demise of Nationalism in Australia, 3rd edn. Sydney: Pluto Press. Clawson, D. (1996) ‘From the Editor’s Desk’, Contemporary Sociology 25(3): ix. —— (ed.) (1998) Required Reading: Sociology’s Most Influential Books. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press. Clawson, D. and R. Zussman (1998) ‘Canon and Anti-canon for a Fragmented Discipline’, pp. 3–17 in D. Clawson (ed.) Required Reading: Sociology’s Most Influential Books. Connell, R. W. (1977) Ruling Class, Ruling Culture: Studies of Conflict, Power and Hegemony in Australian Life. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. —— (1987) Gender and Power: Society, the Person, and Sexual Politics. Sydney: Allen and Unwin. —— (1995) Masculinities. Sydney: Allen and Unwin. —— (1997) ‘Why is Classical Theory Classical?’, American Journal of Sociology 102(6): 1511–57. —— (2002) ‘Southern Theory’, paper presented to the Australian Sociological Association Conference, 5–6 July, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane. —— (2004) ‘R.W. Connell’s Most Influential Books in Australian Sociology (MIBAS) Address’, Nexus 16(1): 7. Connell, R. W., D. W. Ashenden, S. Kessler and G. W. Dowsett (1982) Making the Difference: Schools, Families and Social Division. Sydney: George Allen and Unwin. Contemporary Sociology (1996) ‘Ten Most Influential Books of the Past 25 Years’, Contemporary Sociology 25(3): 293–325. —— (1997) ‘Commentary’, Contemporary Sociology 26(6): 788–94. Davies, A. F. and S. Encel (eds) (1965) Australian Society: A Sociological Introduction. Melbourne: Cheshire. Dempsey, K. (1990) Smalltown: A Study of Social Inequality, Cohesion and Belonging. Melbourne: Oxford University Press.
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The Most Influential Books in Australian Sociology de Vaus, D. A. (2002) Surveys in Social Research, 5th edn. Sydney: Allen and Unwin. Game, A. and R. Pringle (1983) Gender at Work. Sydney: George Allen and Unwin. Gans, H. (1997a) ‘Best-sellers by Sociologists: An Exploratory Study’, Contemporary Sociology 26(2): 131–5. —— (1997b) ‘Reply’, Contemporary Sociology 26(6): 789–91. —— (1998) ‘Best-sellers by American Sociologists: An Exploratory Study’, pp. 19–27 in D. Clawson (ed.) Required Reading: Sociology’s Most Influential Books. Gross, E. (1978) ‘Ruling Class, Ruling Culture, Review’, Contemporary Sociology 7(1): 70–1. International Sociological Association (ISA) (1998) ‘Books of the Century’, ISA website, http://www.ucm.es/info/isa/books/. Accessed 17 March 2004. Martin, J. (1978) The Migrant Presence: Australian Responses 1947–1977. Sydney: Allen and Unwin. Mouzelis, N. (1997) ‘In Defence of the Sociological Canon: A Reply to David Parker’, The Sociological Review 45(2): 244–52. Parker, D. (1997) ‘Viewpoint: Why Bother with Durkheim? Teaching Sociology in the 1990s’, The Sociological Review 45(1): 122–47. Pusey, M. (1991) Economic Rationalism in Canberra: A Nation-building State Changes its Mind. Melbourne: Cambridge University Press. Summers, A. (1975) Damned Whores and God’s Police: The Colonization of Women in Australia. Ringwood, Victoria: Penguin. Szelenyi, I. (1979) ‘Ruling Class, Ruling Culture: Studies of Conflict, Power and Hegemony in Australian Life, Review’, American Journal of Sociology 84(5): 1313–15. Tucker K. H., Jr (2002) Classical Social Theory. Oxford: Blackwell. Turner, B. (1984) The Body and Society: Explorations in Social Theory. London: Sage. Turner, J. (1997) ‘Founders and Classics: A Canon in Motion’, pp. 64–79 in J. Gubbay, C. Middleton and C. Ballard (eds) The Student’s Companion to Sociology. Oxford: Blackwell. Vasta, E. and S. Castles (eds) (1996) The Teeth Are Smiling: The Persistence of Racism in Multicultural Australia. Sydney: Allen and Unwin. Wild, R. A. (1974) Bradstow: A Study of Status, Class and Power in a Small Australian Town. Sydney: Angus and Robertson. Williams, C. (1981) Open Cut: The Working Class in an Australian Mining Town. Sydney: George Allen and Unwin.
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Histories of Australian Sociology Willis, E. (1983) Medical Dominance: The Division of Labour in Australian Health Care. Sydney: George Allen and Unwin.
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21 Disciplining Australian Sociology? Charting a History of Theory Use in Sociology1 KIRSTEN HARLEY
A
cursory examination of any library catalogue, or a historically-inclined sociologist’s bookshelves, reveals that there is no shortage of histories of sociology, or histories of social (or sociological) theory. However, histories of ‘theory use’ in sociology are much harder to come by. Whether the histories select and relate the biographies of ‘founding fathers’, map the accumulation and development of conceptual frameworks, or include the complex details of institutional, personal and intellectual battles, the importance and usefulness of theory for sociology are generally taken for granted. Histories of sociology or social theory, nonetheless, do provide some hints about some of the ways in which theory has been used in sociology. This chapter sets out to extract from histories of sociology some first fragments towards charting the history of theory use in sociology, focusing particularly on the use of theory in attempting to institutionalise Australian sociology as an academic discipline. I should make clear at the outset that it is well beyond the scope of this chapter (or indeed the larger project from which it derives) to construct a complete history of theory use in sociology. The necessarily more modest task of this chapter—beginning to chart a history of theory use in Australian sociology—can be clarified by identifying four of its limitations. Firstly, it is reliant for source material on historical accounts, rather than on primary historic documents. Thus I must accept the selections and foci of other writers, doubtless shaped by their particular argumentative tasks and theoretical frameworks: a reasonable trade-off since this approach provides convenient access to decades of material as a starting-point for my project.2 Secondly, since there are no histories of theory use in Australian sociology to draw on, it is based on histories of sociology or social theory, which may omit incidents, arguments or details that 343
Histories of Australian Sociology would be included in a history of theory use in sociology. Like a map of potential ore sites drawn solely from study of topographical maps, it must be seen as an initial step, with further exploration to follow. Thirdly, this chapter concentrates on specifically Australian histories of sociology’s institutionalisation, ignoring the real permeability of national boundaries, the international aspects of sociology’s history and the different implications of ‘core’ and ‘peripheral’ positions for theory and sociology.3 There is space only to briefly note some comparisons with the British and American cases. And finally, I have here drawn on only a limited collection of ten histories of sociology in Australia: other historical accounts may suggest further examples of theory use.4 In effect, then, this chapter is sketching an initial exploratory map of the history of theory use in Australia, marking some of the sites where further digging through historical materials may prove fruitful. Having noted these important limitations of my cartographic task, we turn now to brief explanations of two key aspects of the chapter. The first is its object, ‘theory use’; and the second is its more specific focus on the use of theory to discipline and shape boundaries around sociology. We will then move on to consider some possible examples of the ways theory has (and hasn’t) been employed in disciplining the discipline. Theory Use The distinction between ‘theory use’, which is the object for this chapter and the larger project from which it derives, and the more common object, theory, draws attention to three aspects of theory use for exploration. Firstly, it emphasises the diversity of approaches to theory available in sociology. These may include, for instance: synthesising concepts from different theoretical traditions; engaging with, adopting, rejecting or amending the central problems of a theoretical tradition; extracting ideas from eclectic sources; adding a few theoretical-looking references that happen to fit what would have been said anyway; assessing theoretical biographies, on their own terms or against other theoretical positions;
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Disciplining Australian Sociology? testing and amending theoretical ideas against research findings; banishment (or elevation) to a theory chapter or section (see Wolcott 2002 on the ‘Chapter Two Problem’); assessing strengths and weaknesses of different theories in dealing with a particular issue; and developing theoretical ideas without reference to previous traditions.
Secondly, the distinction draws attention to the possibility of ‘theory’ occupying different places within sociology. For instance, we might consider the history of ‘the theorist’ as a special category of sociologist. Thirdly, and most importantly for this chapter, I am interested in the multiple possible objectives and effects of theory use, noting that these are not necessarily always intentional or successful (Malpas & Wickham 1995). While this chapter focuses on the use of theory to undertake disciplinary and boundary-work, other uses of interest may include, for example:
importing moral or political agenda; authorising knowledge or knowledge-producers; producing work that is fashionable or distinctive; achieving status; testing ideas; sustaining careers; making assumptions explicit; building scientific knowledge; identifying positions; impressing or provoking audiences; facilitating collaboration; minimising or emphasising effort; and providing intellectual enjoyment.
My emphasis on the plurality of theory use in turn entails deliberate adoption of a polymorphous understanding of theory. In particular, I am not limiting myself to theory as conceptual tools for sociological inquiry or explanation, but treating theory as a complex of (variously, interrelated) perspectives, tools, names, ideas, approaches, languages, explanations, laws, philosophies or traditions, including those identified by such terms as Marxism, agency/structure, ethnomethodology, process sociology, and positivism.5 In employing such an expansive understanding of theory, my strategy is to be 345
Histories of Australian Sociology mindful of the different, potentially shifting ways in which ‘theory’ is cordoned off from ‘non-theory’, how the distinction is mobilised, and to what effect.6 Disciplining Sociology In this chapter I concentrate specially on the use of theory to discipline and perform boundary-work around (and within) sociology. Two related themes running through histories of Australian sociology point to the importance of negotiation of disciplinary space and boundaries as central to that history, and raise questions about these uses of theory in particular. Firstly, sociology’s slow and troubled path to institutionalisation highlights the challenges of negotiating disciplinary space. Secondly, sociology’s competitive and cooperative interactions with other disciplines suggest the importance of boundary work. Just a few examples are used to convey these themes here: more examples and details can be found by consulting the relevant historical accounts. In Australia, as elsewhere, sociology could be seen as having dawdled its way to the academic dinner table. This is reflected in Crozier’s (2002: 128) description of Australian sociology as ‘in many respects stillborn in the pre-war period’, Bulmer’s (1985: 14) view of pre-war English sociology as at best a ‘sickly infant’, and the fact that relatively healthy turn-of-the-century American sociology was nonetheless a younger social-science sibling, trailing behind big brother/sister economics (Ross 1991: 122). Sociology’s ‘late arrival’ in Australia has, to some extent, stemmed from, and in turn affected, its relationships with other disciplines. It is not simply that sociology had to play ‘musical chairs’, pushing other disciplines aside to find a university seat: it has also emerged out of (or been accommodated on the laps of!) pre-existing disciplines and traditions. Thus early advocates for sociology departments included people drawn from philosophy, economics, law and anthropology (Baldock & Lally: 1974: 5; Bourke 1981: 27; Crozier 2002: 127-28; Davison 2003: 139; Zubrzycki 1971: 1-6); the failure of the first attempts to establish sociology departments or courses at the Universities of Sydney and Melbourne can be attributed in large part to economics’ greater success in arguing its worth (Bourke 1981; Crozier 2002);7 before its disciplinary reinstitution, social surveys and research were conducted under the auspices of university departments 346
Disciplining Australian Sociology? of Agriculture, Anthropology, Economics/Commerce, Psychology, Social Studies and Social Work, some sponsored by church agencies and the Commonwealth Government (Beilharz 1995: 123; Crozier 2002: 131; Davison 2003); and even when established in departments, sociology was often combined with anthropology, and also taught in a range of other departments, such as education, politics and social work (Baldock & Lally 1974: 16-17; Beilharz 1995: 123; Zubrzycki 1971: 18, 28-32). This combination of sociology’s late arrival and its relationships of both competition and cohabitation with other disciplines provides a context for needing to negotiate disciplinary space and boundaries. We turn now to the use of theory in these tasks. Disciplining and Boundary Work In considering the possible use of theory for establishing sociology as a separate discipline, we should not expect theory to be the only resource for boundary-formation and -maintenance, nor for it to be employed in consistent ways. Gieryn (1983: 1999) provides an analogous illustration of John Tyndall, nineteenth-century Professor and Superintendent of the Royal Institution in London. In defending ‘science’ from the two encroaching threats of religion, on one hand, and mechanics, on the other, Tyndall employed quite different conceptions of science. Notably, for our purposes, as ‘Not-Religion’, science was emphatically empirical, whereas as ‘Not-Mechanics’, Tyndall emphasised science’s theoreticality. We now consider some different ways in which theory has been employed to create and shape sociology as a discipline in Australia. The first involves theorising sociology’s relationship with other disciplines, a technique that goes back at least to Comte (Heilbron 1995: 195-266). The main theme evident is the idea of sociology as the fundamental social science, or a kind of umbrella for the social sciences. For example, Bourke (1981: 26) quotes early Australian advocates’ depictions of sociology as the ‘central science’, ‘motherscience’, and ‘fundamental science’ (Bourke 1981: 26). Anderson (1912: 17, in Bourke 1981: 26) specifically counterposed sociology to economics, which ‘deals with a fragment, and not with the whole’ and Irvine (1914, in Bourke 1981: 26) believed sociology to be the only subject capable of understanding the ‘one great unity—human experience’. Nonetheless, Bourke notes that the versions of sociology 347
Histories of Australian Sociology espoused by such people as the first WEA tutor, Meredith Atkinson, drew on a number of disciplinary frameworks but failed to play this integrative role. His student, W. K. Hancock (1954: 70, in Bourke 1981: 26) later described sociology as ‘“mumbo-jumbo”… a mixture of second-hand fact, disputable generalisations and a pretentious vocabulary’. So, here theory was employed, if not successfully, not so much to forge boundaries, but to locate sociology’s disciplinary space as bridge-builder or boundary-crosser. The histories don’t reveal whether the rhetoric associated with later successful claiming of university places for sociology maintained this role, but a similar stance appears in Western’s (1998: 227-29) suggestion that relaxing of boundaries between disciplines might be the way forward for the social sciences. Boundary work might occur, nonetheless, in negotiating competing claims to that (inter)disciplinary space.8 A second category of theory use we might expect in negotiating a disciplinary place for sociology is providing theoretical tools (or names) that distinguish it from other traditions; or provide legitimacy; or unify it as a knowledge endeavour. Only limited evidence is available from the historical accounts, but what becomes clear is that theory has not consistently been used to legitimate institutional sociology. For instance, Bourke (1981: 34) suggests that one feature of the early, stymied attempt to institutionalise sociology in Australia was the failure to mobilise European social theory in defence of the discipline: And if there was not methodology or research to identify the specific nature of the field, there was also no legitimacy deriving from any influence from the classical European tradition of sociology, of LePlay, Durkheim or Weber. This is an interesting contrast with the British case, where the choice of social philosophers (or theoreticians), Hobhouse and Ginsberg, to lead sociology at the London School of Economics has been seen as an (also apparently unsuccessful) attempt to establish the ‘academic status of sociology’ (Bulmer 1985; Kent 1985). The more firmly established academic position of British anthropology, on the other hand, has been attributed, in part, to ‘its alliance of first-hand inquiry with a commitment to rigorous general theory’, including— 348
Disciplining Australian Sociology? interestingly—the influence of Durkheim on Radcliffe-Brown (Bulmer 1985: 12-13, 20-21).9 The histories I have consulted unfortunately do not provide any clues as to whether theory was used to legitimate or unify sociology in the later, successful institutionalisation of sociology in particular universities.10 Its perceived potential can be seen, however, in Zubrzycki’s (1971: 21) suggestion that ‘the only remedy to fragmentation ... lies in giving greater emphasis to … the “core sociological enterprise …” [which] implies a greater stress on theory and research methodology than is given at present, and perhaps better integration between the many substantive fields of sociology that are now being taught and the current sociological enterprise of theory and research’. The histories indicate that sociology and anthropology were commonly close neighbours, to the extent that social theory was often taught by anthropologists. For example, Zubrzycki (1971: 4-6) notes that under Professor A. P. Elkin in the 1940s, the University of Sydney’s Department of Anthropology courses included considerable sociology and sociological theory. And Thiele (1999) notes that most of the early sociology staff at the University of New England (UNE), including Uma Pandey, who introduced and for many years taught a course in social theory, were trained in anthropology.11 This raises an interesting question for further research about the extent to which choice of theorists or other aspects of theory was used to distinguish sociology from its neighbours. Thirdly, science, or scientificity, is sometimes invoked as a basis for legitimacy. Agreement by its advocates and practitioners on sociology’s scientificity (at least in theory!) was gained early in Australia, perhaps, as elsewhere (Bulmer 1985: 4; Ross 1991: 131), preceding agreement on its ‘object’.12 As mentioned above, its scientificity was central in the rhetorical versions of sociology presented by early advocates and teachers (Bourke 1981: 26). The need for a science of society was seen as being particularly acute in the Australian case, which as a new democracy was considered a social laboratory awaiting empirical evaluation, although the social measurement called for by Anderson and others failed to eventuate (Bourke 1981: 27, 34; Crozier 2002: 127). Colouring this scientific quest was a distinctly moral tone, evident in Gunn’s (and his predecessor’s) view of sociology’s goal, indicated in the title of his inaugural address, ‘social progress’. Similarly, the 1918 doctoral thesis 349
Histories of Australian Sociology of Clarence Northcott, one of Anderson’s former students, was the first ‘explicitly sociological evaluation of Australia’s progress’, attempting to ‘produce guidelines for continued progress’ towards ‘a more moral social order characterised by harmony and not by class conflict’ (Bourke 1981: 26-27, 30-31). Elkin’s ephemeral 1940s Australian Institute of Sociology also aimed (in part) at ‘promoting the understanding of sociological research as “scientific”—contra its detractors’ (Crozier 2002: 135-36). One possibility suggested by a US example is that scientificity and theoreticality may be competing grounds for legitimacy. In her article comparing research in the histories of sociology and anthropology, Kuklick (1999) includes a footnote suggestion that US sociology textbooks’ emphasis on ‘founding fathers’ increased as American sociologists’ confidence in its scientificity decreased – that is, that as science lost its potency as a legitimating device, theory stepped in.13 It does seem that early Australian sociologists seeking rhetoric to legitimise their enterprise grasped for ‘science’ before ‘theory’. Finally and more recently, the intertwinement of theory, science and morality, and of theoretical stances and disciplinary agenda, is exemplified by the highly publicised 1972 tussle over editorship of the ANZJS. The two sides have been typified as: on the one hand, preoccupied ‘with a narrow minded and inward looking professionalism’, ‘trying to build the discipline around cautious empirical studies’, seeking establishment of sociology as ‘a “scientific” discipline’, mimicking American sociology, and positivist; and on the other ‘young conflict theorists’, willing to express ‘strong value commitments’ and wanting to ‘address ... ongoing issues’ (Birrell et al 1972 in Baldock & Lally 1974: 269-70; Baldock 1994: 603). While the details of these alignments await further investigation, it seems that this was a ‘theoretical battle’ both in the sense that it was a battle about which theoretical approach (‘positivist’ or ‘conflict’) should prevail in sociological practice and in the sense that theory was employed to define sides, create opposition and fight the battle. Conclusion While a history of theory use in Australian sociology remains to be written, this chapter has mapped out some instances that might be included, or at least where further exploration seems warranted. These fragments do show that the use made of theory to discipline 350
Disciplining Australian Sociology? Australian sociology—whether through theorising its relationship with other disciplines, providing theoretical tools, or in relation to scientific and moral rhetorical versions of sociology—has been partial and of mixed success, and (perhaps not coincidentally) provides clearer evidence of theoretical work to create boundaries within sociology rather than between it and other disciplines. Questions remain about how the two categories of theory use, disciplining and boundary work, are related to others, such as importing moral and political agenda, building scientific knowledge, and sustaining careers. This chapter has barely touched on the disciplinary uses of theory subsequent to academic institutionalisation. Those historical accounts that include descriptions of contemporary theoretical landscapes (Baldock & Lally 1974; Baldock 1994; Beilharz 1995; Western 1998) portray both the effects of fashion and social processes—as in Beilharz’s (1995: 133) qualified nomination of ‘dominant figures’ for different decades, with Marcuse ‘in’ in the 1960s, the ugh-booted Althusser in the 1970s14 and Foucault in the 1980s—and an expansion of theoretical diversity.15 Further work on a history of theory use in Australian sociology could explore how these theoretical developments have shaped, and been shaped by, the disciplinary institutionalisation of sociology, including such details as introduction of requirements that sociology majors or students seeking postgraduate admission complete courses in social theory.16 Other issues that such a history might address include: the role that the choice of theorists, or theories, has in defining the discipline, particularly in contexts of inter-disciplinary proximity; the interrelationship between national histories; additional historical evidence available for particular institutions; and a more detailed understanding of the nature and effects of theory use in various forms of sociological practice. Notes 1.
This chapter is drawn from work towards my PhD thesis about the uses of theory in sociology, for which I acknowledge the helpful supervision of Robert van Krieken and Gary Wickham and financial support from an Australian Postgraduate Award and a supplementary scholarship from the University of Sydney’s College of Humanities and Social Sciences. The chapter has also benefited from comments by Tara McGee and John Germov, and those attending presentations of earlier versions, at TASA’s Annual Conference and the University of Sydney, Department of Sociology and Social Policy’s postgraduate seminars in 2003, including discussants Gary Wickham and Megan Blaxland.
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Histories of Australian Sociology 2. 3. 4.
5.
6. 7.
8. 9. 10. 11.
12. 13.
14. 15. 16.
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For a first piece examining primary sources—in this case introductory textbooks— for historical material on theory-use, see Harley (2004). For some accounts see Connell (1997) and Turner (1986). The national focus also means that most of the source texts are histories of sociology, rather than of social theory, since the latter tend not to be organised on a national basis. The accounts of the history of sociology in Australia on which this chapter is based are: Baldock & Lally (1974), Baldock (1994), Beilharz (1995), Bourke (1981), Crozier (2002), Davison (2003), Mitropoulos (1999), Thiele (1999), Western (1998) and Zubrzycki (1971). However some uses of theory may be tied to particular theoretical categories, e.g. the attachment of theories to ‘names’, which can operate as ‘intellectual badges’ (Stinchcombe 1982: 6), so that for example, citing names (Marx, Foucault, etc) can position one as fashionable, or of interest to a particular audience. See van Krieken (2002: 257) on the endless possibilities offered by synthesis and reformulation of theoretical dualities. Mitropoulos (1999) provides a competing account, arguing that the early version of sociology, driven by a conservative campaign of social efficiency, centrally employed ‘socialised’ versions of economic categories, and that sociology was disbanded because ‘[n]otwithstanding its anti-communism, sociology continued to bear the burden of its epistemological relation to Marxism …, which was to mark even it as suspicious in the anti-communist hysteria of the 1920s’ (Mitropoulos 1999: 87). The more recent relationship between sociology and cultural studies may be an interesting case for further exploration. This raises the question of the extent to which choice of theorists/theories is used to distinguish disciplines. The promise of further research in this area is suggested by an observation made by Alec Pemberton (personal correspondence) that in the 1970s sociology was taught at the University of Sydney via a course in Social Theory. Interestingly, the UNE Arts Faculty’s original plan to institute social anthropology alongside sociology was not sustained, although there is a strong anthropological flavour evident in the University Calendar course description for the early (1966) sociology subjects. Thiele (1999) explains this in terms of funding imperatives promoting a choice between the two; a strange belief that sociology was closer than anthropology to newly-introduced archaeology; and a fear of conflict between sociology and anthropology, given the difficulty of defining a boundary between them. If so, this is quite curious, as we might expect object-definition to be an important and early part of disciplinary definition. Although theory and science may also collaborate to authorise knowledge endeavours. For example, Willmott (1985: 144-45) considers the preoccupation of British sociology in the 1950s and 1960s, to ‘show that, like economics, it had a body of theory with which all sociologists worked’ to be part of its attempt to emulate the natural sciences, ‘so as to establish its academic credibility’. Thanks to participants in our postgraduate seminar on 30 July 2003 for this image, which highlights the weight of fashion (including fashion-recycling) in theory. Although part of Beilharz’s (1995) argument is that social (rather than sociological) theory is by no means congruent with sociology, or even contained within academic walls; thus understood, theoretical diversity stretches back. The existence of such a rule for UNE is mentioned in Thiele (1999).
Disciplining Australian Sociology? References Baldock, Cora V. and Jim Lally (1974) Sociology in Australia and New Zealand: Theory and Methods, Contributions in Sociology, no. 16. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. Baldock, Cora Vellekoop (1994) ‘Sociology in Australia and New Zealand’, pp. 587-622 in Raj R. Mohan and Arthur S. Wilke (eds.) International Handbook of Contemporary Developments in Sociology. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. Beilharz, Peter (1995) ‘Social theory in Australia: A roadmap for tourists’, Thesis Eleven 43: 120-33. Bourke, Helen (1981) ‘Sociology and the social sciences in Australia, 1912-1928’, Australian and New Zealand Journal of Sociology 17(1): 26-35. Bulmer, Martin (1985) ‘The development of sociology and of empirical social research in Britain’, pp. 3-36 in Martin Bulmer (ed.) Essays on the History of British Sociological Research. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Connell, R. W. (1997) ‘Why is classical theory classical?’, American Journal of Sociology 102(6): 1511-57. Crozier, Michael (2002) ‘Society economized: T. R. Ashworth and the history of the social sciences in Australia’, Australian Historical Studies 119: 125-42. Davison, Graeme (2003) ‘The social survey and the puzzle of Australian sociology’. Australian Historical Studies 121:139-62. Gieryn, Thomas F (1999) Cultural Boundaries of Science: Credibility on the Line. Chicago & London: The University of Chicago Press. —— (1983) ‘Boundary-work and the demarcation of science from non-science’, American Sociological Review 48(6): 781-95. Harley, Kirsten (2004) Use of theory in sociology – the textbook version(s), paper presented to British Sociological Association Annual Conference, University of York, 22-24 March. Heilbron, Johan (1995) The Rise of Social Theory, translated by Sheila Gogol. Cambridge: Polity Press. Kent, Raymond (1985) ‘The emergence of the sociological survey, 1887-1939’, pp. 52-69 in Martin Bulmer (ed.) Essays on the History of British Sociological Research. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kuklick, Henrika (1999) ‘Assessing research in the history of sociology and anthropology’, Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences 35(3): 227-37.
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Histories of Australian Sociology Malpas, Jeff and Gary Wickham (1995) ‘Governance and failure: On the limits of sociology’, The Australian and New Zealand Journal of Sociology 31(3): 37-50. Mitropoulos, Angela (1999) ‘Discipline and labour: sociology, class formation and money in Australia at the beginning of the twentieth century’, Journal of Sociology 35(1): 77-91. Ross, Dorothy (1991) The Origins of American Social Science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Stinchcombe, Arthur L. (1982) ‘Should sociologists forget their mothers and fathers?’, American Sociologist 17(1): 2-11. Thiele, Steven (1999) The Sociology Department, Sociology Department, University of New England, downloaded August 2004. www.une.edu.au/arts/Sociolog/PDFs/Sociology_history.pdf Turner, Bryan S. (1986) ‘Sociology as an academic trade: Some reflections on centre and periphery in the sociology market’, The Australian and New Zealand Journal of Sociology 22(2): 272-82. van Krieken, Robert (2002) ‘The paradox of the “two sociologies”: Hobbes, Latour and the constitution of modern social theory’, Journal of Sociology 38(3): 255-73. Western, John S. (1998) ‘Sociology’, pp. 223-232 in Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia (ed.) Challenges for the Social Sciences and Australia, Vol. 1. Canberra: National Board of Employment, Education and Training. Willmott, Peter (1985) ‘The Institute of Community Studies’, pp. 13750 in Martin Bulmer (ed.) Essays on the History of British Sociological Research. Wolcott, Harry F. (2002) ‘Writing up qualitative research … better’, (Keynote Address: Second Advances in Qualitative Research Conference), Qualitative Health Research 12(1): 91-103. Zubrzycki, Jerzy (1971) ‘The teaching of sociology in Australian universities, past and present’, pp. 1-32 in Jerzy Zubrzycki (ed.) The Teaching of Sociology in Australia and New Zealand, Proceedings of the Conference on the Teaching of Sociology in Australia and New Zealand, Australian National University, Canberra, 23-26 August 1970. Melbourne: Cheshire Publishing for the Sociological Association of Australia and New Zealand.
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22 Australian Sociology: Recent Trends and Prospects JOHN GERMOV TARA RENAE MCGEE* Sociology is a thing, which if it didn’t exist, would have to be invented.
Leonard Broom
D
espite the late onset of sociology in Australia, the discipline continued to grow well into the 1990s to become one of the dominant strands of the social sciences. By 2004, Australian sociology can be viewed as healthy in terms of student numbers, professional memberships, and citation statistics (see Phelan 2000; Najman and Hewitt 2003; Gläser 2004). This chapter provides a snapshot of the contemporary era, a peri-history of Australian sociology in the early twenty-first century and its professional organisation, the Australian Sociological Association (TASA). The chapter first provides an overview of the professional membership, structure and achievements of TASA, and then describes trends in sociology student course completion and enrolment data. TASA: A Contemporary Overview This section of the chapter provides an overview of TASA, in terms of its structure, activities and membership. The broad aims of TASA are to: promote sociology in Australia; provide a network for sociologists; enhance links with other sociological associations; and address issues of relevance to Australian sociologists. One of the main ways it does this is through its annual conferences, but it is also responsible for the production of two refereed journals, a newsletter and other professional publications such as refereed conference proceedings. TASA is a ‘collective member’ of the International Sociological
*
Some of the material in this chapter was first presented by John Germov as part of his Presidential Address at the TASA 2004 Conference held at the Beechworth campus of La Trobe University.
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Histories of Australian Sociology Association (ISA) and in 2002 hosted the ISA’s World Congress of Sociology in Brisbane, which attracted over 2800 delegates (including around 600 Australians). In 2004 TASA also became a foundation member of the Council for the Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences (CHASS)—a federally-funded peak body which aims to play a promotional and advocacy role for these sectors. Table 1: TASA and SAANZ Presidents, 1963–2006* 2005–2006 2002–2004 2001–2002 1999–2000 1997–1998 1996 1995 1994 1993 1991–1992 1989–1990 1987–1988 1986–1987 1986 1983–1985 1982–1983
Roberta Julian John Germov1 Stephen Crook2 Stephen Crook Sharyn Roach Anleu3 Bryan Turner Bryan Turner Ann Daniel Ann Daniel Katy Richmond John Western4 Bob Connell Bob Lingard Nicholas Perry Owen Dent Anne Edwards
1981–1982 1980–1981 1979–1980 1978–1979 1977–1978 1975–1976 1974–1975 1973–1974 1972–1973 1971–1972 1970–1971 1968–1969 1967 1966 1965 1963–1964
Ron Wild Bill Willmott Cora V. Baldock W. H. (Bill) Scott Les Kilmartin Lois Bryson John S. Western W. H. (Bill) Scott Dexter C. Dunphy Jerzy Zubrzycki Jean I. Martin Sol Encel Jim H. Robb Max G. Marwick John Barnes W. D. (Mick) Borrie5
Sources: ANZJS ‘Notes & Announcements’ (various years), SAANZ/Nexus Newsletter (various years), Women’s Section Newsletter (various years), and chapters in this volume. Notes: * Until 1997, the Presidential term was one year, and often overlapped years due to the date of the Conference and AGM, making it difficult to determine the actual length of Presidency, particularly for pre-1980 Presidential terms. 1. John Germov was Acting President from February to December 2002. 2. Stephen Crook resigned due to illness in February 2002. 3. Two-year EC term began in 1997–1998. 4. TASA formed in 1988, incorporated 1989. 5. Foundation president of SAANZ.
The Association began its life in October 1963 as the Sociological Association of Australia and New Zealand (SAANZ), and formally incorporated in 1968. It was formed during the first conference of Australian and New Zealand sociologists held at the Australian National University (ANU, Canberra), organised by the Canberra 356
Australian Sociology: Recent Trends and Prospects Sociological Society (originally founded in 1958). The inaugural President was W. D. (Mick) Borrie, Professor of Demography at ANU; the Vice-presidents were Professor Morven S. Brown from the University of NSW and Jim H. Robb from Victoria University (Wellington, New Zealand); and J. J. Mol was Secretary-Treasurer (ANZJS 1965). Table 1 provides a complete list of TASA presidents to date. Since its inception, the Association has only had eight female presidents, Jean Martin being the first (1970-71). In 1965 SAANZ established the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Sociology (ANZJS), with Jerzy Zubrzycki as the first editor. In the same year, the first Australian PhD in Sociology was awarded by ANU to Robert Pike, supervised by Zubrzycki (Willis 2005). The ANZJS was originally published in two issues per year, moving to three in 1971, the same year in which the SAANZ Newsletter was first published (see Box 1 for a list of editors). In 1998, the name of the ANZJS was changed to the Journal of Sociology (JOS), and in 2001 the journal was first published in four issues by the international publisher SAGE. In 2003 the JOS was ranked 65 out of 93 sociology journals in the ISI Journal Citation Reports, with an impact factor of 0.256. In 2001, Health Sociology Review (HSR) formally became a TASA journal, after changing its name from the Annual Review of Health Social Sciences. While the JOS is the official journal of the Association and included as part of a full TASA membership subscription, HSR is an optional subscription offered to members at a discount. The Association has also produced a guide to Postgraduate Study in Sociology (1991), four editions of Sociology in Australian Universities (1993-2000) edited by Katy Richmond, and an annual Membership Directory listing members’ contact details and research interests. Since 2001 the TASA membership directory has been annually archived online, and from 2003 it became an online searchable database accessible from the member-section of the TASA website. Given the size of the Association, there have only been a few special interest networks that have formally organised over the years. In 1968, a Medical Sociology Section of SAANZ was established and later renamed the Health Sociology Section (see Willis 1991; Willis & Broom 2004), followed by a Sociology Teachers’ Section in 1970, and a Women’s Section in 1976 (which published its own newsletter from 1979–1989). There was also a short-lived Student Section newsletter 357
Histories of Australian Sociology published in 1980. By 2004 only the Health Sociology Section remains an active network, holding a Health Day event and AGM prior to the TASA conference each year. The section also launched its own website in December 2000, known as eSocHealth and edited by Chris King, which evolved from an email newsletter created in 1992. The TASA website and email list were created by John Germov and launched on 22 July 1996, hosted on the University of Newcastle server (and archived at http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www. newcastle.edu.au/department/so/tasa/). In December 2001, TASAweb was moved to its own domain (www.tasa.org.au) and subsequently a range of features were added, such as a member-only section, online membership subscription and membership directory, discussion forums, and online conference registration facilities. It is hardly a coincidence that the substantial TASA web presence and extra services offered to members through it, has been paralleled by a significant increase in membership numbers (discussed below), with the vast majority of members joining and renewing their membership online. Box 1: TASA/SAANZ Editors JOS/ANZJS Editors 2005–2008: Peter Corrigan, Margaret Gibson, David Plummer, John Scott & Steve Thiele 2001–2004: Bill Martin, Sharyn Roach Anleu & Maria Zadoroznyj (2001: 4 issues per year and published by SAGE) 1997–2000: Barbara Adkins, Malcolm Alexander, Paul Boreham, Michael Emmison, Gavin Kendall & Jake Najman (1998: name change from ANZJS to JOS) 1993–1997: Stephen Crook, Jan Pakulski & Malcolm Waters 1990–1993: Barry Hindess & Frank L. Jones 1989: Gisela Kaplan, Paul Boreham and John Western 1986–1988: David de Vaus, Ken Dempsey and Yoshio Sugimoto 1982–1985: Stewart Clegg and John Western 1979–1981: Bettina Cass and Alex Kondos 1977–1978: Kevin Clements and Bob Gidlow 1976: Kevin Clements, Bob Gidlow and Peter Davis 1975: Kevin Clements and Peter Davis 1973–1975: Lois Bryson 1970–1972: Frank L. Jones 1969–1970: Jerzy Zubrzycki 1968–1969: Don S. Anderson (Acting Editor) 1965–1968: Jerzy Zubrzycki
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Australian Sociology: Recent Trends and Prospects HSR Editors* 2005–2006: Fran Collyer 2004–2005: Fran Collyer and Toni Schofield 2001–2003: Eileen Willis and Jane Shoebridge
*Note: Prior to becoming a TASA journal, HSR was called the Annual Review of Health Social Sciences (1991–2000)
Nexus/SAANZ Newsletter Editors 2005–2008: Janet Grice 2002–2004: Daphne Habibis (Editor-in-chief), Glenda Jones and Kris Natalier 1998–2001: Gayle Jennings 1996–1997: Janeen Baxter 1995: Janeen Baxter and Toni Makkai 1994: Toni Makkai and Janeen Baxter 1991–1993: Katy Richmond 1988–1990: Neil Britton, Rosemary Cant, Varoe Legge and Kate O’Loughlin (1989: name change from SAANZ Newsletter to Nexus) 1985–1987: Simon Petrie 1982–1984: Bruce Wilson and Johanna Wyn 1980–1981: Dick Grozier 1979–1980: Kate Gillen 1979: Anna Yeatman 1974–1978: The inaugural editors of the SAANZ Newsletter were Kevin Paul Clements and Edward Douglas of Canterbury and Waikato Universities. Women’s Section Newsletter Editors 1991: March – Grazyna Zajdow and Marilyn Poole 1990: May – Grazyna Zajdow and Marilyn Poole 1989: June – Liz Ashburn and Chris Lidgard 1988: Issue 32 (March) and Issue 33 (July) – Gisela Kaplan 1987: Issue 29 (March) and Issue 30/31 (November/December) – Gisela Kaplan 1986: Issue 27/28 (November/December) – Gisela Kaplan 1986: Issue 26 (June/July) – Eve Barboza 1985: Issue 25 (December ’85/March ’86) – Eve Barboza 1985: Issue 24 (August) – Janeen Baxter and June Fielding 1985: Issue 23 (April) – Frances Lovejoy 1984: Issue 21 (July) – June Fielding and Janeen Baxter 1984: Issue 22 (December) – Cora Baldock and Terry Webster 1984: Issue 20 (May) – Katy Richmond 1984: Issue 19 – Katy Richmond 1983: Issue 18 (November) – Helen Marshall 1983: Issue 17 (June) – Penny Fenwick 1983: Issue 16 (March) – Cora Baldock and Liz Harman 1982: Issue 15 (November) – Lois Bryson 1982: Issue 14 [incorrectly numbered as 13] (August) – Lenore Manderson 1982: Issue 13 (June) – Canterbury University Newsletter Collective 1982: Issue 12 (March) – Helen Marshall and Johanna Willis 1981: Issue 11 (November) – Penny Fenwick 1981: Issue 10 (September) – Tanya Castleman
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1980: Issue 9 (May) – Trudy Boon and Anna Yeatman 1980: Issue 8 (November) – Katy Richmond 1980: Issue 7 (August) – Robyn Roland 1980: Issue 6 (June) – June Fielding and Gillian Lupton 1980: Issue 5 (February) – Cora Baldock 1979: Issue 4 (December) – Cora Baldock and LaWanna Blount 1979: Issue 3 (September) – Shirley Sampson 1979: Issue 1 & 2 (March & June) – Lois Foster
Student Section Newsletter editors 1980: Issue 2 (November) – Yoland Wadsworth 1980: Issue 1 (September) – Ray Jureidini Refereed conference proceedings* 2004: Revisioning Institutions: Change in the 21st Century, TASA 2004 Conference Proceedings, CDROM, Edited by K. Richmond 2004: Has deinstitutionalisation worked?, TASA 2004 Health Sociology Day Refereed Conference Papers, CDROM, Edited by E. Willis 2003: New Times, New Worlds, New Ideas: Sociology Today and Tomorrow, TASA 2003 Conference Proceedings, CDROM, Edited by P. Corrigan, M. Gibson, G. Hawkes, E. Livingstone, J. Scott, S. Thiele & G. Carpenter 2002: TASA 2002 Conference Book of Abstracts, Edited by Z. Skrbis (no proceedings were produced due to the small size of the conference, which was a preliminary event to the XV World Congress of Sociology) 2001: TASA 2001 Conference Proceedings, CDROM, Edited by C. Browne, K. Edwards, V. Watson & R. van Krieken 2000: Sociological Sites/Sights, TASA 2000 Conference Proceedings, CDROM, Edited by S. Oakley, J. Pudsey, J. Henderson, D. King & R. Boyd 1999: Sociology for a New Millennium: Challenges and Prospects, TASA 1999 Conference Proceedings, Edited by M. Collis, L. Munro & S. Russell 1998: Refashioning Sociology: Responses to a New World Order, TASA 1998 Conference Proceedings, Edited by M. Alexander, S. Harding, P. Harrison, G. Kendall, Z. Skrbis & J. Western 1996: The Sociology of Food and Nutrition: Australian Perspectives, Papers presented at TASA 1995, Edited by J. Germov & L. Williams 1994: TASA 1993 Health Papers, Proceedings from the TASA Conference, Edited by J. Germov 1971: The Teaching of Sociology in Australia and New Zealand, Proceedings of the Conference on the Teaching of Sociology in Australia and New Zealand, Edited by J. Zubrzycki * Published in CDROM format since 2000 and available online from the member-section of the TASA website.
Web site editors 2005- : Tara Renae McGee 1996-2005: John Germov
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Australian Sociology: Recent Trends and Prospects Other publications 1993-2000: Sociology in Australian Universities (four editions) - edited by Katy Richmond 1991: Postgraduate Study in Sociology Annual: Membership Directory - the last hard-copy version was released in 2001 and contained the members for 2000. From 2001 onwards the TASA membership directories have been archived on the TASA website. In 2003, TASA launched an online, ‘real time’ updatable and searchable directory accessible from the member-section of its website. Each year, the online version is archived.
While the Association has regularly held conferences (see Box 2), it has only recently begun to produce conference proceedings on a regular basis. The first conference proceedings were edited by Zubrzycki (1971), The Teaching of Sociology in Australia and New Zealand, from a 1970 conference held at ANU. It was not until the 1990s that the next proceedings were published, starting with Germov’s (1993) TASA 1993 Health Papers, and followed by full refereed conference proceedings edited by Alexander et al. (1998). Since then, conference proceedings have continued to be published, and from 2000 they have been produced in CDROM format and made available online in the TASA website member-section. Box 2: TASA/SAANZ Conference Locations & Convenors*
2005: University of Tasmania, Hobart, 5–8 December, Rob White and Roberta Julian 2004: La Trobe University, Beechworth, 8–12 December, Katy Richmond 2003: University of New England, Armidale, 4–6 December, Peter Corrigan 2002: University of QLD & QUT, Brisbane, 5–6 July, Zlatko Skrbis; TASA hosts the ISA XV World Congress at QUT, Brisbane, 7–13 July 2001: University of Sydney, Sydney, 13–15 December, Rob van Krieken 2000: Flinders University, Adelaide, 6–8 December, Deb King and Jason Pudsey 1999: Monash University, Clayton, 7–10 December, Harry Ballis 1998: Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, 1–4 December, Gavin Kendall 1997: University of Wollongong, Wollongong, 9–12 December, Trish Vezgoff 1996: University of Tasmania, Hobart, 4–8 December, Tim Scrase 1995: University of Newcastle, Callaghan, 5–8 December, John Germov 1994: Deakin University, Geelong, 7–10 December, Grazyna Zajdow 1993: Macquarie University, Sydney, 12–15 December, George Moran 1992: Flinders University and University of South Australia, Adelaide, 10–13 December, Claire Williams and Sharyn Roach Anleu (conference held at University of South Australia) 1991: Murdoch University, Perth, 10–14 December, Gary Wickham and Cora Baldock
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1990: The University of Queensland, 12–16 December, Claire Runciman 1989: La Trobe University, Bundoora (First TASA conference), 8–12 December, Katy Richmond 1988: Australian National University, Canberra, 28 November–2 December, Stephen Mugford (Split with NZ occurs, TASA formed) 1987: University of New South Wales, Sydney, 14–17 July, John Buchner 1986: University of New England, Armidale, 9–12 July, Mary Wilke and Steven Thiele 1985: University of Queensland, Brisbane, 30 August–2 September, Paul Boreham 1984: No SAANZ conference held this year. 1983: Melbourne College of Advanced Education, Carlton, 25–28 August, Roger Woock, Bruce Wilson and Johanna Wyn 1982: University of New South Wales, Sydney, 26–29 August, Frances Lovejoy and Ann Daniel 1981: Canterbury University, Christchurch, New Zealand, 28 November, 1 December, Colin Goodrich 1980: University of Tasmania, Hobart, 23–26 August, Peter Gunn, Jan Pakulski and Malcolm Waters 1979: Canberra College of Advanced Education, Belconnen, 6–8 July, Cedric Bullard 1978: University of Queensland, Brisbane, 18–21 May, Michael Cass 1976: La Trobe University, Melbourne, 4–6 August, Katy Richmond and G. Ternowetsky 1975: University of Waikato, New Zealand, David Bettison 1974: UNE, Armidale 23–25 August, J. S. Nalson 1971: University of Queensland, 21–23 May, D. J. Tugby and John Western 1970: ANU, Canberra, 23–26 August, Jerzy Zubrzycki 1969: Monash University, Clayton, 23–25 August, Anne Edwards 1968: Victoria University, Wellington, NZ, 1–3 February, J. H. Robb 1967: UNSW, Kensington, 21–23 January, Sol Encel and A. A. Congalton 1965: Monash University, Clayton, 21–23 August, Max Marwick 1964: ANU, Canberra, Mick (WD) Borrie 1963: ANU, Canberra, Mick (WD) Borrie
* The records we consulted did not contain information about the 1966, 1972, 1973 and 1977 conferences.
Even though the Association was originally intended as a joint Australian-New Zealand (NZ) body, it always had a distinct Australian bias, with NZ members never accounting for more than a quarter of the membership (Western chapter 4), and eventually moves to form an independent NZ body surfaced (see Crothers, chapter 7, and Baldock, chapter 18, for further details). In 1988, New Zealand members seceded to form the Sociological Association of Aotearoa (NZ)—effectively keeping the original acronym. TASA was born in the same year, with John Western as President (though it formally
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Australian Sociology: Recent Trends and Prospects incorporated in 1989). After the split the ANZJS retained its original name until 1998 when it became JOS. The Executive Committee (EC) is the Association’s decision-making body. Its primary role is to ensure the successful operation of the Association in meeting its aims and objectives, as governed by its Constitution and Strategic Plan, as well as ensuring its compliance with taxation requirements and relevant legislation (such as the ACT Associations Incorporation Act 1991; Australian Privacy Act 1988, and Spam Act 2003). Much of the work of the EC concerns facilitating the annual conference, determining editorships and prizes, maintaining the TASA website and membership database, and promoting information and events relevant to the membership. While the EC is the governing body of the Association, its power may be changed or restricted by members through resolutions made during Special and Annual General Meetings. In 1997 the EC term was extended from one to two years following a successful constitutional amendment the previous year. In 2004, the election for the 2005-06 Executive was determined by mid-year, allowing the in-coming EC members to ‘shadow’ outgoing members for a significant ‘handover’ period. The EC consists of 10 members—7 elected voting members and a minimum of three non-voting (ex officio) members. The elected voting members include: President, Vice-President, Secretary, Treasurer, Postgraduate Member, and two Ordinary members. The ex officio members consist of the: Immediate Past President; a JOS editor, and a Nexus newsletter editor. Additional people may also be invited to take part in EC meetings as the need arises, such as Conference and Prize convenors. Professional awards and prizes
TASA also determines four major awards and prizes. The ‘Jean Martin Award’ (JMA) was established in 1980 and is granted biannually to the best PhD thesis in a social science discipline submitted to the Award Committee from an Australian tertiary institution. The inaugural recipient was Claire Williams, whose PhD was published as Open Cut by Allen and Unwin (the vagaries of the Australian publishing market mean that the JMA no longer includes a guarantee of publication). The ‘Best Paper in the Journal of Sociology Award’ is given to a paper judged by the panel to be the best published in the previous two years of the journal; the inaugural recipient was Eric Livingstone in 1995.
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Histories of Australian Sociology Box 3: Recipients of TASA awards and prizes Recipients of the Jean Martin Award: 2003: Millsom S. Henry-Waring 2001: Dimitria Giorgas and S. Caroline Taylor (joint recipients) 1999: Adam Possamai 1997: Vera Ranki 1995: Supriya Singh 1993: Diana Olsberg 1991: Kerry Carrington 1989: Loucas Nicolaou 1987: Andrew Metcalfe 1985: Claudia Knapman 1982: Evan Willis 1980: Claire Williams Recipients of the Best Paper in the Journal Award (JOS & ANZJS)* 2003: Ian Woodward 2003, 'Divergent narratives in the imagining of the home amongst middle-class consumers: Aesthetics, comfort and the symbolic boundaries of self and home', Journal of Sociology, 39, 4, 391–412. 2001: Philip Smith and Tim Phillips 2001, ‘Popular understandings of "unAustralian": an investigation of the un-national’, Journal of Sociology, 37, 4, December, 323-339. 1999: Marion Collis, 1999, 'Marital conflict and men's leisure: how women negotiate male power in a small mining community', Journal of Sociology, 35, 1. 1997: Michael Emmison, 1997, 'Transformations of taste: Americanisation, generational change and Australian cultural consumption', Australian and New Zealand Journal of Sociology, 33, 3. 1995: Eric Livingston, 1995, 'The idiosyncratic specificity of the methods of physical experimentation', Australian and New Zealand Journal of Sociology, 31, 3. * Copies of recipients’ papers are available from the TASA website. Recipients of the Distinguished Service to Australian Sociology Award: 2004: Katy Richmond 2000: Cora Baldock 1996: Lois Bryson & John Western. Inaugural recipient of the Stephen Crook Memorial Prize: 2003: Michael Pusey for his book, The Experience of Middle Australia: The Dark Side of Economic Reform (Cambridge University Press 2003).
In 1996, the Association introduced the ‘Distinguished Service to Australian Sociology Award’, and its inaugural recipients were Lois Bryson and John Western. The ‘Stephen Crook Memorial Prize’ (SCMP) is the most recent award, and is given bi-annually to the best authored monograph in the discipline of Sociology published by an Australian sociologist; the inaugural recipient was Michael Pusey in 364
Australian Sociology: Recent Trends and Prospects 2003. Box 3 provides a full list of recipients of these TASA awards and prizes since their inception. The Association also awards the TASA/AASR Postgraduate Conference Scholarship. It was established in 2003 with funds donated by the former Australian Association of Social Research Inc. (AASR). The scholarships aim to support postgraduate participation at TASA annual conferences. Further information about the Scholarship and lists of recipients are published on the TASA website. TASA Membership Data TASA is a voluntary professional association and has no qualification or registration requirements, aside from the payment of a membership fee and completion of a membership form. Its membership base consists primarily of university-based sociologists and social scientists, including postgraduate and undergraduate students, as well as public servants, private sector consultants and social researchers. Basic demographic information has always been collected on the TASA membership form. To gain a better understanding of the characteristics of TASA members, additional demographic questions regarding student and employment status were added to the 2004 membership form. It is this data that we report here. Figure 1 depicts TASA membership numbers since 1990. As at December 10, 2004, memberships had reached a record figure of 635 (see above). Demographic characteristics
The data reported here were taken from TASA’s online membership administration system at the end of 2004. For some of the data there are missing values, and for others, the items are not valid for some members. This leads to inconsistent totals between tables. Some of this data is available to members via the search features of the online membership directory. It should be noted that slightly different results will be obtained as some members (9.9 per cent) choose not to have their details published in the membership directory. TASA contacts its members regularly via a moderated e-list and most members (91.7 per cent) choose to receive these emails.
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Histories of Australian Sociology Figure 1: TASA membership numbers since 1990 700
635 570
600
Number of members
500
555
538 495
464
517
504
577
548 457
463
1999
2000
448
445
2001
2002
384
400
300
200
100
0 1990
1991
1992
1993
1994
1995
1996
1997
1998
2003
2004
Year
Source: Nexus newsletters and TASA membership database. Note: Earlier membership figures – 1964: 111; 1968: 376; 1969: 446 (ANZJS 1970: 70); and 1972: 502 (Jones 1973: 2)
Two thirds of TASA members are female (n=419, 66 per cent), whereas the American Sociological Association (ASA) has a much more even gender split with females constituting 53.9 per cent of their membership (ASA 2004a). The youngest TASA member was 19 years of age in 2004, while the oldest was 79 years of age. TASA membership fees are on a sliding income scale. Most members fall within the highest and lowest income brackets (see Table 2). TASA offers a discounted student membership rate which excludes subscription to the JOS. Approximately one-fifth of the TASA membership subscribe at this student rate (n=135, 21.3 per cent). It should be noted that there are additional members who are students and subscribe at higher rates to receive the Journal. TASA offers members the option of one-, two- or three-year memberships. In 2004, 74 members (11.7 per cent) had two- or three-year memberships.
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Australian Sociology: Recent Trends and Prospects Table 2: Membership rate Income bracket Student rate $0 to $32,999 $33,000 to $44,999 $45,000 to $54,999 $55,000 to $69,999 $70,000+ Contributing membership (includes donation to TASA)
Total
Frequency 135 167 37 59 117 110 10
Per cent 21.3 26.3 5.8 21.3 18.4 17.3 1.6
635
100.0
The geographical location of members is generally reflective of the location of the Australian population more broadly, that is, in the eastern states. Seventy-five per cent of TASA members come from New South Wales (29.3 per cent), Victoria (25.5 per cent) and Queensland (20.3 per cent) (see Table 3). Table 3: State/Territory/Country of membership address Australia New South Wales Victoria Queensland South Australia Australian Capital Territory Western Australia Tasmania Northern Territory Overseas Total
Frequency
Per cent
184 171 125 47 32 31 26 1 18 635
29.0 26.9 19.7 7.4 5.0 4.9 4.1 0.2 2.8 100.0
There are 18 TASA members (2.8 per cent) outside Australia. They are in New Zealand (n=6), United Kingdom (n=3), Canada (n=2), United States (n=2), United Arab Emirates (n=1), Angola (n=1), Cypress (n=1), Hong Kong (n=1), and Turkey (n=1). Many are expatriates working or studying abroad. Nearly half (45.4 per cent) of TASA’s members have a PhD degree (see Table 4), whereas 54.8 per cent of ASA members (regular, student and associate members) have a PhD degree (ASA 2004a, 367
Histories of Australian Sociology 2004b). Most of those TASA members whose highest qualification is a Bachelor with Honours or Masters degree are currently enrolled either part-time or full-time in PhD studies. Table 4: Highest qualification PhD Masters Other postgraduate qualification Bachelor (Honours) Bachelor Diploma Current undergraduate student Total
Frequency 288 95 23 145 56 2 11 620
Per cent 45.4 15.0 3.6 22.8 8.8 0.3 1.7 100.0
Approximately three quarters of TASA members who are students are PhD candidates (full-time 48.2 per cent, part-time 24.9 per cent). Eleven per cent are undergraduates and seven per cent are Masters students (see Table 5). Table 5: Degree enrolment and enrolment status Full-time PhD Part-time PhD Full-time Masters Part-time Masters Full-time other postgraduate Part-time other postgraduate Full-time undergraduate Part-time undergraduate Other Total
Frequency 122 63 7 11 3 10 16 11 10 253
Per cent 48.2 24.9 2.8 4.3 1.2 4.0 6.3 4.3 4.0 100.0
Approximately one third of TASA members are postgraduate students. To address the needs of this large constituency a Postgraduate Representative, Nicky Welch, was co-opted to the Executive Committee in mid-2002 during the AGM at the one-day TASA Conference held prior to the World Congress of Sociology. The position was formalised in a constitutional amendment at the 2003 AGM and became an elected position for the 2005-06 Executive 368
Australian Sociology: Recent Trends and Prospects Committee; the first elected person to the position was Tara McGee. The Association also initiated a Postgraduate Workshop preconference event in 2003 and with the assistance of a donation from the former Australian Association of Social Research (AASR), introduced postgraduate conference scholarships to facilitate attendance. The workshop focuses on building skills and widening networks among postgraduate students. An inaugural postgraduate workshop evaluation report, prepared by workshop facilitator Karina Butera, is available from the member-section of the TASA website. Employment data
Under half of TASA’s members are employed full-time (47.4 per cent), with nearly one-third of the membership being employed in casual (17.2 per cent) or part-time (12.7 per cent) positions (see Table 6). This not only reflects the high proportion of students who are members, but also the increasing casualisation of employment in the university sector and the Australian economy in general. Table 6: Employment status Full-time Casual Part-time Not employed Self employed Other Total
Frequency 257 93 69 60 15 48 542
Per cent 47.4 17.2 12.7 11.1 2.8 8.9 100.0
Of those TASA members who are employed, just over three quarters are employed in a higher education institution (77.6 per cent). This is comparable to the ASA, where 78.7 per cent of their regular and associate members are employed in colleges and universities (ASA 2004b). This still leaves a significant number of TASA members who are working outside of the university sector (n=100) (for a breakdown see Table 7).
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Histories of Australian Sociology Table 7: Employment sector Frequency 346 32 21
Higher education institution Independent consultant Local government Non-government/Non-profit organisation Private sector organisation Federal government State government Total
Per cent 77.6 7.2 4.7
15
3.4
15 9 8 446
3.4 2.0 1.8 100.0
Of those members who are working within academe, there is a large spread across all levels of academic appointment. There is some concentration around Levels B and C, which is equivalent to the positions of Lecturer and Senior lecturer respectively. Despite this there is good representation in more senior and junior positions (see Table 8). However, there are a higher number of female members employed in casual positions. Interestingly, there is a higher percentage of male members appointed at levels C, D and E; however, when looking at the raw scores, the number of male and female TASA members appointed at these levels is virtually equal. Table 8: Level of academic appointment by gender Male Level E Academic / Research Level D Academic / Research Level C Academic / Research Level B Academic / Research Level A Academic / Research Research appointment (HEW) Tutorial assistant/fellow Casual Other Total
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n 12 18 25 35 4 5 7 9 5 120
% 10.0 15.0 20.8 29.2 3.3 4.2 5.8 7.5 4.2 100.0
Female n % 13 5.7 18 7.8 25 10.9 64 27.8 26 11.3 15 6.5 13 5.7 34 14.8 22 9.6 230 100.0
Total n 25 36 50 99 30 20 20 43 27 350
% 7.1 10.3 14.3 28.3 8.6 5.7 5.7 12.3 7.7 100.0
Australian Sociology: Recent Trends and Prospects Research interests
Approximately one third of TASA members nominate to be part of the Health Section (35.8 per cent). Currently, this is the only semistructured research section of the Association. Table 9: TASA members’ top 15 areas of research interest Feminism, Gender and Sexuality Health, Medicine and the Body Social Theory Methodology Community Research Culture and Cultural Policy Family Social Change and Development Industrial Sociology, Work and Organisations Immigration, Ethnicity and Multiculturalism Welfare Issues and Human Services Knowledge, Language, Science and Ideology Political Sociology Class, Stratification and Mobility Deviance, Social Control and Criminology
Frequency 263 216 207 193 179 162 150 144 140 124 123 121 117 116 113
TASA members are also asked to nominate their areas of research interest on their membership form. These can be searched as part of the online membership directory—see TASAweb <www.tasa.org.au> for the full list of research interests. Table 9 (above) presents the top 15 most frequently nominated areas of research interest. The top six areas have been nominated by between a quarter to one third of the membership and these are: feminism, gender and sexuality; health, medicine and the body; social theory; methodology; community research; and culture and cultural policy. The main characteristics of TASA members can be summarised as follows: • Approximately two thirds of the members are female • There is good representation across all income groups • Three-quarters of the membership is concentrated in New South Wales, Victoria and Queensland • Approximately half of the members have a PhD • Three-quarters of student members are enrolled in a PhD
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Histories of Australian Sociology • Just under half of the members are employed in a full-time position • Of those employed, approximately three-quarters work in a university • There are equal numbers of males and females appointed at higher level academic positions; however, this is disproportionate when considering that two-thirds of the members are female, and • The top 6 areas of TASA members’ research interests are: gender, health, theory, methodology, community, and culture. Australian Sociology in the Academy Despite seemingly perennial discussions of imminent crises and debates over relevance and utility (see Zubrzycki 1973; Dunphy 1974; Scott 1979; Jones et al. 1983; Turner et al. 1986; Roach Anleu 1998; Crook 2000; Germov 2003), many chapters of this book demonstrate that the teaching of sociology is firmly entrenched in almost all of Australia’s 38 universities. Sociology is either identifiable in its own right as a major area of study, or in significant contributions to interdisciplinary fields, many of which can be considered as sociology ‘spin-offs’, such as: Australian studies, cultural studies, criminology, development studies, gender studies, and organisation studies (Roach Anleu 1998). Additionally, sociology continues to make substantial contributions to programs in health science, education, management, and social work among others. The following section presents data on sociology student enrolments and course completions in Australia. The data show the steady growth of the sociology student cohort throughout the 1990s, though the most recent figures suggest the start of a decline. Sociology student data: enrolments and course completions
Presented below are data on recent Australian university student course enrolments and completions in Sociology. TASA purchased the data from the Department of Education, Science and Training (DEST) in order to obtain an understanding of the trends in Sociological training in Australian universities. On examining the data provided by DEST, it became apparent that the official figures significantly under-represent the level of sociology enrolments and course completions.
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Australian Sociology: Recent Trends and Prospects According to DEST, the main reason the data are inaccurate is because universities are not supplying student data that is specific enough to identify students studying Sociology. For example, both enrolments and completions are being recorded in more generic categories such as Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences, whereas they should be coded to the more specific category of Sociology. If universities continue to record course information in this way, discipline-specific data will continue to be under-reported.
Year
Doctorate by Research
Masters by Research
Masters by Coursework
Postgraduate Qual/Prelim
Grad (Post) Dip (new area)
Grad (Post) Dip (ext area)
Graduate Certificate
Bachelors Postgraduate
Bachelor Honours
Bachelor Pass
Diploma / Adv. Diploma
Other undergrad. courses
Total
Table 10: Australian university student enrolments, Sociology, 1989–2003
1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003
95 104 105 140 156 145 157 168 191 212 210 185 241 215 204
56 56 59 77 100 80 46 49 53 63 50 55 51 45 49
96 96 141 166 148 157 141 104 92 76 50 35 10 64 23
13 5 10 9 11 2 1 3 0 1 0 2 1 1 1
35 64 65 55 87 77 49 32 28 9 7 2 4 14 21
0 0 0 0 17 14 11 15 0 0 35 18 1 0 1
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 2 4 12
6 6 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
10 7 6 9 13 23 19 22 35 30 36 35 49 56 38
94 131 196 232 268 357 504 628 627 995 1143 1437 789 721 632
0 19 26 33 0 0 0 0 0 0 2 2 2 0 0
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0
405 488 608 721 800 855 928 1021 1027 1386 1534 1771 1150 1120 981
Source: Data purchased from the DEST, October 2003 and November 2004. Notes: For 1989–2000, field of study code 030219 was used to identify Sociology. For 2001–2003, field of education code 090301 was used to identify Sociology. For 1989–2000, students counted are those enrolled at 31 March and have semester 1 load. For 2001–2003, students counted are those enrolled and studying between 1 Sep and 31 Aug.
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Histories of Australian Sociology It is also worth noting that enrolment data are likely to be further under-reported due to the common practice of sociology ‘service teaching’ into other degrees. In addition, sociology is also taught in many interdisciplinary areas such as women’s/gender studies, criminology, and cultural studies. Despite the limitations, these are the best data that we have on Sociology enrolments and course completions in Australia. There has been a steady increase in the number of enrolments in sociology doctorates from 1989 to 2002 (see Table 10). In the same time period, enrolment in Masters by research degrees peaked in 1993 and has remained fairly steady since the mid-1990s. Enrolments in Masters by coursework degrees and Graduate diplomas experienced a downward trend in the 1990s, whereas there has been a dramatic increase in Bachelor degree enrolments over the same time period. Figure 2: Total Australian Sociology, 1989–2003
university
student
enrolments,
2000 1800
Number of enrolments
1600 1400 1200 1000 800 600 400 200 0 1989
1990
1991
1992
1993
1994
1995
1996
1997
1998
1999
2000
2001
2002
2003
Year
Source: Data purchased from the DEST, October 2003 and November 2004. Notes: For 1989–2000, field of study code 030219 was used to identify Sociology. For 2001–2003, field of education code 090301 was used to identify Sociology. For 1989–2000, students counted are those enrolled at 31 March and have semester 1 load. For 2001–2003, students counted are those enrolled and studying between 1 Sep and 31 Aug.
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Australian Sociology: Recent Trends and Prospects As can be seen in Figure 2, the overall trend for sociology student enrolments has been an increase throughout the 1990s, with a sudden drop in 2001, which is likely due to measurement differences as DEST introduced new field of education codes in 2001. However, the trend over 2001-2003 indicates a period of declining enrolments. Data later in this chapter show such a decline is by no means uniform across the Humanities and Social Sciences sector. Not surprisingly, the trends in completions in sociology courses broadly reflect those of enrolments. We expect that the course completion data are also under-reported in the same way as for the enrolment data.
24 24 19 33 53 47 33 25 32 23 32 23 14 2 13 397
0 3 11 3 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 17
27 18 1 2 15 26 44 26 17 15 7 6 1 3 3 211
0 0 0 0 0 11 10 6 9 1 0 18 12 3 1 71
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 2 0 3
0 16 17 31 33 30 36 45 114 167 278 258 316 201 162 1704
0 0 2 0 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 5
Total
1 6 4 3 5 10 15 13 10 16 13 16 19 27 29 187
Diploma / Adv. Diploma
Graduate Certificate
Grad (Post) Dip (ext area)
Grad (Post) Dip (new area)
Postgraduate Qual/Prelim
Masters by Coursework
Masters by Research 5 6 6 4 4 8 6 2 3 3 4 4 8 4 2 69
Bachelor Pass
15 7 22 22 17 16 11 18 26 24 23 23 24 28 28 304
Bachelor Honours
1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 Total
Doctorate by Research
Year
Table 11: Australian University Award Course Completions, Sociology, 1988–2002
72 80 82 98 129 148 155 135 211 249 357 349 394 270 239 2968
Source: Data purchased from the DEST, October 2003 and November 2004. Notes: For 1988–2000, DEST field of study code 030219 was used to identify Sociology. For 2001–2002, DEST field of education code 090301 was used to identify Sociology.
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Histories of Australian Sociology While the rate of doctoral enrolments has been increasing, the rate of Doctorate completions has been fairly stable from 1988 to 2002 (see Table 11). The completion rate of Masters by research has also been fairly stable, whereas after a peak in the early 1990s, there has been a downward trend in Masters by coursework completions (possibly a reflection of fee de-regulation). The most marked increase in course completions has been in Bachelor and Bachelor (Honours) degrees, which peaked in 2000 and is reflective of the large increase in Bachelor degree enrolments during the 1990s (see Table 11 for further details). Overall, course completions increased until the year 2000, with a marked drop in 2001 and a subsequent declining trend to 2003 (see Figure 3). As noted above, the dramatic drop in 2001 is likely to be a consequence of measurement changes by DEST; however, the declining trend in Sociology course completions matches declining enrolments noted above. Figure 3: Australian University Total Award Course Completions, Sociology, 1988–2002 450 400
Number of completions
350 300 250 200 150 100 50 0 1988
1989
1990
1991
1992
1993
1994
1995
1996
1997
1998
1999
2000
2001
2002
Year
Source: Data purchased from the DEST, October 2003. Notes: For 1988-2000, DEST field of study code 030219 was used to identify Sociology. For 2001-2002, DEST field of education code 090301 was used to identify Sociology.
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Australian Sociology: Recent Trends and Prospects Enrolment and completion data for other disciplines
The above data show the discipline is in a relatively healthy state, with significant numbers in terms of enrolments and completions at both the undergraduate and postgraduate levels. However, the recent decline in figures since 2001 indicates a worrying trend, particularly when compared to other Humanities and Social Science disciplines. Figure 4 compares enrolment trends between the disciplines of Sociology, Anthropology, Political Science, and History, and shows that Political Science, History and Criminology are trending upwards since 2001, while Sociology enrolments have decreased over the same period. Figure 4: Total Australian university student enrolments for Sociology, Anthropology, Political Science, History and Criminology 1989–2003 3000
Number of Enrolments
2500
2000
1500
1000
500
0 1989
1990
1991
1992
1993
1994
1995
1996
1997
1998
1999
2000
2001
2002
2003
Year Sociology
Anthropology
Political Science
History
Criminology
Source: Data purchased from the DEST, November 2004. Notes: For 1989-2000, DEST field of study codes: 030219 Sociology, 030203 Anthropology, 030214 Political Science and 030209 History. For 2001-2003, DEST field of education codes: 090301 Sociology, 090303 Anthropology, 090101 Political Science, 090305 History and 099903 Criminology. Figures are based on DEST’s field of study and field of education codes for each discipline. There are additional codes for sub-disciplinary areas, such as ‘Econometrics’, but due to their small numbers they are not included in the data reported here.
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Histories of Australian Sociology Some of the reduction in Sociology enrolments may be due to the introduction of Criminology as a new field of education in 2001, with enrolments that were previously counted as sociology now being counted under this new code. However, given the small number of Criminology enrolments, there is still a reduction in Sociology enrolments that is not accounted for (see Figure 4). Additional comparative data for the much larger disciplines of Psychology, Social Work and Economics is included in Figure 5. These disciplines, especially psychology, have experienced growth since 1989, with enrolments continuing to rise after the change in field codes in 2001. Figure 5: Total Australian university student enrolments, for Sociology, Anthropology, Political Science, History, Social Work, Economics and Psychology, 1989–2003
20000 18000
Number of enrolments
16000 14000 12000 10000 8000 6000 4000 2000 0 Sociology
Anthropology
Political Science
History
Social Work
Economics
Psychology
Enrolments 1989-2003
Source: Data purchased from the DEST, November 2004. Notes: For 1989-2000, DEST field of study codes: 030219 Sociology, 030203 Anthropology, 030214 Political Science, 030209 History, 030218 Social Work, 040301 Economics and 030215 Psychology. For 2001-2003, DEST field of education codes: 090301 Sociology, 090303 Anthropology, 090101 Political Science, 090305 History, 090501 Social Work, 091901 Economics and 090701 Psychology.
Once again the course completion data are generally reflective of trends in the enrolment data. However, while there have been 378
Australian Sociology: Recent Trends and Prospects reductions in Sociology student enrolments and course completions since 2001, Political Science and Social Work have continued to have increased enrolments but the number of course completions for these two disciplines is decreasing (see Figure 6). Anthropology on the other hand, while experiencing decreasing enrolments, has had increased completions since 2001. Figure 6: Total Australian university student completions, for Sociology, Anthropology, Political Science, History, Social Work, Economics and Psychology, 1989–2002 4000 3500
Number of completions
3000 2500 2000 1500 1000 500 0 Sociology
Anthropology
Pol Sci
History
Social Work
Economics
Psychology
Completions 1988-2002
Source: Data purchased from the DEST, November 2004. Notes: For 1989-2000, DEST field of study codes: 030219 Sociology, 030203 Anthropology, 030214 Political Science, 030209 History, 030218 Social Work, 040301 Economics and 030215 Psychology. For 2001-2002, DEST field of education codes: 090301 Sociology, 090303 Anthropology, 090101 Political Science, 090305 History, 090501 Social Work, 091901 Economics and 090701 Psychology.
TASA will continue to make course enrolment and completion data available through its website and will report on comparative trends for related disciplines.
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Histories of Australian Sociology Future History A summary of milestones in the history of Australian sociology is provided in Box 4. A full history of Australian sociology, and of its professional association, akin to that available for the US and UK (see Rhoades 1981; Platt 2003; Halsey 2004) is yet to be written, and at the very least would require:
life-histories of key Australian sociologists a search through various university archives to document the life course of sociology academic units a survey of the contemporary sociology curriculum in terms of the range of courses, teaching practices, methodological and theoretical content provided a review of postgraduate areas of study (thesis topics, theories and methodologies) and graduate career destinations an examination of the impact of feminist scholarship on Australian sociology, given that two-thirds of TASA members are women and that ‘Feminism, Gender and Sexuality’ is the most often cited area of research interest given such a gender profile, it would be interesting to compare sociology with neighbouring social science disciplines such as economics, political science, history, psychology, anthropology and cultural studies a review of the impact of major social research organisations, such as the Australian Institute of Family Studies (AIFS), the Australian Institute of Criminology (AIC), the Evatt Foundation, the Australia Institute, and the Social Policy Research Centre (SPRC) a review of publication and citation trends in terms of substantive areas, theories and methodologies (cf. Kelliher and Reynolds 1996; Gläser 2004; Skrbis and Germov 2004).
The final chapter of this book lists a range of further resources for those interested in delving deeper into such a task. Many of the resources listed there will be made available online in a history section of the TASA website, which will also be a repository for future membership and student enrolment data. In addition to this book, we trust this will provide a foundation for ‘future histories’ of Australian sociology to foster a better appreciation of our past, present and future.
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Australian Sociology: Recent Trends and Prospects Box 4: Australian Sociology Milestones
1911: Francis Anderson unsuccessfully advocates for a Chair in Sociology to be established at the University of Sydney; sociology subjects taught there until early 1920s 1914: Meredith Atkinson introduces sociology courses into the Workers’ Educational Association (WEA) program 1918: Atkinson takes up a professorship at the University of Melbourne and allegedly uses the self-proclaimed title of Professor of Sociology, teaching sociology until his resignation in 1922; Clarence Northcott publishes the first Australian ‘sociological’ book, Australian Social Development 1942: Adolphus Peter Elkin founds the short-lived Australian Institute of Sociology and its journal Social Horizons (1943-45) 1958: Canberra Sociological Society established 1959: First professor of sociology appointed—Morven S. Brown at UNSW, with the first Department of Sociology created in the same year 1962: Department of Sociology at the University of New England in Armidale created, headed by Associate Professor of Rural Sociology James Harle Bell; ANU establishes a Department of Sociology (but no Chair until 1976) 1963: Sociological Association of Australia and New Zealand (SAANZ) established, with Mick Borrie elected as its first President, Jim H. Robb as Vice-President (NZ), Morven S. Brown as Vice-President (Aust.), and J. J. Mol as Secretary-Treasurer. 1965: Australian and New Zealand Journal of Sociology (ANZJS) established, with Jerzy Zubrzycki as the first editor; first Australian sociology textbook by Davies and Encel, Australian Society; first Australian PhD in Sociology awarded to Robert Pike (ANU, supervisor: Jerzy Zubrzycki) 1966: Jean Martin becomes foundation professor of sociology at La Trobe University; John Nalson becomes the foundation professor of sociology at UNE 1968: Medical Sociology Section of SAANZ established 1970: Sociology Teachers’ Section of SAANZ established 1971: ANZJS moves to three issues; SAANZ Newsletter first published; first conference proceedings published, The Teaching of Sociology in Australia and New Zealand 1972: SAANZ General Meeting passes a constitutional amendment to make the ANZJS editor and editorial board elected positions 1976: Women’s section of SAANZ founded; first chair of sociology at ANU established 1979: SAANZ Women’s Section Newsletter first published 1980: Jean Martin Award established for best PhD; inaugural award to Claire Williams and published as Open Cut by Allen & Unwin 1987: Labour & Industry journal co-sponsored by SAANZ/TASA (until 1996) and the Association of Industrial Relations Academics of Australia and New Zealand
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Histories of Australian Sociology
1988-89: TASA established at the 1988 AGM (formally incorporated in 1989) after New Zealand sociologists secede to form an independent association— the Sociological Association of Aotearoa (NZ); the SAANZ Newsletter is renamed the Nexus Newsletter 1995: Best paper in the journal award established; inaugural recipient was Eric Livingstone 1996: TASA website and email list established by John Germov on 22 July and hosted on the University of Newcastle server; Distinguished Service to Australian Sociology Award established—inaugural recipients were Lois Bryson and John Western 1997: Two-year terms for the TASA Executive Committee begin 1998: ANZJS name changed to the Journal of Sociology (JOS); Full Refereed Conference Proceedings published at the TASA Conference, QUT Brisbane 2000: Refereed Conference Proceedings published in CDROM format; eSocHealth: the Health Sociology Section website established 2001: JOS now published by SAGE and moves to four issues per year (including a thematic issue), with full content simultaneously accessible via online journal databases; TASAweb moves to own domain in December: <www.tasa.org.au>; Health Sociology Review becomes an official TASA journal (inaugural editors were Jane Shoebridge and Eileen Willis) 2002: Member-only section of TASAweb launched in February; including access to online versions of Nexus and refereed conference proceedings; TASA hosts the ISA XV World Congress of Sociology at QUT in Brisbane, July 713; Postgraduate Representative created as a co-opted temporary position on the TASA Executive Committee 2003: TASA Directory Online; Update My Profile features; Secure online payment facilities, Online conference registration; and Online discussion forums, all added to TASAweb; 40th anniversary of TASA/SAANZ; inaugural Postgraduate Workshop and conference scholarships launched; Stephen Crook Memorial Prize award launched (inaugural recipient was Michael Pusey); Constitutional amendment creates a Postgraduate member position on the TASA Executive Committee (effective for the 2005-06 Executive term as an elected position); Revised TASA Code of Ethics adopted after consultation with members; Most Influential Books in Australian Sociology (MIBAS) survey conducted; Health Sociology Review published by eContent Management 2004: Record TASA membership of 635 by December 10; new TASA Strategic Plan adopted after consultation with members; TASA becomes a foundation member of the Council for the Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences (CHASS).
Sources: ANZJS/JOS (various years); SAANZ/Nexus Newsletter & Women’s Section Newsletter (various years); TASAweb: www.tasa.org.au, Thiele 1999; Willis 2005; various chapters in this volume.
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Australian Sociology: Recent Trends and Prospects Acknowledgments
The authors thank Katy Richmond, John Western, Gary Wickham, and Yoland Wadsworth for their help in tracking down sources of information, as well as their invaluable personal recollections. References Alexander, M., Harding, S., Harrison, P., Skrbis, Z., Kendall, G., & Western, J. (eds) 1998, Refashioning Sociology: Responses to a New World Order, TASA 1998 Conference Proceedings, Brisbane, TASA. ANZJS 1965, ‘Notes and Announcements’, vol. 1, no. 1, pp. 64-65. ANZJS 1970, ‘Notes and Announcements’, vol. 6, no. 1, p. 70. ASA, American Sociological Association 2004a, The Gender Composition of Regular and Student ASA Members 1999 to 2003, viewed 6 October 2004, . —— 2004b, Employment Sectors of 2003 ASA Regular and Associate Members, by PhD Status, viewed 6th October 2004, . Crook, S. 2003, ‘Change, uncertainty and the future of sociology’, Presidential Address delivered at the 2000 TASA Conference, Journal of Sociology, vol. 39, no. 1, pp. 7–14. Dunphy, D. 1974, ‘Putting sociology to work—the relevance of sociology—an immediate issue’, Australian and New Zealand Journal of Sociology, vol. 10, no. 1, pp. 3-7. Encel, S. 1984, ‘Introduction’, in S. Encel and L. Bryson (eds) Australian Society: Introductory Essays, 4th edition, Melbourne, Longman Cheshire, pp. 1-11. Gläser, J. 2004, ‘Why are the most influential books in Australian sociology not necessarily the most highly cited ones?’, Journal of Sociology, vol. 40, no. 3, pp. 261-282. Germov, J. 2003, ‘Higher education reform: sociology at the crossroads’, Nexus, vol. 15, no. 2, February, pp. 3-5. —— 1993, TASA 2003 Health Papers, Proceedings from the TASA 2003 Conference at Macquarie University, December 12-15, TASA. Halsey, A. H. 2004, A History of Sociology in Britain: Science, Literature, and Society, Oxford, Oxford University Press. Jones, F. L. 1973, Editorial, Australian and New Zealand Journal of Sociology, vol. 9, no. 1, pp. 1-2.
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Histories of Australian Sociology Jones, F. L., Willmott, W. E., and Wild, R. 1983, ‘Dialogue: Crisis in Sociology,’ Australian and New Zealand Journal of Sociology vol. 19, no. 2, July, pp. 195–215. Kelliher, S. and Reynolds, P. 1996, ‘Methodological issues within the disciplines of psychology and sociology in Australia and New Zealand: A content analysis of 1970s, 1980s and 1990s published research’, Australian Journal of Social Research, vol. 2, no. 1, pp. 3957. Najman, J. M., & Hewitt, B. 2003, ‘The Validity of Publications and Citation Counts for Sociology and Other Selected Disciplines’, Journal of Sociology, vol. 39, no. 1, pp. 62-80. Phelan, T. J. 2000, ‘Bibliometrics and the Evaluation of Australian Sociology’, Journal of Sociology, vol. 36, no. 3, pp. 345-63. Platt, J. 2003, The British Sociological Association: A Sociological History, Durham, UK, Sociology Press. Rhoades, L. J. 1981, A History of the ASA: 1905-1980, Washington, D.C., American Sociological Association. Roach Anleu, S. 1998, ‘Refashioning Sociology: Disciplinary and Institutional Challenges’, Opening Address presented to the TASA 1998 Conference, Refashioning Sociology: Responses to a New World Order, QUT Brisbane, 2 December. Scott, W. H. 1979, Australian and New Zealand Sociology 1971-78: An Introduction, Monograph Series No. 3, Department of Anthropology and Sociology, Monash University and the Sociological Association of Australia and New Zealand. Skrbis, Z., & Germov, J. 2004, ‘The Most Influential Books in Australian Sociology (MIBAS), 1963-2003’, Journal of Sociology, vol. 40, no. 3, pp. 283-304. Thiele, S. 1999, The Sociology Department, Sociology Department, University of New England, viewed 14 October 2004, www.une.edu.au/arts/Sociolog/PDFs/Sociology_history.pdf Turner, B. S. 1986, ‘Sociology as an Academic Trade: Some Reflections on Centre and Periphery in the Sociology Market’, Australian and New Zealand Journal of Sociology, vol. 22, no. 2, pp. 272-82; and Bryson, L., Emmison, M. and Turner, B.S. ‘Responses and a Reply’, pp. 283–90. Willis, E. 1991, ‘The sociology of health and illness in Australia: The 1980s and beyond’, Annual Review of Health Social Sciences, vol. 1, pp. 46-53. —— 2005, 'The First Sociology Doctorate in Australia', Nexus, vol. 17, no. 1, pp. 11-3.
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Australian Sociology: Recent Trends and Prospects Willis, E. & Broom, A. 2004, ‘State of the art: A decade of health sociology in review’, Health Sociology Review, vol. 13, no. 2, pp. 122-144. Zubrzycki, J. 1973, ‘The relevance of sociology’, Australian and New Zealand Journal of Sociology, vol. 9, no. 1, pp. 5-15. —— (ed) 1971, The Teaching of Sociology in Australia and New Zealand, Proceedings of the Conference on the Teaching of Sociology in Australia and New Zealand, Australian National University, Canberra, 23-26 August 1970, Melbourne, Cheshire Publishing for the Sociological Association of Australia and New Zealand.
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23 The State of Social Sciences in Australia PETER BEILHARZ TREVOR HOGAN (2004)*
A
ustralia has always been a peculiar place, since settlement or invasion in 1788. It combines extremes: one of the most urban nations in the world, its cities nestle on the edge of an island continent largely dominated by desert. It is simultaneously Western, more directly British and in turn American, and other, not least because of the founding presence of an Aboriginal culture which stretches back forty thousand years. It is at the same time developed and underdeveloped, central and yet peripheral, increasingly more like North America and yet historically closer in experience to South America. It has a long and ambivalent relationship with New Zealand/Aotearoa, across the Tasman; earlier, the two used to be referred to as Australasia, and New Zealand was a hundred years ago touted as a possible partner to Australian Federation. Australia is plainly the result of colonial activity, since its penal inception by Britain in the eighteenth century; and yet like other such cases, it also generates its own culture, combining vernacular with dominant imperial cultures and anything else obvious that comes to mind and hand. And so it is with social sciences, in Australia, which often bear the clear imprint of British and American precedents, yet have something else to offer besides: first, as a horizon of reflection for metropolitan social sciences (e.g., Durkheim); second, as a source of expatriate social scientists (earlier, e.g, Hancock; V. G. Childe, Mayo); third, as a site of indigenous innovation using classical traditions and methods in social sciences (e.g., Aboriginal ethnography; community, class and stratification studies); and in recent decades, as the antipodean *
Source: Beilharz, P. & Hogan, T. (2004) The State of Social Sciences in Australia, Social Science Research Council, New York. The authors gratefully acknowledge the support of the Social Science Research Council, New York.
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Histories of Australian Sociology crossroads of cultural and intellectual trafficking in social sciences. In each of these phases and practices, social sciences in Australia have their own achievements, mainly those established through the statebased university system and its expansion after World War Two. At the same time, given the present state of change, it is now increasingly difficult to characterise the situation in Australia, which seems far more volatile than elsewhere in the centres, though it may parallel rates of change in more transitional cases. For universities have been the specific objects of political change or social engineering for the last twenty years now, first at the hands of the Australian Labor Party, now the Liberal-National Coalition Parties (Conservatives). In the process, the universities have become institutions dominated by vocational, instrumental and managerialist cultures (Marginson and Considine 2000; Marginson 2002). This survey brief begins with an overview, followed by a section on the disciplines. A case study of our own university, La Trobe, follows, as an indicator of some of the characteristics, changes and challenges facing social sciences in Australia today. The next section addresses publics, publishers, think tanks, academics, and other institutions. Concluding observations close the brief. This is a view from La Trobe, a sixties university originally built with a liberal arts agenda, and it is a view from a Sociology Department which once claimed to be the largest and most influential in the southern hemisphere. This brief does not claim to be comprehensive; it merely attempts to survey some issues and context by way of a mapping exercise.
Overview Social sciences as a coherent project in Australia can be dated from the Second World War. As a settler capitalist society, the institutional development of intellectual life first took shape in the mid-late nineteenth century with the establishment of founding universities in the colonial cities of Sydney and Melbourne. The Universities of Adelaide and Tasmania continued this trend into the nineteenth century. The last of the so-called ‘sandstone’ universities were established in Brisbane and Perth in 1910 and 1911 respectively.1 Throughout this first phase, activities we would now identify as social scientific took place in these universities as well as in non-disciplinary institutions of civil society such as churches, political parties and social movements, mechanics institutes and so on. Federation in 1901 388
The State of Social Sciences in Australia formally unified some of these activities, but the idea of a dedicated national research force only took off into a second phase in the period of post-war reconstruction, especially in connection with the establishment of the Australian National University, itself originally designed to be the first and only research university in Australia, a public service for a national development agenda. A third phase opened into the 1960s, with the extensive establishment of suburban, redbrick or ‘redgum’ universities for mass education. A fourth phase, which we still inhabit, saw the rationalization and vocationalization of the tertiary sector from the 1980s on, and the establishment of newer universities, often located in regions rather than in the larger cities, where disciplines were often subsumed under other organizational categories such as ‘Area Studies’ (sic)—a term first introduced into the national university system by Macquarie University, Sydney, in the late ’60s (Roe 2002). The growth of these ‘Area Studies’ and the refashioning of social sciences and humanities as branches of business studies, however, are trends endemic to the whole university system and not confined to the newer universities. The Australian tradition, until the 1980s and still residually, is statecentric. Historically, the majority of education and research at all levels has been provided by the state. The peculiar configuration of white Australian history is that its British penal and modest colonial origins saw the development of a local working class before the emergence of a national bourgeoisie, with the result that institutions were built in the image of British experience until World War Two and the emergence of American global hegemony. The difference is that Australian universities have neither an Oxbridge nor an Ivy League tradition—the colonial elite was neither aristocratic nor progressivist. Tertiary education and research has historically been both state-sponsored, and dominated by a long left-liberal intellectual consensus which began to collapse into the 1980s as the experience of tertiary rationalization, restructuring and vocationalization was inaugurated by the Labor Government in its longest period of federal office, 1983-1996. The foundational pattern of development was that the earliest universities were established alongside colonial houses of parliament and libraries. Social sciences in this first period were subsumed to other categories of organization; sociology, for example, was nowhere taught as a program or major, though its early influence can be found in philosophy, education, social administration, government and into the interwar period, in anthropology. In the 1940s, the social sciences 389
Histories of Australian Sociology were flagged as a national priority, and institutionalised often in very large disciplinary departments with increasing faculty numbers over the ensuing three decades. The social sciences thus arrived together with the social movements of the 1960s. This connection both formed them substantially and potentially explains the subsequent decline of these disciplines as the specificities of the 1960s were exhausted or absorbed into mass culture. While the transition from an elite focus to a mass system has at undergraduate level meant the practical inclusion of women and ethnic minorities, the participation of students of indigenous background remains marginal, even in more directly pertinent disciplines such as anthropology. Universities have been radically transformed across these periods of change. In particular, the disciplines emerged and were consolidated dramatically into the 1970s and are now in decline or reconfiguration. Nevertheless, the universities remain the dominant sites of training. Vocational preparation also takes place in the Vocational Education and Training (VET) sector, a second tertiary sector that performs a role somewhere between the American community colleges and the old English polytechnics, offering courses below bachelor degree level. Unlike university students, the overwhelming majority of VET students are part-time. As outlined above, of the 39 Universities in Australia, some date back to the nineteenth century, many were founded in the major period of national government-funded institution building between 1960 and 1975, while many others are the result of amalgamations and conversions from a previous generation of polytechnic-like institutions, the degree granting colleges of advanced education, which were wound up as a sector in 1988. Only two universities are privately funded (the University of Notre Dame in Perth, and Bond University in the Gold Coast, Queensland). Australian Catholic University is a private university that is publicly funded. One of the oldest colonial universities, the University of Melbourne’s, experiment in launching its own private university at the outset of this century was shortlived. There is a relative absence of the kind of think-tanks predominant elsewhere. Significant research institutions such as the Social Policy Research Centre are housed within and deliver through universities, in this case the University of New South Wales. Political think-tanks have proliferated since the 1980s (the Tasman Institute, the Centre of Independent Studies, Institute of Public Affairs, the Evatt 390
The State of Social Sciences in Australia Foundation, Henderson Foundation, Whitlam Institute, Sydney Institute, Brisbane Institute, and the Australia Institute), but these do not confer degrees and to date have not yet borne much fruit as sites of significant social science research. Virtually all training of social scientists takes place in the public university sector, which houses 98 per cent of all university students in Australia. Correspondingly, the majority of social scientists work within this sector, in government and governmental agencies, and in the universities, though joint PhDs with industry with joint supervision are growing in some areas.2 Almost half (48 per cent) of all of the income received by Australian universities comes from the Federal government, with about 30 per cent derived from students in the form of fees and charges, and approximately 5 per cent as industry funding of research and consultancy. In the social sciences—apart from Business Studies, which receives a relatively high level of fee income, principally from international students—the level of dependence on the Federal government is significantly higher than 48 per cent. The great majority of research funding in the social sciences comes from the Federally-funded Australian Research Council (ARC). Foundational and philanthropic funding is less developed than in the United States; foundations that provide funding for social research include the local Myer Foundation, the Japan Foundation, and Potter Foundation. The social sciences are firmly entrenched as part of the research environment; they account for over 30% of full-time equivalent staff in Australia and almost 20% of total expenditure on research and development in the higher education sector: the balance is located in medicine and the life sciences, the physical sciences, engineering, the arts and humanities, and professional fields such as architecture and agriculture (ASSA 1998). Shrinkage over the last decade due to funding cuts and aging demographics, together with overseas exits, has fuelled widespread concerns about a ‘brain-drain’. Indeed, the general sense among midto-late career researchers in the Australian system would be that the system is either in crisis or else that it is transitional, with the strong concern that transitional opportunities and possibilities are being squandered, ignored or blocked-out. The level of reported academic stress is considerably higher in Australia than in the USA (Marginson 2002). In 2000, out of a total population of nearly 20 million Australians, there were 93,216 higher degree students in Australia, including 391
Histories of Australian Sociology 28,632 doctoral students, 663 in coursework doctorates, 9408 in research masters.3 More than half of all these are in social sciences (Marginson 2002). Social science research is generated through journals, books, conferences and postgraduate research. Disciplines conventionally have their own journals, as in Australian Journal of Political Science or Journal of Sociology. Journals like these have been subject to arguments for globalization of content and are now published internationally. Since the 1980s, especially, some global publishers have identified Australian writers in culture and theory as central actors in these fields internationally. The journal Cultural Studies was founded in Australia, as was Discourse in Education; leading international journals of social theory such as Australian Feminist Studies and Thesis Eleven persist in working this antipodean axis. Australian feminists have been widely influential, both in theory and in policy work, being less marked by antipodean location in the former than the latter. The general orientation of Australian feminism is either to policy and the state, or else to French philosophy. There is relatively little traffic between feminism and critical theory in the German sense. Over the longer period of the twentieth century, much academic and cultural production has been local in content, reflecting the provincial or anti-imperial culture of nation-building. Australian cultural journals such as Meanjin and Arena work within and across these axes, and have done so for decades. More recent developments in public criticism include the Jesuit monthly, Eureka Street, and the Quarterly Essay. The older established Quadrant, which was aligned with the British Encounter, took a liberal turn under the editorship of Robert Manne, but has now reverted to its established position of cultural conservatism, with the addition of a new sour twist of economic liberalism. Arena, a radical journal founded in 1963, bifurcated into a journal and an influential monthly magazine. The major book review is the monthly Australian Book Review. The nominally communist Australian Left Review followed something of the trajectory of the British parallel, Marxism Today, eventually liquidating its influence into the Labor Party, as did much else of the left during the period of Labor hegemony between 1983 and 1996. The influential social policy and social issues monthly, Australian Society, permutated into Modern Times before folding in 1992.
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The State of Social Sciences in Australia As the list of journals has expanded, book publishing has arguably contracted over the last two decades. Prominent presses with Australian lists in social science areas include Cambridge University Press and the newly aggressive and prominent University of New South Wales Press; the stalwart is the Australian independent commercial press of Allen and Unwin. Significant newer alternative publishers include Text, Black Inc. and Pluto in Melbourne and Federation Press in Sydney. High quality regional presses, such as Fremantle Arts Centre Press, tend to focus on promoting the arts and literature, with some sprinkling of biographical and historical narratives that are especially useful to social sciences (e.g., Aboriginal autobiographies). University Presses have hit hard times in recent years and among those closing are the Australian National and Sydney University Presses. Melbourne University Press remains the largest university press in Australia, but it is in the main oriented to the humanities. Academics find it increasingly difficult, nevertheless, to publish monographs with primarily local content. The easiest field in which to publish is textbooks, which may well limit the prospect of innovation in social science fields. University moves to prioritization of PhD research in accordance with local areas of strength both promise to deliver more by way of critical mass and potentially less by way of innovation. Internet publishing has caught on especially in fields themselves synergistic with IT, such as media studies (commonsense has it that antipodeans, responding to the tyranny of distance, are among the highest net users in the world). One leading initiative here is the Perth-based API, Australian Public Intellectuals internet network. Universities, or at least their leading social scientists, have either been slow to recognise that their graduates will not become academics, or else so enthusiastically embrace vocationalism as to risk jeopardizing general liberal arts training prospects. The globalization of Australian social sciences, or at least the capacity of Australian researchers and writers to be heard outside of Australia, is evidently facilitated by the use of English as the dominant if not exclusive language of research and instruction. Language departments have been among those most devastated by financial cuts and restructuring, and this not only (as one might perhaps expect) for European languages, but even for Asian languages or language-based studies. Many people in and around universities imagine that Asian languages are well-funded because of government economic priorities in the region; there is, however, no substance to these ideas. Asian 393
Histories of Australian Sociology languages received special funding in the ’80s, but it is now wound in and lost. One consequence is that Australia remains a nation containing a significant number of polyglot first-generation migrants, but with a monolingual public sphere. Social sciences have never been institutionally entrenched in Australia as they have been in the US. The strongest kindred field traditionally would be History. History and literature have worked as the dominant fields of discourse with reference to national identity and nation building. The study of politics is often connected with parliament in popular consciousness, and fields like sociology and anthropology can find themselves the butt of humour in the popular press. The ‘best’ students are routinely attracted to the older universities or to the first and largest post-war foundations, such as Monash University and the University of New South Wales. Though students with the highest grade point averages are attracted to Business and Management in growing numbers, in Australia they tend to opt for the highest prestige fields such as Medicine, Law, Dentistry, or Veterinary Science. If they take social and behavioural sciences, they do so at the older and prestigious universities—even though the better social science might be taking place in some of the newer institutions. Given the changes that have occurred over the last decades, however, these older trends also have new dynamics. If the best students continue to go into medicine, as they always have, they will there encounter some social science concerns in the form of social ethics or bioethics. The Disciplines There is a relative scarcity of published material available on the history of the social sciences or the present situation of the social sciences in Australia. Probably more has been written by historians about History as a discipline than any other field, though perhaps especially with reference to the work of particular individuals such as Manning Clark.4 Within the social sciences, the pressures and possibilities encountered differ, even if the inhabitants of the field as a whole feel threatened. Sociology, which expanded dramatically into the 1970s, is now experiencing contraction as a discipline. Sociology, in one sense, now appears again as it did earlier, before the sixties, in other places—in public health, in legal studies, cultural studies, political science, poverty and policy research. As with anthropology, after its academic 394
The State of Social Sciences in Australia or disciplinary peak in the ’80s, sociologists are often finding applied rather than academic work. Larger schools or departments include those that have developed this kind of auxiliary strategy to secure funds and appointments. Thus, Sociology at the University of Queensland has developed special strengths in health and, at the University of Tasmania, has connected to criminology. The Sociology Department at the University of NSW split between radicals and traditionalists over disputes to do with cultural studies and the canon, though this has also resulted more recently in reunification. The core of Australian sociology reflects concerns with class, race and gender, with the latter two themes more prevalent than the former in recent years. Particularly in the ’70s, however, sociology was dominated by indigenous endeavours to develop and apply Marxist and Weberian concepts and methods to local conditions in the sociology of community (Bryson; Dempsey; Wild), class (Connell; Chamberlain; Connell and Irving) and stratification (Encel; Jones; Western).5 Reflecting its expansion into the ’70s and the influence of social movements and public policy openings, Sociology today is especially concerned with topics having to do with health, gender and the family. Like social history, sociology has been heavily influenced by feminism. There is a major impulse among some sociologists toward professionalisation. They seem to imagine that they can construct a job market like that of, say, social workers, where membership in a professional association is a condition of appointment. Anthropology has historically been connected to the study of indigenous peoples in Australia and its mandated territories in New Guinea and sideways across the Pacific archipelagos of Mela-, Microand Polynesia. In the last twenty years anthropologists have often become advocates of indigenous peoples, not least in connection with land rights claims. As with other disciplines, anthropology is now training fewer academics and more fieldworkers in NGOs, public service, resource industry corporations both within Australia and overseas, especially since the emergence of aboriginal rights as a major political issue into the 1980s. These changes also signal further shifts of orientation for anthropologists, not least as they move from advocacy to the aura of legal impartiality required by working with the courts. If thirty years ago the sense was that anthropology was part of the problem rather than the radical solution, and twenty years ago the appropriate role was denunciation of white racism, then
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Histories of Australian Sociology perhaps today anthropologists act as mediators, not least in legal settings. Two other major areas of work are consultancy in development and aid projects overseas and employment in resource extraction corporations. In some sense, anthropology is experiencing a push to professionalisation. Given the centrality of fieldwork to the discipline and the need for enculturation and language training, anthropologists are especially alarmed at 3½ year-scholarship-funded maxima dictated by federal authorities. Intellectual trends in anthropology, as elsewhere, follow through Marxism and feminism into postcolonialism and cultural studies, though Australian anthropologists continue to lead as well as to follow, as exemplified in the work of Joel Kahn (La Trobe; Culture, Multiculture, Postculture, 1995, Modernity and Exclusion, 2001). In some universities the crossover with Sociology remains strong (La Trobe, Queensland, Newcastle), while the more conservative disciplinary tradition pairs it with archaeology. A highly creative pairing of anthropology and history encouraged by the pioneering work of Bernard Smith had its initial institutional setting at the University of Melbourne’s Art History Department, but its scholarly harvest was reaped at La Trobe University’s History Department from the seventies to the present in the work of Greg Dening, Rhys Isaac and Inga Glendinnen. Economics as a discipline is shrinking. Aggregate university enrolments in Economics fell by 32 per cent between 1995 and 2000, while enrolments in Marketing doubled (Alvey and Smith 2000; Marginson 2000, 2002). This may come as a surprise to left critics who view the last twenty years as synonymous with the rise of ‘economic rationalism’ or economic liberalism. It is, rather, Business and Management which are undergoing growth (and lateral development too, as, for example, the idea of culture so traditionally central to Sociology and Anthropology becomes an orienting point within Business and Management). Economics and Business might be viewed as complementary studies, but the current trend is for the latter to substitute for the former (Millmow 2002). In Economics, students vote with their feet after the first undergraduate year, often to vocationally defined market niches such as Hospitality Management or IT. A number of commentators within the field refer to the Americanisation of Australian Economics in the post-war period. American intellectual life and culture also act as the dominant pole in other fields, such as Sociology and Anthropology, though given the commitment of economics to mathematical model building, the 396
The State of Social Sciences in Australia question of how well American arguments and theorems travel may well be more problematical. The situation in economics seems more extreme to the extent that among the top 35 international economics journals, there is not a single Australian journal, despite the high international profile across the 20th century of Australian economists such as Colin Clark and Geoffrey Harcourt (Groenewegen and McFarlane 1990; Fleming 1996). Psychology, in comparison, is viewed by its practitioners as relatively universal or independent of culture—there is no field of ‘Australian psychology’. Moreover, given its proximity to natural and biological sciences, psychology is relatively uninfluenced by trends such as postmodernism which may have been influential elsewhere. Indeed, in Australia, psychology is classified more frequently as a ‘Behavioural’ than as a ‘Social’ Science. Research training in psychology is by apprenticeship, and there is an increase in combined degrees, double degrees or professional degrees, including three-year coursework doctoral programs. Professional doctorates are more common in other fields such as Public Health and Business and Management. Research degrees in Law are also rarely taken. Across Law Schools, the older political distinction between ‘black letter’ and critical legal studies characteristic of an earlier time is eroding. The study of politics maintains strengths in international relations, domestic politics and public policy, and political theory, the latter often in the guise of Foucauldian ‘governmentality’. The post-war structure of political science departments is perhaps still framed by Cold War, geopolitical logic, so that specialisation—rather like cultural anthropology—correlates with the coordinates of the modern nation-state system or else with area studies. Newer interests are delivered through projects or centres. The Australian National University, for example, has various crossdisciplinary, area studies centres, including International Centres for Excellence in Asia-Pacific Studies, the Humanities Research Centre, the Centre for Cross-Cultural Analysis, and the Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research. It is also home to leading international social and political theorists, such as Barry Hindess and Robert Goodin, who work in or around the Social and Political Theory Program in the Research School of Social Sciences—earlier the base for the Political Theory Newsletter, founded at the Australian Defence Force Academy in Canberra. Goodin currently edits the Journal of Political Philosophy. Within the Research School at the ANU, some 397
Histories of Australian Sociology disciplines, like Sociology, have almost disappeared, while others, like History, remain strong. Some earlier innovators, like the influential Urban Research Program, have been closed altogether. Other centres of note include Deakin University’s Centre for Citizenship and Human Rights, founded by Bryan Turner, and the Centre for Public Policy at the University of Melbourne, rebuilt by Mark Considine. An emergent thematic focus is environmental politics and policymaking, and there are interesting examples of multi-disciplinary centres addressing these issues across the regions. Among them are the Centre for Environmental Political Theory and Ethics, University of Tasmania, the work of Robin Eckersley and Peter Christoff at Melbourne, and the Institute for Sustainability and Technology Policy at Murdoch University, Perth. This latter institute includes philosophers, sociologists, political theorists and life scientists; it was founded by the environmental scientist Peter Newman, renowned for his work with Jeff Kenworthy on city and regional policy research. History, while often formally classified with liberal arts or humanities rather than Social Sciences, remains a key strength in social sciences activity. Historians have always been among the key actors in discussions of public life; they have often also been active in the kind of theoretical discussion that in other national cultures one might associate with philosophy or social theory, as is attested by the quality of papers published for example in the Australian Historical Studies, the Australian Journal of Politics and History, and the Journal of Australian Studies. Given the peculiarities of Australian history, one perennial concern remains the question of Antipodean difference, or exceptionalism. This question tends to divide scholars between nationalists and cosmopolitans; the impact of globalization is to reinforce the latter, though with the result that ideas of historical specificity (or ‘alternative modernities’) are often trampled in the process. History appointments have shrunk by half in ten years. If there has been compensatory growth, it may be in Australian Studies, partly in connection with the rise of Cultural Studies. The standard reservations expressed about Australian Studies are that its professional training lacks disciplinary rigour and because it involves local content does not transport well into other markets, climes, and settings overseas; academics with training in Australian Studies may well be able to manipulate new lateral openings, say in media or museums in the Australian setting, but imaginably would find it rather more difficult to pick up work as, say political scientists 398
The State of Social Sciences in Australia or sociologists in Europe or America. A degree in Australian Studies may be a useful strategy for freelance workers or for those who want to make a career in Australia. Perhaps our greatest challenge is to reshape Australian Studies into a global, or, more precisely, comparative, field of study. Given the pre-existing differences between the cultures and systems of training, in vocational terms, the challenge here is to work out ways to train doctoral candidates so that they will be prepared to conduct research both within Australia and abroad. Multidisciplinary and combined appointments as advocated by the Gulbenkian Commission, Open the Social Sciences, are in some ways less imperative in Australia than elsewhere. The relatively small scale of Australian intellectual culture means that some disciplines, such as sociology, have never been self-reproductive in the professional sense. The absence of a highly developed division of labour, as in America, means that intellectuals and researchers frequently move sideways from one discipline to another, and often work through different literatures, journals and conferences at the same time. Doubtless the results of this process can include a kind of promiscuity or superficiality in which intellectuals get it wrong, or more wrong than usual. The upside of this process, in contrast, is the phenomenon of multi-skilled intellectuals, including exemplary figures such as Bernard Smith and George Seddon and others who follow them, like Terry Smith (Making the Modern, 1993), Nicholas Thomas and Tom Griffiths (Hunters and Collectors, 1996). The older generation of mavericks also includes figures such as Hugh Stretton, whose work covers policy, economics, history and questions of the good life. Intellectuals like these lead from the margins; while now recognised as one of Australia’s leading public intellectuals, Stretton was forced earlier to self-publish his widely influential book Ideas for Australian Cities (1964). More recently his alternative Economics text was copublished by UNSW Press and Polity in Britain. La Trobe University: A Case Study The University of Melbourne, Australian National University (ANU), La Trobe University and the University of the Sunshine Coast can be taken to represent each of the four phases of the Australian university system identified in the overview above.
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Histories of Australian Sociology The University of Melbourne was established in 1856 as part of a broader program of public institution building that included the public library and museum. The colonial city’s aspiration was to institute a civic high culture of learning. Pride of place in the University, therefore, was given to Classics, Arts, Law, Medicine, and Natural Sciences. As one of the seven sandstone universities, it is the richest university in capital assets and in the average income levels of its student population, which today numbers in excess of 30,000. The social sciences, largely as a twentieth-century artefact, therefore, did not gain institutional footing in the University till relatively late in that century and fall between the older disciplinary stools. Early on, sociology was delivered in agricultural science and psychology. Consequently, it was the Politics Department that first introduced sociology courses especially by Professor A. F. Davies in Politics and Geoff Sharp and Frank Knopfelmacher in Social Theory. Ironically, a separate Sociology Program was not established until the last decade of the twentieth century, long after its popularity had waned elsewhere, and it remains under the aegis of the Politics Department. Anthropology is now located, together with the Ashworth Centre for Social Theory, in the History and Philosophy of Science Program. History, Politics, Geography and Architecture remain major areas of strength, and Social Sciences are delivered through various Centres and Programs for Health. The Australian National University was founded in 1946 as the primary Australian research institution. The University subsequently developed a separate structure called ‘Faculties’, for the purpose of generating undergraduates to feed into the Research Schools. The Faculties were organised and reorganised to cover Social Sciences and Pacific Studies. Caught then between this dual structure, often duplicating disciplines if not programs, the ANU has more recently introduced a system of virtual institutes to bridge the gap by connecting teachers and researchers in terms of shared thematic interests. The Social Sciences remain entrenched in both Faculties and in the Research School of Social Sciences, where Political Science, Philosophy and Economics are dominant. The University of the Sunshine Coast commenced life as a Teachers’ College in 1994 and is one of the newest and smallest Universities in Australia, with 2500 students. There is no school or department of Social Sciences. In the area of Social and Community Studies, courses draw on anthropology and sociology. International Studies offers courses in political science, as well as Japanese and Indonesian 400
The State of Social Sciences in Australia language courses. Thus, Social Science concerns are addressed in different areas of substantive or vocational study. This may be the image of the future, with most universities in Australia offering applied and vocational social sciences as part of business studies and a few select universities continuing to provide discipline-oriented social sciences. Because the high point in the institution of the social sciences in Australia coincides with the birth of La Trobe University, and because we know this university best, we use its story here as a case study. La Trobe, an archetypal Australian redgum university, was established in 1964 and officially opened to students in 1967, at the height of the post-war boom years and at the beginning of the rapid expansion of tertiary institutions—the first such wave of national commitment since federation years. To recall our typological history in the overview above, La Trobe is representative of the fate of the social sciences in third wave universities into the current fourth phase of rationalization and vocationalization. Today the main campus of La Trobe is located in a working-class suburb of Melbourne with a high proportion of newly arrived immigrants. The over 22,000 students at La Trobe constitute a very ethnically diverse population and many students are the first generation in their families to attend a university. Like all universities in Australia, La Trobe also has a sizable overseas student intake.6 At La Trobe’s commencement in 1967, there were three disciplines in the School of Social Sciences: Sociology, Politics, and Economics. Only two of the five Full Professors in Sociology and Politics held doctorates, while all other staff held Bachelor degrees. By contrast, all members of the economics staff held Masters degrees, in keeping with the general ethos of the era, a buoyant, expansive labour market, and a dissociation between the pressure to develop individual career and research profiles and the development of professional credentials. This situation was to change over the course of the next thirty years. In 1967, there were no professional or vocational courses offered by the university, and each of the Schools was of roughly equivalent size in staff, finances, and resources. There was a strong emphasis on interdisciplinary studies within each School. Undergraduates were required to take two general first-year overview courses in the social sciences and were then permitted to integrate sociology, politics and economics in a mix of second- and third-year courses in order to qualify for a Bachelor of Arts (Social Sciences) or a Bachelor of Economics (Social Sciences) degree. 401
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La Trobe’s growth over the next two decades more than matched its founders’ intellectual ambitions. In 1990, there were ten schools and two campuses (Bundoora and City). The School of Social Sciences consisted of three departments: Legal Studies (where Law is understood to pertain to those ‘concepts, tools, and techniques constituting a distinctive scheme of social order’ and the objective of the Department is to ‘consider the place of law in the social whole’), Politics, and Sociology. Meanwhile, Schools of Economics and Education were also developed separately from the School of Social Sciences. A number of other university-wide research centres and institutes of various sizes and resources also existed, including: regional studies of Africa, Latin America, and the Southwest Pacific; Socio-Legal Studies; Social Justice and Human Rights; and Gerontology. Women’s Studies was to follow into the 1980s. The ’90s was a tumultuous decade for the national tertiary education sector in Australia, and La Trobe University was no exception. As a regional liberal arts university with a large, aging staff profile, administrative reforms and cuts had to be made if the university was to survive national changes in educational policies and goals. In 1990, 85 per cent of all undergraduate degrees were BAs. In keeping with global trends in OECD tertiary education sectors, the general strategy included centralization, computerization, downsizing, professionalisation and vocationalizing of disciplines with the concomitant shifting of resources away from humanities and social sciences. The continuing staff in these areas not only had to cope with increased workloads on a declining resource base, but also had to adjust to a new managerial environment that developed national standards for measuring performance, productivity, external income generation, and so forth. In the Social Sciences at La Trobe, these changes in national tertiary education policy and strategy had the following impacts: Reorganisation of schools, departments and faculties: Whereas in 1990 there were ten schools, these were reconfigured into four main Faculties by the beginning of 1994. The Faculty of Economics, Education and Social Sciences (the title was shortened to Social Sciences within a year). Economics contained two Schools (Commerce and Economics), with the latter containing three Departments: Econometrics, Economic History and Economics per se. The Graduate Schools of Education and Social Work were added to the 402
The State of Social Sciences in Australia Economics Faculty, while Politics migrated to the Humanities Faculty. For the first time, Law was officially added to the portfolio of the Legal Studies School, and Anthropology was added to the portfolio of the School of Sociology. Health, Legal, Labour and Women’s Studies were listed as cross-disciplinary streams available to all Social Sciences (and Humanities) students. The 1994 Faculty restructuring of the university was reformed again in 1997, this time resulting in the most significant restructuring of Social Sciences since the founding of the university. La Trobe University’s international reputation as a liberal arts college was undercut by a major shift in resources and foci away from social sciences. This was symbolised by the bulking up of Health Sciences (with supplementation by Social Work, Public Health, a range of vocational courses in medical sciences, and opening of specialist research centres), the establishment of a new Faculty of Law, Business and Management (with a subordination of economics to commerce and legal studies to vocational training in law), and the shunting sideways of Sociology and Anthropology to the Faculty of Humanities. The compromise was that the Faculty of Humanities would add Social Sciences to its title and the School of Sociology and Anthropology would merge with politics to form School of Sociology, Politics and Anthropology (SPA). Three Sociologists of Health joined the new Faculty of Health Sciences. By 2001, the School of SPA was again restructured to include the Department of Asian Studies and renamed as the School of Social Sciences. In 1997 these were restructured again to be Departments of Business (13 staff in 2002), Accounting and Management (26 staff in 2002), and Economics and Finance (28 staff in 2002). Commerce is now dominant and economic history is a minor key despite the presence of three leading practitioners in Michael Schneider, John King, and Lionel Frost, mirroring the shrinkage of economic history nation-wide. The Graduate School of Education was axed altogether. The development of regional campuses: In 1990, La Trobe had only two campuses; in 2001, La Trobe had 2 metropolitan campuses and 6 regional campuses. Social Sciences were taught at half of these regional campuses, two of which have small but independent departments. The disciplines: Asian Studies was the innovation of Professor John Fitzgerald, a politics graduate and a China specialist. Its main focus is 403
Histories of Australian Sociology language training but, with its incorporation into the new School of Social Sciences, it is expected to expand into cultural, political and socio-economic courses and research, with cross-program offerings in Politics, Sociology and Anthropology. Staffing: In 1990, the Politics Department had 19 full-time equivalent staff, including two Professors.7 There were only two women in the department, though one of them was a Full Professor. Course offerings included: government systems, policy-making and the Australian state; international relations and peace and conflict studies; regional and comparative studies (e.g., Indonesia, India, Middle East, North America, Communist Bloc); labour politics and political theory. The Sociology Department was nearly twice the size of Politics, with 34 equivalent full-time staff, including three full professors (an Australian trained at UNSW; a Japanese trained in Japan and Pittsburgh; a Chilean trained in London). Already by 1990, the baby boomer demographic was starting to reveal a top-heavy pyramid hierarchical structure. Six of the 34 staff members self-identified as anthropologists. Women represented one quarter of the total number of staff. In 2002, seven out of the 11 staff in Asian Studies are women; there are only three women (or 22 per cent) in Politics and seven (or 33 per cent) in Sociology and Anthropology. There is one female Reader in Politics and five female Senior Lecturers in Sociology. The age profile of Asian Studies is again the youngest by far, with neither the Politics nor Sociology and Anthropology programs having any staff who are Lecturers or above under the age of 40. This reflects three aspects: the radical downsizing of Sociology over the past ten years, the loss of junior staff appointments in order to protect existing tenured staff in more senior positions, and the general freezing of all new appointments at any level, excepting through individual promotions meeting explicit performance criteria set by the Faculty. This situation is not likely to alter in the foreseeable future. Teaching: The 1994 Academic Plan of the School of Sociology and Anthropology proclaimed itself as having: ‘the largest number of graduate research students of any sociology department in Australia’. In 2001, these claims remained largely true, but they are under considerable threat. The total number of MAs and PhDs by research students in the various programs that constitute the School of Social Sciences today, has remained relatively stable over the decade at about 100, with the proportions being approximately 50 per cent 404
The State of Social Sciences in Australia sociology, 10 per cent anthropology, 30 per cent politics, and 10 per cent Asian studies. La Trobe has always battled to offer sufficient scholarship positions to applicants: the numbers of scholarships on offer are declining each year, their monetary value cannot compete with the sandstone universities, and increasingly, students need to obtain a high first-class Honours Bachelor degree with a mark over 85 per cent to have any chance of success. The Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences as a whole only offers approximately 30 postgraduate scholarships per year. The large number of part-time postgraduate students is also an indicator of the number of research students who struggle to combine work and study requirements. A recent student poverty study conducted by the Academic Development Unit revealed that many La Trobe students come from lower socio-economic status groups and go into debt in order to undertake their studies. In any one calendar year, approximately ten to twenty postgraduates can be expected to successfully complete their thesis. In contrast to the North American universities, there is no system of professional seminars in research degrees. The School offers informal monthly thematic seminars convened by staff in a voluntary capacity and an annual two-day School Conference at which all enrolled postgraduates are expected to present a paper on their research topic. Postgraduate research in Australia has an Oxbridge aura in ethos, but not in resource allocation. The system is shifting from a biographically and intellectually driven focus to thesis topics and methods that fit the current professionalized and corporatized priorities. Thesis length and timelines are being reduced downwards, supervision is modelled on contractual rather than pastoral lines, and research interests of supervisor and student alike are being encouraged to align with Faculty-nominated research priority areas. Research Priorities and Foci of School of Social Sciences With the merger of Sociology and Anthropology with Politics and Asian Studies, three emergent research foci have been determined as priorities for the whole School: 1) Asian-Pacific Region Studies; 2) Australian Studies; and 3) Policy Studies. The identification of longterm corporate goals is intended to attract external research income, encourage more collaborative research and teaching and to provide more flexible yet focussed learning paths for students from under- to postgraduate levels (and with faster completion rates). While there is 405
Histories of Australian Sociology no desire to reduce the School’s pre-eminent breadth and pluralism, there is increasing external pressure to build a critical mass of research activities that attracts more income and faster turnovers of throughput in identified areas of research strength and that involves more collaborative approaches to research. While the School has a reasonable but not outstanding track record in attracting external research income, the past decade has witnessed high productivity on the publications front. Well over 50 books have been written and published by Sociology, Anthropology, Politics and Asian Studies staff, some of whom are internationally-recognised scholars in their fields. As to be expected the most prolific authors are the more senior researchers, with each of the School’s full professors having written at least three single-authored scholarly books since 1990. In addition, a significant number of graduates have published their doctoral theses within five years of completion. Most School graduates holding doctorates have secured jobs in other universities in the Australasian region within 12 months of their graduation. With the cutbacks in the university system in recent years, however, there is a trend for graduates to obtain work outside the academy: for example, politics and sociology graduates in public and social sector research, anthropologists are gaining employment with mining companies, Australian indigenous organizations, museums, and overseas aid agencies. A majority of the School’s postgraduate population is already gainfully employed. While this enriches their critical reflections, it also means a slower completion rate. There are two international journals that have their editorial base in the School, Thesis Eleven: Critical Theory and Historical Sociology (Sage) and Pacifica Review (Carfax) respectively. In addition, some staff members have editorial roles in Arena Journal, Critique of Anthropology, Journal of Intercultural Studies and Journal of Iberian and Latin American Studies. Two La Trobe University Institutes, the Institute of Iberian and Latin American Studies and the African Research Institute, have input by staff in the School. The newly established Thesis Eleven Centre for Critical Theory promises to advance the School’s profile in international critical theory and historical sociology research. The Centre is a member of the International Social Theory Consortium that involves over ten such centres and is cultivating specific linkages in the first instance with Yale University, Department of Sociology. The Politics program is seeking to establish a Centre for Civilizational 406
The State of Social Sciences in Australia Dialogue. The existing Centres and Institutes have been important promoters of research seminars and conferences that bring international scholars to La Trobe University and that in turn have attracted income to the School from outside Academies and Foundations, both private and government, national and international. External income for research projects has been more difficult to sustain in the changing system than outstanding publication records of scholars at the School would lead one to expect. As one of the major Social Sciences schools in Australia, its prospects are strong but unlikely to indicate growth. In the longer run, the school, rather than its individual disciplines, may be that which remains. Publics Universities like La Trobe have been major actors involved in institutionalizing the social sciences and encouraging interdisciplinarity in Australia. They have also contributed significantly to public debate. Sociologists like Michael Pusey (UNSW) and John Carroll (La Trobe), political thinkers like Robert Manne (La Trobe), and historians like Hugh Stretton (Adelaide) have been constant critics of neoliberalism (known in Australia as economic rationalism). Historians like Peter Read (ANU) and Henry Reynolds (Tasmania), as well as critics like Manne, have offered major interventions in debates over race relations between whites and indigenous peoples and the issue of reconciliation. Public debate and policy-making on migration and multiculturalism since the late sixties includes significant interventions by social scientists ranging from Charles Price (Demography, ANU), Jean Martin (La Trobe), and James Jupp (Centre for Immigration and Multicultural Studies, in the Demography and Sociology program, ANU) through to contemporary commentators such as Gill Bottomley, and Mary Kalantzis at RMIT. Feminist scholars of Australian welfare state and social policy include the sociologists Marian Sawer (ANU) and Kerreen Reiger (La Trobe), the historians Marilyn Lake (La Trobe) and Marian Quartly (Monash), the social policy practitioners Bettina Cass and Meredith Edwards through to Sheila Shaver at the University of Western Sydney. The politics of immigration, race and welfare are the main arenas of debate about the national settlement. Because the Australian settlement as been statecentric, academics aspiring to be legislators have crossed over to 407
Histories of Australian Sociology strategic middle-level public service management and policy units. Debates continue concerning the fate of regional and rural Australia, poverty, the ‘underclass’ and the issue of social polarization. Leading conservative critics of left revisionism on race include Geoffrey Blainey. Blainey’s own path and the ambition of his project are evident in the transition from classics such as The Tyranny of Distance (1968) to A Short History of the World (2000). Globalization is now presented or received as a major issue for intellectuals in Australia, as is citizenship and identity politics or the politics of representation, the latter perhaps especially in anthropology and cultural studies. Historians have been particularly concerned with interpreting the ‘Australian Settlement’ and its legacy of social and economic protection, not least in light of the centenary of Federation. Historians have been vocal on matters of race, civics, citizenship and gender. Issues of social capital and solidarity are significant, though these tend to be conducted in local terms of reference, outside, say, the terms of reference in Tocqueville or in Putnam’s Bowling Alone. Given the centrality of the state tradition, globalization or marketization is a major practical as well as symbolic concern, though again the terms of reference are often framed by the tradition of collective provision rather than the liberal image of homo economicus. Intellectual traditions in universities are generally left-liberal, or more dispositionally Fabian in the British sense, though Australian Fabians have arguably been more influential in the Australian policy process than in Britain. The boundaries between research and policy are often observed to be more fluid than elsewhere. This is particularly notable in the crossover of the politics of social movements and the state, especially in policy-making and public service evident over the past three decades amongst labour, international aid and development, and feminist and environmentalist academics. The mainline Christian churches, not least through the ecumenical movement, have been significant institutional actors as sources and sponsors of social research in indigenous affairs, immigration, social welfare, overseas aid and development, education, and social justice areas. Churchbased agencies make up over 80 per cent of the so-called ‘Third Sector’. In terms of social theory, American or Anglo influences are strong in some places, such as Canberra. Sydney has had an enthusiasm for things French, compatible with its local tradition of libertarianism, while German or Critical Theory has ties in Melbourne, home of 408
The State of Social Sciences in Australia Thesis Eleven. From the seventies to the eighties, Australia was the place of exile for the Budapest School, students of Georg Lukács (Ivan Szelenyi in Adelaide, George and Maria Markus in Sydney, Ferenc Fehér and Agnes Heller in Melbourne). Other exiled European intellectuals of significance for antipodean social and political theory include the political philosopher Eugene Kamenka, the literary critic Andrew Riemer, and the social theorist, Johann Arnason. Australia also led in the English-language discovery of Gramsci from 1968, not least because of the pioneering intellectual biography by Alastair Davidson. Marxism developed out of historiography and labour history into class analysis and political economy, which fed into the politics of New Labor 1983-1996. Earlier left enthusiasms for industry development policy transformed into advocacy of cultural industry policy, which informs academics at universities such as Griffith in Brisbane. Australians make up one of several wings of the ongoing Erik Olin Wright project of class analysis. The period of Thatcherism saw a major influx of British refugees, including Barry Hindess, Bryan Turner, Colin Mercer and Tony Bennett, Frank Castles and Stephen Castles—many of whom have since returned to the UK. American immigrants are less common, partly because Australia plainly falls outside the American status system (as a New Yorker said to Agnes Heller, ‘I’d rather shine shoes in Toledo than teach philosophy in Bundoora’), partly because the networks are too far away and the salary rates no longer commensurable. There are few prominent American intellectuals in Australia, though there are well-exercised paths of traffic between Australia and Canada, and an Association dedicated to that crossover. American studies in Australia are concentrated in politics and history. Traffic out of Australia has always been significant, and traditionally it has been one-way (e.g., Robert Hughes, Jill Ker Conway, Germaine Greer, Clive James, Peter Conrad), though some expatriates have rediscovered Australia in the ’90s and others are commuters (e.g., Peter Carey, Elizabeth Grosz, Meaghan Morris, Carole Pateman, Peter Singer, Bryan Turner). Asian intellectual traffic is smaller and more frequently organically connected to regional interests (e.g., languages, Asian studies). An exception to this rule might be Yoshio Sugimoto, a renowned sociologist on three continents, and not only for his work on Japan; although contrary to academic commonsense expectations, there is no great interest in or support for Japanese 409
Histories of Australian Sociology studies in Australia. Other Asian presences are especially apparent in the colonial and postcolonial connection, sometimes connected to subaltern studies (e.g., Raj Pandey, Sanjay Seth, Leela Gandhi, Suvendi Pereira at La Trobe; Dipesh Chakrabarty, Chicago/ANU). Political scientists also have a significant presence in Asia, not least because of the growth of regionalist studies during the Cold War era. The recently deceased Herb Feith (Monash) on Indonesia is one example, while Joe Camilleri (La Trobe) and Desmond Ball (ANU) are leading regional security analysts. ANU is the national research centre of Asian politics and economics and as such has the largest core of research scholars in the field. Dennis Altman (La Trobe) is renowned for his public activism and studies on sex and sexuality. In recent years, he has played a leading role in the United Nations’ organization of HIV/AIDS research and policy-making at global and regional levels. Australian studies is an important vehicle for cultural and intellectual traffic overseas for a nation-state that is demographically small (20 million people) but economically and politically of not insignificant global and regional status. Australian studies in America are conducted especially through the Centre at Texas (Austin), the Australian and New Zealand Studies Centre at Georgetown University, Washington DC, and via the Chair of Australian Studies at Harvard. Of these three connections, only Harvard is dedicated to Australian Studies exclusively of New Zealand. The central UK connections are through the centres at the University of London, Lampeter University, Wales, and Trinity College, Dublin. There are also a number of Australian Studies Centres in Europe, East Asia and Southeast Asia. The general situation in New Zealand is smaller, and more difficult. Britain has always had a special relationship with New Zealand, which was unaffected by American involvement in the Pacific arena of the Second War in the way that Australia was. New Zealand’s university tradition is part English, part Scottish. Its greatest minds have often travelled out (e.g., John G. A. Pocock, John C. Beaglehole). There appears to be a high proportion of expatriate academics from Britain, US and Australia in the New Zealand university system, who stay for an average of three to five years. The most striking contemporary difference between the intellectual climate in Australia and New Zealand is directly political. While New Zealand pioneered deregulation in the 1980s at a pace blistering even 410
The State of Social Sciences in Australia by Australian standards, its reaction since the late 90s has seen the return of Labor to office, following a left Third Way path. In short, there is a strong degree of consonance between the left-liberal academy and the public face of government. Present Social Services Minister and likely Prime Ministerial candidate Steve Maharey, for example, is a sociologist. In Australia, by comparison, the LiberalNational Conservative Government, which has held power since 1996, is much closer to Bush than Blair in orientation, so that many social scientists feel locked out. In New Zealand, to the contrary, some sociologists at least feel locked into consent or silent support for the Labour regime, where sociology is legitimated at the potential expense of sacrificing voice for loyalty. National funding for social sciences in New Zealand is complicated by the fact that its academy is the Royal Academy, where natural science reigns. New strategic and intellectual openings appear, however, around issues such as the genetic modification of foodstuffs (similar developments and strategic openings can be expected in Australia with reference to rural sociology and agriculture, which intersects with different enthusiasms for ecology). The centrality of nature, and the radical distinction in race relations between whites and the dominant minority Maori (fourteen per cent of the population, compared to two percent for aborigines in Australia) further indicate the differences across the Tasman. In Australia there are two pertinent institutions, the Academy of the Social Sciences and the Academy of the Humanities. Both feel anxious in the present political climate. Few academics have influence with the present government, and even less social scientists. The recent Review of the Australian Learned Academies suggested their amalgamation, which seems unlikely, though co-operative avenues are increasingly open and exercised (Blainey and Maloney 2001). Social Sciences, and more so Humanities, plainly find it increasingly difficult to defend their interests in terms of pressing government claims regarding the priority of ‘national economic benefit’ in securing funding. Given the relative weakness of team-research traditions in social science and the predominance of single-researcher activity, it is all too easy for authorities to insist that social science work will get done in its own time anyway, and thus needs no funding. The increasing institutional demands on university teachers who conduct research simply means that less research will be done, while the reliance of funding on the state or auxiliary institutions cannot be replaced by directives to find money (or time) elsewhere. 411
Histories of Australian Sociology This scenario is unlikely to change, regardless of which party is in government, given more pressing economic imperatives (global export drives) or social policy concerns (health care, aging). As leading historians like Stuart Macintyre, Dean of Arts at Melbourne, indicate, these days the best you can hope to do as a senior academic is write papers and put the books on hold. For some academics, especially at the bottom of the food chain, it is difficult to find time to read books, let alone to write them. This is one major aspect of the crisis facing social sciences in Australia. In the absence of a French culture of criticism, an American tradition of public intellectuals and independent magazines or philanthropic funding, a German tradition of foundation funding, or a British tradition of independent journalism, there are relatively few resources for public intellectual work. Most public intellectual activity, indeed, is conducted by academics, though it is also arguably the case that the most influential historian in Australia—at least in political circles and popular consciousness – is one of its leading journalists (Paul Kelly, of The Australian). Indeed, given that there is no sufficient income base for independent writers, most public intellectuals draw state salaries in order to support their public work for liberal papers such as the Age or to appear on ABC radio or TV. In a relatively small country, however, some of this public activity is inevitably conducted at the expense of pure research and maintenance. The debate around civic life and public intellectuals remains unresolved; given the practical or pragmatic inclination of Australian culture, there seems to be a widespread sensibility that the only decent intellectuals are public intellectuals. An equally powerful view can be put (though it rarely is) that intellectuals, left or right, radical or traditional, ought to have a primary commitment to maintaining intellectual culture as well as to innovating within its traditions, to cultivating its local traditions as well as connecting them into global or other national trends and vice-versa. Antipodeans have always, necessarily, been good at cultural traffic, at knowing both their own worlds and those constitutive of them, not least in the centres. Arguably we could do better at lateral connections in the Southern Hemisphere, learning from Latin America, South Africa and Southeast Asia as well as Britain, the United States and the Continent. This, in turn, impacts not only on questions of ‘pure’ as contrasted to ‘applied’ research or public criticism, but also on questions of how the present turn to Australian studies might be developed in ways that express culture as traffic and not only as place. 412
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For the moment, the culture of social sciences (and humanities) in Australia seems caught adrift, irrelevant, and negative in relation to the dominant political agenda of neoliberalism. One positive development is the establishment of the Council for the Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences (CHASS) created in 2004 to promote the humanities and social sciences to the government. The Labor Party, the so-to-say natural constituency of reforming social sciences, having initiated the rationalization of the university system, seems both responsible in large part for this malaise and at present unable to redirect it. In this context, the major themes of debate remain negative or oppositional—against asylum or immigration policy, against monoculturalism, against cultural isolationism and single-minded support for the Washington consensus. Beyond politics, in this particular sense, Australian contributions to the global culture industry continue, as they will to intellectual traffic in the social sciences and humanities. The challenge remains to develop innovative ways of responding to these predicaments and opportunities in and after disciplinarity. Bibliography Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia. 1998. Challenges for the Social Sciences and Australia: Discipline Research Strategies, Volumes 1 and 2. Australia Research Council. Aitkin, Don. (ed.) 1985. Surveys of Australian Political Science. Sydney, Allen & Unwin. Anderson, Don, Richard Johnson and Bruce Milligan. 2000. Access to Postgraduate Courses: Opportunities and Obstacles. NBEET Higher Education Council Report No. 64. Austin-Broos, Diane. 1984. Australian Sociologies, Sydney, Allen and Unwin. Alvey, J. and Smith L. 2000. ‘Perceptions of the Causes of Recent Declines in Enrolments in Economics Studies in Antipodean Universities’, Journal of Economic and Social Policy, 4:2, 1-13. Australia Research Council. 1992. Status Report for the Humanities and Social Sciences. AGPS, Canberra. —— September, 1998. Challenges for the Social Sciences and Australia: Comments on Discipline Research Strategies. National Board of Employment, Education and Training (NBEET).
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Histories of Australian Sociology Beilharz, Peter. 1997. Imagining the Antipodes. Theory, Culture and the Visual in the Work of Bernard Smith. Melbourne, Cambridge University Press. —— 1995. ‘Social Theory in Australia: A Road Map for Tourists’, Thesis Eleven 43, 120-133. —— 1994. Transforming Labor–Labour Tradition and the Labor Decade in Australia. Melbourne, Cambridge University Press. —— 1990. ‘Australian Radical Scholarship in the Wake of Marxism’, Political Theory Newsletter 2, 1: 1-9. Birrell, Bob, Ian R. Dobson, Virginia Rapson and T. Fred Smith. July, 2001. Skilled Labour: Gains and Losses. Centre for Population and Urban Research, Monash University. Blainey, G. and J. Maloney. 2001. 2000 Review of the Australian Learned Academies. Canberra, DETYA. Bourke, Helen. 1988. ‘Social Scientists As Intellectuals’ in Brian Head and James Walter (eds) Intellectual Movements and Australian Society. Melbourne, Oxford University Press. —— 1984. ‘Intellectuals For Export: Australia in the 1920s’, Australian Cultural History 3: 59-73. —— 1981. ‘Sociology and the Social Scientists in Australia, 19121928’, Australian and New Zealand Journal of Sociology. 17, 1: 26-35. Catley, R. and D. Mosler, 1998. America and Americans in Australia. Westport, Conn., Praeger. Considine, Mark. 2001. ‘APSA Presidential Address 2000: ‘The Tragedy of the Common-rooms? Political Science and the New University Governance’, Australian Journal of Political Science. 36,1: 145-156. Crozier, Michael. 2001. ‘A Problematic Discipline: The Identity of Australian Political Studies’, Australian Journal of Political Science. 36,1: 7-26. Dessaix, Robert. ed. 1998. Speaking Their Minds: Intellectuals and the Public Culture in Australia. ABC Books. Fleming, G. 1996. ‘Australian Economists and the “Educative” Ideal: An Historical Perspective’, Journal of Economic and Social Policy, 1:2, 24-34. Groenewegen, Peter D. and Bruce McFarlane. 1990. A History of Australian Economic Thought. London and New York, Routledge. Gulbenkian Commission. 1996. Open the Social Sciences: Report of the Gulbenkian Commission on the Restructuring of the Social Sciences. Mudimbe, V.Y. (ed.) Stanford University Press. Head, B. and J. Walter. eds. 1988. Intellectual Movements and Australian Society. Melbourne, Oxford University Press. 414
The State of Social Sciences in Australia Hooper, Beverley. 1995. ‘Asian Studies in Australia: Trends and Prospects’, Asian Studies Review. 17,3: 71-82. Kersten, Rikki et. al. 1996. Asian Studies in Australia’s Higher Education Sector. RIAP, Sydney University. Macintyre, S. 2000. A Concise History of Australia. Melbourne, Cambridge University Press. Marginson, Simon. ed. 2002. Investing in Social Capital. Postgraduate Training in the Social Sciences in Australia. Journal of Australian Studies 74, St. Lucia: The University of Queensland Press. Marginson, Simon and Mark Considine. 2000. The Enterprise University: Power, Governance and Reinvention in Australia. Cambridge and New York, Cambridge University Press. Marsh, Ian. 1995. The Development and Impact of Australia’s ‘Think Tanks’. CEDA Information Paper No. 43. (Committee for Economic Development of Australia). Melleuish, G. 1995. Cultural Liberalism in Australia. Melbourne, Cambridge University Press. Millmow, Alex. 2002. ‘The Disintegration of Economics’, Economic Papers. 21:2, June. Milner, Anthony. 1999. ‘Approaching Asia, and Asian Studies, in Australia’, Asian Studies Review. 23, 2: 193-203. OECD and DEETYA 1997. Thematic Review of the First Years of Tertiary Education in Australia. Putnam, Robert D. 2000. Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. New York, Simon and Schuster. Richmond, Katy. (ed.) Sociology in Australian Universities: 1993-2000. The Australian Sociological Association (TASA). —— (ed.) 2000. The Australian Sociological Association (TASA) Directory. TASA. Roe, Jill. 2001. ‘“A Golden Age”?: a personal reflection, 1970s and now’, Australian Universities Review. 44:1 & 2, 2-4. Rowse, T. 1978. Liberalism and Australian National Character. Malmsbury, Kibble. Russell, Steven. 1999. ‘Sociology in Mid-life Crisis?’ in Collis, Marion, Lyle Munro & Steven Russell (eds). Sociology for a New Millennium: Challenges and Prospects. Melbourne, TASA Conference Proceedings. Stretton, Hugh. 1999. Economics: A New Introduction. Sydney, University of NSW Press. —— 1975. Ideas for Australian Cities. Melbourne, Georgian House.
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Histories of Australian Sociology Wilson, Erin. 2000. Report on the Student Experiences of Poverty at La Trobe University. Academic Development Unit, La Trobe University. Withers, Glenn. (ed.) 1991. Commonality and Difference: Australia and the United States. Allen & Unwin. Notes 1.
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Many public buildings in the colonies were built using local materials. ‘Sandstone universities’, therefore, types colonial metropolitan universities by building material. ‘Redbrick universities’ performs a similar function for modern post-WW II universities. The term is first used in Britain and popularised by the campus novels of David Lodge. ‘Redgum’ universities are a local Australian inflection, but shifts the allusion to the environment and away from the building materials, as very few universities in Australia since 1945 have used redbrick. It refers to the same phase of state provision of tertiary education. Personal communication from Simon Marginson (20.05.2002). Professor Marginson, Director, Monash Centre for Research in International Education, and leading Australian tertiary education policy analyst, indicated that national data on new or all social science graduates by employment sector is difficult to obtain in useful form. Coursework doctorates are advanced professional degrees in fields such as Nursing, Education, Business and Engineering. Typically they involve coursework programs as in the American PhD, plus an extended professional project or dissertation, often of 50 000 words. This compares to the normal Australian PhD program which typically involves no compulsory coursework—though some universities are now introducing this—and a dissertation of 80 000 to 100 000 words in length. The research Masters is typically a two-year full-time training in advanced research, including a 30 000 to 50 000 dissertation. Some research Masters students upgrade to PhD level during the course of their studies. The remaining postgraduate students in Australia are mostly enrolled in coursework-only programs at Graduate Diploma or Masters level. Among this group, which is growing rapidly, Business and Information Technology enrolments predominate. Business students constitute the largest single block of social science students at postgraduate level, but among them the emphasis is overwhelmingly on practical vocational fields such as Marketing or Financial Management—only a small proportion of Business postgraduates enrol in research degrees, in contrast to the more traditional social science disciplines such as History or Sociology. The following summaries draw on entries in Investing in Social Capital: Postgraduate Training in the Social Sciences in Australia, 2002, edited by Simon Marginson for a collaborative project of the Academy of Social Sciences, Australia. A further major contribution is the Cambridge Handbook of Social Sciences, 2003, co-edited by Ian McAllister, Steven Dowrick and Riaz Hassan; and see generally the Academy of Social Sciences, Challenges to the Social Sciences, 1998. For a general overview and critical discussion of these texts, themes and thinkers in Australian sociology, see Austin, 1984. See: www.detya.gov.au/archive/highered/statistics/characteristics/05_overseasstudents.html It should be noted that Australia uses different nomenclature for classifying academic staff to that of North America. There are 5 levels of teaching and research appointment: Associate Lecturer (Level A), Lecturer (Level B), Senior Lecturer (Level C), Associate Professor or Reader (Level D), Professor (Level E). Only Level
The State of Social Sciences in Australia E appointments are granted the title ‘Professor’ in contrast to those national tertiary systems that follow the North American convention of calling all appointments ‘Professor’ (Full, Associate, Assistant). It should also be noted that Australians do not distinguish between Faculty (Academic) and Staff (Administrative) but rather the former term refers to the peak organizational structure of cognate disciplines in a university.
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24 Change, Uncertainty and the Future of Sociology STEPHEN CROOK (2003)*
I
am grateful for the opportunity to address themes that are central to the future of our discipline and association. That future appears clouded to many of us, especially the majority located in universities. There, our concerns are amplified by funding problems, shifts in student enrolment patterns towards ‘safe’ vocational courses, permanent revolution in organizational structures and the rest (I have been at James Cook University for three years and in each year the composition and structure of our Faculty have been different). Those matters richly deserve extended sociological attention, which I can’t give them here. But I do want to link them to other questions about the future of sociology. The theme of ‘sociology in crisis’ is as old as the discipline itself, but there are important differences between the challenges presently facing the discipline and the post-Parsonsian ‘crisis’ of US sociology in the 1960s. In that period, each side of the quarrels over ‘system vs conflict’, ‘structure vs action’ or ‘conservatism vs radicalism’ could share the comfortable assumption that their arguments mattered. It was important to settle the political, theoretical and methodological parameters of sociology because sociology mattered. The type of sociology that prevailed would influence the shape of society itself. We no longer enjoy that consolation. We may have come to terms with a post-Parsonsian pluralism, but we seem to face the more insidious threat of a leaching away of our salience. That point has a double sense. In the more obvious, the audiences for sociology among policy elites, publics and students appear to be shrinking. In the perhaps less obvious sense, the specifically ‘sociological’ character of what we do loses definition, shading into the concerns of various area studies.
*
Presidential Address, originally delivered at the TASA 2000 Conference, Flinders University, and published posthumously in 2003 in the Journal of Sociology, vol. 39(1): 7–14. © TASA.
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It is this question of salience that I want to address briefly today. In doing so, I want to avoid two extremes: a denial that anything significant or problematic is happening and a fatalism that supposes nothing can be done to halt the decline of our discipline. In an address of this type I can’t hope to be exhaustive, so I’ll confine myself to three aspects of change that impacted upon the salience of sociology: 1. Shifts in dominant sites of uncertainty 2. New modes of production of knowledge 3. A utilitarian culture that demands immediate ‘relevance’. I’ll run through the difficulties created by each of these developments before turning to the ways in which sociology might usefully respond to them. Uncertainty Sociology and the other 19th-century projects we have posthumously enrolled as sociological were born in the attempt to make sense of an emergent industrial, urban, democratic and ‘modern’ order. Such success as sociology enjoyed in its early days derived from its ability to define, and to formulate as quintessentially ‘social’, some of the major sites of uncertainty in that order: urban poverty, crime, labour unrest and political conflict. That diagnosis would hold for the pragmatic founders of American and British sociology, for Marx’s ‘historical materialism’ and, of course, for Durkheim. Durkheim’s genius as a disciplinary entrepreneur lay in his capacity to take any source of fashionable anxiety and argue, to paraphrase, that ‘It’s the social, stupid’. A very few decades later, what some would see as the discipline’s finest hour in terms of its salience came with the agricultural, industrial and social programmes of the Roosevelt ‘New Deal’ in the USA. The employment of sociologists in large numbers appeared to open a limitless vista of state patronage and influence for the discipline. Our recent difficulties in establishing our salience, in forging privileged links to significant sites of uncertainty, derive from two apparently divergent trends. The first of these, paradoxically, is our own success. The fundamental theses that the founders of sociology fought to establish have become truisms, even clichés. Policy-makers and publics do not need sociologists to tell them, for example, that 420
Change, Uncertainty and the Future of Sociology poverty fosters crime, that schooling reproduces inequalities or that unemployment erodes community integration. Sociologists have lost any exclusive claim they may have advanced to intellectual property rights in ‘the social’. At the same time, and here is the second trend, there is a growing weariness and disillusionment with those ‘social’ diagnoses and the policy prescriptions with which they have been associated. Over the decades in which the ‘social’ character of social problems has been understood, it can seem that understanding has not produced amelioration: crime, inequality and mal-integration stubbornly persist. Against that background, neo-liberal preferences for individual-level diagnoses and treatments for these pathologies have an increasing appeal. Their appeal is only amplified by the promise of powerful biologically-based explanatory accounts of, and interventions in, behaviour. The social, it seems, is surplus to requirements. As Laplace spoke of God to Napoleon, we have no need of that hypothesis. Productions of Knowledge We know, on sociology of knowledge principles, that academic disciplines are contingent human practices rather than Platonic forms (remember R. S. Peters et al.). In consequence, we know that disciplines will emerge, mutate and sometimes dissolve. There is no reason to expect sociology to be an exception to this rule: our discipline has no unique right to an untroubled perpetuity. However, this process of emergence, mutation and dissolution is not a timeless ‘eternal return’. Disciplines, as we now understand them, are specifically modern in their social-organizational as well as their cognitive dimensions. They are contingent upon the funding arrangements, career patterns, curricula and the rest that define modern universities. In a well-known argument, Gibbons and his colleagues have suggested that discipline-based ‘mode one’ knowledge production is yielding priority to a trans-disciplinary ‘mode two’. This shift not only breaches boundaries between disciplines, creating new fields, but erases the distinction between ‘pure’ and ‘applied’ enquiry and erodes the privilege of universities as uniquely chartered sites of knowledgeproduction. The most frequently cited examples of ‘mode two’ knowledge production are fields such as artificial intelligence, biotechnology and superconductivity. But there is abundant evidence that similar processes are re-shaping the landscape within which 421
Histories of Australian Sociology sociology is located: environmental studies, health studies, organizational studies, sports studies and tourism studies, for example. Here too, the modern pattern of disciplinarity is challenged in many of the ways that Gibbons and his colleagues suggest. If this argument is correct, the challenge facing sociology is not simply to reassert disciplinary claims against competitor disciplines in a re-run of Durkheim’s battles, but to determine what its disciplinarity might mean in an increasingly trans-disciplinary world. Utilitarian Culture It is here that the threats to our discipline are at their most visible and connect most plainly with the institutional travails I noted in my introductory remarks. The connections to the threats outlined above are also plain. In contemporary Australia a number of trends combine to produce a toxic anti-intellectualism in so-called ‘mainstream’ culture. In our local variant of neo-liberalism, the arts and education become private, rather than public goods. Any subsidy is denounced by the more virulent commentators as ‘middle-class welfare’ and ‘rent-seeking’. In the post-Hansonite political climate fostered by the federal government, long-established traditions of egalitarianism are enrolled into derisive attacks on metropolitan ‘elites’. In this climate, the only possible grounds on which to argue for increased—or restored— funding to higher education and research are purely economic: Australia’s ‘national competitiveness’ will suffer if we do not do so. The times are not propitious for a discipline that has prided itself on its role as a critic of inequalities of wealth and power. These cultural factors combine with genuine and understandable anxieties about career prospects among potential students and their parents. The flight towards ‘vocational’ courses is complex and interesting. In some ways it represents a denial of contemporary labour market realities, an attempt to evade the truth that traditional life-long ‘careers’, with their single-entry ticket and their predictable and progressive unfolding, are relics of the past. For whatever reasons, the generalist degree packages within which sociology has typically been offered in Australian universities are out of favour with students and therefore, especially on current funding models, with university managements. Those same funding models partly explain why, in many institutions, the teaching that sociologists have offered in vocational programmes has
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Change, Uncertainty and the Future of Sociology moved ‘in house’ – to be offered either by sociologists separated from their disciplinary unit, or by non-sociologists. What is to be Done? How, then, should we respond as sociologists to what I have sketched so far as a set of hostile developments? A first step is to recognize that, perhaps uniquely among the disciplines, we are equipped to understand the origins, nature and prospects of our own situation. In its very sketchy way, the account I have offered of the difficulties faced by sociology is itself sociological. Second, we will need to distinguish between those factors that are merely local or temporary and those that are connected to long-term trends. To fail to do this will encourage either a facile and passive optimism—‘The next change of government will see us right’, or an unremitting and equally passive pessimism—‘We can do nothing, we’ll all be roond.’1 Third, of course, we must recognize the positive opportunities presented by the developments that I have portrayed in a wholly negative way. With those points made, I will re-trace my steps through the three clusters of issues I have addressed—although they overlap extensively—to explain why I think that sociology can face the future with confidence and optimism. Uncertainty Again The obvious lesson to be drawn from shifts in the major sites of uncertainty is that we should ensure that our disciplinary agenda keeps pace with those shifts. On some fronts we are performing very effectively: sociologists have been at the forefront of the analysis of globalization for a decade. We are well positioned to focus empirical attention on the uneven and disruptive local effects of globalizing processes in Australia. Similarly, we have produced compelling accounts of the nature and effects of neo-liberalism that have helped to shape public debate in Australia. Again, we are well placed to respond to the conservative re-discovery of ‘social capital’ which is likely to figure prominently in Australian politics over the next few years. In other respects, the challenge of maintaining salience requires of us more difficult choices and changes. The relations between natural, technical and social processes lie at the heart of fundamental issues, from climate change to genetic engineering. Increasingly, these issues and others like them will move to the top of public and policy 423
Histories of Australian Sociology agendas. It is not simply cynicism and opportunism to argue that if sociology is to retain—or regain—its salience, we must place these same issues at the top of our own agendas. Without a sociological dimension, public debate on scientific and technical questions will be radically impoverished. Policy outcomes will be more likely to fall victim to varieties of the paradox of consequences. So far so good, but here comes the hard part. Sociology’s contribution to these debates cannot be confined to debunking assertions that climatic or genetic phenomena are ‘socially constructed’ (interestingly, in the former case such assertions are likely to come from the ‘right’, in the latter case from the ‘left’). As Barry Barnes, Steve Fuller and others have recently argued, sociology must reengage with the substantive knowledges produced in biology. The case could be extended to other natural sciences. The point here is not that biology is the new Queen of the Sciences, from whence all claims must be uncritically accepted. As Fuller points out, the stark and common optionalization of total rejection or total acceptance misses the point. But if we are to engage selectively with biology, it will require more sociologists to become more familiar with debates in that science, and more comfortable with the culture of the natural sciences generally, than has typically been the case. There are important research traditions in science and technology studies, notably actor network theory, that are enormously suggestive about the ways in which sociology should engage with nature, technology and the ‘non-human’ more generally. But these traditions are at the margins of our discipline—an arrangement with which they themselves have often been quite content. On the argument here, they must be brought to the centre in a fundamental reworking of our ideas of society and the social. Productions of Knowledge Again If a secular shift from discipline-based knowledge production, located primarily in universities, is giving way to trans-disciplinary productions whose sites are far more widely dispersed, why should sociology even try to buck this trend? Why should we not accept the proliferation of area studies as a vindicating Aufhebung of our discipline in a post-disciplinary world? The question is not easily answered. I recall that my DPhil supervisor saw the task of sociology as its own abolition in a generalized reflexivity of practices. While President of the ISA, Immanuel Wallerstein argued in his (very 424
Change, Uncertainty and the Future of Sociology lengthy) ‘address’ in 1998 that sociology should cede its priority to developing the broader ‘culture of social science’. Andrew Sayer has recently advocated the embrace of ‘post-disciplinary studies’ as the alternative to the ‘evolutionary cul de sac’ of an absurd and selfcontradictory ‘disciplinary imperialism and parochialism’. These are generous, optimistic and outward-looking views that have much to commend them. Clearly, any attempt on the part of sociology to pull up the drawbridge and pour boiling pitch from the battlements on to non-sociologists would be a disaster. However, a modest (in all senses) defence of the ‘disciplinarity’ of sociology need not have this character. The starting point must be an understanding of ‘discipline’ that draws on the sociology of knowledge rather more than on the philosophy of science. As noted earlier, sociology is not an eternally valid ‘form of knowledge’. Neither does it hold exclusive property rights in a preconstituted field of ‘the social’. Rather, sociology is as we find it: an untidy and developing network composed of concepts, arguments, models, exemplary studies, associations, journals and practitioners— living and dead. The elements that make up this odd assemblage are not bound together by any ‘logic’, but neither are they randomly distributed and associated. Moving through time, the disciplinary network acquires the status of a tradition—or set of traditions— through citation and self-reference. On that basis, the question of our disciplinarity is the question of the extent to which we continue to link our activities in research and teaching to the elements of that network. In relation to trans- or post-disciplinary studies, the question is not whether or not to engage with them, but whether we have something ‘sociological’ to bring to them. Stevi Jackson’s recent argument that feminism has a lot to gain from a re-examination of the microsociological tradition exemplifies a type of committed and productive disciplinarity that engages with the transdisciplinary without losing its sociological character. Jackson’s point can be generalized: we must resist the intellectual cringe that can lead us to assume that any French philosopher is, by definition, more interesting than any American sociologist; or that one deconstructed text is more useful than any number of large-scale data sets. The point may seem banal and question-begging, but we enact our disciplinarity as sociologists when we take up, argue with and develop the resources of sociology’s disciplinary networks in our professional practice. If we can do this in a manner that is both confident and open-minded, there need be no
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Histories of Australian Sociology contradiction between our ‘disciplinarity’ in this sense and our engagement with trans-disciplinary studies. Utilitarian Culture Again Sociology was born in the spruiking of its general usefulness, but has now developed—in some quarters at least—a much more cautious attitude to utility and application. Any hint that an application of sociology may be complicit with corporate or state power immediately condemns it. By contrast, an application conducted in the name of ‘resistance’ is absolved of the need to meet any other criteria, it can seem. The lingering afterlife of the myth of purely resistant knowledges, uncontaminated by power, has severely hampered our capacity to think about the utility of our discipline. Perversely, it has discouraged paying attention to the ‘professional ethics’ of sociological practice. We need to recognize more clearly that there is nothing inherently dishonourable about research that aims to enhance the effectiveness of government programmes, or to restructure a corporate management, or to identify the market for a consumer product. Even more generally, there are no reasons why neo-liberals or conservatives cannot be effective professional sociologists. Once we abandon the idea that our professional practice in some way necessitates, or privileges, a particular political stance, we can focus our attention on the ethical and legal conditions that should regulate our practice. This is perhaps an oblique way to approach my main point: if we are to argue that the utilitarianism of our contemporary political and policy culture is damagingly restrictive, we weaken rather than strengthen our case if we set our professional face against utility per se. We strengthen the case if we show that we can be ‘useful’ in quite narrow ways while at the same time encouraging sharp-edged and critical debates about social priorities and alternatives. For a century, the capacity to hold these two aspects of sociology in balance has been one of the major strengths of our disciplinary networks. I want to raise two other matters under this heading. First, I recall a bleak winter afternoon in 1995 when I was visiting my old university—York, in the North of England. Sociology staff I had known as a student 20 years before were reflecting on what they saw as the decline in York sociology over those years and the lack of 426
Change, Uncertainty and the Future of Sociology engagement on the part of many sociology students. As someone remarked, in a phrase that has stuck in my mind, ‘We need to tell them better stories’. Perhaps, sometimes, we do need to tell them— our students—better stories. A diet of unrelieved gloom focused on the evils of class, patriarchy and racism, or the threats posed by environmental crisis and the global economy has a strong appeal to me but not, I think, to most 18-year-old North Queenslanders. Perhaps we need to tell them stories about the skills they can acquire to help them make what they want of their lives, or about the ways their communities can be strengthened, or the types of transnational institutions that might promote ecological sustainability. For all the flaws of US sociology in the Parsonsian ascendancy, its fundamental optimism and can-do orientation to social problems are attractive. I’m not suggesting a John Howard style return to a future of Norman Rockwell paintings and the Peace Corps. We should not become the collective Dr Pangloss of the social sciences. But neither should we claim from economics the title of ‘the gloomy science’. Social criticism must remain a central element in our disciplinary repertoire, but balanced by a ‘utopian realism’, to borrow Giddens’ phrase. On the second, and final, matter I want to raise, we must recognize that universities have no monopoly on the practice of sociology. Many hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Australians trained in sociology work in transnational corporations, market research companies, government departments, community groups or as independent consultants. Their positions are rarely labelled ‘sociologist’, but nonetheless, that is what they are. These practitioners of sociology are in the front line of debates about ‘utility’: it is the fundamental condition of their professional activity. The challenges facing sociology that I have outlined here are not matters that face academic sociology alone. If we are to try to formulate any kind of collective response, we surely cannot do so effectively if academic sociology and its practice outside the academy remain as divorced from each other as they are in Australia. The difficult task of forging links between these very different sociologies must be a priority for sociology, and especially for TASA, over the next few years. Conclusion I don’t want to offer a very extended conclusion, you will be pleased to hear. Very roughly, I have argued that sociology faces serious 427
Histories of Australian Sociology challenges linked to: shifts in dominant sites of uncertainty, new modes of production of knowledge and a utilitarian culture that demands immediate ‘relevance’. We have the capacity, if we choose, to seize the opportunities embedded in those challenges, to reshape our discipline in a way that adapts to contemporary realities and priorities while retaining its identifiably sociological character. It is not only in our own interests to do so: now, more than ever, the pace and complexity of change processes require a strong sociological voice in public and policy debates about Australia’s future. Notes 1.
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That is, ‘we’ll all be ruined’; from John O’Brien’s poem ‘Said Hanrahan’.
25 Researching the History of Australian Sociology TARA RENAE MCGEE JOHN GERMOV
I
n compiling this book we discovered many other resources that would be of use to those interested in the history of Australian sociology, the Australian Sociological Association (TASA), and other sociological associations. This chapter describes a range of resources and further reading available for whoever may wish to add another dimension to the histories of sociology in Australia. TASAweb History Section: www.tasa.org.au Coinciding with the publication of this book, a history section of TASAweb was launched. The history section aims to be an online resource for those interested in the history of TASA and Australian sociology more generally. The site includes: Links to online history resources and papers Archived TASA membership data Sociology undergraduate and postgraduate enrolment data Web archive of previous versions of the TASA website Results of the Most Influential Books in Australian Sociology (MIBAS) survey Conference proceedings and full papers of the recipients of the Best Paper in the Journal of Sociology award Past office bearers, journal editors, and conference convenors and locations.
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Histories of Australian Sociology Health Section and eSocHealth Newsletter As the only semi-structured research section of TASA, the Health section includes approximately one third of TASA members. The section has an online newsletter that was originally distributed via email. All of the newsletters since 1993 have been archived. Current and archived newsletters can be accessed via the health sociology section website: http://www.latrobe.edu.au/telehealth/esochealth/index.html ANZJS Notes and Announcements Early issues of the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Sociology (ANZJS) often included a ‘Notes and Announcements’ section which can be a good source of historical information. Nexus and Women’s Section Newsletters Nexus is the TASA newsletter. It often features information about the discipline of sociology in Australia including: professional information; university news; interviews with prominent sociologists and information about the work of the TASA Executive. More recent issues of Nexus are available online in the members section of TASAweb. Both newsletters are available in the National Library of Australia. Nexus (ISSN: 0728-1595), is available at N 301.05 NEX. Note that there are two collections: one from when the Association was named SAANZ and then a new collection was begun when the name was changed to TASA. The SAANZ/TASA Women’s Section Newsletter (ISSN: 0157-1818) from 1979–1989 is available at N 301.06294 SOC in the Main reading room. The TASA office also holds copies of all these newsletters; originals are archived in the National Library.
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Researching the History of Australian Sociology TASA Membership Directories, Sociology in Australian Universities, and Postgraduate Study in Sociology TASA has produced directories of its membership for many decades. The National Library of Australia has membership directories dating back to the early 1970s. The last hard-copy version of the membership directory was produced in 2001 and contained the members for the year 2000. From 2001 onwards the membership directory has been archived in the members’ section of the TASA website. In 2003, TASA launched an online, ‘real time’, updatable and searchable directory accessible from the member-section of its website. Each year, the online version is archived. In the 1990s Katy Richmond edited four editions of Sociology in Australian Universities (1993–94, 1995–6, 1997–98, and 1999–2000). This publication provided a directory of all the university departments and schools where sociology was being taught. This was incorporated into later versions of the membership directory and can now be accessed via the ‘Sociology Departments’ page of the TASA website. In 1991 Postgraduate Study in Sociology was also published. Social Horizons Social Horizons is the journal of the short-lived Australian Institute of Sociology. The journal not only contains papers on early sociological work undertaken in Australia (in the 1940s), it also contains information about the Institute and its members in the preliminary and end pages. The journal was published in two issues per year from 1943 to 1945. It is quite rare but some university libraries have copies and the full set is available in the National Library of Australia. Archives at the National Library of Australia An important repository for documentation on the history of SAANZ/TASA and sociology more generally is the archives of the National Library of Australia (NLA) in Canberra: <www.nla.gov.au>.
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Histories of Australian Sociology While searching for documentation on the history of the Association, we discovered 57 boxes of SAANZ records archived in the NLA. The manuscript reference number in the NLA catalogue is: NLA MS 7741. These documents include:
Correspondence files kept by successive editors of the journal, 1965-83, including Jerzy Zubrzycki, Frank L. Jones, Lois Bryson, Kevin Clements, Bob Gidlow, Bettina Cass, Alex Condes and David Hickman; Files of SAANZ office bearers, including correspondence, minutes, reports and other papers, 1978-82; Financial records, 1964-82; ANZJS production material, 1971-79; and Articles submitted, 1971-81.
More detailed information on these documents can be found in the NLA catalogue aid on: <www.nla.gov.au/ms/findaids/7741.html>. Other materials of the Journal and the Association are held by the National Library of Australia at MS 3883 (folio). These records cover the period 1964–1969 and consist mainly of correspondence between members of the Editorial Board. There is some correspondence with the publisher, printer and advertising agent and reprint request forms. Also included are some annual reports of the Editor and financial statements. Minutes of meetings, agenda and copies of the constitution are included as well. The abstracts and proceedings of many SAANZ and TASA conferences and the membership directories produced by the Association are also available in the NLA collection. Australian Dictionary of Biography For those who want to find out more about prominent Australian sociologists, we suggest they consult the Australian Dictionary of Biography, based in the Research School of Social Sciences at the Australian National University in Canberra. The biographies range in length from 500 to 6000 words. The home page for this publication is and the dictionary will be available online by the end of 2005.
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Researching the History of Australian Sociology An older edition of the dictionary is available online as part of the Gutenberg project: . Other Sociological Histories For those interested in the history of sociology in the United States and Britain, there are a number of sources. A Sociology Timeline from 1600, by Ed
Stephan:
Halsey, A. 2004, A History of Sociology in Britain: Science, Literature, and Society, Oxford University Press, Oxford. ISBN 0199266603 Accessible online if subscribed to Oxford Scholarship Online: <www.oxfordscholarship.com/oso/public/content/politicalscience/ 0199266603/toc.html> Hill, M.R. 2005, Centennial Bibliography on the History of American Sociology, American Sociological Association. Available online: Platt, J. 2003, The British Sociological Association: A Sociological History, Sociology Press, UK. ISBN 1903457068 For further information see: —— 1998, History of ISA: 1948-1997, International Sociological Association. ISBN 8460577473. Order form: <www.ucm.es/info/isa/publ/formhist.htm> Rhoades, L. J. 1981, A History of the ASA: 1905-1980, American Sociological Association. Available online: Rosich, Katherine J. 2005, A History of the American Sociological Association 1981–2004, American Sociological Association. Available online: 433
Histories of Australian Sociology Further Reading The list of sources provided below is a collection of published items that we discovered and were suggested to us in the process of compiling this book. Many focus on a particular sub-discipline of sociology and for this reason were too narrowly focused for this collection, or were similar to chapters already contained in the book. We hope they will be of use for those who want to explore the history of sociology in Australia in more detail. Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia 1998, Challenges for the Social Sciences and Australia: Discipline Research Strategies, Volumes 1 and 2. Australia Research Council, Canberra. Australia Research Council 1992, Status Report for the Humanities and Social Sciences. AGPS, Canberra. Baldock, C.V. & Lally, J. 1974, Sociology in Australia and New Zealand: Theory and Methods, vol. 16, Contributions in sociology, Greenwood Press, Westport, CT. Beilharz, P. 1990, ‘Australian Radical Scholarship in the Wake of Marxism’, Political Theory Newsletter, vol. 2, pp. 1-9. —— 1995, ‘Social theory in Australia: A Roadmap for Tourists’, Thesis Eleven, vol. 43, pp. 120-33. Bourke, H. 1981, ‘Sociology and the Social Sciences in Australia, 1912-1928’, Australian and New Zealand Journal of Sociology, vol. 17, no. 1, pp. 26-35. Caiden, N. 1964, ‘The Organisation of Teaching and Research in the Social Sciences in Australian Universities’, Social Sciences Information, vol. 3, pp. 21-39. Connell, R. W. 2005, ‘Northern Theory’, in press. Crothers, C. & Gribben, C. 1986, ‘The State of New Zealand Sociology: Some Preliminary Observations’, New Zealand Sociology, vol. 1, no. 1, pp. 1-17. Davison, G. and Lack, J. 1981, ‘Planning the New Social Order’, Australian and New Zealand Journal of Sociology, vol. 17, no. 1, pp. 36-45. Dunphy, D. 1974, ‘Putting Sociology to Work—The Relevance of Sociology—An Immediate issue’, Australian and New Zealand Journal of Sociology, vol. 10, no. 1, pp. 3-7.
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Researching the History of Australian Sociology Elkin, A. P. 1943, Changes That Are Upon Us: The Presidential Address, The Australian Institute of Sociology, 19 April, 1943, Sydney, Snelling Printing Works. Encel, S. 1970, ‘Science, Discovery and Innovation: An Australian Case History’, International Social Science Journal, vol. 22, no. 1, pp. 42-53. —— 1984, ‘Introduction’, in S. Encel and L. Bryson (eds) Australian Society: Introductory Essays, 4th edition, Melbourne, Longman Cheshire, pp. 1-11. Germov, J. 2003, ‘Higher Education Reform: Sociology at the Crossroads’, Nexus, vol. 15, no. 2, February, pp. 3-5. Gläser, J. 2004, ‘Why are the Most Influential Books in Australian Sociology not Necessarily the Most Highly Cited Ones?’, Journal of Sociology, vol. 40, no. 3, pp. 261-282. Harding, S. 2002, ‘Studying Sociology in a Corporate Culture’, Paper presented to the XV World Congress of Sociology, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, July 7-13. Head, B. and J. Walter. (eds) 1988, Intellectual Movements and Australian Society. Melbourne, Oxford University Press. Jamrozik, A. 2002, ‘From Lucky Country to Penal Colony: How Politics of Fear have changed Australia—Keynote Address’, paper presented to Refugees and the Lucky Country Forum, RMIT Melbourne, 28-30 November. Jones, F. L., Willmott, W. E., and Wild, R. 1983, ‘Dialogue: Crisis in Sociology’, Australian and New Zealand Journal of Sociology, vol. 19, no. 2, July, pp. 195–215. Kelliher, S. & Reynolds, P. 1996, ‘Methodological Issues within the Disciplines of Psychology and Sociology in Australia and New Zealand: A Content Analysis of 1970s, 1980s and 1990s Published Research’, Australian Journal of Social Research, vol. 2, no. 1, pp. 39-57. Lally, J. & Baldock, C. V. 1975, ‘Contemporary Sociology in Australia and New Zealand’, in R. P. Mohan & D. Martindale (eds), Handbook of Contemporary Developments in World Sociology, Westport, CT, Greenwood Press, vol. 17. Lawrence, G. 1997, ‘Rural Sociology: Does it have a Future in Australian Universities?’, Rural Society, vol. 7, no. 1, pp. 29-36.
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Histories of Australian Sociology Marginson, S. (ed) 2002, ‘Investing in Social Capital. Postgraduate Training in the Social Sciences in Australia’, Journal of Australian Studies 74, St. Lucia, The University of Queensland Press. McAllister, I., Dowrick, S. and Hassan, R. (eds) 2003, Cambridge Handbook of Social Sciences, South Melbourne, Cambridge University Press. Mol, H. 1968, ‘Sociology in Australia and New Zealand’, The American Sociologist, vol. 3, no. 2, pp. 146-7. Najman, J. M., & Hewitt, B. 2003, ‘The Validity of Publications and Citation Counts for Sociology and Other Selected Disciplines’, Journal of Sociology, vol. 39, no. 1, pp. 62-80. O’Malley, P. 1984, ‘Trends in the Sociology of the Australian Legal Order’, Journal of Law and Society, vol. 11, no. 1, pp. 91-103. Partridge, P. H. 1955, ‘Teaching and Research in the Social Sciences in Australia’, International Social Science Bulletin, vol. 7, pp. 24553. Phelan, T. J. 2000, ‘Bibliometrics and the Evaluation of Australian Sociology’, Journal of Sociology, vol. 36, no. 3, pp. 345-63. Roach Anleu, S. L. 1999, ‘Sociologists Confront Human Rights: The Problem of Universalism’, Presidential Address delivered at the 1997 TASA Conference, Journal of Sociology, vol. 39, no. 1, pp. 7–14. Sawer, M. 2003, The Ethical State: Social Liberalism in Australia, Melbourne, Melbourne University Press. Scott, W. H. 1979, Australian and New Zealand Sociology 1971-78: An Introduction, Monograph Series No. 3, Department of Anthropology and Sociology, Monash University and The Sociological Association of Australia and New Zealand. Stanner, W. E. H. 1962, ‘The Need for Departments of Sociology in Australian Universities’, Australian Quarterly, vol. 24, no. 1, pp. 60-72. Stehlik, D. 2002, ‘Establishing a Sociology for Tropical Australia? An Analysis of the 1924 Gorman/Cilento Survey Methodology’, paper presented to XV ISA World Congress of Sociology, Brisbane, Australia, 7-13 July. Thompson, P. 2003, ‘The Wisdom Interviews: Jerzy Zubrzycki’, ABC Radio National, 25 May, <www.abc.net.au/rn/bigidea/stories/s859455.htm>. 436
Researching the History of Australian Sociology Timms, D. W. G. & Zubrzycki, J. 1971, ‘A Rationale for Sociology Teaching in Australasia’, Australian and New Zealand Journal of Sociology, vol. 7, no. 1, pp. 3-20. Turner, B. S. 1986, ‘Sociology as an Academic Trade: Some Reflections on Centre and Periphery in the Sociology Market’, Australian and New Zealand Journal of Sociology, vol. 22, no. 2, pp. 272-82; and Bryson, L., Emmison, M. and Turner, B. S. ‘Responses and a Reply’, 283–90. Vanclay, F. 2001, ‘Environmental Sociology in Australia’, Nexus, vol. 13, no. 3, pp. 4-6. Western, J. S. 1998, ‘Sociology’, in Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia (ed.), Challenges for the Social Sciences and Australia, National Board of Employment, Education and Training, Canberra ACT. Western, J.S. & Najman, J.M. 2000, 'Whither sociology?' in J.M. Najman & J.S. Western (eds), A Sociology of Australian Society, Macmillan Publishers Australia, Melbourne. Willis, E. 1982, ‘Research and teaching in the sociology of health and illness in Australia and New Zealand’, Community Health Studies, vol. 6, no. 2, pp. 144-53. —— 1991, ‘The sociology of health and illness in Australia: The 1980s and beyond’, Annual Review of Health Social Sciences, vol. 1, pp. 46-53. —— 2004, ‘State of the Art: A Decade of Health Sociology in Review’, Health Sociology Review, vol. 13, no. 2. —— 2005, 'The First Sociology Doctorate in Australia', Nexus, vol. 17, no. 1, pp. 11-3. Zubrzycki, J. (ed) 1970, The Teaching of Sociology in Australia and New Zealand, Melbourne, Cheshire. —— 1973, ‘The Relevance of Sociology’, Australian and New Zealand Journal of Sociology, vol. 9, no. 1, pp. 5-15.
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Index Abbott, Edith 174 Aboriginal 11–14, 182, 207, 247, 257, 258–60, 269, 289, 411, see also Indigenous assimilation 97 communities 10 culture 16, 66, 387 ethnography 387 identity 182, 201 people 20, 21, 290 Addams, Jane 172–4, 196 Adatto, K 338–9 agriculture 29, 46 alienation 15, 109 Althusser, L 104, 117 Altman, Dennis 325, 410 American Sociological Association (ASA) xxi, 11, 209–11, 324, 327 American Sociological Review 16 American Sociological Society 16 Anderson, C 257, 262 Annual Review of Health Social Sciences 357 Anderson, Fay 30, 32–34 Anderson, Francis xii, xiii, 18, 9, 16, 29, 43, 49, 81, 83, 96, 102–05, 107–09, 111, 115, 125, 130, 137, 145–8, 151, 155, 158, 168, 171–2, 176, 181, 195, 219, 221, 240–1, 268, 350 anti-communism 30, 31, 33–6, 58–9, 62, 115, 128, 130 Antipodal Sociological Association (ASA) 210 apartheid 284 Appleyard, R. T 206, 258, 262 Aranda people 14 archaeologies of knowledge 101 Arena 32–3, 36 Argus (Melbourne) 129, 141 Arlen, Michael 209 Armstrong, David 46 Armstrong, W. 256, 262 Aryan race 7, 8 Ashby, Sir Eric 235 Ashenden, D.W. 326, 333 Ashley, Sir William 160 Ashworth bequest 82, 124, 128–30, 138 Ashworth, T.R. 123, 128–33, 136–8, 140–2 assimilation 21
Atkinson, Meredith 43, 49, 50, 102, 107, 110–12, 115, 126, 139, 150–5, 157– 9, 168, 220, 240, 348 Austin-Broos, Diane xiii, 201, 245, 294 Australasian Association for the Advancement of Science 29, 129, 145, 171 Australia Institute 391 Australian Feminist Studies 392 Australian Institute of Criminology (AIC) xxi, 380 Australian Institute of Family Studies (AIFS) xxi, 293, 380 Australian Institute of Sociology 81, 96, 118, 132, 180, 222, 350 Australian Journal of Political Science 392 Australian Labour Party 30, 388 Australian National University (ANU) xxi, 45, 50–1, 58–9, 62–5, 127, 137, 201, 204–07, 223–7, 230, 233, 277–8, 288, 356, 389, 400 Australian and New Zealand Association for the Advancement of Science 81, 99, 102, 104, 111 Australian and New Zealand Journal of Sociology (ANZJS) xxi, 21, 38, 49, 65, 239, 274, 287, 317, 323, 333, 350, 356–7, 430, see also Journal of Sociology Australian Research Council (ARC) xxi, 53, 272, 277, 391, 434 Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) 1, 31–2, 35 Australian Sociology Milestones 381–2 Australian Universities Commission 224, 227, 230 Badger, Colin Robert 139, 141 Baehr, P. 4, 338–9 Baldock, Cora ix, xii, xiii, 2–4, 19, 21, 63, 65–6, 71–2, 75–7, 201, 245, 267, 287, 291, 323, 325, 334–6, 346–7, 351, 434, 435 Barbalet, J.M. 325 Barnes, John 46–7, 51, 62, 207 Barnett, Oswald 178–9, 184, 197 Barnett, Rev. Samuel 172, 182 Barrett, Michelle 286 Beaglehole, John C. 77, 410 Bean, C.E.W 256, 262 behaviourism 17
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Histories of Australian Sociology Beilharz, Peter xii, xiii, 321, 325, 347, 351, 387, 434 Bell, Colin 43 Bell, D. 325 Bennet, Tony 325, 409 Berger, P.L. 329 Bernard, L.L. 9 Berndt, C.H. 257, 263 Berndt, R.M. 205, 257, 262 bi-culturalism 66, 74 biology 85–6, 90, 146, 155 Birnbaum, Norman 309 Blainey, Geoffrey 408, 411, 414 Bland, F.A. 156 Boehm, E.A. 112–13 Bolshevism 160–1 Booth, Charles 158, 172, 174–6, 178, 183, 185, 191–2 Boreham, Paul 53, 291 Borrie, Mick 45–6, 51, 58, 357 Borrie, W.D. 204–07, 224, 258, 263 botany 85, 90 Bottomley, Gill 325, 407 Boudon, Raymond 309 Bourdieu, P. 328–9 Bowlby, John 34 Boyer, Richard 182 Bourke, Helen xiv, 49–50, 82, 118, 124, 138–9, 145, 169, 177, 195–7, 347, 353, 348–50, 434 Bradbury, J. 256, 262 Braithwaite, J. 325, 332–4 Braverman, H. 117, 328 Brennan, Tom 47, 193, 205 Brigden, J.B. 135–6, 139, 142, 156 Briggs, Asa 195 Brisbane Institute 391 Broom, Dorothy, xii, 282, 325 Broom, Leonard xii, xiv, 46, 201, 204, 209, 213, 224, 257, 259, 263, 278 Brotherhood of St Laurence 17, 178, 190–1, 194, 199, 292 Brown, Morven S 204, 207, 224, 357 Brown, Nicholas 138–9, 188 Bryson, Lois ix, xii, xiv, 1, 29, 63, 66, 193, 199, 259, 263, 292, 325, 335–6, 395, 432 Buckley, K. 106 Buckley, V. 29 Budapest School 409 Bulletin 32–6 Bulmer, Martin 196, 346, 348–9, 353 bureaucratisation 210, 334 Burgess, E.W. 15, 174
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Burton, Clare 66, 292 Butlin, Noel 113, 250–1, 260, 263 Caiden, Naomi 242, 434 Cain, Neville 139, 142 Calhoun, Craig 311 Cambridge University 49–51, 148 Campbell, Frank 38 Canberra Sociological Society 2, 46, 51, 81, 357 cannibalism 12 Canterbury University (CU) xxi, 65, 68, 72–3, 76, 205, 270 capitalism 129, 153, 181, 248, 241 capitalist production 103, 110, 116 capitalist society 103, 105, 131, 388 Capling, Ann 142 Carroll, John 143, 407 Carter, Ian 67, 69, 77 Castleman, Tanya 60 Castles, Frank 409 Castles, S. 325, 409 Centre for Independent Studies 390 Centre for Urban Research and Action (CURA) 194–5 Chakrabarty, Dipesh 410 Chalmers, Thomas 173, 196 Chamberlain, C. 255, 263, 280, 395 Chicago School 15, 16, 171, 190 Childe, Gordon 16, 387 Chodorow, N. 328 Christian Social Union 151 citizenship 155, 308, 311, 408 Clark, Manning 394 class 255–7, 279, 281, 332, 387, 427 composition 101 conflict 350 consciousness 17, 44, 87, 107, 279 formation 101 organisation 104 politics 130 radicalism 111–12 relations 255, 294 stratification 19 structure 44 Classics 89, 90, 154 Clawson, D. 324, 327–8, 338, 340 Clements, Kevin 74, 432 Cochrane, Donald 184 Coghlan, Timothy 176, 240 Cold War 30, 188, 410 Cole, S. 338–9 collectivism 86, 153 Collins, J. 258–9, 263
Index Collins, P.H. 310, 318 colonialism 4, 5, 10, 20 Commonwealth Reconstruction Training Scheme 30 Commonwealth Royal Commission on the Constitution 129 communism 33, 128, 130–1 communist 130–1, 179, 184 activists 32 infiltration 36 militants 128 plot 32, 36, 39 Communist Party of Australia 115 community-based welfare system 193 Comte, Auguste 4–6, 8, 15, 323, 347 Condes, Alex 432 Congalton, Athol A. 51, 204, 206 Connell, R.W. xv, 1, 3, 5, 7, 15, 17, 19, 22–3, 52–3, 57, 188, 254–6, 263, 278–80, 294, 310, 325–6, 332–4, 337–8, 395, 434 conservatism 149 Considine, M. 388, 415 convict 110–11 Copland, Douglas, B. 126–8, 133–9, 142, 152, 154–9, 163, 167–9, 177 Council for the Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences (CHASS) 356, 413 Council for Scientific and Industrial Research 166 Cowen, Zelman 31 Craig, Jean 16, 44, 182, 187, 198 see also Jean Martin Crawford, J.G. 198, 222 Crawford, Max 33–5, 57 criminology 29, 76, 293, 307, 372, 377, 378 Crisp, L.F. 117 critical theory 35, 408 Crook, R. 275, 298 Crook, Stephen xv, 321, 326, 372, 383, 419 Crothers, Charles xvi, 43, 67, 72, 76–7, 81, 123, 195, 197, 346–7, 349, 434 Crough, G. 248, 263 cultural studies 76, 288, 308, 372 Curthoys, A. 259, 263 Dallen, R.A. 100 Darwin, Charles 5, 10, 11 Davidson, A. 326, 409 Davies, A.F. 19, 47, 140, 206, 326, 400 Davis, James A. 243 Davis, Peter 76
Davison, Graeme xvi, 82, 139, 171, 196, 197, 198, 346, 347, 434 Dawkins White Paper 53 de Lepervanche, M. 289, 325 delinquency 15, 34 democracy 153, 180 democratization 30 demography 45, 72, 124, 223 Dempsey, Ken 193, 290, 326, 336, 395 Denney, R. 330–1 Dent, Owen 46 Department of Education, Science and Training (DEST) 372–3, 375–9 Department of Post-war Reconstruction 44, 222 Department of Scientific and Industrial Research (DSIR) 284 de Tocqueville 236 de Vaus, D. 326, 336 deviance 288, 315 Dickson, W.J. 169 Disciples of Christ 173 Dixson, Miriam 259, 263 Dow, Geoff 291 Dow, Gwynneth 184 Dow, Hume 139 Downing, Richard 184, 191–2, 199 Dowrick, S. 435 Dowsett, G.W. 326, 333 Duncan Hall, H. 154, 159 Dunphy, D. 372, 383, 434 du Plessis, Rosemary 76 du Plessis Novitz, Rosemary 284 Durkheim, E. 3–5, 7, 9, 13–15, 59, 132, 159, 236–7, 267, 311, 315, 330, 338, 348–9, 387, 420 economic rationalism 281, 407 Economic Society of Australia 177 Economic Society of Australia and New Zealand 133 economics 45, 47, 50, 54, 81, 85, 91, 94, 96, 105, 124–9, 133–5, 146, 150, 152, 156–7, 160, 162–3, 167, 177, 221, 233, 346, 396 education 46, 97, 181 Edwards, A. 60, 326 Edwards, Meredith 407 egalitarianism 21, 256, 277, 334, 422 Eggleston, Frederic 132, 137–8, 140–2, 147, 168 Eisenstein, Hester 292 Elias, N. 329
441
Histories of Australian Sociology Elkin, A.P. xii, xvi, 16–17, 62, 81, 89, 99, 132–3, 141, 179, 180–4, 187, 197, 221–2, 242, 257, 264, 349–50, 435 Elkington, J.S. 152 Emery, F.E. 44, 139, 189, 198, 206 empirical sociology 71, 158 empiricism 9, 22 Encel, Sol ix, xii, xvii, 2, 19, 22, 37, 43, 51, 58, 62, 138, 206, 251–3, 262, 326, 395, 434 Engels, Friedrich 267 epistemology 237 Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) 291 ethnicity 15, 21, 72, 201, 278, 288–90, 334–5, 390 ethnocentric 14 ethnography 13, 23 ethnomethodology 287, 345 Etzioni-Halevy, Eva 281 eugenics 126, 155, 177, 178 European Economic Community (EEC) 246, 252 Evatt Foundation 390–1 evolutionary social science 4, 8–11, 20 Fallding, H. 19, 22 family 97–8, 181, 183, 190, 234, 282, 284, 288–9 Federation 111, 117, 123, 387, 388 feminism 380, 425 feminist research methodology 284 sociologists 63, 282, 286, 289, 292–3 sociology 60, 281, 289 theory 60 Fenwick, Penny 293 First World War 124, 145, 147, 159– 61, 166, 176, 221 Fleming, G. 142, 397, 414 Flinders University 225, 281 Ford, Henry 108, 117 Fordism 15, 108–09, 132 Foster, Lois 63, 293 Foucault, Michel 101, 173, 196, 286, 312, 328 Foundation of New Zealand Social Science Organizations (FoNZSSO) xxi, 275 Frankfurt School 286 Frow, J. 325 Fuller, Steve 424 functionalism 3, 22
442
Galligan, Brian 142 Gallop Poll 17 Galpin, C.J. 174, 186 Game, A. 259, 264, 280, 326, 332–4 Gans, Herbert 330 Garfinkel, Harold 286 Garton, Stephen 197 gay and lesbian studies 307 Geddes, Bill 47 Geertz, C. 328 gender studies 307, 372 Germov, John ix, xi, xvii, 321, 323, 355, 358, 372, 380, 383–4, 435 Giblin, L.F. 128, 135, 139, 161, 163 Giddens, Anthony 286, 427 Giddings, Franklin 49, 148, 149 Gieryn, Thomas F. 347, 353 Gillespie, R. 312, 318 Glaser, J. 355, 380, 383, 435 Glazer, N. 330, 331 globalisation 308, 393, 408 corporate 23 imperial expansion 5 money markets 113 sociology 24 Goffman, E. 311, 329 Gollan, Robin 253, 264 Goodwin, C.D. 168 Gouldner, Alvin 59, 309 Governor General of Australia 31 Graetz, Brian 278 Gramsci, A. 255, 279, 409 Graycar, Adam 292 Great Depression 133–4, 211, 249, 251 Great War 123, 126, 134 Greer, Germaine 409 Gribben, Chris 67, 72, 77, 434 Groenewegen, Peter 139, 397 Gross Domestic Product (GDP) xxi, 113 Grosz, Elizabeth 409 Gunn, J.A. 50, 126, 154–9, 168–9, 220, 240, 349 Habermas, Jurgen 286, 329 Halsey, A.H. 380, 383, 433 Hammond, S.B. 17, 44, 139, 189, 198, 206 Hancock, Merv 67, 71 Hancock, W.K. 138–9, 142, 152–3, 160, 168, 249, 251, 277, 348 Harding, S. 435 Harley, Kirsten xii, xvii, 321, 343 Harris, Patricia 292
Index Harrison, J.F.C. 150, 168 Harrison Moore, W. 147, 151–2, 168 Hartwig, M. 257, 264 Harvard School of Business Administration 165 Hassan, R. 435 Hawke Government 195 Hawthorne, S. 326 Head, Brian xii, 138, 195, 255, 264, 435 Health Sociology Review (HSR) 357 Hearn, W.E. 6–9, 17, 92, 93, 152, 176 Heaton, Herbert 102, 117, 154, 159–63, 167–9 Hegel 104–05 hegemony 254, 280, 389 Heilbron, Johan 347, 353 Heller, Agnes 409 Henderson Foundation 391 Henderson poverty line 128, 191 Henderson, Ronald 128, 140, 191–2, 199 Hewitt, B 355, 384, 436 Hiatt, L. 257, 264 Hindess, Barry 287, 409 Hirst, John 196 historical materialism 420 Hoban, Ruth 31–5 Hogan, Trevor xvii, 321, 387 Hollingworth, Peter 190, 199 Holt, Alan 186, 198 Holton, R. 281, 327 Horne, D. 18, 29, 33–4, 36 housing 97, 179 Howard government 5, 23 Howe, Brian 194–5 Howe, Renate 175–6, 196, 197 Hughes, Robert 409 Hughes, Selwyn 175–6 Hutchinson, Bertram 17–18, 140, 189, 198 ideology 23, 101, 116, 118, 150, 261 Immigrants 18, 97, 148, 189 immigration 15, 21, 98, 201, 223, 269, 270, 288, 292 indigenous and settler civilizations 24 cultures 14, 20, 21 issues 335 peoples 167, 267, 395 societies 10, 20 sociology 73, 294 individualism 129, 131, 149
industrial relations 17, 160 Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) xxi, 111–12 industrialization 164, 223, 269 inequality 421 Inglis, Ken 58 Institute for Applied Economic and Social Research 128 Institute of Advanced Studies 58 Institute of Pacific Relations 69 Institute of Public Affairs (IPA) 39, 390 Institute of Sociology 44 institutionalisation 34, 270, 276, 344, 346 international relations 50 International Sociological Association (ISA) 22, 61, 63, 75, 274, 324, 329–30, 356, 424, 433 Iremonger, Duncan 199 Irvine, R.F. 102, 110, 114–15, 125, 130, 133, 137, 146–8, 151, 154–5, 157–8, 167–9, 195–6, 347 Irving, T.H. 16, 19, 254–6, 263, 326, 395 James, Bev 284, 290 James, Henry 310 Janet, Pierre 164 Jayawardena, C. 205 Jean Martin Award 274, 276, 337, 363 Jevons, William Stanley 175 Jones, Frank 48, 51–2, 63, 204, 224, 257, 263, 278, 372, 384, 432, 435 Journal of Sociology (JOS) xxi, 38, 317, 324, 357, 392, 429 Jupp, James 258, 264, 259, 407 Kalantzis, Mary 325, 407 Kamenka, Eugene 409 Kaplan, Gisela 63 Keating Government 195 Kellehear, A. 326 Kelliher, S. 380, 384, 435 Kelly, Paul 412 Kent, Raymond 348, 353 Ker Conway, Jill 409 Kessler, S. 326, 333 Keynes, J.M. 161 Keynesianism 136–8, 251 Kirsner, D. 252, 265 Kish Sklar, Kathryn 195–6 Knibbs, George 151, 240 Knopfelmacher, Frank 33, 58, 400 Kolb, J.H. 69, 186
443
Histories of Australian Sociology Koopman-Boyden, Peggy 293 Krupinski, J. 60, 198 Kuklick, Henrika 350, 353 Lack, J. 139, 198, 434 Lafitte, Paul 17, 44, 139 Lake, Marilyn 407 Lally, Jim 3, 4, 19, 21, 65–6, 71, 245, 267, 287, 323, 334–5, 346–7, 351, 434–5 Latrobe University 44, 58–9, 225, 228, 229, 401–03, 405, 407 Laura Spelman Rockefeller Foundation 157, 177 law 81, 92, 94, 101, 104, 223, 346 Lawrence, G. xii, 326, 435 League of Nations 161 Legislative Council of New South Wales 89 Lemert, Charles 59, 62, 326 Lepervanche, Marie de 258–9, 264 LePlay 159, 174, 348 Lever-Tracy, C. 259, 265 liberalisation 30, 34, 36 liberalism 147, 153 Liebow, E. 330–1 Lipset, S. 331 Luckmann, T. 329 Lukacs, Georg 409 Lukes, S. 15 Lupton, Gillian 63 Machiavelli 59, 161 Macintyre, Alan 186, 198 Macintyre, S. 29–31, 35–6, 196, 254, 262, 265, 412 Mackenzie King, W.L. 130–1, 141 MacMahon Ball, W. 44, 126, 139, 158 Macquarie University 225, 233, 279 Maddock, K. 258, 265 Maharey, Steve 77, 411 Malinowski, B. 164 Maloney, J. 411, 414 Manne, Robert 143, 407 Mannheim, Karl 222 Mansbridge, Albert 102, 150, 160 Maori 66, 73–5, 206, 269, 284–5, 289– 90, 411 marginalisation 291, 313 Marginson, S. 388, 415, 436 Marshall, Alfred 136 Martin, Elaine 189, 199 Martin, Jean 16, 44–6, 51, 58–9, 62–3, 182, 187, 192–3, 199, 242, 259, 265, 325, 407
444
Marwick, Max 40, 205 Marx, K. 4, 6, 15, 30–1, 59, 86, 104, 105, 109, 115–18, 130, 172, 236–7, 267, 311, 315, 330, 338, 420 Marxism 4, 22, 59, 63, 115, 251, 279, 281, 286, 291, 345, 409 mass consumption, distribution and production 132 Massey University (MU) xxi, 70, 73–6 mathematics 89, 90, 238–9 Mayer, Henry 38 Mayer, K. xvii, 201, 203–04, 224 Mayo, E. 16, 50, 108, 110–12, 115, 151, 154, 159–60, 163–6, 169, 387 McAllister, Ian 278, 436 McCaughey, Jean 193, 199 McFarlane, Bruce 106, 113, 139, 397 McGee, Tara xi, xviii, 321, 355, 369 McKnight, D. 29, 32, 35 McMichael, P. 326 McQueen, Humphrey 254–6, 262, 326 McRae, C.R. 242 mechanisation 109, 113 Meggitt, M. 257, 265 Melbourne University, see University of Melbourne Melleuish, G. 16 Melville, L.G. 139, 163 Mendelsohn, Ronald 51 Mendes, P. 29, 36 Mennell, Stephen 287 Menzies government 30, 224 Mercer, Colin 409 Mercer, Jan 259, 265 Metcalfe, Andrew 280, 291 Metin, Albert 147, 268 metropole 4, 6, 10, 12, 15, 17–18, 22–4, 310 metropolitan elites 422 frameworks 23 literature 8, 20 social researchers 17 sociology 6, 15–18, 20, 22 theory 18, 20–3 Middleton, Sue 73 migration 21, 258, 293, 335 Mills, R.C. 139, 154 Mitchell, William 162, 164 Mitropoulos, A. xix, 81, 101 mode of production 101, 115, 116 Mol, H. 51, 58, 436 Mol, J.J. 204, 207, 357
Index Monash University 30, 37, 40, 45, 48, 204, 225, 227–9 Morven Brown, S. 44–5, 51 Most Influential Books in Australian Sociology (MIBAS) xxi, 321, 324, 327, 331–2, 334–8, 429 Mouzelis, N. 338, 341 Mowbray, M. 39 Mullins, P. 255, 265 multiculturalism 260 Myer Foundation 391 Najman, J.M. 62, 316, 318, 355, 384, 436–7 Nalson, John 45 National Library of Australia 431 nationalism 114, 177, 335 Nationalist War Precautions Act 113 neo-liberalism 23, 407, 423 neo-Marxist 278 new social movements 311 New Zealand Sociology 67 Nexus 48, 430 Northcott, Clarence 43, 49, 107, 110, 115, 148–9, 152, 154–5, 159, 168, 220, 240, 350 NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics 45 NSW University of Technology 44 O’Brien, Mary 282, 338–9 O’Connor, J. 260, 265, 326 Oeser, Oscar 16, 17, 44, 47, 128, 139, 188–9, 191, 198, 206 O’Malley, P. 436 O’Neill, Judith 190, 199 organisation of money 101–02 Orloff, A. 326 Osmond, Warren 140, 142, 158–9, 169 Otago University (OU) xxi, 75–6, 270–1 Owen, Robert 150 Oxbridge theory 71 Oxford University Press Sociology Prize 274 Pakulski, Jan 281, 309, 326 Park, Robert 15, 174, 178, 182, 185, 193, 196 Parker, D. 338, 341 Parsonian functionalism 19 Parsons, T. 16, 59, 214, 243, 311, 329 Partridge, P.H. 223, 242, 436 Pateman, Carole 282, 326, 409 paternalism 194 patriarchy 427
Pearson, D. 283, 290 Perry, N. 73, 283 Phelan, T.J. 355, 384, 436 phenomenology 104 Philosophical Society of Australasia 89 philosophy 29, 43, 46–7, 81, 85, 90, 94, 99, 124, 127, 397 Platt, J. 380, 384, 433 Playford, J. 252, 265 Pocock, John G.A. 410 Political behaviour 72 economy 152 institutions 50 philosophy 50, 114, 126, 155, 158, 164 sociology 288 political science 29, 43, 45, 81, 93, 124, 127–8, 152, 223, 308, 377, 379 politics 129, 209, 397 Portus, G.V. 43, 130, 151, 156, 158 positivism 104, 147, 277, 286, 345 postmodernism 22, 39, 286, 312 post-structuralism 22 Potter Foundation 391 poverty 15, 38, 45, 178, 192, 289, 292, 421 Prest, Wilfred 127, 183–5, 187, 192 Price, C.A. 206, 407 Pringle, R. 259, 264, 280, 282, 326, 332–4 professionalisation 2, 53, 155, 158, 315–16, 395 progressive liberalism 103 prostitution 18, 155, 179 protectionism 250 Protestant Reform Movement 176 Pusey, Michael 143, 281, 326, 332–3, 337, 407 Quartly, Marian 407 race 185, 289–90, 294, 408, 411 racism 14, 182, 250, 334, 427 Radcliffe-Brown, A. 159, 164, 221, 349 reconciliation 104 reconstruction 98, 179 Reeves, John, H. 179, 197 Reiger, Kerreen 66, 118, 407 religion 18, 181 Reynolds, P. 380, 384, 435 Rhoades, L.J. 380, 384, 433 Richards, Lynn 66, 193, 289, 326 Richardson, S. 327
445
Histories of Australian Sociology Richmond, Katy xii, xix, 2, 46, 57, 65, 275, 357, 383, 431 Riemer, Andrew 409 Riesman, D. 330–1 Rivett, K. 259, 265 Roach Anleu, Sharyn L. xii, xix, 202, 307, 372, 384, 436 Robb, Jim H. 51, 67, 69, 71, 205, 357 Robb, J.S. 207 Rockefeller Foundation 127 Roe, J. 114–15, 389, 415 Roethlisberger, F. 169 Rose, Hilary 282, 286 Ross, Dorothy 9, 346, 354 Rothberg, Maurice 186, 198 Rowley, C.D. 257, 265 Rowntree, Seebohm 158, 172, 175–6, 183, 191–3 Rowse, Tim 118, 138, 142, 149, 168, 249 Royal Society of New South Wales 89 Rubin, L. 331 Rural Reconstruction Commission 186, 187, 222 rural sociology 69, 73, 288 Russell, C. 327 Russell Sage Foundation 174 Russian Revolution 160 Ryan, W. 331 SAANZ Newsletter 356 SAANZ Presidents 356 SAANZ Women’s Section Newsletter 63 Said, E. 328 Sargeant, M. 327 Sawer, Marian 407, 436 Sayer, Andrew 425 Schedvin, C.B. 114, 142 Scheff, Tom 60, 63 Schofield, T. 327 Scott, D. 17, 189, 190, 198–9 Scott, W.H. 71–2, 372, 384, 436 Scott Fitzgerald, F. 310 Seitz, Anne 60 Selleck, R.J.W. 29–31, 35, 36 settler society 24 Shann, E.O.G. 138–9, 142, 160 Sharp, Geoff 31, 33, 35–7, 48, 59, 62, 400 Shaver, S. 292, 326, 407 Shaw, George Bernard 201 Shaw, M. 117 Sherrington, G. 258, 266 Simmel, G. 15, 330, 338
446
Singer, Peter 409 Skrbis, Z. xii, xix, 323, 380, 384 Slater, P. 330–1 Slattery, L. 312, 318 Smart, Barry 287 Smelser, Neil J. 236, 243 Smith, Dorothy E. 282 Smyth, Paul 138–9 social amelioration 221 anthropology 13, 15–16, 94, 95, 108, 180 capital 112, 423 causation 179 Christianity 175, 181 cohesion 154 community 153 contract 179 Darwinism 129, 182 democracy 148 disorder 110, 134, 173, 182 efficiency 101, 103–05, 107–09, 111, 116, 148 equity 134 evolution 5, 15, 131, 146, 154 formation 103, 105, 109 harmony 132, 165 inequality 62, 260, 292 integration 15, 134, 186 hygiene 97 justice 39, 104, 108 laboratory 134, 193 labour 105, 109, 114–16 mobility 207 movements 390 philosophy 129, 133 planning 101 policy 116, 288, 292 progress 125, 154 psychology 16, 18, 108, 126, 154, 156 reform 36, 137, 149, 159, 261 research 31, 97, 132, 171, 181 solidarity 149, 154 stratification 18, 20–1, 72, 206, 288, 387, 395 survey 17, 19, 23, 44, 128, 171–99 theory 153–4, 343 wage 114–16 welfare 176, 292 work 29, 36–7, 39, 46 Social Horizons 81, 118, 141, 168, 195, 197, 223, 431 Social Policy Research Centre (SPRC) xxi, 292, 380, 390
Index Social Science Research Fund Committee (SSRFC) xxi, 273 Social Sciences Research Council 188-9 socialism 86–7, 125, 129, 131, 147 socialist feminist theories 278, 282 Sociological Association of Aotearoa (New Zealand) 66, 274 Sociological Association of Australia and New Zealand (SAANZ) x, xxi, 2, 3, 37–40, 46–8, 50–3, 59, 60, 62–3, 65–6, 74–5, 81, 201, 207, 209–10, 214–15, 285, 317, 323, 333, 356, 430, 432 Sociological Association of New Zealand Newsletter 67 Sociology and Social Research 201 Somerset, H.C.D. 67–9, 77, 206 Soper, Donald 182 South Australian Worker 162, 169 southern theory 334 Spencer, Herbert 4–8, 13–14, 83, 86, 130, 172 Spender, D. 327 Spoonley, Paul 67, 73, 76, 283, 289, 294 Stanner, W.E.H. 139, 436 Stehlik, D. xii, 436 Stevenson, Anne 190 stratification 109, 234, 236 Stretton, Hugh 58, 399, 407 Summers, Anne 259, 266, 327, 332, 333 Sumner, Colin 309 Sumner, W.G. 4, 11–14 surplus labour 116 surplus value 118 Sutherland, Alexander 176 symbolic interactionism 3 Sydney Institute 391 Szelenyi, Ivan 281, 409 Sztompka, P. 22 Taft, Ronald A. 206 Tarling, Nicholas 67 TASAweb 429 Tasman Institute 390 Taylorism 108–09, 113 terrorism 39 Thatcherism 409 The Australian Sociological Association (TASA) ix, x, xxi, 1–3, 43, 52–3, 65–6, 275, 315–17, 321, 324–5, 331–2, 336–8, 355–85 427, 429–32 theology 94 Theophanous, A. 327
Thesis Eleven 392, 406, 409 Thiele, Steven 349, 354 Thompson, E.P. 280 Thompson, Faith 193, 199, 325, 335 Thompson, Richard 67, 70–2, 205–06 Thompson, S.D. 154–6 Thorns, David 76–7, 283 Timms, Duncan 67, 69, 70, 437 Titmuss, Richard 192 totalitarian 94, 101, 117 Townsend, Peter 192 Toyne, P. 257, 266 trade union 106, 154, 160–1, 258, 269 Treaty of Waitangi 284, 293 Tucker, G. 178–9, 182, 184, 189–90 Turner, Bryan 281, 287, 327, 332–3, 409, 437 Turner, Ian 253, 266 Tylor, E. 7, 10–13 unionism 105, 117 United Nations educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) xxi, 16, 44, 189, 233, 293 University of Adelaide 57–8, 63, 99, 160, 164, 205 University of Auckland 76 University of Melbourne 6, 16, 17, 29– 33, 35–6, 39, 43–4, 49, 50, 57–60, 62–3, 91, 94, 99, 123–4, 127, 133, 138, 140, 147, 150, 152, 156, 158, 176, 178–9, 185, 187–9, 191, 206, 220, 400 University of New England 205, 225, 228 University of New South Wales 44, 48, 49, 51, 63, 204, 225, 229, 245, 270, 323 University of New Zealand 69 University of Notre Dame 390 University of Queensland 53, 99, 108, 164, 176, 205, 207, 225 University of Sydney 6, 8, 9, 16, 18, 29, 43, 57–8, 62, 81, 84, 89, 90–2, 94–5, 99, 102, 115, 123–6, 150–1, 171, 179, 205, 219, 221–2, 225, 227, 229–30, 233, 245 University of Tasmania 99, 152, 160, 270 University of Western Australia 57, 58, 99, 205, 225, 229, 230, 233 Urban studies 38, 127, 234 urbanisation 1, 18 U’Ren, R. 17, 190, 198–9 utilitarian 84, 167, 250, 420, 422, 426 utopian realism 427
447
Histories of Australian Sociology Vachon, D. 257, 266 Victoria University of Wellington (VUW) xi, 46, 69, 71, 73, 76, 205–06, 270 Victorian Employers Federation 129, 141 Victorian Slum Abolition Board 178 Vietnam War 246 Vinson, Tony 45 Vocational Education and Training (VET) xxi, 390 Wacjman, Judy 280, 327 Wadham, Samuel 182, 185–6, 198 Wadsworth, Yolande xii, 53, 327, 383 wage labour 102, 105, 110 wage regulation 111 Waikato University (WU) xxi, 70, 288 Walker, Alan 16, 17, 182–3, 198 Wallerstein, I. 23, 328, 424 Walter, James xii, 138, 195, 435 Ward, L. 7, 11–14, 130 Ward, Russell 253, 256, 266 Warner, W. 257, 266 Waters, M. 275, 281, 298, 309, 326, 327 Wearing, Betsy 66, 289 Weber, M. 4, 5, 15, 59, 159, 236, 237, 311, 315, 329–30, 333, 338, 348 Weberianism 3, 4, 19, 22, 31, 277–8, 281, 283 welfare state 15, 16, 116, 160 Wesley Central Mission 183 Western, J. ix, xii, xx, 2, 49, 62–3, 278, 327, 351, 362, 383, 395, 437 Wheelwright, E.L. 106, 247, 263 White Australia policy 256 Whitlam government 32 Whitlam Institute 391 Whitley Committee Reports 1917–18 221 Wickham, G. xii, 53 Wild, R.A. 62, 66, 327, 336, 372, 384, 395, 435 Williams, Claire 52, 65, 259, 266, 280– 2, 290–1, 327, 363 Willis, E. 325, 327, 332–3, 337, 437 Willmott, W.E. 67, 372, 384, 435 Wilson, Paul 293 Wise, Tigger 182, 197 Witton, R. 38 Wolcott, Harry F. 345, 354 women’s studies 76, 259, 276, 288, 307, 402
448
Wood, G.L. 157, 168 Wooden, M. 327 Workers’ Educational Association (WEA) xxi, 16, 49, 50, 82, 102, 106, 108, 110–11, 115, 117, 126, 145, 150–2, 154–6, 158–61, 220, 268, 348 working class 15, 110–14, 116, 194, 247, 254, 291, 389 World Bank 115 World Sociology Congress 61 Wright, C. 107, 113 Wright, Don 183, 198 Wright, Erik Olin 286, 409 Wright, Mills C. 329 Wyn, Johanna 60 Yeatman, Anna 281, 327 Yeomans, Neville 60 youth studies 288, 315 Zubrzycki, Jerzy (George) xii, xx, 17, 38, 46, 48, 51, 58, 63, 138, 141, 168, 201, 204, 206, 219, 259, 266, 278, 346–7, 349, 356, 372, 432, 436–7 Zussman, R. 324, 328, 338, 340
