William I. Robinson
Alex Callinicos, Social Theory: A Historical Introduction, New York, New York University Press 1999, ISBN 0-8147-1593-1.
I can affirm as a professor of social theory routinely bombarded
by publishers to adopt new texts on the subject that there has been no shortage of supply in recent years. But this is not your typical introductory reading to social theory. Professor Callinicos has done a remarkable job. Not since Irving Zeitlin's Ideology and the Development of Sociological Theory, first published in 1968, have I come across such a refreshing and insightful historical synthesis of the body of Western social theory. The study is lively and accessible to students of social and political theory yet profound and original enough in its interpretation to be of interest to those scholars more steeped in theory, history, politics, and philosophy.Callinicos suggests three "identifying features" of social theory: 1) concern with society as distinct from political institutions; 2) concern with distinguishing between and seeking to make generalizations about different kinds of societies, and 3) the particular problematic of modernity, or "the form of society which emerged in the modern West of the past few centuries and has come to dominate the world as a whole" (pp. 10). The study, informed by philosophy and political economy, then takes us through the classical French and Scottish Enlightement theorists, Hegel, and the liberal thinkers and Romantic reaction of the post-1789 world, before delivering us to Marx, Durkheim, and Weber. There are in between important discussions on the relation between evolutionism and social theory and on the grim critique of modernity opened up by Nietzche with his
metaphysical "will to power," extreme perspectivism, and attack on rationality. Subsequent chapters review, among others, Simmel, Freud, the Hegelian Marxists, Heiddeger, Keynes, Hayek, Parsons, the Frankfurt School, the structuralism of Levi-Strauss and Althusser, the post-structuralism of Foucault, and the more recent theoretical directions taken by Habermas and Bourdieu. Although no study can cover the full breadth of theory, notably absent here are late 20th century feminist theories and theories of the world system or the global political economy.What stands out, though, is not the scope of the study but the historical synthesis, the treatment of social theory in the context of the political and economic development of capitalism/modernism, and the emphasis on political economy. Sociology, as Callinicos notes, has been on the political defensive with the rise of the neo-liberal Right in recent years. Under the sway of postmodernism, it has sought questionable shelter in currently fashionable "cultural studies." Only a return to political economy, in my view, can rescue social theory from such enthrails that seem to have done away with material accounts of social reality.
I do not want to misrepresent Professor Callinicos, as a renewal of such material accounts in the face of cultural studies and postmodernism is not a project he has openly espoused. Nonetheless, a rendition that is gounded in political economy and that situates social theory in the political and historical context of its production, as does Callinicos,' is by definition a challenge to the renewal of claims via the train of postmodernism that the social world is unknowable, that objective reality does not exist, and that historical and material accounts of the social world are totalizing and therefore totalitarian...music to the ears, of course, of the neo-liberal Right and the apologists of global capitalism. Callinicos's particular treatment of social theory is thus a defense of history in the face of "End of History" theses, whether as victory cries of the current global capitalist order or epistemological claims of post-modernism. For if there is no history then there is no need for social theory.
Callinicos's final chapter, "In Place of Conclusion," reviews some of the urgent questions that social theory faces in the new century:
This entire chapter is crucial, and the issues it raises could well have been taken up more rigorously earlier in the text. Each of these questions are important, but given space constraints I wish to focus in these brief remarks on the issues of modernity and capitalism, and on "taking sides," which Callinicos suggests, if I read him correctly, involves a return to Marx in the face of his recent (only recent?) marginalization. I want to do this in such a way as to raise my one overarching criticism of Callinicos' study, what I see as its Eurocentric or Western-centric account of social theory. "Modernity" is for Callinicos a - nay, the - central motif in social theory. I have never been persuaded by claims that "modernity" is something other than the overall experience of capitalism - its constant restructuring and its ever-changing social, cultural, political, ideological/intellectual and institutional dimensions. Callinicos observers that "the concept of modernity is in fact highly ambiguous," and recognizes the "importance of distinguishing between the explanatory theory of the capitalist mode of production as a socio-economic system with its distinctive dynamics and phases of development from the normative philosophical idea of modernity as the actualization of the ideals of the Enlightenment" (pp. 297). But he remains non-committal and even seems to reduce the issue to semantics - whether "'capitalism' or 'modernity' is a better label" (pp. 298) for the historic transformation of society that began in Western Europe several hundred years ago.
Callinicos explains early on that he is not able to address the relationship between social theory and anthropology (pp. 5-6), yet his study emphasizes the salience of evolutionism and the swing between the poles of naturalism and anti-naturalism in the development of social theory. I raise this because, along with the reinstatement of political economy at the center of social theory, the contributions of a materialist anthropology may well be a key element in the renewal of social theory insofar as any such renewal requires, in my view, that we move beyond the deeply engrained Eurocentric tradition of situating social theory in Western history, as Callinicos does. If social theory is less ambitious than anthropological theory in the explanation it seeks of the nature and anatonmy of human existence, whether historical or prehistorical, its imperiative is certainly much more than an explanation of "modernity" so central to Callinicos ontological and normative conception of the theoretical enterprise.
This Eurocentric tradition lends itself to the "modernity" paradigm, whereby "modern" society as a form of thought and being originates "uniquely" in Europe (e.g., Weber), one outcome of which is the rise of capitalism. This is not a material but an ideal account, not a universal but a particularist rendition of history. Theories of "modernity" have not by and large been advanced alongside Marxist theory but in place of theories of capitalism, as an approach that has had the effect, intentional or otherwise, of marginalizing Marx. The problematic of capitalism is in my view not that of "Western modernity," and the two may be antinomious. Much of modern social theory has been a reaction to the challenge of Marx and historical materialism, a dynamic largely overlooked in Callinicos account. If Weber was "debating with the ghost of Karl Marx," so too, in varying degrees and distinct ways, were Durkheim, Parsons, Hayek, and - indeed - most of the thinkers discussed in the study. It is not enough that Callinicos qualifies his objective as introducing "Western" social theory, since theory cannot be constrained by particular histories and because such histories can only be grasped in their relation to world history, to the universals which lie beneath the differences that characterize particular types of human society.
This is, I believe, the promise of historical materialism. That social theory as we refer to it originated out of the transition to capitalism in the West does not mean that theory need to or should have as its central problematic that experience rather than what that experience tells us about the nature of human society. Social change is taking place worldwide at a hitherto unknown pace in the times of capitalist globalization. Certainly, a more universal approach is required if social theory is to become once again not just an instrument of explanation but a guide for social action.
William I. Robinson teaches at New Mexico State University