Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-xbtfd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-03T04:47:30.317Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Producing Textbook Sociology*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 September 2010

Jeff Manza ,
Michael Sauder  and
Nathan Wright
Jeff Manza
Affiliation:
Department of Sociology, New York University [[email protected]]
Michael Sauder
Affiliation:
Department of Sociology, University of Iowa [[email protected]]
Nathan Wright
Affiliation:
Department of Sociology, Bryn Mawr College [[email protected]].
Get access

Abstract

The conservative role of the textbook in reproducing the dominant ideas of a disciplinary field is well known. The factors driving that content have remained almost entirely unexamined. Reviewing the universe of textbooks aimed at the American market between 1998 and 2004, we explore the persistence of the identification in American sociology textbooks of a paradigm in which structural functionalism, conflict theory, and symbolic interactionism are used to frame the theoretical core of the discipline. We examine how over time the textbook market produces both supply and demand pressures to reproduce content that is at odds with the mainstream of the profession. We draw upon in-depth interviews with recent textbook authors and their editors.

Résumé

Il est bien connu que les manuels pour étudiants transmettent toujours une vue des idées dominantes en retrait par rapport au front de la science. Cependant les facteurs causaux ont été peu étudiés. Si l’on prend le cas de la sociologie aux États-Unis sur la période 1998-2004, on voit que le structuro-fonctionnalisme, théorie du conflit, et interactionnisme symbolique sont présents comme s’ils constituaient encore l’essentiel du corpus théorique de la discipline. Une enquête sur et auprès des auteurs comme des maisons d’édition fait apparaître certains éléments d’explication tant du côté de la demande que de l’offre.

Zusammenfassung

Wie bekannt, vermitteln Schulbücher Wissen gängiger Ideen und stehen der Wissenschaft hinten an. Die kausalen Gründe für diesen Sachverhalt sind wenig untersucht. Zwischen 1998-2004 wird die Soziologie in den USA noch als struktureller Funktionalismus, als Konflikttheorie und symbolischer Interaktionismus dargestellt, gerade so als wären sie noch Hauptbestandteil der soziologischen Theorie. Eine Untersuchung sowohl der Autoren als auch der Verlage weist einige Elemente auf, die mit Angebot und Nachfrage erklärt werden können.

Keywords

Introductory SociologySociological TheorySociological PedagogyIntroduction à la sociologieThéorie sociologiquePédagogie de la sociologieEinführung in die SoziologieSoziologietheorieSoziologiepädagogik
Type
Research Articles
Information
European Journal of Sociology / Archives Européennes de Sociologie , Volume 51 , Issue 2 , August 2010 , pp. 271 - 304
Copyright
Copyright © A.E.S. 2010

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Abend, Gabriel, 2006. “Styles of Sociological Thought: Sociologies, Epistemologies, and the Mexican and U.S. Quests for Truth”, Sociological Theory, 24 (1), pp. 1-41.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Agger, Ben, 1989b. “Do Books Write Authors? A Study of Disciplinary Hegemony”, Teaching Sociology, 17, pp. 365-369.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Agger, Ben, 2001. Public Sociology (Lanham, Rowman and Littlefield).Google Scholar
Alexander, Jeffrey, 1984. Theoretical Logic in Sociology, vol. IV: The Modern Reconstruction of Classical Thought: Talcott Parsons (Berkeley, University of California Press).Google Scholar
Alexander, Jeffrey, 1998. Neofunctionalism and After (Oxford, Basil Blackwell).Google Scholar
Alexander, Jeffrey and Thompson, Kenneth, 2008. A Contemporary Introduction to Sociology: Culture and Society in Transition (Boulder, Paradigm Publishers).Google Scholar
Anderson, Margaret L. and Taylor, Howard, 2000. Sociology (Belmont, Wadsworth).Google Scholar
Axelrod, Robert, 1997. The Complexity of Cooperation: Agent-Based Models of Competition and Collaboration (Princeton, Princeton University Press).Google Scholar
Babchuk, Nicholas and Keith, Bruce, 1995. “Introducing the Discipline: The Scholarly Content of Introductory Texts”, Teaching Sociology, 23, pp. 215-225.Google Scholar
Best, Joel and Schweingruber, David, 2003. “First Words: Do Sociologists Actually Use the Terms in Introductory Sociology Textbooks’ Glosseries?”, The American Sociologist, 34, pp. 97-106.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brooke, John H., 1998. “Textbooks and the History of Science”, Paradigm, 25 (May). Accessed 5/14/2008 at http://faculty.ed.uiuc.edu/westbury/paradigm/brook.html.Google Scholar
Broom, Leonard and Selznick, Philip, 1955. Sociology (Evanston, Row & Peterson).Google Scholar
Brown, Ruth Esther, 1976. “Introductory Texts: A Report on the Current Models”, Contemporary Sociology, 5, pp. 123-130.Google Scholar
Brym, Robert and Lie, John, 2003. Sociology (Toronto, Thomson).Google Scholar
Burawoy, Michael, 2005. “For Public Sociology”, American Sociological Review, 70, pp. 4-28.Google Scholar
Buxton, William and Turner, Stephen P., 1992. “From Education to Expertise: Sociology as a ‘Profession’”, in Halliday, Terence C. and Janowitz, Morris, eds., Sociology and Its Publics: The Forms and Fates of Disciplinary Organization (London, The University of Chicago Press).Google Scholar
Charmaz, Kathy and Lofland, Lyn H., 2003. “Introduction to the Special Issue of Distinguished Voices in Symbolic Interactionism”, Symbolic Interactionism, 26, pp. 1-4.Google Scholar
Colander, David, ed., 2004. The Complexity Vision and the Teaching of Economics.Google Scholar
Colander, David, 2005. “What Economists Teach and What Economists Do” Journal of Economic Education 20, pp. 249-260.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cole, Stephen, ed., 2001. What’s Wrong With Sociology? (New Brunswick, Transaction Publishers).Google Scholar
Coleman, James, 1990. Foundations of Social Theory (Cambridge, Harvard University Press).Google Scholar
Collins, Randall, 1975. Conflict Sociology (New York, Academic Press).Google Scholar
Colomy, Paul, 1990. Neofunctionalist Sociology (Northampton, Edward Elgar Press).Google Scholar
Conley, Dalton, 2009. You May Ask Yourself: An introduction to thinking like sociologist (New York, Norton).Google Scholar
Coser, Lewis, 1954. The Functions of Social Conflict (New York, The Free Press).Google Scholar
Coser, Lewis, 1979. “Asymmetries in Author-Publisher Relations” Transaction/Society, 17, pp. 34-38.Google Scholar
Dahrendorf, Ralf, 1959. Class and Class Conflict in Industrial Society (Stanford, Stanford University Press).Google Scholar
Davis, James A., 1994. “What’s Wrong With Sociology?”, Sociological Forum, 9, pp. 179-197.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Eitzen, D. Stanley, 1988. “Textbook Writing: Asymmetries and Issues in the Publisher-Author Relationship”, Teaching Sociology, 16, pp. 390-392.Google Scholar
Elster, Jon, 1982. “Marxism, Functionalism, and Game Theory”, Theory and Society, 11, pp. 453-482.Google Scholar
Epstein, Joshua M. and Axtell, Robert, 1996. Growing Artificial Societies: Social Science From the Bottom Up (Cambridge, MIT Press/Brookings Institution).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Faris, Robert E. Lee, 1964. “Introduction” in Faris, Robert E. Lee, ed., Handbook of Modern Sociology, pp. 21-64 (Chicago, Rand McNally).Google Scholar
Ferree, Myra Marx and Hall, Elaine, 1996. “Rethinking Stratification from a Feminist Perspective: Gender, Race and Class in Mainstream Textbooks”, American Sociological Review, 61, pp. 929-950.Google Scholar
Fine, Gary, 1993. “The Sad Demise, Mysterious Disappearance, and Glorious Triumph of Symbolic Interactionism”, Annual Review of Sociology, 19, pp. 61-87.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fitzhugh, George, 1854. A Sociology for the South (Richmond, A. Morris).Google Scholar
Fleck, Ludwik, [1935] 1979. Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact (Chicago, University of Chicago Press).Google Scholar
Friedman, Norman L., 1991. “What Do We Really Teach in Introductory Sociology Textbooks? Three Underlying Messages and Their Instructional Implications”, The American Sociologist, 22, pp. 137-146.Google Scholar
Friedrichs, Robert W., 1970. A Sociology of Sociology (New York, The Free Press).Google Scholar
Gouldner, Alvin, 1970. The Coming Crisis of Western Sociology (New York, Basic Books).Google Scholar
Graff, Gerald, 1993. Beyond the Culture Wars: How Teaching the Conflicts Can Revitalize American Education (New York, Norton & co).Google Scholar
Graham, Franklin C., 1988. “Some Observations on Sociology Textbooks: An Editorial Perspective”, Teaching Sociology, 16, pp. 356-365.Google Scholar
Hagan, John and Shedd, Carla, 2005. “Socio-Legal Conflict Theory of Perceptions of Criminal Injustice”, University of Chicago Legal Forum, pp. 261-288.Google Scholar
Hamilton, Richard and Form, William, 2003. “Categorical Usages and Complex Realities: Race, Ethnicity, and Religion in the United States”, Social Forces, 81, pp. 693-714.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Herrick, Robert L. 1980. “Nineteen Pictures of a Discipline: A Review of Recent Introductory Textbooks”, Contemporary Sociology, 9, pp. 617-621.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hess, Beth B., 1988. “In Defense of the Introductory Textbook”, Teaching Sociology, 16, pp. 403-04.Google Scholar
Hobbs, A. H., 1951. The Claims of Sociology: A Critique of Textbooks (Harrisburg, The Stackpole Co).Google Scholar
Horowitz, Irving Louis, 1994. The Decomposition of Sociology (New York, Oxford University Press).Google Scholar
Howard, Judith A., 2007. “The State of (Cumulative Theoretical) Social Psychology”, Contemporary Sociology, 36, pp. 418-20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hughes, Henry, [1854] 1968. A Treatise on Sociology (New York, Negro University Press).Google Scholar
Joas, Hans and Knobl, Wolfgang, [2004] 2009. Social Theory: Twenty Introductory Lectures (New York, Cambridge University Press).Google Scholar
Journal of Economics Education, 1988. Special Issue on the Principles of Economics Textbook. 19, pp. 109-184.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kendall, Diana, 1999. “Doing a Good Deed or Confounding the Problem? Peer Review and Sociology of Textbooks”, Teaching Sociology, 27, pp. 17-30.Google Scholar
Kimmel, Michael, 2007. Sociology Now (Upper Saddle River, Pearson).Google Scholar
Kuhn, Thomas, 1979. The Essential Tension: Selected Studies in Scientific Tradition and Change (Chicago, University of Chicago Press).Google Scholar
Kuhn, Thomas, [1962] 1996. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. 3rded. (Chicago, University of Chicago Press).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Laslett, Barbara, 1990. “Biography as History: The Case of William Fielding Ogburn”, Theory and Society, 20, pp. 511-539.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Leavitt, Barbara and Nass, Clifford, 1989. “The Lid on the Garbage Can: Institutional Constraints on Decision Making in the Technical Core of College-Text Publishers”, Administrative Science Quarterly, 34, pp. 190-207.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lindsay, Linda L. and Beach, Stephen, 2000. Sociology (New York, Prentice-Hall).Google Scholar
Luhmann, Niklas, [1984] 1995. Social Systems (Stanford, Stanford University Press).Google Scholar
Lynch, Michael and Bogan, David, 1997. “Sociology’s Asociological ‘Core’: An Examination of Textbook Sociology in Light of the Sociology of Scientific Knowledge”, American Sociological Review, 62, pp. 481-493.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Macionis, John J., 1988. “Textbooks and Sociology: A Case of Professional Dependency?”, Teaching Sociology, 16, pp. 420-423.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Macionis, John J., 2006. Sociology, 10thed. (New York, Prentice Hall).Google Scholar
Maines, David R., 2003. “Interactionism’s Place”, Symbolic Interactionism, 26, pp. 5-18.Google Scholar
Martin, John, 2003. “What is Field Theory?”, American Journal of Sociology, 109, pp. 1-49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McCall, George, 2006. “Symbolic Interaction” in Burke, Peter J., ed., Contemporary Social Psychological Theories (Stanford, Stanford University Press).Google Scholar
McGee, Reese, 1985. “The Sociology of Sociology Textbooks” in Campbell, Frederick L., Blalock, Hubert M. Jr. and McGee, Reese, eds., Teaching Sociology (Chicago, Nelson-Hall).Google Scholar
McQuarle, Donald and Murray, Martin, 1984. “Conflict Theory: An Obituary”, Current Perspectives in Social Theory, 5, pp. 201-223.Google Scholar
Merton, Robert, 1968. Social Theory and Social Structure (New York, The Free Press).Google Scholar
Michael, Ian, 1998. “Textbooks as History” Paradigm 25 (May). Accessed 5/14/2008 at http://faculty.ed.uiuc.edu/westbury/paradigm/brook.html.Google Scholar
Miller, Laura, 2006. Reluctant Capitalists: Bookselling and the Culture of Consumption (Chicago, University of Chicago Press).Google Scholar
Mills, C. Wright, 1943. “The Professional Ideology of Social Pathologists”, American Journal of Sociology, 48, pp. 165-180.Google Scholar
Mills, C. Wright, 1959. The Sociological Imagination (New York, Oxford University Press).Google Scholar
Mullins, Nicholas, 1973. Theories and Theory Groups in Contemporary American Sociology (New York, Harper & Row).Google Scholar
Nolan, Patrick, 2003. “Questioning Textbook Truth: Suicide Rates and the Hawthrone Effect” The American Sociologist 34, pp. 281-297.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Odum, Howard, 1951. American Sociology: The Story of Sociology in the United States Through 1950 (New York, Greenwood Publishers).Google Scholar
Park, Robert E. and Burgess, Ernest W., 1920. Introduction to the Science of Sociology (Chicago, University of Chicago Press).Google Scholar
Pereyra, Diego, 2008. “Sociological Texbooks in Argentina and Mexico, 1940-1960”, Current Sociology, 15, pp. 267-287.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Perucci, Robert, 1980. “Sociology and the Introductory Textbook”, The American Sociologist, 15, pp. 39-49.Google Scholar
Platt, Jennifer, 2008a. “Introduction”, Current Sociology, 56, pp. 147-164.Google Scholar
Platt, Jennifer, 2008b. “British Sociology Textbooks From 1949 On”, Current Sociology, 56, pp. 165-182.Google Scholar
Rex, John, [1961] 1970. Key Problems of Sociological Theory (London, Routledge).Google Scholar
Ritzer, George, 1988. “Problems, Scandals, and the Possibility of ‘Textbookgate’: An Author’s View”, Teaching Sociology, 16, pp. 373-380.Google Scholar
Ross, E.A., 1923. Outlines of Sociology (New York, The Century Company).Google Scholar
Schiffrin, Andre, 2000. The Business of Books: How the International Conglomerates Took Over Publishing and Changed the Way We Read (New York, The New Press).Google Scholar
Sorokin, Pitrim, 1929. “Some Contrasts of Contemporary European and American Sociology I”, Social Forces, 8, pp. 57-62.Google Scholar
Spencer, Herbert, [1879] 2004. Principles of Sociology (New Brunswick, Transaction Publishers).Google Scholar
Turner, Stephen P. and Turner, Jonathan H., 1990. The Impossible Science: An Institutional Analysis of American Sociology (Newbury Park, Sage Publications).Google Scholar
Turner, Jonathan H., 2006. Sociology (Upper Saddle River, Pearson).Google Scholar
Wacquant, Loic, 2009. Deadly Symbiosis: Race and the Rise of the Penal State (Cambridge, Polity Press).Google Scholar
Ward, Lester, [1883] 1897. Dynamics of Sociology (New York, D. Appleton and Company).Google Scholar
Wood, Robert, 1983. “Conflict Theory as Pedagogy: A Critique from the Left”, Teaching Sociology, 10, pp. 463-485.Google Scholar