Homo Sociologicus Review

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Homo Sociologicus ReviewDespite its centrality to sociological theory, role theory is rarely subjected to extended critical scrutiny. There is an old book by Bruce Biddle that I have not read, a nice chapter by Sarbin and Allen in an old Handbook of Social Psychology, and a quite balanced chapter by Jonathan Turner in the Handbook of Sociological Theory. Dahrendorf's book actually precedes these, as it was written in 1957, when Dahrendorf was 28, and before his well-known contributions. Dahrendorf describes role theory in passing, but his real goal in this book (continued in a short paper he wrote some twelve years later) is to take on, however diffidently, the role-theoretic side of Talcott Parsons' work. Now in 1958, Parsons was at the top of his power, and he had move on from role theory (actually, he called it the "theory of action") to structural functionalism. Parsons was ultimately dethroned and indeed rather completely discredited, both for his theory of action and his structural-functionalism. Personally, I don't think structural-functionalism is that important, although I think his critics are generally far off the mark.
The usual critique is that Parsons focuses on social integration and conformity and does not deal with social change and other conflictive dynamical phenomena. This is true only in part (recall his use of cultural evolutionary theory to explain social institutions), and bids supplementing his approach, not deep-sixing it (remember the story of the baby and the bathwater). No one suggests, for instance, that we reject Gray's Anatomy because not everyone enjoys the ideal human body, or reject DNA sequencing because there are individual genetic differences. Mostly, when I read Parsons' critics, I feel sorry for their limited capacity for clear thought.
Parsons' theory of action is much of the same. It is fundamentally sound but it must be seriously revised to deal with social and cultural change. The most famous expression of this sentiment was Dennis Wrong's famous article on Parsons' "oversocialized man." Quipping on this state of affairs, economist James Duesenberry remarked, "Economics is all about how people make choices. Sociology is all about why they don't have any choices to make.'" I was firmly of the same opinion as Wrong in a reply I wrote to Parsons' critique of some of my work in the Quarterly Journal of Economics in 1974. I certainly exhibited at least as great a "limited capacity for clear thought" that I attribute to Parsons' major critics (I was 33 years old when I responded to Parsons---old enough to know better).
Dahrendorf's critique is more humanistic than Wrong's and less decisive. It is more of a recognition that Parsons is correct, but this recognition leads to a really dismal view of the relationship between individual and society. "How does the human being of our everyday experience relate to the glass men of social science? Must we and can we defend our artificial, abstract creatures against real human beings?" (p. 4)
"What are we doing," Dahrendorf asks, "if we develop theories which imply an image of man as a composite of roles?... the more precise we render the category of social role, the more threatening becomes the problems of homo sociologus, sociological man, whose every move express a role imposed on him by the impersonal agency of society. Is homo sociologus a totally alienate man given into the hands of man-made power, and yet with no chance of escaping them? ... For society and sociology, socialization invariable means depersonalization, the yielding up of man's absolute individuality and liberty to the constraint and generality of social roles. ...Unfortunately a society populated by homines sociologici, i.e., the massive reification of the basic assumptions of sociological theories, is only too easily conceivable today. America's "lonely crowd" comes as close to being social a society as Russia's "democracy without liberty." " (p. vi,25,39,76,83)
The problem with the oversocialized man critique of Parsons' action theory is simple: conformity with ethical and social norms are valued by most individuals when these norms are deemed legitimate and when others are conforming as well, but people weigh the costs and benefits of conformity, in some cases constantly and in others only periodically, and when these costs become too high, or when they are deemed illegitimate, individuals will abandon, sometimes reluctantly and with guile, and other time with energy and fanfare, the behaviors associated with their role positions. I wrote about this in two papers a few years ago:, "Solving the Puzzle of Human Prosociality", Rationality and Society 15,2 [may] (2003):155-187; and, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to Altruism: Genes, Culture, and the Internalization of Norms", Journal of Theoretical Biology 220,4 (2003):407-418.
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