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Contested Canon: Simmel Scholarship at Columbia and the New SchoolAuthor(s): Gary D. JaworskiReviewed work(s):Source: The American Sociologist, Vol. 29, No. 2 (Summer, 1998), pp. 4-18Published by: SpringerStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27698867.

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Contested Canon: Simmel Scholarshipat Columbia and the New SchoolGary D. Jaworski

The history of sociology exhibits what might be called, after Gallie (1956), anessentially contested canon. The key figures, sacred texts, and central ideas

that constitute the sociological tradition are inherently in dispute. This essayexamines the contested canon within a historical framework to provide atleast a partial explanation for the restricted interpretation of Georg Simmel asa structuralist sociologist. The sites of this contest are two New York Cityinstitutions, Columbia University and the New School for Social Research,both ofwhich offered mid-century readings of Simmel's works. At Columbiain the mid-1950s, Robert K. Merton advanced a structural reading of Simmel's

work. During the same broad period, the New School's Albert Salomon championed a phenomenological reading of Simmel in his classes and seminars.Despite penetrating insights into Simmel's links to the phenomenological tradition, Salomon's interpretation has had less salience than the approach advanced by Merton. The differential success of these competing interpretationsis explained in large measure by the institutionalization and dominance of

Merton's research tradition relative to Salomon's.

The history of sociology exhibits what might be called, after Gallie (1956), anessentially contested canon. Like the concepts that Gallie discussed? power,democracy, and freedom, for example?the key figures, sacred texts, andcentral ideas that constitute the sociological tradition are inherently in dispute.Even when there is agreement over which figures belong in the list of approvedwriters, the interpretation of those figures is often hotly debated. Recent controversies over Parsons's reading of Weber and Blumer's reading of Mead are onlytwo examples of this pattern. Unlike Gallie's concepts, however, the inherent

contestability of the sociological canon is less a logical than a sociological andpolitical problem. The contending schools of sociology, as Tiryakian (1986)

Gary D. Jaworski is a Professor of Sociology, Fairleigh Dickinson University, Madison, NewJersey.

The American Sociologist/Summer 1998



and others have observed, canonize intellectual heroes, texts, and traditions,and challenge or ignore others. Approved authors and texts are advanced asschools institutionalize themselves and attain dominance; others are ignored,forgotten, and occasionally resurrected.This essay examines the contested canon within a historical framework toprovide at least a partial explanation for the restricted interpretation of GeorgSimmel as a structuralist sociologist. The sites of this contest are two New YorkCity institutions, Columbia University and the New School for Social Research,both of which offered mid-century readings of Simmers works. At Columbia inthe mid-1950s, Robert K. Merton advanced a structural reading of Simmers workin two year-long seminars (1955-56; 1956-57) titled Selected Problems in theTheory of Organizations. During the same broad period, Albert Salomon, anoriginal member of the New School's Graduate Faculty who had studied withboth Weber and Simmel, championed a phenomenological reading of Simmel inhis classes and seminars. Despite penetrating insights into Simmers links to thephenomenological tradition, including an examination of the inner affinity ofSimmel and Alfred Schutz, Salomon's interpretation has had less salience thanthe approach advanced by Merton. The differential success of these competinginterpretations is explained in large measure by the institutionalization anddominance of Merton's research tradition relative to Salomon's. Such an analysispromises to cast light not only on the history of Simmel's American receptionbut on the vicissitudes of contemporary sociological theories and methods.A useful strategy for comparing intellectual and professional styles of work isto chart them along an intellectual continuum. At one end of the continuum liesscholarship, that is, intellectual work in harmony with humanist intellectualtraditions. Assuming the unity of knowledge, this approach links sociology toliterary, philosophical, and historical projects. Texts are examined historicallyand systematically, employing explication du texte, and biography is acceptedas relevant to understanding a thinker. At the other end of the continuum isabstracted empiricism, to borrow C. Wright Mills's (1959) phrase, in the scientific intellectual tradition. Work in this vein is characterized less by its questions than its techniques. Armed with a positivist philosophy of science, itmeasuresall knowledge by a restricted yardstick of truth. Not surprisingly, many authorsare dismissed as unworthy of study; others are of interest only for the hypotheses and concepts their works contain. Texts are examined, if at all, in isolationfrom the literary and historical context of their production. In the middle of thecontinuum is a style of work that shares in abstracted empiricism's instrumentalism, its goal of utilizing a text for some purpose, and in scholarship's universalism, its desire to advance intellect and learning. This middle course can becalled the research program.The competing approaches to Simmel in the period after the Second WorldWar do not range very widely along this continuum. Yet Salomon's work at theNew School mostly addresses the criteria of scholarship, while the work ofMerton and other Columbia sociologists focuses on the research program. Overall, the story of Simmel in post-war American sociology revolves in important

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ways around the relationship between these styles of thought and their corresponding institutional locations. Columbia's institutional dominance relative tothe New School had profound consequences, not only for American Simmelstudies but for sociology more generally. In the American academy today, theresearch program and abstracted empiricism have largely supplanted scholarship. Explication du texte is a dying art,while methods that ape the natural sciences are de rigueur in graduate schools across the United States. Europeanstyle scholarship, with its ties to philosophy and literature, has been rejected asold-fashioned and replaced by an American brand of academic work tied toscientific advance and social improvement.In part, such developments are a result of the academic styles successfullyadvanced by Merton and Paul Lazarsfeld at Columbia University, where sociologywas defined mostly along the lines of the natural sciences. Such a definitionentailed substantial gains, including greater prestige for postwar sociology. Butthose gains have come at a price, namely, the eclipse of the kind of AmericanSimmel scholarship represented at the New School. With few exceptions, contemporary Simmel scholarship has returned to the European community, wherethe most comprehensive efforts at understanding Simmel's writings, as opposedto developing them for other purposes, are taking place.1A thorough study of thewritings and institutional contexts of American Simmelstudies would be necessary to substantiate the above thesis and conclusions.Here I lay the groundwork for such a study by presenting short sketches of workat each institution. The sketches rest on information from my interviews withthe principals and their students and from an analysis of published and unpublished sources, including seminar notes, drafts of papers, and correspondence.

Simmel Studies at ColumbiaMerton's examination of Simmel's sociology is usefully viewed in the contextof the Columbia sociology department's project of developing a unified socio

logical approach, what Crothers (1996) calls the Columbia Tradition. Prior tothis development, Columbia sociology was dominated by a series of great thinkers?first Franklin H. Giddings and then Robert M. Maclver, and assisted by anumber of other strong intellects, including Theodore Abel and Robert Lynd?each one professing his own brand of sociology.2 In the late 1930s, there emergeda divide between those members of the department, like Abel, who thought thatthe department's internal contradictions stimulated individuality of thought andthose, like Lazarsfeld and many students, who thought it impaired intellectualaccomplishment. This split is evident in a debate between Lazarsfeld and Abel,recorded in the latter's diaries (Abel 1936: 130-131). Lazarsfeld gave the department low marks and argued in favor of a unified approach, a school of thought.Abel, predictably, stressed the department's virtues and defended a scholar'sright to do his own thinking.

Columbia sociology during the 1940s and 1950s developed along the linesthat Lazarsfeld had promoted, as a department characterized by strong intellec

6 The American Sociologist/Summer 1998



tuai coherence. Lazarsfeld and Merton joined formal theory with research methodology, funded students with strong statistical skills, secured grants for facultyand student research projects, and helped form a school of thought that ensuredColumbia's place as one of the country's leading departments. Central to thistradition was Merton's definition of sociology as a special science focusedon the structural factors of social life. Such an approach aimed for autonomy,not only from related disciplines, like psychology and cultural anthropology, butalso from other schools of sociological thought. It also entailed a rereading ofthe sociological tradition, not as a history of great thinkers or a tale of theoretical convergence, but as a repository of structuralist insights.Merton's postwar interest in Simmel, then, was part of this project of advancing the frontiers of the emerging Columbia school of thought. This focus helpsexplain Merton's response to Lewis A. Coser's initial dissertation proposal. Coseroriginally envisioned not a special study of Simmel's essay on conflict but anexamination of the German sociologist's intellectual biography. Merton rejectedthe plan on the grounds that such a study was unfashionable (Coser 1987; seealso Rosenberg 1984: 44). This response reflected his quest to make Columbiasociology scientific and autonomous, distinct not only from non-scientific fieldsof study but also from the department's own humanistic past.In developing a distinctive brand of sociology, Merton and his colleaguesabandoned continental intellectual styles. The version of social science advancedby his predecessor Maclver closely linked sociology and philosophy (Bierstedt1981: 243-297). Mertonian structural-functionalism, however, severed the connection between the two intellectual pursuits. Illustrative of this separation isMerton's Social Theory and Social Structure (1957). One of the era's mosterudite and enduring sociological treatises, it nevertheless examines almost nophilosophers. Inmore than 600 pages, Hegel and Nietzsche are cited once each,and there are no citations of Plato or Aristotle, Kant or Kierkegaard, Schopenhaueror Bergson.3 Moreover, Merton's seminar notes on Selected Problems in theTheory of Organization reveal that of all Simmel's writings, only his Soziologiewas included. Simmel's cultural or philosophical works, indeed even his othersociological writings, would have been read by Merton's students, only eitheroutside of class or later in their careers.4

In place of a historical and systematic examination of Simmel's writings, Mertondeveloped a strategy of extracting and extending Simmel's structuralist insights.6The basic approach of each seminar session was to startwith a quotation froman assigned text and then rephrase it in terms of contemporary issues or conceptsin order to extend, revise, or update the ideas. The primary text was Kurt H.Wolffs translation of The Sociology of Georg Simmel (1950), but other sources?by Parsons, Homans, and Bendix, among others?also provided raw material forthose sessions. This procedure is similar towhat Merton (1973) has referred to ascodification in science, an operation considered fundamental in the structuralfunctional school but quite foreign to the humanistic scholars at the New School.Merton's interest in Simmel may have found expression in the Columbia project,but its content largely derives from a contemporary social problem. By the mid

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1950s, when Merton examined Simmel's sociology, America had suffered fromyears of Cold War suspicion and demagoguery. Through the activities of SenatorJoseph McCarthy and his minions, thousands of citizens suffered countless invasions of privacy and other violations of civil rights. Academics were speciallytargeted for their real or imagined ties to scapegoated groups. Once the tumulthad subsided, the topic of leadership in a democratic society took center stage.For many intellectuals, including Merton's former teacher, Talcott Parsons, thesolution to the problem of McCarthyism lay, above all, in improved nationalpolitical leadership.6 Merton (1957:336-357) forcefully engaged this issue, drawing on Simmel's ideas about visibility to help him answer one of the crucialquestions of this period: What are the conditions that support a vital democracy?(See Jaworski 1990; 1997, ch. 5.)In a discussion of aristocracy in his Soziologie, Simmel (1950:90) wrote: Ifit is to be effective as a whole, the aristocratic group must be 'surveyable'[?bersehbar] by every single member of it. Every element must be personallyacquainted with every other. Merton extended Simmel's term theoretically bydistinguishing between visibility, a social psychological quality, and observability,a structural property of a group. Practically, he applied Simmel's insights intothe vital conditions of aristocracy (Simmel 1950:91) to the problem of democratic leadership. In a vital democracy, Merton maintained, leaders and led mustbe visible and observable to each other; leaders must be willing to communicateopenly with the people. The improvement of public opinion polls, for example,would provide an efficient means of communicating to leaders the concerns ofthe people. While Merton recognized the ethical and social necessity for curbson full visibility, he was convinced, following Simmel's insights, that improvedvisibility and observability would enhance democratic governance. Merton'sextension of Simmel's ?bersehbar was thus embedded in an institutional project,developing the Columbia Tradition, and motivated as well by practical concern with the renewal of national political leadership. His development of thestructural aspects of Simmel's ideas was a theoretical expression of the politicalproblem of secrecy and disclosure, a key concern of the Cold War world.7 Thesame cannot be said, however, for subsequent applications of Merton's conceptual distinction between visibility and observability. Applied to abstractedresearch on medical practice, small groups, and scientific prestige, the termsyielded thin results and, consequently, the trickle of studies in this researchprogram dried up (Cole and Cole 1968; Hopkins 1964; Merton et al. 1957).8Merton's extension of Simmel's ideas contributed to sociological and politicaltheory, but it never became in our sense a scholarly examination of Simmel's

writings. Neither the seminars nor the writings derived from them representefforts to better understand Simmel on his own terms. The seminar notes revealneither an exegesis nor a contextual examination of the text. In the words ofone of the seminar participants, The Sociology of Georg Simmel was a pretext,not a text. Itwas a point of departure for advancing Merton's research program, which aimed at an analysis of the structural properties of groups. In hisseminars, then, Merton was more interested in standing on Simmel's shouldersthan in carefully measuring them.




Merton attributes the modest productivity of these seminars to his own errorof judgment (Merton 1988). For him, their result was the long chapter in thesecond edition of Social Theory and Social Structure, titled Continuities in theTheory of Reference Groups and Social Structure (Merton 1957:281-386). Thischapter contains a wealth of directions for research in functionalist analysis,many of which remain buried in those pages and unexplored by his students.Had the piece been published separately, Merton remarked, itwould have hadgreater research salience. Merton's conjecture is realistic. Lewis A. Coser's TheFunctions of Social Conflict (1956), while written prior to those seminars, alsoemployed Simmelian ideas to advance the functionalist research agenda. Published as a slim volume, it succeeded in shaping several generations of thinkers.(See Jaworski 1997, ch. 6.)It is well known that The Functions of Social Conflict was Coser's doctoraldissertation, written under Merton at Columbia. Less widely known is the factthat the published book is actually only half of his dissertation, and that theother half remains unpublished/The part that has become famous follows Merton'sfunctionalist research program, especially the focus on unintended consequencesof social action. Its style is also heavily indebted to Merton, whose strategy ofexamining Simmel's writings is in all essentials the same approach Coser followsin his book. Coser's study departs from functionalism, however, in privilegingconflict over consensus as the cohesive force of liberal, democratic societies. Inthis sense Coser calls himself a heretic in the church of functionalists (Rosenberg1984: 44).The unpublished first part of Coser's dissertation is titled The Concept ofSocial Conflict in American Sociology: An Exercise in the Sociology of Knowledge (Coser 1954: 5-188). Itwas written partly at Chicago, partly at Columbia,and represents a very different research program from that followed in thepublished part (Coser 1989). In the unpublished material, Coser's basic purposeis to explain the changing status of conflict in American sociological thought,from a positive valuation among the founding generation to a negative estimation in the generation represented by Elton Mayo and Talcott Parsons. Drawingon Mead, Znaniecki, and C. Wright Mills, Coser observes that the first generationof sociologists addressed reformist audiences: men and women engaged in socialconflict who positively valued this struggle. A shift in audience and affiliationoccurred during and after the New Deal period, as sociologists increasinglyworked in applied positions within various public and private bureaucracies.Along with new audiences came a new style of work, applied sociology, anda new type of administration-oriented sociologist. A fear of conflict dominatedthe intellectual outlook of this new generation and resulted inwork preoccupied with cohesion, common values, and social integration.As this brief review indicates, Coser's response to Merton's rejection of hisproposal towrite an intellectual biography of Simmel resulted in a dissertationthat contributes to two research programs. The published part, with its analysisof the positive functions of social conflict, advanced the functionalist researchprogram; the unpublished part presents a critique of that theoretical perspec

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tive, especially of itsmore conservative branch. It represents an attempt to forgea critical sociology on quite different theoretical grounds.Simmel Scholarship at the New School

What Columbia rejected, the New School embraced. In the 1940s and 1950s,the New School sociology department produced dissertations on Max Weber,Thorstein Veblen, Carl Gustav Jung, George Herbert Mead, Emile Durkheim, andthe lay sociologist, Mark Twain, among other topics.9 These studies not onlyoffer intellectual biographies of their subject, but also include Simmelian analyses and reflections. Rosenberg's dissertation on Veblen singled out Simmel'sessay on the stranger as a key text in understanding its subject; Natanson's studyof Mead identified the similarities and differences between Mead's and Simmel'sanalyses of self and society; even Skelton's dissertation on Mark Twain offereda Simmelian analysis of Pudd'nhead Wilson, one of Twain's characters, as maverick and stranger. It is likely, then, that the New School faculty would not haverejected a dissertation proposal for an intellectual biography of Georg Simmel.In fact, Albert Salomon was eager for a new interpretation of Simmel.Salomon, himself, was working on such a revised reading of his former teacheras early as 1940, when he wrote to Harry Elmer Barnes, My Simmel interpretation will give me much work. However, it is highly necessary to revise the veryimperfect book of Spykman and to suggest a new [reading] of Simmel himself(Salomon 1940). Salomon was referring to Nicholas J. Spykman's book, TheSocial Theory of Georg Simmel, first published in 1925. At the time, this wasthe only major study of Simmel available in English, and both its contributionsand limitations were widely recognized. Salomon's work on a new interpretationof Simmel led to two publications in the 1940s: an entry on Simmel in TheUniversal fewish Encyclopedia (Salomon 1943) and a section of his chapter onGerman sociology inGurvitch and Moore's Twentieth Century Sociology (Salomon1945). Both pieces are animated by a desire tomake sense of Simmel's writings,as opposed to employing them for some other research purpose. They also linkSimmel's work to more general philosophical and literary traditions. Indeed,Salomon's insistence on reading Simmel as a.philosopher and sociologist distinguishes his reading of Simmel from his American contemporaries, who preferredto extract Simmel's sociology from his philosophy, focusing primarily on theformer and ignoring the latter. To Salomon, such an approach was scandalous. 10

Both of these early essays on Simmel draw out the connections betweenSimmel's philosophy and his sociology. For example, in his 1945 chapter onGerman sociology, Salomon described Simmel as primarily a philosopher. Buthe quickly added, however, sociological thinking was a fundamental element ofhis philosophical reflection (Salomon 1945:604). In later publications, as wellas in seminars and class lectures, he stated this point more forcefully. I submit,he said to his class on Simmel and Schutz, that in the case of Simmel, sociologyand philosophy basically merge and are one and indivisible (Salomon 1962). In




1963, when he lectured on Simmel at the Leo Baeck Institute inNew York City,he repeated this refrain: Simmel was a philosopher-sociologist, one and indivisible (Salomon 1995[1963]:363).Like Merton's work on Simmel, which was tied to advancing the frontiers ofColumbia sociology, Salomon's Simmel scholarship was embedded in an institutional project. In the 1950s and 1960s Alfred Schutz, and later Aron Gurwitschand Dorian Cairns, was making the New School the center for phenomenologicalphilosophy (Rutkoff and Scott 1986). Since this perspective was well out of themainstream of social and political thought, which was dominated by positivistassumptions, special efforts were made to legitimate the approach. In their bidfor legitimacy, the Graduate Faculty employed the strategy of interpreting socialtheory with an eye to establishing the links between the phenomenologicaltradition and other European and American developments. Schutz's writings onWilliam James and George Herbert Mead, for example, underscored the parallelsbetween those American thinkers and Husserl and Bergson (see Coser 1984:121125; Rutkoff and Scott 1986:205-206; Wagner 1983). As Schutz (1970: 13) explained,in those writings his aim was to show that phenomenology [was] not quite astranger in this country.Salomon's work on Simmel contributed to these efforts to vindicate one of the

New School's most important emerging philosophical positions. He does this byinterpreting Simmel as an important progenitor of the phenomenological tradition. In his writings and class notes, Salomon emphasized Simmel's relationshipto both the European phenomenological tradition and analogous American philosophical thought. As a former student of Simmel's, he wrote about his teacherhaving a remarkable influence on the liberal youth in his classes, introducingthem to James and Bergson and combining those thinkers with the idealistictraditions which were then prevalent (Salomon 1943:542). Another example isfound in Salomon's seminar on Simmel, offered in the semester preceding Schutz'sown 1958 seminar on James and Bergson. As he wrote, I considered [my seminar on Simmel] as an introduction to Professor Schutz's course on Bergson andJames....Simmel knew that Bergson was closest to his own work, and he recognized the greater potency of the French philosopher (Salomon 1966). A fewyears after Schutz's death in 1959, Salomon offered his course Simmel andSchutz as Sociologists, a tribute to both thinkers (see Appendix). Again in thiscourse, Salomon maintained that Simmel was an important precursor to phenomenological philosophy and sociology: in his examination of intersubjectivity as aconstitutive element of human conduct; in his analysis of social types and typifications; and in his philosophy of life and essays on the life-world. In all these

ways, and others, Simmel reveals his affinities to that tradition. As Salomon(1945:609) stated elsewhere, Simmel's work is living and suggestive, for hehas seen the problems that the Phenomenological School applies to the analysisof social phenomena.The seminar on Simmel and Schutz explored the affinities between the twofigures, including their common background in the philosophy of Bergson andthe similarity of the intellectual problems on which theyworked.11 While Salomon

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admitted the fundamental differences between their respective intellectual worlds,he insisted on the inner affinity of Simmel and Schutz as sociologists. According to Salomon, both thinkers are concerned with vindicating the subject in theface of social forces that were turning the constructive and spontaneous individual into a stereotype and pattern of institutional logic (Salomon 1962).Simmel's defense of the subject, Salomon showed, took the form of understanding how individuals transcend the relationships and structures within whichthey interact. Whether they are examining art or fashion, the money economyor religion, Simmel's writings illustrate how our ways of being with others al

ways include ways of going beyond them. To employ Salomon's (1962) appositephrase, according to Simmel, the beyond is not irrelevant for the social being.Schutz's vindication of the subject lay on different foundations than Simmel's?especially on the works of Husserl and Weber?but he too focused on the worldas experienced and understood from the subjective point of view. Thus, despitethe manifold differences in theirwork, Simmel and Schutz occupy common ground.The inner unity of the two thinkers shows in other ways as well. Both wereessayists in the tradition of Montaigne, a stylistic similarity that perhaps accountsfor Schutz's appreciation of Simmel's special investigations, including his essayson the role of numbers in social life, the poor, and faithfulness and gratitude.But his regard for Simmel's essay on the sociology of the letter has deeper roots(Simmel 1950:352-355; see Schutz 1964:112). Simmel's analysis of the lettercontrasts face-to-face communication with communication through the writtenword. He explores the paradox ofwritten communication: it enhances the logical clarity of communication while magnifying the ambiguity surrounding anunderstanding of the individual. Because the reader of a letter does not haveimmediate access to the visual and audible signs of delivery, the letter ismoreopen to interpretation and also misunderstanding. Hence, what Simmel calls thesecret of the other ?a person's moods and qualities of being?while potentially accessible through face-to-face interaction, is concealed inwritten communication (Simmel 1950:355). Simmel's analysis of the letter reveals close thematic links to Schutz's own analysis of degrees of intimacy and anonymity insocial relations (Schutz and Luckmann 1973, ch. 2), thus lending support toSalomon's view of the inner affinity of the two figures?their mutual concernfor the secret of the other.As this brief review indicates, Salomon's unpublished notes on Simmel arepowerful and suggestive. His published writings on Simmel, however, are not asclear or comprehensive as are thewritings of some of his contemporaries, suchas Kracauer's (1995 [1920-21]) essay on Simmel. Indeed, his assertions are sometimes cryptic and undeveloped. Consider this elusive statement: Simmel's modeof thinking moves between George Herbert Mead and some problems of a philosophy of existence (Salomon 1995[1963]:374). Such writing may be the resultof poorly considered ideas, but more likely it has another source. As his intellectual biographer, Matthiesen, has shown, Salomon's efforts to join the American academic mainstream were repeatedly rebuffed and may have led him towithdraw to the small audiences that accepted him, his students and fellow New




York Jewish refugees (Mathiessen 1988). In speaking to this audience, itmayhave been unnecessary to elaborate on points known to all. The meaning ofSalomon's point about Simmel's relationship to Mead would likely have beenobvious to his students, especially if they attended his seminar on Mead, whichhe jointly conducted in spring of 1944 with Alfred Schutz. Maurice Natanson, astudent of both Salomon and Schutz, wrote a dissertation on Mead that addressed this question clearly, ifbriefly.

Despite these limitations, Salomon's writings on Simmel make several contributions, not the least ofwhich is their powerful if implicit critique of the reception of Simmel's work by mainstream American sociology. Salomon's insistenceon the unity of Simmel's philosophy and sociology, as well as his reading ofSimmel within the phenomenological tradition, are important contributions thenas now. Matthiesen (1988:330) echoes this point when he writes, Salomon showed

why the American Simmel reception, which favored formal sociology and conflictsociology, had to remain inadequate without also considering the strong philosophy of life undercurrents, the influence of Dilthey as well as Bergson and James.

ConclusionMerton (1973 [1959]:55) once wrote that controversy among sociologists often is less a matter of contradictions between sociological ideas than of com

peting definitions of the role considered appropriate for the sociologist. Theplace of Simmel in the sociological canon, Imaintain, is an outcome of such acontest between what I earlier called the research program and scholarshipmodels of intellectual work.While intellectuals in both traditions often agreed on the value of Simmel'swork, they construed his significance in very different ways. Empiricists andadvocates of the research program sought to extract insights from Simmel'swork and develop them into a series of fundable research proposals. The emigres inGreenwich Village, by contrast, resisted this trend by salvaging the remnants of the continental tradition threatened by war and atrocity and developingthem on American soil. Their efforts were a mixed success (Krohn 1993), butthe attempt to transplant old world styles of scholarship must be judged afailure. Empiricism and the research program, both consistent with the structureand reward system of American higher education, came to dominate its academic style ofwork. Columbia's research program overshadowed the New School'salternative, and thereby contributed to the restricted understanding of Simmelamong American sociologists that lasts to this day.

Ironically, despite the relative success of the Columbia intellectual style, itsprogram of research on Simmel remains only partially incorporated into American sociology. Like Salomon's interpretation of Simmel, which is captured partlyin publications, partly in class notes and syllabi, Merton's Simmel interpretationis buried in seminar notes and the dense thickets of his magnum opus, SocialTheory and Social Structure. Perhaps something about Simmel's writings makesthem inassimilable by mainstream academic styles. His radically individual talent

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may be the ultimate protection against what Merton calls obliteration by incorporation. Neither surpassed nor fully assimilated, Simmel's oeuvre remains tobe understood.

AcknowledgmentsThis article is a revision of a paper presented at meetings of the Research Committee on the History ofSociology, International Sociological Association, Amsterdam, the Netherlands, May 16-18, 1996. I am gratefulto Charles Crothers, David Frisby, and Arnold Simmel for helpful conversations about American Simmel studies,and to Larry Nichols and Mary Rogers, who helped tomake this a better essay. Permission to quote material fromthe Albert Salomon Collections of the Leo Baeck Institute (New York) and the Sozialwissenschafliches Archiv

(Constance) is gratefully acknowledged.

Notes1. I have in mind the editors of the Simmel Newsletter (Universit?t Bielefeld), the contributors to that

important forum for Simmel-studies, and those who are responsible for producing the Georg SimmelGesamtausgabe.2. The beginning years of Columbia sociology, under Giddings, have been extensively studied (Wallace 1991,1992), as have the years of the postwar period of the Lazarsfeld-Merton team (Clark 1995; Crothers 1996;Lipset and Smelser 1961). But the pivotal decade of the thirties has yet to be investigated with the sameintensity.3. According to the Name Index of Merton's Social Theory and Social Structure (1957), the following figuresreceived one citation each: Adorno, Comte, Hegel, Hobbes, Hume, Husserl, Jaspers, Leibniz, Mill, Nietzsche,Russell, and Smith. Dilthey, James, Luk?cs, Peirce, and Rickert earned two citations each. Whiteheadreceived five citations. Compare these citations to the Foreword and Index to Maclver (1965).4. Information from telephone interviews with three seminar participants: D. Harper, Professor of Sociology,University of Rochester, July 24, 1996; C Kadushin, Professor of Sociology, City University of New York,Graduate Center, April 25, 1996; and G. Lindt, Dean of Columbia University's School of General Studies,March 18, 1996.5. I am grateful to Professor Merton formaking available to me the second year's report, Working Memoranda (Preliminary Draft), 1956-57. From Selected Problems in the Theory of Organizations, Soc. 321,Columbia University.6. In his essay on McCarthyism, Parsons advocated far-reaching changes in the structure of American society, the most important of which was a revision in the source and character of national politicalleadership (Parsons 1963 [1955]: 228).7. Merton's terminology articulates in theoretical terms E. Shils's (1956: 237) claim that the stability of thefree society acknowledges both the claims of individuals and corporate bodies to privacy and theproper practice of publicity.8. For an exception, see R.L. Coser (1961).9. Identified chronologically, these dissertations are: E. Fischoff, Max Weber and the Sociology of Religionwith Special Reference to Judaism (1942); B. Rosenberg, Thorstein Veblen in the Light of ContemporarySocial Science (1949); I. Progroff, CJ. Jung's Psychology in its Significance for the Social Sciences(1952); M. A. Natanson, George H. Mead: Social Scientist and Philosopher (1953); K. T. Skelton, MarkTwain: Sociological Realist (1956); J.W. Harris, Thorstein Veblen's Social Theory: A Reappraisal (1956);and A. Ben-Ami, Durkheim's Sociological Method and Parsons' Action Theory: A Study in SociologicalTheory (1956). See Contributions to Scholarship (1973).10. Kurt H. Wolff (1993) has revealed that Salomon used the word scandalous to describe Wolffs introduction to his translated collection of Simmel's writings, The Sociology of Georg Simmel (1950).11. On Bergson and Schutz, see Wagner (1977; 1983: 273-284). On Bergson and Simmel, see Schwerdtfeger(1995). Salomon's students were encouraged to read an important essay on Simmel by V. Jank?l?vitch(1925), a student and friend of Bergson 's.

ReferencesAbel, Theodore. 1936. fournal of Thoughts and Events, Volume 3 (March 5). Theodore Abel Collection, RareBook and Manuscript Library, Columbia University.Bierstedt, Robert. 1981. American Sociological Theory: A Critical History. New York: Academic Press.Clark, T.N. 1995. Paul F. Lazarsfeld and the Columbia Sociology Machine. Unpublished manuscript.




Cole, S. and Cole, J.R. 1968. Visibility and the Structural Bases of Awareness of Scientific Research. AmericanSociological Review 33:397-413.Contributions to Scholarship: Doctoral Dissertations of the Graduate Faculty of Political and Social Science.1973. New School for Social Research.

Coser, Lewis A. 1954. Toward a Sociology of Social Conflict. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Columbia University.-. 1956. The Functions of Social Conflict. New York: Free Press.-. 1984. Refugee Scholars in America: Their Impact and Their Experiences. New Haven: Yale UniversityPress.-. 1987. Interview with the author, May 14.-. 1989. Interview with the author, October 2.Coser, Rose L. 1961. Insulation from Observability and Types of Social Conformity. American SociologicalReview 26:28-39Crothers, Charles. 1996. The Postwar 'Columbia Tradition' in Sociology. Unpublished manuscript.Gallie, W. B. 1956. Essentially Contested Concepts. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 56.Hopkins, T. K. 1964. The Exercise of Influence in Small Groups. Totowa, NJ: Bedminster Press.Jank?l?vitch, V. 1925. Georg Simmel, philosophe de la vie. Revue de m?taphysique at de morale 32:213-57,373-86.Jaworski, Gary D. 1990. Robert K. Merton as Postwar Prophet. American Sociologist 21:209-216.-. 1997. Georg Simmel and the American Prospect. New York: State University of New York Press.Kracauer, S. 1995 [1920-21]. Georg Simmel. InT.Y. Levin (ed.), TheMass Ornament: Weimar Essays.Camb?dge:

Harvard University Press.Krohn, C.-D. 1993- Intellectuals in Exile: Refugee Scholars and theNew School for Social Research. Translatedby Rita and Robert Kimber. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press.Lipset, Seymour M. and Smelser, Neil J. 1961. The Setting of Sociology in the 1950s. In Lipset and Smelser(Eds.), Sociology: the Progress of a Decade. Engelwood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.Maclver, Robert M. 1965. The Web of Government. Revised Edition. New York: Free Press.Mathiessen, U. 1988. 'Im Schatten einer endlosen grossen Zeit': Etappen der intellektuellen Biographie AlbertSalomons. In Ilja Srubar (ed.), Exile, Wissenschaft, Identit?t: Die Emigration deutscher Sozial-wissenscbaftler,1933-1945. Frankfurt-am-Main: Suhrkamp.Merton, Robert K. 1957. Social Theory and Social Structure. Revised and Enlarged Edition. Glencoe, IL: FreePress.-. 1973 [1959]. Social Conflict Over Styles of Sociological Work. In The Sociology of Sciences: Theoretical and Emprirical Investigations. New York: Free Press.-. 1988. Interview with the author, February 18.-, Reader, G.G., and Kendell, P.L. (Eds). 1957. The Student Physician. Cambridge: Harvard UniversityPress.Mills, C. Wright. 1959. Abstracted Empiricism. In The Sociological Imagination. New York: Oxford UniversityPress.Parsons, Talcott. 1963 [1955]. Social Strains in America. In Daniel Bell (ed.), The Radical Right. New York:Doubleday.Rosenberg, R. 1984. An Interview with Lewis Coser. InW. Powell and R. Robbins (Eds.), Conflict and Consensus: A Festschrift in Honor of Lewis A. Coser. New York: Free Press.Rutkoff, P.M. and Scott, W.B 1986. New School: A History of the New School for Social Research. New York:Free Press.Salomon, Albert. 1940. Letter to H.E. Barnes, April 20. In the Albert Salomon Collection, Leo Baeck Institute(New York), Box 1, Korrespondenz, A-N.-. 1943- Simmel, Georg. The Universal fewish Encyclopedia. Volume 9. New York: Universal Jewish

Encyclopedia.-. 1945. German Sociology. In G. Gurvitch and W.E. Moore (eds.) Twentieth Century Sociology. NewYork: Philosophical Library.-. 1962. Lecture Notes to Simmel and Schutz as Sociologists. Salomon Papers, SozialwissenschaftlichesArchiv, Universit?t Konstanz, Mappen Number 29.-. 1995 [1963]. Georg Simmel Reconsidered. International fournal of Politics, Culture, and Society8:361-378.-. 1966. Lecture Notes to Dilthey-Simmel Course, Sozialwissenschaftliches Archiv, Universit?t Konstanz,Mappen Number 26.Schutz, Alfred. 1964. The Homecomer. In Collected Papers. Volume 2. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.-. 1970. William James's Concept of the Stream of Thought Phenomenologically Interpreted. In CollectedPapers. Volume 3. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.-, and Thomas Luckmann. 1973. The Structures of the Life-World. Translated by R.M. Zaner and H.T.Engelhardt, Jr., Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.

Schwerdtfeger, J. 1995. Bergson und Simmel. Simmel Newsletter 5: 89-96.Shils, Edward. 1956. The Torment of Secrecy. New York: Free Press.

Jaworski 15



Simmel, Georg. 1950. The Sociology of Georg Simmel. Translated and edited by K.H. Wolff. New York: FreePress.Spykman, Nichols J. 1925. The Social Theory of Georg Simmel. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Tiryakian, Edward A. 1986. Hegemonic Schools and the Development of Sociology: Rethinking the History ofa Discipline. In R.C. Monk (ed.), Structures of Knowing. Lanham, MD: University Press of America.Wagner, H. R. 1977. The Bergsonian Period of Alfred Schutz. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research38:187-199.

-. 1983- Alfred Schutz: An Intellectual Biography. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Wallace, R. W. 1991. The Struggle of a Department: Columbia Sociology in the 1920s.. Journal of theHistoryof the Behavioral Sciences 27: 323-340.-. 1992. Starting a Department and Getting itUnder Way: Sociology at Columbia University, 1891-1914.Minerva 30:497-512

Wolff, Kurt H. 1993. Interview with the author, March 7.




APPENDIXGraduate Faculty, New School for Social ResearchAlbert Salomon

Simmel and Schutz as SociologistsGeorg Simmel, Sociology, Trans. KurtWolff, The Free Press 1950 (referred to hereafteras Sociology)KurtWolff, ed. Georg Simmel, 1958-1918?^4 Collection of Essays, Ohio State UniversityPress, 1959 (hereafter Essays)Georg Simmel, Conflict and The Web of Group Affiliations, trans. Bendix and Wolff,Free Press, 1955Alfred Schutz, Der Sinnhafte Aufbau der Sozialen Welt.

Essays in:Social Research (hereafterSR), Philosophy and PhenomenologicalResearch (hereafter P & Ph R)I. How is Society Possible: Intersubjectivity?(on Schutz) Richard Zaner, Theory of Intersubjectivity: Alfred SchutzSR Winter, 1961

Simmel, The Problem of Sociology, How is Society Possible? EssaysII. The Problem of CommunicationSchutz, Sartre's Theory of the Alter Ego, P & Ph R V. IX, 1948;Scheler's Theory of Intersubjectivity, ibid., 1942;Scheler's Ethics and Epistemology Journal ofMetaphysics, 1954(on Simmel) Tenbruck Simmel's Formal Sociology EssaysIII. The Social Distribution of KnowledgeSchutz, TheWell Informed Citizen: An Essay in the Social Distribution ofKnowledgeS.R., V. XIII, December, 1946

Simmel, Philosophie des Geldes, Part six, Lebensanschauug: Ch. I and IIIV. On Multiple RealitiesSchutz, On Multiple Realities P&PhR, V. 5, 1945Simmel, The Adventure, The Actor, Essays, The Secret, Sociology, FashionAfS, Vol. LXII, #6,May 1959

V. Schutz, Aspects of Human Equality, Conference on Science, Philosophy and Religion,Symposium, 1955Simmel, Philosophie des Geldes, Last Division; The Metropolis and Mental Life,Soziologie', and Mills, Images of ManVI. The Problem of Individual PsychologySchutz, Sinnhafte, parts 3, 4, on Descriptive Psychology; James' Concept ofStream of Thought, P&PhR, vol. I, 1941; On Husserl's Ideas, P&PhR,vol. XIII, 1953.

Simmel, Sociology, Philosophie des Geldes, LebensanshauungVIL Schutz, Problem der Vergangenheit in der SozialweltSimmel, Das Problem der historischen zeit, vom wesen des historischen

verstehens, Die Formation de Historischen Kunstwerkes.VIII. Schutz, Common-Sense and Scientific Interpretation of Human Action

P&PhR, vol. XIV, 1953, Also inCoser & Rosenberg, Sociological Theory

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Simmel Lebensanschauung, ch. 1,2, Fragmente, Br?cke und T?r,Philosophie des Geldes.IX. Schutz, Symbol, Reality and Society, Conference in Science, Philosophyand Religion, Symposium, 1954Simmel, Goethe, Rembrandt, Kant und Goethe, Probleme der Philosophie,Essays on GeorgeX. The StrangerSchutz, The Stranger, AfS 1944Simmel, The Stranger, SociologyXI. Schutz, Die Mitweltliche Beziehung und die mitweltliche BeobachtugSimmel, Exkurs ?ber den Schriftlichen Verkehr, Die Soziologie der Sinne


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