Weber and Interpretive Sociology in AmericaAuthor(s): Peter Kivisto and William H. Swatos, Jr.Source: The Sociological Quarterly, Vol. 31, No. 1 (Spring, 1990), pp. 149-163Published by: Blackwell Publishing on behalf of the Midwest Sociological SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4120876Accessed: 17/07/2009 07:21

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WEBER AND INTERPRETIVE SOCIOLOGY IN AMERICA

Peter Kivisto* Augustana College

William H. Swatos, Jr. University of Manitoba

This article examines the role of Weber's methodological writings on verstehende Soziologie in the construction of an American variant of interpretive sociology during the first half of the twentieth century. It thereby illustrates the connections between intellectual appropriation and the academic institutionalization of competing sociological schools. After reviewing Weber's general reception in American sociology, it focuses on the respective relevance of Weber for symbolic interaction, which developed out of the Chicago School; Parsonian action theory; and the phenomenological social theory of Alfred Schutz. Three conclusions emerge. First, the symbolic interactionists and their predecessors operated with the implicit assumption that they did not need Weber. Second, Weber was not only intellectually valuable to Parsons, but also useful in his quest for intellectual hegemony. Finally, Schutz, in offering a third, alternative and competing interpretation of Weber, served to complicate this struggle between the two American sociological schools.

The relationship between Weber's methodological writings on verstehende Soziologie and the construction of an American variant of interpretive sociology during the first half of the twentieth century constitutes a particularly curious tale in the history of the discipline. A review of that history from the perspective of the sociology of knowledge illustrates the connections between intellectual appropriation and the academic institutionalization of competing sociological schools. Specifically, we focus on three interconnected issues: the first, factors that contributed to what Jennifer Platt (1985) refers to as the "missing link" between Weber and the Chicago School; the second, the manner in which Weber was appropriated by and accorded a privileged position in Parsonian theory; the third, the role played by European scholars who migrated to America between the wars in articulating a Weberian-inspired phenomenological sociology.

Our argument parallels Besnard's (1986) discussion of Parsons's use of the Durkheimian concept of anomie. Besnard contends that Parsons ignored the Chicago School's concept of

*Direct all correspondence to: Peter Kivisto, Department of Sociology, Augustana College, Rock Island, IL 61201-2210.

The Sociological Quarterly, Volume 31, Number 1, pages 149-163. Copyright ? 1990 by JAI Press, Inc. All rights of reproduction in any form reserved. ISSN: 0038-0253.

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social disorganization, replacing it with anomie in an effort to discredit the theoretical utility of the former concept. Similarly, we find that Weber's sociological writings were not only intellectually valuable to Parsons, but served to distance Parsons's sociology from that of his American predecessors. This was important inasmuch as the quest for intellectual hegemony required discrediting the Chicago School while simultaneously indicating that Parsonian action theory provided a new basis for advancing the science of society. In essence, Parsons looked to Weber and other prominent European thinkers for the theoretical undergirding of his grand theory, implying that the founders of American sociology were not capable of making a similar contribution to this enterprise.

THE GENERAL RECEPTION OF WEBER IN AMERICA: TWO PERIODS

Weber's work in relation to American interpretive sociology cannot be understood in isolation, but only in terms of the overall reception of Weberian social thought. This section sketches, in broad strokes, the manner in which Weber's ideas filtered into American sociology.

According to the German sociologist, Dirk Kiisler (1988, p. 197), In spite of international research which has been going on for decades, no comprehensive account of the reception of Weber's work has hitherto been presented. A voluminous literature details various intellectual connections or comparisons, but, he argues, has not resulted in a "systematic investigation" of the varied receptions accorded Weber's work over time. Although Kaisler focuses on the German reception, the lack is even more evident elsewhere.

While Weberian scholarship is a growth industry at present, and Weber's place in the pantheon of "classic founders" of modern social science is secure, his work has been received slowly, by fits and starts. Talcott Parsons (1980) comments, for example, that while studying at the London School of Economics during the 1920s, he never heard Weber's name mentioned. Similarly, Coser (1988, p. xiii) discovered that Weber was "practically unknown" at the Sorbonne in the early 1930s. Bendix (1984, p. 13) did not encounter the work of Weber in Europe; he "discovered Weber" in his "student days" at Chicago, studying under Louis Wirth. The American parallels the British and French experiences (Lassman and Velody 1989, p. 160). Many sociologists in this country have been content to utilize selective portions of Weber's oeuvre with little concern for the overall thrust of his intellectual activity. Though the thematic core of Weber's work has been a topic of inquiry at least since Karl Liwith's (1932) comparison of Weber and Marx, until recently it has received little attention in American sociology. A number of factors contributed to the way in which Weber's work was imported into America, though they differed depending on the particular time period. For our purposes, two time periods can be distinguished.

The First Period

The first period encompasses Weber's reception during his lifetime. This is also when major strides in the institutionalization of sociology were made and consolidation of the process-via the creation of the American Sociological Society and the emergence of Chicago and Columbia as major centers for the discipline-met with partial success. Figures such as Franklin Giddings, Edward Alsworth Ross, Albion Small, William Graham Sumner, William Isaac Thomas, and Lester Frank Ward profoundly shaped the science of society.

Weber and Interpretive Sociology in America 151

These were Weber's contemporaries. Though the sociology they created, in its diverse articulations, had a distinctively American cast to it (Kivisto 1987; Vidich and Lyman 1985; Swatos 1984; Seidman 1983), they were receptive to contemporary currents in European thought. Indeed, a number had sojourned to Europe, particularly Germany, to study devel- opments in the social sciences. While none studied with Weber, in part because he was unable to resume teaching until long after his breakdown (he renewed his teaching activities in 1918, at the University of Vienna), they should have been aware of him and his work. He was sufficiently known, for instance, to be invited to deliver a paper at the 1904 Congress of Arts and Sciences in St. Louis. (Bulmer [1984, p. 34] and Dibble [1975, p. 3] claim that Small extended the invitation; Coser [1971, p. 239], that Hugo Munsterberg did so; and Weber [1975] and Mommsen [1987] support the latter.) The 6migr6 scholar Munsterberg and Weber were well aware of each other. The former borrowed from the latter in designing a survey of industrial relations, while, in Roscher and Knies, Weber extensively criticized the social psychology of Munsterberg.

It is, therefore, somewhat surprising that Weber was mentioned only infrequently in journals and books written during this time. None of his works were reviewed in nor did any of his writings appear in translation in the American Journal of Sociology, despite the fact that his friends and colleagues Simmel and Tdnnies served at the time as advisory editors (Tiryakian 1966). While Gumplowicz, Ratzenhofer, Schaiflle, and Simmel were often cited by American sociologists, Weber was not. The lack of direct contact between Weber and American students can account only in part for this situation. Perhaps the American sociologist who knew Weber's work best was W.E.B. DuBois (they met during Weber's 1904 trip), but his marginality in the discipline as a whole prevented him from effectively introducing Weber to a larger audience. Similarly, that Weber's work was not yet translated is only a partial explanation, since this held generally for other German sociologists as well.

Of greatest importance was the incompatibility between Weber's conception of the science of society and that harbored by scholars in America. First, Weber was not a system-builder at a time when many American sociologists were intent on building a grand theoretical systems for the discipline. American sociologists, for this purpose, drew heavily upon Spencer and, to a lesser extent, Comte and the German organicist Schaiflle. Second, Weber's interdisciplinary proclivities were not conducive to those concerned with estab- lishing a distinct niche in the academy. In fact, at least until his visit to the United States, Weber perhaps was largely identified by Americans as an economist. Weber, himself, may have defined his work as historical rather than primarily sociological. Third, Weber was decidedly anti-evolutionary at a time when evolutionary thinking cast a spell over many prominent sociologists. Finally, the pessimism that colored Weber's work simply did not resonate with intellectuals participating in the optimism of "the American century."

The Second Period

The second period begins with Weber's death and extends to mid-century. During this time, certain continuities with the first period are evident, but there were also new develop- ments in the response to Weber. As the Chicago School began to consolidate as the most important center for the discipline (Bulmer 1984; Matthews 1977), the lack of interest in Weber, initially at least, exacerbated. Jeffrey Alexander (1987, p. 21) attempts to explain part of the reason for the neglect of Weber when he writes that during this period, "American

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sociology in general and Chicago sociology in particular were, by and large, alarmingly atheoretical and deeply empiricist." While one can challenge his characterization of Chicago sociologists as atheoretical, their emphasis was clearly on empirical research, not on the systematic development of theory (Mullins 1973, p. 45), this disinclined them to sever theory construction from empirical research in the manner, for instance, of Parsons. However, another factor was important: The Chicago School was in critical respects ahistorical, which compounded its lack of interest in Weber. Conversely, the empirical concerns that preoccupied the Chicago School-the dynamics of the contemporary city and race relations-were not central for Weber. The Weberian preoccupation with politics and religion did not strike a responsive chord with Park, his colleagues, or his students. Regarding the former topic, it is a not infrequent complaint that the Chicago School was remarkably apolitical, seen clearly in its ecological analyses of the metropolis. In terms of the latter, Chicago-trained sociologists did not enter into the Protestant ethic debate, though American theologians and historians did so just a few years after the initial German publication of Weber's thesis (Forsyth 1910; Liebersohn 1988, p. 95).

This situation would change by the 1930s, in part abetted by the growing access to English translations of Weber's work, beginning with economist Frank Knight's production of General Economic History in 1927 and Talcott Parsons's translation of The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism in 1930 (Hinkle 1980, p. 311). Interest in Weber also evolved as Americans continued to study in Germany; though he was already dead, they nonetheless came under the influence of his thought. Two notable instances are Howard Becker and Talcott Parsons (Gerth 1982, p. 209). The former would return and produce a number of publications explicating the ideal type and historical sociology (Becker 1933, 1934; Becker and Barnes 1952). The latter would, in his watershed publication, The Structure of Social Action (Parsons 1937), treat Weber as of paramount importance in his own effort to construct the basis for a grand theoretical synthesis.

Had these been the only contributing figures, an American variant of Weberian sociology might have emerged. However, Hitler's ascendance to power in 1933 resulted in the exodus of numerous German intellectuals to the United States. Collective settlements of these

6migr6 scholars were established at the New School for Social Research (Rutkoff and Scott 1986) and, to a lesser extent, Columbia University. In Weberian scholarship, names of importance included, at the former institution, Emil Lederer, Adolph Lowe, Karl Mayer, Albert Salomon, Alfred Schutz, and Hans Speier; and, at the latter, Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Herbert Marcuse, Paul Lazarsfceld, and Alexander von Schelting. Figures who found academic homes elsewhere throughout the country included Theodore Abel, Reinhard Bendix, Carl Friedrich, Hans Gerth, and Paul Honigsheim. The influence of some of these scholars was largely limited to their exilic institutions, while for others it extended well beyond to the discipline at large.

Due to the multiplicity of interpretations of Weberian thought, no one assessment came to dominate American sociology's understanding of Weber. When this is compounded by the slow and halting translation of Weber into English, it is not surprising that, as H. Stuart Hughes (1975, p. 31) writes, "The Weberian attitude permeated social thought by slow capillary action." A fruitful dialogue between Weberian theory and the American empirical research tradition was sought by some, the relationship between Paul Lazarsfeld and his American colleagues constituting perhaps the most obvious instance of this attempted

Weber and Interpretive Sociology in America 153

synthesis. As the discipline divided increasingly into subspecialties, Weber's work was used eclectically with little regard to it as a totality. Some American students of sociology became familiar with Weber's work in the German original; for example, Charles Page and a number of other Columbia University graduate students (many of whom would become prominent figures in the discipline) were introduced to Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft by Alexander von Schelting (Page 1982, p. 27). However, most American social scientists relied on transla- tions; they waited until 1968 for a complete translation of the above-mentioned volume.

A consequence of the way that Weber's ideas filtered into American sociology was that it was very difficult to determine with any precision the degree or extent of impact his thought had in shaping American developments. Clearly aspects of his work began to be utilized during the 1950s and 1960s, producing a rapidly expanding body of literature devoted to Weberian themes. The three topics that received by far the most attention were bureaucracy, charismatic authority (with a considerable amount of this work devoted to the issue of legitimacy in newly-established post-colonial nations), and the Protestant ethic thesis. In each instance, but perhaps most evidently in the last, much of this research was conducted in an ahistorical manner quite at variance with the thrust of Weber's work on these themes.

Despite the interpretive efforts of not only various previously-mentioned 6migr6 scholars but also American-born scholars such as C. Wright Mills, one figure came to stand alone as the major exegete advancing the importance of Weberian thought: Talcott Parsons (Mommsen 1989, p. 181). Since Parsons's grand theoretical efforts were viewed with suspicion by those interested in promoting empirical-especially quantitative-research, his location at Harvard was probably crucial: it removed him from the criticisms he likely would have encountered in more established departments elsewhere. Nonetheless, he was persistently forced to wrestle with the relationship of theory to quantitative research, and his alliance with Stouffer can be seen in this light. All of this, of course, further complicates Parsons's relationship to Weber.

Given the hegemony of Parsonian theory in the post-war period, many other Weberian scholars came to advance their own interpretations of Weber in contradistinction to the portrait offered by Parsons, who began his career by engaging the classics in behalf of a voluntaristic theory of action that would overcome the deficiencies of positivism, ulititarianism, and idealism. While his reading of and attitude toward Weber is not always clear, it is certain that he was convinced that the main orientation of Weber's work had a marked affinity with his own. This exegetical bias, not surprisingly, fostered a particular kind of critique of Parsons: as Alexander (1987, p. 119) notes, "It is only natural that when the critics came to challenge Parsons's theory they would challenge his readings of the classics in turn." During the approximately four decades encompassing the rise and fall of the structural-functionalist paradigm, critics persistently sought to illustrate rather wide divergences where Parsons found convergence among the classic figures of the discipline (Pope et al. 1975). Repeated efforts were made to "de-Parsonize Weber" during this period (Cohen et al. 1975).

Parsons zealously sought to reshape the theoretical matrix of sociology and to create (in part, in conjunction with colleagues such as Clyde Kluckhohn, Gordon Allport, and Edward Shils) an integrated social science. His single-mindedness and apparent imperviousness to criticism (see Homans 1984, p. 323) appeared to be impelled by his Puritanical under- standing of vocation: his errand into the intellectual wilderness was to create a new

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conceptual city on the hill. During the 1960s and up to his death in 1977, the attacks on his work intensified, captured in Gouldner's (1970) study of the discipline's "coming crisis." Near the end of Parsons's life, the new exegete and system-builder, Anthony Giddens (1976), would deliver the eulogy at the funeral of structural-functionalism. The result of this, in terms of Weber's thought, was an efflorescence of scholarship devoted to reassessing his corpus.

INTERPRETIVE SOCIOLOGY IN AMERICA

Within this context American interpretive sociology arose. Three principal schools of thought can be distinguished: (1) symbolic interaction, which developed out of the Chicago School; (2) Parsons's action theory; and (3) a phenomenological approach perhaps most closely identified with the 6migr6 scholar, Alfred Schutz. In this section, each school is reviewed briefly in an effort to locate the relevance of Weber for each, as well as to indicate the relationships among them.

The Chicago School

W.I. Thomas was the first important figure from the Chicago School to subsequently influence the development of symbolic interaction. His articulation of the concept of the "definition of the situation" became a touchstone for those intent on establishing a situational sociology that sought to investigate the ways in which subjective and objective factors contribute to a social actor's definition of the situation (Thomas 1929). In so viewing the task of sociology, Thomas's approach evinces obvious similarities to that of Weber. As Rochberg-Halton (1986, p. 44) observes:

Thomas's two-sided concept of situation as the configuration of conditioning factors that are selectively defined by the person and that shape behavior ... reveals a concern somewhat similar to Weber's concept of action as subjectively intended meaning oriented to a conditioning "outer world" of objects and processes of nature and as

meaning determined through objectively rational means.

Despite this similarity, it is clear that Weberian thought did not enter into Thomas's sociological formulations. This is the case in spite of the fact that Thomas read German, studied in Germany during the academic year 1888-1889, and traveled extensively through- out Europe at various points in his life. His earliest published work reflects his immersion in the fields of folk psychology and ethnology, fields he explored intensively during his studies at Gottingen and Berlin. Such interests were quite at variance with the central thematic concerns and disciplinary groundings of Weber.

Even in his monumental study on The Polish Peasant in Europe and America (1918- 1920), hailed in 1938 by the Social Science Research Council as the most important sociological book written during the twentieth century, Weber does not enter. This absence is surprising, in part, because Thomas's collaborator on the study, Florian Znaniecki, was an 6migr6 scholar familiar with contemporary currents in German scholarship. The book used personal documents to get at the lived experience of Polish immigrants and in so doing

Weber and Interpretive Sociology in America 155

provided an important methodological example for interpretive sociology. While not without its problems, rather harshly assessed in 1938 by Herbert Blumer, the book is, Norbert Wiley (1986, p. 34) convincingly argues,

completely hermeneutic and interpretive in what it does, i.e., in its logic-in-use. Such notions as the following are present, operatively, in the book: that reality is constructed

interactively as well as individually, that a level of interaction intervenes between and connects attitudes and values, that interaction proceeds within concentric circles of life worlds ..., and that selves "ground" the validity of attitudes much as societies

'"ground" the validity of values.

Thomas appears to have developed his approach to sociological inquiry eclectically, though the imprint of American pragmatism in general, and the work of Dewey and Mead in particular (despite occasional disclaimers by Thomas), undoubtedly constituted the major philosophical grounding for his thought. His approach provided a basis for an interpretive sociology in fundamental ways untouched by Weber and by the particularities of the Rickertain debate over the differences between the human and the natural sciences that so profoundly engaged him (Oakes 1988).

Given Thomas's omniverous intellectual interests, his neglect of Weber is perplexing, if for no other reason than that Weber's applied sociology on the situation of workers in East Elbian Germany had relevance for the study of the Polish peasant. However, even more perplexing is the case of Robert Park.

Considerable attention has focused on Park in recent years (Matthews 1977; Bulmer 1984; Lal 1987; Smith 1988; Rauschenbush 1979). Like Thomas, he studied in Germany and he knew German. He was sufficiently fluent to write a German thesis, Masse und Publikum. During 1899 he attended Simmel's lectures. He remained in Germany four years, returning to Harvard in 1903 (these years essentially correspond with those when Weber's mental breakdown took its heaviest tool).

Martindale (1960) argues that Park's heart belonged to Simmel. While this is perhaps an overstatement, it is the case that Simmel did provide Park with his only formal training in sociology. It was, according to Levine (1985, p. 112), something of an "ambivalent encounter"; nevertheless Park found in it "a basic way to think about society... by applying the notion of forms of interaction." For Park, the focus on interaction resolved two dilemmas. First, it provided an alternative to sociological reductionism, as actors were not deemed mere effects of powerful external social forces. Second, it did not limit sociology to an ideographic level. Sociology was capable of being a nomothetic science.

Park was interested chiefly in advancing sociology as an empirical science, carrying on Thomas's war against "armchair sociology." To that end he engaged a generation of graduate students to study myriad aspects of contemporary urban life. In contrast, he cared little about developing a coherent general theoretical system. Indeed, two strands of theory permeate his work in an uneasy relationship: one is ecological, the other is interpretive. While space precludes a detailed discussion of his interpretive sociology, one example suffices to illustrate Simmel's impact.

In "Behind Our Marks" (1950), Park's analysis of race relations views race

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phenomenologically and links interaction at the individual level to race dynamics at the macro-level. He contends that societies where the significance of racial identity is great force persons to wear their race like a mask, making it impossible for members of another race to see the person as an individual. Underlying this analysis is Park's appropriation of S immel's insight regarding the importance in human interaction of reading the face of the other. The interpretive work of everyday life entails an ongoing assessment and adjudication of the motives and intentions of others, possible only when the face of the other is a transparent text. When occluded by a racial mask, such understanding is impossible. Thus, in societies so characterized, race relations at the micro-level are prone to tension and conflict.

In her study of intellectual influences on Park, Lengermann (1988, p. 364; cf. Platt 1985) reports that Simmel is the figure he cites most frequently, followed by Sumner, Thomas, and Spencer. While one finds infrequent references to Weber in Park's later writings, clearly Weber did not play a role in shaping Park's conception of the sociological enterprise. Simmel's formal sociology attracted Park because it was seen as providing a basis for a generalizable science. Simmel accomplished this by divorcing sociology from history in a manner that was quite at odds with Weber's project, which attempted to provide the basis for a genuinely historical sociology. The consequence was a marked de-historicizing thrust to Park's sociology in particular and to the Chicago School in general.

With Herbert Blumer, we see the distillation of the major theoretical preoccupations of the Chicago School and the refinement and further development of an interpretive sociology which in 1937 he dubbed "symbolic interactionism." Of interest here are the antecedent sociologists most important to Blumer. In this regard, Blumer (1969, p. 3) is helpful insofar as he cites a number of thinkers deemed to be instrumental in shaping his own sociological perspective: Thomas, Park, Sumner, James, Baldwin, Dewey, Mead, Znaniecki, and Cooley. All are Americans, except for Znaniecki. Thus, Blumer represents a distinctive brand of interpretive sociology that is not informed, at least directly, by European thinkers. Weber is referred to only infrequently in Blumer's writings (for that matter, this is the case with Simmel, also).

That Blumer did not explicitly invoke Weber should not be construed as an indication that the work of the two did not resonate in key respects (Hammersley 1989, p. 40). In the first place, both argued that the methods appropriate to the human sciences should be applied with a sensitivity to the contingencies of human action. Blumer contended that the concepts and theories of the social sciences should be "sensitizing," their purpose being to cull out and offer interpretations of primary order interpretations of social reality. Thus, he opposed attempts to construct grand theories that claim to be both universal and context-free. But this is not to suggest that symbolic interactionism is hostile to theory and is primarily concerned to describe interaction at the micro-level. Indeed, as Lyman (1987, p. 6; see also Lyman 1984 and Fine unpublished) indicates, Blumerian symbolic interactionism is "nei- ther anti-theoretical, purely ideographic, inherently subjective, nor confined to microecological investigations .... " Blumer's viewpoint was very similar to Weber's, which opposed efforts to create an immutable theoretic system. Weber saw ideal types, for instance, as transient and contingent. This view resulted, according to Fitzhenry (1986, p. 148), in a "certain minimalism" and tentativeness in "his formal conceptual structure."

It is ironic that the similarity between Weberian and Blumerian sociology should be so

Weber and Interpretive Sociology in America 157

long obscured. To explicate this, at least in part, we explore the appropriation of Weber by Parsons.

Parsonian Action Theory The same year that Blumer coined the term "symbolic interactionism," Talcott Parsons

published his first major work, The Structure of Social Action (1937). Therein Parsons employed the thought of a variety of European scholars-but especially the writings of Marshall, Pareto, Durkeim, and Weber-to articulate a voluntaristic theory of action that would overcome the limitations of utilitarianism and yet find room for rational action within the parameters of societal and cultural constraints. He sought to indicate an incipient convergence in the thought of these classic figures. That he discussed Weber last suggests Weber's peculiar importance to him.

Indeed, Parsons expressed a lifelong interest in Weber, beginning in the 1920s, when he published an essay on Weber and the rise of capitalism and translated The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism into English, and extending to some of his last writings, where he sought to reappraise his own thought.

Of relevance here is Parsons's use of Weber's verstehen method, which he saw as providing a crucial basis for analyses of the individual social actor: its concept of inten- tionality, or voluntarism, provided an alternative to the sociological reductionism of behav- iorism.

Extended debate has ensued concerning Parson's particular interpretation of Weberian verstehen. In part, the exegesis is impeded by ambiguities in Weber. However, another difficulty is that Parsons did not merely seek to explicate Weber, but used him in the construction of his own theoretical edifice. Of importance here is the centrality of value consensus in Parsons's thought, for this is directly at odds with Weber, whose portrait of value conflict is actually similar to that of Blumer.

Weber's emphasis on rational social action was reinforced in Parsons, resulting, as Alan Sica (1988) indicates, in a theoretical devaluation of the irrational. This is rather surprising in Parsons given the prominence he accorded to Pareto, but it nonetheless results in bracketing out of consideration a significant spectrum of social action. Some argue that Parsons misconstrued Weber from the start, perhaps due to faulty translations, and thus gave verstehen an undue "psychological twist" (Munch 1975, p. 61; see also Graber 1975). Others, beginning with Scott (1963), contend that however true to Weber Parsons may have been in 1937, he progressively abandoned his action theory in favor of functionalism, a social structural approach, or systems theory, all of which are much more congruent with Durkheimian thought than with Weberian theory.

Recently, Jonathan Turner (1988, p. 73, pp. 134-135) has argued that Weber and Parsons shared a common problem: their action theories lacked "a model of interaction." Turner notes that Parsons "appears to have been unaware" of both Schutz's early analysis of this problem and the "relevant work of George Herbert Mead." Indicating the value Simmel should have had for Parsons, Turner recalls Parsons's decision to exclude Simmel from The Structure of SocialAction because he "did not 'fit' into the scheme that he was proposing." From our perspective, of interest in Parsons's various resistances to theoretical incorporation is the issue of intellectual competition. Simply put, Schutz represented a direct challenge to

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Parsons's analysis of Weber, while Mead and Simmel were theoretically central to leading figures coming out of the Chicago School.

The present reappraisal of Parsons (Alexander 1978; Bourricaud 1981; Miinch 1987) reflects the "current interregnum" in contemporary social theory (Wiley 1985). Parsonian thought may no longer be hegemonic, but neither has it been consigned to the dustbins of intellectual history. It remains one of many competitors in the sociological marketplace.

When Parsons was the most important theorist in the sociological universe, he operated with proselytizing zeal in an ecumenical fashion. Ethnically and politically marginal students were welcomed into the fold. Competing theories were adjudicated with patrician generosity. His strategy was to facilitate the inclusion of individuals and ideas; channels of communication were always open (this is not to suggest that genuine dialogue was permitted, as will be seen below in the case of Schutz). Thus, an interesting exchange took place between Parsons and Blumer as a result of the claim by Jonathan Turner that Parsons and the symbolic interactionists were in fundamental agreement concerning their views on personality, social action, and organization. Parsons's (1976) comment on Turner expressed essential agreement with this claim. In contrast, Blumer (1976) argued that the differences were considerable: whereas symbolic interactionism studied the processes of interaction, Parsonian functionalism was only interested in the products of interaction. Furthermore, the former was inductive; the latter, deductive.

This example clearly indicates Parsons's desire to be inclusive. Others, like Coser (1976, p. 157), directly assaulted symbolic interaction for its "intellectual Luddism." Parsons, in contrast, patiently attempted to indicate that the virtues of interactionism could be seen in a more pristine articulation in his own writings. It is important to remember the context of this exchange. Parsonian thought, though under attack from several quarters, and especially from conflict-oriented sociologists, had three decades earlier triumphed over symbolic interac- tionism. Blumer and his descendants had been consigned to the role of the loyal opposition. They were not the likely candidates to usurp Parsons from his throne. Thus, not only could Parsons afford to be generous, but such was probably a wise defensive maneuver.

Prior to this overture to symbolic interactionists (and this is especially evident in his early publications) American sociologists did not factor into Parsons's work in any significant way. In the quest for hegemony, it was essential that the work of the Chicago School be devalued. It was already being challenged by quantifiers who considered its empiricism insufficiently rigorous. Ogburn, who had moved from Columbia to Chicago, pressed to replace the ethnographic method with statistical analyses. Parsons, by contrast, sought to replace Chicago's theory, not its methodology. His tactic for questioning the adequacy of its theoretical orientation was to operate as if such theory did not exist. No critique of the Chicago School was ever offered, no explicit assessment of its strengths and weaknesses presented. Hamilton (1983, p. 81) refers to this as "Parsons's benign disregard of the pragmatic and symbolic interactionist traditions in American social theory." In outcome, his course of action was more damning: the elements needed for his theory construction had to be imported, American sociology prior to his arrival on the scene, to his thinking, existing in a kind of theoretical void.

Schutz and Phenomenological Sociology

Parsons responded similarly to Alfred Schutz. Schutz wanted to create an interpretive

Weber and Interpretive Sociology in America 159

sociology explicitly grounded in the work of Weber and Husserl. He was deeply immersed in the intellectual legacy of Weber and, when he arrived in America as an 6migr6 scholar, sought contact with American scholars who shared his interest. In particular, Schutz saw Parsons as a "fellow Weberian who grasped his sociology of understanding" (Wagner 1983, p. 75). Schutz initiated a correspondence with Parsons, who in 1940 invited him to present a lecture at Harvard. This encounter proved frustrating for Schutz: from his perspective, Parsons showed no interest in seeking to rectify and clarify various ambiguities in Weber's interpretive sociology. Moreover, when Schutz offered collegially intended criticisms of Parsons's own work, he was met with silence. While their communication continued for some time (Grathoff 1978), Schutz ultimately concluded that Parsons was unwilling to enter into genuine dialogue with him. Furthermore, when Parsons turned his attention to systems theory in the 1950s, Schutz lost interest in the Parsonian project, for this approach struck him as an abandonment of the centrality of interpretation, which he saw as the hallmark of Weber's work.

Parsons's courtesy toward Schutz while simultaneously remaining impervious to the latter's criticisms can be understood in terms of their respective intellectual locations. At the timeof their encounter, Parsons clearly had "arrived." He had established himself as a major force in the discipline and was already surrounded by a coterie of graduate students. He had also forged relationships with key figures at Harvard in other social sciences-part of his plan to construct an overarching theoretical framework for the social sciences. Meanwhile, Schutz was a doubly marginalized intellectual: not only was he located academically out of the mainstream, at that bastion of iconoclastic thought, the New School, but his position there was part-time. He survived financially by working in a bank. These circumstances made it impossible for Schutz to be a significant challenger to Parsons. Thus, Parsons could respond to Schutz with a kind of civil inattentiveness.

It is peculiar that Schutzian phenomenology was never engaged in a serious or sustained dialogue with symbolic interactionism. Should this have happened, Weber's thought would have made contact with that of the American progenitors of symbolic interactionism. It is not clear why Schutz exhibited so little interest in such an exchange. Similarly, the converse lack of interest by symbolic interactionists is perplexing, though Fine (1988, p. 31) suggests at least a partial explanation when he argues that the "interactionist perspective is at its core social and relational, whereas the phenomenological approach emphasizes the individual construction of the world, a world of discrete and separate actors. As a result, interactionists feel uncomfortable with the writings of Schutz whose concept of relations are (sic) at- tenuated." In consequence, until the 1960s, an American intellectual tradition, on the one hand, and a European counterpart influenced by Weber, on the other, remained remarkably aloof from each other.

CONCLUSION

From a presentist perspective, where Weber's intellectual heritage looms large over the sociological horizon, it is at times difficult to appreciate the slow and fitful incorporation of Weber into American sociology. Yet, as has been suggested above, the reception of Weber in general can aptly be characterized by what Paul Honigsheim (1968, p. 142) refers to as "American eclecticism." This article has focused on the varied reception of Weber's

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interpretive sociology, and has sought to illustrate not only three different responses, but especially those factors that mitigated efforts to appropriate Weber into an established American tradition of interpretive sociology. Simply put, Blumer and his immediate predecessors and heirs operated with the implicit assumption that they did not need Weber. Parsons, by contrast, needed Weber; in part, we have argued, he needed to import Weber to indicate the theoretical deficiencies of American sociology in general and of the Chicago School in particular. Schutz (like a number of other 6migr6 scholars) complicated this struggle for intellectual hegemony by offering a distinctly European reading of Weber. In so doing, he helped establish a more cosmopolitan American sociology. But even in this present "interregnum" in sociology, characterized by a greater openness to competing theoretical traditions than was the case in the past, remarkably little has been done to explicate and to comprehend the significance of both the similarities and differences between Weber's verstehende Soziologie and American interpretive sociology.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

An earlier version of this article was presented at the Midwest Sociological Society Meet- ings, St. Louis, 1989. We would like to thank Robert Antonio, Kenneth Colburn, Jr., Horst Helle, Gisela J. Hinkle, Mary Moore, and Richard Owsley for their comments and their advice. In addition, we are indebted to three anonymous reviewers for their most useful suggestions and various factual corrections.

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