William Graham Sumner Information

William Graham Sumner (October 30, 1840 – April 12, 1910) was an American academic and professor at Yale College. For many years he had a reputation as one of the most influential teachers there. He was a polymath with numerous books and essays on American history, economic history, political theory, sociology, and anthropology. He is credited with introducing the term "ethnocentrism," a term intended to identify imperialists' chief means of justification, in his book Folkways (1906). Sumner was also the first to teach a course entitled "Sociology".

Biography

Born in Paterson, New Jersey, Sumner graduated from Yale College in 1863, where he had been a member of Skull and Bones. Later he was appointed to the newly created Chair of Political and Social Science at Yale. As a sociologist, his major accomplishments were developing the concepts of diffusion, folkways, and ethnocentrism. Sumner's work with folkways led him to conclude that attempts at government-mandated reform were useless. He was a staunch advocate of laissez-faire economics. Sumner was active in the intellectual promotion of free-trade classical liberalism, and in his heyday and after there were Sumner Clubs here and there. He heavily criticized state socialism/state communism. One adversary he mentioned by name was Edward Bellamy, whose national variant of socialism was set forth in Looking Backward, published in 1888, and the sequel Equality.

Like many classical liberals at the time, including Edward Atkinson, Moorfield Storey, and Grover Cleveland, Sumner opposed the Spanish-American War and the subsequent U.S. effort to quell the insurgency in the Philippines. He was a vice president of the Anti-Imperialist League which had been formed after the war to oppose the annexation of territories. In his speech "The Conquest of the United States by Spain," he lambasted imperialism as a betrayal of the best traditions, principles, and interests of the American People and contrary to America's own founding as a state of equals, where justice and law "were to reign in the midst of simplicity." According to Sumner, imperialism would enthrone a new group of "plutocrats," or businesspeople who depended on government subsidies and contracts.

In 1875, Sumner became the first to teach a course entitled "sociology" in the English-speaking world, though this course focused on the thought of Auguste Comte and Herbert Spencer, rather than the formal academic sociology that would be established 20 years later by Émile Durkheim in Europe.^[1] He was the second president of American Sociological Association serving from 1908 to 1909. and succeeding his long time ideological opponent Lester F. Ward.

Folkways

Sumner's most popular book is Folkways: A study of the sociological importance of usages, manners, customs, mores, and morals (1907). Starting with four theoretical chapters, it provides a frank, objective, and candid description of the nature of many of the more important customs and institutions in societies past and present around the world. The book promotes a sociological or relativistic approach to moral behavior, as expressed in his thesis that "the mores can make anything right and prevent condemnation of anything." (p. 521)

Influence

Sumner's popular essays gave him a wide audience for his laissez-faire: advocacy of free markets, anti-imperialism, and the gold standard. Thousands of Yale students took his courses, and many remarked on his influence. His essays were very widely read among intellectuals, and men of affairs. Among Sumner's students were the anthropologist Albert Galloway Keller, the economist Irving Fisher, and the champion of an anthropological approach to economics, Thorstein Bunde Veblen.

Works

• Sumner, William Graham. On Liberty, Society, and Politics: The Essential Essays of William Graham Sumner, ed. Robert C. Bannister (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1992). online
• A History of American Currency: with chapters on the English bank restriction and Austrian paper money : to which is appended "The bullion report" (New York: H. Holt and Co., 1874)
• Lectures on the History of Protection in the United States: delivered before the International Free-Trade Alliance (New York:G. P. Putnam's sons, 1877)
• Andrew Jackson as a Public Man (Boston and New York : Houghton, Mifflin and company, 1882)
• What Social Classes Owe to Each Other (New York: Harper and Bros. 1883)
• Protectionism: the -ism which teaches that waste makes wealth (New York : H. Holt and Company, 1885)
• Alexander Hamilton (New York: Dodd, Mead and Co., 1890)
• The Financier & the Finances of the American Revolution (2 vols. New York: Dodd, Mead, and Co., 1891)
• Robert Morris (New York: Dodd, Mead, and Co. 1892)
• The Absurd Effort to Make the World Over (Originally published in the Forum 17 (March 1894), 92-102; reprinted in War, ed. Albert Galioway Keller, pp. 195–210.)
• Vol. 1 of A History of Banking in all the Leading Nations, edited by the editor of the Journal of Commerce and Commercial Bulletin (4 vols. New York : The Journal of Commerce, 1896)
• Folkways: a study of the sociological importance of usages,manners, customs, mores, and morals (Boston: Ginn and Co., 1906)
• The Science of Society , with Albert G. Keller, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1927; London: H. Milford, Oxford University Press, 1927).
• Collected Essays in Political and Social Science (New York: Henry Holt and company, 1885)
• War, and other essays, ed. with introduction, Albert Galloway Keller (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1911)
• Earth-hunger and other essays , ed. Albert Galloway Keller (New Haven: Yale University press, 1913)
• The Challenge of Facts: and Other Essays ed. Albert Galloway Keller (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1914)
• The Forgotten Man, and Other Essays ed. Albert Galloway Keller (New Haven, Yale University Press, 1918)
• Selected Essays of William Graham Sumner, edited Albert Galloway Keller ... and Maurice R. Davie (New Haven: Yale University press, 1934)
• Sumner today: selected essays of William Graham Sumner, with comments American leaders, ed. Maurice R. Davie (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1940
• The forgotten man's almanac rations of common sense from William Graham Sumner, ed. A. G. Keller (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1943)
• Social Darwinism: Selected Essays of William Graham Sumner, ed. Stow Persons (Englewood Cliff, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1963).
• The conquest of the United States by Spain, and other essays ed. Murray Polner (Chicago:Henry Regnery, 1965)
• "The Conquest of the United States by Spain," Molinari Institute.

Bibliography

• Bannister, Robert C., Jr. "William Graham Sumner's Social Darwinism: a Reconsideration." History of Political Economy 1973 5(1): 89-109. ISSN 0018-2702 Looks at Sumner's ideas, especially as revealed in Folkways (1906) and his other writings. Contrary to the position of the kind of social Darwinism sometimes attributed to him, he insisted equally on a distinction between the "struggle for existence" of man against nature and the "competition of life" among men in society." Sumner did not really equate might and right, and did not reduce everything finally to social power.
• David T. Beito and Linda Royster Beito, "Gold Democrats and the Decline of Classical Liberalism, 1896-1900," Independent Review 4 (Spring 2000), 555-75.
• Curtis, Bruce. William Graham Sumner. (Twayne's United States Authors Series, no. 391.) Twayne, 1981. 186 pp.
• Curtis, Bruce. "William Graham Sumner 'On the Concentration of Wealth.'" Journal of American History 1969 55(4): 823-832. ISSN 0021-8723 Fulltext in Jstor. Sumner has usually been considered a dogmatic defender of laissez-faire and of conservative social Darwinism. But an examination of his unpublished essay of 1909, "On the Concentration of Wealth" (here published in full), reveals that his earlier views were subject to modification. In this 1909 essay he shows his concern for pervasive corporate monopoly as a threat to social equality and democratic government. His analysis was akin to that of a Wilsonian Progressive, although his remedies were vague and incomplete. This stand against plutocracy was consistent with his life and consisted of a long defense of a middle-class society against the pressures of greedy self-interest groups and demos, the mob. Earlier he was most concerned with threats from corrupt politicians. Later plutocracy threatened the middle classes through abuses which might have led to class warfare.
• Curtis, Bruce. "William Graham Sumner and the Problem of Progress." New England Quarterly 1978 51(3): 348-369. ISSN 0028-4866 Fulltext in Jstor. Sumner was one of the few late-19th-century Americans to reject a belief in inevitable human progress. Influenced by his understanding of Darwinism, Malthusian theory, and the Second Law of Thermodynamics, he came to believe the ancient doctrine of cycles in human affairs and in the universe. Based on Sumner's classroom notes and other writings.
• Curtis, Bruce. "Victorians Abed: William Graham Sumner on the Family, Women and Sex." American Studies 1977 18(1): 101-122. ISSN 0026-3079. Asks, did a Victorian consensus concerning sexuality exist? Sumner's life reveals many tensions and inconsistencies, although he generally supported the sexual status quo. His ideal of the middle class family, nonetheless, led him to oppose the double sexual standard and to question the idea of a stable Victorian consensus on sexuality. He supported humane divorce policies and kinder treatment for prostitutes, and recognized women as sexual beings.
• Garson, Robert and Maidment, Richard. "Social Darwinism and the Liberal Tradition: the Case of William Graham Sumner." South Atlantic Quarterly 1981 80(1): 61-76. ISSN 0038-2876. Argues Sumner, drew upon themes and ideas that were firmly established in the political consciousness of Americans. The introduction of such devices as the struggle for survival and the competition of life served in fact to dramatize and highlight some of the central concerns of liberalism. When Sumner did repudiate certain fundamental premises of the liberal tradition, he did so on the grounds that the tradition was misconstrued and not because it was unsustainable. He did not discard liberal theory nor did he lose sight of its principal threads.
• Hofstadter, Richard. "William Graham Sumner, Social Darwinist," The New England Quarterly, Vol. 14, No. 3 (Sep., 1941), pp. 457–477 online at JSTOR, reprinted in Hofstadter, Social Darwinism in American Thought, 1860-1915 (1944).
• Lee, Alfred Mcclung. "The Forgotten Sumner." Journal of the History of Sociology 1980-1981 3(1): 87-106. ISSN 0190-2067. Sumner as sociologist.
• Marshall, Jonathan. "William Graham Sumner: Critic of Progressive Liberalism." Journal of Libertarian Studies 1979 3(3): 261-277. ISSN 0363-2873
• Pickens, Donald. "William Graham Sumner as a Critic of the Spanish American War." Continuity 1987 (11): 75-92. ISSN 0277-1446
• Pickens, Donald K. "William Graham Sumner: Moralist as Social Scientist." Social Science 1968 43(4): 202-209. ISSN 0037-7848. Sumner shared many intellectual assumptions with 18th century Scottish moral philosophers, such as Adam Smith, Thomas Reid, and Dugald Stewart. They were part of ethical naturalism. The major reason for this ideological kinship was the historical fact that Scottish moral philosophy was one of the major sources for modern social science. Sumner's Folkways [1907] illustrates the Scottish influence.
• Shone, Steve J. "Cultural Relativism and the Savage: the Alleged Inconsistency of William Graham Sumner." American Journal of Economics and Sociology 2004 63(3): 697-715. ISSN 0002-9246 Fulltext online in Swetswise, Ingenta, and Ebsco
• Sklansky, Jeff. "Pauperism and Poverty: Henry George, William Graham Sumner, and the Ideological Origins of Modern American Social Science." Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences 1999 35(2): 111-138. ISSN 0022-5061 Fulltext online at Swetswise and Ebsco
• Smith, Norman E. and Hinkle, Roscoe C. "Sumner Versus Keller and the Social Evolutionism of Early American Sociology." Sociological Inquiry 1979 49(1): 41-48. ISSN 0038-0245 Based on the contents of two recently discovered unpublished manuscripts of Sumner, concludes that he came to reject the basic premises of social evolutionism, 1900–10, and that his apparent support for the theory as stated in The Science of Society (1927, printed 17 years after Sumner's death) was actually the thought of Albert Galloway Keller, with whom he collaborated.
• Smith, Norman Erik. "William Graham Sumner as an Anti-social Darwinist." Pacific Sociological Review 1979 22(3): 332-347. ISSN 0030-8919 Fulltext in JSTOR. Sumner clearly rejected social Darwinism in the final decade of his career, 1900–10.

William Graham Sumner Chair

The following have been the William Graham Sumner Professor of Sociology at Yale University:

This is an incomplete list, which may never be able to satisfy particular standards for completeness. You can help by expanding it with reliably sourced entries.

• 1909–1942: Albert Galloway Keller (1874–1956).^[2]
• 1942–1954: Maurice Rae Davie (1914–1975).^[3]
• 1954–1963:
• 1963–1970: August Hollingshead (1907–1980)
• 1970–1993: Albert J. Reiss Jr. (1922–2006).^[4]
• 1993–1999
• 1999–2009: Iván Szelényi

Notes

1. ^ http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O119-Sociology.html
2. ^ "Education: Keller's Last Class," Time (New York). January 26, 1946; Albert Galloway Keller papers, Sterling Memorial Library, Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University
3. ^ Terrien, Frederic W. "Who Thinks What About Education," The Public Opinion. Vol. 18, No. 2 (Summer, 1954), pp. 157-168; Maurice Rae Davie papers, Sterling Memorial Library, Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University
4. ^ "In Memorium, Albert J. Reiss," University of Pennsylvania, Department of Criminology.

Sources

• Connecticut's Heritage Gateway

External links

• Biography at ASA
• Works by William Graham Sumner
• Major Works of William Graham Sumner
• Review materials for studying William Graham Sumner

• Works by William Graham Sumner at Project Gutenberg
• William Graham Sumner at Find a Grave

Categories: American academics | American anthropologists | American essayists | American historians | American libertarians | American political scientists | Presidents of the American Sociological Association | American sociologists | Libertarian theorists | Yale University alumni | Yale University faculty | 1840 births | 1910 deaths

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