- Incheon, Korea, Republic of
- Honam, Institute of Humanities and Social Sciences, Department Memberadd
- American Culture, Philosophy, Political Science, Political Philosophy, Political Economy, Intellectual History, and 15 moreWorld History and Globalization, History of Economic Thought, Macroeconomics, Social Policy & Development, Health Economics, African Diaspora, Latin America and the Caribbean, African American Cultures, African American and American Indian Relations, Race and Racism, Education, Anthropology, Blackness, Identity, and Transnationalismedit
- After receiving my Ph.D. in intellectual history at Harvard in 1980 I had several one- or two-year jobs in the inclem... moreAfter receiving my Ph.D. in intellectual history at Harvard in 1980 I had several one- or two-year jobs in the inclement hiring weather of the era before the job requirements of my then-spouse required me to seek non-academic employment in the Boston area. However, after almost twenty years in market research for the IT industry, I serendipitously found myself in a situation to return to my first loves of teaching and academic writing. This meant moving to Korea in 2003 to teach history and American culture at Sogang University in Seoul, then, after forced retirement at age 65, to an association with the Institute of Humanities and Social Sciences at Honam University in Gwangju, Korea. Since the fall semester of 2019 I have been teaching U.S. history, European history, and the history of science, technology, and medicine at SUNY Korea. My interests and publications encompass a broad swath across 19th, 20th, and 21st century intellectual and cultural history, including literature, political and social thought, religion, and the natural sciences.edit
- Donald Flemingedit
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William Graham Sumner, originator of the phrase “the Forgotten Man,” has himself to a great extent become a forgotten man. Already during his...
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역사가들은 1950년대와 1960년대 미국대외정책의 개념화를 이해하는 데 있어 “근대화” 도식(schema)의 유용성을 인정하고 있다. 그러나 제2차 세계대전 후 국제문제에 대하여 사회과학자들이 접근하면서 가졌던 사고방식을 이해하기 위해서는 학계, 재단, 정부서비스, 언론에서 당시의 국내정책을 형성하고 추진하는 사람들을 이끌고 있던 가정과 목표들의 비교 가능한 네트워크 내에서 근대화의 맥락을 짚어보는 것이 중요하다. 미국의... more
역사가들은 1950년대와 1960년대 미국대외정책의 개념화를 이해하는 데 있어 “근대화” 도식(schema)의 유용성을 인정하고 있다. 그러나 제2차 세계대전 후 국제문제에 대하여 사회과학자들이 접근하면서 가졌던 사고방식을 이해하기 위해서는 학계, 재단, 정부서비스, 언론에서 당시의 국내정책을 형성하고 추진하는 사람들을 이끌고 있던 가정과 목표들의 비교 가능한 네트워크 내에서 근대화의 맥락을 짚어보는 것이 중요하다. 미국의 국내와 국외에서 근대화론자들은 공중위생 개혁을 추진하고, 백인 중심의 남부와 같은 “미개발” 지역의 사회적 관습을 변화시키고자 시도하거나, 통합되고 합리적이면서 개방적이면서 광범하게 평등한 국가건설이라는 목표에 전력을 기울이는 모습을 보여주었다. 그러나 자신들과 가치를 공유하지 않는다고 생각했던 다른 미국인들을 교육하려고 한 노력에서 나타난 바와 같이 그들 앞에 놓인 임무의 범위와 어려움을 알고 있었다. 또 미국의 근대화 전망에 대한 극히 제한된 낙관론조차 좌파와 우파에서 모두 쇠퇴해 가고 있었기 때문에 그들의 우려가 잘못된 것은 아니었다.
Research Interests:
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Research Interests: American Studies and Art
2019 년에 우리는 돌진하는 희망과 충돌하는 정체성이 혼재하는 100 년을 기념했다. 갈등은 부분적으로 낙담스러웠는데 그 이유는 1 차 세계대전의 종결로 자기 결정을 통해 미래를 통제하고 허용하며 새롭고 더 자유로운 세계의 창조를 용이하게 했던 그 시기 세계적으로 기대가 크게 일어났음에도 불구하고 갈등으로 인해 그 기대가 좌절되었기 때문이다. 자기결정에...
Research Interests: Intellectual History, Cultural History, Psychology, Korean Studies, Race and Ethnicity, and 15 moreTurkey, May Fourth Movement, First World War, Intellectual and cultural history, Ethnicity, Woodrow Wilson, The League of Nations, Cultural History of the First World War, Indian Independence, Irish War of Independence, DREAM, Prohibition in the USA, Red scares, Interwar Period, and deferral
Throughout history the cosmopolitanism of world citizenship has competed with the universalism of faith-based religions. The nature of religious belief has tended to divide the world between in-groups and out-groups in real or potential... more
Throughout history the cosmopolitanism of world citizenship has competed with the universalism of faith-based religions. The nature of religious belief has tended to divide the world between in-groups and out-groups in real or potential conflict with one another, while the origins of the cosmopolitan ideal derive from secular sources, above all the cultural relativism of ancient Greeks and Romans and of Enlightenment figures such as Immanuel Kant. In recent decades religion has played an increasingly important role as the principal alternative to the malleability of cosmopolitan ideals by cordoning traditional customs and attitudes behind fences of belief. In this contest, cosmopolitan values will remain at a disadvantage because they cannot leverage intense emotional attachments in the same way or to the same extent as more limited but more traditional worldviews can. Martha Nussbaum has pointed the way out of this conundrum through a better understanding of the importance of political emotions that work in a recognizably religious fashion. Thus, while the competition of religion and cosmopolitanism will not disappear as long as religious commitment remains a question of belief, there is ample room ? indeed, an urgent necessity ? to yoke them together in an appeal to human emotions.
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American conservatism is not a stable tradition. Even during a supposed era of conservative dominance like the Gilded Age,...
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An extraordinary constellation of biographical films about American entertainers and songwriters released between 1935 and 1959 suggests the extent to which Americans defined their nationalism in terms of popular culture, specifically... more
An extraordinary constellation of biographical films about American entertainers and songwriters released between 1935 and 1959 suggests the extent to which Americans defined their nationalism in terms of popular culture, specifically music. The cinematic celebration of the creators of music over the course of a century fostered a crucial alliance between the ideals of democracy and modernity, while ostensibly transcending internal divisions by ethnicity, region, and race.
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A momentous shift in American intellectuals’ understanding of humanity, culture, and nature began in the 1960s and 1970s. Symbolic of the transition was a gradual substitution of primary definitions of the term environmentalism, from the... more
A momentous shift in American intellectuals’ understanding of humanity, culture, and nature began in the 1960s and 1970s. Symbolic of the transition was a gradual substitution of primary definitions of the term environmentalism, from the malleability of human values, knowledge, and goals due to the overwhelming importance of culture, to the care and respect for the complex web of relationships across the diversity of species. The significance of environmentalism in its earlier definition was eroded as the post-World War II intellectual consensus pairing cultural environmentalism and human distinctiveness unraveled for a number of reasons, including the appeal of biological arguments to segments of the left coalition as well as questions raised by the debates about behaviorism and linguistics. In retrospect, it also seems that the shift in definition to the ecological sense of environmentalism was itself a stimulus rather than simply a symptom of the transition. As humanity assumed a new position as part of rather than separate from and dominating the natural world, a new characterization of environmentalism underscored the new message encoded in the changes in biological and psychological research.
Research Interests:
Among the commentators on Christian Science, the American mind-cure religion, in the years immediately prior to the death of its founder Mary Baker Eddy were an American and an Englishman who also died in 1910. Despite their shared... more
Among the commentators on Christian Science, the American mind-cure religion, in the years immediately prior to the death of its founder Mary Baker Eddy were an American and an Englishman who also died in 1910. Despite their shared institutional affiliation, however, as well as similar rhetoric about avoiding prejudgments on matters related to alleged intrusions of the spiritual on the physical realm, William James and Frank Podmore represented sharply contrasting approaches to the issues in turn-of-the-twentieth-century religious and scientific thought that the Christian Science phenomenon helped to crystallize. For James the compensations of individual belief in non-materialistic explanations outweighed other factors and led to a largely positive appraisal of Christian Science, while for Podmore, who conceded the factuality of many Christian Science cures, its pretentions as a religion nevertheless ruled it out of bounds.
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윌리엄 그레이험 섬너는 19세기 말 자유무역을 옹호하던 여타 자유주의자들과 마찬가지로, 미국-스페인 전쟁과 필리핀 합병이라는 상황에 직면하여 지적 정체성에 있어 위기를 맞게 되었다. 비록 군사모험주의와 제국주의에 대한 그의 초기태도에서 보이는 애매함과 모순점으로 인해 1898년에서 1899년 사이 맥킨리 행정부의 정책에 대한 반대가 당연한 것으로 간주되도록 하지는 않았지만, “스페인의 미국정복”(1899)에 담긴 미국... more
윌리엄 그레이험 섬너는 19세기 말 자유무역을 옹호하던 여타 자유주의자들과 마찬가지로, 미국-스페인 전쟁과 필리핀 합병이라는 상황에 직면하여 지적 정체성에 있어 위기를 맞게 되었다. 비록 군사모험주의와 제국주의에 대한 그의 초기태도에서 보이는 애매함과 모순점으로 인해 1898년에서 1899년 사이 맥킨리 행정부의 정책에 대한 반대가 당연한 것으로 간주되도록 하지는 않았지만, “스페인의 미국정복”(1899)에 담긴 미국 공화주의적 전통과의 일관성에 대한 그의 주장은 섬너가 반 제국주의 운동의 중심에 서도록 하였다. 그러나 미국이 일관성을 유지할 것을 요구하던 섬너의 호소는 그 자신의 개인적 일관성의 문제와 충돌하였다. 그의 상대주의적 사회 이론은 영속성 있는 정치적 이념이 차지할 공간을 거의 내주지 않았다. 그러므로, 제국주의에 대한 섬너의 최종적 입장은 Folkways(1906)의 도덕적 상대주의에 있어서 그의 사회학적 이론의 마지막 단계의 등장과 운명적으로 상호 얽혀지게 되었다.
Research Interests:
The analysis that follows examines how religious citizenship evolved during the twelve years of Reconstruction (1865-1877) in the United States that followed Lincoln's injunction to his fellow Americans to act in the years ahead... more
The analysis that follows examines how religious citizenship evolved during the twelve years of Reconstruction (1865-1877) in the United States that followed Lincoln's injunction to his fellow Americans to act in the years ahead "with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right." The essay begins by tracing some of the divergences between postwar religious assumptions in the North and South to attitudes honed during the conflict. It takes as symbols of the contrasting views two of the opposing generals at the Battle of Chancellorsville in 1862, Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson, the early avatar of the religion of the lost cause in the South, and Oliver Otis Howard, the future head of the Freedmen's Bureau. It then deals with how Americans made peace with the dead -- at least 620,000 of them, or two percent of the nation's population -- in ways that included Horace Bushnell's theology of vicarious sacrifice, resurgent spiritualism, and the annihilation of pain and suffering in Mary Baker Eddy's Science and Health (1875). It concludes with the religious impulse to make peace with the living through reuniting the national family. However, this compassionate religious citizenship too often offered only a blinkered definition of family, for reconciliation with the white prodigal sons of the South typically entailed abandoning the newly admitted African American members of the national family.
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Research Interests: History and Philosophy
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Research Interests:
Throughout history the cosmopolitanism of world citizenship has competed with the universalism of faith-based religions. The nature of religious belief has tended to divide the world between in-groups and out-groups in real or potential... more
Throughout history the cosmopolitanism of world citizenship has competed with the universalism of faith-based religions. The nature of religious belief has tended to divide the world between in-groups and out-groups in real or potential conflict with one another, while the origins of the cosmopolitan ideal derive from secular sources, above all the cultural relativism of ancient Greeks and Romans and of Enlightenment figures such as Immanuel Kant. In recent decades religion has played an increasingly important role as the principal alternative to the malleability of cosmopolitan ideals by cordoning traditional customs and attitudes behind fences of belief. In this contest, cosmopolitan values will remain at a disadvantage because they cannot leverage intense emotional attachments in the same way or to the same extent as more limited but more traditional worldviews can. Martha Nussbaum has pointed the way out of this conundrum through a better understanding of the importance of polit...
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
윌리엄 그레이험 섬너는 19세기 말 자유무역을 옹호하던 여타 자유주의자들과 마찬가지로, 미국-스페인 전쟁과 필리핀 합병이라는 상황에 직면하여 지적 정체성에 있어 위기를 맞게 되었다. 비록 군사모험주의와 제국주의에 대한 그의 초기태도에서 보이는 애매함과 모순점으로 인해 1898년에서 1899년 사이 맥킨리 행정부의 정책에 대한 반대가 당연한 것으로 간주되도록 하지는 않았지만, “스페인의 미국정복”(1899)에 담긴 미국... more
윌리엄 그레이험 섬너는 19세기 말 자유무역을 옹호하던 여타 자유주의자들과 마찬가지로, 미국-스페인 전쟁과 필리핀 합병이라는 상황에 직면하여 지적 정체성에 있어 위기를 맞게 되었다. 비록 군사모험주의와 제국주의에 대한 그의 초기태도에서 보이는 애매함과 모순점으로 인해 1898년에서 1899년 사이 맥킨리 행정부의 정책에 대한 반대가 당연한 것으로 간주되도록 하지는 않았지만, “스페인의 미국정복”(1899)에 담긴 미국 공화주의적 전통과의 일관성에 대한 그의 주장은 섬너가 반 제국주의 운동의 중심에 서도록 하였다. 그러나 미국이 일관성을 유지할 것을 요구하던 섬너의 호소는 그 자신의 개인적 일관성의 문제와 충돌하였다. 그의 상대주의적 사회 이론은 영속성 있는 정치적 이념이 차지할 공간을 거의 내주지 않았다. 그러므로, 제국주의에 대한 섬너의 최종적 입장은 Folkways(1906)의 도덕적 상대주의에 있어서 그의 사회학적 이론의 마지막 단계의 등장과 운명적으로 상호 얽혀지게 되었다.
Research Interests:
Research Interests: American Studies and Art
William Graham Sumner, originator of the phrase “the Forgotten Man,” has himself to a great extent become a forgotten man. Already during his...
Research Interests:
2019 년에 우리는 돌진하는 희망과 충돌하는 정체성이 혼재하는 100 년을 기념했다. 갈등은 부분적으로 낙담스러웠는데 그 이유는 1 차 세계대전의 종결로 자기 결정을 통해 미래를 통제하고 허용하며 새롭고 더 자유로운 세계의 창조를 용이하게 했던 그 시기 세계적으로 기대가 크게 일어났음에도 불구하고 갈등으로 인해 그 기대가 좌절되었기 때문이다. 자기결정에...
Research Interests: Intellectual History, Cultural History, Psychology, Korean Studies, Race and Ethnicity, and 15 moreWorld History, Turkey, May Fourth Movement, First World War, Intellectual and cultural history, Ethnicity, Chinese history (History), Woodrow Wilson, The League of Nations, Cultural History of the First World War, Indian Independence, Irish War of Independence, Prohibition in the USA, Red scares, and Interwar Period
The analysis that follows examines how religious citizenship evolved during the twelve years of Reconstruction (1865-1877) in the United States that followed Lincoln's injunction to his fellow Americans to act in the years ahead... more
The analysis that follows examines how religious citizenship evolved during the twelve years of Reconstruction (1865-1877) in the United States that followed Lincoln's injunction to his fellow Americans to act in the years ahead "with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right." The essay begins by tracing some of the divergences between postwar religious assumptions in the North and South to attitudes honed during the conflict. It takes as symbols of the contrasting views two of the opposing generals at the Battle of Chancellorsville in 1862, Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson, the early avatar of the religion of the lost cause in the South, and Oliver Otis Howard, the future head of the Freedmen's Bureau. It then deals with how Americans made peace with the dead -- at least 620,000 of them, or two percent of the nation's population -- in ways that included Horace Bushnell's theology of vicarious sacrifice, resurgent spiritualism, and the annihilation of pain and suffering in Mary Baker Eddy's Science and Health (1875). It concludes with the religious impulse to make peace with the living through reuniting the national family. However, this compassionate religious citizenship too often offered only a blinkered definition of family, for reconciliation with the white prodigal sons of the South typically entailed abandoning the newly admitted African American members of the national family.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
A momentous shift in American intellectuals’ understanding of humanity, culture, and nature began in the 1960s and 1970s. Symbolic of the transition was a gradual substitution of primary definitions of the term environmentalism, from the... more
A momentous shift in American intellectuals’ understanding of humanity, culture, and nature began in the 1960s and 1970s. Symbolic of the transition was a gradual substitution of primary definitions of the term environmentalism, from the malleability of human values, knowledge, and goals due to the overwhelming importance of culture, to the care and respect for the complex web of relationships across the diversity of species. The significance of environmentalism in its earlier definition was eroded as the post-World War II intellectual consensus pairing cultural environmentalism and human distinctiveness unraveled for a number of reasons, including the appeal of biological arguments to segments of the left coalition as well as questions raised by the debates about behaviorism and linguistics. In retrospect, it also seems that the shift in definition to the ecological sense of environmentalism was itself a stimulus rather than simply a symptom of the transition. As humanity assumed a new position as part of rather than separate from and dominating the natural world, a new characterization of environmentalism underscored the new message encoded in the changes in biological and psychological research.
Research Interests:
Public commemoration of unexpected death in America, while often focused on charismatic celebrities in the short term, typically finds permanent form...
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Research Interests:
역사가들은 1950년대와 1960년대 미국대외정책의 개념화를 이해하는 데 있어 “근대화” 도식(schema)의 유용성을 인정하고 있다. 그러나 제2차 세계대전 후 국제문제에 대하여 사회과학자들이 접근하면서 가졌던 사고방식을 이해하기 위해서는 학계, 재단, 정부서비스, 언론에서 당시의 국내정책을 형성하고 추진하는 사람들을 이끌고 있던 가정과 목표들의 비교 가능한 네트워크 내에서 근대화의 맥락을 짚어보는 것이 중요하다. 미국의... more
역사가들은 1950년대와 1960년대 미국대외정책의 개념화를 이해하는 데 있어 “근대화” 도식(schema)의 유용성을 인정하고 있다. 그러나 제2차 세계대전 후 국제문제에 대하여 사회과학자들이 접근하면서 가졌던 사고방식을 이해하기 위해서는 학계, 재단, 정부서비스, 언론에서 당시의 국내정책을 형성하고 추진하는 사람들을 이끌고 있던 가정과 목표들의 비교 가능한 네트워크 내에서 근대화의 맥락을 짚어보는 것이 중요하다. 미국의 국내와 국외에서 근대화론자들은 공중위생 개혁을 추진하고, 백인 중심의 남부와 같은 “미개발” 지역의 사회적 관습을 변화시키고자 시도하거나, 통합되고 합리적이면서 개방적이면서 광범하게 평등한 국가건설이라는 목표에 전력을 기울이는 모습을 보여주었다. 그러나 자신들과 가치를 공유하지 않는다고 생각했던 다른 미국인들을 교육하려고 한 노력에서 나타난 바와 같이 그들 앞에 놓인 임무의 범위와 어려움을 알고 있었다. 또 미국의 근대화 전망에 대한 극히 제한된 낙관론조차 좌파와 우파에서 모두 쇠퇴해 가고 있었기 때문에 그들의 우려가 잘못된 것은 아니었다.
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Among the commentators on Christian Science, the American mind-cure religion, in the years immediately prior to the death of its founder Mary Baker Eddy were an American and an Englishman who also died in 1910. Despite their shared... more
Among the commentators on Christian Science, the American mind-cure religion, in the years immediately prior to the death of its founder Mary Baker Eddy were an American and an Englishman who also died in 1910. Despite their shared institutional affiliation, however, as well as similar rhetoric about avoiding prejudgments on matters related to alleged intrusions of the spiritual on the physical realm, William James and Frank Podmore represented sharply contrasting approaches to the issues in turn-of-the-twentieth-century religious and scientific thought that the Christian Science phenomenon helped to crystallize. For James the compensations of individual belief in non-materialistic explanations outweighed other factors and led to a largely positive appraisal of Christian Science, while for Podmore, who conceded the factuality of many Christian Science cures, its pretentions as a religion nevertheless ruled it out of bounds.
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The analysis that follows examines how religious citizenship evolved during the twelve years of Reconstruction (1865-1877) in the United States that followed Lincoln's injunction to his fellow Americans to act in the years ahead "with... more
The analysis that follows examines how religious citizenship evolved during the twelve years of Reconstruction (1865-1877) in the United States that followed Lincoln's injunction to his fellow Americans to act in the years ahead "with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right." The essay begins by tracing some of the divergences between postwar religious assumptions in the North and South to attitudes honed during the conflict. It takes as symbols of the contrasting views two of the opposing generals at the Battle of Chancellorsville in 1862, Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson, the early avatar of the religion of the lost cause in the South, and Oliver Otis Howard, the future head of the Freedmen's Bureau. It then deals with how Americans made peace with the dead -- at least 620,000 of them, or two percent of the nation's population -- in ways that included Horace Bushnell's theology of vicarious sacrifice, resurgent spiritualism, and the annihilation of pain and suffering in Mary Baker Eddy's Science and Health (1875). It concludes with the religious impulse to make peace with the living through reuniting the national family. However, this compassionate religious citizenship too often offered only a blinkered definition of family, for reconciliation with the white prodigal sons of the South typically entailed abandoning the newly admitted African American members of the national family.
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In 2019 we commemorate the centennial of a year of dashed hopes and clashing identities. The conflicts were so disheartening in part because they arose from the failure of expectations ignited around the world that the end of the Great... more
In 2019 we commemorate the centennial of a year of dashed hopes and clashing identities. The conflicts were so disheartening in part because they arose from the failure of expectations ignited around the world that the end of the Great War would facilitate the creation of a new, more just and liberal world order allowing control over the future through self-determination. The focus on self-determination meant that the year's conflicts would involve a range of incarnations of identity, some assertive, including national-ethnic, anti-imperialist, and racial movements, some predominantly defensive, notably through bonds with a presumed national past to erect barriers against change. Often the most effective identities were the most narrow, as indicated by the limitations of class identity revealed in the pushback against strikes and other worker initiatives and by the repudiation by the U.S. Senate of President Woodrow Wilson's League of Nations. Many of the same identity conflicts still plague the world today, but the main lesson of 1919 for the present may simply be that whatever crises may confront humanity over the next century, it is likely that at their crux we will find questions of identity.
Research Interests: Intellectual History, Cultural History, Korean Studies, Race and Ethnicity, World History, and 15 moreTurkey, May Fourth Movement, First World War, Intellectual and cultural history, Ethnicity, Chinese history (History), Woodrow Wilson, The League of Nations, Cultural History of the First World War, Indian Independence, Irish War of Independence, Interwar period, 1919 - 1939, Prohibition in the USA, Red scares, and Red Summer of 1919
An extraordinary constellation of biographical films about American entertainers and songwriters released between 1935 and 1959 suggests the extent to which Americans defined their nationalism in terms of popular culture, specifically... more
An extraordinary constellation of biographical films about American entertainers and songwriters released between 1935 and 1959 suggests the extent to which Americans defined their nationalism in terms of popular culture, specifically music. The cinematic celebration of the creators of music over the course of a century fostered a crucial alliance between the ideals of democracy and modernity, while ostensibly transcending internal divisions by ethnicity, region, and race.
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A momentous shift in American intellectuals’ understanding of humanity, culture, and nature began in the 1960s and 1970s. Symbolic of the transition was a gradual substitution of primary definitions of the term environmentalism, from the... more
A momentous shift in American intellectuals’ understanding of humanity, culture, and nature began in the 1960s and 1970s. Symbolic of the transition was a gradual substitution of primary definitions of the term environmentalism, from the malleability of human values, knowledge, and goals due to the overwhelming importance of culture, to the care and respect for the complex web of relationships across the diversity of species. The significance of environmentalism in its earlier definition was eroded as the post-World War II intellectual consensus pairing cultural environmentalism and human distinctiveness unraveled for a number of reasons, including the appeal of biological arguments to segments of the left coalition as well as questions raised by the debates about behaviorism and linguistics. In retrospect, it also seems that the shift in definition to the ecological sense of environmentalism was itself a stimulus rather than simply a symptom of the transition. As humanity assumed a new position as part of rather than separate from and dominating the natural world, a new characterization of environmentalism underscored the new message encoded in the changes in biological and psychological research.
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Although many of the terms and concepts that William Graham Sumner originated or popularized in Folkways (1906) continued in professional and popular parlance, the writer and his work have remained difficult for historians of the social... more
Although many of the terms and concepts that William Graham Sumner originated or popularized in Folkways (1906) continued in professional and popular parlance, the writer and his work have remained difficult for historians of the social sciences to treat with the same level of nuance and acuity afforded his contemporaries in America and Europe. This paper posits that one of the key continuities that Slumner shared with other founders of sociology and anthropology was a dilemma in choosing between two alternative conceptual models available at the turn of the twentieth century: relativism, inevitably creeping from the mores to morality, and modernism, the historical grid bifurcating the “cake of custom” from rational individual choice. Although Folkways is more famous (or notorious) as an extreme statement of cultural and moral relativism, Sumner continued to be shaped by both sets of values, especially in his ambivalent and ambiguous treatment of mores in modern times. In Folkways, Sumner left himself an escape hatch from relativism in the guise of the scientific method. Other social scientists simply seized one horn of the dilemma, with many sociologists reconfiguring modernism (for example, as solidarité organique or Gesellschaft), and most early anthropologists embracing relativism. Yet the dilemma would endure for their successors.