171. Gouldner, Alvin Alvin W. Gouldner (b. July 29, 1920–d. December 15, 1980) was one of the leading American sociologists from the 1950s through the 1970s. Gouldner was born and raised in Bronx, New York. He completed his master’s degree in sociology at Columbia University (1945) under the supervision of Robert McIver. He then worked with Robert K. Merton, who supervised his doctoral research in a gypsum plant in upstate New York. Gouldner earned his Ph.D. (1953) from Columbia University, while serving as an associate professor at Antioch College (1952–54). A year later, Gouldner published two books from his dissertation: Patterns of Industrial Bureaucracy (1954a) – now a classic in the field of organizational sociology – and Wildcat Strike (1954b). Gouldner took his first full-time, tenure-track position in sociology at Washington University, St. Louis in 1959. By this time, even though Gouldner had established himself as a leading scholar in organizational sociology, until his death in 1980 he was more concerned with sociological theory in general. Throughout this period, Gouldner’s task was the development of a reflexive sociology which called for a greater awareness of how the infrastructural level of tacit assumptions (ontological, epistemological, and axiological) connects up with the technical level (the actual theories and methods being developed to explain some part of the social world). For example, Gouldner (1960) published the article “The Norm of Reciprocity,” which was generally critical of functionalism for its naivete concerning the importance of social exchange in assuring social order. But this takes for granted the eternal stability of social exchange itself, and functionalists such as Parsons never asked what the starting mechanisms were that gave rise to exchange in the first place. Even so, Gouldner was critical not only of the lack of reflexivity of functionalists; he conducted further critical examinations of interpretive theory, critical theory, Marxism, and linguistically oriented theory (such as that of Habermas), and a searing examination of the field of sociology in its totality in The Coming Crisis of Western Sociology (1970). Gouldner’s Coming Crisis of Western Sociology was, in essence, a product of the tumultuous 1960s, where a systematic questioning and repudiation of the establishment emerged in the guise of numerous social movements including women’s rights, gay rights, civil rights, and racial equality, along with anti-war, university, and police protests. There was a general feeling of crisis and a belief that fundamental changes in society were underway and could not be contained by established institutions. Establishment politics and culture received withering criticism, and Talcott Parsons, the leading world sociologist through the 1960s, was the focal point of Gouldner’s own sense of crisis in sociology and Western society. According to Gouldner, establishment sociology had become moribund with its fetish of objectivity and quantitative methods, and was moving towards a more liberative, critical, and interpretive model of theorizing consistent with the increasing emphasis being placed on subjectivity and empathic understanding (Verstehen). This postpositivist movement was represented by such microtheories as dramaturgy (Goffman), ethnomethodology (Garfinkel), and phenomenology (Schutz). Three years later, Gouldner (1973) published a book titled For Sociology which consisted of some of his earlier journal articles along with some new and previously unpublished work. The first two chapters reprinted two of his important journal articles from the 1960s. The “Anti-minotaur” paper concerned the ways in which sociologists had contorted and misrepresented Weber’s position on objectivity to perpetuate the destructive and untenable myth of a value-free sociology. The “Sociologist as partisan” paper was written in light of the success of a critical project which Gouldner had played a key role in initiating; namely, the dispelling of the myth of objectivity in sociology. This produced, by the late 1960s, an equally pernicious partisanship whereby sociologists now felt emboldened to openly declare allegiances with particular persons, programs, or organizations; that is, elevating noncognitive (e.g., emotional) elements while denigrating empirical evidence. This amounted to an unreflective embrace of the welfare state and the range of dispossessed persons and groups – the poor, prostitutes, the mentally ill, racial minorities, the incarcerated – who populated the state’s growing client list. Howard Becker 568 James J. Chriss - 9781800375918 Downloaded from https://www.elgaronline.com/ at 04/30/2024 06:44:37PM by j.chriss@csuohio.edu via James Chriss Gouldner, Alvin and the Chicago School also became targets of Gouldner’s ire. By proclaiming that they are taking the side of society’s “underdogs,” they are really setting themselves up as zookeepers and administrators for the welfare state, all the while accruing to themselves higher status and funding while doing little to alleviate the suffering of the masses. The rancor and agonistic struggle arising from this work was rather typical of Gouldner’s incessant challenge to the sociological establishment and this was represented even more forcefully in Gouldner’s responses to critics of The Coming Crisis in other parts of the book. These themes of critique and renewal were continued with the launching in 1974 of the journal Theory and Society, which Gouldner founded and edited until his death in 1980. As Gouldner (1974) explained in the journal’s first issue, Theory and Society aimed to bring together scholars who had both a firm grasp of philosophy and a healthy respect for empirical commitments without the sterility of method as an end in itself. By bringing philosophy back to sociology, which had pretty much been abandoned with Comte and early positivism, the rationality of social theory could be assured in the future. This would constitute a new objectivity, the theme of which would be extended through his “dark side of the dialectic” project until his untimely death (Gouldner 1976a, 1976b, 1979, 1980). James J. Chriss 569 References Gouldner, Alvin W. 1953. “Industry and Bureaucracy.” PhD Dissertation. Columbia University. Gouldner, Alvin W. 1954a. Patterns of Industrial Bureaucracy. Glencoe, IL: Free Press. Gouldner, Alvin W. 1954b. Wildcat Strike. Yellow Springs, OH: Antioch Press. Gouldner, Alvin W. 1960. “The Norm of Reciprocity.” American Sociological Review 25: 161–78. Gouldner, Alvin W. 1970. Coming Crisis of Western Sociology. New York: Avon. Gouldner, Alvin W. 1973. For Sociology: Renewal and Critique in Sociology Today. New York: Basic Books. Gouldner, Alvin W. 1974. “Toward the New Objectivity: An Introduction to Theory and Society.” Theory and Society 1, no. 1: i–v. Gouldner, Alvin W. 1976a. “The Dark Side of the Dialectic: Toward a New Objectivity.” Sociological Inquiry 46, no. 1: 3–15. Gouldner, Alvin W. 1976b. Dialectic of Ideology and Technology: The Origins, Grammar, and Future of Ideology. New York: Seabury Press. Gouldner, Alvin W. 1979. The Future of Intellectuals and the Rise of the New Class. New York: Seabury Press. Gouldner, Alvin W. 1980. The Two Marxisms. New York: Oxford University Press. See also Intellectuals; Critical Theory James J. Chriss James J. Chriss - 9781800375918 Downloaded from https://www.elgaronline.com/ at 04/30/2024 06:44:37PM by j.chriss@csuohio.edu via James Chriss