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Jul 19, 2011 · In short, Ross argues that most U.S. intellectual historians have framed the nation’s history through the lens of modernity–at least, since the historiographical renunciation of American exceptionalism in the 1960s.
DOROTHY ROSS In the historical narratives that nations write for themselves, location on the map of modernity is a crucial component of identity. In the United States as in other areas of the world, the construction of a national self-conception was bound up with the Eurocentric character of modernity. The United States began its existence in the
- Chapter Outline
- Herbert Spencer’s Influence on Sociology
- The Development of Conflict Theory
- Theories of Modernity and Postmodernity
- Summary
Early American Sociological Theory Sociological Theory to Midcentury Sociological Theory from Midcentury Late Twentieth-Century Integrative Theory Theories of Modernity and Postmodernity Social Theory in the Twenty-First Century
Why were Spencer’s ideas so much more influential in the early years of American sociology than those of Comte, Durkheim, Marx, and Weber? Richard Hofstadter (1959) offered several explanations. To take the easiest first, Spencer wrote in English, whereas the others did not. In addition, Spencer wrote in non-technical terms, making his work broadly...
Another precursor to a true union of Marxism and sociological theory was the development of a conflict-theory alternative to structural functionalism. As we have just seen, structural functionalism had no sooner gained leadership in sociological theory than it came under increasing attack. The attack was mul-tifaceted: Structural functionalists wer...
Toward the end of the twentieth century, social theorists7 were increasingly interested in the question of whether society (as well as theories about it) has undergone a dramatic transformation. On one side is a group of theo-rists (e.g., Jürgen Habermas, Zygmunt Bauman, and Anthony Giddens) who believe that we continue to live in a society that st...
This chapter picks up where Chapter 1 left off and deals with the history of sociological theory since the beginning of the twentieth century. We begin with the early history of American sociological theory, which was characterized by its liberalism, by its inter-est in Social Darwinism, and consequently by the influence of Herbert Spencer. In this...
Dorothy Ross argues that recent historians have emphasized Abraham Lincoln’s opposition to slavery to the neglect of his ardent nationalism.
Dorothy Ross (born 1936) is an American historian and Arthur O. Lovejoy Professor of History at Johns Hopkins University. She attended Smith College and Columbia University and taught at Hunter College and at the University of Virginia before Johns Hopkins.
DOROTHY ROSS IN HIS CLASSIC STUDY of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century social thought in America, Morton White suggested that Progressives were the first social thinkers to take seriously the idea that society must be understood as a product of continuous historical change. This understanding of history, he noted, came late to America.
Professor Ross argues that American social science receives its distinctive stamp from the ideology of American exceptionalism, the idea that America occupies an exceptional place in history,...
