Editorial: Ellsworth Faris 1874-1953

Editorial: Ellsworth Faris 1874-1953Author(s): Howard W. OdumSource: Social Forces, Vol. 33, No. 1 (Oct., 1954), pp. 101-103Published by: Oxford University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2573161 .

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EDITORIAL

In resuming the policy followed in the earlier JOURNAL OF SOCIAL FORCES of providing opportunity for editorial notes and discussion, the general purpose is to give an opportunity for discussion of themes relating to the field of sociology. The range of editorials is intended to be broad enough to include not only opinion and comment but especially conclusions which have been reached from observation, experience, research, but are not sufficiently matured or objective as to constitute leading contributions. It may be expected that sometimes there will be more than one editorial on the same subject with special opportunity for guest editorials commenting on or differing from views presented by the editors.

ELLSWORTH FARIS

I874-I953

O F THE senior American sociologists to whom I should like to pay special tribute it may seem strange that I include Ells-

worth Faris, Chicago head man, in the panel of three with Franklin H. Giddings and Frank H. Hankins of the Columbia vintage. There is no need to explain the dynamic Giddings inspiration and direction which stemmed from the doctorate under his tutelage and the reading of his extraordinary books, systematic, erudite, well-written and still standing many of the severest tests of contempo- rary sociology and letters. But even before that I was really introduced to Giddings when I had my first course in sociology with Hankins in Clark College while I was working for the Ph.D. in psychology at Clark University under G. Stanley Hall, with minors in sociology with Hankins, in anthropology with Alexander Chamberlain, and in education under William H. Burnham. So well did Hankins teach the Giddings sociology and so thoroughly did he imbue me with the field and methods of Giddings that any doubt I might have had as to going on from Clark to Columbia for a second Ph.D., in sociology, never matured as an obstacle in the difficult task of working out ways and means. It was always a very real satisfaction to find that Hall and Giddings each held the other in high esteem.

Now the Faris indebtedness was something different. Although only ten years older than myself, he always seemed to me as if he were an older preceptor advising, criticizing, soliloquizing

but always forward-looking, even in satire. I had the feeling that his successors in piloting the first and most influential department of sociology in existence through several crises justified the con- clusion that his constructive work found its main focus in leadership and influence to a large con- stituency. His blessing and participation in the annual meetings of the American Sociological So- ciety impressed me as one of the many younger sociologists coming up from the provinces.

Yet, most of his help and stimulation came from later years of correspondence and from my study of his career for inclusion in my American Sociology. Much of this was after he had become professor emeritus, but also much of it came from recaptur- ing his role and personality in the early meetings of the Society which meant so much to those of us who were growing up with the new science and trying so hard to make a go of it. Except for E. A. Ross, I do not envisage any American sociologist whose presence so often at the annual meetings reflected so much of the dynamism and professional prestige which was crucial to the times. It is peculiarly appropriate here also to reflect that Faris' work as editor of The American Journal of Sociology finds a rare and worthy continuity in the work of Robert E. L. Faris as distinguished young editor of the official organ of the American Socio- logical Society, the American Sociological Review. It was no easy task to follow Albion W. Small in making a better journal even as he was building a better department.

101



102 SOCIAL FORCES

I should like to pay special tribute to Professor Faris as facile writer of letters, of scintillating reviews of current sociological literature, and as frank critic of my own concepts and immature theory. First, his keen and critical reviews of regionalism cautioned about making out some cosmic "ism" as an escape from facing reality in the South. Subsequently, he was a keen dragon- slayer in the field of folk and ethnic cultures and warned against too simple dichotomies in the polarity from folk culture to state civilization. Yet I believe I value his final appraisal of folk sociology, which came to be the core of any theory I might construct, more than that of any other sociologist among the very, very few who would really ex- amine this construct of folk sociology as a subject field for the study of human society.

Once again, the correspondence with him in the preparation of American Sociology: The Story of Sociology in the United States to 1950 was good enough, much of it, to have been published in full, had there been room for it. I have often felt that here was a man of letters with a lively style telling us about the annals of a period and a university. In all of this he seemed the youngest man I wrote to and was forever giving the impression of more, more. And he was always urging me on and chal- lenging me to complete what he undoubtedly thought was too much and perhaps too ambitious on the level of sociological theory.

I should like, however, to adapt something of what I wrote about him in this tribute which, even at its best, could be only a token from an outside observer of the process and succession of American sociologists in the making. But before that, I would suggest that the reading of his special features and book reviews within the last years of his retirement will not only repay the new students of sociology, but for the elders will recall a rare vigor, an unusual knowledge, a thorough reading of what was going on, and a rare spirit and style, worthy of his old-time satire, humor, and direct- ness. For instance, as late as February 1953 he was writing in the American Sociological Review, edited by his son.

Faris was twenty-seventh president, of forty-two up to his death, of the American Sociological So- ciety. He was chairman of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at the University of Chicago immediately following the great pioneer, Small. Then, as chairman of the separate Depart- ment of Sociology, and editor of The American

Journal of Sociology, he recapitulated much of the frontier method of American sociology in making its way through great difficulties in the rapid growth of American universities. For here was the Number One department in the United States with its powerful heritage of Small, Vincent, Henderson, closely allied with Mead and Angell in psychology, so completely depleted as to have only the old "Master," incapacitated with time and the weak- ening of a strong heart, and with one young but promising assistant. Chicago and Columbia were the two competing major departments offering the Doctor's degree. The problem then, as has been true at Chicago again, and at Columbia and other leading departments, was to rebuild a great department. Chicago had led all others in both distinguished professors and number of Ph.D. graduates. Faris lacked the momentum or money of the early university and President Harper under whose auspices Small had worked. If we add to this the fact that Faris had not even the direct heritage of the Small mantle but came dichotomously through psychology and anthropology to under- take such a task we can begin to appreciate the crucial task before him. So, too, the social incidence through which financial limitations and health hazards impeded the free flow of administration contributed to the measure of his success in a situ- ation and achievement that will rank Faris high up in the final hierarchy of those who achieved re- sults in the building of American sociology.

If we superimpose the Chicago picture over the map of the American departments a quarter cen- tury later we can begin to sense what it meant in a relatively short time for Chicago to reach domi- nance perhaps above its former status, with Faris and Thomas, Park and Burgess, Ogburn and Stouffer, Wirth and Blumer. In Faris' earlier days also was a preview of the new anthropology- sociology, in which the work of Ralph Linton and Edward Sapir, Fay-Cooper Cole and Robert Red- field, set a new page from its genesis with Faris' first organizational efforts. Then add to this the continuing stream of graduate students, their enthusiasm and loyalty to Faris in the light of his stimulating, albeit sharp, and driving direction of many studies and we have almost a fair estimate of Faris' ex officio rating in the catalogue of American sociologists. If he is not recorded as author of many books, neither were such prominent dynamic professors in other fields of academic endeavor as Adams of Hopkins, Edwin Gay of Harvard,



EDITORIAL 103

Burgess of Columbia, Day of Wisconsin and Cornell, and others. His critical analysis of social psychology and behaviorism and his approach to "the nature of human nature" reflected him as at least partly a frontiersman in the "behavioral sciences."

Concerning Faris' matured appraisal of the field and methods of sociology, he wrote as of 1950, "I have greater enthusiasm for sociology than ever before. And this is not on account of what has been done but because of my belief in what will be done and the supreme desirability that it may be done. A basic science of human nature we do not have, but our welfare, if not our survival, depends on its discovery or creation. My own interest is in what is known as social psychology and my effort has been to make a contribution to the understanding of the nature of personality and the antecedents of deviant conduct. This has led

me into studies of persons, crowds, mobs, religious sects, preliterate magic, and child behavior. But my colleagues have chosen many other aspects of human life for their study and I rejoice at every earnest effort."

In his progressive work with students, Faris propounded something new in the theory of imita- tion. He was among the first to attack the Mc- Dougall doctrine of instincts. And he was fighting in the ranks of the men who opposed the extremes of Watson and the now obsolescence of Freud. Had Faris' magnum opus ever been written, it would have undertaken to set forth an account of human nature and personality that would find a place for all the older categories called mental, as growing out of action and conduct. I only wish we might have had him in the new counsels of the behavioral scientists.

HowARD W. ODUM



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Editorial: Ellsworth Faris 1874-1953