Nicole Curato

A Sociological
Reading of Classical
Sociological Theory

“Do we still need to talk about the classics?” is perhaps one of the most basic yet
difficult questions students and scholars of sociology face today. Mastery of the
work of Marx, Weber and Durkheim remains to be a badge of membership—a
rite of passage to become part of a community of professional sociologists.
However, theory, as Robert Cox argues, is always for someone and for some
purpose. Theories are always derived from particular standpoints and privilege
certain perspectives. This article aims to unpack the classics’ epistemological
assumptions and argue for a critical renegotiation of their legacy. There is a need
to contextualize, provincialize, and pluralize the classics to make them cognizant
of non-Western and non-masculine accounts of modernity.  The aim is to explore
the possibilities of an approach that allows sociologists to make connections
between social worlds without using European modernity as central referent for
analysis.

Keywords: classical sociological theory, Marx, Weber, Durkheim,

post-colonial theory, indigenization

Philippine Sociological Review (2013) • Vol. 61 • pp. 265-288 265

“An Imaginary Sociology Text Book.” (Photo by Nina Karla Botial)

2 66 Philippine Sociological Review (2013) • Vol. 61 • No. 2

T
he discipline of sociology has a mixed track record of promoting
progressive ideas. On one hand, sociologists are trained to think
critically, to interrogate taken for granted assumptions because
“things are not always what they seem” (Berger 1963:23). Introductory
courses often begin with a discussion of sociology’s “promise” to
develop a “quality of mind” that allows students to overcome the cult
of the individual and make sense of their personal troubles’ intersection
with public issues (Mills 1959). Other texts emphasize that sociological
knowledge can be an instrument of truth telling—to use “the power of
ideas to confront existing power relations” (Collins 2013:37). Sociology,
as Pierre Bourdieu (2010) puts it, is a combat sport. You use it to defend
yourself but not to attack others.
On the other hand, the origins of sociology as an academic
discipline have been held suspect. Its foundations were built on the
“imperial gaze” of white, liberal bourgeoisie men in Europe (Connell
1997:1523). Classical sociological theory, specially, tends to put forward
a universal template of development based on Europe’s particular
experience. Differences across societies are framed as a function of
evolutionary stages, an implicit way of depicting the advanced nature,
if not superiority of the West’s experience (Go 2013:32). The legacy
of a Eurocentric intellectual paradigm remains relevant today where
social progress is benchmarked against Enlightenment ideals of liberty,
individualism, and secularism.
The “canonization” of Marx, Weber, and Durkheim as sociology’s
“founding fathers” plays a major part in sustaining this legacy. By
equating classical sociology to these theorists, accounts of modernity
are limited to the historical circumstances which shaped these men’s
social thought. This comes at the expense of a conversation about
significant and diverse ideas that developed over the same period as
well as social transformations that diverge from the West’s trajectory
(Giddens 1971:VII). The tendency to glamorize the classics as the work

Nicole Curato is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Center for Deliberative

Democracy and Global Governance at the Australian National University. Prior
to her fellowship, she was an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University
of the Philippines-Diliman. Email the author at [email protected].

Philippine Sociological Review (2013) • Vol. 61 267

of “great men” in textbooks, classroom discussions or research papers
puts sociology in a paradoxical position. For a discipline that is about
interrogating taken for granted realities, it deifies a trinity of European
men considered to be the discipline’s foundation (Parker 1997:124).
This article seeks to address this paradox by making a case for a
sociological reading of classical sociological theory. This means critically
negotiating the legacy of the classics by situating it in the broader
context of the social construction of knowledge. Rather than reading the
classics as authoritative canons that have to be mastered by scholars and
students of sociology, I propose three alternative ways of approaching
the text, namely: to contextualize or characterize social conditions and
political decisions that awarded the high status the classics enjoy today;
to provincialize or decenter the European experience as the axis of
sociological thought and; to pluralize or diversify entry points that lead
one to engage in sociological literature apart from the canons. Through
this approach, I hope to highlight the existing spaces for pedagogy and
critical research to interpret classical sociological theory in a more
inclusive, relevant and dynamic manner.

Why the classics?

It has been customary for degree programs in sociology to have a course—
usually a mandatory one–that focuses on the writings of Karl Marx,
Max Weber, and Emile Durkheim. Some programs label these courses
as Classical Sociological Theory while others designate a more general
label such as Sociological Theory I. These courses are usually structured
as prerequisite to “more advanced” courses such as Contemporary
Sociological Theory or Sociological Theory II, based on a premise that
the classics are foundational to higher sociological knowledge. Such
sequential structure communicates that “any self-respecting student must
first acquire the basic ideas of the classics as a first step in his or her
sociological education” (Sandywell 1998:611).
The classics enjoy a considerable status in the teaching of sociology
because they are considered a “canonical set of text.” A canon is considered
a privileged set of texts “whose interpretation and reinterpretation defines
a field” (Connell 1997:1512; also see Bratton, Denham, and Deutschmann
2009:1). The classics perform an “integrative” function to the discipline

2 68 Philippine Sociological Review (2013) • Vol. 61 • No. 2

by creating a language shared by a community of sociologists until today.
As Jeffrey Alexander explains:

The functional necessity for classics develops because of the need for
integrating the field of theoretical discourse. By integration, I do not mean
cooperation and equilibrium but rather the boundary maintenance, or closure,
which allows systems to exist. It is this functional demand that explains the
formation of disciplinary boundaries which from an intellectual standpoint
often seem arbitrary (Alexander 1987:27).

The classics provide some baseline understanding for scholarly

conversations to ensue. It is difficult, if not impossible to speak the
language of sociology without the shared vocabulary of class, division
of labor and rationality. These concepts have not only become standard
descriptors or conceptual frameworks for analyses. They have also
been the bases for critique and further theorizing that have fuelled
developments in sociology today. For example, the Marxist and Weberian
concepts of class as developed in Das Kapital and Economy and Society,
respectively, have been a subject of investigation by generations of
sociologists, with some relating it to symbolic and cultural capital, others
to race and ethnicity, social mobility and even health. It has become a
locus of theoretical and empirical sociology by providing the language
for examining stratification, inequalities and social conflict.
Aside from providing a shared language for the discipline, the classics
have also set the agenda of inquiry. Even though some contemporary
theorists claim that societies have now entered a new phase of modernity
(e.g. Beck 2000; Lyotard 1984), there are still key points of continuity
with the classics. The commonly used term “globalization,” for example,
can be understood as a continuation of the relentless expansion of capital
as identified by Marx or increasing rationalization of society as identified
by Weber (Hughes, Sharrock, and Martin 2003:3). As Hughes et al. point
out, “many of the issues and problems engaged with by recent theorists
were, in fact, originally confronted by Marx, Durkheim, and Weber, often
with a greater degree of clarity than has been customary of late” (Hughes
et al. 2003:6). Students of sociology can relate to the classics because “for
the most part, they are still writing about a world we still inhabit” (Ashley

curato • A Sociological Reading of Classical Sociological Theory 2 69

and Orenstein 1995:9). For this reason, Hughes et al. propose that the works
of Marx, Weber and Durkheim be appreciated as a sociological tradition,
in the same way that Judaism, Roman Catholicism, and Protestantism are
understood as part of the Judeo-Christian tradition. Even though there are
marked differences among their intellectual contributions, they nevertheless
pose thematic continuities to see them as part of the same tradition (Hughes
et al. 2003:6; also see Alexander 1987:12).

Empty universalism
This tradition, however, has been under increasingly tight scrutiny today.
Several sociologists (Go 2013; Bhambra 2007a; Alatas 2010; Magubane
2005; Chakrabarty 2000; Connell 1997; Chua 2008; Camic 1979;
Parker 1997) have protested the Eurocentric universalism underpinning
classical theory. Concepts derived from particular historical, Eurocentric,
and andocentric traditions are translated to grand narratives that claim
to account for universal social patterns. Comte’s law of three stages,
Marx’s stages of capitalism, Weber’s bureaucratization, and Durkheim’s
transition from a primitive to modern society are templates of societal
developments exclusively drawn from the Western European experience.
The classics have been held suspect because they presuppose, by and
large, that other societies are different from the West because they have
retarded social transformations (Go 2013).
This epistemological paradigm places the discipline of sociology
in a compromising position for several reasons. Firstly, the discipline
is relying on a set of texts that fail to provide accurate descriptions of
social realities, often at the expense of the non-Western “other” (Chua
2008:1183).Modernity, for example, because it is viewed from a European
gaze, is defined by secularization, bureaucratization, urbanization and
democratization (Bratton et al. 2009:10). Virtues of dynamism, intellectual
creativity and triumph of science are claimed to be Enlightenment’s
achievements. Non-Western cultures, on the other hand, are depicted as
“static and backwards” (Go 2013).
This intellectual construct has a major impact to social thought in
non-Western societies until today, where mainstream benchmarks for
development, progress and growth are still drawn from the European
model of modernity. The characterization of the Philippines as a

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“patrimonial oligarchic state,” for example, is lifted from the Weberian
ideal types of modern states. As a consequence, patterns of kinship and
personality-based practice prevalent in the Philippine society are usually
uncritically identified as weaknesses and deterrents to economic and
political development. The critique is against the Philippines’ failure to
evolve based on the West’s historically-specific evolutionary model, rather
than interrogate the potency of the Weberian lens. Indigenization efforts
in Philippine scholarship through “pantayong pananaw”(“from-us-for-
us perspective”), “Pilipinolohiya” (Philippinology) and “Sikolohiyang
Pilipino” (Filipino Psychology) have provided alternative approaches
to studying local realities although these also have epistemological
limitations which will be briefly discussed later.
Secondly, the increasing attention towards the study of globalization
today uncovers the classics’ poor legacy of accounting for peoples’
historical connections due to colonialism. The emergence of the
cosmopolitan perspective tends to emphasize the epochal shift that the
world experienced at the end of the twentieth century (Beck 2000) but
a question is raised whether this paradigm, rather than accounting for
increasing global interconnectedness, is only making up for the poverty
of the classics’ conceptual tools. Put another way, what has substantively
changed is not the dynamic of globalization or cosmopolitanism per se,
but the concepts used to understand these interconnections (Chakrabarty
2000). Part of the reason for this is the canons’ weak account of
colonialism. As Boatcâ and Costa put it, the “terminological toolkit of
classical sociology” heavily depended upon a “suppression of colonial
and imperial dynamics” (Boatcâ and Costa 2010:16). The discussion of
Western modernity has identified the French Revolution and Industrial
Revolution in England as central to social change but offered little account
of the politics of accumulation through Atlantic Slave Trade and overseas
plantation economy which made these revolutions possible (Boatcâ and
Costa 2010:16). Postcolonial sociologist, Julian Go, provides an apt
summation of this observation:

Weber’s writings portray the Orient as lacking and static but the related
problem is that he never considered that capitalism’s origins and sustenance
may have rested upon imperial accumulation rather than in Protestant beliefs

curato • A Sociological Reading of Classical Sociological Theory 271

 alone. Durkheim postulated transitions from different types of solidarity (that
he neatly mapped onto binaries like “primitive” and “modern,” preindustrial
and industrial, etc.) but never considered that one may have been dependent
upon the imperial consolidation of the other. Marx saw colonialism as a
mechanism for expanding capitalism, not as a constitutive force in its very
making (Go 2013:36-37)1.

The binaries of classical theory create conceptual limitations by

drawing lines of demarcation (traditional versus modern society;
feudal versus capitalist) rather than making connections across
mutually constitutive forms of societies. For these reasons, historical
and postcolonial sociologists consider classical accounts as partial at
best, as failure to examine social transformations in relation to global
colonial interconnections present a largely problematic framework for
understanding modernity (Bratton et al. 2009:10).
Thirdly, the classics are heavily critiqued for their failure to bring in
a range of voices in their descriptions of social order and change. They
are charged of “empty universalism” not only for privileging a European
gaze but also for speaking from the perspective of white, able-bodied,
heterosexual male scholars. One consequence of this, as some scholars
argue, is the apparent oblivion of the founding fathers to questions of
gender distinctions, sexuality, race, culture as well as disability and
their relationship to social power. Postcolonial theorists, for example,
(Chakrabarty 2000; Bhambra 2007a; Go 2013) are critical of Marx’s
valorization of working class men whereas there are other powerful
accounts of revolution such as Franz Fanon and Simon Bolivar’s ideas for
colonial independence which foreground the role of non-white colonial
subjects in revolutionary struggles. While these ideas are not necessarily
inconsistent, the question remains as to why Marx holds the privileged
position of being “canonized” as a pillar of sociological thought while
discussions on race, colonial peripheries as well as gender, sexuality
and disability are relegated as “adjuncts” of sociological investigation
(Bhambra 2007b).

1 Go further notes that even though Marx views capitalism as a “world

system,” he nevertheless identifies its central dynamic as coming from a
European origin.

272 Philippine Sociological Review (2013) • Vol. 61 • No. 2

Renegotiating the classics’ legacy
Given these limitations, should students and scholars of sociology
continue to devote time and effort in reading the theories of dead white
European males? A tentative, yes, with numerous qualifications is one
way of responding to this query. Randolf David offers a productive
insight which can be used as a springboard for discussion:

The obvious value of sociological theory is to serve as a tool for sensitizing
us to data and for organizing our observations…the goal of inquiry is to cope
with real problems encountered in the course of action, rather than to arrive at
a “correct” representation of reality (David 2001:6).

This pragmatist approach in reading the classics encourages readers

to appreciate the text as tools to help one make sense of social realities
rather than treat them as timeless, authoritative pieces one must master
for the sake of scholarship. Theory, David further argues, should serve as
“vocabularies, sources of metaphors or ways of looking at things, rather
than the definitive truth about the nature of the social world” (David
2001:11).
To espouse this position, however, is not to say that a devout reading of
the classics is a futile exercise. Indeed, there is space for scholarship that
engages debates about whether Durkheim was a political conservative
or a radical or those that attempt to come up with “more accurate”
interpretations of Weber’s scholarship by understanding the context of
German nationalism at the turn of the twentieth century. These scholarly
endeavors continue to enrich the discipline by providing background
knowledge which gave life to influential concepts used over a century
after they were coined.
However, classical theory is classical not only because“they provide
a historical context for reading sociology,” but also because “they
help us understand our own society” (Bratton et al 2009:1). It is in the
process of understanding “our own society” where issues of power
become particularly relevant. An uncritical deployment of classical
theory’s insights and the way they are reproduced in textbooks, academic
journals and classroom discussions may serve to perpetuate particular
epistemological hierarchies as discussed in the previous section. For these

curato • A Sociological Reading of Classical Sociological Theory 2 73

reasons, it is crucial, particularly for scholarly settings outside Europe to
negotiate the legacy of the classics.
The term “negotiate” is used to refer to the active interrogation of
the bases for the classics’ status in sociological theory2. It questions the
scholarly consensus which considers the canons as a “must read” set of
texts for sociologists. It haggles over the standing of the classics in the
broad field of sociological theory and assesses its place particularly in
non-European contexts. In the following sections, three specific ways of
negotiating the classics are presented. The aim is not to prescribe but to
explore possibilities in thinking about the classics’ legacy in a manner that
contextualizes, provincializes and pluralizes a powerful metanarrative
that shapes the discipline of sociology.

Contextualize
“Theory is always for someone and for some purpose,” argues
critical theorist Robert Cox (1981:128). All theories, he explains,
are inextricably linked to structural conditions, material relations, and
patterns of domination that shape intellectual thought at a particular time
and space. There is “no such thing as theory in itself,” he adds (Cox
1981:128), as theories are always derived from particular standpoints
and privileges certain perspectives. When a theory presents itself as a
generalized proposition or law, Cox suggests that it should be treated as
ideology and “lay bare its concealed perspective” (Cox 1981:128).
While Cox made this argument in relation to hegemonic paradigms
in international relations, his ideas are equally applicable to sociological
theory. Several sociologists have already argued in a similar vein, suggesting
that skeptical reflexivity should be practiced with regard to sociology’s
origins, sources and claims (Sandywell 1998:601). As mentioned, if
sociology is about interrogating taken for granted assumptions, then
the social construction of the discipline itself must be subject to critical
investigation (Parker 1997:124; Connell 1997). A sociological approach
to sociological theory is warranted, which exposes social relations that

2 The selection of the word is also influenced by the lectures of Prof. John
Holmwood at the University of Birmingham where the author was his
teaching associate.

2 74 Philippine Sociological Review (2013) • Vol. 61 • No. 2

elevated the classics to the status they have today. Indeed, reference to
the classics has become a “badge of membership” in the community of
sociologists and a rite of passage for sociology students. It has fueled
what Mouzelis (1997) describes as the Marx-Weber-Durkheim industry
where published books and articles are dedicated to interpret what the
holy trinity “really” meant. In Bourdieu’s terms, mastery of the canons
provides symbolic capital to invest in the game of sociology.
One way of “de-naturalizing” the classics’ standing in sociological
theory is to contextualize the social construction of its status. In the early
twentieth century, there was no consensus among sociologists about
which thinker can be considered the founding father of sociology. The
range of choices was broad, from Adam Smith, Auguste Comte, Marquis
de Condorcet, Vilfredo Pareto, George Herbert Mead, to Charles Darwin
(Bratton et al. 2009:2-3). As Bratton et al. put it, the selection of the
classical theory canon is “partly a result of translation, partly textual
interpretation, partly academic consensus, partly what is going on ‘out
there’ in society itself.” (Bratton et al. 2009:2).
This observation is reflected in the context of the American academia.
Initially, the English-speaking sociological community identified
Durkheim, Weber, and Simmel as notable theorists. Part of the reason for
this is political. As “an American sociological project,” the declaration of
canons not only provided the discipline a sense of professionalism and
legitimacy (Alexander 1987) but it also favored theoretical contributions
that are consistent with America’s post-war ideological project (Friedrichs
1970). Harvard Professor Talcott Parsons, for example, in his seminal
book The Structure of Social Action (1937) introduced the merit of
Durkheim, Weber, and Pareto’s works in the English-speaking world but
left Marx out of the discussion (Hamilton 2003:284). Durkheim easily
qualified as part of the canons for his “conservative” theory of moral
solidarity and bonds of interdependence while Weber joined the ranks
of the classics because of his emphasis on the value-based context of
capitalism’s expansion, refuting Marx’s argument on capitalist expansion
and exploitation (Alexander 1987:37-39)3. Marx, on the other hand, was
of marginal interest to American sociologists until the 1940s (Hinkle

3 Calhoun (2010) describes Parsons as a self-styled “synthesizer of crucial

European work.”

curato • A Sociological Reading of Classical Sociological Theory 2 75

1994:283-84) and only received the status of a classical theorist in the
1960s. This was the period of radicalization among student movements in
Western Europe as well as the emergence of anti-functionalist movement
in the Anglo-Saxon academic community. Parsons’ focus on questions of
social order was challenged to consider a more power-oriented sociological
theory. Among the sociologists that were in the forefront of this project
were Alvin Gouldner (1980) and Anthony Giddens (1976). Gouldner, for
his part, identified the radical and materialist aspects of Durkheim’s work
which contradicted the order-oriented lore of functionalism. Giddens
similarly argued that Durkheim’s account has important points of
convergence with Marx’s economic and institutional focus. In the 1970s,
Marx was introduced as the “first great radical sociologist” to American
academia (Bratton et al. 2009:3). Giddens’ influential book Capitalism
and Modern Social Theory (1971) “officially” identified Marx, Weber
and Durkheim as thinkers who established foundational frameworks for
contemporary sociology4. Sociology in the Philippines, because of its
American colonial origins, is described to have a similar trajectory, with
Marxist theorizing gaining ground during the Martial Law regime (see
Bautista 1994; Abad and Eviota 1982; Porio 2010; Weightman 1987).
This exercise of contextualizing the canonization of Marx, Weber
and Durkheim in the western academia opens up several possibilities for
negotiating the classics’ legacy. First, it underscores the role of politics in
according the classics the status they have today. WhileMarx, Weber and
Durkheim have made profound contributions to social theory which can
justify their status as “founding fathers,” the circumstances that led to the
elevation of their standing was equally a product of the status of those
who canonized them. Durkheim and Weber’s standing, for example, can
be appreciated as derivatives of the reigning orthodoxy of functionalism
in post-war America. Such dominance, as George Huaco argues,
“was not due to the theory’s scientific merits… but to its ideological
dimension” (Huaco 1986:52). Sociological functionalism, deliberately
or inadvertently reflected the United States’ quest to maintain imperial
world hegemony from 1945 to 1971.

4 See Hamilton (2003) for a more detailed discussion of the evolution of

textbooks on sociological theory.

2 76 Philippine Sociological Review (2013) • Vol. 61 • No. 2

 Second, contextualizing the classics allows one to gain perspective
that the selection of canonical texts is a product of people’s constructions.
It was only fifty years ago when the Anglo-Saxon community of
sociologists handpicked Marx, Durkheim, and Weber as part of the
canons. Hence, different communities of sociologists have leeway to
revise the composition of the classics that best suits their respective
contexts or reconsider whether classics are needed at all. The canons are
not static sets of texts but are as dynamic as the intellectual community
that consumes and engages them. Contextualizing the circumstances that
made the classics reach their iconic status today demystifies their standing
in sociological theory, opening up spaces for further contestation and
reflection on their relevance for various academic contexts.

Provincialize
One response to the classics’ tendency to universalize their particular
historical experience is to “provincialize Europe.” Coined by Bengali
historiographer Dipesh Chakrabarty, to provincialize Europe is to:

[…] decenter an imaginary figure that remains deeply embedded

in clichéd and shorthand forms in some everyday habits of thought that
invariably subtend attempts in the social sciences to address questions of
political modernity (Chakrabarty 2000:4).

In practice, this entails exposing the limits of universal categories by

disclosing how un-universal or provincial the bases of these categories are.
Modernity as theorized by Marx, Weber, and Durkheim, is an example
of this category. It is difficult to divorce the category of modernity from
the intellectual traditions of Europe, in the same way that concepts such
as civil society, scientific rationality, and the public sphere “all bear the
burden of European thought and history” (Chakrabarty 2000:4). From
the perspective of colonized people, modernity is always “something that
had already happened somewhere else” (Chakrabarty 1997:373).
To provincialize, however, is not to reject European thought or render
“postcolonial revenge.” Instead, it is to recognize both the indispensability
and inadequacy of European ideas in theorizing modernity in non-
Western nations. (Chakrabarty 2000:16). Hence, the classics can be

curato • A Sociological Reading of Classical Sociological Theory 277

“provincialized” in such a way that it is understood to be a space- and
time-bound experience in Europe which may not necessarily best explain
social relations outside its limited sphere.
There are two related analytical trajectories that take-off from this
argument. The first is to reframe and recontextualize classical sociological
theory to broaden its scope. Theory must not be approached as if Europe’s
experience is the only theorizable experience while others serve as mere
counter-arguments5. Part of this is acknowledging that the classics are not
the only significant streams of thought that are sociological in character.
Instead, as Raewyn Connell argues, sociological theory is also a matter of
studying the world in which sociology was constructed “that came outside
the metropole, ranging from Islamic and Chinese debates about modernity
to Indian and African critiques of empire” (Connell 1997:1546). An
important intellectual project is to draw out the plethora of social theories
developed over the same period of 1820-1920 in other parts of the world,
decentring the focus away from Europe (Giddens 1971:VII; Parker
1997). Sociology may benefit from deploying non-Western knowledges
to bring out the voice and agency of colonized peoples (Go 2013:39-40).
As Go points out, there are emerging sociologies of underrepresented
intellectual traditions such as:

Jose Rizal in the Philippines, Rabindranath Tagore in India, or the African

oral tradition…Rather than relying on Max Weber alone for insights on the
societies of the Middle East, they might instead turn to Abd al-Rahmān Ibn
Khaldūn... Or rather than just Karl Marx to think about Latin America, they
might instead look at Simon Bolivar, Jose Martí, or more recently Nestor
García Canclini (Go 2013:39-40).

Sociological theory, when viewed from the perspective of these

thinkers, exposes not only different images and ways of thinking about
Europe but also a range of experiences of colonialism and inferiorization.
It puts forward perspectives that gaze at Europe instead of Europe gazing

5 Weber’s extensive work on India, for instance, was done in such a way that
he could compare it with the expansion of European capitalism (see Weber
1962).

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at the non-Western other. Malaysian sociologist Syed Farid Alas refers to
this as “autonomous sociology” (see Alatas 2010; Alatas and Sinha 2001)
where the work of Jose Rizal is considered as exemplar:

In Rizal’s thought, the corrupt Spanish colonial government and its

officials oppress and exploit the Filipinos, while blaming the backwardness
of Filipinos on their alleged laziness. But Rizal’s project was to show that in
fact the Filipinos were a relatively advanced society in pre-colonial times,
and that their backwardness was a product of colonialism… In fact, Rizal was
extremely critical of the ‘boasted ministers of God [the friars] and propagators
of light (!) [who] have not sowed nor do they sow Christian moral, they have
not taught religion but rituals and superstitions (Alatas 2010:31; emphasis in
the original).

Rather than celebrating colonial knowledge as mark of progress or

a mechanism of “diffusing” Enlightenment ideals to colonials, Rizal
exposes the irrationalities of colonial Church and state from the point
of view of the colonized. He explained the seeming “backwardness” of
the Philippines not because of indolence as the Spanish have purported
but because of the Filipino’s resistance to work under the encomenderos
(Alatas 2010:32). To quote Rizal, “the miseries of a people without
freedom should not be imputed to the people but to their rulers” (Rizal
1963:31). For Alatas, the work of Rizal, together with Ibn Khaldūn,
can be used as examples for an autonomous sociological tradition that
creatively applies theories in a manner that is not intellectually dominated
by another tradition (Alatas 2010:37). They also reverse the subject-
object dichotomy where white European males are not the only knowing
subjects which provide concepts and theory but can also be objects of
sociological inquiry. This, it is argued, is an important component of
negotiating the classics. The question of “who looks at whom” frames
understandings of social realities and creates spaces for multicultural
understandings of various civilizational backgrounds.
Second, provincializing Europe entails rendering the “constituted
other” visible through what Gurminder Bhambra calls “connected
sociologies” (Bhambra 2007a; 2007b; 2010). The premise of this
argument is that the world today as it was in the past is a product of

curato • A Sociological Reading of Classical Sociological Theory 2 79

“historical flows of people, goods and ideas that intersect and transcend
particular localities” (Bhambra 2007b:59). Sociological theory is not
usually posed in these terms. Classical theory is marked with dualisms
such as traditional and modern, rational and non-rational, bourgeois
and proletariat, feudal and capitalist, and city and country. Instead of
highlighting these distinctions, a connected sociologies approach focuses
on the mutually constitutive character of different societies (Bhambra
2010).
One important application of this perspective is the account of
colonialism and modernity. For Bhambra, colonialism is not an outcome
of modernity but rather “modernity itself, the modern world developed
out of colonial encounters” (Bhambra 2007b:67-68). The book Black
Jacobins (1938) by the Afro-Trinidadian writer CLR James is an apt
example of such scholarship. James challenges the Eurocentric account
of the French Revolution as one of the turning points of modernity by
putting the Haitian Revolution at the center of his narrative. He argues
that the Haitian slave-holding colony was integral to the development
of capitalism in France which supported the revolutionary bourgeoisie’s
overthrow of monarchy. Viewed this way, it can be argued that liberty
in France—the so-called hallmark of modernity—is contingent on
slavery (see Magubane 2005). This example deconstructs the narrative
of European uniqueness in its quest for freedom and liberty and instead,
underscores the connections among revolutionary actors in wider arenas
of struggle which mutually shape each other. The story of Parisian
revolutionaries can only be understood in relation to transnational
and intra-imperial interaction in French colonies in the Caribbean (Go
2013:46).
Reading the classics as a provincialized account of modernity
in conjunction with other non-European narratives can enrich one’s
understanding of sociological concepts. Modernity was used as example
in this section, although this can be applied in other concepts such as
class, secularism, enlightenment, or other concepts that have no European
counterparts. By provincializing the classics or treating them as one of
many accounts of social life, the classics can be better appreciated for its
context and contributions.

280 Philippine Sociological Review (2013) • Vol. 61 • No. 2

Pluralize
Finally, negotiating the classics’ legacy can take the form of broadening
the range of “authoritative” texts to a plurality of voices. Recovering from
the Eurocentric and andocentric legacy of the classics entails an inclusive
historical account of sociology that includes “feminists, anarchists
and colonials who were erased from the canonical story” (Connell
1997:1546). This allows for what Sujata Patel (2011) calls “sociology
with diverse epistemes,” which celebrates the dispersal rather than the
homogenization or standardization of knowledge structures.
Even though sociology is said to have a “cultural turn” (see Friedland
and Mohr 2004; Rojek and Turner 2000) or a “postmodern turn” (see
Lyotard 1984), some scholars argue that the discipline has not been
substantively transformed by feminism, critical race studies, postcolonial
theory, disability studies, and queer theory (Parker 1997:134). Instead,
these subfields remain at the margins or outside sociology’s mainstream.
The case David Parker made more than ten years ago on pluralizing
sociology resonates today:

The challenge of sociology teaching towards a new century is to draw
on these fresh sources of inspiration to truly redefine the core of sociology.
Rather than unthinkingly reproducing sociology as it has been for the last two
decades, surely the time has come to register the more diverse societies of our
age, the rise of new social forces and the wider range of student backgrounds
that face us in our everyday teaching lives. We have to ask whether students
are best served by continuing to read Marx, Weber and Durkheim as privileged
introductions to sociological theory, or whether there are wider resources to
draw on (Parker 1997:134).

For Parker, gateways that lead students to sociology must be diversified

and not limited to the canons (Parker 1997:142). In practice, this involves
three spaces that can be opened up as entry points.
The first relates to thematic interests or selection of social
categories that warrant sociological theorizing. It has been argued
that methodological nationalism or privileging the nation-state as
conceptual category has limited the canons’ ability to explore other

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interconnections that cannot be fully captured by a Westphalian frame.
Nancy Fraser (1992), for example, points out that the meaning of
“public interest” or “the public sphere” tends to be defined by educated
bourgeoisie men in the eighteenth century at the expense of the voices
of propertyless workers, women, ethno-racial and religious minorities.
The experiences of subalterns tend to be silenced with an uncritical
deployment of the Westphalian frame, hence the need to reconsider
“the national” as default category for analysis. Although identification
with the “place” allows nationalist intellectuals to build frames of
references and fight colonial knowledge (Patel 2011), it must also be
recognized that “the national” is not always a reliable category for a
pluralized understanding of the social. To a certain extent, this explains
why indigenization efforts mentioned earlier must be used with care
and reflexivity, because of this tendency to essentialize “the national”
at the expense of the plural (see Guillermo 2009).
Second, a pluralized approach continues to make room for “authorial
genealogy”—i.e. the continuous inclusion of Marx, Weber and
Durkheim in the study of sociology– but broadens the range of “core”
sets of authoritative texts (Parker 1997:134). Parker cites the example of
including W.E.B. Du Bois and Charlotte Perkins Gilmans as counterpoint
to the founding fathers while others support the inclusion of Franz Fanon,
Harriet Martineau, Mary Wollstonecraft and, as mentioned earlier, Jose
Rizal and Ibn Khaldūn.
Third, aside from broadening the classics’ themes to race, colonialism,
and feminism, their inclusion also opens up the language of sociology to
the use of autobiography, fiction, and poetry to better understand racialized
and gendered social realities. After all, the canons not only place privilege
on Eurocentric themes but also particular styles of speech or what Iris
Marion Young (2000) calls “gentlemanly rules of discourse” marked by
systematic reason-giving and dispassionate speech evident in the works
of Durkheim, Weber, and the scientific Marx. The status accorded to
the language of the metanarrative warrants critical negotiation as well
to consider alternative discursive forms that meaningfully communicate
important sociological concepts. The literary/narrative format of Du
Bois’ The Souls of Black Folk (1905), for example, provides a theoretical

282 Philippine Sociological Review (2013) • Vol. 61 • No. 2

account, albeit implicitly, of selfhood, identity, and blackness while
Rizal’s novels sharply convey class distinctions and colonial resistance in
a way that resonated to his readers at that time.
It is recognized that broadening the language of sociology raises
questions as to whether these texts are “sociological” in the first place.
If sociology’s basic definition is systematic study of society, can literary
texts, essays and narratives count as works of sociology? One way of
responding to this query is to return to David’s discussion on the pragmatic
use of theory. These texts, it is argued, have value to sociology if they
provide vocabularies and metaphors that allow one to engage in inquiry
and cope with social problems. These texts may not be sociological in
the sense that they are not bound by what Zygmunt Bauman (1990)
refers to as “rules of responsible speech”—the type that is corroborated
by systematically gathered and analyzed evidence as Durkheim did in
Suicide—but they are nevertheless enabling in making sense of social
worlds in a critical and analytical manner. Viewed this way, pluralizing
sociological theory is also about exposing discursive gate keeping in
both the medium and message of sociological texts. It remains crucial
to negotiate the legacy of the metanarratives’ discursive privilege by
acknowledging the different languages of theorizing.

Conclusion: A way of seeing

is also a way of not seeing
When asked what a student needs to do to understand the world in a
global way, Robert Cox answered:

I don’t like to prescribe, and my own intellectual trajectory has been very
idiosyncratic. Yet I can indicate that, for me, there is a danger in the reading-
list-approach to topics, because it tends to put students in the position wherein
they get forced to become members of a particular school of thought, and I
think that’s a risky thing. Just look at the terminology: different schools of
thought or distinct approaches to the same world are called “disciplines”, and
that is indeed what they do: they discipline students into seeing the world
through only one particular lens—which is more misleading than revealing
(Cox in Schouten 2010).

curato • A Sociological Reading of Classical Sociological Theory 283

 This piece has illustrated how the classics have contributed to the
discipline of sociology – what aspects of reality they expose and which
parts they conceal. The argument was to negotiate the classics’ legacy
by contextualizing, provincializing and pluralizing their sociological
accounts.
The aim is not to advocate a wholesale rejection of the canons but to
engage them in such a way that challenges their hierarchical privilege in
relation to other sociological texts. As Connell puts it, “Marx, Durkheim
and Weber will still be present in history. They will be present in realistic
contexts and proportions, not as shadowy giants at the limit of vision”
(Connell 1997:1547).
The theoretical tradition of the classics can be meaningfully sustained
if it encourages novel theorizing instead of repetition and provocative
reformulations rather than conservative interpretations (Sandywell
1998:611). The classics can create spaces for pedagogy and research if they
are treated as a “somewhat arbitrary collection of texts” or a retrospective
summary of intellectual endeavors that remains open to revision (Turner
1999:VIII). This piece has offered three ways of approaching the classics
that hopefully recovers the canon’s legacy to be a part of, rather than a
deterrent to efforts that make sociological theorizing an inclusive and
dynamic practice.

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