Abstract
I emphasize the usefulness of American sociology that follows the pragmatic structural-functionalism of the 1930’s, heavily influenced by the Chicago School of Sociology, by doing a major critique of Hans Gerth and C. Wright Mills, Character and Social Structure: The Psychology of Social Institutions, emphasizing its holistic and pragmatic qualities, as well as its relation to the work of Max Weber. I then follow up with a critique of French and German social theory, based to a large extent on Louis Dumont, Essays on Individualism: Modern Ideology in Anthropological Perspective. I suggest the usefulness of supplementing what I consider to be their unpragmatic tendencies, particularly with their approaches to the relation between social structure and self-fulfillment, and here I consider the work of Jűrgen Habermas to be only a partial corrective.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
I can add to their perspective on this by postulating such distinctions as feelings of guilt (superego + ego); feelings of anxiety (ego + id – cognitions taking the lead initiating emotional reactions); and feelings of anger or lust in response to diminution of self-esteem (id + ego – impulsiveness given an emotionally-driven direction because of socially-derived interpretations of the situation).
One effect of most entertainment vehicles, besides relieving tension temporarily, is to increase the tendency toward escapism and to decrease the tendency toward facing life realistically, since the whole purpose of escapism is just that, to escape. Such escapism may be a temporary retreat from reality, that allows one to regroup one’s emotional resources for better use later, in other words it may serve as recreation just because there are sources of tensions and perhaps a lack of emotional fulfillment in everyday life, or such escapism may be treated as a permanent substitute for facing reality, so that endless recreation becomes as society evolves seen as the new everyday social reality. Such a development has sometimes been described as “the carnivalization of society.” See Jerome Braun and Lauren Langman, eds., The Carnivalization of Society (Braun and Langman 2012).
I would add to the account of religion provided by Gerth and Mills (Gerth and Mills 1953, 230–45) derived I would say to a large extent from the writings of Max Weber, that they schematize the differences and underestimate the similarities of the major monotheistic religions. My own approach to this subject is to mention that Islam emphasizes prevention of sin (through social control derived from religious law), Judaism emphasizes purification from sin (most obvious in the ancient Temple cult, but afterward this emphasis on concrete understandings of the circumstances and ramifications of everyday events leads to a comfortableness in dealing with personal relationships that respects the details of “depth psychology” for purposes of improvement of character (by preventing sin often by preventing the temptation to sin, as well as purification after sinning so as to reduce the temptation to do it again) as well as for reconciliation with the divine, and Christianity emphasizes forgiveness of sin, a kind of purification but mediated through the personal authority of a leader, usually a priest or an elder of the Church, ultimately understood to be by Christ himself as the leader of the Church. Of course Islam does understand forgiveness of sin as does Judaism, and Christianity does understand preventing sin through the operation of law and reconciliation by following legally-prescribed procedures, as does Judaism, and all three religions do appreciate purification from sin, especially to reduce temptation to sin again. It is just that their particular emphases, from a psychological perspective, and in terms of procedures, differ. For example Christianity is concerned with purification through forgiveness of sin and resulting changes in attitudes, but not often with purification in the depth psychology sense other than for the occasional once in a lifetime “leap of faith” that often is a response to the poor social relationships and anomie found in secular society, interpreting the ongoing “sinfulness” of secular society through the understandings of their religious culture. I would say that Islamic reliance on law to integrate society (that retains many of the qualities of custom) is coordinated with and serves as a base for highly personal secular standards of sociability (such as a code of personal and family “honor,” usually not overly severe as long as social class relationships do not become excessively rigid and harsh), that Jewish purification from sin is an ongoing process through means for hallowing (making holy) everyday life that remains in the background to ordinary secular sociability, and Christian forgiveness of sin tends to be routinized so that Church-induced punishments (penance), that are commonly bureaucratically enforced and so have already become removed from communal custom, though at certain times and places have shown that influence also, are rarely overly-severe. All these religious traditions have the ability to analyze moral questions with a certain degree of sophistication, though it is also likely for some practitioners to take goals and standards from their tradition out of context in order to justify paranoia, self-righteousness, and status-consciousness, and by political leaders in order to demand loyalty to them by cloaking their self-serving policies in a religious veneer.
A book that came out about the same time as the book by Hans Gerth and C. Wright Mills, David Riesman, Nathan Glazer and Reuel Denney’s The Lonely Crowd: A Study of the Changing American Character (Riesman 2001 – the latest edition) emphasizes changes that might be considered the reverse in direction of the changes in culture and personality discussed by W. I. Thomas, as American-style individualists became less individualistic. Also see David Riesman, “Some Questions about the Study of the American Character in the Twentieth Century,” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 370 (March, 1967), 36–47. (Riesman et al. 1967, 36–47).
This book originally was published in 1950 and reflects an idealization of “The Protestant Ethic” that is different from the family and communal-based, largely Catholic in inspiration philosophy of life that helped mold the personality of, in particular, the Polish peasantry (except when modern pressures for integration into economic markets and justifications for individual ambition at the expense of familial and communal solidarity overrode that tradition) that was the chief claim to fame for W. I. Thomas’s analyses that deal with the relation between culture (and social structure) and personality. Thus W. I. Thomas writes about the problems caused by individuals becoming more individualistic and rebelling against society and the need for a common social order, something that Emile Durkheim wrote about also, while David Riesman emphasizes the values of “The Protestant Ethic,” of individuals who are so self-righteous to begin with they feel unfulfilled by the surrounding society filled with “sinners” (as to whether they are right, that is a separate question). One can conclude that a rather curdled sourness was and to a large extent still is the common long-run fate of political militancy in America, at least as long as political militancy has failed to gain permanent political power (the typical American experience).
I should add, regarding much discussion, scholarly and popular, about the nature of “personality,” the social and behavioral sciences in general often treat personality as an afterthought. They often treat personality as if it is an offshoot of social psychology, with psychology too often treating personality as a collection of attitudes reflecting a utilitarian calculus, forgetting the murky depths of personality proper, sociology emphasizing social conformity processes, and anthropology emphasizing what is left over, the existential meaning rooted in both biological needs and in cultural frames of reference. Depth psychology, as in the Freudian tradition, exists but is not particularly popular anymore in any of these fields. A corollary to this is that many popular writings on “happiness” reflect the simplifications of the mass media that so often have the agenda of trying to sell a product, or seek to arouse an audience by appealing to an ideology, and so treat happiness as something to be achieved at a pinpoint of time as an intense emotional state, as if it is orgasmic. In reality it resembles more a mood, that residue of past emotional states combined with their cognitive understandings that is evened-out and sustainable for a long period of time, unlike an emotion that almost always fades away after the initiating environmental condition disappears.
Particularly as developed in the book he co-wrote with Florian Znaniecki, for the abridged version see The Polish Peasant in Europe and America: A Classic Work in Immigration History (Thomas and Znaniecki 1996), W.I Thomas emphasized a theme found in many of his writings, that objective social factors are subjectively experienced, so that personality types reflect the presence of psychological attitudes that react to the pressures or produce their own counter pressures in turn on social institutions whose major function is to enforce values on the populations they serve. He maintains there is a tendency toward inherent conflict between social institutions (e.g., the family, the community, the state) and the interests of individuals, particularly when social change takes the form of encouraging individualism as the means for achieving hedonistic satisfaction and social accomplishment.
In summary, W. I. Thomas categorized the major human motives as the desire for new experience and the desire for security (obviously these desires are contradictory though compromise solutions are possible), and regarding more obviously social motives the desire for response from others (the fulfillment of vanity) and the desire for recognition (respect) (these desires are also contradictory through compromise solutions are possible). In fact W. I. Thomas distinguishes between the Philistine who is essentially an uncultured conformist (I suppose either to the traditional community or to the new “modern” community), the Bohemian (another term for the avant-garde person) who is perpetually seeking new sources of pleasure, often merely to overcome boredom, sometimes to achieve self-esteem by partaking in cultural fads and so to achieve social acceptance and recognition by this means, and a compromise between these two extremes, the creative person who avoids both these extremes by thoughtful action. To summarize W. I. Thomas’s attitudes on social change: “The real cause of all phenomena of family disorganization is to be sought in the influence of certain new values – new for the subject – such as: new sources of hedonistic satisfaction, new vanity values, new (individualistic) types of economic organization, new forms of sexual appeal” (Janowitz 1966, 67).
References
Bensman, J., Vidich, A. J., & Gerth, N. (Eds.). (1982). Politics, character, and culture: Perspectives from Hans Gerth. Westport: Greenwood Press.
Braun, J., & Langman, L. (Eds.). (2012). The Carnivalization of Society. New York: Routledge.
Calinescu, M. (1987). Five faces of modernity: Modernism avant-garde decadence kitsch postmodernism (2nd ed.). Durham: Duke University Press.
Connolly, W. E. (2002). Identity/Difference: Democratic Negotiations of Political Paradox. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Dumont, L. (1986). Essays on individualism: Modern ideology in anthropological perspective. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Faubion, J. D. (Ed.). (1995). Rethinking the subject: An anthology of contemporary European social thought. Boulder: Westview Press.
Fuller, S. (2006). The new sociological imagination. London: Sage Publications.
Gellner, E. (1989). Plough, Sword and Book. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Gerth, H., & Wright Mills, C. (1953). Character and social structure: The psychology of social institutions. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World.
Held, D. (1980). Introduction to critical theory: Horkheimer to Habermas. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Ingham, J. (1996). Psychological anthropology reconsidered. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Janowitz, M. (Ed.). (1966). W.I. Thomas on social organization and personality. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Joas, H. (1993). Pragmatism and social theory (2nd ed.). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Lepenies, W. (2006). The seduction of culture in German History. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Levine, D. (1995). Visions of the sociological tradition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
LeVine, R. A. (2007). Culture, behavior, and personality: An introduction to the comparative study of psychosocial adaptation (2nd ed.). New Brunswick: Aldine Transaction.
Lilla, M. (Ed.). (1994). New French Thought. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Mills, C. W. (2000). The Power Elite. New York: Oxford University Press.
Oakes, G., & Vidich, A. J. (1999). Collaboration, reputation, and ethics in American academic life: Hans H. Gerth and C Wright Mills. Urbana-Champaign: University of Illinois Press.
Riesman, D. (2001). The lonely crowd: A study of the changing American character. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Riesman, D., Glazer, N., & Denney, R. (1967). Some questions about the study of the American character in the twentieth century. The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 370, 36–47. March.
Thomas, W. I., & Znaniecki, F. (1996). The polish peasant in Europe and America: A classic work in immigration history. Urbana-Champaign: University of Illinois Press.
Wilson, J. Q. (1993). The Moral Sense. New York: Free Press.
Wolin, R. (1992). The terms of cultural criticism. New York: Columbia University Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Braun, J. What Social Theory Can Learn from Hans Gerth and C. Wright Mills’s Character and Social Structure: The Psychology of Social Institutions . Am Soc 46, 414–433 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12108-015-9261-1
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12108-015-9261-1