Spencer's Social Theory Revisited


Valerie Haines, University of Calgary

The social theory of Herbert Spencer has long been the subject of ongoing debate. After a gap of more than 30 years, the publication of three general books on Herbert Spencer and two books reassessing the Spencerian legacy suggests that now is an opportune time to revisit Spencer’s social theory. This paper responds to this suggestion. Because it is situated at the intersection of the fields of classical social theory and the history of sociology, its objectives are substantive and methodological. Substantively, it explores whether this resurgence of interest in Spencer’s social theory has resolved ongoing disputes about what Spencer actually believed, wrote and accomplished. Methodologically, it explores the value of double contextualizing in the history of sociology by offering properly contextualized analyses of both Spencer’s social theory and rival interpretations of this theory. It focuses on two questions that my reading of Spencer’s social theory argues help structure the form and content of this theory and its subsequent fate. The first question is: Does Spencer bring biology into his social theory and if so, then how? The second question is: Is Spencer’s social theory “evolutionary” in the modern biological sense of the term evolution or is it teleological by virtue of Spencer’s progressive deism, metaphysics, or biological borrowings? To answer these questions, I conduct a detailed textual analysis of each book that gives close attention to (1) how each interpretation contextualized Spencer’s social theory, (2) what each interpretation took from Spencer and what it left behind, (3) what textual evidence from Spencer’s writings was used to support each interpretation and what textual evidence was set aside when this evidence contested this interpretation, and (4) where, why and how each interpretation engaged with rival interpretations. To ensure an accurate assessment of the extent and nature of these engagements I bring in earlier publications by authors of the five books and reviews by these authors of each other’s books. I begin with my answers to the two questions that frame this paper: first, Spencer developed his social theory by participating in nineteenth century debates about the fact and mechanism of biological evolution, making it hard to overstate the importance of his biology for his sociology and second, Spencer’s social theory is evolutionary in the modern biological sense of the term evolution. Then I use these answers to anchor my engagements with the interpretations of Spencer’s social theory set out in the books that prompted this paper. None of these interpretations engages systematically with these answers, the way in which they are contextualized, the textual evidence that supports them, or the arguments for their structuring role—even where an interpretation is highly critical of my reading of Spencer’s social theory. Nor do any of these recent contributions to the scholarship on Spencer engage systematically with the others or with earlier publications that had already adumbrated core features of these interpretations. Despite the recent resurgence of interest in Spencer and his ideas, then, disputes about the role of biology in Spencer’s social theory, the evolutionary status of this theory and theoretical implications of both for the place of this theory in the development of sociology remain unresolved. When it comes to producing a better understanding of Spencer’s social theory and the Spencerian legacy, the critical question is not “Who now reads Spencer?” but rather “How do we read Spencer?”

This paper will be presented at the following session: