The Rational Reconstruction of Society: 1992 Presidential Address

In the eighteenth century a Great Transformation began - a transformation rooted in even earlier times and still in progress today. This transformation is characterized by the decline of institutions based on the family as the central element of social organization and the replacement of these institutions by purposively organization. Sociology is itself a product of this transformation, and the stages in the Great Transformation are mirrored by changes in the central foci of sociological theory and research. The decline of social organization has been accompanied by a loss of informal social capital on which social control depended before the transformation. The design of purposive organiza- tion is necessary to compensate for this loss; this design is an emerging central focus for sociology. I introduce an example, bounties on children, to illustrate this point. I recently took a canoe trip with two of my sons down the Wisconsin River and a portion of the Mississippi. We began the trip in a setting much like that experienced by Indians on the same river: Evidence of beavers abounded on the ri- verbanks; great blue herons, snowy egrets, and sandhill cranes flapped away as we approached; an American bald eagle soared overhead. We made our way down the river at three or four miles per hour. When we reached the Mississippi on the third day, nature retreated to the backwaters off the main channel. We saw barges traveling at maybe twice our speed, pushed by Mississippi river tugboats, descendents of the commercial riverboats that have plied that river for more than two centuries. River towns, electric power plants, and industrial cities interrupted the natural envi- ronment. As we progressed, we heard the whistles and clackety-clack of trains along the Iowa bank, moving past us at more than 10 times our speed. Power boats sped up, down, and across the river. Toward the end of our trip, a military jet took off nearby, screaming past us at nearly the speed of sound. In this description, I draw attention to the changes in physical environment and in trans- portation my sons and I observed as we traveled: From the canoe at 3 or 4 miles per hour, to die- sel-powered river traffic at 7 or 8 miles per hour, to a train at 50 miles per hour, to a jet at nearly the speed of sound. Accompanying this change was a change from beavers and great blue herons to the hustle and bustle of modem commercial, industrial, and leisure activity, all taking place with the aid of machines. One way of describing these changes is as a progression from a natu- ral or primordial physical environment to a constructed physical environment. In this paper I first describe a transformation that has occurred in social organization that is at least as profound and far-reaching in its implica- tions as this transformation of the physical envi- ronment.' Second, I suggest that this transforma- tion has proceeded via several changes in the economy and the social structure, and indicate just what these changes have been. Third, I sug- gest that the discipline of sociology came into being as part of the early stages of this transfor- mation, and indicate how the discipline has shifted its central focus as these changes have taken place. Fourth, I describe how the transformed social structure, which characterizes society at the dawn of the twenty-first century, differs from the struc- ture it is replacing and, to a large extent, has already replaced. Finally, I argue that the trans- formation of society, taken in its entirety, is so fundamental that it requires a change in the very stance of the discipline to its subject matter.