CHAPTER NINE

WILLIAM GRAHAM SUMNER: CULTURAL RELATIVISM AND THE SAVAGE

William Graham Sumner (1840–1910) was one of the founders of sociology. Although not generally categorized as an anarchist, he lived at the same time as the other thinkers described in this book and was a trenchant individualist, and his ideas – which are in some ways similar to those of Max Stirner, and in many ways compatible with contemporary libertari- anism – may therefore be worth reevaluation as part of a volume that has as its goal the promotion of nineteenth century anarchism as a solution to contemporary problems.1 Within the discipline of sociology, Sumner is credited with originating the fundamental concepts of folkways, ethno- centrism, and cultural relativism, although, as Brown (2008) observes, the saga of cultural relativism within anthropology is of varying, more contested provenance, while the concept can be located in the work of some earlier thinkers, including Auguste Comte. Sumner taught at Yale from 1866–1909, where he used Herbert Spencer’s (1904) book The Study of Sociology in his classes until the president of Yale, Noah Porter, ordered him to stop using it, thereby creating a major debate about academic freedom (Bledstein 1974). Sumner was also a political philosopher, and is known for a Social Darwinist defense of the hardworking “Forgotten Man.” Can the same person really have written seemingly contradictory texts that allow him even today to be the darling of both cultural relativists and libertarians at the same time? For John Chamberlain, who explains the cacophony simply as a case of being inconsistent, the two perspectives exist “in frequently unspoken conflict”: As a sociologist … he did more than anyone else in America to establish the relativistic opinion that there is nothing right or wrong save as the mores make it so. Yet in his writings as an economist, a publicist, an educator and a human being, he knew right from wrong – and thundered forth like old John Knox. … The synthesis, the self-consistency, that one normally expects

1 For a very thoughtful analysis of Sumner’s political position, see Byrne 2008.

PG3298 PG3298 william graham sumner 237

from a first-class mind is not to be found in Sumner. (Chamberlain [1940] 1971, xix) Attributing some kind of overall constancy to these strands of Sumner’s output seems a tall order. After all, in a memorial address delivered at Yale, even his confidant and co-author, Albert Galloway Keller (1914, 443), commented that “Sumner never held very much to conscious method.” However, notwithstanding much that appears to be mutually contradic- tory, it is possible to bridge the great intellectual divide within Sumner’s oeuvre. Of particular assistance is the author’s commitment to social evo- lutionism, a belief that, along with his Social Darwinism and the approach he took to teaching sociology, was heavily influenced by Herbert Spencer. As Persons (1963, 2) notes: The Spencerian world view that Sumner embroidered in his own fashion was a form of evolutionary naturalism. Linking the sociological and political writings is the following passage from “Responsible Government,” in which cultural relativism can be seen to form the basis of a rejection of utopian political thought: If we study human nature and human history, we find that civil institutions are only “better” and “best” relatively to the people for whom they exist, and that they can be so called only as they are more closely adjusted to the circumstances of the nation in question. The a priori philosophers have led men astray by their assumptions and speculations, teaching them to look into the clouds for dreams and impossibilities instead of studying the world and life as they are, so as to learn how to make the best of them. We shall discover or invent no system of government which we can carry from nation to nation, counting upon uniform action and results everywhere, as we do, for instance, with a steam engine or a telescope. (Sumner 1914, 244–245) Sumner argues that while science travels, values do not. Since cultural relativism is not a barrier to understanding the workings of a telescope, it is possible for the natural sciences to be universally valid. It is interesting to note an additional variety of what appears to be inconsistency here, because part of the above quotation conflicts with what Sumner told stu- dents in his “Introductory Lecture to Courses in Political and Social Science.” Talking about political economy, to which Sumner refers as a sub-field of political science, he writes: The only real antagonism of method is between the scientific and the traditional or dogmatic. Here I take sides decidedly. I have no confidence

PG3298 PG3298 PG3298