The Honored Outsider: Raymond Aron As Sociologist Peter Baehr 93
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Sociological Volume 31 Number 2 June 2013 Theory Contents Articles The Honored Outsider: Raymond Aron as Sociologist Peter Baehr 93 Thinking about Food and Sex: Deliberate Cognition in the Routine Practices of a Field Vanina Leschziner and Adam Isaiah Green 116 The Practical Organization of Moral Transactions: Gift Giving, Market Exchange, Credit, and the Making of Diaspora Bonds Dan Lainer-Vos 145 Copresence: Revisiting a Building Block for Social Interaction Theories Celeste Campos-Castillo and Steven Hitlin 168 Sociological Theory (ST) publishes work in all areas of theory, including new substantive theories, history of theory, metatheory, formal theory construction, and synthetic contributions. Although aimed at a sociological readership, its orientation is pluralistic and it welcomes contributions by scholars in other fields. Peer reviewed and published quarterly, Sociological Theory is renowned for featuring the best international research and scholarship. 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Printed on acid-free paper 31210.1177/0735275113489561<italic>Sociological Theory</italic>Baehr 489561research-article2013 Article Sociological Theory 31(2) 93 –115 The Honored Outsider: © American Sociological Association 2013 DOI: 10.1177/0735275113489561 Raymond Aron as Sociologist stx.sagepub.com Peter Baehr1 Abstract Raymond Aron (1905–1983) assumed many guises over a long and fruitful career: journalist, polemicist, philosopher of history, counselor to political leaders and officials, theorist of nuclear deterrence and international relations. He was also France’s most notable sociologist. While Aron had especially close ties with Britain, a result of his days in active exile there during the Second World War, he was widely appreciated in the United States too. His book Main Currents in Sociological Thought was hailed a masterpiece; more generally, Aron’s books were extensively reviewed in the American Journal of Sociology, the American Sociological Review (in earlier days, it hosted a review section), Contemporary Sociology, and Social Forces. And he was admired and cited by sociologists of the stature of Daniel Bell, Edward Shils, and David Riesman. Yet despite appearing well poised to become a major force in international sociology, analogous to his younger collaborator, Pierre Bourdieu, Aron has almost vanished from the sociological landscape. This article explains why, offering in the process some observations on the conditions—conceptual and motivational—of reputational longevity in sociological theory and showing how Aron failed to meet them. Special attention is devoted to a confusing equivocation in Aron’s description of sociology and to the cultural basis of his ambivalence toward the discipline. Keywords Aron, remembrance, stipulative oscillation, unmasking, the other sociology INTRODUCTION Anglophone sociologists with at least a nodding acquaintance of Raymond Aron are likely to share two characteristics. They are close to or past retirement age, and they probably first encountered Aron—often for the last time—through his Main Currents in Sociological Thought (1965, 1967c), a two-volume text prominent on undergraduate reading lists of clas- sical sociological theory in the late 1960s and 1970s. Reviewing volume 1 for the American 1Lingnan University, Tuen Mun, Hong Kong Corresponding Author: Peter Baehr, Department of Sociology and Social Policy, Lingnan University, 8 Castle Peak Road, Hong Kong. Email: [email protected] 94 Sociological Theory 31(2) Journal of Sociology, Lewis Feuer (1965) declared it “the most profound and the most inter- esting account of classical sociological theory that has been written” (p. 331). Today, Main Currents is assigned more rarely. One reason is greater choice: several surveys of the clas- sics are now available. Furthermore, the impact of academic feminism and multiculturalism on the discipline diverts younger sociologists from Aron’s exclusive list of male and European greats: in order of exposition, Montesquieu, Comte, Marx, Tocqueville, Durkheim, Pareto, and Weber. In the 1960s and 1970s, things were different. Sociologists both fledg- ling and veteran who wished for a historical conspectus of sociology’s major figures had more limited options. If Main Currents never dominated the field, it was briefly among the more attractive alternative to its few rivals. In his day, Aron was a prolific writer, a cofounder of Archives européennes de sociologie, and, fluent in English and German, a major presence on the conference and lecture circuit. As the cousin of Marcel Mauss, who in turn was the nephew of Emile Durkheim, Aron was a scion of a formidable sociological dynasty, albeit one that, in intellectual terms, he went on forcefully to oppose.1 Between 1955 and 1967, he was professor of sociology at the Sorbonne and “one of the most powerful figures in the sociological establishment, a status which he shared with Gurvitch and Stoezel” (Robbins 2012:25), two other figures unread today. He introduced the license in sociology. He became, in 1960, a director of studies at the Ecole pratique des hautes études. He established the Centre de sociologie européenne, with Pierre Bourdieu as its general secretary (Aron [1983] 1990:239). And in 1970, he reached the scholarly pinnacle when elected