One of my mentors, Donald Black, University Professor Emeritus of the Social Sciences at the University of Virginia, passed away in late January. Here, I’ll discuss Black’s vision for sociology. I believe that he would find my focus on his scientific contributions to be a more prudent tribute than a review of biographical details of his life, though he was very interested in biographies of intellectuals. A conventional obituary of his credentials, appointments, publications, and awards can be found on the American Society of Criminology website.
Black self-identified as a theoretical sociologist. He approached studying human behavior like a physicist studies the universe. Black developed testable theories that hold true across all societies and all time.
Black devised his own approach to explaining human behavior. “Pure sociology” is a type of sociology with no psychology. Pure sociology explains social behavior with its location and direction in social space—its social geometry.
Black is best known for his book The Behavior of Law in which he developed a general sociological theory of law. The book contains a series of theoretical formulations that predict and explain the quantity and style of law in various locations and directions in social space.
For example, Black states “Law varies inversely with other social control.” In a society or group where there are other social controls—family, school, work, religion—there will be less law. In a society where these controls are absent, there will be more law. The book is full of these falsifiable propositions. Collectively, these constitute his general theory of law.
Black’s sociology predicts and explains social life without regard to the individual. Pure sociology makes no presumptions about any essential human nature. His theory does not account for how individuals experience reality. It includes no psychology. Black sought to focus on “the social” and “declare independence from psychology.”
Most social scientists would explain a police officer’s act of making an arrest in terms of an officer’s motivations, background, biases, decision-making, or some other aspect of their psychology. Black transcends an individualistic focus, removes all psychology, and explains arrest as a function of the behavior of law. To use Black’s language, “the social geometry” of the encounter explains whether or not an arrest occurs.
Black was troubled by overt activism in modern sociology. Black contended that ideology doesn’t belong in social science, unless ideology itself was the subject of study. Pure sociology is value-free, including being free of any ideology.
Many sociologists regard value-free sociology as undesirable and make value-judgements in the name of sociology, often to address perceived injustices. For example, a sociologist might research capital punishment in the U.S. and conclude that there are racial disparities in who is sentenced to death. Many sociologists go one step further and advocate for eliminating capital punishment because they deem the practice to be racist and inhumane.
Black would repudiate the intrusion of one’s personal values into sociology. Conversely, he would commend a scientific explanation of the social conditions in which governments employ the death penalty as a form of conflict resolution. For Black, the goal of sociology is to explain human behavior, not to enact social change.
Black influenced how I do sociology. Like Black, I try to develop markedly sociological explanations of behavior; I locate causality in social institutions, not in the psychology of individuals. Additionally, I strive for objectivity and to prevent my own values and biases from intruding into my scholarship or teaching. In my From the Murphy Center columns, I believe that Black would praise my commitment to advancing sociological explanations of phenomena including firearm deaths, declining teen mental health, homelessness, and other subjects. He would challenge me to remove all psychology from my sociology. Finally, I think that he would caution me that taking time to write for the public distracts from advancing theoretical sociology.
Roscoe Scarborough, Ph.D. is chair of the Department of Social Sciences and associate professor of sociology at College of Coastal Georgia. He is an associate scholar at the Reg Murphy Center for Economic and Policy Studies. He can be reached by email at rscarborough@ccga.edu.
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