Books that Matter. The Case of Tocqueville’s Democracy in America

ABSTRACT

This article addresses a puzzle in the history of academic disciplines: Why is Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America, once considered a sociological classic, nowadays mostly praised as a classic in political philosophy? Existing approaches emphasize either aspects internal to the text or to the figure of the author, or external factors such as historical contexts and disciplinary dynamics. Our explanation questions the assumption that texts are stable and explores the pragmatic interplay between text-artifact-metaphor. The result is a pragmatic genealogy of the successive material incarnations of Democracy since 1945. This allows us to account for the various meanings that have been associated with Democracy (and Tocqueville) at key historical moments in terms of the cultural work of collectives of agents around the text and its material form so as to make it the icon of certain political and disciplinary projects.

KEYWORDS:

• Tocqueville
• Democracy in America
• history of the social sciences
• social theory
• political theory
• materiality

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Until the eve of World War I, Democracy was published in the United States in 46 different printings, including many abridgments adapted for the use of schools and district libraries; see Bradley (1945:xxii).

2. Letter from Salomon to Knopf, 26 March 1945. Alfred A. Knopf Archive (herewith KA).

3. The Knopf Archive, which includes the materials pertaining to this edition of Democracy is held at the Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin.

4. Letter to Knopf, January 24, 1946. KA.

5. Letter from Knopf to Bradley, January 16 1951. KA.

6. The Commager edition appeared in the United States in 1947. Relevant materials are in the Oxford University Press Archive (OUP Archive) in Oxford.

7. Letter to Hatcher, New York branch of OUP, 7 September 1944. OUP Archive.

8. 20,829 balance at 1 April 1960. OUP Archive.

9. Letter to OUP, New York of 21 February, 1961.

10. Harper & Row’s records (herewith HR), which include materials pertaining to this edition of Democracy in America, are held at the Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University.

11. In order to ensure comparability with previous studies, we have analyzed ten textbooks from each of the following four periods: 1958–1962; 1963–1967; 1968–1972; 1973–1977 (Bain 1962; Oromaner 1968; Perrucci 1980); and nineteen from the 1978–1980 period (Herrick 1980). The complete list of textbooks is available in Perrucci (1980:41) and Herrick (1980:625–6).

12. Babchuk and Keith (1995) focus on the four of the “most widely adopted comprehensive introductory sociology textbooks” (1995:216) for analysis. Using this criterion to analyze the 1980–1997 period, we find Tocqueville’s Democracy being cited at least twice in Persell (1990) and in Hess et al. (1991), even though in this case one of these references is actually about Harriet Martineau’s Society in America, not Democracy in America. In short, in only one of the four most widely adopted sociology textbooks in the 1980s and 1990s do we find the slightest of references being made to Democracy. Moving on to the 1990s and 2000s, Hamilton reaches a similar conclusion. He shows that in 17 textbooks published between 1997 and 2000, Tocqueville is mentioned in only seven (Hamilton 2003:292). Finally, regarding the 2000–2015 period, our analysis shows that Tocqueville’s presence is residual at best. Maccionis’ Sociology ([1987] 2014), the most influential textbook in America today, does not list Democracy in its references, and virtually all eight mentions of Tocqueville in the text (or in the notes) are superficial. A similar pattern emerges in other textbooks. Henslin (1999:177) makes one reference to Tocqueville (on voluntary associations), while Schaefer (2001) and Kendall (2011) make no reference to Tocqueville. Textbooks of sociological theory offer a similar picture. Turner (1998), Ashley and Orenstein (2005), Goodwin and Scimecca (2005), Edles and Applerouth (2005) make no reference to Tocqueville.

13. Although ISA members were asked to list “five books published in the twentieth century which were most influential in their work as sociologists,” several books published in the 19th century were listed (e.g. Marx’s 1867 Capital). Democracy in America was not one of them. See: http://www.isa-sociology.org/en/about-isa/history-of-isa/books-of-the-xx-century/ranking-order/.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Filipe Carreira da Silva

Filipe Carreira da Silva is a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Social Sciences of the University of Lisbon. He is also a Fellow of Selwyn College, Cambridge.

Monica Brito Vieira

Monica Brito Vieira is Professor of Politics, Department of Politics, University of York, United Kingdom.