The Study of Society, Methods and Problems
MENTAL WELFARE 117 . . Edited by r. C. Bartlett, M. Ginsberg, E. J. Lindgren, and R. J. Thouless. Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co. Ltd., Broadway House, 68-74 Carter Lane, E.C. 10/6.
The necessity for detached work of a scientific nature concerning the study of society, its methods and its problems is not lessened but increased many times when a society passes through the experience of war. When many societies are involved and the experience threatens to widen into world patterns, though the work becomes increasingly difficult, this study, and its orderly presentation through critical and constructive minds to those who are concerned with social development may prove to be one of the chief avenues by which, when peace returns, the world may be rebuilt on reasonable lines.
In the hour of such crises men and women engaged in this work need to be unhesitating and undeterred in its continuance?if they are able?in the midst of their society’s upheaval. During the last war Hobhouse, from his Hampstead garden, wrote the following words to his son in the air force. They form part of the dedication of ” The Metaphysical Theory of the State” (a pungent criticism of the Hegelian theory of the State) in the writing of which he had been interrupted by an air raid over London:
” The raid was soon over and the three specks drifted away towards the east. The gunfire died down, and below the hill the great city picked up its dead. … As I went back to my Hegel my first mood was one of self-satire. Was this a time for theorising or destroying theories when the world was tumbling about our ears? My second thoughts ran otherwise. To each man the tools and weapons he can best use. In the bombing of London I had just witnessed the visible and tangible outcome of *a false and wicked doctrine, the foundations of which lay, as I believe, in the book before me. To combat this doctrine effectively is to take such part in the fight as the disabilities of middle age will allow. … In the Hegelian theory of the god-state all that I had witnessed lay implicit. You may meet his Gothas in the air and may the full power of a just cause be with you. I must be content with more pedestrian methods. But ‘ to make the world a safe place for democracythe weapons of the spirit are as necessary as those of the flesh.”
A generation has grown up since then, and during those years the truth has been slowly if belatedly gaining ground that spiritual weapons are as dependent upon accurate knowledge and experienced skill for their right and effective using as are the weapons of material and physical forces. This book is a scholarly and constructive effort in the direction of bringing such knowledge and skill a little nearer the increasing number in our modern society who are concerned with discovering the conditions and means whereby its quality and progress can be improved. To quote from the preface “it is designed mainly for the use of those who are engaged upon or who wish to engage upon social research, and who require to know what methods are already available, upon what established conclusion they may reasonably build, and what are some of the outstanding problems which may repay further study.”
In a brief review of a book like this, in which the contributions are all the result of diverse and specialised study, and where there is not a page whose matter is extraneous to the subject, it is difficult to select one section for comment without giving an impression of its content which might destroy that balance of varied and integrating interest which?to the present reviewer?is one of its most helpful features. It gives in a small space, from the angles of psychology, anthropology, and sociology, the kind of information and constructive suggestion which, if studied carefully may save those wishing to engage in social research hours of scattered and misdirected enquiry. The excellent bibliography at the end of each chapter, and the comprehensive index increase its value in this direction.
Beyond this, however, there is much in this volume which the general reader, interested in his social environment, will find helpful and suggestive, especially if he brings to the reading a perception of the importance of ordinary everyday happenings and behaviour, the bulk of which make up the texture of society?such things, for instance, as the significance of language, of attitudes, and of conversation. I should like to underline Professor Pear’s words with reference to the last: ” Of all the patterns of social behaviour which we know, one of the most subtle and effective is conversation, and its study should form a large part of any adequate social psychology.”
The book should help to encourage a consciousness of the forces at work?to mention a few of the more obvious?in the press and the cinema, in work and in the lack of work, in the telling of tales, and in the behaviour of children. It is this consciousness, widely disseminated, which is needed if the specialist is to get the full cooperation from the members of a community in his social research which will bring the maximum result. It is the lack of this consciousness which helps to make a people an easy prey to subtle forms of dictatorship and control even while they protest that they will fight to the end for freedom.
The Study of Society is a book which needs to be followed up, continually, by others on the same co-operative basis. One of the most hopeful indications that, in spite of the disintegration of wars and rumours of wars, some advance is being made in the right direction, lies in the fact that men of such diverse points of view and experience should have been sufficiently convinced of the necessity of co-operative thought and effort as to produce a book of this kind. At last the social sciences are learning to appreciate each other, and are aiming at that unity which comes through comradeship in diversity. The highest social and individual development depends upon that unity being gained over an increasingly wide area. If we enquire as to the nature of that development, Professor Ginsberg’s concluding chapter may throw some light on this final problem : ” If,” he says, ” development is understood as consisting in a process whereby a full realisation or fulfilment of human capacities is gradually attained, that society might be regarded as most developed which evokes the most spontaneous devotion to common ends among its members and releases the greatest fund of intelligent energy This piece of co-operative work is a distinctive contribution towards building up those conditions which will make that process easier and more effective. M. L. Haskins.
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