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Famous Sociologists

Garry Runciman

[1934]

	Texts by Runciman Runciman Live Texts on Runciman Bi(bli)ographies
Famous Sociologists ‖ Sociologists in social media

Famous Sociologists ‖ Sociologists in social media

“A is relatively deprived of X when (i) he does not have X, (ii) he sees some other person or persons, which may include himself at some privious or expected time, as having X (wheter or not this is or will be in fact the case), (iii) he wants X, and (iv) he sees it as feasible that he should have X” [Runciman, Relative Deprivation and Social Justice, 1966:10].

Texts by Runciman

[1959] Plato’s Parmenides
In: Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, 64: 89-120.
[1962] A Method for Cross-National Comparison of Political Consensus
In: British Journal of Sociology, 13(2): 151-155. June 1962.
The maintenance of a stable democracy depends on the degree of concensus. Consensus is a complex phenomena that is certainly not unidemensional. Runciman clarifies the implicatins of the notion of concens, and suggest a way of presenting cross-national comparisons based on voting statistics.
[1963] Social Science and Political Theory
Cambridge University Press.
Essays based on a course of lectures delivered in Cambridge during the autumn of 1961 and broadcast in a shortened form in the B.B.C. Third Programme in the spring of 1962.
Review by:
- Morris Janowitz, in: American Journal of Sociology, 70(4): 516. January 1965.
- Djuro J. Vrga, in: The Review of Politics, 32(2): 254-256. April 1970.
[1965] Some recent contributions to the theory of democracy
In: European Journal of Sociology, 6(1): 174-185. May 1965.
[1965] Games, Justice and the General Will Games, Justice and the General Will (with Amartya K. Sen)
In: Mind, 74(296): 554-562. October 1965.
[1966] Relative Deprivation and Social Justice: A Study of Attitudes to Social Inequality in Twentieth-Century England
University of California Press.
The central problem for Runciman is the discrepancy between social inequalities and people’s sense of grievance about these inequalities. He poses a question that has been at the heart of sociology from its beginnings: How does social order persist in the face of widespread social inequalities?” The basic thesis is that feelings of dissatisfaction depend not on one’s level of absolute deprivation, but on one’s level of deprivation relative to ohter. People feel unjustly treated or inadequately compensated when they compare themaselves to some standard of reference. In terms of levels of income satisfaction, individuals use only a narrow range of social comparisons. They tend to compare themselves with others in similar situations. They do not appreciate the full extent of the income range or of inequality more generally. Hence, income inequality is tolerated and so does not become a source of social conflict or schism. Questions of justice arise only when self-interested persons and groups press conflicting claims on each other. Question of justice apply not so much to any inequality in the situation of people, as to their awareness and resentment of inequalities affecting themselves.
Review by:
- T. Burns, in: British Journal of Sociology, 17(4): 430-434. December 1966.
- Bryan Roberts, in: American Journal of Sociology, 73(1): 127-128. July 1967.
[1967] ‘Social’ Equality
In: Philosophical Quarterly, 17(68): 221-230. July 1967.
Runciman distinguishes between 3 and not more than 3 form of inequality: economic (wealth), social (status) and political (power). Social inequalities are defined as differences in ‘status’. Status is derived from the distinction between praise and respect. The basic idea of equal respect for the dignity of the individual is that all inequalities of status are to be taken as (illegimate) inequalities of respect, unless they can be shown to be inequalities of praise. Runciman summarizes the sense in which men should treat each other as ‘social’ equals in the maxim: free inequality of praise, no inequality of respect.
[1967] Justices, congruence and professor Homans
In: European Journal of Sociology, 8(1): 115-128.
[1968] Class, Status and Power?
In: John A. Jackson (ed.) [1968] Social Stratification.
Cambridge University Press. pp. 25-61.
[1969] Status consistency, relative deprivation, and attituges to immigrants (with C. R. Bagley)
In: Sociology, 3(2): 359-375. September 1969.
[1969] What Is Structuralism?
In: British Journal of Sociology, 20(2): 253-265. September 1969.
[1969] The sociological explanation of ‘religious’ beliefs
In: European Journal of Sociology, 10(2): 149-191. November 1969.
[1970] Social stratification: a rejoinder to mr. Ingham
In: Sociology 4(2): 246-248. May 1970.
[1972] Race and Social Stratification
In: Race & Class, 13(4): 497-509. April 1972.
{1972] Describing
In: Mind, 81(323): 372-388. July 1972.
[1972] Explaining Social Stratification
In: Nossiter e.a. [1972] Imagination and Precision in the Social Science.
London. pp. 157-180.
[1972] A Critique of Max Weber’s Philosophy of Social Science
Cambridge University Press.
Runciman argues that Weber’s analysis breaks down at three decisive points: (i) the difference between theoretical pre-suppositions and implicit value-judgements; (ii) the manner in which ‘idiographic’ explanations are to be subsumed under causal laws; and (iv) the relation of explanation to description in sociology. And he attemts to correct Weber’s mistakes.
[1974] Prisoner’s Dilemma and Social Justice: A Reply (with Amartya K. Sen
In: Mind, 83(332): 582. October 1974.
[1974] Occupational class and the assessment of economic inequality in Britain
In: Dorothy Wedderburn (ed.) [1974] Poverty, Inequality and Class Structure.
Cambridge University Press.
[1974] Towards a Theory of Social Stratification
In: Frank Parkin (ed.) [1974] The Social Analysis of Class Structure.
London: Routledge. pp. 55-101.
[1974] Relativism: Cognitive and Moral (with Steven Lukes)
In: Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volumes, 48: 165-189 + 191-208.
[1977] Weber’s Understanding: A Reply to J. Donald Moon
In: Political Theory, 5(2): 199-204 May, 1977.
[1978] Processes, End-States and Social Justice
In: Philosophical Quarterly, 28(110): 37-45. January 1978.
Social justice is the problem of arriving at an ethical criteriuon by reference to which the distribution of social goods in human societies may be assessed. This raises two sociological questions: (1) what are the social goods whose distribution is to be assessed? and (2) how is the structure of the societies within which the distribution takes place to be conceptualized independently of variations in culture? Runciman believes that these questions can be answered adequately in one by saying that social goods are to be defined in terms of people’s interests and these interests are to be defined in terms of improvement in their positions in one or more of the three dimensions of social structure: economic class, social prestige and political power.
[1980] Comparative sociology or narrative history? A note on the methodology of Perry Anderson
In: European Journal of Sociology, 21(1): 162-178.
The principal methodological problem that Runciman raises by Anderson’s approach is the unresolved tension within it between historical narrative and comparative sociology.
[1982] Origins of States: The Case of Archaic Greece
In: Comparative Studies in Society and History, 24(3): 351-377. July 1982.
To bring about an evolution from statessness to statehood something has to happen. There are four necessary and jointly sufficient conditions for the emergence of a state from nonstate or stateless forms of social organization: (i) specialization of governemental roles; (ii) centralization of enforceable authority; (iii) permanence, or at least more thant ephemeral stability, of stucture; and (iv) emancipation from real or fictive kniship as the basis of relations between the occupants of governmental rols and those whom they govern. There are more thant one way in which states originate, and that there is more than one kind of ‘original’ state. Runciman argues that the critical transition depends on the conditions for a cumulative accretion of the power available to the incuments of prospective governmental roles. He illustrates this with particular (not exclusive) reference to the case of archaic Greece.
[1983] A Treatise on Social Theory. Volume 1: The Methodology of Social Theory
Cambridge University Press. March 31, 1983.
Review by:
- Michael Mann, in: Sociology, 17(3): 406. August 1983.
- George C. Homans, in: Theory and Society, 13(1): 137-140. January 1984.
- John Gray, in: Philosophy, 59(229): 406-408. July 1864.
- Robert Alun Jones, in: Contemporary Sociology, 14(2): 32-34. January 1985.
- John Rex, in: British Journal of Sociology, 36(3): 479-481. Septmber 1985.
- Alan Sica, in: Canadian Journal of Sociology, 11(1): 97-101. Spring 1986.
- Barbara Rosenblum, in: Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 25(2): 262-263. June 1986.
- Erik Oger, in: Tijdschrift voor Filosofie, 48(4): 664. December 1986.
[1983] Capitalism without Classes: The Case of Classical Rome
In: British Journal of Sociology, 34(2): 157-181, June 1993.
[1983] Unnecessary revolution: the case of France
In: European Journal of Sociology, 24(2): 291-318. November 1983.
[1989] The selectionist paradigm and its implication for sociology
In: Sociology, 32(1): 163-188. February 1998.
[1989] A Treatise on Social Theory. Volume 2: Substantive Social Theory
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Review by:
- Andreas Bruck, in: Anthropos, 85(4./6): 641-642.
- Randall Collins, in: European Sociological Review, 6(1): 87-89. May 1990.
- Arthur L. Stinchcombe, in: Ethics, 100(4): 897. July 1990.
- John A. Hall, in: Contemporary Sociology, 19(5): 758-759. September 1990.
- Alice Schlegel, in: American Anthropologist, 32(4): 1094. December 1990.
- V. G. Kiernan, in: History, 76(246): 76-77. February 1991.
- Jonathan H. Turner, in: Social Forces, 71(2): 521-522. December 1992.
[1990] How many classes are there in contemporary British society?
In: Sociology, 24(3): 377-396. August 1990.
‘Class’ is defined in terms of the economic power attaching to different roles through their relation to the processes of production, distribution and exchange. Therefore the number of classes is a function of the number of dividing-lines in its social space which can be so drawn as to mark qualitative differences between sets of similarly positioned roles. These differences are defined neither by income nor by employment status as such, but by one or more of the three functionally equivalent criteria of ownership, control and marketability. From this approach, it follows that the number of classes in British society is seven.
[1991] Are there any irrational beliefs?
In: European Journal of Sociology, 32(2): 215-228.
[1991] Explaining union density in twentieth-century Britain
In: Sociology, 25(4): 697-712. November 1991.
[1993] Has British Capitalism Changed Since the First World War?
In: British Journal of Sociology, 44(1): 53-67. March 1993.
[1995] New Times or Old? A Reply to Fulcher
In: British Journal of Sociology, 46(4): 708-714. December 1995.
[1997] Rejoinder to Fulcher, ‘Did British Society Change Character in the 1920s or the 1980s?’
In: British Journal of Sociology, 48(3): 522-523. September 1997.
[1997] A Treatise on Social Theory. Volume 3: Applied Social Theory
Cambridge University Press.
Review by:
- John Holmwood, in: British Journal of Sociology, 49(3): 507-508. September 1998.
- Arthur L. Stinchcombe, in: American Journal of Sociology, 104(4): 1241-1243. January 1999.
- Jon Lawrence, in: Journal of Contemporary History, 35(2): 307-318. April 2000.
[1998] The selectionist paradigm and its implications for sociology
In: Sociology, 32(1): 163-188. February 1998.
[1998] The Social Animal
Harper Collins.
A classic investigation of human beings as social animals that sets out the present extent of our knowledge about how human societies and institutions really work, and what motivates the people who live within them.
[2000] Can there be a Nietzschean sociology?
In: European Journal of Sociology, 41(1): 3-21.
Runciman tries to find an answer to the question: what sort of sociology do we get in we take Nietsch’s arguments about human history and psychology as serious as we can?
[2002] (ed.) The Origin of Human Social Institutions
British Academy. May 16, 2002.
An interdisciplinary approach to what the central question in the study of human social evolution: how did the simple hunting and foraging bands of the Upper Palaeolithic evolve into the institutionally complex societies of the so-called Neolithic Revolution? The contributors are leading experts from the fields of archaeology, anthropology, sociology, psychology, and game theory, all of whom share a common evolutionary perspective.
[2002] On Darwin & Sociological Theory Today
In: Daedalus, 131(2):133-137. Spring, 2002.
[2004] The Diffusion of Christianity in the Third Century AD as a Case-Study in the Theory of Cultural Selection
In: European Journal of Sociology, 45(1): 3-21.
[2005] Culture does evolve
In: History and Theory, 44: 1-13. February 2005.
[2005] Rejoinder to Fracchia and Lewontin
In: History and Theory, 44: 30-41. February 2005.
[2005] Stone Age Sociology
In: Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 2(1): 129-142. March 2005.
How could the original bands of hunters and foragers cohere over many successive generations without either transitive rank-orders headed by dominant males or institutional roles in which leadership was formally vested? For Runciman the answer lies neither in natural selection for genes favouring altruistic behaviour, nor in the emergence of an egalitarian morality, but in cultural selection for strong reciprocity sustaind by specific pressures from the palaeo-ecological environment.
[2005] Puritan American Capitalists and Evolutionary Game Theory
In: Max Weber Studies, 5(2): 281-296. July 2005.
Weber attributed two distinctive ways of behaving to Protestant, and more specifically Puritan, capitalists that have a particular relevance to the evolution of capitalism in the Northern United States: (i) their willingness to deal fairly not only within but also outside of the community of fellow-believers; (ii) the ‘ascetic compulsion to save’ which led them to reinvest their surpluses rather than either thesaurize or consume them. These are two importan elements for the explanation of the success of ‘modern’ capitalist enterprises. Runciman argues that this is not only supported by the evidence which Weber himself adduced in his essay on the ‘Protestant Sects’ but also by arguments drawn from evolutionary game theory.
[2006] Darwinian evolutionary theory and the social sciences
(with Ian Gough, Ruth Mace, Geoffrey Hodgson, Michael Rustin)
In: Twenty-first century society, 3(1): 65-86.
[2007] Cultural Selection, Axiological Reasoning, and Paradiastole
In: European Journal of Sociology, 48(1): 173-189.
[2009] Not Whether but How: A Comment on Nettle’s Beyond Nature versus Culture
In: Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 15(2): 241-243. June 2009.
[2009] The Theory of Cultural and Social Selection
Cambridge University Press. December 14, 2009.
Runciman assesses the fundamental processes by which different human cultures and societies come to be the way they are. He combines different levels of change and differentiation in human existence — from the biological to the social — under a single analytic framework that rests firmly on a Darwinian logic of selection. Runciman argues that collective human behaviour should be analyzed as the acting-out of information transmitted at the three separate but interacting levels of heritable variation and competitive selection: the biological, the cultural, and the social.
Reviews by:
- Martin Stuart-Fox, in: History and Theory,50(2): 229-242. May 2011.
[2015] Very Different, But Much the Same: The Evolution of English Society Since 1714
Oxford University Press. January 13, 2015.
Runciman’s starting point is the distribution of political, ideological, and economic power between English society’s constituent roles from the time when Daniel Defoe was writing Robinson Crusoe, and argues that Defoe would find it remarkably similar three centuries later despite all the changes in technology, lifestyles, amenities, beliefs, attitudes, norms, and values by which he would no doubt be astonished. The disjunction between the two is explained by bringing to bear the approach of current evolutionary sociological theory in which the reproduction or extinction of a society's institutional practices is traced to selective environmental pressures which are independent of the personal motives and subjective experiences of the individuals whose practices they are.

Runciman Live: videos

[2010] W.G. Runciman - Visions of the Good Society [28:34]
Runciman re-examines three classics of Western political thought: Plato (The Republic), Hobbes (Leviathan), Marx (Communist Manifesto). They share a single overriding central concern: “They are all three dismayed not to say appalled by the seemingly total inability of human beings to live with each other in an orderly and harmonious manner.” Runceman asks: how accurate are their assumptions about human motivation and action?

Texts on Runciman

Abraham, C. M. / Pradeep Kumar, K.
[1989] Preconditions of Relative Deprivation - An Empirical Validation
In: Indian Journal of Industrial Relations, 25(1): 82-88. July 1989.
Care, Norman S.
[1968] Runciman on Social Inequality
In: Philosophical Quarterly, 18(71): 151-154. April 1968.
Ditton, Jason / Brown, Richard
[1981] Why Don't They Revolt? ‘Invisible Income’ as a Neglected Dimension of Runciman’s Relative Deprivation Thesis
In: British Journal of Sociology, 32(4): 521-530. December 1981.
Goody, Esther
[2005] ‘Stone Age Sociology’: Or Sociology of Early Language-Using Society?
In: Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 11(3): 585-588. September 2005.
Hey, John D. / Lambert, Peter J.
[1980] Relative Deprivation and the Gini Coefficient: Comment
In: Quarterly Journal of Economics, 95(3): 567-573. November 1980.
Hollis, Martin
[1967] Runciman’s Misdescriptions
In: Analysis, 28(1): 8-10. October 1967.
Ingham, Geoffrey K.
[1970] Social stratification: Individual attributes and social relationships
In: Sociology, 4(1): 105-113. January 1970.
Runciman argued that it is logically and conceptually useful to employ the tripartite distinction between ‘class’, ‘status’, and ‘power’ in the analysis of social stratification. He does not deny the existence of links between these three dimension, but suggests that such links must be seen contingent empirical relationships and not necessary logical onese. Ingham’s main contention is “that Runciman’s treatment of the problem is unnecessarily restrictive and unhelpful for the analysis of many important sociological problems.” He further argues “that these shortcomings stem from his initial unsatisfactory conceptualization of class, status, and power in which the necessary links between class and power, and status and power, go unrecognized.“
Moon, J. Donald
[1977] Understanding and Explanation in Social Science: On Runciman’s Critique of Weber In: Political Theory, 5(2): 183-198. May 1977.
Pomper, Philip
[2011] One again, with more feeling
In: History and Theory, 50:243-253. May 2011.
Rose, David
[2006] Social comparisons and oscial order: Issues relating to a possible re-study of W.G. Runciman’s Relative Deprivation and Social Justice
ISE Working Paper 2006-48. Colchester: University of Essex.
Stuart-Fox, Martin
[2011] Constructing a selectionist paradigm
In: History and Theory, 50: 229-242. May 2011.
Wrong, Dennis H.
- [1966] Comment on Sica’s Review of Runciman
  In: Canadian Journal of Sociology, 11(4): 433-435. Winter 1966.
- [1973] A Critique of Max Weber’s Philosophy of Social Science by W. G. Runciman
  In: Social Forces, 52(1): 126-127. September 1973.
Yitzhaki, Shlomo
[1979] Relative Deprivation and the Gini Coefficient
Quarterly Journal of Economics, 93(2): 321-324. May 1979.
Yitzhaki shows that a measure of aggregate relative deprivation (of a society, or of a reference group within a society) could be expressed as the product of the mean income (of that society or reference group) and the Gini coefficient (for that society or reference group).

Bi(bli)ographies

Alchetron: Garry Runciman, 3rd Viscount Runciman of Doxford
Wikipedia: Garry Runciman | Relative deprivation

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Editor	dr. Albert Benschop Social & Behavioral Studies University of Amsterdam
Created	June, 1996
Last modified	03rd April, 2017