Gerhard Lenski - Scholarly Work

Scholarly Work

Much of his earliest work dealt with the sociology of religion and culminated in the publication of The Religious Factor: A Sociological Study of Religion's Impact on Politics, Economics, and Family Life (Doubleday, 1961, and Doubleday Anchor Books, 1963). Robert Wuthnow has referred to this volume as "arguably one of a handful of 'classics' among contributions by American sociologists to the social scientific study of religion." ("The Religious Factor Revisited," Sociological Theory, 22, p. 205).

In subsequent publications (Power and Privilege: A Theory of Social Stratification, McGraw-Hill, 1966, University of North Carolina Press, 1984; Human Societies: An Introduction to Macrosociology, McGraw-Hill, Paradigm Press, 1970-2011; and Ecological-Evolutionary Theory: Principles and Applications, Paradigm Press, 2006), Lenski built on the foundations of evolutionary theory laid in the 18th century by A.R.J. Turgot, Adam Ferguson, John Millar, and Thomas Malthus, and in the 19th and 20th centuries by Lewis Henry Morgan, Leslie White, and Charles Darwin and the many biological evolutionists following him, to propose a more contemporary ecological and evolutionary theory of societal development from the Stone Age to the present. He has viewed information, especially technological information, as the most basic and most powerful factor in the evolution of human societies (though not the only one, as some of his critics have claimed). Lenski has argued that the evolution of cultural information is an extension of the evolution of genetic information with the characteristics of human societies being the product of the interaction of both genetic and cultural influences.

In Lenski's view, members of any given society are united by a shared and distinctive culture, though these ties become attenuated to varying degrees as their society's store of information increases, their cultural and organizational patterns become more diverse, and intersocietal contacts increase with the acquisition of signals, and later, symbols, early humans gained the critically important ability to share information gained through individual experience. These and other later advances in the technologies of communication and transportation laid the foundations for major developments in political and economic systems, social inequality, science, ideology, and other spheres of social life.

Lenski's theory has been well received. The one-time president of the American Political Science Association, Heinz Eulau, described Power and Privilege as a "masterpiece of comparative social analysis" and Ralf Dahrendorf referred to it as "an imaginative and substantial work an indispensable guide (reviews of Power and Privilege, American Sociological Review, vol. 61, pp. 482-5)) One feature of his work that has won fairly wide acceptance among sociologists, as reflected in its incorporation into leading introductory textbooks in the discipline, is his ecological and evolutionary typology of human societies first proposed in Power and Privilege and enhanced later in Human Societies and other publications This typology is based on a combination of two elements: (1) the kind of environment to which the society must adapt, and (2) its level of technological development. In its most basic form, he identifies seven types:

• Societies of hunters and gatherers
• Horticultural societies
• Agricultural or agrarian societies
• Industrial societies
• Fishing societies
• Herding societies
• Maritime societies

These types are often combined in various ways (for example, industrializing horticultural and agrarian societies today, such as Ghana and Brazil) and can be usefully subdivided into more or less advanced (e.g., simple and advanced horticultural societies).

An important feature of Lenski's theory has been his emphasis on the need for a broadly inclusive approach in theory building. In a 1988 article in the American Sociological Review ("Rethinking Macrosociological Theory," vol.53, pp. 163–171), he argued that macrosociological theory should be based on our knowledge of the entire universe of human societies, past as well as present, and should seek to explain the major features of that universe, both its uniformities and its variations. This is undoubtedly one feature of the theory that many sociologists find troubling and unattractive because of a tradition developed in American sociology in the twentieth century of focusing theory and research on single society during a limited time period (especially American society in the 20th century) or a handful of societies (e.g., modern industrial societies) during an equally limited span of time.

Another notable feature of Lenski's work has been his interest in Marxist societies. This was a product of his interest in the forces shaping societal development. Marx, who had a major influence on sociological thought in the twentieth century, had a very optimistic view of human nature that is reflected in his belief in the inevitability of communism in the future when the governing principle in human societies would be "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need." Lenski viewed the Marxist societies of the last century as important, but too often neglected, social experiments that put Marx's view of human nature to the test and found it wanting (Lenski,"Marxist Experiments in Destratification: An Appraisal," Social Forces, 1978; Gerhard Lenski, Patrick Nolan, Jean Lenski, Human Societies, 7th ed., 1995, chapter 15).