Rustow (#68719)
by Common Sense on September 23, 2005 at 8:51 PM

This is a great post about a great thinker. One quibble: Rustow, as the authors note, wrote that "superstratification, in Rustow’s eyes, occurs whenever an invader occupies the same geographic space as an invaded population. This produces “human social groupings that, in their inner structure, were based on bloodshed and violence.” Whereas in earlier eras communities banded together and fought other communities, superstratification turns bloodshed and violence inward." Rustow's European focus prevents him from giving due attention to the American situation. Here, whites invaded reds, but were unable to exploit them. Instead, they *imported* a class of black slaves, and through that method acted out the basic dynamic Rustow accurately addresses.

I read Rustow the summer before starting grad school and was impressed. It did not mesh well, however, with grad school culture and, by extension, the culture of the university historical profession. Rustow's style and somewhat "binary" approach is alien to modern academic sociology and history and its obsession with the "latest scholarship." I tried to bridge this gap in a paper that analyzed the "latest scholarship" in my field via classical liberal theories of class conflict, but it was rejected (A-) because "class conflict theory is Marxist, and you do not take a Marxist approach." Duh.

The paper became an article, which won a major award, which inspired a dissertation, which is now being modified into a book due out in 2006. Every time the profession reads and judges the evolving work, at every step of the way, it always tries to suppress the (classical liberal) class conflict angle and encourage my work's relations to current academic debates. This is good in the sense that my work keeps getting better and stays fresh, but the downside is that the class angle keeps diminishing in importance, and it was the class angle that long ago I wished to highlight in the tradition of Rustow (and de la Boetie through Grinder and Hagel in modern times, or parts of ancient Jewish scripture if you want to go way back.)