William Graham Sumner

William Graham Sumner 1840-1910, American sociologist and political economist, b. Paterson, N.J., grad. Yale, 1863, and studied in Germany, in Switzerland, and at Oxford. He was ordained an Episcopal minister and from 1872 was professor of political and social science at Yale. In economics he advocated a policy of extreme laissez-faire , strongly opposing any government measures that he thought interfered with the natural economics of trade. As a sociologist he did valuable work in charting the evolution of human customs— folkways and mores . He concluded that the power of these forces, developed in the course of human evolution, rendered useless any attempts at social reform. He also originated the concept of ethnocentrism, a term now commonly used, to designate attitudes of superiority about one's own group in comparison with others. His major work was Folkways (1907). The massive Science of Society by Sumner and Albert G. Keller, a colleague, was not completed and published until 1927 (4 vol.; Vol. IV by Sumner, Keller, and M. R. Davie).

Bibliography: See H. E. Starr, William Graham Sumner (1925); A. G. Keller, Reminiscences (Mainly Personal) of William Graham Sumner (1933); W. G. Green, Sumner Today (1940, repr. 1971); R. G. McCloskey, American Conservatism in the Age of Enterprise (1951, repr. 1964); M. R. Davie, William Graham Sumner (1963).

Sumner, William Graham (1840–1910) An early American sociologist and noted laissez-faire Social Darwinist. Influenced by the works of Herbert Spencer, he argued that social life was governed by natural laws (as binding as those governing the physical world), the most basic of which stipulated evolutionary struggle and the survival of the fittest (meaning the most industrious and frugal). He accepted that societies could ensure the survival of the weakest (for example through welfare programmes) but regarded this as a stimulus to social decline. These beliefs have attracted the usual criticisms levelled against other varieties of economic determinism. In Folkways (1906) he argued the moral relativist position that each human group has its own appropriate folkways, mores, and institutions—the various group habits that, by trial and error, seem to be best suited to the particular circumstance prevailing at the time. The possible contradiction between this argument, and the belief in the universal superiority of folkways that support a laissez-faire economy, is not addressed in Sumner's work. He also coined the widely used terms in-group, out-group, and ethnocentricism. For the last two years of his life he was president of the American Sociological Association.

Sumner, William Graham (1840–1910),professor of political and social science at Yale (1872–1909), is famous for both his economic and his sociological treatises. In economics he championed free trade, and is usually considered an advocate of laissez‐faire, although his opposition to governmental control and labor organization was founded on the theory that they were likely to be unintelligent experimentation instead of scientific and unsentimental correction. In sociology, he believed that the science of society must be based on the study of the full interrelations of all institutions, from their most primitive to their most complex forms. He found that custom was the basis of all institutions, and in his book Folkways (1907) made a careful study of this underlying factor, showing the anthropological and sociological evolution of social institutions. His books on economics include What Social Classes Owe to Each Other (1883) and Protectionism (1885). His unfinished Science in Society (4 vols., 1927) was completed by A.G. Keller, who edited other works under the titles War and Other Essays (1911), Earth Hunger and Other Essays (1913), and The Forgotten Man and Other Essays (1919).