Consider, for example, my first subject in pure sociology: law. The
psychology of law addresses the individualistic aspect of the subject,
including legal attitudes, perceptions, beliefs, and meanings, their origin,
and their impact on legal decision-making. But the pure sociology of law entirely
ignores the psychology of law. It reconceptualizes law as a social rather than
a personal phenomenon. The subject becomes the behavior of law itself What does
law do, and why? How does it vary with its location and direction in social
space? The pure sociology
of law not only differs from the psychology of law, but completely reverses the
prevailing conception of legal action. No longer conceived as the action of a
person (such as a citizen, police officer, or judge), it now becomes the action
of law itself. A call to the police, for example, becomes law's movement into a
particular conflict. The same applies to every instance of governmental social
control, whether an arrest, prosecution, conviction, punishment, civil lawsuit,
or civil remedy. Every such action is an increase of law in a particular case.
And all increases of law are predictable and explainable with a single theory
applicable across the social universe.
Law of every kind varies with its location and direction in social space,
the social structure of each case-its geometry. Social space includes vertical,
horizontal, cultural, corporate, and normative dimensions, and the multidimensional
structure of every conflict predicts and explains the behavior of law in each
(see Black 1976). From the standpoint of pure sociology, then, people do
not use more or less law to pursue justice or other goals. Instead, conflict
structures attract more or less law. There are litigious structures rather than
litigious people, punitive and severe structures rather than punitive and
severe people. People are irrelevant.
The behavior of law depends, for example, on the relational structure of each
case: Law is a curvilinear function of relational distance (Black 1976: 40-46).
This principle predicts that a conflict of any kind between strangers in any
society will attract more law than the same conflict between family members or
anyone else closer than strangers-and also more than a conflict between members
of different societies. In modem America, for instance, it predicts that
capital punishment will be more likely in homicide cases between strangers than
in those between intimates. It similarly predicts calls to the police, arrests,
lawsuits, who wins in court, and every other kind of variation in the amount of
law-- with no reference whatsoever to the psychology of anyone involved. The
principle of relational distance is not qualified by place or time but predicts
and explains legal variation across societies and history, including the
absence of law in bands of hunter-gatherers where everyone is intimate with
everyone else and between tribes or nations with no relationship at all. Yet it
meets all the highest standards of science-- testability, generality,
simplicity, and so onand enjoys enormous empirical support, including numerous
findings by anthropologists and historians (for a review of evidence, see,
e.g., Black 1995: 842-44). No psychological theory of law (or anything else)
predicts and explains as many facts so economically, precisely, and in a manner
so easily testable across societies and history. Note, too, that the principle
of relational distance has no ideological element (since it does not evaluate
law or anything else), no teleological element (since it does not explain law
as a means to an end), and no individualistic element (since it predicts the
behavior of law instead of the behavior of people). It is a sociological law of
law-a law of social life-something almost unimaginable before pure sociology.
I have applied the same paradigm to other subjects, such as the behavior of
other social control, the behavior of ideas, the behavior of medicine, the
behavior of science, and the behavior of God. There are violent structures and
gossipy structures rather than violent and gossipy people, for instance, and
there are scientific structures and religious structures rather than scientific
and religious people (see, e.g., Black 1979; 1995; 1998: xviii-xxi; 2000a).
Consider song and dance: Solo singing with precise pronunciation is a direct
function of centralized authority, for example, and the number of body parts
moved by dancers is a direct function of social stratification (see Lomax 1968:
121-40, 243-47). In this sense, the structure sings-not a person as such. The
structure dances. The structure does everything. The person is sociologically
dead (Black 1995: 870).
Pure sociology
applies to all human behavior, including the behavior of people toward
themselves-social life within the social structure of the self (see, e.g.,
Black 1992; 1995: 835). It also applies to the social life of nonhumans, and I
have already extended it to the behavior of chimpanzees (Black 2000b: 114-16).
Others have applied it to a wide variety of subjects as well (for references,
see, e.g., Black 1995: 844-45, n. 88). And do not think that because pure sociology
is so scientific and theoretical it has no practical value. On the contrary: It
provides radically new directions for those who would change the world-a new
source of what James Coleman calls "knowledgeable intervention"
(1990: 4). The pure theory of law, for example, readily applies to practical
matters such as winning legal cases, weakening the impact of social factors in
the handling of legal cases, and reducing law itself (Black 1989: Chapters
2-5). Below I even address some practical implications of my pure theory of
science. But first consider the behavior of sociology.
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