G.D.H. Cole and British Sociology

This book is an original and timely contribution to the history of British sociology. It reveals aspects of G. D. H. Cole’s intellectual life that have not been studied in such detail before and enriches our knowledge of a period of British sociology too long neglected by historians. The author’s argument as to the value of Cole’s sociological contribution is entirely persuasive and anyone with an interest in British intellectual history of the mid-twentieth century will find much to learn — Dr. Plamena Panayotova, University of Glasgow, Scotland. G.D.H. Cole was a significant prominence in earlier times. He was radical, he was systematic and he was uncommonly wide-ranging, from Guild Socialism until the postwar years. Now, thanks to the labour and insight of Matt Dawson, he has a renewed presence as a resource for sociology and the legacies that follow socialism. Hit Refresh! — Prof. Peter Beilharz, Sichuan University, China. This book explores G.D.H Cole’s significant yet overlooked role in the history of British Sociology from 1920-1960. Eager to achieve scientific legitimacy, British sociology had no space for Cole, who saw sociology as a normative and political project dedicated to the development of socialism. Conceptualising Cole's relationship to sociology as one of semi-alienation - an openness to the principles of the discipline yet disagreement with the form it currently takes – this book shows how Cole made important sociological contributions grounded in an early form of structuration theory, including one of Britain’s first sociology textbooks and an early monograph on the sociology of class. Cole was a promoter of the sociological Marx and interrogator of Durkheim as part of his desire to develop sociology in Britain, including at the University of Oxford. Cole also produced a distinctive public, creative sociology expressed in newspaper articles, poems and songs. Drawing on archival research this book reintegrates Cole into the history of British Sociology and offers insight into sociology's history, emphasising a normative, critical and public form of the discipline. Matt Dawson is Professor of Sociology at the University of Glasgow, UK. He is the author of The Political Durkheim: Sociology, Socialism, Legacies (2023), Social Theory for Alternative Societies (2016) and Late Modernity, Individualization and Socialism: An Associational Critique of Neoliberalism (2013). His research interests include social theory and the history of sociology.