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Our History

The study of society has a long tradition at Aberdeen. Some of the founding figures of modern sociology researched and taught at the University in the early days of these disciplines.

William Robertson Smith

The work of William Robertson Smith (1846-94) was a very great influence on nineteenth and early twentieth century anthropology, sociology and psychology. The son of an Aberdeenshire minister, Robertson Smith progressed to an undergraduate career at the University, under the tutelage of the professor of Rhetoric and Logic, Alexander Bain. From 1870 onwards, he was professor of Oriental languages and Old Testament exegesis. After leaving Aberdeen he became editor-in-chief of The Encyclopaedia Britannica, and professor of Arabic at Cambridge. Among his more well-known works are The Old Testament in the Jewish Church (1881), The Prophets of Israel (1882), and Lectures on the Religion of the Semites (1889).

Robertson Smith's studies of the social conditions of religion put him at the forefront of Biblical scholars of his day. He was the first scholar to apply anthropological approaches to the Hebrew Bible in a systematic way. His approach to such issues figures as a major-staging post in the history of the emergence of fully-fledged anthropological and sociological modes of thought from their antecedents in historiography, philosophy and theology. His work came to enjoy the same status as that of other great nineteenth century pioneeers in anthropological thought such as Sir James Frazer, upon whom Robertson Smith's researches made a profound impression.

Robertson Smith's s methodological approach to religious phenomena was a very great influence on Emile Durkheim's classic study The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life. Furthermore, Sigmund Freud's famous work of speculative anthropology, Totem and Taboo, is heavily indebted to Robertson Smith's research on religious practices.

Overall, it is fair to say that modern studies of religion from anthropological, sociological and psychoanalytic perspectives owe a huge debt of gratitude to Robertson Smith, as does anthropological thought more generally. The sociological study of religion and theoretical work in anthropology continue to be mainstays of our research today.

Robert MacIver

Despite its ancient origins, the University of Aberdeen was one of the first institutions in the UK and further afield to introduce the subject of sociology. In 1907 Robert MacIver (1882-1970), a young lecturer of local birth, was appointed as an assistant in Moral Philosophy but delivered lectures in the new subject. We believe that among his students at that time was the future father-in-law of the Chinese Communist leader, Chairman Mao. Whatever influence Aberdonian sociology had on the subsequent development of Maoism is unrecorded.

When he left Aberdeen, MacIver went first to the University of Toronto, and then moved to become head of the prestigious Department of Sociology at Columbia in New York. Such was his reputation in America that he was tempted out of retirement in 1962 to head the New School for Social Research in New York, one of the world's leading research centres in the social sciences. By the end of his - very long - life, MacIver had become one of the most prestigious sociologists in the worldwide scholarly community.

MacIver had a profound influence on succeeding generations of sociologists in the English-speaking world. One of his first major studies was Community, a sociological study; being an attempt to set out the nature and fundamental laws of social life (1917), which was still being referred to as a standard work in the field many years later. His study of the philosophical underpinnings of social science, Social Causation, first published in 1942, was still sufficiently valued to be reprinted 25 years later. Of even greater impact was MacIver and Page's book Society: an introductory analysis, first published in 1950 and then reprinted every two years until 1967. This became for many students of sociology the first book that opened their eyes to the unique perspectives that the discipline can bring to bear on the world.

Further reading:

• T. O. Beidelman, W. Robertson Smith and the Sociological Study of Religion. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1974.
• [Contains information on Smith's life and times, and gives a good account of one of his most important studies, Lectures on the Religion of the Semites. In particular, the book shows how great an influence Robertson Smith was on the work of Durkheim and other scholars.]
• John Sutherland and George Chrystal, The Life of William Robertson Smith, London, 1902 [repr. 1912].
• Robert M. MacIver, Academic freedom in our time. New York, Columbia University Press, 1955. [A book with a great deal of pertinence today]
• Robert M. MacIver, The pursuit of happiness; a philosophy for modern living. New York, Simon and Schuster, 1955
• Robert M. MacIver, The challenge of the passing years; my encounter with time. New York, Simon and Schuster, 1962

Some biographical information taken from The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. Copyright © 2000 Columbia University Press.

This page was last updated on 27-Feb-2012 11:07:52 GMT