The Ghost of Patrick Geddes: Civics as Applied Sociology

In 1904 and 1905 Patrick Geddes (1905, 1906) read his famed, but todaylittle-read, two-part paper, ‘Civics: as Applied Sociology’, to the firstmeetings of the British Sociological Society. Geddes is often thought of as a‘pioneer of sociology’ (Mairet, 1957;Meller, 1990) and for some (egDevine, 1999:296) as ‘a seminal influence on sociology’. However, little of substance hasbeen written to critically assess Geddes's intellectual legacy as a sociologist.His work is largely forgotten by sociologists in Britain (Abrams, 1968;Halliday,1968;Evans, 1986). Few have been prepared to follow Geddes's ambition to bridgethe chasm between nature and culture, environment and society, geography,biology and sociology. His conception of ‘sociology’, oriented towards socialaction from a standpoint explicitly informed by evolutionary theory. Are-appraisal of the contemporary relevance of Geddes's thinking on civics asapplied sociology has to venture into the knotted problem of evolutionarysociology. It also requires giving some cogency to Geddes's often fragmentaryand inconsistent mode of address. Although part of a post-positivist, ‘largermodernism’ Geddes remained mired in nineteenth century evolutionary thought andfought shy of dealing with larger issues of social class or the breakthroughwork of early twentieth century sociology of Simmel, Weber and Durkheim. Hisapolitical notion of ‘civics’ limits its relevance to academic sociologytoday.