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.