Search

Christian Smith's paper 'The Incoherence of 'Culture' in American Sociology' is a valuable provocation that can prompt us to reflect on the role of concepts and on the role of agreement on the definition of concepts in scientific research. In this comment paper, I raise questions about Smith's empirical expectation that sociologists should agree on a concept of culture based on debates in the sociology of science. I also suggest that in terms of the future agenda for the sociology of culture, we should distinguish between dialogue and clarification on the one hand, which I agree is needed, and standardization on the other hand, which seems incompatible with open-minded empirical research. Rather than work on agreement on what culture is, we might work on clarifying relevant distinctions among dimensions of culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on the future of sociology archive as a discipline. The major U.S. university libraries now go to extraordinary lengths and expense to collect the papers of writers, even many who as yet have not been categorically identified as important. There is a serious lesson in this-one might even say, a vital one-for sociology as it confronts an uncertain future. As everyone of a certain age will recall, the saga of Roots, in book and television formats, single-handedly gave American blacks a collective sense of historical importance that up to that point was absent from mass culture. The new Holocaust Museum in Washington is the most eloquent and emotionally wracking contemporary expression of historical memory for public consumption on a grand scale. Other examples can be found at every juncture of the "culture wars" that have been raging in the United States since the 1960s. Every politically self-aware group is supposed to venerate its real or imagined past, both at individual and collective levels, not only because such joint expressions enhance self-conceptions but also owing to the strategic advantage.

The decline of interest among sociologists in the works of Talcott Parsons over the last several decades has been driven in substantial respects by a belief that he was personally conservative in his political views and that his theoretical formulations were rigidly tied to a conservative view of social order. The present paper reviews Parsons' major political involvements through the course of his career from his student days through the last decade of his life. The review demonstrates that Parsons was a typical academic liberal of his time and that his liberalism was expressed especially in several major applied essays. In the 1930s, he was an early and active opponent of Nazism. During World War II, he taught professionals to administer occupied territories and nations effectively. After the war, he advocated for government support of the social sciences, citing the important contributions they had made to the war effort. In the 1950s, he wrote a famous critical analysis of the Joseph McCarthy movement in American politics. In the 1960s, he contributed supportive essays to the Civil Rights movement. Later in the decade and in the 1970s, he contributed to the protection of academic freedoms while also proposing accommodations to the demands of the student movement for more "relevant" teaching and greater participation in university governance. Throughout his career, he taught and worked closely with students of various political views and sought to protect their rights of freedom of political expression. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After a review of comparable degree productivity among several social and behavioral sciences, this paper concludes that sociology was uniquely affected by forces that lowered both the production of B.A.'s, M.A.'s, and Ph.D.'s and the quality of its graduate students. From the mid-1970s to the late 1980s, sociology suffered drastic declines in student numbers and quality. The increased careerism among students apparently accounts for a substantial portion of this decline, but through a very concrete mechanism: the expansion of business programs. The paper suggests that perhaps an absence of a serious commitment to teaching scientific sociology accounts for the loss of quality, since applied sciences have fared much better than has sociology. The recent ASA Task Force recommendations for curriculum redesign are reviewed, and a call is issued for revitalizing the scientific component of undergraduate sociology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Stratification in science has received extensive attention from researchers in the sociology of science. The general research strategy involves identifying certain socio-personal characteristics of scientists such as professional age, highest degree, prestige of training and affiliated institutions, and relating these characteristics to the reward systems in science. Two identifiable reward systems in science involve (1) the bestowal of honorary awards, and (2) the access to, and recognition in, the formal communication system in science. These two systems both contribute to the overall stratification of the reward system but differ on at least two counts. This paper attempts to examine the stratification of the formal communication system in American sociology as it is related to the stratification of scientists. It is found that the visible journals in sociology are consistently stratified according to criteria such as rejection rates, articles rejected but eventually published in other sociological journals, order of submission preferences of ASA meeting authors, and cross-citation patterns in articles of the journals.

Prior to his 1922 emigration to Europe and thence to the United States, Pitirim Alexandrovich Sorokin had an exceptional intellectual and political career in Russia and the Soviet Union (Sorokin , ; Johnston ; Krotov ). Indeed, he was among the early founders of the science of sociology in his native land, where, according to a relatively recent bibliography (Sorokin ), he produced 162 Russian-language publications between the ages of 21 and 33. This listing includes not only book reviews and journal articles, but also substantial monographs and a two-volume theoretical treatise. While still a relatively young man, Sorokin had thus gained widespread recognition as a scholar of the first rank. He was also the initial chairperson (from 1919 to 1922) of a fledgling department of sociology at the University of Petrograd (St. Petersburg), an elected member of the national Constituent Assembly and an appointed staff member of the 1917 Provisional Government, the first democratic regime in Russia. This much would have sufficed for an entry in a sociological encyclopedia, and Sorokin's political career has few parallels in the history of the field, other than the involvement of Emile Durkheim in French educational policy and the participation of Max Weber in creating the Weimar Republic in Germany. Nevertheless sociologists in the United States and most western historians of the field have not yet appreciated the full influence of the formative period, especially from 1905 to 1922. Lacking familiarity with Russian culture of that era and knowing little about the larger Russian socio-historical milieu, its intellectual discourse and collective memory, they have not been able to comprehend Sorokin's outlook, behavior and professional output in the United States in relation to these earlier contextual factors. This is arguably a fundamental reason why many U.S. sociologists have tended to see Sorokin, especially since 1937, as a marginal figure and to regard his works largely as deviations from accepted social scientific practice. This paper will argue that a more adequate appreciation of Sorokin's background and early adult life illumines both stylistic features of his works in America and also places into proper perspective several of his substantive foci that did not accord with contemporary 'normal science' (Kuhn ). In short, despite his overall assimilation into American society and higher education, including his appointment at Harvard University and his election as president of the American Sociological Association, Sorokin should be understood in large measure as a life-long Russian intellectual. His was a Russian-born sensibility and consciousness-indeed a 'Russian soul'-so deeply ingrained that it stamped his entire professional career in the United States, including his published researches, his popular sociology and his university teaching. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This section introduces the articles featured in the spring 2002 issue of The American Sociologist. The half-dozen articles here, along with Brym's engaging introductory essay, help us regain a sense of sociology as an unfolding international movement and also of the distinctive experiences of sociologists in particular national contexts. Rather ironically, in light of the sweep of the paradigms and macro-level theories that are sociology's coin of the realm, there are strong parochial tendencies in the field. In the United States, for instance, many departments of sociology tend to relegate international and cross-cultural matters to anthropologists, and many textbook writers produce analyses that focus overwhelmingly on their home country. One consequence of such tendencies is to speak as though formulas that fit one context have a general or universal applicability. As the papers here inform us time and again, sociology in Canada has struggled with the Anglo-French division of society and culture, which has generated two separate and largely unengaged spheres, and has segregated even the respective social sciences. Meanwhile, Canadian sociologists have worked to develop a voice of their own that is not distorted by the influence of sociology produced in the United States or in Europe.

The article introduces as series of articles dealing in a variety of ways with critical theorists and critical theory. The first three papers offer insightful analyses of the work of several critical thinkers Erich Fromm, David Riesman, C. Wright Mills and Leo Strauss. Neil McLaughlin examines David's Riesman's synthesis of the German critical tradition and U.S. pragmatism in his best known work, The Lonely Crowd. In McLaughlin's view, Riesman's classic analysis of U.S. society in 1950 bears a strong resemblance to many postmodern writings, particularly since Riesman self-consciously assumed the mantle of the public intellectual. James Abbott examines the thought of political philosopher Leo Strauss, with particular attention to its relevance for contemporary controversies concerning facts and values. Abbott is drawn to Strauss's analysis of the crises of modern liberalism and of twentieth century social science, and brings this to bear on the contemporary paradox of a sociology that simultaneously advocates visions of the good society while denying the possibility of trans-historical standards that would validate such visions. Joel Best offers incisive reflections on sociology's status in the academic world. Ironically, despite its image as a minor field, sociology has arguably been among the most influential of disciplines and has spawned a series of specialties that migrated to independence.

U S environmental law requires that environmental impact statements make "integrated use" of the social sciences in identifying the impacts of certain new developments, and requires that decisionmakers give "appropriate consideration" to the impacts which are identified. Despite this fact, sociological expertise is severely underrepresented in the impact statement process--not only in the final decisions, but in the impact statements themselves. This paper draws attention to the existing situation, and offers several suggestions for improving the sociological content of impact statements in the future. The paper's final section examines potential implications of increased sociological involvement in impact assessments, it concludes that there is a good deal that could be promising about improved (and genuinely "social") impact assessments. Not only could they exert an increased influence on policy outcomes, but they hold the potential to contribute to baste sociology as well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This section introduces a series of articles on financing sociological research. The late Alvin Gouldner presented us with a fundamental paradox that those who supply the greatest resources for the institutional development of sociology are precisely those who most distort its quest for knowledge. The problem of financing sociological research is not the burden of individual researchers, it is the challenge to a discipline and a profession that must take account of a shifting cultural-political climate and be accountable to a restive public. The paper by Martin Bulmer examines the unique role of the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial, under the directorship of Breadsley Ruml, in distributing relatively large amounts of money for social research during the 1920s. Highlighting the entry of more direct federal government support for basic social science research, Roberta Balstand Miller's paper, The Social Sciences and the Politics of Science: the 1940s, examines the debate about the inclusion of the social sciences in the legislation that established the National Science Foundation.

The article focuses on the sociological research opportunities that can be found in Canada. The Canadian case offers a veritable cornucopia of research opportunities for the American sociologist. Although Canada is similar in many ways to the U.S., it also differs in significant respects. Given that many important variables can be held more or less constant, opportunities for theoretically meaningful research abound. Likewise, implications for policy are plentiful. The rapidly evolving nature of race relations in Canada might well inform discussions in the U.S. Until as late as 1975, Canada's racial minorities were a minuscule proportion of the overall population. After a change in immigration policy, the percentage reached 6.3 percent in 1986; and 11.2 percent in 1996. In the Canadian census, as well as in standard academic discussions, aboriginals are not included with visible minorities. While there is variation in the situation of visible minorities--some are quite prosperous--the situation vis-a-vis aboriginals is otherwise. The figures on poverty, unemployment, life expectancy, incarceration, murder, and so forth are extreme and show only modest signs of improvement. Canada has always been bilingual. Canada is also a bi-religious country. It used to be that Protestants outnumbered Catholics in a pattern somewhat similar to that in the U.S.

This paper examines some of the reasons why the social sciences were excluded from the legislation that established the National Science Foundation in 1946. Although the social sciences had been used increasingly before the war in the interest of rational social planning by the federal government and had been supported during the war, they nevertheless were weaker after the war than before it. The failure to include the social sciences in NSF was due to three factors. opposition by key scientists, conservatives' fears that social science research would emphasize potential political problems such as racial inequality, and the failure of social scientists to make a strong bid for their inclusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I would like to try to sort out the conflict of two ways of knowing: on the one hand there are folk methods for constituting positive knowledge and on the other hand there are scientific methods of acquiring accurate, positive knowledge. Both methods try to solve the problem of subjectivity: privately, individually held states of knowing and understanding. In this endeavor, the very existence of social reality is at stake. If persons have, internally, states of understanding that are different from each other in any persistent and significant way, their behavior will be at cross purpose or to no human purpose and gradually behavior will drift irreconcilably apart. There are, of course, social controls by which to resynchronize behavior but in these, too, folk methods are challenged by scientific methods. I wish to emphasize that the human project requires both folk methods and scientific methods of knowledge constitution. The former could ensure collective praxis; the latter could contribute to the authentic self-knowledge of a social life world. Together they could reunite the alienated divisions of the knowledge process. I suggest some canons in the last section that may promote such reunification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper summarizes briefly the formal relationship between the American Sociological Association (ASA) and the seven regional sociological societies, suggests that little has resulted from the affiliation, and recommends (1) the ASA Committee on Regional Affairs be terminated, and (2) four other ways of linking the national and regional societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper has attempted to outline the present situation and trends in scholarly cooperation between Latin American and U.S. social science, tracing significant changes in recent years, and identifying policy-shifts in foundations and other granting agencies as a primary cause of such changes. It has briefly analyzed the current structure of international cooperation. Finally, it has presented the most coherent position running contrary to growing optimism, which would predict a mutually advantageous cooperative framework.
Changes implemented by foundations and granting agencies have carried cross-national cooperation to a level beyond which U.S. scientific establishments cannot or are not likely to go. In other words, the alternative to the new forms of cooperative research is probably no cooperation at all. Tins is, in essence, what the radical critique argues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This contribution to consideration of "Talcott Parsons and Politics" explores the kind of optimism of sociology's "incurable theorist" that is evident in his mature view of the USA as the world's "New Lead" society. Statements related to optimism can be identified in his extensive writings and this article focuses upon its expression when as an "early career academic" in the late 1920s and 1930s he laid the foundations for his life-long work in sociology. Parsons' sociology developed as the USA's twentieth century contribution unfolded. His "moderate optimism" about the viability of the American experiment shares deeply and intimately in his claim that sociology had finally emerged as an analytical social science oriented by the theory of social action. His mature work considers the "societal community" to be the peculiar focus for sociology's special scientific attention. The USA has taken on this "New Lead" role at the same time that the societal community itself has emerged from within American experience. The discussion here is as much a personal memoire of the author, revisiting efforts to understand how the earliest stages of Parsons's sociology were maintained by him over a long career. Parsons sociological scholarship exhibited American characteristics. As sociology's "incurable theorist" he sought understanding of his own (American) situation, and its context, past and present, seeking to promote a social science that contributed positively to global society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

US-American sociology has largely failed to examine the transformation of mediated communication of the past 20 years. If sociology is to be conceived as a general social science concerned with analyzing and critically scrutinizing past, present, and future conditions of collective human existence, this failure, and the ignorance it engenders, is detrimental. This ignorance, we argue, may be traced back to the weak self-identity, institutionalization and position of media sociology in the discipline. Our argument here is threefold: 1) There was an opportunity structure for specialization, that is, a venerable research tradition in media sociology since the first half of the twentieth century. This tradition links back to classics in sociology and peaked at a time (1970s and 1980s) when the discipline differentiated institutionally and many new sections emerged in the American Sociological Association. 2) Despite this tradition, media sociology has not become established in sociology in the United States until recently. 3) Lastly, we locate reasons for non-establishment on three distinct but interconnected levels: the history of ideas in media sociology, institutional/disciplinary history, and disciplinary politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents a commentary on a paper by Robert A. Stebbins in a previous issue of The American Sociologist which provided an account of professional and amateur sociology in the U.S. Stebbins' account of professional and amateur sociology unearths a set of boxes nesting in one another that according to the commenter, contain issues going to the foundations of current social science, conceptually and institutionally. The most encompassing issue is embedded in Stebbins' assertion throughout that the discipline and profession of sociology exists, has definable and agreed aims, and is thereby a special stream in science as well as within social science. He presumes that there is some accurate version of sociology into which laypeople can and should be indoctrinated. The commenter relates that many institutional structures support this version of the division of scientific labor, a version based more on professionalism and careerism than on ideas about the unity of science. Skepticism, is missing from this account of sociology. The proposal mostly takes up issues of craft, unrelated however to the research questions for which the particular tactic of volunteer sociologists would be more useful than another.

This article presents a commentary on a paper by Robert A. Stebbins in a previous issue of The American Sociologist which provided an account of professional and amateur sociology in the U.S. Amateur sociology was the parent professional, the child Park was a professional writer, an amateur sociologist. He did join the sociological fraternity, to that extent he became professional. Sumner wrote a book it got adopted by sociologists. Sumner accepted the adoption very unwillingly, and made no change in his writing or thinking. At present, sociology has a professional structure, and can control what is published as sociology, but the commenter is grateful that people cannot control what is written on sociological matters or in the sociological mood. The commenter cites that unless sociologists get much more bureaucratized, it will always be possible for people to be writers of sociology. At present, sociology has a professional structure, and can control what is published as sociology. There is no virtue in being amateur. Researchers, professional or not should not try to publish their reports in the regular journals. In this way new lines of thought and research will reach the widest audience of interested readers.

Charles Tilly's work on repertoires of contention and social mechanisms was pathbreaking. In this article, I argue that his understanding of both concepts overlaps with social-theoretical work informed by the philosophical tradition of classical American pragmatism. There is no evidence that Tilly was influenced by pragmatism, but I argue that the overlap is substantial enough that large portions of his oeuvre can serve as illustrations of the explanatory power of pragmatist social science-and that Tilly's theorization of mechanisms in particular would have been even stronger had he engaged pragmatism directly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the nature of anti-scientific climate prevailing in the U.S., discuss the origins of this hostility, and present an alternate vision for how sociologists, as social scientists, should respond to the challenges of doing social science in anti-scientific times. The current campaign against science represents a well-coordinated sectarian effort that seeks to replace scientific knowledge with religious dogma in classrooms. Religious conservatives seek to overthrow the theoretical foundations of modern biology and replace them with a theory of divine creation.

Columbia sociologists from the 1940s to 1970s probed core elements of post-industrial society. Lazarsfeld, Merton, and their colleagues conducted many detailed studies that contributed to a paradigmatic revolution. Yet the revolution went unrecognized at the time. Why? Many Columbia sociologists saw themselves as closer to Marx, and only years after their core ideas emerged, was the term "post-industrial" applied by Bell. They still contributed a middle-range set of propositions and findings that cumulatively transformed the broader paradigms. Their work offers useful concepts and propositions to interpret the post-industrial society of the early twenty-first century. These concepts are presented in tables contrasting them with Marxist and individualist concepts. Key examples are explored. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article traces the relationship between the Doctor of Philosophy degree and the institutionalization of American sociology. The organizing of disciplines in American higher education, which occurred as the twentieth century began, involved gaining recognition for distinctive areas of research, organizing disciplinary associations, creating journals dedicated to fields, creating professorships devoted to fields, granting doctorates in fields, and organizing administrative units (i.e., departments) providing some level of autonomy to fields in colleges and universities. The primary datum reported in the article is the presence of professors with doctorates, teaching sociology in American institutions of higher education. Doctorates are granted by institutions either in the subject of instruction or in some other subject, or even in no subject at all. As sociology departments came to be organized, the connection between doctorates and institutions came into view; the degrees came to be brand names, as it were. Thus this article also focuses on the establishment and consolidation of departments of sociology. It is not a mere matter of administrative units being organized officially; noting that would be an exercise in mere chronology.

Over the course of more than three decades, Larry Reynolds has presented a series of thoughtful critiques of the sociological enterprise as it is organized in the United States. This essay will focus on two volumes published recently by Larry Reynolds on the sociology of sociology, hereafter referred to as "Reflexive" and "Self-Analytical", which are essential reading for anyone who is remotely concerned about the state of American sociology. Throughout the pages of these texts, Larry Reynolds raises important questions about the fundamental nature of sociology.

The article focuses on the professional ideology of social pathologists in the U.S. C. Wright Mills stirred a debate with his indictment of an alleged historical conservatism of U.S. sociology which had developed around the study of social problems. In his classic discussion of the influence of ideology on the sociology of social problems, The Professional Ideology of Social Pathologists, Mills argues that the U.S. sociologists and social problems books in the first four decades of the twentieth century tend to be apolitical or aspire to democratic opportunism. Mills attacked most of the thirty-two social pathologists who had a lasting influence on the direction of U.S. sociology as being a conservative, homogeneous group. The transformation of the emphasis on sociology as social science versus social alarmism and political advocacy blurred rapidly after Mills's premature death in 1962 and the onset of the cultural revolution of the Sixties. In contrast to political science, economics, psychology and arguably anthropology, a great many sociologists are not just politically liberal but are on the radical left wing, particularly in the realm of the sociology of social problems.

This article examines the research activity in sociology by faculty at liberal arts colleges. We used Sociological Abstracts to compile a list of journal articles published from 1960 to 1999 for which the first author's affiliation was among the 161 schools classified as liberal arts colleges by the Carnegie Foundation. We rank the colleges by the number of journal publications over the whole time period as well as a subset of the last ten years, and provide information on which journals are the most frequent outlets for liberal arts faculty. Finally, we provide some evidence that this research output is linked to teaching effectiveness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article describes the contemporary appeal of the Chicago sociology perspective in France, and analyzes the bases of its attraction. Old Chicago sociology/anthropology was a heady and fruitful conjoining of ethnography, urban ecology and geography, interactionist social psychology, and pragmatist epistemology. Using the vocabulary of science, it spoke of the city of Chicago as its laboratory, but what this meant was that its students were exhorted to exit the library in order to roam, observe, and undertake what then were termed case studies and today, urban ethnography. The laboratory was particularly exciting because of the growth in the population in Chicago, Illinois. Immigrants had been flooding the U.S. and its urban centers throughout the late 19th and early 20th century, and Chicago was a nodal point. Within Europe of the period there had also been migrations on a lesser yet also significant scale, especially from the east to the west. In France, Europe, an throughout the world, an intense process of urbanization has been occurring. The challenge has been how to understand and describe the processes and their consequences, other than being publicly appalled. Jammed side by side in these immense cities are clusters and communities of families and peoples differing in languages, religions, ethnic-cultural origins, and social race.

This article takes up the discussion recently stimulated through the volume, A Second Chicago School? That book's connecting postwar Chicago sociology with the "Chicago approach" of mainly the 1910s to 1930s is extended, going back as far as the turn of the twentieth century and also forward to the 1990s, with a view endorsing Simmelian interactionism as opposed to Spencerian utilitarianism. Albion Small, first Chairman of the Chicago Department, introduced a Simmelian sociology to the U.S., and the question arises to what extent this legacy is being realized until today. Using Anselm Strauss as a case in point, the article has two main parts. Part One recapitulates various attempts at understanding the phases and realms of Chicago sociology. The focus is not only on the various "Chicago Schools" that may be separated, but also the differences in the work of three scholars who often are grouped together under the label of Chicago, namely Herbert Blumer, Robert Park, and Everett Hughes. Part Two recollects Strauss's intellectual biography, as life of a scholar determined to make a contribution to modern sociology, in the name of "Chicago interactionism." Strauss's work, however, came to endorse Spencerian-type utilitarianism more than Simmelian-type interactionism from the middle 1960s onwards--thereby joining in with anti-structural functionalism tendencies in American sociology.(n1) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article asks whether the discipline claiming professional expertise in matters social and institutional is willing and able to employ its own analytic techniques in the process of keeping itself robust, relevant and responsive. In short, can what is right with sociology fix what is wrong with sociology? The answer would appear to be a resounding no. Sounding off about the crises and contradictions of sociology has a long if not distinguished history since at least Mills (1958) and Gouldner (1970), but in recent years has become a veritable cottage industry. A review of the meta-sociological literature finds a common theme that invariably revolves around a crisis in the discipline. Wolfe (1992) for example, argues that despite the fact that sociologists are more theoretically and analytically skilled than at any point in the history of the discipline, sociology remains a weak field that is in a state of turmoil. Becker and Rau (1992 and 1971) argue that sociology in the 1990s is hopelessly fragmented and that the discipline lacks a theoretical, methodological, or institutional center. Collins (1986) worries that sociology has a bad case of the doldrums and is faced with an institutional malaise.