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This paper examines the idea of sociological film that encourages sociological imagination, which refers to the capability to recognize the intersection of biography and history. The paper identifies six key dimensions of sociological film through a thematic analysis of different classic approaches to sociological imagination: sociological life, structure-actors relationship, critical perspective, academic awareness, fluidity of meaning, and promotion of sociological imagination. This paper provides concrete examples to demonstrate the distinctive features of sociological film and how it relates to, and differs from, other films that address social issues, including documentary films. The paper argues that sociological film is essential in fostering sociological imagination by offering a unique lens for analyzing and understanding social phenomena. Sociological film has the potential to inspire social change by increasing awareness about significant social issues and promoting critical thinking and reflection. The paper concludes by emphasizing the significance of collaboration between sociologists and filmmakers in advancing sociological imagination through the medium of sociological films. It highlights the importance of actively engaging with the public in visual research methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Traces the history of the sociology department at Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri, from its position as a top department in the 1950s and 1960s to its decline in the 1970s, and termination in the 1990s. Criticizes the administration for allowing the department's prominence to decline. Maintains that the closure will hurt all social science disciplines at the university. (RW)

The main purpose of this paper is to provide a biographical sketch of the late Hans L. Zetterberg and a historical background to a translation of an essay based on a lecture given by Zetterberg in Stockholm in 1995. In it, he recounts his time at the Department of Sociology at Columbia University in the years 1953–1964. This essay is full of insights into an inspiring and formative period for Zetterberg in the United States, particularly in the stimulating milieu that was Columbia, at this time the center of American sociology led by Robert K. Merton and Paul Lazarsfeld. In the introduction to this translated essay, I give a brief overview of the establishment of sociology as a discipline in Sweden, and the transfer of knowledge between the United States and Sweden (and Europe, more broadly), embodied in Hans Zetterberg. In the post-WWII years, American sociology, which had a strong positivistic imprint, played an important role in shaping the beginnings of Swedish sociology. However, the transfer of knowledge went both ways, with Zetterberg, a semi-central and often neglected figure, being both a significant contributor to sociology at Columbia in its period of greatest prominence, and in his native Sweden. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the historical origins and theoretical underpinnings of the maps of the city of Chicago produced by sociologists at the University of Chicago between 1920 and 1934. I argue that the three mapping schemes produced in those years-the concentric zone map of The City (1925), the base map of 75 community areas and the census tract maps published in three volumes of Census Data of the City of Chicago (1920, 1930, 1934)-draw upon distinct historical antecedents and have distinct theoretical implications. The first scheme exhibits the strong influence of Johann Heinrich von Thünen's location theory and maps produced by early Chicago city boosters, the second most clearly exhibits the influence of the Social Survey Movement and of pragmatist philosophy and the third, the influence of the financial and governmental interests of the organizations that made up the Chicago Census Committee. Literature on early urban sociology and mapping in Chicago has hitherto not adequately differentiated these three mapping schemes or problematized the implications of their differences for our understanding of the theoretical commitments of the 'Chicago School.' [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers three types and levels of ignorance about the professions: expert, amateur, and professional. The empirical data comprise my own book about the professions, the Wikipedia article on that subject, and the 105 papers that cited my book in 2008. In these three I separate ignorance of facts, of literatures, and of skills, characterizing each type of ignorance by its mix of the three. Amateur ignorance is mostly of skills, and professional ignorance mostly ignorance of collateral literatures. Expert ignorance reflects the use of theory as a mnemonic device and so is particularly insidious. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper traces the historical development as well as the analytical and ideological uses of 'industrial society' as an object of knowledge. The binary opposition traditional society/industrial society and the latter tripartite division traditional, industrial, post-industrial society have been central to the development of sociology as a discipline. Like all analytical concepts 'industrial society' is both a way of seeing and not seeing. It focuses attention on some social attributes and processes rather than others. The first objective of this paper is to evaluate whether or not this object of knowledge focuses attention on crucial aspects of social life, or whether, instead, it shrouds and distorts more than it reveals. The second objective is to evaluate the ideological import of the concept. Did it, and does it still, provide a realistic and achievable model of the way we ought to live together? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Anthony J. Blasi’s book, Sociology of Religion in America: A History of a Secular Fascination with Religion, is a valuable contribution to the history of the sociology of religion. In this comment paper, I assert that this text is a fine addition to any graduate-level course on the sociology of religion, and I discuss three different threads of discussion that masters and doctoral students could explore in class. These discussion threads include: 1) Can sociologists maintain objectivity when studying faith-based phenomena? 2) How can sociologists best study religion today? 3) How does the current study of religion today compare to the subfield a century ago? Educators can use this text as a springboard for their students to think, discuss, and write critically. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Founded in 1929 by Emory S. Bogardus, the PSA is the oldest regional sociological association. During its 85-year history, the association has steadily increased in membership, participation, registration and size of its annual meeting, complexity of organizational structure, and has moved from a gemeinshaft to a gesellshaft culture and to a more inclusive and democratic association. Much of this change has mirrored the growth of sociology in general and of higher educational institutions in U.S. and has been made possible essentially through the work and effort of volunteers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Robert Nisbet returned to full time teaching at the University of California, Riverside, in 1964, after ten years as Dean and Vice-Chancellor. The author was an undergraduate student in sociology at Riverside during the years 1965-67 and recalls Nisbet as a teacher. This was a prolific period in Nisbet's writing career and many of the ideas that appeared in his books were introduced and explored in the courses that he taught. Two of these courses - 'Community' and 'History and Systems of Sociology' - are discussed in detail. The presentation of the material in these courses provides insight into how Nisbet understood the themes of the sociological tradition and how he thought these were best communicated to students. The paper also considers how Nisbet, an avowed conservative, was perceived by some of his undergraduate students during a time of cultural ferment and political unrest in America. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

Although much overlooked by both sociologists and educators, Emile Durkheim's The Evolution of Educational Thought ( EET; lectures from 1904-1905) not only provides extended insight into the developmental flows and disjunctures of Western education and scholarship from the classical Greek era to Durkheim's own time but also indicates the fundamentally sociological nature of these transformations. As well, and in contrast to the more heavily structuralist, Cartesian rationalist approach that Durkheim adopts in his earlier, better known works (especially The Division of Labor in Society, Rules of the Sociological Method, and Suicide), Durkheim's EET may be better characterized as a historically informed, sociological pragmatist approach to the study of education as a humanly engaged process. Given the extended amount of material covered in EET and the necessity of establishing in some detail Durkheim's position on the development of educational thought over the preceding 2000 years, it has been necessary to divide this material into smaller packages for the purpose of presentation. In the first six chapters of EET Durkheim addresses (a) the Greek and Latin foundations of educational thought in France, (b) the role that the early Christian church assumed in shaping and preserving education and scholarship, and (c) the nature and emphasis of the Carolingian Renaissance (8 and 9 centuries), along with its relevance for the development of universities in Europe. Following (1) an introduction to Durkheim's EET, (2) a synopsis of the first six chapters of EET, and (3) a highly compacted overview of the remaining 21 chapters of this volume, this paper concludes with (4) a commentary on the necessity of attending to the historical development of Western social thought for a sociological analysis of knowing and acting. An epilogue briefly considers (5) some ways that sociologists, classicists, and other students of the human condition may contribute to this exceptionally consequential venture [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The so-called 'Bellah affair at Princeton' began in March 1973 when a harsh but nonetheless ordinary academic fight over the appointment of Robert N. Bellah as a permanent member of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton found its way to the wider public sphere. Using published and unpublished evidence, the paper shows how two different interpretations of academic freedom were put forward by Bellah's supporters and opponents, and how the sociological profession understood the episode as a disciplinary attack on the part of the hard sciences and historical disciplines. The emerging symbolic constellation led all the relevant actors to develop a shared interest in the rapid oblivion of the episode: the Bellah affair became a lose-lose game which all the players wanted to end as rapidly as possible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Meso history is that branch of the history of sociology that focuses on social relations, that is, patterns of connection among groups, group members, and group meanings, as explanatory factors in the shaping of sociology. The methodology of meso history consists of strategies for discovering, documenting and patterning connections. This paper explores those strategies in terms of three moments generic to the research process in social science– moments of movement from intellectual curiosity to conceptualization, from research question to data collection and from data to presentation of findings–focusing on the distinctive permutations on this research process that occur in the practice of meso history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Robert Nisbet's ideas on sociology as an art form are examined in the light of Nisbet's intellectual biography as we as in the tradition of other writers who have approached sociology and history as an art. Nisbet conceived sociology as an art of landscape and portraiture, in which neither theory nor methods should be allowed to become 'idols of the profession.' His thought on sociology as an art is best understood as part of a long-term effort to re-center sociology in a conservative intellectual tradition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relations between George Herbert Mead's pragmatism and Wilhelm Dilthey's hermeneutics have been examined in recent years in a new light: based on the former's close contact with the latter during the course of his studies in Germany in the 1880s–90s. These relations seem to vanish afterward, with Mead's return to the United States. Yet the common interests they share in the formation of a new social science keeps their respective developments in parallel; from psychology to history, they both share common interests in the reformulation of the concepts of Geist or Mind of the Hegelian legacy, through an interest in meaning and symbols as keys to the interpretation of the social world. Although there are important differences in their evaluation of the definition of the scientific enterprise that keeps natural sciences and Geisteswissenschaften apart for Dilthey, but are rather seen in their continuity for Mead, there are numerous points of intersection in their views. This article seeks to highlight those similarities, without neglecting the differences between Mead and Dilthey, in order to bring hermeneutics and pragmatism closer in their capacity to shed light on each other, and on the requirements of sociological analysis in contemporary society to be widened and deepened by adding the psychological and historical dimensions to its perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article seeks to rewrite the genealogy of sociology of death by revisiting the history of sociology, from the 1830s to the early twentieth century. Providing an overview of sociological studies of death that consolidated into a subfield in the 1990s, it shows how recent attempts at including intersectional and decolonial approaches link with considerations of death in sociology's early history. Engaging sociological thinkers Harriet Martineau, Émile Durkheim, Ida B. Wells, and W.E.B. Du Bois, the article seeks to provide an alternate genealogy of the sociology of death and to make a case for mainstreaming the study of death within the discipline. It shows that questions of suicide and Black death were a significant part of these scholars' writings and that attention to loss and mourning shaped emergent understandings of the social, sociological frameworks, and methodologies. This view supplements efforts toward encouraging intersectional and geopolitical approaches to the study of death in sociology, approaches that are more needed than ever before to contend with the scale of loss and suffering that is filling lives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite being foundational for the origins of modern sociology, religion as a topic of inquiry and the sociology of religion as a subdiscipline have long remained relatively marginalized in the sociological field. Losing sight of sociology's profound initial engagement with religion, or a one-sided understanding of it as indifferent or unsympathetic towards the subject, may have contributed to this phenomenon. This article revisits early sociologists' and the larger family of social philosophers' involvement with religion to offer a more nuanced history. It argues that the religious question was crucial for the development of sociological thinking in three interrelated dimensions: epistemological, normative, and empirical. Epistemologically, social theorists questioned whether the scientific study of society was reconcilable with the premises of faith. Normatively, they were directly or indirectly involved with the question of whether religion should continue to exist and in what forms. Empirically, the main interest was how religion was changing via modernization, or whether it would survive it, which prompted methodological innovations and became the core of the secularization debate. Focusing on key social thinkers from the Enlightenment to the classics of the long nineteenth century, the article discusses the significance of the engagement with religion and secularity for the consolidation of sociology in these three dimensions, as well as its ongoing relevance for the discipline's future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Behavioral sociology has developed unique features which have caused controversy and confusion in the discipline. In this paper, we briefly describe the history of behavioral sociology, and show how its major forms have been applied to behavioral analysts in complex organizations, laboratory experimental analysis of social exchange and social process, and behavioral macrosociology and theoretical extensions We also briefly examine criticisms of behavioral sociology on grounds of tautology, reduction, the omission of internal states as relevant data, and behavior control. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the history of the sociology of corruption. It is shown that from the 1950s until the early 1970s, the sociological discourse on corruption was dominated by a functionalist approach that tried to offer a counter-intuitive perspective on deviant behavior in arguing that corruption has positive functions for political and economic development. Because of a political reading of this discourse, its ambiguous terminology and some difficulties in methodology, it was largely abandoned in sociology. However, this not only led to a change in paradigmatic orientations in the sociology of corruption, but also to a general decline in interest for the phenomenon in sociology. This gap was filled by economic models of corruption that could bypass some terminological difficulties in defining corruption and, building on this, also enabled a largely quantitative approach in numerically comparing, correlating and ranking corruption. The effect was a consensus on the mostly negative effects of corruption on development, a proliferation of the transparency ideal and the disability of sociology to offer an alternative perspective on evaluating the effects of corruption. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines Robert Nisbet's claim that the first totalitarian experiment of the twentieth century occurred not in the Soviet Union or in Nazi Germany, but in the United States during the First World War. Totalitarianism appeared in the form of mass propaganda, surveillance and repression. It was accompanied by a messianic desire of Woodrow Wilson and his team to transform America into a 'national community.' By 1920, American totalitarianism was effectively at an end but, claimed Nisbet, it left a legacy of centralization that, over successive Democratic and Republican administrations, has stripped the Republic's citizens of social authority and independence; the political trumped the social. Nisbet's depiction of American totalitarianism is contrasted with Hannah Arendt's argument that totalitarianism, thus far in history, is restricted to Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union under Stalin. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reveals the emergence of the idea of development in the sociological study of Latin America in the United States as a specific product of history. We show how in the 1960s, it was the result of interaction between the economic, political, military, and scientific fields generated by the mobilization of resources based on their respective rules. We criticize the idea that sociology had clearly-defined goals during this period. Our research demonstrates, for instance, how the research conducted on Latin America during that period was rooted in 'topical tropism'. Our investigation is based on the analysis of empirical data including institutional information, journal articles and historical archives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Between 1950 and 1980 surveys of academic sociologists revealed a major shift in the relative ratings of the top six Sociology departments. Wisconsin rose from a distant sixth to being rated first or second. Harvard and Columbia dropped from first and second the rankings to as low as sixth seventh. Underlying these trajectories were a variety of historical changes affecting academia and Sociology, particularly in the 1960s. Using complete yearly listings of the faculties of these six top departments I trace the demographic changes that appear to have been instrumental in producing the movement in ratings. In particular, the radical growth and youth of Wisconsin, and the aging of Harvard and Columbia seem to have played an important role. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This embedded case study of the Chicago School of Civics and Philanthropy (CSCP) illustrates the development of disciplinary boundaries during a transitional period of professionalization in the social sciences, particularly for the fields of sociology and social work. Drawing on archival data (e.g., reports, scholarly and autobiographical writings, and correspondence) we first document sociological contributions of the community-based school, one of many progressive projects among social settlements and social gospelers of the day. Then using the lens of an intergenerational struggle reflective of the historical social movements of the period, we analyze the circumstances surrounding the 1920 merger of the CSCP with the University of Chicago. Succeeding their early social settlement mentors, Graham Taylor of the Chicago Commons and Jane Addams and Julia Lathrop of Hull House, a second generation of social reformer protégés became a formidable force in this disciplinary differentiation. This case can be read as a micro-level illustration of a much larger macro-level political contest as professional social scientists vied for control of the definition of social science and its applied mission. The "ghosts of sociologies past" still haunt the discipline today offering important lessons for sustaining a science that joins theory with action to solve social problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The history of sociology has been one of borrowing and synthesizing methods and theoretical frameworks form sister disciplines in largely a reciprocal fashion. While these transitions are often well documented and attributed to a progression towards an 'improved' sociology, a recent increasing interest in the spatial context in which individual and group actions occur has largely gone unnoticed. The current manuscript takes a historical approach in implementing a pseudo content analysis of all articles ever published in mainstream sociology journals. The results show that while sociology has historically been a leader within the social sciences concerning ecological analyses, a recent boom in its presence has solidified its place within the discipline. Ultimately, this is not surprising given the core tenets and roots of the discipline. However, what is somewhat surprising is the relative absence of acknowledgement of such a transition outside of the sub-disciplines of demography, criminology and rural sociology. This manuscript looks to those areas as evidence of future work in the more general field of sociology and couples that argument with historical results substantiating the trend. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Epochal synthesis, retrospective ethnography, and critical comparison identify three distinct ways of thinking about history–sociology relations. Epochal synthesis has lost the favor it enjoyed 40 years ago, but is likely to revive with the rising prevalence of evolutionary explanations for social affairs. Retrospective ethnography requires an ability to reconstruct actors’ dispositions from the historical record, never an easy task. Critical comparison opens the way to specification of causal mechanisms and processes without reconstruction of dispositions. Retrospective ethnography and critical comparison will compete for historical sociologists’ attention for some time to come. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social studies of science have yielded a general understanding of the values and normative structure of scientific discovery, but we can benefit from its further specification and respecification as a social achievement. The socio-structural mechanisms that both create and sustain scientific activity are documented, in part. This article employs data from the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History-the "Science in American Life" exhibition-to investigate how museum representation, and critiques of the representation, as a context for communication amongst and about members of the scientific community, define and solve the problem of "science." The mechanisms of normal science (social and cognitive norms), are reexamined in a situated context of publicly accessed discourse. The history of science is claimed to be as functionally imperative to science as is the laboratory experiment when both modes of communication are interpreted as part of a broader social situation. If science consists of a set of practices "made sense" of in the context of "finding the phenomenon," both and all affirmations and disruptions to this activity make science recognizable as what we all know it to be. Talk "about" science "is" science; facts are not found, they are inseparable [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

C Wright Mills directed sociologists to use sociological imaginations to understand the happenings in the world at large and to understand people through points where history and biographies intersect. Using this approach as it applies to sociology as a discipline, I examine its intersection of history and biography with regard to silencing voices that are not the status quo, i.e. white, male, and middle class, I do this using the metaphor of a magic show with three magic acts: Pulling a White Rabbit out of a Black Hat, Levitation, and The Vanishing Woman. These acts refer to the history of sociology of repressing the voices of the nonwhite, non-middle class and of women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents several letters to the editor on issues related to sociology. Comment on an article by sociologist John Heeren, published in May 1971 issue of the periodical "The American Sociologist"; Praise of Robert Nisbet's letter on sociological identity published in May 1971 issue of the periodical "The American Sociologist"; Acknowledgement of contribution made by sociologist Kai Erikson, through his views published in the periodical "The American Sociologist," to make sociologists realize, the importance of methods and findings of history for their interests.