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This paper is about tendencies to the subversion of sociology as a discipline. It connects external factors of the wider socio-political environment of higher education in the UK, especially those associated with the audit culture and new systems of governance, with the internal organization of the discipline. While the environment is similar for all social science subjects, the paper argues that there are specific consequences for sociology because of characteristics peculiar to the discipline. The paper discusses these consequences in terms of the changing relationship between sociology and the growing interdisciplinary area of applied social studies as a form of 'mode 2 knowledge'. It argues that while sociology 'exports' concepts, methodologies and personnel it lacks the internal disciplinary integrity of other 'exporter' disciplines, such as economics, political science and anthropology. The consequence is an increasingly blurred distinction between sociology as a discipline and the interdisciplinary area of applied social studies with a potential loss of disciplinary identity. The paper concludes with a discussion of how this loss of identity is associated with a reduced ability to reproduce a critical sensibility within sociology and absorption to the constraints of audit culture with its preferred form of mode 2 knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a examination into the history and trajectory of sociology as scholastic discipline in Great Britain, debating the flaws, challenges and possible future of the field. The author heavily cites and responds to a paper by John Holmwood included within the issue discussing the same topic. The author confirms and expands Holmwood's analysis, discussing the divergences which occurred in the discipline between the 1960s and the 1990s. Attention is particularly given to the role of sociology as an interdisciplinary art and the internal fragmentation of the discipline as a result.

There are growing debates about the relationship between the two disciplines of sociology and ethics, particularly as they each become increasingly involved in research and policy formation on the life sciences, especially genetics. Much of this debate has been highly abstract, often stipulating the seemingly different character of the two disciplines and speculating on their theoretical potential – or lack thereof – for future collaborative work. This article uses an existing collaboration between a sociologist and an ethicist, on a study of participation in genetic databases, to explore some of the challenges, for both disciplines, of working together. Building upon this case study, we examine the suggestion that the Aristotelian concept of ‘phronesis’ provides the grounds for establishing one possible theoretical framework with which the disciplines can be bridged. Further exploration of this approach leads to suggestions for ways of thinking about the apparently fundamental divides between the disciplines and for ways of adding to notions of a ‘public sociology’. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]