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In the history of American sociology, there have been two periods of clear theoretical domination, that of the Chicago school, from the teens until the mid-thirties and that of the functionalists, from about 1950 until the mid-or late-sixties. The remaining periods have been interregnums or "free for ails," in which no theory group or point of view has been able to establish supremacy. The article review some of the major trend in these articles and then consider what they mean for the current state of sociology. For those who may not be current on methods, new causal theory is an extension of correlational techniques, made possible by the computer and based heavily on the use of partial regression coefficients. Toward the end of the period, these articles began doubling up on themselves and bickering over methods, much as happened to the Warner and Hunter spurts. A third methodological grouping was historical sociology, which had a small but growing representation in these journals. Evidently the field of history itself, which has been switching from the qualitative study of elites to the more quantitative study of whole populations, has been quietly going sociological.

This essay provides information on the translations of books or articles, reviews published by the main French journals about U.S. work in sociology, as well as quotations from and references to U.S. texts which are all indications of U.S. influence on French sociology. The focus of this essay is U.S. texts translated into French or reviewed in French, in other words, texts available to a wide audience of non-English readers. Other channels of exchange and direct quotations from original texts deserves analysis, but many French sociologists are unlikely to read the original works in English. The bulk of this essay is limited in scope to translations of books over a very long period. Then the range of our observations will be broadened to reviews of U.S. books and articles by U.S. sociologists published in a selection of main nonspecialized French journals over the last two decades. While books often reach a wider lay audience, these journals are mainly meant for specialists. Selecting such a corpus implies determining who is a U.S. sociologist. In this paper, United States refers to the author's usual place of residence, a criterion sometimes difficult to apply, whether because of lack of information because some sociologists are often on the move. The choices made also imply defining sociology, and that is a more difficult issue; social and cultural anthropology are included whenever fieldwork takes place in industrialized societies; historical sociology is excluded when its main concern is about societies in the past. Approximately one hundred first translations of sociology books can be listed over the 1880-1998 period. The risk of omissions in listing these books is higher for years before 1970, since computerized library catalogues are of little help before that date. The median delay between original and French publication is nine years. The number of translated books reached its peak in the early 1970s.

The article critically appraises "Neofunctionalism," edited by Jefrey C. Alexander. This volume is the first entry in a projected series entitled "Key Issues in Sociological Theory." It is anticipated that further entries will appear annually with the purpose of bringing together revisions of papers presented at the Theory Section of the American Sociological Association's (ASA) yearly miniconference, held in conjunction with the ASA meetings. In bringing together a collection of articles under the rubric of "neofunctionalism," Alexander aims not merely to make generally available a number of interrelated essays by a group of contemporary scholars; he expressly seeks, in addition, to crystallize a "theoretical movement" allegedly "wide and deep" already and still "gaining momentum" both in American sociology and "throughout Western sociology", to appropriate creatively the functionalist legacy of Talcott Parsons. In this sense, "neofunctionalism" is intended as an alternative to neo-Marxism, and Alexander reports that he actually chose the former term "in conscious similitude" to the latter.

This article presents the author's views on the review of the book "The Great American Values Test: Influencing Behavior and Belief through Television." The review of the book, The Great American Values Test names not only the book but also a thirty-minute television documentary designed and produced by the authors-well-known professors at Washington State University when the research was conducted-to foster the adoption of egalitarian and pro-environment values, beliefs, and behavior. Their analyses lead them to conclude that the program, the primary "treatment" in a comprehensive test of their theories in a natural setting, had significant effects on values and attitudes for at least six weeks and on behavior for at least two to three months after it aired. Since much of the mass-media-effects literature suffers from a lack of significant findings or from methodological flaws, or both, the authors devote a great deal of time and effort to avoiding such outcomes. Substantial portions of their book explain and justify their procedures.

The article focuses on intellectuals who had influenced the field of sociology in the U.S. It mentions journalists who integrated social science into their stories and commentaries including Walter Lippmann. The impact of Lippmann on society and politics in the U.S. during his lifetime including his relations with several presidents of the country is cited. The author says the American Sociological Association is looking for editors including the author's successor.

This article considers the significant contribution of teaching to sociology. Teaching is a vital means to expand the influence of sociology. Through teaching, the largest audience can be reached. Accountability for teaching is a growing issue and is likely to remain. Legislators, administrators, parents and students in the U.S. are demanding better teaching. Teaching was by far the area in which new methods of evaluating faculty have been developed, with 69 percent of all institutions and 77 percent of all research institutions claiming this activity. Evidence of a research project's impact on teaching is being used to evaluate faculty, with 45 percent of all institutions citing this criterion. Many people argue that sociology lacks internal consistency, or, put more positively, that it is a multi-paradigm science. Expanded focus on teaching can move sociology toward greater coherence. Several faculty members in each sociology doctoral program must know enough to teach such a course, and many must be knowledgeable mentors. Progressive doctoral programs should establish positions for faculty with specialties in teaching sociology to mentor both graduate students and other faculty members.

It is estimated that more than 200,000 students take an introductory marriage and family course in the United States each year. More than two out of every five of these students take such courses in sociology departments, and many of the remainder of these students have sociologists as instructors, even though the course may be offered in an interdisciplinary department. To accommodate the rapid growth in marriage and family courses and the increasing interest in this topic among college and university students, a large and growing number of textbooks has been written. This article evaluates marriage and family textbooks commonly described as "applied" or "functional" in approach. The primary purpose of this article is to evaluate the use of social science research in these textbooks. Marriage and the family became a visible specialty within the social sciences in the 1920s due to the attention given to the topic by sociologists such as Ernest Burgess and his colleagues. Since that time, of course, the field has crown immensely.

This article focuses on author Mark Schneider's observations in the new sociology of culture during the 1980s in the U.S. His principal argument holds that interpreting culture throws one out of the naturalistic register and into an interpretative one, which risks losing precision and demonstrability. The author's work deliberates over a number of theories and interpretative dilemmas that face the new sociology of culture. In one he puts Charles Taylor's book, Interpretation and the Sciences of Man, and Oliver Sack's book, Awakenings, through a number of hermeneutic hoops, concluding that their warrant for reliable knowledge is not very robust--that interpretative work of their styles is a riskily soft foundation on which to build science. In another chapter, the book, The Model of the Text, is paired with canonical expositions of deep play and thick description dating from roughly the same time. With similar motives and techniques, Schneider again shows them to be less useful for cultural analysis that they have commonly been regarded over the last two decades. In his account of the Royal Society of Restoration England, and its symptomatic character John Aubrey. This odd man, who clearly seconds Schneider's ambivalence about the relation of art to science, managed in his harum-scarum life to found modern archaeology and write dozens of solid short biographies. At the end, Schneider makes a valuable distinction that perhaps cultural meaning comes in two main forms, one amendable to naturalistic evaluation, the other, forever tried to mere edification and thus never truly explainable. That is, culture will offer its admirers a certain level of understanding through counting and ordering, but only so much.

This article presents information about the book "Street Corner Society: The Social Structure of an Italian Slum," 3rd ed., by William F. Whyte. The major emphasis of the first edition had been on the theory of informal group structures and leadership patterns, the organization of ethnic ghetto life, and the limited means that the people of Cornerville, now acknowledged to be Boston's North End, had to link them with the larger society around them, and thus to opportunities for upward social mobility. And now, forty years after the original research was completed, the third and presumably final edition of the book has appeared. This book deserves wide reading among research scholars and social activists. Whyte does an important service by his willingness to raise difficult questions about the meaning of social research and the various ways that such research may impact on the individuals who were the subjects of that research. He presents a compelling case for how sociological knowledge, theoretical and methodological can be used to tackle and resolve human problems.