Search

This review article assesses recent developments and perspectives in the history of sociology as evidenced in two recently published conference volumes emanating from the ISA Research Committee on History of Sociology. Both these volumes address questions arising from recent debates in the discipline about the nature and role of sociology in the public domain. The article argues that history of sociology is ‘coming of age’ in the richness of topics, and varieties of methodological approaches and perspectives used in attempts more firmly to ground the sociological enterprise in its changing cultural and geographic contexts. The article also raises critical questions about the role of the history of sociology in contributing to a sharpened understanding of the complex and contradictory role of sociology in relation to its publics, and to the meaning of globalization in social science, both in theory and practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sociology has been taught in Paraguay since 1900. In those years, it was included in the training of other humanities, such as law. Despite this early appearance, the education of sociology is now only 30 years old and exhibits an evolutionary lethargy. The discipline was institutionalized not because it was taught as a major course of study, but because of the publication of two national journals that have existed for more than four decades: Revista Paraguaya de Sociología (Paraguayan Journal of Sociology) and Estudios Paraguayos (Paraguayan Studies). These were the means through which the first sociological articles appeared and currently remain principal channels of knowledge in the field. The objective of this essay is to describe national sociological academic production by analyzing the last five issues of both publications. The classification of topics, methodologies, approaches, use of bibliographies, and types of articles was carried out using hand-coded qualitative text analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the uneasy relationship between forward-oriented sociological research and public debate. It explores how implicit assumptions and explicit conceptualizations influence sociology’s ability to address the future. It argues that the stakes are not merely theoretical but also practical because methodological pre-decisions shape sociology’s relation to public debate and its abilities to tackle the emergent challenges of our time. Sociology was geared since its inception toward the collective reflection of not only present or past conditions of social existence but also of possibilities for change. While deterministic and expertocratic closures limited its potential, shifting epistemological, institutional, and social constellations allow the expansion, evasion, and re-emergence of open and contestable future orientations. Case studies related to climate change, globalization, social movements, values, and media are used to explore actual and potential contributions to public discourse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]