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The scope and structure of social theory are often analyzed as part of or preamble to theorizing proper. This paper takes an indirect approach to the metatheoretical question, "what does social theory look like in terms of scope and structure?" by analyzing a form of social theory that sociologists tend not to think of as social theory: namely, judge-made law produced in Federal appellate courts. We argue that judges engage in social theorizing on a routine basis, and that they arrive at some of their theoretical claims through a process of theorizing that has features in common with sociological theorizing. The social theorizing of judges holds up a mirror to our own. By recognizing and examining judicial social theorizing as a form of structured, social theorizing, we aim to facilitate a clearer understanding of the social conditions enabling (and constraining) the production of social theory within sociology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports on the use of aerial photographs to study the social structure of a dairy farm neighborhood in St. Lawrence County, New York. The paper compares information from aerial photographs of farmsteads and farm work to data gathered in a sociological survey. I examine how the visual data compares to other sociological information; how photographs, in this research, amplify, supplement, or contextualize nonvisual data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents a response to the comments made by Jay Corzine on the paper Conspiracy, Paranoia, and the Problem of Knowledge, by Charles W. Lidz. Corzine seems to want to define Lemert's empirical assertions and methods. My objections, however, are not primarily directed to either of these but to Lemert's approach to knowing the phenomenon, to his epistemology. Thus, Corzine objects to one of the two ways in which I suggest that one might go about assessing the objective existence of a conspiracy, namely, to use as a criterion the intentions of the actors involved. I proposed this only as one of the ways Lemert might have meant to assess the objective reality of the conspiracy, since it is a frequent criterion in interactionist sociology. My own position is clearly that it is a mistake to separate existence of a conspiracy from the way it is known, something required by any objective determination of whether or not a conspiracy is real. However, suppose for a moment, that I am wrong about what Lemert means and Corzine is right in every detail. Then it is hard to see why the paper is so widely thought to be important. Corzine's Lemert discovered only that sometimes people unite against people who are labelled paranoid but that this has no causal significance in the production of paranoia. Since Corzine's Lemert believes that conspiracy is a frequent occurrence in U.S. Organizations, there is no reason to believe it occurs more often to people labelled paranoid than to those who are not. While this position can argue that the paranoid has grounds for his feelings of persecution, so does just about everyone else. Corzine defends Lemert by condemning him to triviality.