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Religion remains among the most powerful and pervasive forms of social behavior around the world, including the United States. Yet academic sociology has long ignored its relevance and is consequently neglecting a responsibility to provide accurate and comprehensive explanations of social life to the world. I consider several reasons for this neglect, including the uncomfortable topic of anti‐religious bias within the discipline. I propose that correcting our collective suspicion toward religion, religious people, and the specialists who study them is not only ethical, but it helps us do better science, prevents us from excluding minorities who are also more likely to be religious, and helps us earn the trust of the wider public. I conclude by calling for a reprioritization of religion in the discipline. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The essays in this special section originate from a 2022 panel discussion on decolonizing migration studies. The authors reflect on the sociology of migration field in the United States and their own intellectual trajectories. They discuss the challenges of shifting the field away from its focus on migrant integration within national borders and propose a variety of decolonizing strategies, from interrogating established categories of migration to integrating scholarship from the global South. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this essay, I argue that sociology programs should offer curricular opportunities for undergraduate students to study the actual mechanics of social change in the form of explicit training in the philosophies and practices of community organizing and direct action. That training, I assert, is separate from a content‐driven approach to the study of social movements, or the inclusion of community‐based research courses. Grounded in an analysis of the roots of the discipline of U.S. sociology as situated in the practice of empirically informed democratic engagement, I shift the focus away from a debate over whether or not critical pedagogy is, or should include, activism. Instead, I focus on the extent to which our students are, in practice, learning concrete organizing skills to change power relations, regardless of the content area or pedagogical style. In doing so, I bring back into the conversation a tradition that the profession seems to have forgotten, and think of ways in which contemporary sociology programs in the United States can better contribute to the advancement of a grassroots, or a humanistic public sociology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores the ways that sociology fails to address the needs of community college sociologists and marginalizes them as outsiders. It argues that the structure of the discipline, both training and focus, is the major barrier to becoming inclusive. Based on this, it explores ways in which sociology can be inclusive of community college sociologists and how they can address their needs. Ironically, as a result of this position, community college sociologists may be in the best position to challenge the structure of the discipline and create social change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using MacKendrick (2017) as a springboard, this essay explores the March for Science as an example of social mobilization. I lay out some concerns regarding the use of this tactic as a response to attacks on science and suggest some ways sociology could contribute to the development of more efficacious actions to address the denigration of scientific knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The U.S. Constitution includes civil and political rights-as individual rights-but does not include what is internationally understood to be 'human rights,' namely rights we enjoy as equals, including economic, social, and cultural rights, and protections for vulnerable persons, such as children, minorities, mothers, and refugees. The United States has not ratified any international (United Nations) or regional (Organization of American States) human rights treaty, is not a party to the Rome Statute that established the International Criminal Court, and is no longer a member of the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization. It might be concluded that Americans do not know what human rights are. It is more complicated than that. While opinion polls show that Americans often endorse individual rights-e. g., the rights of women-they do not frame them as being interdependent or being within the purview of government. Can we conclude that human rights have no place in the United States? Not at all. This article concludes by showing that many U.S. institutions of higher learning have programs in human rights and that some academic associations, including the American Sociological Association, recognize human rights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay responds to article 'How Has Bourdieu Been Good to Think With? The Case of the United States,' which appears in this issue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay describes Robin M. Williams Jr.’s maturation from a precocious college student to a fully formed sociological researcher by describing various personal and professional encounters with significant events of the twentieth century. I reflect on the ways the historical cataclysms of depression and war galvanized Williams and his peers to work toward radical change, both in their lives and in the world about them. The result was a remarkable societal transformation that improved the lives of ordinary citizens in many and diverse ways. The essay concludes with the hope that sociologists will once again be in the vanguard of social action, as Robin Williams was during his long career of teaching, research, and public criticism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I point to contradictions in American individualism not unlike those suggested by Robin M. Williams Jr. I go on to suggest how twenty-first-century sociologists might better understand this aspect of American exceptionalism: not as an egoistic, asocial individualism, but as a covenantal, social voluntarism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article profiles on the sociological works of Robin Murphy Williams, Jr., founding editor of "Sociological Forum," died on June 3, 2006 in Irvine, California. It explores the various sociology books and the cycle of professional career of Williams in American sociological studies. It highlights on the first editorial essay of Williams following his founding of the "Sociological Forum." Moreover, the article discusses various essays published within the issue, which tributes and reflects on Williams' works, including on William's body of work, on the rejection on the concept of values and another on social and cultural trends linked to individualism.

Fifty years ago, Robin M. Williams Jr. described eight notable changes in U.S. sociology, one of which was the “widespread diffusion of a relatively clear and sophisticated conception of the place of values in sociological study, as an object of research, as a factor in behavior, and as an element to be controlled in the prosecution of research” (Williams, 1958:621). In this essay, I ask what has become of that rising interest in the sociological study of values? I follow three distinct trajectories of sociological research on values, briefly describing the contributions of each, and identifying several lines of inquiry that strike me as particularly important and promising for the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this essay, I discuss Robin M. Williams Jr.’s unique sociological approach to the study of race and the ways his background and the historical moment in which he wrote contributed to his sociological vision. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this essay, I reflect on the ways elements of Robin M. Williams Jr.’s research agenda might be carried forth in a meaningful way to sociological studies of twenty-first-century phenomena—in particular identifying the ways in which the facts of human interaction, of human expectation, and of human influence shapes outcomes of significance for our present, our future, and, therefore, our past. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes gendered social identity in Japan and the United States, countries with comparable postindustrial economic systems but distinct cultural traditions. Using national surveys (1995), we find gender differences in value orientations to be neither systematic nor consistent. They often disappeared after controlling for demographic and human-capital variables, though not so often for Japan. Other variables proved more important predictors of values than gender, although in different ways in Japan and the United States. We conclude by reassessing the use of the term gender in social research and the cultural meaning of gender relations by addressing the feminist concerns with issues of gender location. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents an interview with renowned U.S. sociologist Howard S. Becker. In the interview Becker compares the meaning of "worlds" in his work to the meaning of "fields" in the work of French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu. According to Becker, a "field" is a metaphor that involves caricatures of people who engage in relations of domination and behave in specific ways. In a "world" people's actions are shaped by those around them and adjust their actions based on how people respond. The article discusses the differences between the organization and study and teaching of sociology in the U.S. and France.

In-depth interview data reveal that workplace context and the social characteristics of clients and coworkers play an important role in shaping how upwardly mobile individuals experience class at work. While respondents did discuss their working-class backgrounds as a liability, as might be expected, they also described ways in which they experience their backgrounds as an occupational asset. These findings challenge the notion of a linear relationship between class and culture, suggesting instead a complex, fluid relationship between class, culture, and occupation, where the “class” of a job does not necessarily determine the class culture needed for that job. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article is based on sociologist Robin M. Williams lecture presented at an annual meeting of Eastern Sociological Society at Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1995. In his important book "American Society" published in 1960, Williams stated that the increased public attention and recognition of the social sciences demand careful self-criticism and continuous revision based on penetrating research and theoretical reflections. The goal of the lecture is to show how diagnosis of social problems and prescriptions for their solution are related, in part, to the analytical concepts one uses. A study that Williams conducted with sociologist Margaret Ryan about community experiences in school desegregation included facts and theories that could have assisted the Supreme Court. A good society achieves its effectiveness by way of both contributive and distributive justice. The gift of poor White families to the society at large is a working model of contributive justice and the gift of poor Black families to the society at large is a working model of distributive justice.

In sociology, work in formal theory is more extensive and intensive today than at any time in the past, but remains invisible to some, including S. Zhao [(1996) "The Beginning of the End or the End of the Beginning: The Theory Construction Movement Revisited," Sociological Forum, Vol 11, No. 2, pp. 305-318]. I trace the growth of formal theory in sociology focusing on theoretical research programs and show that, whereas formal theory came after the books on theory construction, it was not based on them. Elementary Theory's research program provides an example of that discontinuity. Some misunderstandings concerning formal theory can be traced to the Maryland Theory Conference of 1990 and a critique of selected ideas of that Conference is offered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay examines some of the trends in educational, sociological, and social psychological research on inequality of educational opportunity for African Americans in the United States. A review of theoretical approaches and methodological developments is followed by an overview of research and theory in selected substantive areas; social allocation processes in schools (ability grouping tracking etc.), the relationship of poverty to academic achievement, and educational attainment The article concludes with recommendations for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

African American sociologists are beginning to confront the use of "African American/Black" as a homogeneous sociological category. In doing so they are laying the ground for improvements in social scientific research in general One aspect of that improvement involves the use of people of African descent as subjects for theoretical statements about humanity at large rather than merely about other African descendent populations. Another aspect involves confronting the extensive segregation within the discipline around the research done by African American scholars. This introduction discusses the implications of these issues for African American scholars and for the discipline as a whole. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Refugees are individuals forced to flee from their homelands because of categorical persecution or because they are bystanders caught in the crossfire of war or civil strife. Such involuntary exile often leads to alienation in the most literal sense of the term. Whether expellees, escapees, or displaced persons, refugees share a common fate and, often, a common destiny: those who are dispossessed are dependent on others to provide care, succor, protection, and assistance. Yet responses to their plight are almost invariably highly selective, the quality of mercy being strained by considerations other than pure altruism. This paper, a commentary on the sociology of exile, attempts to convey the sense and significance of estrangement and responses to it in both historical and con temporary contexts. Early sections deal with concepts and concerns; later ones examine United States refugee policies and practices relating to exile, ethnicity, and the politics of rescue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although other nations have participated extensively in international peacekeeping operations, the use of American soldiers as peacekeepers is a recent change in their military role, and is not well understood by American society, the U.S. Army, the soldiers, or their wives. We use a social constructionist perspective, which has rarely been applied to the study of the American military, to analyze the definition of peacekeeping missions and of the nature of the military, by soldiers assigned to peacekeeping duly, their families, and other social institutions such as communications media and churches. We suggest that, because peacekeeping is an inherently ambiguous process, this theoretical perspective may prove useful in understanding the social definition of the emerging military role of peacekeeper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on the populist turn on sociology and social history of the U.S. in the year 1960. Scholars began an unprecedented effort to speak for the powerless or to help them speak for themselves. Voice itself validates insurgency, they seemed to claim. Both fields had long since undertaken studies of poor, powerless people; witness the Pittsburgh Survey of 1903 and R. H. Tawney's early writings on the 16th century. Inspired by civil rights activism as well as by subsequent demands for empowerment of women, homosexuals, Chicanos, Native Americans and many others, scholars tried to counter the condescension, denigration, and dehumanization they detected in earlier analyses of popular collective action. They insisted that routine social arrangements harmed ordinary people, and that only force held ordinary people back from overt resistance. In short, compliance does not consist of conscious rule following or straightforward exchange, but of pursuing personal agendas by maneuvering among obstacles, obstacles put in place by other people and past experience.

This paper has several objectives. First, it demonstrates the utility of employing an array of metatheoretical tools (paradigm, paradigm bridging micro -- macro, integrated paradigm, theoretical syntheses) to analyze the recent history of mainstream American sociological theory. Second, it shows that we have moved through three rather well defined epochs in sociological theory over the last three decades and are entering a fourth. Third, it demonstrates that the trend in recent years has been away from theoretical separatism and exclusivity, and toward theoretical synthesis and integration. Finally, and relatedly, the integrated sociological paradigm that I sketched a decade ago, or at least something very much like it, it shown to be now much closer to being a reality, perhaps even a defining reality, in sociological theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the population of the United States grows older, we might expect the role of the elderly to change. Among the many questions that could be asked about changes in the age stratification system, here we focus on the engagement of older persons in leadership roles. The period covered is roughly 1940 to the present, and the areas of leadership examined are representation in Congress and in professional and managerial occupations. if agespecific rates of representation remain constant over time, the proportion of leadership positions filled by older persons will increase at the same pace that the proportion of the adult population age sixty-five and over is increasing. On the other hand, if changes are occurring in the age stratification system, the role of the elderly in leadership may be either decreasing or increasing more rapidly than the population is aging. The data examined here show that over the past several decades the engagement of older persons in leadership positions has declined rapidly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past twenty years, the expansion and differentiation of education in the United States have been explained in many different ways, but most explanations give little or no importance to the role of government officials pursuing their own interests. And all ignore how business's and students' influence over educational policy is due less to their direct participation in policy-making than to their ideological influence and possession of resources that policy-makers covet. In this paper, I use the case of the massive expansion of occupational education in the community college to develop an alternative explanation of educational policy-making. This analysis draws on, but also critiques, recent work in political sociology on the roles and interests of the "state managers" who head major segments of the state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A sociological framework for relating the division of labor to the market areas of manufacturing firms is reformulated. The growth of exchange and the dynamics of differentiation and integration are discussed as key processes that explain changes in these market areas from local to regional to multiregional to national and also the rise of industrial regions. A case study of nineteenth-century plow manufacturing in the United States illustrates the utility of the proposed framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The debate over the "community question" has generated several perspectives on the sources of ties to the territorial community in modern society. This paper attempts to empirically assess the utility of each model for predicting the number of ties to the local community and extra-local area, using data on voluntary association memberships in Seattle. Results indicate that the "community of limited liability" perspective is most accurate in predicting the importance of social, economic, and temporal investments for local memberships, and social position for extra-local memberships.' [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our objective is to examine how several aspects of the class structure influence the prevalence of artistic institutions. The analysis is based on quantitative comparisons of the 125 largest metropolitan areas in the United States. Most of the literature on the history of art concludes that artistic developments depend on the patronage of an elite-as noble patrons, as rich donors, or even as affluent bourgeois donors and audiences. Whereas these conclusions imply that class inequalities further the growth of the arts, our empirical findings indicate the opposite. Both lesser inequality and reductions of inequality in a metropolis increase a variety of artistic institutions, and these influences persist when other influences on these institutions are controlled. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Noting that sociology, like other disciplines, usually discusses itself as if its content-its body of knowledge-were created by a wholly intellectual process, I am adopting in this paper the approach of the sociology of knowledge by emphasizing the "existential factors" that influence knowledge. I employ the poorly developed concept of occupation, and argue that in the United States academic disciplines like sociology are best analyzed as professions, which are organized occupations. American professions sustain their present position by the functional differentiation of members into separate administrative, research or scholarship, and practice roles. Practice roles serving lay clients or patrons provide the basic economic support of the profession as a whole. The characteristic practice role of most academic arts and science disciplines is teaching. Using sociology and its special position in the under-graduate curriculum as an example, I suggest that the contingencies of teaching influence what knowledge is used, underlie at least part of the public image of the discipline, and determine some of what becomes part of the published corpus of the discipline's knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented for this issue which includes reviews of books written by Richard Alba, Claude Fischer, and Thomas Lyson which focus on U.S. sociology.

The article comments on the twentieth year of the "Sociological Forum" periodical in the U.S. in 2005. Since the first issues under its founding editor Robin M. Williams Jr. in 1986, the periodical has tried to encourage critical analytical exchanges among sociologists. In its pages, implicit and explicit 'conversations' between scholars debate the ideas that rule our intellectual lives. Contested facts, alternative methodologies, opposing theories, competing perspectives and distinctive world views punctuate those conversations. The March 2005 issue of the "Sociological Forum" offers a group of articles that effectively represent a range of these conversations, each in its own way issuing a challenge to other scholars.

This article is a note from the new editor of the journal "Sociological Forum," for the first issue processed in the Albany office in New York. The issue is similar to the issues from offices in Ithaca and Stony Brook. Two reasons for this continuity are that the papers in editorial process at Stony Brook were sent to Albany in the editorial office transition and that editors are at the mercy of the authors who submit manuscripts. The plea made to authors by editor Stephen Cole was that if one had a manuscript ready for submission, one should first think of the "Sociological Forum."