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The paper seeks to demonstrate the inherently practical intent of the Marshall Lectures. It argues that Parsons' views on the relationship between sociology and economics were presupposed by his broader vision of how the social sciences could contribute to the successful functioning of the social order. This conception of a new division of labor in the social sciences arose from Parsons' concern with the shortcomings of both utilitarian economics and Marxism. Evidence from Parsons' writings of the 1930s and 1940s is provided in support of these claims. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Several influential sociologists have questioned the wisdom of criminology's departure from sociology. Omitted from these reflections are the rationale explaining the schism. The present work grants a historical account to fill that absence. Oral histories with 17 leading criminologists, 13 of whom trained as sociologists, have been collected and analyzed. Two domains are explored, professional/organizational and informal/intellectual. First, the departments evidence different hiring patterns, journal content preferences, and journal structures over the past half‐century. Second, there are contrasts regarding ideology; sociology trends leftward. Criminological research concentrates on a dependent variable; sociology links to a unifying orientation. There are concerns that the field's training and research may be too narrow and that the lure of influencing policy could undermine its opportunity to offer critical commentary. Criminology's focus on addressing crime as a practical concern serves some advantages. However, many respondents were conflicted over the loss of an abiding identity. If the field fails to confront its preference for multitheoretical, policy‐driven discussion, it risks being pruned or subsumed without a more fixed sense of identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This issue of "Sociological Inquiry" presents a new and rather exciting feature which I believe will be of great interest to the readers of this journal. They are, for the first time, publishing the winning paper of the Alpha Kappa Delta (AKD) undergraduate paper competition. The editorial advisory board strongly recommended publishing the winning paper as "Sociological Inquiry" is, after all, the official journal of AKD, the international sociology honorary society. They also know that many of their subscribers are students. The editor hope that they enjoy this rather unique look at an aspect of human society that has been virtually untouched by sociologists. As they read this article, he hope also that they come away with a sense of satisfaction with knowing that the next generation of sociologists is being well trained in their discipline. Recognizing that much of this behavior has little to do with intended suicide, and cannot necessarily be linked to other pathologies, Sarah Hodgson interviews individuals who engage in this type of self mutilation through online chat rooms. Her analysis reveals several layers of learning that take place, as well as numerous mechanisms that are employed to maintain their credibility in a society that otherwise stigmatizes such behavior.

The author of the article discusses sociological writing and how the prose used in that field must stand up to the criticism of any English professor. The article discusses the book "Modern English Usage" by H. W. Fowler and the way Fowler defined sociological writing as one that utilizes complicated and pretentious words. The author points out that some criticism drawn by their field's writers is justified, and uses examples drawn from the works of sociologists Henry F. Graff, Jacques Barzun, and Everett Wilson, to show how sociologists often use language germane only to their own field of science.

In his popular introductory sociology text, Stark identifies W. E. B. Du Bois and Albion Small as important cornerstones of the U.S. sociological tradition. While the work of the “Chicago School” is well known in sociological circles, Du Bois’ sociological legacy is not. The Philadelphia Negro ([1899] 1996) is a classic empirical sociological study that is rarely included in discussions of the development of scientific sociology. Likewise, The Negro Church ([1903b] 2003) represents one of the first empirically based sociological studies of a religious institution. Sociologists of religion routinely discuss the contributions of Durkheim, Weber, and Simmel while virtually ignoring Du Bois. This is ironic because Du Bois’ work on religion was based on ethnographic data, field interviews, surveys, and census data. This article provides an overview of Du Bois’ sociological study of the Black Church in the United States by identifying some of the main themes developed in The Philadelphia Negro ([1899] 1996), The Souls of Black Folk ([1903a] 1994), and The Negro Church ([1903b] 2003). These studies reveal that Du Bois was a pioneer in the areas of evaluation research, public sociology, service learning, and congregational studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The publication of the Marshall Lectures is part of the current upswing of interest in what is happening at the boundaries between the economy and society as well as between economics and sociology. Parsons welcomed the opportunity to give the Marshall Lectures because he wanted to apply his system of action to other areas within the social sciences. Parsons' argument in the lectures, however, was too general and his interpretation of Keynes was incomplete. Economy and Society (Parsons and Smelser 1956) represents in these and a few other aspects a clear advance in Parsons' thinking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rupert B. Vance, a distinguished sociologist, was a true Renaissance man whose writings spanned a variety of disciplines and touched on many issues of public as well as professional interest. As is typical of such scholars, his writings are published in a broad range of books, journals, newspapers, and other outlets. Reed and Singal (1982) brought together a selection of his writings on the South as a region, but his works in other areas have not been synthesized. The effort here is to assess his contributions to the field of population. Although no great ideas in population analysis are associated with his name, a review of his publications shows that he often was ahead of his time in dealing with issues and his influence on the field can be profoundly felt. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses gender roles and women's issues as an area of interest among sociologists. A way to examine developments in gender issues is to take as a base population only those individuals citing an interest in this specialty and then to examine the proportions of males and females represented. Gender issues as a specialty originated with observations and concerns occurring principally within the female population of sociologists. The trends, however, do raise several interesting questions on increase in male representation within gender issues. Seventeen percent of the manuscripts submitted to the journal "Sociological Inquiry" over the past two years were concerned with gender roles and women's issue although they do explain why all but one of the authors were female gender roles and women's issues as an area of interest. Thus, the percentage of submissions is much greater than the percentage of those interested in gender roles and women's issues. There are several possible explanations for this situation. First, it may be that the data are not representative of the total population of sociologists. Second, individuals with an interest in gender roles and women's issues may be more likely to submit manuscripts than those with other areas of interest.

Although sociologists have long been interested in the analysis of inequality, there have been relatively few systematic attempts to measure it. Most measurement has utilized popular existing measures such as the Gini coefficient, which unfortunately is relatively difficult to compute and interpret. This article presents a new measure of inequality (B) that is based upon the concept of entropy. The B measure is used for categorical data and complements Theil's (T) entropy measure for continuous data. The B measure is illustrated for both income and wealth data and successfully meets several criteria for evaluating measures of inequality. These include the criteria of scale invariance, sensitivity to transfers, and adequate upper bounds. A further advantage of sociological entropy measures of inequality is that they facilitate interdisciplinary comparison of work on inequality between sociology and other disciplines (such as economics) which use entropy measures of inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The reductionist position of Homans and Skinner has generated substantial debate among sociologists over the past two decades. Much of the debate can be resolved by examining the issues in light of the history of science. A historical analysis suggests that modern sociology has little to lose—and something to gain—by reevaluating its traditional stance on reduction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relationship between political economy and social problems advanced by S. M. Miller in his presidential address to the Society for the Study of Social Problems is analyzed. Political economy is judged to qualify as ritual drama as much as science or as ideology because (1) political economy reduces Maclver's distributive and conjunctural phenomena to collective phenomena, (2) it fails to grapple directly with political and economic obstacles to its proposed policies, and (3) it does invest these obstacles with symbolism. The function of ritual drama is suggested and the concept is applied to the work of other sociologists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Weber's interpretive sociology requires the understanding of motives, affectual states, and actions. These are understandable because they themselves represent or embody interpretations. The Weberian statements are shown to be compatible with a conception of the human individual as a being who interprets subjective experiences in terms of cultural categories and guides his conduct by such interpretations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on the sociology of science. The sociology of science is well established as a specialty in research and in teaching. When something is widely defined as a social problem in modern Western society, it becomes a proper object for study. And science is now considered by many to be, if not a social problem itself, the cause of significant social problems. Concern about science from a sociological perspective has produced the development of a specialty that, characteristically, has followed paths similar to the development of scientific specialties generally. At the beginning, the primary theoretical perspective involved what has come to be called Mertonian sociology of science. Mertonian sociology of science is based on the idea that the social institution of science can be studied as any other social institution. As an institutionalized activity, science has goals and proceeds, through the various social processes, to realize its goals. This conception naturally leads to a variety of questions familiar to all sociologists.

This article focuses on the life story of Jack Seeley as a sociologist. A proper study of Seeley's sociology as a lived practice would be sympathetic in a precise sense, it would honor the terms of that sociology, attempting to understand integrally the full spectrum of personal and social meanings encoded in his life and the dimensions of purpose and tragedy; it would be fully critical and advocative, an agency of loving justice. Each man's life is a gesture of meaning in the social cosmos, and Seeley's life provides one definition of sociology-a definition in the flesh rather than the word, as true definitions are, grown in the day's circumstance rather than inherited. One theme of Seeley's work is to recognize the integrity of the way the personal and the social nestle together, in intimate conjugation, in each human circumstance. Analysis gave Seeley a much richer sense of the complexity of motives which underlie the practices of scholarship and an integral sense of the relation between private and public drama, which came increasingly to be reflected in his work.