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C. Wright Mills' The Sociological Imagination (1959) represents one of the most influential texts of postwar American sociology. The title has become a catchphrase that stands for a style of thought that transcends both theoretical dogma and the constraints of mere methodological rule following. This article sets out to show that Mills' vision of the sociological imagination had more in common with the then dominant lines of scholarship than his broadside against Parsonian grand theory and Lazarsfeldian abstracted empiricism in the main part of the book would suggest. Among the tools that Mills introduced as fostering the sociological imagination were 2 × 2 tables. The article traces the use of such tables over time and across scholarly communities and shows that, contrary to Mills' own estimate, these tables describe a common nexus between his own work and that of Parsons and Lazarsfeld. All three scholars made ample use of this formal tool to construct sociological arguments at central places of their oeuvre. Given its shared use across otherwise divergent schools, the 2 × 2 table is a prime example for what historians of science have called paper tools, i.e. statistical formulas, algorithms, tables, diagrams, graphs, etc., that structure scientific research across different schools of thought and theoretical approaches. Drawing on the notion of paper tools, the article advances a post-Kuhnian perspective on the history of sociology that shifts the research focus from substantive ideas to formal tools and demonstrates elements of commensurability among presumably incommensurable schools of thought. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents a step-by-step guide for the undergraduate instructor in how to launch a student journal. The authors describe their experiences over the past four years in publishing the student journal at Wayne County Community College in Detroit, Michigan. Though there were some problems and pitfalls, the authors concluded that it was a rewarding educational experience and strongly recommend its replication at other undergraduate institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Political sociologists have spent more time investigating how charismatic leaders gain support than how they lose it. Which factors drive voters to abandon a charismatic leader? Is defection associated with social and political identity, economic circumstances, democratic commitments, interactions between these, or other factors? In this paper, I use the case of Juan "Evo" Morales and Bolivia to explore how support for a charismatic leader erodes. A mixed-methods approach enables a descriptive portrait of loyalists and defectors from nationally representative survey data, along with an analysis of how voters describe their political allegiances from in-depth interviews across two summers of fieldwork in La Paz. The study finds that in the case of Evo and Bolivia, loyalty to and defection from a charismatic leader are affected by education, ethnic identity, and sex. Using these findings, the paper shows how responses to charismatic counter-roles are shaped by voter positionality. Differences in voters' interpretation of a given situation depend partly on identity. Support for a charismatic leader is not necessarily support for charisma, and voters defect for various reasons, including some cited by other voters as grounds for their persistent loyalty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper provides insights on the contemporary relevance of Talcott Parsons's writings by analyzing 20 textbooks from Austria, Germany, Great Britain and the United States, published in 1999–2019. Whether having knowledge of Parsons is helpful to today's students and other interested readers, and what knowledge, deserves consideration. Therefore , the paper asks: Which future gains of readers did textbook authors envision when they chose, in their own present, to discuss (or not) sociological writings from long ago? In order to understand what future opportunities authors wanted to create for readers, as well as how they chose to discuss Parsons to this end, the paper draws on Niklas Luhmann's notion of memory. The analysis reveals several key competencies that student and other interested readers might acquire through having knowledge of Parsons' writings and its critiques. These potentials would have gone unnoticed if authors had assessed Parsons's relevance only according to whether he adequately considered conflict or not, as has been done in many debates about his work until today. Moreover, through analyzing how authors remembered Parsons, I distilled two key selective criteria: First, what must be remembered in order to enable readers to acquire those competencies? Second, which memories would be impeding for readers and thus be better left out? These criteria are relevant for research, as well. Looking at the future, it would be desirable that sociologists let Parsons assist them in their research in many different ways, if possible. As a result, we might see a revival of Parsons that enables genuine advancement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the authors views on the effects of social changes on sports in the U.S. The article refers three papers on this subject. These paper includes sociologist August Cornte's concern for the social changes in the early portion of the 19th century. Comte viewed societies in terms of their statistics and dynamics. It is apparent in the article that scholars have approached the study of social change in society and sport from diverse perspectives and hold differing views as to its outcomes for society in general and sport in particular. The papers referred to here, explore diverse aspects of social change in sports. The first paper, criticizes the discipline of sociology of sport for its lack of attention to social change in play, sport, and leisure contexts. Arguing that social change is ubiquitous and deserving of our attention, she provides an overview of theoretical frameworks for the analysis of social change, including cyclic theories, a variety of developmental formulations in sociology and anthropology, and structural functionalism. The second paper provides an excellent case study of social change in a nation state and its influence on sport.

Christian Smith's paper 'The Incoherence of 'Culture' in American Sociology' is a valuable provocation that can prompt us to reflect on the role of concepts and on the role of agreement on the definition of concepts in scientific research. In this comment paper, I raise questions about Smith's empirical expectation that sociologists should agree on a concept of culture based on debates in the sociology of science. I also suggest that in terms of the future agenda for the sociology of culture, we should distinguish between dialogue and clarification on the one hand, which I agree is needed, and standardization on the other hand, which seems incompatible with open-minded empirical research. Rather than work on agreement on what culture is, we might work on clarifying relevant distinctions among dimensions of culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the author's comments on the works of sociologist Robert F. Winch regarding permanence and change in the American family. The author suggests that there may be two significant aspects of a network of extended kin in a nuclear family. One is the literality of kin contacts and other is the presence or absence of formal kin groupings.

Between 1915 and the late 1930s W.I. Thomas developed a theory of human motivation steering a middle course between determinism (biological or social) and unfettered free will. The theory of the four wishes posited that all human beings, across time and place, are driven by a set of connected wishes mediated by the social and physical environment. These are the wish for new experience, the wish for security, the wish for recognition, and the wish for response. Between 1917 when Thomas first published the wishes and the early 1930s when the wishes fell out of use, they were the dominant micro theory of motivation invoked by sociologists in the United States (particularly those associated with the Chicago School). This paper explores the rise and fall of Thomas's wishes in the context of the sociology of ideas, with particular emphasis on fluctuations in Thomas's professional status. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on the future of sociology archive as a discipline. The major U.S. university libraries now go to extraordinary lengths and expense to collect the papers of writers, even many who as yet have not been categorically identified as important. There is a serious lesson in this-one might even say, a vital one-for sociology as it confronts an uncertain future. As everyone of a certain age will recall, the saga of Roots, in book and television formats, single-handedly gave American blacks a collective sense of historical importance that up to that point was absent from mass culture. The new Holocaust Museum in Washington is the most eloquent and emotionally wracking contemporary expression of historical memory for public consumption on a grand scale. Other examples can be found at every juncture of the "culture wars" that have been raging in the United States since the 1960s. Every politically self-aware group is supposed to venerate its real or imagined past, both at individual and collective levels, not only because such joint expressions enhance self-conceptions but also owing to the strategic advantage.

This paper tracks Mead's induction into the sociological canon, focusing in particular on American sociologists who made a concerted effort to reconstruct Mead as a systematic social theorist and apply his ideas to empirical research. It distinguishes two interpretive strategies of framing the classic and constructing the canon -- the politics of orthodoxy and politics of the open canon. The politics of orthodoxy aims to ascertain the original meaning and close the textual canon, creating a template relative to which alternative interpretations are judged incomplete, unorthodox, or wrongheaded. The politics of the open canon proceeds on the assumption that the classic text lends itself to conflicting interpretations, that room for the honest difference of opinion must be safeguarded, and that the capacity to further productive inquiry rather than the adherence to an orthodox view recommends a particular construal as viable and canon-worhty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Erving Goffman's written legacy bears on sociology as a whole, or so he argued in his Presidential Address to the American Sociological Association (Goffman, 1983). However, while being celebrated as important to the discipline, his work is also interpreted in inconsistent ways, often downplayed or marginalized, and even neglected. This paper claims that Goffman's "well known aversion to self-disclosure" (Shalin, 2013) does not justify overlooking his trajectory, from the unknown "margins" of a Canadian small town to the elusive "center" of American sociology—and much less does it justify still circulating assessments of his personality, crafted while overlooking his life experiences—and, especially, his writings. Anecdotal evidence of his "enigmatic" personality (Lemert, 2003), or "bad-boy outrageousness" (Berger, 1986), works as a derailing tactic, leading to unwarranted appraisals of Goffman's personality—and, more importantly, to the neglect of crucial aspects of his work. From a theoretical standpoint, Simmel's treatment of "the stranger" as a social relationship, and Merton's concept of "moral alchemy", are used here to try to make some sense of the mixture of celebration and neglect still surrounding "Goffman". Historical data was gathered in part from the "Erving Goffman Archives'' (Shalin, 2013). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The decline of interest among sociologists in the works of Talcott Parsons over the last several decades has been driven in substantial respects by a belief that he was personally conservative in his political views and that his theoretical formulations were rigidly tied to a conservative view of social order. The present paper reviews Parsons' major political involvements through the course of his career from his student days through the last decade of his life. The review demonstrates that Parsons was a typical academic liberal of his time and that his liberalism was expressed especially in several major applied essays. In the 1930s, he was an early and active opponent of Nazism. During World War II, he taught professionals to administer occupied territories and nations effectively. After the war, he advocated for government support of the social sciences, citing the important contributions they had made to the war effort. In the 1950s, he wrote a famous critical analysis of the Joseph McCarthy movement in American politics. In the 1960s, he contributed supportive essays to the Civil Rights movement. Later in the decade and in the 1970s, he contributed to the protection of academic freedoms while also proposing accommodations to the demands of the student movement for more "relevant" teaching and greater participation in university governance. Throughout his career, he taught and worked closely with students of various political views and sought to protect their rights of freedom of political expression. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the last decades of his life, Talcott Parsons was often indicted as conservative. More recently, his analyses of contemporary society have been perceived as obsolete. In the present paper, I argue that both these accounts are wrong. Parsons's biographical and intellectual profile is clearly – and rather consistently – that of a New Deal liberal. His "ate" works, moreover, articulate an original view of the integrative processes in modern societies that is still both theoretically compelling and politically relevant. Parsons's view of modernity has made possible the development of a sophisticated theory of societal pluralism, able to deal analytically with the astonishing variety of structural strains (and resources) arising from an increasingly diverse – in racial, religious, ethnic, sexual and moral terms - membership in contemporary societies. His sociological enthusiasm for inclusion has never been blind to the likelihood of backlashes and the strength of discontent such inclusion may bring. His work provides thus some important directions in the current storm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article documents the writings of sociologist Samuel Wilson Blizzard. Some of them are "The Attitudes of Rural and Urban High School Students Toward the Values of Rural Livings" published in 1946. "The Value of Man," published in February 1948. "Problems in Meeting Religious Needs in the Rural-Urban Fringe" an address given at the National Presbyterian Town and Country Conference, Champaign, Illinois. "Social Participation Patterns of Husbands and Wives Who Are Migrants in the City" published in 1952, "The Church and the Community: A Discussion Guide for Christian Action; and an Instructor's Manual," published in 1952, "The Rural Church and its Community Relations," a paper presented at the Rural Leadership Institute, University of Kentucky, College of Agriculture and Home Economics, Lexington, April 1953, "The Place of the Social Sciences in Theological Training for Rural Ministers, The Christian Mission in the Rural Social Process," (New York: National Council of Churches of Christ in the U.S.A., Department of Town and Country Church), October 1955; and many others.

This article reports on the Fifth World Congress of Sociology organised by the International Sociological Association (ISA), at the Shoreham Hotel, Washington D.C., during 2-8 September, 1962, under the auspices of UNESCO and in collaboration with the American Sociological Association. The meetings brought together 1,030 participants from fifty one countries. Three main themes dealt with were, sociologists, policy-makers and the public, the sociology of development, the nature and problems of sociological theory. Many of the 240 invited contributions and the main papers presented to the plenary sessions are being published in the periodical "Transactions," volumes I and II of which have already appeared. Volumes III and IV will be published during the spring of 1963 and will contain reports on the discussions, a representative selection of the shorter papers and a list of the participants. Grants from the American Council of Learned Societies, the National Science Foundation and the Social Science Research Council enabled the ISA to pay the travel expenses of most of the principal contributors and to offer free charter flight tickets to 80 young research workers from twenty countries.

In this article the author presents various topics published in the Winter 1952-53 issue of the journal "Public Opinion Quarterly." In the first paper published in the issue, Paul F. Lazarsfeld expresses the hope of American sociologists that international communications research can help to fill certain methodological and substantive gaps which have not yet been successfully bridged in the domestic sphere. He stresses particularly the opportunities open in this new field for bringing social researchers and policy makers closer together in their endeavors in the area of social progress. The reader may look at this paper as an expression of mature speculation about the opportunities, hopes, and dangers in the new field. In the next two sections, the author moves into the work-a-day realm, encountering the people who, in spite of all the handicaps of an ill-defined field, unproven methods, and shortage of trained personnel, have gone ahead and contributed substantively to international communications research. In the section on "Techniques" some very pertinent problems of methodology are frankly stated. The issue is concluded by a short report on the first meeting of the Committee on International Communications Research, which took place during the last annual convention of the American Association for Public Opinion Research.

This paper tries to explain an intrinsic clue in Mills's empirical study of American society and the epistemological proposal of social sciences. In his stratification trilogy, which consists of New Men of Power: America's Labor Leaders (1948), White Collar: The American Middle Class (1951), and Men of Power (1956), Mills depicted a grey picture of the mass society, where the power was concentrated in the hands of small groups of elites while the labor and white collar were powerless and indifferent. The Sociological Imagination, which was published after the trilogy, inherited the substantive analysis of the mass society in the trilogy and further raised the problem of human nature in the mass society, namely, the problem of so?called "happy robot." On the other hand, it discussed what stance, position, and intervention intellectuals and social researchers should take when facing such a mass society in formation. In particular, Mills proposed how to use the sociological imagination to pursue the ideal of a democratic society. Thus, the trace from the "mass society" to "the sociological imagination" constitutes an intrinsic clue to an understanding of Mills. On this basis, the paper further discusses the two main issues in Mills' sociological writings, namely, to explore the possibility of social change, and to care about the human meaning in modern society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper introduces a sociological approach to the study of art and literature and demonstrates its value as a methodological intervention in the field of comics studies. Known as the 'production of culture' perspective, this approach argues that all artistic work - including comics - is the product of collective, often routinized, human activity. Therefore, it is not sufficient merely to study the text and/or the artist to whom the work is directly attributed. Rather, to fully understand any artistic work, one must also study the larger social and organizational context of its production and dissemination. In the first part of the paper, I will provide an overview of the production of culture approach, discussing some of its foundational theorists and their respective intellectual contributions. Sociologists covered will include Howard Becker, Pierre Bourdieu, and Richard A. Peterson. In the second part of the paper, I will present an example of how this approach may be applied in scholarly practice. Using the transnational comics publishing industry in Japan and the United States as a case study, I will show how the conditions and mode of production help to determine the particular sorts of texts that are actually created. Finally, I will conclude with a discussion of the limitations of the production of culture approach and possible directions for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1945 Davis and Moore, following an earlier formulation by Davis, proposed a functional theory of stratification that was intended to account for what they contended was the "universal necessity" for social inequality in any social order. Beginning with an article by Tumin in 1953, the Davis-Moore theory elicited regular analysis, commentary, criticism, and debate through the 1970s. Although professional work on the theory has largely ceased since the late 1980s, the Davis-Moore theory remains perhaps the single most widely cited paper in American introductory sociology and stratification textbooks and constitutes "required reading" in hundreds, if not thousands, of undergraduate and graduate courses throughout the United States. The present paper traces the history of the debate and attempts to explain the theory's longevity and vitality in the face of what has amounted to largely negative assessments by other sociologists over the preceding fifty years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents information on the activities of various sociological organizations and departments of sociology in universities in the U.S. "Rural Sociology," a new journal to be published quarterly, is being established this year by the Section on Rural Sociology of the American Sociological Society. The managing editor of this journal, which is to be published by The Louisiana State University Press, is T. Lynn Smith of Louisiana State University. The annual meeting of the Eastern Sociological Conference will be held on April 18 and 19 in New Haven, Connecticut. The central topic of the Conference will be Social Theory and the Social Order. The annual Spring meeting of the Ohio Sociological Society will be held in Columbus, Ohio, April 24 and 25, 1936. The Pacific Sociological Society held its Seventh Conference, together with Coast Economists, at Mills College in Oakland, California, December 27-28. In September 1935, E. D. Tetreau, formerly analyst with the Federal Emergency Relief Administration and Associate Professor of Rural Sociology at Ohio State University, accepted a position at the University of Arizona as rural sociologist on The Experiment Station staff.

This paper presents a brief overview of the growth and development of the North American Society for Sociology of Sport, beginning with its formation at the Second CIC Symposium on Sociology of Sport at Minneapolis in 1978. Although the organization's maturation and success may not be highly correlated with the development of the subdiscipline itself, consistent interest in sport sociology topics and the absence of a forum for exchange are viewed as important factors that led to its formation. Historically, the organization has consisted of diverse perspectives which have been viewed as an organizational strength. Recently, however, a form of subtle intolerance seems to be promoting a separate identification for various scholarly perspectives. A cau- tionary warning is issued against the possible rise of elitism that could evolve from the creation of false cleavages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article addresses the concern expressed by many within the Pacific Sociological Association in recent years that their regional organization is increasingly seen by Research I University sociologists as no longer meeting their professional needs, thus leading to (a) decreasing rates of membership and participation within, (b) a decline in the amount of high quality professional work associated with, and (c) a diminishment of the professional status of, the PSA. Using data gained from a membership survey of sociologists at the 29 Research I Universities in the Western Region of the United States and Canada, the empirical basis of these claims is examined, and their possible implications explored. The results of this investigation suggest that although PSA membership among faculty members at PhD-granting institutions may have declined somewhat over time, this has occurred for a number of very comprehendible reasons, some associated with but others external to the Pacific Sociological Association as a professional organization. In light of these findings, it is the main recommendation of this paper that the PSA should continue to approach this issue in a careful and reasoned manner, doing what it reasonably can to try to meet the professional needs of Research I University sociologists in the 21st century, but being mindful not to jeopardize what has made the PSA important and attractive to its growing number of other constituencies in recent years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The sociology of the South, as a substantive area research interest, emerged during the 1800s as a means to rationalize and preserve the cultural norms of slavery era whites who would soon experience seismic social shocks including the Civil War and emancipation of enslaved blacks. The person singularly cited as the architect of this area of study is Howard W. Odum. Although Odum is identified as the person most responsible for the development of this field, archival data indicate that W. E. B. Du Bois and the men and women of the Atlanta Sociological Laboratory were its first practitioners. In this paper evidence is offered to show that Du Bois's Atlanta University efforts predated Odum's North Carolina research program. Additionally, an explanation for Du Bois's marginalization in the existing sociology of the South literature is offered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the creation of an intellectual biography of the U.S. sociologist Talcott Parsons. The researcher discusses Parsons' doctoral dissertation dealing with capitalism that was analyzed by sociologist Max Weber, and how Parsons' work delivered sociology from social Darwinism at the turn of the twentieth century. The author supports Parsons' work on the basis that he was a thinker and academician who did not use inconsistent analysis. The author utilized Parsons' archives at Harvard University, such as Parsons' paper "The Problem of Controlled Institutional Change."

The history of innovation as a category is dominated by economists and by the contribution of J. A. Schumpeter. This paper documents the contribution of a neglected but influential author, the American sociologist William F. Ogburn. Over a period of more than 30 years, Ogburn developed pioneering ideas on three dimensions of technological innovation: origins, diffusion, and effects. He also developed the first conceptual framework for innovation studies-based on the concept of cultural lags-which led to studying and forecasting the impacts of technological innovation on society. All in all, Ogburn has been as important to the sociology of technology as Robert K. Merton has been to the sociology of science and Schumpeter to the economics of technological innovation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that Charles Sanders Peirce contributed significantly to the founding of American sociology, doing so at the level of philosophical presuppositions or meta-sociology. I emphasize two of his ideas. One is semiotics, which is virtually the same as the anthropologists' concept of culture. This latter concept in turn was essential to clarifying the sociologists' idea of the social or society. Peirce also created the modern theory of the dialogical self, which explained the symbolic character of human beings and proved foundational for social psychology. Politically Peirce was a right-wing conservative, but his ideas eventually contributed to the egalitarian views of cultures and sub-cultures. In addition his ideas contributed, by way of unanticipated consequences, to the 20th-century human rights revolutions in the American legal system. Thus he was both a founder of sociology and a founder of American political liberalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Between 1885 and 1930, as sociology was becoming an academic discipline, sociology was also being practiced intelligently, innovatively, and self-consciously outside the academy in the social settlements that grew up in America's major cities. In this paper, we first define and give a brief overview of the settlement movement in America; second, we show how the settlement workers were sociologists in their self-definition and action and in their relations with other sociologists; third, in the body of the paper, we describe the sociology done by the settlements in terms of the empirical research they undertook and the theory they created. Our argument is that settlement sociologists produced empirical studies that were both substantively significant and methodologically pioneering; that they did so in terms of a coherent social theory unique in its focus on "the neighborly relation"; and that both their research and theory were part of a critical, reflexive, and activist sociology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the success of The Sociological Quarterly in becoming more than a regional journal in the U.S. from 1960 to 1970. The journal Midwest Sociologist was an official semiannual publication of the Midwest Sociological Society. In the late 1950s, the need for revamping the form and content of the journal in order to accommodate a flow of papers became increasingly important. Accordingly, in 1960 the Midwest Sociologist became The Sociological Quarterly. The name chosen for the renovated journal was important for two reasons. First, the transition from a semiannual to a quarterly provided a publication outlet for qualified manuscripts that had been delayed or rejected due to space limitations. Second, the adoption of the title The Sociological Quarterly signified an attempt to avoid the regional connotations of the term Midwest and to initiate a journal of general interest and utility to sociologists of varying professional persuasions from all sections of the country. During the decade, the journal has been consistently publishing manuscripts from all parts of the country and can no longer be considered merely a regional journal of limited geographical scope. Data regarding the geographical sources of published papers indicate a steady tendency toward extraregionalism.

This article provides an overview of the issue which gives emphasis on both the plenary and the presidential addresses presented at the 1985 annual meeting of the Mid-South Sociological Association held in Little Rock, Arkansas. The success of the meeting was made even more so by these two extremely timely and thought provoking papers from Bill Catton and Marsha McGee. Both not only reflect the introspective nature of sociology and sociologists at this time, but also provide direction for the discipline. Hence, it is hoped that the quality of both the 1985 plenary address and the 1985 presidential address serves as an encouragement to those who would like to attend the 1986 annual meeting in Jackson, Mississippi.

Tolbert H. Kennedy was an administrator and professor at Washington State University. 1944-1965. During that time this university reached rank three on the all-time list of schools producing doctoral-level black sociologists. Only the University of Chicago and Ohio State were more successful than Washington State in that respect. This paper contends Kennedy's is humanitarian interest in practical race relations, conditioned by his southern upbringing, led him to work privately in the production of potential leaders who would press for human equality. In so doing he showed teaching to be a relationship which enables teacher and learner to he mutually fulfilled. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a paper on the three levels of value-judgment in sociology. The three levels are--value-judgments as objects of sociological research, value-judgments as postulates of sociology, and metasociological value-judgments. It is evident that the sociologist cannot avoid making metasociological value-judgments. Whoever carries on a sociological investigation makes the metasociological value-judgment that the problem he studies is worth studying. Whoever constructs a sociological system makes the metasociological value-judgment that this particular approach is worth while and significant. A little reflection will show that these value-judgments belong in an entirely different category from those which have been discussed. Those discussed previously ascribed some value to the phenomena which sociology studies to the present condition of race relations in the U.S., for example while metasociological value-judgments ascribe some value to sociology itself, to sociology in general or to some particular approach or application of sociology.

Contrary to the belief of many who have read George Homans' recent works, he is not the first sociologist to make explicit use of the concept of exchange. From 1883 to 1885 Albert Chavannes published in The Sociologist a series of papers titled "Studies in Sociology" which treated "The Law of Exchange" and three other social laws. Chavannes' use of the exchange concept was very similar to Homans'. Also, Chavannes emphasized the importance of a systematic empirical sociology but did not contribute to it as Homans has done. This comparison of the two men fills a gap in the history of American sociology and puts Homans' recent contributions in historical perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]