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This article discusses the American Sociological Association (ASA) as a portrait of organizational success and intellectual paralysis. There are many important things that the ASA does very well. Its conventions are now quite large and complicated, with more than 200 sessions and close to a thousand persons participating in the sessions. Planning for a convention starts four years in advance with the choice of a site, and program committees work hard for a year in setting up sessions and recruiting session organizers. The sessions have changed over the past few decades, as of 1981. In the early days, sessions were organized more casually, networks of acquaintances being used frequently as means to solicit papers for sessions. Now, participation has been placed on a more universalistic basis. More opportunities are provided for members to exchange ideas and information about work in progress through luncheon roundtables, workshops, and poster sessions. The ASA also is successful in publishing its journals and in running a monograph series. The journals do come out more or less on time and are delivered to the right addresses. If there is an establishment in the ASA, it is composed of persons who are well known, mainly through their scholarly works or other activities that bring them to the attention of the members. Although the ASA must be reckoned successful in a bureaucratic sense, it has not been successful in advancing the intellectual side of the discipline.

In this paper, I would like to try to sort out the conflict of two ways of knowing: on the one hand there are folk methods for constituting positive knowledge and on the other hand there are scientific methods of acquiring accurate, positive knowledge. Both methods try to solve the problem of subjectivity: privately, individually held states of knowing and understanding. In this endeavor, the very existence of social reality is at stake. If persons have, internally, states of understanding that are different from each other in any persistent and significant way, their behavior will be at cross purpose or to no human purpose and gradually behavior will drift irreconcilably apart. There are, of course, social controls by which to resynchronize behavior but in these, too, folk methods are challenged by scientific methods. I wish to emphasize that the human project requires both folk methods and scientific methods of knowledge constitution. The former could ensure collective praxis; the latter could contribute to the authentic self-knowledge of a social life world. Together they could reunite the alienated divisions of the knowledge process. I suggest some canons in the last section that may promote such reunification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article comments on the history and accomplishments of the American Sociological Association. The most astonishing activity of the ASA is an annual production, the extravaganza called the national meetings. In the 1940s and 1950s the national convention was sometimes criticized for being a market fair at which young academics were forced to kowtow to the mighty for jobs, rather than being able to take delight in truly intellectual discourse. Over the decades, the business meetings of the ASA have remained unchanged in one important way. They always have been poorly attended, except for a few times in the late 1960s. This intense apathy is characteristic of a well run learned society. First it shows the good sense of sociologists, for there is little worth capturing at the business meeting. Second, most of the time the Council and the national staff have succeeded in attaining harmony with the vibrations of their constituents, and thus, they often have made entirely independent decisions that pleased the others anyway. Even in the high drama of business meetings in the late 1960s and early 1970s, it should be noted, established sociology was the main target. In response to the sociologist's usual preference for egalitarian policy, the 1960's charges of elitism, and the sheer growth of research money, the number of papers or presentations has grown, certainly faster than the membership.

The article presents the author's response to comments about his article on the importance of terminology in sociological research. Richard Dewey suggests that I violated my own injunction to use the simplest unambiguous term for a concept when I offered "terminological overloading." Instead, he says, I should have used "term overloading." A number of comments made were simply not germane to my proposal. I shall respond more specifically to the misconceptions, as I see them found in the comments by my critics. An alternative strategy for presenting my reflections on terminology occurred to me recently, inspired by hearing a song about speaking Jabberwocky. I suggest a two-by-two matrix of language modes involving two dimensions of variation (1) the degree to which a language is intelligible to its audience and (2) the extent to which the audience finds a communication offensive or inoffensive. I must deal with a frequent confusion in the comments on my paper about the defining characteristics of a "glossary," which has to be distinguished from both a thesaurus and a dictionary. A thesaurus contains only a vocabulary, totally without definitions. The most familiar thesaurus, Roget's, contains a classified collection of synonyms which is not a controlled vocabulary. Admittedly, glosaries in the form of a standard to enhance the understanding of interrealted concepts because they use a classified arrangement of entries which facilitates the comprehension of technical definitions. For social scientists, a lexicon is assuredly more interesting and acceptable than a standard. But it is also apparent that the primary users of a lexicon will be language mediators including indexers, translators, and lexicographers, rathern than scholards engaged in the production of knowledge.

The purpose of the present paper is to test and reemphasize the notion that there is great unevenness in the quality of articles within any journal. In order to demonstrate this variability, the Glenn methodology (listed in parentheses below) was repeated with one major and several minor modifications. Whereas Glenn requested that respondents evaluate journals, for this study the respondents were asked to read and to evaluate journal articles. Articles were mailed in 1975 to a random sample of 1050 (250) professors and associate professors in departments of sociology with M.A. or Ph.D. programmes (Ph.D. only) listed in the Guide to Departments of Sociology, 1974 (1969). Articles in the American Sociological Review (the ASR itself) were used as the standard reference. A weight of 10 was arbitrarily assigned to an article in the ASR, (ASR itself) so that an article (journal) only half as important as an ASR article (journal) should be assigned a weight of five, an article (journal) twice as important a weight of 20 and so forth. Six "general" sociology journals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents a commentary about the preponderance of sociology by David Gray. Sociologists appear unable to treat methods as techniques for analyzing human group life in its naturalistic and historical contexts. The alternative model of science attempts to fit itself and its methods to the demands and variations of the empirical world. Research papers that flow from methods courses and substantive field courses must be written around bodies of theory or interpreted from the perspective of a particular theory. The increasing press to expand the foundations of mathematical sociology, at the graduate and undergraduate levels, has had the unfortunate consequence of removing the serious study of theory and substantive fields from many curricula. The mirror theory of published sociology becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

This paper examines the relations between the data, methods, and interpretations of social history and sociology, with specific attention to the potential of sociolinguistics in the use of historical materials by sociologists. Data from conversation manuals, etiquette books, and grammars on introductions, greetings, and the regulation of conversational interaction illustrate diachronic variation in the use of these formulate expressions. The context of the egalitarian ethic of Jacksonian Democracy highlights a nineteenth-century shift in the use of politeness formulae by and to speakers of different social classes. These examples illustrate the need for an historically reformed sociolinguistics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This short paper presents a few of the issues which divide contemporary Marxists and shows how their debates relate to Marx's original work In the first part, I discuss the family, law and the world system in the light of two notions of social structure. In the second part, I consider the dynamics of capitalism and the struggles between classes, races and genders as potential motors of change. This is followed by an outline of Marx's understanding of the persistence of capitalism, the notion of reproduction of social relations, and how the state becomes involved in the organization of struggles and in the preservation of the conditions of accumulation In the final part, the past is examined for the light it may shed on the future Has history a prior purpose, or telos? How did Marx and how do Marxists conceive of the transition from one period of history to another? What can we say about the transition to socialism based on the experience of the last hundred years? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Behavioral sociology has developed unique features which have caused controversy and confusion in the discipline. In this paper, we briefly describe the history of behavioral sociology, and show how its major forms have been applied to behavioral analysts in complex organizations, laboratory experimental analysis of social exchange and social process, and behavioral macrosociology and theoretical extensions We also briefly examine criticisms of behavioral sociology on grounds of tautology, reduction, the omission of internal states as relevant data, and behavior control. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This brief essay attempts to make certain strands of ethnomethodological thought intelligible to a general audience in the hope of opening this growing tradition to those who are interested and who may find it of some use in their own work The discussion focuses in turn upon the relationship of phenomenology to ethnomethodology, the issue of reductionism, the concept of "natural language," the relationship of context and particular in ethnomethodological work, and on the possibility of interchange between ethnomethodology and other sociological approaches.
The aim of this paper, therefore, is not to define ethnomethodology, or to provide an authoritative reply to its critics. Instead, this brief essay will attempt to make certain strands of ethnomethodological thought intelligible to a general audience, thereby, perhaps, to open this growing tradition to those who are interested and who may find it useful in their own work. Discussion will focus, in turn, on phenomenological sociology, the issue of reductionism, the concept of "natural language,'' the relationship between context and particular in ethnomethodological work, and, in conclusion, on the relationship between ethnomethodology and other concerns in sociology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article provides a brief summary of the individual papers in the issue, indicating their logical and thematic connections as well as their relationship to Charles S. Peirce's semiotics and Norbert Wiley's model of 'the semiotic self.' The significance of the articles for the future development of sociology is also considered. [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 article comments on Peter Lawler's paper about contemporary Western culture. The dare generated by Lawler's writing is that he positions anyone who disagrees with him as a proponent of indifferent non-judgmentalism, Viagra and tyranny. Lawler's discussion of communism was taken to be largely rhetorical. The argument about the basic commonalities of communism and libertarianism runs aground on the fundamental shoal of private property. Lawler argues that one thing communism and libertarianism share is a utopian sentimentality.

The article presents information on the comments of the editor for the journal "Human Studies." This special issue began with an idea proposed by George Psathas over lunch an intentionally open and broad call for papers to all contributors, editors and friends of "Human Studies." The present volume displays the many different ways that call was answered. As a sociologist have generally found it advisable to reject what in traditional academic circles is called interdisciplinary but in practice seems a way for one discipline to steal, and often distort in the process, ideas from other disciplines and claim them as their own. When, for instance, sociologists make use of psychological theories to explain children, rather than displaying interdisciplinarianism, they, from perspective, simply fill in gaps neglected by sociologists by stuffing in handy ideas from psychology, doing justice to neither.

Sponsored by the Research Committee of the History of Sociology, International Sociological Association, a symposium on the lives and works of sociologists Gunnar Myrdal and Alva Myrdal was presented at the meeting of the World Congress of Sociology in Montreal, in July 1998. Sven Eliæson, professor at Stockholm University, arranged and chaired the session. The papers examined the scientific, epistemological, methodological and policy influencing effects and implications of the Myrdals' many writings while exploring the impact of their academic careers and numerous ventures into public service on their own and their children's domestic lives. Long associated with the ideology and praxes of social democracy in Sweden, the Myrdals also contributed to an understanding of the race problem in the U.S., provided a reconceptualization of economic development in post-colonial Asia, examined the place of values in social science, and offered a critical revaluation of the character of and possible solutions to such public problems as housing, population decline, family formations and long-term poverty.

The article compares philosopher Talcott Parsons's views with Habermas's theory. The entire basis of Habermas's communicative action banks on the distinctions Parsons made some sixty years previously, namely Habermas's notion of the universal validity claims underlying all speech. The three dimensions corresponding to the three validity claims are the subjective world, the objective world and the social world. This makes sense only in post conventional societies, because prior to that time, persons often drew upon only one world in making claims such as appealing to tradition, the divine right of kings, aesthetics, religion, or whatever. Habermas's penchant for grand, overarching theory was borrowed from Parsons and Parsons himself had been earlier influenced by that unique German brand of theorizing tracing back through Hegel and Marx, Simmel, Weber and Mannheim. In effect, the same logic underlying Habermas's analytic of the three worlds and the three validity claims can be found in the pages of Parsons's Amherst papers.

This article reflects on the progress of the American Sociological Association (ASA) from 1905 to 1980. The author relates that when she took office elate in 1949, there were approximately 2,700 members on the Society's roles. Ten years later there were 7,000. With the Reorganization Committee of 1950 anticipating the potential, certain goals for the Association were set early in the decade. There were eight goals that the society was determined to accomplish. It is a matter of record that considerable progress was made during the decade of the 1950s in moving toward these goals especially the first six Constitutional changes were affected. membership participation was broadened. An executive office was organized. Several new publications were started. Membership services generally were expanded. All the annual meeting, over 300 papers were presented in 1960 in contrast to 77 in 1950. In two important respects, however, the mid-century ASA was somewhat less effective in performing its supportive role in expanding the uses of sociology and in aiding the development of the discipline. For example, responding to indications that sociologists were needed in a variety of practicing professions, ASA together with Russell Sage Foundation, undertook a series of bulletins on the fields of sociological application.

This article presents a commentary on a paper by Paul Kay in a previous issue of The American Sociologist which analyzed the growth of a mythical enthusiasm for nonacademic employment in anthropology and other disciplines in the U.S. Kay proposes three tests for labeling this as an ideology, that it is demonstrably false and it serves to maintain the status quo. According to the commenter, he has seen very little evidence that the field of sociology is suffused with a growing enthusiasm about prospects for jobs outside academia. The American Sociological Association's (ASA) Expanding Employment Opportunities Committee's attempts to define the problem and to suggest useful steps to be taken to deal with it have hardly struck fire either at the grays roots or at the ASA Council level. Skepticism has been expressed as to whether the problem of a declining academic job market is not simply temporary, and thus not deserving of curriculum revision, recruiting cutbacks or some other organized response. Kay defends his second point, that the belief is false, mainly by referring to the competitive disadvantage of anthropologists in seeking to supplant others now holding nonacademic jobs or when offering their services at the same time as others displaced by the same market forces.

This article introduces a series of articles on the contributions of early women in sociology in the U.S. The initial paper by Patricia Lengermann and Jill Niebrugge describes the social settlement movement of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, in order to analyze settlement workers as practicing sociologists operating within a paradigm of the neighborly relation. Linda Rynbrandt and Mary Jo Deegan focus on Caroline Bartlett Crane, a Progressive Era reformer. In their analysis, the authors develop a characterization of Crane as an ecofeminist and forerunner of contemporary reform movements. They argue further that Crane deserves to been as a founding figure in sociology in the U.S. who associated with recognized pioneers, including Jane Addams and Charles Henderson. Barbara Richardson portrays Ellen Swallow Richards, the first woman to graduate from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, as an applied sociologist with a distinctive emphasis on humanistic oekology. Richards focused on gender issues and the application of scientific methods for the solution of contemporary social problems. The final paper, by Erich Goode, departs from the overall theme and offers a rejoinder to an analysis of the death of the sociology of deviance.

This section introduces the articles featured in the summer 2000 issue of The American Sociologist. As a new millennium unfolds, a global dialogue in sociology is underway that promises to enrich and renew culture-bound sociological imaginations. As Gary Marx notes, by 1911 Edward A. Ross, a towering figure in his day, had published a book for popular audiences about China as seen by a sociological traveler. Karl Marx brings this commentary up to date, and provides insight into a reality that Ross did not experience, namely, the teaching of sociology in Chinese universities. William Buxton has gathered together a fascinating set of materials about U.S. interest in Asia, with particular reference to Talcott Parsons, Harvard University and Japan. As he notes, these materials call into question simplistic views of Parsons as a Eurocentric thinker by documenting an ongoing encounter with Asia that extended from the 1940s through the late 1970s. One product of events at Harvard was a graduate-seminar paper written in 1941 by Marion Levy and rediscovered by him a half century later. In addition to its relevance for the emergent sociology of Asia, Levy's paper is a most interesting example of early functionalist analysis in U.S. sociology.

The article presents an overview of the topics discussed in the September 1, 1999 issue of The American Sociologists concerning diversity and collaboration. Three papers in this issue address the question of diversity within sociology, with attention to both intellectual and social differences. Roger Clark frames his inquiry in dialectical terms that permit consideration of diversity as both problem and solution. Other authors employ descriptive methods to present profiles or snapshots of the current situation. Thus, Jane Lord and Stephen Sanderson examine the theoretical commitments and political orientations of one subgroup in the profession, namely, members of the theory section of the American Sociological Association. Joseph McFalls, Michael Engle and Bernard Gallagher tabulate the social characteristics of sociologists in the contemporary academy. Two other papers in this issue focus on changing patterns of work in sociology and on the experience of an extended career in the field. Nicholas Babchuk, Bruce Keith and George Peters analyze the trend toward increasing collaboration among sociologists and compare it to the situation in several other academic specializations. The voices in this issue offer valuable insights into the profession's past, present and emerging future as we become simultaneously more diverse and yet more collaborative.

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.

The following section presents several papers focused on Talcott Parsons and Georg Simmel. The first is the fragment on Simmel of Ch. XVIII, Georg Simmel and Ferdinand Toennies. This chapter has been the subject of scholarly discussion since Parsons revealed in 1968 that he had drafted it for his early major work, The Structure of Social Action (1937), but had ultimately decided not to include it. The second, Simmel and the Methodological Problems of Formal Sociology, is a previously unpublished manuscript by Parsons--apparently written in 1939--that continues his engagement with Simmel's approach. The third is a commentary on the second Simmel manuscript that Edward Shils sent Parsons, in response to the latter's request. Finally, there is William Buxton's paper, From the Missing Fragment to the Lost Manuscript: Reflections on Parsons' Engagement with Simmel, which compares the two Parsons manuscripts and reflects on their significance. In addition, Simmel's second manuscript is also published for the first time along with ore famous missing fragment on Simmel, thereby facilitating scholarly analysis and comparison. Buxton's careful and searching analysis identifies as series of issues that merit further examination.

Each moment of the sociological enterprise may be rightly regarded as a turning point, that is, a place of choosing among options that have consequences for the field. The papers in the September, 2003 issue of the journal "American Sociologist" share a theme of revisiting for the sake of new departures. Sociologist Neil J. Smelser begins with a broad overview of a century's travels that affirms the value of the sociological endeavor and looks optimistically ahead to new developments. Sociologists Douglas Hartmann, Paul R. Croll and Katja Guenther focus on past definitions of the race-relations problematic in order to articulate emergent understandings. Sociologist Michael DeCesare reconsiders the relationship between earlier choices of theoretical orientation and later pedagogical practices. Sociologists Joel Best and David Schweingruber cast a critical eye toward the established terminology in sociological textbooks, asking whether one should continue this way of teaching the profession's language. Sociologist Patrick D. Nolan offers a similar reflection on standardized stories and rhetorical strategies in the textbooks that represent the field to most undergraduates.

This article introduces issues and topics discussed in the Winter 2002 issue of The American Sociologist. Bill Du Bois and R. Dean Wright begin with a broad-gauge discussion of the meaning of humanist sociology. Chet Ballard then contributes a description of the early years of humanism as a movement, including the first annual conferences of what became the Association for Humanist Sociology (AHS). Jerold Starr offers a personal account of the attractions of the emerging movement and the distinctive feel of AHS conferences. Jill Bystydzienski provides a perspective on both humanism and feminism, and addresses the tensions between those movements, based on her own participation in both. Art Jipson discusses how a commitment to humanism has affected his approach to undergraduate teaching. Hal Pepinsky offers an autobiographical essay on his development as a humanist criminologist. Lloyd Klein and Shela R. Van Ness trace the development of humanist criminology. Alan Spector examines the divergence and convergence of humanism and Marxist sociology, against based on personal experience within both movements. The final paper by Severyn T. Bruyn celebrates the humanist commitment of the late William F. Whyte.

This section introduces the articles featured in the summer 2002 issue of The American Sociologist. This issue features six papers that explore several related themes in the intellectual history of sociology. The authors place particular emphasis on the enduring legacies of creative minds, while also tracing out unnoticed linkages between thinkers and intellectual traditions and pointing to unresolved tensions and lacunae within individual approaches. The articles combine a retrospective glance with a commitment to incorporating and further developing the insights of earlier work. There is also a happy blending of the personal, the conceptual, and the historical. Uta Gerhardt contributes an erudite and nuanced discussion of the relations between major figures who are ordinarily regarded as polar opposites: social-action and social-system theorist Talcott Parsons and members of the frankfurt School of philosophy, psychology, and sociology, especially Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno. Jean-Francois Côté and Daniel Dagenais provide further insight into the development of critical sociology similar to that of the Frankfurt School within the context of contemporary Canada, especially Quebec.

This section introduces the articles featured in the spring 2002 issue of The American Sociologist. The half-dozen articles here, along with Brym's engaging introductory essay, help us regain a sense of sociology as an unfolding international movement and also of the distinctive experiences of sociologists in particular national contexts. Rather ironically, in light of the sweep of the paradigms and macro-level theories that are sociology's coin of the realm, there are strong parochial tendencies in the field. In the United States, for instance, many departments of sociology tend to relegate international and cross-cultural matters to anthropologists, and many textbook writers produce analyses that focus overwhelmingly on their home country. One consequence of such tendencies is to speak as though formulas that fit one context have a general or universal applicability. As the papers here inform us time and again, sociology in Canada has struggled with the Anglo-French division of society and culture, which has generated two separate and largely unengaged spheres, and has segregated even the respective social sciences. Meanwhile, Canadian sociologists have worked to develop a voice of their own that is not distorted by the influence of sociology produced in the United States or in Europe.

The article introduces as series of articles dealing in a variety of ways with critical theorists and critical theory. The first three papers offer insightful analyses of the work of several critical thinkers Erich Fromm, David Riesman, C. Wright Mills and Leo Strauss. Neil McLaughlin examines David's Riesman's synthesis of the German critical tradition and U.S. pragmatism in his best known work, The Lonely Crowd. In McLaughlin's view, Riesman's classic analysis of U.S. society in 1950 bears a strong resemblance to many postmodern writings, particularly since Riesman self-consciously assumed the mantle of the public intellectual. James Abbott examines the thought of political philosopher Leo Strauss, with particular attention to its relevance for contemporary controversies concerning facts and values. Abbott is drawn to Strauss's analysis of the crises of modern liberalism and of twentieth century social science, and brings this to bear on the contemporary paradox of a sociology that simultaneously advocates visions of the good society while denying the possibility of trans-historical standards that would validate such visions. Joel Best offers incisive reflections on sociology's status in the academic world. Ironically, despite its image as a minor field, sociology has arguably been among the most influential of disciplines and has spawned a series of specialties that migrated to independence.

This article presents the author's reflections on his role as a university-based sociologist who emphasize sociological practice. I pursued one such role over a thirty-year period at a major U.S. university. This role was based on both a personal and professional commitment and an institution's commitment to science with practice, societal-relevant research communicated to targeted client systems. Major areas of sociological emphasis during these thirty years were social change, communication and organizational effectiveness. The locales of research and action have ranged from local communities, districts within states, state, region, national and into twelve foreign countries. There was great range of forms and intensity of communication and interchange with clients. It involved developing learner-centered training materials for workshops varying from one-half day to two weeks duration. It may be of interest to note that despite the practice orientation of which I am very proud, it was possible to participate in many activities usually thought of as the province of the academic, for example, co-author-editor of six books, chapters in 11 additional books, 20 refereed journal articles, over 50 papers at professional meetings and 60 monographs.

The article presents the author's response to criticisms against his article on changes in some role relationships in the editorial review process of general sociology journals. Some of these concerns are well founded. We can all agree it would be unwise for ASA journals or for independent journals to adopt sweeping changes without hard evidence on the probable effect of such changes. Such evidence should not be difficult to obtain. If research is undertaken, however, I would hope that it would try to assess some of the social psychological dynamics of the editorial review process. Research on the publishing of scientific papers, such as Duncan Lindsey's excellent volume, has not focused much on how authors, referees and editors differ in their attitudes and in their definitions and perceptions of the situation, on how the editorial review process is affected by these differences and on how the structure of the process itself is a cause of them. These comments have suggested a number of questions about the editorial review process that need to be fortrightly addressed and empirically answered. But I want one of my own questions answered--one to which these comments were not responsive and one for which survey data would be useless.

This article presents Robert A. Stebbins' reaction to several comments on his paper which appeared in a previous issue of The American Sociologist, which provided an account of professional and amateur sociology in the U.S. Stebbins states that he wishes only to offer a single clarification of a poorly communicated passage that caught Althauser's attention. It concerns the four conditions that encourage the emergence and persistence of an avocational interest in science. According to Stebbins, when he wrote the passage, he had Kuhn's concept of normal science in mind. Amateurism takes root in those sciences or areas of sciences that lack a dominant paradigm as the exclusive grade to scholarly research. These fields are in a preparadigm stage of development in which several schools of thought compete. Why then, is there no amateur sociology? Among the answers to this question, according to Stebbins, are that sociologists lack a tradition of amateurism, a vision that amateurs could help professionals with some of their research interests, and a willingness to organize nonprofessional assistance on any basis other than temporary. The same conclusions could likely be reached for other sciences.

This article presents a commentary on a paper by Robert A. Stebbins in a previous issue of The American Sociologist which provided an account of professional and amateur sociology in the U.S. Amateur sociology was the parent professional, the child Park was a professional writer, an amateur sociologist. He did join the sociological fraternity, to that extent he became professional. Sumner wrote a book it got adopted by sociologists. Sumner accepted the adoption very unwillingly, and made no change in his writing or thinking. At present, sociology has a professional structure, and can control what is published as sociology, but the commenter is grateful that people cannot control what is written on sociological matters or in the sociological mood. The commenter cites that unless sociologists get much more bureaucratized, it will always be possible for people to be writers of sociology. At present, sociology has a professional structure, and can control what is published as sociology. There is no virtue in being amateur. Researchers, professional or not should not try to publish their reports in the regular journals. In this way new lines of thought and research will reach the widest audience of interested readers.

This article presents a commentary on a paper by Robert A. Stebbins in a previous issue of The American Sociologist which provided an account of professional and amateur sociology in the U.S. Stebbins' account of professional and amateur sociology unearths a set of boxes nesting in one another that according to the commenter, contain issues going to the foundations of current social science, conceptually and institutionally. The most encompassing issue is embedded in Stebbins' assertion throughout that the discipline and profession of sociology exists, has definable and agreed aims, and is thereby a special stream in science as well as within social science. He presumes that there is some accurate version of sociology into which laypeople can and should be indoctrinated. The commenter relates that many institutional structures support this version of the division of scientific labor, a version based more on professionalism and careerism than on ideas about the unity of science. Skepticism, is missing from this account of sociology. The proposal mostly takes up issues of craft, unrelated however to the research questions for which the particular tactic of volunteer sociologists would be more useful than another.

This article presents a commentary on a paper by Robert A. Stebbins in a previous issue of The American Sociologist which provided an account of professional and amateur sociology in the U.S. The British organization, Mass Observation existed in a relatively nonintrusive society with (as compared to the U.S.) greater concern for one's own and other people's privacy. Canada and Great Britain may in this respect have more built-in defenses against the risks of some kinds of amateur sociology that the U.S. would have. However, according to the commenter, Stebbins already anticipates this objection by requiring amateurs to be supervised and to start with a certain amount of instruction and proper cautionary comments. By engaging primarily in the use of unobtrusive measures and observations, the amateur will avoid the risks of harm to which Stebbins is already sensitive. The commenter relates that one of the public areas in which he has encouraged such unobtrusive observations is in churches, where the observer in outward appearance is similar to the congregation and hence not seen as an intruder. According to him, he has had a fair amount of experience with undergraduate amateurs of the sort described.

This article presents a commentary on a paper by Paul Kay in a previous issue of The American Sociologist which addressed the growing number of unemployed and underemployed doctor of philosophy degree holders in the U.S. According to the commenter, he sees little evidence of a burgeoning enthusiasm for nonacademic employment among sociologists. Nor he sees any substantial evidence that the scholarly emphasis of most doctor of philosophy programs in sociology is giving way to practical training and applied programs. To be sure, a number of sociologists have counseled such a shift, but their ranks are relatively small. With respect to the likelihood of any massive proportionate increase in nonacademic job opportunities for sociologists, the commenter explains that he comes to pretty much the same point that Kay makes for anthropologists. The estimates suggest that possibly one out of every five sociologists is employed in a nonacademic setting, and that this ratio has not varied much over the past quarter century. According to the commenter, this is not to say however that the number of nonacademic positions for sociologists will not continue to increase as it has for the past twenty-odd years.

This article presents a commentary on a paper by Paul Kay in a previous issue of The American Sociologist which addressed the growing number of unemployed and underemployed doctor of philosophy degree holders in the U.S. Kay implies that traditional training for academic employment is not ideological but rational in character. The commenters disagree with this idea. According to them, it is important to raise this issue because, in spite of very modest changes in employment patterns the vast majority of social scientists, even throughout the lean 1970s, did hold academic jobs. Training for research in graduate school regularly takes precedence over training for teaching, and yet most college faculty rarely if ever publish the fruits of their scholarship, while presumably all teach. Their lack of fit between training and work experience will increase as more and more doctor of philosophy degree holders bump down within academe from sociology to non-sociology departments, and/or from research to teaching institutions where they may find some rewards for competent teaching, but weak institutional and even interpersonal support for their research interests. However, according to the commenters, this is certainly not to say that training for critical analysis and scholarship ought to be abandoned, but rather that graduate education should include attention to the shifting realities of academic employment.

This article presents information about several authors who have contributed papers to the present issue of the periodical "Theory & Society." Some of them are Mansoor Moaddel and Jon Shefner. Moaddel is Professor of Sociology at Eastern Michigan University. He is currently working on a comparative project on determinants of ideological production in the Islamic world. With financial supports from the National Science Foundation, Ford Foundation and Bank of Sweden Foundation, he is carrying out surveys of attitudes and value orientations of the national representative samples of the Islamic publics in Egypt, Iran and Jordan. Shefner is Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Tennessee. In addition to researching urban politics in Latin America, he has recently completed a study of a university community partnership in New Orleans. He continues to study both, politics of the poor and their interactions with nongovernmental organizations and is currently working on a book discussing the impact of politics from below on Mexico's democratization process.

This articles presents the topics discussed in the June 1998 issue concerning sociology. All of the articles here are historical, but not merely so. All look beyond the bare chronicling of events to the larger and wider impact of those events on the sociological enterprise. Gary Jaworski examines receptions to Simmel's work at two universities in order to illumine the open-ended, constructed and contested nature of the sociological tradition. William Buxton presents one little known, and done previously unpublished, work by Parsons on Georg Simmel in an effort to expand dialogue on the significance of Simmel in Parson's thought. Bernard Barber takes up a similar theme by focusing on how Parsons' thinking about social systems gradually evolved. The editor's contribution, finally, points to the influence of developments in psychology on the famous experiment in Social Relations at Harvard. The emphasis in all articles is the unfolding of ideas and the consequence of interpretative decisions, including roads not taken. In view of Talcott Parson's worldwide reputation and influence, his lost manuscript on Simmel may attract considerable scholarly attention. Indeed, Professors Don Levine, Kiyomitsu Yui, Charles Camic and Hans Joas and others have been planning a series of papers on this manuscript that may appear at a special issue of Theory, Culture and Society or elsewhere.

This article presents a commentary on a paper by Robert A. Stebbins in a previous issue of The American Sociologist which provided an account of professional and amateur sociology in the U.S. According to the commenter, there are many attractive features to what Stebbins proposes. The Mass Observation (MO) movement is an interesting case in point . The main objective of the movement was to support the British war effort in World War II by providing the Home Office with information about wartime concerns and worries of the British population. To participate as an observer in MO, listening to conversations in bars, in workplaces, on public transport, and so on, was to participate in the war effort. And then there is the anecdote problem what is to prevent amateur sociologists from being collectors of odd facts, interesting and startling experiences, miscellaneous overheard conversations and the like? All the anecdotal evidence that plagues sociologists at cocktail parties may be gathered and displayed by the amateurs at their meetings. Stebbins recognizes this problem and would establish the principle that anecdotal evidence would not be allowed in amateur sociological societies.