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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.

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]

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."

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]

The article presents an introduction to the December 2010 issue of "American Sociologist," which focuses on sociologist Charles Tilly.

Alfred Schutz's influence on American sociologists and sociology in the 1960s and 1970s is traced through the examination of the work of two of his students, Helmut Wagner and Peter Berger, and of Harold Garfinkel with whom he met and corresponded over a number of years. The circumstances of Schutz's own academic situation, particularly the short period of his academic career in the United States and his location at the New School, are examined to consider how and in what ways he was constrained from exerting an even wider influence. The two major areas of influence in American sociology that are examined are the sociology of knowledge and the early development of ethnomethodology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is taken from Chapter 6 of the publication A Lucky Journey: The Sociological Enterprise, 1931-1980, which reflects on the progress of the American Sociological Review (ASR) as a publication from 1958 to 1960. The local editorial staff of the publication began with a contingent of ten scholars. These ten scholars included representatives of various sub-fields in sociology and of related discipline as well as specialists on Soviet Russia, Africa, India and Japan. Most of the day-to-day labor on the Review was done by editorial secretary Betty Vogel, Michael Olmsted, and their nominal boss. Michael Olmsted was more than a first-rate book review editor, he evaluated papers in his special fields with sagacity and designed an attractive cover to replace what had long been the dismal front of the publication. Solicitation of papers by prominent sociologists helped to upgrade ASR as a scholarly journal. Another change was the introduction of a division of the Review on the Profession which included not merely the obituaries or communications pertaining to the sociological guild, but both solicited submitted articles on the occupation itself. This innovation, according to the author, was consistent with his own growing interest in the sociology of sociology.

When the notion that Quebec is a distinct society within Canada became the chief object of discord during the Meech Lake constitutional debate, sociologists were offered a golden opportunity to participate in shaping the evolving understandings that Canadians have of their country. But this opportunity was not grasped. This paper evaluates some of the discursive conditions that have produced the apparent indifference of Anglo-Canadian sociologists to this most crucial of sociological questions as it applies to their own country: what is a society? Of particular interest are the general underconceptualization in sociology of "society," and the conceptual confusion that links "society" to "nation," "state," and "country." Canada's political-economic autonomy relative to the United States is quite limited, and Canadian "sense of society" is vague and is challenged from within.

This paper examines the life and career of the prominent sociologist Werner Stark (1909–1985), born and raised in Marienbad, Bohemia, and after 1918 in the multi-ethnic state of Czechoslovakia. As a prolific and wide-ranging scholar whose many works failed to find an enduring place in American sociology, Stark is a prime example of academic marginalisation. The authors analyse Stark’s major contributions from the standpoint of the sociology of knowledge. They argue that his ideas regarding human nature, the need for social discipline, and the desirability of community were rooted in a pervasive biographical marginality that found resolution in his conversion to Catholicism. In turn, these ideas reinforced the marginality from which they emerged. The reception of Stark’s work in the United States was governed by a perceived incompatibility of his outlook with the assumptions and goals of his American audience. In particular, Stark offered an explicitly value-directed sociology, one which asserted the importance of social order, individual discipline, and universal community, at a time (the 1960s and 1970s) when the field sought to maintain its credibility as an objective scientific discipline in the face of growing challenges from sociologists and non-sociologists alike. Stark’s American colleagues focused on aspects of his work that were incompatible with their own cultural and disciplinary orientations and this obscured the full range of his achievements, especially his analyses which anticipated contemporary sociological work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Edward Shils began as a sociologist under the close mentorship of Louis Wirth, with whom he collaborated on the translation of Karl Mannheim's Ideology and Utopia. After 1940, however, Shils' career, which had been focused on topics in sociology, notably the class and occupational structure of cities and on German Sociological Theory, took an apparent turn, which in 1946 led him into a relationship with Michael Polanyi, a half-time appointment at the London School of Economics, and a new intellectual direction. Part of the biographical background to this was personal: his relationship with Wirth ended, and with it his expectation of a Ph.D. and his role in the Sociology Department. Yet his new direction had Chicago roots in his work on Mannheim, and his relation to Frank Knight and the planning disputes of the 1930s and 40s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the status of women and feminism in the Association for Humanist Sociology (AHS) in the U.S. from 1976 to 2002. The author's perspective is that of a feminist sociologist trained in the 1960s and 1970s, rooted in a radical feminism and embracing a transformational, international feminism. Women had constituted a minority in terms of numbers as well as intellectual recognition within the AHS. The author claims that according to his experience and that of other feminist involved in AHS, although the association had been from the beginning much more welcoming of women and their contributions than other sociological organizations, the relationship between feminism and humanist sociology has not always been an easy one. However, humanist sociology, as its is practiced in the AHS, has changed over time and has become increasingly accepting of feminism. The author attributes this to grassroots efforts among feminist members of the association to better integrate women and feminism, and the increasing numbers of women in the AHS, as well as a growing awareness among both humanist sociologists and feminists of the great human variety of positionalities, identities, and experiences.

This article contrasts the use of ethnographic research procedures in the study of schools in Great Britain and the U.S. It also reflects on differences between the anthropology and the sociology of education. In the course of this exploration the authors also hope to draw together much of the literature from the respective countries and disciplinary fields. There is an obvious and striking difference between British and U.S. school ethnography. Whereas the U.S. research on schools and classrooms has been conducted primarily by applied anthropologists, that in Great Britain has been done overwhelmingly by researchers who see themselves as sociologists. It is noticeable that several researchers working as sociologists were trained as anthropologists or began work in anthropology departments. Where British research has looked to North America it has been to U.S. sociology in genera--especially symbolic interactionism and ethnomethodology. The article also attempts to establish that the Atlantic really does divide school ethnographers into differing traditions. It establishes the truth of the authors' claim that school and classroom ethnography in the U.S. and Canada is predominantly anthropological in orientation, while that in Great Britain is more sociological.

The article presents information on the work of sociologist George Simmel in relation to American sociology. The history of sociology is in need of a new historical narrative, a story that reflects and reinforces the contemporary transition in sociological thought from a celebration of scientific autonomy to a demonstration of social relevance. Whether they are accomplished through critical analysis of sociological discourse, historical analysis of sociology's changing publics, or pragmatic proposals for change, sociology's aspirations to professional and intellectual self-sufficiency have been pronounced a failure. This article reexamines the American Simmel reception in light of the conception of sociology as a conversation on America rather than a conversation sociologists have with themselves. It views sociologists as creative figures, like poets and novelists who help to shape America's future by molding how people think about it. To recognize this feature of the American reception of Simmel's work is not to deny that there were, intellectual reasons for an interest in Simmel. One can and must examine the historical and contemporary interest in Simmel from both points of view. Indeed, it is probably an error to consider theoretical reason and practical life as polar terms. A pragmatic and phenomenologically informed study of social theory, its production and reception, would the links between lifeworld and social thought.

The elucidation of explanatory relationships between individuated life experience and articulated thought is perhaps the least precise of all scholarly endeavors. It is the most susceptible to the subjective loadings of the explicator and the most likely to be exploited for non-scholarly ends. Scholarship on Thorstein Veblen is rife with examples. David Riesman, who relied uncritically on Dorfman for the biographical elements that informed his infelicitous foray into psychohistory, carried the search for a psychological explanation of Thorstein Veblen's irreverent assault on the mores and mechanisms of power and wealth to its height. Even while protesting that "it does not help determine the truth of a doctrine to penetrate into its personal and psychological sources in its originator," Riesman proceeds with great determination to do precisely that; to reduce Thorstein Veblen to emotionally crippling origins on the margins of Yankee society, which, despite genuflexions to Veblen's intellectual stature, in effect seeks to neutralize his most penetrating criticisms of the prevailing societal order.

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 summary of the session on applied sociology and clinical sociology at the recent Annual Meeting of the North Central Sociological Association. The meeting was held during April 1-4, 2004 in Cleveland. Participants prepared papers on the state of the field in contemporary applied and clinical sociology. Discussions focused on theoretical issues, client relations, and the education of applied sociologists. Some of the papers include: "Facility Programming - A New Niche for Applied Sociologists?," by Lubomir Popov, "Re-Visioning the Future: A Sociology for Social Change," by Kathy Feltey, "Alternative Futures for Applied Sociology," by James C. Petersen, "Martin E.P. Seligman and Pitirim Sorokin: In Quest of a Prosocial Science," by Barry V. Johnston, and "Embracing the Advantages of Multidisciplinary Research in Health Care," by Lynn Clough.

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. 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 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. 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 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 provides some history of sociology by focusing on the origins of the Bogardus Social Distance Scale. The scale was developed by Emory Bogardus in 1924 and is still widely used in measuring prejudice. It has been translated into several languages, and used in many countries in measuring attitudes toward a variety of groups. The authors use primary and secondary data, including an interview with one of Bogardus’s colleagues, Thomas Lasswell, and the Bogardus archive at the University of Southern California. American racial and ethnic conflict, and the increasing scientific emphasis in sociology help explain the genesis of the scale. The personal biography of Bogardus is examined along with trends in sociology during his training at the University of Chicago and developments throughout American society. This study shows how the social environment of Bogardus influenced his personal life circumstances that help account for his creation of the scale. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article traces the relationship between the Doctor of Philosophy degree and the institutionalization of American sociology. The organizing of disciplines in American higher education, which occurred as the twentieth century began, involved gaining recognition for distinctive areas of research, organizing disciplinary associations, creating journals dedicated to fields, creating professorships devoted to fields, granting doctorates in fields, and organizing administrative units (i.e., departments) providing some level of autonomy to fields in colleges and universities. The primary datum reported in the article is the presence of professors with doctorates, teaching sociology in American institutions of higher education. Doctorates are granted by institutions either in the subject of instruction or in some other subject, or even in no subject at all. As sociology departments came to be organized, the connection between doctorates and institutions came into view; the degrees came to be brand names, as it were. Thus this article also focuses on the establishment and consolidation of departments of sociology. It is not a mere matter of administrative units being organized officially; noting that would be an exercise in mere chronology.

Over the course of more than three decades, Larry Reynolds has presented a series of thoughtful critiques of the sociological enterprise as it is organized in the United States. This essay will focus on two volumes published recently by Larry Reynolds on the sociology of sociology, hereafter referred to as "Reflexive" and "Self-Analytical", which are essential reading for anyone who is remotely concerned about the state of American sociology. Throughout the pages of these texts, Larry Reynolds raises important questions about the fundamental nature of sociology.

The author discusses and uses survey results from students and members of the North Central Sociological Association (NCSA) about important current issues in the U.S. The aim of this article is to illustrate some of the problems experienced by sociologists in teaching about social issues in our society. The purpose of the survey is to compare the attitudes of NCSA members compared to those of students about a variety of public opinion issues. The NCSA members are concerned more about race relations and the availability and affordability of health care while students are concerned more about crime, violence, and hunger. The data in this study also have implications for the understanding of gender relations. The results of this study suggest that the society is becoming more accepting of homosexuals; however, students are still leery about homosexuals serving as members of the clergy or as elementary school teachers. The author suggests several things that will help narrow the gap between the students' views and the sociology teachers' conceptualization of problems.

This article discusses the meaning of humanistic sociology. Humanistic sociology is not a difficult idea to define. For the humanistic sociologist, sociology is the study of how to make a better world. The key commitment is that people matter. Humanistic sociology is not only an academic discipline, it is the merging of personal and professional identities. It is a methodology/theoretical perspective that is inter-disciplinary in its delivery. Ernest Becker's The Structure of Evil: An Essay on the Unification of the Science of Man provides a ready summary of the ground on which to trace the history of humanistic sociology. In the volume, Becker talks of two sociologies. Humanism in sociology is not new. Sociology has a history of do-gooders. Many early U.S. sociologists were actually ministers who came to sociology to perfect the art of implementing a Social Gospel. Social amelioration was the goal of most sociologists in the late 1880s. To the layperson, the term humanistic sociology would seem redundant. It would seem obvious that sociology is concerned with the person and human needs. But sociology drifted from its original intent and purpose and it became necessary to specify a specially humanistic sociology.

The article focuses on the professional ideology of social pathologists in the U.S. C. Wright Mills stirred a debate with his indictment of an alleged historical conservatism of U.S. sociology which had developed around the study of social problems. In his classic discussion of the influence of ideology on the sociology of social problems, The Professional Ideology of Social Pathologists, Mills argues that the U.S. sociologists and social problems books in the first four decades of the twentieth century tend to be apolitical or aspire to democratic opportunism. Mills attacked most of the thirty-two social pathologists who had a lasting influence on the direction of U.S. sociology as being a conservative, homogeneous group. The transformation of the emphasis on sociology as social science versus social alarmism and political advocacy blurred rapidly after Mills's premature death in 1962 and the onset of the cultural revolution of the Sixties. In contrast to political science, economics, psychology and arguably anthropology, a great many sociologists are not just politically liberal but are on the radical left wing, particularly in the realm of the sociology of social problems.

This article presents the author's account of his career as a sociologist. There are several pathways to occupational choice. It may be, or used to be, a matter of following in the footsteps of parents. It may be inspired by the desire to do something interesting, exciting, or creative, that is, to find fulfillment in the occupation chosen. Another powerful determinant may be an appetite for wealth, sometimes power. Occupational choice may be fused with the desire for security. There are studies that explore the motivation of people who become sociologists in the U.S. The author believes that there are two major motives that may sometimes be combined: one is to do good, to change society or particular institutions by grasping how society works and discovering the roots of social problems, inequality, conflict, and human misery. Secondly, there is the desire to become a scientist of society, to master and accumulate knowledge of human interactions, social institutions, change, and conflict but not necessarily in order to improve the world. This is the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake. On the author's part, the choice of sociology as a field of study and subsequent profession was not the culmination of carefully nurtured aspirations, of the desire to be of some service to humanity, to becoming a virtuous critic of social injustice, or a scientist discovering the social facts and rules of life and their inexorable imperatives.

This article deals with the disintegration of tribal solidarity among U.S. sociologists. Developing cumulative knowledge in sociology has always been problematic. One critical feature of organizations generating valid knowledge is a ratio of limited skepticism to high levels of trust. U.S. sociology has a crisis in theory, many theorists want to be humanists and engage in stimulating debates with each other about subject matters that do not matter, while those who wish to develop positivistic theory have a hard time getting a hearing from those who collect data. For a science to be effective and to develop cumulative knowledge, it is essential that the organizations structuring scientific inquiry be insulated from the lay public, especially with respect to deciding what problems to pursue and what constitutes valid facts. Policy is influenced more by ideological and political rhetoric, or even worse, by disciplines such as economics which have an inadequate theory and psychology which has no theory of the structure and collectivity. This exclusion of sociology from important policy decisions is the result of the perceived failures of the discipline to cumulate knowledge and to possess knowledge that would be useful to clients.

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.

Any evaluation of sociology as a discipline ought to focus hot only on the way sociology is produced, but also on how it is consumed. In this article, we examine the degree to which sociological concepts have been incorporated into the vernacular of American society, the impact of sociological techniques and methods on politics and society, and the relationship between sociology and public policy. While sociologists often point to the problems caused by a certain alienation from the general culture--for example the notion that sociology is written in an obtuse language that the public cannot comprehend--we point to the problems that develop when sociology is too readily incorporated into American culture and society. The danger is that the more popular sociology is, the less likely it will be to maintain the sharp intellectual edge that made its incorporation possible in the first place. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The idea of standardizing concepts in sociology is not new, but we have made little progress, despite the early hopes of such theorists as Durkheim and Weber. This article refutes the arguments of some who contend that we do not need standard concepts, we cannot make standard concepts, social phenomena are too complex and changeful sociologists are too individualistic and sociological concepts are too context-dependent. The author proposes that the American Sociological Association appoint a Committee on Basic Sociological Concepts to investigate and recommend the official adoption of a basic conceptual language in American sociology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The system of social inequality in American science has been the subject of numerous empirical investigations in the last decades. A persistent theme of such studies has been the attempt to de-mystify the social organization of academic life as supposedly exemplary of the domination of the universalistic-achievement pattern. Investigators have stressed the descriptive-like antecedents and consequences of the reputation of universities or departments as a career contingency for individual scientists. Given the various independent dimensions of the analysis, zero-order correlations were computed as a gross index of the relation among the variables, both for the year 1959 and 1970. For both time periods, standardized regression coefficients are used for art assessment of the predictive utility of each independent dimension when the effects of the remaining independent variables are removed. The model used assumes additive effects for variables in both time periods, this may be useful as a first approximation but it is, of course, conceivable, for example, that the dimension highest degree would interact with other independent variables.

The article focuses on the topic of historical sociology. Historical sociology, as actually practiced, includes a variety of investigations at different edges of sociology: investigations of political processes, family structure, community organization, inequality, ideological orientations, scientific activity, economic transformation and much more. On the whole, the ideas guiding such investigations bind the investigators to others who are studying similar phenomena much more strongly than to fellow sociologists who likewise work chiefly on the past rather than the present. Nevertheless, historical sociology have greatly gained in popularity over the last two decades, especially in the United States. A greatly broadened historical sociology can make two major contributions to the discipline. First, it can historicize sociological analyses: anchor them in time and place. Second, a greatly broadened historical sociology can also draw in important problems that are prominent in historical analysis and in lived history, but somehow remain neglected in sociology. Most notably, it can force sociologists to examine how the residues of action at a given time constrain subsequent action.

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

Using a 1978 national Gallup poll, we test the hypothesis that social marginality is a predictor of belief in paranormal phenomena. Being female and not being married generally correlate as hypothesized with paranormal belief, but age, low education, being Black, and being unemployed generally do not. The marginality hypothesis has a questionable theoretical foundation and fails to predict a variety of beliefs consistently. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article highlights issues related to sociology in Canada. The generally accepted view of how sociology is constituted as a science commits to procedures, which subsume the regional and local. Methods, such as the construction of typologies, are made use of in recovering from the distinctive local settings attributes, which can be arrayed conceptually in an abstract formal space. frameworks of "theory". The methodological procedures devised by sociologists and presented in standard introductory texts on "methods" are designed to constitute data in such a way that distinctive local and individual features and the characteristic ways in which social phenomena are embedded in and integral to a social organization of local settings become contingent and accidental properties which must be stripped away conceptually. Ethnographic research in sociology provides the endemic problems of its "generalizability." black males throughout the urban United States?" The work of ethnomethodologists seeks also its invariant practices, its forms of law-like statements, while repudiating the established methods of arriving at them.