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Despite the close resemblances evident in their major works, their critical stance and their politics, C. Wright Mills and Alvin Gouldner have received strikingly different responses from their sociological peers, and they now occupy very different places in the collective memory of the discipline. This intriguing discrepancy provides the basis here for a comparative case study that examines both ongoing commemorative practices and historical evidence. This paper shows how the sociological community has frequently and approvingly commemorated Mills through introductory textbooks, as well as reading lists for doctoral comprehensive examinations, awards in Mills' honor and biographies of Mills, while doing much less to preserve and promote the memory of Gouldner and his contributions to the field. In an effort to attain a better understanding of such differences, I compare the prescriptions that each advocated for the discipline, especially as these are expressed in Mills' Sociological Imagination and Gouldner's Coming Crisis of Western Sociology. The analysis emphasizes how Mills explicitly sought to move beyond sociology, in a narrow academic sense, and called for well-honed empirical endeavors with relevance for a variety of publics, whereas Gouldner proceeded largely as an academic theorist who demanded sociological-theoretical reform. Unlike Mills, he did not breach the gap between academia and the general public. These findings illustrate an apparent paradox, namely, that American sociology in the twenty-first century may reserve its most esteemed positions for internal critics who advocate movement beyond its contemporary confines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prior to his 1922 emigration to Europe and thence to the United States, Pitirim Alexandrovich Sorokin had an exceptional intellectual and political career in Russia and the Soviet Union (Sorokin , ; Johnston ; Krotov ). Indeed, he was among the early founders of the science of sociology in his native land, where, according to a relatively recent bibliography (Sorokin ), he produced 162 Russian-language publications between the ages of 21 and 33. This listing includes not only book reviews and journal articles, but also substantial monographs and a two-volume theoretical treatise. While still a relatively young man, Sorokin had thus gained widespread recognition as a scholar of the first rank. He was also the initial chairperson (from 1919 to 1922) of a fledgling department of sociology at the University of Petrograd (St. Petersburg), an elected member of the national Constituent Assembly and an appointed staff member of the 1917 Provisional Government, the first democratic regime in Russia. This much would have sufficed for an entry in a sociological encyclopedia, and Sorokin's political career has few parallels in the history of the field, other than the involvement of Emile Durkheim in French educational policy and the participation of Max Weber in creating the Weimar Republic in Germany. Nevertheless sociologists in the United States and most western historians of the field have not yet appreciated the full influence of the formative period, especially from 1905 to 1922. Lacking familiarity with Russian culture of that era and knowing little about the larger Russian socio-historical milieu, its intellectual discourse and collective memory, they have not been able to comprehend Sorokin's outlook, behavior and professional output in the United States in relation to these earlier contextual factors. This is arguably a fundamental reason why many U.S. sociologists have tended to see Sorokin, especially since 1937, as a marginal figure and to regard his works largely as deviations from accepted social scientific practice. This paper will argue that a more adequate appreciation of Sorokin's background and early adult life illumines both stylistic features of his works in America and also places into proper perspective several of his substantive foci that did not accord with contemporary 'normal science' (Kuhn ). In short, despite his overall assimilation into American society and higher education, including his appointment at Harvard University and his election as president of the American Sociological Association, Sorokin should be understood in large measure as a life-long Russian intellectual. His was a Russian-born sensibility and consciousness-indeed a 'Russian soul'-so deeply ingrained that it stamped his entire professional career in the United States, including his published researches, his popular sociology and his university teaching. [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."

This article focuses on the dissemination of sociological dissertation findings in the United States. In an attempt to obtain an understanding of the extent to which dissertation findings are disseminated through a variety of media, a questionnaire was sent to a random sample of 200 sociologists drawn from the members of the American Sociological Association residing in the U. S. who hold the PhD. By means of an open-ended format, members were asked to list publications, read papers, and any other means by which findings of their dissertations had been disseminated. It should be noted that this method is broad not only in including numerous avenues of dissemination, but also in including dissemination throughout the entire professional careers of respondents up until the time of this study. The original mailing in February, 1974, together with a follow-up mailing in March, yielded a response rate of 72%. It might be noted parenthetically that the largest number of papers were read at annual meetings of the American Sociological Association. The next largest number were presented at the Southern Sociological Society meetings, followed closely by the Pacific Sociological Society