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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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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 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]

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.

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]

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]

Existing accounts of American sociology’s founding years during the early twentieth century assume that the discipline was ‘metrocentric.’ They assume that it was only interested in processes occurring within the United States; that American sociologists fell prey to state-centrist thought; and that, therefore, contextualizing America sociology’s emergence necessitates understanding relations, events, and processes within the confines of US territorial boundaries. By contrast, this paper shows the imperial and hence global aspects of early American sociological thought. Early American sociologists were interested in imperialism and, therefore, in cross-societal, transnational, and global processes and relations. Implicitly or explicitly they approached imperialism as a process by which social groups, not least ‘races,’ interacted and conflicted. They also saw it as a route towards new global forms. Early American sociology thus articulated a sociological imagination that looked beyond American society and to the wider world. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Harry Alpert (1912-1977), the US sociologist, is best-known for his directorship of the National Science Foundation's social science programme in the 1950s. This study extends our understanding of Alpert in two main ways: first, by examining the earlier development of his views and career. Beginning with his 1939 biography of Emile Durkheim, we explore the early development of Alpert's views about foundational questions concerning the scientific status of sociology and social science more generally, proper social science methodology, the practical value of social science, the academic institutionalisation of sociology, and the unity-of-science viewpoint. Second, this paper illuminates Alpert's complex involvement with certain tensions in mid-century US social science that were themselves linked to major transformations in national science policy, public patronage, and unequal relations between the social and natural sciences. We show that Alpert's views about the intellectual foundations, practical relevance, and institutional standing of the social sciences were, in some important respects, at odds with his NSF policy work. Although remembered as a quantitative evangelist and advocate for the unity-of-science viewpoint, Alpert was in fact an urbane critic of natural-science envy, social scientific certainty, and what he saw as excessive devotion to quantitative methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The idea of a social (or general) mind was prevalent in early American sociology from the 1880s through about the 1910s. As a concept, the social mind served as a proxy for what would later be defined and understood as culture and other collective phenomena such as social movements, crowd behavior, organizational behavior (e.g. ‘corporate actors’), and so forth. In the early stages of the development of sociology in America, sociologists such as Lester F. Ward and Franklin H. Giddings (1855-1931) were struggling to establish sociology as a legitimate science, and they needed to ground this new science of society in an object or reality that existed above the level of the individual members of society (for not doing so would bring the charge that sociology was nothing more than a watered-down version of psychology). In this paper I examine specifically Giddings' writings on the social mind, for they illustrate how subjectivist or idealist elements can be incorporated into an overtly positivistic or naturalistic theoretical framework. [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]

Although there is a thriving industry of classical sociology within the discipline of sociology, not much attention has been focused on the early American sociologists. This paper offers a six-fold typology of the uses of the classics within sociology, and argues that the neglect of early American sociology among contemporary sociologists requires correction. For reasons delineated, Lester F. Ward is the overlooked early American sociologist most deserving of renewed attention and study. [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.

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 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 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 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.