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This paper charts the changing intersections between sociology and science and technology studies (STS) using computational textual analysis. We characterize this "quali-quantitative" approach as a Big Data method, as this calls attention to the commixture of textual and numeric data that characterizes Big Data. The term Big Data, too, calls attention to the increasing privatization of both data and data analytics tools. The data mining was done using a commercial analytics tool, IBM SPSS Modeler, that to the best of our knowledge has not yet been used for STS or sociological research. The identification of intersections occurred as part of a larger project to analyze political-economic and epistemic changes within STS, focusing on academic publishing. These epistemic changes were identified qualitatively, through 76 interviews with STS scholars, and quantitatively, through a computational analysis of three decades of STS journals (1990–2019). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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In 1938, Joseph Oldham, a leading British Christian ecumenist, formed a discussion group that came to be known as the Moot. The Moot met in a retreat setting for several long weekends each year until early 1947, its discussions carefully organized and convened by Oldham. More than anything else, the discussions of the Moot revolved around the topic of order and, more particularly, around the problem of how order might be restored in British society and culture in the context of a 'world turned upside down'. Oldham and most members of the group sought a central place for Christian ideas and ideals in British social life. A striking feature of the Moot was the intellectual stature and the diversity of interests of its members. Among its 16 or so regular members were Oldham (1874-1969), his close friend T.S. Eliot (1888-1963) and Karl Mannheim (1893-1947). Among the later 'visitors' to Moot meetings was Michael Polanyi (1891-1976), who first came to the 20th Moot meeting in June of 1944. This article presents several papers that were produced for the Moot discussion of 15-18 December 1944 by Eliot, Mannheim and Polanyi. These papers have intrinsic and historical interest, and are published together for the first time here. The initial paper, written by Eliot, treats the role in society of 'the clerisy' - a term borrowed from Samuel Taylor Coleridge that points to an intellectual elite or vanguard. Eliot requested that Oldham solicit responses to his paper from Mannheim and Polanyi. Mannheim's response was a set of detailed answers to four questions that Eliot posed at the end of his essay. Polanyi's response was a short, coherent essay, which he identified as 'my own position with respect' to Eliot's discussion; his essay outlines a brief account of the role of the clerisy in science. Eliot wrote short comments on the responses of both Mannheim and Polanyi. These five pieces, which have a natural unity, should be of interest to anyone working in the history of social thought. We have abridged only Mannheim's lengthy response and have eliminated a few lines of illustrative material from Eliot's reply to Mannheim, but these excisions in no way detract from the clarity of the authors' perspectives in this rich trilogue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents information on the book "Studies in Social and Political Theory," by Anthony Giddens. This book contains one paper on four myths in the history of sociology, two critiques of Emile Durkheim, and one discussion of suicide which in its earlier version dealt mainly with the French debate over the causes of suicide to which Durkheim's famous book was a contribution. The paper on the origins of sociology refutes several beliefs about the intellectual and political circumtances attending its birth. The thoroughly revised paper on suicide presents a theory that draws effectively on psychoanalysis. The longest and first essay in the book provides a superbly concise history of positivism and its philosophical and social scientific critics from Auguste Comte, a sociologist, to the recent demolition of the positivistic philosophy of science several sociologists. The interpretive practices of commonsense and the traditional methods of scholarship in history and the humanities remain, as they have always been in practice, is the major intellectual re source of sociology.

The article presents a reply to a critique by Steve Fuller of a paper published by the authors on the early history of sociology in Great Britain. They dispute Fuller's contention that the earlier paper had misstated the opinions on evolution and eugenics held by Patrick Geddes and Victor Branford, two pioneering British sociologists. Fuller is accused of using academic secondary source research selectively, choosing to cite information that supports his point of view. He is also faulted for suggesting that Geddes was a supporter of the forced sterilization for the eugenically unsound.

This paper focuses on some of the significant ‘moments’ and ‘problems’ and ‘characters’ and places which mark out a history of the sociology of education. It further explores some of the historical conjunctions of knowledge and practice to which the sociology of education contributed in its uneasy relations with schools and teachers and education policy. Three sets of tools and sorts of analysis, drawn from the work of Bernstein, Foucault and Bourdieu, are deployed to explore some of the turmoil and conflict which has characterised the sociology of education at different points in its history focusing on three of these. They are, the 1930s/1960s (Political Arithmetic), the 1970s (the New Sociology of Education) and the 1980s ‘flight to policy studies’ and particularly one aspect of this which produced the notion of ‘school effectiveness’. The paper suggests some of the ways in which the sociology of education has played its part in the government and the detailed management of the population, through the changing construction of an unrelenting gaze (focused initially on families) and the concomitant development of a body of expert professional knowledge (teacher education) and, latterly, the management of the institutions of management (schools) and of the professionals themselves (teachers). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the telling of the inscription of feminism into sociology, both space and time intervene. Institutionally some departments appear to be at the vanguard of feminist thought, others, as if feminism never happened. These uneven manifestations tell a story about people, place, power and struggle. Even feminism itself operates on different temporalities: while many feminists now ‘forget’ to address ‘woman’ as an object of their research, using instead debates from feminist theory about gender, life itself or relations, others continuing to generate important information on where women are and what they do. The gap between these two positions of object/no object is vast. Yet the perception of objects/subjects and their recognition through citation is central to the achievement of feminism within academia and this is where the struggle continues, as this paper shows. By showing how feminism has impacted upon sociology in a variety of ways: institutionally, theoretically, methodologically, politically, practically, it unearths how many different struggles on many different fronts continue. Rather than accepting the defeat or dilution of feminism this paper shows how feminism has inscribed some of the darkest and deepest recesses of sociology. But also how this is an achievement reliant upon repetition and attrition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article the author offers a critique of the papers by Maggie Studholme, John Scott and Christopher T. Husbands on the foundations of British sociology. He takes a differing view of Patrick Geddes and Victor Branford, two scholars who pioneered early sociology in Great Britain. He examines early concepts of sociological principles of concern to Geddes and Branford, such as eugenics and evolution. He faults the writers of the papers for misstating the positions Geddes and Branford, suggesting that they did so in an attempt to restyle the reputations of the early sociologist, casting them in a politically correct light.

The Google Books N-gram corpus contains an enormous volume of digitized data, which, to the best of our knowledge, sociologists have yet to fully utilize. In this paper, we mine this data to shed light on the discipline itself by conducting the first empirical study to map the disciplinary advancement of sociology from the mid-nineteenth century to 2008. We analyse the usage frequency of the most common terms in five major sociology categories: disciplinary advancement, scholars of sociology, theoretical dimensions, fields of sociology, and research methodologies. We also construct an overall index deriving from all sociology-related key words using the principal component method to demonstrate the overall influence of sociology as a discipline. Charting the historical evolution of the examined terms provides rich insights regarding the emergence and development of sociological norms, practices, and boundaries over the past two centuries. This novel application of massive content analysis using data of unprecedented size helps unpack the transformation of sociocultural dynamics over a long-term temporal scale. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This review article assesses recent developments and perspectives in the history of sociology as evidenced in two recently published conference volumes emanating from the ISA Research Committee on History of Sociology. Both these volumes address questions arising from recent debates in the discipline about the nature and role of sociology in the public domain. The article argues that history of sociology is ‘coming of age’ in the richness of topics, and varieties of methodological approaches and perspectives used in attempts more firmly to ground the sociological enterprise in its changing cultural and geographic contexts. The article also raises critical questions about the role of the history of sociology in contributing to a sharpened understanding of the complex and contradictory role of sociology in relation to its publics, and to the meaning of globalization in social science, both in theory and practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After 1989, class appeared to be everywhere and nowhere. The messy consequences of the emergence of new classes and new types of economic inequalities were plain for all to see, but no one uttered the term "class." The concept appeared illegitimate because of associations with the old regime, even though it always had more success explaining developments in the capitalist world east Europe was entering than the state socialist world it was leaving. The media and academy adopted a discourse of "normality" instead: New rules resulted not from policy choices empowering certain groups at the expense of others but from necessity, and people just had to adapt. Because the economic collapse nevertheless elicited much anger and frustration, the absence of class talk contributed to a proliferation of nationalist talk, and thus had political consequences. The paper rehearses reasons for the decline of class analysis in the region, and notes the post-1989 fascination with the "middle class." It explores the evolution of class analysis during the communist period, culminating in the embrace of a stratification theory that resisted discussion of power, which made sense at the time but became a burden after 1989. Several critical class analyses of state socialism, from the 1930s to today, are then introduced, demonstrating both their relevance and their unfortunate absence from debates. New types of class analyses promoted by younger scholars and activists are emerging, however, and are discussed in the summaries of the other essays in this collection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper analyzes the variety of discourses on social inequalities in postcommunist Bulgaria. The focus is on academic discourse, but political and everyday interpretations are presented as well. Politicians generally avoid talking about social differences and prefer instead the dichotomy of "elite" versus "the people," whose interests the politicians vow to protect. In popular consciousness, the main division is between "the rich" (mafia, politicians, ex-nomenklatura) and "the honest poor." In sociology, three main research trajectories have emerged: from class-based to status-based stratification; from one-dimensional to multidimensional stratification; and from a Marxist class model to a social network model. Perhaps the most important characteristic of Bulgarian society is its high level of poverty, according both to income indicators and self-perception. In this context of a pervasive sense of poverty, status differences lose their significance. This in turn prevents the establishment of group or class solidarity, as everyone feels she or he is competing with all others. Starting in 2013, a new trend can be observed: of social protests organized by those who say they feel powerless and manipulated by corrupt elites. As they try to initiate new types of economic negotiations with the government, sociologists have a responsibility both to study this new movement and to push the problems it raises into public debate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Histories of sociology have concentrated on the development of theory rather than methods. This article examines the work of five women researchers associated with the London School of Economics in the early 20th century to highlight an aspect of this neglected history: the development of research methods. Mildred Bulkley, Maud Davies, Amy Harrison, Bessie Hutchins and Varvara De Vesselitsky all carried out empirical research on the sociology of work, women and the household deploying multiple research methods, including surveys, interviews, observations, covert ethnography and diaries and schedules for recording household diets and finances. Their work combined a sensitivity to social context and lived experience within a framework integrating the drive to social reform with a focus on scientific sociology. Very little of this work is known today. An awareness of it changes our understanding of disciplinary history, particularly with respect to the provenance of research methods, and their role in establishing academic sociology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines how Robert Park’s work, first at the American Congo Reform Association (ACRA) as a secretary/publicity agent and later at Tuskegee Institute as Booker T Washington’s researcher, ghostwriter, and co-author, influenced how he conceptualized what academic sociology could do and should be. Once he secured an academic position at the University of Chicago, Park, like many of his peers, sought to establish his difference from and superiority over practical reformers by defining his object of study – society – as a ‘social organism’ which was governed by natural laws. Park’s definition of sociology and its object of study made it possible not only to exclude non-academic researchers from the discipline but also to place his own actions as a ‘reformer’ (i.e. imperial consultant at Tuskegee and the ACRA) beyond scholarly inquiry. Park’s relationship to Washington helps to explain the relationship between sociology’s separation from the reform movement and the erasure of colonialism and imperialism from disciplinary history. It also partially accounts for why contemporary sociology’s analytical structure still struggles to account for and theoretically capture the complexities of colonial history. [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]

The case argued in this paper is not that the concerns of the founders of sociology are uniformly and in every particular still our own (Runciman, 2008), but that the concepts and methods used to address just one of their concerns were both ground breaking and of enduring value (Shilling and Mellor, 2001, 2011, for example, make a similar claim). Such a concern focused on the kind of morality grounded in a capitalist social order and, by implication, how it might be theorized. This generated in the process the uniquely sociological operationalization of what had seemed hitherto a philosophical concept: human dignity, along with the freedom and autonomy that attend it. Certainly, the priorities differed in each of the contributions to this endeavour but, in coming at the problem from different standpoints, the concept of dignity came to appear more rounded, more substantive and more relevant to the human condition in all its historical specificity. Quite crucially, there is also in these sources from the classical period of sociology an intimation of method: both the way in which human dignity is to be 'perceived' within an inter-personal dialectic at a micro-level and, at a macro-level, how we can discern that dignity transcends artificial confinement by any one aspect of life (be it economic, political or cultural).1 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that Elias’s work presupposes a radical abandonment of philosophy as a vestige of magical–mythical thinking that has been rendered obsolete by the rise of sociology. For Elias, attempts by philosophers to claim a continuing nonempirical area of investigation are spurious and reflect only professional interests. The origins of Elias’s position are traced to his rejection of neo-Kantianism and his participation in the Wissenssoziologie of Karl Mannheim in Weimar Germany. Focusing on the traditional ethical or normative questions, the paper shows how Elias’s conception of the ‘detour via detachment’ enabled him to transcribe these issues (as well as traditional epistemological and ontological questions) into sociologically manageable terms. His strategy is further clarified through a comparison with the all-pervasive Critical Sociology approach to these matters, which emerges as severely handicapped by its reliance upon quasi-metaphysical, transcendental arguments. Also, its attributions of social blame generate fear images that reinforce conflict and its negative overstatements strengthen anxiety and frustration, thereby bolstering precisely what it is trying to change. The paper reveals the tacit function as a leftist code-word that the term ‘critical’ performs for many sociologists. Neo-Marxist ‘critique’ is shown to be a profoundly flawed attempt to deal with issues of theory and practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research programmes in the social sciences and elsewhere can be seen as ‘set-ups’ which combine inscription devices and thought styles. The history of inscription devices without consideration of changing and often discontinuous thought styles effectively takes the historical dimension out of the history of thought. Perhaps thought styles are actually more important than the techniques of inscription that arise from them. The social sciences have relied upon multiple modes of inscription, often using, adapting or extending those invented for other purposes, such as the census. But the strategic prioritisation and deployment of specific inscriptions in analysis and argument has inescapably been dependent on particular thought styles; of which by far the most significant over the course of the first half of the twentieth century was eugenics with its specific problem of ‘population’. This paper describes the way that Alexander Carr-Saunders took up the problem of population within early attempts to develop sociology. We ask whether Carr-Saunders can be considered a ‘precursor’ of a sociologist. The history of British sociology takes different shapes – as indeed does the very idea of a history of sociology – depending on how one answers this question. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the contribution of Elizabeth Bott's Family and Social Network to the elaboration of modern British sociology. I show that although Bott is often identified as one of the key figures in the emergence of social network analysis, this misunderstands her contribution. I show how her work drew strongly on key aspects of the research programme of the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations, and that it was her use of the in-depth interview, allied to an interest in probing class identities, which was to be seminal. This case study is used to show how a focus on the practical inscription techniques mobilised by social scientists can give a radically different perspective on the discipline than approaches which focus on schools of thought or ‘great men’. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Textbooks increasingly reflect changes in our sociological stock of knowledge about the founders of the discipline. Richard Hamilton is unaware of this research and its documentation of the flaws in earlier accounts of the history of the profession. In an effort to expand his disciplinary understanding, I briefly review the extensive scholarship on the sociology of Harriet Martineau which has been published over the last quarter of a century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented to the issue, which draws heavily from papers read at a 1979 conference held in Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology at Hull University in England.

An unexamined problem in the history of American sociology is how to understand cross-societal transference of theoretical structures. The case study considered here is that of the cultural migration of refugee scholars from Nazi Germany to the United States. This paper treats this event as a problem in the sociology of theory structures. Habermas' work on the social character of scientific knowledge aids in conceptualizing our frame- work. A major substantive contribution concerns the use for the first time of data sources previously unknown or ignored in the existent literature on refugee scholars. The analysis focuses particularly on the comparative depletions of theoretical structures from German universities. Sociology emerges as one of the early disciplines to feel the impact of the Third Reich in terms of depletion rates and losses of senior faculty. It also ranks very high in the percentage of refugee scholars already in the United States by 1937. Two other aspects of this problem are considered in less detail: the character of sociology remaining in the Third Reich and the examination of a `deviant' case in the cross-societal transference of theory structure in sociology from Germany to the United States. The paper ends with additional reflections on the study of theory structures and general issues in the history of sociology in the context of examining theory structures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The historical, and indeed evolutionary, dimension is a fundamental element in alt of Durkheim's sociological work. The resent paper argues that this fact should be neither ignored nor explained away as a mere survival of outmoded nineteenth century thought. Rather, Durkheim's practice in this respect, as in others, provides an important pointer for current sociology. The historical dimension had a prominent place in Durkheim's discussion of method in sociology, especially in his insistence on comparison and on structural taxonomy. In Durkheim's analysis of social causes, both morphological and representational, the historical and evolutionary dimension provided a fundamental axis. Various aspects of his work-for example, his sociology of the family, of individuation, and of religion-are cited to illustrate the significance of history in Durkheim's thought. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the main contributions of the figurational sociological tradition to the sociology of sport. It also charts the development of this work since the pioneering text, Quest for Excitement, by Norbert Elias and Eric Dunning, as well as offering a brief overview of some of the debates and disagreements that have arisen within the area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Today Pierre Bourdieu is well known as one of the most important social scientists of the 20th century. One of the outstanding qualities of his work has been his innovative combination of different methods and research strategies as well as his analytical skills in interpreting the obtained data (his ‘sociological gaze’). In this paper, we attempt to retrace the development of an extraordinary way of doing social research and show the benefit of Bourdieu's visual sociology for his empirical fieldwork and sociological theory. The article particularly stresses the significance of his photographic archive, which has long been ignored within the appreciation of Bourdieu's work. Studying Bourdieu's photography gives access to his œuvre in several new ways: not only can we understand how Bourdieu became an unconventional sociologist practicing his craft in the midst of a colonial war. Bourdieu's visual anthropology also offers an insight into the status nascendi of Bourdieu's sociology in all its elementary forms and contents. Through his photography Boudieu demonstrated the concepts of ‘habitat and habitus’, the material and symbolic living conditions of the Algerian population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay analyzes racialized exclusions in sociology through a focus on sociology's deep epistemic structures. These structures dictate what counts as social scientific knowledge and who can produce it. A historical analysis of their emergence and persistence reveals their connections to empire. Due to sociology's initial emergence within the culture of American imperialism, early sociological thought embedded the culture of empire's exclusionary logics. Sociology's epistemic structures were inextricably racialized, contributing to exclusionary modes of thought and practice along the lines of race, ethnicity, and social geography that persist into the present. Overcoming this racialized inequality requires problematizing and unsettling these epistemic structures by (1) provincializing the canon to create a transformative epistemic pluralism and (2) reconsidering common conceptions of what counts as "theory" in the first place. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay is part of a symposium on Modernity and the Jews in Western Social Thought (University of Chicago Press, 2017) and responds to comments on the book by Angel Adams Parham, Joseph Gerteis, Peter Kivisto, and Fuyuki Kurasawa. As all these commentators recognize, the history of social theory at its best involves more than conserving, inculcating, and consecrating the sociological canon or even remaking the canon through the addition of previously neglected authors. The history of social theory also allows scholars to address fundamental questions in the sociology of knowledge, the comparative investigation of different kinds of alterity, and the study of social solidarity and belonging. This essay reflects on how best to address these questions and suggests ways that new research in the history of social thought can build upon and extend existing scholarship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The poem "Chicago Pastoral 1931" by Ian F Shaw is presented. First Line: The woman enters the north-south streets. Last Line: This fractured time, it me defines."

Sociology has been taught in Paraguay since 1900. In those years, it was included in the training of other humanities, such as law. Despite this early appearance, the education of sociology is now only 30 years old and exhibits an evolutionary lethargy. The discipline was institutionalized not because it was taught as a major course of study, but because of the publication of two national journals that have existed for more than four decades: Revista Paraguaya de Sociología (Paraguayan Journal of Sociology) and Estudios Paraguayos (Paraguayan Studies). These were the means through which the first sociological articles appeared and currently remain principal channels of knowledge in the field. The objective of this essay is to describe national sociological academic production by analyzing the last five issues of both publications. The classification of topics, methodologies, approaches, use of bibliographies, and types of articles was carried out using hand-coded qualitative text analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores the sociopsychological considerations made by Polish sociologist Stanisław Ossowski (1897-1963) during World War II in reaction to his specific experiences in Soviet-occupied Lwów and German-occupied Warsaw. Based on readings of Ossowski’s publications and so far unpublished archival material, the influences and practical consequences of permanently observed violations of ethical and moral boundaries in that “great sociological laboratory” of war and occupation shall be traced in the texts he wrote during that time. As a member of a group of engineers, town planners, and architects, Ossowski sketched various psycho- and sociotechnical means of controlling that should guarantee for a peaceful social existence of free individuals in a new Polish state. Particular attention will be directed to the specific difficulties of attaining, communicating, and distributing knowledge in the de facto doubled cities that developed along the lines of opposition between the occupying and the occupied. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article offers an outline of a pragmatic sociology of the book. Whilst ubiquitous, books have received relatively little attention from sociologists. I propose to remedy this situation by drawing upon the ideas of GH Mead, namely his neo-Hegelian theory of the subject–object relationship. Mead’s chief insight is that objects such as books are first social and only then physical entities. They have agency not because of their thing-ness, so to speak, but because of their sociality. After reviewing the existing literature on the book, I discuss Mead’s most relevant contributions. In the proposal for a pragmatic sociology of the book that follows, I combine pragmatism’s focus upon the materiality of meaning-production with genealogy’s concern with power and violence. I conclude with an illustration of the approach: the simultaneous decanonization of Tocqueville’s Democracy in America among sociologists today and its canonization in political science. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I present a future-oriented look at sociology and anthropology's historical appropriation of the concept of organism. The ‘future’ of which I speak is one in which the biological and technological are blending together. In cultural and science studies, the figure of the ‘cyborg’ is often discussed in this context. But the cyborg tends to be treated as a specifically ‘postmodern’ innovation, whereas the organism has always invited the cyborg's ontological ambivalence. This sensibility goes back to the dawn of both the modern biomedical sciences and the social sciences. I begin on the relatively familiar terrain of the role that emerging medical conceptions of the organism in the mid-nineteenth century played in the formation of such founding figures of sociology and anthropology as Emile Durkheim and Franz Boas. I then move to the specific ‘relativization’ of Darwin's theory of evolution that fostered turn-of-the-century conceptions of the social organism, including that emergent entity, the ‘superorganism’, which figures prominently – albeit differently – in the attempts to characterize the uniquely ‘human’ character of culture and technology. Finally I look at one very explicitly ‘constructivist’ approach to the social organism promoted by the distinguished chemist Wilhelm Ostwald, who was in turn anathematized by Max Weber in one of the original episodes of sociology's disciplinary boundary maintenance. The pride of place that Ostwald gave to ‘catalysts’ in consolidating and enhancing social organisms – from business firms to academic disciplines – earns his perspective a second look in our time. I end with directions for further exploration, which include reviving Norbert Wiener's cybernetic vision. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the uneasy relationship between forward-oriented sociological research and public debate. It explores how implicit assumptions and explicit conceptualizations influence sociology’s ability to address the future. It argues that the stakes are not merely theoretical but also practical because methodological pre-decisions shape sociology’s relation to public debate and its abilities to tackle the emergent challenges of our time. Sociology was geared since its inception toward the collective reflection of not only present or past conditions of social existence but also of possibilities for change. While deterministic and expertocratic closures limited its potential, shifting epistemological, institutional, and social constellations allow the expansion, evasion, and re-emergence of open and contestable future orientations. Case studies related to climate change, globalization, social movements, values, and media are used to explore actual and potential contributions to public discourse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article highlights two contrasting ways in which social theorists have been trying to define the ontological boundaries of sociology since the early days of the discipline. Some (e.g. Durkheim, Weber, and critical realists) have attempted to demarcate social reality as a causally autonomous and qualitatively distinct realm in a segmented/stratified universe. Others (e.g. Tarde, Spencer, Luhmann, sociobiologists, and actor-network theorists) have postulated a more open (or flat) ontological space and blurred such demarcations by either rejecting the causal autonomy of sociological phenomena, or their qualitative distinctiveness, or both. So far, there has been little convergence between these two orientations since according to the former, the opening of the boundaries is likely to give way to reductionist conceptions of society, whereas the latter tends to associate rigid boundaries with essentialism. Through a close examination of these opposing orientations, the article aims to shed light on current ontological dilemmas of sociology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The basic challenge of Israeli sociology always has been, and continues to be to present days, the designation of its object of study; i.e. 'Israeli society'. The history of Israeli sociology and its conception of 'Israeli society' may be discerned into the five following modules: 1. Proto-sociology. In the pre-state era, sociological thought thrived within the context of the socialist Zionism. The two prominent 'proto-sociologists' were Arthur Ruppin and Martin Buber, who professed German communal perspectives. 2. Modernization sociology. The formative phase of sociology as a discipline was from 1950 to 1977. It was led by Shmuel Noah Eisenstadt, who effected a transition from the German anti-modernist paradigm to an American modernization theory. 3. Critical sociology. The critical phase took place in the 1970s and 1980s. Critical sociology was manifested in elitism, pluralism, Marxism, feminism and colonization approaches. Simultaneously there emerged a robust branch of 'quantitative sociology'. 4. Post-modem sociology. The turn towards post-modernity started in the 1990s. The three noticeable post-modem perspectives are: post-structuralism, post-colonialism and post-Marxism. 5. Palestinian Arab sociology in Israel. Palestinian Arab sociology is emerging and coming to its own since the 1990s. It reflects integration as well as alienation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article introduces the monograph on Future Moves. It discusses sociology’s re-emerging concern for the future and the general approach on which the contributors converge despite diverse theoretical provenances, thematic focuses, and social settings. It explains how the studies in this publication contribute to the strengthening of a future-oriented sociology and studies of culture, society, and technology. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

While the lives and works of many sociologists have now been well documented, numerous sociologists at the ‘coal face’ of social research remain ignored. Consequently, beyond the contributions of those more ‘well-known’ scholars, considerably more needs to be done to examine the history of our discipline and reassess the significant contributions made by ‘other’ researchers so that we may reappraise what can be learnt from these ‘pioneer scholars’. In this article we focus on Pearl Jephcott (1900–1980), who in a research career spanning 40 years, but now largely forgotten, was at the forefront of methodological innovation in the 1960s. We offer an introduction to her work, focusing on questions such as why were her methods innovative and why is she now ignored within sociology? [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

History of sociology is one of the main fields within the broader area of social science research. Despite its growing methodological sophistication, the field still lacks a truly global approach, one that takes into account alternative sociological traditions, particularly those from the so-called Global South. This article seeks to address these shortcomings by proposing a case study comparison between two sociologists from the Global South who developed similar sociological discourses between the 1950s and 1970s and pursued intellectual autonomy. These were the Brazilian Alberto Guerreiro Ramos (1915–1982) and the Malaysian Syed Hussein Alatas (1927–2008). The article analyzes the main works of Ramos and Alatas and compares their trajectories as well. It is argued that the sociological discourses in the Global South are best explained through a transnational analysis that pays close attention to the conditions of intellectual labor and the quest for intellectual autonomy in this area. It is also argued that the field of history of sociology should take into account these alternative discourses in order to avoid Eurocentrism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focusing on the project of cultural work (muncă culturală), involving hundreds of university students from different disciplines going to the countryside to study rural life and to aid its modernisation, this article examines the prominent role sociology played in King Carol II’s Romania as a scientific tool for planning rural reform and as a practical project of mass social organisation. Designed and launched by the sociologist Dimitrie Gusti in 1934, cultural work competed with the fascist Legion of the Archangel Michael’s work camps, providing an “official” project of rural modernisation, meant to bridge the gap between the educated youth and the peasantry and increase support for the King. Largely ignored by scholars of this period, this project offers a new perspective on the country’s social, political, and intellectual history, one that concentrates on the “rise of the social” in Romania, to which the transformation of the peasantry was central. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Drawing on archival materials and personal testimonies, I reconstruct the conditions under which Bourdieu came to receive the Gold Medal of the National Center for Scientific Research, France’s highest science prize, in 1993 as a signal case study of the existential predicament and institutional trappings of scholarly consecration. Bourdieu’s award speech and the ceremony at which he read it present a triple interest for the history and sociology of sociology. They illustrate how a shaping figure in the discipline personally experienced, reflexively viewed, and practically navigated the nexus of science, authority, and power. They mark 1993 as a pivot-year in Bourdieu’s intellectual evolution, leading to a new agenda foregrounding the state as paramount symbolic power, the alchemy of group formation, and the unfinished promise of democratic politics; and they help explain why he ventured more forthrightly into civic debate in the 1990s. Bourdieu’s ambivalent acceptance of the prize also illustrates his conception of the ‘Realpolitik of reason’ and put an emphatic end to the eclipse of Durkheim by restoring sociology to its rightful place at the scientific zenith in the country of its birth. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article deals with the position of the Southern sociologies within the discipline. The role and presence of local, national and regional scholarly communities has been widely reflected on in the context of the discussion around internationalization or globalization of the discipline. Thus, a variety of critiques of ‘Eurocentrism’, or more precisely, ‘North Atlantic domination’, have arisen in recent years that can be strengthened by empirical evidence of strong inequalities and distorted communication mechanisms within sociology at an international level. What has been largely missing so far is the demonstration of viable alternatives to North Atlantic domination, as well as enquiries into the conditions of their emergence. This article offers a different perspective by highlighting counterhegemonic currents emerging out of the South despite the peripheral position, i.e. by drawing attention towards challenging scholarly communities and their output that have not received much, if any, attention in the discussions so far. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article presents an author's response regarding the criticism to his article entitled, "The State of the Art in North American Urban History," by Carl Abbott and Timothy J. Gilfoyle. In response to the idea of Gilfoyle that the author suggested in his writing the existence of golden age in urban historical writing, the author explains that he is not seeking a meta-narrative and new urban orthodoxy for his paper. On the other hand, the author cited that Abbott raises a different set of issues, noting that urban history has spread through permeable disciplinary boundaries to new realms which the author sees fragmentation and Abbot sees vitality.

America was an attractive destination for European scholars and social scientist--their contacts, observations, experiences, and thoughts often became a subject of interest in itself to many other sociologists. Poles are no exception. Florian Znaniecki and William I. Thomas and their classic Polish Peasant in Europe and America, first published in 1918-20, is symbolic of contacts and influences between Polish and American sociology in the first half of the twentieth century. However, sociologists other than Znaniecki and their transatlantic journeys remain somehow in the shadows to this day. This article presents a more recent and yet less known chapter of Polish-American relations--Polish sociologists visiting American universities in the 1950s and 1960s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the 20th century Indian sociology grew from the enterprise of a small elite group to a respectable size and visible voice in global sociology. It bears the potential to reconnect the sociological discourse with the classical 'big' questions that haunted sociology for an entire century. But for shaping the global agenda of sociology, this essay argues, the sociological discourse in India first had to deconstruct its alter ego. Overcoming the reception of western sociology as a monolithic construct will remove an intellectual obstacle. This leitmotiv is discussed by reflecting on three recent books, by Yogesh Atal, T. K. Oommen and Yogendra Singh, which analyse the development of Indian sociology as a 'locus of struggles' (Bourdieu): Where did it come from? How does it operate? Where will it go? While tracing its evolution and interaction with western sociological discourse, the essay first discusses the introduction of social sciences to India as a colonial heritage that implanted empiricist 'outsider' studies of 'native' cultures, and identifies the reception of the American siblings of structural-functionalism and empiricism that dominated western sociology in the 1960s. Both intellectual encounters provoked the traditionalist call for indigenization as a counterforce to the perceived westernization of Indian social thought from 1950 to 1980. Finally, considering the recent attempt of a perspective 'from below', the essay discusses how far the view that places the increasing exclusion of specific groups from the public discourse on the sociological agenda could unite Indian sociology -- and decentre the global one. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on historical changes to the study of elites in sociology, generally focusing on the post-World War II period in the United States and Great Britain. It reveals that studies of elites have been hampered by an overly broad use of the term "elite" beginning in the 1980s. Topics considered include elite groups and their access to power, decision making, and social structures of societies. Notable theories of sociologists including Michel Foucault, John Scott, Vilfredo Pareto, and Gaetano Mosca are considered.

The article presents an historical overview of sociological studies of the corporate elite of Canada for the post-World War II period. It considers theories from books such as the 1965 "The Vertical Mosaic" by John Porter, the 1975 "The Canadian Corporate Elite" by Wallace Clement, and the 1981 "Canadian Capitalism" by Jorge Niosi. Topics explored include social relationships, capitalization, capitalists, intellectuals, and social classes. The impact of political neoliberalism and economic reform after 1979 on corporate structures is considered.

Scholars have often viewed Du Bois as a Eurocentric thinker concerned with Black people yet inhibited by his Eurocentric method from a thorough study of them. This essay shows the opposite. Du Bois clearly sought new methods and philosophical foundations for studying Black humanity. His work is the earliest engagement with the philosophical and scientific assumptions and foundations of the White supremacist study of Black humanity. He seeks out through theory, philosophy, and empirical and historical studies ways to study Africans from the standpoint of being an African. In most respects, he achieved his goal. The author terms his achievement an epistemic rupture and revolutionary breakthrough in knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]