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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]

This paper analyzes the work of two Indian sociologists who defined the contours of sociology in India in the immediate post-independence decades, M. N. Srinivas and A. R. Desai. It argues that their scholarship can be linked to sociology's legacy as anthropology in India and its embeddedness in the episteme of colonial modernity. It contends that Srinivas's methodology, the field view, attempted to make a break with earlier methods, such as book view. However, his three concepts, that of dominant caste, Sanskritization and Westernization were perceived as civilizational attributes and which had organized social change in India. A. R. Desai, a Marxist historical sociologist, made an incisive critique of capitalist exploitation and elaborated the material conditions that led to peasant and working-class revolts. However, his sociology could not unravel the caste-class linkages that organized the Indian 'social' which was embedded in Indian nationalism. This paper suggests that a definitive understanding of modernity emerges in Indian sociology in the late 70s when the feminist, dalit and tribal movements interrogated the material basis of contemporary India's developmentalism and its capitalist and exploitative character. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Even conservative estimates of the future course of AIDS epidemic make clear that only a small fraction of people who ultimately will experience AIDS symptoms now have them and that the spread of the virus will continue for some time to come. This article focuses on the social consequences of the AIDS epidemic, some of which are beginning to be felt. I argue that sociologists have an important contribution to make anticipating the long range social consequences of AIDS. Intelligent planning is impossible without a reduction of uncertainty in what the future might hold. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents a commentary about a study by Michael A. Overington about the changes which have occurred in the history, philosophy and sociology of science. Most scientists are taught that theories will be abandoned when negative evidence is discovered. Scientists are taught that they should evaluate all new ideas even if those ideas contradict existing scientific beliefs. Parts of the work from some philosophers of science have been emphasized by a group of subjectivists who take pleasure in arguing that there is no real difference between scientific ideas and other types of ideas. Most sociologists know that what is considered to be good work depends upon a contemporary but changing consensus. Saying that there is no difference between scientific knowledge and ideology is saying that despite the beliefs of scientists, empirical evidence is of little importance in validating currently accepted scientific beliefs.

In educational research, there has been much stricture of neoliberalism as a scourge. In the higher education sector, the neoliberal turn has been observed as eroding academic freedom and deprofessionalising academics. Early career academics are often described as victims of neoliberalism. In this paper, we take a positive perspective through a deep dive into resilience that enables self-transformation and, potentially, system change. Our paper is situated in the Chinese higher education context where the "up-or-out" system has been put in place, mirroring the neoliberal university at a global range. We — a mid-career researcher and an early career academic — analyse our collective narratives generated through WeChat text and voice message. Drawing insight from Bourdieu's reflexive sociology, our narratives lead to four themes: capital accumulation and self-transformation, shaping the publication habitus, emancipation from symbolic violence, and resilience to symbolic domination. We conclude the paper with a call for sociology of resilience and recommendations for deneoliberalising higher education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discourse and ideology are interrelated concepts in social sciences and the humanities and are even occasionally employed interchangeably. This paper sheds light on their relationship in academic discourse and examines the role of sociology as a scientific field in its conceptualization. Using bibliometric analysis, we examined 15,716 academic publications mentioning "discourse" or "ideology" in their title and written in English by American and British scholars between 1966 and 2015. The investigation focused on the two terms' conceptual environment, areas of usage, journals, and the organizations to which the authors were affiliated. First, we conclude that although some sociology researchers have attempted to create a sociological definition for the concept of discourse, sociologists are not its most active users. The same is true for ideology. These concepts have established niches in other disciplines (political science and history for "ideology," and educational science and linguistics for "discourse"). Second, throughout the years, the field of discourse studies has become more diversified and fragmented than that of ideology. Third, the leading organizations in both fields are prestigious American and British universities, which indicates that discourse and ideology are elements of the intellectual elites' language. Fourth, the concept of discourse was more frequently applied than that of ideology in the years 2010–2015, and we expect that it will remain popular among scholars in the next decade. As for ideology, we believe that new social challenges could foster the rediscovery of this concept in the near future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a new approach to theorizing and empirically investigating a phenomenon variously described by sociologists as internalized oppression or symbolic violence. Located at the intersection of internal worlds and external reality, the intrapsychic and the interpersonal and social, this object of inquiry—here termed self-negation—is crucial to many forms of societal domination. The paper explores its inner workings, analytically disaggregating it into an array of psychosocial processes drawn from the psychoanalytic theory of the defenses. Much of the work's originality consists in showing how these processes operate across multiple systems of domination and drive many and varied outward manifestations of the phenomenon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article contains a critique of Dirk Meyer's paper on "Deprivation of Politics". It is shown that Meyer's analysis of the structural conflicts between a globalized capitalist economy and democratic politics is unintendedly convergent with Marx' theory of revolution. Seen from this background it is unlikely that the withdrawal of the "mobile factors of production" from the framework of national political democracy will open a way to restore "collective rationality", as the author suggests. Contrarily, what Meyer points to is the scenario of a deepening economic and social crisis. Meyers neoclassical analysis of the crisis is faulty and ignores the historical circumstances which led to the rise of the modern interventionist state in the 20th century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper deals with the interest nowadays played by the concept of cosmopolitanism in contemporary schools of critical thought through different and interconnected perspectives. The article reads some deconstructive, culturalist and postcolonial rewritings of the Kantian notion of cosmopolitanism, with a focus on the network of 'refuge-cities' functioning on global cooperation, as offered by Jacques Derrida; with the cosmopolitanism 'from below' indicated by the sociologist Stuart Hall; with the 'plurality' of cosmopolitanisms claimed by Gayatry C. Spivak to be taught in formal education. The paper's attention then follows what Achille Mbembe claims as the political urge to the institution of a 'cosmo-nationality', and the necessity of a 'planetary thinking' conceived for the advent of 'cosmotechnics' as it is advocated by the influential scholar Yuk Hui. The main idea of the paper develops in the section devoted to 'cosmo-po/ethics', which played the focus of the critical attention of the International Conference organized on the emergence of its theme, in 2010, at the University of Durham, in Britain, to then migrate into some radical contributions to the debate; here those signed by the philosopher Denise Ferreira da Silva, who uses its address to the ethics of black feminist thought, and those 'proudly' performed by the poet Sanjlia Patel in her 'Migritude'. At the heart of the article's interest lies the conviction that, nowadays, philosophy, critical thinking and aesthetics constitute the arenas where it is possible to think and practice the invention of forms of cosmopolitanism that might contribute to a different respect for the 'other', where to shape the rights for the planetary mobility experienced by all people on earth, and to produce the cosmic thinking necessary to the surge of technology which is still unresolved, unconfronted and uncontrolled by modernity, finally, experiencing and experimenting the vision of the ethics of liberation and justice for all living creatures in the cosmos. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A rejoinder to the papers on A Joyfully Serious Man. The Life of Robert Bellah (AJSM) written by Andrew Abbott, Federico Brandmayr, Charles Camic, Andrea Cossu, Jean-Louis Fabiani, Laura Ford, Harlan Stelmach, and Rhys Williams. Conceived as an exercise in self-reflection, the paper addresses five wide areas: specific critiques of AJSM; an assessment of the relationship between AJSM and the research project whence it came; the connections between author and critics; a clarification of some fact regarding the main character of AJSM, that is, Robert Bellah; and the analysis of particular experiences which the author, Bellah, and his critics share as sociologists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An editorial is presented on sociologists conceptualizing and studying hope along with several other papers on diverse topics. Topics include refection on the state of historical consciousness in U.S. sociology, and a discussion of the recent trend toward the pre-registration and registration of research designs; and study of "social pathology" such as poverty, illness, racial/ethnic discrimination.

This short introduction briefly recalls how sociological theories and formal methods for social networks can help to interpret diffusion processes of ancient cultural traits. It also provides a presentation of the selected papers. These papers focus not on the ways archaeological data can be represented in a relational format, but on the potential of specific sociological network-related models to gain insights into the underlying mechanisms of diffusion processes. The necessity to develop more fine-grained information to reconstruct ancient local social networks is underlined while three aspects of the diffusion process are explored: (a) situations in which cultural practices are not borrowed in spite of contact between groups; (b) situations in which cultural practices are adopted; and (c) situations in which cultural practices in one group are copied by people from another group. All of them take inspiration from sociological studies of diffusion processes through networks, although to different extents. [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]

This paper analyses the interrelations between academic disciplines and society beyond academia by the case of sociology in Norway. For that purpose, this paper introduces the concept of disciplines' societal territories, which refer to bounded societal spaces that are shaped by the knowledge of a discipline, premised on the linkages between the discipline and its audience. By mapping sociologists' reported contributions to societal changes beyond academia, the paper firstly shows how societal territories are established by sociologists' recurring engagement with certain topics and research users. Secondly, it traces the interactions between researchers and their users, and identifies four ideal typical pathways by which the cognitive territory of Norwegian sociology is transformed into societal territories. A key observation is that the establishment of societal territories is co-determined by the structures of research use among its audience. As for the case of sociology in Norway, questions therefore arise over the interdependency between sociologists as knowledge 'suppliers' and the 'demand side' for research, and the autonomy of the sociological discipline in selecting its focus of attention. [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]

This paper is a reflection on the power of archives in driving research. Just as much as informants draw the attention of researchers to social patterns, archives do, too. Both archival and ethnographic research depends on the authority of written documents like field notes and official papers—even in the sociology of art. Archives consist mainly of papers about objects and property. I argue that the material turn in my work and the study of logistics as a form of power became important to me because of my archival experience. Sociologists recognize the importance of property as a driver of social relations of power, but they rarely study logistical power. I do, but only because the archives demonstrated its importance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two main points are made in this paper about the use of metaphors in sociology. The first is that metaphors have a strong heuristic or suggestive power that can also be increased. The second is that metaphors can lead you wrong; but there exist some easy ways of proceeding to prevent this. In both cases the paper emphasizes the practical dimension of working with metaphors. The following topics are discussed as well: how to construct a new sociological metaphor; how to add to an existing one; and what exactly happens when you are led astray by a metaphor. By way of background, the paper introduces the reader to the current state of the discussion of metaphors which is interdisciplinary in nature. The ideas of I.A. Richards are singled out as being especially helpful to sociologists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I describe the gradual monetization of the university and its implications for the discipline of sociology. I suggest that not only is money a guiding force for the decisions that university administrators, faculty and students make but that it is also a metaphor for the changes and challenges faced by sociologists today. The second part of the paper identifies strategies for grant success based on approaches that are common in the natural sciences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I argue that the French sociologist Émile Durkheim (1858–1917) decided to constitute sociology, a novel field, as 'scientific' early in his career. He adopted evolutionized biology as then practiced as his principal model of science, but at first wavered between alternative repertoires of concepts, models, metaphors and analogies, in particular Spencerian Lamarckism and French neo-Lamarckism. I show how Durkheim came to fashion a particular deployment of the French neo-Lamarckian repertoire. The paper describes and analyzes this repertoire and explicates how it might have been available to a non-biologist. I analyze Durkheim's very early writings between 1882 and 1892 in this context to substantiate my argument. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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

Developing an understanding of what is meant by the terms ‘child’ and ‘childhood’ is essential for teachers as it shapes their approaches to teaching and learning (Grajczonek in J Relig Educ 59(4):40–47, 2011). Contemporary discourse on these meanings is dominated by sociologists working in the field of the ‘new sociology of childhood’ but this paper argues that notions of spirituality also need to be considered. The paper re-interprets data collected from children aged 7–11 (n = 56) in England about their perceptions of childhood. Previous analysis (Adams, Int J Prim Elem Early Years Edu 41(5):527–537, 2013; Adams, Camb J Edu 44(2):163–178, 2014) was contextualised entirely in sociological theory. However, whilst that analysis facilitated a coherent and meaningful exploration of childhood which synthesised children’s perspectives with theory, this paper argues that sociology alone was insufficient. Without a spiritual lens, the very nature of the children themselves and their descriptions of childhood were lacking. This paper revisits the data and, whilst acknowledging the centrality and value of sociology’s contribution, it re-interrogates the data from the perspective of spirituality. Key themes emerging are: relationship with self; relationship with others; connectedness; beings and becomings, and its darker aspects. The paper concludes that interdisciplinary approaches to understanding childhood should also include the spiritual. The implications of the findings for Religious Education are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In plotting the course for the discipline of sociology, sociologists over the past two decades have called for the practice of "public sociology" (Burawoy in American Sociological Review, 70(1), 4–28, 2005), for disciplinary convergence around a critical methodology (Carroll in Canadian Review of Sociology, 50(1), 1–26, 2013) and the devotion of our scholarly efforts to issues of social justice (Romero in American Sociological Review,85(1), 1–30, 2020). While public, critical, and social justice-oriented work is important, these disciplinary mandates can serve to marginalize other types of sociological work that are valuable as well. In this climate, work coming from perspectives that are not as left leaning politically, or that does not seek to advance any political agenda may be seen as less valued or legitimate, and scholars who choose to separate their political agendas from their research may experience marginalization (McLaughlin in Canadian Journal of Sociology, 30(1), 1–40, 2005; Pawluch in The American Sociologist,50, 204–219, 2019). Inspired by the work and doctoral mentorship of Dorothy Pawluch, this paper seeks to both understand the historical development of the field of Canadian sociology and consider the value and place of the interpretive tradition within it. Through reflecting on the research of others and my own experiences as a graduate student, I argue that the "chilly" climate Dorothy (Pawluch in The American Sociologist,50, 204–219, 2019) alludes to for scholars who operate outside of a politically informed "social-justice agenda" does exist, but that mentorship can help mediate this chill for interpretive leaning students. Finally, I suggest that the branch of the interpretive tradition which asks researchers to suspend their own perspectives and privilege the position of others still has value for Canadian sociology. It can both produce deep, meaningful research contributions and provide students with tools for engaging in productive intellectual debate and transformative encounters with difference. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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 paper reconsiders the problem of whether traditional economics constitutes or comprises rational choice theory in the sense of a comprehensive economic model of and approach to human action and society. Rational choice theorists in economics as well as sociology and beyond claim that their theory and approach is founded in, derived from and justified by classical and neoclassical economics, especially its major figures. This reconsideration casts strong doubt on such claims to "rational choice" traditional economics. It argues and shows that both classical political economy and neoclassical economics essentially is or has no rational choice theory. This applies to virtually all the major economics classics and neoclassics, with some exceptions among their lesser counterparts. The paper aims to contribute to understand better the origins and rationale or lack thereof of rational choice theory and the economic approach to behavior and their implications for its sociological version. The rationale/benefit of this analysis and its finding for contemporary sociologists is three-fold. The first relating to rational choice sociologists is showing that classical/neoclassical economics is not rational choice theory and does not represent their theoretical foundation and precursor. The second pertaining to economic sociologists is demonstrating that conventional economics has elements of economic sociology, especially more than of rational choice theory. The third concerning other sociologists is to make them more familiar with the original ideas of conventional economics as distinct from their interpretations by contemporary economist pursuing the economic approach and rational choice theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

American sociologist C. Wright Mills is one of the most important and controversial sociologists of the post-war period. Of Mills' works, one book stands out: The Sociological Imagination, published by Oxford University Press in 1959. Little known is that Mills drafted his book during a 12-month Fulbright visit to University of Copenhagen 1956-1957. In the rich biographical literature on Mills this is mentioned only in the passing, or not at all. Based on hitherto unused archival material, this paper offers the first detailed account of his Copenhagen-visit during the Cold War. Bringing together this bulk of new historical traces sheds new light on the year Mills himself referred to as a "pivotal moment." These 12 months in Copenhagen, amid the Cold War, was formative for Mills in two ways: First, Copenhagen was an entrepot to European center-left thinking both east and west of the Iron Curtain. Second, the stay in Copenhagen offered a 'space of selfhood', allowing Mills a necessary respite to develop his critical thinking. He did so in close cooperation with like-minded colleagues in Copenhagen. In the mid-1950s, the discipline was in the making in Denmark, and the visit of a prominent US scholar like Mills offered opportunities for Danish sociologist to further the discipline – and their standing within the discipline. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the tensions between ideals about sociology (and what it ought to be) transmitted during university socialization and the everyday working activities among Argentinean sociologists. It focuses on an extreme case: that of the graduates who, lacking the opportunity or the desire to join the professoriate, became market researchers. The case is extreme because while university training provided these individuals with a set of methodological and analytical skills that proved to be useful (and profitable) when studying consumers and markets, it also encouraged a critical, world-rejecting, view of the discipline which was at odds with their professional activities. Not surprisingly, they encountered a distressing moral puzzle: were they betraying sociology's progressive values, values to which they were seriously committed? Building on E. Hughes' concept of "dirty work", this paper examines how these individuals navigated an occupation that was, at least initially, seen as morally objectionable, and the ways by which they came to imbue it with new and edifying "sociological" value. This article is based on interviews with sociologists working in market research and a socio-historical account of the School of Sociology at the University of Buenos Aires, the nation's most important program, where all our interviewees were trained. This study has implications for understanding situations in which actual professional practices are in sharp contrast with the ideals presented during university socialization, and the identity repair processes that university-trained workers undertake when dealing with deviant careers. [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.

Development sociologists generally agree that states play a critical role in promoting, as well as in impeding, development. However, far less scholarly consensus exists on the precise historical processes that lead either to strong or to weak states. This paper investigates the factors that shape varied state capacities through a comparative-historical analysis of two similar countries with divergent development outcomes—Trinidad and Tobago and Gabon. In the 1960s, both countries had comparably large amounts of oil wealth, minimal state involvement in the economy, and low levels of development. In the 1970s, state capacity in Trinidad and Tobago dramatically increased and the country went on to achieve high levels of development. The Gabonese state, on the other hand, remained weak resulting in persistent low levels of development. This paper traces the divergence in state capacity to variations in working class mobilization, specifically the particular type of working class movements in each country and the political opportunity contexts. In doing so, this paper reveals new agents and contingencies producing state capacity that are not predominantly discussed in the contemporary development literature, and the meso-level mechanics by which these agents are successful or constrained in doing so. [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 paper examines the participation by sociologists in several major conferences, mostly held in New York, that focused on issues related to science, democracy and faith between the late 1930s and the early post-World War II period. These events offered sociologists an opportunity to showcase the discipline to leading scholars, public figures, and other intellectuals and public audiences outside the discipline. Amidst widespread uncertainty and a quest for answers to significant social and economic problems, sociologists revealed that they were no more adept than other intellectuals to provide definitive pathways out of potential catastrophe. At the same time, the conferences and related events demonstrated that sociologists had analytical tools and insights that could be useful in framing questions and orientations that were of interest not only to scholar bodies, but also served as potential reference points for social policy and community development. These activities, in helping to legitimize the discipline and reinforce the boundaries within which it operated, did so in a manner that also separated and privileged sociologists, as professionals or experts, from broader publics in ways that narrowed the discipline's main foci and lessened its capacity to adopt more democratic public roles. [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]

Sociologists Claus Offe and Hans Wiesenthal in a widely-cited and influential paper, theorize that capitalists and workers have inherently different logics of collective action that give capitalists a decided advantage over workers in organizing to make claims on other groups and on the state in particular. Because workers necessarily face capitalists as individuals who sell their labor power, it is difficult for them to identify their common interests and act in concert. Offe and Wiesenthal reason that capitalists, however, share unambiguous common interests that can be collectively pursued with relatively little cost to any particular capitalist. This article contrasts Offe and Wiesenthal's structural class theory with a historical view rooted in social movement theory. By the logic of collective action, we mean relationships among interests, identities, and organization found in the processes by which groups make claims on each other for rights, resources, and recognition.

This paper seeks to analyze the policies on the cultural field implemented in Chile in recent years, explaining how expertise became fundamental and, more specifically, how this expertise evolved from that of an expert intellectual to that of an expert professional. The paper is based on the general hypothesis that the cultural field needs to be viewed in the context of a growing differentiation and autonomization of Chilean society, but that there are some interesting nuances to its evolution, particularly with regard to the transformation of expertise. This article argues that the expert in culture has a twofold nature, which is illustrated through drawing a timeline from the 1980s to the present, marking certain milestones in Chile’s national and cultural history. This timeline incorporates the intellectual work of two of Chile’s most important contemporary sociologists and experts in culture and cultural policies, Manuel Antonio Garretón and José Joaquín Brunner. A sample of their publications is analyzed and then contrasted to documents on cultural policy since the approval of the country’s institutional framework for culture in 2003, when the National Council for Culture and the Arts was created, gauging the influence of the expert intellectual on this new institutional framework and the thrust of public policies on culture. The paper concludes that the figure of the expert in culture has shifted from the “expert intellectual” to the expert of a professional kind, although the theoretical work of the former has continued to influence the debate around cultural policies to this day. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to understand the influence of institutional and organisational embeddedness on research productivity of Italian sociologists. We looked at all records published by Italian sociologists in Scopus from 1973 to 2016 and reconstructed their co-authorship patterns. We built an individual productivity index by considering the number and type of records, the impact factor of journals in which these records were published and each record’s citations. We found that sociologists who co-authored more frequently with international authors were more productive and that having a stable group of co-authors had a positive effect on the number of publications but not on citations. We found that organisational embeddedness has a positive effect on productivity at the group level (i.e., sociologists working in the same institute), less at the individual level. We did not found any effect of the scientific disciplinary sectors, which are extremely influential administratively and politically for promotion and career in Italy. With all caveats due to several limitations of our analysis, our findings suggest that internationalisation and certain context-specific organisational settings could promote scientist productivity. [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]

In the last decades of his life, Talcott Parsons was often indicted as conservative. More recently, his analyses of contemporary society have been perceived as obsolete. In the present paper, I argue that both these accounts are wrong. Parsons's biographical and intellectual profile is clearly – and rather consistently – that of a New Deal liberal. His "ate" works, moreover, articulate an original view of the integrative processes in modern societies that is still both theoretically compelling and politically relevant. Parsons's view of modernity has made possible the development of a sophisticated theory of societal pluralism, able to deal analytically with the astonishing variety of structural strains (and resources) arising from an increasingly diverse – in racial, religious, ethnic, sexual and moral terms - membership in contemporary societies. His sociological enthusiasm for inclusion has never been blind to the likelihood of backlashes and the strength of discontent such inclusion may bring. His work provides thus some important directions in the current storm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents critical views of the works of sociologist Alfred Schutz by sociologists Helmut R. Wagner, Jonathan B. Imber and David M. Rasmussen. In Schutz's theory, " value neutrality" means the non-assimilation of the fundamental anxiety and the exclusion of the experiences of music, business, friendship. Wagner traces what Schutz refers to in several places of his work as the fundamental anxiety biographically to Schutz's experience in the first World War. In his analysis of Schutz's" The Well-Informed Citizen," Imber suggests that ways of reading this paper are to see in it what the subtitle says," An Essay on the Social Distribution of Knowledge," that is, a sketch of Schutz's conception of the sociology of knowledge. Rasmussen's "Explorations of the Lebenswelt: Reflections on Schutz and Habermas," criticizes Schutz's use and development of phenomenology, his construction of the social world on the basis of face-to-face relations, and his exclusively methodological critique of Weber.

Critics argue that few sociological publications are cited in the subsequent literature and that this implies many are superfluous. Data on the number of citations to three kinds of sociological documents-Journal ankles, chapters in edited books, and books-show that a substantial majority of each type is cited in the subsequent literature. Furthermore, the high proportions of ever-cited items do not result from authors' citation of their own work Average citation levels of journals are highly correlated with other measures of journal stature. The average book is cited about as often as an average article in a highly-cited journal while an average chapter in an edited book is cited about as often as an average article in an infrequently-cited journal. Within-Journal variation in article citation rates far exceeds between-journal variation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In sociology today, as in other sciences, the professional journals serve as major channels for the dissemination of ideas and information. The papers presented in the principal periodicals reach a wide audience among sociologists, are acknowledged as the best work, and stand as models for all who aspire to success. The present writers have selected for analysis a sample of contributions to two prestigious journals, the "American Sociological Review" and the "American Journal of Sociology." Included in this survey are the 202 articles published in the two periodicals during 1965 and 1966, and the 200 papers published in 1940 and 1941. The term "substantive research" is employed to refer both to studies presenting empirical data on social phenomena and to papers reviewing past research or proposing new direct lions for inquiry. Classed under methodology are all, articles dealing with the basic assumptions of science, with the limitations and potentialities of specific methods, with the development, validity, and reliability of specific scales and measures, and with various statistical and mathematical devices and techniques.

In sociology's formative period between 1830 and 1930, evolutionary analysis organized much theorizing and research. This line of work ended abruptly in the 1920s but, over the last decades, has come back into the discipline somewhat piecemeal with the reintroduction of more sophisticated stage models of societal evolution, functional analysis, human ecological analysis, and other new lines of evolutionary inquiry outlined in this paper. Our goal is to demonstrate that revitalized paradigms of the past can still be useful with modest reconceptualization, while at the same time new intellectual movements in the other social sciences, especially economics and psychology, incorporating evolutionary ideas from biology provide sociology with an opportunity to develop its own approach to evolutionary analysis that avoids the problems that let to the demise of this line of inquiry in the 1920s, as well as the problems of other social sciences applying their more narrowly focus models to sociological problems. Indeed, sociology can become a leader in the social sciences in developing more sophisticated theoretical and methodological approaches to incorporating biology and evolutionary analysis into the social sciences. When presented in a new, more sophisticated guise, old approaches like functionalism, stage models of societal evolution, and ecological models can be seen as still having a great deal of explanatory power, while revealing a progressive and future orientation that should appeal to all contemporary sociologists. It is time, then, for sociology to remember its past in order to move into the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research has examined various elements of Twitter; however, no scholarship has explored how sociologists currently use the platform. This empirically driven paper explores how individuals that self-identify as sociologists on Twitter use the popular micro-blogging social media site. A total of 152,977 tweets from Twitter profiles of 130 sociologists were collected and examined using qualitative media analysis. The potential use of Twitter allows the sociologist to become both the generator and interlocutor of dialogue with publics. We frame our data analysis and discussion around the core theme of expertise - namely, the role that expertise plays in the use of Twitter by sociologists. Our findings indicate that when sociologists used Twitter as sociologists (i.e., drawing upon their stated research expertise) little direct engagement with publics occurred. Thus, while sociologists appear to be using Twitter as a space for public sociology, the use of this interactive platform is mostly limited to the generation of content, a finding consistent with Burawoy's traditional form of public sociology. Suggestions for future research are noted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay examines a brief stretch of the career of the noted sociologist Lewis S. Feuer, paying particular attention to his relationship to Communism during the thirties and forties. With the aid of archival sources, it reconstructs several key episodes of his political involvement that help to explain his eventual deradicalization. This essay first considers Feuer's geopolitical outlook at the beginning of the Second World War, demonstrating the extent to which his views accorded with the official stance of the Communist Party. It then details Feuer's experience as an American soldier stationed in New Caledonia, highlighting his independent efforts to abolish forced labor under the French colonial regime. These previously unexamined aspects of his early life shed new light on his later struggles to define himself politically. The purpose of this essay is to complicate Feuer's posthumous memory, which has been overshadowed by his belated neoconservatism, and to assert the continuing importance of leftist commitment to his thought even until late in his career. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Is there a connection between biography and sociology for Peter Berger? The short answer, as demonstrated by his own memoir, Adventures of an Accidental Sociologist, is "yes." But in his book, he traces this connection to his own arrival and training at the Graduate Faculty of the New School. I would like to suggest that the process begins earlier in his life. Known for his work on the sociology of knowledge, the examination of how "society influences thought," I suggest an examination of how one's biography influences thought, the environment in which Berger grew played a major role in his self-awareness, adjustment, human development, and identity. The paper applies this approach, along with Berger's concept of the sociology of knowledge to sketch a possible understanding of his ideas and work that emerge as a product of his life experiences. The idea here is that people's lives help frame and explain their own thinking and the way they see the world. Who one is, where and how one has lived and those with whom one has interacted create not only one's personality and identity but also epigenetically the blueprint of one's way of perceiving reality and shaping ideas. The intersection of the social and biographical facts of one's life create the person and his ideas, both the objective and subjective structures of meaning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

American sociology has largely neglected enslavement as a topic of study, despite slavery's being one of the most foundational, pervasive, and far-reaching social institutions in the West. In this paper I explain this scholarly neglect as stemming from three factors. First, disciplinary parochialism has blinded US sociologists to the complex interweaving of enslavement with the systems of oppression that sociology has decided to care about. Second, presentism, an ahistorical "account" of the past that culminates in a preference for present-day events and institutions, has relegated slavery to history. Finally, theoretical frameworks that revise enslavement as "ennobling" erase the long-term effects of psychological and physical violence on the descendants of enslaved peoples. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite long-standing prejudices against doing so, it is time for sociology to reconnect with its roots in biological and evolutionary thinking. Sociology emerged as a discipline when the notion of evolution was actively used in biology, geology, and emerging social sciences. Throughout the nineteenth century, many of the most prominent early European sociologists examined the social universe from an evolutionary perspective; and this perspective was borrowed in much of early American sociology in the last decades of the nineteenth century and in the first decades of the twentieth century. By the end of the second decade of the twentieth Century, however, evolutionary analysis was rapidly disappearing in sociology in the United States, and by the 1930s, it was pretty much dead. And for the remainder of the twentieth century, it was viewed with a great suspicion, especially evolutionary approaches that sought to incorporate ideas from biology into the field. Despite the revival of stage models of societal evolution and the emergence of new ecological approaches in the 1960s and 1970s, evolutionary ideas from biology were still rejected by most American sociologists though much of the twentieth century. In this paper, we first present the history of this rejection of evolutionary, with the goal of encouraging sociologists today to recognize the distortions and misrepresentations of Darwinian and Spencerian ideas that fueled intellectual prejudices for so many decades. These prejudices only get in the way of sociology in the twenty-first century, where biological ideas have begun to pervade the social sciences. Thus, American sociologists should now take stock and reconsider how much evolutionary and biological analysis can help sociology and, equally if not more important, how an informed evolutionary sociology can influence those in the other social sciences and even those in the biological sciences. [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]

The article relates the details of a meeting between sociologists Talcott Parsons and Ken'ichi Tominaga in 1978. The discussion between Talcott Parsons and Ken'ichi Tominaga took place at the Iwanami Shoten publishers office in Tokyo, Japan on the afternoon of December 12, 1978. Parsons arrived in Tokyo at mid-day, after having taken the train that had departed from Osaka around 9:00 a.m. that morning. In a letter written to Parsons, a few weeks before the Parsons' visit to Tokyo, Professor Tominaga described the Iwanami Shoten session as a colloquy with himself concerning the retrospection of Parsons on the formation of his own sociological thought. What Tominaga had in mind was something along the lines that Parsons had written for Daedalus. Iwanami Shoten had already shown some interest in Parson's work, having published in 1958 a Japanese translation of Economy and society, with an introduction by Tominaga. Parsons was paid an honorarium of 50,000 yen for the discussion, the same amount that he was given for his lecture later in the day. A few days prior to the discussion, Tominaga had supplied Parson with the following list of provisional questions: voluntarism vs. utilitarianism, motivation vs. value orientation, nature of system theory, relation between the Theory of Action and the Structural-functional theory, phenomenological approach.

Presents a letter to the editor on the anonymity rule adopted by the editors of the American Sociologists Journal.

In this article, we will delve into Theodor W. Adorno's sociology. The general aim is to study Adorno's theory of society and its relation to sociological interpretation. What primarily distinguishes Adorno from other sociologists (of his time and today) is that he considers society to be the fundamental concept of the discipline. Theorising on the post-liberal capitalism of his time, Adorno proposes the concept of the exchange society, which is understood as an antagonistic totality that reproduces itself through the suffering it inflicts on socialised individuals. Within texts dating back to the 1960s, such as 'Society', Adorno engages in an exploration of comprehensive sociology and the sociology of social facts, reciprocally examining them. He confronts one with the other in a proposal of an interpretative model of the comprehensibility or incomprehensibility of society. This intellectual confrontation, while avoiding synthesis, leads Adorno to two main outcomes. First, it yields a diagnostic perspective on social theory, portraying capitalist society as simultaneously rational and irrational, comprehensible and incomprehensible. Second, it hints at a sociological interpretation of specific phenomena. In addition to exploring this central theme in Adorno's sociology, we will also shed light on his distinctive approach to classic texts and concepts. Specifically, Adorno links to the received terminologies but incorporates them into constellations that imbue them with eloquence by revealing the underlying objective moments they encapsulate. The theoretical significance of this article lies in the aim to demonstrate that Adorno's contributions to sociology are not merely borrowed from philosophical contemplations. Instead, they arise from an immanent critique of the sociological tradition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines research on the diffusion of innovation, the final stage in the process of technological change. The focus rests primarily on two traditions in diffusion research: that of economists and that of sociologists. Diffusion researchers in these and related disciplines have made significant contributions to the understanding of the dynamics of processes of change; yet the state of the art in diffusion research is not equal to the sum of its parts. This is due in large measure to disciplinary parochialism: scholars have concentrated on those innovations, diffusion environments, explanatory variables, and analytical methodologies which are most compatible with their particular disciplines, despite the fact that diffusion is not a discipline-specific phenomenon. Deficiencies in current understanding of diffusion are examined in the context of this and other significant problems. The paper concludes by considering the policy relevance of diffusion research and suggesting issues with which future research might productively be concerned. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]