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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]

The term 'pure sociology' reflects some of the most important disciplinary concerns that have helped shape the intellectual development of sociology in the United States, particularly in the effort to establish disciplinary boundaries and achieve academic legitimacy. To flesh out the thesis, the current paper recounts briefly the early discussions associated with pure sociology before examining the various usages in the U.S. since the establishment of the discipline. While selected classical theorists employed the concept in framing their discussions, pure sociology represents a distinctively American idiom. The etymological history coincides with the institutionalization of sociology in U.S. universities, while informing key debates about the nature of sociological analysis throughout the past 120 years. Drawing upon an electronic search of multiple databases, a content analysis highlights the prevalence of the different meanings that mainly U.S. social scientists have attached to the concept. The paper then traces the varying trajectories of the many different usages over time, concluding with a discussion of the ascendance of Donald Black's theoretical paradigm that has appropriated the term with considerable success. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Norbert Elias's theory of civilising processes has been received only marginally in the USA, one of the obstacles being the absence of figurational or process studies of American society. In the first decade of this century this situation was changed by the publication of Stephen Mennell's The American Civilizing Process (2007) and Cas Wouters' Sex and Manners (2004) and Informalization (2007). By 2012, Randall Collins had reviewed the first and the third books in two essays (2009, 2011). His claims and criticism of civilising and informalisation theory are discussed in this paper by placing them in the context of the reception history of Elias's work since the 1960s, when a first round of discussion centred on criteria to be used for determining the direction of civilising processes. A second round was in the 1990s, and in this paper we contribute to a new round by presenting a summary of earlier critical discussions in an attempt to establish a more solid and subtler body of criteria for studying civilising processes. We use this in critically discussing Collins's contributions, linking them to symbolic interactionism, American National Ideology, and blind spots in American sociology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Anthony J. Blasi’s book, Sociology of Religion in America: A History of a Secular Fascination with Religion, is a valuable contribution to the history of the sociology of religion. In this comment paper, I assert that this text is a fine addition to any graduate-level course on the sociology of religion, and I discuss three different threads of discussion that masters and doctoral students could explore in class. These discussion threads include: 1) Can sociologists maintain objectivity when studying faith-based phenomena? 2) How can sociologists best study religion today? 3) How does the current study of religion today compare to the subfield a century ago? Educators can use this text as a springboard for their students to think, discuss, and write critically. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Histories of American sociology generally acknowledge, to varying degrees, Christian involvement in the development of the field. Much of this attention, however, underemphasizes two highly influential movements in early-twentieth-century Christian thought, the social gospel movement (1870s-1920s) and the rise of the global ecumenical movement (beginning in 1910). One under-researched, yet particularly revealing example of the impact of these movements is the Institute of Social and Religious Research ('the Institute'; 1921-1934), founded in 1921 under the leadership of global Christian leader John R. Mott and funded by John D. Rockefeller, Jr. The Institute was comprised of Christian social scientific researchers who promoted interdenominational cooperation by engaging in scientific inquiry regarding the structure, current status, and functions of religious institutions and life in the Untied States. The Institute strived to maintain a high level of academic rigor while also retaining a religious motivation that included service to others, a classic struggle in the early history of American sociology. The publications produced by the Institute were groundbreaking in their applications of social scientific methods to the study of religion in the United States, most notable of which included Robert S. Lynd and Helen Merrell Lynd's highly generative and controversial Middletown study. In an overview of the largely unexplored tenure of the Institute, this paper brings together important trends in the early twentieth century to provide a unique perspective on the historical and theological contexts for the development of American sociology as an academic discipline. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Stephen Turner's book, American Sociology, is valuable contribution to the history of the field. In this comment paper, however, I raise questions about two of its core claims: that the feminization of American sociology prevented its collapse, and that the discipline has a two-tiered status structure, with activist scholarship located primarily in the lower tier. We should be sure that Turner is right about these points before we accept his evaluation of the current state of the field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Life story methods in Europe commonly belong to the field of biographical sociology. This paper points out that biographical sociology is missing from American sociology and describes in-depth two well-known methods in this field in Europe, the narrative interview and objective hermeneutics. The absence of biographical sociology from U.S. sociology should be remedied, it is argued, for the following reasons: First, an analysis of biographical patterns could counteract the heavy emphasis on social structure in American sociology and enrich certain subfields within it. For example, some of the concepts used in European biographical sociology, such as the concept of the 'trajectory' can be related to conceptions of agency set forth by American and British sociologists and thus enrich sociology overall. Second, biographical sociology can help counteract the heavy orientation towards quantitative research in American sociology without falling into the pitfalls of purely interpretive methodologies. And third, biographical sociology can significantly enrich the still missing link between culture and cognition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyzes the American presence in two journals of the Bucharest School of Sociology, as well as the information provided in these journals with regard to the American sociological models and their evolution. The data reviewed demonstrate not only a strong academic connection, but also an active cooperation and consistent exchange of academic knowledge between the two countries. The paper builds on a quantitative study of the full archives of the two journals - Arhiva pentru Ştiinţa şi Reforma Socială (Archive for Science and Social Reform) and Sociologie Romanească (Romanian Sociology); its final part is dedicated to the Romanian monographic activity of the U.S. sociologist Ph. Mosely. The conclusion is that the development of the Romanian school of sociology was in line not only with what was happening in the greatest schools of sociology in Europe, but also with the theoretical developments of the American sociology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This contribution to consideration of "Talcott Parsons and Politics" explores the kind of optimism of sociology's "incurable theorist" that is evident in his mature view of the USA as the world's "New Lead" society. Statements related to optimism can be identified in his extensive writings and this article focuses upon its expression when as an "early career academic" in the late 1920s and 1930s he laid the foundations for his life-long work in sociology. Parsons' sociology developed as the USA's twentieth century contribution unfolded. His "moderate optimism" about the viability of the American experiment shares deeply and intimately in his claim that sociology had finally emerged as an analytical social science oriented by the theory of social action. His mature work considers the "societal community" to be the peculiar focus for sociology's special scientific attention. The USA has taken on this "New Lead" role at the same time that the societal community itself has emerged from within American experience. The discussion here is as much a personal memoire of the author, revisiting efforts to understand how the earliest stages of Parsons's sociology were maintained by him over a long career. Parsons sociological scholarship exhibited American characteristics. As sociology's "incurable theorist" he sought understanding of his own (American) situation, and its context, past and present, seeking to promote a social science that contributed positively to global society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the Progressive Era, sociology and institutional economics shared some important methodological principles and theoretical constructs. This study explores some of these similarities, focusing on the ideas and theories of Albion Small and Franklin Giddings, who were the most important sociologists in the United States at the turn of the twentieth century. Since the literature on the history of the interdisciplinarity of economics and sociology is somewhat scarce, this study aims to contribute to this historiography by considering the methodological and theoretical underpinnings of early institutional economics -- mainly from the standpoint of Veblenian institutional economics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using a unique data set of causal usage drawn from research articles published between 2006-2008 in the American Journal of Sociology and American Sociological Review, this article offers an empirical assessment of causality in American sociology. Testing various aspects of what we consider the conventional wisdom on causality in the discipline, we find that (1) 'variablistic' or 'covering law' models are not the dominant way of making causal claims, (2) research methods affect but do not determine causal usage, and (3) the use of explicit causal language and the concept of 'mechanisms' to make causal claims is limited. Instead, we find that metaphors and metaphoric reasoning are fundamental for causal claims-making in the discipline. On this basis, we define three dominant causal types used in sociology today, which we label the Probabilistic, Initiating and Conditioning types. We theorize this outcome as demonstrating the primary role that cognitive models play in providing inference-rich metaphors that allow sociologists to map causal relationships on to empirical processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Peter Baehr, Katelin Albert, Eleanore Townsley and Neil Gross raise a variety of issues in relation to American Sociology: From Pre-Disciplinary to Post-Normal (). In response, I defend the claim that the revival of sociology enrollments after the 1980s owes something to the concentration on gender issues and the feminization of sociology. I defend the claim that the response to the enrollment crisis was a rational strategy which succeeded. I also consider challenges to my depiction of the caste system in American sociology against the idea that there is a continuous distribution of merit. I argue that the changes in American sociology during this period need to be understood against the larger backdrop of the transformation to post-normal science and the acceptance of openly partisan academic fields. Although I attempted to record rather than evaluate these developments, I respond to Baehr and Townsley's attempt to discern an evaluative stance, and provide a context for this response in relation to the problem of expertise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sociology once debated ‘the social’ and did so with a public readership. Even as late as the Second World War, sociologists commanded a wide public on questions about the nature of society, altruism and the direction of social evolution. As a result of several waves of professionalization, however, these issues have vanished from academic sociology and from the public writings of sociologists. From the 1960s onwards sociologists instead wrote for the public by supporting social movements. Discussion within sociology became constrained both by ‘professional’ expectations and political taboos. Yet the original motivating concerns of sociology and its public, such as the compatibility of socialism and Darwinism, the nature of society, and the process of social evolution, did not cease to be of public interest. With sociologists showing little interest in satisfying the demand, it was met by non-sociologists, with the result that sociology lost both its intellectual public, as distinct from affinity groups, and its claim on these topics. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]