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Information about several papers discussed at a session on currents from Chicago, Illinois and the impact of U.S. sociology around the world, that were given before the American Sociological Association, are presented. The papers presented ventures into the history of sociology and emphasizes its effort as a discipline to confront the realities of war and peace, poverty and wealth, nationalism and imperialism, dominance and subornation and to define the role of sociology and sociologists in the face of these realities.

The concept of caste played a prominent role in the early American sociology of race and race relations. The concept was developed largely through case studies of racially segregated communities in the American Deep South during the 1930s. While the concept of caste was largely abandoned by the middle of the 1950s, elements of a caste theory remain useful for both understanding contemporary work on race relations and the development of the sociology of race. This paper proposes a revised and expanded conception of caste grounded in the Black-White dynamic of American race relations. This approach builds on the performance circuit framework of economic sociology, arguing that "caste" refers to the roles, rules, and etiquette that govern economic interaction and give them meaning. The expanded approach develops three premises that highlight the consequences of caste. First, the entanglement of occupational and social roles is a key component of a racialized caste system. Second, deeply rooted racial animus prevents the social cohesion necessary to transition out of an economy defined by caste. Finally, the precarity of nominal class advancement within the dominated caste inhibits organizing that might challenge the overall system. This reevaluation of the caste concept resolves many of the limitations of the original caste school and bridges the divide between cultural and economic-based analyses of race relations in the early days of the American social sciences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is an investigation of attempts at endogenization and indigenization in the history of sociology in Japan. The author begins by presenting a short history of Japanese sociology. While the issues of endogenization and indigenization had been raised in the 1910s, imperialism and the militarization of the Emperor state and society blocked this form of development. Japanese social sciences have thus mainly followed the model of Western social sciences. The issue of indigenization gained attention after World War II and especially after the late 1960s, which was a time of reflection on the extreme influence of American sociology. In this context, this paper investigates the development of Kazuko Tsurumi's sociology, which is one of the best examples of work that deals with the issue of indigenization. Tsurumi analyzes social change from pre‐World War II to post‐World War II Japan by drawing on sociological functionalism. However, Tsurumi suggests that Kunio Yanagita's theory of folklore and ethnology provides a stronger explanatory framework than functionalism, and contends that Kumagusu Minaka has developed an approach rooted in East Asia. Tsurumi advances this indigenous development theory based on the work of Yanagita and Minakata, and at the same time internationalizes this theory. This paper concludes that Tsurumi's theory is an important medium between Western sociology and Eastern sociology. [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]

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]

Classical Theory courses in the U.S. present a history of our discipline grounded in the works of Durkheim, Marx, and Weber, defining "classic" by space and time, giving pre-World War II Europe credit for creating the foundation of contemporary sociology. While past critiques of this canon have argued for expanding the geographic bounds outside of Europe, these efforts still ground the origins of social theory in a time period of racial exclusion and segregation. We argue for a reckoning with the racial origins of the discipline in the United States in anti-Blackness and the legacies of racial exclusions. We must grapple with the histories of exclusion and segregation that continue to impact the discipline's present and futures. In this paper, we argue that the teaching of sociology's history should be through the "Foundations of Social Theory," a broad approach to teaching that rejects the ideas of both "classics" and a "canon." This approach roots theory in our history through core issues of study (e.g., the origins and consequences of capitalism) and directly addresses past racial and gendered exclusions by centering BIPOC intellectual contributions across time. By lifting the time and space restrictions, we open the doors to including voices omitted and repressed due to the exclusion of BIPOC people, especially Black women, from higher education in the U.S. This approach acknowledges the diverse histories and voices in our classrooms and profession, and highlights the relevance of social theory for our future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines one aspect of early twentieth century debates over the meaning of scientific methodology and epistemology within the social sciences: the tendency of sociologists to invoke 'laboratory' as a multivalent concept and in reference to diverse institutions and sites of exploration. The aspiration to designate or create laboratories as spaces of sociological knowledge production was broadly unifying in early American sociology (1890-1930), even though there was no general agreement about what 'laboratory' meant, nor any explicit acknowledgment of that lack of consensus. The persistence of laboratory talk in sociology over decades reflects the power of 'laboratory' as a productively ambiguous, legitimizing ideal for sociologists aspiring to make their discipline rigorously scientific. [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]

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]

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

This paper explores the research methodology of Gunnar Myrdal's study of race relations in the United States, An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy (1944). It gives an overview of the methodological framework it presents for the study of racism and its consequences. The interpretative paradigm that underpinned this forcefully anti-racist synthesis of a large amount of empirical evidence is discussed, and three core elements of the normative theoretical framework are highlighted: the role of human rights values in theory and practice, the concept of `social environmentalism' and the principle of `cumulative causation'. Examples are then given of quantitative and qualitative evidence in support of the overall arguments about racism and its consequences. The paper concludes by noting that Myrdal's explicit value perspective, coupled with detailed empirical attention to the causal institutional effects of racism as a belief system, is a research tradition worthy of continued attention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Edward A. Ross, a key figure in the early history of American sociology, developed a conceptualization of natural and social changes of the material environment that is virtually forgotten today. In this paper, these topics are discussed and located vis-à-vis Ross's intellectual contemporaries and their general take on the nature/society relationship. It is argued that ecological and sociological ideas in the early twentieth century influenced one another and, in the case of Ross, produced a perspective of social change that tried to include the dynamics of nature. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The dismissal in 1931 of a distinguished sociologist, Carl C. Taylor, after 11 years as an influential faculty member, and the investigation by the American Association of University Professors which followed has received little attention in the literature on the history of sociology. Taylor did not have the security of a tenure system. years later, he received as honorary degree from the same institution, now, North Carolina State University, from which he had been dismissed. This paper makes accessible the AAUP's full report on the Taylor case and highlights his carrer and contributions. The AAUP report summarizes alternative explanation for the dismissal, concluding that the compelling cause was not the budgetary pressures cited president of the university. Our interpretation is that the university president had Taylor dismissed because of deterioration in their interpersonal relations and the cumulative effect of anti-liberal conservative forces in the state at the time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper examines the relationship between two seminal figures in American sociology, in terms of its contribution to the movement to establish the science within the academic world. Using archival data, the analysis shows how Edward A. Ross and Pitirim A. Sorokin became acquainted and subsequently collaborated to expand the intellectual horizons and institutional base of sociology. Their collaboration is understood as intergenerational solidarity, which the paper argues is fundamental to an understanding of both the past and the future of organized sciences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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 article deals with the state of sociology in Canada. A review of the history of the discipline of sociology in this country leads to the almost inescapable conclusion that what has developed here is not a Canadian sociology but a sociology that is American. Not only have Canadian universities recruited their sociology staffs largely from the United States, but most of the Canadians we have had teaching sociology in this country have acquired their training across the border. If one attempted to trace the early development of sociological teaching and research in Canada there might be reason to argue that in its origins the discipline had something of a Canadian or, at least, a non-American character. They were not Americans in those days before the First World War or immediately after teaching sociology or attempting to apply its teachings to the affairs of the community. There is much that could be said about the accomplishments of Canadian sociology, particularly as it is coming to be developed by younger scholars in the field.

Professional sociology in the U.S. began as a field area within economics, but gradually emerged as a separate discipline. Using new data on joint meetings and the separation of departments, I track interdisciplinary relations through three phases: sponsorship (1890–1905), collaboration (1905–1940), and disengagement (post-1940). In the early years, sociology was mostly a branch of economics departments. With the formation of the American Sociological Society, relations with economics began to be more characterized by professionally autonomous collaboration. The 1920s saw a large wave of sociology departments separating from economics. Still, joint annual meetings (including joint presidential addresses) remained the norm until 1940. Paradigmatic conflict between institutional and neoclassical economists was the major force that sustained the economics–sociology collaboration. As institutionalism faded from the scene in the late 1930s, so went interdisciplinary contact. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this essay, I reflect on the ways elements of Robin M. Williams Jr.’s research agenda might be carried forth in a meaningful way to sociological studies of twenty-first-century phenomena—in particular identifying the ways in which the facts of human interaction, of human expectation, and of human influence shapes outcomes of significance for our present, our future, and, therefore, our past. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the New Voices Initiative for the history of sociology in the U.S. that was formulated during the 2019 American Sociological Association (ASA) Annual Meeting in New York. Topics include the relevance of the history of sociology discipline to academic sociology, the views of early career scholars about the history of sociology as a risky proposition for significant intellectual investment, and an overview of the conception of the New Voices Initiative. Also discussed are the opportunities and needs surrounding sociology's history.

C. Wright Mills was one of the most important critics of Talcott Parsons who succeeded in establishing the image of Parsons as a conservative "grand theorist" out of touch with the real world and its real problems, as passed on in sociological textbooks. In this essay, it is argued that Mills' "translation of Parsons into English" is a one-sided interpretation based on his own theoretical premises, which he called the sociological imagination. The way Mills conceptualized sociological imagination leans towards an ideological world-view with political ambitions but lacks the necessary theoretical differentiation for an adequate evaluation of Parsons' general theory of action and the conceptualization of the social system in particular. Given Mills' premises, it appeared to him as if Parsons could not deal with social conflict, social change, domination and power relationships, which laid the foundations of a narrative quite distinct from the "real" Parsons. The conceptual deficiencies of Mills' sociological imagination lead into theoretical antinomies and the practical inability to resolve political issues outside of forceful intervention as suggested in the theoretical tradition of Thomas Hobbes. Independent of a political positioning, Parsons' sophistications in his understanding of power as one of several generalized symbolic media of interaction beyond the Hobbesian utilitarian model are necessary to come to terms with the increased complexity of modern society, both in theoretical and in political terms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates the relationship between Progressive era (1890-1920) social reform and the origins of American sociology with a view of the vital contributions of women in these endeavors. I observe the efforts of the first generation of sociologists to legitimate and delineate the field in the "social construction" of the discipline of sociology, as they attempted to combine Christianity, the social gospel, and socialism into a new and unique ideology. In this article I examine the archival material of Progressive era reformer, Caroline Bartlett Crane (1858-1935), a Unitarian minister and student in the sociology department of the University of Chicago in 1896, to address the relationship between theology, sociology, and social reform from a woman's perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This is an article about the history of US sociology with systematic intent. It goes back to World War II to recover a wartime narrative context through which sociologists formulated a ‘trauma’ to the discipline and ‘blamed’ qualitative and values-oriented research for damaging the scientific status of sociology. This narrative documents a discussion of the changes that sociologists said needed to be made in sociology as a science to repair its status and reputation. While debates among sociologists about theory and method had always been contentious, the wartime narrative insisted for the first time that sociology be immediately unified around quantitative approaches. The narrative of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ science that developed during the war not only undermined the efforts of social interactionists to theorize social action and social justice, but also derailed Parsons’ pre-war effort to bridge differences. The moral coding that is the legacy of the narrative stigmatized important approaches to sociology, leading to a ‘crisis’ in the 1960s that still haunts the discipline. Disciplinary history has overlooked the wartime narrative with the result that the role played by World War II in effecting this crisis has gone unrecognized. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

US-American sociology has largely failed to examine the transformation of mediated communication of the past 20 years. If sociology is to be conceived as a general social science concerned with analyzing and critically scrutinizing past, present, and future conditions of collective human existence, this failure, and the ignorance it engenders, is detrimental. This ignorance, we argue, may be traced back to the weak self-identity, institutionalization and position of media sociology in the discipline. Our argument here is threefold: 1) There was an opportunity structure for specialization, that is, a venerable research tradition in media sociology since the first half of the twentieth century. This tradition links back to classics in sociology and peaked at a time (1970s and 1980s) when the discipline differentiated institutionally and many new sections emerged in the American Sociological Association. 2) Despite this tradition, media sociology has not become established in sociology in the United States until recently. 3) Lastly, we locate reasons for non-establishment on three distinct but interconnected levels: the history of ideas in media sociology, institutional/disciplinary history, and disciplinary politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social Network Analysis (SNA) is a sociology based on interaction that visualizes and models relations between actors. Whereas interaction is approached by classical scholars, we had to wait until the 1970s and the birth of computer science to see social networks analysis develop. This article investigates the influence of SNA in France from the 1980s and wonder if there is a French school of SNA? To do so, we first resume social networks history and highlight its contribution to sociology. Second, we analyze the trajectory and profile of five 'disciplinary entrepreneurs,' whose role in the field is important as they master three necessary languages for SNA: English, Mathematics and Computer Science. Third, in order to put back those individuals in their social structures, we cross SNA with the different French sociological tradition(s) (according to topics and methods). Last, we wonder if the institutionalization process succeeded in the creation of institutions from which a French SNA would be able to expand? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Historical binaries constrain Turner's narrative, American Sociology: From Pre-Disciplinary to Post-Normal. The identification of mid-20th century American sociology as a gold standard for judging predisciplinary and post-normal sociology paints the epistemological challenges of the 1960s and 1970s in an unnecessarily negative light. The conflation of feminization with feminism reduces the contributions of Sociologists for Women in Society and collapses them into a narrative about a generational struggle between men. The focus on the elite-mass dynamics of academic labor markets misses the vibrancy of the broader disciplinary project of contemporary sociology. The prospects for 21st century sociology are more positive than Turner imagines. Rather than a scientific failure with a damaged brand, 21st century sociology offers a more reflexive and culturally nuanced form of sociology appropriate for the deeply unequal, global and mediatized social world we inhabit. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, sociology was becoming established as a discipline in the United States and Great Britain. This article looks closely at the lives and work of two prominent sociologists at this time, Patrick Geddes and Lester F. Ward. As sociology was becoming established in academic departments, neither Ward’s nor Geddes’ thought managed to survive intact. A number of factors played into this process, especially the overall broadness of their perspectives, as well as the incompatibility of several of their key concerns, including gender, religion, race and education, with the eventual trajectory of the sociology and the scholars who were involved in consolidating the discipline as such. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

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]

In the late 19th and early 20th century steps were taken to establish academic sociology in the USA, England and Australia. In America the project was a success and the discipline was well established by 1945, yet in England and Australia it made nothing like the same progress. In England it struggled against the influential extramural social research movement, while in Australia sociology’s case was so poorly managed and presented that it was swamped by other disciplines, especially economics, and did not officially join the university system until 1959. The article examines these three attempts to institutionalize sociology before 1945 in terms of three themes of disciplinary coherence: theorization of ‘society’ as a broad object, entailing an attempt to locate sociology as the integrative social science; the quest for ‘scientific’ objectivity; and the practical objective of social reform. While present in all three countries, it was only in America that these themes were organized and presented in such a way as to successfully institutionalize sociology in the academy. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The essay discusses the effect of World War II on the study of psychiatry in the U.S., arguing that the conflict's total warfare produced psychological casualties which in turned revolutionized the psychiatric profession. The author describes the ways in which the U.S. government's engagement with mental health issues following the war affected the study of the social sciences, especially psychology, sociology, and economics.

This article explores the profoundly gendered nature of the split between the disciplines of economics and sociology that took place in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, emphasizing implications for current efforts to bring the fields more closely together. Drawing on historical documents and feminist studies of science, it investigates the gendered processes underlying the divergence of the disciplines in definition, method, and degree of engagement with social problems. The recently developed field of economic sociology and other efforts to bridge the disciplinary gap have the potential to heal this disciplinary split, if they are broadened, deepened, and made wiser and more self-reflective through the use of feminist analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

The article explores the book "The Policeman in the Community," by Michael Banton, focusing on the role of the sacred regarding the sociological study of police forces. The sociological definitions of sacred and profane developed by sociologist Émile Durkheim are presented and used to describe the differing attitudes and status of police officers in Great Britain and the United States during the early 1960s. Sociological enactment of the sacred, the view of the police as angels or as devils, and the relationship between pluralism and the decline of social cohesion are also discussed.

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 history of sociology is an exciting subfield of the discipline of sociology that, of late, has sought to include numerous African Americans into its master narrative. Unfortunately, I am painfully aware that many of the newer works contain many omissions; are often uncritical; and often are not thoroughly researched. This essay calls attention to these highly-charged and explosive mine fields that prevent the full inclusion of progressive Africana politics in sociology’s controversial history. None-the-less, I am compelled to confess that with the proper nurturing, that is, with the rich input of African American and African Diaspora studies, we will eventually achieve the fruition of an ecumenical and diverse history of sociology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article provides some history of sociology by focusing on the origins of the Bogardus Social Distance Scale. The scale was developed by Emory Bogardus in 1924 and is still widely used in measuring prejudice. It has been translated into several languages, and used in many countries in measuring attitudes toward a variety of groups. The authors use primary and secondary data, including an interview with one of Bogardus’s colleagues, Thomas Lasswell, and the Bogardus archive at the University of Southern California. American racial and ethnic conflict, and the increasing scientific emphasis in sociology help explain the genesis of the scale. The personal biography of Bogardus is examined along with trends in sociology during his training at the University of Chicago and developments throughout American society. This study shows how the social environment of Bogardus influenced his personal life circumstances that help account for his creation of the scale. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses several issues related to the history of sociology and considers comparative, macro, and international work studies done on sociology. The author considers how national sociologies relate to international sociologies and looks at the sociology models used to study this history, models concerning colonization, cohort effects, and globalization. Then the methodologies used to collect data on these issues are considered.

This article traces the transatlantic diffusion of Pierre Bourdieu's ideas into American sociology. We find that rather than being received as abstract theory, Bourdieu has been actively put to use to generate new empirical research. In addition, American sociologists have used their findings to problematize and extend his theory. Bourdieu's sociology, in other words, has inspired a progressive research program in the United States. We trace this process in the two main forums for presenting research: journal articles and books. Content analysis of articles published in four major sociology journals reveals that, far from a recent fad, Bourdieu's ideas steadily diffused into American sociology between 1980 and 2004. Case studies of four influential books in turn illustrate how researchers have used Bourdieu's key concepts (capital, field, habitus, and symbolic power) to inform debates in four core subfields (political, economic, cultural, and urban sociology). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the relationship between theology and sociology on two levels. The first is in terms of the general disciplinary closure that has marked much of their coexistence, despite the many topics on which they potentially meet. The second level is more specific and concerns the tension in Britain between religious sociology, in which sociology is put to serve faith, and the secular sociology of religion, where religion is studied scientifically. This tension has been addressed before with respect to the history of sociology in France and the United States, but the British case, hitherto relatively unknown, illustrates the potential there was for a more fruitful relationship between sociology and theology in Britain that went undeveloped as the secular sociology of religion eventually replaced early religious sociology. The existence of religious sociology has been written out of the history of the discipline in Britain, such that when theology and sociology began a more serious engagement in the 1970s in Britain and elsewhere, particularly as biblical studies discovered sociology and as theologians and sociologists first met jointly, this earlier dialogue was entirely overlooked. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents an exploration into the interrelation between the academic sciences of history and sociology in cultural studies. The challenges faced by both historians and sociologists in the United States concerning ideological independence and resistance to interdisciplinary influence are discussed. An overview of the successes and failures of interdisciplinary cooperation in American sociology is provided. The author suggests that sociologists must be willing to accept more influence from historical disciplines to maintain its strength and ensure future development.

The article comments on the work of Craig Calhoun, a professor of sociology, about social science. Calhoun's achievement is evidently a work-in-progress. The author characterized Calhoun's work as an American form of critical theory. His work also arises out of the center of mainstream sociology in the U.S. Furthermore, the powerful presences in his work are history, social history and historical sociology, and anthropology.

Case studies and “small-N comparisons” have been attacked from two directions, positivist and incommensurabilist. At the same time, some authors have defended small-N comparisons as allowing qualitative researchers to attain a degree of scientificity, yet they also have rejected the case study as merely “idiographic.” Practitioners of the case study sometimes agree with these critics, disavowing all claims to scientificity. A related set of disagreements concerns the role and nature of social theory in sociology, which sometimes is described as useless and parasitic and other times as evolving in splendid isolation from empirical research. These three forms of sociological activity—comparative analysis, studies of individual cases, and social theory—are defended here from the standpoint of critical realism. In this article I first reconstruct, in very broad strokes, the dominant epistemological and ontological framework of postwar U.S. sociology. The next two sections discuss several positivist and incommensurabilist criticisms of comparison and case studies. The last two sections propose an understanding of comparison as operating along two dimensions, events and structures, and offer an illustration of the difference and relationship between the two. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses the history of sociology in Soviet Union. Distinctions between official and unofficial sociology; Rules for reading legal sociological texts; Information on Aesopian sociology.