HOW MANY SOCIOLOGIES?

The purpose of this paper is to investigate and criticise, from the standpoint of certain subsequent developments both in Marxist theory and in the state of intellectual dispute in sociology, one of the most eloquent and much-discussed statements of the situation in the sociology of the late sixties: Alan Dawe's 'Two Sociologies'.[2] I shall argue that Dawe does correctly identify two major tendencies in sociological thought, but that these tendencies are not, as Dawe seems to have supposed, either mutually exclusive, or jointly exhaustive of the theoretical space open to social theorising.[3] I shall try, in other words, to argue that Dawe's 'two sociologies' are better understood as variant forms of one sociology, and also that fundamental alternatives to this 'one sociology' exist and are beginning to be explored. Further, I aim to show, within the limits of a paper of this length, that there are fundamental defects in each of the variant forms of sociology which Dawe identifies, and, finally, that the links Dawe supposes to exist between epistemologies ('meta theory') and traditions of substantive enquiry are misconceived in his paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]