Going Out.

The interdependence of sociology and its society is an old story. In some sense all societies have a sociology in that there are shared ideas of social boundaries and some notions of the way the group can influence the individual and roles, shape attitudes and behavior. Sociology and society are deeply "in" one another, mutual in their determination. Society and its sociology, of whatever form, are not two things, but an evolving process of knowledge, action, and substance. In the modern context, the sociology-society process has speeded up, as description and analysis more rapidly feed back into the social order from which they come. That professional sociology is a part, however small, of this two-way enterprise is one of the reason it can never be normal science. Sociology's initial rise after World War II as another positivist endeavor was part of the heady American optimism that a "science of man" could solve human social problems. World events have given a new life to the sociological project, even if sociologists only play small roles in them.