A BRIEF AND INFORMAL ESSAY IN THE SOCIAL-PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIOLOGY.

The article discusses various aspects of the social psychology of sociology. The relationship of sociology to socio-political activism has been widely, if often sterilely, discussed in the abstract. In the concrete, however, the probability that the people who fill roles as socialists will engage in such action has received little attention. On the one hand, the discipline has experienced a secular rise of emphasis on becoming truly scientific, hard-nosed, and mathematical. Probably the bulk of those with the greatest prestige and, therefore, in control of the various sociological associations and major graduate departments, share such an orientation. On the other hand, a relatively newer trend although never totally absent in the history of the discipline toward relevant, humanistic, although not necessarily activistic, sociology is increasingly being rewarded by some sectors of the public. Probably most of the latter adherents are assistant professors and students, namely, the powerless. The probability of social action on the part of sociologists, where it exists, thus resides in precisely the group with the least experience in the discipline.