Theoretical and Political Perspectives.

The article provides information on the June 2002 issue of the journal "The American Sociologist." The issue features six papers that explore several related themes in the intellectual history of sociology. The authors place particular emphasis on the enduring legacies of creative minds, while also tracing out unnoticed linkages between thinkers and intellectual traditions and pointing to unresolved tensions and lacunae within individual approaches. Uta Gerhardt contributes an erudite and nuanced discussion of the relations between major figures who are ordinarily regarded as polar opposites, social-action and social-system theorist Talcott Parsons and members of the "Frankfurt School" of philosophy, psychology, and sociology, especially Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno. David Nock presents an analysis of the career of the late Arthur K. Davis, a student of Parsons and Pitirim Sorokin at Harvard University, Massachusetts, who held professorships at Union College, as well as the universities of Calgary and Alberta, and served as president of the Canadian Sociology and Anthropology Association. Bruce Wearne analyzes the theoretical framework of Bernard Barber, another major figure educated at Harvard during the Sorokin-Parsons era. In contrast to many treatments that regard Barber rather simplistically as a disciple of Parsons, Wearne probes Barber's ongoing effort to create an independent variant of social systems theory that has focused largely on the sociology of science.