North Central Sociological Association Presidential Address the Community College Conundrum: Pitfalls and Possibilities of Professional Sociological Associations

Abstract

This presidential address examines the “community college conundrum” within our discipline. Although it is reported that 44 percent of first-time undergraduate students attend community colleges, community college faculty are underrepresented in the American Sociological Association (ASA) and within our regional associations. This lack of participation has two roots: (1) our disciplinary lack of interest in studying community college education as a unit of analysis; and (2) the failure by sociologists to understand community college education as a social justice concern. Data for this study include an assessment of membership and participation in our disciplinary associations, content analysis of the journal Teaching Sociology, and a review of ASA syllabi sets. Findings reveal a common theme: community college sociologists are ignored and afforded a marginal status—a “less than” status—within our discipline. Recommendations include calling on the ASA and all sociologists to recognize the importance of community colleges in doing the work of “public sociology.”     

Sociology and American Studies: A Case Study in the Limits of Interdisciplinarity

American Studies is an academic discipline whose object of study is the United States of America and everything associated with it, and American sociologists largely ignore it. American Studies largely ignores American sociology. What causes this mutual exclusion? An outline of the disciplinary history of American Studies and journal article citation data show that the relationship between sociology and American Studies is weak and asymmetrical; American Studies cites sociology more often, but very little and not by much. I argue that mutual exclusion is due to mutual distrust in methods: sociology sees itself as a science, while American Studies, with roots in history and literature, does not. This article serves as a case study in the limits of interdisciplinarity.     

Sociology's misfortune: disciplines, interdisciplinarity and the impact of audit culture

This paper is about tendencies to the subversion of sociology as a discipline. It connects external factors of the wider socio-political environment of higher education in the UK, especially those associated with the audit culture and new systems of governance, with the internal organization of the discipline. While the environment is similar for all social science subjects, the paper argues that there are specific consequences for sociology because of characteristics peculiar to the discipline. The paper discusses these consequences in terms of the changing relationship between sociology and the growing interdisciplinary area of applied social studies as a form of 'mode 2 knowledge'. It argues that while sociology 'exports' concepts, methodologies and personnel it lacks the internal disciplinary integrity of other 'exporter' disciplines, such as economics, political science and anthropology. The consequence is an increasingly blurred distinction between sociology as a discipline and the interdisciplinary area of applied social studies with a potential loss of disciplinary identity. The paper concludes with a discussion of how this loss of identity is associated with a reduced ability to reproduce a critical sensibility within sociology and absorption to the constraints of audit culture with its preferred form of mode 2 knowledge.     

“The Littlest Science” Revisited

I revisit Allan Mazur’s 1968 claim that sociology is “The Littlest Science.” In doing so, I review four decades of disciplinary battles on how sociology might raise its scientific profile. I examine data on public attitudes toward sociology as a science and how sociology is perceived by the larger scientific community. I conclude that taking a more interdisciplinary perspective will improve the scientific status of sociology.     

How Not to Establish a Subfield: Media Sociology in the United States

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.     

Cultural Sociology and Other Disciplines: Interdisciplinarity in the Cultural Sciences

The subject of this article is the relationship between cultural sociology and approaches to culture in other social science disciplines. What are the characteristics of the theoretical environment, in which cultural sociology is operating? The article begins by reviewing the literature on interdisciplinarity. Many authors argue that interdisciplinarity is increasing or should be increasing, but the general consensus is that disciplinary isolation is the norm. From this perspective, the relationships between disciplines can be understood in terms of trading zones, in which fields in different disciplines have little in common, theoretically, or empirically. Interdisciplinary communication in ‘trading zones’ requires that participants laboriously construct a set of terms that permits them to exchange ideas. Alternatively, I propose that clusters of fields in different disciplines are linked by free-floating paradigms. Participants in disciplines that share ‘free-floating paradigms’ are able to communicate with one another more readily. The article presents evidence for the second interpretation, drawn from survey articles in disciplinary handbooks. Disciplines and fields in which the study of culture draws from the same pool of paradigms and models and shares a set of lines of inquiry with cultural sociology include traditional disciplines, such as anthropology, communication, geography, history and psychology, and interdisciplinary fields, such as cultural studies, communication, feminist theory, material culture, science studies, and visual culture. Interdisciplinary fields – particularly cultural studies – perform an important role in diffusing paradigms across disciplinary boundaries. Free-floating paradigms are associated with the work of major theorists, such as Lévi-Strauss, Barthes, Foucault, Bourdieu, Lyotard, Baudrillard, Clifford Geertz, Bruno Latour, Adorno, Gramsci, and Habermas.     

Reflections on public sociology: Public relations, disciplinary identity, and the strong program in professional sociology

Public sociology is an attempt to redress the issues of public engagement and disciplinary identity that have beset the discipline over the past several decades. While public sociology seeks to rectify the public invisibility of sociology, this paper investigates the limitations of it program. Several points of critique are offered. First, public sociology's affiliations with Marxism serve to potentially entrench existing divisions within the discipline. Second, public sociology's advancement of an agenda geared toward a “sociology for publics” instead of a “sociology of publics” imposes limitations on the development of a public interface. Third, the lack of a methodological agenda for public sociology raises concerns of how sociology can compete within a contested climate of public opinion. Fourth, issues of disciplinary coherence are not necessarily resolved by public sociology, and are potentially exacerbated by the invocation of public sociology as a new disciplinary identity. Fifth, the incoherence of professional sociology is obviated, and a misleading affiliation is made between scientific knowledge and the hegemonic structure of the profession. Finally, the idealism of public sociology's putative defense of civil society is explored as a Utopian gesture akin to that of Habermas’ attempt to revive the public sphere. The development of a strong program in professional sociology is briefly offered as a means to repair the disciplinary problems that are illustrated by emergence of the project of public sociology.     

The political economy of sociology: An interview with David Goslin,national research council

In this interview, David A. Goslin responds to a variety of questions concerning the relationship between the federal government and the political economy of sociology. He addresses the identity of sociology in Washington, the treatment of behavioral and social sciences as a special case in science policy, the greater acceptability of the behavioral sciences, the battle of 1981, the recurring need for reviews of the discipline, the role of the National Research Council and the National Academy of Sciences, the current status and rising prospects of the social sciences, and emerging areas of national concern. Lawrence J. Rhoades has been on the Washington scene for more than a decade. During the first four years, he served as executive associate of the American Sociological Association and wrote a social science and government series forFootnotes. He has since served in research policy, planning, and evaluation positions in the federal government. He currently is Washington correspondent forThe American Sociologist.     

Abandoned not: media sociology as a networked transfield

ABSTRACT

The relationship between the disciplines of communication and sociology has been primarily described as being abandoned by sociologists. This article historicizes the alleged sociological abandonment of communication and media research and centers on media sociology as the key manifestation of an ongoing vibrant relationship between the two disciplines. It has two goals. First, I examine the contours of the abandonment notion since Berelson vs. Schramm, Riesman, and Bauer in Public Opinion Quarterly in 1959. I demonstrate the diversity and the depth of media sociology and argue that an US-centric positivist understanding of media sociology has led to the exaggerated and misleading notion of abandonment, which homogenizes theoretical discourse and discounts scholarly contributions from outside of the US. Personal and collective memories have also documented institutional and organizational growth of media sociology. Second, I propose to conceptualize media sociology as a networked transfield driven by questions transcending disciplinary little boxes. Rather than returning to the Lazarsfeldian media effect paradigm, media sociology as a networked transfield driven by questions will allows scholars take advantage of structural holes for synthesis and innovation.     

The Sociology of Neuroethics: Expectational Discourses and the Rise of a New Discipline

The sudden emergence of the discipline ‘neuroethics’ is an intriguing event from the perspective of the sociologies of medicine, science and bioethics. Despite calls for greater social science engagement with neuroethics, it has so far received little attention. So that sociologists might consider how to engage with the field, and in order to simultaneously contribute towards a sociology of neuroethics, this paper explores neuroethics’ disciplinary identity via a critical analysis of literature defining neuroethics’ scope and role. Drawing on the sociologies of bioethics and expectations, I argue that in setting the neuroethical agenda, neuroethicists construct expectations about the future of neuroscience. In doing so, they align themselves with neuroscience, rather than maintaining a critical distance. Similar critiques have been made of bioethics, but in its efforts to distinguish itself from bioethics, neuroethics appears to exacerbate many of the attributes which sociologists have found problematic. This reinforces the need for critical social science perspectives to inform neuroethics, and also shows how neuroethics is potentially an interesting area of empirical study for sociology. However, the paper concludes by calling for critical reflexivity in sociology’s engagement with neuroethics, in light of recent debates surrounding the relationship between social science, bioethics, bioscience and expectations.     

2007 North Central Sociological Association Presidential Address: Teaching and Learning and the Culture of the Regional Association in American Sociology

Abstract

In this essay, I examine the role of teaching and learning in the culture of the regional association in American sociology. I analyze the programs of (1) the 2007 joint meeting of the North Central Sociological Association (NCSA) and the Midwest Sociological Society (MSS); (2) the 2007 annual meeting preliminary programs of the Eastern Sociological Society (ESS), the Pacific Sociological Association (PSA), and the Southern Sociological Society (SSS) along with the 2006 annual meeting programs of the MSS and NCSA, as well as the American Sociological Association (ASA); and (3) the 1991 NCSA and 1992 ASA annual meeting programs. I identify program trends with regard to teaching, professional development, undergraduate students, graduate students, and research on higher education. I conclude by identifying regional association annual meeting best practices regarding each of these areas.     

Sebastião Salgado and Visual Sociology

This paper links the work of Sebastião Salgado, recipient of the 2010 American Sociological Association (ASA) Award for Excellence in the Reporting of Social Issues, with the discipline of sociology. I reflect on Salgado’s biography, method, and concerns in order to demonstrate how his work contributes to the awareness and understanding of social issues. Toward this end, I summarize sociology’s record of involvement with visual documentation. Prior to 1915, the American Journal of Sociology regularly included photographs that provided visual documentation of environments under study. However, as sociology moved away from social reform activities and toward scientific investigation, the regular publication of photographs ceased. During the 1930s and 1940s, photographic projects in disciplines and social movements beyond sociology developed a variety of methods that would prove useful to sociology. During the 1970s, sociologists once again began to use visual methods in their teaching, research, and publication, putting sociology in the position to both contribute to and benefit from insights and social commitments that have distinguished Sebastião Salgado as a globally significant photographer and social activist during the late twentieth and early twenty‐first centuries.     

Reflections on Public Sociology: Public Relations, Disciplinary Identity, and the Strong Program in Professional Sociology

Public sociology is an attempt to redress the issues of public engagement and disciplinary identity that have beset the discipline over the past several decades. While public sociology seeks to rectify the public invisibility of sociology, this paper investigates the limitations of it program. Several points of critique are offered. First, public sociology's affiliations with Marxism serve to potentially entrench existing divisions within the discipline. Second, public sociology's advancement of an agenda geared toward a "sociology for publics" instead of a "sociology of publics" imposes limitations on the development of a public interface. Third, the lack of a methodological agenda for public sociology raises concerns of how sociology can compete within a contested climate of public opinion. Fourth, issues of disciplinary coherence are not necessarily resolved by public sociology, and are potentially exacerbated by the invocation of public sociology as a new disciplinary identity. Fifth, the incoherence of professional sociology is obviated, and a misleading affiliation is made between scientific knowledge and the hegemonic structure of the profession. Finally, the idealism of public sociology's putative defense of civil society is explored as a utopian gesture akin to that of Habermas' attempt to revive the public sphere. The development of a strong program in professional sociology is briefly offered as a means to repair the disciplinary problems that are illustrated by emergence of the project of public sociology.     

The cultural and social incorporation of sociological knowledge

Any evaluation of sociology as a discipline ought to focus not only on the way sociology is produced, but also on how it is consumed. In this article, we examine the degree to which sociological concepts have been incorporated into the vernacular of American society, the impact of sociological techniques and methods on politics and society, and the relationship between sociology and public policy. While sociologists often point to the problems caused by a certain alienation from the general culture—for example the notion that sociology is written in an obtuse language that the public cannot comprehend—we point to the problems that develop when sociology is too readily incorporated into American culture and society. The danger is that the more popular sociology is, the less likely it will be to maintain the sharp intellectual edge that made its incorporation possible in the first place.     

'Exchange is Creation': The Revolutionary Poetics of Muriel Rukeyser and Hugh MacDiarmid

Abstract

The increased cultural authority of science in the early decades of the twentieth century called into question prior cultural assumptions regarding the status of poetry as an important discipline. The debate about the changed nature of the relations between the arts and sciences assumed particular importance for the literary left, as writers, critics and intellectuals debated the role which culture would play in political revolution. In order to broaden our understanding of the left's engagement with the problem of the relationship between the arts and sciences, this article will compare the work of the leftist American poet Muriel Rukeyser with that of the Scottish nationalist and Communist poet Hugh MacDiarmid. In particular, I will explore the ways in which their understanding of the essential similarities between the arts and sciences informed their conception of the relationship between poetics and political praxis.     

Classification conundrums: categorizing chimeras and enacting species preservation

Sociologists have challenged the discipline to account for and incorporate biological factors in their analyses. Heeding this call, this article asks how chimeras, a particularly puzzling biological organism, are being officially classified in the interrelated sites of endangered species preservation and the zoo. Based on a qualitative study of endeavors to clone endangered animals, I contend that biology alone cannot determine the classification of these interspecies organisms. Rather, categorizing chimeras requires metaphoric, schematic references to more familiar entities. Here culture and biology are tools for classification, which has consequences for preservation practices and the materiality of endangered wildlife. Drawing on the sociology of culture, I show that positions on classification represent an intermediary space for interpreting the relationship between meaning and action in discourse elaboration. Building on the sociology of science and technology, I show the epistemological limitations of understanding the biological as an a priori factor.     

Between the Ethos of Science and the Ethos of Ideology

Abstract

This paper attempts to explain the continuous friction between Marxist sociology and Marxist ideology in terms of the premises of the theory of scientific communism, which accords to proletarian ideology the status of scientific truth. The successive stages of the evolution of Soviet sociology are related to the parallel development of views on the scientific ethos. The notion of the “ethos of ideology” is introduced and applied to the analysis of the ideological turmoil Soviet sociology underwent in the course of its establishment as an academic discipline. “Value tolerance” is advocated as an alternative to the “value-partisan” and “value-neutral” orientations in social science.     

Caroline Bartlett Crane and the history of sociology: Salvation, sanitation, and the social gospel

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.     

Problems in Terminology,Concept Formation,and Theory Construction

Abstract

Satisfactory verbal theory in sociology is dependent on appropriate concept formation, which in turn must be based on precise terminology and word usage. Futhermore, such terminology should enable the theorist to communicate unambiguously with others knowledgeable in the discipline, a goal to which contemporary sociological theorists have not yet arrived. An understanding of the relationship of logic, meaning, and truth must underlay successful efforts to overcome deficiencies in theory construction. The logical positivists have pointed the way to the development of scientific theory as the basis of empirical social science.     

The isolation of crime,law, and deviance from the core of sociology

The study of crime, law, and deviance is considered to be an isolated subarea of sociology that draws upon but does not contribute to the core of the discipline. Subareas, the specific and substantive topics of sociology, may be expected to make less obvious and direct contributions to the core than do theory, methodology, social organization, and social psychology as the major areas of sociology. And within subareas, studies that are readily applied may be considered less integrated and contributory to the discipline than the more “pure” or basic science subareas. This analysis examines the relationships between areas, subareas, and the core of sociology; the subject matter of sociological subareas; the actual versus perceptual isolation of crime, law, and deviance studies from the core; and the meaning of contribution. Measurement of contribution is limited to a survey ofSociological Abstracts, theCumulative Index of Sociology Journals, and the 1993 program for the American Sociological Association annual meetings. Comparing area and subarea publications and conference sessions suggests that, contrary to expectations, crime, law, and deviance research constitutes a significant portion of the available knowledge base. The perceived isolation of crime, law, and deviance from sociology may be explained by professional bias against applied studies of stigmatized populations. An earlier draft of this paper was presented at the 1992 American Sociological Association Annual Meetings.