Review Essay: Constructing the Sociology of Social Problems: Spector and Kitsuse Twenty-Five Years Later

Sociological Forum -     

A Comparison of Accelerated and Traditional MSW Students: Twenty Years Later

Abstract

There has been concern about the ideal length of time to effectively offer graduate content. Programs of less than two full years have been suspect. Thus study reports on two groups of social workers in the same program who have been professionally active for over twenty years. They completed the master's requirements under two different time conditions: One group completed study in twelve months; the other in the traditional two year period. The accelerated group reported the five major curriculum areas were more useful in their practice. In addition, they reported higher long-range achievement scores on the identical objectives of both programs.     

Sociology Dismissing Religion? The Presentation of Religious Change in Introductory Sociology Textbooks

This paper explores whether the field of sociology harbors a dismissive attitude towards religion. Specifically it examines whether introductory sociology textbooks present the classic secularization theory over the more recent religious economies explanation of religious change. The classical secularization thesis suggests that religion is declining in importance in modern societies and may disappear completely. The religious economies perspective proposes that religion has actually become more influential and dynamic over time. While both theories are well represented in the sociology of religion literature, we explore whether generalist sociology textbooks reflect this reality. This article provides a content analysis of 31 introductory sociology textbooks published between 2003 and 2006. We assess the presence and promotion of the above theories in these textbooks. Our analysis reveals that 20 (65%) of the 31 textbooks in our study present only secularization theory, while seven (23%) of the textbooks cover both secularization theory and religious economies theory. We assess the ramifications of such a lopsided arrangement and conclude by encouraging a more open dialogue on this issue.     

The National Social Distance Study: Ten Years Later

The Bogardus social distance scale, which measures the level of acceptance that Americans feel toward members of the most common ethnic and racial groups in the United States, was administered six times nationally between 1920 and 2001. Replicating the most recent study with its revised list of ethnic and racial groups, the authors of this study analyzed a stratified random sample of 3,166 college students, making it the largest national social distance study ever conducted. The findings indicate an increase since 2001 in the mean level of social distance toward all ethnic groups, as well as in the spread between the groups with the highest and lowest levels of social distance. Further, a consistency between studies in group preferences reaffirms the relevance of the similarity‐attraction bond in accepting those who are racially and culturally different. Mean comparisons and analysis of variance tests also showed that gender, birthplace of respondents and/or their parents, race, and year in college are all significant indicators of the level of social distance toward groups.     

Reduction and The Future of Sociology*

The reductionist position of Homans and Skinner has generated substantial debate among sociologists over the past two decades. Mitch of the debate can be resolved by examining the issues in light of the history of science. A historical analysis suggests that modern sociology has little to lose—and something to gain—by reevaluating its traditional stance on reduction.     

Introduction: The Puerto Rico Project: Reflections Sixty Years Later

In the late 1940s Julian Steward initiated a social anthropological study of Puerto Rico, carried out by a team working in a range of communities representing different ecological zones. The project was a landmark in anthropology but met with criticism from Puerto Rican scholars. The articles in this collection reconsider the Puerto Rico Project in terms of its place within the history of anthropology, its reception in Puerto Rico and elsewhere, and some theoretical and political issues raised by it.     

The Relationship between Theory and Research: a Study in the Sociology of Sociology*

While the importance of the relationship between theory and research is given credence in sociology, little has been done in delineating the specific nature of such a relationship. In order to do so, the present article examines data concerning the theoretical orientation and methodological procedures employed by the authors of 1,434 articles (in five substantive areas) which have appeared in nine major sociological journals over the period 1950 to 1970. Analysis of these data reveals the presence of a strong affinity between the utilization of a realist theoretical perspective, centering upon the study of group properties, and the employment of less empirical research techniques. Conversely, those authors shown to employ a nominalist theoretical approach, and hence those focusing upon individual properties, were found to use more empirical techniques and procedures in their research. Further analysis of the relationship between the theoretical and methodological orientations utilized by the authors surveyed appears to indicate some tendency for one's mode of data analysis to be as much a reason for, as a function of, one's theoretical perspective.     

Critical Theory and Critical Sociology: The Second Synthesis*

The syntheses of consensus and conflict theory which were developed during the sixties served as a healthy corrective for traditional functional theory but did not exhaust theoretical debate. The identification of such syntheses with empirico-analytic tradition (and dominant control systems) calls forth a second (critical) synthesis which is not complementary, but competing. Despite the fact that both are parallel in many respects, the two theoretical syntheses are differentiated on a number of levels: value assumptions, emphases, epistemology and the implications each possesses regarding the nature of sociological activity. Conflicting interpretations drawn from the two competing paradigms promise to define the fundamental issues within sociological theory during the seventies.     

Sociology and Science: The Making of a Social Scientific Method

Criticism against quantitative methods has grown in the context of “big-data”, charging an empirical, quantitative agenda with expanding to displace qualitative and theoretical approaches indispensable to the future of sociological research. Underscoring the strong convergences between the historical development of empiricism in the scientific method and the apparent turn to quantitative empiricism in sociology, this article uses content and hierarchical clustering analyses on the textual representations of journal articles from 1950 to 2010 to open dialogue on the epistemological issues of contemporary sociological research. In doing so, I push towards the conceptualization of a social scientific method, inspired by the scientific method from the philosophy of science and borne out of growing constructions of a systematically empirical representation among sociology articles. I articulate how this social scientific method is defined by three dimensions – empiricism, and theoretical and discursive compartmentalization –, and how, contrary to popular expectations, knowledge production consequently becomes independent of choice of research method, bound up instead in social constructions that divide its epistemological occurrence into two levels: (i) the way in which social reality is broken down into data, collected and analyzed, and (ii) the way in which this data is framed and made to recursively influence future sociological knowledge production. In this way, empiricism both mediates and is mediated by knowledge production not through the direct manipulation of method or theory use, but by redefining the ways in which methods are being labeled and knowledge framed, remembered, and interpreted.     

Chronic Disease and Applied Sociology: An Essay in Personalized Sociology*

This essay represents an attempt to combine personal experience and general sociological knowledge in formulating (1) an analytic model of disease and (2) a definition of chronic disease that would help us better understand the trials and tribulations of chronically diseased persons as they cope with their environments. These objectives are achieved but their heuristic value as analytic tools or their utility for pragmatic intervention requires amplification and demonstration. The ideas and themes discussed are viewed as important considerations fur applied sociological pursuits, particularly in medical sociology, but also have broader implications for sociology in general.     

The New Theology and the Sociology of Religion*

La nouvelle theologie represente une forme contemporaine d'expression religieuse qui est d'un interet tout particulier pour la sociologie des religions. Non seulement pouvons-nous decouvrir quelques-uns des facteurs sociaux qui ont suscité ces changements dans la theologie, mais aussi certaines des consequences sociologiques de la nouvelle theologie suggerent une revision theorique de la perspective traditionnelle (centree sur l'Eglise) de la sociologie des religions. Nous pretendons que cette nouvelle theologie peut fournir des donnees objectives dans noire recherche d'une comprehension sociologique plus exhaustive et universelle de la religion. The New Theology represents a contemporary form of religious expression that is of specific interest to the sociology of religion. Not only can we uncover some of the social sources of this change in theology, but there are also sociological implications of the new theology that encourage a theoretical review of the previously restricted church-oriented perspective of the sociology of religion. It is our contention that the new theology can provide objective data in the quest for a more comprehensive and universal sociological understanding of religion.     

Rationalists, Fatalists, and the Modern Superstitious: Test-Taking in Introductory Sociology

As sociologists we are guided by a rational approach to understanding the social world. This rational approach is also evident in the way we test students. But do students approach tests from the same orientation that we take in creating them, or are they influenced by such nonrational orientations as superstitions? To explore this question the authors created and administered the Luck and Superstition Questionnaire to 426 students taking Introduction to Sociology. We found that nearly 70 percent of students indicate some level of test‐related superstitious practice. However, we also found that superstitious practice was largely unrelated to religious belief and practice, gender and race, educational performance and grade expectations, and end‐of‐semester pressures. These results are entirely consistent with Colin Campbell's theory of modern superstition. Superstitious practice in modern society is self‐sustaining–not integrated into social institutions or systems of belief–and only “half‐believed” by the very practitioners of modern superstition.