The political economy of sociology: An interview with William V. D’Antonio,American Sociological Association

The Executive Director of the American Sociological Association discusses the many uses of sociology as a practical and knowledge-producing discipline, as well as a profession with many constituencies. While hailing gains in sociology’s relations with Congress, the media, and other social science disciplines, he laments that too few talented students elect to pursue social science degrees. D’Antonio concludes with thoughts on the certification of sociologists. His research has centered on the social and political dimensions of science and technology, especially research evaluation, public understanding of science, misconduct in research, and career patterns of scientists and engineers. His latest book (co-edited) isInterdisciplinary Analysis and Research (Lomond 1986).     

A Sociology of the Unmarked: Redirecting Our Focus

This article suggests that American sociology has developed a de facto tradition in the sociology of the marked that devotes greater epistemological attention to "politically salient" and "ontologically uncommon" features of social life. Although the "unmarked" comprises the vast majority of social life, the "marked" commands a disproportionate share of attention from sociologists. Since the marked already draws more attention within the general culture, social scientists contribute to re-marking and the reproduction of common-sense images of social reality. This has important analytic consequences. This article argues for developing a stronger tradition in a sociology of the unmarked that explicitly foregrounds "politically unnoticed" and taken-for-granted elements of social reality. Three strategies are proposed toward this end: (1) reversing conventional patterns of markedness to foreground what typically remains unnamed and implicit, (2) marking everything by filling in all the shades of social continua so that each shares the same degree of epistemological ornamentation, and (3) developing an analytically nomadic perspective that observes social phenomena from multiple vantage points.     

Culturally meaningful networks: on the transition from military to civilian life in the United Kingdom

This article introduces the Culturally Meaningful Networks (CMN) approach. Following a pragmatist perspective of social mechanisms more broadly, it develops and demonstrates an approach to understanding networks that incorporates both structure and meaning and that leverages time to understand how these aspects influence each other. I apply this approach to investigate a longstanding puzzle about why some of those who leave military service for civilian life fare well, and others badly. In a mixed-methods analysis, I follow a sample of individuals moving through the transition from military to civilian life in the contemporary United Kingdom. I find that the higher the proportion of alters (i.e., “contacts”) with a military background in the networks of leavers before discharge, the worse they fare after discharge. The CMN approach helps me locate a specific structural embedding that explains the presence or absence of durable cultural frames that set the context for the actual experience of the transition and cause problems during it. Attention to the temporal unfolding of network structure and social meaning is essential to bringing out this finding. By re-embedding networks within people’s experiences over time, the CMN approach helps grasp the distinctions by which leavers understand their interactions. I conclude by arguing that the CMN approach has implications for network sociology and cultural sociology that go beyond this substantive case.     

For a postcolonial sociology

Postcolonial theory has enjoyed wide influence in the humanities but it has left sociology comparatively unscathed. Does this mean that postcolonial theory is not relevant to sociology? Focusing upon social theory and historical sociology in particular, this article considers if and how postcolonial theory in the humanities might be imported into North American sociology. It argues that postcolonial theory offers a substantial critique of sociology because it alerts us to sociology’s tendency to analytically bifurcate social relations. The article also suggests that a postcolonial sociology can overcome these problems by incorporating relational social theories to give new accounts of modernity. Rather than simply studying non-Western postcolonial societies or only examining colonialism, this approach insists upon the interactional constitution of social units, processes, and practices across space. To illustrate, the article draws upon relational theories (actor-network theory and field theory) to offer postcolonial accounts of two conventional research areas in historical sociology: the industrial revolution in England and the French Revolution.     

Return Migration to India: Decision‐Making among Academic Engineers and Scientists

The decision‐making process among migrants, whether to leave their country of birth for a foreign country or deciding to return to their native country is complex and laden with challenges. This article seeks to understand the decision‐making process by which immigrant engineers and scientists select to return to India after study and work in the United States. It is based on in‐depth interviews conducted with 54 returned engineers and scientists. Results indicate that the decision to return is anything but a linear process as highlighted in rational choice theory. Prospect and planned behaviour theories are better positioned to explain the decision‐making process among returned migrant engineers and scientists.     

Reply to Klein

Many “theoretical” writings in sociology and in the social sciences use conceptual frameworks (perspectives, paradigms). Developments in family sociology are used as a case study to explore the role of conceptual frameworks in the growth of scientific theory. The claim that conceptual frameworks are necessary for theory building is evaluated. Using writings in family sociology and in the philosophy of science, the claim is found wanting. Social scientists are therefore cautioned to avoid conceptual work that is only rhetorically related to the development of theory.     

Warfare,social theory and West European development

This paper explores the intellectual reasons for the failure of sociology to give sufficient attention to warfare and military organisation as central problems in social theory. These reasons are to be found in the dominance of liberal functionalism and Marxism as paradigms in the development of sociology. A reorientation of social theory is called for and it is suggested that writers in the neo-Machiavellian tradition provide an important corrective to sociological orthodoxy in respect of the role of war and military organisation in social life. The paper goes on to show that these factors are crucial components in an adequate account of one of the most important problems raised by sociology: why did hegemonic capitalism develop originally in the West and not elsewhere. Thus, ironically, those factors which sociology has tended to ignore are actually the key to solving one of its central problems.     

Totem and Taboo in Sociology: The Politics of Affirmative Action Research*

The thesis is advanced that sociology's strong links with welfare-state liberalism have also led to the widespread acquiescence to “liberal taboos” regarding some topics of social research such as affirmative action. The relationship between sociology and liberalism is examined. Radical and neoconservative influences are also noted. Adverse encounters with affirmative action taboos by intellectuals and social scientists are discussed as is the “fashionable” consensus on affirmative action in sociology. That this consensus may sometimes be shallow and relatively uninformed is suggested by reactions by the author's Southern California colleagues regarding his proposed studies of (1) the extent of widespread public discussion of affirmative action in the 1970s. and (2) the social psychological impact of such policies upon white males. The paper concludes with a discussion of related taboos in sociology and other fields and the dangers involved in ideological allegiances. I'm not saying that cities are doomed places, but I will say that the hard core of the welfare society is doomed. There are no prospects for these people. Nobody ever took the trouble to teach them anything. They live in a kind of perpetual chaos, in a great noise. And, you know, they really are startled souls. They cannot be reasoned with or talked to about anything. Isn't it time for us to admit this? For a long time, the subject lay under a taboo. Nobody was going to talk about it. Now people are beginning to do so. Though I consider myself a kind of liberal, I have to admit that the taboos were partly of liberal origin. It was supposed to be wrong to speak with candor. But lying in a good cause only aggravates disorder. –Saul Bellow (1982) We had best remember that socìology and ideology are competitors …–Alvin Gouldner (1976)     

A first generation critic comes of age: Reflections of a critical gerontologist

This paper reflects upon the direction and evolution of my scholarly endeavors as a sociologist of four decades in the field of aging, with thoughts on the future direction of this work and the challenges for the larger field. The perspective presented is located within two frameworks of active debate: the sociology of knowledge(s) [Gouldner, A. 1970. The Coming Crisis of Western Sociology. New York: Basic Books] and public sociology, which is one of the four major types of sociology identified by Burawoy [Burawoy, M. (2005, 2007). A call for public sociology. In D. Clawson, R. Zussman, J. Misra, N. Gerstel, R. Stokes, & R. L. Anderton (Eds.), Public Sociology. Berkeley: University of California Press.], also including traditional professional sociology, policy sociology, and critical sociology.     

Das DIN-Interview

The regulation of standardized social surveys by a German national and an international norm, distributed by the Deutsche Institut für Normung, Berlin, is presented, regarding general out-lines as well as important details. Furthermore, three perspectives are dealt with in which these regulations are important not only for market and opinion research institutes, but for the academic discipline of sociology as well. Firstly, sociology is a client of the institutes. Drawing upon regulations, it is better equipped to negotiate with the institutes and to justify specific demands. Secondly, sociology and the institutes are equally interested in public opinion. Both live from the trust of people in market and opinion research which is sustained through the regulations. Thirdly, sociology educates graduates to be employed by the institutes and should therefore know and teach the regulations. As for the future, the internationallization of the institutes and technical advances as online surveys require the permanent revision of the regulations.     

Networks,communication and productivity in a natural science research facility

There is a need in the sociology of science to study relationships among sets of scientists, where each set consists of an entire organization of scientists, or an institute or department of scientists within such an organization. In this paper, colleague choices are aggregated between the institutes (departments) of a single large natural science facility and a multidimensional scaling technique is employed to produce a social map of the facility. Next, hypotheses about the positions of the department in that map are tested. Disciplinary similarity; scale of phenomena investigated (cellular, molecular, or atomic); availability of appropriate apparatus at the facility; and, for the applied and service institutes, the type of assistance they provide (general or more specific) all help explain the social locations of the institutes within the facility. Then, productivity scores for the institutes of the facility are determined and related to the social map and to likely patterns of communication employed by the institutes. The institutes vary in productivity, measured both with objective indicators and with more qualitative assessments. Centrally located     

Social anthropologist: marginal academic?

Il y a déjà plusieurs années, Radcliffe-Brown suggérait que l'on intègre anthropologie sociale et sociologie sous le titre "sociologie comparative." Au cours de ces derníères années, les divisions départementales traditionnelles ont subi de plus en plus d'attaques. Plusieurs éléments quí, paraît-il, séparent la sociologie de l'anthropologie sociale, après examen, s'avèrent périmés ou illogiques et l'on a en outre, décrit la remarquable similitude de leurs approches théoríques. En dépit d'une compatibilité logique plus nette entre ces disciplines aujourd'hui, il demeure improbable que l'espoir de Radcliffe-Brown vienne à se réaliser. Cet échec est dû essentíellement à des facteurs non-rationnels tels que la rigidité de la bureaucratie universitaire et l'opposition au changement dans les départements de sciences sociales.
Several years ago Radcliffe-Brown suggested that social anthropology and sociology should be combined under the term "comparative sociology." In recent years traditional departmental boundaries have come under increased attack. Several factors that supposedly separate social anthropology and sociology are examined and found to be out-dated or illogical, and their remarkable similar theoretical trends are described. Despite the greater logical compatability between these disciplines today, it is improbable that Radcliffe-Brown's vision will finally be realized. This is mainly because of nonrational factors such as the rigidity of university bureaucracy and the resistance of social scientists to change.     

Public social science in Norway: Migration research in the public debate

How do Norwegian migration and diversity researchers experience and maneuver participation in public debate? And do their experiences and strategies fit with Michael Burawoy's image of Norwegian social science and with his model of public sociology? In this article, the concept of public sociology is expanded to public social science, encompassing communication of research not just from sociology but social science in general. Semi-structured interviews with 31 Norwegian migration and diversity scholars from 10 academic institutions about their experiences of, and views on, public research communication constitute the empirical material. The article concludes that Burawoy is right about the relatively high participation in public debate among social scientists in Norway. And his ideal-typical distinction between four types of sociology is helpful in analyzing how researchers relate differently to the science-public interface. Yet the results indicate that his perspective on public sociology is overly optimistic and not sufficiently attuned to the normativity already attached to highly politicized issues in public debate.     

THE DANGERS OF PURITY: ON THE INCOMPATIBILITY OF "PURE SOCIOLOGY" AND SCIENCE

Donald Black insists that sociology must be purged of its psychological elements in order to become a genuinely distinct and scientific discipline. But such "purification" is simultaneously unnecessary, undesirable, and unattainable. It is unnecessary because the scientific shortcomings of sociology are indigenous and have nothing to do with psychologism. Indeed, a more scientific sociology would look more, not less, like psychology. Purity is undesirable in that it is not only not a scientific virtue, but is antithetical to the very scientific values that Black invokes to justify it. His systems are neither theories nor laws, but heuristics, more akin to common sense than to scientific theory. Finally, purity is unattainable because though society is indeed discontinuous with the individuals who make it up, it and all theorizing about it, are ontologically and conceptually dependent upon them.     

Earnings of foreign-born doctoral engineers in the United States: intersectionality of citizenship status and gender

Abstract

Foreign-born scientists and engineers in the United States make significant contributions to their fields. While some studies of their career outcomes investigate the internal differences among immigrant scientists and engineers, there is little scholarly attention to how immigration status and gender work together in shaping their career outcomes. This study employs the intersectionality framework and uses National Science Foundation’s Survey of Doctorate Recipients 2008, 2010, 2013, 2015, and 2017 to examine how citizenship status and the intersection of citizenship status and gender affect earnings among engineers with doctoral degrees. Findings show that naturalized U.S. citizens do not earn less than comparable native-born citizens, but permanent residents and temporary residents do. In terms of intersectional effects, U.S.-born women experience an earnings disadvantage due to their gender, naturalized U.S. citizen women and permanent resident women face earnings disadvantages because of both citizenship status and gender, and temporary resident women earn less because of their citizenship status. The preceding findings persisted in the period of study with one exception. These findings reveal the internal variations among foreign-born engineers, intersectional effects of citizenship status and gender, and the complexity and persistence of these effects, suggesting the intersectional and enduring nature of inequality.     

Science, Religion and Secularization

The persistence of religion among scientists is the background question from which is derived a number of theoretical questions previously explored only tentatively in the sociology of religion and less by the sociology of science. The examination, organized around the differences in style and subject of these two sociological specialties, argues that the social study of science could benefit from and supplement theoretical concepts recently developed in the sociology of religion. Propositions are developed on the idea of scientism as a general ideology functioning as a substitute religion, and the proposition that modern consciousness is more able to sustain normative dissonance, including dissonance between religious and scientific norms. The discussion is theoretical and programmatic rather than empirical.     

Social desire paths: a new theoretical concept to increase the usability of social science research in society

Social scientists are well-trained to observe and chart social trends, but less experienced at presenting scientific findings in formats that can inform social change work. In this article, I propose a new theoretical concept that provides a mechanism by which social science research can be more effectively applied for proactive policy, organizational, and program development. The approach is to use the metaphor of “desire paths” from landscape architecture to show how social scientists can identify and analyze social desire paths that appear on the social structural landscape. Social desire paths usually emerge because existing formal structures do not meet individual or group needs. Such paths are generally started at the individual level, followed by others through individual actions, and ultimately leave an (usually informal) imprint on the social structure, even though the motivations behind those actions are not usually social change. Using what we know about the sociology of interests and what we have learned from trying to apply social science findings to policy, I propose seven criteria for phenomena to be defined as social desire paths. I then apply the criteria to two case studies related to housing, and discuss social desire paths usefulness to social scientists involved in any research that captures interests, deviance, or innovation; and that also has the potential to inform formal structures such as policy, organizations, program development, and participatory democracy.     

Revisiting regional traditions: An emerging sociology of the great plains

Meliorism, empiricism, ethnography, locality, and reform characterized Midwestern American Sociology at the turn of the twentieth century. Almost a century later, the mini-regional Great Plains Sociological Association, through its refereed publication, The Great Plains Sociologist (TGPS), maintains a variant of this tradition. We examine the first decade (1988-1997) of published articles (N=52) in TGPS with a focus on authorship, affiliations, editorship, and components of the earliest Chicago sociology and its diffusion to the University of North Dakota and the region through the work of John Morris Gillette. The results show that TGPS is uniquely a publication representing empirical studies, of homespun social issues, involving local samples, by sociologists and criminologists affiliated with a range of colleges and universities in and around the Dakotas and that a sociology of the Great Plains is emerging. Implications for the journal, state and mini-regional associations, and the discipline are discussed. Morten G. Ender research areas are social psychology, military sociology, and undergraduate education. Shihluang Huang research areas are drug laws/policies, systems analysis, corrections, and community corrections. Both authors served on the faculty at the University of North Dakota where this project was completed.     

Cognitive Sociology in France

While cognitive sociology is a relatively new area in U.S. sociology, the subfield has a lengthy history in French sociology. Developing a typology based upon the existing literature, we identify three branches of cognitive sociology in France. The first was initiated by Raymond Boudon, one of the scholars most responsible for popularizing the area, who envisioned cognitive sociology as helping delineate the role of beliefs in rational action. Second, another group of researchers seeks to found sociology upon a naturalistic basis, thus drawing upon the disciplines constitutive of cognitive science (e.g., psychology, cognitive neuroscience, and cognitive anthropology). Finally, the third approach to cognitive sociology in France takes inspiration from linguistics as a foundation for sociological investigations. We conclude the paper by discussing the relationship between these three sub-fields and by examining the relationship between French and American cognitive sociologies in order to identify fruitful directions for future research.     

PRESIDENTIAL SPEECHES AND TEACHING SOCIOLOGY (2009 MSSA PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS)

In this address, I review available published presidential addresses written by presidents of various sociological organizations as a way of thinking about sociology and what sociologists may find important. Using Eller's categorizations, I divide the articles into three types including (1) query of the profession in which the author discussed the history of sociology or its future; (2) a call for new directions in methodologies or theories within sociology; and (3) a focus on the author/president's research. Then, I focus on what is missing in most presidential addresses given by sociologists: sociologists' role as educators and the impact we have upon students. I find that most presidential addresses do not include any or only passing nods to our responsibilities as teachers. I end the address with a call to consider our responsibilities and impact as teachers.