The sociology of organizations and the organization of sociology: some reflections on the making of a division of labour

This paper speculates on the emerging divide between 'organization studies'– a discipline largely practised in management departments – and the 'sociology of organizations'. Using organizational culture as a case study, I argue that 'forgetting' is a key move in the construction of a discipline. Much organization studies' writing on corporate culture and symbolism is predicated on an amnesia about a wide body of older sociological work on 'atmosphere', 'climate', 'personality' and 'informal structure'. This disciplinary constitution is productive of knowing, yet it also involves drawing boundaries that enable forgetting. Critically reflecting on the current division of labour in this area, as well as on the costs of amnesia, might encourage more historically informed forms of knowing.     

Why sociology does not need to be saved: Analytic reflections on public sociologies

After reviewing the debate about public sociologies in the American Sociological Association over the past few years, we offer a response to calls for “saving sociology” from the Burawoy approach as well as an analytic critique of the former ASA president's “For Public Sociology” address. While being sympathetic to the basic idea of public sociologies, we argue that the “reflexive” and “critical” categories of sociology, as Burawoy has conceptualized them, are too ambiguous and value-laden to allow for empirical investigation of the different major orientations of sociological research and the ways the discipline can address non-academic audiences. Debates about the future of sociology should be undertaken with empirical evidence, and we need a theoretical approach that can allow us to compare both disciplines and nations as well as taking into account the institutional context of the universities in which we operate. Research into the conditions under which professional, critical, policy, and public sociologies could work together for the larger disciplinary and societal good is called for instead of overheated rhetoric both for and against public sociologies.     

The Global Transformation: Critical reflections on the historical sociology of the long nineteenth century

George Lawson and Barry Buzan's The Global Transformation advances the claim that International Relations (IR) has mistakenly overlooked the Long Nineteenth Century as a transformative era. They argue this period saw a shift in the mode of power, i.e. how power was utilised and expressed, and not merely a change in how it was distributed amongst competing political entities. The following offers a sympathetic critique of their theoretical claims. Highlighting the role of geopolitics and the societal changes of the public sphere, the article argues that the historical sociological method utilised by these authors is ‘neither realist nor liberal enough’.     

Some reflections upon the macro-micro problem in the sociology of education

The macro-micro problem has been a prominent feature of British sociology of education since the early 1970s. In this discipline macro and micro have each come to be associated with particular theoretical perspectives, notably Marxism and interactionism respectively. This has had several unfortunate consequences. First, arguments about the value of macro and micro work have often been little more than dismissals of one perspective by proponents of another. Second, the macro-micro debate has conflated several quite distinct methodological issues. This article focuses on one of these issues: the question of whether social events can best be explained as the product of large or small scale structures. It is claimed that this issue cannot be resolved by philosophical analysis alone, the answer is a matter for empirical discovery. Moreover, the problem cannot be settled at the moment because we have insufficient well-established theories. Only when more such theories are available will we be able to resolve the question of whether valid macro and micro theories are possible. What stands in the way of achieving this, however, is precisely what led to the fruitless character of the macro-micro dispute in the first place: the organization of the sociology of education around theoretical perspectives rather than around substantive research problems.     

Economic sociology as disequilibrium economics: a contribution to the critique of the new economic sociology

This paper analyses the problem of the asocial view of the market at the theoretical core of contemporary economic sociology. Despite much emphasis on the apparent interpenetration of society and the economy, contemporary economic sociology is rooted in an analytical distinction between the two spheres. The implicit reliance on the neoclassical economic conception of the market helps to explain why the ‘new economic sociology’ often collapses into disequilibrium economics, where disequilibrium becomes the central but unstated prediction of a good deal of the work in the paradigm. Using a sample of contributions from the field, I demonstrate that a strong tendency running through much of the new economic sociology tends to understand society as a fundamentally distortionary force. To resolve this problem, I argue that an independent field of economic sociology necessitates a distinction between social relationships and social relations.     

Beyond deference and demystification in the sociology of science and technology: A reply to Otero

A response to Otero's criticism of the thesis of the nonrevolutionary character of biotechnology is developed within a larger consideration of the relatively small amount of attention high technologies have received within the sociology of science. It is argued that the new sociology of science of the past decade has been a major advance on midcentury functionalist perspectives that took an essentialist, deferential view toward science. The new sociology of science, based on the demystification of science through a relativist view of scientific knowledge production, is nonetheless limited in several respects in its applicability to contemporary issues relating to high technologies. Otero's criticisms are considered in the light of the continuing need for uniting the sociology of science and sociology of technology, and for developing a perspective on science and technology that avoids both uncritical deference and excessive relativization of these forces for social change.     

Bringing our bodies and ourselves back in: reflections on a past, present, and future "medical sociology"

This paper is a revision of an address given upon receipt of the Leo G. Reeder Award for Distinguished Scholarship in Medical Sociology. It was presented on August 14, 1990 to The Medical Sociology Section of the American Sociological Association during its annual meetings, held in Washington, DC. Herein I reflect on the structured silence of personal bodily experience and on the unfinished paradigmatic challenge of feminism as a way of leading to a new praxis in medical sociology.     

Social memories: Steps to a sociology of the past

This article is an attempt to develop a comprehensive framework to examine memory from a sociological perspective with a particular emphasis on the impersonal, conventional, collective, and normative aspects of the process of remembering. After discussing the social context of remembering as well as various traditions andrules of remembrance, the article examines the process ofmnemonic socialization. It then moves on to identify variousmnemonic communities (the family, the workplace, the ethnic group, the nation) as well as various social sites of memory(documents, stories, photograph albums, archaeological ruins, the calendar). Following a discussion of the way in which holidays allow mnemonic synchronization,the article ends by examining the politics of remembrance as manifested in various mnemonic battlesover the social legacy of the past.     

论哈桑·图拉比与苏丹的伊斯兰化

哈桑·图拉比是近年来苏丹政坛的风云人物,其伊斯兰主义思想不仅使伊斯兰解放阵线成功执政,而且也使得苏丹迅速伊斯兰化,成为20世纪九十年代后期继伊朗之后,又一个实行伊斯兰法的中东国家.尽管巴希尔后来选择与囹拉比分道扬镳,但图拉比领导的人民大会党能否卷土重来,仍将是观察苏丹未来政局发展的重要指标.     

Photo albums: Images of time and reflections of self

The advent of popular photography has allowed ordinary people to visually record their view of themselves and the passage of their lives. Photographs not only record events but also allow the maker to group them for presentation in a structured manner comparable to verbal narratives, most commonly in photo albums. We examined more than forty albums created by amateur photographers in order to investigate the psychological and social functions of photo albums and their value to scholars as documentations of social life. Albums are intensely personal; they create a relationship between the presenter and the viewer; the audience is small; the possessor plays an active role in the album's presentation; and there is an accompanying verbal narrative. This narrative is crucial to the understanding of the album. This paper explores the structure of these narratives and their role in creating the meaning of the album. In the absence of a possessor/presenter, a narrative can be constructed by determining the type of album being examined and establishing the personal relationships and themes within the album. We suggest devices and procedures for reconstruction of such a narrative in the absence of a presenter.     

Put to the test: For a new sociology of testing

In an age defined by computational innovation, testing seems to have become ubiquitous, and tests are routinely deployed as a form of governance, a marketing device, an instrument for political intervention, and an everyday practice to evaluate the self. This essay argues that something more radical is happening here than simply attempts to move tests from the laboratory into social settings. The challenge that a new sociology of testing must address is that ubiquitous testing changes the relations between science, engineering, and sociology: Engineering is today in the very stuff of where society happens. It is not that the tests of 21st-century engineering occur within a social context but that it is the very fabric of the social that is being put to the test. To understand how testing and the social relate today, we must investigate how testing operates on social life, through the modification of its settings. One way to clarify the difference is to say that the new forms of testing can be captured neither within the logic of the field test nor of the controlled experiment. Whereas tests once happened inside social environments, today’s tests directly and deliberately modify the social environment.     

Rapid response to a conjunctivitis outbreak: the use of technology to leverage information

When an outbreak of conjunctivitis was identified at a rural New England college early in 2002, the college health center medical staff used various information management and communication systems to alert the community to the situation. They called upon the state Department of Human Services and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to help them understand and manage the outbreak. Technological systems already in place at the college allowed for rapid collection of data by means of a survey delivered over the Internet and a carriage study facilitated by a Web-based appointment and communication system. Within days, the data were collected and analyzed and an immediate response to contain the outbreak was launched.