ASA certification as cooptation

We provide a brief overview of the American Sociological Association’s Ph.D. Certification Program and question the need for, and justification of, certifying sociologists. Essentially, the ASA certification mechanism, as implemented, is nonsociological, emphasizing presumed defects in the individual to the neglect of wider, systemic forces impinging on our discipline. If certification of sociologists is warranted, a view difficult to support given the small number of applicants for certification since 1986, we suggest departmental accreditation—a more sociological approach that emphasizes the value of the discipline, in and of itself. His research interests include political sociology, stratification and contemporary issues affecting the discipline. His research foci include rural and agricultural issues and the sociological employment market and profession.     

Disciplining an Unruly Field: Terrorism Experts and Theories of Scientific/Intellectual Production

“Terrorism” has proved to be a highly problematic object of expertise. Terrorism studies fails to conform to the most common sociological notions of what a field of intellectual production ought to look like, and has been described by participants and observers alike as a failure. Yet the study of terrorism is a booming field, whether measured in terms of funding, publications, or numbers of aspiring experts. This paper aims to explain, first, the disjuncture between terrorism studies in practice and the sociological literature on fields of intellectual production, and, second, the reasons for experts’ “rhetoric of failure” about their field. I suggest that terrorism studies, rather than conforming to the notion of an ideal-typical profession, discipline, or bounded “intellectual field,” instead represents an interstitial space of knowledge production. I further argue that the “rhetoric of failure” can be understood as a strategy through which terrorism researchers mobilize sociological theories of scientific/cultural fields as both an interpretive resource in their attempts to make sense of the apparent oddness of their field and their situation, and as schemas, or models, in their attempts to reshape the field. I conclude that sociologists ought to expand our vision to incorporate the many arenas of expertise that occupy interstitial spaces, moving and travelling between multiple fields.     

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.     

Sociology and the effects of affirmative action: A case of neglect

A literature review reveals that sociology has largely neglected to study the social effects of affirmative action, even though the policy’s assumptions and concepts are sociological. Non-sociological treatments of the policy’s consequences are examined and found wanting: polemics, legal commentaries, philosophical commentaries, economic analyses, psychological studies and organizational analyses. Sociological treatments—including opinion surveys and studies of overall societal effects—are examined and found to be mostly outdated and meager. Ten specific avenues of future research are described whereby our profession can fill this gap in our knowledge. where he has taught since 1969. He is editor of the forthcomingRelative Strangers: Studies of Stepfamily Processes (Littlefield-Adams).     

Ethics,human rights and sociological inquiry: Genocide,politicide and other issues of organizational power

This paper introduces a human rights (in contrast to an ethicist) perspective into sociological investigation. Moreover, it indicates why a human rights orientation is necessary for examining genocide, politicide and other issues of organizational power. For years he has been concerned with the sociology of ethics, human rights and bureaucracy. Her research focuses on formal organizations, criminology/deviance, family life and medical sociology. Her primary interests are race and ethnic relations, family life and social psychology. Her interests include formal organizations, American studies and autobiography.     

How organizational characteristics shape gender difference and inequality at work

Why should students and scholars who are interested in gender difference and inequality study organizations? In recent years, as research on organizations has migrated to business schools and become less connected to other subfields of the discipline, the value of organizational sociology has become less evident to many. Yet characteristics of organizations contribute in important ways to producing different experiences and outcomes for women and men, by constraining certain individual actions and enabling or bringing about others. In this essay, we trace the consequences of four categories of organizational characteristics—the formal structure of work, employment practices, informal structure and culture, and organizational networks and fields—for gender inequality in three areas: workplace experiences, work–family conflict, and career outcomes. We close with some brief reflections on future directions for research linking organizations and gender.     

The many faces of sociology: Ambivalence and conflict in graduate education

This article addresses how the ambivalence of the discipline of sociology affects students’ understanding of it. We consider this ambivalence as multi-layered. The first level embodies the usefulness of sociology as a discipline and sociologists’ ambivalence toward their profession. The second involves applying a sociological perspective to our everyday lives. We discuss the administrative organization of our department, the examination structure, and the structure of asymetric power relations. We conclude that one possible solution toward resolving ambivalences both in our everyday lives and within the profession is to take our critical theoretical training seriously. with special interests in social psychology and qualitative research. She is planning a dissertation on how ideology affects the structure of battered women’s shelters. Barbara G. Brents is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Missouri with special interests in political economy and aging. She currently is working on a dissertation entitled “The Class Politics of Age: The Social Security Act of 1935.”     

Mapping Gender and Migration in Sociological Scholarship: Is It Segregation or Integration?

A review of the sociological research about gender and migration shows the substantial ways in which gender fundamentally organizes the social relations and structures influencing the causes and consequences of migration. Yet, although a significant sociological research has emerged on gender and migration in the last three decades, studies are not evenly distributed across the discipline. In this article, we map the recent intellectual history of gender and migration in the field of sociology and then systematically assess the extent to which studies on engendering migration have appeared in four widely read journals of sociology (American Journal of Sociology, American Sociological Review, Demography, and Social Forces). We follow with a discussion of these studies, and in our conclusions, we consider how future gender and migration scholarship in sociology might evolve more equitably.     

Sociology as a Natural Science? The Agenda of Walter Wallace*

Walter L. Wallace has spent over twenty years outlining parameters for the discipline of sociology. He has paid special attention to what he calls the “complementarities” between the various areas of sociological specialization. From this investigation he has proposed a metalanguage to unite the discipline, with a particular emphasis on structure. Wallace's position is that sociology must, inevitably, follow the canons of the natural science model. This perspective is sketched in this article with some assessment of Wallace's contribution to contemporary sociology.     

A Troubling Presence: Indigeneity in English‐Language Canadian Sociology

Over the past decade Canadian sociology has engaged in spirited debates on the sociology of sociological research, but it has barely begun to address its relation to Indigenous theorizing, scholarship, and politics. How does the discipline deal with the settler colonial history and current realities of Indigenous social lives, and where is the place in our field for Indigenous voices and perspectives? Drawing on Coulthard's politics of recognition and Tuck's damage‐centered research, we present here the first systematic empirical analysis of the place of Indigeneity in the Canadian Review of Sociology and the Canadian Journal of Sociology. We situate the presence of Indigeneity in Canadian sociology journals in the sociopolitical context of the time, and examine how imperialism, statism, and damage are oriented within the two journals. Most importantly, we challenge the silence in the discipline's intellectual frames and research programs with respect to Indigenous theorizing about the social world.     

The Promise and Perils of Applied Sociology: A Survey of Nonacademic Employers

Using data collected from sixty-five nonacademic employers, who either advertised in the ASA Employment Bulletin between January 1979 and January 1981 or who registered with the employment service at the ASA annual meetings in 1979 or 1980, we examine what nonacademic employers are looking for when they recruit sociologists, how they recruit such employees, what tasks employers assign sociologists, and what they perceive to be the major shortcomings of sociologists they have hired. Guiding the inquiry is our belief that programs and policies for expanding nonacademic job opportunities and the arguments for increasing the emphasis placed on applied sociology in graduate training have been more concerned with molding individuals to fit certain perceived occupational roles outside of academia than with training sociologists. We suggest that an uncritical acceptance of the nature of demand in the current labor market may ultimately lead to a deskilling of the sociological profession and the homogenization of the nonacademic labor markets open to social scientists.     

A Canadian rejoinder: Sociology north and south of the border

In response to the recent The American Sociologist special issue on Canadian sociology, this rejoinder dialogues with some of the perspectives offered there on the discipline north of the border with an eye towards lessons that American sociologists might learn from the Canadian experience. My reflections build on a larger analytic piece entitled “Canada’s Impossible Science: The Historical and Institutional Origins of the Coming Crisis of Anglo-Canadian Sociology” to be published soon in The Canadian Journal Sociology. Particular attention is paid to the different institutional arrangements of higher education in Canada and the United States, Anglo-Canadian reliance on the particularly English “weakness as strength” strategy for sociology, tensions between the cultural values of populism, egalitarianism, and excellence, and the trade-offs between professional and public intellectual work. A critique is offered of the “origin myth” of Canadian sociology as a particularly vibrant “critical sociology,” with discussion of Dorothy Smith's influence on sociology in Canada. His research interests are in sociological theory, the sociology of culture, and the study of intellectuals from the perspective of the sociology of organisations and professions. He is studying Edward Said as a “global public intellectual” as part of a Canadian government-funded interdisciplinary grant on “Globalization and Autonomy” at McMaster University. He is also working “Canadian professors as public intellectuals,” a project also funded by the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada.     

Some thoughts on graduate education in sociology

Examining the question of graduate education in sociology raises issues about the way we perceive our discipline and its future. Multiple theoretical perspectives and applied vs. basic interests need not fractionate the discipline if we orient ourselves to those skills which comprise the essence of sociological work; and the idea of a disciplinary core will be more easily operationalized if we construct graduate curricula with these skills in mind. How we practice our discipline will be a far more significant determinant of both its future and the content of graduate training than our normative pronouncements about what ought to be. His recent publications, both with Les Whitbeck, include “Knowledge Use as Knowledge Creation” inKnowledge (1986), and “Sources of Knowledge for Practice” in theJournal of Applied Behavioral Science (forthcoming).     

Facing Each Other: Japanese and Russian Sociologies

The history of sociology as a subfield has long aimed to describe the historical developments of the discipline, within which national traditions offer unique voices while also contributing to a global sociology. How do various sociological paradigms and national traditions approach social reality in similar and different ways? This paper examines Russian and Japanese contributions to the history of sociology by reviewing some of their major concepts and perspectives. On this basis, this paper seeks to probe into the past and present self-understandings of the two sociological traditions, as well as their potentials for a more active role in global sociological discourse. Both countries have a history of protracted isolation, which has made them more or less invisible in the international sociological community. However, Russian and Japanese sociological traditions exist and are ready to be tapped, even as their production and mobilization of intellectual resources remain strongly embedded in their politics, cultures, and societies. A broader aim of this paper is to enhance mutual understandings and future collaborations between sociologists in Russia and Japan.     

Gender differences in patterns of publication in leading sociology journals, 1960–1985

This paper examines the impact of the recent feminization of the sociological profession on gender differences in patterns of publication in leading sociology journals. Our findings show that women are better represented in the leading journals in an absolute sense, but continue to be underrepresented relative to men. Moreover, while women are better represented in the leading journals than in the past, they more often occupy marginal locations within the structure of the discipline. Finally, we discuss the likely implications of the feminization of sociology on the production of knowledge within the discipline as a whole. His interests include social theory, stratification, organizations, and the sociology of science. His interests include criminology, criminal justice, and the sociology of science. Ann M. Rotchford is a doctoral candidate in sociology at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. Her interests include organizations and sex stratification. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 1988 Southern Sociological Society meetings.     

Autonomy and Compliance: How Qualitative Sociologists Respond to Institutional Ethical Oversight

Prevailing sociological understandings of institutional ethical review tend to homogenize faculty responses to them, and are predominantly speculative. In this research, we conduct interviews with sociologists from 21 Ph.D.-granting departments across Canada, finding three predominant “ethics orientations” among them, with associated cognitive maps and strategic actions. In our analyses, we use these orientations to complicate homogeneous appraisals of social researchers’ responses to new bureaucratic requirements, enriching our understanding of how such requirements affect the ways sociologists think about their occupation, approach their research, and mentor successive generations. These ethics orientations suggest the field of sociology is comprised of distinct political cohorts with diverging understandings of ethical review, and by extension, power and intellectual work. For some, ethical review signals a more consultative and therefore better approach to knowledge production, while for others it marks the end of an era of unfettered (and superior) intellectual pursuit in sociology.     

Combining the liberal and useful arts: Sociological skills in the global economy

The discipline of sociology remains vulnerable in an environment of economic uncertainty and global change. Constraints on higher education are likely to increase and recurrent pressures on traditional liberal arts programs will continue unabated. An older, more diverse, cost-conscious and career-minded student population will increasingly insist on clearer pathways to difficult and bewildering labor markets. But sociology’s weakness as a liberal art may be overcome by combining it with a more applied and practical orientation. The very forces that threaten the discipline’s institutional existence make it profoundly relevant and valuable in an age of social transformation. Based on a familiar Millsian conception of the sociological imagination, this article attempts to combine sociology’s liberal tradition with its role as a “useful art,” honed into the specific features of workplace change and the employment setting. It does so by suggesting five categories of emerging skills in the global economy and ways that sociology has a far reaching claim to their practice and development. The categories are: 1) the skills of knowledge workers; 2) skills in the learning organization; 3) skills in the technological context; 4) skills in the diverse and divided workplace; 5) change-making skills. The article concludes by urging those in the discipline to make sociology more of a useful art that has practical application in a changing world. An earlier version of this article was presented at the Sociological Practice Association 15th Annual Meeting, Denver, Colorado, June 11, 1993.     

Humanitarian work psychology: The contributions of organizational psychology to poverty reduction

Achieving the MDG goal of reducing world poverty by 50% by 2015 requires the cooperative effort of many disciplines. To date the discipline of organizational psychology has not played as significant a role as it might in this endeavor. With the recent establishment of the Global Task Force for Humanitarian Work Psychology, this discipline signaled its commitment to the global effort. Organizational psychology offers to bring its expertise to poverty reduction: its ability to assess needs and capacity, develop partnerships with stakeholders, bring about and manage change, and systematically review, evaluate, monitor and revise high level mandates, policy development, program implementation and consultation on personnel issues. Its successes as practitioners-scientists in private enterprise will enhance its credibility for success in the public sphere. The article reviews the research and practice of some of the organizational psychologists presently engaged in poverty reduction and how humanitarian work psychology might enhance the efforts of anti-poverty organizations.     

How Public Are We? Coverage of Sociology by the Associated Press

The recent and prolific attention to public sociology has involved a great deal of theoretical debate about its merits, flaws, and potential future within the discipline. Despite the loud call for becoming more public, existing research on the discipline lacks both an empirical understanding of where we are as well as a methodological rubric to guide future inquiry. This project explores one outlet for public sociology—the press—as a starting point for this line of research. Through an investigation of Associated Press stories featuring sociology and sociologists, we seek to provide a baseline for consideration of public sociology efforts by describing the current state of how our discipline and its members are portrayed in the press. Further, based on our findings we provide some insights for future research.     

Grassroots sociology and the future of the discipline

It has become a truism to say that the sociological enterprise is in disarray. The sociological niche is neither self-evident nor safe. Given the problems facing sociology, it is imperative that the discipline begins to plan to protect is assets and to project its capabitlities into the twenty-first century. State sociological assocations could be major components of such a plan. The state sociological association is, however, a largely unknown entity. The present study presents the result of a survey of the officers of state assocations to determine the demographic makeup of their membership, concerns addressed by their associations and their strategies for dealing with these concerns. The findings suggest that state socioclogical associations are in an excellent position to build community in the discipline by breaking down the lines of stratification separating the organizational levels of the sociological enterprise and the different needs of our academic and applied endeavors. Both are past presidents of the North Carolina State Sociological Association. Harris is past president of the National Association of State Sociological Associations and Wise is its current president.