Sociology and the Nation-State in an Era of Shifting Boundaries

Academic disciplines and nation-states resemble one another in the sense that both emerged worldwide as overarching categories for conferring collective identities about a century ago. During the past quarter century, however, the status of both has been challenged. Disciplines like sociology have been challenged by more salient intellectual boundaries organized around subdisciplinary, transdisciplinary, and supradisciplinary lines—a fact that helps account for sociology's response to external threats to the discipline with a sense of being in crisis. Nation-states have been similarly challenged by new jurisdictions organized around subnational, transnational, and supranational lines. Even so, these changes constitute a process of differentiation, not displacement; disciplines and nation-states are likely to persist in serving important functions. albeit reduced in scope.     

The United States Senate votes to uphold Roe versus Wade

An analysis is reported of the voting of U.S. Senators in their rejection in 1983 of the proposed Hatch/Eagleton Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. That Amendment, if passed and ratified, would have reversed the 1973 Supreme Court Decision in Roe versus Wade which legalized abortion throughout the United States; the Senate, in effect, thus voted to uphold Roe versus Wade. Analyses are reported on public opinion and public policy, regional differences, characteristics of the states and personal characteristics of the Senators, including some variables of more political relevance and others of more relevance to social scientists. A regression analysis summarizes the results by indicating that, other things being equal, pro-choice votes were likely to be cast by nonCatholic Democratic Senators who were from New England, the Pacific, or Middle Atlantic region, who were from states with a relatively high income, and who had voted against a proposed constitutional amendment allowing prayer in public schools.The author wishes to thank John Murphy, Patricia Shanks, Diane Chappell, and Nancy Allen for their assistance.     

Formalism in the social sciences,rhetorically speaking

Even formal methods in economics, which sociologists have been tempted to adopt, are “rhetorical,” in the sense of “argued to other scholars, not proven forever and ever.” The rhetoric of inquiry, in other words, is not confined to flowery language. Two examples of formal methods that have defective rhetorics are significance tests (in which the sociologists are far ahead) and existence theorems (in which the sociologists are in danger of imitating the economists’ errors). Much effort in economics is spent on a rhetoric without conclusions. A more humanistic economics — or sociology—would examine all the arguments, whether mathematical or not. He is also director of the Project on Rhetoric of Inquiry.