The most critical issue facing the ASA

The ASA worries that it may be allowing organizational fragmentation to contribute to intellectual disarray in the discipline. ASA should recognize that the increase in the number of sociologists has made it easier to start new, economically viable organizations, with their own journals, prizes, and meetings. A serious problem facing ASA is that the American Sociological Review shows an editorial bias toward quantitative research. Sociologists need to strengthen alternative organizations-regional and specialty-especially among groups which differ politically from ASA, so that it will not try to speak for all of us. He is co-editor (wih Michal M. McCall) ofSymbolic Interaction and Cultural Studies (1990, Chicago: University of Chicago Press).