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C. Wright Mills' The Sociological Imagination (1959) represents one of the most influential texts of postwar American sociology. The title has become a catchphrase that stands for a style of thought that transcends both theoretical dogma and the constraints of mere methodological rule following. This article sets out to show that Mills' vision of the sociological imagination had more in common with the then dominant lines of scholarship than his broadside against Parsonian grand theory and Lazarsfeldian abstracted empiricism in the main part of the book would suggest. Among the tools that Mills introduced as fostering the sociological imagination were 2 × 2 tables. The article traces the use of such tables over time and across scholarly communities and shows that, contrary to Mills' own estimate, these tables describe a common nexus between his own work and that of Parsons and Lazarsfeld. All three scholars made ample use of this formal tool to construct sociological arguments at central places of their oeuvre. Given its shared use across otherwise divergent schools, the 2 × 2 table is a prime example for what historians of science have called paper tools, i.e. statistical formulas, algorithms, tables, diagrams, graphs, etc., that structure scientific research across different schools of thought and theoretical approaches. Drawing on the notion of paper tools, the article advances a post-Kuhnian perspective on the history of sociology that shifts the research focus from substantive ideas to formal tools and demonstrates elements of commensurability among presumably incommensurable schools of thought. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focuses on the social consequences of the AIDS epidemic, arguing that sociologists have an important contribution to make in planning for the long-range social consequences of AIDS. Concludes with three different commentaries on Berk's article. (Author/BSR)

The article analyzes the Amherst papers in relation to development of Parsons' theory. A careful analysis of the Amherst papers reveals that the basic ideas and philosophical principles that Parsons followed throughout his life were already in place, some more fully developed than others, yet forming an integrally coherent pattern to a surprising degree. The clear existence in Parsons's Amherst papers of a metatheoretical framework predating his later professional writing calls into question some still existing myths about radical breaks in the development of Parsons's theory. In one version of this mythology, Parsons began his theory as a voluntarist, then became a structural-functionalist, later moved on to become a systems-theorist and ended up as a social evolutionist. Despite such claims, Parsons always was a voluntarist, even during his so-called structural-functionalist middle period. The Amherst papers reveal an amazingly complex and logically coherent theoretical system-in the mind of a twenty-year-young man-and testify to an extraordinary scope of philosophical depth, and intellectual maturity.

This article comments on a paper by David Jenness, which focused on the efforts of the Consortium of Social Science Associations (COSSA) in organizing the social sciences in their own interest. The future of federal support for sociology will depend on the continued mobilization efforts of COSSA and upon public recognition of sociological contributions to the realization of two prime sets of values. Much has been written since 1981, when Reaganism became the guiding hand and official ideology at the federal level, of the need for new academic-industry partnerships. Most often, research training and subject-matter expertise were the initial factors to employment. Marketable skills opened opportunities that would have been shut to someone simply proclaiming sociology as his or her trade or profession. The virtues of a range of sociological skills are recognized much more readily: for information and intelligence, for systems analysis and design, for social trend analysis and forecasting, and in general for systematic scouting of the environment within which organized efforts in the public and private sectors operate, flourish, or decline. Herbert Costner once referred to this aspect of applied work as reconnaissance sociology.

The article discusses economic and social theory of Talcott Parsons. Parsons's persistent attention to economic theory has been relatively neglected by critics of Parsons who, in attacking the alleged functionalism of Parsonian sociology, concentrated on the issues of value consensus and normative integration, believing that Parsons had relatively little interest in the economic base of society. This neglect of Parsons's economic sociology was probably intensified by the Marxist undercurrent of much so-called conflict theory. In recent years there has fortunately been considerable interest shown in Parsons's analysis of economic theory and more specifically in his economic sociology. At Amherst, Parsons came under the influence of the philosopher Alexander Meiklejohn, who prompted his students to consider broad questions relating to alternatives to industrial capitalist society and who created an educational environment within which students were involved in a general analysis of the social sciences. It was this engagement with institutional economics that marked Parsons's departure from biology into the social sciences as an academic career. Parsons was introduced to a broad spectrum of social theory relating to cultural and biological dimensions of human existence as explanations of social differentiation.

Even conservative estimates of the future course of AIDS epidemic make clear that only a small fraction of people who ultimately will experience AIDS symptoms now have them and that the spread of the virus will continue for some time to come. This article focuses on the social consequences of the AIDS epidemic, some of which are beginning to be felt. I argue that sociologists have an important contribution to make anticipating the long range social consequences of AIDS. Intelligent planning is impossible without a reduction of uncertainty in what the future might hold. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This narrative traces the life and fate of a paper submitted to the journal Social Problems and ultimately rejected, with the author claiming that the review was "unfair." It is an editor's story and seeks to specify various "ethical" dilemmas that help to define such work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents a commentary about a study by Michael A. Overington about the changes which have occurred in the history, philosophy and sociology of science. Most scientists are taught that theories will be abandoned when negative evidence is discovered. Scientists are taught that they should evaluate all new ideas even if those ideas contradict existing scientific beliefs. Parts of the work from some philosophers of science have been emphasized by a group of subjectivists who take pleasure in arguing that there is no real difference between scientific ideas and other types of ideas. Most sociologists know that what is considered to be good work depends upon a contemporary but changing consensus. Saying that there is no difference between scientific knowledge and ideology is saying that despite the beliefs of scientists, empirical evidence is of little importance in validating currently accepted scientific beliefs.

In this paper we examine the publication of international articles in the two leading journals in sociology, the American Sociological Review and the American Journal of Sociology. The most prominent journals in several other social-science fields, namely economics, demography, political science and education, are included for purposes of comparison. "International" is defined alternatively with respect to topics and authors. The journal with the least representation of international topics is the American Educational Research Journal, followed by the two leading sociology journals. The journal Demography is also more international in focus than are ASR and AJS. Economics, as represented by the American Economic Review, and political science, as represented by the American Political Science Review, are the most international of this set of fields. The rank order of journals follows largely the same pattern when the focus shifts to international authorship rather than international subject matter. Foreign first authors are not uncommon, but many of these authors received their PhD degrees from a university based in the US or held a faculty position in the US. Co-authorship teams are most likely to be all US authors, but cross-national teams are not at all uncommon. Our findings suggest that a disproportionate focus on the U.S. may limit the sociological imagination and result in an impoverished sociological toolkit that is ill-suited for understanding the global reality of deeply diverse and divided societies. In addition, the opportunity structure available to sociologists around the globe is somewhat skewed. Foreign sociologists who rely upon publication in US journals for career advancement may find themselves at a disadvantage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reflects on the origins and subsequent reception of the paper "Ontological Gerrymandering: The anatomy of social problems explanations", published in 1985. It describes the circumstances of my turning up at McGill University as a Visiting Professor in Sociology and meeting Dorothy, then a graduate student and the TA assigned to an undergraduate course on Social Problems which I was asked to teach. The paper reflects on the twin benefits: of an interloper, from Europe and from Science and Technology Studies (STS), entering the exotic and heady fray of North American social problems; and of Dorothy's steady and resolute guidance in introducing me to a new field. The paper suggests some reasons for the endurance of the paper's arguments, more than 35 years after its publication, drawing on some parallel developments in Social Problems and STS. It asks why has there been rather little mutual interaction between these disciplines, given their common concern with questions, among others, about values, effects and interventions in academic scholarship. The paper concludes that many more of us might have done well to pursue the path of strident agnosticism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Both within and outside of sociology, there are conversations about methods to reduce error and improve research quality—one such method is preregistration and its counterpart, registered reports. Preregistration is the process of detailing research questions, variables, analysis plans, etc. before conducting research. Registered reports take this one step further, with a paper being reviewed on the merit of these plans, not its findings. In this manuscript, I detail preregistration's and registered reports' strengths and weaknesses for improving the quality of sociological research. I conclude by considering the implications of a structural-level adoption of preregistration and registered reports. Importantly, I do not recommend that all sociologists use preregistration and registered reports for all studies. Rather, I discuss the potential benefits and genuine limitations of preregistration and registered reports for the individual sociologist and the discipline. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Experts, Social Scientists, and Techniques of Prognosis in Cold War America convincingly demonstrates the importance of RAND's Delphi method and political gaming as techniques of prognosis that were central to the construction of Cold War futures expertise. The book begins from the premise that although expertise in various forms of prognosis, prediction, and forecasting predated the creation of RAND, different modes of interaction among experts at RAND defined a new form of future-oriented expertise during the Cold War. This visual essay will use this premise as an entry point into other, earlier historical examples of interaction, albeit in different forms, that also produced expert knowledge about the future: 1.) nineteenth-century meteorological knowledge infrastructures and what Aitor Anduaga has described as "epistemic networks," 2.) agricultural statistics and cooperative bureaucracy, and 3.) early twentieth-century business forecasting and what Seth Rockman has identified as the "paper technologies of capitalism." This visual essay examines three images that illuminate earlier historical examples of expert interaction in predictive knowledge infrastructures in the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century United States. The essay employs historian Paul Edwards's definition of knowledge infrastructures as "robust networks of people, artifacts, and institutions that generate, share, and maintain specific knowledge about the human and natural worlds." An infrastructural framework, as Edwards observes, shifts away from "thinking about knowledge as pure facts, theories, and ideas" and instead "views knowledge as an enduring, widely shared sociotechnical system." The visual essay format makes visible the material components of a knowledge infrastructure as well as its symbolic meanings, and it also reminds us to ask what is not pictured and why. This essay focuses on how these knowledge infrastructures have combined data, information, judgment, and opinion to produce expert knowledge about the future, and it asks us to consider how future-oriented expertise has emerged historically and who counts as an expert. It will explore three main questions: How has interaction among experts historically taken place at a distance and in person? How did knowledge infrastructures, bureaucracies, and paperwork shape the production of expert knowledge about the future before the Cold War? How has expert foreknowledge historically relied on various forms of "futurework" as labor? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discourse and ideology are interrelated concepts in social sciences and the humanities and are even occasionally employed interchangeably. This paper sheds light on their relationship in academic discourse and examines the role of sociology as a scientific field in its conceptualization. Using bibliometric analysis, we examined 15,716 academic publications mentioning "discourse" or "ideology" in their title and written in English by American and British scholars between 1966 and 2015. The investigation focused on the two terms' conceptual environment, areas of usage, journals, and the organizations to which the authors were affiliated. First, we conclude that although some sociology researchers have attempted to create a sociological definition for the concept of discourse, sociologists are not its most active users. The same is true for ideology. These concepts have established niches in other disciplines (political science and history for "ideology," and educational science and linguistics for "discourse"). Second, throughout the years, the field of discourse studies has become more diversified and fragmented than that of ideology. Third, the leading organizations in both fields are prestigious American and British universities, which indicates that discourse and ideology are elements of the intellectual elites' language. Fourth, the concept of discourse was more frequently applied than that of ideology in the years 2010–2015, and we expect that it will remain popular among scholars in the next decade. As for ideology, we believe that new social challenges could foster the rediscovery of this concept in the near future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Israel leads the worldwide record of living non-directed kidney donations: People who volunteer to donate one of their kidneys to people they do not know. This paper explores this phenomenon by localizing the theoretical question of the tension between altruism and solidarity in the actual structure of Israeli society. Specifically, the paper introduces the work of Matnat Chaim, a non-profit organization of matching donors with renal patients in need of a transplantation. This organization allows its volunteers to select their recipient's background and indeed almost all donations are directed to Jewish patients. The paper enters the ethical discussion regarding this practice, by presenting the stories of the donors themselves and their donation justifications. This paper portrays a nuanced understanding of the connections between altruism and solidarity which digresses from liberal interpretations of these concepts. I concludes by pointing to the dialectics of altruism and solidarity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is considerable interest in the ranking of journals, given the intense pressure to place articles in the 'top' journals. In this article, a new index, h, and a new source of data-Google Scholar - are introduced, and a number of advantages of this methodology to assessing journals are noted. This approach is attractive because it provides a more robust account of the scholarly enterprise than do the standard Journal Citation Reports. Readily available software enables do-it-yourself assessments of journals, including those not otherwise covered, and enable the journal selection process to become a research endeavor that identifies particular articles of interest. While some critics are skeptical about the visibility and impact of sociological research, the evidence presented here indicates that most sociology journals produce a steady stream of papers that garner considerable attention. While the position of individual journals varies across measures, there is a high degree commonality across these measurement approaches. A clear hierarchy of journals remains no matter what assessment metric is used. Moreover, data over time indicate that the hierarchy of journals is highly stable and self-perpetuating. Yet highly visible articles do appear in journals outside the set of elite journals. In short, the h index provides a more comprehensive picture of the output and noteworthy consequences of sociology journals than do than standard impact scores, even though the overall ranking of journals does not markedly change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this essay I discuss how my editorship of Sociological Focus, the official journal of the North Central Sociological Association, simultaneously places me at the margins, in relation to top-tier journals, and in the thick of things, in relation to the authors and reviewers who participate in the journal. All editors face issues related to the review process and, occasionally at least, struggle with decisions. Given the hierarchical nature of the discipline, however, editors of journals at the lower end of the rankings face additional dilemmas related to fairness and access. Concluding that the margin is a bustling place where lots of sociology gets done, I end with a strong plea that we protect our regional journals and keep them vibrant and inclusive. The easiest way to do that is for all of us to publish in them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the idea of sociological film that encourages sociological imagination, which refers to the capability to recognize the intersection of biography and history. The paper identifies six key dimensions of sociological film through a thematic analysis of different classic approaches to sociological imagination: sociological life, structure-actors relationship, critical perspective, academic awareness, fluidity of meaning, and promotion of sociological imagination. This paper provides concrete examples to demonstrate the distinctive features of sociological film and how it relates to, and differs from, other films that address social issues, including documentary films. The paper argues that sociological film is essential in fostering sociological imagination by offering a unique lens for analyzing and understanding social phenomena. Sociological film has the potential to inspire social change by increasing awareness about significant social issues and promoting critical thinking and reflection. The paper concludes by emphasizing the significance of collaboration between sociologists and filmmakers in advancing sociological imagination through the medium of sociological films. It highlights the importance of actively engaging with the public in visual research methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

American sociologist C. Wright Mills is one of the most important and controversial sociologists of the post-war period. Of Mills' works, one book stands out: The Sociological Imagination, published by Oxford University Press in 1959. Little known is that Mills drafted his book during a 12-month Fulbright visit to University of Copenhagen 1956-1957. In the rich biographical literature on Mills this is mentioned only in the passing, or not at all. Based on hitherto unused archival material, this paper offers the first detailed account of his Copenhagen-visit during the Cold War. Bringing together this bulk of new historical traces sheds new light on the year Mills himself referred to as a "pivotal moment." These 12 months in Copenhagen, amid the Cold War, was formative for Mills in two ways: First, Copenhagen was an entrepot to European center-left thinking both east and west of the Iron Curtain. Second, the stay in Copenhagen offered a 'space of selfhood', allowing Mills a necessary respite to develop his critical thinking. He did so in close cooperation with like-minded colleagues in Copenhagen. In the mid-1950s, the discipline was in the making in Denmark, and the visit of a prominent US scholar like Mills offered opportunities for Danish sociologist to further the discipline – and their standing within the discipline. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent reflections on the state of publications in sociology (Becker, 2003) suggest that article titles are getting longer. I test this hypothesis with data from ASR since inception and a wider sample of papers from Sociological Abstracts between 1963 and 1999. My results indicate a rapid and widespread increase in title length. Further analyses suggest that title length does not predict citation, suggesting that long titles are not an avenue for getting more readers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents information on various developments in the field of sociology. For the 1970 national meetings of the American Sociological Association, special efforts are being made to expand and enlarge the seminar sessions. These sessions are an experiment in seeking to make available a new format at the convention in order to overcome fragmented sessions and to permit discussion in depth. The luncheon roundtables at the Annual Meeting continue to be highly successful and more than 100 are being scheduled for the 1970 meeting. Herbert L. Costner of the University of Washington will replace Edgar F. Borgatta as editor of Sociological Methodology as of January 1, 1970. Papers will be accepted for review for Sociological Methodology: 1971 from January, 1970, through September 1970. They will be accepted or rejected as soon as sufficient editorial review is available, usually in 6 to 12 weeks. Papers accepted early in the year will be available for any necessary revision before the publisher's deadline, and hence early submission is encouraged.

Peer review is a central institution in academic publishing, yet its processes and effects on research remain opaque. Empirical studies have (1) been rare because data on the peer review process are generally unavailable, and (2) conceptualized peer review as gate-keepers who either accept or reject a manuscript, overlooking peer review's role in constructing articles. This study uses a unique data resource to study how sociological manuscripts change during peer review. Authors of published sociological research often present earlier versions of that research at annual meetings of the American Sociological Association (ASA). Many of these annual meetings papers are publicly available online and tend to be uploaded before undergoing formal peer review. A data sample is constructed by linking these papers to the respective versions published between 2006 and 2012 in two peer-reviewed journals, American Sociological Review and Social Forces. Quantitative and qualitative analyses examine changes across article versions, paying special attention to how elements of data analysis and theory in the ASA versions change. Results show that manuscripts tend to change more substantially in their theoretical framing than in the data analyses. The finding suggests that a chief effect of peer review in quantitative sociology is to prompt authors to adjust their theoretical framing, a mode or review I call 'data-driven.' The data-driven mode of review problematizes the vision of sociological research as addressing theoretically motivated questions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The process of evaluating papers for journal publication is a measurement process, similar to the other measurement processes of qualitative material in the social sciences. A good qualitative measurement technique rarely has a reliability coefficient of more than about 0.50 i.e., a correlation of 0.50 of one measurement with another measurement by the same technique. The square root of the reliability of a measure is the upper limit of its validity. If it is assumed that journal editing as a measurement process is as good as good qualitative measurement can possibly be, given this experience in the social sciences it would estimate the validity of a judgment of article quality to be about 0.70. The two major journals in Sociology accept about 16 per cent of the papers submitted to them. If the quality of papers judged is approximately normal, then one can say that papers judged to be 1 standard deviation or more above the mean of papers submitted will be accepted. Assuming a correlation of 0.70 between the true quality of the paper and the judged quality, one can estimate the proportion of acceptances of papers of different quality.

An editorial is presented on sociologists conceptualizing and studying hope along with several other papers on diverse topics. Topics include refection on the state of historical consciousness in U.S. sociology, and a discussion of the recent trend toward the pre-registration and registration of research designs; and study of "social pathology" such as poverty, illness, racial/ethnic discrimination.

Among the founders of sociology, it was Georg Simmel who provided the most thorough analysis and theory of space. This paper aims to reconstruct Simmel's spatial theory and his observations of spatial relations. The German sociologist engaged with spatiality in a threefold way. First, he tried to provide a systematic social theory of space; second, analyzing spatial relations was important for his diagnosis of modernity; third, he dealt with the subjective constitutions of space in his shorter, essayistic writings. This paper argues that the importance of the third strand for a sociological understanding of space has seldom been recognized in sociology. In addition, it also shows that despite the diversity in perspectives, there is an underlying coherence to Simmel's theory of space. As a result, it becomes evident that Simmel was not only ground-breaking in conceptualizing space from a sociological point of view, but that his theory of space continues to be inspirational and relevant to this day for interpreting the entanglement of social and spatial relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Attending and presenting at academic conferences can be an unnerving and formidable experience, especially for graduate students. In this essay, I describe some of my experiences as a graduate student, highlighting the benefits of attending and presenting at the Pacific Sociological Association annual conference and how this aided my professional development. I also provide some ideas for the Association to consider in their goal of improving the graduate student experience. Finally, I conclude with some recommendations for current graduate students attending the regional conference. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How are contemporary researchers "present" in investigating the past, and how do they conduct research that acknowledges the reconstruction of the past without reducing it to what they already wanted to find? These perennial questions have become central to literature at the intersection of historical hermeneutics and sociological methodology. This paper provides a novel perspective on these questions by interrogating the notion of "anachronism" with the help of queer historiography and pragmatism. Queer historiographers make a case for how the present is experienced as multiple temporalities, how the sense of anachronism is dependent on dynamics of bodily identification with historical others, and how this sense may become a provocative hermeneutic strategy rather than a topic to be avoided. Pragmatists show how anachronism emerges as the socially-situated and embodied sense of surprise in encountering particular traces of the past in the actor's present, and how this surprise may prompt analyses into the past that utilize the researcher's value-commitments as a resource in sociological inquiry. The paper seeks to build conceptual tools for a pragmatic hermeneutics that can strengthen both the accuracy of our investigations into particular historical events and our democratically-inclusive ethical and political projects to reconstruct usable histories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is a report on the status of minorities and women in sociology. In 1971, at the request of the American Sociological Council, participation by women and blacks in sociology was first assessed. That report affords a base for adding more data to assess the changes, if any, in the degree of participation by minority and women sociologists in the opportunity structure of the discipline. The concern with minorities in enlarged this year to include data on Asian Americans, Chicanos, American Indians, and Puerto Ricans, as well as with black sociologists. Along with women, these groups represent the focus of attention of two active committees formed by the ASA Council: the Committee on the Status of Racial and Ethnic Minorities in the Profession, and the Committee on the Status of Women in the Profession. The level of response, along with problems of definition, involving comparability of categories, indicates that this report may best serve as a working paper suggesting questions for more refined research. Hopefully, also, it will stimulate cooperation between the ASA and all departments of sociology to develop more reliable and valid accounting procedures so that better data on minorities and women may be routinely collected in the future. This hope is based on the assumption that facts about the number of minorities and women in sociology will promote their participation and enhance the quality of the entire sociological enterprise.

A rejoinder to the papers on A Joyfully Serious Man. The Life of Robert Bellah (AJSM) written by Andrew Abbott, Federico Brandmayr, Charles Camic, Andrea Cossu, Jean-Louis Fabiani, Laura Ford, Harlan Stelmach, and Rhys Williams. Conceived as an exercise in self-reflection, the paper addresses five wide areas: specific critiques of AJSM; an assessment of the relationship between AJSM and the research project whence it came; the connections between author and critics; a clarification of some fact regarding the main character of AJSM, that is, Robert Bellah; and the analysis of particular experiences which the author, Bellah, and his critics share as sociologists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The contribution is based on Robert Bellah's introduction to Emile Durkheim on Morality and Society (1973) and second on other references to the French sociologist in Bellah's work as well as in Bortolini's insightful remarks on the "homology" between Durkheim and Bellah. The publication of the book took place in a time of Durkheimian effervescence: Steven Lukes' Emile Durkheim.His Life and Work was published on the same year and a new Durkheimology appeared in the English-speaking world: attention shifted from methodology, as expressed in Suicide or in the Rules of Sociological Method, to morality with a focus on the moral basis on a non-pathological society. Bellah's statement is quite strong: Durkheim can "be seen as a theologian of French civil religion". The paper will examine's this point of view with respect to the state of French society at the turn of the century and Durkheim's social project. One side question concerns the choice of texts: the editor did not give enough weight to texts that might have strengthen Bellah's point of view, particularly l'Education morale. Bortolini mentions Bob's long and silent work on Durkheim and his critique of mainstream analysis of The Elementary forms of Religious Life, reducing religion to a mere projection of society (:142). The biographer insists on the ambivalent, if not contradictory, vision of Durkheim in Bellah's work, in which he finds a key to the interpretation of the oeuvre. The article focuses on how to account for its complexity, which is never as clear as in the interpretation of Durkheim's sociology in a post-rationalist direction. Bortolini's concept of role model/hero incarnated by the founding fathers (here Weber and Durkheim) is analyzed in connection with Parsons' reconstitution of a pantheon. The question of civil religion is reexamined in the light of the transatlantic transfers carrying different meanings of civil religion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The changes to the way that the program is built for the PSA annual meetings offered some exciting new possibilities and successes, but there were also problems. This paper suggests a hybrid between the new and old systems in order to allow continued involvement by committees and other PSA members in shaping the program. Suggestions are also given for ensuring quality of papers, increasing attendance, and providing increased opportunities for interaction and networking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2000, a controversial article about hormones and gender roles was published to stimulate debate about whether and how biological knowledge should be integrated in sociological research. Two decades later, this so-called biosociology debate is more relevant than ever, as biological knowledge has become widespread across societies and scientific disciplines. Hence, we as sociologists are regularly confronted with biological explanations that challenge our own explanations. Whether this happens in the scientific arena, the classroom, media, or even at social events, these situations often force us, individually, to take a stance on whether to meet such explanations with dialogue or opposition. One could therefore expect that sociologists have an interest in discussing these issues with their peers, but their lack of participation in the biosociology debate suggests otherwise. This paper explores possible reasons for this absence and how sociologists' views on biosociology are influenced by key agents – sociological associations and journals. Smith's "A Sacred project of American Sociology", and Scott's "A Sociology of Nothing" served as theoretical tools in the paper. A qualitative content analysis of presidential addresses of four sociological associations was conducted. The analyses suggest that sociologist avoid biosociology for widely different reasons, including fear that biosociology legitimizes oppression. This avoidance is probably reinforced by the leftish politization of the sociological discipline and the rightish politization of society. Overcoming obstacles to engagement in biosociology is required to safeguard the scientific integrity of sociology and enable sociologists to provide relevant contributions to research on the Covid-19 pandemic and climate change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The sociology review process is broken. There are too many reviews per paper and the norm that all papers go through a revise and resubmit process burns through reviewers, slows down the publication process, creates distorted papers as authors try to satisfy incompatible demands, and puts too high a premium on novelty over methodological rigor. Editors should get fewer reviews per paper and make editorial decisions. No new reviewers should be added in reviewing a revised manuscript. Peer review should not be treated as an opportunity to receive editorial assistance and mentoring and instead should be focused on ensuring that published papers are correct. Asking for large numbers of reviews will not solve the problem that sociologists do not agree on their standards. The reviewer problem points to larger questions about the structure of sociology as a field, the need for more venues for publishing solid empirical work, and the importance of replications. It also points to the structure of academic publishing in which for-profit publishers make money by selling to university libraries the products of the free labor of university professors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The bibliography of this paper is provably the most unspeakable, out of fashion, no longer necessary or relevant set of references ever published in a sociology journal. They are not the least cited, but the most forgotten. These books and articles were at one point quite famous among publishing sociologists but have since suffered near-complete extinction. The explanations of these famous works' unlikely demise reflect the mechanisms and history of the maintenance and change of the discipline, such as obliteration by incorporation, topical and epistemological shifts in the field, founder-selection, the effects of reputation entrepreneurship, and the shifting of what is intellectually unspeakable. I give this index of the forgotten some face-validity by reviewing exegetical work on "forgotten" sociologists and by conducting qualitative analysis (autopsies) of the biggest falls in conversation with the history of sociology and the sociology of science. Finally, I provide an online tool for further investigation into events in sociology's citation history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks to uncover the modes of justification by which sociological theorists legitimize the "canon" of sociological theory in practice, through the stories they tell to students in sociological theory textbooks. Specifically, we ask: how do textbook authors rationalize their decisions to include and exclude some theorists? Further, what are the modes or "rules of the conceptual game" underlying these justifications? To address these questions, we undertake a rhetorical examination of a corpus of 250 English-language editions of sociological theory textbooks. Focusing on their Introductions and Conclusions, we highlight texts that presume the canon is a social fact and investigate the justifications they provide for assenting to this fact. We articulate and illustrate three forms of legitimation: functionalist, historicist, and humanist. Functionalist justifications legitimate the canon by appealing to its capacity to generate disciplinary unity and integrity. Historicist justifications legitimate the canon by appealing to its members' foundational and influential role in defining the direction of the field. Humanist justifications legitimate the canon through appealing to the intrinsic qualities of its texts and authors. Identifying these pathways is the primary empirical contribution of this paper, which in turn contributes to the collective project of disciplinary self-reflection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper tries to combine the natural history model of social problems with Foucauldian discourse analysis. Foucault tried to outline connections between knowledge and power, and this paper applied his method to qualitative content analysis of discourse on low birth rates in Japanese news articles and discussions among the Japan's national Diet members. This paper focuses on two topics: how some policies to combat low birth rates were adopted, while other were rejected; and why the policies which were adopted tend to favor two-income families. In order to answer these two questions, this paper selects seven important events from 1990 to 2016 in order to understand what kind of power or knowledge operates, and what kind of similarities in the discourse appear repeatedly and regularly. This paper highlights four points. First, claim-makers who regarded declining birth rates as a serious social problem---population experts, politicians, bureaucrats, and feminists---influenced political decisions against low birth rates. The low birth rate issues can be considered a government-manufactured social problem. Second, the policies against low birth rates have emphasized that difficulty in balancing work and childrearing decreases the fertility rates. Therefore, gender-equality and work-life balance have been dominant within the discourses on low birth rates, and the more fundamental problem of why young people are postponing marriage have been ignored. Third, both bureaucrats in the Ministry of Finance balancing national revenue and expenditure and feminist activists emphasizing gender-equality and work-life balance often reject a child allowance which provides equal benefit to each child regardless of the parents' lifestyle. Fourth, merely welfare policies that are adaptive to the ideologies of gender-equality and work-life balance have been implemented. Bureaucrats, lawmakers, and feminist activists gained ownership of a social problem. Similarly, the gender-equality ideology has only catered to heterosexual males and females who form a family, work outside, and raise children equally. Therefore, single persons with no family or singleincome families have been neglected. This should be described as the exertion of governmental power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Christian Smith's paper 'The Incoherence of 'Culture' in American Sociology' is a valuable provocation that can prompt us to reflect on the role of concepts and on the role of agreement on the definition of concepts in scientific research. In this comment paper, I raise questions about Smith's empirical expectation that sociologists should agree on a concept of culture based on debates in the sociology of science. I also suggest that in terms of the future agenda for the sociology of culture, we should distinguish between dialogue and clarification on the one hand, which I agree is needed, and standardization on the other hand, which seems incompatible with open-minded empirical research. Rather than work on agreement on what culture is, we might work on clarifying relevant distinctions among dimensions of culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper provides insights on the contemporary relevance of Talcott Parsons's writings by analyzing 20 textbooks from Austria, Germany, Great Britain and the United States, published in 1999–2019. Whether having knowledge of Parsons is helpful to today's students and other interested readers, and what knowledge, deserves consideration. Therefore , the paper asks: Which future gains of readers did textbook authors envision when they chose, in their own present, to discuss (or not) sociological writings from long ago? In order to understand what future opportunities authors wanted to create for readers, as well as how they chose to discuss Parsons to this end, the paper draws on Niklas Luhmann's notion of memory. The analysis reveals several key competencies that student and other interested readers might acquire through having knowledge of Parsons' writings and its critiques. These potentials would have gone unnoticed if authors had assessed Parsons's relevance only according to whether he adequately considered conflict or not, as has been done in many debates about his work until today. Moreover, through analyzing how authors remembered Parsons, I distilled two key selective criteria: First, what must be remembered in order to enable readers to acquire those competencies? Second, which memories would be impeding for readers and thus be better left out? These criteria are relevant for research, as well. Looking at the future, it would be desirable that sociologists let Parsons assist them in their research in many different ways, if possible. As a result, we might see a revival of Parsons that enables genuine advancement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This introduction serves to set the stage for a special issue of The American Sociologist, a festschrift in honour of the career and ongoing influence of Dorothy Pawluch. A festschrift is a collection of reflections in honor of a scholar, and this issue includes reflections of how Dorothy Pawluch came to inspire, through her teaching and supervisory guidance, a particular legacy that continues to inform her former students, their own students, and the wider academic community. The festschrift also includes papers which have the goal of advancing social problems theory and taking constructionism in new, exciting directions. As such, they are also geared to honor Dorothy's career. While readers will no doubt be reminded by many of the contributors about the huge impact of Dorothy's influential article, Ontological Gerrymandering, written with Stephen Woolgar, what also shines through are recollections of Dorothy's kindness, altruism, and general decency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this autoethnographic essay, I reflect on my experience of meeting Dorothy and working with her during my graduate studies at McMaster University. Drawing on the concepts of "otherness" and "belonging," I reflect on the role Dorothy played in introducing me to the social constructionism and to the dynamic of relationship between graduate students in their mentors. Following my own professional transitions, I structure the paper as a set of personal diary entries that are focused on my conversation with Dorothy as my course instructor and my mentor post-graduation. In these entries, my thoughts or ideas are presented as "responses" to the questions, ideas, and discussions posed or initiated by Dorothy. The last reflection considers how Dorothy's role as my mentor shaped my own experiences of mentoring students and became pivotal in my academic and personal development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following reflections by Talcott Parsons and Niklas Luhmann, this paper is concerned with the changing meaning of the profession as a sociological category for analyzing modern society. Professions are practical academic occupational groups oriented to certain social values, to which a special significance for society was attributed in the social sciences for a long time, thus marking a connection between professions' research and theory of society. This paper now describes that the causal relationship between profession and society is limited to a historically relatively early period. In the transition to modern society, this close network of relationships begins to dissolve, and now professions operate in the context of some function systems of society whose task is the professional assistance of single clients, such as in the fields of health, law, and pastoral care. However, the professions' highlighted position in the knowledge and action structure of single function systems seems to dissolve more and more today so that one can ask whether we can speak here already of an end of the social form profession. This would correspond with the observation that actually the professions no longer appear at all in the newer theories of society and therefore their function as an important mechanism of social structure formation is no longer attributed to them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two main points are made in this paper about the use of metaphors in sociology. The first is that metaphors have a strong heuristic or suggestive power that can also be increased. The second is that metaphors can lead you wrong; but there exist some easy ways of proceeding to prevent this. In both cases the paper emphasizes the practical dimension of working with metaphors. The following topics are discussed as well: how to construct a new sociological metaphor; how to add to an existing one; and what exactly happens when you are led astray by a metaphor. By way of background, the paper introduces the reader to the current state of the discussion of metaphors which is interdisciplinary in nature. The ideas of I.A. Richards are singled out as being especially helpful to sociologists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper builds on Joel Isaac's analysis of "interstitial" arrangements that generate scientific knowledge, and also draws upon the networking model of theory groups articulated by Nicholas and Caroline Mullins. I consider how the "interstitial academy" at Harvard, as well as Talcott Parsons's navigation of it, facilitated his professional rise from a vulnerable young instructor in economics in 1927 to one of the most prominent social scientists in the United States in 1951. I examine Parsons's engagement with curriculum-building committees in sociology and social ethics, in "the area of social science" and in social relations, as well as with undergraduate courses on institutions and on sociological theory, including a graduate student discussion circle, and with seminars on Pareto, on rationality and on "basic social science." In some instances, Parsons's involvement as a newcomer or junior participant led to important peer alliances, or to the support of higher-ranking faculty and administrators who sponsored his advancement. In other instances, especially as his ascent progressed, Parsons played the more powerful role of "indispensable hub" who gained stature by organizing cross-disciplinary interaction. Parsons's interdisciplinary dialogue and collaboration also placed him an initial administrative role that would prepare him to serve as chair of two academic departments. The final and most important outcome of the process of upward mobility was the creation of a "theory school" that elevated Parsons to a unique status as the most boundary-spanning theorist of the social sciences. The paper thus supplements existing accounts of the rise of Parsons while also offering a mode of analysis that might be widely applied to the careers of other social scientists, both contemporary and historical (e.g., to figures such as Jane Addams and W. E. B. DuBois), in diverse academic settings and national contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main purpose of this article is to provide some guidance and inspiration for the teaching of the classics in sociology by taking a close look at the way in which Robert K. Merton taught this topic at Columbia University. The course was entitled "History of Sociological Theory (Sociology 150)" and was given between 1958 and 1968. With the help of archival material, the article reconstructs what Merton said during his lectures, which texts he assigned, what kind of tests he gave, and what type of paper the students should write. Merton did not want the students to only study the texts of the classics but also try to figure out how these went about their research and were able to formulate their theories. This meant that he emphasized how the classics approached such activities as problem-finding, problem-solving and looking for strategic research sites. In the concluding section, the broad approach to theory in Merton's teaching is contrasted to the more narrow one he presented in Social Theory and Social Structure. Positive and negative aspects of Merton's approach to the classics are also discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Unethical behavior by journal authors is rare, but some referees of manuscripts shirk their duties. Referees have ethical responsibilities to review manuscripts promptly, to write constructive comments for authors, to be tactful in their comments, and to avoid sectarian bias. An ethical question to which there is no agreed-upon answer is what to do when asked to review a paper that one has already reviewed for another journal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How has sociology evolved over the last 40 years? In this paper, we examine networks built on thousands of sociology-relevant papers to map sociology's position in the wider social sciences and identify changes in the most prominent research fronts in the discipline. We find first that sociology seems to have traded centrality in the field of social sciences for internal cohesion: sociology is central, but not nearly as well bounded as neighboring disciplines such as economics or law. Internally, sociology appears to have moved away from research topics associated with fundamental social processes and toward social-problems research. We end by discussing strategies for extending this work to wider science production networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I will try to consider the usual allegations of determinism that are directed towards Bourdieu's notion of habitus from a slightly different perspective. One of the most common arguments found in these types of charges is that Bourdieu unsuccessfully attempted to reconcile objective and subjective aspects of social life under one notion. According to critics, habitus is not a viable solution to structure vs. agency debate simply because it cannot be both determined by social structure and open to contingency of autonomous subjective interpretations of the social world. I will show that this critique of Bourdieu actually is inspired by incompatibilist philosophy which maintains that regarding human action either determinism or free will can be true. However, those sociologists who, in criticising Bourdieu's understanding of habitus, follow the incompatibilist line of reasoning usually overlook the compatibilist side of this old debate in moral philosophy. In that regard, I will argue that Frankfurt and Taylor's compatibilist account of second order desires and strong evaluations can help us to better understand how habitus can be determined by environmental social factors and, at the same, time not only foster free will, but also provide a theoretical insight into radical forms of social change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The societal changes of the last century, especially in the aftermath of World War II, have led thinkers to imagine philosophical anthropology centred on the concept of hope. From very different perspectives, authors such as Ernst Bloch, Erich Fromm, and Hannah Arendt understood that hope is deeply connected with the condition and destiny of humanity. Various sociologists have developed concepts closely linked with hope: action, social change, utopia, revolution, emancipation, innovation, and trust. However, a coherent and systematic analysis is yet to emerge. Taking up the threads of this rich but fragmented reflection, this paper intends to outline the traits of a "sociology of hope" as a tool for critically interpreting today's society and the processes of change crisscrossing it, starting from some crucial questions: Who are the actors and historical bearers of hope? What are the main socio-historical forms of hope? What social, political, and cultural conditions favour the emergence and strengthening of this disposition? What are the effects and consequences on personal and social life? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a sociological view of the press coverage of a sociological convention. The coverage is based on observations carried out by five newsmen-observers who attended the August 1965 American Sociological Association (ASA) meetings in Chicago, Illinois. The general conclusion of this study of the convention was that the confrontation of the sociologist with the representative of the news media was overwhelmingly inadvertent, disconcerting and only partially successful to either party. In terms of efficiency in social communication, it leaves much to be desired and strongly entices one to prescribe therapy. Few suggestions are made in advance of Florida sessions in order to get sociologist into communication with the Miami Press. It is suggested to issue a handbook in advance of the convention to all members of the ASA and once the convention has started, to maintain a special message board near the newsroom which offers a chance for newsmen to indicate their wish to contact writers of papers. It is also suggested the president of the ASA assemble a small, informal committee which would hold daily news briefings alerting them to persons or topics originating outside or inside the formal program of the convention.

In this paper I describe the gradual monetization of the university and its implications for the discipline of sociology. I suggest that not only is money a guiding force for the decisions that university administrators, faculty and students make but that it is also a metaphor for the changes and challenges faced by sociologists today. The second part of the paper identifies strategies for grant success based on approaches that are common in the natural sciences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Thomas Schelling and Erving Goffman: who influenced whom, when and to what effect? Was there "influence" at all or, as Tom Burns suggests, independent discovery and convergence? These are the questions that this paper is meant to answer. Using available archival material and historical and textual analysis, the paper takes a fresh look at Goffman's interest in and contribution to game theory. It charts the important first meeting in the late 1950s, their subsequent dialogue through publications, and the critical 1964 conference on "Strategic Interaction and Conflict," where Goffman encountered an assembly of defense and nuclear strategists associated with the RAND Corporation. These include Daniel Ellsberg, who was a sharp critic of Goffman's conference presentation, Albert Wohlstetter and, of course, Tom Schelling. During the heated discussion that accompanied Goffman's presentation, the session chairman gave Goffman the sobriquet sorcerer's "apprentice." Ever the ally, Schelling said that he was sympathetic to Goffman's "style of [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]