Issue 6 Dimitrov.pdf · “The genuine history of sociological theory must ex-tend beyond the...

Sofia 2014

CAS WORKING PAPER SERIES

Issue 6

CENTRE FOR ADVANCED STUDY SOFIA

ADVANCED ACADEmIA PROGRAmmE

2012–2014

CAS Working Paper Series No. 6/2014

This publication is available also in electronic form at www.cas.bg

Copyright © 2014 by the CAS contributors/CAS Copyright remains with the individual authors/CAS. This publication may be distributed to other individuals for non-commercial use, provided that the text and this note remain intact. This publication may not be reprinted or redistrib-uted for commercial use without prior written permission from the author and CAS. If you have any questions about permissions, please, write to [email protected]. Preferred Citation: Dimitrov, Georgi, Perpetually New – Essentially Modern: a Preliminary Study in the Discontinuities of Social Science Transformations. CAS Working Paper Series No. 6/2014: Sofia 2014. Advanced Academia programme, a

project of the Centre for Advanced Study Sofia.

CENTRE FOR ADVANCED STUDY SOFIA

7B, Stefan Karadja St., Sofia 1000, Bulgariaphone:+359 2 9803704, fax:+359 2 9803662

[email protected], www.cas.bg

The following publication presents part of the author’s research carried out under the Advanced Academia Programme of the Centre for Advanced Study Sofia.This programme is supported by the America for Bulgaria Foundation, Stifterverband für die Deutsche

Wissenschaft and the Fritz Thyssen Foundation.

www.cas.bg

mailto:[email protected]

mailto:[email protected]

www.cas.bg

http://www.cas.bg/en/cas-current-programmes/advanced-academia-48.html

http://www.cas.bg/en/cas-current-programmes/advanced-academia-48.html

GeorGi Dimitrov

PerPetually New – esseNtially moDerN: a PrelimiNary stuDy iN the DiscoNtiNuities of social scieNce traNsformatioNs1

“Sociology in America represents a continuously emerging product of a complex interplay among re-ceived ideas, social values and concerns, structural opportunities and constraints, organizational and institutional factors”.

R. M. Williams, Jr.

“The genuine history of sociological theory must ex-tend beyond the chronologically ordered set of criti-cal synopses of doctrine; it must deal with the inter-play between theory and such matters as the social origins and statuses of its exponents; the changing social organization of sociology; the changes that diffusion brings to ideas; and their relations to the environing social and cultural structures.”

Robert K. Merton

“But we will misunderstand recent history if we for-get that a project of situat ing truth in the histori-cally particular experience of human com munities had a formidable trajectory of its own, energized by a largely uncritical respect for the procedures and achievements of existing scientific communities.”

David A. Hollinger

“Except in economics, none of the new theo-ries of the 1950s became paradigmatic in their disciplines, and they left behind disciplines divided by schools and subfields, interdisci-plinary overlays, and technological practices.

1 The project under the title Constantly New: Studies in Discontinuities and Transformations in Social Science was carried out during the fall semester of the academic year 2012. Many thanks to the CAS team for their support and the encouragement for its fulfillment! The present paper is a radical abridgment of the introductory chapter of the volume which springs from this project.

4

CAS WORKING PAPER SERIES 6

The intense ideological and theoretical debate of these decades spawned new fields, such as the study of women and gender, and sharpened discord, so that subfields often went their own way, rarely communicating with each other or contributing to a common matrix.”

Dorothy Ross

I. JustIfIcatIon of the study

To Heraclitus, they say, belongs the saying that “The only constant is change” or translated differently, “Nothing endures but change”. For sure this is a pre-modern saying – the obsession with the “constant” (the “enduring”) is pretty obvious in it. A modern person, being conscious of one’s belonging to modernity, wouldn’t ever say such a thing. Because of the most important of all reasons – the change itself is changing, thus making the radical novelty quintessential to Modernity. This is what this story is about. Yet, in order to make it meaningful, we have to radically desert the purely abstract level of thinking. Please, follow me!2

It would be a risky business for the social sciences in the beginning of the 21st cen-tury to evolve in the same naïve and pseudo-natural way as their history of nearly two hundred years has been doing so far. Having had a glorious past is not a guar-antee for any bright future as we, here in Europe, know pretty well...3

Among the many members the big large and growing family of the social sciences, sociology, which claims the status of being the the specifically modern form of self-consciousness in modern societies (P. Berger, but R. Nisbet, W. Lepenies, E. Shils4, P. Wagner and many others as well), has the least right to leave itself to the natural course of events. Because its place under the academic sun is the most precari-ous. A glaring example is Bulgaria, where the symptoms of the fundamental crisis are most visible since they have surfaced recently – both in the form of easy de-molition/extinction of public institutions of sociological knowledge (the Institute of sociology at the Bulgarian Academy of sciences, the National center for public opinion polls), and the parallel substantial decrease of interest in this academic

2 The reader has certainly noticed already the author’s deliberate intention, as a person who has studied and understood (I hope) the feminist input to the social sciences, to openly declare that the dialogue with him/her, the emotional experiences included, could not and should not be eradicated from the study of any social subject matter.

3 “This time there is no question about what sociologists mean when they talk about crisis. The European integration project has never since its inception been as close to a crash as it is now. Nor do we need much justification for the view that what now is needed is critique, a social science that offers views on how modern societies work, stick together and change.” Pekka Sulkunen, ESA President, President’s address, Coming of Age, European sociologist, Newsletter, June, 2013.

4 For the specific purposes of the current work the most suitable will be E. Shils’ statement: ”Sociol-ogy has arrived by becoming in some respects, an organ of the ties which characterize the most recent phase of modern society. Sociology has come into its present estate partly because of its own development has borne a rough correspondence to the development of the consciousness of the Western part of mankind in its moral movement.”(Shils 1980:13).

5


discipline.5 But the local Bulgarian problems are meager when compared with the processes underway in global sociology with its actually permanent crisis6.

This state of affairs is the source of the intention which the current research project fulfills – to understand the constitutive mechanisms of the academic creation and public establishment of the social sciences (in order to optimize the pat-terns of their development) through the study of social science history in the USA in the 20th century. The optimization targets both the social realization of the so-cial sciences and their tertiary teaching, which provides the future social science experts (in the broadest spectrum from policy advisors to politicians or policy-makers, responsible for the development of contemporary societies).

The present study is conceived as a critical endeavor in the classical Kantian sense – to investigate the terms of possibility of cognition. The main idea is to prove that – because of its “nature” and not because of the influence of external arbitrary circumstances – the social sciences are perpetually under a qualitative transforma-tion. They do not evolve as a process of accumulation of knowledge, but develop through a series of drastic ruptures of tradition and gradual, yet radical transfor-mations. As a consequence of this, the entire classical notion of social science de-velopment, which operates with concepts like “paradigm sustainment”, “schools”, “theory-building”, etc., is largely inadequate. It provides a false ideal of scientific work that is used as a disciplinary and disciplinizing matrix of professional aca-demic practices, which, being substantially different from their real mode of de-

5 The oldest and the most prestigious faculty of sociology in Bulgaria is the one at St. Kl. Ohridski University of Sofia. This is why its crisis is the most symptomatic: for the period after 2004, enroll-ment interest – both as a first choice or any preference at all – drops by 30 per cent in comparison with the previous year...

We can consider as a secondary symptom of the same crisis the exponential growth of empirical studies of a variety of aspects of the social and academic being of sociology, i.e. its exploding “self-reflexivity”. From all 24 publications, books and reports published, providing research results on the diversified sociological life and teaching at the Bulgarian universities, about 80 per cent have been written after 2000, and half of them after 2005.

6 The overt statement of this proposition belongs to Lipset, and Berger has sided with him for a couple of decades. These are not just exceptions (See Cole, Horrowitz, etc.). I have said more on the same topic in several public presentations (Sociology in Trouble 2004; A Plea for a Mediating Sociology 2005; Sociology as a Figure of Speech or Love 2006).

6


velopment, inevitably distances and alienates the social sciences from real life. The matrix, which (implicitly, at least) orients the research work towards a constant, although impossible pattern, hinders the intensively changing social relevance that has been and will be of utmost importance for the social sciences.

Within the limits of a duly short introduction I can only provide a single example to illustrate both the methodological issue at stake and my thesis, which must be proved by the findings of the empirical historical research later on.

To this very day, it is usually uncritically assumed that theoretical knowledge, the-ory-building, is the priority/paramount task of scientific work7 – there isn’t enough time to enumerate all those who identify the development of social science with the creating of … theories. Even methodological innovations are judged against the criteria of whether they contribute to the further advancement of theory.

But why and on what grounds could we be sure that a fairly generalized theory would be possible?8 What makes us think or believe that such a research strategy is possible and productive, instead of initially and ineradicably futile?

As a first and most tentative approximization towards this extraordinarily com-plex and complicated issue, let us recall some important but forgotten facts. When we speak about a theory in social science, exactly at that initial phase be-fore its disciplinary differentiation, the first names that come to our minds are Weber, Durkheim, and Marx. Yet the fact is that none of them wrote any theory, actually, ever.

Marx explicitly wrote that his Russian, would-be positive, critic was not doing him any favors in saying that “Das Kapital” was a theory of capitalism. That, wrote Marx, “is both honoring and shaming me too much”. It is honoring, in a sense, because – if possible – it would have been great for this to have been done by Marx. Neverthe-less it is shaming because such a feat of spirit, ascribed to him, is in fact unattain-able. What he thought he had accomplished was to write a “historical sketch of the genesis of capitalism in Western Europe”. In a nutshell, Marx, having understood the essence of his subject matter, was convinced that the latter was far beyond a theoretical reach and this is precisely why he offered to the readers a sketch for the (truly historical by its nature) local social reality in an unfinished work.9

7 "The essence of science is precisely theory...a generalized and coherent body of ideas, which ex-plain the range of variations in the empirical world in terms of general principles.." (Collins 1994: 1345).

8 From all the authors listed in the bibliography at the end, only Karl Mannheim, Joan Acker, Keith Dixon and Duhomir Minev, in Bulgaria, discuss the possibility of social science theory in a criti-cal perspective.

9 It is well known that Marx himself published only the first,volume of his Opus Magnum in 1867. Later on he re-issued it for the next nearly 16 years, until his death in 1883, but he never finished his research project as planned. The second volume was edited and published by Engels, the third by K. Kautscki, and the fourth is comprised of Marx’ manuscripts from the preparatory work for “Capital” through the critique of bourgeois economists (which is an edition of the Institute Marx, Engels, Lenin, Moscow).

We should not regard the above-cited comment from Marx as an insignificant saying, as a sort

7


The case of Max Weber is even more telling in this regard. Piles of papers have been written by forgotten/insignificant authors who claim that Weber was wrong in his theory about the genesis of capitalism, as, they suppose, he wrote in the famous “Protestant Ethics and the Spirit of Capitalism”. Their renunciation is carried out in the form of giving various examples from places all over the globe, demonstrating that there is no necessary and universal connection between Protestantism and capitalism. Yet all these titanic efforts are pointless. Because the entire Weberian original social science was created in order to solve the problem of social science of “historical individuals”, as all social phenomena are. The methodology of ideal types (which are, for any subject matter, as many as the number of their authors) is his resolution of the problem of the impossibility of a social science theory and, hence, Weber as a methodologically self-reflective researcher could not have writ-ten “theory about capitalism” or about anything else.10

The illusion that there could be a theory in social sciences derives from a series of misunderstandings. Let us quickly jump over the numerous sociological volumes (written about the turn of the previous century by then academic celebrities) which actually promise such a theory or explanations of how useful it could eventually be (ex., Giddings, Ward, Small). The most serious is the misunderstanding inherent in the academic career of Talcott Parsons’, from whom we have inherited the unat-tainable fiction of social science theory (down through his enormous influence on figures like Habermas and Lumann, which they acknowledge gratefully and which has been analytically proven by J. Alexander).

of lapse. On the contrary, it is a summary of the methodological program elaborated explicitly in the chapter “Method” in the preparatory manuscripts of “Capital”. There he wrote: “To sum-marize: There are characteristics which all stages of production have in common, and which are established as general ones by the mind; but the so-called general preconditions of all production are nothing more than these abstract moments with which no real historical stage of production can be grasped.” (italics added, GD). With consequences for methodology, Being methodologically consistent later on he wrote the letter to the Editor of the Otecestvenniye Zapisky: “Thus events strikingly analogous but taking place in different historic surroundings led to totally different results. By studying each of these forms of evolution separately and then comparing them one can easily find the clue to this phenomenon, but one will never arrive there by the universal passport of a general historico-philosophical theory, the supreme virtue of which consists in being super-historical.”(Marx-Engels Correspondence 1877, Letter from Marx to Editor of the Otecestvenniye Zapisky, [Notes on the Fatherland], Written: in French at the end of November 1877; Source: Marx and Engels Correspondence; Publisher: International Publishers (1968);

10 A connoisseur of Weber should appreciate the essential coherence in his liberal outlook (accord-ing to which the social reality is nothing but the consciously intended mutually oriented actions of individuals) and his sociological method, according to which the interpretative understanding is a must. In such a sociological vision, a “theory” is simply unthinkable: “[…]subjective under-standingis the specific characteristic of sociological knowledge. In the case of social collectivities, precisely as distinguished from organisms, we are in a position to go beyond merely demon-strating functional relationships and uniformities. We can accomplish something which is never attainable in the natural sciences, namely the subjective understanding of the action of the com-ponent individuals. The natural sciences, on the other hand, cannot do this, being limited to the formulation of causal uniformities in objects and events, and the explanation of individual facts by applying them. We do not “understand” the behaviour of cells, but can only observe the rel-evant functional relationships and generalise on the basis of these observations. This additional achievement of explanation by interpretive understanding, as distinguished from external obser-vation, is of course attained only at a price – the more hypothetical and fragmentary character of its results. Nevertheless, subjective understanding is the specific characteristic of sociological knowledge.” (Weber 1978, p 15).

8


A caveat is due: I am not asserting that after Parsons there were no more influen-tial writings in social science theory. It is practically impossible to list comprehen-sively all those who have tried to do it – the first names that come to one’s mind are George Ritzer, James Coleman, Jonathan Turner, Steven Turner, Anthony Giddins, Pier Bourdieu (in Bulgaria, Georgi Fotev). My claim is only that to date there is no ex-ample of a successful experiment in the creation of a theory that is sociologically use-ful/applicable in a meaningful explanation. But the experimentation does not cease. And always eventually with the very same result – a failure to arrive at their most dear and cherished desire: an explanation that will provide means for convenient control of the evolution of social life, promised at the very start by August Comte.

The reason is that social life is always a “historical individual” (Weber) while the-ory claims the universal validity of its knowledge as generalized comprehension of the subject matter. Yet in social life, especially in high Modernity, diversity and dynamic changes prevail over the general and the constant. The course of socio-historical processes in modern societies is engendered exactly by its inexhaustible diversity, which generates exponential development. This is why what has been achieved in generalization is deprived of meaning in regard to whatever is actually happening (has happened of will happen), no matter whether we are talking about socialism, capitalism, markets, states, law, EC, globalization, etc. Especially in the case of advanced Modernity, construing universally valid knowledge about social relationships in their substantive diversity and multi-directionally changing system-atics is a bankrupt endeavor…

I am the last person to profess any usefulness (or whatever other value) in stud-ies that are merely fact-finding without explanatory ambitions. It is pointless to spend resources for conceptually meaningless studies, i.e. I am convinced that fact-finding is worthwhile only if it leads to an explanation that solves a problem. The main and crucial difference between a theory and a concept is the lower level of generalization/universality of the latter. Just as any serious concept frankly admits its own limits in terms of cognitive scope and temporal nature – a temporal knowl-edge for a temporal issue – it also makes explicit its dose of hypothetical assump-tions and individual idiosyncratic knowledge, admitting that it has been construed for the resolution of a specific problem.11 The concept confesses at the beginning not only that it is overtly partial but that it is intentional in regard of its subject matter (it is derivative of a cognitive interest that is defined by the pertinence of a task, for-matted by a specific academic discourse in a socio-institutional context of peculiar problems, hope, mental patterns, opportunities and hindrances).12

The problem seems to derive from the fact that the illusory ideal of social science theory is our legacy exactly from Parsons. This was done in such a powerful and

11 Compare with D. Minev (Minev 2012).12 Most luckily this has been acknowledged even in Bulgaria, if only, alas, by a few scholars (see D.

Minev…, but in a mesmerizing manner the same has been demonstrated in some historical stud-ies by R. Daskalov – How to Think the Revival, some other students of modernity – The Balkan 19th century. Other Readings, and Rumen Avramov – The Communal Capitalism).

9


seducive manner that it could appear as if it were only he who failed to solve the task of building a truly heuristic theory which is our reach in general … This is a radically false assumption!

In proof of my thesis I provide evidence13 that the work of Parsons includes his eccentric theory which for him seemed to be THE foundation of social sciences en bloc – not a scratch less. But his significance and influence over American sociology (to say the least) – and through Habermas and Lumann over the Eu-ropean14 – is due not to the theory itself but to his personal cultural relevance in that particular span of time (when he was – for a while – really extraordinarily important). Afterwards, although he was alive still (and endlessly fabricating new versions of his theory15), he was in fact sociologically dead for the next 15 years of his greatest maturity. And the reason for that was mainly that he had already accomplished his life-task. The resolution of the latter cast him irrecoverably into the past of sociology.

In other words, his original sociology – which has evolved in total disregard of the previous American tradition (R. Bierstedt) – was a resolution of a socio-historical

13 The deliberate choice of the history of American sociology as a factological material through the study of which the constructive mechanisms in contemporary social science transformations to be revealed is done purposefully in an attempt to solve a specific cognitive task. It is understand-able that within the limits of a single individual research project it is practically impossible to encompass in a comprehensive way all the contemporary social sciences, whose history seen su-perficially in very large-scale terms fills thousands of pages of multi-volume editions ( see Porter, Ross 2003; Backhouse, Fontaine 2010). This qualification imposes the selection of a ‘representa-tive case’. The findings of its study could then be tentatively extrapolated beyond the individual case studied. In a sense, we are dealing with a “methodologically privileged case” (in this par-ticular study: a case that is representative of the mechanisms for perpetual social science history renewal). The history of American sociology has been selected as most suitable not because it can be considered in any regard “paramount” or the “Best”. It is a methodologically privileged case for the specific purposes of the current project in as far as it is very abundant – with many autonomous centers of advancement. It is extraordinary diversified at any single point in time and undergoes intensive changes every other decade. More than that, due to the many crises in its history, the American sociology of sociology is very well developed. Even if it is not always very self-reflexive, it is very useful as a source of information about personalities, institutions, schools, journals, wars of ideas or minute inter-personal conflicts – in how many other national socio-logical traditions can we find a specialized journal (American Sociologist) focused mainly on the issues of the professional realization of sociologists? On top of everything else, the American history of sociology has its own history of more than 100 years, which has not been interrupted by external events (like the two WW), to which could be attributed the decisive role of the sharp ruptures with the tradition that are our main point of concern here. Yet such ruptures are quite abundant; one can even say that they are the “rule”, and they are mostly endogenous, not the result of external influences in this particular case.

14 As already mentioned, J. Alexander proved convincingly how the Parsonian ‘Theory’ influenced them both at lexical, compositional, axiological and conceptual level. Nevertheless, one should not share with him the exaggerating exaltation – “Who would Habermas be without Parsons…”

15 Uta Gerhardt is remarkable, indeed. In order to put an end to the question as early as possible I will emphasize that this enthusiastic admirer and follower of Parsons, in her second fundamental study on her teacher’s heritage offered us two main theses – an explicit and implicit one. The for-mer concerns the subordination of the entire career track of the American sociological Colossus at Harvard to the idea of a general sociological theory. Over the course of the subsequent decades he only modified its shape and structure, its formulations. The more important but implicit thesis lurks in the subtitle of the book – Methodology and American Ethos: in fact this integrity of the Parsonian ethics, of a devoted American liberal, plays the role of a guiding research “method”. (Uta Gerhardt, The Social Thought of Talcott Parsons: Methodology and American Ethos. Ash-gate Publishers, 2011).

10


task (within which the cognitive theoretical contents had been a very important and yet very small part). And exactly because it has been resolved successfully, it was no longer an issue demanding new efforts, mobilizing academic attention and leading to public recognition and prestige. In its own turn, the successful resolu-tion of the problems tackled opened new sociological tasks, which in principle could not be solved with the cultural and cognitive apparatus of Parsons (neither by him personally or by other sociologists). Figuratively speaking, his success killed him – as has been the case with many before and after him.

Here we arrive at the most intriguing point. It turns out that this sinister doom has been met not only by this American hero of sociological labor but, half a century be-fore that, the fate of the entire American Social Science Association was typological-ly similar – for the exactly same reasons (Haskell). Here are several telling examples:

“In addition to providing an inviting field of inquiry and some of the concep-tual tools with which to inquire, the growing interdependence of nineteenth-century society also contributed to the emergence of professional social sci-ence by creating a market for the results of inquiry, a demand for expert ad-vice.” 43-44

“Explanation itself becomes a matter of special significance, because the ex-plainer promises to put his audience back in touch with the most vital ele-ments of a receding and increasingly elusive reality.” 44

“Sociologists in the 1890's deprived the ASSA of its trump cards by promis-ing an analysis of society that would be both interdisciplinary and volunta-ristic—and, more than that, systematic.” 190

“Social inquirers so impressed with the interdependence of human affairs and so eager to avoid the parochialism of proximate causal attribution would nat-urally lean toward functionalism as a style of explanation—for the meaning of a part lies in its relation to the whole. 253-254

“They often would adopt an aggressively inductive stance, as if that were the only proper mode of thought—for fact-gathering is all that men can do when they find inherited paradigms and theoretical structures inadequate bases for deduction and prediction. In social policy their touchstone would be a quest for community—for interdependence devitalized the island community and simultaneously opened up the tantalizing promise of a grander community, one embracing the whole nation, or even all mankind. […] it was not until the 1890's that the new moral perspective acquired a legitimacy, a self-confident aggressiveness and sense of momentum that made it a real contender for dominance in American culture.” ( Haskell 1977: 254, italics added, G.D.)

If the reader is ignorant of the fact that these observations concern the history of ASSA of the last quarter of the 19th century, s/he could be very easily misled to be-

11


lieve that they address the Parsonian sociology only: a drive for all-encompassing knowledge, embracing mankind in general, but through the prism of an individual axiological horizon; a strong pathos of social science professionalism16, the amaz-ing confluence of voluntarism (free value choices in individual actions) and sys-tematism, the impetus towards aggressive self-assertion in American culture, and the tendency, immanent in this orientation, to evolve into structural-functional-ism: the entire complex of ideas, expectations, value premises, personal motives of public behavior, all these are features of Parsons and his sociology.17 The typo-logical similarity is further on expressed in the way in which ASSA in the late 19th century and Parsons, the leading American theorist of the mid-20th century, both lost cultural relevance, descended from the public arena and lost devotees because of … the proliferating diversities within their own conceptual positions. (The latter is a key factor of social science development in the ensemble of social, cultural and academic forces of change.)

In other words, both the organizational integrity of ASSA, and the conceptual unity of Parsonian sociology came at a very high price. That was a large share of the infantilism of their promise to society – both in regard of the character of social science and in regard of its place in public life. This is an infantilism of a social science stance/position/claim which does not know its own framing conditions of possibility. At the very next moment, when the promise has to be fulfilled as a professionalized practice, its inherent (unknown and incomprehen-sible) diversified plurality of potentials inevitably conduces to the disintegration of the initial “whole”.

I was really surprised to find that practically the same thing happened in the 1950’s, in close parallel to Parsons’ doom but in the field of … literature studies to the then dominant New Criticism (Gallaghar)18, and that later on, in a typologically

16 This is the main theme of Parsons’ presidential address as President of the ASA...17 In a nutshell, as a rough initial generalization, it could be claimed that Parsonian sociology is a

peculiar kind of culmination of the half-a-century history of American social science reproduced at a qualitatively new level as a new phase of its development with its immanent issues, tasks, value engagements and intrinsic contradictions.

18 “During the last decade many academic literary critics have developed an intense interest in the history of their discipline. No longer content to know merely what previous critics wrote, they explore the institutional and broader political histories surrounding critical theories and practices. Such resorts to collective narrative are, of course, common reactions to intellec tual crises, so it should not surprise us that the various histories now available come to the reassuring conclusion that literary studies have always been in crisis. We have not created more chaos than earlier genera-tions, they seem to say: literature professors have always disagreed over the fundamental principles of the profession, always engaged in theory wars, always been prompted by extra-literary political concerns, and even always been accused of posing a threat to the American way of life. […]

While one might take a certain rueful comfort in these reflections, one might still wonder why the period dominated by the New Criticism (1938-1965) continues to look, if only retrospectively and relatively, like a time when basic critical protocols commanded wide agreement. I will try to answer that question by describing the temporary stability the New Critics brought to English departments. I will also describe how the New Critics prepared their own supersession.” 151

“But if the New Criticism opposed itself to modernization in terms that are recognizably modernist, it just as emphatically nominated itself as a movement for professional consolidation. Its stunning success probably owed more to the deftness with which the ideas were woven into a discourse of professionalism than to the ideas themselves. The New Criticism reinvented the discipline by unify-

12


similar – but very paradoxical – way, “the same fate” engulfed the powerful tide of feminism in sociology.

Not only the revolutions but the success in social science too devours its own chil-dren. This is because the cause that has brought them to life, has made them visible and publicly and academically ‘central’, has its own unseen premises. The invisibil-ity of the latter is, however, a crucial precondition of the very cause (for example – sole-ness of the research method, positioning in the “center” of the public space, etc.). The success of the cause makes it necessary to bring the premises to the focus of intellectual attention, and it turns out that they, in their own right, have had their

ing what had formerly seemed to be competing professional exigencies. Before the New Criticism, the two legs necessary to the forward stride of any profession—specialized learning and public ser-vice—were uncoordinated in English departments. 152-153 …. the professional desiderata of dif-ficulty and uniqueness are inextricably bound to those of usefulness and service.” 155-6

“English departments were theoretically open and eclectic in the sixties and seventies, not despite the New Criticism but because of it. Its flexibility and its ability, as an analytic technique, to mix well with various theories provided the sense of a common enterprise that many English de-partments now seem to lack. The eclecticism, nevertheless, eventually came to include ideas that seemed corrosive to the bases of the program, ideas that discounted the foundational concepts of "the literary" as a particularly intricate and difficult kind of language and of "criticism" as the discipline of analyzing the literary.” 160

“Paul de Man's ‘Form and Intent in the American New Criticism,’15 which was written before he became a Derridean, defends the idea that ‘literature is an autonomous activity of the mind, a dis-tinctive way of being in the world to be understood in terms of its own purposes and intentions.’16 But it defends the literary by attacking the New Critical understanding of its ‘objective’ existence. By trying to get along without intentionality and concentrating on ‘the surface dimensions of lan-guage,’ de Man claimed, the New Critics had mistaken the nature of the literary object, confusing it with a natural object.” 160-161

“The challenges mounted. Did not the restrictiveness of the idea of the literary privilege an al-ready privileged white, male, middle-class consciousness, primarily concerned with safeguarding its precious uniqueness? And did not that restrictiveness relegate the more urgent, unambiguous, and collectively-conscious writings of minorities, proletarians, and women to the category of the ‘non-literary’? Could it not also be said to have eradicated all signs of historical specificity and alterity from the works of past authors, creating a canon that narcissistically mirrored a narrow stratum of mid-twentieth-century American experience? Versions of this political disaffection hit all of the humanities and social sciences departments simultaneously. But in a less overtly politi-cal vein, the literature students of the sixties were also irritated by the absence of the category of pleasure in most critical studies.”162-163

“And the New Criticism,[…], revealed under pressure that its methodological habit was also its deepest commitment. Never having truly justified that habit, though, having merely inherited the idea of the aesthetic subject from a romantic tradition they often themselves spurned, the old-guard New Critics had little more than a defensive humanism to fall back upon.”168

“Even a high level of comfort with the new eclecticism, though, entails a loss: critics of the nine-ties, unlike those of the fifties, can point to no underlying consensus about the general benefits that derive from their unique specialization. A widespread inattentiveness to the coordination of institutional and professional demands, the kind of coordination that the New Critics took so persuasively into account, has been characteristic of the last two decades.” (Gallaghar 1997:169)

There is no way for a connoisseur of Parsonian sociology, especially of the particular part of the 1950s that made him globally renowned, to read about “the professional desiderata of difficulty and uniqueness [that] are inextricably bound to those of usefulness and service” and not to be convinced this is exactly its essence that has brought the success to the creator of that sociology – professional exoterism plus extreme theoretical complexity in service, this should be taken liter-ally, of social needs. Yet I am not saying that the situation is exactly the very same. For the sake of the present case study, it is important to keep an eye on the difference between the individual spiritual world and the broader cultural climate that made it illuminating. For the moment, it is important to stress that the crisis and the collapse that followed were invited by the impossibility of having the imperatives of professionalism, depth and sophistication fulfilled and keeping them in a unity and in the singular. Each one of these implies a diversity of its own …

13


own tacit assumptions both unseen and unjustifiable.19 No, it is never exactly the same situation …

And so on and so forth to eternity. Because in parallel with the process described above, the cultural climate changes, social life evolves and in the new circumstanc-es the old scientific culture (the peculiar and particular socio-scientific culture included) becomes obsolete. It loses its appeal since the premises that validated it – making the products of that academic culture publicly visible and prestigious – have disappeared. This is why it is not a mere coincidence that what happened to Parsons closely resembles the destiny of the ASSA at the turn of the previous century: it has to disappear because its own cause/ideals have necessarily led to disciplinarization of the diverse partial social sciences, which have a common an-cestry but speak different professional languages to diversified audiences. The dis-integration was inevitable, since the former common addressee of ‘high society’ (which had felt itself responsible for the solution of the pressing public problems of the newly emerging, painfully experienced characteristics of the then booming capitalism) had vanished meanwhile20.

This is exactly the reason why I have chosen as a motto of this work the general-ization of Robin Williams, Jr. that “sociology in America represents a continuously emerging product of a complex interplay”. It is an emerging reality and not a tra-dition or a corpus of knowledge. Therefore, in order to understand it, we should not simply uphold the set of “received ideas, social values and concerns, structural opportunities and constraints, organizational and institutional factors”. Their me-chanical sum will not explain anything. The crucial accent is on the “complex inter-play among”[them all].

19 As will be proven later on, it is practically impossible for women – to their most bitter disappoint-ment – to occupy the cherished central and paramount place in public and academic life (remem-ber that the program of feminism could be summarized in their brave slogan of “Centralizing women”), as the ‘social system”/ the social whole could afford in its own time. The claim itself is unaffordable in a radically fragmentarized world without any center and in which the academic ascent of women became possible in first place because of the professionalization of the social sciences, which necessarily means de-genderization… More to that if they fight primarily for just and justifiable equality this implies in itself the existence of others who deserve no less right to be equal to all (hence the notorious “Being equal is not equal enough” of J. Stacey). And this includes human equality in emotional experience of the crises of modern life – the men have their unalienable right of suffering: there is nothing specifically feminine in having nausea after every departmental meeting (please, Dorothy Smith, forgive us…). Not to speak of the logical inevita-bility of the swift course of events: if the Particular becomes cognitively paramount and because of this the doors are widely open for the gender to become academically important (and to rule the social science scenes), it is only a matter of time before the discovery that there is no such thing as “women in general”; women are important but they are essentially stratified and diversified by race, ethnicity, status, privilege of all kinds, etc. The latter fact makes women quarrel and even antagonizes them in intramural fights with devastating effects – because previously it was exactly the unity of ‘sisterhood’ which had made them a successful political factor in their struggle for academic power (Wallace, Laslette, Thorne, Delamont). And so on.

20 And we certainly feel compassion for the shock experienced by some of the militants of the femi-nist paradigm in sociology when, while listening to the euphoric narrations of their female doc-toral students, in their souls raged the very same old question that they had been asked by their old scowling professor, “Well, is this sociology at all?”. Because we know already their persisting answer they have promptly uttered – “No, not yet…” (Acker). An answer full of historic optimism, a real prophecy of predestination in fact…

14


I will state it once again in order to focus the reader’s attention: the specifics of the respective national situation in a particular historical moment select and shape the organizational and institutional factors that are not mere external framing terms but are internal structural elements as well, which define simultaneously both the opportunities and the restrictions before sociology (and their changing balance as a result of the deeds of academic participants). These include value preferences and problem orientations through the filter of which specific ideas are inherited from the past or borrowed from neighboring disciplinary fields or other national aca-demic communities.….21. This is how social science in contemporary modern soci-eties is done and, exactly because of that, it is continuously emerging…

II. Why ‘socIal scIence’ and not mere socIology?

The reader has some grounds for puzzlement: why does the author, being a sociol-ogist and dealing predominantly with the history of American sociology, choose to position his study in the broader context of discontinuities in social science? Won’t his thesis be a mere uncritical extrapolation of what has happened in that sociology applied to the whole, inexhaustible and incomprehensive social science in which a variety of multidirectional and greatly diversified processes are simultaneously underway? Should not his main accent in accord with the preferred commitment to the Particular exclude such a generalization of “social science” at all? Is he not a victim of the contemporary fad that has plagued many recent studies at the turn of the century? Or, maybe, is it a defense strategy of sociologists cowardly hiding themselves behind the broader shoulders of the common block of social sciences? And is it a social science or social sciences (in plural) in the final account?

Such questions are undoubtedly reasonable and have to receive their answers despite the fact that they concern the larger framework of the study and not its direct core.

First of all, it should be frankly admitted that sociologists have not always pre-ferred to speak on behalf of the entire social science. At the more advanced stages of disciplinary development, when they had to struggle for the right of sociology to exist and for its establishment in an unfriendly institutional surrounding in uni-versities, they used to be agitators on behalf of the uniqueness of sociology and its supremacy. Nevertheless, it is a fact that at the turn of the century many among the sociological celebrities– Miller et al., Wallerstein, Burawoy, Porter & Ross, Stein-metz – persistently preferred to speak of social science in general pretty much re-sembling the parlance of their ancestor … a hundred years ago. Yet at the end of the 19th century, it was easy to justify the primary concern with unified social science with the fact that disciplinary differentiation was not pertinent at that time and had no public or academic importance (it was just about to begin in the next decades).

21 If Bourdieu has lived with the self-confident idea that he is the sole creator of the most complex theory of the field and habitus, let us leave him at peace with his self-conceit and insurmountable obsession with power (Мarinova 2012).

15


But this is not valid for the present situation. We have to seek an alternative ex-planation of the current “vogue” among sociologists. The meaningful explanation should be specific for the present moment.

In this regard, the first thing that comes to mind could be that the development of sociology has reached a phase of very deep crisis. The attempts to form a common front of all social sciences is a way to devise a defense strategy against the trend of marginalization, which is most sharply experienced by sociologists but is not a “specific malady” for them only. There is a dose of plausibility in such an assump-tion and it should be checked against the available facts.

One of Google’s engines, namely Google Books Ngram Viewer, offers us a graphic vizualization of the data of a comprehensive search of all titles of books (in major languages) from the invention of print to date. I will beg for the reader’s indulgence for the far too broad assumption that the number of books containing in their title a word signifying a particular field of study could be a kind of measurement (or at least a symptom) of the public interest in that problematic at that particular historical moment. This broad assumption provides us with a tool for tracing the variance of the corresponding public interest both in terms of consecutive time spans and in terms of variations among fields of study. The books, of course, have different circulations, editions and diverse public influences, and yet the approxi-mization contained in the mere number of titles is a suitable device for a compara-tive “measurement” of general public interest in the issues addressed.

The comparison between the long-term periods of interest in society and in soci-ology (in the English language literature which was the prevailing language of the social science volumes for the longest time) is really telling for a number of reasons:

1. Sociology covers a very insignificant share of the general interest of society in itself, i.e. only a tiny share of the public focus on society has been socio-logically framed for more than 200 years. It appeared late in time, and the insignificance persists over time despite the ups and downs of the trends. The interest in sociology has been so weak that in comparative terms its dynamics has been almost nullified and the curve of its trend appears as a straight line, the fluctuations seem nearly imperceptible.

2. Beyond this marked incommensurability of size we can see that there is a kind of parallel between the two lines tracing the periods of rising and diminishing interest in society and sociology, meaning that the respective phases of the

16


trends approximately coincide in historical time.

3. The period of clearly seen, almost exponential growth of interest in both so-ciety and sociology arose from about the post-WWII period up to the mid-1970’s, when the first post-war global economic crisis hit the Western World. Since then we see a long-lasting trend, with some minor fluctuations, of a gen-eral decrease in the public interest in society (and in sociology, consequently, as can be logically deduced from the previously stated premises).

So far I have been able to demonstrate that sociology has very serious grounds for a deep concern about its plight and its future in the long run. But what about the other social sciences?

On the next graph, one can see the result of statistical computations of the data about the major social sciences rivaling sociology (it would be hard to believe that demography or geography could claim the status of a major social science while history, philosophy and literature studies are considered in general as belonging to humanities and not to the social sciences). I omit titles concerning economy, be-cause the scope of economic literature would make the trends in political science, anthropology and sociology appear undistinguishable.22

The comparison among sociology, anthropology and political science is extraordi-narily interesting because it reveals several key facts:

1. Their individual percentage shares from the entire body of literature is really minute in general, never amounting to more than 0,0015 per cent! Neverthe-less, among them they enjoy public attention of varying shares – the biggest one being in sociology, followed by the that in anthropology, with the interest in political science being the weakest of all.

2. The temporal structure of their developments is sharply expressed, allow-ing us to clearly see the substantial differences in the three cases. The fluc-tuations are most significant in sociology: it evolved intensively in the first

22 But economy, too, experiences an unprecedented decline after the 1990’s.

17


three decades of the 20th century, then abated for a while in war-time, just to see exponential growth from the post-war period up to the mid-1970s. The curves of development of anthropology and political science are to an extent smoother, but in general terms, the notion of a “golden era” for sociology, the span 1950-1975 (Wallerstein 2000), is applicable to these social sciences as well. The crisis in political science came first in the early 1970s in the form of a slight but constant decrease that remained as if insignificant. The crisis of anthropology came last – for a short period in the early 1980s and, more vis-ibly, after 2000.

3. These dissimilarities notwithstanding, it is quite obvious that the three social sciences have recently experienced a common process of advancing lack of public interest, represented in the number of books published in the respec-tive disciplinary fields.

Of course this is a superfluous, indirect argument, but it gives us some grounds to look for an explanation and decisions of a common problem most clearly seen in the case of sociology which, yet, are not merely pertinent only to it.23 So far, we have found a reason for the quest for a common “defense strategy” among the so-cial sciences.

Nevertheless, I am convinced that the experienced crisis is far from being the only or the major reason for the revival of the long-lasting interest in the social science in contrast to the emphasis on the disciplinary differences and divergence. The contemporary social sciences not only emerged from a common womb (Lepenies, Ross, Bojean, Schneider & Lineburry, Haskell and many, many others) – preserv-ing a common cultural frame, but during their individual developments have pre-served the inclination of their brightest minds to think in a common perspective as well. It is symptomatic, for example, that Parsons, “an apostle of the sociological faith” (Friedrichs), has been academically and publicly influential because he stood

23 The illustrative “statistical” argument is not the only one, of course. Much more serious is the conceptual one. The problem is that in order to grasp it one must be familiar in advance with the academic debate that the crisis of sociology of the early 1990’s produced. I have written exten-sively on the topic and I will direct the reader to a previously stated argument: “If one goes back to the pages of ‘Footnotes’ from the early 1990s, he will find abundant evidence of a sharpened crisis consciousness among sociologists of different ranks. The same would be the impression from the pages of American Sociologist, Social Forces, and Sociological Forum of the same pe-riod. A brief enumeration of some telling titles would suffice: Turner and Turner had depicted sociology as The Impossible Science [Turner & Turner : 1990]; P. Berger issued his Disinvitation to sociology [Berger : 1992]; I. Horowitz composed his Decomposition of Sociology [Horowitz : 1993]; St. Cole solicited the debate on What is Wrong in Sociology in Sociological Forum, later to appear in a much extended volume under the same title [Cole : 2001]; Despite of the fact that Charles Lemert eagerly published Sociology after the Crisis as early as 1995 [Lemert : 1995; 1996] in 1999 Lopreato and Crippen issued their vision of Crisis in Sociology [Lopreato and Crippen : 1999]. The crisis concerns are to be found in the representative and influential collections edited by H. Gans [Gans : 1990], Halliday and Janovitz [Halliday and Janovitz : 1992], and Erikson [Erikson : 1997]. Sociology in all those cases meant American sociology, of course, but important counterparts are to be found in Europe [Bryant and Becker : 1990], too. A decade later, the very same crisis is, obviously, not over yet [Berger : 2002] –– and here we have a topic to think about.” (Dimitrov 2005:2-3)

18


and fought for the social science in first place. (Sociology for him was a kind of flagship in the armada of social science – Parsons 1948). In other words, the con-temporary disciplinary differentiated social sciences not only have common ori-gins but remain throughout their course of evolution intimately engaged with their subject matter, which is social life. The latter has never been and could never be disciplinarily fragmentarized. Just as any social subject/issue diffuses in the realm of at least several social sciences, social problems in general are transdisciplinary (Abbott). What is more, after the initial phase of disciplinary divergence and the resolution of intramural disciplinary (conceptual and methodological) problems, the mature social sciences necessarily go back to the fundamental reason for their emergence – the variety and complexity of social problems. It is exactly this indi-visiblesubject matter that conduces to the secondary re-socialization of the social sciences, i.e. which re-integrates them in a synthesis of social knowledge. Not a single major social problem could ever have a successful mono-disciplinary solu-tion. The above-mentioned crisis of public interest in all key social sciences is only a supplement to the deeper impetus for the return to an emphasis on social prob-lems, which stimulates their drive to stay together and to penetrate each other if they still cannot be an entity of social knowledge.

Finally, within the frame of reference of the current task of this research project, namely the mechanisms of development of social science, including the impor-tant differences of its differentiated disciplinary fields and the modes of divergence among them, a crucial issue is transdisciplinary dialogues and rivalries. In other words, the “variety of cases” of social science could be viewed as a research “labo-ratory”, in which the differences help us clarify the role of a specific element of the development mechanisms – both by the persistence of some elements and the uniqueness of others. And besides, the very dialogue itself is highly important as a source of major influences. The research can test how it becomes important – at what moments of the development process and because of what characteristics of the beneficiary and of the donating/competing disciplines. To say the least, aca-demic competition is a powerful stimulus for inner disciplinary advancement and change… This is exactly where the current study has to broaden its scope to include psychology (which is in the USA a branch of the hard, natural sciences) and liter-ary studies, history, political studies, economy, anthropology, philosophy, cultural studies – as demonstrated by Bender & Schoske, Steinmetz, Porter & Ross; Back-hoese & Fontaine.

This does not imply, however, that we should necessarily be interested in the positive side of the transdiciplinary communication – their mutual enrichment (through borrowing problems, particular knowledge and methodology). For exam-ple, the variety of postmodernisms (deriving initially from European philosophies) were extremely important for the overcoming of the grave conceptual and institu-tional crisis in literary studies, and their success there happened to be contagious for historians (because meanwhile the access to their particular subject matter had become dependent on making one’s way through the formidably expanded his-

19


toriographic and historio-analytical literature), anthropologists, and sociologists alike… Not to speak of the powerful impulse attained by sociological feminism, and feminism in the social sciences in general, from post-modernist attitudes and their concrete accomplishments. No less important for the understanding of the devel-opment mechanisms is the phenomenon of, let us call it, social science inbreeding. Because the real process of social science advancement and transformations de-pends on following common fads and on using quasi-arguments in methodological disputes by references to the would-be “universal” paradigmal standards – no mat-ter which particular contamination we might have in mind: behaviorism, positiv-ism, or post-modernisms.

In sum, the core subject matter of the current study is the development mechanisms of social science, by which I mean not any abstraction that would be repeatedly en-countered in the majority of social sciences but a synthesis of two principles. First, the common endeavor in problem solving, from which the respective social science disciplines retrieve their vitality (and sources for advancement). Second, the very ‘commonness’ is fulfilled through the differentiation of the cognitive tasks being solved by the diversified disciplinary practices, which provides for the opportunity for social science development to be carried out by competition, complementarity, suggestions, imitations and interpenetrations of the sub-fields of study. The com-plex of all these proceses constitutes the real life of social science in its intelligible entity as a subject of discovery (Toynbee)24.

The history of American sociology of the 20th century has been deliberately chosen as a methodologically privileged case of study because of its intrinsic diversity, in-tensive dynamics, changing addressees and comparatively high level of self-reflex-ivity, and only in this specific meaning – because of its richness.25

24 Just as a separate illustration of this general perspective, I would note that Parsons fought the central fight of his academic life in the name of (‘for”) the future of the social sciences not against opponents knowledgeable of Marxism, of which there were many (Gouldner, Wright Mills, Fried-richs, Reinolds), but against two other dangers that were much more influential, both academi-cally and publicly, in the US:

а) those oriented towards (and sponsored by the state for) direct instrumentalization of the social sciences for the purposes of business-managerial goals of research work in the tradition of behav-iorism and positivistic experimental psychology in general;

b) those devoted to philosophical moralizing of the crises of modern life in the tradition of the classical Chicago sociological school.

25 American sociology has always drawn on the fact that its texts have been read by the broad, general audience as a scientization of a moral philosophy (Bershady) discussing the pains of the public (hence, the enormous success of figures like R. Park, R. Lind, D. Riesman, A. Lee, R. Bellah, R. Putnam and many, many others). Here is one of the roots of the crisis of the late 20th century, when it turned out that literature offers the very same public service while being at the same time much better as… literature (while at the same time sociology was sinking deeper into more and more fragmentarized problems discussed in a highly professionalized jargon) (Halliday and Janowitz 1992). As a consequence we witness three mutually interfering processes:

а) the comparative advantage and, hence, success of anthropology when it was able to preserve the winning synthesis between narration and research;

b) the rise of feminism with its marked affinity towards quantitative methods and life storytelling. c) the almost omnipresent cultural turn in the major social sciences during the last quarter of the

20th century. Here the mutual trespassing, borrowings and contaminations become very difficult to delineate

and trace in detail… and so forth.

20


III. the construIng of the subJect matter as a research task

3.1. the more general questIon – hoW Is socIal scIence done?

The author should not aspire for the reader’s attention if s/he is incapable of at least a minimum of self-control in justifying his/her thesis. This means that s/he is obliged to argue not only for the public pertinence of the issues discussed but for the rational construction of the very research problem in need of discussion.

Have you ever pondered the question of how few people who professionally carry out research work actually have specialized education in the methodology of social science?

I encountered the problem for the first time during my two Fulbright studies in the USA26, when before each collegial meeting with an academic partner/sociologist I took the time to study his/her academic biography (which is quite easy today with the electronic resources of Chicago University and The George Washington Univer-sity and, hence, is a matter of good will and professional standards). The greater bulk of the influential sociologists today have as a rule an educational background other than sociology (A. Abbott, the decades-long chief editor of AJS, boasts of his train-ing in literary studies at Harvard; R. Collins is a psychologist; and T. Parsons was trained in biology at Amherst College and economy at LSE). It is true that before one gets to the second three-year period dedicated entirely to the doctoral research project in the USA, s/he is obliged to spend the first three years in thorough special-ization in sociology through taking about 30 courses, in which courses in research methods are mandatory. But these are usually methods of empirical studies (i.e. the technology of research process – very often if not always with a strong accent on quantitative methods). These are not actually courses in methodology proper as it is understood in Europe – i.e., the conceptual clarification of the specific relationship of congruence between the peculiarities of the subject matters studied and the char-acteristics of the cognitive apparatus accommodated to them (which would require courses in the philosophy of science or the sociology of science and the like). As a consequence of this academic model, very few of the internationally renowned so-cial science celebrities have in their academic background formal training in social science epistemology (or philosophy, at least). And while interviewing these few, you will be surprised by the fact that the names that figure in the respective epis-temological fundament are of researchers lost to oblivion, who nowadays are no

26 To the Fulbright commission I owe my wholehearted gratitude for the unique opportunity to use the resource of two excellent universities, Chicago University and The George Washington University, and the friendly collegiality of their academic staff – professional support and lively conversation, the resources of the Congressional Library, as well as to carry out a participant’s observation over the Centennial Parsonian Conference in New York in December 2002.

21


longer paid any attention. Let us confess it frankly – in the field of the methodology of social science proper we all are, to varying degrees, amateurs. What has finally be-come our methodological stance (implicit as a rule) is a patchy result of learning by doing, while following models of research work and the patterns of its presentation to the public that are local and institutionally imposed or consciously preselected by micro-communities or exemplars (in accord with recent fads, as P. Sorokin has put it). As a result of this largely un-reflective practice, very few social scientists consid-er the rules of their craft and the framing and organizing of these rules, goals, values and paradigms. Nor is there is any room for empirical testing of them, of course …

Let us for a moment go back to Kuhn’s famous “The Structure of Scientific Revolu-tions”, which really caused a series of scientific revolutions when it first appeared. Being truly scientific and revolutionary, it is nonetheless based on … prejudices. The very naming of the two key types of research practices analyzed by him is tell-ing far beyond the author’s intentions, alas. These two are “normal science” and “revolutionary situations”. In other words, to the discoverer of the paradigm prob-lem the old, classical model of knowledge-accumulating science is the “normal”. Hence, all the rest is… abnormal, if science at all. And because of that the revolu-tion, throughout which the social mechanisms of construing the new knowledge are decisive, is a situation only, i.e. this is just another way to say the very same – that is, a deviation, an exception to the rule, to “normalcy”. At the present stage of scientific advancement, we already know that the so-called normal science is only possible at all in so far as it routinely practices what is usually magnified and ex-posed by the revolutionary phases of its development. In other words, it is exactly the “revolution” in science that constitutes its normalcy and the “normal science” is only an instrumentally useful idealization of partial aspects of the scientific life, beyond the confines of which the latter actually evolves as a general rule27…. The findings of the empirical study I have carried out of the history of American sociol-ogy in the 20th century prove this thesis, which – before the empirical results are presented – should be taken as a hypothesis only.

This thesis, however, radically inverts the understanding of how science is done in general, inviting the academic audience to rethink the initial premises within the frame of which cognitive actions are made possible and their results are construct-ed. This statement concerns all the aspects of research work and, understandably, I cannot tackle them all here. Hence, again we encounter the necessity of dealing with a single, but representative case.

I choose the status of theory as an emblematic case because the classical ideal of

27 It is not from mere coincidence that Kuhn is very cautious and made the caveat that his observations encompass only the patterns of development of the natural sciences, even though he is inclined to believe that the situation in the social sciences is similar. This is where he is wrong – it is not similar. It is exactly the opposite: in the second field of research, the role of the essentially social mechanisms is of crucial importance, as a rule, and because of this it is comparatively easier to prove that the revolution is the master rule, the normal condition, while the ‘normal science” is actually a micro-aspect of socio-scientific life in this field. That is, the social sciences are the magnifying glass through which we see the “enlarged persistence” of revolutions within the standard work of “normal science”.

22


science has positioned theory as the climax and the garland of knowledge – both its initial point and ultimate end/goal.

The far too tiresome and speculative effort to understand what theory in the social sciences really is from the vast works dedicated to this task ends in a disappointing result. Because even if written in theoretical mode, i.e. manipulating a broad spec-trum of highest abstractions28, the works devoted to theory rarely possess the most valuable characteristic one expects from theoretical knowledge – a completed meaningful whole with some real explicative power because of its well thought-out substantive connections between its own components and aspects.

Were we not in a hurry to arrive at our final point of the current study, we could spend much more time in joking about the intellectual infantilism, which is actu-ally demonstrated in the greater bulk of works claiming the status of social science theory. Theory seems to be the “logically ordered connection among sentences about…”, or “highest level of abstract knowledge”, or “a phase in the process of knowledge”, or the mechanical aggregate of all partial aspects already elaborated by previous works on the topic of what theory is or should be29…

The problem is especially painful for social science in general and for sociology in particular because it seems that it cannot exist without a theory of its own. The respective subject matter is so vast, incomprehensible in fact, in terms of a) ‘ele-ments’ of a complex reality; b) broadly varying manifestations of these elements in time; and c) relationships and connections among them and their features. Because of this enormousness and of the plentitude in the subject matter, it seems as if it is necessary to abstract only what is repeatedly common (in all manifestations) that should be logically constructed as a comprehensible entity. The latter is theory.

That would be great … were it possible!

I have many times used the metaphor of the proverbial “Eagle, Crab, and Pike” to il-lustrate the absurdity of the abstracted “repeatedly common features”. Hypothetically, we could abstract the common feature of the trio and construct as a result a theo-retical concept of a ‘living organism’. The only problem is that this construct would be anything but alive. Hence, it would be useless to attempt to explain even the initial prototypes – the eagle, the crab or the pike or whatever else: not only would the theo-retical construct be void of meaning, but it would not allow anyone to understand why it is pointless to consider the trio together (which actually is the real point)30…

28 One of the most famous American sociologists of the second half of the previous century mocks his teacher by telling this anecdote about him: meeting the elder professor with huge research experi-ence, the up-and-coming youngster asked, “Prof. X, what do you think of theory?”. The answer was “Theory of what?” For a theorist, it is self-evident that theory is abstract, ‘in general’, and theoretical knowledge is universal. Hence, for him it appears as if the stubborn resistance of the empirical re-searcher against the self-contained, radically abstract theory is ridiculous… This is not funny at all.

29 Вж. като достатъчно представителен пример….30 If it seems that the quasi-zoological example is too vulgar, the reader is invited to use as an exam-

ple democracy or Eastern Orthodoxy and s/he will discover the very same – pseudo-homogeneity in the generalized common “matter” which varies at large in real life to the extent of being indis-

23


In other words, on the side of the subject matter of the theoretical investigation, we encounter the irresolvable problem of the proportions between the repeated common traits and the substantial and essential variations of life forms. I have to confess that I myself have thought for decades that “a society in general” is more than a useful abstraction that spares us boring repetitions in speech – as Marx put it – without really understanding either him or the essential changeability of social life that nullifies the usefulness of generalized abstractions. The very same is true about the notions of economy, democracy, history, culture and so forth, i.e. all the constitutive categories of social sciences.

The social scientist can never know how many relationships constitute his sub-ject of study, whose complexity will always remain far beyond the reach of his/her study, even if they are a finite and unchangeable number (and hence s/he is doomed to substitute the actual complexity with an idiosyncratic vision that seems a complete image). But they are not. There is no guarantee that these relationships will not change in number during his study or will not change in character, as a re-sult of which their relationships would change, too. And this means a quantitative transformation in the subject matter in the course of study.

As a direct consequence of the above, the subject is not a persisting system of re-lationships, as assumed in theoretical knowledge, but only a cognitive construct (Weber) – a projection of one’s personal intentionality that actually performs the selection of the meaningful relationships from the multitude of characteristics in-trinsic to the subject, and contains in itself countless tacit assumptions, values and stakes, unknown to the researcher and hidden in the selection procedure. The di-rect consequence is that the very same subject matter will most probably not be seen by the same observer in a similar way31, not to speak of anyone else…

And everything said so far is the very abridged summary of the ontological grounds of the impossibility of a social science theory on the side of the studied subject mat-ter32. This is the reason for the assertion of many thinkers, not all of them Webe-rians, that all social phenomena are “historical individuals”. Correspondingly, that social knowledge could be construed as ideal-types based on value-free (to the extent that conscious self-control will allow) judgments, which are as numerous as the researchers trying to understand the phenomena.

To say the least, deep in the ethological presumptions that make social science theory possible as abstract, universal knowledge, we can find the self-evident as-sumptions of a positivistic mentality. This is exactly where the legacy of Emil Dur-kheim becomes invaluable, namely his masterpiece “The Rules of the Sociological

cernible according to the difference of special and temporal circumstances.31 And consequently Parsons’ general sociological theory has been perpetually transformed, to the

extent that its constant “core” becomes indiscernible in the course of time (that has been filled with intensive inter-personal communication and intra-communal discourses, even outrageous debates and cultural changes). And yet for him his theory has remained essentially ‘the same” (….)

32 Let us forget not that according to Weber the world before knowledge is chaos.

24


Method”, which has the misfortune of being among the most rarely read classic books in our tradition. One can find in it the explicit disclaimer that the knowledge of social life is possible at all only because and to the extent that the inner essence of things appears as external manifestations. Only on the grounds of this assumption is it rightful to claim that the observation of facts is a “privileged cognitive instru-ment”, the initial point of knowledge. A point which, according to the Durkheimian illusion, is unconditional, self-contained and universal, because the senses register things as such (not knowing that the senses themselves are subjective “theoreti-cians”, as the very young Marx wrote).33

The fundamental dependence of scientific knowledge on the observation of facts is not a Durkheimian discovery, because it belongs to G. Gallilei (and, hence, Husserl named the entirety of modern science after him – Gallileian science (Husserl 1965)). That was the man who introduced the experiment as the foundation of scientific knowledge. And the experiment is truly indispensable in the edifice of modern cog-nition aiming at the objectivity of knowledge. As far as we can arrive at one and the same result (while conducting the same experiment again and again), we are within our rights to claim that the cognitive result does not depend on the subjectivity of the experimenter. In other words, the experimental knowledge on which the mod-ern sciences are built is nothing but a solution to the problem of the inextricable subjectivity of the researcher in the course of observation. The problem seems to be solved by the intersubjectivity of the result of observation of the experiment. Yet the entire logical construction implicit in experimental knowledge is gravely depen-dant on a crucial assumption: the persistence of the experimental results requires that the subject under experimentation have a constant, unchanging nature that will, in its turn, disqualify the diversified subjectivities of the experimentators. The high cost of the very possibility of experimental knowledge is the tacit assump-tion, unjustifiable in the social sciences, of the unchangeability of the studied subject, of the observed phenomenon. The very same assumption that was the justification of the aspiration of theoretical knowledge is now reproduced as a tacit premise in the base of the edifice of the positivist cognitive model hidden “in the nature ‘of the facts observed’”34. In more general terms, we have found in the foundation of modern science a typically anti-modern stance – the assumption that the world under scrutiny is essentially constant35. It is not a surprise that it was exactly mature modernity that brought an end to the classical mentality and its model of cognition, even in the fields of natural sciences (Mamardashvili).

33 For truly serious and philosophically mature treatment of the problem of observation see Mamar-dashvili (Mamardashvili 2010).

34 For example, Parsons is an ardent opponent of positivism in sociology and considers his own approach – ‘analytical realism’ – to be its alternative. In practice, his approach is fundamentally dependent on the observation of facts, and thus on the positivist ideals hidden in the understand-ing of facts. This is worth mentioning just because it is highly representative of the kind of fight against positivism that actually perpetuates it ….

35 Compare with Bruno Latur’s thesis in his book under the telling title of “We Have Never Been Modern”, where the author exposes the fact that some key components of the modern outlook are entirely unjustifiable.

25


This is exactly the gravest problem of social science: that fact-finding observation as an initial step or as the base of the theoretical generalization is irrecoverably deriva-tive of the hidden positivist assumption of the universality of things and, hence, the reproducibility of experience. In this perspective, although living and being histori-cal by its origin, the social subject should not change in the course of study – for the sake of theoretical knowledge. This is exactly what cannot be granted the social researcher – any limitedness and persistence in the studied subjects. On the con-trary: s/he can take for granted, especially in the frame of late Modernity, that the subject matter will inevitably be transformed in the course of its study (Mannheim).

In sum, what has previously been stated about the vulnerability of the subject’s ontology (because of its multidimensionally changing “nature”) is reproduced at a second level as a vulnerability of the repercussions of positivism in the cognitive apparatus. The expectation for a social science theory is doomed to remain futile because of its intrinsic dependence on the initial false assumptions of observation – what is observed and how it it “observed”.

And yet everything mentioned so far is nothing more than an introduction of my key argument: at the end of the 20th century, the universal, the general in the sub-ject matter lost its academic appeal. Let us say it once again using the lovely sen-tence of Stephen Toulmin:

“Within a humanized Modernity, the decontextualizing of problems so typical of High Modernity is no longer a serious option” (1990, p. 201).

Toulmin’s fundamentally important work did not receive the proper attention in the social sciences. If that could have happened, his research results concerning the peculiarities and dynamics of the Modern Time mentality could have produced resounding revolutions – far more fruitful than the Kuhnian one. This British-born American researcher proved there has been, in the course of Modern history, not a linear advancement and accumulation of knowledge and persistence of the single pattern of rationality, but an oscillation of alternative epistemes (Foucault). The pat-terns that organized mental space (Mamardashvili) in the consecutive epochs of Modernity are the consequences of a series of radical transformations in socio-po-litical life and the corresponding values inherent in it. Long before Descartes could manage to decontectualize the thinking of people, especially of intellectually in-fluential figures, the latter held a worldview of a drastically different character – in sharp contrast to the one that we are used to ascribing uncritically to all of Moder-nity: the abstract and universalistic, formal rationalistic thinking. During the last quarter of the 20th century and thereafter, the abstract and universal is no longer/again not “sexy”.36 This is why I say that Toulmin’s phrase is not only valid but essen-

36 Here the reference to sex is not a result of the inertia of mundane jargon but precisely the value accent on humanity (beyond pure reason) that implies corporal-emotional multidimensionality and aesthetic ‘reasoning’/validating.

26


tially beautiful. It does not claim that the classical modern decontextualizing men-tality is dead, harmful or disproved. It is just no longer “a serious option”, at least in the cognitive strategy of a philosophically and methodologically informed person.

This is not merely a statement of a value preference. As should be clear from the discussion above, the logical consequences of the former sex-appeal of abstract universality have reached very high and very deep in the architectonics of scientific knowledge. This means that if we accept not the Abstract but the Particular as having the highest cognitive priority, this shift will inevitably have powerful follow-ups. The entire organization of academic life will be shaken and transformed – in terms of patterns of doing research, and modes of scientific communication and, primarily, as strategies and practices of academic socialization.

I suppose that the reader has already apprehended Toulmin’s major claim that the cognitive prioritization of the Particular(s) is the normal (though long forgotten or delayed) humanization of the contemporary worldview. And because of its peculiar value potentials it is both legitimate and promisisng. And, of course, this is not a logical argument but the demonstration of an appeal – in two senses: а) of attrac-tiveness and b) of orientation towards the audience’s approval (which, however, would most probably be inclined to give it to the author because of the human-izing potentials of the perspective offered)37. The true proof of the importance of these considerations will become evident through the study of the rise and fall of the powerful tide of feminism in the social sciences and especially in sociology. At present it is sufficient to mention only that within the scope of research that makes the Particular(s) a privileged and prioritized cognitive concern, the decades-long aspiration to a social science theory has little chance …

I would re-emphasize that everything discussed above is just a preliminary move suggesting how really important it is to think about the broader cognitive pattern that will guide the substantive empirical study. This reflection is necessary because if eventually an alternative normalcy of social science development is found and proven, that would have a direct influence over the practical models of doing re-search and teaching social sciences. In a new, contemporary, humanized perspec-tive of social sciences, their chances for a much better future are bigger.

Yet we should not underestimate the limitations inherent in any choice made: the prioritization of the Particular(s) means simultaneously several different imperatives:

37 Let’s say it out loud – it has been necessary for abstract thinking, which violated human nature, to use force in extraordinary historical circumstances; it has needed the horror of monstrosity and, exactly, the absurdity of mutual extermination among Christians on primarily religious grounds (“The Lord our God is one Lord; and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.' "The second is this, 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no other commandment greater than these." (NAS, Mark 12:28-31)). This is why it is not necessary for the newly rediscovered humanized mentality to enforce itself in any way: according to Toulmin, it is only natural to be humane in the specific mental pattern of the late 20th century; it is a kind of a liberation from a yoke that should simply be embraced and enjoyed … Far too simplistic in my view.

27


• Dominance of the moment over long-term tendencies;

• Dominance of personality over paradigms and ideas;

• Dominance of the peculiarities in the ensemble of details and the variety of differences;

• Dominance of the change over the change itself, i.e. a transformation of the changes and an accent on the difference in the transformations; it is the devel-opment that matters most.

Thus we arrived at the direct necessity of justifying the peculiarity of the chosen method for solving the task about understanding the constitutive mechanisms of social science development.

IV. What Is the chosen methodologIcal program? – a socIology of socIology38

As should have become clear by now, the research strategy followed here is a pe-culiar sociology of sociology – namely, its historicized version. But, as could be ex-pected, the multitude of sociological worlds has impregnated this particular type of sociology, which systematically studies the dialectical interdependence of social life and its sociological self-reflection. This is why a narrowing of the way the cho-sen sociology of sociology is understood here, for the purpose of the current task, is a must. At the same time, the explication of the specific meaning of the sociol-ogy of sociology, by naming seminal works, key figures and analytical programs, aims to prove that this meta-discipline is neither solely American nor belongs to the confines of narrowly defined sociology. This task is even more pressing if we keep in mind the general rule outlined by David Hollinger, a professor of history at Berkeley (who used to be especially influential in the American intellectual life of the previous century). According to him there is a danger of uncritical submission to the formidable trajectory of the tradition of the procedures and achievements of existing scientific communities, which has previously experimented with at-tempts to situat e truth in the historically particular experience of human com-munities, and yet without them we will be not able to comprehend the current state of affairs in social sciences.

Such a study ought to begin with a figure who is rightfully considered as one of the founding fathers of the sociology of science, to which contemporary sociology owes a large share of its influence and prestige: Robert Merton. More than half a

38 As must have become obvious, the present study has been deeply influenced by Robert Friedrichs. Yet the accent on a sociology of sociology is not a tribute to the title of his masterpiece. This methodological accent is a necessary outcome/manifestation of the inner coherence of the stance asserted here.

28


century ago, he gave us the prophecy: “The genuine history of sociological theory must extend beyond the chronologically ordered set of critical synopses of doctrine; it must deal with the interplay between theory and such matters as the social ori-gins and statuses of its exponents; the changing social organization of sociology; the changes that diffusion brings to ideas; and their relations to the environing social and cultural structures.” (1957, italics added – G.D.).

Please, pay special attention to the phrases in italics: 1) what is at stake here is not a unidirectional dependence on (or ideological positioning of theories in) the social milieu, but the interplay, the many times repeated two-way exchanges between social wife and its conceptualizations; 2) “the players”, the two sides of the relation-ship, are changing and this is just one of the many transformations, because ideas not only radiate in public audiences, but this latter process substantially transforms them in as much as 3) they interact dialectically with both the social structures and the structures and values of the respective culture. All specifications following below are additional accents and priorities within this research program.

It should be admitted that the research agenda outlined above has been accom-plished to an insignificant degree because of an important and simple reason: in order to carry out such a investigation one should possess extraordinary erudition and a mind formidable in scope and power, which would not begrudge the decades of hard labor necessary for researching the subject. It is not likely to happen even in the near future, because it does not seem quite rewarding in biographical terms …

In fact, this is one of the key reasons why one of the brightest celebrities of the American sociology of mid-20th century, Robert Friedrichs, is almost completely forgotten. His work is far too complex, intellectually sophisticated and “empiri-cally”/factologically vast to be followed/continued by others. His major thesis, to which the amazing conceptual reconstruction of the then contemporary Ameri-can sociology is a sort of empirical evidence, could be summarized as follows. In a dispute with Kuhn, Friedrichs claims that it makes sense to build a dialectical sociology beyond any particular paradigmal shifts: “normality” and “revolution” (in his ironical terminology, “priestly”, “prophetic” sociology) are not only differ-ent types in the history of scientific progress, but they are both regular phases of research practices in dialectical symbiosis with one another. Hence, not the accu-mulation of knowledge but precisely the perpetual change of cognitive patterns is the natural state of the art in social sciences. Initially, Friedrichs was bundled with the group of “barking on Parsons Leftists” (Levine), and, later on, forgotten with pleasure, since the great crisis of American sociology in the 1970s faded away, and the sociology of sociology declined with it39. Nevertheless, the grounds for an

39 The explosion of sociology of sociologies happened in the beginning of the 1970s (Tiryakian : 1970; Reynolds and Reynolds : 1970; Friedrichs : 1970; Gouldner : 1970; Coser : 1971; Curtis and Petras : 1972; Mullins : 1973). This sociological sub/meta-field derived from the intention to con-tain – in quasi-theoretical form – the integrity of sociology when it has become unconditionally clear that the multitude of diverse sociologies is not a fleeting moment of uncertainty or a kind of scientific deficiency but it is a manifestation of the true nature of sociological development. In this

29


interest in sociology of sociology transcend the narrow circumstances of that par-ticular episode of American sociology, and this is why we could – if there were a will – discover its presence in enormously large spatial and temporal frames.

If we shift our attention to the UK and to the University of London, in particular, we will find that a local celebrity there, Prof. J. D. Y. Peel, President of the African Studies Association of the UK (1996-98) and Chair of the Social Anthropology and Human Geography Section of the British Academy (1997-2000), in the beginning of his academic career wrote a wonderful book on Herbert Spenser. The book itself is a product of a consciously followed research program: “[…] the value of the study of the ‘classics’ lies in their differences rather than their alleged similarities. …[I]t is because of the final uniqueness of each instance of sociology that it is really worth understanding the history of sociology. This must be history 'as it really happened' (so far as we can honestly achieve it), rather than the Whiggish myths that are so prevalent. We can learn from this past, not because it can directly tell us things that we ought to know, but because we can see in it that theories are the product of particular purposes and a particular subject matter.” (1971: 164-5, italics added –G.D.) I would gladly subscribe to this program as a whole and to each one of its particular accents. More than that, I intend to follow it both in its accent on the particular cognitive purposes and the specificity of the subject matter studied, and even more so in the deliberate denial of retrieving a universal truth (and the sub-

sense, the sociology of sociology is an intellectual response to the crisis that had been produced by the promise of a single social science of society facing the irreducibility of its intrinsic paradigmal plurality. The intention was to preserve the unity of the discipline (because the destructive conse-quences of the patterns of advancement and the public prestige of the missing core and the lack of knowledge accumulation were not eliminated) while legitimizing the normalcy of the diversity in approaches and subject matters and the variations in the routes of development. Thereafter, Lipset claims, there was a prolonged period of crises oscillations between sharpenings and calms before next storms (Lipset : 2001). Actually, we can delineate two marked phases of this persistent crisis – a deeper phase in the early 1970’s and a milder one in the early 1990’s of the previous cen-tury. The reasons for the escalation of the crisis are various and complex (Cole 2001), but for the absolutely unprecedented crisis of the 70’s there is one major and very visible cause: after a quarter of a century of nearly explosive growth in interest in sociology (measured by the rates of student enrollment), in the early 70’s the trend abruptly reversed for a period of about 15 years. The con-trast between the two tendencies and the very sharpness of the tide-change is a major contributor to the rise of crisis-awareness in sociology. It is quite clear why the same magnitude of crisis has never been repeated so far…

30


sequent prioritizing of the uniqueness of the study in an effort toward maximally thick, detailed reconstructions of sociology’s past steps). This concerns the history of sociology in general and not only the rare products of sociological genius.

I appreciate, next, on the shores of continental Europe, the work of Pеter Wagner & Bjorn Wittrock, for their radical dismissal of the distinction between “external” and “internal” factors. And even more so for the attention paid to the national specificities of the longue-duree socio-historical situations in which the process of social science construction takes place: “A theoretically informed sociology of the social sciences must […] overcome the dichotomies of externalism and in-ternalize as well as of micro- and macro-accounts, while bringing historic-ity back in, in a manner which is sensitive to particularities, yet does not shy away from the theoretical commitment of social science. Any such comprehen-sive sociology of modern social science will then have to take the development of the reformed, research-oriented, university and the development of the territorial nation-state as its points of reference. These academic and political institutions are precisely such vehicles for the mobilization of resources which underpin practices of a long duration and extension. They effectively serve to sustain – or to thwart – the intellectual projects promoted by various individuals and groupings, and form the institutional underpinning and discursive backdrop of these projects” (1997: 332, italics added – G.D.) 40.

And going further to the East (before returning to the USA, but this second time harboring afar from sociology), let us look at an extraordinarily concise analysis that is frightening in its depth. A Bulgarian colleague in the bloom of her maturity as a researcher has highlighted on the back-cover of her newly published book the epitomizing statement: “What constitutes an academic discipline, first of all, is neither the common subject matter, nor the common method, or the common para-digm, but the faith that it exists as well as the symbols that make it socially vis-ible and influential.” (Sv. Marinova 2012: 42, italics added –G.D.). I shall confess that I was left breathless when I read for the first time so succinctly expressed the thoughts that had rankled my mind for more than a decade. Please, pay special at-tention to the explicit emphasis of Faith as a value, motivational and constitutive element/base of sociology. It is inevitable that we should recall here Tertullian and his proverbial saying, “I believe because it is absurd”! Sociology would not be so fundamentally dependent on faith were its essence not deeply branded by the absurd. In other words, unless our understanding is being marked by the clash with the inextricable absurd of the sociological endeavor, we will not grasp the greatness of Marinova’s conclusion (which summarizes the results of her virtuoso study of the history of the German sociologies and the ways they have used the narratives of the history of sociology for the purposes of their own legitimating in the course of

40 See more on the traumatic aspects of the question of the national character of social sciences and on the heated debate on this subject in “The short happy life of the American sociological tradi-tion” (Dimitrov 2005).

31


severe intra-faction fights and political struggles …). What’s the point of laboring for sociology if your eventual success will kill you in the final account?

It should be emphasized as well that no matter how powerful a faith is, it cannot serve as a self-sufficient base for social science. Marinova rightly points to the nec-essary crutches of socially prestigious symbols that make sociology both visible and admirable. Hence, we should not talk about sociology in terms of social engineering only propped up on its bare truthfulness – this is important, too, but it is not the crucial factor that makes sociology possible. It is not. Yet, could there be any public prestige and recognition of any sociology in whatever society if there were no applied usages of sociological knowledge of any kind (or promises for public utility at least)41?

This is exactly where I see a direct meaningful linkage of what has been said above and another methodological platform stated by one of the most renowned connois-seurs of the history of political sciences in the USA, Ira Katznelson, whose shining academic career is bound up with Columbia University, but passed through Chicago University and the New School of Social Research. I unconditionally agree with him that “[This perspective] contrasts with the view that the social and human sciences are products of social and institutional changes that instrumentally require particu-lar kinds of ideas, and also with the position that ideas located in free-standing dis-courses develop along well-defined disciplinary paths via the rules of inquiry and dialogue. Instead, it looks simultaneously at how the institutionalization of social knowledge in university disciplines as loci of intellectual authority bridges a two-way flow between the discursive constitution of politics and society by scholarly products and the ways the organization, subject matter, and methodologies of the academic disciplines are shaped by factors of state, economy, and civil society located outside the universities. It is important not to choose a priori between ideational, material, or institutional causes. What matters is the distinctive qualities of their constel-lation at given historical moments” (1998:335, italics added – G.D.).

This is so well-said that it would be pointless to add additional conceptual accents, except for one – what matters most in social sciences is always the differences in the constellations of constitutive factors in every historical moment and, hence, we cannot know in advance what to expect in studying these constellations.

Actually, this is what is somewhat common in all the examples of the sociology of sociology selected here. It will not be a surprise that it is exactly the same perspec-tive that has been guiding the work of the only professional historian of the social sciences among my preferred highly respected figures, D. Ross, the author of the study, truly influential in academic circles, The Origins of American Social Science (1991). Of course, the accent on the particular should not come as a surprise in the work of a historian, and yet the emphasis on the extremely important context

41 Please note: in the strategic program document entitled “Social Science: A Basic National Re-source”, Parsons appealed for large-scale governmental financial support for the social sciences only after having enumerated countless examples over nearly 50 pages of various social science practical inputs and useful applications of their resources in resolving pressing social issues!

32


of competitiveness – both in terms of public and academic surroundings – in the cognitive reconstruction of the ensembles of the social sciences, which are highly dependent on conventions, is not that common: “Acting within an already-existing structure of intellectual domains, with its own patterns of authority, social scientists had to ‘compete for the right to define what shall count as intellectually estab-lished and culturally legitimate’, not only between disciplinary areas and within them, but also in the public arena. The disciplinary project was also linked to a ‘professional’ one, especially in the United States, where university appointment did not carry with it a traditional role or one that carried civic status, so that profes-sional career lines and expertise were important concerns. Both intellectual and professional considerations interacted in contests for legitimacy, resources, and practical expertise.” (2003: 206, italics added – G.D.).

In sum, the research orientation proposed here is not without precedent; in fact, it has a decent tradition. It is an inheritor of a dispersed, yet significant academic tradition that has been focused on the resolution of various other problems. The easily justifiable claim that the current endeavor is swiftly inserted in a more gen-eral research program, in a “common” line of studies, makes it urgent to provide an argument for the expected novelty of this particular study.

Discontinuities in social science advancement have been generally marginalized as a major topic of study. If changes appear in the scope of social science history research, they are supposed to refer to ‘the contours’ but not to ‘the core’ of the dis-ciplines (Ross: 2003). At first glance, the title of this paper, which emphasizes pre-cisely discontinuity and transformations, could be associated with a famous col-lection of studies in the field of the sociology of science and sociology of sociology in particular: “The Establishment of Empirical Sociology: Studies in Continuity, Discontinuity, and Institutionalization”. This volume, edited by Anthony Oberschall, is undoubtedly an important, benchmark accomplishment in the history of the discipline. But it is too traditional in its paradigmal orientation, as manifested in the deliberate loyalty towards succession and enduring institutionalization, i.e. to-wards the constant in the research activity. This is exactly what has been challenged and overcome by the recent advancement of social knowledge in the last decades.

In this sense, the present project is much more directly linked to the research tradi-tion marked by another famous collection of studies, “Discourses on Society : The Shaping of the Social Science Disciplines”. I think this volume by P. Wagner and his associates is especially pertinent because it stresses exactly the ruptures and trans-formations in social science practices as the main venue for development.

At the same time, the studies in this volume have been limited in a number of ways. First, tracing the dynamics of the disciplinary field’s formation at the end of the 19th and in the beginning of the 20th century, the authors analyze not the evolution of social scientific knowledge but only the disciplines as institutional structures with-in which research has been done. Second, the main relationship studied is the con-nection between the academic institutions (the universities) and the macro-social

33


structures of the states, which was really important, but predominantly in Europe. Third, aspiring to prove the essential indeterminacy of the disciplinary differen-tiation, which does not derive from any pseudo-universal, “natural” distinctions in the subject matter itself, the authors focus their attention on the preliminary phases of social science disciplinary constructions. It was then when the relative autonomy of the disciplines and the cognitive grounds proper for research devel-opment were least mature, of course (and consequently the external determinants were extremely powerful and important).

The current text presents a study that is oriented towards the overcoming of these one-sided limitations in the analysis of discontinuities and transformations as a general pattern of social science development. Through the study of the history of American sociology (in its relationships of competition, dialogue and interweaving with other social science disciplines), I aim to prove that:

1) No matter how significant the external influences over the field of social sci-ences are, the development of knowledge, the patterns of doing sociology in the USA during the 20th century, are a result, to a larger extent, of the inner logic of sociological knowledge. Whatever the scientific discoveries, the tasks solved do not lead to any accumulation of knowledge but to its transforma-tion and reorientation instead – to focusing on new tasks which make the previous achievements irrelevant. The often discussed key handicap of soci-ology (no substantive core and accumulation and, hence, the quick passage into oblivion of the former celebrities) is not a secondary defect of certain sociological practices or the guilt of new generations of sociologists (with too short memories), but the general norm in social sciences. The latter develop through the process of radical changes in the cognitive priorities and in the patterns of doing research.

2) No matter how important for the fate of social sciences their link to govern-mental institutions may be, especially in countries with a powerful etatist tra-ditions, in the US the crucial role belongs to the “structures of mediation” (Berger) – micro-groups of acquaintances, informal networks, interpersonal communications and long-standing friendships or feuds. These are rather dif-fuse and dispersed communities, which nevertheless have a very substantial impact on the course of events in social science histories – regardless of the differences between, as an example, the role of Jewish connections or the spe-cific role of “sisterhood” among women in academia. By the very same logic, there is a need for a shift in interest towards microlevel interactions instead of focusing on the institutions of power, or, so to say, towards the channels of soft academic power. Especially important in this regard are the cultural mediations, the climate of ideas (or the brewing of ideas) within the vessels of informal groups, the correspondences and the camps of rivalries and hatreds. Without taking all these into consideration, the developments of social sci-ences becomes incomprehensible…

34


In order to successfully trace these relatively ignored aspects of scientific develop-ment, one certainly has to select a different, more suitable “subject matter”. This should necessarily be a more mature stage of the sociological development in order to be appropriate for the study of interplays simultaneously among a) the transfor-mative logic of the process of knowledge, b) the constitutive impact of informal networks, and c) the important role of value changes in the cultural and academic contexts of the social science advancement.

At the same time, inasmuch as the major claim of this study is to prove the ex-istence of a quasi-common, general mechanism of social science development (which is important exactly because of its changes and variances), i.e. a mechanism of a truly historical development in the proper sense of the word, this epistemolog-ical engagement engenders two more imperatives. First, at least two distinctively different cases, in all their academically meaningful parameters/features, must be selected in order to prove the presence of a “common pattern” in them beyond all the differences. Second, exactly because the development of the social sciences is at stake here, it is necessary to prove that the principle of change itself has been transformed. That is the identifiable “common trait” of the two exemplary cases, the two distictlively different phases of of sociological development: they have to demonstrate certain crucial pattern similarities among the important substantive incommensurabilities that make the concrete historical configuration so signifi-cant and preclude its repetition (Peals, Ross, Katznelson).

Through the study of two major episodes, in a sense – two crucial turning points, which have been well-documented and analyzed, in the history of the American sociology – I will demonstrate that:

1) The spectacular rise of the sociology of T. Parsons is a derivative of the inter-weaving of several specific social, academic and cultural tendencies:

а) The first successes of the Chicago school were the cause of its gradual de-cline because the predominantly qualitative tools of its studies undermined the claim to scientific worth that le gitimated the break with the "armchair sociology" of the first generation. This led to the rise of sociology at Colum-bia University through the productive partnership of Merton and Lazarsfeld, with their huge contribution to the commercialization of sociology, but also to its increasingly diversified mass public use and substantial methodologi-cal sophistication, quantification included. As interest in sociology grew, it expanded in quantitative and institutional terms, which meant a powerful in-flux of differences – thematic, methodological, and axiological – which put its identity to trial. This was happening at a time when, after World War II, the much larger state machinery was turning into an increasingly important contracting authority for socio logical studies. Thus even in the late 1940s, calls were made for a theoretical consolidation of sociology as a key neces-sity for preserving its integrity and social role [Odum : 1951]. This is how Parsons' star as an “incurable theorist” ascended. His systematic sociological

35


theory remained indisputably in fluential and mobilizing for the sociological endeavor until the mid-1960s.

б) The rising and increasing influence of the dispersed Jewish émigré commu-nity created a taste for high theory but in the specific context of the academic tensions and marginality of Jews in the American academy (especially in the social sciences, with their image of academic newcomers, with the peculiar American anti-intellectaulism, and the indisputably very high quality of Jew-ish theorists and their very common and marked pro-Marxist inclinations);

c) There has been a contagious fascination with systematic and cybernetic vi-sions/ideas in mid-20th century in accord with the enormous post-WWII state expansion and aspirations for large-scale interventionism and social and political managerism (Fordism, as Steimetz has difined it);

d) There has been a peculiar “pro-status quo” value orientation that is implicit in systematic theory oriented towards the maintenance of equilibrium that was publicly legitimate in the post-war atmosphere of victory, the GDP, which doubled in 10 years, and the context of the escalating Cold War;

e) Parsons led many prolonged and profound public battles against Marxism, positivism, behaviorism and philosophical moralizing for the cause of the brighter future of social science and the prosperity of the American society as derivative of the former;

f) And, not least in importance, he was involved in very diversified networks of academic contacts with economists, historians, philosophers, and psycho-analysts, which were a powerful tool for academic innovation.

Consequently, the only momentary validity of all these premises of the rise of Par-sonian sociology predetermine its inevitable fall, due to the inescapable transfor-mations in each of them, which made the inherent conceptual and methodological vulnerability of systematic theory visible and a focal point of diversified attacks from numerous contenders and enemies.

2. The rise of the powerful, massive feminist sociology around the last quarter of the 20th century is anything but a surprise42. It is a synthetic and systemic outcome of the interference and mutual repercussions among such tenden-cies as:

42 This case is interesting not because of its sheer magnitude but because it is the exact opposite of the case of Parson’s one-man success. Feminist sociology is, in the first place, a mass movement, which is the most visible form of manifestation, and a driving force in the more general trend of feminization of American sociology where, of course, not all female-sociologists are feminists. This feminization is clearly traceable in the organizational profile of American sociology and, mainly, in the thematic developments of late 20th century American sociology. The radical trans-formation proceeded in line/accord with the general feminization of the social sciences, especially at the secondary and tertiary levels of education, and the corresponding gender change in aca-demic staff and its character, values and teaching priorities...

36


а) Cognitive transformations of points of interest for sociology in the last de-cades of the 20th century to prioritization of the social problems of particular groups (ethnic, racial, sexual and so forth) and with the resources of the al-ready established prestige of qualitative research methods, phenomenology, and cultural anthropology as autonomous trends and as an intellectual re-sponse to the theoretical and methodological crisis of Parsonianism;

b) A gradual ascent to academic power of the “disobedient generation” of the 1960’s, in which female students were a substantial share (who particularized the general problem of social inequality to the form of gender inequality, thus making its goals attainable and academically legitimate as a topic of study and a cause of action on campus);

c) A large-scale and long-term overt general feminization of social sciences, most visible in sociology, that became possible because of the process of professionalization of these academic disciplines, the one that Parsons had fought for, which makes the access to academic career a matter of routine43;

d) The gradual surfacing of the gender issue on the public political agenda as a result of the human rights movements in previous decades and because of the drastic forms of gender inequalities that are peculiar to American society;

e) The sweeping triumph of post-modernist attitudes in academic institutions in general as a form of cognitive remedy of the escalating traumatic experi-ence of the ‘uncertainty’ of late Modernity, the legitimate relativity of various sociologies and a form of joint fight against mainstream sociology: as topics of study and patterns of doing research;

f) The ideology and practices of “sisterhood” as a political instrument for acquir-ing academic power but, even more so, the focus on power itself as seemingly the ultimate resolution of the problem of the uncertainty experienced by ev-

43

37


eryone (so typical for the post-modern condition). In other words, sociology gave women the specialized language to express their typically modern con-cerns and the key instrument to cope with the crucial career and biographical problems of late modern life. While at the same time it provided the opportu-nity for their concerns to be meaningful far beyond their uni-gendered circles of communications.

As a by-product of this second case analysis, we attain a new perspective on the key debate about the role of women in the history of sociology. For some very vocal militant feminist sociologists (М. Jo Deegan, Р. Lengermann, J. Brantly, S. Harding), it is quite usual to claim that women have always contributed a lot to the advancement of sociology and that they are unduly and deliberated forgotten as a result of the male academic politics of gender oppression. The findings of the study prove that there have been very peculiar circumstances and historical prem-ises in the last quarter of the 20th century which have provided for the success of thousands of female sociologists in their fight for the academic establishment of feminist sociology (as a bearer of specific new themes of study and a new method-ological sensitivity – with a particular broader cultural relevance which emerged exactly at that point of time).

Although in each of the two cases the current study uses a relatively “stable and consistent set” of constituents of socio-scientific life (transformation of knowledge, mediating structures – partnerships, networks and movements; value transforma-tions in the academic and broader cultural life and transformations of public sen-sitivity), it demonstrates the substantial change in the contents and structures of these components, both within each one of them and in their modes of interac-tion with the course of events. Correspondingly, a change is traced in their rela-tive “weight” in the set seen through the prism of the competitiveness and mutual enrichment among the social science disciplines (Ross; Hollinger).

conclusIon

The academic importance of this rather unique in scope, manifold project may be seen both narrowly and broadly.

The findings of the project will contribute, first, to the future elaboration of a still missing history of American sociology as a complex, dispersed and yet integral pro-cess in a comparative social science perspective. (Let’s be very careful about the distinction between American sociology and sociology in America44…)

44 “Sociology” in America is the title of the centennial volume of essays under the editorial patron-age of Craig Calhoun. Its appearance in 2006 gave cause to a colleague to claim that my diagnosis of a missing history of the distinctively AMERICAN sociology had been proven false. For the details about the debate on the very possibility of existence of a distinctively American sociology, see Dimitrov (Dimitrov 2005) or Bershady (Bershady 1991).

38


In broader terms, the results of the proposed project may also outline some refer-ence points for escaping the “persistent crisis of sociology” (Cole: 2001). And here again we should be very careful – if we have come to know the mechanisms that have construed sociological success in previous cases, that by no means equips us with a ready-made formula for any future successes, whether of individuals or groups. Nor could this knowledge serve the opposite “humbling cause” – to con-sole anyone for failure on the grounds that s/he has been deprived of the particular resources that have provided for the previous successes of those who did sociol-ogy before us. On the contrary – this new knowledge of the mechanisms of social science innovations is important only to the extent to which it leads us to the op-portunity to take responsibility for the “extended ontology” (Mamardashvili) of so-ciological success. It has to be always construed anew in a specific way in highly competitive fields that are framed by possibilities and constraints, by public demands and personal resourcefulness.

Finally, it must be iterated once again that the importance of the project’s findings derive from the fact that the way we conceive the nature of social sciences has a decisive impact on the patterns in which we organize, practice, and teach these sciences. The disciplinary based academic training emphasizing loyalty to paradigms and schools in the social sciences is obsolete – it is not the mere belong-ing to whatever method, paradigm or school but the coping with specific socio-cognitive (social and cognitive) tasks that could provide us brighter prospects for the future. The history of sociology, when it is truly sociologically and historically sensitive and meaningful, teaches us the plurality of the tasks and the plurality of the patterns of decision-finding which include, inter alia, public and institutional positioning. Thus, by its diversity, this history stimulates our imagination for seek-ing novel solutions for unprecedented tasks.

This is what it has been all about.

It is what is worth trying here and now.

Bibliography:

Аврамов, Р.2007 – Комуналният капитализъм, Том I, II и III, София, Фондация Българска наука и култура,

Даскалов, Р. 2002 – Как се мисли Българското възраждане. София: ЛИК,., Мишкова, Д. (ред.), 2006 – Балканският Балканският XIX век. Други прочити.. София: CAS, Sofia / Рива,

Димитров, Г., 2005 – Загадката в историята на американската социология, в: Социологически проблеми, 2005, № 1

Маринова, Св., 2012. – Към политическа икономия на разказите за миналото в германската история на социологията, Университетско издателство „Св. Кл. Охридски”,

Минев, Д., 2012 – Социология и социална динамика, София,

39


Фотев, Г. 2004 – Диалогична социология, Издателство “Изток – Запад”, София .— 1982 – Принципите на позитивистката социология. София, Бьлгарска академия на науките,

Abbott, A. 1999 – Department & Discipline: Chicago Sociology at One Hundred. Univ. of Chicago Press. Chicago

Acker, J. 1997 – My Life as a Feminist Sociologist; or, Getting the Man out of My Head; In: Laslett, B., B. Thorne 1997- Feminist Sociology: Life Histories of a Movement, Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick, NJ, and London

— 1989 – Making Gender Visible; In: Feminism and Sociological Theory, Wallace, R. 1989 (ed.) Sage Publications Inc.

Adams, J., El. St. Clemens, and Ann Sh. Orloff, 2005 – Remaking Modernity: Politics, History, and Sociology, Duke University Press.

Alexander, J., R. Boudon, M. Cherkaoui (ed) – The Classical Tradition in Sociology : the American Tradition. Sage Publications Inc. 1997.

Alexander, J. Ph. Smith (ed) – The New American Cultural Sociology. Cambridge Univ. Press. 1998Alexander, J. & St. Siedman. (ed), 1990 – Culture and Society: Contemporary Debates, Cambridge Univ. Press.Alexander, J., 2009 – Social Science as Reading and Performance: A Cultural-Sociological Understanding of

Epistemology. 0.16 MB (with Isaac Reed). European Journal of Social Theory, 12(1): 21–41, February,.— 2005 – Contradictions in the Societal Community: The Promise and Disappointments of Parsons’ Concept.

pp. 93-110 in R. Fox, V. Lidz, and H. Bershady, eds., After Parsons: A Theory of Social Action for the TwentyFirst Century. Russell Sage Foundation,

— 1998 – Theories of Sociology, Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Vol. 10: 2-8. London: Routledge.— 1994а – Twenty Lectures: Sociological Theory Since World War II. Columbia Univ. Press.— 1994b – How “National” Is Social Theory? A Note on Some Worrying Trends in the Recent Theorizing of

Richard Much, Theory, Autumn. Backhouse, R. and Philippe Fontaine, (eds), 2010 – The History of the Social Sciences since 1945. New York:

Cambridge University PressBannister, R. 1987 – Sociology and Scientism : the American Quest for Objectivity, 18801940. University of

North Carolina Press.. Baritz, L., 1960 – The servants of power: A history of the use of social science in American in

dustry. Middletown, CT, US: Wesleyan University Press.Becker, E. 1971- The Lost Science of Man. George Braziller Publishers. N. Y. Becker, H. & W. Rau 2001 – Sociology in the 1990s, in: What’s Wrong with Sociology?, Cole, St. (ed),

Transaction Publishers, New Brunswick, New Jersey; Bender, Th., C. Schoske (eds.) 1998 – American Academic Culture in Transition: 50 Years, Four

Disciplines, Princeton Univ. Press, Princeton, New JersyBerger, B. (ed.) 1990 – Authors of Their Own Lives. Intellectual Autobiographies by Twenty Ame

rican Sociologists, University of California Press, California Berger, P. 2002 – Whatever Happened to Sociology? First Things: A Monthly Journal of Religion

& Public Life, Oct2002 Issue 126, pp. 2730— 2001 – Sociology: A Disinvitation? in: What’s Wrong with Sociology, (St. Cole ed.)Transaction

Publishers, New Brunswick and London Berger, P., Th. Luckmann, 1995 – Modernity, pluralism and the crisis of meaning : the orientation

of modern man / Gütersloh : Bertelsmann Foundation Publishers, Berman, L. C., 2009 – Speaking of Jews: Rabbis, Intellectuals, and the Creation of an American

Public Identity, University of California, Berkeley, L.A., LondonBernard, J., 1989 – The Dissemination of Feminist Thought 1960-1988; In: Feminism and Sociologi

cal Theory, Wallace, R. 1989 (ed.) Sage Publications Inc. Bershady, H. 1991 – Practice Against Theory in American Sociology: an Exercise in the Sociology of

http://www.lib.muohio.edu/multifacet/books/%22Acker, Joan.%22?field=authors

http://www.amazon.com/Barrie-Thorne/e/B000APTBQY/ref=ntt_athr_dp_pel_2

http://www.dukeupress.edu/index.shtml

http://ccs.research.yale.edu/alexander/articles/2009/2009 Social Science as Reading and Performance_with Reed_EJST.pdf

http://ccs.research.yale.edu/alexander/articles/2009/2009 Social Science as Reading and Performance_with Reed_EJST.pdf

http://ccs.research.yale.edu/alexander/articles/2005/2005_Contradictions in the Societal Community.pdf

http://surveyor.library.gwu.edu/?hreciid=%7clibrary%2fm%2fWRLC%7c0Zb2358981

http://surveyor.library.gwu.edu/?hreciid=%7clibrary%2fm%2fWRLC%7c0Zb2358981

40


Knowledge; in Talcott Parsons. Theorist of Modernity, (Robertson, R. and Br. Turner, eds.) Sage Publications, London, Newburry Park, New Delhi

Bierstedt, R. 1981 – American Sociological Theory : a Critical History. Academic Press. N.YBonjean, Ch. M., L. Schneider, and Robert L. Lineberry, (eds.) 1976 – Social Science in America: The

first two hundred years. Austin: University of Texas Press, Bottomore, T., Nisbet, R. (eds) 1978 – A History of Sociological Analysis, Basic Books, Inc., Pu-

blishers, N.Y. Boudon, R. 1993 – European Sociology: The Identity Lost?; in: Sociology in Europe. In Search of

Identity. (Nedelmann, B. and P. Sztompka eds.) Walter de Gruyter, Berlin, N.Y.— 1988 – Will Sociology Ever be a “Normal Science?”, Theory and Society, vol. 17, (5), September— 1980 – The Crisis in Sociology : Problems of Sociological Epistemology, Columbia University

Press, New York.Bramson, L. 1961 – The Political Context of Sociology, Princeton University Press, Princeton Bryant, Chr., & H. Becker (eds) 1990 – What has Sociology Achieved?, St. Martin’s Press, New York Burawoy, M. 2005– Provincializing the Social Science; In: Steinmetz, G. (ed.) – The Politics of Method

in the Human Sciences: Positivism and Its Epistemological Others, Duke University Press, Du-rham/London, 2005

Buxton, W. and St. Turner, 1992 – From Education to Expertise: Sociology as a “Profession” ; in: Sociology and Its Publics. The Forms and Fates of Disciplinary Organization, (Halliday, T. and M. Janowitz eds), The University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London

Calhoun, Cr. 1992 – Sociology, Other Disciplines, and the Project of a General Understanding of So-cial Life; in: Sociology and Its Publics. The Forms and Fates of Disciplinary Organization, (Halliday, T. and M. Janowitz eds), The University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London

— 2006 – Sociology in America. A History, University of Chicago Press, Chicago— 1992 – Sociology, Other Disciplines, and the Project of a General Understanding of Social Life;

in: Sociology and Its Publics. The Forms and Fates of Disciplinary Organization, (Halliday, T. and M. Janowitz eds.), The University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London

Cassano, Gr., R. Dello Buono (eds.), 2010 – Crisis, Politics and Critical Sociology, Critical Social Sciences Series, vol. 17, BRILL, Leiden, The Netherlands

Camic, Ch. And H. Joas, (eds)2004 – The Dialogical Turn: New Roles for Sociology in the Postdisciplinary Age, Chicago University Press, Chicago

Clawson, D. 1998 – Required Reading: Sociology’s Most Influential Books, University of Massachu-setts Press, Amherst.

Clemens, E., W. Powell, Kr. McIlwaine, and D. Okamoto 1995 – Careers in Print: Books, Journals, and Scholary Reputations, Centennial essay, American Journal of Sociology, vol. 101, (2), Septem-ber

Cole, St. 2001 – What’s Wrong with Sociology, Transaction Publishers, New Brunswick and London— 2001a – Introduction: The Social Construction of Sociology; in: What’s Wrong with Sociology,

(St. Cole ed.)Transaction Publishers, New Brunswick and London— 2001b – Why Sociology Doesn’t Make Progress Like the Natural Sciences; in: What’s Wrong with

Sociology, (St. Cole ed.)Transaction Publishers, New Brunswick and LondonCollins, R. 2001 – Why the Social Sciences Won’t Become High-Consensus, Rapid-Discovery Science;

in: What’s Wrong with Sociology, (St. Cole ed.)Transaction Publishers, New Brunswick and London

— 1994 – Four Sociological Traditions; Revised & Enlarged edition, Oxford University Press, N. Y., Oxford

Coser, L. A., 1984 – Refugee Scholars in America :Their Impact and Their Experiences. New Haven : Yale University Press,

— 1978 – American Trends, in: A History of Sociological Analysis, Bottomore, T., Nisbet, R. (eds) Basic Books, Inc., Publishers, N.Y.

41


— 1971 – Masters of Sociological Thought. Ideas in Historical and Social Context, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., N. Y. Chicago., San Francisco, Atlanta

Crane, D, and H. Small 1992 – American Sociology since the Seventies: The Emerging Identity Crisis in the Discipline; in: Sociology and Its Publics. The Forms and Fates of Disciplinary Organization, (Halliday, T. and M. Janowitz eds), The University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London

Curtis, J. and J. Petras, 1972 – The Sociology of Sociology: Some Lines of Inquiry in the Study of the Discipline, The Sociological Quarterly, 13, Spring

Davis, J. 2001 – What’s Wrong with Sociology; in: What’s Wrong with Sociology, (St. Cole ed.)Tran-saction Publishers, New Brunswick and London

Delamont, S. 2003 – Feminist Sociology, Sage Publ. Inc.Deegan, M. Jo, 1990 – Jane Addams and the Men of the Chicago School: 18921918, Transaction

Publishers, New Jersey Dimitrov, G., 2006 – Sociology as a Figure of Speech or Love; Special Issue of Sociological Problems

dedicated to the XVІ Congress of ISA, — 2005 – The Crisis of Sociology at the End of the 20th Century and Perspectives for the 21st Cen

tury. A Plea for a Mediating Sociology. Public lecture at “Sozialwissenschaften neu denken. Sozialwissenschaften Fur das 21. Jahrhendert. Denkwerkstatte der Fakultat Fur Sozialwissen-schaften an der Universitat Wien, Juni,, Wien

— 2004 – Sociology in Trouble; Expert Workshop: The Sociological Worlds of Peter Berger, Sofia,Dixon, Keith 1973 – Sociological theory; pretence and possibility. London,Boston, Routledge & K.

Paul Durkheim, Em., 1982 [1895] – The Rules of the Sociological Method. New York: The Free Press.Eisenstadt, S. N. with M. Curelaru, 1976 – The Form of Sociology –Paradigms and Crises. New

York: Wiley, Ennis, J. 1992 – “The Social Organization of Sociological Knowledge: Modeling the Intersection of

Specialties”, American Sociological Review, Vol. 57, No. 2. (Apr., 1992), pp. 259-265.Farr J., R. Seidelman 1993 – Discipline and History: Political Science in the United States. Univ.

Michigan Press, Fletcher, R. 1971 – The Making of Sociology. A Study of Sociological Theory, vol. II, Charles Scrib-

ner’s Sons, New York. Friedland, Roger and J. Mohr (2004) ‘The Cultural Turn in American Sociology’, pp. 1–68 in Roger

Friedland and John Mohr (eds) Matters of Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Friedrichs, R. 1970 – A Sociology of Sociology, New York: The Free Press, de la Fuente Eduardoq, 2007 – The place of culture in sociology: Romanticism and debates about the

‘cultural turn’, Journal of Sociology, 2007; 43; 115Gallagher, C. 1997 – The History of Literary Criticism ; In: Thomas Bender & Carl E. Schorske (eds),

1997 – American Academic Culture in Transformation: Fifty Years, Four Disciplines, AAASc, Princeton; Princeton University Press

Gans, H. (ed.) 1990 – Sociology in America; American Sociological Association Presidential Series, Sage Publications, London, New Delhi

— 1990a – Sociology in America: The Discipline and the Public. American Sociological Association, 1988 Presidential Address; in: Sociology in America; (Gans, H. ed.), Sage Publications, Lon-don, New Delhi,

Gerhardt, Ut. 2011 – The Social Thought of Talcott Parsons: Methodology and American Ethos. Ashgate Publishers, Surrey/Burlington

Giddings, Fr. H. 1894 – The Theory of Sociology, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, v. 7

Gilman, N., 2003 – Mandarins of the Future: Modernization Theory in Cold War America. Bal-timore: Johns Hopkins University Press,

http://www.amazon.com/Mary-Jo-Deegan/e/B001H6MH66/ref=ntt_athr_dp_pel_1

http://www.thelatinlibrary.com/ammianus/17.shtml#12

42


Gitlin, T. 1990 – Sociology for Whom? Criticism for Whom?; in: Sociology in America; (Gans, H. ed.), Sage Publications, London, New Delhi

Gordon, M. 1997 – Toward an American Sociology. Questioning the European Construct, Preager Publishers, Westport, Connecticut, London,

Gouldner, A. 1971 – The Coming Crisis of Western Sociology, New York: Basic Books Graham, L., W. Lepenies, and P. Weingart (eds).1983- Functions and uses of disciplinary histories,

Dordrecht, Holland ;Boston : D. Reidel ;Hingham, MA : Kluwer Academic Publishers Gray, D. 1979 – American Sociology: Plight and Promise, The American Sociologist, vol. 14Greek, C. 1992 – The Religious Roots of American Sociology, Garland Publishing, Inc., New York

& London Habermas, J. (1984) [1981]. – Theory of Communicative Action,Volume One and Two. Boston,

Mass.: Beacon Press. — 1990 – On the Logic of the Social Sciences (Studies in Contemporary German Social Thought),

Boston: The MIT Press.Halliday, T. and M. Janowitz,(eds.) 1992 – Sociology and Its Publics. The Forms and Fates of Disci

plinary Organization, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago and LondonHalliday, T. 1992 – Introduction: Sociology’s Fragile Professionalization; in: Sociology and Its Pu

blics. The Forms and Fates of Disciplinary Organization, (Halliday, T. and M. Janowitz eds), The University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London

Hamilton, P. (ed) 1992 – Talcott Parsons: Critical Assessments. Routledge.. Haney, D. P. 2008 – The Americanization of Social Science. Intellectuals and Public Responsibility

in the Postwar United States. Temple University Press . Philadelphia Haskell, Th. L. 1984 – The Authority of Experts: Studies in History and Theory, Indiana Univ. Press,

Bloomington. — 1977 – The Emergence of Professional Social Science: The American Social Science Association

and the 19th Century Crisis of Authority, Urbana: University of Illinois PressHarding, S., 2003 – Why Has Sex/Gender Become Visible Only Now; In: Harding, S. M., B. P. Hintikka,

2003 (2nd ed.) – Discovering Reality: Feminist Perspectives on Epistemology, Metaphysics, Methodology, and Philosophy of Science, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht, Nether-lands.

Harding, S. M., B. P. Hintikka, 2003 (2nd ed.) – Discovering Reality: Feminist Perspectives on Epistemology, Metaphysics, Methodology, and Philosophy of Science, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht, Netherlands

Hiller, H. 1979 – Universality of Science and the Question of National Sociologies, The American Sociologist, vol. 14

Hinkle, R. 1994 – Developments in American sociological theory, 19151950. State Univ. of New York Press.

— 1980 – Founding theory of American sociology, 18811915 . Routledge.. Hinkle, R. & G. Hinkle, 1954 – The Development of Modern Sociology, Random House, N.Y.Holmwood, J.1996 – Founding Sociology? Talcott Parsons and the Idea of General Theory. Addi-

son-Wesley Longman. Hollinger, D. A. 1998 – Science, Jews, and Secular Culture: Studies in MidTwentiethCentury

American Intellectual History, Princeton University Press, Princeton, N.J.,— 1997 – The Disciplines and the Identity Debates, 1970-1995; In: Thomas Bender & Carl E. Schorske

(eds), 1997- American Academic Culture in Transformation: Fifty Years, Four Disciplines, AAASc, Princeton; Princeton University Press

Homans, G. 1969 – A Life Synthesis; in: Sociological SelfImages. A Collective Portrait, (ed.) Ho-rowitz, Irving Sage Publ., Beverly Hills, California Horowitz, I. 1983 – C. Wright Mills: An Ame-rican Utopian. Free Press..

Horowitz, I. 1994 – The Decomposition of Sociology, Oxford University Press, N. Y., Oxford

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%C3%BCrgen_Habermas

http://openlibrary.org/search?publisher_facet=Temple University Press

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=ntt_athr_dp_sr_2?_encoding=UTF8&sort=relevancerank&search-alias=books&field-author=Merrill B.P. Hintikka

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=ntt_athr_dp_sr_2?_encoding=UTF8&sort=relevancerank&search-alias=books&field-author=Merrill B.P. Hintikka

43


— 1976 – Professing Sociology: Studies in the life Cycle of Social Science. Southern Illinois Univ. Press.

— 1969 – Sociological selfimages; a collective portrait. Sage Publications Inc.. Husserl, Ed.,1965 – Phenomenology and the Crisis of Philosophy. New York: Harper & Row. Jacobs, J. A. and Sc. Frickel 2009 – Interdisciplinarity: A Critical Assessment, Annual Review of

Sociology. 2009.35:43-65Janiwitz, M. 1972 – Professionalization of Sociology, American Journal of Sociology, 78, Joas, H., 2010 – The Benefit of Broad Horizons: Intellectual and Institutional Preconditions for a

Global Social Science, Leiden : BRILL Jones, R. 1992 – “The New History of Sociology”, Annual Review of Sociology, Vol. 9. (1983), pp.

447-469.Johnson, M. M., 1989 – Feminism and the Theories of Talcott Parsons; In: Feminism and Sociologi

cal Theory, Wallace, R. 1989 (ed.) Sage Publications Inc. Katznelson, Ira, 1997 – From the Street to the Lecture Hall: The 1960s Gallagher Catherine – The

History of Literary Criticism ; In: Thomas Bender & Carl E. Schorske (eds), 1997- American Academic Culture in Transformation: Fifty Years, Four Disciplines, AAASc, Princeton; Princeton University Press

Klausner, S. Z., V. M. Lidz (eds.) 1986 – The Nationalization of the Social Sciences, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia.

Kinloch, Gr. and R. P. Mohan. 2000 – Ideology and the Social Sciences. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press.

Laslett, B., B. Thorne 1997- Feminist Sociology: Life Histories of a Movement, Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick, NJ, and London

Latham, M. E., 2000 – Modernization as Ideology. American Social Science and "Nation Building" in the Kennedy Era. Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, Mary Jo Deegan (Author)

Latour, Br., 1993 – We Have Never Been Modern, Harvard University Press, Cambridge Mass., USA.Lemert, Ch. 1996 – Representations of the Sociologist: Getting over the Crisis, Sociological Forum,

vol. 11, (2) April— 1995 – Sociology after the Crisis, Westview Press Inc., Colorado Lengermann, P. M., Jill Niebrugge-Brantley, 1997 – The Women Founders: Sociology and Social

Theory, 18301930, ) McGraw-Hill Humanities/Social Sciences/Languages; Lepenies, Wolf (1998) – Between Literature and Science: The Rise of Sociology, Cambridge: Cam-

bridge University Press.Levine, D. 1996 – On the National Question in Sociology, Swiss Sociological Review, vol. 22, (3)— 1972 – A Sociology of Sociology, book review, American Antropologists, vol. 74 1-2Littlewood, B. 2004 – Feminist perspectives on sociology. Harlow, England: Pearson Education Li-

mited. Lipset, M. 2001 – The State of American Sociology in: What’s Wrong with Sociology, (St. Cole ed.)

Transaction Publishers, New Brunswick and London Lopreato, J., T. Crippen, 1999 – Crisis in Sociology. The Need for Darwin, Transaction Publishers,

New Brunswick Lumann, N., 1995 – Social Systems, Stanford: Stanford University Press — 1990 – General Theory and American Sociology; in: Sociology in America; (Gans, H. ed.), Sage

Publications, London, New Delhi.Lyman, St. 2001 – Roads to Dystopia: Sociological Essays on the Postmodern Condition. Univ. of

Arkansas Press.— 1997 – Postmodernism and a Sociology of the Absurd and Other Essays on the Nouvelle Vague

in American Social Science. Univ. of Arkansas Press.. Mamardashvili, M.K. 2010 – Klassicheskii i Neklassicheskii Idealy Ratsional'nosti, Санкт-Петербург:

Азбука, [Classical and non-classical ideals of rationality:], Saint-Petersburg:Azbuka.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harper_%26_Row

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=ntt_athr_dp_sr_2?_encoding=UTF8&sort=relevancerank&search-alias=books&field-author=Victor M. Lidz


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_Have_Never_Been_Modern

http://www.amazon.com/Women-Founders-Sociology-1830-1930-Readings/dp/0070371695/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1379169098&sr=1-1

http://www.amazon.com/Women-Founders-Sociology-1830-1930-Readings/dp/0070371695/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1379169098&sr=1-1

44


Mannheim, K. 1953 – American Sociology, in P. Kecskemeti (ed) Essays on Sociology and Social Psychology, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London

— 1936 – Ideology and Utopia. London: Routledge.Marris, P. 1990 – Witnesses, Engineers, or Storytellers? Roles of Sociology in Social Policy; in: Socio

logy in America; (Gans, H. ed.), Sage Publications, London, New DelhiMartindale, D. 1988- The Nature and Types of Sociological Theory. Waveland Press.— 1982 – Personality and Milieu: The Shaping of Social Science Culture. Cap & Gown Press..— 1976 – The Romance of a Profession: A Case History in Sociology of Sociology,Matthews, Fr. 1977 – Quest for an American Sociology : Robert E. Park and the Chicago school.

McGill Queens Univ. Press. McDonald, T. (ed.), 1996 – The Historic Turn in the Human Sciences, University of Michigan Press

Merton, R. 1976 – Structural Analysis in Sociology, in: Sociological Ambivalence and Other Essays, Free Press. N.Y.

Merton R K. 1949. – Social theory and social structure. New York: Free Press, Merton, R, M. W. Riley, 1980 – Sociological Traditions from Generation to Generation: Glimpses

of American Experience, Norwood, N.Y.Mills, C. Wright 1959 – The Sociological Imagination, Oxford University Press, New York.Mullins, N. 1990 – Sociology in America; in: What has Sociology Achieved?, (Bryant, Chr., & H.

Becker, eds) St. Martin’s Press, New York — 1983 – Theories and Theory Groups Revisited, Sociological Theory, vol. 1— 1973 – Theories and Theory Groups in Contemporary American Sociology, Harper and Row,

New York.Munch, R. 1993 – The Contribution of German Social Theory to European Sociology; in: Sociology

in Europe. In Search of Identity. (Nedelmann, B. and P. Sztompka eds.) Walter de Gruyter, Berlin, N.Y.

— 1991 – American and European Social Theory: Cultural Identities and Social Forms of Theory Production, Sociological Perspectives, vol. 34

Nedelmann, B. and P. Sztompka 1993a – Introduction,in: Sociology in Europe. In Search of Identity. (Nedelmann, B. and P. Sztompka eds.) Walter de Gruyter, Berlin, N.Y.

Nisbet, R. 1976 – Sociology as an Art Form, Cambridge, Cambridge Univ. Press. Oberschall, Anth. 1972 – The Establishment of Empirical Sociology, Studies in Continuity, Discon

tinuity, and Institutionalization, Harper & Row, NY. Odum, H. 1951 – American Sociology. The Story of Sociology in America Through 1950, Long-

mans, Green and Co, NY, London, Toronto Orlans, K., and R. Wallace. 1994. – Gender and the academic experience: Berkeley Women Socio

logists. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Parsons, T., 1977 – Social Systems and the Evolution of Action Theory, New York: Free Press; — 1971 – The System of Modern Societies. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, — 1971а – Some Problems Confronting Sociology as a Profession; in: The Phenomenon of Sociology.

A Reader in Sociology of Sociology, Tikyanian, Ed.(ed.) N.Y. — ( 1968), [1937] – The Structure of Social Action,, The Free Press, New York. — 1951 – The Social System. Published by Free Press, Glencoe, Illinois, — 1948 – Social Science: A Basic National Resource Edited by S.Z. Klausner & Victor Lidz. Samuel Z.

Klausner and Victor M. Lidz, Eds. The Nationalization of the Social Sciences. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1986.

Peel, J.D.Y., 1971 – Herbert Spencer: The Evolution of a Sociologist. New York: Basic Books. Porter, Th., D. Ross (eds.) 2003 – The Modern Social Sciences, The Cambridge History of Science,

vol. 7, Cambridge Univ. Press, Cambridge Riley, M. W. (ed.) 1988. – Sociological Lives. London: SageReynolds, L. & J. Reynolds, 1970 – The Sociology of Sociology. Analysis and Criticism of the

45


Thought, Research, and Ethical Folkways of Sociology and Its Practitioners, David Mckay Company, New York

Rhoades, L. 1981 – A History of the American Sociological Association, 19041980, American Sociological Association, Washington, D.C.

Ritzer, G. 1983 – Sociological Theory. Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. New York— 1991 – Metatheorizing in Sociology, Lexington Books, Massachusettes, TorontoRoss, D. 2003 – Changing Contours of Social Science Disciplines; in: Porter, Th., D. Ross (eds.) The

Modern Social Sciences, The Cambridge History of Science, vol. 7, Cambridge Univ. Press, Cambridge

— 1994 – Modernist Impulses in Human Sciences, 17601930. Johns Hopkins Univ. Press..— 1991 – The Origins of American Social Science. Cambridge Univ. Press.. Scaff, L. 1993 – Europe and America in Search of Sociology: Reflections on a Parnership; In : Socio

logy in Europe. In Search of Identity. (Nedelmann, B. and P. Sztompka eds.) Walter de Gruy-ter, Berlin, N.Y.

Seidman, St. 1994 – Contested Knowledge. Social Theory in the Postmodern Era, Blackwell, Cam-bridge Massachusettes

— (ed)1994 – The Postmodern Turn. New Perspectives on Social Theory, Cambridge Univ. Press, Cambridge

— 1994a – The End of Sociological Theory, in : The Postmodern Turn. New Perspectives on Social Theory, Seidman, St. (Ed) Cambridge Univ. Press, Cambridge

Shils, E. 1980a – The Calling of Sociology ; in: The Calling of Sociology and Other Essays on the Pursuit of Learning, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago

1980b – The Confluence of Sociological Traditions; in: The Calling of Sociology and Other Essays on the Pursuit of Learning, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago

— 1980c – Tradition, Ecology, and Institution in the History of Sociology; in: The Calling of Sociology and Other Essays on the Pursuit of Learning, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago

Sica, Al,, St. Turner (eds.) 2006 – The Disobedient Generation. Social Theorists in the Sixties; The University of Chicago Press, Chicago.

— 1992 – The Rhetoric of Sociology and Its Audience; in: Sociology and Its Publics. The Forms and Fates of Disciplinary Organization, (Halliday, T. and M. Janowitz eds), The University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London

Silverberg, H. (ed.) 1998 – Gender and American Social Science: The Formative Years. Princeton University Press, Princeton, N.J.

Small, Al. 1924- “Some Contributions to the History of Sociology. Section XIX. The Emergence of Sociology in the United States”, American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 30, No. 3. (Nov., 1924), pp. 310-336.

— 1916 – “Fifty Years of Sociology in the United States (1865-1915)” American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 21, No. 6. (May,), pp. 721-864.

Smelser, N. & J. Alexander,(ed) 1999 – Diversity and its Discontents. Cultural Conflict and Common Ground in Contemporary American Society, Univ. of Princeton Press, Princeton

Smelser, N.1997 – Sociology as Science, Humanism, and Art; in: Sociological Visions, Erikson, K. (ed), Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., New York, Oxford

— 1992 – External Influences on Sociology; in: Sociology and Its Publics. The Forms and Fates of Disciplinary Organization, (Halliday, T. and M. Janowitz eds), The University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London

— 1990 – External Influences on Sociology; in: Sociology in America, 1990; ed. Gans, Herbert, Lon-don, New Delhi, Sage Publications, (American Sociological Association Presidential Sorokin, P. 1929 – Some Contrasts of Contemporary European and American Sociology, Social Forces, lov. 8

Smith, D. E., 1989 – Sociological Theory. Methods of Writing Patriarchy; In: Feminism and Sociological Theory, Wallace, R. 1989 (ed.) Sage Publications Inc.

http://www.press.uchicago.edu/presssite/author.epl?fullauthor=Alan Sica

http://www.press.uchicago.edu/presssite/author.epl?fullauthor=Stephen Turner

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0691017492

46


Stacey, J. 1997 – Disloyal to the Disciplines: A Feminist Trajectory in the Borderlands; In: Laslett, B., B. Thorne 1997- Feminist Sociology: Life Histories of a Movement, Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick, NJ, and London

Stacey, J., B. Thorne, 1985 – The Missing Feminist Revolution in Sociology, Social Problems, Vol. 32, No. 4, Sorokin, P. 1956 – Fads and Foibles in Modern Sociology and Related Sciences, Regnery, ChicagoSteinmetz, G. (ed.) 2005 – The Politics of Method in the Human Sciences: Positivism and Its Epis

temological Others, Duke University Press, Durham/LondonStinchcombe, A. 2001 –Disintegrated Discipline and the Future of Sociology; in: What’s Wrong with

Sociology, (St. Cole ed.)Transaction Publishers, New Brunswick and LondonSzacki, J. 1982 – The History of Sociology and Substantive Sociological Theories; in: – Sociology The

State of Art, Bottomore, T., S. Nowak, M. Sokolowska (eds),Sage Publ. London and Beverly HillsSusman, W. I. 2003 (1984) – Culture As History: The Transformation of American Society in the

Twentieth Century, Smithsonian Institution Press Tiryakian, Ed.(ed.) 1971 – The Phenomenon of Sociology. A Reader in Sociology of Sociology, N.Y.Tiryakian, Ed.(ed.) 1971a – Introduction to the Sociology of Sociology; in: The Phenomenon of So

ciology. A Reader in Sociology of Sociology, Tikyanian, Ed.(ed.) N.Y. Toulmin, St., 1990 – Cosmopolis: The Hidden Agenda of Modernity () New York: Free Press, Tourain, Al. 1990 – American Sociology Viewed from Abroad; in: Sociology in America; (Gans, H.

ed.), Sage Publications, London, New DelhiToynbee, Arn. (1939-61) – A Study of History, Oxford University Press Turner, J. 1997 – The Structure of Social Theory. Wadsworth Publishing Company.Turner, J. 1996 – Social Theory and Sociology: The Classics and Beyond. Blackwell Publishers..Turner, J., L. Beeghley, C. Powers 1994- The emergence of sociological theory. Wadsworth Publishing

Company..Turner, J. 1994 – Sociology: Concepts and Uses. KcGraw-Hill Companies..Turner, J. 1989 – Theory Building in Sociology: Assessing Theoretical Cumulation. Sage Publica-

tions Inc. Turner, Br. 1996 – Sociological Theory in the Tension Between Globalization and Localization:

The MunchAlezander Debate, Swiss Journal of Sociology, vol. 22 (1)Turner, St., J. Turner, 1990 – The Impossible Science, An Institutional Analysis of American Socio

logy, Sage Publications, Newbury Park, CaliforniaTurner, St. 1994 – The Social Theory of Practices – Traditions, Tacit knowledge and Presumption,

Cambridge Univ. Press— 1986 – Sociological Theory in Transition. Cambridge Univ. Press. Vaughan, T. R., G. Sjoberg, and L. T. Reynolds (eds.), 1993 – A Critique of Contemporary American

Sociology, New York: General Hall, Vidich, A. St. Lyman 1985- American Sociology. Yale Univ. Press.Wagner, P. 2012 – Modernity : understanding the present / Cambridge ;Malden, MA : Polity Press.Wagner, P., B. Wittrock, and R. Whitley (eds.),1991 – Discourses on Society : The Shaping of the

Social Science Disciplines, Dordrect : Kluwer Academic Publishers, Wagner, P. & B. Wittrock,1991 – Analyzing social science: On the possibility of a sociology of social

sciences, In: Wagner, P., B. Wittrock, and R. Whitley (eds.) – Discourses on Society: The Shaping of the Social Science Disciplines, Dordrect : Kluwer Academic Publishers

Wallace, R. 1989 – Feminism and Sociological Theory, Sage Publications Inc. Wallerstein, Im. 2000 – From sociology to historical social science: prospects and obstacles. The

British Journal of Sociology, Volume 51, Issue 1, pages 25–35, March 2000— 1998 – The Heritage of Sociology, the Promise of Social Science Presidential Address, XIVth World

Congress of Sociology, Montreal, 26 July 1998, Current Sociology, January 1999 vol. 47 no. 1 137 Wiley, N., 1979 – The Rise and Fall of Dominating Theories in American Sociology; in: Fuhrman, Ells.

R., Miller, M. K. and Snizek, W. E. (eds.) – Contemporary issues in theory and research : a

http://www.lib.muohio.edu/multifacet/books/%22Stacey, Judith.%22?field=authors


http://nobsword.blogspot.com/1993_10_17_nobsword_archive.html

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/bjos.2000.51.issue-1/issuetoc

47


metasociological perspective, Greenwood Press, Westport, Connecticut.Williams, Jr., Robin M. 2006 – The Long 20th Century in American Sociology: A Semiautobiographical

Survey, Annual Review of Sociology, Vol. 32: 1-23.— 1976 – Sociology in America; In: Bonjean, Ch. M., L. Schneider, and Robert L. Lineberry, (eds.) 1976

– Social Science in America: The first two hundred years. Austin: University of Texas PressWronski, St. P., Bragaw, D. H., (eds.), 1986 – Social Studies and Social Sciences: A FiftyYear Pers

pective, Bulletin No. 78., National Council for the Social Studies.Ward, Lester 1920 – Dynamic Sociology. Or Applied Social Science. As based upon Static Socio

logy and other less Complex Science, D. Appleton and Company, New York and London.Warner, R. St. 1985 – Sociological Theory and History of Sociology: Autonomy and Interdependence,

Sociological Theory, Vol. 3, SpringWells, R. and J. S. Picou 1981 – American Sociology: Theoretical and Methodological Structure, Uni-

versity Press of America, Wolff, K. 1946 – Notes Towards a Sociocultural Interpretation of American Sociology; American

Sociological Review, vol. 11, 5Wrong, D.1993 – The Present Condition of American Sociology; Comparative Studies of Society and

History, Vol. 35, No. 1 (Jan., 1993), pp. 183-196Wrong, D. 1990 – The Influence of Sociological Ideas on American Culture; in: Sociology in America;

(Gans, H. ed.), Sage Publications, London, New DelhiYeo, E. J. 1996 – The Contest for Social Science: Relations and Representations of Gender and

Class, Rivers Oram Press, London Zola, I. K. 1995 – Shifting Boundaries: Doing Social Science in the 1990s – A Personal Odyssey, Socio

logical Forum, vol. 10.

Annex:

A comprehensive bibliography of publications on the contemporary Bulgarian sociology:

Галев, Т., 2012 – Студентите по социология за образованието по социология (Резултати от емпирично изследване на студентските практики и нагласи) , Социологически проблеми, [Galev, Todor – Sociology Students on Sociology Education: Results of an Empirical Survey of Student Practices and Attitudes], Sociological Problems (3–4/2012)

Генов, Н. 2001 – Социология и социално развитие. в: Генов, Н. (съст.) Перспективи пред социологията в България, С., Издателство на Софийски университет. [Genov, N. – Socio-logy and Social Development; in: Perspective of Sociology in Bulgaria, St. Kl. Ohridski Univer-sity Publ. House]

Данчев, В. 2005. Публичната релевантност на социологическото знание в процеса на трансформация на обществените институции в България. Доклад, представен на “Четения за млади социолози”, 17–18 май, София. [Danchev, V. – The Public Relevance of Sociological Knowlwdge in the Process of Trasformation of Public Institutions in Bulgaria, Pu-blic Sociological Readings for Young Sociologists, Sofia]

Димитров, Г. 2005 – Създаване на специалост Социология в ЮЗУ “Н. Рилски”: историко-концептуални и биографични реминисценции, в: Социологически траектории. 10 години от създаването на специалност “Социология”, т.1, С., Университетско издателство “Св. Кл. Охридски”. [ Dimitrov, G. – The Establishment of the Department of Sociology at the South-Western University “N. Rilski”: Historical, Conceptual and Biographical Reminiscences,

http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/search/simpleSearch.jsp?_pageLabel=ERICSearchResult&_urlType=action&newSearch=true&ERICExtSearch_SearchType_0=au&ERICExtSearch_SearchValue_0=%22Wronski+Stanley+P.%22

http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/search/simpleSearch.jsp?_pageLabel=ERICSearchResult&_urlType=action&newSearch=true&ERICExtSearch_SearchType_0=au&ERICExtSearch_SearchValue_0=%22Bragaw+Donald+H.%22

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=ntt_athr_dp_sr_1?_encoding=UTF8&sort=relevancerank&search-alias=books&field-author=Eileen Janes Yeo

48


Sociological Trajectories, Vol.1, St. Kl. Ohridski University Publ. House]Димитров, Г. 1995 – Кое защо е в нашата социология, В: България в орбитите на модернизацията,

С., Издателство на Софийски университет. [Dimitrov, G. – What is why in Bulgarian Socio-logy, in: Bulgaria in the Orbits of Modernization, St. Kl. Ohridski University Publ. House]

Димитров, Г. 1995 – Българската социология – основания за оптимизъм. Социологически проблеми, 1995, кн.4., [Dimitrov, G. – The Bulgarian Sociology – Grounds for Optimism, Sociological Problems (4/1995)]

Колева, Св. 2005 – Социологията като проект. Научна идентичност и социални изпитания в България 1945–1989, С., Издателство “Пенсофт”, [ Koleva, Sv. – The Sociology as a Project. Scientific Identities and Social Trials 1945–1989, Sofia, “Pensoft” Publ. House]

Колева, С. 2004. Дискусията “Социална ангажираност и академични ценности в социологията в глобализиращия се свят”, Социологически проблеми, 3–4 [Koleva, Sv. – The Discussion “Social Engagement and Academic Values of Sociology in a Globalizing World, Sociological Problems (3–4/2004)]

Митев, П.-Е. 1995 – Българското общество, българската социология, Българската социологическа асоциация, Социологически проблеми, кн. 4. [Mitev, P-E. – The Bulgarian Society, the Bulgarian Sociology, and the Bulgarian Sociological Association, Sociological Pro-blems (4/1995)]

Митев, Т., 2012 – Проблеми на социологическите професии в България: условия за възможност и зависимост от изминатия път, Социологически проблеми, [Mitev, T. – Problems of Socio-logical Careers in Bulgaria: Conditions of Possibility and Path Dependence] Sociological Pro-blems (3–4/2012)]

Митев, Т., П. Славова, 2012 – Висшето образование като предприемачески експеримент: три портрета на специалност Социология в България (1990–2006), Социологически проблеми, [Mitev, T.; Slavova, P. - Higher Education as an Entrepreneurship: Three Portraits of the Discipline of Sociology in Bulgaria (1990–2006)], Sociological Problems (3–4/2012)]

Михайлов, Ст. 2003 – Социологията в България след Втората световна война, С., Издателство M-8-M. [Mihailov, St. – The Sociology in Bulgaria after the WWII, Sofia, M-8-M Publ. House.]

Славова, П. 2012 – Постсоциалистическото образование в огледалото на социалистическото минало: случаят на специалност Социология в Софийския университет „Св. Климент Охридски”, Социологически проблеми, [ Slavova, P. - Post-Socialist Higher Education in the Mirror of the Socialist Past: The Case of the Discipline of Sociology at Sofia University „St. Kl. Ochridski“], Sociological Problems (3–4/2012)]

Славова, П. (съст.)2010 – Какъв да стана? С какво да се захвана?, С., Издателство “Изток-Запад” [Slavova, P. – What Should I Become? What Should I Start with?, Sofia, Iztok-Zapad Publ. House.]

“Социологията: за една разумна и отговорна политика”, публична дискусия между социолози и журналисти от 25 юли 2005, “Социологически проблеми”, 3–4, 2005, pp. 70-101. [The Sociology: a Rational and Responsible Policy. Public Debate among Sociologists and Journalists on July 25 2005, Sociological Problems (3–4/2005)]

Ставров, Б. 2004 – История на социологията в България, С. : Унив. изд. Стопанство. [A History of Sociology in Bulgaria, Sofia, University Publishing Stopanstvo.]

Boyadjieva, P. 2009 – Shooting at a Moving Target: Rediscovering Sociology in Bulgaria, In: Patel, Sujata (ed.). The ISA Handbook of Diverse Sociological Traditions, Sage Publ.

Deyanova, Liliana. 2001. Les Combats pour la Sociologie (la Sociologie en Bulgarie apre 1989-cinq recits) In: Transitions, 42(1), 187-195.

Dimitrov, G. 2002 – The Contemporary Sociology: Crucified by its Tradition and Public Expectations, Sociological Problems (special Issue) 2002

49


Dimitrov, G., E. Stoykova, 2009 – Why Has Sociology a Marginal Position in Civic Education in Bul-garia – Nationally Specific and/or Universal Trends?, Journal of Social Science Education, Vol. 8, N 4, 2009

Koev, K. 1992 – Masks and Faces: Bulgarian Sociology in Search of Itself, International Sociology, vol. 7, (1)

Koleva, S. 2002. The Disciplinary Identity of Sociology: Profiles of Construction (Sociology in Poland, Russia and Bulgaria in the 1950s and 1960s), Sociological problems, Special Issue, pp. 74-91

Nickolov, L. 1992 – Sociologists in Bulgaria Today, International Sociology, vol. 7, (1).Slavova, P. 2005 – An Accidental Encounter with the World of Sociology, in: Keen, M; Mucha, J. (eds)

Autobiographies of Transformation: Lives in Central and Eastern Europe (Routledge/ESA Stu-dies in European Societies), Routledge.

Issue 6 Dimitrov.pdf · “The genuine history of sociological theory must ex-tend beyond the...

Documents

Transcript of Issue 6 Dimitrov.pdf · “The genuine history of sociological theory must ex-tend beyond the...