The Deterioration of American Academic Sociology (And Why It Matters)

by David John Ayers Ph.D. April 2009, Center for Vision and Values, Grove City College

A female professor at a top university privately tells a graduate student that he should hope fervently for the Democratic candidate for President to win that year. This would mean a lot more federal domestic spending, and thus, more jobs and funding for people like them. Hope is raised in the student’s mind—perhaps now the hours spent deciphering the almost impenetrable jargon and convoluted, over-done statistics in the recent journals he’s been plowing through for his master’s project will pay off. Too bad—she later informs him that his Republican, evangelical, and pro-life views will hurt him in the profession unless he learns to hide these sympathies, before cutting him off from most future contact.

A speaker at a professional association meeting tells hundreds of assembled scholars to produce evidence that the death penalty does not deter homicide. Apparently oblivious to the notion that one’s conclusions should follow rather than precede one’s research, she points out that her organization needs “objective” data they can use in their on-going efforts to illegalize execution. Around the same time, a member of the latter audience is “asked,” along with other members of a graduate school class, to wear the union pins his professor is passing out in the midst of a major strike. This same poor soul is advised by a well-meaning friend that, given his conservative views on marriage and family issues, he is better off focusing his studies in areas “no one cares about,” to stay out of trouble and make it easier to secure good academic positions. Perhaps it is fortunate, then, that his Ph.D. program has stopped offering a specialization in classic marriage and family scholarship, having abandoned this for “gender studies.”

Meanwhile, the editors of a book for which he has written a chapter critical of feminism inform him that, while his essay has been enthusiastically accepted, they wish to let him withdraw the piece quietly if he would like. Why? Knowing the sharp ideological biases of his academic discipline, they do not wish to see this young man’s career undermined at the outset.

On the other side of the country a scholar is still stinging from the response from within his discipline to his work documenting harm to white males as a result of affirmative action quotas. After experiencing what he later called “instant excommunication” in which he “simply ceased to exist” within his academic field, he takes a faculty position and title in Government rather than the former, wisely electing to gradually submerge his ties to, and detach from, it.

Does this sound like a field you would encourage talented people to enter? Does this describe a discipline people should turn to for cogent insight and balanced, fair information about the world? Perhaps not! Welcome to the world of modern academic American Sociology.

Without pulling punches, the highly respected Sociologist Irving Louis Horowitz made this startling claim in 1994:

“…in a period when the fields of social science—from the policy sciences to social planning, from public administration to demography—are expanding, one area, sociology, with a distinguished lineage and tradition, is suffering hard times. Indeed, sociology threatens to join phrenology as a pseudoscience and to share the fate of occult studies in being viewed more as a privileged language of dedicated elites than as a field of investigation broadly reflective of public needs… we are witnessing no general retreat to a prescientific approach to social issues. We are witnessing the decomposition of one field, sociology.”

As Horowitz pointed out, this does not necessarily mean the dismantling of academic Sociology programs, given the realities of tenure and departmental entrenchment (though it is true that by the early 1990s notable Sociology programs such as at the University of Rochester, and Washington University of St. Louis, had been dissolved, and more were on the block). Indeed, Sociology degree completions at the bachelor, masters, and doctoral levels have all increased steadily since the low period of the mid-1980s to early 1990s. The deterioration of Sociology is not about numbers and departmental security. Rather, it involves the crumbling of Sociology’s ties to the broader social world it claims to study, and of the field itself internally.

Sociology is increasingly unable to speak intelligently and persuasively to the public. Contrast the paucity of major, national thinkers in Sociology today with such previous, towering contributors to the national conversation as David Riesman (The Lonely Crowd) , William Whyte (The Organization Man), Daniel Bell (The Coming of Post-Industrial Society, The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism), or Robert Bellah (Habits of the Heart).

This failure to engage the public square is influenced by many factors. The poor writing and heavy, unnecessary use of convoluted phraseology and hyper-technical jargon Sociology has become famous for has certainly accelerated its obscurity and separation from the world of everyday men. Closely associated with this is the misuse, among too many empirical Sociologists, of overly complicated and dense statistics, or impenetrable qualitative analytical strategies, where far simpler approaches would suffice.

Perhaps the chief problem Sociology has is that it has lost the trust and respect of the public. Some of this is due to a general perception of mediocrity, which has not been helped by the perceived, languishing quality of graduate students in Sociology relative to those in many other social science fields.

But probably the most important reason for the public’s lack of trust in Sociology is its widespread left-wing politicization. In Sociology today, reasoned scholarship is too often displaced by emotion, over-emphasis upon victimization of designated “oppressed” groups, and special agenda politics. Meanwhile, increasingly the very possibility of applying rationality and science to understanding and improving the human condition is mocked. The mantra “race, class, gender,” or terms like “oppression” and “hegemony,” dominate the section and paper lists of every American Sociological Association conference in recent memory. Evaluation of work within the field is often based more on “whose side it is on” than upon considerations such as quality and accuracy. Meanwhile, the pictures of society presented by Sociologists are increasingly “crude caricatures” rather than “theories of society patiently built up from empirical investigations.” As such, everyday people cannot relate to these images. When even liberal publications such as The New York Times take Sociology to task for being dominated by leftist ideological extremism, the field has a public perception problem.

Sociology stands well to the Left of the American public, speaks a different language, is ignorant or indifferent to much of the reality of everyday life, is often seen as academically mediocre, while remaining very hostile to and dismissive of viewpoints from the Right or even middle that many people take quite seriously. Its relation to the public square has deteriorated.

Internally, Sociology is crumbling as a unified discipline into various sub-specialties which are increasingly disconnected from and unable to communicate coherently with each other. Often, the same jargon and overly complicated modes of analysis that separate Sociology as a whole from everyday people also helps to divide the field into sub-disciplinary ghettoes. Theories within each specialty become detached from general Sociological theory. Often, these areas of expertise come to completely command the identity of Sociological practitioners within them. Sociologists go from studying crime to being “Criminologists,” from analyzing population dynamics to being “Demographers,” from researching public bureaucracies to being scholars of Public Administration, and so on. As these subject areas become more autonomous, scholars often just become schooled in them directly, bypassing Sociology entirely.

Sociologists are also already increasingly separated from, and even in conflict with, each other based on identity (race, ethnicity, class, sex, sexual orientation, etc.). The idea that only members of a group can properly understand those inside the group (except apparently white males, who the rest can supposedly understand perfectly) has become commonplace in the field.

Political activism in Sociology has also generally rendered it prone to often intense internal conflict. Indeed, in many colleges and universities Sociology is often known for its intradepartmental fighting, and some of the best stories the present author remembers from graduate school had to do with brawls between Sociology faculty members (which he also saw played out in front of him).

Finally, while theoretical diversity is to some extent healthy and understandable in a field dealing with such a broad range of areas, and one of the most complex entities imaginable—human society—the current situation in Sociology can best be described as destructive theoretical fragmentation. Simply peruse any complete Modern Sociological Theory text, and the rapid proliferation of theories in recent decades, compared to the much smaller number of major systems up into the 1970s and even early 1980s, will be quite obvious.

In sum, Sociology is increasingly divided by political and personal rancor, specialty, group loyalty and identity, and theory. It is truly experiencing internal deterioration.

In the remainder of this paper, each of the above factors will be explored in more detail. Following this, we will consider why non-Sociologists should be concerned with the negative developments in this field. That is, what difference does this make to the general public?

DETERIORATION IN RELATIONSHIPS WITH THE LARGER PUBLIC

Hegemony of Gobbledygook?

Some things are just plain complicated, and even the best-written explanations of them may prove to be tough going for the specialist, not to mention the uninitiated. Similarly, technical terms are sometimes necessary, being the most efficient means to express particular concepts. There is certainly no reason to object when Sociologists have to write complex treatises about tangled, multi-leveled realities. Sometimes, they honestly need to use terms that are not normally employed in everyday life, or which otherwise have specialized meanings (such as “anomie,” “charisma,” “role conflict,” or “status set”). But academicians who unnecessarily use unintelligible jargon and byzantine explanations to discuss realities that could be stated more clearly should not be surprised to find themselves the subject of ridicule. The impression that outsiders attending Sociology conferences often walk away with is that Sociologists are a professionally insecure lot, trying to “give an appearance of profundity and complexity to concepts that turn out to be rather ordinary.” As eminent Sociologist Nathan Glazer notes,

“…sociology indulges in a great deal of impenetrable language, once more commonly found in efforts to make the discipline look like a science, now more commonly serving a political agenda, though one has to be an initiate to realize that some political agenda isbeing invoked”.

Perhaps the use of incomprehensible modes of expression has some precedent in the field. Harvard University’s Talcott Parsons, perhaps Sociology’s pre-eminent theorist in the 1950s and 1960s, was known for his jargon and capacity for making the simple, complicated. Consider this gem, drawn almost at random from the pages of The Social System:

“The second type of purely expressive symbolism with respect to which the allocative problem arises is composed of physical and cultural objects in their ‘style pattern’ significance, both the style of the object itself and the symbolic significance of possessing that object, in certain quantities and qualities, as part of the style of life of the actor in question. The ordering of this aspect of the reward system involves some rather complex considerations.”

At great professional risk, the present author would like to suggest that Dr. Parsons is referring to the fact that some people are better able than others to secure the status symbols (including non-physical things such as country club memberships and expressions of respect by others) needed to maintain their desired lifestyles. But then, how can one be absolutely sure?

But with respect to his unintelligibility, Parsons was not the norm for Sociology in the 1950s. In fact, as Alvin Gouldner pointed out, his “tortured style” often made him the object of “snickering” from other Sociologists, and is probably at least one key reason his theory fell out of favor. Not only lay people, but other Sociologists, found his prose “forbidding.”

Yet by the late 1980s, we find Sociologists much more likely to use what Lewis Coser artfully dismissed as “sociologese.” How else do we find an observer at the 1988 American Sociological Association annual conference informing us that

“…a panelist discussing the effects of society on women’s sexual habits had this to say: ‘In the emphasis on diversity, the notion of hegemonic discourse is deconstructed, even among those who claim to have one…the exploration of sexuality within feminism is attentive to the postmodern concern with the multiplying mutations of the self.’…One panelist used the word ‘script’ to mean…a preference, a form of behavior. The subject was homosexual practices and the panelist talked about ‘recreational scripts,’ meaning casual sexual practices, and ‘relational scripts,’ meaning long-lasting, romantic relationships….A panelist describing black education in the antebellum South said that the failure to provide adequate funds in this area showed ‘an absence of democratic hegemony.’ She might, more simply, have said that it described the absence of democracy… ‘distributional conservative notions’ [was] an apparent reference to conservative economic policies...and ‘the discourse of status ambivalence in clothing and fashion’ [was used] to suggest, apparently, confusion in the ways people, eager to make a good impression, choose what they wear.”

So perhaps Sociologists got the message twenty years ago, and the field has since become a bastion of clarity? Sadly, this has not been the case. Another hapless New York Times reporter, for example, had this experience at the ASA annual conference in 2000:

“I arrived early for ‘Confronting Racism, Sexism and Homophobia in Academia,’ drawn by a hard-sell come-one: ‘This thematic session problematizes institutional structures and culture in which women and minority academics function….The second theme…will focus on the questioning of prevailing paradigms in sociology that despite unreal claims display provincialism that is neither reflective nor representative of the experiences of women and minorities.’ It is the rare sociologist who can forgo a paradigm or two, but ‘problematize’ began to sound as though somebody was kidding the profession’s pretensions….The first panelist[’s]…specialty of ‘spatiality’…I came to understand was the study of how the allotment of physical space is used by the powers that be to keep others in a subordinate condition…[her] paper was so clogged with the craft’s jargon (‘access to gender space’, ‘maxi- and micro-analysis’, ‘complex multirational’) that it left little breathing space.”

Or consider this zinger from last year, an abstract introducing a 2008 article in a major Sociological journal by a Sociologist at Montclair State University in New Jersey:

“In this article I first examine the ways in which the dual terms of structure and agency are used in sociological theories. Then, relying on Lacan’s notions of split-subject, the formula of sexuation, and forms of discourses, and Laclau’s theory of ideological hegemony, I argue that agency in most current sociological formulations is but a posited other of the structure that dissolves if examined closely; it is similar to the Lacanian fantasmic object. To resolve the fundamental paradoxes in structure-agency theories, I reformulate structures as paradoxical, incomplete, and contingent symbolic formations that are always partial and unstable due to their inclusion and exclusion operations. Consequently, social transformational agency consists in the structural inconsistencies that open structural gaps available to social actors. As a result, agency can be recognized in two moments conceived as two symbolic gestures. From this perspective, agency as such is always a possibility qua potential and its efficacy is always retroactively recognized-actualized from within a new social structure or symbolic order.”

There are certainly still many Sociologists who can speak and write clearly, without pretentious jargon and tortured writing styles, to those both within and outside their field. Many decry the growth, tolerance, and publication of this kind of nonsense. At the ASA annual conference in 1988, as Lewis Coser complained about “sociologese,” Todd Gitlin “lambasted his colleagues for ‘inward-turning, indecipherable prose…that crosses the line from complexity to obscurity.’” Anthony Haynor and Joseph Varacalli have also denounced “the inaccessibility of discourse” of much Sociology. There is still too much bad writing and plain old mumbo jumbo, however, in Sociological books, journals, conferences and classrooms. It is not going away. If the discipline wants to advance internally and to be respected externally, it needs to admit these faddish emperors have no clothes, and end the hegemony of gobbledygook.

Quantophrenia

In his book Fads and Foibles in Modern Sociology and Related Sciences, Pitirim Sorokin criticized much Sociology for what he dubbed “quantophrenia.” This included, among other things, an unhealthy, uncritical, flawed use of statistics. Sorokin used numbers all the time, and thus, did not seem to object to employing them in appropriate ways. But he did feel that too many Sociologists thought that they needed to use fancy statistics to be “real scientists.”

Though his criticisms of statistical misuse in this book were at times overdone and misdirected themselves, if he was correct at all that the flawed use of statistics is a kind of mental illness of modern Sociology, even many ardent defenders of the appropriate use of numbers must admit that Sociology may be in serious need of therapy. Graduate students often spend so much time in the study of statistics that they have little left over to master other key aspects even of methodology. Too often, things are quantified that are best left qualitative. Converting some social realities to numbers destroys things like richness, depth, and context, and might, like jargon, obfuscate rather than clarify. Perhaps even more to the point with too much published research in modern American Sociology, it makes no sense to use an elephant gun to shoot a chipmunk. Some statistics are just overdone, with very complicated analyses employed where far simpler techniques would work just as well and communicate much better. As Glazer put it, “There is a good deal of work in sociology in which the legitimate effort to quantify…is pursued to an extent that seems to add little to what cruder numbers…can do.”

It would be easy to multiply examples, but one from a recent, top Sociology journal will do. The authors are comparing the career trajectories and success of feature film actors who, across different movies, play very different character types versus those who essentially play the same sort of role repeatedly, the costs and benefits of each strategy under different conditions and career situations, and so on. At some point in the study, they need to consider the case of actors that are associated with particular genres versus those who are not. A legitimate concern is to see if the actors are tied to the genre directly, or if this apparent link is only due to their close association with particular directors. For example, was John Wayne an actor that does Westerns, or was he just closely tied to John Ford, who directed a lot of Westerns? The problem is, instead of just explaining to the reader using clear language and logic why they need to make this distinction, and how they intend to do it, they give us the following “rationale” for doing so:

“…it is possible that genre-based typecasting actually reflects the social boundaries around cliques of actors and directors (who may focus on the genre). A necessary condition for this to be true is that there be significant concentration in actors’ tendency to work with particular directors. To calculate such concentration, we…calculate a Herfindahl score for the actor’s concentration of work with a small set of directors, [complicated statistical formula inserted here and “explained”]….We then take the mean Herfindahl over all actors in the sample to generate our measure of aggregate concentration of relationships with particular directors: [another hellish statistical formula inserted]….[we then] observe the level of concentration when controlling for the number of films in which actors appeared [refer to really ugly statistical table]…the level of concentration declines with increases in the number of films…to test whether the observed concentration…exceeds what would be found through random pairings….we conduct 1,000 random permutations of the actor-director vectors for each of the three years under observation…. Results…revealed that the observed concentration in the actor-director network significantly exceeded the level that could be due to random chance…This finding reinforces our need to control for such network ties in our analysis of the effects of typecasting on career outcomes. In particular, we must make sure that actors who are presumed to be categorized in a particular genre are not simply connected to a director…who specializes in that genre.

No, these types of examples are not rare in empirically oriented Sociology today. Quantophrenia? The reader can decide. The present author would like to introduce a new term for this kind of thing, in time to grab credit for it and pile up professional citations: “hyper-statistification.” Please do the author the courtesy of noting where you saw it first.

Leftocracy

Sociology has historically tilted to the Left. Despite this, well into the 1960s, it had two major features that helped it maintain balance and fairness as it addressed social realities, not perfectly of course, but substantially. First, there was more of an ideological spectrum represented among leading figures, including those with more conservative orientations such as Robert Nisbet, George Homans (“a life-long Republican and supporter of conservative views in economics”) and Pitirim Sorokin. More importantly, as Seymour Martin Lipset recounts, despite the Left-ward inclinations of many top Sociologists,

“…unlike many activist students and leftist faculty from the late 1960s on, we, and the field generally, tried to keep our politics and our scholarship separate. Though some of us worked on political topics, we felt duty bound to be as objective as possible, to report results that contradicted our ideological concerns following, unknowingly, the advice of Max Weber. Weber had written that every scholar had a ‘party line,’ in terms of his academic concerns, if not internal politics. Given this, researchers should be extremely careful not to easily accept and propagate findings that agreed with their line. If the results disagreed with their basic views, then, they were probably valid, but if they coincided, he recommended having the analysis redone, just to make sure it was correct.”

This is a fairly good synopsis of Weber’s beliefs on how social science scholars should handle the issue of doing research about matters they held strong values on. They should keep their values and even as private citizens work for what they believe in but strive for objective truth in their scholarship and consciously work to not allow the latter to be perverted by their ideological commitments. This included ethical obligations whereby, in the classroom, the social science professor should instruct students, not indoctrinate them in his or her ideologies.

Sadly, as Lipset went on to note,

“The 1960s brought an end to the dominance of the emphasis on objectivity. The civil rights and antiwar movements strengthened radical activism among students, graduate students, even some older figures. They wanted to see sociology and the other social sciences become activist and openly radical and political.”

During this general time frame, both C. Wright Mills and Alvin Gouldner published major attacks on the idea of the kind of “value-free objectivity” espoused by then-mainstream Sociology. Stating that this stance against bias was really a thin disguise for being “‘sold out’ to the established interests,” these critiques of scholarly impartiality enjoyed an increasingly wide following in the years to come, being blended with the various ideologies espoused by the particular Sociologist (for example, the Marxists “praxis,” or feminist “consciousness raising”).

In 1993, Haynor and Varacalli stated that “sociology is hopelessly politicized.” Though their indictment included some moderates or conservatives who work for government, military or corporations, they said, the “radical left is in firm control of many [academic] departments.” About the same time, someone as well-versed in the field as Irving Louis Horowitz could agonize about “the ultra-leftist effort to co-opt sociology,” which rather than leading to freedom in Sociological research and teaching, was actually an “assault upon liberal values as a set of operational guidelines for sociological work….” Or consider Nathan Glazer, who asserted that “Hardly a discipline in the liberal academy is as politically correct as sociology….” And it was something that, for radicals of all stripes, was ultimately turning Sociology into little more than a means to their ideological ends. Here is Horowitz (no conservative, he) again:

The new politicization of sociology is an attempt to ideologically redefine the tasks as well as the operations of research. Not only the general theory but also the specific practice of sociology is at stake. What starts as pluralistic definitions of sociology ends as monolithic practice….The rhetorical transformation of sociology into a constant barrage of ideological beliefs is part of an on-going struggle for the minds of the masses. For the devotees of partisanship as truth, sociology has simply become a turf, a terrain, on which such ideological struggles are carried out.

A good example is the response of Sociologist John Scanzoni to Norval Glenn’s (excellent and valuable) general assessment of family texts, which had rated Scanzoni’s quite low. The latter’s rebuttal reveals the overt tying of Sociological work to advancing ideological agendas, and rejection of objectivity. It certainly fits what Joseph Lopreato and Timothy Crippen called “the politics of advocacy and the ideology of self-righteousness” that characterizes too much of contemporary American Sociology. Here are some snippets:

“There is a disquieting theme throughout his writings that at best can be taken as an intended disregard for women’s interests, and at worst a backdoor effort to put the brakes on women’s historic struggles to gain social justice….There is no such thing as ‘objective assessment…the task of public policy is not...to ‘recapture’ or ‘regain’ anything. It is instead to invent workable structural arrangements that, among other things, enhance the aspirations for autonomy and equity that live at the core of Western society. We are moreover obliged to make certain those arrangements simultaneously foster a sense of responsibility for what Daniel Bell (1990) has called ‘the public household.’ In my view, this perilous balancing act is the pivotal challenge that must be conveyed to students and other citizens alike. Accordingly, we must do our research, write our books and articles, and shape our teaching so as to encourage persons to manage that challenge—to look to the future rather than the past.”

Nor is the ideological bias of the field hidden from the general public. Too often, in public settings Sociologists come off as parodies of themselves, creating fodder for late-night comedians more than serious scholarship that influences public dialogue and action. The New York Times coverage of the 2000 ASA convention that was touched on earlier was headlined “Thinkers Who Would Be Doers See Social Injustice Wherever They Turn.” The official theme for that conference was “Oppression, Domination, and Liberation: Challenges for the 21st Century.” Here are some of the session titles from it (besides the one given in the earlier quotefrom this article), which the Times reporter said “cried for a colonoscopy”:

‘Beyond Triple Jeopardy: Women of Color, Public Policy and the Limits of Citizenship’; ‘Gender Oppression and Gender Democracy in Global Market Society’; ‘Postmodern Critiques of Science and the Rise of Reactionary Modernism in South Asia’; ‘Social Definitions of Virtue and Blame: Moral Fault in Child Care’; ‘Who Needs the Worker?: Restructuring in the 21 st Century’;…‘Gender Discrimination Revisited; Subtle, Blatant, and Covert’….

This is sharp public ridicule of the extreme Leftism on display at this conference, and in the pages of a pretty liberal newspaper. It should not surprise anyone that Sociology professors such as the self-described “pro-feminist gay Chicano” speaker at this conference—like Rodney Dangerfield—“can’t get no respect.”

Part of this Leftist orientation has been a commitment to a kind of hyper-relativism that is both unnecessary and illogical, and which seriously undermines Sociology’s ability to speak to pressing social issues. Haynor and Varacalli lament: “There is nothing intrinsic to the sociological enterprise that must imply the philosophy of moral relativism and derogate the moral. Sadly this has not been the case.”

A good example is what James Jasper, in an otherwise excellent book, lays out as a ground assumption in The Art of Moral Protest:

As the ‘postmodernists’ insist, we have no universal absolute truths on which we can construct our beliefs, no firm grounds that we can always take for granted. We have only our own cultural traditions, and the traditions of others.

Besides making moral protest ultimately insensible to those who engage in it (most moral protesters try to change things which they believe are really “wrong,” like sex slavery), this relativistic claim rests on poor logic. As Ellen Klein has noted, applying her critique to rampant relativism in feminist circles:

“Relativism…maintains the position that ‘There are no absolute truths.’…if the claim is maintained as absolutely true, then it is false…if it is held to be only relatively true, then one is within her rights to hold the claim that ‘There are absolute truths,’ simultaneously, as also (relatively) true…the relativist…rejects the law of noncontradiction….”

Finally, political correctness leads to scholarly mediocrity, which is hardly likely to raise public esteem for the field. Testing assertions by correct politics rather than by logic, facts, and sound methodology lowers the bar, making it easy to get shoddy work accepted. It can hardly be expected that Sociology will be able to consistently attract the brightest students to such a field.

Here, Lopreato and Crippen are absolutely “on the money”:

“When science and politics are mixed, both activities may suffer….Political agendas give rise to ruinous deficits. They tend to produce superficially trained professors who resist intellectual challenges and demand little from their students beyond the ideologies and banalities that led them to sociology in the first place.”

Lipset was concerned that an early 1990s survey of 144 deans, and faculty in nine disciplines who agreed with them, ranked Sociology last, among academic departments, in research and teaching. He noted that Graduate Record Examination (GRE) scores in Sociology had been declining, relative to other fields, from the mid-1960s through the late 1980s, and pointed out that Sociologists themselves rated their own “teaching less positively,” and “their own research as average.” This is supported by much more recent reports that suggest that students with intended graduate concentrations in Sociology have lower mean GRE scores than those planning to enter other academic social science fields.

INTERNAL DETERIORATION

Theory of the Month Club?

While the present author is not convinced that their call to unify Sociology within an evolutionary biology framework is the answer to the field’s troubles, he certainly agrees with Lopreato and Crippen that the theoretical fragmentation of Sociology is “corrosive,” leading to “unbridled confusion” and the “rampant feeling that we are getting nowhere and likely there to remain.” These authors go on to cite a study of Sociologists’ theoretical allegiances that show eight theories that each hold significant percentages, plus “eclectic” (about 25%) and “atheoretical,” and an “other” category that encompassed no less than eight additional theoretical systems. This was in 1992; more have been added since then. Moreover, these are general theories. Within substantive areas, the recent theoretical proliferation is also extreme. For example, examine the “theories” chapters in any major Criminology text.

Looking at the field of social movements theories, James Jasper points out that new theories are often created for trivial reasons: “Every new concept or variable is inflated into an entire theory….” Moreover, there is the “tendency of young scholars to carve out niches by attacking established scholars and their paradigms.” Over time, the accomplishments of earlier thinkers are lost, and any sense of “cumulative” understanding and theory-building is destroyed. Aggravating all of this is an either-or approach to theoretical models; “only one model can be right.” Whole theories are inspired by limited cases, as when “…the Nazis inspired mass society theories; bureaucratized trade unions gave us rational-choice models….” All of this is a prescription for fragmentation, not progress.

Every Specialist to Himself

The afore-described division of Sociology into sub-specialties further exacerbates the field’s internal separation. In fact, it blends with the issue of the problem of theoretical disunity, as theories within specialty areas command greater attention than general Sociological models, and the former are increasingly decoupled from the latter. The specialty divisions in the field also connect to the issues of excessive jargon and hyper-complex statistics (or even some obscure qualitative methods). Sociologists working in different domains of interest generate their own language and analytical approaches which are often unintelligible to their Sociological brethren specializing in other areas.

As earlier touched on, Horowitz noted that over time these specializations begin to chop pieces out of the field, becoming separate entire academic fields and departments in their own right, and successfully claiming ownership over their particular domains of inquiry. Lopreato and Crippen aptly referred to this as “predation by applied social disciplines…[as well as] incursions by prestigious social sciences and by branches of evolutionary biology….” They believe the survival of Sociology is at stake, a worry expressed sharply by one of the present writer’s graduate professors in a seminar on Sociological theory. One is able to conjure an image of the weakened animal having pieces torn away by lions he kicks at but cannot repel.

Is the Personal Political? Or Is the Political a Bit Too Personal?

Divisions of Sociology because of identity politics, questioning scholars’ abilities or rights to speak to realities outside their tribe, or to critique the claims of self-appointed representatives of “protected” groups, are a serious problem in the field today. Men questioning feminist theory, or whites discoursing on high African American out-of-wedlock birth and crime rates (especially those unwilling to blame racism)—beware! This is also obviously associated with the New Left tilt of the field.

Whole issue areas are declared “off-limits” to entire groups of trained scholars unlucky enough to have the “wrong” gender, race, or sexual orientation. Ad hominem attacks such as accusations of being “racist,” “sexist” and “homophobic” are too often applied to scholars outside the relevant groups who question ideas of Sociologists within them, or criticize notions thought to advance these groups’ interests. This is a mind-deadening and destructive situation. For example, it is clear that just these types of vehement personal attacks on Daniel Patrick Moynihan in the wake of his famous 1965 study of rising pathology in the black family chloroformed scholarly study of, as well as public discussion and action about, this urgent area. Meanwhile, the percentage of African American babies born out of wedlock soared from the almost one-quarter reported by Moynihan, to close to 70% today.

Consider this self-righteous response of the University of Florida’s Scanzoni to Glenn, who had the temerity to question the soundness of some elements of a 1972 book by feminist Jessie Bernard. One reads it wondering how any respectable journal could publish an unbalanced, personal attack like this is in what was supposed to be a forum for scholarly debate, especially when one compares these statements to what Glenn actually said.

…I am particularly incensed by the smugness of his attacks on the work of ourdistinguished and influential colleague, Jessie Bernard. I cannot imagine a scenario in which a male sociologist would, in comparable fashion, dismiss the contribution of a [sic] eminent male scholar….Although unable to respond, I have no doubt that Jessie, from the vantage of her eternal reward, is bemused by the spectacle of someone who, to my knowledge has never published any books at all (or at least any that I’ve heard of) arrogating to himself the lofty role of academic muckraker.

Finally, let’s return to our hapless New York Times reporter, Goodman, at the 2000 ASA conference. He is enjoying the aftermath of what had been a pretty balanced scholarly presentation.

“The analyses of the ups and downs of capitalism by…and the highs and lows of Marxism by…were pretty straightforward, offering data and historical interpretation, with little of the rah-rah spirit that flavored other panels. That was exactly what displeased some in the audience, who sought a call to action. One critic even hurled charges of ‘implicit racism’ at the panelists for not acknowledging the pernicious situation in South Africa, and had to be reprimanded by the moderator”.

Social Science or Martial Art?

The present writer thought that graduate school stories by professors of famous fights in the field, including the professor who decked a graduate student who insulted him, with an upper-cut to the jaw, were pretty hilarious. Until he found himself, too often, being the unfortunate student in the middle of some of these petty fights. The quotes in the previous section (above) certainly illustrate the rancor that often characterizes Sociologists who disagree. Many of these personal conflicts are aggravated by sociologists’ political activism and by their constant engagement in divisive identity politics.

This is more than humorous or even sad, however. It obviously makes it much more difficult for Sociologists of different stripes to work together, something that must happen for the field to really progress and for its students to get the very best education.

This kind of thing has also hurt the reputation of academic Sociologists within their respective schools. Lipset quotes a Sociologist who is also (still) President of the State University of New York at Binghamton explaining, at a 1991 ASA convention, why Sociology programs often lose the support of administrators:

“I have found over the years that when I meet with administrators, as soon as they find outI am a sociologist, they all have a woeful story to tell about how they just can’t understand how their Sociology Department can continue to fight among themselves, and that if that continues, they will, in fact, write them off. They won’t channel resources to a department which is incapable of keeping its own house in order; that does not support the professional development of junior faculty or that seems more interested in petty squabbling than the atmosphere and reputation of the university. There are, in fact, many worthy competitors for funding”.

Lipset goes on to recount similar Sociological infighting he had witnessed often at many different universities. These included “tattling,” “snitching,” and going over people’s heads to complain about fellow department members, including accusations of incompetence. Administrators and faculty outside Sociology do not need these kinds of headaches. In fact, as he notes, the famous demise of the Sociology Department at Washington University of St. Louis, which was rejected by the school’s administrators and faculty alike, was preceded by such rancor. It “literally killed itself by bitter internal denunciations.”

So—Why Should Anyone Care?

So, at this point the reader may be concluding that the best thing to do is…nothing. Let Sociology “go the way of all flesh.” Ignore it and steer potential consumers (students, prospective employers of Sociologists, etc.) away from it. Allow it to destroy itself if that is its wish. The present author would certainly (sadly) include some conservative friends among those who would be perfectly happy to see Sociology simply disappear forever.

This is not a wise approach, and indeed, there are sound reasons that it is desirable for the discipline to get reinvigorated: to draw more fine thinkers and students representing a spectrum of viewpoints and interests, who are or will become capable of doing objective high-quality scholarship, excellent and fair teaching, clear and persuasive writing, while engaging in civilized discussions with each other and others. To be sure, there are many solid scholars in the field, and students learning it, who possess or are acquiring these qualities. With Sociologists of fair-mind and sound intellect who are still active, there is still much to build upon.

There is superb work being done in just about every area of Sociology, which truly advances our ability to understand, address problems, and take effective action, in the social world. This writer would certainly include Rodney Stark’s work in the Sociology of Religion, Robert Wuthnow in Religion and Culture, both Alan Wolfe and James Davison Hunter’s analyses of the contemporary “culture wars” issue (including their civilized disagreements in that area), scholarship by Norval Glenn, David Popenoe, Andrew Cherlin, and Linda Waite in the areas of marriage and family, William Julius Wilson’s work in race, poverty, and urban issues, Travis Hirschi on crime and delinquency, and anything by Peter Berger (who, though turning 80 this year, remains active), just to scratch the surface. Too often, this kind of first-rate scholarship is hard for people outside the field to see, blinded as they are by the smokescreen of hip lingo and trendy Leftism that often commands the public stage.

Consider the excellent Sociological tradition since the time of Max Weber, Emile Durkheim, Georg Simmel, Charles Horton Cooley and George Herbert Mead through the days ofHerbert Blumer, Robert Merton, David Riesman, Pitirim Sorokin, Robert Nisbet, William Whyte, Daniel Bell, and Erving Goffman, up until now. Thoughtful and properly educated Sociologists have a lineage that they can be proud of identifying with and preserving. It would be a terrible shame to see all of this work even partially “orphaned” by a Sociological descentcinto hopeless ignominy and obscurity.

Sociology is also quite a broad discipline, and as this writer tells his students, that can bea weakness, but it is also a strength. At its best it serves an integrative function that more specialized social science disciplines cannot. This is especially true if its various substantive areas are linked by common theoretical orientations, concepts, and questions. What are the relative influences of values versus material interests? This question, and studies that help to answer it, matter in criminal policy, race relations, social movements, family dynamics, the intersection of social class and politics, crime, predicting sexual behavior, and more. Or to name just another example, certain Sociological insights about the ways that reciprocity is tied to social cohesion and the human sense of fairness have relevance in almost every area of Sociological inquiry: how people select mates, marital harmony, public support for policies of criminal punishment, voting behavior, religious codes, to name a few. We need specialized legal scholars studying law, theologians tackling religion, historians looking at the rise of new religions over time, political scientists analyzing voter behavior and legislative dynamics; specialist activities such as these. It is valuable, however, to have Sociologists delve into these areas as well, from their unique conceptual, theoretical, and historical vantage points, tying them into a larger tapestry of society woven of many strands.

Next, readers tempted to write Sociology off need to skim college and universitycatalogues to note how many fundamental topical areas are commonly handled in and through the Sociology departments: crime, race relations, social class and mobility, marriage and the family, drug and alcohol abuse, the dynamics and future of American culture and cultural conflict, social movements, urban affairs, and so on. Is it really wise to leave a lot of the teaching in these areas to contentious, hyper-relativistic, anti-Western ideologues who see a stable society composed of solid two-parent families as a kind of prison, and who measure their success in the classroom by their ability to change opinions rather than to inform and educate?

To ask the question is to answer it. These students are all in the process of becoming the politicians, policy makers, business and church leaders, social workers, medical personnel, lawyers, educators, and so on of the near future. Should their education in these vital areas be balanced and thorough, rooted in solid data and clear logic? Or should it just be thinly veiled ideological indoctrination? In the 1980’s Michelle LaVaughn Robinson majored in Sociology at Princeton. Now, of course, she is Mrs. Barack Obama. The way her Princeton experience shaped her is going to matter, at least a little bit, to all of us.

Finally, the latter point can extend to the areas of public policy. To what extent do we want policy specialists in the types of areas identified in the last paragraph coming out of Sociology programs if the field is not significantly reformed (recognizing, of course, that there are still good programs out there too)? If not, do we want policy work in these applied areas tackled only by majors in “newer” specialty areas with little connection to other domains of social inquiry (Urban Planners, Demographers, Criminal Justice graduates, etc.)? Or done just by people “borrowed” from other social sciences, as when Economists do “law and society” scholarship, or studies of race relations, the influence of cultural factors on poverty, or the impact of gun control or the death penalty? Valuable as much of these latter contributions have been (and this writer is a big fan of Thomas Sowell, who as an Economist is one of the best Sociologists today), it still seems that a reinvigorated Sociology, with all of its integrative tendencies, is something that can be of great benefit.

Certainly, one of the aims in the present author’s own professional work has been to produce trained social scientists in the Sociological tradition able to take on political, policy, and cultural research unburdened by the numerous liabilities of too-much modern American academic Sociology that have been described herein.