Volume 16, Number 4 · March 11, 1971
Has Sociology a Future?
By Tom Bottomore
The Coming Crisis of Western Sociology
by Alvin W. Gouldner
Basic Books, 528 pp., $12.50
Recent Sociology No. 1
edited by Hans Peter Dreitzel
Macmillan, 298 pp., $1.95 (paper)
Embattled Reason: Essays on Social Knowledge
by Reinhard Bendix
Oxford, 395 pp., $9.75
Sociology in its Place and Other Essays
by W.G. Runciman
Cambridge, 236 pp., $7.50
The 'new sociology' was proclaimed some years ago. Growing mainly out of the work of C. Wright Mills, it was connected, through him, with the doctrines and movements of the New Left in the later 1950s and early 1960s. But just as the New Left grew old quite quickly and was supplanted by still newer movements, so also the new sociology, without ever having established itself properly as a distinct style of social thought, has been pushed aside by yet more recent attempts to give sociology a fresh orientation. In less than a decade we have had 'critical sociology,' 'radical sociology,' and such innovations, less closely tied to political commitments, as ethnomethodology and structuralism—not to speak of the Sociology Liberation Movement, which is perhaps more a mode of feeling than of thinking. Now Alvin Gouldner offers us yet another diversion in the shape of 'reflexive sociology,' or the sociologist contemplating his own navel.
Review, 3901 words
To read the full text of this piece, please choose one of the following options:
|
If you are already a subscriber to the Review's electronic edition, please sign in: |
To subscribe to the electronic edition, please press the button below. |
To purchase access to this article for $3, please press the button below. |