Abstract
Historical binaries constrain Turner’s narrative, American Sociology: From Pre-Disciplinary to Post-Normal. The identification of mid-20th century American sociology as a gold standard for judging predisciplinary and post-normal sociology paints the epistemological challenges of the 1960s and 1970s in an unnecessarily negative light. The conflation of feminization with feminism reduces the contributions of Sociologists for Women in Society and collapses them into a narrative about a generational struggle between men. The focus on the elite-mass dynamics of academic labor markets misses the vibrancy of the broader disciplinary project of contemporary sociology. The prospects for 21st century sociology are more positive than Turner imagines. Rather than a scientific failure with a damaged brand, 21st century sociology offers a more reflexive and culturally nuanced form of sociology appropriate for the deeply unequal, global and mediatized social world we inhabit.
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Notes
It is worth noting that at the high point in the 1950s and 1960s, the department at the center of the Merton-Lazarsfeld model of normal sociology also contained two deeply influential critics of normal sociology, Robert Lynd and C. Wright Mills.
“The sixties” trope creates a period effect by blurring the events of the years of the 1960s together and in many cases also the events of the 1970s. In US political discourse, the election of Ronald Reagan as President safely ends the period covered by the sixties trope (Townsley 2001).
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Townsley, E. Science, Expertise and Profession in the Post–Normal Discipline. Am Soc 46, 18–28 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12108-014-9246-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12108-014-9246-5