Abstract
Peter Baehr, Katelin Albert, Eleanore Townsley and Neil Gross raise a variety of issues in relation to American Sociology: From Pre-Disciplinary to Post-Normal (2014a). In response, I defend the claim that the revival of sociology enrollments after the 1980s owes something to the concentration on gender issues and the feminization of sociology. I defend the claim that the response to the enrollment crisis was a rational strategy which succeeded. I also consider challenges to my depiction of the caste system in American sociology against the idea that there is a continuous distribution of merit. I argue that the changes in American sociology during this period need to be understood against the larger backdrop of the transformation to post-normal science and the acceptance of openly partisan academic fields. Although I attempted to record rather than evaluate these developments, I respond to Baehr and Townsley’s attempt to discern an evaluative stance, and provide a context for this response in relation to the problem of expertise.
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Turner, S. Going Post-Normal: A Response to Baehr, Albert, Gross, and Townsley. Am Soc 46, 51–64 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12108-014-9247-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12108-014-9247-4