Abstract
Decisions, such as the one to abolish the sociology department at Washington University, do not happen over night. In this article, we trace the fine, if at times fraught, history of sociology at WU, from 1906 to 1989. The department has been home to two presidents of the ASA and location for exciting work in both theory and research. We note that the demise of the department has been a long time in the making, although the death blow was struck as if it constituted the necessary slaughter of the weak. A conservative university has eliminated a once-stellar department and, in so doing, dismissed the relevance of social thought in this modern era.
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where he has been on the faculty since 1958. He served as the departmental chairman for the sociology department from 1976 to 1985, and as the director of the Social Science Institute from 1963 to 1976. He is the author or editor of seven books and approximately 200 published scientific articles, reports, and essays, chiefly in the areas of alcoholism, drug addiction, criminology, mass media, and the delivery of health care.
Deirdre Boden received her Ph.D. from the University of California at Santa Barbara in 1984 and has been assistant professor of sociology at Washington University since 1986. Her forthcoming publications includeThe Business of Talk: Organizations in Action, Polity Press: 1990,Talk and Social Structure, (with Don H. Zimmerman) Polity Press: 1990; andNow/Here: Time, Space, and Modernity (with Roger Friedland) University of California Press: forthcoming.
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Pittman, D.J. Sociology at Washington University in St. Louis: History and reflections, 1906–1989. Am Soc 20, 305–321 (1989). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02691813
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02691813