Abstract
Articles in both the popular press and sociology journals have argued that between the mid-1970s and mid-1980s sociologists became more pessimistic about the intellectual vitality of their field. Data from the 1969, 1975, and 1984 Carnegie surveys of faculty at U.S. universities suggest that sociologists’ assessments of their field changed little over this period. In several respects the “sociology in the doldrums” thesis of the 1980s resembles the 1970s “blue collar blues” thesis; in both cases sociologists gave structural explanations for apparently nonexistent trends.
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Hargens, L. Sociologists’ assessments of the state of sociology, 1969–1984. Am Soc 21, 200–208 (1990). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02692421
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02692421