Abstract
We present data from a survey of deans at colleges and universities throughout the USA on the relative status of disciplines. Findings indicate that the relative status of Sociology within the academy is low, although there are several specific areas of high status—namely, concerning community involvement and engagement. Our analyses also investigate which areas of activity are most closely associated with the overall prestige of disciplines. Findings indicate that research-oriented activities are the most influential, while student-oriented activities have a more ambivalent association with status. Based on those findings, we offer suggestions for raising the status of the discipline, based on the cultivation of natural synergies linking research, community engagement, student training, and focusing on the benefits of establishing social science research centers associated with Sociology departments.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
For all presentations of status rankings, frequencies for “most prestigious” and “second most prestigious” were summed. We used the same procedure for low status rankings, summing “least prestigious” with “second least prestigious.”
“Professionals themselves confer status on the exclusion of the nonprofessional. The public confers status on effective contact with the disorderly. In practice, the public prizes precisely those contacts with professionals want to escape. As professionals seek the admiration of their peers, they gradually withdraw from front-line practice. As a result, the whole profession gradually shifts toward purer practice until, as in the case of psychiatry, the original disorder is the shadow of a shade. This withdrawal from publicly charismatic disorders, both within individual careers and within professions over time, is a kind of drawing back into purity, a regression. Such professional regression is a fundamental feature of professional life” (Abbott 1981: 830). Or, as he sums up: “In the pursuit of intraprofessional status, professions and professionals thus tend to withdraw from precisely those problems for which the public gives them status” (p. 819).
References
Abbott, A. (1981). Status and Status Strain in the Professions. American Journal of Sociology, 86(4), 819–835.
Burawoy, M. (2005). For Public Sociology. American Sociological Review, 70(1), 4–28.
Dillman, D. A. (1978). Mail and telephone surveys: The total design method. New York: Wiley.
DiMaggio, P. J., & Powell, W. W. (1983). The iron cage revisited: Institutional isomorphism and collective rationality in organizational fields. American Sociological Review, 48, 147–160.
Hohm, C. F. (2008). Sociology in the academy: How the discipline is viewed by deans (2007 Pacific Sociological Association Presidential Address). Sociological Perspectives, 51(2), 235–258.
Keck, M. E., & Sikkink, K. (1998). Activists beyond borders: Advocacy networks in international politics. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Kuhn, T. S. (1970). The structure of scientific revolutions. New York: New American Library.
Meyer, J. W., & Rowan, B. (1977). Institutionalized organizations: Formal structure as myth and ceremony. American Journal of Sociology, 83, 340–363.
Marullo, S., & Strand, K. J. (Eds.) (2004). Community-based research. Washington, DC: American Sociological Association.
Mills, C. W. (1959). The sociological imagination. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Ostrow, J., Hesser, G., & Enos, S. (Eds.) (1999). Cultivating the sociological imagination: Concepts and models for service-learning in Sociology. Washington, DC: American Sociological Association.
Acknowledgements
Thanks to the following colleagues at California State University, Dominguez Hills for their assistance in conducting this research project: Ricky Bluthenthal, Ph.D., Professor of Sociology and Director of the Urban Community Research Center; Matt Mutchler, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Sociology; Heather Guentzel, M.P.H., M.A., Program Manager of the Urban Community Research Center; and Neisha Rhodes, B.A., Office Manager, the College of Natural and Behavioral Sciences, Also, we thank the American Sociological Association for an ASA Fund for the Advancement of the Discipline grant.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Appendix A
Appendix A
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Downey, D.J., Wagner, W.E., Hohm, C.F. et al. The Status of Sociology within the Academy: Where We Are, Why We’re There, and How to Change It. Am Soc 39, 193–214 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12108-008-9047-9
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12108-008-9047-9