Abstract
Recent essays have raised once again the issue of the “long-standing divide between sociology as an activist discipline vs. sociology as a science” (Turner in The American Sociologist, 50, 456–487, 2019: 456; House in Annual Review of Sociology, 45, 1–29, 2019). In this presentation, I would like to consider this issue in both its current form and its manifestations during what was perhaps the most tumultuous period in the history of American sociology, i.e. the decade from 1968 to 1977. I will first revisit the earlier period of conflict and turmoil and then turn the focus to sociology and some of the problems it faces today, not the least of which has been a decline in the number of members since the end of President Obama’s first term. Although there are indeed certain similarities between these two periods, I will argue that the differences far outweigh those commonalities which, I believe, is a result of an increased democratization within our profession. An important bridge connecting sociology’s past with our present era exists in the collective memory of the post-war, or “baby boom” generation of sociologists. Many of that generation experienced first-hand the tensions and tumult surrounding the Vietnam War and changes within the ASA that led to the eventual election in 1976 of Alfred McClung Lee as the ASA’s 67th President. As a generation, those born between 1946 and 1964 are a diverse group but the research and scholarship produced by this group has been marked largely by the ideal of the scientific pursuit of knowledge of important sociological issues.
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Notes
For more on the Vietnam War-era polls, see (https://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/active_learning/explorations/vietnam/vietnam_pubopinion.cfm).
Almost none of the “older” sociologists could be considered “old” even by the standards of fifty years ago. Karl Schuessler was 53 at the time of the ASA Vietnam War vote and Reinhard Bendix was a year younger (b. 1916). Most of the older generation were actually only in their forties at the time. Among this generation was Peter H. Rossi, born in 1921; Jackson Toby, born in 1925; and Jack P. Gibbs, who came into the world in 1927. Rossi was 47 during the 1968 ASA Convention; Toby was 43; and Professor Gibbs was 41. Despite their youth, they were all on the older, conservative side of the generational split that became obvious in 1968. Gibbs viewed the left discontents to be, basically, irrelevant. He wrote (1979: p. 81), that “Exhortations from the left notwithstanding, sociology is seldom used by the powerful, the simple reason being that sociology is not useful." Toby remained until his death this past June (2023) convinced that sociology was antithetical to social action research (2019). Perhaps unsurprisingly Toby was highly critical of Alfred McClung Lee and those who placed his name on the ballot.
Mannheim’s theory of generational change was dismissed by the then-emerging Frankfurt School members, particularly Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno, who considered such a theory as having no moral or social foundation. An endless repetition of ideologies being replaced by ideologies which become reified as new ideologies lacked any basis or foundation for creating a more just society (Jay, 1974).
The first issue of Footnotes appeared in January 1973. Prior to this initial appearance of Footnotes, the ASA sponsored two outlets for professional articles and news/reports on the profession. These were Socio-Log, which ended publication the previous year, and The American Sociologist, which had previously been a quarterly journal but, in 1972, was transformed into a newspaper. The ASA explained the changes in the Dec. 1972 issue of TAS:
“In its December meeting in San Francisco, ASA Council granted the divorce of TAS from its stormy one year trial-marriage with a tabloid publication that included news items, the Employment Bulletin, and other notes on the profession. The Publications Committee concurred in the decision to separate the two types of ASA publications. Henceforth, members and subscribers will receive TAS as a quarterly journal devoted to scholarly concerns about the discipline, and will also receive a tabloid from the Executive Office nine times per year (every month except June, July, and September) bringing news and notes on the profession. For four issues in 1971, the tabloid was called Socio-Log. Some confusion emerged, how ever, as problems of spelling and pronunciation plagued the members. To overcome this identity crisis, a clear title is being sought that will convey the function of the tabloid and afford members a positive reference point. Thus, ASA Footnotes is under consideration.”
The name, Footnotes, indeed became the new title and its publication continues today. TAS, however, ended publication in November, 1982, presumably a victim of rising publication costs and what some considered to be its left-progressive bias (Galliher, 1992). It resumed publication, although not sponsored by the ASA, in 1987. The new publisher was Transaction Periodicals Consortium and its editor, Irving Louis Horowitz.
Carter’s defeat of the weakened Republican candidate, Gerald Ford, in 1976 occurred in the wake of the Watergate scandal and the resignation of Richard Nixon, who was pardoned by Ford for any and all crimes stemming from the Watergate break-in.
Harvey Molotch is a particularly interesting and relevant case of the precursor generation. Not only did he later become a founding father of environmental sociology, but he himself was distrustful of what had passed as applied sociology during the 1960s. He wrote, in an letter to the American Sociologist in 1969 that “Applied sociology is overwhelmingly likely to be sell-out sociology” (1969, p. 51).
Lists such as this one are fraught with many perils, not the least of which is the omission of other equally well- known and deserving examples. For those cited here, there are others from the same generation as well as those born within more recent generations who have continued sociology’s effort to bring the methods of science to understand, and perhaps contribute to the development of a more just and equitable society. The tradition of socially relevant research into social structures and the injustices they harbor continues today. Among more recent generations of American sociologists whose work combines analytical rigor with a commitment for social justice is, for example, Desmond’s work on housing evictions (2016) (Desmond & Wilmers, 2019).
Membership reached a peak in the years 2007-2009 of approximately 14,700 members. As of 2023, this total has dwindled to 9,923.
The quote here is from Campbell’s 2019 book, Has Sociology Progressed? which is the subject of Baehr’s paper.
Gouldner (1970, p. 12), in his analysis of what he described as the “coming crisis of American sociology,” described the conflicting elements that have always been present in sociology:
“Sociology has a dialectical character and contains both repressive and liberative dimensions. The extrication and further development of its liberative potential will depend ... on the penetration of an historically informed critique of sociology as a theory and as a socialinstitution.”
Reviews of The Divorce Revolution by feminist sociologists were not blind to the flaws of Weitzman’s work. In one of sociology’s leading journals on the topic of gender, Risman’s (1990) review of The Gender Revolution did make clear the many problematic aspects of the analysis.
A tenth section, Social Psychology, was disbanded in 1972 for lack of activity but reactivated by 1974 with over 200 dues-paying members.
Bernard S. Phillips has led an effort to create a section within the ASA devoted to what he has described as “paradigmatic sociology.”
The reaction among sociologists to the appearance of an article in ASR, titled “Biological Limits of Gender Construction” (Udry, 2000; 2001), made the argument that the ways in which gender roles are socially constructed “are influenced by individual levels of sex hormones” (Ariansen, 2021, p. 478). The feminist critique of the Udry article was immediate and intense, labeling such arguments as serving to legitimize subordination of women.”
In 1968, following the assassination of Robert Kennedy, Hubert H. Humphrey became the nominee of the Democratic Party in their tumultuous August convention in Chicago. Although Humphrey initially trailed the Republican Party’s nominee, Richard M. Nixon, by over 30 points in some polls, the gap greatly narrowed by election day in November, with Nixon winning with only 43.4% of the votes, to Humphrey’s 42.7% (a difference of approximately 500,000 votes of the almost 65,000,000 votes cast). The racist governor of Alabama, George Wallace, ran as an independent (with the infamous Air Force general, Curtis LeMay, as his running mate) and garnered almost 10,000,000 votes. By 1972, in contrast, Nixon defeated McGovern in a landslide, McGovern winning only one state (Massachusetts). The conservative trend was unmistakeable: the 1960s were over and the Thermidorean reaction was taking hold.
Some may recall Richard Nixon’s “Southern strategy” which aimed to woo Southern whites to the Republican Party on the basis of his program of “law and order,” which was a thinly veiled allusion to the urban riots in cities like Newark, Los Angeles, Detroit, and Indianapolis during the 1960s. Readers might also recall Nixon’s secret plan to end the war in Vietnam, a promise that in 1968 appealed to many Americans. So, too, in his 2016 campaign, candidate Donald Trump had his own version of a Southern strategy, which was a promise to build a long wall across the southern U.S. border with Mexico, the bill for which he promised would would be paid for by Mexico. Trump also promised to end the long war in Afghanistan, a promise at least partially kept as he entered into an agreement with the Taliban (but not the Afghanistan government itself) to withdraw American forces from that country by May 1, 2021, an agreement and date left to President Biden to honor.
Some similarities, unfortunately, remain. The criminal indictment in 1973 of then-Vice President Spiro Agnew has its counterpart today in the June 2023 federal indictment of former President Donald J. Trump of charges of conspiracy and violations of the Espionage Act, and more other indictments that are too many to list.
A complete analysis of Bourdieu’s views on the martial uses of sociological knowledge can be found in Bourdieu (2010), which is a collection of his writings edited by Gisele Sapiro.
This just-quoted phrase does not specify any particular group of people and, for clarification, must be interpreted in light of Lee’s humanist convictions. It is far removed from the meaning intended by some today who resent and fear the presence of recent immigrants to the U.S. and who use the concept of citizen as a wedge to separate social groups invidiously by documentation status.
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Dowd, J.J. Sociology for Whom, once More. Am Soc (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12108-024-09619-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12108-024-09619-1