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What's Wrong with Sociology? (Paperback)
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What's Wrong with Sociology? (Paperback)
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Since the 1950s sociology has experienced a decline in prestige
when compared with the other social sciences. In some highly
publicized cases some universities have retrenched their sociology
departments, others are contemplating either retrenchment or
downsizing of their departments. Although there are some
practitioners of the discipline who believe that it has never been
in better shape, many sociologists have come to believe that there
are very serious problems both in the cognitive and social
organization of the discipline. This book contains sixteen essays
by sociologists who believe that their discipline faces very
serious problems which must be overcome if the discipline is to
survive and prosper. The contributors were selected to represent
diverse views and thus there is substantial disagreement among them
over what the problems are that sociology faces and how they may be
remedied. In this highly provocative book readers is likely to find
some essays they agree with and others they disagree with; but all
the essays present important problems faced by the discipline which
must be addressed.Although the authors of the sixteen essays do not
agree on what is wrong with the discipline, there are some themes
which appear frequently. In his introduction Cole summarizes and
comments on these themes. His introduction centers on the question
of whether sociology is entirely socially constructed. Is what we
believe to be true about society constrained by empirical evidence
or is it a result of our ideology, power, authority, and other
social processes? One theme which appears in many of the essays is
that sociology has become too ideological and as a result has lost
credibility among university administrators, politicians and the
general public. Many of the essays also stress the view that there
are very low levels of consensus in sociology and that it is hard
to see evidence of progress. Others criticize the discipline for
not dealing with the really important social issues and see much of
the work published as being parochial and trivial. Questions are
also raised about why the use of causal models has failed to
generate solutions to most of the problems the discipline
addresses. Some authors believe that the discipline adheres to an
overly rational model of human behavior and has failed to keep up
with some of the advances introduced by post-modernist
theories.This highly readable set of essays should be of interest
to all those are concerned about the current state of sociology.
They will also be useful in introducing graduate students to some
of the most important issues currently being debated in the
field.Stephen Cole is currently professor of sociology at the State
University of New York at Stony Brook and professor of sociology at
the University of Queensland, Australia. He is the author of Making
Science: Between Nature and Society, and with Jonathan R. Cole,
Social Stratification in Science.
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