Abstract
Sociology is trapped in a kind of perpetual Groundhog Day as what looks like progress largely consisting of the recycling of old but largely forgotten perspectives. This occurs because, in addition to an ignorance of the discipline’s history, over-specialisation has resulted in the lack of a collective common memory, that is of material known to virtually all sociologists. The vast increase in books and journals has accelerated this “Balkanization” or decomposition of the discipline, with the expansion of the frontier at the expense of the core making it increasingly “incoherent”. At the same time, the discipline has been subject to the influence of fashion, with the result that it is prone to import dubious theoretical perspectives while actively exporting whole subject areas.
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Notes
- 1.
Urry helpfully lists what he considers these perspectives to be. He names eight: critical theory; ethnomethodology; functionalism; interactionism; Marxism; positivism; structuralism and Weberianism (1981, p. 32).
- 2.
- 3.
He also refers to this as “the amnesia hypothesis” That is, how many so-called new policy ideas are in reality rehashes of previous suggestions.
- 4.
The problem here is not simply that ignorance of the past ensures that perspectives are recycled, but also that because data is “added to” it is tempting to believe that cumulation is occurring. A belief that then serves to justify ignoring the past. Unfortunately, true cumulation is more than simply “adding to” data. It involves deepening our understanding of core issues.
- 5.
As Jennifer Platt notes, in the 1960s it was possible to “know ‘everybody’ in British sociology.” “Epilogue in Eight Essays: Halsey, Crouch, Giddens, Oakley, Platt, Runciman and Westergaard”, pp. 217–219.
- 6.
For details of which significant sociology books were published in which year see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_sociology. Accessed 12 November 2018.
- 7.
The editors of the AJS and the ASR consider these to be international rather than US journals.
- 8.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sociology_journals. Accessed 15 October 2018.
- 9.
https://kieranhealy.org/blog/archives/2014???/11/15/top-ten-by-decade/. Accessed 10 October 2018.
- 10.
John Holmwood is someone else who suggests that sociology does not so much have “a core” as “a sensibility” (2010).
- 11.
But then it could be that Urry’s idea of what constitutes the “core” of the discipline’ is different from mine. He seems to assume that it is “society” that is commonly regarded as the central subject matter of sociology. I would disagree. As stated elsewhere, I consider the central subject matter to be an agreed set of questions—not a topic.
- 12.
It has been suggested that one possible reason for the marked tendency of sociologists to import theoretical perspectives from other disciplines is, as John Scott has suggested, because when it comes to “social theory”, British sociology is “felt to be weak” (2006, p. 54).
- 13.
Abell is another sociologist who comments on the extent to which sociology is “subject to” “fashion and fad” (1981, p. 121).
- 14.
See Paul Rock’s comments (1994).
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Campbell, C. (2019). Sociological Groundhog Day. In: Has Sociology Progressed?. Palgrave Pivot, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-19978-4_3
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