Abstract
It has been suggested that since sociology cannot be described as a science, it would be unrealistic to expect it to “progress”, while there are those who dismiss the idea of progress itself as a social construct. However, there are also those who believe that it has progressed. But progress requires that advances are made in the core knowledge of the discipline, not at the frontier, which is where new data is collected. Unfortunately, too many sociologists act like slash and burn horticulturalists, continually “harvesting” new findings but rarely doing the work of consolidating these data so that they form additions to the core. This is largely because sociologists prefer to study topics that interest them rather than focus on solving important sociological problems.
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Notes
- 1.
As Lee Freese notes, this reveals the extent to which sociology lacks an integrated body of theory (1972, p. 473).
- 2.
One issue here is a possible difference over the reasons for remembering “the ancestors”. As Arthur L. Stinchcombe suggests, there are a number of different reasons why one might want to consult the classic works in sociology, some of which relate more to their pedagogic value than their current theoretical relevance (1982).
- 3.
As Abbott notes (2006, p. 62), such claims can never succeed because of the very diverse nature of the theoretical traditions that are acknowledged to be essential ingredients of the discipline. Indeed, such strong claims inevitably spark critical reactions.
- 4.
Khalil (1995) also uses the core-periphery contrast in his historiographic analysis of the question of whether the discipline of economics could be said to have progressed.
- 5.
What Cole, Homans and indeed others, calls the core and the frontier, Andrew Abbott calls “general frameworks” as opposed to “data”, observing that in sociology “data churns and grows at an exponential rate while our general frameworks grow not at all” (Abbott 2006, p. 65).
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Campbell, C. (2019). Slash and Burn Sociology. In: Has Sociology Progressed?. Palgrave Pivot, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-19978-4_4
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