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- Title
Towards a respectable, reflexive, scientific sociology: A note on the reformation required.
- Authors
Bryant, Joseph M.
- Abstract
Use of the word crisis to characterize the state of the discipline has been overworked almost to the point of a cliche, but certainly the vital signs in the last few years are not promising. The outright disbanding of sociology departments; proposals to radically reduce the size of the faculty; a spate of journalistic reports on the malaise and declining appeal of the discipline; embarrassingly low evaluations of sociology programs by students in comparative ratings of educational quality; the downward trend in both graduate and undergraduate enrollment; and mounting concerns over retirement attrition, as administrators invoke fiscal constraints as a means of lowering the sociological profile in their universities are all warning signs. According to the author, his article addresses the positivistic bid for respectability, which seeks to gain for sociology the reflected glory of the natural sciences through methodological mimesis. That project has manifestly failed, and it is not difficult to identify the basic reasons. As philosophers and historians of science have documented over the course of three decades, positivism is premised on a false conception of the natural sciences.
- Subjects
SOCIOLOGY; EDUCATIONAL quality; SOCIOLOGY teachers; SOCIOLOGY students; POSITIVISM; ORGANIZATIONAL structure; NATURAL history
- Publication
Canadian Journal of Sociology, 1992, Vol 17, Issue 3, p322
- ISSN
0318-6431
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.2307/3341327