The Teaching of Sociology in the United States

Bernard, L. L.

doi:10.1086/211772

Cited by 33 publications

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“…Therefore, my second methodological concern was to find sources of information about the development of sociology in the nation and in the South. Among the most useful sources were studies of the growth of sociology in colleges and universities in the USA, especially Bernard's (1909Bernard's ( , 1918 works; American Journal of Sociology's annual lists of Ph.D.s by institution, title and author; "news and notes"; and committee reports of the American Sociological Society; Odum's (1951), American Sociology; studies of sociology in the South (Bernard 1918(Bernard , 1937Odum 1938); and a few interviews I conducted with old, middle-aged, and young SSS members. Odum's American Sociology is a 50-year descriptive history (as seen by Odum) of all of the first half-century's ASS presidents and their presidencies.…”

Section: Methodological Issuesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Fifty Years of the Southern Sociological Society: Change and Continuity in a Professional Society. Methodological Perspectives on Studying the History of the Southern Sociological Society

Simpson

2007

Am Soc

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Section: Methodological Issuesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Fifty Years of the Southern Sociological Society: Change and Continuity in a Professional Society. Methodological Perspectives on Studying the History of the Southern Sociological Society

Simpson

2007

Am Soc

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“…In the 1909 survey of universities, sociology was most frequently taught in the departments of economics. Only 36 percent of the departments teaching the subject had the term "sociology" in their title, and only 12 percent were independent sociology departments (Bernard, 1909). By 1945, a full 90 percent of the departments had the term "sociology" in their title, and 70 percent were independent entities titled "department of sociology" (Bernard, 1945, p. 543).…”

Section: Measures Of Disengagementmentioning

confidence: 99%

The emergence of sociology from political economy in the United States: 1890 to 1940

Young¹

2009

J History Behavioral Science

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Professional sociology in the U.S. began as a field area within economics, but gradually emerged as a separate discipline. Using new data on joint meetings and the separation of departments, I track interdisciplinary relations through three phases: sponsorship (1890-1905), collaboration (1905-1940), and disengagement (post-1940). In the early years, sociology was mostly a branch of economics departments. With the formation of the American Sociological Society, relations with economics began to be more characterized by professionally autonomous collaboration. The 1920s saw a large wave of sociology departments separating from economics. Still, joint annual meetings (including joint presidential addresses) remained the norm until 1940. Paradigmatic conflict between institutional and neoclassical economists was the major force that sustained the economics-sociology collaboration. As institutionalism faded from the scene in the late 1930s, so went interdisciplinary contact.

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“…Yet, the early texts of sociology before World War I were decidedly Comtean and Spencerian, blending positivism, organicism, functionalism, and evolutionism with interventionism and reformism (Bernard, 1909). Such a strange mix of topics could not provide much symbolic unity to the new academic discipline--just as it cannot today.…”

Section: Sociology Enters Academiamentioning

confidence: 99%

American sociology in chaos: Differentiation without integration

Turner¹

2006

Am Soc

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American sociology is a chaotic discipline. There is disagreement on foundational issues that give disciplines coherence. For example, sociologist disagree on the appropriateness of a scientific orientation, the role of activism and ideology in inquiry, the best methodologies to employ, the primacy of micro-versus macro-levels of analysis, the most important topics to study, and many other contentious issues. The recent call for a "public sociology" in which four wings of the discipline--policy (applied), professional (scientific), critical (ideological), and public (civic engagement) sociologies--are to be integrated is less of a remedy for what troubles sociology than an admission that we are a discipline divided (Burawoy, 2005). Among the social sciences, economics is the most coherent, with the other social sciences revealing varying degrees of incoherence or chaos. Sociology is probably the least integrated of the social sciences, although cultural anthropology has increasingly become much like sociology. In this paper, my goal is to offer an explanation for how sociology came to it present state and what, if anything, can be done to integrate the discipline. Let me begin by outlining what makes a discipline coherent. What Makes an Academic Discipline Coherent?Ultimately, a discipline becomes integrated when there is relatively centralized control over the material, organizational, and symbolic resources necessary for intellectual work (Turner, 1989;Fuchs and Turner, 1986; Whitley, 1984). Conversely, when there is little control over the distribution of resources, a discipline will display low levels of integration or coordination of work to address agreed upon problems with accepted methodologies.Material resources are always necessary to conduct intellectual activities; and in the context of an academic discipline, these can be various. Money in the form of research grants and budgetary allocations, student bodies seeking knowledge and paying fees or tuitions, clients looking for expertise to solve particular applied problems, and physical Jonathan H. Turner is Distinguished Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Riverside. He is primarily a theorist, and his substantive interests include the history and structure of American sociology. He can be reached at jonathan.turner@ucr.edu. Turner15

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The Teaching of Sociology in the United States

Cited by 33 publications

References 0 publications

Fifty Years of the Southern Sociological Society: Change and Continuity in a Professional Society. Methodological Perspectives on Studying the History of the Southern Sociological Society

Fifty Years of the Southern Sociological Society: Change and Continuity in a Professional Society. Methodological Perspectives on Studying the History of the Southern Sociological Society

The emergence of sociology from political economy in the United States: 1890 to 1940

American sociology in chaos: Differentiation without integration

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