introduction

Introduction

DAV/D SWARTZ Department of Sociology, Wesleyan University

This year marks the twentieth anniversary of 1968 and the social and intellectual changes symbolized by that year. The sixties represent a watershed for sociology and social theory in the post-World War II period. From skyrocketing enrollments in sociology courses to the appearance of a multitude of new research and theoretical perspectives, the entire discipline has felt the impact of that tumultuous period.

Writing at the close of the sixties, Alvin W. Gouldner, in The Coming Crisis of Western Sociology, was one of the first to identify the sixties as a crucial transition period for sociology and social theory. For Gouldner, the dominance of Parsonsian Functionalism in Academic Sociology and scientism in Marxism was giving way to the emergence of a new polycentrism, one that Gouldner welcomed and encouraged the expression of in the pages of this journal? During the last twenty years, a striking polycentrism has indeed penetrated the discipline: subfields have multiplied, theoretical approaches have proliferated, each pursuing their own specialized interests, leaving sociology without a shared discourse or paradigm such as it had enjoyed during the fifties. Though the hegemony of Functionalism over the discipline during the fifties was never complete, the degree of diversity that emerged with the sixties represents a sharp contrast to that earlier period. Virtually every commentary on the current state of the field begins by noting the pro- fusion of paradigms and research agendas. 2 Marxism as well as main- stream sociology has not escaped this diversifying trend, leading Immanuel Wallerstein to exclaim that we are now in an "era of a thou- sand Marxisms? '3 More generally, Wallerstein characterizes the post- sixties period as one of "the multiple utopias, the multiple Marxisms, the multiple social sciences. ''4

Though few would contest the claim that the sixties represent a special

Theory and Society 17." 615-625, 1988 �9 1988 Kiuwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands

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transition period for sociology and social theory, not all agree upon the quality of the impact of that period upon the discipline. Some look upon the ensuing polycentrism as an expression of a chaotic sectari- anism that prohibits sociology from regaining a sense of coherent direction and purpose once enjoyed in the heady days of structural- functionalism. 5 Alex Inkeles summarizes well this mood when he writes

. . . . the dominant mood today is one of discouragement -- a feeling that researchers go around in circles, that conceptual clarity is lacking, that theory is uninformed by empirical findings, that the former consensus about the core of the discipline has largely broken down. 6

This mood of gloom has prompted several recent efforts to reassert the primacy of the discipline for the study of significant social questions. 7 Others 'discount the enduring validity of the new diversity in sociology and instead point to the ascent of one particular strand, such as quantitative research and statistical techniques, as the crowning achievement of contemporary sociology; all other competing currents are dismissed as being relatively unimportant. 8 Still others, along with Gouldner, have welcomed the decline in hegemony of structural-functionalism and see in the subsequent trend toward polycentrism vital sources of conceptual innovation. Randall Collins and Anthony Giddens, for example, view what some perceive as the intellectual crisis of contemporary sociology as in reality a crisis in institutional supports, such as declining enrollments, careers in tight academic labor markets, and funding cuts for research; in terms of intellectual progress, however, both point to the last twenty years as producing considerable conceptual innovation and indeed laying the groundwork for a new synthesis of themes that will likely guide theory and research in the future. 9

In recognition of the twentieth anniversary of 1968, this special issue of Theory and Society assembles seven articles that explore various developments in social theory and sociology since the sixties. The papers by no means represent an exhaustive assessment of all the changes that have occurred; nevertheless, they do highlight selected developments that have emerged and that promise to continue shaping sociology and social theory in the coming years. In addition to the appearance of new subspecialties and modes of investigation, the articles call attention to the following themes: the permeability and erosion of boundaries between subfields and disciplines as institutionalized academically and professionally; the emergence of new agenda issues of power, domina-

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tion, conflict, and change; a critical and reflexive concern for the social conditions of theory production and change; a renewed interest in epistemological and foundational questions of sociological knowledge. 1~

The sixties generation and sociology inquiry

Much of the writing about the sixties has been informed by Mann- heim's powerful theoretical formulation that distinguishes social from biological generations and that draws a parallel between membership to a generation and membership in a social c lass? 1 Key to Mannheim's conceptualization is the idea that the "fresh contact" that new waves of individuals have with prevailing culture can create "generation units" who develop a distinctive set of '~integrative attitudes and formative principles" that remodel the tradition they inherit. The idea that generations can occupy specific social locations and thereby generate distinctive outlooks and modes of behavior is probably commonly accept- ed among sociologists today. But it was Gouldner who first provided the most probing analysis of how the fresh contact between the new wave of young sociologists from the sixties and Parsonsian Func- tionalism generated a new set of intellectual dispositions and political impulses that would have a decisive impact on sociology and social theory in subsequent years. The intellectual agenda would shift from concerns for order and consensus to equality and change. It is therefore fitting that this special issue begins with the article 'Tkn 'Uppity Genera- tion' and the Revitalization of Macroscopic Sociology: Reflections at Mid-Career by a Woman from the Sixties" in which Theda Skocpol offers a biographical sketch of how the sixties motivated and shaped her scholarly contribution in the area of comparative historical work. Her retrospective reflection demonstrates C. Wright Mills's sociological imagination writ large; namely, how personal choices in her scholarly research intersected with the new agenda of critical issues that emerged in the sixties: power, domination, social change, and the role of the state. But her choices also reflect the bold confidence the sixties inspired in many college students that something could be done about the burning issues of the day: civil fights, Vietnam War, poverty, and imperialism. She learned "to think big and critically." She argues that the bold optimism for change and the sharp critical spirit characteristic of the outlook of the sixties generation have been not only a significant factor in her career but also an important source of intellectual revitalization for sociology. For one, the considerable amount of macroscopic comparative-historical work undertaken by sociologists during the last

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twenty years has been stimulated in large part by the agenda issues created in the sixties.

She also notes the transformation of gender roles brought on by the sixties and the institutional opportunities and obstacles available to women scholars in the American universities and sociology profession in subsequent years. She affirms that changes in gender relations and the emergence of the women's movement have been an important "source of intellectual revitalization" for sociology. In her own case, Skocpol plans to orient her future work around issues relating women and the welfare state.

The sixties raised the issue of the particular role that highly educat- ed individuals might play in political movements. The period thus prompted renewed interest by academic sociology and Marxist schol- arship in New Class theories. The sixties generation of young sociologists made up a substantial portion of the New Left intelligentsia, which according to Ivan Szelenyi and Bill Martin in their paper "The Three Waves of New Class Theories," represent the most recent of three important waves of intellectuals that have been objects of New Class theorizing. Drawing upon the theoretical insights of Gouldner, Szelenyi and Martin identify the New Left as a knowledge class, with a "teleocratic" project, and possessing the Culture of Critical Discourse as its key power resource. Nonetheless, the New Left represents, according to Szelenyi and Martin, a failed class project in that it has not been able to gain control over key institutional loci of power such as the corporation or the state. While Skocpol emphasizes the positive impact of the "Uppity Generation" of sociologists upon sociology and social theory, Szelenyi and Martin are less optimistic about more far-reaching consequences the New Left has had on Western societies. They see its influence as being largely confined to the arenas of culture, academe, and the media -- lacking significant impact upon broader institutional settings.

The revival of interest in New Class perspectives forms part of two broader and intersecting themes that Szelenyi and Martin develop and that have had a significant impact on social theory in subsequent years. First, New Class theorizing in the sixties raised the question of relations between knowledge and power. Though the student movement sharply criticized the compromised role of the university in providing vital knowledge to the state and the military as well as the use of social science by U.S. government agencies in the Third World, critical

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knowledge was also seen as a liberating force. Thus, as Szelenyi and Martin point out, knowledge could be understood as not simply an "epiphenomenon of power," but could become an autonomous power base and employed in the service of human emancipation.

Second, New Class theorizing put reflexivity on the theoretical agenda. A key contribution of New Class theories to social theory more generally, Szelenyi and Martin point out, is the need to proceed with cn't/- cal self-reflexivity. Increasingly social theory has had to come to grips with the key question Gouldner raised: "Where does the cameraman fit in?" The sixties raised the question not only of how to change structures of domination but also what are the optimal conditions for changing social theory itself. This requires social theory to theorize the position of the theorist, the conditions of its production, in its very ela- boration.

In their article, Szelenyi and Martin propose a reflexive understanding of New Class theorizing by suggesting that past failures of New Class projects stem from their inability to fulfill simultaneously three essen- tial conditions for class formation: first, there must be agents ready to assume power; second, these agents must find a structural location from which power can be effectively exercised; third, these agents must pos- sess the appropriate kind of consciousness to exercise power. For the future, the authors see limits but somewhat better chances of these conditions being met in the Soviet Union than in the United States.

In his article "For a Sociological Philosophy" Randall Collins demonstrates this growing concern for intellectual change and how it is to be analyzed. Prompted in part by Kuhn's book The Structure of Scien~fic Revolutions and subsequent work in the philosophy of science and sociology of science as well as the ferment of the sixties, social theory is more intensely concerned today than it was prior to the sixties with the conditions for intellectual change. There is today a greater sense that intellectual communities are in fact political communities in which various camps struggle for the capacity to impose their respective intellectual styles as legitimate. Collins sketches out changes that have occurred in the intellectual field of Anglo-American philosophy in this century. Collins illustrates this enhanced sensitivity to the sources of intellectual change by showing how external factors -- particularly the expansion of higher education -- intersect with the intellectual conltiet internal to the disciplines to produce new agendas, new definitions of the disciplines, and new boundaries between them.

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One of the consequences of the professionalization of academic sociology has meant the severing of all trappings of the philosophical heri- tage out of which this new empirical science of society emerged in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. For generations, with a few notable exceptions, sociologists and philosophers have pursued careers and established their respective intellectual agendas in virtual ignorance of each other, if not with some degree of mutual contempt. That situation is beginning to change, as Collins points out. In recent years the increased interest in the philosophy of science and the sociology of science has attracted some of the best minds from both fields and new agendas of key questions that cross the boundaries traditionally sepa- rating the two disciplines have surfaced. Collins explores how the dominant position of the analytical/positivist orientation has begun to erode, opening the way for new interest in Continental perspectives. Collins shows how broader shifts in the social, cultural, and political environment -- particularly during the sixties -- in combination with the generational conflict within the intellectual field of philosophy have lead to a growing interest in the social basis of knowledge claims. It is this development of how the social impinges upon the epistemological that Collins sees promising for sociology to play a vital role in future philosophical investigations.

If several philosophers are beginning to discover the relevance of the social for considering foundational issues in that discipline, a growing number of sociologists have become even more emphatic that sociological investigation needs to be enriched by the historical. The often- quoted passage by Marx that "men make their own history, but not of their own free will" contains a simple but powerful idea: "how things happen depends strongly on when and where they happen" This seed has sprouted one of the new and most promising bodies of sociological work in the last twenty years: historical sociology.

In his short essay "Future Sociology" Charles Tilly notes that historical research has finally found its time in a discipline that traditionally distinguished itself from history by appropriating the more honorific voca- tion of theoretical categorization, comparison, and generalization, and by relegating the more mundane task of detail accumulation to the latter. Tilly has in mind a broad and diverse range of excellent studies that touch on four different levels: metahistorical, such as the recent work of Anthony Giddens and Michael Mann on power and social change; world-systemic, in the work of Immanuel Wallerstein and his collabo- rators and critics; macrohistorical, notably the large number of studies

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charting the transition from feudalism to capitalism; microhistorical, in work on family structure and communities.

But if the historicist imagination has found its time in sociology, Tilly is less sanguine that it has found its place. He fears that historical sociology will become but one more subfield within the discipline -- rich in publications, journals, courses, and ASA sections, but poor in impact on the broader discipline. His hopes run differently; namely, that the historicist imagination will "permeate all of sociology": indeed, that it will "become the foundation of all sociology."

The growth of historical sociology found considerable impetus in the sixties and grew in part out of the extensive critique of the ideas of "development" and "modernization." As Evans and Stephens point out in their article "Studying Development since the Sixties: The Emer- gence of a New Comparative Political Economy" few areas in the social sciences felt the "intellectual tumult of the sixties" to the extent that did the study of development. The Vietnam War catalyzed an outburst of theoretical and empirical work that critically exposed the relations of domination between the industrialized countries and the Third World.

Evans and Stephens provide an overview of trends in the development field since the sixties. They cover a diverse set of studies on Latin America, Asia, Africa, and Europe in different time periods. Neither this diversity of situations nor the multiplicity of approaches employed have, according to the authors, prohibited the emergence of a set of "heuristic assumptions" that undergird much of this broad range of research. As a whole, this body of work is historical and comparative, it connects politics, economics, and ideology, and it is sensitive to inter- national, inter-state, and global factors as well as to the structures and processes internal to individual countries. The authors label this growing body of work the "New Comparative Political Economy"

If Tilly worries that the historicist imagination may become boxed up and isolated in yet another specialty of the discipline, Evans and Stephens fear the dangers of a narrow paradigm emerging in the New Comparative Political Economy. The great virtue of the early phase of this quite broad range of studies, they argue, is precisely the willingness of most researchers to be guided by the complexity and historical character of development issues rather than by disciplinary boundaries or simplistic but elegant formal modeling. The latter possibility, they fear, would greatly stifle the innovative and imaginative work that has

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distinguished much of the recent development literature. This fear prompts their critical attitude toward the recent penetration of "rational choice" theory into some development work. The attractive featu- res of logical eloquence and ability to generate formal models of social issues are overshadowed by the tendency of the "new utilitarianism" to short circuit key concerns regarding the locus and content of decision making. Important cultural, historical, and political factors tend to be abstracted from consideration in work guided by the rational choice paradigm. These shortcomings must be and can be avoided, the authors point out, but only if the rational choice approach draws upon the cultural, political, and social structural arguments that have come to characterize the New Comparative Political Economy.

Some rational choice theorists appear willing to heed the criticisms offered by Evans and Stephens. In the next article, "Will Sociology Ever Be a Normal Science ?" Raymond Boud0n indeed advocates a "meth- odological individualism" approach for sociological inquiry, including in the area of development. Much of Boudon's recent work consists of enumerating examples from the classic writers as well as from contemporary research where a rational choice model can find plausible application. But though an advocate for rational choice modeling, Boudon, interestingly, also argues in his paper that this particular perspective is not suitable for a variety of situations, such as the study of the origins of revolutionary change, that are of keen interest to sociologists.

Though an advocate for a rational choice approch in sociological inquiry, Boudon welcomes the multiplicity of paradigms that have found expression in sociology during the last twenty years. Indeed, Boudon goes so far as to proclaim that "sociology is in a phase of crisis when it pretends to have reached a normal science state and to be led by a unique paradigm" He argues that the social sciences have never approached the state of a normal science in the Kuhnian sense and for good reason: different topics of social inquiry call for different para- digmatic assumptions. For Boudon, different topics of inquiry require different kinds of conceptual assumptions, and cherished theoretical assumptions that may be appropriate for one topic of inquiry may be misleading for others. No one paradigm, according to Boudon, can be expected to find fruitful application across all topics of sociological interest. He argues that social theory will always be characterized by a multiplicity of paradigms, though there are some basic reappearing ones built around three basic binary options: Is social scientific knowledge objective or relative? Should the level of analysis be indivi-

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dualistic or holistic? Should action be theorized as fundamentally rational or irrational? Boudon sees these as relatively permanent conceptual options in social theory as different theorists tend to emphasize one rather than the other in their analysis of different social issues. His article, then, points to another theme of reflection that is receiving increased attention in recent years; namely, foundational assumptions about sociological knowledge.

The final article by Pierre Bourdieu, also addresses foundational issues of sociological knowledge, particularly the way actors and structures are to be conceptually related. In "Vive la Crise! For Heterodoxy in Social Science" Bourdieu applauds the decline of Functionalism as the dominant paradigm in sociology and welcomes the growing heterodoxy. Like Boudon, Bourdieu welcomes the multiplicity of paradigms that have emerged since the sixties. 12 Bourdieu, however, argues that the rupture with the classic assumptions undergirding the old functionalist paradigm has not gone far enough. Bourdieu sees the field of social science as being still dominated by sets of paired oppositions, such as theoreticist theory/empirical methodology, micro/macro levels of analysis, quantitative/qualitative methods, structure/history, and consensus/conflict, which, according to Bourdieu, represent social as well as conceptual divisions that segment the social scientific enterprise and hence impede progress in scientific discovery. 13 In one form or another, these binary oppositions are expressions of the fundamental dichotomy of subjectivism/objectivism that has plagued social science from the very beginning. These antinomies operate as social -- indeed political -- as well as conceptual classifictions that undergird narrow and rigid divisions between the disciplines, subfields, and theoretical schools. The social sciences, as a consequence, are divided into warring camps, and research frequently reduces to one of posturing for one side or the other. The solution lies, according to Bourdieu, not in finding a new or returning to an old unifying paradigm but rather in practicing a genuinely reflexive and critical social science that requires transcending the subject/object dichotomy by relating agents and structures and by situating the inquiry within the broader context of power.relations that embrace the researchers as well as the objects of investigation. To this end, Bourdieu proposes a theory of practice that integrates culture, power, and social structure within his key concept of habitus. Moreover, he calls for the social scientist to exercise "epistemological vigilance" against approaches that divorce agents from structures and abstract from consideration the social conditions that deter- mine the posture the researcher takes in the process of inquiry.

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Although many sociologists today are probably content going about their work with the conviction that the issues raised by Bourdieu and Boudon are essentially intractable and if allowed to become an obses- sion may impede the important task of getting on with actual research, Bourdieu and Boudon nonetheless render us an important service. These two French sociologists are surely right that "in practice" sociologists are involved in some form of paradigm construction and main- tenance that involves fundamental assumptions about the nature of social scientific knowledge. And Bourdieu in particular offers us the important reminder that the act of social research is fundamentally a social as well as a conceptual act, one that is embedded in fundamental assumptions about the ordering of the social world and the nature of the scientific investigation of that world.

All the articles in this issue welcome the new polycentrism in sociology of the last twenty years. Moreover, they point to an increased awareness in our understanding of how the institutionalization of the study of significant social issues into disciplines and professions in one generation can result in an intellectual agenda that is inadequate for the subsequent generation. Indeed, one of the most significant contributions of the sixties to sociology and social theory has been to oblige us to recon- sider the intellectual agendas inherited from the past. The crisis in contemporary sociology that some lament may in fact stem more directly from changes in the institutionalized forms of the field than from a lack of intellectual vigor. Indeed, the papers in this volume suggest that an important legacy of the sixties has been one of considerable conceptual innovation in the study of significant social issues.

Notes

1. Alvin W. Gouldner, The Coming Crisis of Western Sociology (New York: Basic Books, 1970). Gouldner assigned to social theory a crucial role in facilitating this transition. He conceptualized the task of social theory as one of providing an alter- native to the objectivism of both Academic Sociology and Marxism by offering a critical and reflexive understanding of the soci~ and psychological conditions under which theory is produced. This vision of social theory prompted Gouldner to found Theory and Society in 1973. Two other co-founders of the journal, Pierre Bourdieu and Randall Collins, are among the contributors to this special issue.

2. Tom Bottomore's "Introduction" in Sociology: The State of the Art, ed. Tom Bottomore, Stefan Nowak, and Magdalena Sokolowska (Beverley Hills: Sage Publi- cations, 1982), 27--35, is a characteristic example.

3. Immanuel Wallerstein, "Marxisms as Utopias: Evolving Ideologies," American Journal of Sociology (91 1986): 1302. In their paper "Recent Trends in Theory and Methodology in the Study of Economy and Society" in Sociology: The State of the

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Art, 147--172, Harry Makler, Arnaud Sales, and Neil J. Smelser distinguish four main categories of theoretical orientation in Marxism that are now seen to be important: Marxist, Marxist-Weberian/Marxist-functionalist, World system and dependency, and Modernization.

4. Wallerstein, "Marxisms as Utopias," 1307. 5. Eisenstadt, for one, sees the sixties as only fostering "sectarian tendencies" and

contributing to a loss of central direction in sociology, S.N. Eisenstadt, "The Schools of Sociology," American Behavioral Scientist 24 (January-February 1981): 329--344.

6. Alex Inkeles, "The Sociological Contribution to Advances in the Social Sciences," The Social Science Journal 20 (1983): 27--44.

7. See The Future of Sociology, ed. Edgar F. Borgatta and Karen S. Cook (Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publications, 1988) for a collection of articles designed to re- establish the leadership role of sociology in the study of key social issues.

8. Reflecting on the past fifty years of sociology, George C. Homans writes "The great achievement of sociology has been its development of statistical techniques . . . . " George C. Homans, "Fifty Years of Sociology," Annual Review of Sociology 12 (1986): xiii--xxx. Randall Collins, in "Is 1980s Sociology in the Doldrums?" Amer- ican Journal of Sociology 91 (May 1986): 1336--1355, cites a letter by William H. Sewell to the New York Times in which the latter proudly identifies the "mathemati- cal revolution" as the distinguishing achievement of sociology in recent years and relegates nonquantitative work to only minor significance.

9. Randall Collins "Is 1980s Sociology in the Doldrums?" and Anthony Giddens "Nine Theses on the Future of Sociology," chapter 2 in Social Theory and Modern Sociology (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1987).

10. It is noteworthy that Gouldner anticipated in The Coming Crisis these thematic developments. In addition, Gouldner predicted two other currents that have de- veloped considerably since the sixties: growth and diversification of Marxism and increased interest and study of micro structures and processes. Taking stock of developments in sociology and social theory eight years after publishing The Coming Crisis, Gouldner expanded his agenda of significant research issues to include the following: revolutions, peasants, working classes, the arrangement between the sexes, the new mass media, the new class thesis, human capital, inter- national structures, capitalisms and socialisms, states and state formation, Marxist residues, and dialectic and discourse. See Alvin W. Gouldner, "Towards an Agenda for Social Theory in the Last Quarter of the Twentieth Century." Theory and Society 5 (January 1978): vii--xii.

11. Karl Mannheim, "The Problem of Generations." In Essays on the Sociology of Knowledge, (London: Routtedge & Kegan Paul, 1952), 276--320.

12. If both Bourdieu and Boudon welcome the new diversity and want to see more cross-fertilization between the disciplines, there is little else held in common by these two quite divergent voices from France. See David Swartz "Classes, Educa- tional Systems & Labor Markets," Journal of European Sociology 22 (1981): 325-- 353, where a number of similarities and contrasts between their approaches to the study of stratification and education are examined.

13. See Sherry B. Ortner "Theory in Anthropology since the Sixties," Comparative Studies in Society and History 26 (1984): 126-- 166 for a diagnosis of paired oppositions that have plagued anthropology.

introduction

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