Reminders & More Lecture Notes

I forgot to allow time for the families to confer last Thursday 4/30 about making up final exam questions, partly because attendance was so poor. But I will make sure to give the families time this coming Tuesday 5/5. In the meantime you should be giving some thought to this and making up questions on your own so the families can decide which questions to submit on Tuesday. Remember, the deadline for submitting these questions (and answers) is WEDNESDAY, 5/6.

Also, don't forget that your final short essay, involving Ahrens and Chapter 19 in the text is due on Tuesday, May 5th. As I noted in my write-up of this assignment, I will not be very forgiving of late papers.


MORE LECTURE NOTES: we left off on Thursday in Chapter 19, where I had gotten into the Fact-Value Debate.

After noting that the authors do a pretty good job on this debate, although they rely on some of the weaker critics (in my opinion) -- Friedrichs and Gouldner, then...

1. They begin with Howard Becker's presidential address to the 1960 ASA convention, which sort of laid down the gauntlet to those who were questioning sociology as a value-free, empirical science (such as C. Wright Mills). As quoted, Becker says, "There is no substitute for remaining in close touch with the empirical evidence, with the 'damned facts.'" (p. 480, bottom) -- this reflected the position of professional, institutionalized sociology.

2. The authors go on to mention some of the prominent American critics -- Alfred McClung Lee, Robert Lynd, C. Wright Mills, Alvin Gouldner.

a.) The nature of the challenge to value-free orthodoxy is captured in a reference to Alvin Gouldner. See short paragraph, mid. p. 482. Note the assumption that values and passion are considered synonymous, as are reason and facts.

b.) Of course, the value-free stance did not sit too well with many students (and professors) who were getting involved in various protests. They obviously felt sociology should be relevant to these issues, to taking a stance on them.

c.) Lurking in the background of all this is Karl Marx, as the authors comment: "The Marx who was relevant was not, however, the Marx of class conflict but the Marx of alienation." (a distinction I don't really agree with, but I believe they mean: not the later, more scientific Marx but the early humanist Marx.)

d.) The first ASA president to embrace the dissenters' view of this issue was Alfred McClung Lee. He later expanded his presidential address into a book, "Sociology for Whom?". He also founded the Society for Humanist Sociology. See middle two paragraphs, p. 486.

3. Even though this debate has yet to be resolved, the authors suggest it opened the door to a variety of new approaches.


C. The authors put the next debate (Macro/Micro Perspectives) in the context of Thomas Kuhn's, "The STructure of Scientific Revolutions," and his analysis of "paradigm change." Clearly, the fact/value debate falls under the same heading, as the authors point out, and they also describe in fairly simple terms the macro/micro debate. See bottom p. 488 - 489.

1. Although the authors see this macro/micro dichotomy as a "misguided division of the sociological endeavor" (as I also do), it has tended to divide sociologists -- even lead to competition for legitimacy and students (and their fees)-- the latter being truly pathetic in my opinion.

D. This sets the stage for the last two sections of this chapter -- recent theoretical work which attempts to bridge these divides. In particular, feminist sociological theory and theories of race and colonialism. (But, unless I missed something, I did not see much evidence of these new perspectives bridging any divide. At best, they just articulate new points of view that had been missing.)

So, I am going to conclude my remarks on Chapter 19 here, which will set the stage for talking about the Ahrens material on Tuesday. See you then.