Measure, Value and the Current Crises of Sociology

Mills (2000 [1959]), the fundamental task of the sociologist is to identify how scopic socio-historical forces and individual biographies and agency intersect. A sociology that privileges either of these essential ingredients at the expense of the other thus shortchanges the discipline's raison-d'etre and vision. Such compartmentalisation incapacitates theoretical inflection. It proscribes what Wright Mills (1959, passim) calls "the promise" of "the sociological imagination". What is the state of social theory in sociology and the social sciences today? Are we realising and reaping the potential that theory driven social research possesses for enriching, intriguing and enduring analysis? It is these pivotal questions that this piece aims to address. In the process, emphasis is made on explaining the currents that are suffocating social theory generation and thus bleeding dry sociology's promise.

Theory, Culture & Society, 2012

This article takes the fiftieth anniversary of the death of American sociologist C. Wright Mills as a cue to revisit his legacy but also the value of sociology today. It argues that the enduring relevance of Mills' work is his cultivation of a sociological sensibility, which is both an attentive and sensuous craft and also a moral and political project. The article returns to some of the key aspects of Mills' life and work, and focuses, in particular, on his influential book The Sociological Imagination. Revisiting the opening and closing chapters of this book-entitled 'The Promise' and 'On Intellectual Craftsmanship'-this article argues that the contemporary social imagination needs to offer its students the capacity to open out to the world through a heightened sensory attentiveness, which in turn makes possible a different kind of social imaginary. In this way Mills' gift to the future is a sociological sensibility furnished by its tradition, but one also that is constantly re-tuned to the circumstances and problems of the present.

PREPRINT SocArXiv, 2024

The article argues that a degree in sociology provides academic qualification rather than professional qualification, and hence sociology cannot be practised. The practice of sociology lacks scientific legitimacy and ethical legitimacy. Even though it cannot be practised, sociology can be applied, in the sense that it can be used in various fields. It informs decisions and actions either by using existing sociological knowledge and theories or by generating new knowledge through conducting sociological research. The article highlights that sociologists are taught in universities to conduct fundamental research rather than applied research, that they conduct fundamental research regardless of context, and thus, they do not truly respond to the knowledge needs of the beneficiaries. This article presents the necessity of a clearer methodological distinction between fundamental and applied research and proposes a clarification of the role theory plays in the latter. It emphasises the idea that theory is not only not prioritised but is also not even mandatory in applied research.

Sociology, 2016

Since Sociology was established in 1967, the journal has assumed a significant role in shaping the discipline. In the interim years it is often said that the very practice of sociology has now ‘spun out’ beyond the dedicated departments that were once the centres of sociological practice. This raises questions as to the relationship between sociology and other disciplines, questions that are compelling and arguably distinct from a welcome recognition of sociology’s undoubted intellectual hybridity. The extent to which this is a productive tension or one that requires a resolution is an ongoing conversation to which this special issue speaks. In this introductory article we take what we consider to be an innovative route that is guided by the theme of ‘Bringing Sociology Home’ whilst simultaneously recognising the enormous strengths brought by the multidisciplinary developments of the last 50 volumes. We set out the terrain before introducing a mixture of short and substantive papers...

2000

TO THE INDIVIDUAL social scientist who feels himself a part of the classic tradition, social science is the practice of a craft. A man at work on problems of substance, he is among those who are quickly made impatient and weary by elaborate discussions of method-and-theory-in-general; so much of it interrupts his proper studies. It is much better, he believes, to have one account by a working student of how he is going about his work than a dozen 'codifications of procedure' by specialists who as often as not have never done much work of consequence. Only by conversations in which experienced thinkers exchange information about their actual ways of working can a useful sense of method and theory be imparted to the beginning student. I feel it useful, therefore, to report in some detail how I go about my craft. This is necessarily a personal statement, but it is written with the hope that others, especially those beginning independent work, will make it less personal by the facts of their own experience.

No matter how different sociological ontology, epistemology and methodology are, they pull together reasoning the social world for a better human understanding. So of their diverse theoretical paradigms and perspectives that developed over the time, make sociology a distinct discipline. But so far, their internal contradictions and dualism remain unresolved, and rather invites challenges for the future prospect of world sociology. The challenge is not how they thrive humans on different or diverse universe of meanings but to see their cross-boundaries of meanings. Our study also reveals that now the foundationlism-the theoretical narratives of Durkheim, Marx and Weber (DMW) have been reconstructed and regained with a fresh lease of life in the sociological world. But the proponents for such original building blocks are not always visible protagonists. However, in this context, the neo-functional theorists buttress structural functionalism with some radicalism whereas the critical theorists juxtapose the conflict theoretical perspectives uncovering many missing dimensions of exclusions of sociological marginal and minorities.

C. Wright Mills will likely prove to be the most influential American sociologist of the twentieth century. He was an outsider to the sociology profession of his time, but he was a powerful scholar with a brilliant sociological imagination-a term he invented. The following excerpt is from the beginning of his classic book "The Sociological Imagination" His opening section argues that people nowadays experience their lives as traps that they feel they cannot overcome. He then offers his solution: ways of seeing the world around us that can help us to make wiser, saner and more effective choices in our lives-as individuals and through our governments. The sociologically imagination, says Mills, insists on understanding people in terms of the intersection of their own lives (their biographies) and their larger social and historical context (in history). The final section discusses the difference between "private troubles" and "public issues" or "social problems." Mills points out that there are many forms of private troubles, but that some of them also affect many other people-they have structural or large-scale sociological causes. These personal troubles that are also social issues include poverty, unemployment, many schools in New York and other cities, air and water pollution, war, racism, teenage pregnancy, abortion, drug policy and many other topics in the news and that we have been discussing this semester. Nowadays men and women often feel that their private lives are a series of traps. They sense that within their everyday worlds, they cannot overcome their troubles, and in this feeling, they are often quite correct: What ordinary people are directly aware of and what they try to do are bounded by the private orbits in which they live; their visions and their powers are limited to the close-up scenes of job, family, neighborhood; in other mile , they move vicariously and remain spectators. And the more aware they become, however vaguely, of ambitions and of threats which transcend their immediate locales, the more trapped they seem to feel.