A sociological approach to the history of sociology

Max Weber's “Science as a Vocation” and “Politics as a Vocation” show that irrespective of Weber's insistence on “value-free” sociology, he was a committed critic of his society but failed to explicate his position fully. The assumption of a sociological approach to the history of sociology is that sociology must operate with the concept of a normative society, thus reestablishing continuity with sociology's first hundred years and potentially uniting, in the face of the possibility of our planet's demise, not only sociologists but all people of good will.     

Professional sociologists and the history of sociology: A survey of recent opinion

Using members of the American Sociological Association, we attempt to determine the amount and degree of interest in the history of sociology; the particular nature of that interest; and the special sources of that interest. We find that the most significant factor affecting both degree and nature of interest in the history of sociology is the speciality of the sociologist himself.     

Assessing research in the history of sociology and anthropology.

This paper reviews recent interpretive trends among historians of anthropology and sociology, examining both introductory texts and scholarly studies. It focuses on works published over the last ten years, and stresses that there has been no resolution of the long-standing conflict between "presentist" and "historicist" approaches to the history of the human sciences.     

Herbert Blumer's critique of The Polish Peasant: A post mortem on the life history approach in sociology

Herbert Blumer's appraisal of William Thomas and Florian Znaniecki's Polish Peasant study and the panel discussion of Blumer's critique, sponsored by the Social Science Research Council in 1938, occasioned a discussion of the value of personal documents in social research which is indicative of the controversy surrounding their use in the interwar period. It is suggested that most sociologists writing in the 1930s were skeptical of the value of personal document research, because such research could not be conducted along the lines of experimental procedure in physical science. Personal document research was in decline by 1938. The critique and conference constituted a post mortem examination of this approach to social analysis.     

The development of the “participant observation” method in sociology: Origin myth and history

Common understandings about the ancestry of “participant observation” as now defined are historically misleading. In the prewar texts taken as ancestors, access to meanings was not associated with participation per se, and where participation was used data might be quantified and were not distinguished from data from other sources; the term “participant observation” was not widely current, and only gradually developed its present meanings. Methods are defined in relation to the perceived alternatives, and it was only in the 1940s that the current set of alternatives emerged. To understand earlier writers' conceptions, their work must be related to its context.     

Imagination and society: the role of visual sociology

The paper presents the field of Visual Sociology as an approach that makes use of photographs, films, documentaries, videos, to capture and assess aspects of social life and social signals. It overviews some relevant works in the field, it deals with methodological and epistemological issues, by raising the question of the relation between the observer and the observed, and makes reference to some methods of analysis, such as those proposed by the Grounded Theory, and to some connected tools for automatic qualitative analysis, like NVivo. The relevance of visual sociology to the study of social signals lies in the fact that it can validly integrate the information, introducing a multi-modal approach in the analysis of social signals.     

Imagination and society: the role of visual sociology

The paper presents the field of Visual Sociology as an approach that makes use of photographs, films, documentaries, videos, to capture and assess aspects of social life and social signals. It overviews some relevant works in the field, it deals with methodological and epistemological issues, by raising the question of the relation between the observer and the observed, and makes reference to some methods of analysis, such as those proposed by the Grounded Theory, and to some connected tools for automatic qualitative analysis, like NVivo. The relevance of visual sociology to the study of social signals lies in the fact that it can validly integrate the information, introducing a multi-modal approach in the analysis of social signals.     

Martha and the Masters: Virtuous Domestic Aesthetic Activity

In this essay, I draw Karen Stohr’s work on the moral-aesthetic elements of hospitality into conversation with classical Confucianism. While the early Confucians would not deny the other-regarding elements of hospitality Stohr emphasizes, they also notably highlight the ways exercises in taste and skillful aesthetic activity can work on and for the agent herself, providing a sensibility that can guard domestic aesthetic activity against problematic forms of self-sacrifice and alienated labor that color contemporary gendered representations of the home and its activity. The most robustly virtuous and indeed rewarding versions of hospitality and domestic aesthetic activity, I argue, will link self to environment and work, using both as mechanisms that foster wider values the self prizes and endorses.     

Hiring practices in British sociology: linkages among top-rated sociology doctoral programs

The extent to which top-rated and lower-rated doctoral programs in sociology in Great Britain hired their own and one another's graduates was evaluated. The 8 top-rated doctoral programs in sociology in Great Britain did not hire one another's graduates to the extent this occurs in such doctoral programs in sociology in the United States.     

The definition of sociology and the sociology of definition: Durkheim's Rules of Sociological Method and high school philosophy in France

Despite his attempts to break with philosophy and found a science of society, Émile Durkheim (1858–1917) was involved with philosophy throughout his career. Academic philosophy in France was a highly centralized institution that produced professors capable of teaching a standard curriculum. These professors made up a significant portion of the audience whose support Durkheim hoped to win for his sociological project. The concepts of Pierre Bourdieu and the literature on the rhetoric of the human sciences can help reconstruct the field of academic philosophy, Durkheim's relationship with it, and the ways in which he drew upon it to formulate his method and to persuade his philosophical colleagues. Durkheim's definition of the social fact in The Rules of Sociological Method can only be understood in the context of French academic philosophy. © 1996 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

阿育王与前七祖

阿育王是印度历史上的一个伟大的国王,在他的前后,佛教出现了七位当时公认的领袖,即前七代持法者,也是后来禅宗二十八祖中的前七祖。大量史料表明,七代持法者的存在是毫无疑问的,也表明佛教确实存在着持法者代代相承的历史传统,因而后来的禅宗世系说有比较充分的根据,并非是后世有意编造祖统。     

Masters of shadows

The interchange of views between Hans Binder and Bruno Klopfer regarding their evaluation and scoring systems for shading responses is traced and their single personal meeting much later is described.