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The Sociological Imagination Group
Future conferences:
9th Annual Conference, 2008, Boston, August--10th and 11th: "Environmental Unsustainability and Escalating World Problems"
Sociological Imagination Group
Formed just prior to 9/11 and deeply influenced by escalating problems throughout the world, we were appalled by the failure of sociology to live up to what C. Wright Mills called "the promise of sociology." And we were equally appalled by the failure of the other social sciences to live up to their own promise of penetrating very far into the complexity of human behavior and human problems. Yet it was C. Wright Mills' The Sociological Imagination--voted by the International Sociological Association as the 2nd most influential book for sociologists published during the entire 20th century--that succeeded in stimulating our own efforts. We have developed--in our 5 published or in-press books and 6th manuscript under consideration--what we believe is a fundamental breakthrough in the scientific method that can move toward fulfilling those promises.
Ours is a direction that follows the scientific ideal of opening up to the full range of knowledge relevant to a given problem. It builds systematically on Mills' vision:
The sociological imagination. . . is the capacity to shift from one perspective to another—from the political to the psychological; from examination of a single family to comparative assessment of the national budgets of the world; from the theological school to the military establishment; from considerations of an oil industry to studies of contemporary poetry.
In place of the approach of our bureaucratic social sciences--as illustrated by the 46 Sections of the American Sociological Association with very limited communication across those specialized areas--our direction yields both the integration of that knowledge and efforts to put that knowledge to work.
We are convinced that we have in fact achieved this breakthrough by unearthing the bureaucratic assumptions or paradigm that lies behind present practices throughout the social sciences, by developing alternatives to that paradigm, and by publishing work that illustrates the effectiveness of those alternatives. By so doing we have followed Thomas Kuhn's analysis in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Yet our own work does no more than open a door to integrating and making use of the available knowledge of human behavior that presently exists only in bits and pieces. We believe that all humans bear responsibility for--and are capable of shouldering--this task, and not just social scientists. We see this task as absolutely vital at this time in history, given escalating world problems. We urge visitors to this website to consider how they might make use of our ideas to help them confront problems in their own diverse ways.
Note that the starred books below are part of a series with Paradigm Publishers, "Advancing the Sociological Imagination," edited by Bernard Phillips and David Knottnerus. We invite prospective authors to write us at bernieflps@aol.com or at david.knottnerus@okstate.edu We also invite visitors to the website to participate in our 9th Annual Conference, "Confronting Escalating World Problems," July 31 and August 1 in Boston near the ASA meetings. Details about the conference--including the submission of papers--will appear on this website shortly.
Excerpts from our five key books and sixth manuscript--including three edited volumes--can be accessed on this website. They are:
(1) Beyond Sociology's Tower of Babel (2001);
(2) Toward a Sociological Imagination (2002, volume);
(3) *The Invisible Crisis of Contemporary Society (2007);
(4) *Understanding Terrorism (2007, volume);
(5) *Armageddon or Evolution? (2008, in press);
(6) Confronting Fundamental Social Problems (manuscript of vol. under consideration)
Institutionalized Elder Abuse,
by Jason Ulsperger and David Knottnerus, a chapter in "Confronting
Fundamental Social Problems," a manuscript based on the Montreal conference
(7) "Manifesto for Deep Democracy," an introductory chapter to a new manuscript, is an effort to integrate basic ideas from all of these books in a short space.
Other materials on this website are:
· A short bio of C. Wright Mills (2004)
· *Goffman Unbound! (2006)
· "The Evolutionary Manifesto" (2006)
· "Structural Ritualization Theory" (2007)
· *Struggles before Brown (2007)
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Structural Ritualization Theory: 2006 and 2007 Application and Change, Chapter by Knottnerus in a new manuscript based on the Montreal conference, "Confronting Fundamental Social Problems."
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Brief Description and Sources for "Structural Ritualization Theory," Initiated by David Knottnerus
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Chapter 1 of Bernard Phillips' Beyond Sociology's Tower of Babel (2001)
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Harold Kincaid's "Explaining Inequality" in the group's first volume (2002)
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Phillips' Introduction to Armageddon or Evolution? (Paradigm, in press).
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The Introduction to the group's volume, Understanding Terrorism (Paradigm 2007)
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Jean Van Delinder's First Chapter of Struggles before Brown: Early Civil Rights Protests and Their Significance Today (Paradigm 2007)
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Manifesto for Deep Democracy, Chapter 1 of Bernard Phillips new book.
visitors since 5/17/2007