The Alienation of Sociology from Its History

In 2001, a number of sociologists combined forces to publish a book entitled What’s Wrong with Sociology? (Stephen Cole, Ed.). This paper aims to contribute to the continuation of this discussion by offering a new answer to the question that they raised. I here argue that the main problem facing sociology is that not only has it been alienated from its own history, it has also been provided with a scientific biography that failed to grasp its true nature and did not present a comprehensible explanation of what the classical sociologists were doing and why.

This discussion puts forward the premise that the reason for the alienation of sociology from its history is that it was not constructed upon a solid and unitary foundation, but instead came to be marked by a persistent conflict between two opposing conceptions of sociology that reflected two different methodological positions and two different understandings of how sociology should begin—with theory, or with empirical data collection. The primary focus of the present investigation is on one of the most important controversies in sociology, namely, that represented by Talcott Parsons and Herbert Blumer which involved macro and microsociology as the markers of the two main opposing views of sociology. More particularly, I will explore “predecessor selection” as a strategy for writing both macro and microsociological histories that was employed by Parsons, as Camic (1992) established, as well as Blumer, who presented the history of the symbolic interactionist tradition.