How Does Class Affiliation of Sociologists Impact Their Choice of Theoretical-Methodological Research Paradigm for Study of Social Structuration and Inequality and of Corresponding Practical -Political Strategies ?

The paper proposes self-reflective examination of the impact of the class affiliation of sociologists on their choice of theoretical-methodological and practical-political research paradigm starting from which sociologists attempt to explain and/or understand dis/continuities in social structuration and propose corresponding strategies for conservation, mitigation or elimination of socially structured inequality.

The main hypothesis of the paper is that sociologists like other highly educated experts are affiliates of the new small bourgeoisie, incarnating contradictory class affiliation. Sociologists like other professionals, possess formal certificate of acquired specialist knowledge. Diploma makes accessible to them salaried employment and work place privileges of performing planning and commands’ mediating work functions, but does not relieve from permanent worries not to lose them and fall into the ranks of the manual wage laborers in times of high unemployment. This contradictory place in the class division of labor of direct producers of legitimizing ideologies, leaves sociologists greater margin for the choice of the world view and social standpoint than to the affiliates of the main antagonistic classes.

The core finding of the paper is that from the time of institutionalization of the sociology as the academic discipline, the majority of sociologists tend to retain/improve the standpoint/interest of exploiting class of commanding managers to conserve or only to reform the existing relations of reproduction of civil society’s social life and inequality, articulating simultaneously the corresponding mainstream consensus or conflict version of the positivist "old-materialistic" and / or phenomenological-hermeneutical "idealist" research paradigm of eternal hierarchical social structure/stratification.  The minority chooses to attempt to come over to the standpoint/interest of the class of exploited executors, to overcome class division of labor which reproduces social inequality and to establish the relations of self-managed “socialized humanity”, articulating simultaneously the corresponding critical “new-materialistically inverted dialectic” research paradigm of liberating potential of self-organized class struggle.