Afterword to the Special Issue on Knowledge in Practice

Abstract

I was very glad to say yes when Claudio Benzecry and Monika Krause asked if I would contribute an afterword to this special issue of Qualitative Sociology. I was not one of the discussants at the 2009 Junior Theorists Symposium (JTS) where the papers published here were originally presented. But I was in the audience, and was impressed then, just as I am now, by the range, intellectual vigor, and downright interestingness of the pieces. Young scholars selected to take part in the JTS are typically regarded by their mentors as having the potential to make major contributions to the discipline, and from the papers it is not hard to see why. Given space constraints I won’t be able to discuss most of the essays in any depth. Instead, I’ll confine myself to making a few observations, based in part on my reading of the papers, about the state of the theory field. In a piece for the ASATheory Section newsletter in 2004, Michele Lamont reported the results of an informal survey of theory teaching in the top ten American graduate departments of sociology. Most of those sociologist who taught theory didn’t think of themselves first and foremost as theorists. Rather, “the prime subfield-identity of the theory teachers tends to be that of cultural sociologist, comparative historical sociologist, political sociologist, and gender sociologist” (Lamont 2004, p. 14). The only exceptions were very senior scholars. Lamont found a similar pattern when she examined ASA section memberships. Among the sections, it was Culture, Comparative-Historical, Political Sociology, and Sex and Gender that had the largest number of members who were also members of the Theory Section. Lamont went on to reflect on the significance of these findings. Are they a function of the fact that there are few jobs these days for self-identified theorists, signaling the declining prestige of the subfield, such that those with theoretical inclinations are forced to reinvent themselves as empirical researchers? Do they mean, more narrowly, that top departments, for whatever reason, are reluctant to hire theorists, and offload their required theory courses onto scholars with other interests? Or do they signal a shift in the nature of the theoretical enterprise, with the most innovative and influential work now being done by Qual Sociol (2010) 33:563–567 DOI 10.1007/s11133-010-9170-0