Change and Controversy in Recent American Sociology

Abstract

8-T1HE PERIOD since the end of World War II has clearly | witnessed basic changes in American sociology. The combina1 tion of rapid expansion of both uxiiversity posts and of available research funds facilitated more diverse large-scale efforts to upgrade the intellectual quality of sociological investigation than occurred in any other comparable period of time. 1 These efforts at innovation have led to considerable controversy about the future pattern of the field both in America and in other countries. In this connection we should like to offier a few reflections, based on American developments in the past several decades, on some of the problems that the rapid growth of an intellectual discipline creates.2 In fact the growth of an intellectual tradition is not without the ironies and paradoxes that accompany all growth. The radicals and innovators in one period Eequently become conservatives in the next. Indeed, the initiators of trends often come to resist the extension and consolidation of those trends which they themselves set in motion. As a result, intellectual developments are commonly plagued by those controversies, revolutions, secessions, and accusations of heresy and subversion which we associate with the dynacs of religion and