Editor’s Introduction: Canons, Classics and Publics

Abstract

In this issue we offer a rich variety of papers that share some common foci, especially intellectual and historical traditions and relations with external groups. Some articles address very immediate issues, while others provide an historical perspective that seeks to link past events to contemporary work in sociology. There is also an international dimension, with a particular focus on Russia. We begin with Neil Smelser’s insightful analysis of sources of unity and disunity in the field of sociology. Consistent with his longstanding interest in the process of differentiation (which includes both difference and integration), Smelser probes the factors that operate to bring us together or to pull us apart. Although the tone is dispassionate, the discussion embodies Smelser’s deep concern for the well-being of his discipline. For him, as it was for his mentor, Talcott Parsons, sociology has always been an affair of the heart. Dmitri Shalin’s article is likewise oriented toward both unity and disunity, but with a particular focus on competing constructions of the work of George Herbert Mead. If Mead’s work is now generally regarded as canonical, how did that come to be? Moreover, who Bspeaks for Mead,^ and who should be regarded as the most legitimate interpreter of his writings? The discussion brings to mind a remark by Everett C. Hughes, years ago, while he was at Boston College. In challenging a proposed reading list of theoretical works (which I had helped to draft), Hughes demanded, BWho defines the canon?^ Pavel Sorokin begins by noting that, in the professional literature, the image of BRussian sociology^ remains Bfragmentary and incomplete.^ He therefore attempts to identify the basic features of sociology in Russia, to demonstrate its fundamental continuity over nearly two centuries, and to reveal its relevance to contemporary debates in the field. What is especially noteworthy, in his view, is that sociology in Russia has always had a deeply Bpublic^ character, in the sense that it has always been oriented primarily toward contemporary social problems (e.g., serfdom and tsarism) Am Soc (2015) 46:301–302 DOI 10.1007/s12108-015-9279-4