Fifty Years of the Southern Sociological Society: Change and Continuity in a Professional Society. Methodological Perspectives on Studying the History of the Southern Sociological Society

Abstract

This paper revisits research procedures used to collect and analyze data for Fifty Years of the Southern Sociological Society: Change and Continuity in a Professional Society (1988) to comment on methodological issues. The fifty years of change were conceptualized as having shifted the Southern Sociological Society from a disciplinary to a professional mode of organization. The shift occurred both from evolutionary processes and from deliberate revolutionary actions of officials and members. Data for the study came mainly from the Society’s Archives. It included personal accounts by presidents, secretary-treasurers’ and committee reports, annual programs and newsletters. Evolutionary processes of adapting the association to the growth of membership, to differentiation of fields of sociological study, along with the rationalization and formalization of the Society’s governance and operation, were extracted mainly from annual programs, the most continuous and objective body of archival information. Revolutionary changes, including adaptation to societal challenges including racial segregation, from the Society’s founding onward were inferred from personal accounts, committee reports, and newsletters, and were confirmed from interviews with long-standing members.