Gouldner is always worth reading

Abstract

When preparing for this essay, I chose not to focus on Alvin Gouldner's critique of Parsons and of Functionalism. I had never considered either very dominant, even in the 1950s in graduate school. American sociology then and in the 1960s seemed "polycentric" already, rather than becoming so, as he concluded in The Coming Crisis ... in 1970 (p. 444). Instead I have recorded my somewhat "critical comments," where it seemed that Gouldner's own domain assumption and sentiments screened him from trends now more apparent in the world and our field. Here, considerably condensed, are my reactions, plus?as space allows? some final reflections, and recollections of the man and his work in The Coming Crisis. . . . Gouldner seems most "on" about the rise of a more left-radical U.S. sociology. Fourteen years after The Coming Crisis, for example, Kanter (1984, p. 151) noted that in sociology and in economics, "a revival of interest in Marxist theory and research has taken as a first premise that no part of modern life goes uninfluenced by the structure of capitalist institutions." Gouldner seems most "off" in his (insufficiently self-criticized)1 assumption that interrelated economic class and national political-economic interests would surely be the decisive ones in in dustrial societies and in the evolution of sociology, although in new ways to new generations. Strong yes, decisive possibly; but other ancient contenders for such a claim are again more evident. And even his (and our common) sociological premise, that there is something sensible to refer to as a society, is presently attracting profound criticism. The New Left and Marxism (of the 1960s) have "evolved" into a m?lange2 of Marxian perspectives, often emphasizing varied values and ideologies as much as the class-and-national economic interests that Gouldner considered so crucial in explaining sociology's coming crisis.