Our British Cousins

Abstract

In 1980, the British Sociological Association celebrated its 30th anniversary at its annual conference. The eleven papers reprinted in this volume are a selection from a larger number focused on various aspects of the discipline's fortunes and misfortunes since the formation of the BSA in 1950. It will come as no surprise to learn that on this occasion the dominant mood was one of pessimism. Neither the state of the world nor of the art itself could give members much encouragement to re-live the palmy days of the 1960s, when sociology was a swinging subject and such an event as the introduction of a sociological tripos at Cambridge was deemed worthy of the close attention of readers of the London Times. All the same, the anniversary itself might fairly have merited rather more in the way of thanksgiving and celebration. The Association had achieved a remarkable rate of growth (in the sixties membership was doubling every two or three years); it had successfully launched a new journal, Sociology, alongside the two established native publications which already enjoyed international standing; and its membership had regularly and energetically debated issues of professionalism without ever succumbing to the temptation to devise their own formal professional structure. Yet despite the evidence of solid progress, a sense of crisis and an air of intellectual uncertainty are manifest throughout this volume. The papers fall into three sections. The first deals with the institutional contexts within which the subject operates and is concerned with the role of the BSA in the matter of professionalism (Barnes), the parasitical relationship between sociology and other disciplines (Urry), the relation between the rise of sociology in Oxford and Cambridge and measures of academic excellence (Heath and Edmondson), and current risks of institutional erosion or collapse for sociology (Abrams). The second section consists of five papers addressed to questions of the nature of sociological knowledge and of the scope of sociological method. It begins with an argument that positivism lives (Platt) and continues with an assessment of the anti-quantitative basis said to be prevalent in British sociology (Husbands).