Social Problems: Pathways for Transcending Exclusive Sociology

Abstract

In this paper we juxtapose assimilationist and diversity arguments found in recent metatheoretical discussions about a crisis in North American sociology. Each argument identifies a very different crisis, yet the remedies proposed appear similar in certain instances. We suggest that the assimilationist response to the crisis reproduces it, because this response requires exclusivity in sociological inquiry. Diversity reasoning acknowledges different forms of inquiry, largely as representing situated actors in different relations of domination. In doing so, diversity reasoning points towards how to transcend exclusivity because it implicitly focuses on issues related to the question “sociology for whom?” (Lee 1976). In the last part of this paper, we offer one possible way to elaborate further the potential for this transcendence: making social problems the explicit focus of sociological knowledge and incorporating nonacademic communities into sociological projects.