The Sociologist's Quest for Respectability

Abstract

ACADEMIC sociologists and those trained in sociology have a long university tradition, and even though we are sociologists and professors, we often fail fully to appreciate this tradition in our daily existence of teaching, research, and other roles. As professors we sometimes forget that we have a long and eminent tradition. We have positions of high status, a status reflected in an often-quoted Swedish statement that professor walks second only to the king, who walks next to God. Universities extend as far back as the ninth century, but they were largely specialized institutions dealing with medicine, law, and theology. As groups of schools, faculties, and colleges, universities date primarily from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, following the accumulation of knowledge largely derived through the rediscovery of Aristotle, Arabian commentaries, and the study of the broader liberal arts. Many universities from which we trace our traditions have existed for as long as nine hundred years: Bologna (1088), the universities of Paris, Oxford, and Cambridge from the twelfth century; Prague (1348); Vienna (1365); Uppsala (1477); Mexico and San Marcos de Lima (1551); and Harvard (1636). Universities today, as compared with the past, have developed well-established innovations, such as the preparation of theses in place of disputations, seminars, electives, laboratories, and separate graduate schools. In this long academic tradition, sociologists are fairly late arrivals on the university faculties; the first independent department of sociology in the world is generally considered to be at the University of Chicago in 1893. The first professional journal was established in 1895. It was not until the 1940's that the University of California and Princeton University recognized sociology as a separate academic discipline. Today nearly all universities in this country have departments of sociology, and they are rapidly being established abroad. Thus it is understandable that sociologists often