Theoretical and political perspectives of American sociologists in the 1990s

Abstract

This study investigated the theoretical allegiances of a national sample of 168 sociologists. Conflict theory and Marxism, symbolic interactionism, functionalism, and eclecticism were the approaches most widely adhered to by our respondents. Nonetheless, the respondents claimed allegiance to a wide range of perspectives, suggesting that contemporary sociology is, as long suspected, highly fragmented theoretically. A special concern of the study was to determine the degree to which sociologists identify biological factors as important determinants of social behavior. The respondents were highly antibiological in outlook, with more than half attributing only 15 percent or less of the variation in 12 dimensions of social behavior to biological causes. We also explored the degree to which four variables—age, gender, institutional affiliation, and political outlook—were correlated with the respondents’ theoretical preferences and the importance they gave to biological causation. Political outlook was the best predictor of the respondents’ theoretical outlooks, followed fairly closely by age. Institutional affiliation was a weak predictor of theoretical outlook, and gender was completely unrelated to theory choice and perception of the importance of biological causation.