This issue of SER contains three articles on public sociology and economic sociology, which all have their origin in a session on this theme that was held at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association in August 2006 in Montreal. The reason for organizing this session was a sense that ‘new economic sociology’ has ignored many of the issues that are associated with the term ‘publ...

Do all disciplines fret over the state of their own intellectual and policy-relevant health? Is it a symptom of our hyper-reflexive and confessional times that collective anxiety has to be rehearsed over the track record, and present and projected performance of a group of scholars? Medical sociology’s lengthy reflections on the state of its own practice are recognizable as part of a more gener...

1. Sociology's Relevance to International Relations 2. Historical Origins of Sociological Thought 3. Historical Sociology 4. The Historical Sociology of the State and International Relations 5. Principles of Historical Sociology 6. Problems with Historical Sociology 7. Sociology of Globalization 8. Global Versus Historical Sociology? 9. The Future Sociological Agenda in International Relations ...

Industrial relations (IR) is often accused of being atheoretical. Yet there has been a tradition of tacit theorizing that links IR to an important strand of social science theory, institutional analysis. There are further connections to the philosophy of science laid out in critical realism (CR). This paper argues that these connections need to be made more explicit and that a programme of IR r...

The programme of analytical sociology brings sharp focus to fundamental issues insociology as a scientific discipline. Its practitioners offer a clear paradigm of how sociologicalexplanations ought to proceed, from individual actors to social outcomes. This essay considerslimitations of the approach as a general framework for all sociological research, however. Theessay surveys ...

The recent development of child guidance clinics and behavior research centers presents students of human nature and social relations with new opportunities and new problems. The history of science seems to demonstrate that whenever a body of theoretical knowledge becomes oriented and useful with reference to a concrete human problem a period of rapid development ensues. The evidence for such a...

This paper discusses the aims and format of an introductory course in clinical sociology . It reviews the process of teaching clinical sociology as a profession and teaching the theoretical basis that distinguishes the field. Case studies, guest practitioners, and practical exercises are used to prompt an application and integration of the acquired knowledge. Ideally, the course reviewed here c...

Max Weber and Georg Simmel are considered as ideal-typical founders of sociology. Whereas Simmel pleaded for a large conception of sociology, which would include the epistemological and metaphysical issues as well, Max Weber explicitly excluded philosophical questions from the domain of sociology. A philosophical reading of Max Weber’s sociology, which uncovers his philosophy in the margins of ...

The advent of public sociology over the past decade represents the end of a string of crisis moments in sociology. Since the 1950s and, especially, the 1960s, sociology was argued to be in a crisis because the discipline was thought to be conservative and contributing to sustain the status quo. As a result, the 1970s witnessed a radicalization of sociology, but the 1980s saw a general decline o...