The Coming Crisis of Western Sociology

In his preface to The Coming Crisis of Western Sociology, Alvin W. Gouldner explains that the book is part of a larger plan, beginning with the publication of Enter Plato, whose object is to "contribute to an historically informed sociology of social theory". The sentiment structure of the new sociology may be inclined to favor Erving Goffman's ahistoricism and rejection of hierarchy, according to Gouldner, because of Talcott Parsons' overweening emphasis on moral values in the maintenance of social order. Gouldner suggests that the version of exchange theory espoused by George Homans had its roots in postwar America; specifically, it was an extension of the revisionist social utilitarianism implicit in Robert K. Merton. Merton's version of functionalism. Gouldner suggests that by the 1960s western sociology had become increasingly polarized due to the polycentrism occurring within both Marxism and academic sociology.