ABSTRACT
The war of words between sociological styles is different in content, but hardly less sharp in polemical form, than the ideological battles waged between Hamiltonians and Jeffersonians or Trotskyites and Stalinists. Pure sociologists view applied sociologists as interlopers, surrogates for social workers. Applied sociologists accuse "grand theorists" of forgetting the human content and context of social science. The war of words deserves a better underpinning in reality than it has received up to now. The contributors to Applied Sociology illumine a set of applied results arising out of established social theory. The key to the distinction between status groups for these sociologists remains economic wealth. Occupying the middle ground, Mabel Elliott argues that the solution of this science-action dualism lies in greater cohesion and coming together of sociologists and psychologists. Miller, for his part, points out the dangers involved in an applied sociology.
