ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of key concepts discussed in the preceding chapters of this book. The book presents a wide range of contributions to address the question of why certain sociologists and schools of thought become forgotten. As Norbert Elias would chide us, the sociology of sociology does not begin from a zero-point in the present. Stephen Mennell situates Elias in the intellectual and political context of his time in post-war Britain. As Mennell reminds us, sociological amnesia is aided and abetted by the disciplinary schism between empiricism and theoreticism. A form of sociology concerned with supposedly pre-theoretical forms of data is subject to the effects of heterogeneous influences over the construction of sociological problems. Constrained by the short-term horizons of the present, empiricist amnesia surrenders the disciplinary autonomy required as a means of orientation for understanding the longer-term trajectory of human society, its possibilities and probabilities.
