ABSTRACT
Chapter 1 reviews major trends in sociological theory since the 1940s, including the division between sociological theory and social theory and the success of three distinct forms of sociology—sociological empiricism, middle-range theory and critical public sociology—in the postwar period. Each of these forms of sociology incorporates theory in a different way, and the differences and disagreements between advocates of each have contributed to a long-running sense of fragmentation and crisis within sociological theory and sociology as a whole. This chapter considers whether sociology’s most pressing crisis has less to do with epistemological and methodological differences within the field than with the ways national higher education audit cultures encourage overproduction of derivative research while discouraging innovative approaches to theory.
