ABSTRACT
The first three volumes in the Falmer Sociology Series—on the work of Robert K. Merton, Anthony Giddens and John H.Goldthorpe—were edited by myself, Sohan Modgil and Celia Modgil. They were begun in 1986 and published in 1990. The idea for this volume was conceived on 30 July 1990 at Nuffield College, Oxford. I had arranged to visit Nuffield Official Fellow John H.Goldthorpe with Christine Cox, the editor of the Falmer Sociology Series, to celebrate the publication of his own Falmer volume. At this point nothing was further from my mind than the idea of editing further volumes in the series on leading living sociologists. I was about to begin fieldwork on a major new research project on ‘managing an automated factory’, and had no intention of letting myself in for further editorial exhaustion of the kind required when editing a series with large numbers of ‘paired contributors’ from various academic cultures with very different definitions of that most elusive of concepts, the deadline. Nevertheless, it was always good fun, and extremely revealing, to ask colleagues whom among leading living sociologists they would choose if there were to be further volumes in the series.
