ABSTRACT
On the morning of 16 February 1988 the Guardian newspaper carried a full-page article on the decline of British sociology. Published under the headline ‘Who needs sociologists?’ it made grim reading over breakfast. Apparently there had been a ‘terrible eclipse’ of the discipline during the 1980s: governments and university authorities had become hostile, departments were closed, and as a result many sociologists were disheartened, anxious about their public image and uncertain as to the merits of the subject itself.
