ABSTRACT
In this book, I have analyzed three concepts—"founders,” “classics,” and “canon"—and examined their significance for sociology today. My attempt to identify and unravel the metaphors of founders and canon was not done for its own sake, an exercise in deconstructive pyrotechnics, but to show what happens when people mistake these figures of speech for something literal. In those instances, metaphor lapses into a pseudo-description of (what purports to be) an actual event or entity. Thus, despite being widely and uncritically accepted by sociologists, the concept of “founders of sociology” does little to enhance our understanding of the emergence and growth of sociology, either as discourse or as a discipline. It tends, on the one hand, to portray “founding” as an act rather than as a historical process, and, on the other, to focus almost exclusively on individuals at the expense of the wider intellectual and social milieu in which they operated. At its most crude, the mythology of Founding (Fathers, Mothers, Sisters) deteriorates into hagiography as it seeks to legitimate some project or obsession. At its most sophisticated, it draws on associations that are provocative but misleading and ultimately confusing.
