ABSTRACT
M ore or less a generation ago, when Alvin Gouldner wrote The Coming Crisis of Western Sociology, neither he nor his readers could have anticipated just how severe that crisis would be. It is far from clear that the crisis will ever end. It may, perhaps, be the way the world is. The very lack of any strong, coherent voice announcing anything like a crisis-free future in this world suggests we may be in this for the long haul. The more confident voices today are fundamentalisms, religious and secular, of various kinds. They denounce the corruptions of the present time and, very often, as evangelicals always have, call their followers to another world. Few are called to praise the present world.
