ABSTRACT
We are misfits. The most developed sociology in the world exists in a country inhospitable to it. The related US traits of individualism, jingoistic arrogance, and lack of a labor party tradition, combine to make sociology a suspect endeavor. There is little incentive to understand our underlying assumptions nor attend to the progress of our work. The ideas of social structure, of social facts, of situated behavior are hard sells in a land where the way to get elected, to become head of the PTA, or make a living in consulting is by pushing wars on drugs and locking people up. Our national traditions support forms of making sense that run counter to ours. Absent a strong hunch that social conditions affect individual behav ior, you get a blameful and dangerous society and certainly one with little use for sociology.
