ABSTRACT
In the view of C. Wright Mills, the promise of sociology was a theoreti cal framework in which men and women could interpretively link their personal troubles and public issues to broader changes of history and social structure (1977: 3-24). Today, because of such changes, it is the personal troubles and public issues of our discipline that need the light of the socio logical imagination. Since the mid-eighties, both in and outside of sociol ogy, there has been the recognition that our discipline has entered a period of decline. The troubles and issues produced by this decline have been the subject of several analyses. These can be put into two broad categories. The first is the politicized or value influenced nature of knowledge production in sociology. The second is that the technical conditions of production are not strict enough. The analyses offered by Horowitz( 1993) and Lipset(1994) reflect the over-politicized view, while those of Wallace(1988) and Collins(1994) represent the under-technicized position.
