| Popis: |
This chapter distinguishes rumour from evidence and the supposition of intellectual doom from the supposition of institutional doom. The case of the proposal to close the Department of Sociology at North East London Polytechnic is a good example of the institutional version of the problem. The recent dealings of the British Sociological Association with the Social Science Research Council provide an apt and important illustration of stage of elusiveness on institutional lines. The analogy with theology should be taken seriously; not because sociology is a matter of faith but because, like theology, it has to be an argumentative discipline. Theology provides one among a number of highly respectable precedents for embracing the role of polemicist. By unifying social theory and social practice, socialism suppresses social science. It makes intelligible in practice spheres of human conduct which had been intelligible only through theory. |
