5,000 Sociologists, Sittin' Around Talkin'

Once upon a time, there was a "scholarly journal" called -- would THE SCRAPBOOK make this up? -- The Insurgent Sociologist. If you were an engage assistant professor convinced that mainstream sociology wasn't wool-headedly "relevant" enough, this is what you read. Then, in 1988, the whole intra-disciplinary revolution thing went belly up and The Insurgent Sociologist got a brand-new, more soothing name: Critical Sociology. Had sociology's 1960s finally ended?

Nope. There couldn't be an Insurgent Sociologist anymore simply because there were too few "reactionary" sociologists left to insurge against. And now, 12 years later, there appear to be even fewer of them.

Invitations have just gone out to the 95th annual meeting of the American Sociological Association, sociology's Elks Club. This August in Washington, announces association president Joe R. Feagin, more than 5,000 sociologists will gather to discuss the "vital issues that animate our society and sociology as a field." Those issues would be "Oppression, Domination & Liberation: Challenges for the 21st Century." With "special plenary sessions" on "Sexism and Feminism" and "Racism and Anti-Racism Struggles."

Washington is a perfect place for such discussions, Feagin observes, since "racial and class inequality [is] etched in the physical face of the city" and "full citizenship and democratic representation are still denied to its residents." In fact, the convention's feature event will be a "Town Meeting on the status of Washington, DC within the U.S. political system," featuring such of "the nation's leaders" as Eleanor Holmes Norton, Joyce Ladner, and Constance King.

Norton is Washington's nonvoting delegate to the U.S. House of Representatives. THE SCRAPBOOK can't remember who Ladner and King are. But that doesn't matter. Nor does it matter that Washington will achieve statehood -- ASA's apparent goal, here -- when hell freezes over. What matters, as Joe R. Feagin points out, is how "sociology begins a new and challenging century of social inquiry." Quantitative ethnographers of the world, unite!