Relativism, Equality, and Popular Culture

To understand society, we study people’s relationships, but we also study their lives. If we want to understand sociology’s place in society, we must look at ourselves in the same way—and precisely because we are supposed to be detached social scientists. Sociologists are also people, and when we try to be value-free, knowledge about the values from which we are seeking to free ourselves becomes absolutely necessary. Although I wish this were a volume of biographical studies, I suspect that no one is yet ready to pay for biographical research among sociologists; autobiographical accounts are therefore a useful precursor.