My Life and Soft Times

There is a touch of chutzpah in autobiography, an arrogance that my life is a matter of such significance as to merit the reader’s attention. My name may be known in seminars but it is hardly known in households. The self-analysis implied requires me to find some justification in a more universal rationale. I find it in Gerth and Mills’s view of social psychology as the confluence of history and biography. An even more useful salve to my sensibilities has been supplied by Alvin Gouldner, who wrote that the perception of sociologists comes from two sources. One is empirical studies