Revising the Canon: Graduate Training in the Two Sociologies

Graduate programs in sociology are noted for the excellent training they provide in quantitative data analysis and the use of large datasets. With a few notable exceptions, however, PhD programs in sociology in the United States generally fail to provide an equivalent emphasis in social theory or interpretive sociology. Mainstream American sociology has long been dominated by adherents of the positivistic tradition. The result has been an increased isolation of sociology within academe, a diminishing American contribution to the development of social theory, and a growing irrelevance of sociology to the larger intellectual trends within the humanities and social sciences. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the effects of these trends upon graduate education in sociology. I argue that our graduate training programs are deficient in several ways, most especially in their narrow commitment to the positivist view of social science. The failure to develop sociology's interpretive tradition has allowed the style and intellectual creativity of sociological work to suffer as well as allowing an unproductive attitude of sociological "imperialism" to take root, thereby insuring the increased irrelevance of sociology to wider circles of intellectual discourse. I conclude with an argument for a greater balance in graduate training programs between sociology's two great traditions.