Review: 'The Sacred Project of American Sociology' Part II | National Catholic Reporter

Review: 'The Sacred Project of American Sociology' Part II | National Catholic Reporter by MSW. MGB: This book is a memoir of a conservative in a liberal field.  His awakening began when he went to the annual convention and noted the language of victimhood with an egalitarian solution (which Douglas and Wildavsky would call fatalism and Coyle and myself would call despotism with a egalitarian solution).  Even the culture studies seemed to him to follow this meme.  Gender studies were also a part.



Reviewed books in their professional journal reinforced this (although I suspect those would be the books on display, ya think?).  In the text, Smith reviews several books according to his personal biases, which seem different from the others in his field, and even those without provocative titles seem to follow the common mold.  ASA annual meetings, of course, follow the same mold ( I would be shocked if they did not).  The text's go there too, including the most common Soc 101 text which starts discussing gender equality (although I suspect it won't in a few years, because gender equality will not be an issue in law - and maybe not even in religion).



Smith also cites Lenore Weisman's seminal study on inequality in divorce (although I would demur, because my income is down and the Mrs.' is doing better - the correct item of the study would be dependent and supporting spouses, but that would not be news).  Smith, however, could not find confirming data.  Of course, if she had used meta-data, it would not have been available in raw form. He still thinks it is fabricated, and seems to mind that with these data, Lenore has been quite successful in changing divorce law to favor women more (of course, this begs the question of why divorce law needed to be changed.)



Smith also talks about a study of children of same sex parents, although MSW leaves us to read the book.  A better contrast would have been comparing same sex and opposite sex parents for both adjustment and sexual copying.  Of course, we have had gays and lesbianns coming out for a long time, the vast majority of whom had straight parents (and rather intolerant ones at that, at least initially).  Indeed, it used to be that Sociology and psychology were in the vanguard of trying to explain gay children - with all sorts of crackpot theories about gay men loving their mothers more than their fathers.  The shoe is simply on the other foot.



More on the Sacred on Monday, although my working hypothesis is that the paradigm that controlled Sociology has changed from one that affirms the thoughts of the majority (slavery was good, white people are superior, homosexuality is a disease) to something more feminist, egalitarian and sympathetic to the victims of society, with Smith suffering culture shock as an academic who believes in individual study, not group paradigms.  I am sure he is alienating his colleagues, although they may take pity on him as a victim - which he would probably hate more than derision or being called a conservative pawn (depending on who published his text).