BEYOND STRUCTURAL ANALYSIS IN THE SOCIOLOGY OF SOCIOLOGY: THE CASE OF BEHAVIORISM AND ETHNOMETHODOLOGY

Oliver, Melvin L.

Publication

BEYOND STRUCTURAL ANALYSIS IN THE SOCIOLOGY OF SOCIOLOGY: THE CASE OF BEHAVIORISM AND ETHNOMETHODOLOGY

Oliver, Melvin L.

Abstract

The paper focuses on an analysis of the potential impact that the behaviorist and ethnomethodological paradigms may have on academic sociology. Structural analysis in the sociology of sociology (Friedrichs, 1974; Mullins, 1973) is criticized and countered with an analysis which stresses the subjective process of theory acceptance and rejection exploiting Gouldner's concept of "domain assumptions" (1970). Utilizing data from a large survey of sociologists queried during the mid-sixties (Sprehe, 1967), the fit between various groupings of sociologists' "domain assumptions" and the "background assumptions " of each theory are analyzed. The results ofsuch an analysis suggest that ethnomethodology may be more attractive to certain groupings of sociologists than behaviorism, thus contradicting in part the argument advanced on the basis ofa structural analysis. The paper calls for a recognition of the dialectical interplay between "structural conditions" and "subjective forces" in the adoption and rejection oftheory.