This essay argues that sociology's major current problems are intellectual. Examples of new methodologies founded on contextual thinking are considered. Anniversaries are often valedictions. A centennial sometimes shows an association to be moribund, just as a diamond jubilee may reveal a queen's irrelevance and a golden anniversary finds many a marriage dead. By contrast, living social relations celebrate daily.
Anniversaries merely punctuate their excitement.
It is commonly argued that unions regularize workplace conflict by substituting formal strikes and grievance proceedings for informal forms of resistance. This transformation is interpreted as part of a trade-off under business unionism in which unions help discipline workers and keep them on the job in exchange for the right to bargain collectively in their name. Tests of this thesis have focused on the trades-off between collective voice and exit and have ignored the subtle forms of worker resistance that are central to the argument. Craft and industrial unions increase organized conflict with management. Industrial unions reduce some aspects of informal resistance and some aspects of organizational loyalty.