An Interview with Randall Collins Conducted by Lara Kreps Randall Collins was the Chairperson of the Sociology Department at the University of California, Riverside. The following interview was conducted on May 20, 1992. Systematic development of conflict theory. As you know, sociology is still in its infancy as a science. Social networks, formal organizations, micro-interaction and emotion, social movements, political and economic change.
Sociology tends to confuse empirical description with more general analytical processes.
The latter is the subject of theories which can be used to analyze new materials. Theoretical understanding of some topics has become quite good, but our theories have become extremely complicated, involving multiple causes and feedbacks. Together with the high degree of specialization within sociology, this complicatedness tends to blur your best ideas in a literature that very few people understand very well. All advanced sciences have this kind of complicatedness, but they also have general legitimation which gives people the confidence that they can find the relevant specialist who can give a technically competent answer to their problems. Sociology lacks this legitimation, both with the public and with the academic world, and for that matter even among different specialties within sociology.