North Central Sociological Association 2013 Ruth and John Useem Plenary Address Paradox: Sociological Theory Should Need No Defense, But Apparently It Does. Why?

It is an honor to present the NCSA [North Central Sociological Association] Useem plenary address, and I am pleased to be here in this role (as well as, I might add, at my age, I am just pleased to be here!). The honor is obvious; the pleasure is multiplied by the fact that Ruth Hill Useem and John Useem were friends of long-standing. Contributing to my pleasure in being here is that I once was President of the NCSA, then called the Ohio Valley Sociological Society. A final source of my interest in accepting the invitation from Steve [Carlton-Ford, then President of NCSA] was the feeling of deja vu I had when told of the "defense of theory" theme of the meeting. It put me at home for a reason I will explain shortly.The title of my talk is derived from the meeting theme, though I have used a somewhat different meaning of "defense" than I believe intended by that theme. Over the years, I have given thought to the import for the larger discipline of sociology of substantive areas of sociology locating their work in theoretical terms, and the importance to the substantive areas themselves of doing so. I have also given thought to why, if the import of doing this is great, it so often fails to be done.The bulk of this thinking and this talk has a highly pessimistic tone-it sounds of gloom and doom-since it focuses on obstacles to the production of compelling theory. I have no doubt about the reality of these obstacles and will call these as I see them. I do not do this as an old man looking back on the glory that was in his youth. I do it as one who believes that we can do things that can minimize the threats to the theoretical enterprise in sociology that my litany of obstacles represents. While I have thought of a few ways to do so and will tell you these, I do this in the firm belief that we can collectively think of more ways to minimize the threats. In short, I hope to enlist you in the defense of theory.If, as my title suggests, theory should need no defense, then why does it? Many sociologists assert that too little of what appears in our journals holds anything that interests them or from which they benefit; they find no reason to read anything outside of their own specialized comer of the field. Underlying that assessment, I believe, is the absence of a cogent conceptual and theoretical argument as setting for the work these articles contain. For me, conceptual setting or frame and theory together constitute the theoretical enterprise of sociology. It is in that context that the theoretical enterprise requires defense. That is, its very absence from much published sociological work suggests that many fail to see the utility of strong theory for the work itself or for the field outside that particular work, and its defense becomes a matter of understanding its utility.The question then becomes: why this failure? In my judgment, an important part of the answer lies in the confusion and conflation of frame and theory, in ways the sociology profession has chosen to organize itself, in features of the times we live in and their impact on higher education and academic sociology, and in features related to how sociological theory is presented to its audience.The roots of my thinking go back to my graduate student days in the late 1940s. Those days were at the University of Minnesota and I adopted the sociology as science view then dominating the ethos of that department. This view included the demand that a theoretically grounded claim required empirical verification. At the same time, I was a student of sociological theory a la Don Martindale, who at least many of the middle aged or older among you will remember as the author of the theory book (Martindale 1960) that got them through their theory prelims. When I add that to my sociology as science view, to me that meant doing a dissertation involving a testable explanatory claim based on strong theoretical reasoning. Initially, I considered a dissertation developing from Freud, but abandoned the idea when I realized that every Freudian-based claim came with escape clauses that allowed maintaining the claim in the face of negative evidence. …