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Sociology Research and ReferenceiResearchNet ious position and there have been several recent defenses of sociology, such as the notion of a public sociology advocated by Ben Agger (2000) and Michael Burawoy (2005a, 2005b) and the various attempts of John Scott (2005) and Steve Fuller (2006) to revive the sociological imagination. On the other side, there is a position advocated by John Goldthorpe (2002) that confines sociology to a narrow methodologically grounded science. Is it a choice of ‘‘disciplinary parochialism’’ or ‘‘imperialism,’’ as Andrew Sayer (2000) asks?Current Challenges and Issues in Sociology It is evident that the challenges facing sociology are no longer those that it faced a century ago; it is no longer a question of the scientific status of the discipline and the need to demarcate a space between the natural sciences on one side, and on the other the human sciences. Some of the major debates of the second half of the twentieth century will continue to be important, but will not define the field of sociology, such as the micro macro link, agency and structure, quantitative versus qualitative methods, the nature of theory and its relation to empirical research, the question of normative critique, the status of evidence and the limits of explanation, etc. Three major debates have emerged in recent times which capture the current situation of sociology more fully than these methodological and theoretical issues: the question of the subject matter of sociology in light of globalization; the question of disciplinarity; and the debate about the public function of sociology. As the science of society, sociology has always been a contested inquiry. Many of the major disputes have been about the nature of method and the scope of social science more generally. The debate about the subject matter of sociology has mostly resolved around issues of the know ability of the social world. In recent years an additional challenge has emerged around the very conception of the social (Gane 2004). To a large degree this has been due to major changes in the very definition of society. While much of classical sociology on the whole took society to be the society of the nation state, this is less the case today. It should be pointed out that while the equation of classical sociology with national societies has been exaggerated, there is little doubt that sociology arose as the science of the modern industrial nation state. The comparative tradition in sociological analysis, Weber’s historical sociology, and much of Marxist sociology is a reminder of the global concerns of sociology. However, as an institutionalized social science, sociology has mostly been conducted within national parameters. By far the greatest concentration of sociological research in the second half of the twentieth century has been in the US, where sociology has been the science of social order and national consensus. While the national institutional frameworks continue to be primary in terms of professional accreditation, teaching, funding, and research, the global dimension is coming more to the fore. Inter national sociological associations such as the International Sociological Association and the European Sociological Association now offer rival contexts for sociological research. It is true too that much of what might be called global sociology is merely the continuation of the comparative tradition, which can be located within an ‘‘international’’ view of sociology. But this would be to neglect a deeper transformation which is also a reflection of the transformation of the social itself. While many social theorists (e.g., Urry 2000) have argued that the social is in decline and others that the social does not coincide with the notion of society, conceived of a spatially bounded entity, it is evident that notwithstanding some of these far reaching claims the social world is undergoing major transformation and the notion of society is in need of considerable reevaluation (Smelser 1997). Exactly how new such developments are will continue to be debated. A strong case can be made for seeing current developments as part of a long term process of civilizational shifts and transformation in the nature of modernity. It is no longer possible to see the social world merely in terms of national structures impacting on the lives of individuals. Such forces are global and they interact with the local in complex ways. The turn to globality in contemporary sociology is not in any way an invalidation of sociology, even if some of the classical approaches are inadequate for the demands of the present day. Indeed, of all the social and human sciences, sociology – with its rich tradition of theory and methodology – is particularly suited to the current global context. Just one point can be made to highlight the relevance of sociology. If globalization entails the intensification of social relations across the globe, the core concern of sociology with the construction and contestability of the social world has a considerable application and relevance. This leads directly to the second challenge, the question of disciplinarity. According to the Gulbenkian Commission for the Restructuring of the Social Sciences: To be sociological is not the exclusive purview of persons called sociologists. It is an obligation of all social scientists” (Mudimbe 1996: 98). Does this mean the end of sociology? Clearly, many have taken this view and see sociology disappearing into new inter disciplinary areas and that it can no longer command disciplinary specialization due to its highly general nature. This is too pessimistic, since the Gulbenkian Commission report also points out that the same situation applies to other sciences: history is not the exclusive domain of historians and economic issues are not the exclusive purview of economists. In the era of growing interdisciplinarity, sociology is not alone in having to reorient itself beyond the narrow confines of disciplinarity. Political scientists hardly have a monopoly over politics. Sociology now exists in part within other disciplines, in particular in new post disciplinary areas which it helped to create, but it also exists in its own terms as a post disciplinary social science. In the present day it is evident that sociology takes disciplinary, interdisciplinary, and post disciplinary forms. While much of sociology has migrated from sociology to the other sciences, sociology today is also increasingly absorbing influences from other sciences. A survey of the discipline’s most influential works noted that a large number have been written by non sociologists (Clawson 1998). This is nothing new: from the very beginning sociology incorporated other disciplines into itself. Of course, this is not without contestation, as in the debate about the influence of cultural studies – itself partly a creation of sociology – on sociology (Rojek & Turner 2001). Sociology is well positioned to engage with other sciences and much of modern sociology has been based on a view of sociology as a science that incorporates the specialized results of other sciences into its framework. As Fuller (2006) argues, today this engagement with other sciences must include biology, which can now explain much of social life. Sociology must engage with some of the claims of biology to explain the social world and offer different accounts. In this respect, then, interdisciplinarity and post disciplinarity need not be seen as the end of a sociology, but a window of opportunity for sociology to address new issues. One such issue is the public function of sociology. The specialization of sociological research by professional sociology has led to a marginalization of its public role. Michael Burawoy argued this in his presidential address to the ASA in 2004 and opened up a major debate on the future of sociology (Burawoy 2005a, 2005b; Calhoun 2005). Public sociology and professional sociology...