Introduction
Document Type
Journal article
Source Publication
The American Sociologist
Publication Date
3-2014
Volume
45
Issue
1
First Page
2
Last Page
7
Publisher
Springer New York LLC
Abstract
Over the course of 2 days, in the spring of 2012, a group of scholars met in Hong Kong to discuss one of the most penetrating thinkers of twentieth century social enquiry. Participants offered the only kind of tribute that Robert Nisbet (1913–1996)—American sociologist, historian of ideas, political writer—would have deemed serious. Engaging critically with his ideas, speakers plumbed their sources, assessed their plausibility, enquired into their relevance, and weighed alternative models and hypotheses. This special issue of The American Sociologistis the fruit of those endeavors. Encompassing both his social and his political ideas it is also the first collection of essays ever published on Nisbet’s work. Why might that be? The briefest answer is that while Nisbet’s books are still individually cited and respected, their author does not command the stature, the attention, of such thinkers as Talcott Parsons, C. Wright Mills, Anthony Giddens, Pierre Bourdieu and Jürgen Habermas. Explaining these writers’ prestige, and Nisbet’s marginality, compels us to recall some of the deepest currents of the social sciences.
DOI
10.1007/s12108-014-9198-9
Print ISSN
00031232
E-ISSN
19364784
Funding Information
The contributors gratefully acknowledge the financial support of Lingnan University, Hong Kong. LU sponsored and hosted the conference on Robert Nisbet from which these papers derive.
Publisher Statement
Copyright © Springer Science+Business Media New York 2014. Access to external full text or publisher's version may require subscription.
Full-text Version
Publisher’s Version
Language
English
Recommended Citation
Baehr, P. (2014). Introduction. The American Sociologist, 45(1), 2-7. doi: 10.1007/s12108-014-9198-9