To the Editor:
I found Nathan Glazer’s article, “What is Sociology’s Job?” [in the February Commentary] amusing, penetrating, and thought-provoking.
Mr. Glazer seems quite correct in pointing out that American sociology—in distinction from European—has tended to concentrate on bread-and-butter problems and to stress amelioration, rather than the scientific study of society as a whole. The present disjointed and atomistic approach unfortunately tends to be perpetuated by the vested interests of departmentalization in the social science field. A more fundamental approach might involve “trespassing” in, say, the older-established and more lucrative and prestige-giving spheres of the economists and the biblical scientists, and might provoke resistance. Sociology has been termed “the science of leftovers,” and in America there is some truth in this. The anthropologists, under the protective coloring of a major preoccupation with the “primitive,” are at present more aggressive than the sociologists in staking out their claim to an interest in a total “science of man.”
The path to scientific progress would seem to be in a better interpretation of and cooperation between the various social scientific disciplines—I liked the article!
Elizabeth K. Nottingham
Department of Sociology
Queens College
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