This excursion into the histories of American sociology, as recalled by male scholars in autobiographical narratives, reveals the absence of women. The data are published autobiographical accounts of American sociology in the 1930s, 1940s, 1950s and 1960s, by men, aimed at fel­low sociologists. There are some parallel volumes of autobiography and oral history about American […]

When I read the published interview, I was immediately struck by Goffman’s account of the Chicago Sociology Department as if it had been an all-male environment, and his all-male friendship circle. At the time of publication I made some notes for a commentary on the inter­view, but merely filed them. Then Gary Alan Fine (1995) […]

In 1980 Jef Verhoeven conducted a long interview with Goffman in his house, as part of a series of such interviews with leading symbolic inter- actionists in the USA. Goffman died in 1982, during his term as President of the ASA. In 1992 Verhoeven published the text of their conversation edited to remove some ‘infelicities’. […]

This section shows how little impact all the work of all the feminist sociologists has had. It is to be contrasted with the following section, in which work by some very different men, who have treated feminist sociology with respect, is explored. The silverback narrative section begins with my personal response to the publication of […]

feminist sociology and the malestream T his chapter takes its title from Amanda Cross (1981: 47) and is drawn out of a comment made by her heroine Kate Fransler about her lack of impact on and in Harvard: ‘Because as a woman… she was simply invisible.’ This chapter faces, Janus-like, in two directions. There are […]

There are two distinct Durkheimian traditions in contemporary social science, and so it is important to clarify which Durkheim is under dis­cussion before exploring modern feminist responses to his work. There is the mainstream sociological Durkheim, promulgated by Parsons, who is an empiricist, a positivist and a conservative. Then there is the Gallic Durkheim of […]

There are several feminists whose work could be discussed here, but the most interesting is Dorothy Smith. In her early work she combined a Marxist analysis of macro-structures with an ethnomethodological take on micro-processes to create an innovative feminist sociology(Smith, 1972, 1973). Her later work is much less influenced by any male theorists, as she […]

In the earlier section on feminist responses to the major figures in the classic grand narrative of sociology I used women whose work is recog­nisable to all but the most blinkered malestream sociologists. In this part of the chapter the focus is on feminist developments from the founding fathers which deviate further from malestream sociology, […]

The Gorgona is a giant mermaid, a sister of Alexander the Great. She appears beside a boat, grabs the gunwale, and asks if her brother, King Alexander, lives. Woe betide the sailor who tells her Alexander is dead. Wise mariners answer ‘He lives and reigns: zei kai vasileri/’ or ‘He lives, he reigns, he rules […]