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PARTISAN REVIEW
once made its identity and frame of reference clear as something other
than a footnote to social work and welfare.
One is tempted to say that the editor of
Contemporary Sociology
must
either assume the burdens or at least share in this catastrophic situation.
But I think not. Indeed, I am impressed by the Herculean degree to
which the current editor has attempted to enlist th e aid of non–
sociologists in the review process . But no matter who is the review
editor, or who shares responsiblity for editorial supervision, one needs
several hundred reviewers for several hundred books. If a field is so
unified in its ideology, so rooted in a shared mission, the editors can do
little but moderate and mediate the outcomes. The field as such must
assume the burden of responsibility.
For what we are dealing with is a hermetically sealed context, in
which external impediments to the ideological agenda within sociology
are systematically, if often unconsciously, sealed off. This means that
world events that do not fit the model of rigid race , class and gender
analysis are ignored. Yet, the unpleasant facts of ethnic warfare, systemic
collapse, national identities, and tribal fratricide keep bubbling to the
surface. We have a peculiar sociological isolationism - in which so-called
domestic agendas simply preempt world events. When that larger world
is admitted to the sociological field of vision, it comes as history without
currency.
This myopic condition is essentially confined - one would have to
say happily - to sociology. There is no comparable situation in any of
the other social sciences. Any cursory examination of review media in
other areas, such as
Contemporary Psychology ,
the official journal of the
American Psychological Association, or the large review segment of
The
American Political Science R eview,
the organ of the American Political
Science Association, offers a full panoply of reviewing options. The em–
phasis in these journals is on quality, not ideology; on coverage not cat–
echism. As long as the converse is the case in the profession of sociology,
the field's deterioration will continue. The reviewing media of a profes–
sional discipline is a litmus test of the state of a field. When it reflects the
state of the world, a discipline is in a healthy state. When it fails to rec–
ognize that society has always been a larger category than sociology, it
fails to enlighten.
