Abstract

This is an excursion into the sociology of American sociology. It is an attempt to present a typology of the relationship between sociological empiricism as an ideology, and the pre?eminence and power of empiricist sociologists. Toward this end, such concrete factors as recruitment practices, educational orientations, status strivings of the social scientists, forms of financial subsidization, and the profes?sionalization of the field are taken into account. The article concludes by noting the limited field of investigations open to sociological empiricism, and its general impoverishment as the leading ideology of the science of sociology