Founders, Classics, Canons: Modern Disputes Over the Origins and Appraisal of the Social Sciences

Founders, classics, and canons have been vitally important in helping to frame sociology's identity. Within the academy today, a number of positions—feminist, postmodernist, postcolonial—question the status of "tradition."

In Founders, Classics, Canons, Peter Baehr defends the continuing importance of sociology's classics and traditions in a university education. Baehr offers arguments against interpreting, defending, and attacking sociology's great texts and authors in terms of founders and...