Volume 40, Issue 1: Critical Sociology after 40 Years: Looking Back, Looking Forward

Modern scholarship is in deep crisis. The extent of intellection prostitution to those who oppress and manipulate others may have already reached the point of no return. (Western Union of Radical Sociologists, 1969b)

With these opening sentences, the founders of The Insurgent Sociologist, which later became Critical Sociology,1 gave notice to the academy writ large, and the sociology profession in particular, that a new era had begun, a challenge to orthodoxy had emerged, that would call into question business as usual within academe. Heretofore ‘scholarship’ that did little to really interrogate the world as it was, that more often than not served as apologist for governments and policies, that provided a rationale for actions and outcomes creating poverty and despair, would no longer be tolerated. The remainder of this inaugural issue laid out a program of action, in part as a result of a conference of radical sociologists in Berkeley, designed to protest and challenge the sociology profession during its annual meeting to be held in San Francisco in 1969. This included truth squads that would attend traditional sessions in order to correct misinformation, provide literature that challenged what was being presented by main-stream scholars, and organize counter sessions and workshops to begin the hard work of building a radical alternative…

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