Moral Minefields: how sociologists debate good science
Dromi, Shai M.
- Chicago The University of Chicago Press 2023
- xii, 227p. Includes bibliography, notes and index
Few academic disciplines are as contentious as sociology. Sociologists routinely turn on their peers with fierce criticisms not only of their empirical rigor and theoretical clarity but of their character as well. Yet despite the controversy, scholars manage to engage in thorny debates without being censured. How? In Moral Minefields, Shai M. Dromi and Samuel D. Stabler consider five recent controversial topics in sociology―race and genetics, secularization theory, methodological nationalism, the culture of poverty, and parenting practices―to reveal how moral debates affect the field. Sociologists, they show, tend to respond to moral criticism of scholarly work in one of three ways. While some accept and endorse the criticism, others work out new ways to address these topics that can transcend the criticism, while still others build on the debates to form new, more morally acceptable research.