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Says Alvin Gouldner in The Coming Crisis of Western Sociology, "a Reflexive Sociology
is and would need to be a radical sociology. Radical, because it would recognize that knowledge of the world
cannot be advanced apart from the sociologist's knowledge of himself and his position in
the social world, or apart from his efforts to change these. Radical, because it seeks to
transform as well as to know the alien world inside him. Radical, because it would accept
the fact that the roots of sociology pass through the sociologist as a total man, and that
the question he must confront, therefore, is not merely how to work, but how to live...
The historical mission of a Reflexive Sociology is to transcend sociology as it now
exists. In deepening our understanding of our own sociological selves and of our position
in the world, we can, I believe, simultaneously help to produce a new breed of
sociologists who can also better understand other men and their social worlds. A Reflexive
Sociology means that we sociologists must - at the very least - acquire the ingrained
habit of viewing our own beliefs
as we now view those held by others." Harold
Garfinkel has also approached this idea in an interesting manner with his contention that
sociologists are like goldfish swimming in a bowl, confidently analyzing other goldfish,
without having ever stopped to recognize the bowl and the water they have in common with
the fish they study. - Alvin Gouldner, The Coming Crisis of Western
Sociology (New York: Basic Books, Inc., Publishers, 1970).
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