REFLECTIONS ON THE PARADIGMATIC STATUS OF SOCIOLOGY

The 1970s is a decade in which sociology is characterized byattempts to define its paradigmatic status. In the first systematiceffort to apply Thomas Kuhn's (1970) ideas to sociology,Friedrichs (1970) granted most sociological theories the status ofaparadigm, or at least a would-beparadigm. However, he relegatedthese theories to the status of second-orderparadigms while thefirst order, or most controlling, paradigms were those that relatedto the image the sociologist has of "himself as a scientific agent,"The prophetic sociologists are those who see themselves as socialcritics seeking to debunk social myths while priestly sociologistsare more interested in scientific, value-freesociology (Friedrichs,1970). Effrat (1972) enumerated a long list of sociologicalparadigms which are really virtually