Getting Sociology Right: A Half-Century of Reflections

Neil J. Smelser, one of the most important and influential American sociologists, traces the discipline of sociology from 1969 to the early twenty-first century in Getting Sociology Right: A Half-Century of Reflections. Examining sociology as a vocation and building on the work of Talcott Parsons, Smelser discusses his views on the discipline of sociology and shows how his perspective of the field evolved in the postwar era.

Neil J. Smelser is Professor Emeritus of Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley. He was a Rhodes scholar at Oxford University from 1952 to 1954. At twenty-four, he coauthored Economy and Society with Talcott Parsons. He earned his PhD in sociology from Harvard in 1958 and was a junior fellow of the Society of Fellows. From 1994 to 2001, he directed the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences.