Contesting Disciplinary Boundaries. Richard Kilminster and the 'sociological revolution'

Abstract

This paper examines the idea of the ‘sociological revolution’ in the work of Richard Kilminster. His work is interpreted as a form of late classical (or late modernist) opposition to academic fashions in contemporary sociology and social theory. This approach views sociology as a cognitive revolution that sweeps – or should sweep – all before it, both transcending and incorporating the concerns of rival disciplines, notably philosophy. The paper first examines the potential rewards and costs of this circumvention of academic fashions. Secondly, it discusses the possible unforeseen consequences of the border dispute with philosophy in which the Elias community has occasionally engaged. The final section of the paper makes the case for amore pluralistic view of the role of sociology that takes its cue from George Steinmetz’s plea for an ‘open’ sociology in which sociology acts as a broker between disciplines rather than making ‘imperialist’ claims on its own behalf. Karl Mannheim’s pluralist and conciliatory position is taken as an example of such a foil to a radical ‘sociologism’. The fate of Mannheim’s more conciliatory stance in his sociology of knowledge, however, illustrates that such an open sociology is not without its dangers.