ALEKSANDRA SASHA MILICEVIC
International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Volume 25.4 December 2001
This article is about the rise and fall of radicalism among intellectuals during the 1960s and 1970s, using the case of sociologists, or, to be more precise, of a group of scholars associated with what is today known as New Urban Sociology (NUS). The theoretical frame to be tested in the discussion is Gouldner’s sociology of intellectuals, and, to some extent, the sociology of sociology, as developed in The coming crisis of western sociology (1970) and The future of intellectuals and the rise of the new class (1979). The case illustrates the changes of position that occurred among urban scholars associated with the NUS and involved with the Research Committee on the Sociology of Urban and Regional Development (RC 21) of the International Sociological Association and its International Journal for Urban and Regional Research (IJURR). This was a relatively small, international group of scholars working within closely related fields of social sciences. The story of this group begins with the ‘calling’ of a generation of social scientists during the turmoil of the 1960s, who developed a distinct critical/radical discourse and eventually created a niche for themselves. In order to tell that story, which is also the story of who those intellectuals are and under what circumstances they became radicalized, I will firstly outline the social and theoretical developments of this period and demonstrate the novelty of the questions that the new urban sociologists posed. Secondly, I will examine the features of the practical engagements and motivations of the group under consideration and show how they changed. Thirdly, I will discuss the institutionalization of this group.
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