Careers, identities, and institutions: the legacy of the Chicago School of Sociology

Abstract

A sociology which forgets its past may be committed to the continuous rediscovery of old ideas. When the provenance of thought is unknown, authorship can be claimed by those who lack any proper title to it. Old issues are proclaimed innovations, only to recede again into the limbo from which they were retrieved. The unstated component … is a fertile culture for the emergence of a cyclical pattern of recovery and loss. Paul Rock, 1979 Specialization rarely proceeds by simply redistributing tasks. Instead, most specialties evolve gradually by pruning back an initially broader set of interests. By sloughing off the fuzzier elements of earlier thought in favor of more developed concepts, nascent specialties ostensibly select more precise tools for roughing out a cumulative line of inquiry. In the process, however, fruitful but less articulate ideas may fall through the discipline's cracks. Consequently, when specialists stop to take stock of their progress, as is the partial function of a handbook such as this, they should not only seek to consolidate their hard-won treasures but also attempt to uncover long-neglected paths once blazed by their forebears. By so doing, specialists may reclaim realms of inquiry that might now be more profitably explored. Thus, it is with an eye to enriching career theory that this essay deals in what may seem the all-too-distant past. My intent, however, is neither to write a history of career theory nor to lead modern scholars on a pilgrimage to their roots. Though such a trek might prove enlightening, it begs for a focus broader than my own.