Sociology Now, Census Update

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of fool-

ishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was

the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything

before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct

the other way—in short, the period was so far like the present period....

—Charles Dickens (1859)

THESE ARE THE FIRST LINESof one of Western literature’s greatest novels, A Tale of Two

Citiesby Charles Dickens. In it, Dickens recounts the saga of the French Revolution, at once

one of the most exciting, hopeful, and momentous events in history, and among its most

bloody, cruel, and tragic, a period of unparalleled optimism about the possibilities of human

freedom and some of the most bar-

baric and repressive measures ever

taken in the name of that freedom.

But which is it: best or worst,

wisdom or foolishness, light or dark-

ness? Dickens insisted that it was

both—and there lies the essence of sociological thinking. It’s difficult to hold both ideas in

our heads at the same time. More often, we take a position—usually at one extreme or the

other—and then try to hold it in the face of evidence that suggests otherwise. We find it

easier to take an extreme position than to occupy a vague middle ground of ambivalence.

Besides, logic and common

sense insist that it can’t possi-

bly be both.

That’s what makes sociol-

ogy so fascinating. Sociology is

constantly wrestling with two

immense and seemingly contra-

dictory questions: social order

and social disorder—how it often feels that everything fits together perfectly, like a

smoothly functioning machine, and how everything feels like it’s falling apart and society is

What Is

Sociology?

3

Sociology is a way of seeing the world.

It takes us beyond the “either/or”

framing of common sense, and looks

at how most social issues are really

“both/and.”