Re: ASA Publications' Committee

> basically its a power struggle over control of the ASR. to simplify
> greatly its the old guard of quantitative sociologists who study the US
> vs. the rainbow coalition of qualitative, critical, multicultural, etc.
> folks who have been more or less excluded from publishing in the ASR.
> this would not be so much a problem if ASR publication was not so
> important for getting jobs, promotion and tenure.  some folks on both
> sides have been trying to address this problem for years, but the slow
> approach seems to have come to little and now we have a confrontation
> brewing.


Agreed.  But there are many historical parralells, at all levels - groups,
organization, instutitons, nations - to this kind of situation.  Hence, one
can't help raise the nagging and gnawing question of whether  the
replacement of the current elite will truly produce any change or will the
new "revolutionary" elite simplify ossify (as history suggests, at least to
me) into another old guard.


>     for world-systemites it would be a good idea to support a broadening
> of the kind of artricles that can appear in the ASR. so keep watching. i
> expect there will be a petition to clarify the relationship between the
> Publications Com and the Council. and that this will come to a head at
> the ASA meeting in Chicago.


Agreed.  Anything that undermines and weakens the control of the
"professional," "scientists" and "bureaucrats" over the ASA should be
supported.


Carl Dassbach