SOCIOLOGICAL PRACTICE: CLINICAL AND APPLIED SOCIOLOGY

I was a co-founder, founding newsletter and book editor of the Clinical Sociology Association, now part of the Association for Applied and Clinical Sociology.  Over the next few decades I've published two seminal textbooks and many scholarly papers on Sociological Practice as well as co-authored a book presenting the late Nathan Hurvitz's sociocognitiveapproach to marriage and family therapy (among other things, he was the originator of peer self-help groups).

"Most people probably think of sociologists (if they think of us at all) as scholars and researchers who are experts on the subject of society and its institutions, and who earn their living as college and university professors.  That  is not untrue, but, ever since its origins in the nineteenth century, the discipline of sociology has been linked with practice.  Many sociologists can and do take science one step further and feed back our knowledge and  perspective into the world -- sometimes using them to make things go right in applied endeavors, somtimes using them to make the world a better place in which to live, as clinicians.  Many of us see no contradiction among any of these role and move freely between them."

If you have any needs or interests with respect to social science research or sociological practice, please contact me!

Here are three presentations that will provide an introduction to the topic, the relationship between sociological practice and market research, and, for those interested in a more scholarly definition of the field and its possibilities, also my often-reprinted paper on clinical sociological intervention.