Testing Gouldner's coming crisis theory: on the state of contemporary sociological theory

Abstract

Alvin Gouldner, in his 1970 work The Coming Crisis of Western Sociology, put forth the proposition that the discipline of sociology would soon witness the decline and eventual entropy of the then dominant functionalist theoretical perspective. This thesis is tested vis-a-vis the measurement of influence of the leading figures of four competing theory groups, namely Talcott Parsons (functionalism), George Homans (exchange theory), Erving Goffman (the dramaturgical wing of symbolic interactionism), and Harold Garfinkel (ethnomethodology). The findings provide illuminations of both the past and current state of sociological theory.