Radical Sociologists and the Movement: Experiences, Lessons, and Legacies

As part of the current rediscovery of the Sixties, this book brings together autobiographical essays by individuals whose radicalism developed in and around the academic discipline of sociology. The contributors expose the roots of their radical consciousness by examining interrelated personal and historical themes: how the socioeconomic and political conditions of the 1960s acted as an intellectual incubator that served to radicalize a significant number of sociologists; and how critical, radical, Marxist, and humanist sociology developed in the context of this era. Aiming to "redefine sociology to correspond to social reality," these academics broke from the institutional establishment and turned to radical interpretations of the persistence of racial and gender inequality, power relations, the permanence of privilege and poverty, the causes and consequences of war, among other topics.

Martin Oppenheimer is Associate Professor of Sociology at Rutgers University.

Martin J. Murray is Associate Professor of Sociology at State University of New York, Binghamton.

Rhonda F. Levine is Associate Professor of Sociology at Colgate University.