Can a humanist criminologist be a sociologist?

Abstract

Here I reflect on my career as a criminologist, focusing on a failed attempt to become recognized as a legitimate sociologist, and on how 1 have found community in the company of members of the Association for Humanist Sociology.Dear TAS readers, I have reflected long and hard about how to use this opportunity to write to those I suppose I might stereotype as mainstream U.S. sociologists. As guest editor of this issue on humanist sociology, Bill Du Bois did me the honor of asking me to write as a criminologist, which I am.I dropped my ASA membership late in the 'seventies, just a few years after receiving my sociology doctorate. By then I already had felt numerous professional rejections by those identified as "sociologists." From losing my first job in a sociology department on the grounds that I was a "philosopher" rather than a "scientist," to scathing journal rejections, to rejection of even a courtesy by my two post-graduate disciplines--law and sociology--I got the message that although I had a good job and opportunity to study crime, I was not really a sociologist. (I am in an interdisciplinary arts and sciences social science department in "criminal justice," a congenial academic home.) Twenty years ago, my wife, Jill Bystydzienski, and I attended our first Association for Humanist Sociology (AHS) meeting together. Jill was AHS president from 2000 to 2001. The AHS meeting is our one favorite meeting to attend together each year, in a group calling itself "sociological."When Bill DuBois invited me to contribute an article to this issue, I accepted and sent a fairly formal abstract before I really began to think through what to write. After sending my abstract, I e-mailed Bill a message that on further reflection, I accepted his invitation as an opportunity to tell mainstream U.S. sociologists every-