The first Sociological Science Conference began this morning. It was organized primarily by my colleague Steve Vaisey, along with Ashley Harrell, Craig Rawlings, Turgut Kestinturk, Pablo Bello, and myself. We began on a somber note because of some news that came with the first visitors on Sunday evening.

Opening Remarks

Harrison White passed away the day before yesterday after, I believe, a long illness. This is not the time for a proper remembrance, and I am not the person to do it. But we are here for the next two days under the label of Sociological Science. Each of us likely has a view about what that phrase means, and probably disagree on many points. But one part of science is surely its methods and techniques. And another part is its imagery, its metaphors, and its vision. There are few sociologists who so fully embodied the power of technique while also being so gifted with imagery and so clearly in the grip of a vision of the world. I was looking last night at my copy of Identity and Control and I was reminded, first, that Chuck Tilly a little ruefully compared it to Finnegans Wake; and then, second, of a thing that Samuel Beckett said about that book. “Here” he remarked, “words are not the polite contortions of twentieth century printer’s ink. They are alive. They elbow their way on to the page, and glow and blaze and fade and disappear.” We should all be so lucky to have our own scientific work draw flame and catch fire in the way that Harrison White’s work so often did.

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Here’s a short post from 2008 that touches on White’s astonishing legacy of training students.