I recently attended a seminar where the speaker’s main purpose seemed to be to denigrate the reputation of a well-known contemporary sociologist by suggesting that his virtues were those of synthesis and compilation rather than ones of originality. As if to clinch the point, the speaker let it be known that it was rumoured the sociologist in question was currently engaged inwriting a text-book – and, as if to make matters worse, for a major American publisher.

I was as surprised that the point should have been made as I was by the largely disapproving reactions it prompted. One member of the audience observed, as if the activity were in some way suspect, that the production of text books by leading sociologists constituted one of the chief means through which the discipline of sociology reproduced itself. Quite so, but I was at a loss, then as now, to see why a noted scholar should be hauled over the coals for thinking the conditions of his discipline sufficiently important to dedicate his efforts to sustaining them.