ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the contribution, or lack of it, which Oxford and Cambridge have made to the development of sociology. Thus we started from the question have Oxford and Cambridge, when compared with other universities, made that contribution to British sociology which their relative resources and privilege might have led us to expect? To consider this question fairly we found ourselves led into a broader survey of sociology departments, their reputations and the work they have produced. We shall therefore be drawing on A. H. Halsey’s recent survey of university teachers and their judgements of departmental reputations (Halsey, 1979), and we shall also be presenting some new material on what might loosely be termed ‘top books and top places’ in postwar British sociology. This material also allows us to make some incidental contributions to the debate among sociologists about the tasks of their discipline as they see it.
