Australian sociology: recent trends and prospects

Abstract

Despite the late onset of sociology in Australia, the discipline continued to grow well into the 1990s to become one of the dominant strands of the social sciences. By 2004, Australian sociology can be viewed as healthy in terms of student numbers, professional memberships, and citation statistics (see Phelan 2000; Najman and Hewitt 2003; Gläser 2004). This chapter provides a snapshot of the contemporary era, a peri-history of Australian sociology in the early twenty-first century and its professional organisation, the Australian Sociological Association (TASA). The chapter first provides an overview of the professional membership, structure and achievements of TASA, and then describes trends in sociology student course completion and enrolment data.