Journal Article — Editor’s Note: Toward Sociological Re-Imaginations of Science and Peer Reviewing — by Mohammad H. Tamdgidi

To what extent does the traditional and prevailing models and practices of “science” and especially of academic peer-reviewing enhance or hinder the advancement of the sociological imagination? More specifically, if the sociological imagination centrally involves the cultivation of an ever deepening link between our knowledges of our personal troubles in everyday life to our knowledges of the ever widening public issues arising from the structures of contemporary capitalism in a world-history context, how does a science still biased in favor of classical notions of impersonal “objectivity,” and a peer-review mechanism structurally bent on “blind” peer reviewing and subtraction of the “personal” from the texture of reviewed manuscripts, help us advance the sociological imagination? The juxtaposition–in this issue of Human Architecture–of a symposium of papers on the public issues related to the malfunction of science and peer reviewing on the one hand, and a series of innovative, reflective self-explorations by students and/or faculty of their experiences of learning and teaching the sociological imagination on the other hand, can hopefully and “empirically” illustrate the difference our sociological re-imaginations of science and peer reviewing can make for students and faculty alike in understanding and transforming their everyday lives, on- and off-campus.