I know plenty of people in academia who eagerly expound their sense of which scholarly approaches are "so yesterday." Whatever those individuals have, I lack. I've been reading Max Weber's Economy and Society again and, although even the critics of his critics are considered hopelessly dated, I find myself thinking that I derive more benefit from spending time with his work than I would from making myself conversant with the oh-so-au-courant scholarship that can't imagine confronting Pierre Bourdieu, much less Weber or Emile Durkheim, as an intellectual with something pertinent to say to us. Maybe it's simply my weakness to identify too readily what might serve the present conjuncture, but I don't see myself overcoming it anytime soon.
