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	Podcast:		Heterodox Out Loud
	Episode:		Is Sociology Broken? Jukka Savolainen on Ideology and Reform \| Ep 35
	Category:		Science & Medicine
	Duration:		00:43:32
	Publish Date:		2025-05-06 09:00:00
	Description:		How can sociology reclaim its commitment to rigorous inquiry and viewpoint diversity? Today, John Tomasi sits with Jukka Savolainen, Ph.D., Sociology professor at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan, and the moderator of the Heterodox Academy’s Sociology community. They discuss the discipline's current challenges, including ideological bias and lack of viewpoint diversity, and explore potential paths toward reform. Jukka shares his journey into sociology and his decision to leave Finland to pursue a PhD in the United States due to concerns about postmodernist influences in Finnish sociology. He addresses the core aims of sociology, its present state of fragmentation, and the impact of ideological bias on research and discourse. Jukka highlights the importance of empirical evidence and viewpoint diversity while pointing out taboos and restrictions on certain topics within the field. The conversation also examines the role of external interventions, using the example of the Danish government's restructuring of the sociology department at Copenhagen University in the 1980s, and the more recent actions by the state of Florida. In This Episode:
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