Religion vs. Science: What Religious People Really Think

state, and national politics. Curiously, the author omits these facts illuminating the relationship between pragmatist theory and practice and ‘‘positioning sociology as a discipline capable of playing an active and meaningful role in public life’’ (p. 3). Pragmatists advocated an intelligent control of human society, which called for a social control for human intelligence. Democracy foreswears revolutionary violence, opting instead for ‘‘the improvement of the methods and conditions of debate, discussion, and persuasion’’ (Dewey, Freedom and Culture). Engaging in public sociology is what pragmatist social scientists demand and what sociological pragmatists delivered. Much needs to be done by way of illuminating interfaces between scholarship and advocacy. Alas, the volume under review does not take up this challenge. It would help, also, if the author examined how sociologists advancing the pragmatist agenda tackled the big and small issues confronting society today. Gene Halton did important research on capitalist modernity and numbing consumerism in contemporary America. Ruth Horowitz conducted ethnographic studies of bureaucratic agencies mishandling teen mothers and welfare recipients. Hans Joas laid down the pragmatist foundation for human rights politics. Lonnie Athens’s radical interactionism took aim at violence, domination, and power politics. These studies exemplify the kind of committed pragmatist sociology the author champions, and it is unfortunate that he skirts the prior work in this area, confining himself to programmatic statements. I found the latter well-articulated and worth mulling over, but I hope Dunn takes his own advice and fleshes out his program in case studies blending theory, methodology, and political engagement in a pragmatist key. Why not take the nativist turn in politics, for instance, and analyze it through the lenses of critical pragmatism? You can situate narrow-minded populism in American history, connect it to capitalist modernity, bring mixed methods to bear on the manifestations of bigotry, and then show how scholars fortified by the pragmatist ethos can lead the charge against the rising tide of the alt-right and white nationalism. I believe the author is well equipped to undertake such a task, which will bring us a step closer to ‘‘a genuinely critical sociology based on the spirit and principle of pragmatism’’ (p. viii).