Sociology derives its identity not from a unified question, a common paradigm, or a succession of competing schools of thought. Instead, the defining elements of the discipline are substantial debates and extensive controversies regarding the conceptual, theoretical, and methodological foundations of a science of the social. The contributions in this volume trace the formative intra-disciplinary conflicts in the more than hundred-year history of sociology: starting with the value judgment dispute, through the controversy surrounding the sociology of knowledge, the positivism dispute, and the quarrels over postmodernism, to the debate between constructivism and post-constructivism.