paradox; it has become both established and disestablished more or less concurrently. The establishment is unquestionable - recognition in universities and colleges throughout most of the world for sociology as a subject with academic standing and with legitimate research functions - a rapid growth in the range of accredited and well-funded research institutes; definitive recognition through direct sponsorship from major funding organizations and through public grant-awarding bodies. The establishment of research in sociology has been a necessary condition of the establishment of the discipline itself. Only by demonstrating, empirically that there are laws governing human behaviour in societies could sociology substantiate its claim for a legitimate separate existence either from literature with its established capacity to describe and interpret human interaction, or from history with its established strategies of analysing unique events and their consequencesl. The battle for scientific recognition of this kind was first fought by the psychologists, successfully but at considerable cost to the development of the subject - where the crudities of behaviourism, having the manner of approved scientific method, were tolerated, while the existing but largely untestable hypotheses in the field of psychoanalysis presented continuous embarrassment. The rigorous formalism of the British Psychological Society, still largely modelled on the prestigious pure science organizations, points to a continuing belief in a need for scientific respectability. Sociology was spared some of these traumas. The recognition of psychology opened the path for the recognition of sociology even though it was along a path that had been laid down by the psychologists. But at least some of the exertions to establish it could be avoided by sociologists who were able to devote somewhat more of their time to exploring sociological as opposed to scientific perspectives. In this they were helped by the standing of anthropological study as a distinct and acceptable even if somewhat remote area of study. Yet the influence of the psychological interpretation of the pure science model on sociology is regularly to be seen, and Swift (1973) has noted that sociologists in Britain still find themselves "forced" into doing social psychology'. He suggests that many of the problems in the way of a fruitful relationship between sociology and psychology spring from the psychology determined path of recognition that has had to be trodden by sociologists. There are many examples in present day sociology that reaffirm this history. The almost