>which kind of raises the point: to what extent are claims to scientificity
>rhetorical?
I'd say that all such claims are rhetorical. How can they not be?
As to whether sociologists are committed to some form of positivism: Norman Denzin, US Univ. Illinois, seems to have rejected it in favor of the analysis of media texts. The rest, the ones who reject positivism, are generally theorists who just don't *do* social research. Denzin is the only one I know of who engages in a form of research--textual analyses or whateveryawannacallit. Oh wait, there is Judith Stacey's work on the family in _Brave new Families_ where she plays around with how one might actually go about doing research while trying to embrace a pomo/postruc critique of knowledge production. Oh, and then there's Charles Lemert, I think, who does stuff on the VietNam War; Douglas Kellner who's analyzed the Gulf War and the media, as well as media analysis of particular genres.
There's also an interesting article by Richard Harvey Brown where he shows how each variant of sociology is rhetorically (poetically) constructed. He maintains that the task of sociology now is to be able to shift back and forth and be aware of the rhetorical construction of sociological modes of thought and the goal of sociologists themselves is to engage in a scholarly democratic community of critique and self-critique. My problem with him is that this isn't quite political enough. (Which is also what's wrong with Popper's critique of the Vienna circle wherein he maintains that science is always already critical) Seidman goes further demanding political engagement with a much broader community.
Kelley, rambling incoherent thoughts this a.m.