Why does the theme of identities feature so prominently these days? What ideologies are at play in these discourses? What forces are shaping the academic agenda of our times? What is happening to the humanities and social sciences? How have universities changed over recent decades? How have academic disciplines evolved? Why do various forms of neopositivism and postmodernism prevail across various disciplines? Why the mania for metrics, the surveys of the surface, the exotica of deconstruction, the conclusions of inconclusiveness? Why does the most totalising system the world has ever known paralyse totalising thinking? Will marketisation marginalise all else? Will sociologists be stenographers of the surface or seers of the social order?