Even if we grant that the proportion of sociologists engaged in Grand Theory — producing, critiquing, reinterpreting, endlessly quoting — has declined, I don’t see that it necessarily follows that Grand Theory is dead/in decline. Maybe what matters for the theoretical health of a discipline is that there are some well-respected people at well-respected places engaging Grand Theory, not that every top 100 PhD-producing department has at least 10% (or whatever) of its FTEs devoted to “theorists.” (Which I suspect was never the case, especially outside of the elite private schools and, arguably, the flagship publics.)