ABSTRACT This paper argues that sociology has come to be dominated by an ethos of suspicion and that attending to the critical sociology of Jeffrey C. Goldfarb can help it break free from this domination and expand the range of its relation to the structures, institutions, and interactions it studies. This argument unfolds in three parts. In the first it is argued that, while critique remains essential, the ethos of suspicion has unnecessarily narrowed its scope. The space for a more capacious understanding of critique is made, secondly, through a rereading of two recent ‘critics of critique’: Zygmunt Bauman and Bruno Latour. Third and finally, this paper shows how Goldfarb’s scholarship steps into the space carved out by these criticisms, providing a model of a sociology that has moved ‘beyond suspicion’ in its attention to the liberatory power that lies in the collective, critical capacity of ordinary, everyday actors.