This article analyses the contributions of the sociologies or theories of the South to the contemporary debates on the production of theory in the social sciences. Starting with the assumption that these projects adopt a critical view of how sociology has privileged certain objects over others in a colonial way, it proposes an analysis that makes use of certain aspects of the actor-network theory. This approach, it is suggested, will help the sociologies of the South to focus on the (...) production of ontoforms as their specific object, ontoforms which expand and at times challenge the established hegemonic notions of the social and of agency in this area of knowledge. (shrink)

I defend traditional aesthetics against sociological criticism. I argue that “historicist” approaches are not supported by arguments and are intrinsically implausible. Hence the traditional ahistorical philosophical approach to the judgment of taste is justified. Many Marxist, feminist and postmodernist writers either eliminate aesthetic value or reduce it to their favourite political value. Others say that they merely want to give a historical explanation of the culturally local phenomenon of thinking in terms of the aesthetic. As a preliminary, I point out (...) that the conception of the aesthetic these theorists operate with is a straw man. In particular, Kant would have rejected it. I then point out that the empirical evidence does not support their historicist views. Most sociological theorists adduce no evidence, thinking their view obviously correct. Where evidence is adduced, the evidence has little connection with their general historicist conclusions. Lastly, I put pressure on the historicist view, first by appealing to the enormity of the error attributed to ordinary people, and second by appealing to the inevitability of pragmatic inconsistency by those who assert the view. I conclude that traditional philosophical aesthetics was right to be ahistorical. (shrink)

The article sketches an approach to the sociology of the stranger which is based on historical semantics, on comparative studies of social structures of premodern societies and on a reconsideration of the `classical sociology of the stranger' and of marginality (Simmel, 1908; Michels, 1929 and others; Schütz, 1944; Park, 1964). The guiding hypothesis of the article is that there is a discontinuity in the modern experience of the stranger which has not been reflected sufficiently in the classical (...) class='Hi'>sociology of the stranger. Whereas in premodern societies membership criteria are binary codes such as `kin' vs. `stranger', `friend' vs. `enemy', and elaborate arrangements were then necessary for institutionalizing a third status (e.g. for internal strangers) between the binary alternatives, the modern experience is wholly different. Modern society is no longer a membership organization. The third status (i.e. being neither `friend' nor `stranger') has become constitutive of our everyday experience of other persons. And this everyday experience is that of indifference as our normal attitude towards most persons living in the world. A modern sociology of the stranger has to explore the facets of indifference. Indifference can be described as an interactional achievement in situations of fleeting contact. And it can be examined in its macrostructural consequences in a modern societal order in which motivations for societal engagements and therefore any willingness to care for the other are unavoidably scarce. (shrink)

While the Marxist theory of the state was predominant in the 1970s, this account began to fade in the 1980s because, by overemphasizing the autonomy or “relative autonomy” of state and politics, “many of its crucial insights were lost to view in a welter of starting points and obscure formulations.” As Giddens points out, to speak of “relative autonomy” is redundant since in society and politics all autonomy is “relative.” If such is the case, why not approach state and politics (...) first as “autonomous” realms and then focus on their relations with other spheres? The only theory of the state which explicitly postulates the autonomy of the state and politics is Max Weber's, as formulated in “Intermediate Reflections.”. (shrink)

In this 1895 article on the sociology of the family, Simmel locates the study of the family within contemporary sociology. Utilizing current ethnographic material, Simmel seeks to counter simple evolutionary assumptions about the development of the family, in favour of recognition of the variety of its early forms. Arguing that the family emerged from the relation between mother and child, Simmel examines the relationships between private property and monogamy as well as other economic aspects of the family (...) and the position of women. (shrink)

Garfinkel's dissertation, "The Perception of the Other," was completed and defended 15 years prior to the publication of Studies in Ethnomethodology. This essay seeks hints of the familiar ethnomethodological themes (indexicality, reflexivity, accountability) within his thesis. It begins by examining the contributions of earlier social theorists, particularly Talcott Parsons and Alfred Schütz, to Garfinkel's thought. It then examines the dissertation itself seeking evidence to support the claim that Garfinkel was already moving in the direction of an 'incommensurable, asymmetric, and (...) alternate' program of sociological inquiry well before the term 'ethnomethodology' had even been coined. (shrink)

Two distinct attitudes have been adopted by investigators in the field of the sociology of knowledge. One of them may be called speculative; the other, empirical. The central interest of an investigator having the speculative attitude lies in developing a theory of the sociology of knowledge. The central interest of investigators having the empirical attitude lies in finding out or explaining concrete phenomena; the theory is employed, implicitly or explicity, for this purpose. The existence of the two (...) attitudes may be in part explained, as far as the German sociology of knowledge is concerned, by reference to the history of this school, which has grown out of and has been determined by a Marxist and materialistic philosophy, and especially by the use of this philosophy as a political instrument in the struggle of the emerging proletariat against the bourgeoisie. This statement, however, must be supplemented by a short location of the four most important contributors to the theory of the German sociology of knowledge. Max Scheler approaches the problem phenomenologically; he was the first and only one to ask the fundamental question, “What is knowledge?” Karl Mannheim, though markedly influenced by the Marxist viewpoint, particularly by Lukács, seems to me more adequately characterized by stressing his development from a more exclusively speculative to a more decidedly empirical attitude, which latter is especially evident in his most recent book, Man and Society in an Age of Reconstruction. Alexander von Schelting's main contribution is his thorough logical analysis of Mannheim's theory in the light of Max Weber's methodology. Ernst Grünwald has given the most complete survey of the forerunners, the history, and the various contributions of the sociology of knowledge. These four thinkers are indirectly dependent on the historically determined emphasis of the movement on ideology in that they remain on the level of a theoretical discussion without arriving at factual research. (shrink)

The article presents some key aspects of the approach called sociology of philosophy, as represented by Pierre Bourdieu, Randall Colins and others. Comparisons are made with the philosophical research programme, developed by Dieter Henrich, which goes under the name constellation research. One thing that unites the sociology of philosophy and constellation research is an interest in antagonistic constellations involving rivalry, competition and controversy. A few references to the case of Rorty are included in the discussion.

The Introduction to Simmel's early article on the family locates it in the context of his sociological concerns in the 1890s. The article is also placed in the context of his probable anthropological sources. Brief mention is made of some of his other contributions to the study of love and eroticism.

The ArgumentThis essay attempts to show the decisive importance of the “scientific discipline” for any historical or sociological analysis of modern science. There are two reasons for this:1. A discontinuity can be observed at the beginning of modern science: the “discipline,” which up until that time had been a classificatorily generated unit of the ordering of knowledge for purposes of instruction in schools and universities, develops into a genuine and concrete social system of scientific communication. Scientific disciplines as concrete systems (...) (Realsysteme) arise as a result of (a) the communicative stabilization of “scientific communities” at the end of the eighteenth century and the formation of “appropriate” roles and organizational structures (in universities); (b) the structural differentiation of the new scientific disciplines from the established professions (law, theology, medicine) in Europe; (c) the formation of scientific communication in the standardized form of scientific publication; the distinction of the separate action-type “scientific research” and the differentiation of these two elementary acts of all future scientific endeavor in relation to each other.2. The scientific discipline as primary unit of the internal differentiation of science has, since its genesis, been stabilized by two conditions: (a) The fact of a science differentiated into a plurality of (competing, mutually stimulating) disciplinary perspectives becomes the chief causal factor underlying the developmental dynamism of modern science; (b) Similar to the way in which the discipline functions as a cognitive address within the system of science, science also links the discipline up as a structural unit (utilized in both systems) with curricular structures in the system of education — i.e., it is stabilized by the central system/environment relation of science. (shrink)

Theodor Adorno is a widely-studied figure, but most often with regard to his work on cultural theory, philosophy and aesthetics. The Sociology of Theodor Adorno provides the first thorough English-language account of Adorno's sociological thinking. Matthias Benzer reads Adorno's sociology through six major themes: the problem of conceptualising capitalist society; empirical research; theoretical analysis; social critique; the sociological text; and the question of the non-social. Benzer explains the methodological and theoretical ideas informing Adorno's reflections on sociology and (...) illustrates Adorno's approach to examining social life, including astrology, sexual taboos and racial prejudice. Benzer clarifies Adorno's sociology in relation to his work in other disciplines and the inspiration his sociology took from social thinkers such as Marx, Weber, Durkheim, Kracauer and Benjamin. The book raises critical questions about the viability of Adorno's sociological mode of procedure and its potential contributions and challenges to current debates in social science. (shrink)

In order to delimit the realm of social phenomena, sociologists refer implicitly or explicitly to a distinction between living human beings and other entities, that is, sociologists equate the social world with the world of living humans. This consensus has been questioned by only a few authors, such as Luckmann, and some scholars of science studies. According to these approaches, it would be ethnocentric to treat as self-evident the premise that only living human beings can be social actors. The (...) methodological consequence of such critique is a radical deanthropologization of sociological research. It must be considered an open question whether or not only living human can be social actors. The paper starts with a discussion of the methodological problems posed by such an analysis of the borders of the social world, and presents the results of an empirical analysis of these borders in the fields of intensive care and neurological rehabilitation. Within these fields it must be determined whether a body is a living human body or a symbol using human body. The analysis of these elementary border phenomena challenges basic sociological concepts. The relevant contemporary sociological theories refer to a dyadic constellation as the systematic starting point of their concept of sociality. The complex relationship between at least two entities is understood as the basis of the development of a novel order that functions as a mediating structure between the involved parties. Based upon empirical data, I argue that it is necessary to change this foundational assumption. Not the dyad but the triad must be understood as the foundational constellation. This implies a new understanding of the third actor, which is distinct from the concepts developed by Simmel and Berger and Luckmann. (shrink)

The Manifesto develops further the Critical Theory of Religion intrinsic to the Critical Theory of Society of the Frankfurt School into a new paradigm of the Psychology, Sociology, Philosophy and Theology of Religion.

This essay analyzes the theoretical foundations of collective interest in the sufferings of strangers. Concern with the suffering of others, accompanied by the urge to help, is compassion. This study develops the social and historical conditions under which public compassion emerges. Two broad interpretations of these developments are suggested. The democratization perspective suggests that with the lessening of profoundly categorical and corporate social distinctions, compassion becomes more extensive. A second perspective is linked to the emergence of market society. By defining (...) a universal field of others with whom contracts and exchanges can be made, market perspectives extend the sphere of moral concern as well: however unintentionally. Public compassion is part of the language of modernity. This gives compassion the possibility to be also part of a newly emerging ‘Second Modernity’. (shrink)

First Published in 2004. Confusion reigns in sociological accounts of the curent condition of modernity. The story-lines from the 'end of the subject' to 'a new individualism', from the 'dissolution of society' to the re-emergence of 'civil society', from the 'end of modernity' to an 'other modernoity' to 'neo-modernization'. This book offers a sociology of modernity in terms of a historical account of social transformations over the past two centuries, focusing on Western Europe but also looking at the (...) USA and at Soviet socialism as distinct variants of modernity. A fundamental ambivalence of modernity is captured by the double notion of liberty and discipline in its three major dimensions: the relations between individual liberty and political community, betwen agency and structure, and between locally situated human lives and widely extended social institutions. Two major historical transformations of modernity are distinguished, the first one beginning in the late nineteenth century and leading to a social formation that can be called organized modernity, and the second being the one that dissolves organized modernity. It is this current transformation which revives some key concerns of the 'modern project', ideas of liberty, plurality and individual autonomy. But it imperils others, especially the creation of social identities as ties between human beings that allow meaningful and socially viable development of individual autonomy, and the possibility of politics as communicative interaction and collaborative deliberation about what human beings have in common. (shrink)

What a refreshing read in the sociology of literature! Literary works are not just products of social forces, symbolic struggles and accumulated capitals. They have a power of their own – the power to capture and convey the essence and meaning of changing eras. Literature expresses the paradoxes of modern humanity differently than other textual accounts, moving and inspiring readers through its aesthetic form. This book is for social sciences and humanities scholars whose interest in literature goes beyond (...) analysis to an appreciation of its artistry. (shrink)

Max Weber’s studies of the religions of China, India, and ancient Palestine and of the “Protestant ethic” were oriented toward illuminating their “economic ethics” – the ways, in other words, in which their doctrines did or did not conduce to birthing “modern rational capitalism,” as Weber identified the new economic order. Defining the explanandum in these terms was testimony to Weber’s preoccupation with questions raised about the modern world by Karl Marx; it is not too much to say that (...) most of Weber’s scholarly efforts were in some sense a response to Marx’s historical materialism. But recent economic history has cast considerable doubt on the persuasiveness of Weber’s arguments about the importance of Protestantism in facilitating Western dominance of the world. Yet Weber’s preoccupation with “economic ethics” and their consequences -- understandable given his intellectual situation -- may have distracted us from a more solid, more defensible core of his writings on religion. Against this background, we may need to re-think fundamentally our “reception” of Weber’s oeuvre, de-emphasizing his analysis of the causes of the rise of capitalism and focusing instead on the tools with which he has supplied us for the purpose of social analysis generally. Here the debate on the Axial Age helps clarify Weber’s understanding of social analysis as against that of his heirs who defend the Axial Age thesis, which posits a kind of uniformity in the responses of several of the cultures of the ancient world to comparable problems of human development. In contrast, Weber was more inclined to stress the differences between these religious traditions and the consequences of those differences for social and economic order in the places where they took hold. (shrink)

This book fully discusses Schutz's account of social reality and theory of motivation, including how his phenomenology casts the Marxian sociology of knowledge in a new light.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Understanding Musical Understanding: The Philosophy, Psychology and Sociology of the Musical ExperienceDavid BakerHarold E. Fiske, Understanding Musical Understanding: The Philosophy, Psychology and Sociology of the Musical Experience. (Lewiston, New York: Edwin Mellen Press, 2008).Building on several earlier publications on music and the mind (1990, 1993, 1996, 2004), Harold Fiske offers Understanding Musical Understanding. This is a well-referenced piece that outlines the thinking of various authors (for (...) example, Crowder, 19931; Huron, 2006;2 Snyder, 20073). Furthermore, as Fiske meticulously constructs his case, it draws in psychologists such as Carl Seashore and philosophers like Aristotle, Hegel, Kant, and Schopenhauer. All this suggests an author of great expertise and wide appeal.Fiske begins to build his argument by discussing musical cognition in terms of ‘time’ (Chapter 2) and ‘shape’ (Chapter 3) returning to these themes in greater detail in Chapter 6. It may seem axiomatic that music is perceived structurally and through time. Yet, as the author mentions, the capacity for someone to designate musical form is no way in which to illustrate systematically the workings of musical understanding. This happens swiftly and unceasingly in the course of a person’s musical encounter. It is commonplace, too, for musicians and listeners to allude to visual imagery and shape when describing music (for example, ‘high [End Page 204] and low pitches,’ ‘a texture that is dense or thin,’ or ‘an angular melody’). Fiske contributes a plausible explanation of musical shape:... the perceived shape of music can only be the outcome of a construction (not reconstruction or ‘copy’) calculated on the part of the neural network mechanisms… The ‘reality’ of a musical-auditory image is likely a result of imposing a three-dimensioned visual perspective on an inherently unstructured (invisible, tasteless, intangible, and otherwise unknowable) transitory experience. This is the only means the brain has for making sense of a sound event. What it seems to do is: identify relevant cues, piece the cues together into patterns that can be retained (in the echoic memory) long enough for brain mechanisms to examine and create the sense that we can ‘look’ at music by invoking principles borrowed from vision, and then creating the impression of an auditory ‘object.’ The ‘object’ seems complete and multidimensioned but is, however, only remotely related to what we hear during the slit-like limitations of the perceptual ‘now.’(p. 56).Nonetheless, the manner in which we communicate musical perception with terms borrowed from vision does not inconclusively evidence the same mechanisms of human thought on receiving visual or, on the other hand, musical stimuli. Use of such language may only represent an opportune mode of expressing phenomena to which we have no dedicated vocabulary. Fiske argues that musical understanding is part of the human organism’s genetically-inherited capacity to construe (rapidly invent) patterns from sonic stimuli thus making sense of temporal experience. This process, he argues, is part of the brain’s facility to determine quickly the source, kind and meaning of stimuli for the organism’s immediate safety and survival; the mental processes involved are regulated by ‘brain time’ as opposed to ‘clock time.’ Brain time is “... a rapid, micro-temporal, flexible-variable scheme...” (p. 8) in contrast to pre- and externally-determined ‘clock time.’Musical memory is addressed in Chapter 4 in tandem with ‘pattern constructs.’ Pattern constructs, Fiske explains, are ‘chunks’ of learned musical experience encoded in ‘brain time’ as multi-dimensional, unidirectional entities (p. 63). There is evidence of the ‘inner replay’ of learned events such as these.4 Incoming musical information is perceived, though, according to the listener’s cognitive context, and perhaps retroactively linked for ‘best fit’ rather than being ‘measured’ against fixed expectations and pre-established contextual information, say, about genre. The degree of ‘best fit’ either confirms or modifies assumed context. An important point Fiske makes, then, is that “... a misfit... between incoming information and the presumed context” evidences learning (p. 84).5 Since a ‘misfit’ triggers modifications to the cognitive context by which a person discerns music, it enriches his or her musical knowledge and understanding. [End Page 205] Consequently, Fiske sets a challenge for music education: “... how [do we] design teaching... (shrink)

This book primarily tries to bring out the analogy between the conceptual and methodological discourses on the theme of the other. The term 'Other' here refers to the oppressed sections of the society. It may be dalits, women, indigenous or ethnic communities. Since we are living in a multicultural and multilingual society, we should share our views with others on a platform where issues of the marginalized people are addressed by different scholars following different methods and techniques. Though (...) there are various policies and plans for the welfare of the downtrodden, hardly any change can be seen at the micro-level structure of the society. There are studies which highlighted the problems and ethos of the downtrodden sections, but a majority of those studies neglected the marginalized groups. Hence, we felt the need to highlight the issues and concerns of these groups in a wider context and started thinking on the theme 'Ethnographic Discourse of the Other: Conceptual and Methodological Issues'. This volume attempts to discuss and theorize the pragmatic concepts and issues related to the marginalized groups in contemporary societies in South Asia. This book is interdisciplinary in nature and will be useful to scholars and students of Anthropology, Sociology, Linguistics, Social Work, Culture Studies, Gender Studies and Philosophy. It is widely applicable to all sections of the oppressed socially, economically, culturally, academically, politically and other wise. (shrink)

In this paper I explore the sociological study of emotion, contrasting constructionist and psychoanalytic accounts of envy as an emotion. I seek not to contra each vis-à-vis the other but to establish some kind of synthesis in a psychoanalytic sociology of emotion. I argue that although the constructionist approach to emotion gives us valuable insights into the social and moral dimensions of human encounters, it is unable to address the level of emotional intensity found for example in murderous (...) rage against ethnic groups, or the emotional and often self destructive elements of terrorism. Psychoanalytic ideas do engage with these dynamics, and as such, a theory that synthesises both the social construction of reality and the psychodynamics of social life is necessary if we are to engage with these destructive emotions. (shrink)

This paper elaborates three approaches to the issue of state autonomy, and uses two empirical cases (British and American treasury policy during the 1930s) to illustrate them. The three approaches are the group affiliations approach, which considers the social characteristics of the individuals who work in an organization; the structural dependance approach, which considers the structural position of the organization within a network of resource flows; and a cultural approach, which considers the role of ideology in the determination of organizational (...) autonomy. The application of these three approaches to the two cases gives some support to all three, but the cultural approach proves especially useful in conjunction with the other two. (shrink)

In Sociology of Waiting, Paul Christopher Price investigates how people wait and analyzes what individuals do while waiting. Shining the light on waiting permits a far superior understanding of order, first come-first serve, and how society organizes itself around taking turns. Waiting gets at our ability or inability to pause and consider others.

Wikipedia is an important instance of “Big Data,” both because it shapes people's frames of reference and because it is a window into the construction—including via crowd-sourcing—of new bodies of knowledge. Based on our own research as well as others' critical and ethnographic work, we take as an instance Wikipedia's evolving representation of the field of sociology and sociologists, including such gendered aspects as male and female scholars and topics associated with masculinity and femininity. Both the gender-specific dynamics surrounding (...) what counts as “notability” on the online encyclopedia and Wikipedia's relative categorical incoherence are discussed. If “Big Data” can be said to construct its own object, it is, in this instance, a curious and lop-sided one, exemplifying pitfalls as well as promise with respect to more accurate and democratic forms of knowledge. (shrink)

Literature in the area of innovation systems (IS) has been growing in importance and the IS approach has become well established. It is widely used in North America, Western Europe and Scandinavia, both in academic contexts and also as a framework or tool for policymaking. This paper examines work by sociologists, historians and others who have attempted to provide new insights into the nature of technology, in order to determine how the new sociology of technology literature—particularly social construction of (...) technology methodologies—can contribute to, and unpack the study of innovation system. (shrink)

The principles of automation (automatism and programming) in the unfolding of spatio-temporal patterns during animal development are deduced from experimental data reconsidered from the point of view of cell sociology. The developmental programme in the egg is not part of the genetic information but a part of the cytoplasmic information. Throughout development cells store extra-cellular information released by their neighbours in the form of cytoplasmic information. Successive determinations cannot be considered as successive reprogrammings of cells: each one consists of (...) a selection of one specific programme from the total information previously stored. This programme specifies cell interactions in the determined population as a whole; it is very imprecise and is progressively completed during the course of further differentiation by information released by neighbouring cell populations. Complicated patterns may emerge from only two homogeneous populations involved in distinct differentiation pathways and confronting each other. Consequently the egg developmental programme provides gene effectors and specific physico-chemical conditions necessary for the starting of at least two distinct differentation pathways. Experimental data suggest that there are two components in this programme. One is a molecular machinery which starts at fertilization in the whole cytoplasm. It yields two programmes of differentiation, typically first an endodermal and then an ectodermal one. The other component of the egg developmental programme, which does not require specific information, allows the interception of the first (endodermal) programme. The application of informatics to developmental automatism is discussed in the latter part of the paper. (shrink)

Studies in the sociology of religion in Turkey have always kept the concern of examining the objective with an impartial perspective. The fact that researches in Turkey have focused on the religion of Islam and different religious groups with Islamic origins has kept the problem of the objectivity of the sociology of religion on the agenda methodologically. However, it should not be forgotten that understanding Turkish society and other societies where Islam is the dominant religion will be (...) possible by going down to the first sources sociologically as well as religiously, and interpreting the behavior of the first believers of the revelation. In particular, the ijtihads of the "Rashid Caliphs Period", which is a special period in the history of Islam, have been referred to as a religious and rational source both in the formation of Islamic fiqh and in the social structures of Muslim nations. In this context, the question of what are the effects and sociological aspects of the ijtihads of the first four caliphs on the development of Islamic culture and civilization, the govarnance and social formation of Muslim societies will be examined. What social reasons did the Rashid caliphs take into account in their ijtihads, what social events they led to, and how they had an impact on institutions. This study, which will be an essay on "Sociology of Ijtihad", also aims to question the possibilities of a common study field for Sociology and Fiqh. (shrink)

In chapter one I cover the basic concepts developed in Being and Nothingness, notable those of "temporality," "negation," "anguish" and "bad faith." In chapter two I move from the individual as the center of free action, to the individual in relation to the Other. In chapter three I attempt to unify the perspectives in the first two chapter and present a theory of action. In chapter four I introduce the reader to the Critique and establish its thematic links with (...) Being and Nothingness. In chapter five I analyze the ramifications of the concept of the practico-inert, which, for Sartre, is inseparable from human sociality. In chapter six I deal with the concept of organization, which refers to the contradictions within the social group as it moves into advanced stages of social integration. In chapter seven I cover the concepts of power and authority. Chapter eight deals with the idea of dialectical humanism and highlights essential concepts in the work by way of concluding it. --Introduction. (shrink)

The control of pattern formation and the significance of gradients is reconsidered on the basis of the concept of cell sociology (which takes into account continuous exchange of information between cells and the possibility of autonomous progression in differentiation). Not all traits of a pattern are imposed by a single prepattern, which would be an organized molecular framework or a gradient. Patterns are unfolded in steps; these are readjustments of a cell population to intrinsic and extrinsic changes in cell (...) activities. Prepatterns are the various components of the programme of every readjustment and are established by information of various origins, which can be dissociated experimentally: determination (elementary social prepattern), pre-existing organization (antecedent pp.), surrounding cell populations (environmental pp.), position among other tissues (positional pp.) and the organization of inducers (imprinting pp.). Every transitory pattern formed during a readjustment serves as antecedent pp. during the next readjustment. Covert graded patterns result from various aspects of the social behaviour of cells (growth, aggregation, induction, cell renewal) and may serve as antecedent or imprinting prepatterns. They appear as water marks in the final patterns, or generate overt graded patterns. They also manifest themselves in temporal patterns, particularly in gradients of relative growth. (shrink)

Aesthetic theories of art refuse to go away. In spite of decades of criticism and derision, a minority of thinkers stubbornly persist in maintaining that we need a general theory of art that makes essential appeal to beauty, elegance, daintiness, and other aesthetic properties.1 However, those who approach the theory of art from a sociological point of view tend to be skeptical about any account of art that appeals to aesthetic properties in a fundamental way. This skepticism takes two (...) overlapping forms, only one of which I will pursue here. The form of skepticism I am interested in is concerned to deny that we need to appeal to aesthetic considerations in explaining the production of art. Let us call this production skepticism. This form of skepticism does not coincide with skepticism about the appeal to aesthetic considerations in explaining our experiences and judgments about art. Let us call that consumption skepticism. Examples of consumption skeptics are Pierre Bourdieu and Terry Eagleton, who think that aesthetic value judgments about art really reflect social status rather than being a response to qualities of the works.2 In my view, the reasons, such as they are, that Bourdieu and Eagleton put forward in favor of.. (shrink)

How are individuals socialized today? To answer these questions, a unique investigation has been carried out using two scales of analysis: the scale of the cosmopolitan world as well as the scale of everyday life and socialization to otherness.

I compare recent work in the sociology of scientific knowledge with other types of sociological research. On this basis I urge a revival of the sociology of science, offer a tentative agenda, and attempt to show how the questions I raise might be addressed.

This book is an interdisciplinary contribution to bioethics, bringing together philosophers, sociologists and Science and Technology Studies researchers as a way of bridging the disciplinary divides that have opened up in the study of bioethics. Each discipline approaches the topic through its own lens providing either normative statements or empirical studies, and the distance between the disciplines is heightened not only by differences in approach, but also disagreements over the values, interpretations and problematics within bioethical research. In order to converse (...) across these divides, this volume includes contributions from several disciplines. The volume examines the sociological issues faced by interdisciplinary research in bioethics, the role of expertise, moral generalisations, distributed agency, and the importance of examining what is not being talked about. Other contributions try to take an interdisciplinary look at a range of specific situations, fetal alcohol syndrome in the media, citizen science, electronic cigarettes and bioethical issues in human geography. (shrink)

In this paper, Christian Morgner provides a critical reading of Niklas Luhmann's thinking as ignoring human beings or even as antihumanist. Here, he presents an alternative view that centers on Luhmann's idea of the child or human being as a medium. To explain Luhmann's use of these ideas to conceptualize the child and the consequences for research, Morgner refers to the translation of Luhmann's paper “The Child as the Medium of Education” and to as yet unpublished material from his famous (...) card-box reference system. Drawing on these materials, Morgner can more clearly illuminate Luhmann's novel perspective and how it could inform further theoretical development, supported by new analysis of existing research in other fields, including developmental psychology, education, philosophy, and sociology. He concludes that, far from neglecting the human, Luhmann's theory takes human being very seriously and acknowledges its key role as a form-giving medium in addressing the challenges faced by contemporary society. This renewed perspective should be of particular interest to educational theorists, enabling them to more freely apply his ideas in various settings. (shrink)

The method chosen here draws on concepts borrowed from sociology and anthropology. This double conceptual approach is necessary for a society divided between values inherited from medieval Christianity and precapitalist practices. Seventeenth-century France did not think of itself as a class society but as a society of orders. Since sociology is a system of knowledge whose concepts are taken from an imaginary construct, it is thus more suited to analyzing bourgeois society than societies in transition.6 In trying to (...) measure the past with the aid of tools forged in and for contemporary societies, the sociologist runs the risk of only measuring an artifact, produced by his theories in the field of history. Hence the need for the anthropological concepts, including the notion of exchange, among others, whether material , symbolic , or sexual .This approach will bring to light the contradictions underlying the society of the ancient régime. Whereas an ordinary sociohistorical approach views the reign of Louis XIV as unified under a dogmatic classicism, the socioanthropological approach stresses the tensions and oppositions running through this society. Classicism appears then as a façade covering up the change that it cannot imagine. This “spectacle”7 makes it possible to unite contradictory social practices, both those produced by consumption and which originate in the medieval economy and those belonging to the early accumulation of capital which sketch future bourgeois economic practices. 6. See Cornelius Catoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, trans. Kathleen Blamey .7. See Guy Debord, Society of the Spectacle, rev. English ed. . Jean-Marie Apostolidès is professor of French literature at Stanford University. His publications include Le roi-machine, Les metamorphoses de Tintin, and Le prince sacrifié. Alice Musick McLean, a Ph.D. student at the University of Chicago, is specializing in medieval narrative and the literature of the fantastic. (shrink)

This paper discusses the prospect of the "new social history" guided by the recent work of Charles Tilly on the methodology of social and historical explanation. Tilly advocates explanation by mechanisms as the alternative to the covering law explanation. Tilly's proposals are considered to be the attempt to reshape the practices of social and historical explanation following the example set by the explanatory practices of molecular biology, neurobiology, and other recent "success stories" in the life sciences. Recent work in (...) the philosophy of science on these practices by Peter Machamer, Lindley Darden, Carl Craver and others is used as the foil to disclose the difficulties of Tilly's project. Most important among them is the dilemma of specification: if diagrams (standard forms of the representation of mechanisms) are intended as representations of robust causal processes, they cannot be specific enough to provide complete mechanism schemata, and are bound to remain mechanism sketches. If mechanism sketches are elaborated in detail by tracing particular causal processes, they provide representations of fragile causal processes, which cannot be considered as mechanisms comparable to those in advanced life and other special sciences. Tilly's work on the explanation of mechanisms can be considered as symptomatic for the recent trend to visualize the forms of historical representation. As far as diagrams seem to be able to communicate stories in a direct way (without narrative discourse), this trend is a challenge for the theory of historical representation. The new theories of scientific explanation focusing on the explanatory practices of the life sciences can provide examples and be the source of inspiration for the work on the theory of historical and social explanation, going beyond the confines of the received framework of the covering law model of explanation. (shrink)

Below I ask whether the theoretical assumptions of the sociology of knowledge imply a subjectivistic and relativistic approach to cognition theory—a matter that has already been discussed in Polish subject literature (among others by Adam Schaff). Does the “social conditioning of cognition” conception propounded by the sociology of knowledge deny the existence of objective truth and adequate knowledge? Karl Mannheim himself called the sociology of knowledge an anti-relativist position. The critics of his anti-relativist argumentation say it is (...) full of ambiguities and contradictions. I will attempt to take a closer look at this problem, and, at the same time, at the relation between Mannheim’s sociology of knowledge project and such measures of the adequacy of knowledge as the coherence and general consensus criterion. The main question I will try to answer is whether the Mannheimian sociology of knowledge project is a form of epistemological relativism (in the specific meaning of the term I use here), and if not, in what sense and to what degree it can be considered a position convergent with the relative truth conception. (shrink)

Despite the venerable place that "justice" occupies in social scientific theory and research, little effort has been made to see how members of society themselves define and use the concept when confronted with determining "what has happened" in some social arena, theorizing about why it happened, and deciding what should ensue. We take an ethnomethodological approach to justice, attempting to recover it as a feature of practical activity or a "phenomenon of order." Our analysis involves an actual videotaped jury deliberation. (...) In his classic study of decision making by juries, Garfinkel observed that jurors changed their reliance on commonsense reasoning very little, even though they were instructed to adhere to official and legal criteria for guilt. The vacillation between commonsense reasoning and using official criteria creates a tension; in our data this tension is manifested as the choice between adhering to law and procedural rules and providing "justice." By articulating this tension as a puzzle, several of the jurors prepare the way for using "justice," and then use this concept in formal ways which, along with other discursive patterns and strategies, constitute the deliberation as a structured, concerted activity. We show four stages in the use of the term justice as it is embedded in jurors' practical reasoning. (shrink)

I review some theoretical ideas in cosmology different from the standard “Big Bang”: the quasi-steady state model, the plasma cosmology model, non-cosmological redshifts, alternatives to non-baryonic dark matter and/or dark energy, and others. Cosmologists do not usually work within the framework of alternative cosmologies because they feel that these are not at present as competitive as the standard model. Certainly, they are not so developed, and they are not so developed because cosmologists do not work on them. It is a (...) vicious circle. The fact that most cosmologists do not pay them any attention and only dedicate their research time to the standard model is to a great extent due to a sociological phenomenon . We might well wonder whether cosmology, our knowledge of the Universe as a whole, is a science like other fields of physics or a predominant ideology. (shrink)

Bioethicists’ attraction to principlism is rooted in a Western view of how matters that affect the public ought to be deliberated and decided: their resolution ought to be so structured and constrained that it can be understood and verified even by those at a remove from the circumstances of the problem. That view of deliberation, itself fostered by the Western view of government, has encouraged principlism to spread from its source in human subjects research into other areas of bioethics (...) discourse. (shrink)

Morality is an indispensable element of social life. Norms and values - socially embedded and determining the foundations of a culture – decide of individual and massive behaviors. Despite the cultural changes and the discourse around the ways of conceiving the ethics and morality, despite relativization of certain values and norms and consolidation of other, culturally new, morality is an integral building block of society. It is considered both as an essential component of political, economic and social life, as (...) well as permanent element of solving social conflicts in public life and in the international field. (shrink)

This article is a critical analysis of the historical and sociological works of the American political anthropologist J. S. Scott (1936–2024). His works were largely related to the study of the contradictions of social development between the city and the village. This topic is presented especially deeply and comprehensively in Scott's monographs of his late intellectual period: ‘From the Point of View of the State’ (1998), ‘The Art of Being Ungovernable’ (2006), and ‘Against the Grain’ (2016). In these works, Scott (...) analyzed—practically in retrospective order—several key rural-urban contradictions and paradoxes of social development from the era of high modernism of the 19th–20th centuries to the era of the emergence of the first city-states in the 6th millennium BC. Scott based his analysis on extensive regional comparative studies and interdisciplinary research at the intersection of history, sociology, anthropology, cultural studies, ecology, and political science. The problem of the formation, development, and expansion of state power in matters of regulating relations between city and countryside are core themes of these works. On the other hand—in matters of state-controlled relations between city and countryside—Scott highlights the influence of a third force, a third party: the so-called stateless, unsettled barbarism and anarchy that wedges itself into the regulation of rural-urban contradictions. (shrink)

The French sociologist and philosopher Henri Lefebvre developed an account of modernity that combined rigorous critique, a rejection of nostalgia, left pessimism or transcendental appeals, and the search for utopian potentialities in the hidden recesses of the everyday. This article will focus on a topic that is arguably central to his ‘critique of everyday life’ but has been entirely overlooked in the literature thus far: that of boredom. Although often dismissed as trivial, boredom can be understood as a touchstone through (...) which we can grasp much wider anxieties, socio-cultural changes and subjective crises that are intrinsic to our experience of modernity. Curiously, although Lefebvre was very interested in boredom, he did not analyse it systematically, and he used terms like ‘boring’ or ‘boredom’ in loose, elliptical and seemingly contradictory ways. Such a lack of clarity reveals his ambivalence about this phenomenon, but also highlights a subtle pattern of differentiation he makes between particular modalities of boredom that can be highly illuminating. Through a careful reading of the full range of Lefebvre’s writings, we can begin to understand how he discriminates between different experiences and expressions of boredom, some of which are unambiguously negative, whereas others are judged more positively. With respect to the latter, as he says in Introduction to Modernity, under certain conditions boredom can be full of desires, frustrations and possibilities. Through such an investigation, we start to glimpse latent connections between boredom and utopian propensities that caught the attention not only of Lefebvre but also such thinkers as Ernst Bloch, Siegfried Kracauer and Walter Benjamin. (shrink)

In the twentieth century, philosophy came to be dominated by the English-speaking world, first Britain and then the United States. Accompanying this development was an unprecedented professionalization and specialization of the discipline, the consequences of which are surveyed and evaluated in this article. The most general result has been a decline in philosophy's normative mission, which roughly corresponds to the increasing pursuit of philosophy in isolation from public life and especially other forms of inquiry, including ultimately its own history. (...) This is how the author explains the increasing tendency, over the past quarter-century, for philosophy to embrace the role of "underlaborer" for the special sciences. Indicative of this attitude is the long-term popularity of Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, which argues that fields reach maturity when they forget their past and focus on highly specialized problems. In conclusion, the author recalls the history of philosophy that, following Kuhn's advice, has caused us to forget, namely, the fate of Neo-Kantianism in the early twentieth century. Key Words: analytic philosophy • normative • positivism • pragmatism • professionalism • underlaborer. (shrink)

Central to Confucian teachings in the Analects is the ideal of self-cultivation—in particular that of the junzi 君子 (“gentleman” “nobleman”) ideal. At the same time that Confucius recommends that individuals follow such an ideal, he also places limits on who actually might attain it. By examining statements involving such terms as the junzi, the “petty man” ( xiao ren 小人), and the “masses” ( min 民, or zhong 眾), or common people, this essay highlights the sociopolitical and gender restrictions informing (...) one of the most basic, yet lofty, ethical goals of the text. A new means is also offered of discussing these socially delimited discrepancies in moral cultivation by referring to leading, or self-determining agency in association with junzi on the one hand, and to conformist agency for women and common people on the other. (shrink)

Morality is an indispensable element of social life. Norms and values - socially embedded and determining the foundations of a culture – decide of individual and massive behaviors. Despite the cultural changes and the discourse around the ways of conceiving the ethics and morality, despite relativization of certain values and norms and consolidation of other, culturally new, morality is an integral building block of society. It is considered both as an essential component of political, economic and social life, as (...) well as permanent element of solving social conflicts in public life and in the international field. (shrink)

Is there a distinction between social theory and sociology? Perhaps one of the most general features in sociological thinking is that it is an inquiry to develop holistic explanations for social reality. In this sense, there is a kind of universality of social knowledge in its scientific and philosophical dimensions, and is one of its main purposes for the operation of sociology as a "science of modernity". Next, I will develop a brief reconstruction of meaning which is attributed (...) to science in the modern world, followed by the emergence of an specialized explanation of social reality under the name of social theory, as a result of philosophical conclusions that finish it with Hegel on the one side, and it focuses on a differentiated scientific knowledge as a product of modernity itself, on the other hand. Finally, and following this, I will establish the specific role played by sociology and social theory in this context, by considering that the first describes itself as a science of society-modernity and the second has a critical direction to sociability answers and is specifically linked with political-normative approaches. ¿Existe una diferencia entre teoría social y sociología? ¿Se trata de aproximaciones diferentes a un mismo problema o de problemas con tradiciones diferentes que suelen confundirse? Probablemente el elemento que más caracteriza al pensar sociológico sea su búsqueda o pretensión por desarrollar explicaciones holísticas de la realidad. En este sentido la universalidad en el conocimiento sobre lo social en particular resulta uno de los temas de base para el operar de la sociología en tanto ciencia de la sociedad. A continuación y a través de la observación de pasajes específicos de la tradición inaugurada con Hegel, se desarrollará, por un lado, una breve reconstrucción del sentido que se le atribuye a la ciencia en el mundo moderno, seguido, por otro, de la emergencia de un saber especializado de la realidad social bajo el nombre de teoría social de una parte y sociología de otra. Siguiendo lo anterior, se establecerá el papel específico que juega la sociología y la teoría social, entendiendo que a la primera se le entrega el apelativo de ciencia de la sociedad-modernidad y a la segunda una orientación más marcada a las preguntas por la sociabilidad y específicamente vinculada a orientaciones político-normativas. (shrink)

This concluding comment draws upon the common themes articulated by the preceding contributors about how Sociology of Religion and Religious Studies can influence each other, as well as considering some of the obstacles to that. It concludes with some intellectual suggestions for furthering some of our common interests.

Sociology of religion is an interdisciplinary formation at the intersection of sociology and religious studies. While trying to explain the relationship of religion -as a noticeable parameter- with other variables and analyze the current pattern, the unity of social sciences and basic Islamic sciences is occasionally needed. It is expected that the intersection points with the auxiliary sciences will be clearly explained, and the research will represent the field by positioning at the center of the sociology (...) of religion. The valid way for readers to understand texts that are written within the discipline of the sociology of religion is to increase the textual representation of research. The basic issue to increase this representation is locked on the determination of the method as in other sciences. Although it can be mentioned that the studies focusing on the method in the field of sociology of religion are based on the philosophy of science and methodology-oriented evaluations, it is clear that the subject does not receive the necessary attention. This study questions the schematic feasibility of the method that can be used in researches within the field of sociology of religion hypothetically. By schematizing, it is meant to show the main tricks of the method use in the sociology of religion and draw a design. For this reason, firstly the problems encountered in the determination of the method will be addressed and then methodological scheme that can be followed in the studies of the sociology of religion will be evaluated together with the mental, the actional and the semiotic process added as an original category. The article focuses on principal information on how to use the method while studying the sociology of religion; however, does not promise an in-depth study of how the method can be used in practice. The most general output of the research is that by following the signs shown in the study, in-depth examples for further studies can be presented. The study emphasizes that the method as the umbrella concept used jointly by the natural and social sciences is not the only mental processes such as induction and deduction, and also explains that it cannot be labeled as actional processes such as research technique, pattern, model, or theory and approach. It is suggested that the method, which is the product of both abstract and concrete effort, should be taken into account not only with its mental and actional aspects, but also with its semiotic process. In the specialized scheme, while the mental and actional categories have more in common with markers in other sub-branches of sociology, the semiotic side differentiates as a new category. The first point to be mentioned is the necessity to draw attention to the indicative meaning of every object seen in the scientific process. Before the research plan, when a sociologist of religion internalizes that every object around him/her is a part of the body of signs, countless inventories of topics worth investigating are presented. Various protocols suggested by semiotics are followed in the process of providing inventory. Secondly, the researcher is expected to discover his/her own semiotic identity. Since the scholars of the sociology of religion, have largely received theological education, there is a greater possibility that their embodied knowledge will be reflected in the text. Through the inclusion of the semiotic process in the method, the researcher learns before the mental process that he/she cannot conduct a scientific study with a subjective perspective in a way to legitimize his own values and tenets. Through this awareness, he/she recognizes his semiotic identity and reaches the kitchen of meaning. When the researcher is closest to objectivity, receptors understand that they are not reading dogmatic text. This situation, on the one hand, leads to an increase in the studies of the sociology of religion to be carried out in a free arena, on the other hand, it allows to establish a stakeholder with dehumanized sociology texts. The reflection of the principle, sociology not sociologies, to the texts improves the use of related concepts by developing the common language, and the arranged conceptual material helps to prevent schematic clutter. Also the researcher of the sociology of religion expands the doors of a cognitive process as much as possible to get more than they think. Reasoning forms such as induction, deduction or hypothetical-deduction determine the direction of whole and particular. The fact that the researcher takes into account both the whole and the part, and the multi-directional connection between them and indicate which mental process he/she followed according to the course of the research, enables the reader to comprehend the method. (shrink)