The problem of the shaping of the new human being is intimately associated with the question of the essence of the socialist way of life.

Current sociological theories appear to have lost their general persuasiveness in part because, unlike the theories of the ‘classical era’, they fail to maintain an integrated stance toward society, and the practical role that sociology plays in society. The authors explore various facets of this failure and possibilities for reconstructing sociological theories as integrated wholes capable of conveying a moral and political immediacy. They discuss the evolution of several concepts (for example, the social, structure, and self) and address the (...) significant disputes (for example, structuralism versus humanism, and individual versus society) that have dominated twentieth-century sociological thought. Their ideas and analyses are directed towards an audience of students and theorists who are coming to terms with the project of sociological theory, and its relationship with moral discourses and political practice. The authors of these essays are sociological theorists from the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada. They are all established, but not ‘establishment’ authors. The book contains no orthodoxies, and no answers. However, the essays do contribute to identifying the range of issues that will constitute the agenda for the next generation of sociological theorists. (shrink)

Little is known about the world’s first sociological society, Émile Littré’s Société de Sociologie (1872—4). This article, based on prosopographic research, offers an interpretation of the foundation, political-intellectual orientation and early demise of the society. As indicated by recruitment and texts by its founding members, the Société de Sociologie was in fact conceived more as a political club than a learned society. Guided in this by Littré’s heterodox positivism and the redefinition of sociology he proposed around 1870, the Société de (...) Sociologie was intended first and foremost to accompany intellectually the political changes that Littré considered imperative in the early years of the Third Republic (1870— 1940). This expectation found little echo among the members of the society, and it seems possible that Littré himself and his closest associates were the ones to interrupt the society’s meetings. Some of its members’ general studies on the status of the social sciences and their main divisions were continued in the framework of the journal La Philosophie positive (1867—83), but the authors most committed to those studies were on the margins of the Littré network. Neither the dominant positivist republicanism, centered around Littré and Dubost, nor the general sociology of the more peripheral members of the network (Mesmer, Roberty, Vitry) represented an important intellectual contribution to the formation of academic sociology in France. Given that the Société de Sociologie did contribute to diffuse the project of a sociological science and developed forms of sociology coherent enough to be rejected by the pioneers of university sociology, the group constitutes a significant case of failure in the history of the discipline. (shrink)

Key ideas from expectation-states theory, symbolic interactionism, dramaturgical analysis, power-status theories, attribution theory, and psychoanalytic theories are combined in an effort to generate a more general theory of emotional arousal in face-to-face interaction. The level of emotional arousal in interaction is seen to reflect the degree of incongruity between expectations, including expectations for confirmation of self, and actual experiences. Such arousal involves the conversion of primary emotions into first and second-order combinations. The nature of emotional arousal is, however, further (...) complicated by the activation of defense mechanisms and attribution processes. The composite theory is formalized into a series of propositions which can serve as hypotheses for empirical tests. (shrink)

This article argues that Orlando Patterson is a key contributor to postcolonial fiction and postcolonial theory as well as historical sociology and social theory, whose work contains crucial lessons for sociology in general. Patterson has coined striking concepts such as social death and human parasitism and made original historical interpretations such as the origins of freedom in the experiences of female slaves. Patterson has contributed to historical knowledge, social theory, and an alternative epistemology of interpretive social science. And through (...) his fiction, he exemplifies an alternative understanding of the métier of the social scientist, in which literary-aesthetic sensuousness and lyrical pleasure are combined with analytic rigor. The first part of the article suggests that Patterson’s work represents an overlooked foundation for postcolonial sociology. Demonstrating this involves reconstructing Patterson’s early intellectual context and then tracing the interplay between fiction and social analysis in his work. The article then analyses Patterson’s fictional writing, arguing that it is a crucial part of his overall production of social knowledge. The article’s final section argues that Patterson’s work lays out a non-positivist foundation for historical sociology and sociology as a whole. (shrink)

In Toward a Pragmatist Sociology, Robert Dunn explores the relationship between the ideas of philosopher and educator John Dewey and those of sociologist C. Wright Mills in order to provide a philosophical and theoretical foundation for the development of a critical and public sociology. Dunn recovers an intellectual and conceptual framework for transforming sociology into a more substantive, comprehensive, and socially useful discipline. Toward a Pragmatist Sociology argues that Dewey and Mills shared a common vision of a relevant, critical, public (...) sociology dedicated to the solution of societal problems. Dunn investigates the past and present state of the discipline, critiquing its dominant tendencies, and offering historical examples of alternatives to conventional sociological approaches. By stressing the similar intellectual and moral visions of both men, Toward a Pragmatist Sociology provides an original treatment of two important American thinkers whose work offers a conception and model of a sociology with a sense of moral and political purpose and public relevance. It should liberate future sociologists and others to regard the discipline as not only a science but an intellectual, moral, and political enterprise. (shrink)

This article uses participant objectivation in sociology and philosophy as two knowledge fields to provide a reflexive comparison of their synced field effect in historical circumstances. Drawing on the philosopher and historian of science Gaston Bachelard, I theorize fielded knowledge as a social relation that combines the prior presence of folk knowledge with a socioanalytic exchange between field and folk that includes positions of either defense, replacement or critique. A comparison of post-Wittgenstein Anglophone philosophy and post-sixties American sociology describes their (...) mutual confrontation with folk psychology as an “epistemological obstacle” that generates a remarkable concern with action as a position-taking on the folk relation. A reflexive objectivation of folk knowledge is therefore necessary for a revised understanding of action that correlates with the distinction of sociology’s knowledge capital and how it fares as an explanatory resource in competitive circumstances. The article concludes by leveraging the synced field effect even further to make a recommendation that sociologists can increase the distinction of their knowledge capital by producing discourse that can recognize, legitimate and officialize experiences that otherwise remain obscure, nameless or impossible within the bounded universe of folk psychology. (shrink)

This article outlines a sociological agenda for the era of “tech,” a period when digital technologies have come to dominate our social lives. It argues that we should break “tech” down into two parts, the production side and the consumption side. The production side concerns the ways in which these technologies are made, the social actors involved on the design, financing, and production side, and the consumption side refers to the ways in which ordinary users make use of these technologies (...) and the ways in which their use is transforming everyday life. The article maintains that this is an area of research to which sociologists need to pay much greater attention if they are to understand the contemporary world satisfactorily. (shrink)

This article is the introduction to the special issue ‘Sociology and psychology: what intersections?’ In addition to presenting the articles included in this issue, the present text outlines the general stakes of interdisciplinarity between psychology and sociology. It argues that interdisciplinarity requires a specific conversion work between disciplines and that, in the particular case of sociology and psychology, importations and exportations of concepts and ideas have existed since the beginning of these disciplines.

This book’s basic hypothesis – which it proposes to test with a cognitive-sociological approach – is that legal behavior, like every form of human behavior, is directed and framed by biosocial constraints that are neither entirely genetic nor exclusively cultural. As such, from a sociological perspective the law can be seen as a super-meme, that is, as a biosocial constraint that develops only in complex societies. This super-meme theory, by highlighting a fundamental distinction between defensive and assertive biases, might explain (...) the false contradiction between law as a static and historical phenomenon, and law as a dynamic and promotional element. Socio-legal scholars today have to face the challenge of pursuing a truly interdisciplinary approach, connecting all the fields that can contribute to building a modern theory of normative behavior and social action. Understanding and framing concepts such as rationality, emotion, or justice can help to overcome the significant divide between micro and macro sociological knowledge. Social scientists who are interested in the law must be able to master the epistemological discourses of different disciplines, and to produce fruitful syntheses and bridge-operations so as to understand the legal phenomenon from each different point of view. The book adopts four perspectives: sociological, psychological, biological-evolutionary and cognitive. All of them have the potential to be mutually integrated, and constitute that general social science that provides common ground for exchange. The goal is to arrive at a broad and integrated view of the socio-legal phenomenon, paving the way for a comprehensive theory of norm-oriented and norm-perceived actions. (shrink)

1. Philosophy of Science. The term “philosophy of science” is used here to refer to the study of the approaches and methodologies of the sciences. By “approach” is understood the totality of the presuppositions of a given science : more precisely, both philosophical and scientific presuppositions—that is, categories, postulates, and premises as conditions—and “existential” presuppositions. By “methodology” is understood the intellectual-emotional structure of a given science—that is, its categories, postulates, and premises as characteristics, as well as its concepts, methods, and (...) techniques. Further, I advocate understanding a given science through a study of its approach and of its methodology. Finally, I submit that the best understanding of either of the two is impossible without the study of the other. More specifically, I advocate the consideration of a particular science as a given, and the interpretation of its intellectual structure or methodology ; and then the study of its presuppositions or underlying approach. (shrink)

As sociologists deepen their examinations of human rights in their teaching, research, and thinking, it is essential that such work is conducted in a manner that is both mindful and critical of the knowledge we are building upon in sociology and human rights. As the authors of this volume reveal, creating sociological knowledge that examines human rights for the expansion of human rights is something that sociologists are well equipped to undertake, whether through the use of mathematics, comparative-historical analysis, the (...) study of emotions, conversations, or social psychology. In these chapters you will find the roots of the study of human rights deep within sociological research and thinking as well as emerging techniques that will push the discipline as it seeks to expand understanding of human rights together with so many other aspects of the social condition. (shrink)

Progressing beyond the given has been a key modern tendency. Yet modern societies are currently facing the problem of how to put limits on progress, expansion, and growth, live within them, and preserve (rather than transcend) the present. Drawing on economic sociology scholarship on valuation and morality in economic life, this article develops and applies the term economization to analyze the enactment of limits on progress. The question of end-of-life care—when to stop medical efforts to prolong life, postpone death, and (...) advance the scientific frontier—serves as an illustrative empirical case that sheds light on limit-setting in general. My analysis of this case combines historical, ethnographic, and in-depth interview data on US palliative care clinicians, who specialize in making life-and-death decisions in acute care hospitals. (shrink)

This article extends analyses of environmental influences on social action by examining the emotions experienced by Karuk Tribal members in the face of environmental decline. Using interviews, public testimonies, and survey data we make two claims, one specific, the other general. We find that, for Karuk people, the natural environment is part of the stage of social interactions and a central influence on emotional experiences, including individuals’ internalization of identity, social roles, and power structures, and their resistance to racism (...) and ongoing colonialism. We describe a unique approach to understanding the production of inequality through disruptions to relationships among nature, emotions, and society. Grief, anger, shame, and hopelessness associated with environmental decline serve as signal functions confirming structures of power. The moral battery of fear and hope underpins environmental activism and resistance. More generally, we expand this concern to argue that neglecting the natural world as a causal force for “generic” social processes has limited not only work on Native Americans, but also work sociology of emotions and theories of race and ethnicity, and has masked the theoretical significance of environmental justice. Taking seriously the experiences of Native people and the importance of the natural environment offers an opportunity to extend sociological analyses of power and to move sociology toward a more decolonized discipline. (shrink)

Sociological theory, as represented in the two main U.S. theory journals, has been diverted from the project of generalized explanation by a propensity for over-refinement, a preference for small-scale conceptual innovations linked to specific and sometimes quite obscure cases, a tendency to focus on heroes of theory rather than their generalizable ideas, and too much attention to the flux and instability of social life. These conclusions are based on a content analysis of 445 journal articles over a recent 11-year period. (...) As an alternative, I propose focusing on high-leverage sociological concepts, those that have explanatory power across multiple settings, subfields, and levels of analysis, as well as the variables that are most important for conditioning their explanatory force. I connect the project with a recessive theme in the work of the mid-20th century sociologist and theorist Robert K. Merton. (shrink)

This is an excursion into the sociology of American sociology. It is an attempt to present a typology of the relationship between sociological empiricism as an ideology, and the pre?eminence and power of empiricist sociologists. Toward this end, such concrete factors as recruitment practices, educational orientations, status strivings of the social scientists, forms of financial subsidization, and the profes?sionalization of the field are taken into account. The article concludes by noting the limited field of investigations open to sociological empiricism, and (...) its general impoverishment as the leading ideology of the science of sociology. (shrink)

Accession Number: ATLA0001712151; Hosting Book Page Citation: p 253-270.; Language(s): English; General Note: Bibliography: p 269-270.; Issued by ATLA: 20130825; Publication Type: Essay.

Gravity’s Ghost is a book about the search for gravitational waves , which are predicted by the general theory of relativity to be ripples in space–time that propagate at the speed of light. The direct detection of GWs, if they exist at all, is exceptionally difficult, because they are theoretically expected to be very weakly coupled to matter. To this date, there is yet no conclusive evidence for the direct detection of GWs. The search for GWs was started by (...) a series of experiments performed by Joseph Weber in the 1960s. The history of the early GW detection experiments, as well as Weber’s claimed detection of GWs, which was eventually discredited, has been examined in great details by Harry Collins .Collins has long advocated a sociological approach to the study of scientific research groups that is premised on the view that in order to understand how scientific knowledge is produced collectively by a group of researchers, it is necessary to engage in the cultu .. (shrink)

Presented here is an overview from the standpoints of sociology, history of science, philosophy of science and “pure science” of the lingering question of whether sociology is a form of scientific pursuit. The conclusion is drawn that sociology barely meets any of the rigid criteria traditionally associated with the natural sciences. Sociology is viewed as having a position of theory and argument which is labeled “inconoclastic scepticism.”.

This article revises received wisdom about the Durkheimian school of sociology and its relationship to Marxism by analyzing the work of Célestin Bouglé, one of the most influential and least examined sociologists of the Durkheimian tradition. Like other better-known Durkheimians of his generation such as Marcel Mauss and Maurice Halbwachs, Bouglé engaged Durkheimian sociology with Marxian and other German traditions of social thought. In the process he also paid an important debt to the French socialists that Marx and so many (...) French Marxists have denigrated as ‘utopian’, especially Saint-Simon, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and Charles Fourier. In fact, the concerns of Bouglé’s political sociology and Durkheimian sociology more generally are indissociable from the politics of Third Republic France. (shrink)

In its early years the sociology of education was not clearly distinguished from general social philosophy. Spurred by the publication of John Dewey’s_ School and Society_ in 1899, widespread interest in the role of the school as a social institution helped to lay the foundation for the development of educational sociology as a separate field of study. This facsimile set of eight books, selected by the editor, presents early contributions to the development of the sociology of education from the (...) 1920s through to the 1950s - the period in which it emerged as an organized and specialized sub-field of sociology, mainly in the USA. Comprehensive and fascinating, the extensive new introduction to this set places these works firmly in the context of current scholarship, while the nature of the facsimile provides a real sense of immediacy and authenticity for both students and scholars alike. (shrink)

Si l’histoire et les sciences sociales ont connu une sorte de fusion au cours des dernières décennies et si de multiples domaines d’études spécialisées se sont affirmés pendant la même période, le registre durkheimien de la « sociologie générale » paraît aujourd’hui comme en friche. Il s’agit dans un premier temps d’analyser les conditions de cette désaffection et dans un second temps d’indiquer comment, par la voie d’une réflexivité de longue durée, on peut reformuler un agenda pour la sociologie générale.

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain (...) in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

A selection of recent sociological literature dealing with bioethics, concentrating particularly on its interface with research ethics, is reviewed to reveal that the two disciplines of bioethics and sociology have tendencies to approach subject matters from opposed perspectives. These differences in approach have now been generally recognized, accepted and accommodated by proponents of both disciplines. A turning point in the relationship between the two disciplines may have been reached which augers greater mutual respect, appreciation and even learning.

The sociology of scientific knowledge is one of the profession’s most marginal specialties, yet its objects of inquiry, its modes of inquiry, and certain of its findings have very substantial bearing upon the nature and scope of the sociological enterprise in general. While traditional sociology of knowledge asked how, and to what extent, "social factors" might influence the products of the mind, SSK sought to show that knowledge was constitutively social, and in so doing, it raised fundamental questions about (...) taken-for-granted divisions between "social versus cognitive, or natural, factors." This piece traces the historical development of the sociology of scientific knowledge and its relations with sociology and cultural inquiry as a whole. It identifies dominant "localist" sensibilities in SSK and the consequent problem it now confronts of how scientific knowledge travels. Finally, it describes several strands of criticism of SSK that have emerged from among its own practitioners, noting the ways in which some criticisms can be seen as a revival of old aspirations toward privileged meta-languages. (shrink)

The article is an attempt at the reverse engineering of conceptual architecture and logic of David Bloor's Strong Programme (SP) in the sociology of scientific knowledge via explicating key resources and interpretative techniques for constructing it. To do this I show how problematic is a conventional interpretation of the SP as a radicalization of Kuhn's theory of science and as a sociologization of epistemology. This problematization allows me to put anew three questions concerning the SP. In what sense it is (...) post-positivist? In what sense it is sociological? Does it belong to social epistemology? To answer these questions I set myself four tasks. First, Bloor’s theoretical position concerning the Kuhn-Popper debate is located. Second, I point to and present Mary Hesse’s network model of science (NM) as a crucial theoretical source for the early SP. Third, I analyze in detail how Bloor interpreted and appropriated NM. Finally, I show what theoretical and methodological effects this interpretation had for the SP as presented in 1976. The general layout of the conceptual architecture of SP is modeled on the Hesse’s NM. It combines the principle of correspondence and that of coherence and sees the language of science as a network of predicates and laws segmented by contingent and empirical boundaries and not a priori logical divisions between theory and observation. But Bloor creatively interprets and appropriates NM by the double move of generalization and specification. Whereas Hesse’s NM refers to the functioning of scientific language, in Bloor’s hands, it comes to describe human learning in general inscribed in psychological processes (perception and thinking). As a result, SP is based on a form of psychological empiricism that sees science as a two-storied building. The first floor (perception) ensures correspondence and the second one (thinking) provide conditions of coherence. SP of 1976 is a specific model for the sociological segmentation of the second floor. (shrink)

: This study aims to discuss the basic argument that sociology, as a science, emerged as an intellectual response to the lost sense of community during social and cultural changes. This argument carries the assumption that the dominating metaphors and perspectives of classical sociology are informed by conservatism. In sociology, this claim is supported by well-known and ambivalent theoretical structures that are developed to explain the process of social change. This study aims to make a criticism of nostalgic sociology considering (...) the idea that the fundamental assumptions of the ambivalent theoretical structure in sociology are nostalgic. In addition, this study also aims to critically read the historical development of Islamism, one of the modern ideologies, with nostalgia and utopia. The suggestion of the article is that either classical sociology or Islamism –two subject appear differently in terms of their topics- gave similar intellectual reactions about the subject that they are unable to cope with ‘the present’ and produce a ‘golden age’ discourse as a solution to ‘the present’. The argument of the study is that either the effort of idealizing ‘the past’ in classical sociology or the myth of coming back home in Islamism against cultural alienation and sense of loss which are lived in ‘the present’ are actually determined by sovereign modernity paradigm. Summary: Behind the nostalgic paradigm, there is a rebuilt history that is shaped as a transition from feudalism to capitalism. In this history, the decline of feudalism corresponds to the loss of rural community, the loss of personal expressionism and the loss of unregulated society. In classical sociology, the heritage left by the solution of this historical reconstruction of society has become common. The anomaly of the modern world is precisely where the modern society from traditional society has emerged in the pathological state created by the loss of social ties with the passing. This pathological condition was first seen in Swiss mercenaries serving away from home, diagnosing nostalgia as a diagnosis of discomfort. We know that Johannes Hofer, who has a sense of humor, has not written any prescription for this disease, which gives some common signs with his melancholy. Sociology, shaped by three different intellectual movements as intellectual responses to the French and Industrial revolutions that allow the transformation of the European society, has taken its place as its focal point, and in the pioneering names, this change is "a change in everything at a dizzying pace, everything that has happened has evaporated and the glory of the world has deteriorated.” Modernity, which refers to the ideals of enlightenment, is blessed not to progress by nature, fluid, rational, contingent, lacking certainty. In fact, this blessing has brought with it the enemy of tradition to the 'new' with reference to its etymological origin. This sophisticated and complex structure unique to modernity only, has inspired some thinkers to conceive of an idealized past or future that is now determinative. Both of these ideas are moderators. The nostalgia becomes modern because of the longing for a home that no longer exists or has never existed. Nostalgia is coeval with modernity. The article refers to Stauth-Turner's nostalgic paradigm, which provides the meta-phasic and meta-phase dominance of classical sociology detailed in Nietzsche's Dance. This paradigm consists of four main components. The first is that the history that we can summarize as a departure from the golden age when the world was a nest for man is seen as a decline and a loss. History is a history of sorrow and despair, as this decline will continue to exacerbate in the future. The example of such a feeling of grief in society theory is Weber's fate sociology. Because, according to Weber, whatever is waiting for us in the future is the polar night of the icy darkness, not the sunlight of summer. The second component of the nostalgic paradigm is the sense of secularization, together with the loss of integrity and moral certainty. This nostalgic trajectory is a very powerful secularization that emphasizes that such devastating social processes as urbanization, capitalist industrialization and the rationalization of everyday life, such as the diversity and complexity of social structure, the spread of scientific knowledge, urbanization with increasing population ratio, it brings forward its theory. With the announcement of the death of God, the gate of a competing and conflicting world has been opened, from which we have been transformed into a very godlike world. It is possible to observe a similar point of view in classical sociology in Durkheim, which has a theoretical basis for the transformation of social structures through professional distinction in the form of mechanical and organic solidarity. Durkheim analyzes social change in a deliberate way, and pre-change stake favors moral coherence. Moral coherence is now lost when collective consciousness is generally weakened in the post-change phase. The third trajectory we encounter in the nostalgic paradigm is the loss of individual autonomy and the decline of genuine social relations. With the loss of the moral unity, the individual has been caught under the domination of the bureaucratic state, in macro-social processes and institutions. It is inevitable that the individual who lost his autonomy is subject to the denial. The increasing exposure of the individual to social bureaucratic associations has been conceptualized by the iron cage metaphor in Weberian sociology. The enlightenment is the result of the panoptic collection of prison. So there is a nostalgic stance in this compound of the nostalgic paradigm that autonomy-ben lost because of the fall of the bureaucratic world under the domination of the modern state. In the nostalgic paradigm, the ultimate component is the feeling of laxity, spontaneity and loss of naturalness. Here, the individual is subject to not only macro-social processes but also micro-ethics. That is, it is understood that Adorno's "managed society" or Foucault's notion of closure prevents the individual's true emotions and enthusiasm, and that the consumer culture is preoccupied with certain preconceived ways of doing in a world dominated. To sum up, the metaphor of nostalgia that we are living in a world where we have been seized by administrative rules of a central state in a way that has lost the moral certainty and autonomy of the individual. The return to home, which is found in a significant part of the texts and practices put forward in the name of Islamism, has reached a deterministic attitude just as it was in classical sociology. In the nostalgic imagination where those who cannot cope with it are thought of as a safe harbor, there is a certain attitude towards deterministic ideologists that simplify, sanctify, and therefore falsify. Indeed, the imagination of a supra-historical, supra-community model for a time like the Golden Age discourse and for all time is itself history from the very beginning to the end. Therefore, it is a manifestation of a major historical process and the ideological design of sociality. The rhetoric discourse presented as a remedy in the present is possible with an anachronistic point of view which idealizes the past, and therefore the reality is distorted. The authentic one is extremely informal. This kind of discourse of authenticity, which is produced as opposed to the modernity that all that is solid melts into air, eventually has to make iron cages around it. As a result, the nostalgic rhetoric, which aims to be a modern chivalrous remedy that everything changes at a dizzying pace, has been determined by the paradigm of modernity, thanks to its self-reflexive nature which contains the opposite. (shrink)

The paper begins by engaging Mircea Eliade’s undervaluation of the importance of classical sociology of religion, namely, Durkheim and Weber, and goes on to show how much they share with him, particularly with regard to a critique of modern European civilization, and of the foundational importance of religion in society. This “other”, non-positivist, non-reductionist face of Durkheim and Weber is elaborated by showing their religious, even “primordial” approaches to the religious bases of society and culture. Eliade’s criticism of sociology is (...) further misplaced, given the decline of the sociological regime of knowledge, and the accuracy of Eliade’s prescient expectation of a cosmic rather than historical orientation, and the current importance of religion and “spirituality” for socio-cultural life, generally. The displacement of secular social theory by social and psychological understanding explicitly based in religious thought is explored in several domains and religious traditions. The paper emphasizes, however, a sociology created from within the streams of Jewish mysticism, and examples are offered. The line of Romanian scholars of religion, including Eliade, Idel and Culiano, is seen as less than apparently dissonant with both the sociology of religious experience, and the post-sociological turn to creating social theory from within religious, and particularly, mystical traditions. (shrink)

The speed of social dynamics has overtaken the speed of thought. Adopting a dialectical perspective towards reality, social theory has always detected faults in the dominant social pattern, foreseeing crises and outlining in advance the features of new social models. Thought has always moved faster than reality and its ruling models, ensuring a dynamic equilibrium during modernity. Despite any dramatic social crisis, theory has always provided exit routes. The tragedy of current crisis lies in the fact that its social implications (...) are exasperated by the absence of alternative views. This book identifies the causes of this mismatch between thought and reality, and illustrates a way out. (shrink)

This article explores the relationship between theology and sociology on two levels. The first is in terms of the general disciplinary closure that has marked much of their coexistence, despite the many topics on which they potentially meet. The second level is more specific and concerns the tension in Britain between religious sociology, in which sociology is put to serve faith, and the secular sociology of religion, where religion is studied scientifically. This tension has been addressed before with respect (...) to the history of sociology in France and the United States, but the British case, hitherto relatively unknown, illustrates the potential there was for a more fruitful relationship between sociology and theology in Britain that went undeveloped as the secular sociology of religion eventually replaced early religious sociology. The existence of religious sociology has been written out of the history of the discipline in Britain, such that when theology and sociology began a more serious engagement in the 1970s in Britain and elsewhere, particularly as biblical studies discovered sociology and as theologians and sociologists first met jointly, this earlier dialogue was entirely overlooked. (shrink)

In this article, I present a sociological approach to the problem of meaningful work that dwells on its broad social and cultural sources, as opposed to the focus on subjective and organizational factors currently prevailing in the field. Specifically, I consider two sociological perspectives, those of community and autonomy, as important conceptual tools for understanding the ambivalent character of modern culture in providing individuals with a sense of meaningfulness of their activities. I also review some of the existing research on (...) meaningful work and interpret it through this conceptual distinction, both to show the latter’s relevance for the field and to identify the gaps it might help fill. As a result, based on the sociological perspectives, I propose a general conceptual model and discuss five directions to further advance the theoretical comprehension of meaningful work, and I suggest some implications of these perspectives for normative business ethics. (shrink)

A theoretical and sociological exploration of the relationship between law and society, this book constructs an approach to law that integrates legal theory with sociological approaches to law. Law is generally understood to be a mirror of society--a reflection of its customs and morals--that functions to maintain social order. Focusing on this common understanding, the book conducts a survey of Western legal and social theories about law and its relationship within society, engaging in a theoretical and empirical critique of this (...) common understanding. (shrink)

Pragmatic sociology is often read as a reaction to and an alternative to Bourdieu’s ‘critical sociology’. This article, in contrast, offers an assessment of pragmatic sociology in terms of its contribution to the theory of culture in general and its affinities with repertoire theory in particular. Whereas the tendency has been to conceive of repertoires as largely unstructured entities, pragmatic sociology has demonstrated a systematic interest in their internal contents and structure, which it has even expanded through its more (...) recent turn to historical and macro comparative analysis. In the process, however, pragmatic sociology has also been leaning towards a form of cultural sociology that actually challenges some major aspects of repertoire theory–thus also bringing into relief the dilemmas facing any attempt at further elaboration of what is now a growing strand of cultural theory. (shrink)

Economic sociologists have developed and applied theories and concepts in close connection with broadly economic phenomena, including, recently, embeddedness and actor network theory. Key to these theories is understandings of action given uncertainty in which actors develop calculative capabilities, and an emphasis on markets with boundaries and interstices as essential properties. This article reflects upon the connections between Parsons' and Smelser's economic sociology and that of contemporary authors including Granovetter, Callon and White. As a strange other to economics and to (...) sociology, economic sociology can develop research questions in considering arbitrage generally, rather than only restricted to financial markets. (shrink)

This article examines the connections among heuristics, the epistemological and ontological presuppositions that underlie theorizing, and substantive explanations in sociology. It develops and contrasts three heuristics: “doing as knowing” (DK), “categorizing as knowing” (CK), and “praxis as knowing” (PK). These are each composed of four dimensions: the theory of knowledge, the theory of reality, the theory of the growth of knowledge, and the theory of knowledge producers. The article then shows the importance of heuristics for empirical work by demonstrating how (...) they shape explanations in the sociological subfield of the historical sociology of knowledge. The essay draws two main conclusions: it argues that PK offers a more useful basis for developing explanations in sociology than either of the two alternatives (DK and CK) that currently shape substantive work; furthermore, it claims that the exposition of heuristic assumptions is an important task for sociology. (shrink)

Sociology, as conceived by Comte, was to put an end to the anarchy of opinions characteristic of liberal democracy by replacing opinion with the truths of sociology, imposed through indoctrination. Later sociologists backed away from this, making sociology acceptable to liberal democracy by being politically neutral. The critics of this solution asked 'whose side are we on?' Burawoy provides a novel justification for advocacy scholarship in sociology. Public sociology is intended to have political effects, but also to be funded by (...) the politically neutral state. He argues that public sociology is institutionally neutral, but that committing to an organic relation with a social movement is legitimate as a matter of the sociologist's personal value choice. Although this produces side-taking sociology, by improving the case for particular standpoints it serves to improve democratic discussion generally, which is an appropriately neutral public aim. (shrink)

In the present article, the authors continue their sociological interpretations of theempiric data obtained in the research project “Aggregate Capital, Its Structure andRelation to Labour Migration” (2012). The following hypothesis has been proved: ahigher predisposition for the labour migration is more typical for economically activeregion’s inhabitants with fairly high amounts of some indicators of the aggregatecapital, especially physical capital, but with a comparatively lower amount of culturalcapital, which could transform into human capital and further into economic capital inLatgale or Latvia. (...) An in-depth analysis of the factors of life success has revealed that,in general, our respondents tend to assign the lead role not to the personal competitivecharacteristics (resources) but rather to the specificity of the social environment: anexplanation of life success by means of a set of variables that, on the whole, describeit as a socio-political innovation with criminal tendencies (political corruption) is themost spread one. (shrink)

The contemporary sociology of morality is a form of descriptive ethics that shrinks away from any sort of prescriptive ethics. Building on the moral philosophies of John Dewey, and also of Alasdair MacIntyre and Paul Ricoeur, and in dialogue with recent work by Stefan Bargheer, this article proposes a more ambitious program of critical social ethics that connects concerns with character and the common good but tempers them with attention to alienation and oppression.

Experiments are generally thought of as actions or operations undertaken to test a scientific hypothesis in settings detached from the rest of society. In this paper a different notion of experiment will be discussed. It is an understanding that has been developed in the classical tradition of the Chicago School of Sociology since the 1890s, but has so far remained unexplored. This sociological understanding of experiment does not model itself strictly on the natural sciences. Rather, it implies a process of (...) societal self-experimentation without a fixed setting of a sociological experimenter. The paper discusses this notion of experiment in relation to the recursive dependency of the application and the production of sociological knowledge. It is contended that this concept of a self-experimental society offers theoretical insights that could well prove fruitful for a sociological concept of experiment beyond the realm of the laboratory. (shrink)

The article argues for the social production of curiosity. Due its motivating characteristic, curiosity is reconceptualized as an epistemic drive which organizes the social production of knowledge under given socio-historical and local-cultural circumstances. First, historical, philosophical, and sociological literature is reviewed to give a context for the argument. Then a theoretical apparatus is developed considering the emergence, development, and impact of epistemic drives which serves as a foundation for empirical analysis. The second part demonstrates applicability by discussing the problem of (...) economic incentives in scientific research. I argue that scientific projects with little to none immediate economic return have a significant disadvantage in acquiring funding which in turn impacts the mobilization of curiosity in their field. A tendency which systematically yields a disproportionate distribution of knowledge. In conclusion, the article suggests the usefulness of the epistemic drive notion in understanding curiosity as a sociological object. (shrink)

Sociology is becoming fragmented. With specialised fields spinning off beyond the capacity of a unifying theoretical frame to embrace them, the prospect exists that sociology's vital centre may not hold. Proceeding from a social constructionist perspective, this work examines the existence and probes the origins of the specialised sociological fields of social problems and social movements. Conceptual ambiguities that currently plague both specialisations are noted, as are their effective theoretical isolation from general sociological theory. Each field is traced to (...) its roots in sociology's formative period in the nineteenth century. Two modes of doing sociology are found to have evolved, respectively, in the United Stales and in Continental Europe, each conditioned by distinctive historical experiences and resonating with the prevailing social and political concerns on the two continents. American sociology emerged in response to social perceptions that progress is inhibited by a proliferation of 'social problems'. Continental European sociology arose in reaction to Enlightenment principles failing to be institutionalised, inviting the perceived social threat of either revolution or anarchy. Both sociologies are thus seen as ideologically contaminated, and their respective dominant perspectives, through the 1950s, are contrasted as the 'social problem orientation' and the 'social movement orientation'. Comparative analysis of these orientatations probes such issues as ahistorical vs. historical treatments: methodological individualism vs. collectivism: differential conceptions of class; the discipline's need to inhibit ideological contagion through a sociological reconstruction of prevailing social constructions of reality; the vital distinction between structural and processual conceptualisations. The study concludes that temporality serves as a crucial but much-neglected dimension in much of American sociology. So-called social problems and social movements are found to be grounded in essentially similar empirical social circumstances, with their alternate conceptualisations attributable to differential time-frames through which such circumstances are sociologically apprehended. This points to the potential theoretical integration of these two fields. Scientific, ideological. and social policy implications of alternative constructions of reality are also explored. (shrink)