This collection of original chapters, written by prominent social scientists, elucidates the theory and practice of contemporary rural sociology. The book applies lessons from the careers of sociologists and their field research endeavors, covering a wide range of topics: agricultural production, processing, and marketing; international food security and rural development; degradation of the bio-physical environment across borders; and the study of community, family, health, and many other issues in an increasingly globalized world. The authors candid accounts provide insight into (...) possibilities for enhancing opportunity and equality and serving basic human needs.". (shrink)

Fifty Key Sociologists: The Contemporary Theorists covers the life, work, ideas and impact of some of the most important thinkers in this discipline. Concentrating on figures writing predominantly in the second half of the twentieth century, such as Zygmunt Bauman, Pierre Bourdieu, Judith Butler, Michel Foucault and Claude Le;vi-Strauss, each entry includes: · full cross-referencing · a further reading section · biographical data · key works and ideas · critical assessment. Clearly presented in an easy-to-navigate A-Z format, this accessible (...) reference guide is ideal for undergraduate and postgraduate students of sociology, cultural studies and general studies, as well as other readers interested in this fascinating field. (shrink)

This paper studies the conflict between critical rationalism and critical theory in Karl Popper and Theodor Adorno’s 1961 debate by analyzing their shared rejection of Karl Mannheim’s sociology of knowledge. Despite the divergences in their respective projects of critical social research, Popper and Adorno agree that Mannheim’s sociology of knowledge is uncritical. By investigating their respective assessments of this research program I reveal a deeper similarity between critical rationalism and critical theory. Though both agree on the importance of critique, they (...) are less concerned with the development of critical consciousness as a focus of this project. In this way, Mannheim’s sociology of knowledge, particularly in its formative stages, revolves around a set of problems relatively inaccessible to critical rationalism and critical theory, since it is centrally concerned with identifying and cultivating the possibility of critique in society. In closing, I gesture to the importance of political education in Mannheim’s early work, suggesting that a return to these experimental texts will yield resources for political thought today. (shrink)

: Sociologists of Scientific Knowledge sometimes claim to study scientists belonging to other forms of life. This claim causes difficulties, as traditionally Wittgensteinians have taken it to be the case that other forms of life are incomprehensible to us. This paper examines whether, and how, sociologists might gain understanding of another form of life, and whether, and how, this understanding might be passed on to readers. I argue that most techniques proposed for gaining and passing on understanding are (...) inadequate, but I end by describing a method that might work. (shrink)

Fernand Dumont (1927-1997) was a sociologist, philosopher, theologian, and poet. A prominent intellectual in Quebec, he is recognized for his research on the sociology of knowledge and the foundations of modern culture. Dumont's work conceives of culture in terms of both memory and distance, arguing that without culture, man would be immersed in the monotony of his present actions, never achieving the distance necessary to create a past or a future. In Fernand Dumont: A Sociologist Turns to Theology, Gregory Baum (...) interprets Dumont's L'institution de la théologie, which studies the assumptions and commitments implicit in the rational reflection of Catholic thinkers on the meaning of their faith. Baum shows that while Dumont's book is preoccupied with the theoretical, its methodology is informed by the cognitive presuppositions of the social sciences, and its contents - dealing with the spiritual, personal, and social struggles that constitute daily life - are concrete. For Dumont religious truth is insufficient, and may have no impact on everyday life. What counts is relevance, insights that reply to urgent questions and unresolved conflicts. He offers an innovative interpretation of Catholicism that is faithful to the Gospel and relevant to the problems of modern life and the serious questions Quebecers are asking themselves. In Fernand Dumont: A Sociologist Turns to Theology, Baum elucidates Dumont's main ideas and connects the concerns of the Christian gospel with those of contemporary society. (shrink)

The concept of the sick role entered sociology in 1951 when Talcott Parsons creatively separated the sick person out of the doctor–patient dyad. The idea became fundamental in the subdiscipline of medical sociology. By the 1990s, the concept had almost disappeared from the research literature. Beyond the generational and theoretical changes that explain how the sick role idea could become irrelevant or unnecessary to sociologists, there were two immediate factors: the negative politicization of the concept and the shift of (...) medical sociologists to a focus on applied health behavior. In the later, fragmented discipline of sociology, final, total abandonment was still uncertain. (shrink)

It took a very long time before I encountered the systematic study of religious processes and dynamics as a distinctive and expansive area of scholarship. Using an autobiographical account, I trace the development of my scholarship in the social scientific study of religion. I have now experienced a great diversity of approaches to the study of religion. Driven by insatiable curiosity and knowing that no one can capture religion comprehensively, I now am committed to stimulating imaginative, rigorous, and wide-ranging developments (...) in religious scholarship. We require new, inventive, and even incompatible approaches to our study of religion if we ever hope to try adequately grasping the richness of religion. (shrink)

It is the proudest boast of the sciences that they are objective, clean of moral judgments, wertfrei. This insistence was salutary as the physical sciences struggled to loose themselves from the bonds of tradition, and it was natural that the social sciences took over the emphasis. Yet by a quirk of history the latter disciplines in striving for objectivity and amorality are unscientific. Far from being the hallmark of scientific method that students of society think it, the doctrine of Wertfreiheit (...) is of religious origin. It has always been the spokesmen of tradition who have said that science is without reference to morals and value, relegating this province to themselves. (shrink)

Summary Harry Alpert (1912–1977), the US sociologist, is best-known for his directorship of the National Science Foundation's social science programme in the 1950s. This study extends our understanding of Alpert in two main ways: first, by examining the earlier development of his views and career. Beginning with his 1939 biography of Emile Durkheim, we explore the early development of Alpert's views about foundational questions concerning the scientific status of sociology and social science more generally, proper social science methodology, the practical (...) value of social science, the academic institutionalisation of sociology, and the unity-of-science viewpoint. Second, this paper illuminates Alpert's complex involvement with certain tensions in mid-century US social science that were themselves linked to major transformations in national science policy, public patronage, and unequal relations between the social and natural sciences. We show that Alpert's views about the intellectual foundations, practical relevance, and institutional standing of the social sciences were, in some important respects, at odds with his NSF policy work. Although remembered as a quantitative evangelist and advocate for the unity-of-science viewpoint, Alpert was in fact an urbane critic of natural-science envy, social scientific certainty, and what he saw as excessive devotion to quantitative methods. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to introduce the sociological reader to the thought of merleau-ponty, specifically how that author can be applied to the work a sociologist purports to accomplish. also, this article also attempts to provide the sociologically trained reader with an introduction to phenomenological philosophy, and how that philosophy handles many of the traditional problems discussed by the sociologist. this article outlines such common sociological themes as methodology, individualism, social institutions, and culture from a phenomenological perspective, which (...) will hopefully make the sociologist more sensitive to the meaning of the social world. (shrink)

Fernandez examines the lives and ideas of sociologists who shaped the main contours of the discipline. Weber, Marx, Durkheim, and Simmel fashioned the early ideas and approaches of sociology, and their ideas are still central to the discipline. Veblen, Mead, Goffman, and Berger added crucial conceptual approaches; they also serve to underscore the length and breadth of Sociology as a science.

This book provides a new all-round perspective on the life and work of Edgar Zilsel (1891-1944) as a philosopher, historian, and sociologist. He was close to the Vienna Circle and has been hitherto almost exclusively referred to in terms of the so-called “Zilsel thesis” on the origins of modern science. Much beyond this “thesis”, Zilsel’s brilliant work provides original insights on a broad number of topics, ranging from the philosophy of probability and statistics to the concept of “genius”, from the (...) issues of scientific laws and theories to the sociological background of science and philosophy, and to the political analysis of the problems of his time. Praised by Herbert Feigl as an “outstanding brilliant mind”, Zilsel, being as a Social-Democrat of Jewish origins, mostly led a life of hardship marked by emigration and coming to a sudden and tragic end by suicide in 1944. The impossibility of an academic career has hindered the reception of Zilsel’s scientific work for a long time. This volume is a contribution to its late reception, providing new insights especially into his work during his years in Vienna; moreover, it shows the heuristic value of Zilsel’s ideas for future Scholar research – in philosophy, history, and sociology. -/- (ISSN: 0929-6328). (shrink)

This article is an attempt to operationalize A.N. Whitehead's ontological approach within sociology. Whitehead offers lessons and clues to a way of re-envisioning `sociological practice' so that it captures something of the nature of a `social' that is at once real and constructed, material and cultural, and processual and actual. In the course of the article, the terms `operationalize' and `sociology' will themselves be transformed, not least because the range of objects and relations of study will far outstrip those common (...) to sociology; further, the term `operationalize' would seem to retain the notion of a stable sociologist-subject translating precepts into methods. So, the article will follow Whitehead's shift in emphasis toward an understanding of much more relational, heterogeneous and emergent entities — which in turn will require new methodological approaches. In staking out these claims, we follow in an intellectual lineage in which Whitehead's presence has been profound but generally oblique. For it is clear that, while Whitehead has informed various writing, little attempt has been made to draw out, more or less systematically, some of the general methodological tactics that would allow us to practise a Whiteheadian sociology. (shrink)

(1995). A Feminist Sociologist Responds to Daniel's 'Exclusion and Emphasis Reframed as a Matter of Ethics' Ethics & Behavior: Vol. 5, No. 4, pp. 369-371.

The creation of the latest version of psychiatry's 'bible' has been surrounded by a great deal of controversy. The latest revision, the DSM-5, contains several controversial diagnoses that have been the subject of much debate. One of the central criticisms of DSM-5 is that it pathologizes some behaviors that were previously considered simply problematic, or variations of normal behavior—for example, fidgetiness, noisiness, abundance of energy, shyness, anxiety, and bereavement. Diagnoses such as Binge Eating Disorder, Disruptive Mood Dysregulation Disorder...

This essay presents a long, detailed, in many ways critical but also appreciative account, of David Bloor’s recent book The Enigma of the Aerofoil. I take that work as the crowning statement of ideas and principles developed over the past four decades by Bloor and other exponents of the ‘strong programme’ in the sociology of scientific knowledge. It therefore offers both a test-case of that approach and a welcome opportunity to review, clarify and extend some of the arguments brought against (...) it by critical realists. This purpose is particularly well served by Bloor’s having here assembled such a wealth of scientific, historical, political and socio-cultural data concerning one specific, very crucial period of research into theories of aerodynamic lift. His book thus provides an exceptionally useful point of engagement for anyone seeking to adjudicate these issues from a critically angled but engaged and constructive standpoint. (shrink)

Alfred Schutz''s influence on American sociologists and sociology in the 1960s and 1970s is traced through the examination of the work of two of his students, Helmut Wagner and Peter Berger, and of Harold Garfinkel with whom he met and corresponded over a number of years. The circumstances of Schutz''s own academic situation, particularly the short period of his academic career in the United States and his location at the New School, are examined to consider how and in what (...) ways he was constrained from exerting an even wider influence. The two major areas of influence in American sociology that are examined are the sociology of knowledge and the early development of ethnomethodology. (shrink)

Resumen: En la fórmula Campo + [Capital + Habitus] = Prácticas sociales, se condensan las aportaciones de un autor como Pierre Bourdieu a nivel teórico, y de ahí es posible desprender el método de abordaje para la investigación social al recuperar lo objetivo y lo subjetivo de las prácticas sociales. A partir de los conceptos así formulados, se proponen dos lecciones que se desprenden del trabajo intelectual del sociólogo bearnés: lecciones teóricas y algunas lecciones metodológicas derivadas de las primeras, con (...) el fin de contribuir a una sistematización explícita de su modus operandi para la investigación social, toda vez que el autor nunca lo hizo para evitar que sus aportaciones quedasen atrapadas con la rigidez de los esquemas escolásticos. En este sentido, el autor es tanto objeto como instrumento de la reflexión propuesta que mira a la noción de capital como la metodológicamente más importante para la práctica de la investigación social.: In the formula Field + [Capital + Habitus] = Social practices, the contributions of an author such as Pierre Bourdieu are condensed on a theoretical level, and from there it is possible to detach the approached method for social research by recovering the objective and subjective aspects of social practices based on the concepts thus formulated, two lessons are proposed that are derived from the intellectual work of the béarnese sociologist: theoretical lessons and some methodological lessons derived from the former, in order to contribute to an explicit systematization of their modus operandi for social research, since the author never did it to avoid that his contributions were trapped with the rigidity of the scholastic schemes. In this sense, the author is both an object and an instrument of the proposed reflection that looks at the notion of capital as the most important methodologically for the practice of social research. (shrink)

This volume presents an overview of Durkheim's thought and is representative of the best of contemporary Durkheim scholarship.

In the case of Jean-Marie Guyau, declared humanist and sociologist, there is the debt of a French thinker to English thought, ...

This book offers an introduction to critical thinking for sociologists. Critical thinking involves the evaluation of arguments. Because sociologists tend to use particular forms of argumentation, it is helpful to consider how such arguments might be evaluated. Taking these matters into consideration can improve sociological arguments.

The Slovak sociologist Alexander Hirner has been practising in the 1940's and 1950's also philosophy . Thanks to him in the fisrt Slovak Catholic oriented philosophical journal the domination of the religious philosophy was overthrown and the journal became largely pluralistic, allowing for more discussion and criticism. In the history of philosophy Hirner focused on the Enlightenment in Slovakia. He paid special attention to the efforts of its main representatives, trying to articualte their own philosophical stands and views. Due to (...) his attempts a discussion of methodological problems of the history of Slovak philosophy began, in which he stood for objectivity in approaching historical facts, rejecting at the same time schematism, sociologism and nihilism in understanding and evaluation of the philosophical developments in Slovakia. In 1942 he published an essay on values, one of the first works in Slovakia introdu_cing this problematics. In the totalitarian period his views conflicted with those of the political authorities. As a conseqence in 1958 - 1966 he became a victim of a politically arranged trial. (shrink)

The paradox asserts “to be a decent human being, you have to treat people like they're special; but to be a decent sociologist, you have to remember they're not.” How then can a sociologist be a decent human being? I distinguish between rights and other things, such as beliefs or tastes, and draw attention to how respect for rights is compatible with a focus on the typical in research.

The philosopher and moralist Alasdair Maclntyre closed his influential work, After Virtue, with a call for ‘another…Saint Benedict’. The idea of calling for a moral exemplar and savior who could change both forms and practice struck him as the only kind of serious intervention the moral thinker can make under present circumstances, What is lacking in modern life, he reasoned, is a genuine tradition of moral reasoning-moral persuasion and reasoning presuppose such a tradition. So the only choice is to create (...) one. But the creation of a tradition is not something that a professor can do in the study. It is an act, as Maclntyre conceived it, of community formation and the development of a common narrative-what St Benedict did when he created the religious communities of post-Roman Europe through the attractive example of his own way of living as a Christian. (shrink)