This book represents emerging alternative perspectives to the "constructivist" orthodoxy that currently dominates the field of science and technology studies. Various contributions from distinguished Americans and Europeans in the field, provide arguments and evidence that it is not enough simply to say that science is "socially situated." Controversial Science focuses on important political, ethical, and broadly normative considerations that have yet to be given their due, but which point to a more realistic and critical perspective on science policy.

Most social scientists and philosophers claim that sociology and philosophy are disjoint fields of inquiry. Some have wondered how to trace the precise boundary between them. Mario Bunge argues that the two fields are so entangled with one another that no demarcation is possible or, indeed, desirable. In fact, sociological research has demonstrably philosophical pre-suppositions. In turn, some findings of sociology are bound to correct or enrich the philosophical theories that deal with the world, our knowledge of it, (...) or the ways of acting upon it. While Bunge's thesis would hardly have shocked Mill, Marx, Durkheim, or Weber, it is alien to the current sociological mainstream and dominant philosophical schools. Bunge demonstrates that philosophical problematics arise in social science research. A fertile philosophy of social science unearths critical presuppositions, analyzes key concepts, refines effective research strategies, crafts coherent and realistic syntheses, and identifies important new problems. Bunge examines Marx's and Durkheim's thesis that social facts are as objective as physical facts; the so-called Thomas theorem that refutes the behaviorist thesis that social agents react to social stimuli rather than to the way we perceive them; and Merton's thesis on the ethos of basic science which shows that science and morality are intertwined. He considers selected philosophical problems raised by contemporary social studies and argues forcefully against tolerance of shabby work in academic social science and philosophy alike. (shrink)

Through network diagrams and sustained narrative, sociologist Randall Collins traces the development of philosophical thought from ancient Greece to modern ...

This comprehensive collection of classical sociological theory is a definitive guide to the roots of sociology from its undisciplined beginnings to its current guideposts and reference points in contemporary sociological debate. A definitive guide to the roots of sociology through a collection of key writings from the founders of the discipline Explores influential works of Marx, Durkheim, Weber, Mead, Simmel, Freud, Du Bois, Adorno, Marcuse, Parsons, and Merton Editorial introductions lend historical and intellectual perspective to the substantial readings (...) Includes a new section with new readings on the immediate "pre-history" of sociological theory, including the Enlightenment and de Tocqueville Individual reading selections are updated throughout. (shrink)

The Sociology of Intellectual Life outlines a social theory of knowledge for the 21st century. Steve Fuller deals directly with a world in which it is no longer taken for granted that universities and academics are the best places and people to embody the life of the mind. While Fuller defends academic privilege, he takes very seriously the historic divergences between academics and intellectuals, attending especially to the different features of knowledge production that they value."--BOOK JACKET.

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)

This meticulous collection of contemporary sociological theory is the definitive guide to current perspectives and approaches in the field, examining current key topics in the field such as such as symbolic interactionism, phenomenology, structuralism, network theory, critical theory, feminist theory, and the debates over modernity and postmodernity. Includes the work of major figures including Foucault, Giddens, Bourdieu, Bauman, and Habermas Organized thematically, with editorial introductions to put the readings into theoretical perspective New selected readings bring the book up to date.

In this contribution to social theory, John Urry argues that the traditional basis of sociology - the study of society - is outmoded in an increasingly borderless world.

Sociology of Science: A Critical Canadian Introduction provides an overview of how sociology approaches science and, to a lesser extent, technology. It examines how science developed as a set of theories about both what we know and how we know. The book provides a succinct critical examination of the current state of science studies with a particular emphasis on research conducted by Canadian scholars. Hird illustrates that science studies offers useful perspectives on current and ongoing sociological debates, such (...) as the strengths and limitations of social constructionism, as well as popular public debates, such as the ethics of stem-cell research. Using examples from throughout history and with a focus on the Canadian context, the book provides students with an examination of influential science studies concepts, theories, and debates and situates these theories and debates within contemporary field of sociology. (shrink)

In this introductory paper I sketch the tradition, several early aspects of which are discussed in the following essays and reviews. I introduce the main figures whose work initiated and maintained the sociological orientation in Hungarian philosophy thereby tracing its evolution. I suggest that its sociological outlook, if taken to be a characteristic tendency that gives Hungarian philosophy its distinctive flavour, provides us with the framework of a possible narrative about the history of Hungarian philosophy in the broader context of (...) Central European philosophy. This narrative, in turn, suggests a way of integrating the latter into the history of Western philosophy rather than restricting its scope to a handful of canonical works only. (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)

This unusually innovative book treats reflexivity, not as a philosophical conundrum, but as a practical issue that arises in the course of scholarly research and argument. In order to demonstrate the concrete and consequential nature of reflexivity, Malcolm Ashmore concentrates on an area in which reflexive "problems" are acute: the sociology of scientific knowledge. At the forefront of recent radical changes in our understanding of science, this increasingly influential mode of analysis specializes in rigorous deconstructions of the research practices (...) and textual products of the scientific enterprise. Through a series of detailed examinations of the practices and products of the sociology of scientific knowledge, Ashmore turns its own claims and findings back onto itself and opens up a whole new era of exploration beyond the common fear of reflexive self-destruction. (shrink)

The significance and development of Mannheim's sociology Ancient data such as the Code of Hammurabi, the Old Testament, the Confucian Classics, ...

First Published in 2004. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

cis is presented of Randall Collins's book, The Sociology of Philosophies: A Global Theory of Intellectual Change. It presents a sociological theory of intellectual networks that connect thinkers in chains of masters and pupils, colleagues and rivals, and of the internalized conversations that constitute the social processes of thinking. The theory is used to analyze long-term developments of the intellectual communities of philosophers in ancient Greece, ancient and medieval China and India, medieval and modern Japan, medieval Islam and Judaism, (...) medieval Christendom, and modern Europe through the early 20th century. (shrink)

Originally published in 1974. Scientific Knowledge and Sociological Theory centres on the problem of explaining the manifest variety and contrast in the beliefs about nature held in different groups and societies. It maintains that the sociologist should treat all beliefs symmetrically and must investigate and account for allegedly "correct" or "scientific" beliefs just as he would "incorrect" or "unscientific" ones. From this basic position a study of scientific beliefs is constructed. The sociological interest of such beliefs is illustrated and a (...) sociological perspective upon scientific change is developed. (shrink)

In this article, we address an existing lacuna in the sociology of the senses, by employing sociological phenomenology to illuminate the under-researched sense of temperature, as lived by a social group for whom water temperature is particularly salient: competitive pool swimmers. The research contributes to a developing ‘sensory sociology’ that highlights the importance of the socio-cultural framing of the senses and ‘sensory work’, but where there remains a dearth of sociological exploration into senses extending beyond the ‘classic five’ (...) sensorium. Drawing on data from a three-year ethnographic study of competitive swimmers in the UK, our analysis explores the rich sensuousities of swimming, and highlights the role of temperature as fundamentally affecting the affordances offered by the aquatic environment. The article contributes original theoretical perspectives to the sociology of the senses and of sport in addressing the ways in which social actors in the aquatic environment interact, both intersubjectively and intercorporeally, as thermal beings. (shrink)

The sociology of religion is an important disciplinary form of religious knowledge. It has a well-defined subject field - a specific set of interrelated problems in the plane "religion - society - man" exposed to sociological reflection.

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)

This collection of ten original essays was first published in 1977. It engages the 'crisis in sociology' at the most fundamental level of thought and experience. Existential sociology is defined as the study and understanding of all forms of human existence. Without seeking to erect a pristine philosophical sanctuary of its own, Existential Sociology examines and criticizes the underlying philosophical assumptions of previous theories of social science, while elaborating its own approach to human understanding. The contributors are (...) concerned with constructing practical as well as theoretical truths about social life - how we feel, think and act. In contrast to most other sociologies, the emphasis is on the independence and dominance of human feelings over the evaluative and cognitive features of social actions. Students and teachers of sociology and people in related fields interested in the connection between social science and their own subjects will find Existential Sociology useful and absorbing. (shrink)

This chapter provides a historical reconstruction of how Alfred Schutz’s American writings were critically engaged by the feminist sociologists Dorothy E. Smith and Patricia Hill Collins. Schutz’s articulation of a phenomenological sociology in relation to, among others, the sociology of Talcott Parsons and the philosophies of science of Ernest Nagel and Carl G. Hempel proved fruitful to Smith in the development of her feminist standpoint theory in her 1987 The Everyday World as Problematic: A Feminist Sociology. Collins (...) likewise draws on Schutz’s writing in the development of her own standpoint theory in her 1986 paper “Learning from the Outsider Within: The Sociological Significance of Black Feminist Thought,” but in a way that addresses some of her own concerns with Smith’s feminist sociology. As I hope to show with the recovery of this underappreciated history, the critical insights of Smith and Collins with regard to the possible uses and limits of phenomenology for feminist theorizing, are still valuable today. (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)

This book is intended for scholars and students of sociology, social science methodology, business, economics, and social researchers.

Discusses the importance and development of analytical sociology, emphasizing the centrality of mechanisms in explaining social life.

This engaging, wide-ranging study in comparative social and political philosophy gives a well-argued account of how ideological and even utopian views, such as normative communication, development and justice, are sociologically rooted. It also shows how this fact has been reflected in the social history of Asian countries like India and China, as well as some Western countries during the last two centuries. To illustrate the underlying concepts, reference is made to influential thinkers, both from the East and West, from Hegel (...) and James Mill to Marx and Maozedong, and from Gandhi to Rawls. The author, himself one of the major contemporary Indian philosophers, offers arguments to show that the right version of cultural relativism is objective and judgeable. Concrete case studies are cited indicating why even fundamental values like indivisible peace and "our own green planet" cannot be practically universalized. Yet this work is a sustained plea for improvable understanding between the East and the West and the transcultural value orientation of different cultures. (shrink)

This book expands the sociological canon by introducing non-Western and female voices, and subjects the existing canon itself to critique. Including chapters on both the 'founding fathers' of sociology and neglected thinkers it highlights the biases of Eurocentrism and androcentrism, while also offering much-needed correctives to them. The authors challenge a dominant account of the development of sociological theory which would have us believe that it was only Western European and later North American white males in the nineteenth and (...) early twentieth century who thought in a creative and systematic manner about the origins and nature of the emerging modernity of their time. This integrated and contextualised account seeks to restructure the ways in which we theorise the emergence of the classical sociological canon. This book's global scope fills a significant lacuna and provides a unique teaching resource to students of classical sociological theory. (shrink)

What is phenomenological sociology? Why is it significant? This innovative and thought-provoking book argues that phenomenology was the most significant, wide-ranging and influential philosophy to emerge in the twentieth century. The social character of phenomenology is explored in its relation to the concern in twentieth century sociology with questions of modern experience. Phenomenology and sociology come together as 'ethnographies of the present'. As such, they break free of the self-imposed limitations of each to establish a new, critical (...) understanding of contemporary life. By reading phenomenology sociologically and sociology phenomenologically, this book reconstructs a phenomenological sociology of modern experience. Erudite and assured, this book opens up a series of new questions for contemporary social theory that theorists and students of theory can ill-afford to ignore. The text contains a treasure trove of insights and propositions that will stimulate debate and research in both sociology and philosophy. (shrink)

Caribbean sociology accords with the Du Boisan paradigm of sociology as a science. Caribbean sociology originated as an undifferentiated discipline. It is a panoply of social thought integrated with history, political science, anthropology, psychology, and philosophy. Sociology has never been a discipline sufficient unto itself. To speak of Caribbean sociology is to introduce space and place, territory, and identity as parameters of a social scientific discipline that is yet to adhere to its own boundaries or (...) adequately define itself. Caribbean countries constitute the poor West, and it is a challenge of the discipline to study a region where half of its peoples have migrated and are migrating to the global north. Caribbean sociology contributed diverse if not also original perspectives on significant humanity and is rich in the quality and sophistication of its thought. The sociology of the Caribbean is a sociology of possibilities—a sociology of solutions to the problems of underdevelopment and unfreedom. In the tradition of the scientific sociology of W. E. B. Du Bois it is a quest for social justice. (shrink)

This article studies the underinvestigated but fascinating issue of the sociological determinants of accounting misbehavior while focusing on an allegedly illicit accounting practice (i.e., restatement) in family- vs. nonfamily-controlled corporations. Under the framework of institutional anomie theory, we examined whether sociological structures (i.e., legal forces and cultural values) influence accounting errors inducing restatements. By applying a multivariate regression analysis to a sample of restating firms listed in 23 countries during the 2006 to 2014 period, we found that legal forces and (...) cultural values significantly moderate the severity of accounting errors. The results of this study suggest that investors, managers, and policymakers should more fully consider the sociological structures of societies when debating the feasibility of corporate misbehaviors, as combining firm-level and country-level analyses could help to predict a firm’s accounting misbehaviors, such as more severe accounting errors. (shrink)

The fact that sociology was born during the period of the Industrial Revolution does not authorize us to consider its discourse as lacking in philosophical elements that are rooted in a previous age. Neither can we consider as fully accomplished its role for modernity, nonetheless today, in an after-modern climate (in the sense of Donati 2009), sociology is trying to escape the prejudice of modern ethics to go beyond the clichés of postmodernity (Ardigò 1989). Filled with self-reflexivity and (...) reductionist dichotomies, the twenty-first-century sociologist feels the need to ?own factual reality again? and to rediscover ?a new metaphysics of the social world? (Donati 1993). If self-consciousness is in the world, sociology, perhaps, has to go beyond science and turn into ?globology? (Arnason 1990), or into a sociology on a global scale, which looks at how world unification has occurred. In order to accomplish this, it has to be careful about what it was able to do best in the past: ?to foresee and to enhance sustainable change,? to be aware of the ?relational connections,? which no mathematics will ever be able to show, to build new ?memes,? and to decide to accelerate or to go against the phenomena it encounters in its observation. Society in the twenty-first century will go beyond postmodern stagnation and turn into something new (After-modernity? Hyper-modernity? Trans-modernity?) if it is to be helped by the interpretations of sociology. Notwithstanding the endeavors to change, most Westernized countries are trapped in the lib-lab model, while China argues for a complete reconfiguration of the concepts of public and private, states and market, freedom and controls, copyright and copyleft. What is going to happen in the future? Are we going to fall into a technocratic and authoritarian form of neo-modernization? Are we going to rediscover the system of exchanging gifts? Are we going to create a fully ?relational? society, going beyond the Hegelian categories of right and left? It will be the role of a ?strong and relational? sociology to identify all the ?viable? scenarios and to prepare its advent in symbolic terms. (shrink)

In the structural architectonics of religious studies one of the important places is the sociology of religion. Being in close intercourse with philosophy, history, psychology, phenomenology of religion, culturology and ethics, it also appears as a specific branch of socio-scientific knowledge.

In the present essay my aim is first to review and extend Frank’s thinking on ‘the sociology of development,’ and second, I will attempt to apply his insights to some of the new or present-day directions in sociological theory and research with a view to showing how they might be seen as contributing to ‘the underdevelopment of sociology.’ Beginning with the vision of the founding fathers of sociology broadly understood, I will argue that that vision and the (...) promise of sociology are being lessened by the aforementioned new directions in the discipline. (shrink)

Two key themes in contemporary social theory are particularly relevant to the interpretation and critique of figurational sociology. On the one hand, some recent critiques of the sociological tradition — Touraine's attempt to deconstruct the received image of society is the most important example — have called into question a dominant paradigm that underlies both Marxist and structural-functional theories. Norbert Elias has not only anticipated some of the most important criticisms but also suggested correctives to some of the currently (...) fashionable alternatives. More specifically, his relationship to the sociological traditions and to its contemporary offshoots can be described in terms of six antitheses: his approach is anti-economistic, anti-normativistic, anti-reductionistic, anti-functionalist, anti-structuralist and anti-individualistic. On the other hand, the impact of all these critical strategies is somewhat blunted by the one-sided emphasis on power. A more balanced version of figurational sociology would need a concept of culture to match and counter-balance Elias's insights into the problematic of power. Further exploration of this issue could draw both on the classics and on post-Parsonian debates about cultural power and their interconnections. Cultural interpretations of power are the most important link between those two dimensions of social life; although Elias has never explicitly thematized them, his recent writings touch upon some aspects of their specifically modern variants. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In this wide-ranging interview Professor Douglas V. Porpora discusses a number of issues. First, how he became a Critical Realist through his early work on the concept of structure. Second, drawing on his Reconstructing Sociology, his take on the current state of American sociology. This leads to discussion of the broader range of his work as part of Margaret Archer’s various Centre for Social Ontology projects, and on moral-macro reasoning and the concept of truth in political discourse.

This article engages the French pragmatism of Laurent Thévenot, Luc Boltanski and Bruno Latour in debates on how to forge a moral-political sociology of ecological valuation, justification and critique. Picking up the debate initiated by Thévenot on the possible emergence of a novel ‘green’ order of worth, the article juxtaposes the sociology of critical capacity of Boltanski and Thévenot with the actor-network theory of Bruno Latour. In doing so, the article suggests that each of these three pragmatic sociologists (...) succeeds, in characteristically different ways, in theoretically articulating an important but partial socio-political grammar of ecological worth. This claim is substantiated by invoking three case studies into environmental critique and compromise, on transnational carbon markets, urban sustainability projects, and Japanese whaling, respectively. Against this backdrop, the article concludes that – when read together as grammarians of the ecological bond – pragmatic sociology provides important insights into the bounded multiplicity of nature’s worth in political modernity. (shrink)

Sociological Theory in the Classical Era is an innovative text/reader for courses in classical theory. It introduces students to important original works by sociology's key classical theorists, and also provides a thorough framework for understanding these challenging readings. For each theorist, the editors supply a biographical sketch, discuss intellectual influences and core ideas, and offer contemporary applications of those ideas. In addition to the seven major theorists covered, the book also connects their work to "Significant Others"--writers and thinkers who (...) may have derived much of their own perspectives from Marx, Durkheim, Weber, Gilman, Simmel, Du Bois, and Mead. (shrink)

In this article, the basic sociological approaches to theorizing human emotions are reviewed. In broad strokes, theorizing can be grouped into several schools of thought: evolutionary, symbolic interactionist, symbolic interactionist with psychoanalytic elements, interaction ritual, power and status, stratification, and exchange. All of these approaches to theorizing emotions have generated useful insights into the dynamics of emotions. There remain, however, unresolved issues in sociological approaches to emotions, including: the nature of emotions, the degree to which emotions are hard-wired neurological or (...) socially constructed, the relevance of analyzing the biology and evolution of emotions, the relationship between cognition and emotions, the number of distinctive emotional states produced by humans, and the relationship between emotions and rationality. (shrink)