The thesis of the paper is that the distinction between evidential and non-evidential grounds for adopting beliefs is crucial to the study of the sociology of knowledge.

Since the 1970s, historical sociology in the United States has been constituted by a configuration of substantive questions, a theoretical vocabulary anchored in concepts of economic interest and rationalization, and a methodological commitment to comparison. More recently, this configuration has been destabilized along each dimension: the increasing autonomy of comparative-historical methods from specific historical puzzles, the shift from the analysis of covariation to theories of historical process, and new substantive questions through which new kinds of arguments have been (...) elaborated. Although the dominant responses have centered on methodological elaboration and epistemological debate, greater attention to historical process also informs new strategies for defining cases and framing puzzles, thereby highlighting different categories of empirical questions: social caging, group formation, and multiple orders. The most striking shift is from the imagery of systems-and-crises, which highlighted revolution and state-building, to multidimensional understandings of emergence and destabilization. (shrink)

During 'cyclic' historical periods it would be correct to interpret religious processes in terms of interaction of two essentially different, but substantially, structurally and functionally comparative types of integrating cultural complexes that, in historical perspective, compete with each other on the effect on individuals and society in general. Such complexes represent secular and religious culture. Contemporary socio-cultural situation can be defined as an asymmetric representativeness of both secular and religious cultures. In a modern secular society, dominance of a secular culture (...) over a religious one can be manifested in three basic dimensions: substantial, regulative and subjective ones. Secular culture is adopted during the primary socialization process. However, religious culture is still adopted through conscious, voluntary selection in younger or more mature age. It may be possible to determine two basic attitudes of the contemporary man towards religion. The first attitude may be called 'reversive' and the other one 'conversive'. Za 'ciklicne' istorijske periode ispravna je interpretacija religijskih procesa u terminu uzajamnog dejstva dva sustinski razlicita ali sadrzajno, strukturalno i funkcionalno komparativna tipa integrisucih kulturnih kompleksa koji u istorijskoj perspektivi jedan drugom konkurisu u uticaju na pojedinca i drustvo. Takvi kompleksi su svetovna i religiozna kultura. Savremena sociokulturna situacija se moze definisati kao asimetrija reprezentativnosti svetovne i religiozne kulture. Dominacija svetovne nad religioznom kulturom u savremenom sekularizovnom drustvu manifestuje se u tri osnovne dimenzije: predmetnoj, regulativnoj i subjektivnoj. Svetovna kultrura se masovno usvaja u procesu primarne socijalizacije. Religiozna kultura se pak, usvaja samosvesnim, voljnim izborom u mladjem ili starijem uzrastu. Moguce je izdvojiti dva osnovna nacina obracanja savremenog 'sekularizovanog') coveka religiji. Prvi nacin mozemo nazvati 'reverzivnim' a drugi 'konverzivnim'. (shrink)

The ramifications of modernity and the resultant challenges compelled Ottoman intellectuals and state officials to contemplate matters like as innovation, progress, and change. The pursuit of remedies to eradicate political, military, and economic deficiencies was similarly evident in the legal domain. Ziya Gökalp articulated his perspectives on the origins, societal efficacy, and adaptability of law within the framework of the Turkism movement, presenting several methodologies that redefined the interplay among religion, law, society, and state. The most characteristic method among them (...) is the internal sociological methodology of law, which he equated with his own identity. Other Turkist figures of the time supported this theory, which aimed to bring dynamism to Islamic law in line with modern demands and changing conditions, as well as to establish a national law-society-state relationship. Another approach put forward by Gökalp was based on the distinction between legal (qāḍāī) and ethical/spiritual (diyānī) aspects that were established in traditional Islamic law. In Gökalp's intellectual life that extends from the last years of the Ottoman Empire to the first years of the Republic, two different stages stand out. Gökalp, who tended to restructure jurisprudential concepts with an original interpretation in the late Ottoman period, became a persistent defender of the distinction between religion and state as well as religion and law in the Republican period. However, he did not deny the role of religion in the existence of the nation and emphasized the place of religious institutions, such as the office of Sheikhul-Islam, in the Republican period. Although he took the traditional jurisprudential perspectives into consideration, he could not escape from the criticism of his fellow intellectuals such as İzmirli İsmail Hakkı, who represented the traditional understanding. This article addresses Ziya Gökalp's views that he developed on fiqh and sociology in the Turkish modernisation process and sheds light on the possible reflections of these views on the Republican period. (shrink)

What role does “discursive consciousness” play in decision-making? How does it interact with “practical consciousness?” These two questions constitute two important gaps in strong practice theory that extend from Pierre Bourdieu's habitus to Stephen Vaisey's sociological dual-process model and beyond. The goal of this paper is to provide an empirical framework that expands the sociological dual-process model in order to fill these gaps using models from cognitive neuroscience. In particular, I use models of memory and moral judgment that (...) highlight the importance of executive functions and semantic memory. I outline each model as it pertains to the aforementioned gaps in strong practice theory. I then use the models from cognitive neuroscience to create an expanded dual-process model that addresses how and when conscious mental systems override and interact with subconscious mental systems in the use of cultural ends for decision-making. Finally, using this expanded model I address the sociological debate over the use of interview and survey data. My analysis reveals that surveys and interviews both elicit information encoded in declarative memory and differ primarily in the process of information retrieval that is required of respondents. (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)

Some prominent figures in both sociology and the field of sociology of religion, such as Auguste Comte, Max Weber, Karl Marx, and Emile Durkheim, discussed the changes brought about by cultural, political, and economic revolutions in Continental Europe, considering the institution of religion. The issues they explored and the concepts they developed have also had an impact on the Turkish sociologists engaged in academic research outside of Continental Europe. In fact, Turkish intellectuals who experienced the Ottoman Empire transformation (...) into the Republic of Turkey found a rich area of study in the sociological outcomes of the revolution, particularly in relation to the interplay of religion and society. The accumulation of the sociology of religion discipline and methodological studies from Continental Europe to Turkey can be examined by categorizing the symbolic ideas of sociologists into three distinct periods within this framework. The purpose of this study is to address the process of institutionalization of the discipline of sociology of religion in three key phases, elucidating the conceptual frameworks and contributions made by symbolic representatives. Indeed, the examination of the institutionalization process of the discipline of sociology of religion during the Republican era holds historical significance for the field. This study is based on the views of the sociology of religion theorists in three primary phases, focusing on the preparation during the Republican era, institutionalization, and the formation of local literature. It also delves into the contributions of figures like Prens Sabahattin, Ziya Gökalp, Mümtaz Turhan, Erol Güngör, Şerif Mardin, Mehmet Taplamacıoğlu, and Ünver Günay during this process and examine the emergence of new literature in the third phase. Despite the presence of numerous sociology of religion scholars, these specific names were chosen to represent different sociological schools. The data used in this study were obtained through the documentation technique. (shrink)

As part of a wider program that studies the legislative creation process regarding work conditions in the Argentine Republic, the purpose of this research is to examine the different ways in which the written press represents, on one hand, the formulation and approval process of the Labor Risk Law reform, which concluded on 25 October 2012 with the passing of Law 26,773, and, on the other hand, the scope, content, and sense of said regulation. The perspective of the (...) research is interdisciplinary, its methodology is qualitative, and the process guiding the textual analysis is inductive and hermeneutic. The corpus is made up of the news related to the studied legislative process. The news analysis was carried out according to the proposal of a Sociological and Linguistic Discourse Analysis. Thus, the argumentative strategies and the linguistic resources deployed were associated with the interpretive models of reality underlying those texts, and moreover, the similarities and differences among the various news articles were examined as regards the representation of working conditions; workers and employers and their respective rights and obligations; the legitimacy, need, and legality of the regulation passed; the scope of the protection granted to workers; and the effect of this regulation on workers’ constitutional rights and guarantees. (shrink)

Farhad Dalal argues that people differentiate between races in order to make a distinction between the "haves" and "must-not-haves", and that this process is cognitive, emotional and political rather than biological. Examining the subject over the past thousand years, Race, Colour and the Process of Racialisation covers theories of racism and a general theory of difference based on the works of Fanon, Elias, Matte-Blanco and Foulkes, as well as application of this theory to race and racism. Farhad Dalal (...) concludes that the structures of society are reflected in the structures of the psyche, and both of these are colour coded. This book will be invaluable to students, academics and practitioners in the areas of psychoanalysis, group analysis, psychotherapy and counseling. (shrink)

The French sociological tradition has long regarded the ‘individual’ as a reality situated outside its area of intellection and investigation. According to Durkheim, the individual is a psychological object par excellence. Sociology has thus long favored the study of collectives (groups, classes, categories, institutions, microcosms), suggesting that the individual was a reality which, in itself, fell short of the social. The article discusses a method from the mid-1990s of researching sociology at an individual scale. This approach is essentially (...) embedded in the French sociological tradition, from Durkheim to Bourdieu via Halbwachs, despite the inflections and criticisms it might have of this tradition, while also drawing on the main theoretical knowledge of Norbert Elias’ relational and process-focused sociology. From empirical realization in methodological and theoretical reflexivity, this research program has progressed in dialog with various types of scientific knowledge more classically oriented toward the individual and their mental realities, such as cultural psychology, psychoanalysis, cognitive psychology or the neurosciences. (shrink)

This article discusses agent-based simulation (ABS) as a tool of sociological understanding. I argue that agent-based simulations can play an important role in the expansion of explanatory understanding in the social sciences. The argument is based on an inferential account of understanding (Ylikoski 2009, Ylikoski & Kuorikoski 2010), according to which computer simulations increase our explanatory understanding by expanding our ability to make what-if inferences about social processes and by making these inferences more reliable. The inferential account also suggests a (...) number of ways in which the use of simulation methodology might give rise to illusory understanding. The structure of the article is as .. (shrink)

In a comprehensive and innovative reassessment of the discipline, this book argues that classical and contemporary social theories must be studied in relation to the ambition that shaped and established sociology: the ambition to comprehend the relationship between social and moral life. Surveying a range of sociological analyses from Comte to feminism, postmodernism and rational choice theory, this book examines the various attempts that have been made to reconstruct the discipline over the last century, and the challenges facing it (...) today. The book situates sociology in its historical, philosophical and theological contexts and examines how the founders of the discipline developed competing analyses of the processes elementary to social and moral life through their distinctive sociological contributions. Individual chapters examine `Human Sociology', `Sacred Sociology', `Tragic Sociology', `Heroic Sociology' and `Normative Sociology'. The book moves on to discuss post-classical thought, and the attempted reconstruction of the subject. Separate chapters are devoted to `Conflict Sociology', `Feminist Sociology', `Racial Sociology', `Rational Sociology' and `Post//Modern Sociology'. The result is a landmark work in recent sociological study. Accomplished, erudite and alive with ideas, the book will be required reading for students of sociology, social theory, religious studies and cultural studies. (shrink)

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)

This article takes as its provocation Marx's intriguing statement about the disjunction between the flowering of Greek art and the underdeveloped stage of social and economic development made as an epilogue to the Introduction to the Grundrisse in order to ask what are the relations between that which has been considered art and what Marx calls `production as such'. In the elaborated conditions of contemporary capitalist societies, we can ask: Is art still being made? To examine this question I juxtapose (...) what Bauman has called `thinking sociologically' with a proposition that art thinks aesthetically. So how can art historians deal with that challenge of thinking aesthetic practices both socially and historically? I track a genealogy of art historians (Clark, Antal, Shapiro) who have attempted to think socially about artistic practices. This leads into a section about the necessity for both sociological and aesthetic education if we are to avoid totalitarianism or free-market individualism (Bahro). Finally, thinking sociologically, by taking as a case study the work of Aby Warburg, I explore the technological conditions of art historical production itself particularly in relation to photography and the way this shapes our access to the image. Warburg represents the possibility of another model for art historical thinking about the image as Kulturwissenschaft, a parallel to Sozialwissenschaft in its ambition and relation to the great intellectual revolutions c.1905 (Freud, Bergson, Einstein, Hussserl). Like Marx, Warburg questioned the continuity of the imaginary space of art thinking in the age of technological industrialism. Where art is now, where art history is, are not just sociological questions to which Marx might offer a dismal answer. I conclude that what is necessary is a constructive conversation between thinking sociologically and thinking aesthetically, knowing synthetically and knowing for oneself — curricular issues made more intense by the shared conditions in which all intellectual production is being transformed in contemporary sites of intellectual practice, the university, by `production as such' leading thought to risk the same fate as art in contemporary society, as Marx hypothesized. As a final thought, I suggest that in contemporary art work that confronts trauma and catastrophe, often using new technologies as aesthetic processes, we may find a counter-argument. (shrink)

The emergence of processes of globalization has gone hand in hand with a theoretical ?crisis? in sociology. According to an increasing number of scholars, ?global society? has transformed the ?social? to such an extent that classical sociological theory and that of the nineteenth century no longer seem adequate for conceptualizing not only the ?new society,? but (human) society as such. The very distinction between human and non-human society has gone lost. In this context, is it still possible to formulate (...) a ?theory of society? and what form should such a theory take? (shrink)

This book examines the institutional development of Chinese sociology from the 1890s to the present. It plots the discipline’s twisting path in the Chinese context, from early Western influences; through the institutionalization of the discipline in the 1930s-40s; its problematic relationship with socialism and interruptions under Marxist orthodoxy and the Cultural Revolution; its revival during the 1980s-90s; to the twin trends of globalization and indigenization in current Chinese sociological scholarship. Chen argues that in spite of the state-building agenda and (...) persistent efforts to indigenize the discipline, the Western model remains pervasively influential, due in large part to the influence of American missionaries, foundations and scholars in the formation and transformation of the Chinese sociological tradition. The history of Chinese sociology is shown to be a contingent process in which globally circulated knowledge, above all the American sociological tradition, has been adapted to the changing contexts of China. This engaging work contributes an important country study to the history of sociology and will appeal to scholars of Chinese history and disciplinary historiography, in addition to social scientists. (shrink)

Georges Sorel's reputation as a proponent of violence has helped to link his ideas to fascist and totalitarian thought. Much of the literature on Sorel as developed this theme, at the expense of what Sorel himself stated as his primary purpose, "the discovery of the historical genesis of morals." How, Sorel asked, in the light of the development of modern industry and the vast powers of the modern state the individual can possess a sense of self-worth and at the same (...) time help to sustain a cultural vitality similar to the great societies of antiquity? How is it possible to avoid the utter resignation and nihilistic relativism of modern existence? In his writings Sorel outlined a sociology of virtue that combined the importance of family love as the basis of community feelings with acceptance of the basis of individual vitality as constant industrial struggle against nature. Sorel's solution is different from Marx's: in place of the ida of transcended alienation, Sorel envisions an agonal striving against nature's unceasing resistance to our efforts. The Feuerbachian unity of nature that, for Marx, had been alienated under capitalism, Sorel regarded as being inherently fragmented by scientific procedures themselves, as well as by the industrial processes that correspond to those scientific procedures. For Sorel, the struggle against nature is the struggle that enables man to overcome himself, to strive against his own inclination to passivity, sloth, and licentiousness. The Marxist concept of totality so necessary to the vision of a communist society is rejected, in favor of a pragmatic, pluralist view of nature that parallels the social pluralism of a regime of workers' syndicates. The primary function of Sorel's famous "myth of the general strike" is to link the workers' constant struggles against capitalist employers to the never-ending struggle against nature. The feelings engendered by such a strubble constitute the true core of socialism; without such feelings, socialism is doomed to the same decay that Sorel and Marx foresaw for capitalist civilization. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1981. (shrink)

Norbert Elias's The Civilizing Process, which was published in German in 1939 and first translated into English in two volumes in 1978 and 1982, is now widely regarded as one of the great works of twentieth-century sociology. This work attempted to explain how Europeans came to think of themselves as more “civilized” than their forebears and neighboring societies. By analyzing books about manners that had been published between the thirteenth and eighteenth centuries, Elias observed changing conceptions of shame (...) and embarrassment with respect to, among other things, bodily propriety and violence. To explain those developments, Elias examined the interplay among the rise of state monopolies of power, increasing levels of economic interconnectedness among people, and pressures to become attuned to others over greater distances that led to advances in identifying with others in the same society irrespective of social origins. Elias's analysis of the civilizing process was not confined, however, to explaining changing social bonds within separate societies. The investigation also focused on the division of Europe into sovereign states that were embroiled in struggles for power and security.This article provides an overview and analysis of Elias's principal claims in the light of growing interest in this seminal work in sociology. The analysis shows how Elias defended higher levels of synthesis in the social sciences to explain relations between “domestic” and “international” developments, and changes in social structure and in the emotional lives of modern people. Elias's investigation, which explained long-term processes of development over several centuries, pointed to the limitations of inquiries that concentrate on short-term intervals. Only by placing short-term trends in long-term perspective could sociologists understand contemporary developments. This article maintains that Elias's analysis of the civilizing process remains an exemplary study of long-term developments in Western societies over the last five centuries. (shrink)

This article aims at an active dialogue between Ulrich Beck and East Asia with respect to cosmopolitan imagination. Beck’s cosmopolitan sociology requires a reflective cosmopolitan publicness to cope with various kinds of global risks. We therefore extract three different layers of publicness from neo-Confucianism – survival-oriented, deliberative, and ecological – and argue that Beck’s cosmopolitan vision can be better conceptualized when properly linked to, or founded upon, the Tianxiaweigong normative potentials of neo-Confucianism. In so doing our intention is to (...) make Beck’s implicit (Asian) sensibilities and the implicit Asian (cosmopolitan) orientations explicit, as a double process of cosmopolitan self-reflection and dialogue. We also draw attention to the analysis of the cosmopolitan actor in East Asia. Finally, we note that the cosmopolitan future of East Asia still remains uncertain and that reconciling global risk politics, national interests and cosmopolitan morality presents a big challenge to second modern transformation. (shrink)

This outstanding collection contains 100 papers drawn from the broad range of contemporary writing on the sociology of education. Major trends and developments from the 1970s through to the 1990s are represented. The following four volumes offer a comprehensive introduction to, and overview of, the field: * Theories and Methods * Inequalities and Oppressions * Institutions and Processes * Politics and Policies. Covering the key points of dispute and areas of controversy within the sociology of education these volumes (...) include papers from many of the leading writers in the field. Presented together, the papers constitute a sophisticated and versatile toolbox of ideas for theory-building and research. (shrink)

What is Sociology? presents in concise and provocative form the major ideas of a seminal thinker whose work--spanning more than four decades--is only now gaining the recognition here it has long had in Germany and France. Unlike other post-war sociologists, Norbert Elias has always held the concept of historical development among his central concerns; his dynamic theories of the evolution of modern man have remedied the historical and epistemological shortcomings of structualism and ethno-methodology. What is Sociology? refines the (...) arguments that were first found in Elias' massive work on the civilizing process, in which he formulated his major assertions about the interdependence of the making of modern man and modern society. It is Elias' contention that changes in personality structure--embodied in phenomena ranging from table manners and hygiene habits to rites of punishment and courtly love--inevitably reflect and mould patterns of control generated by new political and social instututions. Elias' rejection of a dichotomy between individual and society, and his use of psychoanalysis, political theory, and social history, help restore a fullness of resource to sociology. (shrink)

Weber's studies of non-European (or non-Christian) religions constitute the largest part of his Sociology of Religion—comprising most of the Aufsaetze zur Religionssoziologie (1920-1923), as well as large parts of his treatment in Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft (1956). Included, as is well known, are relatively full-blown studies of Jewish, Chinese (Confucian) and Indian (Hindu and Buddhist) civilizations, and more dispersed, but very rich appraisals of diverse aspects of other religions. These studies are focused on the internal dynamics of religions and on (...) their relations to crucial aspects of social structure—especially political organization, economic life and social stratification. (shrink)

This article provides a brief overview of scholarship on gender differences in emotion and emotional well-being among adults in the United States, highlighting major substantive findings, methodological innovations, and theoretical developments that have emerged in the sociologies of emotion and mental health. Sociological research consistently finds that men report more frequent positive and less frequent negative feelings than women as well as gender differences in both the experience and expression of emotional distress. Sociologists attribute these gendered patterns of emotion to (...) the larger social, economic, and cultural context surrounding women and men. Overall, by identifying macro- and meso-level social causes of microlevel emotional processes, sociologists have made significant contributions to knowledge about gender differences in emotion and emotional well-being in the US. (shrink)

The process of translation has both an excluding and including character. The analysis of actor networks, the process of mobilizing alliances, and constructing networks is a common and worthwhile focus. However, the simultaneous betrayals, dissidences, and controversies are often only implied in network construction stories. We aim to nuance the construction aspect of actor–network theory by shining the analytical searchlight elsewhere, where the theoretical tools of ANT have not yet systematically ventured. We argue that we need to understand (...) every process of translation in relation to its simultaneous process of treason, and to add antonyms for Callon’s problematization, intressement, enrollment, and mobilization. This enables us to describe powerlessness not as a state but as a process. Our case focuses on the network building around measures for disabled people in the construction of the Athens Metro, during the period 1991-1993. The discussion highlights the efforts of disability organizations to intervene in the initial construction works of the metro project and the simultaneous actions of the Greek government to exclude disability organizations from the design process and to disrupt the accessibility-metro actor network. (shrink)

The paper deals with three interrelated Pareto’s contributions to fiscal sociology of relevant contemporary importance, i. e., the maximum of utility of the community as a sociological process (Pareto II criterion of maximum welfare), the non logical actions consisting of derivations based on residuals and the theory of the elites. Pareto II welfare criterion of sociological maximization of individual utilities is compared with Pareto I welfare criterion, commonly known as Pareto criterion, introducing the process of valuations by (...) the elite of the utilities of different social groups weighed according to their residuals. Derivations are essentials to persuade the masses to move to the points designed by the elite. The process is subject to the law of circulation of the elites which leads to different sociological equilibriums. The theories of the elites of Pareto and Mosca, criticized by Einaudi, are then compared. For a disenchanted analysis of the fiscal processes and designs, Pareto’s sociology may still provide to the economist more than a help. (shrink)

This essay explores the profoundly gendered nature of the split between the disciplines of economics and sociology which took place in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, emphasizing implications for the relatively new field of economic sociology. Drawing on historical documents and feminist studies of science, it investigates the gendered processes underlying the divergence of the disciplines in definition, method, and degree of engagement with social problems. Economic sociology has the potential to heal this disciplinary split, (...) but only if the field is broadened, deepened, and made wiser and more self-reflective through the use of feminist analysis. (shrink)

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)

Different notions of multiple rationalities have recently been applied to describe the phenomena of co-existence of competing rationalities in organizations. These include institutional pluralism, institutional logics, competing rationalities and pluralistic contexts. The French pragmatic sociologists Luc Boltanski and Laurent Thévenot have contributed to this line of research with a sophisticated theoretical framework of orders of worth, which has been applied in an increasing number of empirical studies. This article explores how the order of worth framework has been applied to empirical (...) studies of organizations. First, I summarize the basic ideas of the framework, stressing the aspects of special relevance for studies of organizations. Second, I review the empirical studies focusing on the coexistence of competing orders of worth in organizations showing that the order of worth framework primarily has been related to three main themes in organizational research: non-profit and co-operative organizations, inter-organizational co-operation, and organizational change. Third, I discuss how the pragmatic, process-oriented aspect of the research program, focusing on the intertwining of values and action in various forms of ‘justification work’, has been translated into empirical studies. I argue that even if highly interesting empirical studies have begun to appear on the pragmatic aspects of the order of worth program, empirical studies of ‘justification work’ may be a potentially very promising focus for future empirical studies. (shrink)

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

The article presents the sociology of knowledge approach to discourse (SKAD). SKAD, which has been in the process of development since the middle of the 1990s, is now a widely used framework among social scientists in discourse research in the German-speaking area. It links arguments from the social constructionist tradition, following Berger and Luckmann, with assumptions based in symbolic interactionism, hermeneutic sociology of knowledge, and the concepts of Michel Foucault. It argues thereby for a consistent theoretical and (...) methodological grounding of a genuine social sciences perspective on discourse interested in the social production, circulation and transformation of knowledge, that is in social relations and politics of knowledge in the so-called ‘knowledge societies’. Distancing itself from Critical Discourse Analysis, Linguistics, Ethnomethodology inspired discourse analysis and the Analysis of Hegemonies, following Laclau and Mouffe, SKAD’s framework has been built up around research questions and concerns located in the social sciences, referring to public discourse and arenas as well as to more specific fields of (scientific, religious, etc.) discursive struggles and controversies around problematizations (Foucault). (shrink)

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 (...) class='Hi'>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)

Contributed papers presented at conference jointly organised by the Postgraduate Department of Philosophy, Christ University and the Faculty of Philosophy, Dharmaram Vidya Kshetram, Bangalore from January 05-09, 2009.

Understanding Elias -- Origins of Elias's synthesis -- Norbert Elias and Karl Mannheim -- The civilizing process : the structure of a classic -- Involved detachment : knowledge and self-knowledge in Elias -- The symbol theory : secular humanism as a research programme -- Concluding remarks : the fourth blow to man's narcissism.

The social aspects of modern science and technology; The cultural aspects of science; The sociology of the research process; The planning of science: bernal versus polanyi.

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)

This book introduces a new and original sociological conceptualization of compromise after conflict and is based on six-years of study amongst victims of conflict in Northern Ireland, South Africa and Sri Lanka, with case studies from Sierra Leone and Colombia. A sociological approach to compromise is contrasted with approaches in Moral and Political Philosophy and is evaluated for its theoretical utility and empirical robustness with in-depth interview data from victims of conflicts around the globe. The individual chapters are written to (...) illustrate, evaluate and test the conceptualization using the victim data, and an afterword reflects on the new empirical agenda in victim research opened up by a sociological approach to compromise. This volume is part of a larger series of works from a programme advancing a sociological approach to peace processes with a view to seeing how orthodox approaches within International Relations and Political Science are illuminated by the application of the sociological imagination. (shrink)

Sociology is experiencing what can only be described as hyperdifferentiation of theories - there are now many approaches competing for attention in the intellectual arena. From this perspective, we should see a weeding out of theories to a small number, but this is not likely to occur because each of the many theoretical perspectives has a resource base of adherents. As a result, theories in sociology do not compete head on with each other as much as they coexist. (...) This seminal reference work was brought together with an eye to capturing the diversity of theoretical activity in sociology - specifically the forefront of theory. Contributors describe what they themselves are doing right now rather than what others have done in the past. The goal of this volume is to allow prominent theorists working in a variety of traditions - who wouldn't usually come together - to review their work. The chapters in this volume represent a mix of theoretical orientations and strategies, but these these theories are diverse and represent the prominent theoretical discussions in sociology today. Some areas included are: Section I: Theoretical Methodologies and Strategies Section II: The Cultural Turn in Sociological Theorizing Section III: Theorizing Interaction Processes Section IV: Theorizing from the Systemic and Macrolevel Section V: New Directions in Evolutionary Theorizing Section VI: Theorizing on Power, Conflict, and Change SectionVII: Theorizing from Assumptions of Rationality This handbook will be of interest to those wanting a broad spectrum and overview of late 20th - early 21st century sociological theory. (shrink)

Business ethics is the study of ethics as it applies to a particular sphere of human activity. As such, business ethics presupposes a difference between an individual's experience within a business organization and his or her experience outside the organization. But how do we examine this difference? How do we discuss an individual's experience of everyday reality? What processes create and sustain this reality, and how does one's version of reality affect what is, and what is not, ethical? This paper (...) outlines an approach to these questions based on theory from the sociology of knowledge, an approach which makes some progress towards making business ethics more existential. The sociology of knowledge, and particularly the social constructionist perspective, is concerned with how an institution creates knowledge and how this knowledge affects the cognitive processes of the individuals who make up the institution. The dialectic nature of the interdependent processes which shape both the individual and the organization are important in understanding how business ethics, as one kind of social knowledge, are enacted. Examining these processes leads to several interesting hypotheses about the nature of both the study and practice of business ethics. XXXOnly individuals have a sense of responsibility. — Friedrich Nietzsche. (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 article outlines a comparative-civilizational multiple modernities perspective on political sociology. In the context of the major currents within political sociology — modernization approaches, critical and neo-Marxist as well as postmodern and global approaches — it is argued that a comparative-civilizational multiple modernities perspective is defined by several characteristics. First, against functionalist-evolutionist modernization approaches it emphasizes the fragility, contradictions and openness as well as civilizational multiplicity of political modernity and political modernization processes. Second, against critical and neo-Marxist approaches, (...) it insists on the cultural and institutional contradictions of political power, social protest and political conflict. Third, against post-modern and post-colonial micro-sociological approaches, often primarily micro-sociological, it holds to a macro-sociological constructivist orientation. Fourth, against the primarily socio-economic and political-institutional approaches to global political sociology, it again emphasizes the historically changing, culturally contradictory and pluri-civilizational dimensions of international relations and world politics. Though sharing with all these major currents in political sociology some common ground, the outlined comparative-civilizational multiple modernities perspective conceptualizes and analyses, more specifically, the varying impacts of civilizations, empires and world religions on the complex dimensions and levels of the political arena and on power relations in a modernizing and globalizing world. (shrink)

Since the classic contributions of Weber and Durkheim, the sociology of law has raised key questions on the place of law in society. Drawing together both theoretical and empirical themes, in this book Mathieu Deflem reviews the field's major accomplishments and reveals the value of the multiple ways in which sociologists study the social structures and processes of law. He discusses both historical and contemporary issues, from early theoretical foundations and the work of Weber and Durkheim, through the contribution (...) of sociological jurisprudence, to the development of modern perspectives to clarify how sociologists study law. Chapters also look at the role of law in relation to the economy, politics, culture, and the legal profession; and aspects of law enforcement and the globalization of law. This book will appeal to scholars and students of the sociology of law, jurisprudence, social and political theory, and social and political philosophy. (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)

Both the sociology of knowledge and the philosophy of science are centrally concerned with the succession of scientific beliefs. In case studies of scientific debates, however, the emphasis tends to be placed on the outcome of disputes. This paper proposes that attention should instead be focused on the process of debate: that is, on scientific argumentation. It is shown how such a focus circumvents many traditional epistemological problems concerning the truth-status of scientific knowledge. By reference to the consensus (...) conception of truth, it is claimed that scientific arguments can be studied naturalistically whilst still honouring the orientation towards truth exhibited by scientists. Finally, the paper offers a brief résumé of recent studies indicating how this naturalistic study of scientific argumentation can be developed through the sociology of language. (shrink)