Author: Eric Macé
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1538161036
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 371
Book Description
Although sociology is present as a discipline or as a social practice in most countries in the world, its future as a not-only Western social science has hardly been addressed before. In this book, a team of interdisciplinary scholars have been working together not so much to offer one single response to the question than to raise important issues at stake for the future of sociology. Is it universal? Can it be indigenous? How is it possible – and is it even desirable – to write its history differently so as to know better about its early world diffusion and gradual Westernization? Do we need to expand or change its canon? This collection brings together essays that are all engaged in international discussions concerning the universality of sociology, or more precisely the epistemological and theoretical conditions of this universality. The postcolonial and decolonial critiques of the Eurocentrism of sociology are the basis for a reflection on how to continue to do sociology in a non-hegemonic way. That is, sociological ways of describing reality - including the history of sociology and its canon - that are not limited by Western-centrism or other nationalist or religious hegemonies.
An Invitation to Non-Hegemonic World Sociology
Author: Eric Macé
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1538161036
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 371
Book Description
Although sociology is present as a discipline or as a social practice in most countries in the world, its future as a not-only Western social science has hardly been addressed before. In this book, a team of interdisciplinary scholars have been working together not so much to offer one single response to the question than to raise important issues at stake for the future of sociology. Is it universal? Can it be indigenous? How is it possible – and is it even desirable – to write its history differently so as to know better about its early world diffusion and gradual Westernization? Do we need to expand or change its canon? This collection brings together essays that are all engaged in international discussions concerning the universality of sociology, or more precisely the epistemological and theoretical conditions of this universality. The postcolonial and decolonial critiques of the Eurocentrism of sociology are the basis for a reflection on how to continue to do sociology in a non-hegemonic way. That is, sociological ways of describing reality - including the history of sociology and its canon - that are not limited by Western-centrism or other nationalist or religious hegemonies.
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1538161036
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 371
Book Description
Although sociology is present as a discipline or as a social practice in most countries in the world, its future as a not-only Western social science has hardly been addressed before. In this book, a team of interdisciplinary scholars have been working together not so much to offer one single response to the question than to raise important issues at stake for the future of sociology. Is it universal? Can it be indigenous? How is it possible – and is it even desirable – to write its history differently so as to know better about its early world diffusion and gradual Westernization? Do we need to expand or change its canon? This collection brings together essays that are all engaged in international discussions concerning the universality of sociology, or more precisely the epistemological and theoretical conditions of this universality. The postcolonial and decolonial critiques of the Eurocentrism of sociology are the basis for a reflection on how to continue to do sociology in a non-hegemonic way. That is, sociological ways of describing reality - including the history of sociology and its canon - that are not limited by Western-centrism or other nationalist or religious hegemonies.
Concept Formation in Global Studies
Author: Gennaro Ascione
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1538178435
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 281
Book Description
The book proposes a new epistemological and methodological approach to concept formation across human and natural sciences, beyond Eurocentrism and specism. It elaborates a method enabling global epistemics to cope with multiplex challenges coming from geohistorical as well as epistemological standpoints whose methodological potential remains unexplored. It assumes monstrosity as the generative grammar of a new holistic approach to human knowledge, and draws from postcolonial, decolonial or post-western perspectives to place new methodological cornerstones, as well as from arts, astrology and magic from the Islamic and European Renaissance, indigenous knowledge, genetics, theoretical physics or Afrofuturism. The book aims at provoking a shift in critical perspectives, which do not acknowledge their own inability to steam an appropriate methodology of terminological and conceptual elaboration for the lexicon of contemporary human knowledge, out of a pressing demand: once agreed upon the world as a single yet multilayered spacetime of analysis, how should research about large-scale/long-term processes of social change advance, in order to cope with the asymmetrical power relations that materialize colonial history through heterarchies of class, gender, race, ethnicity, culture, knowledge, cosmology and ecology? This book struggles against the prejudice that the instances heterogeneous yet non canonical epistemics are in fact exclusively confined to provincial, exotic or solipsistic particularisms; therefore never as universalistic as the dominant ones. To address this problem, the book proposes: a different way to think of the relation between the abstract and the concrete; a new relation between data or histories, and concepts; an alternative pathway to cross-cultural translation in conceptual and terminological analysis; a new posture to inhabit the spacetimes at the border between translation and untranslatability.
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1538178435
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 281
Book Description
The book proposes a new epistemological and methodological approach to concept formation across human and natural sciences, beyond Eurocentrism and specism. It elaborates a method enabling global epistemics to cope with multiplex challenges coming from geohistorical as well as epistemological standpoints whose methodological potential remains unexplored. It assumes monstrosity as the generative grammar of a new holistic approach to human knowledge, and draws from postcolonial, decolonial or post-western perspectives to place new methodological cornerstones, as well as from arts, astrology and magic from the Islamic and European Renaissance, indigenous knowledge, genetics, theoretical physics or Afrofuturism. The book aims at provoking a shift in critical perspectives, which do not acknowledge their own inability to steam an appropriate methodology of terminological and conceptual elaboration for the lexicon of contemporary human knowledge, out of a pressing demand: once agreed upon the world as a single yet multilayered spacetime of analysis, how should research about large-scale/long-term processes of social change advance, in order to cope with the asymmetrical power relations that materialize colonial history through heterarchies of class, gender, race, ethnicity, culture, knowledge, cosmology and ecology? This book struggles against the prejudice that the instances heterogeneous yet non canonical epistemics are in fact exclusively confined to provincial, exotic or solipsistic particularisms; therefore never as universalistic as the dominant ones. To address this problem, the book proposes: a different way to think of the relation between the abstract and the concrete; a new relation between data or histories, and concepts; an alternative pathway to cross-cultural translation in conceptual and terminological analysis; a new posture to inhabit the spacetimes at the border between translation and untranslatability.
Unthinking Epistemicide
Author: Lucas Van Milders
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1538171937
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 191
Book Description
How can the supremacy of the Western worldview be undone? This book argues that the cause of social and political inequalities is above all the inequality of non-Western worldviews when compared to that of the West. Developing a critical theory and praxis for undoing epistemicide, or in other words, the murder of knowledge this book challenges the approach of ‘the West and the rest.’ Epistemicide refers specifically to the destruction of non-Western forms of knowledge production that has facilitated the hegemony of Western-centric epistemology, or one that takes the West as a universalized perspective. Rather than rehashing well-known critiques of Western-centrism, this book develops the claim that, alternative to the West vs. Rest hierarchy, worldviews are necessarily plural as each way of looking at the world reflects a particular perspective on the world. Bringing this plurality of perspectives into a dialogue that celebrates difference and equality, this book presents both a theoretical understanding of the world as hosting multiple worldviews and a practical conception of these worldviews as always already enacted within the world. Undoing the dominance of the Western-centric worldview entails looking at the different ways of being in the world that exist today and that reflect the prospect of a world in which many worlds are possible.
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1538171937
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 191
Book Description
How can the supremacy of the Western worldview be undone? This book argues that the cause of social and political inequalities is above all the inequality of non-Western worldviews when compared to that of the West. Developing a critical theory and praxis for undoing epistemicide, or in other words, the murder of knowledge this book challenges the approach of ‘the West and the rest.’ Epistemicide refers specifically to the destruction of non-Western forms of knowledge production that has facilitated the hegemony of Western-centric epistemology, or one that takes the West as a universalized perspective. Rather than rehashing well-known critiques of Western-centrism, this book develops the claim that, alternative to the West vs. Rest hierarchy, worldviews are necessarily plural as each way of looking at the world reflects a particular perspective on the world. Bringing this plurality of perspectives into a dialogue that celebrates difference and equality, this book presents both a theoretical understanding of the world as hosting multiple worldviews and a practical conception of these worldviews as always already enacted within the world. Undoing the dominance of the Western-centric worldview entails looking at the different ways of being in the world that exist today and that reflect the prospect of a world in which many worlds are possible.
Nietzsche and Sociology
Author: Anas Karzai
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 179360343X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 249
Book Description
Nietzsche and Sociology: Prophet of Affirmation is about Friedrich Nietzsche’s sociological reading of modern industrial society. Nietzsche is often identified as a philosopher but his uniquely sociological theories and ideas have been disregarded and unacknowledged in the social sciences. This work examines the reasons why Nietzsche has been ignored in sociological literature despite the evidence that most classical and modern sociological thinkers have been profoundly influenced by him. This book argues that the discipline of sociology would benefit by seriously considering the sociological elements in Nietzsche’s prolific work as a way of reevaluating not only the tradition of sociology, but also the sociology of tradition. His major contributions on rethinking traditional sociological theories and concepts in terms of their moral origins make it impossible for the social sciences to continue overlooking Nietzsche as a critical sociological thinker. His conception of non-economic power has become progressively more salient. Given the current juncture of humanity on the brink, Nietzsche’s affirmative philosophy of life is a breath of fresh air. He remains an intellectual force to be reckoned with and may just be the remedy to our present civilizational malaise.
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 179360343X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 249
Book Description
Nietzsche and Sociology: Prophet of Affirmation is about Friedrich Nietzsche’s sociological reading of modern industrial society. Nietzsche is often identified as a philosopher but his uniquely sociological theories and ideas have been disregarded and unacknowledged in the social sciences. This work examines the reasons why Nietzsche has been ignored in sociological literature despite the evidence that most classical and modern sociological thinkers have been profoundly influenced by him. This book argues that the discipline of sociology would benefit by seriously considering the sociological elements in Nietzsche’s prolific work as a way of reevaluating not only the tradition of sociology, but also the sociology of tradition. His major contributions on rethinking traditional sociological theories and concepts in terms of their moral origins make it impossible for the social sciences to continue overlooking Nietzsche as a critical sociological thinker. His conception of non-economic power has become progressively more salient. Given the current juncture of humanity on the brink, Nietzsche’s affirmative philosophy of life is a breath of fresh air. He remains an intellectual force to be reckoned with and may just be the remedy to our present civilizational malaise.
Employing Nietzsche’s Sociological Imagination
Author: Jack Fong
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1793620431
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 223
Book Description
Harnessing the empowering ideas of Friedrich Nietzsche to read the human condition of modern existence through a sociological lens, Employing Nietzsche’s Sociological Imagination: How to Understand Totalitarian Democracy confronts the realities of how modernity and its utopianisms affect one’s ability to purpose existence with self-authored meaning. By critically assessing the ideals of modern institutions, the motives of their pundits, and their political ideologies as expressions born from the social decay of exhausted dreams and projects of modernity, Jack Fong assembles Nietzsche’s existential sociological imagination to empower actors to emancipate the self from such duress. Illuminating the merits of creating new meaning for life affirmation by overcoming struggle with one’s will to power, Fong reveals Nietzsche’s horizons for actualized and empowered selves, selves to be liberated from convention, groupthink, and cultural scripts that exact deference from society’s captive audiences.
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1793620431
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 223
Book Description
Harnessing the empowering ideas of Friedrich Nietzsche to read the human condition of modern existence through a sociological lens, Employing Nietzsche’s Sociological Imagination: How to Understand Totalitarian Democracy confronts the realities of how modernity and its utopianisms affect one’s ability to purpose existence with self-authored meaning. By critically assessing the ideals of modern institutions, the motives of their pundits, and their political ideologies as expressions born from the social decay of exhausted dreams and projects of modernity, Jack Fong assembles Nietzsche’s existential sociological imagination to empower actors to emancipate the self from such duress. Illuminating the merits of creating new meaning for life affirmation by overcoming struggle with one’s will to power, Fong reveals Nietzsche’s horizons for actualized and empowered selves, selves to be liberated from convention, groupthink, and cultural scripts that exact deference from society’s captive audiences.
A Treatise in Phenomenological Sociology
Author: Carlos Belvedere
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1666906115
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 135
Book Description
A Treatise in Phenomenological Sociology: Object, Method, Findings, and Applications provides the first systematic approach to phenomenological sociology. Carlos Belvedere claims that phenomenological sociology is a distinctive paradigm endowed with its peculiar object, method, and stock of knowledge. He defines phenomenological sociology as a science dealing with the natural attitude of groups. When it comes to its method, he describes the actual, centenary use of the epoché, the eidetic variation, and constitutional analysis in the practice of classical and contemporary social thinkers. Finally, he collects a wealth of precious findings in the history of phenomenological sociology, which starts with the ego agens as the substratum of social life, then goes on to consider higher level strata such as pragmata, habitualities, social personalities, and institutions. He argues that social behavior can take different forms, subjective as well as objective, because it can experience a wide range of transformations thanks to specific qualities of pragmata, such as reiterableness and transferability.
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1666906115
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 135
Book Description
A Treatise in Phenomenological Sociology: Object, Method, Findings, and Applications provides the first systematic approach to phenomenological sociology. Carlos Belvedere claims that phenomenological sociology is a distinctive paradigm endowed with its peculiar object, method, and stock of knowledge. He defines phenomenological sociology as a science dealing with the natural attitude of groups. When it comes to its method, he describes the actual, centenary use of the epoché, the eidetic variation, and constitutional analysis in the practice of classical and contemporary social thinkers. Finally, he collects a wealth of precious findings in the history of phenomenological sociology, which starts with the ego agens as the substratum of social life, then goes on to consider higher level strata such as pragmata, habitualities, social personalities, and institutions. He argues that social behavior can take different forms, subjective as well as objective, because it can experience a wide range of transformations thanks to specific qualities of pragmata, such as reiterableness and transferability.
Forgotten Founders and Other Neglected Social Theorists
Author: Christopher T. Conner
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 149857372X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 252
Book Description
This edited volume highlights the work of ten forgotten and neglected social theorists in the hope of reinvigorating interest in their work and their potential contributions to the analysis of contemporary social issues. Each chapter includes a brief biographical sketch, an overview of the selected theorist’s work and significance, and the relevance of their work to one or more contemporary social issues. While other similar texts tend to focus primarily on intellectual biography, our emphasis here is on the scholar’s theories and their application to contemporary social issues. We provide a contextualization of each scholar’s work, using present-day social issues or problems. Many of these individuals played a significant role in the development of sociology. Our hope is to provide a resource that will help re-integrate these marginalized social theorists, rescuing them from obscurity and elevating their status.
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 149857372X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 252
Book Description
This edited volume highlights the work of ten forgotten and neglected social theorists in the hope of reinvigorating interest in their work and their potential contributions to the analysis of contemporary social issues. Each chapter includes a brief biographical sketch, an overview of the selected theorist’s work and significance, and the relevance of their work to one or more contemporary social issues. While other similar texts tend to focus primarily on intellectual biography, our emphasis here is on the scholar’s theories and their application to contemporary social issues. We provide a contextualization of each scholar’s work, using present-day social issues or problems. Many of these individuals played a significant role in the development of sociology. Our hope is to provide a resource that will help re-integrate these marginalized social theorists, rescuing them from obscurity and elevating their status.
Digital Media and the Dynamics of Civil Society
Author: Maria Bakardjieva
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1786616408
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 277
Book Description
Based on an extended empirical research project, this book advances the theoretical, normative and practical understanding of civil society under the conditions of digital mediatization and in relation to a set of particular historical and geopolitical circumstances. Digital Media and the Dynamics of Civil Society adds to existing knowledge of the democratizing role of digital media in communication studies by carefully tracing the trajectory of the emergent communicative and representational practices of civil society in a pair of new European democracies – Estonia and Bulgaria – facing distinctive socio-cultural and political challenges. The book combines macro and micro perspectives to illuminate the activities of civic activist and civil society organizations in the new media environment taking into account the social and cultural developments characteristic of each country. Have digital media contributed to the constitution of a new public space fostering the vitality and democratic potency of civil society in countries where it has suffered historical obstacles? The book addresses this question by traversing the whole range between personal, group and societal beliefs, lived experiences and actions unfolding in a concrete region at a time when civic activists around the world are grappling to understand and harness the powers of digital communication.
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1786616408
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 277
Book Description
Based on an extended empirical research project, this book advances the theoretical, normative and practical understanding of civil society under the conditions of digital mediatization and in relation to a set of particular historical and geopolitical circumstances. Digital Media and the Dynamics of Civil Society adds to existing knowledge of the democratizing role of digital media in communication studies by carefully tracing the trajectory of the emergent communicative and representational practices of civil society in a pair of new European democracies – Estonia and Bulgaria – facing distinctive socio-cultural and political challenges. The book combines macro and micro perspectives to illuminate the activities of civic activist and civil society organizations in the new media environment taking into account the social and cultural developments characteristic of each country. Have digital media contributed to the constitution of a new public space fostering the vitality and democratic potency of civil society in countries where it has suffered historical obstacles? The book addresses this question by traversing the whole range between personal, group and societal beliefs, lived experiences and actions unfolding in a concrete region at a time when civic activists around the world are grappling to understand and harness the powers of digital communication.
Toward a Good Society
Author: Tian-jia Dong
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 149859316X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 170
Book Description
In Toward a Good Society: A Relational Lens, authors Tian-jia Dong and Dongxiao Qin theorize a mutually empowering and growth-fostering society. The authors first demonstrate the feasibility of this society by grounding it in the framework of relational psychology. Departing from there, they travel along nine paths reconstructed from nine classic social science theories. In each chapter, they respectively reconstruct and find ways to move beyond Durkheimian structural-functionalism, de Tocqueville’s communalism, Mead’s symbolic interactionism, Freud’s psychoanalytic perspective, Simmel’s network theory, Smith’s “invisible hand”, Marx’s class theory, Hobbes’s contractarianism, and Weber’s rational-legal formulation. This leads them to propose a new Golden Rule that is as simple as it is profound and foundational to what makes a good society.
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 149859316X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 170
Book Description
In Toward a Good Society: A Relational Lens, authors Tian-jia Dong and Dongxiao Qin theorize a mutually empowering and growth-fostering society. The authors first demonstrate the feasibility of this society by grounding it in the framework of relational psychology. Departing from there, they travel along nine paths reconstructed from nine classic social science theories. In each chapter, they respectively reconstruct and find ways to move beyond Durkheimian structural-functionalism, de Tocqueville’s communalism, Mead’s symbolic interactionism, Freud’s psychoanalytic perspective, Simmel’s network theory, Smith’s “invisible hand”, Marx’s class theory, Hobbes’s contractarianism, and Weber’s rational-legal formulation. This leads them to propose a new Golden Rule that is as simple as it is profound and foundational to what makes a good society.
Invitation to Law & Society
Author: Kitty Calavita
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022629661X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 245
Book Description
Research and real-life examples that “lucidly connect some of the divisive social issues confronting us today to that thing we call ‘the law’” (Law and Politics Book Review). Law and society is a rapidly growing field that turns the conventional view of law as mythical abstraction on its head. Kitty Calavita brilliantly brings to life the ways in which law is found not only in statutes and courtrooms but in our institutions and interactions, while inviting readers into conversations that introduce the field’s dominant themes and most lively disagreements. Deftly interweaving scholarship with familiar examples, Calavita shows how scholars in the discipline are collectively engaged in a subversive exposé of law’s public mythology. While surveying prominent issues and distinctive approaches to both law as it is written and actual legal practices, as well as the law’s potential as a tool for social change, this volume provides a view of law that is more real but just as compelling as its mythic counterpart. With this second edition of Invitation to Law and Society, Calavita brings up to date what is arguably the leading introduction to this exciting, evolving field of inquiry and adds a new chapter on the growing law and cultural studies movement. “Entertaining and conversational.” —Law and Social Inquiry
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022629661X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 245
Book Description
Research and real-life examples that “lucidly connect some of the divisive social issues confronting us today to that thing we call ‘the law’” (Law and Politics Book Review). Law and society is a rapidly growing field that turns the conventional view of law as mythical abstraction on its head. Kitty Calavita brilliantly brings to life the ways in which law is found not only in statutes and courtrooms but in our institutions and interactions, while inviting readers into conversations that introduce the field’s dominant themes and most lively disagreements. Deftly interweaving scholarship with familiar examples, Calavita shows how scholars in the discipline are collectively engaged in a subversive exposé of law’s public mythology. While surveying prominent issues and distinctive approaches to both law as it is written and actual legal practices, as well as the law’s potential as a tool for social change, this volume provides a view of law that is more real but just as compelling as its mythic counterpart. With this second edition of Invitation to Law and Society, Calavita brings up to date what is arguably the leading introduction to this exciting, evolving field of inquiry and adds a new chapter on the growing law and cultural studies movement. “Entertaining and conversational.” —Law and Social Inquiry