Sceptical Sociology Rle Social Theory
Download Sceptical Sociology Rle Social Theory full books in PDF, epub, and Kindle. Read online free Sceptical Sociology Rle Social Theory ebook anywhere anytime directly on your device. Fast Download speed and no annoying ads. We cannot guarantee that every ebooks is available!
| Author | : John Carroll |
| Publisher | : Routledge |
| Total Pages | : 216 |
| Release | : 2014-08-07 |
| Genre | : Social Science |
| ISBN | : 1317651219 |
John Carroll contends that since 1918 sociology has distinguished itself by making society appear as dull as it is at its worst. Using barbaric jargon, legalistic syntax and vacuous statistical tables, and driven by an obsession with the humdrum, it has exhibited some of the worst traits of the culture it should have been laying bare. Sceptical Sociology examines where sociology went wrong, and what ought to be done to transform it into a worthwhile enterprise. In a series of studies of contemporary Western society, the author puts into practice the principles of a ‘sceptical sociology’. There are enquiries into the cleanliness compulsion among housewives, the conflicting dream and reality of the tourist, the moral centrality of the car, the tactics of the latest shopping palaces. There is an allegory on fur hats, a dark portrait of a typical modern marriage, a putting of intellectuals in their place, and a pursuit of the sociology of space through the universal longing for home. The author contends that sociology ought to be the important stories about a society and its times, well told. Sceptical Sociology attempts to show that it can be well done.
| Author | : Joe Bailey |
| Publisher | : Routledge |
| Total Pages | : 167 |
| Release | : 2014-08-13 |
| Genre | : Social Science |
| ISBN | : 1317651782 |
Theorizing in sociology has increasingly become a self-generating and self-fulfilling activity, as sociologists absorb theory as an isolated and formalist part of their discipline. Joe Bailey believes that sociological theory should be a contribution to practical social intervention. His book presents a practical view of social theorizing as an activity at which sociologists are skilled and which they could teach to the interventionist professions. The relation between theory and practice is defined as one in which theory guides practice and makes explicit necessary choices. A description of disciplines and professions is provided as a basis for examining social intervention in three areas – law, social work and urban planning. The author considers some exemplary contributions which sociological theorizing could and should provide, and concludes by proposing a pluralist view of theory as the best strategy for a sociology relevant to practice.
| Author | : Volker Meja |
| Publisher | : Routledge |
| Total Pages | : 384 |
| Release | : 2014-08-13 |
| Genre | : Social Science |
| ISBN | : 1317651626 |
Karl Mannheim’s Ideology and Utopia has been a profoundly provocative book. The debate about politics and social knowledge that was spawned by its original publication in 1929 attracted the most promising younger scholars, some of whom shaped the thought of several generations. The book became a focus for a debate on the methodological and epistemological problems confronting German social science. More than thirty major papers were published in response to Mannheim’s text. Writers such as Hannah Arendt, Ernst Robert Curtius, Max Horkheimer, Herbert Marcuse, Helmuth Plessner, Hans Speier and Paul Tillich were among the contributors. Their positions varied from seeing in the sociology of knowledge a sophisticated reformulation of the materialist conception of history to linking its popularity to a betrayal of Marxism. The English publication in 1936 defined formative issues for two generations of sociological self-reflection. Knowledge and Politics provides an introduction to the dispute and reproduces the leading contributions. It sheds new light on one of the greatest controversies that have marked German social science in the past hundred years.
| Author | : Gunter Werner Remmling |
| Publisher | : Routledge |
| Total Pages | : 472 |
| Release | : 2022-03-23 |
| Genre | : Social Science |
| ISBN | : 100015579X |
The sociology of knowledge is an area of social scientific investigation with major emphasis on the relations between social life and intellectual activity. It is now an area central to most graduate and undergraduate courses in sociology. The present collection of readings explains the origins, systematic development, present state and possible future direction of the discipline. The major statements in the field were developed early in the twentieth century by Durkheim, Scheler and Mannheim, but the sociology of knowledge continues to engage the theoretical and empirical interests of contemporary sociologists who desire to penetrate the surface level of social existence. This book, with its carefully selected contributions and an introduction which relates the selections to the developmental pattern of the discipline, provides guidance and insight for the reader concerned with the topical issues raised by sociologists of knowledge.
| Author | : Werner Pelz |
| Publisher | : Routledge |
| Total Pages | : 298 |
| Release | : 2014-08-13 |
| Genre | : Social Science |
| ISBN | : 1317648447 |
In their efforts to emulate the methodology which had proved so successful in the natural sciences, the social sciences – including sociology – have not yet faced the question as to what constitutes understanding in their area with sufficient seriousness. This book asks again: what does understanding denote in an area where man tries to understand man, where self-understanding is involved, where new understanding immediately becomes part of that which is to be understood? What can we know and what is the use and limitation of knowledge in sociology? When are we conscious that we know and understand? Werner Pelz argues for a thorough reorientation in our approach to sociological thinking, and suggests that scientistic preconceptions have often precluded possibly fruitful approaches to humane understanding. He investigates the relations between various kinds of knowing, and examines the new possibilities of understanding made available, for example, by psychoanalytical and phenomenological insights, as well as by those of poets, artists, mystics. He shows that in the social and humanistic sciences, creative or constitutive contributions illuminate rather than demonstrate, and that, for this reason, sociology has not yet found an appropriate method for conveying them without serious distortions.
| Author | : Geoff Payne |
| Publisher | : Routledge |
| Total Pages | : 336 |
| Release | : 2014-08-21 |
| Genre | : Social Science |
| ISBN | : 1317650859 |
A social science which has become so remote from the society which pays for its upkeep is ultimately doomed, threatened less by repression than by intellectual contempt and financial neglect. This is the message of the authors of this book in this reassessment of the evolution and present state of British sociology. Their investigation analyses the discipline as a social institution, whose product is inexorably shaped by the everyday circumstances of its producers; it is the concrete outcome of people’s work, rather than a body of abstract ideas. Drawing upon their varied experience as teachers and researchers, they identify three major trends in contemporary sociology. First, that the discipline’s rapid expansion has led to a retreat from rigorous research into Utopian and introspective theorising. Second, that the concept of sociological research is being taught in a totally false way because of this, and encourages ‘research’ within a wholly academic environment. Third, that the current unpopularity of sociology with academics, prospective students and politicians is no coincidence, but a reflection of the conditions under which sociology is now produced and practised. In Sociology and Social Research the authors suggest substantial changes in sociological research, the way in which it is carried out and the conditions under which it is undertaken. Their book is a timely warning to fellow sociologists when the profession is under attack as a result of public expenditure cuts.
| Author | : Peter Hamilton |
| Publisher | : Routledge |
| Total Pages | : 172 |
| Release | : 2014-08-13 |
| Genre | : Social Science |
| ISBN | : 1317634985 |
The primary concern of this study is to present, elucidate and analyse the developments which have characterized the sociology of knowledge, and which have set for it the outlines of its major problematics. Peter Hamilton examines the most distinctive approaches to the determinate relationship between knowledge and social structure. He considers the three main ‘pre-paradigms’ of the sociology of knowledge based on the work of Marx, Durkheim and Weber, and looks at the contribution of Scheler, Mannheim and phenomenological studies to this complex field. He explores the intellectual context, particularly that of Enlightenment philosophy, in which the problems involved in producing a sociology of knowledge first came to light. In conclusion, the author suggests an inclusive perspective for approaching the difficulties posed in any attempt to describe and explain relations between knowledge and social structure.
| Author | : James Robert Brown |
| Publisher | : Routledge |
| Total Pages | : 213 |
| Release | : 2014-08-21 |
| Genre | : Social Science |
| ISBN | : 1317651308 |
To paraphrase Marx, sociologists have only interpreted science; the point is to improve it. The Rational and the Social attempts both. It begins by sketching recent sociological approaches to science, notably the strong programme – Bloor’s ‘science of science’ and Barnes’s ‘finitism’ – and that of the ‘anthropologists in the lab’, Collins and Latour and Woolgar. The author argues that although sociological accounts are valuable in many respects, when morals are drawn about the structure and epistemology of science, they are badly flawed. In rejecting the sociological theory of science, it is not necessary to conclude that science develops without reference to the social. James Robert Brown argues for an alternative account. He proposes a novel way of viewing the history of science as a source of evidence for how to do good science and argues that the most important aspect of methodology is that it is comparative. Rival theories are evaluated by comparison and the contribution of the social to this process is inevitable and should be acknowledged. This is the challenge to science.
| Author | : Mike Gane |
| Publisher | : Routledge |
| Total Pages | : 254 |
| Release | : 2014-08-21 |
| Genre | : Social Science |
| ISBN | : 1317652479 |
Baudrillard is widely recognised as a powerful new force in cultural and social criticism, and is often referred to as the ‘High Priest of Postmodernism’. This study presents a detached assessment of his social thought and his reputation, challenging the way his work has been received in postmodernism and proposing a new reading of his contribution to social theory. Using many sources currently available only in French, Mike Gane provides the keys to understanding Baudrillard’s project and reveals the extent and scope of Baudrillard’s challenge to modern social theory and cultural criticism. He looks at the sources of Baudrillard’s ideas, analysing how Baudrillard has turned these sources against themselves. He describes Baudrillard’s dramatic encounter with critical Marxist theory and psychoanalysis, showing how Baudrillard’s post-Marxist writings define, through the exploration of fatal theory, a new episode in cultural history: a period of cultural implosion. This balanced account of Baudrillard’s social theory emphasises the originality of his work and argues that his significance can only be understood by grasping the paradoxes of his project – Baudrillard’s work is poetic, yet, at the same time, critical and fatal.
| Author | : Mark Wardell |
| Publisher | : Routledge |
| Total Pages | : 251 |
| Release | : 2014-08-07 |
| Genre | : Social Science |
| ISBN | : 1317650999 |
Current sociological theories appear to have lost their general persuasiveness in part because, unlike the theories of the ‘classical era’, they fail to maintain an integrated stance toward society, and the practical role that sociology plays in society. The authors explore various facets of this failure and possibilities for reconstructing sociological theories as integrated wholes capable of conveying a moral and political immediacy. They discuss the evolution of several concepts (for example, the social, structure, and self) and address the significant disputes (for example, structuralism versus humanism, and individual versus society) that have dominated twentieth-century sociological thought. Their ideas and analyses are directed towards an audience of students and theorists who are coming to terms with the project of sociological theory, and its relationship with moral discourses and political practice. The authors of these essays are sociological theorists from the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada. They are all established, but not ‘establishment’ authors. The book contains no orthodoxies, and no answers. However, the essays do contribute to identifying the range of issues that will constitute the agenda for the next generation of sociological theorists.
