The New Pragmatist Sociology

The New Pragmatist Sociology
Author: Neil L. Gross
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 793
Release: 2022-07-05
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0231555237

Pragmatist thought is central to sociology. However, sociologists typically encounter pragmatism indirectly, as a philosophy of science or as an influence on canonical social scientists, rather than as a vital source of theory, research questions, and methodological reflection in sociology today. In The New Pragmatist Sociology, Neil Gross, Isaac Ariail Reed, and Christopher Winship assemble a range of sociologists to address essential ideas in the field and their historical and theoretical connection to classical pragmatism. The book examines questions of methodology, social interaction, and politics across the broad themes of inquiry, agency, and democracy. Essays engage widely and deeply with topics that motivate both pragmatist philosophy and sociology, including rationality, speech, truth, expertise, and methodological pluralism. Contributors include Natalie Aviles, Karida Brown, Daniel Cefaï, Mazen Elfakhani, Luis Flores, Daniel Huebner, Cayce C. Hughes, Paul Lichterman, John Levi Martin, Ann Mische, Vontrese D. Pamphile, Jeffrey N. Parker, Susan Sibley, Daniel Silver, Mario Small, Iddo Tavory, Stefan Timmermans, Luna White, and Joshua Whitford.

The Problem of the Color Line at the Turn of the Twentieth Century

The Problem of the Color Line at the Turn of the Twentieth Century
Author: W. E. B. Du Bois
Publisher: Fordham Univ Press
Total Pages: 383
Release: 2014-12-03
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0823254569

Early essays from the sociologist, displaying the beginnings of his views on politics, society, and Black Americans’ status in the United States. This volume assembles essential essays?some published only posthumously, others obscure, another only recently translated?by W. E. B. Du Bois from 1894 to early 1906. They show the first formulations of some of his most famous ideas, namely, “the veil,” “double-consciousness,” and the “problem of the color line.” Moreover, the deep historical sense of the formation of the modern world that informs Du Bois’s thought and gave rise to his understanding of “the problem of the color line” is on display here. Indeed, the essays constitute an essential companion to Du Bois’s 1903 masterpiece The Souls of Black Folk. The collection is based on two editorial principles: presenting the essays in their entirety and in strict chronological order. Copious annotation affords both student and mature scholar an unprecedented grasp of the range and depth of Du Bois’s everyday intellectual and scholarly reference. These essays commence at the moment of Du Bois’s return to the United States from two years of graduate-level study in Europe at the University of Berlin. At their center is the moment of Du Bois’s first full, self-reflexive formulation of a sense of vocation: as a student and scholar in the pursuit of the human sciences (in their still-nascent disciplinary organization?that is, the institutionalization of a generalized “sociology” or general “ethnology”), as they could be brought to bear on the study of the situation of the so-called Negro question in the United States in all of its multiply refracting dimensions. They close with Du Bois’s realization that the commitments orienting his work and intellectual practice demanded that he move beyond the institutional frames for the practice of the human sciences. The ideas developed in these early essays remained the fundamental matrix for the ongoing development of Du Bois’s thought. The essays gathered here will therefore serve as the essential reference for those seeking to understand the most profound registers of this major American thinker. “A seminal contribution to the history of modern thought. Compiled and edited by the world’s preeminent scholar of early Du Boisian thought, these texts represent his most generative period, when Du Bois engaged every discipline, helped construct modern social science, employed critical inquiry as a weapon of antiracism and political liberation, and always set his sites on the entire world. We know this not by the essays alone, but by Nahum Dimitri Chandler’s brilliant, original, and quite riveting introduction. If you are coming to Du Bois for the first time of the 500th time, this book is a must-read.” —Robin D. G. Kelley, author of Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination

Sociology Hesitant

Sociology Hesitant
Author: R. A. Judy
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2000
Genre: Literary Collections
ISBN: 9780822364832

This collection of essays reflects a new, distinctively rigorous engagement with W. E. B. DuBois's theoretical and philosophical thought. It includes the first publication of DuBois's important critical essay on the conceptual foundations of sociology as a science, "Sociology Hesitant." Taking its title from that 1905 essay, Sociology Hesitant draws attention to the ways in which DuBois's thinking about the "Negro problem" was an explicit effort to think about the problem of historical agency. Spanning a wide array of disciplines, from German studies and sociology to literary criticism, philosophy, and anthropology, with contributions from some of the most outstanding scholars in these fields, Sociology Hesitant contributes to the recognition of DuBois as an important historical figure by focusing on the complexity of his theoretical work. These essays offer an extended interaction with the ideas and projects DuBois formulated in a series of essays written between 1887 and 1910 that take up intricate questions concerning the nature of methodology and the theory of knowledge. Using DuBois's work as a point of departure, contributors explore current thinking about diverse subjects such as geopolitics and postcolonialism. Demonstrating that engaging the question of race requires rethinking the historical nature of theoretical understanding, this collection brings to light the notion that the struggle for equality is a struggle for freedom of thought in pursuit of truth. Contributors. Kenneth Barkin, Nahum Chandler, Ronald Judy, David Krell, Charles Lemert, Sieglinde D. Lemke, Tommy Lott, Kevin Miles, Abdulkarim Mustapha, Ken Warren

Annotations

Annotations
Author: Nahum Dimitri Chandler
Publisher: Duke University Press
Total Pages: 125
Release: 2023-03-31
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1478023023

In Annotations Nahum Dimitri Chandler offers a philosophical interpretation of W. E. B. Du Bois’s 1897 American Negro Academy address, “The Conservation of Races.” Chandler approaches Du Bois as a generative and original philosophical thinker-writer on the status and historical implication of matters of human difference, both the fact of and the very idea thereof. Chandler proposes both a close reading of Du Bois’s engagement of the concept of so-called race and a deep meditation on Du Bois’s conceptualization of historicity in general. He elaborates on the way Du Bois’s thought in this address can give an account of the organization of the historicity that yields the emergence of something like the African American, at once with its own internal dimensions and yet also as an originary articulation of forces and possibilities that have world historical implications. Chandler refigures Du Bois’s thought as a vital theoretical resource for rethinking our concepts of differences among humans and, so too, our understanding of modern historicity itself.

The Sociology of W. E. B. Du Bois

The Sociology of W. E. B. Du Bois
Author: José Itzigsohn
Publisher: NYU Press
Total Pages: 291
Release: 2020-03-24
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1479804177

The first comprehensive understanding of Du Bois for social scientists The Sociology of W. E. B. Du Bois provides a comprehensive introduction to the founding father of American sociological thought. Du Bois is now recognized as a pioneer of American scientific sociology and as someone who made foundational contributions to the sociology of race and to urban and community sociology. However, in this authoritative volume, noted scholars José Itzigsohn and Karida L. Brown provide a groundbreaking account of Du Bois’s theoretical contribution to sociology, or what they call the analysis of “racialized modernity.” Further, they examine the implications of developing a Du Boisian sociology for the practice of the discipline today. The full canon of Du Bois’s sociological works spans a lifetime of over ninety years in which his ideas evolved over much of the twentieth century. This broader and more systematic account of Du Bois’s contribution to sociology explores how his theories changed, evolved, and even developed to contradict earlier ideas. Careful parsing of seminal works provides a much needed overview for students and scholars looking to gain a better grasp of the ideas of Du Bois, in particular his understanding of racialized subjectivity, racialized social systems, and his scientific sociology. Further, the authors show that a Du Boisian sociology provides a robust analytical framework for the multilevel examination of individual-level processes—such as the formation of the self—and macro processes—such as group formation and mobilization or the structures of modernity—key concepts for a basic understanding of sociology.

Sentient Flesh

Sentient Flesh
Author: R. A. Judy
Publisher: Duke University Press
Total Pages: 488
Release: 2020-10-02
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1478012552

In Sentient Flesh R. A. Judy takes up freedman Tom Windham’s 1937 remark “we should have our liberty 'cause . . . us is human flesh" as a point of departure for an extended meditation on questions of the human, epistemology, and the historical ways in which the black being is understood. Drawing on numerous fields, from literary theory and musicology, to political theory and phenomenology, as well as Greek and Arabic philosophy, Judy engages literary texts and performative practices such as music and dance that express knowledge and conceptions of humanity appositional to those grounding modern racialized capitalism. Operating as critiques of Western humanism, these practices and modes of being-in-the-world—which he theorizes as “thinking in disorder,” or “poiēsis in black”—foreground the irreducible concomitance of flesh, thinking, and personhood. As Judy demonstrates, recognizing this concomitance is central to finding a way past the destructive force of ontology that still holds us in thrall. Erudite and capacious, Sentient Flesh offers a major intervention in the black study of life.

Ten Neglected Classics of Philosophy

Ten Neglected Classics of Philosophy
Author: Eric Schliesser
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 313
Release: 2017
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0199928924

What makes for a philosophical classic? Why do some philosophical works persist over time, while others do not? The philosophical canon and diversity are topics of major debate today. This stimulating volume contains ten new essays by accomplished philosophers writing passionately about works in the history of philosophy that they feel were unjustly neglected or ignored-and why they deserve greater attention. The essays cover lesser known works by famous thinkers as well as works that were once famous but now only faintly remembered. Works examined include Gorgias' Encomium of Helen, Jane Adams' Women and Public Housekeeping, W.E.B. DuBois' Whither Now and Why, Edith Stein's On the Problem of Empathy, Jonathan Bennett's Rationality, and more. While each chapter is an expression of engagement with an individual work, the volume as a whole, and Eric Schliesser's introduction specifically, address timely questions about the nature of philosophy, disciplinary contours, and the vagaries of canon formation.

Key Sociological Thinkers

Key Sociological Thinkers
Author: Rob Stones
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 478
Release: 2017-09-16
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1349931667

The third edition of this popular and established core textbook provides an invaluable guide to 24 of the most influential thinkers in Sociology. Written by leading academics in the field, Key Sociological Thinkers provides a clear and contextualised introduction to classical and contemporary theory. Each chapter offers an insightful assessment of a different theorist, exploring their lives, works and legacies, and in a much-valued 'Seeing Things Differently' section authors demonstrate how each thinker's ideas can be used to illuminate aspects of social life in new ways. With frameworks for deep learning around group discussion, this continues be an essential text for undergraduate and postgraduate modules on sociological and social theory. New to this Edition: - Four new chapters, on Mead, Du Bois, Latour and Alexander - Five chapters by new authors on existing key thinkers: Durkheim, Merton, Goffman, Bourdieu, and Giddens - A major new introduction - An updated, structured and annotated 'Further Reading' section for each thinker - Extended accounts of 13 additional thinkers who have influenced, or been influenced by, the key thinkers

Black Natural Law

Black Natural Law
Author: Vincent W. Lloyd
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 201
Release: 2016-05-02
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0190610581

Black Natural Law offers a new way of understanding the African American political tradition. Iconoclastically attacking left (including James Baldwin and Audre Lorde), right (including Clarence Thomas and Ben Carson), and center (Barack Obama), Vincent William Lloyd charges that many Black leaders today embrace secular, white modes of political engagement, abandoning the deep connections between religious, philosophical, and political ideas that once animated Black politics. By telling the stories of Frederick Douglass, Anna Julia Cooper, W. E. B. Du Bois, and Martin Luther King, Jr., Lloyd shows how appeals to a higher law, or God's law, have long fueled Black political engagement. Such appeals do not seek to implement divine directives on earth; rather, they pose a challenge to the wisdom of the world, and they mobilize communities for collective action. Black natural law is deeply democratic: while charismatic leaders may provide the occasion for reflection and mobilization, all are capable of discerning the higher law using our human capacities for reason and emotion. At a time when continuing racial injustice poses a deep moral challenge, the most powerful intellectual resources in the struggle for justice have been abandoned. Black Natural Law recovers a rich tradition, and it examines just how this tradition was forgotten. A Black intellectual class emerged that was disconnected from social movement organizing and beholden to white interests. Appeals to higher law became politically impotent: overly rational or overly sentimental. Recovering the Black natural law tradition provides a powerful resource for confronting police violence, mass incarceration, and today's gross racial inequities. Black Natural Law will change the way we understand natural law, a topic central to the Western ethical and political tradition. While drawing particularly on African American resources, Black Natural Law speaks to all who seek politics animated by justice.

World Literature for the Wretched of the Earth

World Literature for the Wretched of the Earth
Author: J. Daniel Elam
Publisher: Fordham University Press
Total Pages: 269
Release: 2020-12-01
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0823289818

“Lays out a novel and provocative argument . . . Essential reading for those concerned with the future of comparative literature and the world.” ―Natalie Melas, Cornell University World Literature for the Wretched of the Earth recovers a genealogy of anticolonial thought that advocated collective inexpertise, unknowing, and unrecognizability. Early-twentieth-century anticolonial thinkers endeavored to imagine a world emancipated from colonial rule, but it was a world they knew they would likely not live to see. Written in exile, in abjection, or in the face of death, anticolonial thought could not afford to base its politics on the hope of eventual success, mastery, or national sovereignty. J. Daniel Elam shows how anticolonial thinkers theorized inconsequential practices of egalitarianism in the service of an impossibility: a world without colonialism. Framed by a suggestive reading of the surprising affinities between Frantz Fanon’s political writings and Erich Auerbach’s philological project, World Literature for the Wretched of the Earth foregrounds anticolonial theories of reading and critique in the writing of Lala Har Dayal, B.R. Ambedkar, M.K. Gandhi, and Bhagat Singh. These anticolonial activists theorized reading not as a way to cultivate mastery and expertise but as a way, rather, to disavow mastery altogether. To become or remain an inexpert reader, divesting oneself of authorial claims, was to fundamentally challenge the logic of the British Empire and European fascism, which prized self-mastery, authority, and national sovereignty. Bringing together the histories of comparative literature and anticolonial thought, Elam demonstrates how these early-twentieth-century theories of reading force us to reconsider the commitments of humanistic critique and egalitarian politics in the still-colonial present.