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Against Essentialism
Against Essentialism presents a sociological theory of culture. This interdisciplinary and foundational work deals with basic issues common to current debates in social theory, including society, culture, meaning, truth, and communication. Stephan Fuchs argues that many mysteries about these concepts lose their mysteriousness when dynamic variations are introduced. Fuchs proposes a theory of culture and society that merges two core traditions--American network theory and European (Luhmannian) systems theory. His book distinguishes four major types of social observers--encounters, groups, organizations, and networks. Society takes place in these four modes of association. Each generates levels of observation linked with each other into a culture--the unity of these observations. Against Essentialism presents a groundbreaking new approach to the construction of society, culture, and personhood. The book invites both social scientists and philosophers to see what happens when essentialism is abandoned.
Handbook of Sociological Theory
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 ra...
The Professional Quest for Truth
This book argues that the power of science as the most respected and authoritative world view is based on its superior material and organizational resources, not on its superior rationality. Fuchs approaches science as a social construct, and utilizing a theory of scientific organizations, he analyzes knowledge production in scientific fields--how they differ in their resources and how these differences affect how science is conducted. The book explains why certain fields produce science and facts, while others engage in hermeneutics and conversation; why certain specialities change through cumulation rather than fragmentation; and why some fields are relativistic while others are positivist in their self-understanding. This general theory of knowledge is applicable not only to science, but to all varieties of professional groups engaged in knowledge production.
What Is a Person?
What is a person? This fundamental question is a perennial concern of philosophers and theologians. But, Christian Smith here argues, it also lies at the center of the social scientist’s quest to interpret and explain social life. In this ambitious book, Smith presents a new model for social theory that does justice to the best of our humanistic visions of people, life, and society. Finding much current thinking on personhood to be confusing or misleading, Smith finds inspiration in critical realism and personalism. Drawing on these ideas, he constructs a theory of personhood that forges a middle path between the extremes of positivist science and relativism. Smith then builds on the work ...
Beyond the Science Wars
Contextualizes the "Science Wars" from interdisciplinary sociological, historical, scientific, political, and cultural perspectives.
Radical Theology and Emerging Christianity
The ’theological turn’ in continental philosophy and the ’turn to Paul’ in political philosophy have occasioned a return to radical theology, a tradition whose philosophical heritage can be traced to the death of God announced in the work of Nietzsche and Hegel. John D. Caputo’s deconstructive theology and Slavoj Zizek’s materialist theology are two radical theologies that explore what it might mean to pass through the death of God and to abandon this experience as specifically Christian. Radical Theology and Emerging Christianity demonstrates how these theologies are transforming everyday religious practices through an examination of the work of Peter Rollins and Kester Brewin, ...
CONTEMPORARY POLITICAL THEORY
Intended as a text for the postgraduate students of political science, this well-researched book attempts to track the evolution of political ideas in the recent past and their background. It brings out the contemporary epistemological and methodological debates within the discipline and social sciences as a whole, and incorporates the latest developments in the field. Divided into forty chapters under eleven parts, the book deals with the core concepts and debates in political theory, and focuses on the state-society interactions. It tries to explain how the states, societies and cultures have responded to the emerging challenges thrown up by the social, economic and political factors, and the direction of the response. It also dwells on the impact of globalisation on current trends. Finally, the book analyses the ideas of modern Indian thinkers such as V.D. Savarkar, Jawaharlal Nehru, Ram Manohar Lohia, B.R. Ambedkar and Jayaprakash Narayan. Besides the postgraduate students of political science, the book would also be useful to the aspirants of civil services examinations and the initiated readers.
Black Women, Agency, and the New Black Feminism
The powerful Beyoncé, formidable Rihanna, and the incalculable Nikki Minaj. Their images lead one to wonder: are they a new incarnation of black feminism and black women’s agency, or are they only pure fantasy in which, instead of having agency, they are in fact the products of the forces of patriarchy and commercialism? More broadly, one can ask whether black women in general are only being led to believe that they have power but are really being drawn back into more complicated systems of exploitation and oppression. Or, are black women subverting patriarchy by challenging notions of their subordinate and exploitable sexuality? In other words, ‘who is playing who’? Black Women, Agen...
Culture and Enchantment
Max Weber viewed modern life as disenchanted, an arena from which scientific inquiry had banished magic. In contrast, Mark Schneider argues intriguingly that enchantment—the sense that we are confronted by inexplicable phenomena—persists in the world today, although it has shifted from the natural to the cultural arena. Culture and Enchantment shows that students of culture today operate in social and intellectual circumstances similar to those of seventeenth-century natural philosophers. Just as Newton was drawn to alchemy, scholars today are fascinated by ghostly and mercurial agents thought to account for the meanings of cultural entities. For interpretive disciplines, Schneider sugge...
