Download or read book Social Theory for Alternative Societies written by Matt Dawson and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2017-09-16 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book traces a unique story of social theory: one which focuses on its role in offering ideas for alternative societies. In charting this story, Matt Dawson argues that the differences in alternatives offered by social theorists not only demonstrate the diversity in, and value of, sociological perspectives, but also emphasize competing ideas of the role of intellectuals in social change. The text discusses a collection of social theorists –from key figures such as Marx, Durkheim and Du Bois to less well known or now commonly overlooked writers such as Levitas, Lefebvre and Mannheim. It explains their use of the tools of sociology to critique society and provide visions for alternatives, highlighting elements of the intellectual backgrounds of movements such as socialism, anti-racism, feminism and cosmopolitanism. Social Theory for Alternative Societies not only explores in detail a variety of thinkers, but also reflects on the relevance of sociology today and on the connection between social theory and the 'real world.' Thus it will be of interest to students of sociology and those interested in ideas for a better society.
Download or read book Alternative Sociologies of Religion written by James V. Spickard and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2017-03-14 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Uncovers what the sociology of religion would look like had it emerged in a Confucian, Muslim, or Native American culture rather than in a Christian one Sociology has long used Western Christianity as a model for all religious life. As a result, the field has tended to highlight aspects of religion that Christians find important, such as religious beliefs and formal organizations, while paying less attention to other elements. Rather than simply criticizing such limitations, James V. Spickard imagines what the sociology of religion would look like had it arisen in three non-Western societies. What aspects of religion would scholars see more clearly if they had been raised in Confucian China? What could they learn about religion from Ibn Khaldun, the famed 14th century Arab scholar? What would they better understand, had they been born Navajo, whose traditional religion certainly does not revolve around beliefs and organizations? Through these thought experiments, Spickard shows how non-Western ideas understand some aspects of religions—even of Western religions—better than does standard sociology. The volume shows how non-Western frameworks can shed new light on several different dimensions of religious life, including the question of who maintains religious communities, the relationships between religion and ethnicity as sources of social ties, and the role of embodied experience in religious rituals. These approaches reveal central aspects of contemporary religions that the dominant way of doing sociology fails to notice. Each approach also provides investigators with new theoretical resources to guide them deeper into their subjects. The volume makes a compelling case for adopting a global perspective in the social sciences.
Download or read book An Alternative Sociology written by Franco Ferrarotti and published by Halsted Press. This book was released on 1979 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Sociology written by Anthony Giddens and published by Polity. This book was released on 2006 with total page 1121 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This updated edition provides an ideal teaching text for first-year university and college courses.
Download or read book The Politics of Crowds written by Christian Borch and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2012-04-12 with total page 347 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book analyses sociological discussions on crowds and masses since the late nineteenth century, covering France, Germany and the USA.
Download or read book Sociology written by Robert Van Krieken and published by Pearson Higher Education AU. This book was released on 2013-09-12 with total page 527 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Building upon the success of previous editions, this fully revised edition of Sociology lays the foundations for understanding sociology in Australia. The depth and breadth of the book ensures its value not only for first-year students, but for sociology majors requiring on-going reference to a range of theoretical perspectives and current debates. This fifth Australian edition continues to build on the book’s reputation for coverage, clarity and content, drawing upon the work of leading Australian sociologists as well as engaging with global social trends and sociological developments.
Download or read book Beyond Sociology written by Ananta Kumar Giri and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-12-20 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the contours of a transformational sociology which seeks to reconsider the horizons of sociological imagination. It questions accepted modernist assumptions such as the equation of society and nation-state, the dualism of individual and society and that of ontology and epistemology. Arguing that contemporary sociology suffers from what Ulrich Beck calls the Nato-like fire power of western sociology, it argues that sociology has to open itself to transcivilizational dialogues and planetary conversations about self, culture and society. The book also challenges scholars to go beyond a privileging of the post-traditional telos of modernist sociology and puts forward a foundational interrogation of modernist sociology. It underscores the limitations of established conventions of sociology and considering an alternative sociology based upon Confucian vision and practice of self-transformation. This collection offers a way to go beyond dominant structures of modern sociology and contemporary dominant ways of thinking about and doing sociology helping us cultivate a transdisciplinary sociology.
Download or read book A Quest for Alternative Sociology written by Kenji Kōsaka and published by ISBS. This book was released on 2008 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Five years ago, a number of sociology and social work faculty members at Kwansei Gakuin University (Japan) commenced an ambitious program in pursuit of social research that might serve to enhance human well-being. Although the program is still in its early stages, after five years of trial and error investigations involving hundreds of scholars from around the world, this collection of papers provides a progress report to the academic community. At this intermediate stage of research, these authors have achieved some notable research results. The study explicates the conditions essential to alternative sociology by reflecting upon the program to date. Specifically, the authors define an 'intersected domain' through the examination of three sub-domains: alternative social research, alternative society, and alternative sociology.
Download or read book Alternative Sociologies of Religion written by James V Spickard and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2018-03-06 with total page 372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Uncovers what the sociology of religion would look like had it emerged in a Confucian, Muslim, or Native American culture rather than in a Christian one Sociology has long used Western Christianity as a model for all religious life. As a result, the field has tended to highlight aspects of religion that Christians find important, such as religious beliefs and formal organizations, while paying less attention to other elements. Rather than simply criticizing such limitations, James V. Spickard imagines what the sociology of religion would look like had it arisen in three non-Western societies. What aspects of religion would scholars see more clearly if they had been raised in Confucian China? What could they learn about religion from Ibn Khaldun, the famed 14th century Arab scholar? What would they better understand, had they been born Navajo, whose traditional religion certainly does not revolve around beliefs and organizations? Through these thought experiments, Spickard shows how non-Western ideas understand some aspects of religions—even of Western religions—better than does standard sociology. The volume shows how non-Western frameworks can shed new light on several different dimensions of religious life, including the question of who maintains religious communities, the relationships between religion and ethnicity as sources of social ties, and the role of embodied experience in religious rituals. These approaches reveal central aspects of contemporary religions that the dominant way of doing sociology fails to notice. Each approach also provides investigators with new theoretical resources to guide them deeper into their subjects. The volume makes a compelling case for adopting a global perspective in the social sciences.
Download or read book Counter Movements in the Sciences written by H. Nowotny and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Heretical thoughts in an orthodox series on sociology of the sciences? Devils and science between the covers of one book? Games with ambivalence to mask collective uncertainty? We anticipate similar future reactions from readers or reviewers when assessing the way in which this volume has been assembled. But writings on counter-science, like the history of colonialism, are usually written by the winners, therefore unequivocally partial and only too often lacking in social imagination. In seeking to redress the balance, we admit to having been fully receptive to the latter, of having displayed an un measured degree of sympathy with heretics and outsiders, including practising scientists, and to letting science defend itself. The antithetical relationship implied in the volume's title - Counter-movements in the Sciences - stands for what we regard as an ongoing, open-ended process. In collecting material for this volume, we have brought together voices speaking from different quarters: there are those who, although modestly claiming to speak only for them selves, have set out to question sacred assumptions of scientific faith or to cast doubt on well-known claims scientific knowledge holds over other forms of knowledge; others have undertaken to demonstrate the fragility, ifnot untenability of attempts at demarcation between science and other systems of belief or practice or shown that demarcations between different forms of rationality rest on other than methodological grounds; finally, those who wish to re-arrange, by mapping out some meta-point of surveillance, familiar territory, showing the need for rearrangement and
Download or read book The Politics of Crowds written by Christian Borch and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2012-04-12 with total page 347 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When sociology emerged as a discipline in the late nineteenth century, the problem of crowds constituted one of its key concerns. It was argued that crowds shook the foundations of society and led individuals into all sorts of irrational behaviour. Yet crowds were not just something to be fought in the street, they also formed a battleground over how sociology should be demarcated from related disciplines, most notably psychology. In The Politics of Crowds, Christian Borch traces sociological debates on crowds and masses from the birth of sociology until today, with a particular focus on the developments in France, Germany and the USA. The book is a refreshing alternative history of sociology and modern society, observed through society's other, the crowd. Borch shows that the problem of crowds is not just of historical interest: even today the politics of sociology is intertwined with the politics of crowds.
Download or read book Envisioning Sociology written by John Scott and published by SUNY Press. This book was released on 2013-06-01 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examines the continuing relevance of early British sociologists Victor Branford, Patrick Geddes, and their associates.
Download or read book Sociology and Organization Theory written by John Hassard and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1995-04-06 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It has been claimed that organization theory is in a state of crisis. This book traces the history of the orthodox systems theory paradigm in organization studies from its foundations to its recent deconstruction by postmodernists. The analysis offers general support for the "sociology-in-crisis" thesis, but takes issue with one of its main propositions, that paradigms are incommensurable. It is argued that paradigms are porous rather than hermetic phenomena, a fact that has profound implications for the theory building process.
Download or read book Perspectives in Sociology written by E.C. Cuff and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2006-09-27 with total page 768 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From its first edition in 1979, Perspectives in Sociology has provided generations of undergraduates with a clear, reassuring introduction to the complications of sociological theory. This revised and updated edition features: a concise introduction to the major debates of the twentieth century, placing them in historical and philosophical context information on thinkers of the nineteenth and early twentieth century whose relevance to modern social thought is only now being recognized, e.g. Nietszche, Saussure, Simmel connections drawn between post-structuralist thinkers like Foucault and Derrida and the founding figures of sociology: Marx, Weber and Durkheim a completely rewritten chapter on the ‘Synthesisers’ - Bourdieu, Habermas and Giddens - and their attempts to generate a consensus from the apparently conflicting theories of their predecessors a new chapter reviewing the rise of British sociology, with particular reference to the political context and the changing role of ‘class’ in sociological thinking a new chapter describing the attempts of sociological theorists to explain current concerns, problems, and issues in the areas of gender, (homo)sexuality, and ethnicity in the context of the postcolonial world. While retaining its emphasis and wealth of information on the founding figures of sociology, this fifth edition now features a new easy-to-read format, (with particular attention paid to the linking and cross-referencing of chapters), and includes much new material on contemporary social theory with particular reference to its attempts to tackle current problems and issues in the areas of gender, sexuality, and ethnicity in the postcolonial context.
Download or read book Orthodox Consensus and Radical Alternative written by Dick Atkinson and published by Basic Books (AZ). This book was released on 1972 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book New Directions In The Sociology Of Health written by Geoff Payne and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2003-09-02 with total page 267 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The sociology of medicine has come a long way from its origins in epidemiology and clinical practice. Like all specialist areas of study it has developed its own internal debates, over the years there has been a shift from a sociology in medicine to a sociology of medicine, and from a sociolgy of medicine, towards a sociology of health and illness. It is to the development of this latter perspective that this volume is addressed.
Download or read book Sociology Phenomenology and Marxian Analysis written by Barry Smart and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-10-15 with total page 223 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sociology is an established academic discipline but there has been continuing debate over its status as a science and the nature of its subject matter. This led to the emergence of a phenomenological sociology and to critiques of positivist sociology. This critical reappraisal of the relevance of Marxian analysis for a science of society shows how these developments within sociology have had their counterpart in Marxism. The author analyses the status of Marx’s work and the Marxist ‘tradition’ in sociology. He focuses upon those concerns which are common to both Marxian analysis and sociology – the question of subjectivity; the nature of social reality; and the dialectical relationship of the ‘doing’ or practice of a science of society to the social world within which such social analyses are situated. Originally published in 1976.
