The Not So Outrageous Idea Of A Christian Sociology

This book provides a rationale for a Christian sociology, challenging the materialist epistemology of contemporary sociology, which provides only a limited understanding of social behavior. Developing a history of the origins of sociology that recognizes the centrality of Christianity to the discipline’s development, it considers the secularization thesis and questions surrounding positivism, scientism and postmodernism, as well as engaging with the work of a range of figures including Margaret Archer, Robert Bellah, Peter Berger, Hans Joas, Thomas Luckmann, David Martin, and Christian Smith. A critique of modern sociology, which argues that a Christian approach provides a better explanation than contemporary paradigms of the polarization occurring today in American society, The Not So Outrageous Idea of a Christian Sociology will appeal to scholars and students with interests in sociological theory, research methods and epistemology, and the sociology of religion.

Colorfully written by two popular and respected sociologists, this volume shows how sociology has evolved, how it became divided from Christian faith, and how Christian sociologists can make sense of this branch of social science.

Sociology and Christianity? Attempting to bring sociology and Christianity together is like trying to mix oil and water. Christians seem to have as little regard for sociology as sociologists generally have for Christianity. However, in the middle of this conflict there is a group bold enough to call themselves "Christian sociologists"; they are not willing to be stereotyped but are seriously committed to both realms. This collection of essays covers topics that are typically addressed in introductory sociology courses. Written from a Christian point of view, these essays are also geared for a wide range of readers from undergraduates to professional sociologists who bring faith commitments to the sociological task. The editors' goal is to provide an understanding of societal forces that is informed by a Christian conscience. Toward that end, certain recurring themes are found in this book: the need for informed Christian social action, the conflict between the individual and the community, the conflict between freedom and determinism, and the significance of social sin.

The Cognitive Foundations of Classical Sociological Theory explores the role that understandings of mind and brain played in the development of sociological theory. It isolates five key authors in the classical tradition and comprehensively explores their oeuvres for moments where they reflect on, engage with, and build from topics related to cognition, placing their work in contact with research today to critically determine areas of relevance, refutation, or revision. Showing how understandings of mind, brain, and body grounded the production of early sociological thought, the book draws attention to the foundational role theories of cognition played in the emergence of sociology as a distinct field of study. With chapters on Comte, Marx, Weber, Durkheim, and Mead, The Cognitive Foundations of Classical Sociological Theory constitutes a novel and timely engagement with canonical social theory, extending its application to contemporary social life. It will therefore appeal to scholars of sociology and psychology with interests in classical social theory, cognition, embodiment, and sociality.

Reprint of the original, first published in 1881.

Social Theory and the Political Imaginary: Practice, Critique and History is an innovative work of synthesis, critique, and analysis. It presages a social theory perspective that recognises the constitutive significance of the political imaginary in modernity. Social theory’s current dilemmas are explored through a series of interlinked asssessments of some of its recent substantial strands, specifically, Luc Boltanski’s pragmatism and the wider ‘practical turn’, the perspectives of multiple modernities and global modernity, the outlook of social and political imaginaries, and critical social theory. The political imaginary’s reconfigurations are evident in the tensions of global modernity and original social theory interpretations are advanced of landmark instances of twenty-first century social contestation: the Hong Kong protests conditioned by threats to civil freedoms and a lack of self-determination, the radical democratic practices of anti-austerity movements contesting capitalist globalisation’s injustices, and the inverted cosmopolitanism of the 2005 French Riots challenging the oppression and inequalities experienced by immigrant communities and marginalised youth. These incisive applications of social theory and complementary conceptual innovations illuminate the vicissitudes of social struggles, political forms, and theoretical perspectives. Similarly, reflection on the political imaginary is found to enable a necessary rethinking of the interrelationship of practice, critique and history.

This book revisits social theory with a view to highlighting certain essential features of ‘good’ social theory: its ability to raise certain questions, its explanatory power, its critical and reflexive interrogation of concepts, its search for objectivity, its concern to make sense of empirical data and its aim of projecting some degree of generality and abstraction. With particular attention to issues of nationalism, democracy, civil society, state, feminism, neoliberalism, minority rights, environment and North-East Indian society, it considers whether new and more relevant theoretical questions need to be asked. It will therefore appeal to scholars of social theory and political sociology with interests in new approaches to social theory and the development of local or ‘indigenous’ social thought.