The Sociology Of Knowledge In A Time Of Crisis

The speed of social dynamics has overtaken the speed of thought. Adopting a dialectical perspective towards reality, social theory has always detected faults in the dominant social pattern, foreseeing crises and outlining in advance the features of new social models. Thought has always moved faster than reality and its ruling models, ensuring a dynamic equilibrium during modernity. Despite any dramatic social crisis, theory has always provided exit routes. The tragedy of current crisis lies in the fact that its social implications are exasperated by the absence of alternative views. This book identifies the causes of this mismatch between thought and reality, and illustrates a way out.

The speed of social dynamics has overtaken the speed of thought. Adopting a dialectical perspective towards reality, social theory has always detected faults in the dominant social pattern, foreseeing crises and outlining in advance the features of new social models. Thought has always moved faster than reality and its ruling models, ensuring a dynamic equilibrium during modernity. Despite any dramatic social crisis, theory has always provided exit routes. The tragedy of current crisis lies in the fact that its social implications are exasperated by the absence of alternative views. This book identifies the causes of this mismatch between thought and reality, and illustrates a way out.

In recent political debates there has been a significant change in the valence of the word “experts” from a superlative to a near pejorative, typically accompanied by a recitation of experts’ many failures and misdeeds. In topics as varied as Brexit, climate change and vaccinations there is a palpable mistrust of experts and a tendency to dismiss their advice. Are we witnessing, therefore, the “death of expertise,” or is the handwringing about an “assault on science” merely the hysterical reaction of threatened elites? In this new book, Gil Eyal argues that what needs to be explained is not a one-sided “mistrust of experts” but the two-headed pushmi-pullyu of unprecedented reliance on science and expertise, on the one hand, coupled with increased suspicion, skepticism and dismissal of scientific findings, expert opinion or even whole branches of investigation, on the other. The current mistrust of experts, Eyal argues, is best understood as one more spiral in an on-going, recursive crisis of legitimacy. The “scientization of politics,” of which critics warned in the 1960s, has brought about a politicization of science, specifically of regulatory and policy science, and the two processes reinforce one another in an unstable, crisis-prone mixture. Eyal demonstrates that the strategies designed to respond to the crisis - from an increased emphasis on inclusion of laypeople and stakeholders in scientific research and regulatory decision-making to approaches seeking to generate trust by relying on objective procedures such as randomized controlled trials (RCTs) – end up exacerbating the crisis, while undermining and contradicting one another. This timely book will be of great interest to students and scholars in the social sciences and to anyone concerned about the political uses of, and attacks on, scientific knowledge and expertise.

The Sociology of Knowledge Approach to Discourse (SKAD) has reoriented research into social forms, structuration and processes of meaning construction and reality formation; doing so by linking social constructivist and pragmatist approaches with post-structuralist thinking in order to study discourses and create epistemological space for analysing processes of world-making in culturally diverse environments. SKAD is anchored in interpretive traditions of inquiry and allows for broadening – and possibly overcoming – of the epistemological biases and restrictions still common in theories and approaches of Western- and Northern-centric social sciences. An innovative volume, this book is exactly attentive to these empirically based, globally diverse further developments of approach, with a clear focus on the methodology and its implementation. Thus, The Sociology of Knowledge Approach to Discourse presents itself as a research program and locates the approach within the context of interpretive social sciences, followed by eleven chapters on different cases from around the world that highlight certain theoretical questions and methodological challenges. Presenting outstanding applications of the Sociology of Knowledge Approach to Discourse across a wide variety of substantive projects and regional contexts, this text will appeal to postgraduate students and researchers interested in fields such as Discourse Studies, Sociology, Cultural Studies and Qualitative Methodology and Methods.

Economic changes and political changes which emerged with the modern capitalist world-economy were accompanied in the sociocultural domain by changes in the structures of knowledge. These included the hierarchical separation of the realm of facts from that of values, institutionalized as a division between the sciences and the humanities. The social sciences responded to contradictions inherent in this structure over the nineteenth century in producing knowledge on which policy decisions could be based. The problems of the contemporary period indicate we are in a long-term, structural crisis. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the theoretical frameworks and methodological approaches through which social analysts and observers alike seek to understand the world. Since the 1960s, developments in the field of knowledge, especially two movements complexity studies in the natural sciences and cultural studies in the humanities have contested the naturalized, essentialist boundaries separating the sciences, the social sciences and the humanities. The primary rationale for this work is to recognize the inseparable whole composed of the material structures of the world and the structures of knowledge that govern what actions may be deemed legitimate and effective. 'Knowledge Matters' discusses what actions will actually be undertaken by social agents, and what such an approach means for an analysis of the present situation in terms of imagining and evaluating possible futures.

The global financial crisis has demonstrated the impact and implications of late capitalism and its bedfellow, globalisation. In the European context, crisis is seen as a threat to the stability of the region, rather than a local or national concern. Post-2008, crisis is social and political, rather than merely financial, as Western countries witness the consequences of consumption, growth and profit. In this book, Tsilimpounidi demonstrates how sociologists must develop new approaches to examining rapid shifts in the social landscape, since crisis is not merely reflected in balance sheets, but is mediated through spectacular imagery of loss, deprivation and increased vectors of marginalisation. Providing focused and valuable insight into the pressing problems of those living in Greece in relation to the wider spheres of the nation and at the level of the European Union, Sociology of Crisis takes an approach that is firmly located within a critical sociological appeal to reflexivity. A timely engagement with the problem of crisis at a macro-level and in dialogue with the everyday experiences of crisis on a micro-level, this interdisciplinary title will appeal to both undergraduate and postgraduate students interested in sociology, social policy, geography, urban studies and research methods (social science).

Crisis in Sociology presents a compelling portrait of sociology's current troubles and proposes a controversial remedy. In the authors' view, sociology's crisis has deep roots, traceable to the over-ambitious sweep of the discipline's founders. Generations of sociologists have failed to focus effectively on the tasks necessary to build a social science. The authors see sociology's most disabling flaw in the failure to discover even a single general law or principle. This makes it impossible to systematically organize empirical observations, guide inquiry by suggesting falsifiable hypotheses, or form the core of a genuinely cumulative body of knowledge. Absent such a theoretical tool, sociology can aspire to little more than an amorphous mass of hunches and disconnected facts. The condition engenders confusion and unproductive debate. It invites fragmentation and predation by applied social disciplines, such as business administration, criminal justice, social work, and urban studies. Even more dangerous are incursions by prestigious social sciences and by branches of evolutionary biology that constitute the frontier of the current revolution in behavioral science. Lopreato and Crippen argue that unless sociology takes into account central developments in evolutionary science, it will not survive as an academic discipline. Crisis in Sociology argues that participation in the "new social science," exemplified by thriving new fields such as evolutionary psychology, will help to build a vigorous, scientific sociology. The authors analyze research on such subjects as sex roles, social stratification, and ethnic conflict, showing how otherwise disconnected features of the sociological landscape can in fact contribute to a theoretically coherent and cumulative body of knowledge.

Widely assigned and taught in senior capstone and social theory courses, Sociology After the Crisis offers the first systematic theory of social differences built on the sociological traditions by embracing to Durkheim, Weber and other familiar figures. The first edition was acclaimed for its nuanced and original rereading of Durkheim in relation to the theoretical reasons he and his contemporaries neglected race and gender. This new edition features two chapters of new material written in the summer of 2003, as the new social structures of the 21st century became increasingly clear. The new Chapter Ten draws upon 9-11, the "new world order" of two Bush presidencies, and globalization to show how individuals' lives and sociologies must be thought about in new ways. These events also highlight how American society and sociology have responded and sometimes failed in the struggle over the crisis of modernism. Reviews for the First Edition: "[This] expansive reimagining of the historical roots of sociological imagination - especially as it embraces voices and visions long lost to our most important national debates - is balm to the fractured soul of American society. Lemert's elegant and passionate volume will aid immeasurably in our nation's search for sane solutions to the crises of purpose and perspective he so skillfully explores." Michael Eric Dyson, author of Making Malcolm and Between God and Gangsta' Rap "Elegantly crafted." Steven Seidman, State University of New York at Albany