Social Theory

How to Become an Iconic Social Thinker: The Intellectual Pursuits of Malinowski and Foucault

by Dominik Bartmanski

Published in European Journal of Social Theory

The present article develops a new approach to intellectual history and sociology of knowledge. Its point of departure... more The present article develops a new approach to intellectual history and sociology of knowledge. Its point of departure is to investigate the conditions under which social thinkers assume the iconic reputation. What does it take to become ‘a founding father’ of a humanistic discipline? How do social thinkers achieve the status of a trans-disciplinary star? Why some intellectuals attract tremendous attention and ‘go down in history’ despite personal and professional failures, while others enjoy only limited recognition or simply sink into oblivion, even if they have met all the standards of their day? Quite a few sociologists have tackled this elusive issue. Pierre Bourdieu, Michele Lamont and Randall Collins are among those who fleshed out strong explanatory frameworks. This project adds to this body of knowledge by emphasizing cultural factors that these authors downplayed in their seminal accounts, despite being aware of their significance. By showing why these underdeveloped aspects of their works need to be incorporated into the debate and how this can be achieved, this article introduces a new theorization of the iconic, lasting intellectual reputation substantiated by evidence from the lifeworks of Bronislaw Malinowski and Michel Foucault. As such, it aims, minimally, to make sociology of knowledge decisively ‘cultural’. Maximally, it seeks to demonstrate that the iconic success of intellectual intervention in social theory depends on carefully performed and contingently mediated engagement with the binary systems of symbolic classification.

Materiality and Meaning in Social Life: Toward an Iconic Turn in Cultural Sociology

by Dominik Bartmanski

Introduction to the book "Iconic Power" co-authored with Jeffrey C. Alexander

With this volume, we push the study of culture into the material realm, not to make cultural sociology materialistic... more With this volume, we push the study of culture into the material realm, not to make cultural sociology materialistic but to make the study of material life more cultural. We introduce the concept of iconicity, and alongside it the idea of iconic power. Objects become icons when they have not only material force but also symbolic power. Actors have iconic consciousness when they experience material objects, not only understanding them cognitively or evaluating them morally but also feeling their sensual, aesthetic force.

Paradoxes of Sociology: Some Notes on the Meaning and Reception of Jeffrey Alexander's Work

by Dominik Bartmanski

This is an article in Polish.

It serves as the introduction to the book:

Jeffrey C. Alexander – Znaczenia Społeczne: Studia z Socjologii Kulturowej (Social Meanings: Studies in Cultural Sociology. Krakow: Nomos

Z obwoluty książki Jeffreya Alexandra The Meanings of Social Life zachęcają nas do jej lektury słowa Zygmunta... more
Z obwoluty książki Jeffreya Alexandra The Meanings of Social Life zachęcają nas do jej lektury słowa Zygmunta Baumana. W swym krótkim omówieniu tego klasycznego już manifestu kulturalistycznego, Bauman zwraca szczególną uwagę
na jego inspirującą paradoksalność, która spełnia się w przekonującym łączeniu przez Alexandra wątków pozornie przeciwstawnych, w systematycznym dążeniu do zintegrowania tego, co w tradycji socjologicznej pozostawało zwykle rozdzielo-ne lub wzięte za antytezy. Działanie i znaczenie, opis i wyjaśnienie, powszedniość i transcendencja, religijność i racjonalność, wartości i fakty, w końcu poezja kul-tury i proza przyziemności – to według Baumana klasyczne dychotomie ukazane przez socjologię Alexandra w fascynującym i rewidującym dyscyplinę świetle. Celność tej uwagi czyni ją adekwatnym kluczem nie tylko do zrozumienia zawartych w tym tomie tekstów, ale także wyborów intelektualnych, które legły u ich podstaw.

Education for the Society of the Future in Morin's Work

by Vasiliki Kantzara

The folds of a-topia (or a materialist take on Utopia)

by Constantinos Miltiadis

short paper, extended version of a competition entry. The original was written with Demetris Shammas, Vasiliki Nikoloutsou, Isavella Ines Oikonomopoulou and Daphne Oikonomopoulou

The paper tries to construct and oppose a material ontology to utopian or idealistic architectural intentions The paper tries to construct and oppose a material ontology to utopian or idealistic architectural intentions

German Sociology After Reunification

by Cüneyd Dinc

Since the 1990s German sociology is confronted with a lost of its “supremeness of interpretation” of societal trends... more Since the 1990s German sociology is confronted with a lost of its “supremeness of interpretation” of societal trends and processes to other academic disciplines, like biology or anthropology. This may be surprising, if one compares the situation in the 1960s and 1970s, where Sociology in Germany was a leading science, analyzing the problems and contradictions of German society and was important for the academic and intellectual socialization of a generation of young students and scholars. The aim of this article is to give a brief overview about contemporary German sociology, describe the current situation of Sociology in Germany and to give an answer for its actual problems and lost of influence.

Negating that which Negates us: Marcuse, Critical Theory and the New Politics of Refusal

by Christian Garland

‘Negating that which Negates us: Marcuse, Critical Theory and the New Politics of Refusal’ (under review) in Radical Philosophy Review. Version of paper presented as part of Panel 24: ‘Looting, Refusing, Negating, Embodying’, 'Critical Refusals’ Fourth Biennal Conference of the International Herbert Marcuse Society, University of Pennsylvania, 27-29 October 2011

Something for all, so that none may escape: reworking the critique of consumption (2012)

by Christian Garland

Something for all, so that none may escape: reworking the critique of consumption in Fast Capitalism 8:2

“We Teach All Hearts to Break” (2012)

by Christian Garland

“We Teach All Hearts to Break”: On the Incompatibility of Education with Schooling at All Levels, and the Renewed Need for a De-Schooling of Society
Published in Educational Studies: A Journal of the American Educational Studies Association 48:1, Special Issue: “Anarchism… is a living force within our life…” Anarchism, Education and Alternative Possibilities pps.30-38
http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/heds20/48/1

Review of Frolich P. (2010) Rosa Luxemburg: Ideas in Action (2012)

by Christian Garland

Unedited version of shorter review published in Anarchist Studies 21.1 pps.119-121
http://www.lwbooks.co.uk/journals/anarchiststudies/current.html

Justicia como virtud artificial en David Hume. Elementos para una teoría psico-social de la acción

by Ana Marta González

Pensamiento, pp. 97-127, 2008. ISSN 0031-4749

2011 “Empire, Global Capitalism, and Theory: Reconsidering Hardt and Negri,” Current Perspectives in Social Theory. Vol. 29. P. 187-207.

by Jeb Sprague

It has been over a decade since the publication of Michael Hardt and Antoni Negri’s widely read Empire, a book that... more It has been over a decade since the publication of Michael Hardt and Antoni Negri’s widely read Empire, a book that claimed humanity had entered a qualitatively new era in the organization of power. How do critical sociological studies that also theorize global capitalism depart from or share affinities with Hardt and Negri’s Foucauldian-inspired notion of empire? The two most important shared insights is the notion of a new epoch in the history of world capitalism and the conceptualization of a global system that moves beyond the idea of U.S. imperialism solely as behind its fundamental structure. However, overpowering Hardt and Negri’s framework are some fundamental problems: the vague and nondialectical idea of multitude, the lack of the role of the state, their confusing and contradictory idea of constitutionalism, and a misapprehension of immaterial labor.

2012 “Transnational State,” in George Ritzer, eds, The Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Globalization, First Edition (Malden, MA and Oxford: Blackwell Publishing Ltd).

by Jeb Sprague

The theory of an emergent transnational state (TNS), as coined by sociologist William I. Robinson (2001), claims that... more The theory of an emergent transnational state (TNS), as coined by sociologist William I. Robinson (2001), claims that through globalization a nascent political, juridical and regulatory
network is coming into existence worldwide. This notion rests upon the idea that a dominant social force, a transnational capitalist class (TCC), propels globalization through transnational corporations (TNCs) (Robinson & Harris 2000). The TCC, to promote and ensure its power, requires a concomitant political project. Such a political project would involve, for example: (i) promoting investor confidence in the global economy, (ii) setting up mechanisms and institutions for responding to economic, political, and military crises that threaten the stability necessary for global markets, and (iii) establishing a degree of macroeconomic policy uniformity across borders.

International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences

by Jeffrey Prager

Plurality and Indeterminacy: Revising Castoriadis's Overly Homogeneous Conception of Society

by Jeff Klooger

La violence en situations. Entretien avec Randall Collins

by Gérôme Truc

Propos traduits de l'anglais (États-Unis) et présentés par Gérôme Truc

Entretien paru dans la revue "Tracés", n°19, 2010, p. 239-255.

Randall Collins (né en 1941) est l’un des plus importants sociologues américains contemporains. Il est Dorothy Swaine... more Randall Collins (né en 1941) est l’un des plus importants sociologues américains contemporains. Il est Dorothy Swaine Thomas Professor de sociologie à l’Université de Pennsylvanie (Philadelphie) depuis 1997, et vient tout récemment d’être élu 102e président de l’Association américaine de sociologie. Dans les années 1960, il fut l’étudiant de Talcott Parsons à Harvard, puis d’Herbert Blumer et Erving Goffman à Berkeley. Ses manuels d’histoire de la pensée sociologique – The Discovery of Society (huit rééditions depuis 1972), écrits avec Michael Makowsky, et Four Sociological Traditions (1994) – sont depuis plus d’une vingtaine d’années des références incontournables pour tout étudiant en sociologie. Pourtant son œuvre, traduite dans de multiples langues et embrassant les principaux domaines de la sociologie, reste malheureusement mal connue en France.


Plan de l'entretien :

La domination émotionnelle des situations violentes

Voir la violence telle qu’elle est

Vers une macrosociologie de la violence micro-fondée

Esquisse d'une sociologie de la théologie. Une relecture de La topographie légendaire des évangiles en Terre sainte de Maurice Halbwachs

by Gérôme Truc

Archives de Sciences Sociales des Religions, 2010, n°150, p. 155-173.

Bien que de nombreux auteurs aient fait œuvre à la fois de sociologue et de théologien, il n’existe pas à proprement... more Bien que de nombreux auteurs aient fait œuvre à la fois de sociologue et de théologien, il n’existe pas à proprement parler de «sociologie de la théologie». L’objet de cet article est de proposer une relecture de La topographie légendaire des évangiles en Terre sainte de Maurice Halbwachs afin de montrer que ce livre offre autant une étude de sociologie de la mémoire qu’une esquisse de sociologie de la théologie. Après avoir précisé en quoi on peut parler d’une étude de la «construction sociale de la pensée chrétienne» chez Halbwachs, on revient plus en détails sur la façon dont il analyse le mécanisme de production de l’orthodoxie théologique, puis sur la spécificité du regard que le sociologue porte sur les questions théologiques. Enfin, la conclusion est l’occasion de souligner ce que pourrait apporter la sociologie de la théologie à la sociologie en elle-même.

Even if various authors contributed to sociology as well as to theology, nothing like a “sociology of theology” exists. The aim of this article is to offer a rereading of La topographie légendaire des évangiles en Terre sainte by Maurice Halbwachs, in order to show that this book is not only a study of sociology of memory but also an outline of a sociology of theology. After having defined in what extent we can find a study of “the social construction of the Christian thought” in Halbwachs’ work, we turn to the way he analyses the production process of the theological orthodoxy, and then to the specificity of the sociological point of view on theological questions. Finally, the conclusion gives us the occasion to underline what the sociology of theology could bring to sociology itself.

Memory of places and places of memory: for a Halbwachsian socio-ethnography of collective memory

by Gérôme Truc

Published in "International Social Science Journal", n° 203–204, 2011, p. 147-159.

Les études mémorielles connaissent depuis plusieurs années un essor certain. Mais, à la suite du travail de... more Les études mémorielles connaissent depuis plusieurs années un essor certain. Mais, à la suite du travail de l’historien Pierre Nora, l’analyse initiée par Halbwachs des processus de localisation des souvenirs a trop souvent été réduite à une simple étude des « lieux de mémoire ». Le but de cet article est alors de restituer la portée sociologique de la dynamique des rapports entre mémoires et lieux, en soulignant à cet égard la portée paradigmatique, tant du point de vue méthodologique que théorique, de La topographie légendaire des évangiles en Terre sainte. À partir d’exemples tirés de ses propres recherches sur les lieux d’attentats et d’une revue de la littérature sur les phénomènes de « mémorialisation spontanée », l’auteur montre que l’enquête sociologique doit se pencher tour à tour sur « ce que les lieux font à la mémoire » et sur « ce que la mémoire fait aux lieux ». Un tel travail implique de porter une attention particulière aux déplacements, tensions et conflits existant entre la « mémoire des lieux » d’un événement passé et les « lieux de mémoire » où cet événement est commémoré, et justifie pour cela le recours à une méthodologie essentiellement ethnographique.

How do we understand taste in music?

by Ganna Grebennikova

An student essay written in Cambridge for 'Media and Culture' class at the Mphil in Modern Society and Global Transformations. Supervised by Peter Webb. An exercise in sociology of culture: Adorno, Bourdieu, Alexander, Archer at al. used to position music in sociological theory and culture studies.

Pierre Bourdieu and the Distinctive Body

by Nadeem Fayaz