The Shape of Sociology for the 21st Century
Tradition and Renewal
- Devorah Kalekin-Fishman - University of Haifa, Israel
- Ann Denis - University of Ottawa, Canada
This critical volume explores the meaning of sociology and sociological knowledge in light of the recent growth and institutionalization of the discipline. A stellar group of international authors powerfully identify, question, and transform key assumptions in sociology. Leading us through the challenges faced by sociology, and the possible strategies for addressing them in the future, the book includes discussion of key issues such as: globalization; development; social policy; and inequality.
Sociology, itself a moment of the self-reflexive nature of modernity, periodically makes itself an object of reflection. This collection of papers, artfully brought together by Devorah Kalekin and Anne Dennis, by many of the leading sociologists of the ISA, covers a wide range of topics and perspectives that are crucial for understanding our time and how sociology shows both greater specialization of interests and at the same time, more interdisciplinary approaches - all of which are contextualized by the ever growing globality of our age - which includes the growing interests in sociology. It is mandatory reading for those concerned with where international sociology is and where it its going. And given the range of topics - it is a very enjoyable read.
All sociologists (and would-be sociologists) are interested in where their discipline is going and it is the backdrop to many conversations amongst those involved with the discipline, but serious discussion about the future is seldom broached. These essays from a workshop of luminaries associated with ISA build on a slim thread of earlier work by carefully updating and extending assessments of the discipline's past and by assaying its potentials. Their empirically-grounded examinations of the relationships between changing social realities (including a widening focus on the Global South) and the cognitive and social organisation of the discipline make the contributions particularly valuable.
This is an important and thought-provoking collection of contemporary articles on the current crisis in social theory.
With a comprehensive vision, great sociologists from around the world address the challenges of the new century.
The book itself is the product of a genuinely international effort and it would be wrong not to recognize this dimension. It arose from an initiative in 2008 in the International Sociological Association and contains nineteen chapters – there is some disproportion (over half) of authors from English-speaking countries of majority-European extraction (Australia, Canada, UK, USA), with a smattering of other individual authors from Continental Europe, leaving sole representatives from Belarus, Brazil, Israel and The Philippines.
