In Acts of Meaning (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 1990, pp. 96-97), Jerome Bruner writes When there is a breakdown in a culture…it can usually be traced to one of several things. The first is a deep disagreement about what constitutes the ordinary and canonical in life and what the exceptional and divergent….this we know inContinue reading “Jerome Bruner On Cultures That ‘Breakdown’”
Tag Archives: sociology
Durkheim On The Pragmatist Conception Of Truth
Pragmatism’s much reviled ‘theory of truth’ received a sympathetic and yet critical and rigorous treatment in Émile Durkheim‘s little-known–to philosophers–Pragmatism and Sociology (John P. Allcock, ed., Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, England, 1955.) As part of this treatment, Durkheim notes that: If thought had as its object simply to ‘reproduce’ reality, it would be the slaveContinue reading “Durkheim On The Pragmatist Conception Of Truth”
Durkheim On Social Facts As Things: Methodology As Metaphysics
In The Rules of Sociological Method (The Free Press, 1982, pp. 35-36) Émile Durkheim writes: The proposition which states that social facts must be treated as things…stirred up the most opposition. It was deemed paradoxical and scandalous for us to assimilate to the realities of the external world those of the social world. This was singularly toContinue reading “Durkheim On Social Facts As Things: Methodology As Metaphysics”
Max Weber On The Ubiquity Of ‘Meaning’ In ‘Social Life’ And ‘Nature’
In “The Concept of ‘Following a Rule’” (Weber: Selections in Translation, ed. W. G. Runciman, Cambridge University Press, 1998, p. 107) Max Weber writes: If we separate in our minds the ‘meaning’ which we find ‘expressed’ in an object or event from those elements in the object or event which are left over when weContinue reading “Max Weber On The Ubiquity Of ‘Meaning’ In ‘Social Life’ And ‘Nature’”
Robert Merton On The Importance Of Knowledge For Analyzing Social Actions
In ‘The Unanticipated Consequences of Purposive Social Action” (American Sociological Review, Vol. 1, No. 6 (Dec., 1936), pp. 894-904) Robert Merton writes: The most obvious limitation to a correct anticipation of consequences of action is provided by the existing state of knowledge. The extent of this limitation may be best appreciated by assuming the simplest case whereContinue reading “Robert Merton On The Importance Of Knowledge For Analyzing Social Actions”
The Contingency Of Academic, ‘Disciplinary’ Classification
The textbook I use for my Social Philosophy class, Social Thought: From the Enlightenment to the Present (ed. Alan Sica, Pearson, 2005) is a standard anthology featuring selections from a wide range of historical periods and schools of thought (and the theorists identified with them). This collection may not only serve as ‘a textbook of socialContinue reading “The Contingency Of Academic, ‘Disciplinary’ Classification”
Max Weber’s ‘Iron Cage’: Who Will Bend Its Bars?
Yesterday morning, as the students in my Social Philosophy class and I discussed an excerpt from Max Weber‘s The Protestant Ethic And The Spirit of Capitalism, we ran out of time. As my students got up and started to head out for their next commitment (work or the next class), I began reading out loudContinue reading “Max Weber’s ‘Iron Cage’: Who Will Bend Its Bars?”
Studying the Social
This coming fall semester, I will teach, ostensibly for the second time, a class titled Social Philosophy. I say ‘ostensibly’ because, though I have taught the Class Formerly Known as Social Philosophy, this is most assuredly not your grandfather’s Social Philosophy. Brooklyn College’s philosophy department offers a pair of related classes: one titled Political Philosophy, andContinue reading “Studying the Social”
Samuel Delany on Power
I have finally taken down, from my shelves, my long-ago-borrowed copy of Samuel Delany‘s Tales of Nevèrÿon (Bantam Books, New York, 1979) and started reading it. Almost immediately, in the first story of Gorgik, the mine slave taken “as a plaything to Nevèrÿon’s imperial court” (‘The Tale of Gorgik‘), I came up on the following Foucauldian ruminationsContinue reading “Samuel Delany on Power”
Georg Simmel on Sociologically Positive Conflict and Urban Life
A quiet span of days with a national holiday mid-week, rare access to expansive living spaces, no subway riding. So, by virtue of having occupied a ‘retreat-like’ space and by taking a step back from the madding crowd, back to a slower pace, there is time to reflect on the space-living-crowds bargain that New YorkContinue reading “Georg Simmel on Sociologically Positive Conflict and Urban Life”
Samir Chopra 