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On 9 October 2022, Bruno Latour died. His death was widely and deeply mourned. He is a great loss to sociology. This article takes Latour's death as cue to make an initial posthumous assessment of his work. It argues that, with Latour's death, sociology is at a cross-roads which in some ways reprises the Tarde-Durkheim debate. When Tarde died in 1904, the Durkheimian school became dominant. After Latour's death, this article considers whether that history might now been reversed with a subsidence of the Durkheimian tradition. The article argues it should not. While recognising Latour's ingenious creativity and his massive contribution to sociology, the article rejects Actor-Network Theory (ANT). Despite the many strengths of ANT and the extraordinary influence it has exerted, the article dissects the actant to claim that ANT is a flawed project. It argues in order to avoid accusations of determinism, the status of the actant was always ambiguous in ANT. As a result, although Latour consistently denied the power of human social groups, his analyses eventually relied upon surreptitious appeals to them. The neo-Durkheimian currents which are evident in contemporary sociology should re-assert themselves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Herbert Adolphus Miller (1875–1951) is a neglected figure within North American sociology, yet he made a distinctive contribution to the sociology and politics of race relations. He was one of the first sociological critics of eugenics and developed a distinctive approach to race relations and the position of subject minorities derived from a critical analysis of European empires. His approach was complementary to that of Du Bois with whom he had a close relationship. In this article, we trace Miller's critique of eugenics and the idea of 'Americanisation' as a policy of immigrant assimilation, showing the distinctiveness of his approach within North American sociology, including the milieu of Chicago sociology with which he was associated. We also examine the connection between his sociology of race and Park's position on race relations as being a process of gradual assimilation. We conclude with discussion of the Chicago school influence over Gunnar Myrdal's The American Dilemma and the alternative approach to race relations that both Du Bois and Miller had already outlined in the 1920s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This introductory article to the special issue 'Classical Sociology from the Metropolis' provides a comprehensive exploration of the profound influence of metropolises, particularly Berlin, on the development and discourse of classical sociology. Emphasizing the metropolis as a social space and promoter of sociological thought, it delves into the lives and works of key figures such as Georg Simmel, Robert E. Park, W.E.B. Du Bois, Frieda Wunderlich and Rose Laub Coser. Their interactions, perspectives and transnational exchanges, particularly between Berlin and other urban centres such as Chicago and New York, are highlighted, illustrating the global interconnectedness of sociological discourse. While acknowledging established sociological icons, the article also highlights the often overlooked contributions of women and scholars of colour, challenging and expanding the traditional understanding of the 'classical' in sociological thought. The narrative travels from the early urban sociological and feminist theories that emerged in the metropolis of the 1920s to the complexities of Marxist sociology in a divided Berlin after the Second World War. Through a curated selection of articles in the special issue, the work underlines the central role of the metropolis in shaping foundational sociological concepts and the thinkers who championed them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a brief exercise in the critical sociology of sociology, this article demonstrates W.E.B. Du Bois's undeniable contributions to the history, discourse, and development of American sociology in particular, and the wider world of sociology in general. This dialectical approach to Du Bois's sociological discourse will enable objective interpreters of his work to see that when compared and contrasted with the monumental work of Karl Marx, Max Weber and Emile Durkheim, what was and what remains really and truly distinctive about Du Bois's sociology is precisely his unpretentious preoccupation with uniquely and unequivocally American social, political, and cultural issues, such as, for example: race and anti-Black racism in the context of slavery, lynching, Black Codes, Jim Crow laws, segregation, and other forms of racial oppression in the United States; racial capitalism and the racial colonization of social classes in the United States; and the racial colonization of gender and sexuality in the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main objective of the paper is to identify the logic of the sociological field in the GDR, looking at how it was spatialized in the city of East Berlin. In this regard, I am less interested in providing an overview of the different research streams of the main sociologists operating in the scientific and academic institutes located in Berlin than in reconstructing some crucial dynamics at work there and highlighting their effects at the social and symbolic levels. The underlying idea is that, especially in East Berlin, the sociological knowledge produced was less homogeneous than it has been represented in the existing literature. Without negating the existence of shared aspects characterizing Marxist-Leninist sociology, also superimposed on the political elite, a field analysis enables us to see how the different positions and trajectories of GDR-sociologists had an impact on their approaches to theoretical, epistemological, and methodological questions, and on their understanding and uses of concepts deriving from both Marxist-Leninist and "bourgeois" sociology. In the analysis, I will first compare the social trajectories of two of my interview-partners as paradigmatic of two different sociological habitus depending on their different academic/political socialization, networks, and positions in the field. As a second step, I will present a sketch of the sociological field drawn from 63 curricula of sociologists active in East Berlin in an attempt to pinpoint, on a larger scale, the homologies between the social and symbolic spaces of the field. Thus, the underlying idea is to examine the intersection of the "quasi-structural properties" of the field with its "phenomenological aspects" concerning the "feel for the game." While the two understandings of field are interdependent, it is in the second one that the physical space as a localized social space played a crucial role in defining the material, social, and cultural constraints and opportunities actors faced which, in turn, influenced their practices and choices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Like Faust, sickened by existing scholarship, in his case political economy, he engages himself in a lifetime struggle against it and thereby to provide the intellectual resources for the overcoming of what Marx mostly called the bourgeois mode of production and soon came to be called capitalism. It consists of a close reading of I Capital i as I inter alia i an I aesthetic i whole, focused in particular on Marx's constant quotation of Goethe's I Faust. i For Kemple, this influence goes all the way down. Kemple, Thomas Marx's Wager: Das Kapital and Classical Sociology. [Extracted from the article]

In this introduction, we thank those who supported and contributed to our special issue of Classical Sociology, on the work and life of André Gorz. We then provide a sketch of Gorz's place in intellectual history. Along the way, we explain some of our motivations for editing the special issue, then move on to a discussion of our contributors' papers. We end with a reiteration of our goals for the issue, and with thanks once more to those who helped make it happen. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This review focuses on one major work of Hans Kelsen which was first published in 1922 and is now included in the most recent volume of Hans Kelsen Werke. While Kelsen's reputation is as a legal philosopher, this 1922 work shows that he had an excellent understanding of sociology, especially regarding Georg Simmel and Max Weber. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This review of Bhambra and Holmwood's Colonialism and Modern Social Theory engages Chapter Six of the text, "Du Bois: Addressing the Colour Line," as a site to contemplate broader questions about the cost of the pervasive historical erasure of the realities of colonialism and racism from the classical sociological cannon. Beyond historical description, the author thinks with the text to imagine a usable sociology toward the aim of alchemy and repair. Specifically, the author addresses the role "the classics" might play in teaching sociology in this context of such intentional redress. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fitzi, Gregor Normative Intermittency: A Sociology of Failing Social Structuration, London: Palgrave Macmillan Cham, 2022. Gregor Fitzi comments that the crisis of the present is not unlike the crisis of the 1920s, which, one may recall, was in part an intellectual crisis over the idea of progress: the capitalist development of the late 19th and early 20th centuries was ended by a catastrophic world war. [Extracted from the article]

This is a translation from French of a speech given by Georges Gurvitch (1894–1965) originally published in Cahiers Internationaux de Sociologie in 1966 under the title 'Proudhon et Marx'. Gurvitch, who succeeded Émile Durkheim as chair of sociology at the Sorbonne, discusses the significance of the revolutionary socialists Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (1809–1865) and Karl Marx (1818–1883) for the field of sociology. In particular, Gurvitch highlights similarities in their thought such as Proudhon's collective force and Marx's surplus value and their shared concern for worker self-management. He argues that their mutual antipathy towards each other was rooted in personal feelings rather than in the incompatibility of their ideas, and calls for a synthesis of their ideas which would correct their errors and inspire 'a new collectivism, neither Marxist nor Proudhonian, but surpassing both'. Lastly, Gurvitch emphasises the recurrent threat of fascism and stresses 'decentralised collectivism' as the only viable alternative going forward. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Émile Durkheim's late work focuses on représentations collectives, social facts that embody sui generis social forces and that direct behaviour in meaningful ways. The focus on représentations collectives raises questions, but also opens doors for Durkheimian sociology. Many would contend that Durkheim's focus on représentations collectives introduces a hermeneutical and ideational element that is at odds with his positivist approach. His study of représentations collectives also point to a potentially broad application of his method to the study of culture as a causally autonomous factor in social life. This article will discuss the social fact in Durkheim's late work in light of these issues. It will argue that représentations collectives are social facts, 'things' in Durkheim's terminology, that are rooted in ritual. They have an objective existence and are causally efficacious, which makes them the object of positive sociology; there is thus no tension between 'early' and 'late' Durkheim on this point. It will also argue that due to the causally autonomous and inherently meaningful nature of représentations collectives, Durkheim's approach adds to the Strong Program's research agenda, albeit with more of a focus on ritual and emotional energy. In so doing the article seeks to build a bridge between the Strong Program and the interaction ritual approach developed by Randall Collins. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper responds to the 'existence theory' proposed by Baert, Morgan and Ushiyama. It considers their proposals in light of two main thematics: the general account of human existence, and the more empirical sociology of existential milestones. Both elements are appraised in light of existentialist philosophy and earlier attempts at 'existentialist sociology'. It is suggested that the authors engage with generational theory, and also give an account of the commodification of significant life-stages by the milestones culture industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this essay, we provide a comprehensive reply to the critical commentaries by David Inglis, Thomas Kemple, William Outhwaite, Simon Susen, Bryan S. Turner, and Robin Wagner-Pacifici. Our reply is structured along three main pillars. Firstly, we clarify what we aim to achieve with existence theory. Drawing on neo-pragmatist philosophy, our aim is to present a new and useful perspective on a wide range of social phenomena; we do not attempt to tackle or resolve broad philosophical issues. Secondly, we demonstrate that we do not subscribe to an algorithmic notion of society which posits that people's trajectories have to fit a neat, linear pathway. Related, we do not wish to impose a normative model that endorses the existential milestones that are dominant in any particular society. Thirdly, building on various helpful pointers from our critics, we elaborate on various ways in which the theory could be enriched and further developed: for instance, by bringing in insights from the sociology of generations, critical theory, and sociological studies of the body. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After exploring the main tenets of existence theory and the affinities between this theory and other philosophical traditions, this introduction lists the central points of each contribution to this special issue. In what follows, we provide a brief synopsis of the critical commentaries by David Inglis, Simon Susen, Robin Wagner-Pacifici, Bryan S. Turner, William Outhwaite, and Thomas Kemple. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main purpose of this paper is to examine the 'existence theory' proposed by Patrick Baert, Marcus Morgan, and Rin Ushiyama. To this end, it focuses on some key issues that could, and arguably should, be explored in more detail, especially if the authors decide to develop their project further, permitting them to establish a new interdisciplinary branch of inquiry. The comments and suggestions made in this paper are meant to be constructive, supporting the idea that Baert, Morgan, and Ushiyama's outline could, and should, be turned into a bold, systematic, and long-term research programme. More specifically, the in-depth analysis of Baert, Morgan, and Ushiyama's theoretical framework demonstrates that their undertaking, which draws on central insights from both existentialism and phenomenology, contributes to bridging the disciplinary gap between philosophy and sociology. The paper concludes by asserting that Baert, Morgan, and Ushiyama's model provides a solid foundation for an ambitious, but viable, project that may result in the creation of a new current of research, capable of generating valuable insights into the tension-laden confluence of existential milestones, existential ladders, and existential urgencies in the theatre of human life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article provides an introduction to the 20th Anniversary Special Issue of the Journal of Classical Sociology. It begins with some brief observations on the key developments that have shaped the disciplinary core of sociology over the past decades. It goes on to reflect on the role of classical sociology in Europe and beyond, drawing attention to its continuing presence in British and Anglo-American intellectual circles. Far from existing in a bubble of academic ivory towers, the paradigms emerging from disputes in the social sciences in general and in sociology in particular are profoundly shaped by wider historical trends – notably those influenced by different forms of collective action, as illustrated in the impact of social movements on the university sector in the late 1960s. In light of recent calls for 'the decolonization of academia', we ask to what extent sociology can, and should, strive to go beyond the hegemony of the 'Western' canon. Having given a succinct overview of the 20-year history of JCS, we elucidate the different formats of the material published in the journal, stressing the importance of editorial flexibility. On a more substantive note, we point out that the thematic scope of the work published in JCS has been wide-ranging and inclusive – not only because of its editors' broad conception of 'classics' and 'classicality', but also because of the interdisciplinary spirit permeating the journal. This commitment, as we explain, manifests itself in the wide range of thinkers and topics discussed – from a multiplicity of perspectives – in the journal. We also grapple with noteworthy challenges posed by the academic publishing industry in the early 21st century, including the difficulties arising from peer-review processes. Finally, we express our gratitude to those who have contributed to this 20th Anniversary Special Issue and emphasize the journal's commitment to defending the legacy of classical sociology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aims to contribute to a sociology of knowledge via an autoanalysis of a marginalised member of the British upper-middle class, who moved first from the South to the North of England and then from England to Scottish society as an immigrant: a 'stranger who stayed'. Written in the first person, Bridget Fowler's reflections move between different religious and political worlds, focusing especially on her reception of conflicting sociological theories and her own development through these. Influenced by five exceptionally learned and lucid sociologists – John Rex, Herminio Martins, Raymond Williams, Pierre Bourdieu and Terry Lovell – she has spent her sociological career contributing to the demystification of power in various forms. In particular she has focused on the significance of secular culture – notably literature – in creating hegemonic domination. She has also analysed the role of symbolic revolutions in social transformation, avoiding in this respect falling either into idealism or simplistic class reductionism. Arguing that sociological theory still needs to teach Marx, Weber and Durkheim, these founding figures should not be seen as creating – in social scientific terms – a unified architectural construction, but should be read with and against one another; further, they need also to be combined with other, more contemporary, influences. Finally whilst noting the existential salience of movements around identity – nation, gender, sexuality and disability – she argues that the discipline must continue to reach out 'beyond the fragments', to address social totalities more broadly, including wider issues of social space and structures of power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Does the discipline of Sociology need to be defended from fragmentation by the mobilisation of a canon derived from its classical legacy? The paper provides an exposition of the arguments of Turner, Susen and O'Neill concerning fragmentation of Sociology as a discipline. It investigates whether there is fragmentation or reinvigorated synthesis in three examples: inequality beyond class, posthumanism and postmodernism. It draws on a reading of contemporary theoretical developments in Sociology. It concludes that the classical legacy is important and that engagement with external forces has reinvigorated rather than fragmented the discipline. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why does sociology teaching uniquely require study of its classics? The answer, it is suggested, lies in the indeterminacy of the idea of what is social —what constitutes and exemplifies it, at different levels of abstraction, about which the classical sociologists diverge, as do their continuing legacies. Synthesis aiming at disciplinary-wide consensus is not, therefore, a promising path. Selective perception, it is further suggested, deepens insight. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This short contribution explores alternative conceptions of classical sociology and continuities and discontinuities in its history, with particular attention to the German and Austrian context and the sociological diaspora resulting from European fascism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article addresses the issue of how to theorize with the help of the classics in sociology; and it is pointed out that the main difficulty involved is that Weber et al have told us next to nothing of how they actually produced their analyses. We are left with trying to search written statements for some clues; and there are not many of these. Furthermore, written statements represent a distinct universe of their own, meaning by this that some things can be said in a written form and others not. While the advantages of having something in a written form are clear, much of what goes into theorizing is of a nature that is hard to express in a written form. Several suggestions for how to theorize with the help of the classics can nevertheless also be found in the article. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Gregory Bateson developed his transdisciplinary thinking in the shadow of sociology, but his ideas are not generally viewed as part of the field of classical sociology. This article will explain this exclusion by arguing that Bateson's way of theorising – while attempting to make progress in the understanding of reality – returns to ideas that were already rejected within the field in which he first worked. Furthermore, as a reading of Bateson through the lens of Durkheim will show, Bateson's theories fail to provide a better understanding of social reality than those of his predecessors. This type of critical analysis demonstrates the weakness of some of Bateson's central claims and contributes to a more in-depth understanding and reassessment of his ideas from a sociological perspective. Pointing out that Bateson's critique of the modern worldview is based on a pre-critical and pre-modern philosophy of wholeness is not to invalidate Bateson's foundational intuition that our current mode of thinking challenges our chances of surviving as a species. However, in order to make a theoretically convincing argument concerning how our thinking challenges our survival, a more critical understanding of the relation between mind and society than the one Bateson offers is required. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aims at exploring the complex interplay between sociology and politics during the Nazi Regime by looking at how some nationalist and national-socialist ideas were incorporated in the works of sociologists. In order to do so, I shall focus on the production and dissemination of sociological knowledge, interlacing two levels of analysis. The first level examines the manners in which sociologists linguistically and epistemologically appropriated some key concepts of nationalist thought and national-socialist ideology. The second level considers the pragmatical use of sociological concepts and methods for investigating and recording the daily life of different groups within the Third Reich's territory. For this purpose, I will first draw an overall picture of the social and symbolic spaces of the sociological field in the interwar period, looking at how some nationalist key concepts gained different meanings over time. I will then analyse the intellectual/scientific trajectories of two sociologists, Adolf Gunther and Erich Rothacker, who began their careers in the second decade of the twentieth century. I argue that, in both cases, the academic/intellectual habitus each author developed before 1933 played a crucial role in determining their rise or decline as sociologists and, broadly speaking, as intellectual figures during the Nazi regime. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is exploratory in nature and attempts to address the following two questions: What is the role of abstractions in sociology? and How can you learn to become better at using them? Noting that there exists next to no literature in sociology on the topic of abstraction, a presentation is first made of two statements on this subject by Durkheim and Weber. Their content can be summarized as follows: abstractions are produced through isolation and generalization. Durkheim and Weber, like other sociologists, do not, however, address the issue of the general nature of abstraction, and for this, some ideas by Charles S. Peirce and Alfred North Whitehead are brought in. They suggest that an abstraction is characterized by the fact that its nature is derived from the reality of another phenomenon. The consequences of this view for sociology are discussed. The article ends with an attempt to show what a practical definition of abstraction would look like, in which the focus is on how to construct and use an abstraction, rather than on just define it in a formal manner. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Emile Durkheim developed his sociology in part by pointing to the insufficiency of contractual explanations of society. This article examines several iterations of 'the contract' in light of the rediscovery of Durkheim's (2011 [1894–1895]) lectures on Hobbes' De Cive. By viewing these recovered lectures alongside his canonical texts, we find three ways in which Durkheim distinguished his sociology from political and economic understandings of the social, in contrast with the contractarianism of Hobbes, the contractualism of Rousseau and the 'contractual solidarity' of Spencer. In his accounts of these thinkers, Durkheim explicates both his philosophical anthropology and his ontology of the social. Whereas contractual explanations of society treat the social as artificial and/or a mere aggregate formation, the social for Durkheim arises spontaneously and exists as a sui generis formation. Through the clarification of these conceptual coordinates, the nature of the social and its relationship with the political for each of these four thinkers come more fully into view. The article concludes with a consideration of the problem of the dissolution of society, pointing to a limit point or horizon for what is thinkable within Durkheimian sociology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This is a Review Article on the volume devoted to most of Weber's methodological writings in the Max Weber Gesamtausgabe. It indicates the critical importance of these writings and highlights the helpful editorial introduction, the copious notes, and other comments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that Goldberg's Modernity and the Jews in Western Social Thought fills an important gap: Jews are not only 'good to think' (Lévi-Strauss) but also essential for Western social theorists to critically interpret modernity and ambivalence towards it. In the article's first part, devoted to the book's epistemological and methodological underpinnings, I raise the following points: the book's disciplinary focus prevents it from engaging more fully with broader intellectual and sociocultural currents, its national- cum -thematic structure precludes the exploration of transnational comparisons and nationally exogenous factors, the neglect of Jewish exile and cosmopolitan identity in the face of antisemitism and lack of clarity as to whether the book conforms to a realist epistemology or a symbolic one. In the article's second part, I raise points about Goldberg's rereading of the sociological canon, notably regarding Durkheim, Simmel and Weber. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This is one of the final volumes in the Max Weber Gesamtausgabe and is entitled Verstehende Soziologie und Werturteilsfreiheit. It is ostensibly on Weber's methodological writings but most of the contents appear to be rather minor pieces— a large number of conference comments, small contributions, and several book reviews. Yet, this is an important work because of those pieces as well as the two major essays on methodology: "Über einige Kategorien der verstehende Soziologie" (1913) and "Der Sinn der 'Wertfreiheit' der soziologischen und ökonomischen Wissenschaften" (1917), both of which were originally published in the journal Logos. As with all of Weber's writings on methodology, these two essays are difficult to comprehend; yet, they are critical for grasping Weber's sociology. The first one sets out Weber's conception of "understanding" in history while the second explains why he believes his distinction between facts and values is critical for scholars. He suggests that we may not understand everything that occurred in history but we can understand enough; if we did not, then there would be no historical discipline. His words concerning the need for intellectual honesty are as important today as when he wrote them more than one hundred years ago. This book is a worthy companion to the forthcoming volume Zur Logik und Methodik der Sozialwissenschaften and is crucial for understanding Weber's path to sociology. It is a worthy final addition to the Max Weber Gesamtausgabe. And, it is a worthy successor to the Gesammelte Schriften zur Wissensschaftslehre. For anyone hoping to understand how Weber became the famous sociologist, this book is necessary reading. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article pursues the question of the origin of the left-Hegelian concept of immanent transcendence that emerged in the nineteenth century. Whereas some contemporary critical theorists apparently understand the concept as deriving from a religious origin, evolutionary and historical considerations would seem to indicate that more might be involved. Evolutionarily, the origin of the concept can be traced to the civilisation-founding cognitive achievement that marks the emergence of the current version of the human species and the concomitant cultural explosion during the Palaeolithic period. In this context, the cultural consolidation of the newly acquired metarepresentational capacity by language and visual symbolisation or art preceded religion by a considerable elapse of time. As one among a number of sociocultural practices, it could only have made a partial contribution to the conditions for the emergence of the concept. Historically, the thought of the key nineteenth-century left-Hegelians Marx and Peirce was fundamentally shaped, not by religion, but rather by the core modern innovation of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries – the new mathematical-scientific-philosophical understanding of infinity as real – which gained primacy by significantly impacting on relevant late eighteenth- and nineteenth-century intellectual developments, including laying down the parameters of classical social thought in general and left-Hegelianism in particular. Since the competing religious understanding of infinity, despite having left traces on modern validity concepts such as truth, justice and truthfulness, remained shrouded in indefinite incomprehensibility, it could at best continue to play only the role of an identity-securing, identity-cultivating and motivational source for some, not all. As such, it did not contribute to the nineteenth-century left-Hegelian concept. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines Max Weber's Politics as a Vocation within the broader context of his sociology through an examination of the unintended consequences of action. This speech, alongside Science as a Vocation, from the end of his life is interpreted as a classic example of Weber's pessimistic sociology in which the unintended consequences of action are typically negative and potentially destructive. The article, however, concludes with an examination of other political articles and speeches from the years immediately following the end of the War in which Weber examines the positive prospects for political reform. Despite Weber's admiration for the success of democratic institutions in the United States and Great Britain, Weber's legacy, such as his references to 'caesarism' in connection with mass democracy, is entangled controversially with the politico-juridical publications of Carl Schmitt and the crisis of democracy resulting in European fascism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article begins by considering the relevance and limitations of Marx's writings for understanding post-1970s financial capitalism. Two specific propositions are outlined and developed. The first is that twenty-first-century financial capitalism is conspicuously vulnerable to implosion or collapse, notably via a Habermasian 'legitimation crisis'. The second traces its progressive 'fracturing', with references to neoliberal austerity and post-welfarism and their deepening impact on the disadvantaged and vulnerable and the sick and disabled. The article then turns to Bhaskar's dialectical critical realism, suggesting, and attempting to show, that it lends additional philosophical and theoretical weight ('deepens' in Bhaskar's terms) the reach and range of Marxian analyses. The third part of the article focuses on Bhaskar's evolving theory of transformative – or emancipatory – action. It is contended that his account grounds and allows for rational and compelling resistance to financial capitalism's neoliberal status quo. In the concluding section, the affinity between Bhaskar's (neo-Marxian) theory of transformative action and the present authors' concept of 'action sociology' is outlined. The article concludes with a manifesto for an action sociology oriented to 'absence', challenging 'constraining ills' and imagining and researching 'alternate futures'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Peter L. Berger (1929–2017) was one of the most influential sociologists of the last century. In the sociology of religion, his classic status is uncontested. This article examines Berger’s original application of a constructionist sociology of knowledge perspective to the sociology of religion and its application to the theory of secularisation. The article assesses the influence of this work – The Sacred Canopy in particular – through an analysis of publication data and a typification of types of reference. Although the metaphor of the ‘sacred canopy’ and Berger’s ideas regarding secularisation have been undoubtedly influential, his work never engendered a genuinely constructionist sociology of religion. The reason for this, the article argues, is Berger’s inconsistent application of his own constructionist ideas to his work on religion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main problem that is addressed in this article is how to use Max Weber’s concept of the ideal type in concrete sociological research. The ideal type was invented by Weber more than a century ago, but has rarely been used in empirical research. One reason for this is that Weber was not very clear on what is meant by an ideal type. Another is that students of Weber’s work have not been very interested in presenting the ideal type in such a way that it can be used. Instead, it has been surrounded by an air of difficulty and unresolved theoretical questions, something that has made the average social scientist confused and unable to use Weber’s concept in his or her own research. In this article, it is argued that despite existing difficulties, we know enough today about the ideal type to use it effectively. A practical guide for how to construct as well as use an ideal type is provided. As a background to this argument, the development of the ideal type in Weber’s work is presented, drawing on a suggestion by Alfred Schutz that Weber originally designed this concept with history in mind, but then switched to sociology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The writings of the Austrian novelist and essayist Robert Musil provide sociology with vital problems and reflections. Indeed, Musil introduces discussions that extend conventional understanding of modernity – sociology’s general object of analysis. The article focuses on two major sets of questions in Musil’s work: the shapelessness of man and the relation between reason and sentiments. Both problems are essential in that genuine twentieth-century experience which Musil calls functional stupidity: the functionalisation of the mind to collective demands of the party, the race and the nation. The article discusses Musil’s arguments by relating them to central propositions in classical sociology (Simmel, Weber, Kracauer, Tönnies, Park). Classical sociology, in turn, is defined as a sub-discourse of classical modern reflection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article sets out to explore the contributions of classical social thinkers to a sociological understanding of love. It builds on the premise that despite its major relevance and consequential importance in shaping both individual lives and the social world, until recently love was a heavily undertheorised topic in the sociological tradition. Moreover, the body of disparate sociological reflections that have been made on the social nature of love has been largely forgotten in the discipline’s intellectual legacy. The article then proceeds in unearthing the classics’ contributions to a sociology of love. It starts with Max Weber’s view that love promises to be a means of sensual salvation in an increasingly rationalised social world based on impersonal formal relationships. Next, it critically examines Pitirim A. Sorokin’s integral theory of love. It then moves to address Talcott Parsons’ view on love as a binding force whose social function is to integrate the conjugal couple of the modern nuclear family in the absence of the external pressures exerted by the kinship network. The article concludes by showing how these conceptualisations of love were all embedded in wider theoretical constructions set up to account for the modernisation process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reconstructs the double movement of departure and return to Emile Durkheim’s sociology that Jürgen Habermas realized in his work in order to define the theoretical paradigm of communicative action and revive the original project of Critical Theory. It highlights, in the first part, how Habermas first used Durkheim’s The Elementary Forms of Religious Life to assign a phylogenetic function to ritual practices and explain modernity, from an evolutionist perspective, as the final result of a progressive linguistification of the sacred, having substituted the communion of minds in rites with the communication of reasons in the public sphere. After having discussed the two main objections that Habermas addressed to Durkheim at the time of The Theory of Communicative Action, the second part shows how he recently revised his rationalist framework through a new anthropological reading of The Elementary Forms, aimed at demonstrating, in the context of a more complex account of evolution, why the requirement of justice discloses, even in modernity, the active presence of the sacred in language and orientates the critical work of reason in the search of solidarity. Pointing out the new directions in which the hypothesis of a linguistification of the sacred must be seriously revised, it ends by suggesting how the question of social justice may open the path to a positive cooperation between sociology and Critical Theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1873, 75 years before Karl Jaspers published his theory of the Axial Age in 1949, unknown to Jaspers and to contemporary scholars today, Scottish folklorist John Stuart Stuart-Glennie elaborated the first fully developed and nuanced theory of what he termed “the Moral Revolution” to characterize the historical shift emerging roughly around 600 BCE in a variety of civilizations, most notably ancient China, India, Judaism, and Greece, as part of a broader critical philosophy of history. He continued to write on the idea over decades in books and articles and also presented his ideas to the fledgling Sociological Society of London in 1905, which were published the following year in the volume Sociological Papers, Volume 2. This article discusses Stuart-Glennie’s ideas on the moral revolution in the context of his philosophy of history, including what he termed “panzooinism”; ideas with implications for contemporary debates in theory, comparative history, and sociology of religion. It shows why he should be acknowledged as the originator of the theory now known as the axial age, and also now be included as a significant sociologist in the movement toward the establishment of sociology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reconsiders the work of Raymond Aron in order to explore the fracture lines that existed (and in many ways continue to exist) between conservative forms of political liberalism, as advocated by Aron, and neoliberal ideas of economic or market freedom associated with Hayek and his followers. These tensions between Aron and Hayek are analysed by assessing Aron’s involvement in the Mont Pèlerin Society and the Congress for Cultural Freedom through the 1950s, and then considering the arguments of his 1962 review of Hayek’s Constitution of Liberty and his 1963 Jefferson Lectures. While Aron has been largely neglected in the existing literature on neoliberalism, it will be argued that he was the key sociological figure to engage critically with neoliberalism in its formative years and, beyond this, that the value of his work today lies in its defence of the social basis of democracy and freedom against the raw economism of neoliberal thought. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The social theory outlined by Patrick Geddes has been largely ignored in writings on the history of sociology and in contemporary discussions of social theory. This neglect reflects the fact that his contributions were scattered and incomplete and were never drawn together into a coherent statement. He and his followers failed to engage with other sociologists and their insights were lost. This article draws on Geddes’ published statements to present a systematic account and reconstruction of his theoretical ideas. It is argued that he built a strikingly modern system theory that is relevant to contemporary discussions in social theory and that his role in the development of sociology must be reconsidered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Published more than 50 years ago, Reinhard Bendix’s classic monograph Max Weber: An Intellectual Portrait (1960) exercised an important influence on the early reception of Weber’s work in America. With the recent resurgence of interest in defining what constitutes ‘the Weberian legacy’, Bendix’s work has taken on renewed significance in understanding why the reception process of translation, adaptation and assimilation in America produced conflicting interpretations of Weber’s fragmented legacy. In the Intellectual Portrait, Bendix sought to provide a synthetic overview of Weber’s oeuvre as a whole, effectively rebalancing the earlier interpretative focus on The Protestant Ethic and the studies of the world religions by giving equal weight to the analytical treatise of Economy and Society, which includes studies of economics, religion, politics, power, law and the state. In doing so, Bendix challenged Talcott Parsons’ powerful alternative theoretical reading and helped extricate Weber’s historical sociology from the claims of functionalism and modernisation theory. Despite this success, Bendix’s Intellectual Portrait still exists under the shadow of Parsons’ interpretative legacy, and his reading of Weber is often criticised or misrepresented, even by his admirers. For some, he was an ‘instrumental Weberian’ who exaggerated Weber’s work on conflict and power, while for others he was a representative of ‘cultural Weberianism’ who focused on the autonomy of intellectual ideas and religious worldviews. In practice, Bendix, like Weber, can be adapted and assimilated into both readings. This essay reappraises the Intellectual Portrait as an important chapter in the intellectual history of Weber scholarship and interpretation. It seeks to re-evaluate Bendix as a Weber interpreter, as well as honour his status as a ‘Weberian’: a scholar who sought to reinterpret Weber’s comparative historical sociology of the West from the viewpoint of multiple modernities. While Bendix deserves this re-evaluation, the essay concludes by suggesting a genealogical counterhistory that questions the narrative retelling of the emergence of ‘the Weberian legacy’ as a progressive or cumulative process leading to an internally coherent or broadly consistent research programme, method, perspective, paradigm or tradition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In The Criminological Imagination, Jock Young praises Charles Mills for his sociological imagination and refutes Talcott Parsons as an abstract theorist. This article focuses on a key concept of contemporary criminology and in the work of Parsons, the concept of insecurity and its relationship with deviance. Three facts have to be kept in mind: (1) Parsons’ work is based in methodology in which conceptual schemes and empirical facts are distinguished. (2) Modern society is pluralised and differentiated and so are the sciences of human action. (3) Since the 1930s, Parsons conceptualised the co-existence of pluralised and differentiated democracy in America and monolithic and totalitarian dictatorship in Germany. It shall be shown how Young’s understanding of insecurity as cause of crime and criminalisation converges with Parsons’ ideas and how some of Young’s psychological assumptions have an equivalent in Parsons’ uses of psychoanalysis. Finally, Young and Parsons address the problem of emotion and expressive action, the pleasures of deviance as well as the origins of punitive reaction formations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this article is to clarify the difference between the anthropological category of the person, as analyzed in The Elementary Forms of Religious Life (1912), and the modern ideal of a free autonomous person, which had been at the center of Durkheim’s sociological project since The Division of Social Labor (1893). After explaining the need to return to a sociological perspective, the article considers Durkheim’s examination of the transformations implied by the modern cult of the person in the practical and intellectual organization of social practices. The modern ideal constitutes morality as a social fact, requiring a new form of moral education, as a first step toward a wider political transformation, based on social aspirations to justice that it is the task of sociology to explain, understand, and help realize. This practical commitment opens the way to an understanding of sociology’s original place in the modern epistemological discussion and, consequently, to an appreciation of the novelty Durkheim achieved in founding the French School of Sociology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the contribution of classical literature to sociology. Textbooks generally agree at least on a small core of the most significant contributions to recent feminist theory, poststructuralist theory, and critical race theory. They states that these approaches deserve to be included in accounts of the social theoretical tradition.

Warrants for continued attention to the sociological classics take diverse forms. This variation appears to be linked to a diversity of narrative interpretations of the sociological tradition. Positivist narratives affirm classics as building blocks for a naturalistic social science and as sources of material not yet incorporated into mainstream sociology. Pluralist narratives celebrate classics as exemplars of different legitimate perspectives. In synthetic narratives, classics are hailed for raising fundamental problems and pointing the way toward culminating syntheses. In humanistic narratives, classics appear as texts of enduring significance for their admixture of poetic insight and moral rumination as well as deep sociological analyses. Contextualist narratives view classics as expressive documents, giving voice to a cultural ambience or complex of collective interests. Dialogical narratives hail classics as parties to transnational and transgenerational conversations. This schema helps organize the wide array of interpretations of Émile Durkheim. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article proposes to give voice to the argument that prospects a cosmopolitan vision of society by reading between the lines of classical sociological thought. This vision, neither manifest nor intentional, is, however, unequivocally present. In particular, the article analyses fragments of writings from Tönnies, Marx, Durkheim and Simmel, wherein each author’s underlying approach to cosmopolitanism clearly emerges: liberal (Marx and Tönnies), patriotic (Durkheim) and relational (Simmel). Contributing to the cosmopolitan historical narrative, the analysis shows that a classical sociology of cosmopolitanism effectively exists and that, if revisited, certain analytical categories of sociological tradition can be fruitfully adapted to contemporary society. This article does not envisage a rejection of the founding fathers of classical sociology; on the contrary, it endorses a more profound analysis of their works. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Herbert Spencer represented societies as ‘social organisms’, but he also interpreted social life as a ‘spontaneous order’. This new reading of Spencer argues that these positions are not incompatible. The sociological challenge he tackled was how to conceptualise order, pattern and change in the mutually interdependent lives of social individuals as moral beings. Many critics, including Tönnies, Durkheim and Bosanquet, overlooked the subtlety of Spencer’s thought on the social organism and socially minded individuals, including its focus on ‘transcendental physiology’ and morphological variety. As a legacy, we behold mythical accounts of Spencer, either as an exponent of a reified ‘social system’ or as a mouthpiece for ‘laissez-faire’, and amoral ‘individualism’. This article suggests that individuals were understood to be neither ‘atomic’ nor amoral but capable of altruism and beneficence and to exhibit a ‘social self-consciousness’ within societies whose structures were mutable. If correct, Spencer’s contribution to the history of sociology has been commonly misjudged, and his basic thought retains value for sociology today in respect of ideas of individualism, holism and ‘society’. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Can Robert K. Merton’s seminal work in the sociology of science still offer useful insights to understand key features, trends and challenges of science in contemporary societies? This article focuses on two main topics. It addresses the general theme of values and norms in science in the light of relevant organizational changes that have marked science in recent decades, as well as the resilience of the concept of ‘scientific community’ to those changes. Starting from Merton’s classical study of the ‘Matthew effect’, the article then analyses the theme of competition in science, with particular regard to the dynamics that characterize the reputation and visibility of scientists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This homage to the prominent French sociologist Raymond Boudon (1934–2013), one of the most notable scholars of our day, who can be said to stand within the classical tradition of sociology in emphasising individual social action, along with the rationality of action and choice, gives a comprehensive representation of his work and achievements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Thorstein Veblen’s work undoubtedly has a place within the field of institutional economics but he has been a relatively marginal figure within the discipline of sociology. If Veblen is discussed at all within contemporary sociology, it is almost without exception in relation to his first major work The Theory of the Leisure Class and his principal contribution to our understanding of modern social life is considered to flow from observations on consumer conduct and associated practices and predispositions. While The Theory of the Leisure Class is a significant work, it by no means exhausts the contemporary relevance of Veblen’s oeuvre. It is argued in this article that in a series of subsequent interconnected studies which embed economic matters in their social and political context, Veblen proceeded to develop a powerful critical analysis of business enterprise and pecuniary culture, one that bears comparison with aspects of Karl Marx’s work. Veblen’s early twentieth-century critical political economy, his references to social and economic dilemmas and tensions as well as his identification of the potential scope for change or ‘reconstruction’ arising from substantial conflicts of interest between ‘the established order of business’ preoccupied with maximising profit and ‘the underlying population who work for a living’ are of considerable contemporary significance, as is his recognition that what is good for business is not good without reservation, not necessarily good for the community or ‘the common man’. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]