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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]

Drawing upon resources from philosophy, sociology, history, and anthropology, this paper explores the possibilities of attending to geographies on the other side of life. After an introductory review of work on deathscapes and extant geographical reflections on absence and loss, the paper turns to consider three horizons in which geographers might extend their interrogations of different mortal conditions: mourning, the spatial politics of the dead, and corporeality. The paper concludes by reflecting on the disciplinary possibilities of responding to these empirical concerns at a time when we are often asked to cultivate all manner of lively geographies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that Elias's work presupposes a radical abandonment of philosophy as a vestige of magical-mythical thinking that has been rendered obsolete by the rise of sociology. For Elias, attempts by philosophers to claim a continuing nonempirical area of investigation are spurious and reflect only professional interests. The origins of Elias's position are traced to his rejection of neo-Kantianism and his participation in the Wissenssoziologie of Karl Mannheim in Weimar Germany. Focusing on the traditional ethical or normative questions, the paper shows how Elias's conception of the 'detour via detachment' enabled him to transcribe these issues (as well as traditional epistemological and ontological questions) into sociologically manageable terms. His strategy is further clarified through a comparison with the all-pervasive Critical Sociology approach to these matters, which emerges as severely handicapped by its reliance upon quasi-metaphysical, transcendental arguments. Also, its attributions of social blame generate fear images that reinforce conflict and its negative overstatements strengthen anxiety and frustration, thereby bolstering precisely what it is trying to change. The paper reveals the tacit function as a leftist code-word that the term 'critical' performs for many sociologists. Neo-Marxist 'critique' is shown to be a profoundly flawed attempt to deal with issues of theory and practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Between 1948 and 1959, perceptions of Israeli water resources changed dramatically from a strong belief in water abundance in the prestate period to an equally strong and unequivocal belief in water scarcity after 1959. This paper tells the story of how the water resources of Israel came to be constructed as scarce. On the substantive level, the paper tells the story of the dismantling of a network of water abundance and the emergence, instead, of a network of water scarcity and centralization, which helped to construct all of the following: water resource scarcity as 'fact'; centralized policy-making institutions as most 'efficient'; centralized technologies as 'appropriate'; the national space as the only source of identity; the national scale of water management as 'necessary'; a strong and centralized state as 'legitimate'; legal precedents for the use of state apparatus for surveillance, discipline, and control over water resources; and, consequently, a form of citizenship that is seen as at once heroic and disciplined. On the theoretical level, in this paper I argue that the ontological distinction often assumed between scientific (eg water scarcity) and political (eg centralized nation-state) fields of practice is exaggerated, especially in literature on water politics in Israel. I further demonstrate that technoscientific debates about water availability, efficient technologies for its utilization, and appropriate institutions for its management are constitutive of relations of power and government and are themselves implicated in the construction of an Israeli style of government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is concerned with the establishment of child psychology at the end of the 19th century and with its applied uses in the field of physical education. During this period psychology evolved from a philosophical field content with generalised statements about the human soul to a scientific field concerned with measuring and individuating the psyche, This paper focuses on how while psychology quickly laid claim to establishing the contours of normative menial health it was simultaneously deployed in the service of identifying and bolstering normative physical health. As interiority was systematically brought within the realm of science, the traditional metonymic connection between physicality and morality materialised into a new relationship between the self and its numerical existence. This relationship is explored here through an examination of physical-health testing in New York schools during the Progressive Era. My aim is to draw out the manifold ways in which psychological technologies were absorbed into spatial practice, supporting the claim of this theme issue that the proliferation of psychology can be traced through multiple governing practices and into specific geographies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I focus on the concept of diagrams, as they have been appropriated from a Deleuzean discourse into the philosophy of Manuel DeLanda. For strategical reasons Gilles Deleuze reiterated on several occasions a caution against subjecting diagrams to history. Yet, this is exactly what DeLanda seems to invite us to do. To counter this tendency, without abandoning DeLanda's perspective, a new passage between the virtual plane of consistency and concrete machines is invented. This paper is not a final solution, but an elaborated strategy which points ahead towards intensified efforts in investigating the evolution of visual screens. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The issue of knowing what it means for a group to have collective beliefs is being discussed more and more in contemporary philosophy of the social sciences and philosophy of mind. Margaret Gilbert's reconsideration of Durkheim's viewpoint in the framework of the plural subject's account is one of the most famous. This has implications in the history and the sociology of science—as well as in the history and sociology of philosophy—although Gilbert only outlined them in the former fields and said nothing about the latter. Symmetrically but independently, a historian of science, Mara Beller, has recently challenged Kuhn's conception of the role of consensus in sciences in a brilliant analysis by carefully studying the history of Copenhagen School of Quantum Mechanics. Not only does she show the role of disagreement and controversies (doubting whether there was any collective belief characteristic in this group of physicists), but she even shakes up the very idea of individual beliefs. Each scientist (Heisenberg, Bohr, etc.) could be seen as divided into several selves. This paper contends that these two conceptions open important new horizons in several domains, especially if they are linked together. The paper assesses this claim in the light of empirical examples like the Vienna Circle, Copenhagen School, and, eventually, Cartesian philosophy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper first offers a brief account of the competition between the Durkheimian sociological tradition and German philosophy in the period in which Bourdieu was a student at the École Normale Supérieure. It indicates the intellectual influences of the early years that Bourdieu subsequently acknowledged and then examines his use of the work of Weber in his first book, Sociologie de l'Algérie (1958). The paper then focuses on the development of Bourdieu's thought from the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s, a period in which he strategically presented himself as an anti-humanist sociologist whilst also articulating a view of science that was in tune with phenomenological and ontological philosophy. Bourdieu's 'Sociology and Philosophy in France since 1945' (1967a) receives particular attention since his analysis of sociology and philosophy in France in the post-war period was a key element in his own position-taking in respect of the two disciplines. The paper then examines Bourdieu's critiques of Weber at this time and suggests that his dissatisfaction with Weber's epistemology logically became a dissastisfaction with the claims of sociological explanation as such. There followed an attempt to reconcile a commitment to social science with an allegiance to elements of phenomenological thought. The outcome was a willingness on Bourdieu's part to see reflexivity as a means to problematizing sociological explanation more than as a means to refining it or making it more sophisticated. The consequence was that commitments to phenomenological ontology and social science co-existed in this period. The balance was to change again subsequently in Bourdieu's thought, and his responsivenesss to changing conditions exemplifies how we should ourselves rethink the relations between possible future social theories and the classical theories of Western sociology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The human body has in recent years become a ‘hot’ topic in sociology, not just in empirical research but also in sociological theorizing. In the latter context, the body has been variously a resource for broadening the parameters of traditional sociological thought deriving from the nineteenth century, and for overturning that paradigm and fundamentally reorienting the assumptions and concepts of sociological thinking. Attempts to abandon the old paradigm and foster a new one through the means of thinking about bodies are many and manifold, and in this paper we trace out the intricate history of moves towards a ‘corporeal sociology’. We identify the dilemmas that have attended these developments, especially as concerns the ways in which new modes of thinking sociologically have tended to founder over the classical sociological dichotomy between social structure and social action. Through tracing out the various moves and counter-moves within this field, we identify a central contradiction that affects all contemporary sociological practice, not just that dealing with the body: an oscillation between judging the utility of conceptual tools in terms of criteria derived from the discipline of Cultural Studies, and evaluating the arguments created by those tools on the basis of the incompatible criteria of classical sociology. The paper challenges sociologists to choose one set of’criteria or the other, for sociological practice cannot be based on both such antagonistic paradigms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a re-reading of the Foucauldian analysis of professional accounting firms given by Grey in his 'Career as a Project of the Self...' (Sociology, 28,2). It argues that Grey's paper provides an exemplar of the 'desocialising' tendencies observed in some Foucauldian analysis and attempts to illustrate this desocialisation through placing Grey's data in an Eliasian rather than a Foucauldian framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper gives an overview of developments in the area of role theory which took place in West Germany between 1958 and 1980. We differentiate three periods. The first is characterized by a discussion of Dahrendorfs Homo Sociologicus, of which we highlight only the essentials. This discussion took place in the early `60s. For the second period, in the late '60s - early 70s, the role theory discussion went into a different phase as a result of the so-called `positivism debate' in German sociology. The various points of view explored in this discussion seem to have converged since the mid '70s; the contours of an integrated role theory are becoming apparent. The paper closes with an overview of both positive and negative sides of the developments outlined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The assumption underlying most philosophical theories of science, that one can apply to any scientific theory the concept of 'truth', is, with its implication of absolute finality, a hangover from the period when Newtonian physics was regarded as an absolute end state. The hidden mourning about the passing of this ideal science gives present philosophical approaches to science and scientific method their common stamp. The alternative seems to be the retreat into a sociological relativism. The paper shows that it is possible to work out a science-theoretical paradigm which avoids the pitfalls of both philosophical absolutism and sociological relativism. It suggests that instead of discussing criteria of a fictitious absolute end-state of knowledge, one might try to discover criteria and conditions for the advance of knowledge, non-scientific and scientific. A theory of this kind has the added advantage that it can be tested by, and can serve as a guide for, empirical studies of sciences and of knowledge generally. The paper also suggests that discussions about 'value-freedom' should be abandoned in favour of enquiries into the use of scientific and non-scientific values in scientific work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of John Searle’s philosophy of society is to provide a foundation for the social sciences. Arguing that the study of social reality needs to be based on a philosophy of language, Searle claims that sociology has little to offer since no sociologist ever took language seriously. Attacking Durkheim head-on, Searle not only claims that Durkheim’s project differs from his own but also that Durkheim’s sociology has serious shortcomings. Opposing Searle, this paper argues that Durkheim’s account of social reality is still viable and that Searle’s attack backfires on his own theoretical project. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the canonization process of George Herbert Mead (1863–1931) in sociology through a recounting of the history of the book Mind, Self, and Society (1934). The relation between Mead and this particular work has no parallel in the history of sociological theory. Although the book was not written by Mead, or even organized under his direction, it has been through it that generations of academics and students have come in contact with Mead’s ideas. There are two main goals behind this exercise in historical reconstruction. First, the study of how Mind, Self, and Society came into existence and acquired classical standing offers an insightful view of the contingency and the complexity of canon formation. It is on this continuous process of reception, through which certain texts and authors acquire classical value, which the second part of the article focuses. It discusses the extent to which the history of the reception of Mead’s ideas would have been very different, and the impact of his ideas for theory building substantially larger, if it had been based, not on a posthumously published transcript, but on his own work. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Abstract The paper addresses the problem of the conceptualisation of morality in sociology. The traditional sociological conception of morality was based upon the acceptance of a fact/value dichotomy, implying that sociology portrays the factual nature of morality, which thereby becomes equivalent to group conformity The opposition of fact and value was brought into question by trends of thought that followed from, respectively, Alfred Schutz and Ludwig Wittgenstein. The line from Schutz's ideas led towards their reformulation by Harold Garfinkel, who to large extent integrated the ‘moral’ with the ‘cognitive’. Wittgenstein's influence, through, especially Peter Winch, John W. Cook and Alfred Louch undercut the idea that sociological descriptions were themselves purely factual, rather than integrally evaluative. A third stream is represented by Alasdair MacIntyre and Charles Taylor, who adopt the idea that morality must be understood in its social and historical context, and explicitly reject the separation of fact and value in moral inquiry. The fact/value distinction is the source of chronic problems for the sociology of morality. Specifically, a sociological account of morality, that would define the correct understanding of the nature of morality – ie identify what substantive character and content is appropriate to it – is not possible. The disintegration of the fact/value dichotomy also means that the idea that the social context can itself be described independently of normative considerations is an illusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A number of contemporary issues demand transdisciplinarity, a fusion between insights from different disciplines within some overarching framework. Yet too often in such cases the disciplines continue to talk past each other. This paper focuses on critical realism as a way of coordinating the disciplines. Critical realism provides a view of reality as stratified, with real causal mechanisms operating at the physical, biological, and social levels, and combining with each other to generate the world as experienced. This perspective is applied within a framework which has a long but now somewhat neglected history in social and political thought. As people interact with nature and transform it into the things they need, they finish up transforming their own natures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is premised on the view that it is premature to write about the end of modernity. Moreover it is argued that, for all the flaws of early Enlightenment philosophy, what Jurgen Habermas has termed the 'project of modernity' should be seen as incomplete, rather than abandoned. Drawing more generally on Habermas' theories, five metatheoretical theses are outlined and elaborated. These, it is suggested, might set the parameters for a fin-de-siècle sociology, geared above all to the rationalisation of the lifeworld, which is both credible and critical in orientation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author argues in this paper that we need a new paradigm for the idea of development. Its linkage with the notion of ever on going progress has to be abandoned Mere tinkering with this concept of development such as advancing the idea of organic development, is no longer sufficient. In fact only phases of development exist within a dynamic equilibrium This idea however does not seem to be appropriate particularly in sub-Saharan Africa. Hence, a provisional strategy is necessary to implement a counter-movement to the idea of development This countermovement can arise from a reflection upon art and philosophy which are non developmental phenomena i e they do not have a development in the sense of unlimited progress. Thus, in the fields of art and philosophy a distinction between developed and developing countries cannot be maintained while developmental differences between the Western world and sub Saharan Africa are of course very real in other fields A dialogue between artists and philosophers from both parts of the world can and has to take place on the level of complete equality As such it also acts as a counterforce to the idea of development in areas other than art and philosophy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The core problems of sociological and philosophical theories of knowledge remain insoluble and unrelated as long as both theories start from static models. The problems can be solved, and the respective theories related to each other, without undue difficulties if the acquisition of knowledge is conceptualized as a long-term process which takes place within societies also considered as long-term processes. This approach has the added advantage of being in closer agreement with the evidence. The paper indicates what needs to be unlearned and what to be learned in order to prepare the way for such a unified theoretical framework which can serve as a guide to, and which can be in turn corrected by, empirical sociological studies of all types of knowledge, scientific and practical as well as non-scientific or ideological. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]