1st Edition
Sociological Amnesia Cross-currents in Disciplinary History
The history of sociology overwhelmingly focuses on 'the winners' from the classical 'canon' - Marx, Durkheim, and Weber - to today's most celebrated sociologists. This book strikingly demonstrates that restricting sociology in this way impoverishes it as a form of historically reflexive knowledge and obscures the processes and struggles of sociology's own making as a form of disciplinary knowledge. Sociological Amnesia focuses on singular contributions to sociology that were once considered central to the discipline but are today largely neglected. Chapters explore the work of illustrious predecessors such as Raymond Aron, Erich Fromm and G.D.H. Cole as well as examining exceptional cases of reputational revival as in the case of Norbert Elias or Gabriel Tarde. Through understanding the obstacles of recognition faced by female sociologists like Viola Klein and Olive Schreiner, and public intellectuals like Cornelius Castoriadis, the volume considers the reasons why certain kinds of sociology are hailed as central to the discipline, whilst others are forgotten. In so doing, the collection offers fresh insights into not only the work of individual sociologists, but also into the discipline of sociology itself - its trajectories, forgotten promises, and dead ends.
Sociological Amnesia: An Introduction, 1. British Sociology and Raymond Aron, 2. Two Men, Two Books, Many Disciplines: Robert N. Bellah, Clifford Geertz, and the Making of Iconic Cultural Objects, 3. Erich Fromm: Studies in Social Character, 4. From Literature to Sociology: The Shock of Celine’s Literary Style and Viola Klein’s Attempt to Understand it (With a Little Help from Karl Mannheim), 5. Olive Schreiner, Sociology and the Company she Kept, 6. Lucien Goldmann's Key Sociological Problems and his Critical Heritage: From the Hidden God to the Hidden Class, 7. G.D.H. Cole: Sociology, Politics, Empowerment and ‘How to be Socially Good’, 8. Social Monads, Not Social Facts: Gabriel Tarde’s Tool for Sociological Analysis, 9. Alasdair MacIntyre’s Lost Sociology, 10. Castoriadis and Social Theory: From Marginalization to Canonization to Re-Radicalization, 11. Norbert Elias: Sociological Amnesia and ‘The Most Important Thinker You Have Never Heard Of’’
Biography
Alex Law is Professor of Sociology at Abertay University, UK. He is the author of Social Theory for Today: Making Sense of Social Worlds, and Key Concepts in Classical Social Theory.
Eric Royal Lybeck is completing his doctoral research in the Department of Sociology at University of Cambridge, UK.
"Mark Twain said that a classic is something that everybody wants to have read but nobody actually wants to read. Sociological Amnesia shows that many of the forgotten sociological classics are books one would certainly want to read eagerly. Recovering a diverse array of compelling authors from posterity's shadows, this book opens up vibrant new vistas for future sociological thinking."— David Inglis, University of Exeter, UK
"This book is a treasure trove of lost jewels. An international team of contributors present a range of social theorists - men and women from three continents - whose work has been forgotten or neglected but retains its power and relevance. The book deserves a place on every sociologist's bookshelf."—John Scott, University of Copenhagen, Denmark and University of Exeter, UK
"In the history of sociology we know more about the top 1% than the rest. The authors of this collection argue for upgrading at least twelve sociologists by offering explanations and complaints for their unjustified neglect. Readers of Law's and Lybeck's Sociological Amnesia are provided with insightful, detailed and combative pleas and detached analysis of interesting cases."— Christian Fleck, University of Graz, Austria, author of A Transatlantic History of the Social Sciences
"The editors, Professor Alex Law, of Abertay University, and Eric Royal Lybeck, University of Exeter, bring together various authors to write chapters on a dozen significant thinkers we now rarely read. In tackling the current obscurity, at least within sociology, of Raymond Aron, Robert Bellah, Erich Fromm, Viola Klein, Gabriel Tarde, Alasdair MacIntyre and others, the book offers some thoughts on why eminent writers fall out of fashion – whether this is caused by some inherent property of their work or is largely by chance. The book points out the cost of ignoring his
