The Shape of Sociology for the 21st Century

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.

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.

Devorah Kalekin-Fishman teaches Sociology at the University of Haifa.  Ann Denis teaches Sociology at the University of Ottawa, Canada. 

About the Contributors Introduction: The Foreseeable Future of Sociology - Devorah Kalekin-Fishman and Ann Denis Part I. Theorizing Sociology: From Past to Future Recent Changes in Sociology - Michel Wieviorka On Inter-Human Space: Toward a Third Sociology - Piotr Sztompka From Modernity to Globality: The Route within Sociology - Devorah Kalekin-Fishman Integrating the Analysis of Complex Inequalities and Globalization into the Heart of Social Theory Using Complexity Theory - Sylvia Walby Part II. Sociology and Social Change Beyond Three Constitutive Ideas of Classical Sociology: Globalization, Post-Modernity and Reflexivity - Emilio Lamo de Espinosa The Shape of Sociology: Looking at the History of our Present - Elisa Reis Dimensions of World-Making: Thoughts from the Caspian Sea - Dennis Smith Part III. Focus on Concepts Identity in the Global Age: Hegemony, Resistance and Social Transformation - Lauren Langman Community as Social Metaphor: The Need for a Genealogy of Social Collectivities - Michael Humphrey Professions and Professionalism: Perspectives from the Sociology of Professional Groups - Julia Evetts Part IV. Unconscious and Conscious Differentiation in Sociology Sociology's Narratives of Global Change: History, Place, and Formations of Knowledge in the Discipline's Past and Future - Raewyn Connell A Plea for a More Interpretive, More Empirical and More Historical Sociology - Gabriele Rosenthal Post-Soviet Sociology as a Pattern of 'Another Sociology' - Larissa Titarenko Part V. Unresolved Challenges Including Sociological Practice: A Global Perspective and the US Case - Jan Marie Fritz A Cultural Transformation - The Design of Alienation in the Guise of Creativity - Pirkkoliisa Ahponen 'Bystander Sociology' and the Sonderbehaltung of the Social - Marvin Prosono Precarious Disciplinary Intersections and Inconvenient Truths: Sociology in Search - Susan McDaniel Policy-Driven Research, Audit Culture, and Power: Transforming Sociological Practices in the Philippines - Emma Porio Part VI. Looking Ahead Sociology in the Twenty-First Century: Embracing Complexity, Diversity and a Global Perspective - Ann Denis