Arendt Contra Sociology

Philip Walsh is Associate Professor of Sociology at York University, Canada. He is the author of Skepticism, Modernity and Critical Theory and co-editor of Retaking the Universe: William S. Burroughs in an Age of Globalization.

'This probing, ambitious and lucid book is the first major attempt to connect Hannah Arendt's work to contemporary sociology. It succeeds brilliantly and will be a vital source for all who wish to engage with Arendt's challenge to sociology and to the social sciences more generally.' Peter Baehr, Lingnan University, Hong Kong'Philip Walsh has accomplished something remarkable in this book. He has combined a contextual history of Arendt’s problematic relations to sociology, a deep reflection on some of the central themes of recent sociological thought, and an explication of her complex scheme of surrogates for more traditional social theoretical concepts.' Stephen Turner, University of South Florida, USA 'This is an important and accessible book that critically mediates debates in contemporary sociology in light of Hannah Arendt's work. Addressed primarily to sociologists, it successfully moves beyond Arendt's critique of sociology to show the way her insights can provide a significant and much needed corrective to the discipline's current state of theoretical pluralism. The book's great accomplishment is the way it uses Arendt's formulations to examine the conceptual strengths and deficiencies of theorists from Marx, Weber, Simmel, Mead and Mannheim, to Goffman, Giddens, Bourdieu, Baumann, Marcuse, Habermas, Archer and Lukes.' Kieran Bonner, St. Jerome's University at the University of Waterloo, Canada [Translated from French] 'Rich in detail and explanation but still very clear, Walsh’s book performs the painstaking work of constructing the thought of Arendt (or even re-constructing when it comes to the question of knowledge) to engage or re-engage and question the concepts themselves away from the subject as a whole, in a complete perspective of the discipline which thus allows the thinking on not only the proliferation of theoretical paradigms and concepts (p. 3). Since this is the explicit objective of the book, it appears not only to have fulfilled its goal, but to have opened the door to resolutely heuristic discussion that has perhaps become too rare.' Lectures, an International Journal of Reviews in Social Sciences'He gives a survey of her triadic understanding of human activity, which she divides into labor, work, and action. Walsh underlines that Arendt does not suggest a classifying typology in the manner of Weber, but that she ratherdefines these categories as ontological, that is, as basic aspects of human existence.'Tomas Stølen, Acta Sociologica

• Chapter 1 Introduction; Part 1 Society and its Science; Chapter 2 Society; Chapter 3 Sociology; Part 2 Re-thinking Sociological Theory; Chapter 4 Reflexivity; Chapter 5 Power; Chapter 6 Knowledge; Chapter 7 Consumption; Chapter 8 Conclusion: The Good Society and the Future of Sociology;