Alain Caillé - Böcker

This book examines the future of the social sciences and the reconstruction of society in contemporary times. Drawing on the lead piece For a New Classic Sociology, it calls for a new theoretical synthesis that overcomes the fragmentation, specialization and professionalization within the social sciences. The position paper and the responses by a team of world-class social theorists provide an alternative to utilitarianism and the colonization of the social sciences by rational choice models, propose a new articulation of social theory, and moral, social and political philosophy. It recommends a return to classical social theory and explores articulations between theories of reciprocity, care and recognition.A radical intervention in the study of the social sciences, the volume will be indispensable to scholars and researchers across the social sciences, especially social theory and sociology and social anthropology.Contributions by Frank Adloff, Jeffrey C. Alexander, Francis Chateauraynaud, Raewyn Connell, François Dubet, Philip Gorski, Nathalie Heinich, Qu Jingdong, Mike Savage, Michael Singleton and Philippe Steiner.

In his classic essay The Gift, Marcel Mauss argued that gifts can never be truly free; rather, they bring about an expectation of reciprocal exchange. For over one hundred years, his ideas on economy, social relations, and exchange have inspired new modes of thought, none more so than what crystallized in the 1980s around an innovative group of French academics. In TheGift Paradigm, Alain Caillé provides the first in-depth, English-language introduction to La Revue du MAUSS—or, “Anti-Utilitarian Movement in the Social Sciences,” combining the work of anthropologists, sociologists, philosophers, and others. Today, the very idea of a “general social science” seems unthinkable, unless you count the pervasive sway of a utilitarian logic in orthodox economics, or the diffuse influence of neoliberalism. Here, Caillé offers a distinctly different reading of economy and society, inspired by Mauss—as vital now as ever.

This book examines the future of the social sciences and the reconstruction of society in contemporary times. Drawing on the lead piece For a New Classic Sociology, it calls for a new theoretical synthesis that overcomes the fragmentation, specialization and professionalization within the social sciences. The position paper and the responses by a team of world-class social theorists provide an alternative to utilitarianism and the colonization of the social sciences by rational choice models, propose a new articulation of social theory, and moral, social and political philosophy. It recommends a return to classical social theory and explores articulations between theories of reciprocity, care and recognition.A radical intervention in the study of the social sciences, the volume will be indispensable to scholars and researchers across the social sciences, especially social theory and sociology and social anthropology.Contributions by Frank Adloff, Jeffrey C. Alexander, Francis Chateauraynaud, Raewyn Connell, François Dubet, Philip Gorski, Nathalie Heinich, Qu Jingdong, Mike Savage, Michael Singleton and Philippe Steiner.