The Shape of Sociology for the 21st Century

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

Introduction: The Foreseeable Future of Sociology - Devorah Kalekin-Fishman and Ann Denis PART I: THEORIZING SOCIOLOGY: FROM PAST TO FUTURE Chapter 2: Recent Changes in Sociology - Michel Wieviorka Chapter 3: On Inter-Human Space - Piotr Sztompka Chapter 4: From Modernity to Globality - Devorah Kalekin-Fishman Chapter 5: 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 Chapter 6: Beyond Three Constitutive Ideas of Classical Sociology - Globalization, Post-Modernity and Reflexivity - Emilio Lamo de Espinosa Chapter 7: The Shape of Sociology - Looking at the History of our Present - Elisa P. Reis Chapter 8: Dimensions of World-Making - Thoughts from the Caspian Sea - Dennis Smith PART III: FOCUS ON CONCEPTS Chapter 9: Identity in the Global Age - Hegemony, Resistance and Social Transformation - Lauren Langman Chapter 10: Community as Social Metaphor - The Need for a Genealogy of Social Collectivities - Michael Humphrey Chapter 11: Professions and Professionalism - Perspectives from the Sociology of Professional Groups - Julia Evetts PART IV: UNCONSCIOUS AND CONSCIOUS DIFFERENTIATION IN SOCIOLOGY Chapter 12: Sociology's Narratives of Global Change - Raewyn Connell Chapter 13: A Plea for a More Interpretive, More Empirical and More Historical Sociology - Gabriele Rosenthal Chapter 14: Post-Soviet Sociology as a Pattern of 'Another Sociology' - Larissa Titarenko PART V: UNRESOLVED CHALLENGES Chapter 15: Including Sociological Practice - A Global Perspective and the US Case - Jan Marie Fritz Chapter 16: A Cultural Transformation - The Design of Alienation in the Guise of Creativity - Pirkkoliisa Ahponen Chapter 17: 'Bystander Sociology' and the Sonderbehandlung of the Social - Marvin Prosono Chapter 18: Precarious Disciplinary Intersections and Inconvenient Truths - Susan A. McDaniel Chapter 19: Policy-Driven Research, Audit Culture, and Power - Transforming Sociological Practices in the Philippines - Emma Porio PART VI: LOOKING AHEAD Chapter 20: Sociology in the 21st Century - Embracing Complexity, Diversity and a Global Perspective - Ann Denis

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. -- Professor Lauren Langman All sociologists (and would-be sociologists) are interested in where their discipline is going and it is the backdrop to many conversations amongst those involved with the discipline, but serious discussion about the future is seldom broached. These essays from a workshop of luminaries associated with ISA build on a slim thread of earlier work by carefully updating and extending assessments of the discipline's past and by assaying its potentials. Their empirically-grounded examinations of the relationships between changing social realities (including a widening focus on the Global South) and the cognitive and social organisation of the discipline make the contributions particularly valuable. -- Professor Charles Crothers This is an important and thought-provoking collection of contemporary articles on the current crisis in social theory. -- Professor Roger Penn With a comprehensive vision, great sociologists from around the world address the challenges of the new century. -- Professor Michael Burawoy 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. -- Chris Husbands