The New Pragmatist Sociology - by Neil L Gross & Isaac Ariail Reed & Christopher Winship (Paperback)

About the Book

"Pragmatist thought is central to sociology. However, sociologists typically encounter pragmatism from a distance, through the works of canonical social scientists including George Herbert Mead, Herbert Blumer, Erving Goffman, and W. E. B. DuBois, rather than the philosophers who founded the school of thought, such as Charles S. Peirce, John Dewey, and William James. In The New Pragmatist Sociology, Neil Gross, Isaac Ariail Reed, and Christopher Winship assemble a range of sociologists to address essential ideas in the field and their historical and theoretical connection to classical pragmatism. The book examines questions of methodology, social interaction, and politics across the broad themes of inquiry, agency, and democracy. Essays engage widely and deeply with topics that motivate both pragmatist philosophy and sociology, including rationality, speech, truth, expertise, and methodological pluralism"--

Book Synopsis

Pragmatist thought is central to sociology. However, sociologists typically encounter pragmatism from a distance, through the works of canonical social scientists including George Herbert Mead, Herbert Blumer, Erving Goffman, and W. E. B. DuBois, rather than the philosophers who founded the school of thought, such as Charles S. Peirce, John Dewey, and William James.

In The New Pragmatist Sociology, Neil Gross, Isaac Ariail Reed, and Christopher Winship assemble a range of sociologists to address essential ideas in the field and their historical and theoretical connection to classical pragmatism. The book examines questions of methodology, social interaction, and politics across the broad themes of inquiry, agency, and democracy. Essays engage widely and deeply with topics that motivate both pragmatist philosophy and sociology, including rationality, speech, truth, expertise, and methodological pluralism.

Contributors include Natalie Aviles, Karida Brown, Daniel Cefaï, Mazen Elfakhani, Luis Flores, Daniel Huebner, Cayce C. Hughes, Paul Lichterman, John Levi Martin, Ann Mische, Vontrese D. Pamphile, Jeffrey N. Parker, Susan Sibley, Daniel Silver, Mario Small, Iddo Tavory, Stefan Timmermans, Luna White, and Joshua Whitford.

Review Quotes

Reading this book, many of us will discover that we have always been pragmatists, without knowing it. The New Pragmatist Sociology proposes to lead the social sciences out of the wilderness of crisis in which we have been wandering for the past fifty-odd years. Its rich and diverse range of topics--from everyday life to structural issues of racism and inequality--simultaneously demonstrates and enacts pragmatism's breadth and significance. More than a theory or methodology, it becomes a double mode of engagement, of sociologists in pragmatic inquiry and sociologists coming to understand people engaging in pragmatic action.--John R. Hall, author of Apocalypse: From Antiquity to the Empire of Modernity

About the Author

Neil Gross is the Charles A. Dana Professor of Sociology at Colby College. He is the author of Why Are Professors Liberal and Why Do Conservatives Care? (2013) and Richard Rorty: The Making of an American Philosopher (2008).

Isaac Ariail Reed is professor of sociology at the University of Virginia. He is the author of Power in Modernity: Agency Relations and the Creative Destruction of the King's Two Bodies (2020) and Interpretation and Social Knowledge: On the Use of Theory in the Human Sciences (2011).

Christopher Winship is Diker-Tishman Professor of Sociology at Harvard University and a senior faculty member at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. He is the editor of the journal Sociological Methods and Research and coauthor of Counterfactuals and Causal Inference: Methods and Principles for Social Research (second edition, 2014).