Founders, Classics, Canons: Modern Disputes Over the Origins and Appraisal of Sociology's Heritage

ISBN-13: 9781412857055 / Angielski / Miękka / 2015 / 310 str.

Peter Baehr; Steven Lukes

Opis

Founders, classics, and canons have been vitally important in helping to frame sociology's identity. Within the academy today, a number of positions-feminist, postmodernist, postcolonial-question the status of "tradition."In Founders, Classics, Canons, Peter Baehr defends the continuing importance of sociology's classics and traditions in a university education. Baehr offers arguments against interpreting, defending, and attacking sociology's great texts and authors in terms of founders and canons. He demonstrates why, in logical and historical terms, discourses and traditions cannot actually be "founded" and why the term "founder" has little explanatory content. Equally, he takes issue with the notion of "canon" and argues that the analogy between the theological canon and sociological classic texts, though seductive, is mistaken.Although he questions the uses to which the concepts of founder, classic, and canon have been put, Baehr is not dismissive. On the contrary, he seeks to understand the value and meaning these concepts have for the people who employ them in the cultural battle to affirm or attack the liberal university tradition.

Spis treści

Acknowledgements

1. Introduction

2. Founders of Discourse
Introduction
Founders: Discursive and Institutional;
Deliberative and Appropriated Founders
Foucault's Founders
Wolin and "Epic Theory"
Constitutions, Discourses, Founders
Conclusion

3. Founders of Institutions
Introduction
The Social Context of Innovation
Creativity, Reputation
and Intellectual Networks
The Shadow Group Revisited
Institutional and Deliberative Founding:
Durkheim and the Annee sociologique
The Founder Idea:
A Conjectural Genealogy
Conclusion

4. The Utility, Rhetoric and Interpretation of Classic Texts
Introduction
A Definition of Classic Texts
Classics in Common? The Uses of Classical
Theory and The Discipline of Sociology
Rhetoric in the Classical Tradition
Understanding Classic Texts
Presentism
The Historicist Critique and Alternative
Objections to Historicism
Conclusion

5. Classicality: Criteria and Reception
Introduction
The Stratification of Classic Texts
"Criteria" of Classicality?
Classics and Their "Reception"
Classic Reception, Classic Formation
The Classics, Gender and Sexuality
Excursus on Classic Appraisal
in Sociology and The Arts
Conclusion

6. Canons
Introduction
"Canon" in Current Social Theory:
Usages and Appraisals
Conflicting Terminologies
The Christian Canon
and the Classics of Sociology
Significance of the Canon Debate:
The Controversy Over Higher Education
and the Purpose of the University
The University and the Jargon of "Relevance"
Conclusion

7. A Concluding Look at the Three Concepts 183
Appendix on Translation and Reception:
The "Iron Cage" and the "Shell of Steel."
Parsons, Weber and the stahlhartes Gehause
metaphor in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit
of Capitalism.

Bibliography

Index

O autorze

Peter Baehr