Making the Familiar Strange: Sociology Contra Reification

ISBN-13: 9780367552800 / Angielski / Miękka / 2022 / 142 str.

Ryan Gunderson

Opis

This book examines the implications of a sociological maxim derived from C. Wright Mills: ‘make the familiar strange’, addressing the methodological questions of why and how sociologists should make the familiar strange, what it means to ‘make the familiar strange’, and how this approach benefits sociological methodology and research.

Recenzje

"Ryan Gunderson's fusion of critical theory and phenomenology and incisive exploration of reification and defamiliarization provide analytical tools to unmask the neoliberal ideology that 'there is no alternative,' come to terms with the grim social realities exposed by the covid-19 pandemic, and imagine a future that averts plutocracy and ecological catastrophe." - Robert J. Antonio, University of Kansas, USA

"Through a systematic exploration of the topic of 'defamiliarization' in sociology, critical theory and phenomenology are once again brought together. The result is a powerful endorsement of active estrangement that fully brings home Brecht's alienation-effect to social theory. By showing us how to think about the world in a different way, Ryan Gunderson opens the way to social change, at least in theory." - Frédéric Vandenberghe, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

"Gunderson's intellectually stimulating study joins the ranks of many important theoretical approaches dedicated to visualizing problematic dimensions of social life that have been normalized via everyday life, and constitutes a most welcome effort to spell out efforts to systematize strategies to counteract mediating processes like alienation and reification, which are detrimental to human agency." - Harry F. Dahms, University of Tennessee-Knoxville, USA

Spis treści

1. What is Sociology’s Epoché?  2. Modes of Reification  3. Familiarity and/as Strangeness  4. Modes of Social Defamiliarization  5. The Anti-Consolation of Sociology

O autorze

Ryan Gunderson is Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology and Gerontology at Miami University, USA, and the co-author of Climate Change Solutions: Beyond the Capital-Climate Contradiction.