{"product_id":"against-essentialism-a-theory-of-culture-and-society-9780674015968","title":"Against Essentialism A Theory of Culture and","description":"\u003cb\u003eBook Synopsis\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFuchs presents a new approach to the construction of society, culture, and personhood. This interdisciplinary, foundational work deals with issues common to current debates in social theory, including society, culture, meaning, truth, and communication, inviting social scientists and philosophers to see what happens when essentialism is abandoned.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTrade Review\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eAgainst Essentialism\u003c\/i\u003e is an original contribution. Realists about science go to war against the social constructionists to defend the traditional meaning of science. Fuchs steps into this battle zone and does a beautiful job of dissecting and defining the nature of the sociological problems involved. The result is a confident, provocative critique of various positions in the science wars. By employing system theory and dynamic network thinking, Fuchs provides a highly coherent, forceful, and persuasive account of how to think about sciences from a sociological point of view. -- Thomas J. Fararo, University of Pittsburgh\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eAgainst Essentialism\u003c\/i\u003e is a brilliant book. Like certain martial artists, Fuchs uses the strengths of his enemies to confound them. Against post-modernists who view the social constructedness of culture as reason to abandon the substantive goals of old-fashioned sociological positivism, Fuchs deploys an even more thoroughgoing constructivism to re-envision as sociological variables the issues in dispute between constructivists and positivists. This is a stunning achievement. I can't think of a book whose publication I would more eagerly anticipate...and as much for the controversy it will create as for its contribution to the discipline. -- Mark A. Schneider, Southern Illinois University\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eAgainst Essentialism\u003c\/i\u003e presents the most diversified and extensive discussion of anti-essentialism I am aware of, bringing together a host of arguments that one usually does not find in a single volume. Fuchs lifts network theory out of its usual organizational sociological, economic sociology, and exchange theory context, and transforms it into a more constructionist and reflexive sociological theoretical framework that also manages to pay attention to microsociological dynamics. It is an original and scholarly contribution to social science theory. -- Karin Knorr Cetina, Bielefeld University\u003cbr\u003eFuchs...has synthesized systems theory...and network theory into a comprehensive sociology of knowledge and culture...This work will be much discussed by sociologists and is essential for any library supporting programs in social thought. -- J. L. Croissant * Choice *\u003cbr\u003eStephan Fuch's \u003ci\u003eAgainst Essentialism\u003c\/i\u003e is the most important work of general theory that has appeared in the last 10 years or more. It is grand theory on the level with Luhmann, Habermas, and Giddens, encompassing society, culture, knowledge, and philosophy. It is general theory both in the sense of giving a framework for all of sociology and in the sense that the word \"theory\" is now used in humanistic and especially literary fields, the orienting perspective on what cultural knowledge consists in. . . Among works of general theory, Fuchs stands out as remarkably well written. \u003ci\u003eAgainst Essentialism\u003c\/i\u003e is full of clever phrases, sharply worded titles and subtitles that point up the keys to the argument, lapidary formulations that could serve as catchwords. Fuchs is surely one of the wittiest writers in sociology and many other fields. Through rather complex arguments he retains a crisp and clear writing style, making the book eminently readable. -- Randall Collins * Sociological Theory *\u003cbr\u003eIn \u003ci\u003eAgainst Essentialism\u003c\/i\u003e, Stephan Fuchs offers a clever, intelligent, and robust defense of the deep structural properties of capital-S Sociology. -- Charles Lembert * Sociological Theory *\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTable of Contents\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIntroduction    1 Theory after Essentialism   Accounting for the Observer   Observing Observers   Levels of Observing   Ideological Conflicts in Observation   Inside and Outside Observers   Value-Freedom and Disinterestedness   The Myth of \"Going Native\"   A Few Pretty Old Rules of Method   The Classics Revisited, Briefly   Networks and Systems   Some Elements of a Working Epistemology    2 How to Sociologize with a Hammer   The Crisis of Representation   Underdetermination and Theory-Ladenness   The Indeterminacy of Translation   Empiricizing Contexts and Demarcations   Incommensurability   The Double Hermeneutic   Things and Persons    3 Cultural Rationality   After Reason   Causes and Reasons   The Unity of Persons   What Do Persons Want and Believe?   Decisions, Decisions   How to Locate Rationality   Some Covariates of Rationality    4 Foundations of Culture   Never Minds   Who Knows? No Idea!   The Meanings of Meaning   Observing Culture and Cultural Observers   What Is in a Culture?   Cultural Stratification   Art   Reputation   From Creativity to Genius    5 Modes of Social Association I: Encounters, Groups, and Organizations   The Bodies and Brains of Persons   Emotional Selves   Levels of Society   Encounters   Groups   Organizations   Variations in Organizational Cultures    6 Modes of Social Association II: Networks   Drift   Fields of Forces   Power to the Networks   Metabolism   Renormalization   Autopoiesis   Self-Similarity   Unity   Boundaries   Network Expansions   Networks of Culture    7 Realism Explained   A Continuum of Realism   Core Expansions and Time   Machines   Instruction   Density   Monopoly and Hegemony   Competition and Decentralization   Literacy and Printing   Orality, Perception, and Copresence   Consensus   Distance and Frontstages    Conclusion    Appendix: Theses   References   Index","brand":"Harvard University Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51037256745303,"sku":"9780674015968","price":33.11,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"url":"https:\/\/bookcurl.com\/products\/against-essentialism-a-theory-of-culture-and-society-9780674015968","provider":"Book Curl","version":"1.0","type":"link"}