Sociology and the Real WorldIn this new book Lyng and Franks argue that contemporary sociology has lost its connection to human realities. Addressing the conceptual underpinnings of sociological practice, they argue that our warranted inhibitions about using the words: objectivity, reality and truth have been part of this loss of connection. The authors deconstruct these terms in modern and postmodern contexts, looking beyond these traditions. They then offer more coherent ways of reclaiming the lost terms by looking beyond dualistic contrasts and using a relational framework. This encourages a dialectic balance between objectivity and subjectivity helpful in addressing the world outside of sociology. The authors critique thought for thoughts sake seen as detached from embodied emotion and action on the world. They contend that as important as constant symbolic interpretation is, we are too often under the spell of our own words to even conceive of nonverbal realities. This is then applied to new ways of looking at an embodied sociology, Habermas's theory of communicative action and social problems. |
Contents
Introduction | 1 |
Breaking Down Dualities but Keeping the Tension Sociology and Reality | 21 |
The Collapse of Word and Deed | 23 |
Thought Word and Deed Toward a Transactional Typology of Action | 37 |
A Relational View of Subjectivity and Objectivity | 57 |
Cognition and Linguistically Given Distance | 79 |
Applications to Selected Sociological Fields An Embodied Approach | 103 |
Toward a Transactional Sociology of the Body | 105 |
Transaction and a Sociological Method for Social Problems | 147 |
Conclusion | 197 |
211 | |
225 | |
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Common terms and phrases
abstract action activity actual alternative analysis argued become behavior biomedical body's capacities chapter cognition communicative body concepts consumer consumption corporeal contingency countersystem critical critique culture Damasio deed Dewey disciplined body discourse discussion disembodied dominating body dualism embodied actors emergent emotion empirical environment existing face-to-face focus Frank Freikorps groups Habermas Habermas's holistic health human ical ideal speech situation implies important indeterminacy institutional interaction intersubjective involved Jürgen Habermas knowledge life-world linguistic linguistic turn lived experience Mead Mead's means mind mirroring body nature neuroscience nonverbal notion objectiv objective one's ontological organism perception perspective Phineas Gage possible postmodernist potential practices pragmatic pragmatist problem-solving production qualia rational real world reality reconstruction reflection relation resistance seen semiotics sense Shalin social problems social-problems research socially constructed society sociologists sociology sociology's structural subjective subjectivism symbolic terminate things thought tion tive transactional approach transactional interpretation truth verbal words