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Description :
Against Essentialism presents a sociological theory of culture. This interdisciplinary and foundational work deals with basic issues common to current debates in social theory, including society, culture, meaning, truth, and communication. Stephan Fuchs argues that many mysteries about these concepts lose their mysteriousness when dynamic variations are introduced.
Fuchs proposes a theory of culture and society that merges two core traditions—American network theory and European (Luhmannian) systems theory. His book distinguishes four major types of social “observers”—encounters, groups, organizations, and networks. Society takes place in these four modes of association. Each generates levels of observation linked with each other into a “culture”—the unity of these observations.
Against Essentialism presents a groundbreaking new approach to the construction of society, culture, and personhood. The book invites both social scientists and philosophers to see what happens when essentialism is abandoned.
Content :
ntroduction
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
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AARON CHATTERJI
