The New Pragmatist Sociology: Inquiry, Agency, and Democracy

Pragmatist thought is central to sociology. However, sociologists typically encounter pragmatism from a distance, through the works of canonical social scientists including George Herbert Mead, Herbert Blumer, Erving Goffman, and W. E. B. DuBois, rather than the philosophers who founded the school of thought, such as Charles S. Peirce, John Dewey, and William James.

In The New Pragmatist Sociology, Neil Gross, Isaac Ariail Reed, and Christopher Winship assemble a range of sociologists to address essential ideas in the field and their historical and theoretical connection to classical pragmatism. The book examines questions of methodology, social interaction, and politics across the broad themes of inquiry, agency, and democracy. Essays engage widely and deeply with topics that motivate both pragmatist philosophy and sociology, including rationality, speech, truth, expertise, and methodological pluralism.

Contributors include Natalie Aviles, Karida Brown, Daniel Cefaï, Mazen Elfakhani, Luis Flores, Daniel Huebner, Cayce C. Hughes, Paul Lichterman, John Levi Martin, Ann Mische, Vontrese D. Pamphile, Jeffrey N. Parker, Susan Sibley, Daniel Silver, Mario Small, Iddo Tavory, Stefan Timmermans, Luna White, and Joshua Whitford.

Author: Neil L. Gross
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Published: 07/05/2022
Pages: 512
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 1.75lbs
Size: 9.90h x 6.90w x 1.10d
ISBN13: 9780231203791
ISBN10: 0231203799
BISAC Categories:
- Social Science | Sociology | General
- Philosophy | Movements | Pragmatism

About the Author
Neil Gross is the Charles A. Dana Professor of Sociology at Colby College. He is the author of Why Are Professors Liberal and Why Do Conservatives Care? (2013) and Richard Rorty: The Making of an American Philosopher (2008).

Isaac Ariail Reed is professor of sociology at the University of Virginia. He is the author of Power in Modernity: Agency Relations and the Creative Destruction of the King's Two Bodies (2020) and Interpretation and Social Knowledge: On the Use of Theory in the Human Sciences (2011).

Christopher Winship is Diker-Tishman Professor of Sociology at Harvard University and a senior faculty member at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. He is the editor of the journal Sociological Methods and Research and coauthor of Counterfactuals and Causal Inference: Methods and Principles for Social Research (second edition, 2014).