Tag: foundations of british sociology

  • What can social reconstruction teach us about imaging post-pandemic society?

    Early 20th century social science was driven by a vision of social reconstruction, described here by John Scott and Ray Bromley in their Envisioning Sociology, loc 323: What would a 21st century post-pandemic reconstruction look like? What role would social science play?

  • On sociological walking, without obsessing about the ‘sociological’

    On sociological walking, without obsessing about the ‘sociological’

    My notes for the opening talk at The Sociological Review’s Thinking on the Move conference, co-organised with Emma Jackson, Les Back and Jenny Thatcher.  I feel like a fraud talking in the opening session of this event because there’s no sense in which I’m an expert on sociological walking. This is obviously compounded by talking […]

  • The Foundations of British Sociology

    The Foundations of British Sociology

    This one-day event intends to raise awareness of the Foundations of British Sociology archive maintained by Keele University. This remarkable resource collects a diverse array of materials from the 1880s to the 1950s, gifted to the university when the Institute of Sociology was dissolved in 1955. ‘Members of the societies founded The Sociological Review, contributed to early […]

  • The Sociological Review and the History of the Discipline

    The Sociological Review and the History of the Discipline

    This one-day event intends to raise awareness of the Foundations of British Sociology archive maintained by Keele University. This remarkable resource collects a diverse array of materials from the 1880s to the 1950s, gifted to the university when the Institute of Sociology was dissolved in 1955. ‘Members of the societies founded The Sociological Review, contributed to early […]

  • What does it mean to claim people were ‘doing sociology’?

    What does it mean to claim a historical figure as a (proto)sociologist? What does it mean to claim people were ‘doing sociology’ under any rubric? Keneth MacDonald began this conference on the history of sociology in Britain by directing these questions towards Adam Ferguson and Adam Smith, kicking off with consideration of recent papers from […]

  • When sociologists meet organised politics

    Not for the first time when reading John Scott and Ray Bromley’s Envisioning Sociology, I was struck by the parallels between the strengths and weaknesses of the early ‘sociological movement’ and tendencies we can see within activist sociology today. From loc 4419: Until the 1920s, Branford and Geddes relied almost exclusively on Le Play House […]

  • What the lost tradition of classical British social theory can teach us about the dangers of charismatic leadership

    In the conclusion to their Envisioning Sociology, John Scott and Ray Bromley reflect on how the project of Patrick Geddes and the sociologists around him came to be forgotten, in spite of the influence they exercised in their own time. This lost tradition of classical British social theory was an energetic and multifaceted engagement with the […]

  • Margaret Archer as neo-classical British social theorist

    While Margaret Archer’s theoretical work is widely respected, it is often categorised as little more than an elaboration of Roy Bhaskar and a critique of Anthony Giddens. This framing leaves it secondary to Critical Realism and Structuration Theory, understandable (though limiting) in the former case and deeply inaccurate in the latter case. Reading Envisioning Sociology […]

  • A renewed engagement with the past could be a powerful means through which the critical tradition in British sociology could fortify itself for a difficult future

    In his magisterial A Secular Age, Charles Taylor introduces the notion of ‘subtraction stories’ to describe our dominant narratives of secularisation. This narrative structure is crucial to teleological thought, explaining our current situation in terms which preclude any backwards movement. As he explains on pg 22, Concisely put, I mean by this stories of modernity in […]

  • The Public Sociology of Patrick Geddes and Victor Branford

    In the last couple of weeks, I’ve been reading about the foundations of British sociology and the motivations of its main figures. One of the most striking things about their work was how explicitly committed it was to a moral vision and sociology’s role in realising that vision. Whereas contemporary public sociology is driven by […]

  • There once was a ‘sociology movement’: could there be one again?

    Within contemporary British Sociology, it can seem like a strange question to ask if the discipline has a moral vision. There are moral commitments which animate much of the activity which takes place within it, manifested in a range of motives including revealing vested interests through critique of ideology, describing inequalities in order to facilitate their amelioration, giving […]

  • How can Sociology be inspired by its own archive?

    What can sociology learn from its archive? In asking this question, I mean archive in the broadest sense, far beyond the formal outputs of the discipline. I spent much of yesterday in the Foundations of British Sociology archive at Keele University, gifted to the university by the Institute of Sociology when it dissolved in 1955. This […]