Processual Sociology by Andrew Abbott (English) Paperback Book

Processual Sociology by Andrew Abbott

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Description Andrew Abbott has been, for the last 20 years, elaborating what he terms a processual ontology for social life. It dovetails with his quest to find ways for the disciplines of history and sociology to be able to talk about the same subject matter, i.e., as different versions of looking at the same thing By a processual approach, Abbott means an approach that presumes that everything in the social world is continuously in the process of making, remaking, and unmaking itself (and other things), instant by instant. A processual approach begins by theorizing the making and unmaking of individuals, social entities, cultural structures, patterns of conflict as the social process unfolds in time.. In a word, the processual approach is fundamentally, essentially historical. In Abbott's take on it, all the micro elements with which the other approaches begin are themselves macrostructures in the processual approach. Their stability is something to be explained, not presumed. This book, then, sets out positively what sociology should look like, both in terms of method and in terms of the "substance of the social." The opening two chapters invite us into Abbott's particular brand of thinking, providing a processual account of individuals in Chapter 1, and then, in Chapter 2, showing how this processual account would deal with the classic theoretical-philosophical problem of "human nature" as an aspect of social thought. Chapter 3 gives a concrete example of how the sociological vision set out in Chapters 1 and 2 could be turned into an empirical research program. Then, chapters 4 and 5 venture out into "theory" again--first to argue, in chapter 4, for sociologists not to give in to the explanatory impulse at every turn, and second, in chapter 5, to make the argument that the concept of excess should be as important to our analyses as scarcity is. This latter chapter takes the argument about excess into the welcome land of analytic precision after all of the poetic whimsy of Nietzsche and Bataille. Chapters 6 and 7 take us to a vision of the "so what" question, which Abbott answers in terms of what sociological knowledge can be for. They deal with the criteria for achieving a good social life. Overall, the book cumulatively builds up a "vision" of what processual sociology looks like.

Publisher Description

For the past twenty years, noted sociologist Andrew Abbott has been developing what he calls a processual ontology for social life. In this view, the social world is constantly changing—making, remaking, and unmaking itself, instant by instant. He argues that even the units of the social world—both individuals and entities—must be explained by these series of events rather than as enduring objects, fixed in time. This radical concept, which lies at the heart of the Chicago School of Sociology, provides a means for the disciplines of history and sociology to interact with and reflect on each other.In Processual Sociology, Abbott first examines the endurance of individuals and social groups through time and then goes on to consider the question of what this means for human nature. He looks at different approaches to the passing of social time and determination, all while examining the goal of social existence, weighing the concepts of individual outcome and social order. Abbott concludes by discussing core difficulties of the practice of social science as a moral activity, arguing that it is inescapably moral and therefore we must develop normative theories more sophisticated than our current naively political normativism. Ranging broadly across disciplines and methodologies, Processual Sociology breaks new ground in its search for conceptual foundations of a rigorously processual account of social life.

Author Biography

Andrew Abbott is the Gustavus F. and Ann M. Swift Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago. He edits the American Journal of Sociology.

Details ISBN 022633662X ISBN-13 9780226336626 Title Processual Sociology Author Andrew Abbott Format Paperback Year 2016 Pages 336 Publisher The University of Chicago Press GE_Item_ID:97525334; About Us

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