1,721,004 research outputs found
La rilevanza dell'irrilevante. Epistemologia di un paradosso sociologico
No full textL'obiettivo della prefazione è duplice: da un lato, presentare la proposta elaborata da Brekhus provando a dissipare le perplessità che a tutta prima possono circondarla; dall'altro, provare a giustificarne (e a capirne) la "pretesa di necessità", ossia la presunta indispensabilità dei passaggi teorico-metodologici che delinea, pur controintuitivi e inattual
Sullo sfondo della realtà sociale. Quello che succede quando non succede niente
No full textPerché mentre l’espressione “dichiaratamente gay” è così usata l’equivalente “apertamente etero” non lo è? Quali sono gli assunti che stanno alle spalle di locuzioni come “donna in carriera” o “infermiere maschio”? Perché Obama è considerato un uomo di colore con una madre bianca anziché un uomo bianco con un padre di colore? È davvero così naturale scandire lo scorrere del tempo con cicli di sette giorni che chiamiamo settimane
Scelte obbligate. Note sugli appunti di Merton
No full textGià professore emerito presso la Columbia University, nel 1987 Merton pubblica sull'”Annual Review of Sociology” una dettagliata esposizione dei tre modelli cognitivi sottesi a gran parte dei suoi lavori: l’identificazione dei fenomeni, l’ignoranza circostanziata, i Materiali Strategici di Ricerca. Caratterizzato dal tipico stile mertoniano – erratico e sistematizzante, digressivo e rigoroso al tempo stesso – il saggio offre l’insolita opportunità di penetrare nel taccuino di uno dei maestri della Sociologia del Novecento, proiettando una luce inedita sul mestiere del sociologo. Il testo è corredato da un’introduzione e un apparato di note a cura di Lorenzo Sabett
Sociologia dell'inavvertito
No full textIn modo più o meno consapevole, la riflessione sociologica si è prevalentemente orientata verso lo studio degli aspetti insoliti, notevoli e particolari della realtà sociale, privilegiando l’analisi dei fatti popolarmente percepiti come degni d’interesse e categorizzati come tali già a livello di senso comune. Così, la disciplina ha spesso finito per ratificare i meccanismi di salienza convenzionali, riaffermando gli schemi cognitivi e i modelli culturali più diffusi. Muovendo da simili constatazioni, Brekhus argomenta l’efficacia di una diversa prospettiva sociologica, che distingua con chiarezza l’importanza analitica di un fenomeno dal rilievo che può essergli generalmente accordato. Combinando teoria e metodologia sociologiche e rileggendo criticamente autori classici come Goffman e Garfinkel, Brekhus pone le basi per una vera e propria sociologia dell’inavvertito, di cui vengono delineati i fondamenti epistemologici e le strategie procedurali.
Il libro è tradotto, curato e introdotto ("La rilevanza dell’irrilevante: epistemologia di un paradosso sociologico", pp. 7-27) da Lorenzo Sabetta
Times of Sociology. Eviatar Zerubavel in Conversation with Lorenzo Sabetta
Full text linkThis interview offers a historical reconstruction of Eviatar Zerubavel’s work, from his pioneering studies of time to his not-yet-published analysis of “concept-driven sociology”, running the gamut of Zerubavel’s career and embracing a period of more than forty years of sociological research. The interview encompasses several major topics: the beginnings of Zerubavel’s own intellectual path and his move from Israel to the United States; the nuts and bolts of sociology of time and cognitive sociology; the underlying theoretical framework of a transcontextual and comparative mode of social inquiry; an in-depth analysis of the last books which Zerubavel has devoted to the study of phenomena such as backgroundness and taken-for-grantedness; the range of his academic and intellectual relationships (especially the one with his mentor Goffman, but also his rapport with Peter Berger, Lewis Coser, Renée Fox, and Murray Davis, among others); the polymorphic connection between sociological theory and politics; the development of the so-called “Rutgers School of Sociology”; the issue of “public sociology”; the future of sociology and academic research
Merton's Self-exemplifying Classical Sociological Contributions
No full textThis chapter is an introduction to Robert K. Merton’s life, work and position in the sociological landscape, and to this Anthem Companion, which explores aspects of these topics in detail. Here, we provide an overall framework within which the various specialist essays can be located
Verso una congiunzione funzionale delle due “etiche” weberiane
No full textMaurizio Bonolis e Lorenzo Sabetta
Toward a Functional Alignment of Weber's “two ethics”
In the final pages of his Politik als Beruf, Max Weber introduced his now widely known and cited distinction between two types of ethics, i.e. the seemingly dichotomous relationship between the “ethics of conviction” (gesinnungsethik) and the “ethics of responsibility” (verantwortungsethik). This proposal has provoked widespread reaction, strong endorsement and quite favorable comments as well as a significant amount of criticism. The purpose of this article, however, is exactly to avoid such hypostatized interpretations of Weber’s work, trying instead to envision a sort of functional integration of the two kinds of ethics, making the case for a blurred and nuanced reading of this famous socio-political pair of concepts. Under this light, Weber’s distinction is best understood as a differentiation between analytical models and not ontological entities – actually, the two ethics seem to be inexorably intertwined with one another, in a constant play of juxtapositions and mutual cross-references
Shameful Traces and Image-Based Sexual Abuse: The Case of Tiziana Cantone
Full text linkn this chapter, I reflect on the relationship between shame and digital traces in cases of image-based sexual abuse (IBSA). I will introduce the concept of shameful trace to describe records of diverse nature that can be used by a group of people participating in an effort to stigmatise an appearance, a conduct, an attitude or any other cause of social disapproval. Such a record is an object of shame only in a latent form. For it to become a shameful trace, it is necessary that it be shared and focussed on particular situations of moral condemnation.
This is neither a purely theoretical nor a purely empirical article. Rather, I first consider a case study of moral violence against a young Italian woman, Tiziana Cantone, who committed suicide in 2016 after the widespread non-consensual dissemination of intimate images. Further, I propose a theoretical understanding of the diffusion of shameful traces as a process of concerted social action including five elements: first, the ontology of the trace; second, the actors involved in its production and diffusion; third, the temporal and spatial coordinates of the shame diffusion and the technical or social means employed in it; and finally (fourth and fifth), the cultural and normative frameworks. Finally, I investigate how social bonds and sociotechnical and normative regulations favour the diffusion of shame in cases of IBSA
From Background to Default: The Epistemic Role of the Unmarked
No full textA great deal of our epistemic life takes place beneath the surface. In forming our beliefs, adjudicating truth, distributing trust, and disseminating knowledge, we oftentimes rely on criteria, assumptions, and requirements, which are seldom openly expressed in our discourse. It is little more than a commonplace to say that we cannot state everything or be aware of everything, but the juicier point is that what we do not state tends to play a more important epistemic role than we think or would like to allow. This is not necessarily a problem, though, or, at any rate, it has not been traditionally treated as such. In this article, we discuss some of the more relevant manifestations of the unmarked in contemporary epistemology. Our survey follows a historical trajectory, but we aim at more than just an account of what has been said about what is not said.
We argue that one can single out two main conceptions of the unmarked in epistemology. First, many writers claimed that our cognitive activities always happen within the contours of a certain background knowledge which, as the name suggests, remains silent albeit present. The idea of background knowledge, which – we suggest – is shaped after the model of Euclid’s geometry, has two remarkable features. On the one hand, it has a constructive role: like in Euclid’s geometry, we need a firm starting point to create new thoughts. On the other hand, it is under our full control: we, as epistemic agents, are able to choose what stays in the background and what comes to the fore. This contention started to become increasingly more suspicious in the postwar period when more and more philosophers pointed out that our hidden presuppositions are so entrenched with the marked part of our epistemic life that a clear separation between the two is impossible in practical terms. This is what we dub ‘default knowledge’ and we argue that it raises a number of ethical questions which were unthinkable from the perspective of background knowledge
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