Discourse and Knowledge The Making of Enlightenment Sociology

by Strydom, Piet

• ISBN13: 9780853238058
• ISBN10: 0853238057
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2000-11-01
• Publisher: Liverpool University Press

Summary

By closely analyzing the contributions of such theorists as More, Hobbes, Vico, Montesquieu, Ferguson and Millar to the emergence of sociology in its original form, Piet Strydom follows the discursive construction of sociology in the context of the society-wide early modern practical discourse about violence and rights. Parallels with the nineteenth- and twentieth-century discourse on poverty and justice and the contemporary discourse of risk and responsibility allow the author to reflect not only on the generation of knowledge through discourse but also on the role that sociology itself plays in this process.

Author Biography

Piet Strydom was born in 1946 in Pretoria of parents from the Cape Province and grew up in Cape Town and the Cape wine lands. he core of the research programme he has been pursuing since the late 1970s is focused on the cognitive transformation and embedding of Apel and Habermas' normative approach and is aimed at a systematic new critical pragmatic cognitive sociology.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements	vi
Preface	vii
Introduction: Discourse and Sociology	1	(33)
Part I: Theory of Discourse and Discourse Analysis
Introduction: From Presentism and Historicism to Discourse	29	(5)
Theory of Discourse	34	(19)
Sociological Theory of Discourse	53	(15)
Discourse of Modernity	68	(9)
Sociological Discourse Analysis	77	(19)
Part II: Discourse of Modernity and the Construction of Sociology
Introduction: Crisis Discourse and Sociology	93	(3)
The Early Modern Problem of Violence	96	(25)
The Rights Discourse	121	(61)
Contributions to Enlightenment Sociology	182	(51)
Discursive Construction of Enlightenment Sociology	233	(24)
Crisis and Critique: The Relations between Social and Political Theory	257	(10)
Notes	267	(36)
Bibliography	303	(27)
Index of Names	330	(5)
Subject Index	335