The Library
Social types and sociological analysis
Tools
Turner, Charles (2019) Social types and sociological analysis. History of the Human Sciences, 32 (3). pp. 3-23. doi:10.1177/0952695118807125 ISSN 0952-6951.
PDF
HHS807125_Rev2(Turner).pdf - Publisher's Proof Version Embargoed item. Restricted access to Repository staff only - Requires a PDF viewer. Download (221Kb) |
Official URL: https://doi.org/10.1177/0952695118807125
Abstract
Social types, or types of persons, occupy a curious place in the history of sociology. There has never been any agreement on how they should be used, or what their import is. Yet the problems surrounding their use are instructive, symptomatic of key ambivalences at the heart of the sociological enterprise. These include a tension between theories of social order that privilege the division of labour and those that focus on large-scale cultural complexes; a tension between the analysis of society in terms of social groups and an acknowledgement of modern individualism; sociology’s location somewhere between literature and science; and sociology’s awkward response to the claim – made by both Catholic conservatives and Marxists – that modern industrial and post-industrial society cannot be a society of estates. These ambivalences may help to explain why the attempts to use social types for the purpose of cultural diagnosis – from the interesting portrait of arbitrarily selected positions in the division of labour to more ambitious guesswork about modern culture’s dominant ‘characters’ – have been unconvincing.
Item Type: | Journal Article | ||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Divisions: | Faculty of Social Sciences > Sociology | ||||||||
Journal or Publication Title: | History of the Human Sciences | ||||||||
Publisher: | Sage Publications Ltd. | ||||||||
ISSN: | 0952-6951 | ||||||||
Official Date: | 1 July 2019 | ||||||||
Dates: |
|
||||||||
Volume: | 32 | ||||||||
Number: | 3 | ||||||||
Page Range: | pp. 3-23 | ||||||||
DOI: | 10.1177/0952695118807125 | ||||||||
Status: | Peer Reviewed | ||||||||
Publication Status: | Published | ||||||||
Access rights to Published version: | Restricted or Subscription Access | ||||||||
Related URLs: |
Request changes or add full text files to a record
Repository staff actions (login required)
View Item |