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The dubious guarantees of social science - A reply to Wallerstein
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UNSPECIFIED (1998) The dubious guarantees of social science - A reply to Wallerstein. INTERNATIONAL SOCIOLOGY, 13 (1). pp. 5-17. ISSN 0268-5809.
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Abstract
This is a critical response to Immanuel Wallerstein's 'Social Science and Contemporary Society: The Vanishing Guarantees of Rationality' in this journal, March 1996, and his claim that social scientists, as the new 'intellectual class', have the task of dissociating themselves from Liberal instrumental Rationality in order to help 'turn the world around'. First, the article questions whether Wallerstein is truly abandoning the 'Enlightenment project' or actually completing Comte's hope for a clerisy of universitaires. Second, it queries his conception of 'totalizing transformation', arguing that he sustains his grand narrative by under-playing the serial elaboration introduced by 19th-century social movements in order to overplay the potential for late 20th-century ones. Finally, it takes issue both with the role assigned to social scientists and to Wallerstein's notion of a guided process of total social transformation, which this article holds to be an impossibility given the ontological status of society as an open system. A more modest role of 'critical dialogue' with other corporate agents is advocated.
Item Type: | Journal Article | ||||
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Subjects: | H Social Sciences > HM Sociology | ||||
Journal or Publication Title: | INTERNATIONAL SOCIOLOGY | ||||
Publisher: | SAGE PUBLICATIONS LTD | ||||
ISSN: | 0268-5809 | ||||
Official Date: | March 1998 | ||||
Dates: |
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Volume: | 13 | ||||
Number: | 1 | ||||
Number of Pages: | 13 | ||||
Page Range: | pp. 5-17 | ||||
Publication Status: | Published |
Data sourced from Thomson Reuters' Web of Knowledge
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