The ISA Handbook of Diverse Sociological Traditions (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9781847874023)

This latest edition to the ISA handbook series actively engages with the many traditions of sociology in the world.

Twenty-nine chapters from prominent international contributors discuss, challenge and re-conceptualize the global discipline of sociology; evaluating the diversities within and between sociological traditions of many regions and nation-states. They assess all aspects of the discipline: ideas and theories; scholars and scholarship; practices and traditions; ruptures and continuities through an international perspective.

The Handbook argues that diversities in sociological traditions can be studied at three levels:

• First, they need to be studied from multiple spatial locations: within localities, within nation-states, within regions and the globe.
• Second, they need to be discussed in terms of their sociological moorings in distinct philosophies, epistemologies and theoretical frames, cultures of science, and languages of reflection.
• Third, the intellectual moorings of sociological practices are extensive. The papers discuss the diverse and comparative sites of knowledge production and its transmission.

Sections include:

• Beyond the Classical Theorists: European & American Sociology Today
• Local Traditions & Universal Sociologies: The Dilemmas of the Post-Communist States of Eastern & Central Europe
• Authoritarianism & Challenges to Sociology in Latin America
• The Colonial Heritage & its Sociological Traditions: Africa, the Middle East, South Asia and the Caribbean
• Local or Universal: Identity & Difference in the Sociology of the Far East

Wide-reaching in scope and ambitious in its aims this handbook is a relevant and challenging resource for students of sociology and practicing sociologists across the globe. Its goal is to become a text for debating the contours of international sociology.