Synopses & Reviews
Against Essentialism presents a sociological theory of culture. This interdisciplinary and foundational work deals with basic issues common to current debates in social theory, including society, culture, meaning, truth, and communication. Stephan Fuchs argues that many mysteries about these concepts lose their mysteriousness when dynamic variations are introduced.
Fuchs proposes a theory of culture and society that merges two core traditions--American network theory and European (Luhmannian) systems theory. His book distinguishes four major types of social "observers"--encounters, groups, organizations, and networks. Society takes place in these four modes of association. Each generates levels of observation linked with each other into a "culture"--the unity of these observations.
Against Essentialism presents a groundbreaking new approach to the construction of society, culture, and personhood. The book invites both social scientists and philosophers to see what happens when essentialism is abandoned.
Review
Against Essentialism is an original contribution. Realists about science go to war against the social constructionists to defend the traditional meaning of science. Fuchs steps into this battle zone and does a beautiful job of dissecting and defining the nature of the sociological problems involved. The result is a confident, provocative critique of various positions in the science wars. By employing system theory and dynamic network thinking, Fuchs provides a highly coherent, forceful, and persuasive account of how to think about sciences from a sociological point of view. Thomas J. Fararo, University of Pittsburgh
Review
In Against Essentialism, Stephan Fuchs offers a clever, intelligent, and robust defense of the deep structural properties of capital-S Sociology. Randall Collins - Sociological Theory
Review
Against Essentialism is an original contribution. Realists about science go to war against the social constructionists to defend the traditional meaning of science. Fuchs steps into this battle zone and does a beautiful job of dissecting and defining the nature of the sociological problems involved. The result is a confident, provocative critique of various positions in the science wars. By employing system theory and dynamic network thinking, Fuchs provides a highly coherent, forceful, and persuasive account of how to think about sciences from a sociological point of view.
Review
Against Essentialism is a brilliant book. Like certain martial artists, Fuchs uses the strengths of his enemies to confound them. Against post-modernists who view the social constructedness of culture as reason to abandon the substantive goals of old-fashioned sociological positivism, Fuchs deploys an even more thoroughgoing constructivism to re-envision as sociological variables the issues in dispute between constructivists and positivists. This is a stunning achievement. I can't think of a book whose publication I would more eagerly anticipate...and as much for the controversy it will create as for its contribution to the discipline. Mark A. Schneider, Southern Illinois University
Review
Against Essentialism presents the most diversified and extensive discussion of anti-essentialism I am aware of, bringing together a host of arguments that one usually does not find in a single volume. Fuchs lifts network theory out of its usual organizational sociological, economic sociology, and exchange theory context, and transforms it into a more constructionist and reflexive sociological theoretical framework that also manages to pay attention to microsociological dynamics. It is an original and scholarly contribution to social science theory. Karin Knorr Cetina, Bielefeld University
Review
Fuchs...has synthesized systems theory...and network theory into a comprehensive sociology of knowledge and culture...This work will be much discussed by sociologists and is essential for any library supporting programs in social thought. J. L. Croissant
Review
Stephan Fuch's Against Essentialism is the most important work of general theory that has appeared in the last 10 years or more. It is grand theory on the level with Luhmann, Habermas, and Giddens, encompassing society, culture, knowledge, and philosophy. It is general theory both in the sense of giving a framework for all of sociology and in the sense that the word "theory" is now used in humanistic and especially literary fields, the orienting perspective on what cultural knowledge consists in. . . Among works of general theory, Fuchs stands out as remarkably well written. Against Essentialism is full of clever phrases, sharply worded titles and subtitles that point up the keys to the argument, lapidary formulations that could serve as catchwords. Fuchs is surely one of the wittiest writers in sociology and many other fields. Through rather complex arguments he retains a crisp and clear writing style, making the book eminently readable. Choice
Synopsis
Against Essentialism presents a groundbreaking new approach to the construction of society, culture, and personhood. This interdisciplinary and foundational work deals with basic issues common to current debates in social theory, including society, culture, meaning, truth, and communication. The book invites both social scientists and philosophers to see what happens when essentialism is abandoned.
About the Author
Stephan Fuchs is Associate Professor of Sociology, University of Virginia.
University of Virginia
Table of Contents
Introduction
1 Theory after Essentialism
Accounting for the Observer
Observing Observers
Levels of Observing
Ideological Conflicts in Observation
Inside and Outside Observers
Value-Freedom and Disinterestedness
The Myth of "Going Native"
A Few Pretty Old Rules of Method
The Classics Revisited, Briefly
Networks and Systems
Some Elements of a Working Epistemology
2 How to Sociologize with a Hammer
The Crisis of Representation
Underdetermination and Theory-Ladenness
The Indeterminacy of Translation
Empiricizing Contexts and Demarcations
Incommensurability
The Double Hermeneutic
Things and Persons
3 Cultural Rationality
After Reason
Causes and Reasons
The Unity of Persons
What Do Persons Want and Believe?
Decisions, Decisions
How to Locate Rationality
Some Covariates of Rationality
4 Foundations of Culture
Never Minds
Who Knows? No Idea!
The Meanings of Meaning
Observing Culture and Cultural Observers
What Is in a Culture?
Cultural Stratification
Art
Reputation
From Creativity to Genius
5 Modes of Social Association I: Encounters, Groups, and Organizations
The Bodies and Brains of Persons
Emotional Selves
Levels of Society
Encounters
Groups
Organizations
Variations in Organizational Cultures
6 Modes of Social Association II: Networks
Drift
Fields of Forces
Power to the Networks
Metabolism
Renormalization
Autopoiesis
Self-Similarity
Unity
Boundaries
Network Expansions
Networks of Culture
7 Realism Explained
A Continuum of Realism
Core Expansions and Time
Machines
Instruction
Density
Monopoly and Hegemony
Competition and Decentralization
Literacy and Printing
Orality, Perception, and Copresence
Consensus
Distance and Frontstages
Conclusion
Appendix: Theses
References
Index