Sociology after Fordism

Prospects and problems

Datos Bibliográficos

ID2397920
AutoresJohn Holmwood (0000-0002-3440-3524, University of Nottingham, autor de correspondencia)
Año2011
Volumen14
Número4
Páginas537-556
Fecha de publicación2011-11-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaEuropean Journal of Social Theory (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 1368-4310 • E-ISSN: 1461-7137
EditorialSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/1368431011417937
OpenAlexW2086497749
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas8
Referencias citadas51

A number of commentators have suggested that the shift from a Fordist to a post-Fordist regime of political economy has had positive consequences for sociology, including the reinforcement of critical sociologies ( Burawoy, 2005 ; Steinmetz, 2005 ). This article argues that, although disciplinary hierarchies have been destabilized, what is emerging is a new form of instrumental knowledge, that of applied interdisciplinary social studies. This development has had a particular impact upon sociology. Savage and Burrows (2007) , for example, argue that sociological knowledge no longer has a privileged claim to authority and is increasingly in competition with social knowledge produced by the private sector and agencies of the public sector. The response of many sociologists to such claims has been to reassert the importance of the discipline as the purveyor of critically relevant knowledge about society. The article traces how the idea of internal critique within sociology has developed to embrace 'knowing capitalism' ( Thrift, 2005 ), at the same time as declaring the impossibility of sociological knowledge. The critique of sociology also becomes the critique of critique and what remains is the instrumentalization of knowledge. Where many sociologists continue to claim a special interest in critical knowledge, the article suggests that, in contrast, we potentially confront the problem that such knowledge may itself be facing a crisis of reproduction

Capitalism · Discipline · Economics · Epistemology · Fordism · Impossibility · Political science · Politics · Public sociology · Reproduction · Social science · Sociology · Sociology of knowledge · Sociology of scientific knowledge · Contemporary Sociological Theory and Practice · Critical Realism in Sociology · Law · Social and Cultural Dynamics