Periphery and metropole in the history of sociology

Bibliographic Data

ID7100752
AuthorsR Connell (0000-0001-8001-2375, The University of Sydney, corresponding author)
Year2010
Volume47
Issue1
Pages72-86
Publication date2010-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueSociologisk Forskning (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0038-0342 • E-ISSN: 2002-066X
PublisherSwedish Sociological Association (PUBLISHER • SE)
DOI10.37062/sf.47.18449
OpenAlexW2110346996
LanguageEN
Citations received7
References cited36

Launching and defining sociologyAll societies have ways of identifying social groups and representing social relations .There is some archaeological evidence that social symbolism became identifiable about 50-40 000 years ago, appearing in the record about the time anatomically mod ern humans (homo sapiens sapiens) spread around the world .This is, arguably, part of the process of creating the divisions of labour (such as gender) and the sustained forms of social cooperation (such as food sharing) that underpin the societies we know in history (Balme and Bowdler 2006) .In more recent history, a growing division of labour allows specialized artisans and then, in urban societies, intellectuals and writing (Childe 1960) .It becomes possible to formalize a language for talking about social order, and speculate about the shapes social relations might or should take .Thus we get the visions of the good society from Plato and Kong Fuzi; the political and cultural observations of Ibn Khaldun's Muqaddimah and Christine de Pizan's City of Women; the cycles of Vico and the constitutions of Montesquieu .In every direction, a glorious field of historical investi gation opens when we ask how different societies have represented themselves and imag ined others .Within this domain of social symbolism, something happened in nineteenth cen tury CE Europe and eastern North America, mainly among the men of the liberal bourgeoisie, that yielded "sociology" as an organized cultural practice .This was a col lective enterprise, as writers of textbooks at the end of the century emphasised, involv ing the labour of many hands .Such labour required means of communication and coordination, among which the textbooks themselves were important; newly founded periodicals and conferences also helped .The rhetoric of "social science" devised by Comte was taken up soon after his death by a broad spectrum of reformers, and put to work in multipurpose organizations such as the Associations for the Promotion of Social Science based in London and Boston .A generation later, more specialized or academic bodies such as the Institut

Epistemology · Historical sociology · Social science · Sociology · Anthropology · Contemporary Sociological Theory and Practice · Emile Durkheim and Sociology · Gender Studies · Philosophy · Social and Cultural Dynamics

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