The Sociology of Knowledge as Postphilosophical Epistemology

Out of IR’s “Socially Constructed” Idealism

Bibliographic Data

ID7104969
AuthorsInanna Hamati-Ataya (0000-0003-3735-8834, Aberystwyth University, corresponding author)
Year2017
Volume20
Issue1
Pages3-29
Publication date2017-08-21
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueInternational Studies Review (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1468-2486 • E-ISSN: 1521-9488
PublisherOxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1093/isr/vix028
OpenAlexW2739341279
LanguageEN
Citations received12
References cited84

This article first aims to draw attention to, and diagnose, the failure of IR’s sociological turn to extend the domain of sociological reason into the philosophical turf of epistemology and thereby fulfill the full promises of the postpositivist turn. Its second purpose is to revive and deploy the radical version of the sociology of knowledge that can achieve an autonomous reconstruction of epistemology suited to a reflexive, post-Kantian consciousness. The diagnosis begins by tracing the erasure of the radical sociological position in the connected evolutions of sociology and international relations (IR). It shows that the derailing of the “sociological revolution” was paradoxically mediated by the consolidation of social constructionism and science studies, reproduced in IR through their counterparts in the “sociological turn”: constructivism and the sociology of IR. In these otherwise reflexive developments, the progression of sociological reason was halted by a self-imposed limitation on the extension of sociological analysis to all domains of thought and the endorsement of an idealist and institutionalist ontology of the social. A reformulation of the forgotten, radical sociological position clarifies the implications for IR of a transition to a postphilosophical theory of knowledge and delineates an empirical research agenda for such a reconstruction of epistemology driven by a sociology of knowledge of a revolutionary persuasion. Exploring the centrality of social practice in the social determination of knowledge, the article argues that, and shows how, a properly reflexive reconstruction of epistemology is best achieved by deploying the sociology of knowledge in two complementary materialist directions: (1) a sociology of everyday social practices that illuminates our epistemic immersion in the carpentered environments of the socionatural order and (2) a sociology of craft that objectivates the social constitution of the skholè as a mode of existential boundedness by addressing scholarly thought as differentiated social labor

Epistemology · Historical sociology · Idealism · Medical sociology · Reflexivity · Social epistemology · Social geometry · Social science · Sociological imagination · Sociology · Sociology of knowledge · Contemporary Sociological Theory and Practice · Foucault, Power, and Ethics · Marxism and Critical Theory · Philosophy