The Flight from Ambiguity: Essays in Social and Cultural Theory

by Donald N. Levine

Overview

The essays turn about a single theme, the loss of the capacity to deal constructively with ambiguity in the modern era. Levine offers a head-on critique of the modern compulsion to flee ambiguity. He centers his analysis on the question of what responses social scientists should adopt in the face of the inexorably ambiguous character of all natural languages. In the course of his argument, Levine presents a fresh reading of works by the classic figures of modern European and American social theory—Durkheim, Freud, Simmel and Weber, and Park, Parsons, and Merton.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780226056210
Publisher:	University of Chicago Press
Publication date:	09/23/2022
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	260
File size:	4 MB

About the Author

Donald N. Levine is the Peter B. Ritzma Professor of Sociology at the University of Chicago. He is the author of Wax and Gold: Tradition and Innovation in Ethiopian Culture and Greater Ethiopia: The Evolution of a Multiethnic Society, both published by the University of Chicago Press, as well as Simmel and Parsons: Two Approaches to the Study of Society.

Table of Contents

Preface

1. The Flight from Ambiguity

2. Ambiguity and Modernity

3. The Flexibility of Traditional Cultures

4. Emile Durkheim, Univocalist Manqué

5. Useful Confusions: Simmel's Stranger and His Followers

6. Ambivalent Encounters: Disavowels of Simmel by Durkheim, Weber, Lukács, Park, and Parsons

7. Rationality and Freedom, Inveterate Multivocals

8. Freud, Weber, and Modern Rationales of Conscience

9. On Subjective and Objective Rationality in Simmel . . . and Weber . . . and Parsons

Epilogue: Two Cheers for Ambiguity in Science

Appendix: Weber's Summary Formulation Regarding the Forms of Rationality

Acknowledgments

References

Index