From Anthropology to Social Theory: Rethinking the Social Sciences

Arpad Szakolczai · Bjørn Thomassen

Jan 2019 · Cambridge University Press

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Presenting a ground-breaking revitalization of contemporary social theory, this book revisits the rise of the modern world to reopen the dialogue between anthropology and sociology. Using concepts developed by a series of 'maverick' anthropologists who were systematically marginalised as their ideas fell outside the standard academic canon, such as Arnold van Gennep, Marcel Mauss, Paul Radin, Lucien Lévy-Bruhl and Gregory Bateson, the authors argue that such concepts are necessary for understanding better the rise and dynamics of the modern world, including the development of the social sciences, in particular sociology and anthropology. Concepts discussed include liminality, imitation, schismogenesis and trickster, which provide an anthropological 'toolkit' for readers to develop innovative understandings of the underlying power mechanisms of globalized modernity. Aimed at graduate students and researchers, the book is clearly structured. Part I introduces the 'maverick' anthropologists, while Part II applies the maverick tool-kit to revisit the history of sociological thought and the question of modernity.

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Arpad Szakolczai is Professor of Sociology at University College Cork. His recent books include Comedy and the Public Sphere (2013), Permanent Liminality and Modernity (2017), and Walking into the Void: A Historical Sociology and Political Anthropology of Walking (with Agnes Horvath, 2018).

Bjørn Thomassen is Professor at the Department of Social Sciences and Business at Roskilde Universitet, Denmark. His book Liminality and the Modern: Living Through the In-Between (2014) paved the way for novel understandings and applications of the liminality concept.