Practicing Social Science : Sociologists and Their Craft

How is the process of globalization effecting changes in the structure of knowledge in sociology? This path-breaking volume looks at the human dimension of developments in the discipline by compiling a set of interviews that exemplify the life and work of a sociologist today. Their ideas and conceptualizations show to what extent a "paradigm shift" has taken root, answering questions such as whether sociology still remains a differentiated, relatively autonomous social science. The chosen interviewees are about equally divided according to gender and have been selected from among professional sociologists in different parts of the globe, with an emphasis on areas that are under-represented in English publications, such as East Asia, Latin America, and Africa. Analysis focuses on changes which are becoming clear from the on-going confrontation between "traditional" sociology which emerged as a project of modernity, and the sociology practiced by sociologists who are called upon to adapt the discipline to the upheavals of the twenty-first century.

Devorah Kalekin-Fishman is Emerita and Senior Researcher in the Faculty of Education at the University of Haifa in Israel. Recent publications include: From the Margins to the Center: An Autoethnography of Passage between Disciplines (with Lea Hagoel, 2016) and The Shape of a Sociology for the 21st Century (ed. with Ann Denis, 2012). She was Vice-President for Publications (2006-2010) for the International Sociological Association.