Notes & quotes from Mike Savage's Contemporary Sociology and the Challenge of Descriptive Assemblage

Savage, M. (2009). Contemporary Sociology and the Challenge of Descriptive Assemblage. European Journal of Social Theory, 12(1), 155-174. doi: 10.1177/1368431008099650

30th December 2013

Back to Savage.

This article argues that the descriptive turn evident in contemporary capitalism challenges orthodox sociological emphases on the central importance of causality and the denigration of descriptive methods.

29th December

Radhika sent me this paper yesterday and I have been reading a book by David McRaney that revisits my curiosity about the unconscious1.

Savage is interested in descriptive sociology2. He draws on the work of Andrew Abbott, John Goldthorpe, and Bruno Latour to make a case for: "a broader re-orientation of sociology away from its historical interface with the humanities and towards the natural sciences" (p. 155).

Savage points to Nigel Thrift's Knowing Capitalism3. Thrift is one of the better writer/thinkers I have come across and so a small, or perhaps larger detour took place.

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