Overview

Signs, Solidarities, & Sociology addresses the formation and fragmentation of identity in today's postmodern world. Informed by the conceptual convergence in the theories of Durkheim, Peirce, Mead, and Lacan, this book surveys the range of twentieth-century sociology to deconstruct those favored nostrums of subjective meaning, personal power, and autonomous selfhood that comprise its semantics of agency. Revealed beneath this semantic screen is the triad of pragmatic codes—premodern affiliation, modern calibration, and postmodern globalization—that govern the social construction of the self. While the ill-comprehended confluence of these three signification codes in the present world situation can indeed fragment personal identity, their formal structural linkages, as shown in this book, may inform a truly postmodern, globally applicable science of culture.

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9780847691791

Table of Contents

Reviews

A very learned book, weaving together themes from many literatures, and must represent decades of reading and reflection. (Sobrinho) makes a valuable contribution in showing the congruence between Peirce's 'scientific realism' and Durkheim's social processes of moral and cognitive solidarity. -- Randall Collins, Department of Sociology, University of Pennsylvania Signs, Solidarities, and Sociology is an insightful and multiply informed book that reflects much reading and much thought. -- Nicholas Rescher, University of Pittsburgh Sobrinho's commentary on contemporary social thought is wide-ranging and eclectic, yet informed by a coherent and original perspective. This is the best new book on social theory to have come my way in a long time. -- Professor Adam Kuper, Department of Social Sciences/Social Anthropology Group Brunel University, Uxbridge, United Kingdom

Sobrinho's commentary on contemporary social thought is wide-ranging and eclectic, yet informed by a coherent and original perspective. This is the best new book on social theory to have come my way in a long time.--Professor Adam Kuper

Author Information

Blasco José Sobrinho is assistant professor of sociology, University of Cincinnati.

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