1st Edition
Sociology of Rationality Critiques and Creative Conversations
This book is a socio-historical analysis of rationalism as a worldview — that guides many of our actions in concrete everyday life — and as a philosophy — that guides our epistemological understanding of the reality around us. It explores the multifaceted manifestations of the idea in the Enlightenment philosophy, modern sociological theorising and in post-structural standpoints. The volume also critiques rationality from feminist, subaltern and post-colonial perspectives. Finally, it delves into the multilayered sociological significances of rationalisation of different domains of life.
Transdisciplinary in scope and with essays by foremost scholars in the field, this volume will be a major intervention across the humanities and the social sciences. It will be of interest to students and researchers in sociology, anthropology, history, philosophy, gender studies, political science, cultural anthropology, education, and religious studies.
Author Biographies
Foreword by Stephen Turner
Preface
1. Sociology of Rationality: An Introduction
Soumyajit Patra and Tattwamasi Paltasingh
SECTION I
REFLECTING RATIONALITY: OVERVIEWS AND PERSPECTIVES
2. Enlightenment and Rationality
Paramjit S. Judge
3. Reason in the Modern Age
Owen Anderson
4. Max Weber: Rational Action, Rationalism and Rationalisation: The Anatomy of Extinction
Sam Whimster
5. Weber’s Theory of Rationality: A Critical Reading
Ajit Kumar Pandey
6. Postcolonial Rationality
Bill Ashcroft
SECTION II
RATIONALITY OF THE MARGINALIZED
7. Feminisms and the Questions Concerning Rationality
Ritu Sen Chaudhuri
8. Dependency and Protest: Choice and Rationality of the Marginalised
Debal K. Singha Roy
9. Modern Secular Rationality and ‘Christianisation-in-Depth’:
Between Marx and Foucault
Anup Dhar
RATIONALITY: CONTEXTUAL RAMIFICATIONS
10. Rationality and Economic Behaviour
Filippo Barbera
11. Rationality, Consumerism and Lifestyle Choices: Narratives of Urban Youth
Nita Mathur
12. ‘McDonaldisation’ of Education: Context and Critiques
Tattwamasi Paltasingh
SECTION IV
RATIONALITY: CRITIQUES AND CREATIVE CONVERSATIONS
13. Sociology in Irrationalities: Contexts of the Commons
Soumyajit Patra
14. Towards Deconstructive Rationality: Pathologies of Reason and Immanentist Counter-discourses
Anindya Sekhar Purakayastha and Subhendra Bhowmick
15. The Trajectory of Politics-Rationality Interface: A Conceptual Framework
Raj Kumar Kothari and Kalyanasis Bhattacharyya
16. Rationality and Beyond: Towards Planetary Conversations
Ananta Kumar Giri
Biography
Soumyajit Patra is Professor of Sociology, SKB University, Purulia, West Bengal, India. He is the former Coordinator of the Center for South Asian Studies, SKB University.
Tattwamasi Paltasingh is Professor of Sociology and Head of the P.G. Department of Sociology at Sambalpur University, Odisha, India.
