The Centrality of Sociality

Responses to Michael E. Brown’s The Concept of the Social in Uniting the Social Sciences and the Humanities.

What do we mean by the word “social?” In The Centrality of Sociality, scholars respond to themes of The Concept of the Social in Uniting the Social Sciences and Humanities in dialogue with Michael E. Brown.

What do we mean by the word “social?” In The Centrality of Sociality, scholars respond to themes of The Concept of the Social in Uniting the Social Sciences and Humanities in dialogue with Michael E. Brown.

The Centrality of Sociality provides analyses of important distinctions between individual and society, agency-dependent and agency-independent objectivity, subject and object, theory and theorizing, and action and “course of activity.” Apart from its theoretical interest, the book raises questions about the compelling idea that “the individual is the ultimate referent of moral discourse,” formulating the question “what is human about human affairs” in such a way that the difficulties involved in defining the word individual appear to place in jeopardy the idea of the individual. The chapters analyze themes such as the conceptualization of the social vis-a-vis the individual, theories of action, and notions of subject-object relations.

A thought-provoking collection of research, this edited volume is key reading for scholars and researchers in sociology.