Citation

Therborn G. Br. J. Sociol. 2000; 51(1): 37-57.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2000, London School of Economics and Political Science, Publisher John Wiley and Sons)

DOI

10.1111/j.1468-4446.2000.00037.x

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

The sociology of the next century is likely to differ from that of the twentieth century. The current situation and the future prospects of sociology are assessed by spelling out the trajectory over the past century of sociology's predominant assumptions about the character and direction of the social world and of its own task of cognition. Sociology is located in three spaces of identity: a space of disciplines, a stage of everyday practice, and a space of imagination and investigation. From the cosmological, epistemological, and spatial trajectories some indications of a new, very different future of sociology are given. Finally, a way of preserving and developing the legacy of first century sociology is presented, in the form of nodes of knowledge, central to a ?typical? sociological approach to the social.

Keywords

globalization; social science; social theory; Sociology