The Difficulties of Emancipatory Sociology

Sociology has always aspired and still aspires to be critical. However, it often believes to be no longer useful for social progress, and thus cyclically seeks new methods of research and analysis. With them, it hopes to provide a stronger foundation and more solidity to its critical and emancipatory role, thereby finally emerging from its supposed crisis. This short book aims to point out a widespread confusion between the activity of the social scientist and political activity. This misunderstanding certainly ought to be addressed instead of trying to solve the supposed "disciplinary crisis" of sociology by pushing into the context of discussions of critical-emancipatory problems. Of course, the engaged investigator doesn't invent specious or false problems, rather acts as a claims-maker: indifferent to epistemological reflection, he becomes part of the very social phenomena that they study. In this way, sociological issues acquire a moral or political dimension, in which it is immediately established what is right and good and what isn't, as well as what the correct emancipatory direction is.

Autorentext

Andrea Spreafico and Enrico Caniglia are Associate Professors of Sociology at the Roma Tre University (Italy) and the University of Perugia (Italy), respectively. Recently, they co-edited "Harvey Sacks. Fare sociologia", 2017 (with F. Zanettin).