SOCIOLOGICAL REALISM: SOCIETY AS THE WALLS OF OUR IMPRISONMENT (WILEY-BLACKWELL, 2026), SAL RESTIVO

Presents a powerful narrative that situates the individual within the inescapable framework of social forces

In a world increasingly defined by inequality and existential threats, Sociological Realism: Society as the Walls of Our Imprisonment offers a bold reinterpretation of society’s role in shaping the individual. Beginning with the premise that society is a reality sui generis―a unique and formative system―Sal Restivo carefully constructs an argument about how institutions, cultural traditions, and historical processes shape our identities, behaviours, and beliefs. Tracing the development of the sociological imagination from antiquity to the present day, the author introduces foundational thinkers whilst anchoring abstract theory in personal narrative and lived experience.

This distinctive volume―part introductory sociology, part sociobiography―confronts dominant ideas about free will, agency, and the autonomous self. Engaging with contemporary issues including class, race, sex, gender, and mortality, the book explores the metaphorical ”walls” that constrain human potential. It also considers possible ”escape tunnels” as suggested by sociologists such as Peter Berger and Erving Goffman. Through original theories―such as the social construction of the brain, the logic of power and free will, and a social-network approach to creativity― Sociological Realism challenges the myth of individualism and portrays the self as a socially embedded phenomenon. Restivo’s own reflections act as a vivid case study in sociological imagination, enriching the text with immediacy and authenticity.


 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

DAVID BROOKS VICTIMIZED BY MEDIEVALISM

       New York Times opinion columnist David Brooks and University of Chicago graduate (BA) has written a great deal in the public arena and now has revealed his spiritual evolution from agnostic to man of faith.   Faith came to him, he writes, through “numinous experience...moments of awe and wonder...”   He writes about moments of transcendence at the foot of a New England mountain and at Chartres Cathedredal in France.   I have stood at the foot of a mountain in New England, and in fact lived on a mountain in Vermont; and I’ve visited and written about the cathedral at Chartres.   I can imagine what Brooks must have felt at these times, but being as I am anchored to the earth I cannot be driven to awe and wonder as numinous experiences.   They did not open up vast mysteries for me as they did for Brooks.   He explains this in terms of “the emotions we feel when we are in the presence of a vast something j...
Read more

TURN OFF THE LIGHTS, HELP SAVE THE WORLD

  I have called many times for an index of GDDP (Gross Domestic Disproduct) to measure the human and natural wastes that accompany the production of goods and services measured by Gross Domestic Product.   This could help offset the fact that we go stumbling along producing goods and services with no thought to the limits of natural resources. Remembering Jimmy Carter, we remember how he urged Americans to limit individual power consumption: “TURN OFF LIGHTS,” he said.   This is an example of what I call the law of marginal futulity.   Suppose we do turn off ights in our individual homes; who is going to turn off the lights in Las Vegas?   Who is even going to imagine that the lights of Las Vegas are the tip of the ice berg of our problem with assigning values and costs to using resources? Jimmy Carter’s Complicated Environmental Legacy, By Nitish Pahwa https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2024/12/jimmy-carter-death-environmental-legacy-cli...
Read more

TRUMP 2024

  My friend Jo Boaler at Stanford posted this on LinkedIn:I have always appreciated the reporting of the Guardian newspaper in the UK. This is their analysis of recent events.I am writing to you on an ominous day for America, and for the world.Last night, in his victory speech, Donald Trump called the free press "the enemy camp". Intimidating words. But we believe that, as journalists, we can't afford to be intimidated. We have a duty to tell the truth about the man the United States has just elected as president - a man who tried to overturn a democratic election the last time he was in office, whose supreme court appointees gutted women's reproductive rights, who calls climate change a hoax, who falsely claims mass deportations will solve our economic problems, who threatens jail for his political opponents, who lies reflexively and shamelessly, and whose second administration imperils our democracy, freedoms and planet.I replied:I experienced the ...
Read more