Founders, Classics, Canons: Modern Disputes Over the Origins and Appraisal of the Social Sciences

by Peter Baehr

Founders, classics, and canons have been vitally important in helping to frame sociology's identity. Within the academy today, a number of positions feminist, postmodernist, postcolonial question the status of "tradition."In Founders, Classics, Canons, Peter Baehr defends the continuing importance of sociology's classics and traditions in a university education. Baehr offers arguments against interpreting, defending, and attacking sociology's great texts and authors in terms of founders and canons. He demonstrates why, in logical and historical terms, discourses and traditions cannot actually be "founded" and why the term "founder" has little explanatory content. Equally, he takes issue with the notion of "canon" and argues that the analogy between the theological canon and sociological classic texts, though seductive, is mistaken.Although he questions the uses to which the concepts of founder, classic, and canon have been put, Baehr is not dismissive. On the contrary, he seeks to understand the value and meaning these concepts have for the people who employ them in the cultural battle to affirm or attack the liberal university tradition.

396 pages, Kindle Edition

Published September 8, 2017

About the author

Peter Baehr is Chair Professor of Social Theory at Lingnan University. Before coming to Hong Kong in 2000, he worked at universities in Canada and Britain. He teaches and writes mainly in the areas of social/ political thought, political culture, and mass emergency. Peter Baehr’s work has been translated into Chinese, Danish, Farsi, French, Hebrew, Italian, Japanese and Portuguese. Aside from his position at Lingnan University, Baehr is Raymond Aron Fellow at Boston University, and an Honorary Fellow of the University of Edinburgh. He is President of the History of Sociology Research Committee of the International Sociological Association, and sits as an international editor on eight journals. Baehr’s books are published by Cambridge University Press, Cornell University Press, Transaction, Penguin and Stanford University Press.