Mad Hazard

Stephen Turner is Distinguished University Professor at the Department of Philosophy, University of South Florida, US, where he is also director of the Center for Social and Political Thought.

• Foreword; Harry F. Dahms and Robert J. AntonioChapter 1. Meet the Family Chapter 2. Born into Chicago: Participant Observer in a time of Racial Succession Chapter 3. Miami: The Quest for Normalcy at the Edge of Change Chapter 4. Four Colleges in Fifteen Months: Higher Learning in the Sixties Chapter 5. Tulane and New Orleans: Sociology as an Identity Chapter 6. Semi-Graduate Student: Becoming a Theorist in a Time of Troubles Chapter 7. Florida Forever: Surviving in a Discipline in Crisis Chapter 8. Refugee from the War in Sociology: Conflict and Contention in Seventies Sociology and the Alternative of Philosophy of Social Science Chapter 9. Reconstructing the Philosophical Thought of Durkheim and Weber and the Turn to Science Studies Chapter 10. Graduate Research Professor and Divorce: Professional Crisis and the Turn to History of Sociology Chapter 11. New Love and the Return to Philosophy: Living Beyond Disciplines in a Disciplinary World Chapter 12. The Social Theory of Practices: Understanding Practices Naturalistically Chapter 13. Pyrrhic Victories and a Family: Leaving the Sociology of the Nineties Chapter 14. The Nineties, Postmodernism, Normativity and Other Controversies: Practices Between Cognitive Science and Ethics Chapter 15. Strange Encounters in the History of Sociology and in Archives: Learning from Archives and the Politics of Collection Chapter 16. Causal Models Again: Understanding Statistical Causality and its Problems Chapter 17. Cognitive Science: The Mutual Implications of the Cognitive Revolution and Sociology Chapter 18. Cleaning Up: Reconciling Normativity, Collective Intentionality, and the Brain Chapter 19. Politics and Law: Kelsen, Weber, and the Defense of DemocracyEpilogue: Luck and the Future of Academic Thought

Anyone who is to some degree familiar with the sociological world will find something to relate to in the book, densely packed with names of academic figures institutions and associations […] the book also has its value for social scientists at an early career stage as a detailed overview of the discipline’s landscape in its rather hectic dynamics: it shows honestly what one is to expect on the path of sociology accepted as a calling.