Public Lecture | Prof Stephen Turner, University of South Florida

Professor Stephen Turner (University of South Florida) will present a brief history of American Sociology, describe it´s present state and will discuss the prospects of this academic discipline in the US.
In his most recent book Stephen Turner argues that American Sociology as undergone radical change since the end of World War II. Theoretical approaches as well as topics of inquiry changed with American Society changed. Stephen Turner explains these changes but also points at continuities of sociological thought since the late 19th century to get a better understanding of the challenges for the discipline in the early 21st century.

Stephen Turner is Distinguished University Professor at the University of Southern Florida He is the author of a number of books in the history and philosophy of social science and statistics, including books on Max Weber, on whom he also edited the Cambridge Companion volume. He is the co-author of the standard one-volume history of American Sociology, The Impossible Science and has recently published an update, American Sociology: From Pre-disciplinary to Post-normal. He has also written extensively in science studies, especially on patronage and the politics and economics of science, and on the concept of practices, including three books, The Social Theory of Practices and Brains//Practices/ Relativism, and a new collection of essays, Understanding the Tacit. His Liberal Democracy 3.0: Civil Society in an Age of Experts, reflects his interest in the problem the political significance of science and more broadly in the problem of knowledge in society. A collection of his essays on this topic, The Politics of Expertise, has recently appeared. Among his other current interests are problems of explaining normativity, especially the conflict between philosophical and social scientific accounts, and issues relating to the implications of cognitive neuroscience for social theory, especially related to the problem of tacit knowledge and mirror neurons. His book Explaining the Normative is a critique and an alternative to the accounts of “normativity” one finds in philosophers like McDowell, Brandom, Korsgaard, Nagel, and the like. He has had fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Studies.