Here are 100 books that Triumph of Emptiness fans have personally recommended if you like
Triumph of Emptiness.
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I am a Greek social psychologist and have spent much of my academic career studying myths and stories in social life - stories, even when inaccurate or wrong, serve to create meaning, a fragile and valuable resource, especially in these post-truth times. At the same time, I believe that we must not lose sight of the distinctions between story and fact, fantasy and reality, truth and fiction. I am greatly concerned that the social sciences today, as shaped by the academic publishing game, are preoccupied with trivia and act as black holes into which meaning disappears. I strongly believe that it is our responsibility to restore the meaningfulness of academic research.
This is a must for any aspiring social scientist. Ironically entitled, the book offers a brilliant account of how many researchers in the social sciences resort to esoteric jargon and abstruse arguments to promote themselves in their academic micro-fiefdoms, defend their areas of expertise from outsiders but also to obfuscate and conceal their own ignorance. The book, however, can also be read on how to write well andget published in the social sciences.
Modern academia is increasingly competitive yet the writing style of social scientists is routinely poor and continues to deteriorate. Are social science postgraduates being taught to write poorly? What conditions adversely affect the way they write? And which linguistic features contribute towards this bad writing? Michael Billig's witty and entertaining book analyses these questions in a quest to pinpoint exactly what is going wrong with the way social scientists write. Using examples from diverse fields such as linguistics, sociology and experimental social psychology, Billig shows how technical terminology is regularly less precise than simpler language. He demonstrates that there are…
In my career as an academic librarian, I was often asked to teach students to think about the credibility of the information they incorporate into their academic, professional, personal, and civic lives. In my teaching and writing, I have struggled to make sense of the complex and nuanced factors that make some information more credible and other information less so. I don’t have all the answers for dealing with problematic information, but I try hard to convince people to think carefully about the information they encounter before accepting any of it as credible or dismissing any of it as non-credible.
Though written by an academic philosopher, the highly readable On Bullshit weighs in at a breezy eighty pages.
What I love about this book is the way the author differentiates the bullshitter, who attempts to persuade without any regard for the truth, from the liar, who cares about the truth but tries to hide it. Frankfurt goes on to make a strong case for why bullshit is far more dangerous than lying.
In an age where bullshitters get more far attention than they deserve, this is even more relevant than when it was first published in the social-media-free year of 1986.
A #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER One of the most salient features of our culture is that there is so much bullshit. Everyone knows this. Each of us contributes his share. But we tend to take the situation for granted. Most people are rather confident of their ability to recognize bullshit and to avoid being taken in by it. So the phenomenon has not aroused much deliberate concern. We have no clear understanding of what bullshit is, why there is so much of it, or what functions it serves. And we lack a conscientiously developed appreciation of what it means…
I am a writer and a sociologist of money. I am passionate about money, relationships, and family violence, because I know from my research that talking about money opens up intimate conversations about the way people see themselves, their aspirations and hopes. Sometimes through hearing other people’s stories I have found mine. I realised while researching family violence that I too had suffered economic abuse. For me too economic abuse was ‘hidden in plain sight’. One of the most meaningful things for me is to help women and men overcome family violence and empower themselves to live with freedom.
Mills’ description of the sociological imagination has become central to the way I think.
He writes of the importance of linking personal troubles to social issues, of moving from the deeply personal to the impersonal, and of linking biography and history.
The sociological imagination is at the heart of my research on domestic economic abuse. It links the stories of personal devastation to the global social issue of family violence. The personal gets transformed to policy and legal issues of the criminalisation of coercive control.
C. Wright Mills is best remembered for his highly acclaimed work The Sociological Imagination, in which he set forth his views on how social science should be pursued. Hailed upon publication as a cogent and hard-hitting critique, The Sociological Imagination took issue with the ascendant schools of sociology in the United States, calling for a humanist sociology connecting the social, personal, and historical dimensions of our lives. The sociological imagination Mills calls for is a sociological vision, a way of looking at the world that can see links between the apparently private problems of the individual and important social issues.…
I am a Greek social psychologist and have spent much of my academic career studying myths and stories in social life - stories, even when inaccurate or wrong, serve to create meaning, a fragile and valuable resource, especially in these post-truth times. At the same time, I believe that we must not lose sight of the distinctions between story and fact, fantasy and reality, truth and fiction. I am greatly concerned that the social sciences today, as shaped by the academic publishing game, are preoccupied with trivia and act as black holes into which meaning disappears. I strongly believe that it is our responsibility to restore the meaningfulness of academic research.
This is an old-fashioned sociology book that shows what can be done with some sociological imagination. Many of us do entirely meaningless work and get paid for it, and what is more, we know that we do. And yet, we pay a high price for it. How to avoid doing empty labour and rediscover the meaning of serious academic work.
While most people work ever-longer hours, international statistics suggest that the average time spent on non-work activities per employee is around two hours a day. How is this possible, and what are the reasons behind employees withdrawing from work? In this thought-provoking book, Roland Paulsen examines organizational misbehavior, specifically the phenomenon of 'empty labor', defined as the time during which employees engage in private activities during the working day. This study explores a variety of explanations, from under-employment to workplace resistance. Building on a rich selection of interview material and extensive empirical research, it uses both qualitative and quantitative data…
After finishing my secondary education in Athens I got a degree in business administration at the University of Genova. The idea was to return to Greece to work in my father’s business. But I soon realized that I was neither interested in business theory nor going back to Greece to work in my father's organization. I decided to continue my studies in England focusing on the social sciences – first at Leicester University and then at the London School of Economics. After retiring I continued to write books and articles in Greek, English, and French. I have passion for reading and writing. It helps me psychologically as well to survive in a postmodern chaotic world.
Habermas is one of the most important living philosophers. In his eighties, he still writes important texts and articles.
I have never met him but I have studied his work and written about it. He has a profound knowledge of social sciences (American, continental, and Anglo-Saxon). He is difficult to read but it is worth trying.
I have always been fascinated by how the human mind adapts, both individually and through history. Julian Jaynes, who taught me while pursuing my PhD in anthropology from Princeton University, provided me with a theoretical framework to explore how the personal and cultural configure each other. Jaynes inspired me to publish on psychotherapeutics, the history of Japanese psychology, linguistics, education, nationalism, the origin of religion, the Bible, ancient Egypt, popular culture, and changing definitions of self, time, and space. My interests have taken me to China and Japan, where I lived for many years. I taught at the University of Arizona and currently work as a licensed mental health counselor.
According to Julian Jaynes, the mentality predating consciousness was bicameral. To appreciate the subtlety of his arguments, a grand historical sweep is needed.
At over a thousand pages, this magisterial tour through the origins and impact of anthropology, sociology, linguistics, economics, and psychology affords context by showing how, from the sixteenth century to the present day, the emergence of a post-bicameral, introspective language of the self-played out in modern times.
A comprehensive history of the human sciences-psychology, sociology, anthropology, economics, and political science-from their precursors in early human culture to the present.
This erudite yet accessible volume in Norton's highly praised History of Science series tracks the long and circuitous path by which human beings came to see themselves and their societies as scientific subjects like any other. Beginning with the Renaissance's rediscovery of Greek psychology, political philosophy, and ethics, Roger Smith recounts how the human sciences gradually organized themselves around a scientific conception of psychology, and how this trend has continued to the present day in a circle of…
Marriage and Fatherhood in the Nazi SS
By
Amy Carney,
When I was writing this book, several of my friends jokingly called it the Nazi baby book, with one insisting it would make a great title. Nazi Babies – admittedly, that is a catchy title, but that’s not exactly what my book is about. SS babies would be slightly more…
I am proud to be a human (social) scientist but think that we could collectively achieve a much more successful human science enterprise. And I believe that a better human science would translate into better public policy. Most human scientists focus on their own research, paying little attention to how the broader enterprise functions. I have written many works of a methodological nature over the years. I am pleased to point here to a handful of works with sound advice for enhancing the human science enterprise.
There are far fewer works in the humanities than in social science that suggest a path toward a more productive scholarly enterprise.
Martinelli is by far my favorite book about reforming humanities scholarship. He and I disagree about the main purpose of the humanities – I stress the role that art plays in human societies, while he urges an appreciation of the great thinkers of the past, and also appreciating such values as beauty and human dignity.
Yet he makes recommendations that I applaud regarding integration, appreciating diverse theories and methods, being reflective, and pursuing clear and logical argumentation.
The book aims to introduce a research concept called "Numanities", as one possible attempt to overcome the current scientific, social and institutional crisis of the humanities.
Such crisis involves their impact on, and role within, society; their popularity among students and scholars; and their identity as producers and promoters of knowledge. The modern western world and its economic policies have been identified as the strongest cause of such a crisis. Creating the conditions for, but in fact encouraging it.
However, a self-critical assessment of the situation is called for. Our primary fault as humanists was that of stubbornly thinking that…
I became aware of the struggles of the LGBTQ community as a 22-year-old touring the Dachau concentration camp in Germany, where hundreds of gay men were imprisoned—my mother was a Holocaust survivor who survived Auschwitz. A month later, in October 1978, after I returned to San Francisco, Supervisor Harvey Milk and Mayor George Moscone were murdered. As a hippie, San Francisco seemed extremely tolerant, but after the murders, I realized there was a monumental struggle for “unalienable rights” in the LGBTQ community. I started photographing LGBTQ political events and, for six years, documented the “gay liberation movement” as it exploded across the streets of New York and San Francisco.
I learned so many things that I was not taught in school from this book. As if revealing a parallel universe, I was made aware of the history of LGBTQ life and culture hidden in American history.
I could think about Melville in a new way when he wrote, “..waking next morning I found Queequeg’s arm thrown over me in the most affectionate manner. You had almost thought I had been his wife”.
Or Emily Dickinson, who remained single but was steadfastly devoted to her close friend Sue Gilbert, who had married her brother. She wrote to Sue: “Susie, forgive me, darling, for every word I say–my heart is full of you, none other than you is in my thoughts…”
Winner of a 2012 Stonewall Book Award in nonfiction
The first book to cover the entirety of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender history, from pre-1492 to the present.
In the 1620s, Thomas Morton broke from Plymouth Colony and founded Merrymount, which celebrated same-sex desire, atheism, and interracial marriage. Transgender evangelist Jemima Wilkinson, in the early 1800s, changed her name to “Publick Universal Friend,” refused to use pronouns, fought for gender equality, and led her own congregation in upstate New York. In the mid-nineteenth century, internationally famous Shakespearean actor Charlotte Cushman led an openly lesbian life, including a well-publicized “female marriage.”…
I am proud to be a human (social) scientist but think that we could collectively achieve a much more successful human science enterprise. And I believe that a better human science would translate into better public policy. Most human scientists focus on their own research, paying little attention to how the broader enterprise functions. I have written many works of a methodological nature over the years. I am pleased to point here to a handful of works with sound advice for enhancing the human science enterprise.
This book is a bit older than the others I recommend. Yet it provides a very clear critique of how the emphasis on novelty in social science – every publication is supposed to say something new – actually detracts from the pursuit of increased understanding.
Smith urges cumulative research programs that alternate between theory and empirics. He notes that natural scientists define novelty differently than social scientists and are thus able to publish in a way that advances cumulative research. He makes important recommendations for theorizing about small systems of phenomena (but appreciating connections to other phenomena) and employing mixed methods in investigating such theories.
Many social researchers today put a premium on novel perspectives, original topics of study, and new approaches. The importance of incrementally advancing established lines of theorizing and research is often overlooked. Cumulative Social Inquiry offers researchers strategies for building meaningful connections among lines of research that would otherwise remain disparate, thus facilitating systematic theory building and the generation of policy-oriented empirical evidence. Robert B. Smith shows how to design theoretically informed studies that illuminate the social structures, processes, and mechanisms that produce observable outcomes. Numerous examples of classic and contemporary mixed-methods studies illustrate the ways in which qualitative and quantitative…
When I was contemplating a topic for my PhD thesis, it struck me powerfully that American economics was severely under-studied, and that this applied even more so to those associated with “American institutional economics.” My research soon indicated to me that the literature that did exist was lacking in coverage and badly misleading. During my research in archives, I uncovered some real gems—just one example was the archives of the Robert Bookings Graduate School, an institution largely forgotten, but famous at the time. This was exciting and inspired me to continue on to provide a major re-evaluation of American economics in the interwar period.
American economics in the Progressive Era (usually dated from the later 1800s to World War I) is quite fascinating.
Mary Furner’s book is an excellent discussion of the developing American social sciences in this period.
American universities developed rapidly along with the professionalization of the social sciences. At the same time, rapid US industrialization created a raft of new economic and social problems that demanded a response.
This created a tension between the desire for professional “scientific” standing and the demand to respond to obvious social problems by advocating for particular policy responses.
Furner pays particular attention to the work and career of economist H. C. Adams, who was a teacher to a number of the later institutionalist group. In the institutionalist literature, this tension is expressed in the conjoined goals of “science and social control.”
For institutionalists, the solution to this problem was found in the pragmatic and instrumental…
This award-winning book of the Frederick Jackson Turner Studies describes the early development of social science professions in the United States. Furner traces the academic process in economics, sociology, and political science. She devotes considerable attention to economics in the 1880s, when first-generation professionals wrestled with the enormously difficult social questions associated with industrialization. Controversies among economists reflected an endemic tension in social science between the necessity of being recognized as objective scientists and an intense desire to advocate reforms.
Molded by internal conflicts and external pressures, social science gradually changed. In the 1890s economics was defined more narrowly around…
