Experimentalism and Sociology

This book is based on the understanding that the diversity and heterogeneity of science and society are not only issue of critique, but engender experimental forms of collaboration. Building on John Dewey's experimental theory of knowledge and inquiry, practice theory, science and technology studies and the anthropology of nature, the book offers a trenchant redefinition of a present-focused sociology as a science of experience in the spirit of experimentalism. Crisis, instead of being a mere problem, is understood as the baseline for creativity and innovation. Committed to the experimental pursuit, the book provides an experience-based methodological approach for an inter- and trans disciplinary sociology. Finally, it argues for a globalized and transformative sociological outreach beyond established epistemic and national borders. This book is of interest to sociologists and other social scientists pursuing experimentalism in method and/or practice.   

Professor PhD habil. Tanja Bogusz? is a sociologist and social anthropologist at Kassel University, Germany, where she has been heading the group 'Sociology of Social Disparities' since 2016. She has earned grants for research projects at the crossroads of social theory, human-environmental relations, biodiversity research, and social cohesion (DFG, BMBF, FMSH, DAAD). In 2011-13 she did an ethnographic inquiry on marine taxonomy at the Natural History Museum in Paris that led to a study of a large international biodiversity expedition in Papua New Guinea. Stemming from her implementation within the expedition, a newly discovered species (Joculator boguszae) was named after her. She has published broadly on French sociology and anthropology (classic and contemporary), pragmatism and practice theories, social sciences of nature and sociological experimentalism. Before Kassel she was appointed as a visiting professor at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) in Paris, the Collège de France Paris, Humboldt Universität zu Berlin, and as a fellow at the Max Weber Centre for Advanced Cultural and Social Studies in Erfurt. In 2017 she completed her habilitation in sociology at Friedrich-Schiller Universität Jena.