What are the aims of sociology? What are its objects of study? How relevant is the classical tradition to the practice of sociology today? This volume brings together internationally renowned and new scholars to consider the changing relationship between contemporary and classical sociology. Arguing that recent historical and theoretical developments make reconsideration timely, it suggests that whilst the classical tradition has a continuing pertinence, it is inevitably subject to ongoing reconfiguration. Assessing the explanatory value of classical and contemporary forms of sociology, interrogating social theory as both a form of explanation and a mode of practice, and considering the possible consequences for the discipline of questions about its subject matter, Sociological Objects steers a course between assertions about radical epistemological breaks on the one hand, and reverence for the classical tradition on the other. Rather, it emphasizes the value of reworking, reconsidering and reconfiguring sociological thought.

Preface; Chapter 1 The Objects of Sociology: An Introduction, Geoff Cooper; Part 1 Social Things; Chapter 2 Durkheim's Globality, David Inglis, Roland Robertson; Chapter 3 Back to the Things Themselves: On Simmelian Objects, Olli Pyyhtinen; Chapter 4 Durkheim's Social Facts and the Performative Model: Reconsidering the Objective Nature of Social Phenomena, Irene Rafanell; Part 2 Social Practices; Chapter 5 Communities of Practice vs. Traditional Communities: The State of Sociology in a Context of Globalization, Anne Warfield Rawls; Chapter 6 Working Out What Garfinkel Could Possibly be Doing with "Durkheim's Aphorism", Michael Lynch; Chapter 7 Mathematical Equations as Durkheimian Social Facts?, Christian Greiffenhagen, Wes Sharrock; Part 3 Social Theories; Chapter 8 Social Theory in Situated Practice: Theoretical Categories in Everyday Discourse, Nanna Mik-Meyer; Chapter 9 Appropriation, Translation and the Opening of Theory, Anna Tsatsaroni, Geoff Cooper; Chapter 10 'Identity' after 'The Moment of Theory', Paul du Gay; Chapter 11 Concluding Thoughts: Reconfigurations of Social Theory, Andrew King, Ruth Rettie;