Sociology, Culture and Energy: The Case of Wilhelm Ostwald’s ‘Sociological Energetics’ – A Translation and Exposition of a Classic Text

Stewart, Janet

doi:10.1177/1749975514523937

Cited by 7 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 24 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…In line with 'boundary object' theory (Star and Griesemer, 1989), the 'Energy Exploration' exhibition, and the objects around which it is constructed, can be conceived as entities that have different meanings in each discipline, but which are common enough to be recognizable in each. This is the case, both with the form of the museum and with the theme of the particular exhibition under investigation in this chapter, as energy is also a theme taken up recently by both visual culture studies (Bozak, 2011;Jolivette, 2014;LeMenager, 2014;O'Brian, 2015;Veder, 2015) and sociology (McKinnon, 2007;Stewart, 2014;Tyfield and Urry, 2014;Urry, 2013). As Boyer and Szeman (2014: n.p.…”

mentioning

confidence: 83%

Visual Culture Studies and Cultural Sociology: Extractive Seeing

Stewart¹

2016

The SAGE Handbook of Cultural Sociology

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

In 1996, the leading modern and contemporary art periodical, October, published the results of its 'Visual Culture Questionnaire' (Alpers et al., 1996), which was to become a landmark publication in the construction of visual culture as a field of study. Many of the individual responses to the questionnaire reflect on the boundary line between visual culture and art history, as, more recently, does Whitney Davis (2011) in his comprehensive General Theory of Visual Culture. The construction of 'visual culture' as an object of study involves a number of moves, in which visual culture studies seeks to distinguish itself from the range of existing disciplines that engage with visual objects-including Anthropology, Architectural History, English, Film Studies, Geography, History, History of Art, Modern Languages, Sociology. Visual culture studies steers a sometimes uneasy course of rapprochement with these disciplines, to which, in part at least, it also sets itself up in resistance. A number of programmatic early contributions to the Journal of Visual Culture (which was established in 2002) focused on the nature of boundaries between visual culture and other fields of study, discussing the desirability of policing and/or permeating such boundaries and reflecting on disciplinarity, interdisciplinarity and even 'indisciplinarity'

show abstract

mentioning

confidence: 83%

Visual Culture Studies and Cultural Sociology: Extractive Seeing

Stewart¹

2016

The SAGE Handbook of Cultural Sociology

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…An exception was the 1909 Nobel Prize winner in chemistry, Wilhelm Ostwald. His ‘sociological energeticism’ was an early signature moment in the demarcation of the social from the natural sciences (Stewart, ). Economics and psychology had long liberally borrowed both ideas and equations from physics, especially the emerging science of thermodynamics (Mirowski, ).…”

Section: Ostwald's Re‐organization Of the Organismmentioning

confidence: 99%

Organizing the organism: a re-casting of the bio-social interface for our times

Fuller¹

2016

The Sociological Review Monographs

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

I present a future‐oriented look at sociology and anthropology's historical appropriation of the concept of organism. The ‘future’ of which I speak is one in which the biological and technological are blending together. In cultural and science studies, the figure of the ‘cyborg’ is often discussed in this context. But the cyborg tends to be treated as a specifically ‘postmodern’ innovation, whereas the organism has always invited the cyborg's ontological ambivalence. This sensibility goes back to the dawn of both the modern biomedical sciences and the social sciences. I begin on the relatively familiar terrain of the role that emerging medical conceptions of the organism in the mid‐nineteenth century played in the formation of such founding figures of sociology and anthropology as Emile Durkheim and Franz Boas. I then move to the specific ‘relativization’ of Darwin's theory of evolution that fostered turn‐of‐the‐century conceptions of the social organism, including that emergent entity, the ‘superorganism’, which figures prominently – albeit differently – in the attempts to characterize the uniquely ‘human’ character of culture and technology. Finally I look at one very explicitly ‘constructivist’ approach to the social organism promoted by the distinguished chemist Wilhelm Ostwald, who was in turn anathematized by Max Weber in one of the original episodes of sociology's disciplinary boundary maintenance. The pride of place that Ostwald gave to ‘catalysts’ in consolidating and enhancing social organisms – from business firms to academic disciplines – earns his perspective a second look in our time. I end with directions for further exploration, which include reviving Norbert Wiener's cybernetic vision.

show abstract

“…An exception was the 1909 Nobel Prize winner in chemistry, Wilhelm Ostwald. His 'sociological energeticism' was an early signature moment in the demarcation of the social from the natural sciences (Stewart, 2014). Economics and psychology had long liberally borrowed both ideas and equations from physics, especially the emerging science of thermodynamics (Mirowski, 1989 Weber's (2012) critique, these appropriations came to be increasingly viewed as the imperial overreach of metaphors from more to less established sciences, without due attention given to contextual differences of application.…”

Section: Ostwald's Re-organization Of the Organismmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…An exception was the 1909 Nobel Prize winner in chemistry, Wilhelm Ostwald. His ‘sociological energeticism’ was an early signature moment in the demarcation of the social from the natural sciences (Stewart, 2014). Economics and psychology had long liberally borrowed both ideas and equations from physics, especially the emerging science of thermodynamics (Mirowski, 1989).…”

Section: Ostwald's Re-organization Of the Organismmentioning

confidence: 99%

Organizing the Organism: A Re-Casting of the Bio-Social Interface for Our Times

Fuller¹

2016

The Sociological Review

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

I present a future-oriented look at sociology and anthropology's historical appropriation of the concept of organism. The 'future' of which I speak is one in which the biological and technological are blending together. In cultural and science studies, the figure of the 'cyborg' is often discussed in this context. But the cyborg tends to be treated as a specifically 'postmodern' innovation, whereas the organism has always invited the cyborg's ontological ambivalence. This sensibility goes back to the dawn of both the modern biomedical sciences and the social sciences. I begin on the relatively familiar terrain of the role that emerging medical conceptions of the organism in the mid-nineteenth century played in the formation of such founding figures of sociology and anthropology as Emile Durkheim and Franz Boas. I then move to the specific 'relativization' of Darwin's theory of evolution that fostered turn-of-the-century conceptions of the social organism, including that emergent entity, the 'superorganism', which figures prominently -albeit differently -in the attempts to characterize the uniquely 'human' character of culture and technology. Finally I look at one very explicitly 'constructivist' approach to the social organism promoted by the distinguished chemist Wilhelm Ostwald, who was in turn anathematized by Max Weber in one of the original episodes of sociology's disciplinary boundary maintenance. The pride of place that Ostwald gave to 'catalysts' in consolidating and enhancing social organisms -from business firms to academic disciplines -earns his perspective a second look in our time. I end with directions for further exploration, which include reviving Norbert Wiener's cybernetic vision. The medical organism as the original bio-social interfaceAs late as the 1970s, anthropology dealt with pre-modern if not all pre-literate societies, whereas sociology dealt with modern if not all literate societies. While anthropologists and sociologists disputed how their respective jurisdictions should be drawn in time and space, they agreed that biologists dealt with aspects of the human condition that lay farther back in time and potentially included all of its

show abstract

Sociology, Culture and Energy: The Case of Wilhelm Ostwald’s ‘Sociological Energetics’ – A Translation and Exposition of a Classic Text

Cited by 7 publications

References 24 publications

Visual Culture Studies and Cultural Sociology: Extractive Seeing

Visual Culture Studies and Cultural Sociology: Extractive Seeing

Organizing the organism: a re-casting of the bio-social interface for our times

Organizing the Organism: A Re-Casting of the Bio-Social Interface for Our Times

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About