The responsibility for social hope

Since representations of social life are rarely separate in their effects from the worlds they aspire to depict, this article argues that as producers of such representations, sociologists are automatically responsible for considering the performative consequences of their work. In particular, it suggests that sociologists have an ongoing normative responsibility to draw out emergent strands of social hope from their empirical analyses. Through a comparison of Rorty, Levitas, and Unger’s different theorizations of social hope, the article argues for a pragmatic model of social hope that is rooted in empirical conceptions of the past and present, but, alive to the transcendent possibilities of the emerging future, refuses to be entirely determined by these conceptions.This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from SAGE via http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/072551361664757

Extending Varieties of Capitalism to Emerging Economies:What can We Learn from Brazil?

In this paper we argue that efforts to apply Varieties of Capitalism to emerging economies can retaining a central role for institutions as constraining, it is important to incorporate into the analysis the nature and role of social blocs and the development of growth regimes. The paper develops a framework that systematically explores the links and interactions between institutions, the politics of social blocs and the viability of growth regimes as a way of understanding the trajectory of varieties of capitalism. We illustrate the value of this framework by applying it to developments in Brazil over the last three decades. In our concluding section, we describe how the application of the framework can be broadened not just to other emerging economies but also to the challenges currently being faced by advanced capitalist democracies. We identify a series of research questions developing and applying insights from this framework. A theoretically renewed comparative capitalisms approach to emerging economies is therefore potentially going to provide a payoff to developing a global perspective on forms of capitalism and their trajectories

Transnational Governance Regimes in the Global South:Multinationals, States and NGOs as Political Actors

PublishedIntroduction Brazil recently experienced one of the world's worst environmental disasters when the Samarco mining company's Fundão tailings dam burst. This tragic disaster, which occurred on 5 November, 2015, killed 17 people, swept away a district of the town of Mariana, polluted the Rio Doce river valley and degraded the water supply of 35 towns, negatively affecting the lives of millions of Brazilians (Aragão & Paes, 2016), and even impacting the waters of the South Atlantic. This was the world's worst environmental disaster involving a tailings dam to date (Bowker, 2015). As of June 2016, polluted sediment was still washing through the river and Samarco had still not paid the fines imposed on it. The mining company, jointly controlled by Australian-based multinational BHP Billiton and Brazil's Vale, was previously recognized as a leader in environmental standards, receiving numerous international awards and certifications (as did its joint owners). Although it is still too early to confirm with any certainty, since the investigations are still underway, there is evidence that this disaster was the result of a lack of adequate regulation, both by the market and by the state (Phillips, 2015). [...

Humanising Sociological Knowledge

This paper elaborates on the value of a humanistic approach to the production and judgement of sociological knowledge by defending this approach against some common criticisms. It argues that humanising sociological knowledge not only lends an appropriate epistemological humility to the discipline, but also encourages productive knowledge development by suggesting that a certain irreverence to what is considered known is far more important for generating useful new perspectives on social phenomena than defensive vindications of existing knowledge. It also suggests that the threat of what is called “relativism” evoked by critics of humanised conceptions of knowledge is largely illusory, and that in fact a far graver danger comes from dogmatic assertions of social truth that claim to have somehow secured access to non-contingent arenas of knowing, forestalling ongoing conversation, and tying future discovery to the limits of current perspectives.This work was supported by the Economic and Social Research Council [grant number ES/ I902503/1]This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Taylor & Francis via http://doi.org/10.1080/02691728.2015.111991