Sociological Trespasses: Interrogating Sin and Flesh ISBN-13: 9780739164624

Author: Aho, James

Brand: Lexington Books

Number Of Pages: 174

ISBN-13: 9780739164624

Release Date: 05-05-2011

Languages: English

Binding: Hardcover

Part Number: 9780739164624

Package Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.2 x 0.8 inches

Details: Product Description

Racism, collective violence, sickness, environmental catastrophe, body obsession, greed, and accelerated life concern everyone. They are also the subject matter of this book. Here, however, they are not viewed as social problems to be solved by technical experts. Instead, they are viewed as products of the joint transference of aspects of ourselves onto objects independent of ourselves. More specifically, they emerge from conviction there is something “out there”-say, a nation, an enemy, time, money, the environment, a medical cure, a bodily orifice (the mouth or genitals), a significant individual, or an anonymous public, etc.-the advancement of, accumulation of, defeat of, management of, or obeisance to can complete us, secure us, fill us, stabilize us, or in some other way enable us to escape from or deny our “lack”: our existential precariousness or death. Sociological Trespasses attempts to disillusion readers of this conviction. This is not done for itself, but to create space for imagining new horizons of lived-possibility, such as tolerance of human difference, simplicity, slowness, care, and wakefulness.

About the Author

James Aho is professor emeritus of sociology at Idaho State University. His two most recent books are Body Matters: A phenomenology of Sickness, Disease, and Illness (Lexington Books, 2008), co-authored with Kevin Aho, and Confession and Bookkeeping (SUNY Press, 2005).