Discussing New Materialism

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-x

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2. Introduction

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 1-1

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   2. New Materialism and Its Methodological Consequences: An Introduction

      • Ulrike Tikvah Kissmann, Joost van Loon

      Pages 3-18

3. Postphenomenology and Actor-Network-Theory

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 19-19

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   2. What Makes Sensation of a Sentient Thing Possible: The Concept of Time in the Work of Maurice Merleau-Ponty

      • Ulrike Tikvah Kissmann

      Pages 21-37

   3. Historical Materialism and Actor-Network-Theory

      • Joost van Loon

      Pages 39-65

4. Cyborg and Agential Realism

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 67-67

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   2. The Cyborg, Its Friends and Feminist Theories of Materiality

      • Anne-Jorunn Berg

      Pages 69-86

   3. “Cutting Together/Apart” – Impulses from Karen Barad’s Feminist Materialism for a Relational Sociology

      • Susanne Völker

      Pages 87-106

5. Praxeology and Communicative Constructivism

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 107-107

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   2. Rethinking Bodies and Objects in Social Interaction: A Multimodal and Multisensorial Approach to Tasting

      • Lorenza Mondada

      Pages 109-134

   3. Materiality, Meaning, Social Practices: Remarks on New Materialism

      • Robert Schmidt

      Pages 135-149

   4. New Materialism? A View from Sociology of Knowledge

      • Reiner Keller

      Pages 151-169

6. Algorithmic Culture and Doing Science

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 171-171

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   2. From Hardware to Software to Runtime: The Politics of (at Least) Three Digital Materialities

      • Jan-Hendrik Passoth

      Pages 173-189

   3. Of Rabbits and Men, or: How to Study Innovation in Nanomedicine

      • Wiebke Schär

      Pages 191-210

The essays in this volume discuss the various approaches to New Materialism in Sociology and Philosophy. They raise the questions of what New Materialism consists of and whether it in fact should be considered a radical change in Social Theory. Are the ideas of a “material turn”, as the theory is formulated and in its assumptions, foreshadowed by the classical philosophies of Spinoza and Tarde? Do these new approaches bring substantially new perspectives to Social Theory? A further goal of these essays is to formulate the methodological and methodical consequences for its empirical implementation. What conditions must an ethnography of things fulfill if it is to be sufficient? Which participant objects and bodies do the approaches of the various social theories and methodologies include or exclude?

• Sozialtheorie
• Konstruktivismus
• Methodologien
• Material Turn
• Kant
• Marx

• Institut für Sozialwesen, Universität Kassel, Kassel, Germany

  Ulrike Tikvah Kissmann

• Fachbereich Soziologie, KU Eichstätt-Ingolstadt, Eichstätt, Germany

  Joost van Loon

Ulrike Tikvah Kissmann is Professor of Sociological Methodology of Qualitative Reconstructive Research at the University of Kassel.

Joost van Loon is Professor of General Sociology and Sociological Theory at the Catholic University Eichstätt-Ingolstadt.

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