Provides original and critical analysis of the state of the social sciences and the humanities. This book examines the different disciplines that address human affairs - from sociology, philosophy, political science, and anthropology to the humanities in general - to understand their common ground.

Introduction: What Is Human about Human Affairs?    I SocialIty: The Problem of Definition    1 The Urgency of Defining the Social  2 Society as a Basic Fact  3 Dependence and Autonomy  4 The Certainty of the Social as the Basic Fact  5 The Sociality of Agency  6 Models, Theory, and Theorizing  7 Theorizing  8 Historicism and Its Alternative  9 Social Facts, Situations, and Moral Stakes   II Social Action    10 Can “the Social” Be a Proper Object of Theory?  11 Further Problems in Theorizing the Social  12 Social Action as Action  13 The Self of the Actor  14 Self and Situation  15 Self and Agency  16 Social Action Reconsidered   III Subjects and Situations    17 Overview  18 Causes of Failure in the Social Sciences  19 Objects and Their Subjects  20 The Positive Sense of “Situation”  21 Practices, Situations, and Inter-subjectivity  22 Criticism, Inter-subjectivity, and Collective Enunciation  23 Criticism and Human Affairs  24 Collective Enunciation  25 Subjectivity and Objectivity  26 Summary, Reprise, and Transition   Acknowledgments Notes References Index