The current thesis attempts to discuss, critique, and repair the idea of public sociology as a public discourse and a professional practice. Emerging in the writings of C W. Mills and Alvin Gouldner in the late 1950s and 1970s, “public sociology” was given its name in 1988 by Herbert J. Gans, before it was popularised by Michael Burawoy in 2004, reflecting a recurring desire to debate the discipline's public relevance, responsibility and accountability to its publics: academic and extra-academic alike. Resisting a trend in the relevant literature to treat the term as new, it is argued that the notion of making sociology “public” is as old as the discipline itself, suggesting that the recent public sociology debate does not describe a modern predicament, but an enduring characteristic of sociology's epistemic identity. A detailed critical review of recent controversies on public sociology is offered as a compass with which to navigate the terms and conditions of the term, as it has been espoused, critiqued and re-modelled to fit divergent aspirations about sociology's identity, status and function in academia and the public sphere. An invitation to understand the discipline beyond a language of crisis concludes the thesis, offering eleven counter-theses to M. Burawoy's approach that seek to reconstruct sociology's self-perception, while also suggesting ways of making it public in the context of intellectual life at the 21st century.

The goal of this dissertation is to investigate the impact that historical (and cultural) contexts have on the production of theories and concepts. In specific, I am interested in the relationship between historical and cultural contexts and the production of theoretical knowledge. I define historical periods in theory as modernist and an "after-modern" context, which comprises poststructuralism, postmodernism and post-Marxism. My case is the life and work of Antonio Gramsci; a "classical theorist" whose work remains salient across the social sciences and humanities. I hypothesize that in order to understand the historiography of knowledge in the social sciences, from the classical period to the present, significant points of "departure" in theory (e.g. Gramsci, Marxism, psychoanalysis, feminism) need to be viewed contextually. By extension, a better way to fully understand Gramsci's insights, and their endurance, for the study of race, sexuality, culture and politics is to situate his methodology, theories, and concepts historically. In the dissertation propose two ways to test this hypothesis: 1. I provide an historically grounded interpretation of Gramsci's political thinking (a orienting place for much of Gramsci's thought) which includes, for example, changes in his perspective about the strategic role of specific political groups, e.g. social movement organizations, in achieving political goals; 2. I embed his theoretical and conceptual framework within the theoretical discourses prevalent during his time, which would include, for example, the rise and predominance of Italian positivist criminology as a racial discourse. I also hypothesize that in this case, such an interpretation is necessary to fully and accurately understand the potential contribution of Gramsci's theoretical framework to contemporary theoretical discourses in both the social sciences and humanities-based disciplines. This dissertation is organized around the following sets of questions. My originating question, which establishes the analytical framework for the dissertation, is: What impact does historical (and cultural) contexts have on the production of theories and concepts? As it pertains to my specific case, the life and work of Antonio Gramsci, I sharpen the point by asking: In the context of the originating research question, In what ways have the historical (and cultural) contexts effected the production of theories and concepts in Gramsci's work? This dissertation represents a contribution to the sociology of ideas as well as to classical theory by providing a new lens through which to look at the early contributions of sociological knowledge. Further, each individual section?which represents explorations of specific theoretical rubrics?may lead to contributions within these distinct areas.

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The thesis offers an exposition and tentative solution of two problems: a definition of the Idea of Progress, and classification of social philosophers and sociologists according to this definition. Twelve propositions, or assumptions, are used to define the Idea, and works of selected philosophers from Hesiod to Parsons are examined in the light of this definition. Historical examination reveals that the Idea's acceptance reaches a zenith in the early nineteenth century, after which it lost credibility, becoming virtually discarded by mid-twentieth century.

The main objective of this study is to develop a feminist theoretical understanding of menstruation. I first explore Simone de Beauvoir’s feminist existentialist concept of woman as Other to establish a baseline from which all other sociocultural discourses on menstruation flow. I next expand Erving Goffman’s symbolic interactionist theory on stigma to discuss the social-psychological internalization process that girls encounter as they become enculturated into menstruation as a stigmatic condition. I then use a macro-discursive, Foucauldian analysis on power and discourse to understand how menstruation has been socially constructed from premodern superstitions, to the rise of modern medicine in the late 19th century. I follow this with a Marxian, macro-materialist understanding of capitalism to discuss how the femcare industry emerged and commodified feminine hygiene products. Finally, I investigate how second and third wave feminists have mobilized to resist patriarchal ideologies which devalue, subordinate, and subjugate menstruating bodies.

This dissertation proposes an approach to energy that transcends the focus on energy as a mere technical economic or engineering problem, is connected to sociological theory as a whole, and takes issues of equality and ecology as theoretical starting points. In doing so, the work presented here puts ecological and environmental sociological theory, and the work of environmental justice scholars, feminist ecologists, and energy scholars, in a context in which they may complement one another to broaden the theoretical basis of the current sociology of energy. This theoretical integration provides an approach to energy focused on energy justice. Understanding energy and society in the terms outlined here makes visible energy injustice, or the interface between social inequalities and ecological depredations accumulating as the social and ecological debts of the modern energy regime. Systems ecology is brought into this framework as a means for understanding unequal exchange, energy injustice more generally, and the requirements for long-term social and ecological reproduction in ecological terms. Energy developments in Ecuador and Cuba are used here as case studies in order to further develop the idea of energy justice and the theory of unequal ecological exchange. The point is to broaden the framework of the contemporary critical sociology of energy, putting energy justice at its heart. This dissertation contains previously published and unpublished co-authored material.

The purpose of this study is to contribute to the construction of a theoretical framework for empirical examination of social movements in Third World countries. Political process theory, currently a dominant perspective on social movements, is the most promising starting point for such a research program; however, it has inherent Western biases, which severely limit its explanatory power for examining Third World social movements. Specifically, I contend that political process theory's understanding of the relationship between the state and social movements, as well as its assumptions about the dynamics of political opportunity structures, inadequately capture the complexities of the Third World social movements. Therefore, as the basis of a larger project, I critique the western biases inherent in the theoretical framework of the political process theory, focusing exclusively on Doug McAdam's contributions to this approach. I employ a hermeneutic method, since it provides a useful means for engaging in discourse with texts. I conclude that McAdam's views on political opportunity and the state reflect a Eurocentric reading and understanding, in large part because his analyses have been based on democratic states.Accordingly, some of the political process theory's key shortcomings for Third World applications are that it overemphasizes the analytic and practical importance of the electoral system, and that its logic is rooted in unrealistic assumptions of inherently stable political structures and institutionalized democratic processes. / Master of Science

This article analyzes the theoretical and epistemological elaborations of Luhmann about the problem of meaning. Its aim is to trace the key tension that crosses the different inflections of his proposal: between a formal definition of meaning, with the distinction of selective actuality and the horizon of potentialities, and its taking form, parting from the operations of systems. In order to do this, three decisive moments of his perspective are studied. First, the article focuses on his claim to formally conceptualize and to «desubjectivize» meaning, within a series of theoretical inheritances and ruptures.Second, it analyzes the consequences of his autopoietical proposal, either by pointing out meaning as the coevolutionary achievement of psychic and social systems, or in its analysis of the linguistic generalization of meaning. Third, in his later works, with the intensification of his theory of the observer, the article examines his approach to meaning from the distinction between medium and form. Finally, the previous considerations are combined with his theory of evolution and differentiation of society, from which the article reflects on the particularities of the conceptual construction of Luhmann about meaning. / Este artículo analiza las elaboraciones teóricas y epistemológicas de Luhmann acerca del problema del sentido. El objetivo es rastrear la tensión clave que atraviesa las distintas inflexiones de su mirada entre una definición formal del sentido, con la distinción de la actualidad selectiva y el horizonte de potencialidades, y su puesta en forma, a partir de las operaciones de los sistemas. Para ello, se recorren tres momentos decisivos de su mirada. En primer lugar, se focaliza en su pretensión de conceptualizar al sentido de modo formal y «des-subjetivado», en un juego de herencias y rupturas teóricas. En segundo lugar, se da cuenta de las consecuencias de su propuesta autopoiética, ya sea al señalar al sentido como logro coevolutivo de los sistemas psíquicos y sociales, ya sea en su análisis de la generalización lingüística del sentido. En tercer lugar, en sus últimas obras, con la intensificación de su teoría del observador, se interroga su abordaje del sentido desde la distinción entre medio y forma. Por último, se aúnan las anteriores consideraciones con su teoría de la evolución y diferenciación de la sociedad, a partir de lo cual se reflexiona sobre las particularidades de la construcción conceptual de Luhmann respecto del sentido.

Ernesto Laclau, emeritus professor of the  University of Essex, UK, visited Ecuador in March 2012. In his open conference at FLACSO, Quito, Laclau presented his peculiar interpretation of «populism». The present article sketches the main lines of Laclau’s lecture and draws a critique on some of his main theoretical and political tenets. / El presente artículo refiere a las propuestas de Ernesto Laclau que revisan la consideración tradicional acerca del populismo. En marzo de 2012, Laclau estuvo de visita en Ecuador y ofreció una conferencia magistral en FLACSO. El artículo a continuación responde en parte a lo dicho por Laclau. Se esbozan críticas a algunos de sus planteamientos.

In this paper, we analize in systematic and detailed terms one central aspect of Manuel Castells´s contemporary sociological perspective of power: the question of frame or modeling mind. The research will allow us to discover, mainly, the proliferation of a discourse built from two theoretical operations hidden by the author: the postulation of a logic of imposition as exclusionary logic of power or power of framed, and the separation between power and minds. We demonstrate that such discourse embodies a contradictory movement as often assumed a markedly ideological form that tend to mask the mentioned operations. Castells´s appropriation of Entman´s theory, his mainly theoretical source inthis case, provides significant evidence to demonstrate such findings. / En el presente artículo analizamos de modo sistemático y pormenorizado un aspecto central de la perspectiva sociológica contemporánea del poder de Manuel Castells: la cuestión del enmarcado o modelado de la mente. El estudio nos permitirá descubrir, principalmente, la proliferación de un discurso edificado a partir de dos operaciones teóricas ocultadas por el autor: la postulación de una lógica de imposición como lógica excluyente del poder y del poder de enmarcado, y la separación entre el poder y las mentes. Demostramos que tal discurso encarna un movimiento contradictorio en tanto asume con frecuencia una forma marcadamente ideológica que tiende a enmascarar las operaciones mencionadas. La apropiación que efectúa Castells de la teoría de Entman, su fuente teórica principal en este caso, aporta pruebas significativas para evidenciar tales hallazgos.