Charles Lemert
Encyclopedia
Charles Lemert is an American born social theorist and sociologist. He has written extensively on social theory
Social theory
Social theories are theoretical frameworks which are used to study and interpret social phenomena within a particular school of thought. An essential tool used by social scientists, theories relate to historical debates over the most valid and reliable methodologies , as well as the primacy of...
, globalization
Globalization
Globalization refers to the increasingly global relationships of culture, people and economic activity. Most often, it refers to economics: the global distribution of the production of goods and services, through reduction of barriers to international trade such as tariffs, export fees, and import...
and culture
Culture
Culture is a term that has many different inter-related meanings. For example, in 1952, Alfred Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn compiled a list of 164 definitions of "culture" in Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions...
. He has contributed to many key debates in social thought, authoring dozens of books including his best-selling text Social Things: An Introduction to the Sociological Life (Rowman & Littlefield, 2005), which the historian Howard Zinn
Howard Zinn
Howard Zinn was an American historian, academic, author, playwright, and social activist. Before and during his tenure as a political science professor at Boston University from 1964-88 he wrote more than 20 books, which included his best-selling and influential A People's History of the United...
, the author of A People's History of the United States
A People's History of the United States
Chapter 7, "As Long As Grass Grows or Water Runs" discusses 19th century conflicts between the U.S. government and Native Americans and Indian removal, especially during the administrations of Andrew Jackson and Martin Van Buren....
, has called "one of those rare ruminations on the human condition that makes you want to return to it after your first reading to ponder its ideas." He teaches at Wesleyan University
Wesleyan University
Wesleyan University is a private liberal arts college founded in 1831 and located in Middletown, Connecticut. According to the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, Wesleyan is the only Baccalaureate College in the nation that emphasizes undergraduate instruction in the arts and...
in Middletown, Connecticut
Middletown, Connecticut
Middletown is a city located in Middlesex County, Connecticut, along the Connecticut River, in the central part of the state, 16 miles south of Hartford. In 1650, it was incorporated as a town under its original Indian name, Mattabeseck. It received its present name in 1653. In 1784, the central...
and lives in New Haven, Connecticut
New Haven, Connecticut
New Haven is the second-largest city in Connecticut and the sixth-largest in New England. According to the 2010 Census, New Haven's population increased by 5.0% between 2000 and 2010, a rate higher than that of the State of Connecticut, and higher than that of the state's five largest cities, and...
with his family.
Lemert is distinguished as a theorist in the US, most notably for introducing French theory to American sociology. His first book Sociology and the Twilight of Man: Homocentrism and Discourse in Sociological Theory (Southern Illinois University Press, 1979) drew from theoretical contributions of the likes of Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault , born Paul-Michel Foucault , was a French philosopher, social theorist and historian of ideas...
and Jacques Derrida
Jacques Derrida
Jacques Derrida was a French philosopher, born in French Algeria. He developed the critical theory known as deconstruction and his work has been labeled as post-structuralism and associated with postmodern philosophy...
in order to critique humanism in sociological theory. His article "Language, Structure, and Measurement: Structuralist Semiotics and Sociology"(1979) published in the American Journal of Sociology
American Journal of Sociology
The American Journal of Sociology was established in 1895 by Albion Small and is the oldest academic journal of sociology in the United States. The journal is attached to the University of Chicago's sociology department and it is published bimonthly by The University of Chicago Press. Its...
and his French Sociology: Rupture and Renewal since 1968 (Columbia University Press, 1981), which brought together scholarly contributions from leading French intellectuals, and Michel Foucault: Social Theory as Transgression(Columbia University Press, 1982) co-authored with Garth Gillan, helped to set in stone his reputation as the leading sociological interpreter of French theory.
Lemert is also known for his best-selling instructional texts:Social Theory: The Multicultural and Classic Readings(Westview Press, 2004) and Social Things: An Introduction to the Sociological Life(Rowman & Littlefield, 2005). More recently, he authored Thinking the Unthinkable: The Riddles of Classical Social Theories (Paradigm Publishers, 2007).
Lately, he has written on a wide range of subjects. His most recent works have dealt with globalization and culture. His The New Individualism (Routledge, 2005) written with Anthony Elliott, explores the figure of the individual looking at the emotional costs of globalization. His Durkheim's Ghosts(Cambridge University Press, 2006) reclaims the legacy of the early sociologist to offer a radical different intellectual trajectory than those who have recently taken ownership of Émile Durkheim
Émile Durkheim
David Émile Durkheim was a French sociologist. He formally established the academic discipline and, with Karl Marx and Max Weber, is commonly cited as the principal architect of modern social science and father of sociology.Much of Durkheim's work was concerned with how societies could maintain...
, namely the strong program of cultural sociology espoused by sociologist Jeffrey C. Alexander
Jeffrey C. Alexander
Jeffrey Charles Alexander is an American sociologist, and one of the main proponents of Neofunctionalism.-Career:Alexander gained his BA from Harvard in 1969 and his PhD from the University of California, Berkeley in 1978...
. He is currently at work on a book on Protestant theologian Reinhold Niebuhr
Reinhold Niebuhr
Karl Paul Reinhold Niebuhr was an American theologian and commentator on public affairs. Starting as a leftist minister in the 1920s indebted to theological liberalism, he shifted to the new Neo-Orthodox theology in the 1930s, explaining how the sin of pride created evil in the world...
for Yale University Press and a reader on globalization (with Anthony Elliott) for Routledge.
He maintains a column called Slow Thoughts for Fast Times for the online journal Fast Capitalism and edits the Great Barrington Books series for Paradigm Publishers and New Social Formations series for Rowman & Littlefield.
Career
EducationLemert received his PhD from Harvard University
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
in 1972 after completing work at Andover Newton Theological School
Andover Newton Theological School
Andover Newton Theological School is a graduate school and seminary located in Newton, Massachusetts. It is America's oldest graduate seminary and the nation's first graduate institution of any kind...
and Miami University
Miami University
Miami University is a coeducational public research university located in Oxford, Ohio, United States. Founded in 1809, it is the 10th oldest public university in the United States and the second oldest university in Ohio, founded four years after Ohio University. In its 2012 edition, U.S...
in Ohio. He also received an honorary doctorate from the University of the West of England
University of the West of England
The University of the West of England is a university based in the English city of Bristol. Its main campus is at Frenchay, about five miles north of the city centre...
in 2004.
Positions
Lemert is a former John C. Andrus Professor of Sociology at Wesleyan University
Wesleyan University
Wesleyan University is a private liberal arts college founded in 1831 and located in Middletown, Connecticut. According to the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, Wesleyan is the only Baccalaureate College in the nation that emphasizes undergraduate instruction in the arts and...
, where he taught from 1982-2010, and teaches at the Boston Graduate School of Psychoanalysis
Boston Graduate School of Psychoanalysis
Boston Graduate School of Psychoanalysis was founded in 1973 as an institute to train psychoanalysts, particularly in the highly controversial field of Modern Psychoanalysis.- Accreditation :...
. Also, he is Visiting Professor of Sociology at Trinity College in Hartford, CT. Before that he was Professor of Sociology at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale from 1977-1981. He has also held several visiting scholarships at various institutions, including Centre de Sociologie Européenne: Education et Culture, Maison des Sciences de l'Homme, Centre d'Etudes Sociologiques, Columbia University
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...
, and MIT.
Recent works
- Thinking the Unthinkable: The Riddles of Classical Social Theories (Paradigm Publishers, 2007).
- Durkheim’s Ghosts: Cultural Logics and Social Things (Cambridge University Press, 2006)
- The Souls of W.E.B. Du Bois, with Alford A. Young, Jr., Jerry G. Watts, Manning Marable & Elizabeth Higginbotham (Boulder & London: Paradigm Publishers, 2006)
- Deadly Worlds: The Emotional Costs of Globalization, with Anthony Elliott (Rowman & Littlefield NA, 2006; world rights: Routledge, UK, 2005 as The New Individualism)
- Social Things (Rowman & Littlefield, 2005; 3e revised & enlarged; 2005). 2e 2001; 1e 1997. German and Danish editions, 2004.
- Postmodernism Is Not What You Think (Paradigm Publishers, 2005; 2e revised & enlarged; forthcoming) Original publisher: Blackwell, 1997. Portuguese/Brazilian Edition, 2001; with new preface.
- Sociology After the Crisis (Paradigm Publishers, 2004; 2e revised & enlarged). Original publisher: Perseus Books, 1995-2002.