Jesse Smith
Free the Inquiry, Substack
What would it take to open up a research field that has narrowed without anyone quite noticing? That sociology of knowledge question animated Jesse Smith’s presentation to the HxSociology virtual community. An assistant professor at the Salmon P. Chase Center for Civics, Culture, and Society at Ohio State University — one of the new civic-thought centers reshaping the institutional landscape of higher ed — Smith builds his case from four premises: that values irreducibly shape research, that they can distort inquiry when they harden into a closed paradigm, that sociology today operates under just such a progressive paradigm, and that closed paradigms only crack open when a competing paradigm, grounded in opposing values, offers genuine alternatives rather than mere critique.
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