For Sociological Polyphony and Conviviality: Enhancing Sociology's Intellectual Aspirations

Abstract

xtending a Welcome to Dialogues in Sociology
Welcome to Dialogues in Sociology!
If you are reading this, you are probably a ‘sociologist’ (however you may define that), or at least someone who is sociology curious.
Presumably, you have been interested enough in a journal called Dialogues in Sociology to want to open this text and to see what the new journal has to offer.
So, here is what is coming up in what we hope is a rather different sort of Sociology journal…
A Space of Polyphony and Conviviality
Dialogues in Sociology is going to publish articles that push forward sociological debates, especially in the form of dialogues carried on between multiple and varied interlocutors.
The dialogical emphasis of the journal means that it supports constructive conversations between participants, not polemics. Dialogue can have a musical meaning, and in musical terms, the journal seeks to promote new forms of polyphony, where different voices come into play with each other. The audible effect is somewhat harmonious but without ever being fully so. Each voice retains its distinctiveness, while at the same time, it may also alter and reposition itself and react to others as the music unfolds.
Disagreement is allowed too, of course, and indeed to some extent encouraged. But discord need not play out in a thoroughly discordant manner. What will be avoided is cacophony, where participants loudly make noises that fail to engage constructively with each other, blocking up their own ears to avoid listening to others as they do so