(Dis)appointment: conspicuous absence in contemporary society

Harvie Ferguson

Contemporary Social Science, 2016, vol. 11, issue 1, 92-101

Abstract: The purpose of this article is to consider varied forms of absence, including absenteeism from work, truancy and missed appointments in modern society in the context of a number of theoretical perspectives within sociology. It does not address empirical material directly but focuses, rather, on the relevance of some central insights of social theory for any comprehensive account of the problematic character of absence in modern society. It is argued that three key theoretical perspectives of social theory provide distinctive explanatory, interpretative and descriptive accounts of absence that reflect the quite different social worlds in which these phenomena arise. A brief account of these worlds of experience is suggested and related to a more general historical sociology of the emergence and continuous transformation of modern society.

Date: 2016
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/21582041.2016.1237662 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:rsocxx:v:11:y:2016:i:1:p:92-101

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/rsoc21

DOI: 10.1080/21582041.2016.1237662

Access Statistics for this article

Contemporary Social Science is currently edited by Professor David Canter

More articles in Contemporary Social Science from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().