The Flight from Ambiguity

The essays turn about a single theme, the loss of the capacity to deal constructively with ambiguity in the modern era. Levine offers a head-on critique of the modern compulsion to flee ambiguity. He centers his analysis on the question of what responses social scientists should adopt in the face of the inexorably ambiguous character of all natural languages. In the course of his argument, Levine presents a fresh reading of works by the classic figures of modern European and American social theoryDurkheim, Freud, Simmel and Weber, and Park, Parsons, and Merton.

Donald N. Levine is the Peter B. Ritzma Professor of Sociology at the University of Chicago. He is the author of Wax and Gold: Tradition and Innovation in Ethiopian Culture and Greater Ethiopia: The Evolution of a Multiethnic Society, both published by the University of Chicago Press, as well as Simmel and Parsons: Two Approaches to the Study of Society.