Isaac Ariail Reed

About

Isaac Ariail Reed is the Thomas C. Sorenson Professor of Political and Social Thought and Professor of Sociology at the University of Virginia. He is a historical and cultural sociologist with particular interests in the philosophy of social science, the historical origins of American modernity and the development of the American state, and the social theory of power. His work began with studies of the Salem Witch Trials and hermeneutic sociology, and expanded into a study of interpretation and explanation in the human sciences, and then to the sociology of power and transitions to modernity. Reed has authored significant publications including 'Interpretation and Social Knowledge: On the use of theory in the human sciences,' which received an honorable mention from two American Sociological Association sections, and other influential works on power, ethnography, and culture in modernity. He is also the co-editor of 'Social Theory Now' and received the Lewis Coser Award for Theoretical Agenda Setting in Sociology in 2015. Reed holds a B.A. in Mathematics and Sociology & Anthropology from Swarthmore College and a Ph.D. in Sociology from Yale University.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Sociology
• Social Science
• Computer Science
• Law
• Philosophy
• Epistemology
• Aesthetics
• History
• Art

Selected publications

• Power: Relational, Discursive, and Performative Dimensions

  Springer eBooks · 2023 · 44 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Modernity and the Politics of Newness: Unraveling New Time in the Chinese Cultural Revolution, 1966 to 1968

  Sociological Theory · 2023 · 10 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding

  This article develops a new approach to the sociology of time by examining how the contentious politics of newness shapes modern revolutionary politics. It goes beyond the prevalent dualistic conception of social time and develops a tripartite model by distinguishing two kinds of unordinary time—carnival time and new time—that are conflated in the dualistic conception. We analyze the Chinese Cultural Revolution (CCR) as a crucial case for understanding the importance of new time to modern revolu…

  PublisherDOI

• Power in Modernity: Agency Relations and the Creative Destruction of the King’s Two Bodies

  2020 · 7 citations

  1st authorCorresponding

  Frontmatter --Contents --Introduction. Two Parables from Kafka --PART I. Power --PART II. Modernity --PART III. Power in Modernity --Acknowledgments --Index

• Debating the dimensions: Amy Allen, Rainer Forst and Isaac Ariail Reed in dialogue-review of<i>The Four Dimensions of Power</i>by Mark Haugaard

  Journal of Political Power · 2021-09-02 · 6 citations

  articleSenior author

  In this article Amy Allen, Rainer Forst and Isaac Reed debate the four dimensions of power, as framed by Mark Haugaard, in The Four Dimensions of Power, and Haugaard responds. This discussion involves the following: the relationship between agency and authority; ideology and acquiescence; power-over, power-to and power-with; structural constraint; bias and exclusion; the distinction between deep and shallow conflicts; the concept of reification; foundational Truth claims and modest truths; how s…

  PublisherDOI

• Epistemology Contextualized: Social Scientific Knowledge in a Post-Positivist Era

  2023-01-01 · 4 citations

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Jeffrey C. Alexander

  University of California System

  8 shared

• Daniel Hirschman

  6 shared

• Abigail Cary Moore

  3 shared

• Vasfiye Betul Toprak

  University of Virginia

  2 shared

• Stephen Jones

  University of Queensland

  2 shared

• Julia Adams

  2 shared

• David E. Baker

  2 shared

• Natalie B. Aviles

  2 shared

Awards & honors

• Honorable Mention from the American Sociological Association…
• Junior Theorist Award from the ASA section on Theory for "Po…
• Lewis Coser Award for Theoretical Agenda Setting in Sociolog…

Similar researchers at University of Virginia

• Josipa Roksah-37
• Jeffrey Olickh-28
• Brad Wilcoxh-24