Alex Law, "The Roots of Sociology: Scottish Enlightenment and the Civilising Process" (Routledge, 2026)

The Scottish Enlightenment wasn't just a collection of philosophical musings—it was a deliberate, elite-driven project to understand and stabilize the emerging commercial society, long before sociology existed as a formal discipline. In 'The Roots of Sociology,' Alex Law argues that thinkers like Adam Smith and Adam Ferguson were not radical revolutionaries but intellectual architects of social order, deeply concerned with the 'civilising process'—the gradual internalisation of self-restraint, the monopolisation of violence by the state, and the formation of civil society. Far from being mere precursors to modern sociology, Law shows they were engaged in a sophisticated, historically grounded analysis of social dynamics, using relational, processual models that anticipated Norbert Elias’s later work. The book challenges the presentist bias in contemporary sociology, urging the discipline to recover its historical self-awareness and to embrace a broader, more integrative vision—one that includes utopian thinking, historical depth, and a critical engagement with power, patronage, and the unintended consequences of social change. This isn’t nostalgia; it’s a call to reclaim sociology’s intellectual roots as a foundation for its future.