Advances in Contemplative Social Research

This book is unique and audacious, and fits very well with current tendencies within qualitative research. It introduces new, fresh threads to questions and concerns that are highly significant for contemporary social science. The formulated conclusions go beyond directly methodological issues, posing key philosophical questions to the whole project of western sociology. The critical potential of the adopted perspective would allow the author to throw the question of reflexive scientific examination in social sciences into doubt to the extent comparable with that of the deconstruction of sociology once performed by Baudrillard. The author does not choose to fulfill this potential. Rather, he pursues the reconciliation of the nondualistic contemplative approach with the discursiveness of western science. He also strongly emphasizes the consistency between the ethical and the cognitive, which is characteristic of the Zen perspective; in our academic reality these two components have been separated and any attempts at their reconciliation result in numerous and rather unmovable difficulties with regard to logic. All this makes the book in question deeply inspiring on various levels of the organization of social science within the contemporary institutional and cultural state of affairs. Without a doubt, this book is worth publishing as it contributes new quality to academic reflection on the social world and the ways of cognising it. -- Grażyna Romańczuk-Woroniecka, University of Warsaw