This book presents a set theoretical approach to sociological research. It revisits existing sociological approaches and discusses their limitations, before suggesting an alternative. While the existing canonical approaches of Positivism, Conflictualism, and Pragmatism are based on biology, history, and physics, respectively, the set theoretical approach is based on mathematics. Utilising its philosophical exploration delineated by Alain Badiou, the book further translates his work into the field of social science. The result of this translation is termed Multiplitism, which evades the limiting contradictions of existing approaches. Drawing on the mathematical notion of 'set' and relating it to recent sociological turns such as the relational and the ontological, the book proposes a scale-relativity through which the researcher (as subject) and the researched (as object) are integrated. The book will be of interest to social scientists, particularly social theorists and advanced level students.

An engrossing account of the meteoric rise of contemporary philosophy's most contentious and prolific intellectual. Slovenian philosopher bad boy Slavoj Zizek is one of the most famous intellectuals of our time, publishing at a breakneck speed and lecturing around the world. With his unmistakable speaking style and set of mannerisms that have made him ripe material for internet humor and meme culture, he is recognizable to a wide spectrum of fans and detractors. But how did an intellectual from a remote Eastern European country come to such popular notoriety? In How Slavoj Became Zizek, sociologist Eliran Bar-El plumbs the emergence, popularization, and development of this phenomenon called "Zizek." Beginning with Zizek's early years as a thinker and political figure in Slovenian civil society, Bar-El traces Zizek's rise from Marxist philosopher to a political candidate to eventual intellectual celebrity as Zizek perfects his unique performative style and a rhetorical arsenal of "Hegelacanese." Following 9/11, Zizek's career as a global op-ed writer and TV commentator married his rhetoric with global events such as the War on Terror, the financial crisis of 2008, and the Arab Spring of 2011. Yet, at the same time, this mainstream popularity, as well as a series of politically incorrect views, almost entirely estranged the Slovenian from the normal workings of academia. Ultimately, this account shows how Zizek harnessed the power of the digital era in his own self-fashioning as a public intellectual.