“Like Rómulo Gallegos’s Doña Barbara, Doña Barbara Celarent comes ‘de más lejos que más nunca’ to reconstitute social thought to its integrity. Her recovery and analysis of odd or forgotten clairvoyant English-speaking social scholars, or her going beyond the ‘English only’ comfort zone, introducing thought-provoking Nairobi, Mexican, Brazilian, Chinese or Peruvian thinkers, reveal the often-missed blend of echoes and voices that deciphering human societies has necessarily encompassed. Varieties of Social Imagination  is an enchanting reading that reinstalls the meaning of erudition that the true sociological imagination demands.”

Mauricio Tenorio-Trillo, University of Chicago

“Varieties of Social Imagination is a beautiful book—deeply learned, deeply original, and deeply humane. If the ‘roots of humane social science,’ as the wise Barbara Celarent suggests, ‘lie in translation, in making the systematic leap from one social standpoint to another,’ then this book is both a compelling exercise in translation and a distinctive contribution to a humane social science.”

Rogers Brubaker, University of California, Los Angeles

“A social scientist of outstanding culture, Abbott takes us in his reading room to revive a wonderful diverse set of authors and works, mostly non-Westerners. The reward is twofold. First, the selection paves the way for a global history of social thought. And second, Abbott’s masterful art of reading proves itself to be a heuristic that makes for better conversation between scholarship and imagination.”

Pierre-Michel Menger, Collège de France (Paris)