Personal profile
Current projects
1. Understanding tragedy: on the importance of the concept for social science
The idea of “the tragic” has been addressed by many in literary studies and philosophy in the past and more recently. From Sophocles to Shakespeare to Nietzsche, tragedy is held up as one of the key literary forms that helps us understand the human condition. Social science has been more reluctant to address this key trope in Western thought and culture. The pioneering German sociologist Max Weber arguably incorporated tragedy as part of his vision for sociology as a “secular theodicy.” Whereas in Christian theology the question of theodicy problematized divine providence by asking how a benevolent and all-knowing God could allow for evil in the world, in a secular, modern context, theodicy would scrutinize the infinite hope of progress innate to the modern project by asking how suffering could persist within it. Tragedy was necessary to explain such incommensurability in traditional, less secular, contexts. but what about today? The gauntlet thrown by Weber has been left largely untouched by social scientists in spite of the fact that, today, “tragedy” seems to be how we name events connected to ever increasing global uncertainty—climate change, pandemics, migration crisis, political instability, just to list a few. This volume aims to bring back “tragedy” as a productive analytic in the social sciences.2. Styling life: ethics and aesthetics in a post-secular era
Biography
Sam Han is an interdisciplinary social scientist, working primarily in the areas of social/cultural/critical theory, new media studies, religion, and East Asia (as well as their various overlaps and nodal points). He is currently Senior Lecturer of Anthropology and Sociology in the School of Social Sciences at the University of Western Australia. He is author of (Inter)Facing Death: Living in Global Uncertainty (Routledge, 2020), Technologies of Religion: Spheres of the Sacred in a Post-Secular Modernity (Routledge, 2016), Digital Culture and Religion in Asia (Routledge, 2015)(with Kamaludeen Mohamed Nasir), Web 2.0 (Routledge, 2011), Navigating Technomedia: Caught in the Web (Rowman & Littlefield, 2007) and editor (with Daniel Chaffee) of The Race of Time: A Charles Lemert Reader (Routledge, 2009).
Previous positions
Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore
Division of Sociology, School of Social Sciences
Associate Professor with Tenure, April 2018-June 2018
Assistant Professor, 2012-April 2018
University of South Australia, Adelaide, Australia
Hawke Research Institute
Affiliate Research Fellow, 2013-2018
Education/Academic qualification
City University of New York
Award Date: 24 May 2012
Wesleyan University
Award Date: 28 May 2006
Research expertise keywords
- Social theory
- Religion
- Media studies
- East Asia
- Death
- Aesthetics