Introduction to the Special Issue.

Andrew Blasko is a Professor of Philosophy with a specialization in European Values and Culture whose present institutional affiliation is the Institute of Population and Human Studies at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. He defended his doctoral dissertation at Sofia University under the direction of Asen Davidov on the question of how Sartre’s conception of the progressive-regressive method, particularly as it is employed in the second volume of Critique de la raison dialectique, casts light on historical development as a process of totalization that does not have a totalizer. His publications have discussed a range of theoretical and empirical questions arising from the ongoing social and cultural changes that have taken place in Central and Eastern Europe during the last three decades. He has also recently co-edited Jane Addams and the Spirit of Social Entrepreneurship (2018). Blasko currently serves as a member of the board of the European Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction and is Secretary-Treasurer of Research Committee 36 on Alienation theory and Research at the International Sociological Association.

Vessela Misheva is a Professor of Sociology at the Department of Sociology, Uppsala University. She has also served as a Professor of Social Psychology at the University of Sködve, Sweden. She was awarded a Ph.D. in the philosophy of science from the Bulgaria Academy of Sciences, as well as a Ph.D. in sociology from Uppsala University. Misheva has also specialized in sociology and systems theory at Bielefeld University under the direction of Niklas Luhmann. From 1998 to 2006 she was a Vice-President of Research Committee 51 on Sociocybernetics and Systems Theory at the International Sociological Association (ISA) and served as a President of the Research Committee 36 on Alienation theory and Research at the ISA between 2010 and 2018. Her current research interests include the sociology of peace, the sociology of knowledge, classical sociology, the theory of self-conscious emotions, and the theory of self. Recent publications include Jane Addams and the Spirit of Social Entrepreneurship (co-edited) (2018), “Jane Addams and the Birth of Micro Sociology as a Science and a Social Enterprise” (2018), “Guilt: What’s So Good about Feeling Bad about Yourself” (2018), and “Lost in Vicissitudes of Greatness and Decline: Charles Horton Cooley’s Unique Contribution to Sociology” (2018).