From Intercivilizational Encounters to Intercivilizational Analysis

Ino Rossi is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology of Saint John’s University, NYC, where he served as a chair of the department and a faculty member of the Interdisciplinary Doctor of Arts in Modern World History. He has a Master in Sociology from the University of Chicago and a PhD in Anthropology-Sociology from the New School for Social Research, New York. His publishing career began with four edited books: Cultural Anthropology: Anthropology Full Circle; People in Culture: A Survey of Cultural Anthropology, and two interpretive critiques and elaborations of Claude Levi-Strauss’s structuralism: The Unconscious in Culture: Levi-Strauss' Structuralism in Perspective, and The Logic of Culture: Refinements of Structural Theory and Method. Then, he went on to propose a structuralist-dialectic approach in sociology with an authored volume: From the Sociology of Symbols to the Sociology of Signs: Toward a Dialectical Sociology, and an edited one: Structural Sociology: Theoretical Essays and Substantive Analyses (with the contributions of T. Parsons, S. Eisenstadt, M. Godelier, C. Lemert, A. Stinchombe among others). He applied the structuralist-dialectic approach in disaster studies under an NSF grant with an authored book (Community Reconstruction after an Earthquake: Dialectical Sociology in Action). The study of reconstruction and developmental issues led him to the field of globalization, first with an edited book on its theoretical and methodological foundations (Frontiers of Globalization Research, Springer) and with another more recent one offering a systematic documentation of the input of globalization on the Global North and Global South as well as a new approach on possible inter-civilizational understanding and dialogue (Challenges of Globalization and Prospects for an Inter-civilizational World Order, Springer). He is the editor of Springer’s series “Emerging Globalities and Civilizational Perspectives”.