A comprehensive and scholarly exploration of the personal and philosophical origins of Andre Gorz's work, this book includes a unique analysis of his early untranslated texts, as well as critical discussion of his relationship to the work of Husserl, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, Marx and Habermas. Reassessing pivotal notions such as the 'lifeworld' and the 'subject', it argues that Gorz has pioneered a person-centred social theory in which the motive and meaning of social critique is firmly rooted in people's lived experience.

Value is typically theorized from the frameworks of economic theory or of moral/ethical theory, but we need to instead think about value foremost as political. Alena Wolflink uncovers a tension in value discourses between material and aspirational life. As she shows, erasing this tension, as has been the historical tendency, can entrench existing configurations of power and privilege, while acknowledging the tension is a vital part of democratic practice. Using genealogical, conceptual-historical, and interpretive approaches, and drawing from such diverse sources as Aristotle, Anna Julia Cooper, Michael Warner, Alicia Garza, and Patrisse Khan-Cullors, Wolflink argues that abstractions of value discourse in both economic theory and moral philosophy have been complicit in devaluing the lives of women, queer people, and people of color. Yet she further argues that value claims nonetheless hold democratic potential as a means of asserting and defining priorities that center the role of political economy in the making of political communities. With many real-world examples vividly portrayed, Claiming Value is an unusually accessible work of political theory accessible to students in courses on political theory, moral philosophy, social theory, economic theory, democracy, social inequality, and more.

This book examines how deterrence, coercion and modernization theory has informed U.S. policy, addressing why former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara's famous description of the Vietnam War as the "social scientist's war" is so accurate. By tracing the evolution of ties between social scientists and the government beginning in World War I and continuing through the Second World War and the early Cold War, the narrative highlights the role of institutions like the RAND Corporation, the Social Science Research Council and MIT's Center for International Studies that facilitate these ties while providing a home for the development of theory. The author compares and contrasts the ideas of Bernard Brodie, Herman Kahn, Albert Wohlstetter, Thomas Schelling, Gabriel Almond, Lucian Pye and Walt Rostow, among others, and offers a cautionary tale concerning the difficulties and problems encountered when applying social science theory to national security policy.

Focused on the German-speaking parts of the former Habsburg Empire, and on present-day Austria in particular, this book offers a series of highly innovative analyses of the interplay of nationalism's discursive and institutional facets. Here, Christian Karner develops a distinctive perspective on Austrian nationalism over the longue duree, tracing nationalistic ways of thinking and mobilizing from the late eighteenth century to the present. Through close analyses of key texts representing diverse settings and historical episodes, this book traces the connections, continuities and ruptures that have characterized the varieties of Austrian nationalism.

Diverse Communities is a critique of Robert Putnam's social capital thesis, re-examined from the perspective of women and cultural minorities in America over the last century. Barbara Arneil argues that the idyllic communities of the past were less positive than Putnam envisions and that the current 'collapse' in participation is better understood as change rather than decline. Arneil suggests that the changes in American civil society in the last half century are not so much the result of generational change or television as the unleashing of powerful economic, social and cultural forces that, despite leading to division and distrust within American society, also contributed to greater justice for women and cultural minorities. She concludes by proposing that the lessons learned from this fuller history of American civil society provide the normative foundation to enumerate the principles of justice by which diverse communities might be governed in the twenty-first century.

Obligations: New Trajectories in Law provides a critical analysis of the role of obligations in contemporary legal and social practices. As rights have become the preeminent feature of modern political and legal discourse, the work of obligations has been overshadowed. Questioning and correcting this dominant image of our time, this book brings obligations back into view in a way that fits better with the realities of contemporary social life. Following a historical account of the changing place and priorities of obligations in modernity, the book analyses how obligations and practices of obedience are core to understanding how law sustains conditions of inequality. But it also explores the enduring role obligations play in furthering individual and collective well-being, highlighting their significance in practices that prioritize human and environmental needs, common goods, and solidarity. In doing so, it also offers an alternative and cogent assessment of the force, and the potential, of obligations in contemporary societies. This original jurisprudential contribution will appeal to an academic and student readership in law, politics, and the social sciences.

This book proposes a reconstruction of contemporary social theory, focusing on thematic issues rather than on authors or schools of thought. In so doing, it endeavours to bridge epistemological approaches and locate critical claims shared by the main trajectories and notions of sociological theoretical debate. The book explores the current forms of social science theorization through the key themes of Agency, Anthropocene, Coloniality, Intersectionality, Othering, Singularization, Technoscience and Uncertainty. Focusing on these key themes, it highlights their usefulness for discussions of inequality, neoliberalism, eurocentrism, androcentrism or anthropocentrism - in order to examine these issues in a new light and look beyond the classic divides of social theory. Intended for an academic audience interested in social theory, scholars and post-graduate students in sociology, social sciences, anthropology, social geography, social psychology and globalization studies will find this book useful. The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

1. Interest in violence as a phenomenon stretches across criminology, sociology, political science and philosophy. This concise and engaging book would be compelling supplementary reading. 2. This book offers useful summaries of key thinking on violence across the social sciences.

First published in 1977, Puritan, Paranoid, Remissive investigates the process of the transformation of Western society in the twentieth century. The author questions assumptions of sociological fashion and goes beyond the descriptions of changes in the economy, government, education, the family, work, leisure and the arts, to a deeper level of historical cause. He proposes three-character types, or patterns of psychological disposition, to indicate respectively the 'Puritan' past that is waning, the immediate 'paranoid' past that has exemplified society's crisis of transition, and the 'remissive' future, whose ideology already permeates the present. These types reflect his leading theme - the historical decline of the authority of the individual. John Carroll believes that culture has moved faster than character. Focusing on what is conventionally the upper middle class - the bourgeoisie - he proposes the emergence of a new 'remissive' culture from the ruins of the old Puritan order, and concludes that the pathology, the remiss nervousness of contemporary Westerners, results from their futile attempts to adapt their enduring Puritan disposition to their hedonist ideals. The twenty-first century carries remnants of this transformation and will be of interest to students of sociology, philosophy, history and political science.

The common theme of this volume is that the critical theory of the Frankfurt School is as important today, if not more so, as it was at its inception during the 1930s. It looks at the distinguishing features of this tradition and how it is critical, yet also complementary, of other approaches in the social sciences, especially in sociology. The vanishing point of critical theory is not the replacement of diverse endeavors to illuminate the nature of modern society, rather, its purpose is to bundle overly fragmented perspectives that have been developed in theoretical sociology. It includes essays that address: the problematic analysis of political economy at the center of the early Frankfurt School, and the subsequent neglect of political economy; the continuing importance of alienation and reification as focal points of critical theory; differences in modes of critical theorizing during the twentieth century (with special emphases on Lukacs, Adorno, Habermas, and Postone); globalization as an analytical and normative challenge critical theorists are uniquely positioned to confront; and, the most problematic feature mainstream approaches in the social sciences have in common.

Value is typically theorized from the frameworks of economic theory or of moral/ethical theory, but we need to instead think about value foremost as political. Alena Wolflink uncovers a tension in value discourses between material and aspirational life. As she shows, erasing this tension, as has been the historical tendency, can entrench existing configurations of power and privilege, while acknowledging the tension is a vital part of democratic practice. Using genealogical, conceptual-historical, and interpretive approaches, and drawing from such diverse sources as Aristotle, Anna Julia Cooper, Michael Warner, Alicia Garza, and Patrisse Khan-Cullors, Wolflink argues that abstractions of value discourse in both economic theory and moral philosophy have been complicit in devaluing the lives of women, queer people, and people of color. Yet she further argues that value claims nonetheless hold democratic potential as a means of asserting and defining priorities that center the role of political economy in the making of political communities. With many real-world examples vividly portrayed, Claiming Value is an unusually accessible work of political theory accessible to students in courses on political theory, moral philosophy, social theory, economic theory, democracy, social inequality, and more.

This study introduces and systematizes the concept of global modernity as a paradigm for the analysis of the contemporary era. Building on Parson's distinction between social, cultural, personal and organismic systems, it presents a four-dimensional scheme that aims to identify modernity's key structural components. Each dimension is explored in turn, highlighting different aspects of the modern condition. While focusing on universal features, the scheme leaves ample room for capturing cross-regional diversity. The book's key argument is that we have entered a new phase of global, polycentric modernity which brings to a close several centuries of Western world domination and gives rise to a new world order.

This introduction to the philosophy of social science provides an original conception of the task and nature of social inquiry. Peter Manicas discusses the role of causality seen in the physical sciences and offers a reassessment of the problem of explanation from a realist perspective. He argues that the fundamental goal of theory in both the natural and social sciences is not, contrary to widespread opinion, prediction and control, or the explanation of events (including behaviour). Instead, theory aims to provide an understanding of the processes which, together, produce the contingent outcomes of experience. Offering a host of concrete illustrations and examples of critical ideas and issues, this accessible book will be of interest to students of the philosophy of social science, and social scientists from a range of disciplines.

This book brings together philosophical, social-theoretical and empirically oriented contributions on the philosophical and socio-theoretical debate on migration and integration, using the instruments of recognition as a normative and social-scientific category. Furthermore, the theoretical and practical implications of recognition theory are reflected through the case of migration. Migration movements, refugees and the associated tensions are phenomena that have become the focus of scientific, political and public debate in recent years. Migrants, in particular refugees, face many injustices and are especially vulnerable, but the right-wing political discourse presents them as threats to social order and stability. This book shows what a critical theory of recognition can contribute to the debate. The book is suitable for researchers in philosophy, social theory and migration research. "A profound examination of how states and societies struggle to recognize migrants as fellow human beings in all their fullness. The contributions are exceptional for combining astute philosophy and social theory with a discussion of actual politics and real lives." Dr. Hugo Slim (Senior Research Fellow at the Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford and formerly Head of Policy at the International Committee of the Red Cross) "This impressive and timely volume offers an innovative way of understanding the issues of migration and integration by using a critical theory of recognition. Recognition theory has rich potential for effectively responding to the issues of autonomy, identity, integration, and empowerment that are at the core of the current public debates on mass migration, displacement, and the refugee crisis. By examining the normative and policy implications of recognition as they apply to migration, the book offers a pathbreaking look at the human dimension of the debate." Dr. Helle Porsdam (Professor of Law and Humanities and UNESCO Chair in Cultural Rights University of Copenhagen)

Immanuel Wallerstein and Istvan Meszaros are prolific scholars whose analyses of global capitalism in crisis offer distinctive insights for research across the social sciences. This book engages readers with their main theses, encouraging their application in analysis of social reality and of its institutions of mass education, which aim to prepare workers for the global economy. Using the theoretical lenses offered by these two scholars, Tom G. Griffiths and Robert Imre develop a timely and provocative critique of mass education for this century, challenging readers to contribute to the construction of radical alternatives.

This book examines diseases and disasters from the perspective of social and political theory, exploring the ways in which political leaders, social activists, historians, philosophers, and writers have tried to make sense of the catastrophes that have plagued humankind from Thucydides to the present COVID pandemic. By adopting the perspective of political theory, it sheds light on what these individuals and events can teach us about politics, society, and human nature, as well as the insights and limitations of political theory. Including thinkers such as Thucydides, Sophocles, Augustine, Bacon, Locke, Hume, Rousseau, Publius, Bartolome de las Casas, Jane Addams, Camus, Saramago, Baudrillard, Weber, Schmitt, Voegelin and Agamben, it considers a diverse range of events including the plagues of Byzantium and 14th century Europe, 9/11, the hurricanes of Fukushima, Boxing Day, and New Orleans, and the current COVID pandemic. An examination of past, present, and future diseases and disasters, and the ways in which individuals and societies react to them, this volume will appeal to scholars of politics, sociology, anthropology and philosophy with interests in disaster and the social body.

As the concept of recognition shifts from philosophical theory to other fields of the humanities and social sciences, this volume explores the nature of this border category that exists in the space between sociological and philosophical considerations, related as it is to concepts such as status, prestige, the looking-glass self, respect, and dignity - at times being used interchangeably with these terms. Bringing together work from across academic disciplines, it presents theoretical conceptualizations of recognition, demonstrates its operationalization in historical and literary research, considers recognition as a fundamental problem of sociological theory and examines the concept as a marker of social distances and redistribution. An examination and demonstration of the full potential of recognition as a category, Understanding Recognition: Conceptual and Empirical Studies explores the contemporary meanings and manifestations of recognition and sheds light on its capacity to complement the notions of status, class or prestige. As such, it will appeal to scholars of sociology and social theory, philosophy, history and literary studies.

Volume 36 of "Studies in Symbolic Interaction" is solely devoted to the "Blue-Ribbon Papers". Nine papers are published in which hotly-contested issues are raised that, even if only resolved partially, could permanently change the future direction of interactional thought. Among the questions addressed are: whether there ever existed a genuine sociological school of thought based on "interactionsim" at the University Chicago, whether Herbert Blumer misinterpreted the major thrust of George Herbert Mead's thought, whether conventional or radical interactionism is the most insightful perspective from which to examine crucial life decisions that are conflict-ridden, whether George Herbert Mead's and George Santayana's perspectives converged with or diverged from one another's and with radical interactionism, whether language develops primarily from the inside out or from the outside in, whether personal economics is mainly responsible for self esteem and the over-all functioning of the self in everyday life, and whether filming constitutes a method of recording data that traditional ethnographers should include in their tool box?

This book is devoted to the reintroduction of the remarkable approach to sociological inquiry developed by Harvey Sacks. Sacks's original analyses - concerned with the lived detail of action and language-in-interaction, discoverable in members' actual activities - demonstrated a means of doing sociology that had previously seemed impossible. In so doing, Sacks provided for highly technical, detailed, yet stunningly simple solutions to some of the most trenchant troubles for the social sciences relating to language, culture, meaning, knowledge, action, and social organisation. In this original collection, scholars working in a range of different fields, including sociology, human geography, communication and media studies, social psychology, and linguistics, outline the ways in which their work has been inspired, influenced, and shaped by Sacks's approach, as well as how their current research is taking Sacks's legacy forward in new directions. As such, the collection is intended to provide both an introduction to, and critical exploration of, the work of Harvey Sacks and its continued relevance for the analysis of contemporary society.

This book explores the thought of - and is dedicated to - David Frisby, one of the leading sociologists of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Presenting original examinations of his unique social theory and underlining his interdisciplinary approach to the critical interpretation of modern metropolitan society and culture, it emphasises Frisby's legacy in highlighting the role of the social researcher as a collector, reader, observer, detective and archivist of the phenomena and ideas that exemplify the modern metropolis as society. With contributions from sociologists, cultural theorists, historians of the city, urban geographers and designers, and architectural historians and theorists, The Detective of Modernity constitutes a wide-ranging engagement with Frisby's profound legacy in social and cultural theory.

In a new reading of Immanuel Kant's work, this book interrogates his notions of the imagination and anthropology, identifying these - rather than the problem of reason - as the two central pivoting orientations of his work. Such an approach allows a more complex understanding of his critical-philosophical program to emerge, which includes his accounts of reason, politics and freedom as well as subjectivity and intersubjectivity, or sociabilities. Examining Kant's theorisation of the complexity of our phenomenological existence, the author explores his transcendental move that includes reason and understanding whilst emphasising the importance of the faculty of the imagination to undergird both, before moving to consider Kant's pluralised, transcendental notion of freedom. This outstanding book will appeal to scholars with interests in philosophy, politics, anthropology and sociology, working on questions of imagination, reason, subjectivities and human freedom.

This Handbook offers an authoritative, up-to-date introduction to the rich scholarly conversation about anarchy-about the possibility, dynamics, and appeal of social order without the state. Drawing on resources from philosophy, economics, law, history, politics, and religious studies, it is designed to deepen understanding of anarchy and the development of anarchist ideas at a time when those ideas have attracted increasing attention. The popular identification of anarchy with chaos makes sophisticated interpretations-which recognize anarchy as a kind of social order rather than an alternative to it-especially interesting. Strong, centralized governments have struggled to quell popular frustration even as doubts have continued to percolate about their legitimacy and long-term financial stability. Since the emergence of the modern state, concerns like these have driven scholars to wonder whether societies could flourish while abandoning monopolistic governance entirely. Standard treatments of political philosophy frequently assume the justifiability and desirability of states, focusing on such questions as, What is the best kind of state? and What laws and policies should states adopt?, without considering whether it is just or prudent for states to do anything at all. This Handbook encourages engagement with a provocative alternative that casts more conventional views in stark relief. Its 30 chapters, written specifically for this volume by an international team of leading scholars, are organized into four main parts: I. Concept and Significance II. Figures and Traditions III. Legitimacy and Order IV. Critique and Alternatives In addition, a comprehensive index makes the volume easy to navigate and an annotated bibliography points readers to the most promising avenues of future research.

Until today, Western, European sociology contributes to the social reality of colonial modernity, and gender knowledge is a paradigmatic example of it. Multiple Gender Cultures, Sociology, and Plural Modernities critically engages with these 'Western eyes' and shifts the focus towards the global variety of gendered socialities and hierarchically entangled social histories. This is conceptualised as multiple gender cultures within plural modernities. The authors examine the multifaceted realities of gendered life in varying contexts across the globe. Bringing together different perspectives, the volume provides a rereading of the social fabric of gender in contrast to androcentrist-modernist as well as orientalist representations of 'the' gendered Other. The key questions explored by this volume are: which social mechanisms lead to conflicting or shifting gender dynamics against the backdrop of global entanglements and interdependencies, and to what extent are neocolonial gender regimes at work in this regard? How are varying gender cultures sociohistorically and culturally structured, and how are they connected within (global) power relations? How can established hierarchies and asymmetries become an object of criticism? How can historical, cultural, social, and political specificities be analysed without gendered and other reifications? That way, the volume aims to promote border thinking in sociological understanding of social reality towards multiple gender cultures and plural modernities.

This book introduces the notion of culinary capital to investigate socialisation and school mealtime experiences in an academy school based in the UK. Drawing on interviews collated from children, teachers and staff within the school, the text sheds light on food insecurity in society and schools as being major issue in educational policy. The book examines schools as a microcosm for society with school food space being the playground for socialisation. It shows how forms of culinary capital can be extended in the school dining hall where social space is negotiated with notions of inclusion and exclusion during mealtime. The book uses gender, class and race to understand the school dining hall as a space where culinary capital can be exchanged and learnt. Thorough research accompanied by ethnographic visuals, field notes and observations, it also explores the sensory impact of school gardens. As such the book will be of interest to students, teachers, school leaders, educators and policy makers in the fields of Education, Sociology, Social Policy and Food Studies.

If today students of social theory read Jurgen Habermas, Michael Foucault and Anthony Giddens, then proper regard to the question of culture means that they should also read Raymond Williams, Julia Kristeva and Slavoj Zizek. The second edition of the Routledge Handbook of Social and Cultural Theory is fully revised and updated to provide students, teachers and researchers with a comprehensive, critical guide to the major traditions of thought in social and cultural theory, as well as tracing the complex intellectual connections between these distinct but related approaches to understanding society and culture. The Handbook, edited by acclaimed sociologist Anthony Elliott, develops a powerful argument for bringing together social and cultural theory more systematically than ever before. Key social and cultural theories, ranging from classical approaches to postmodern, psychoanalytic and post-feminist approaches, are drawn together and critically appraised. There are also new chapters on mobilities and migrations, as well as posthumanism. The Handbook, written in a clear and direct style will appeal to a wide audience of students and scholars. The extensive references and sources will direct students to areas of further study.