Cultural practices and artifacts, in their multiple and varied forms, are grounded on values, which are so deeply internalized by people that usually remain in the background, as taken-for-granted guides for interpretations and decisions in everyday life. Shaping individual moral horizons is at the core of socialization processes, through which older generations aim to disseminate their culturally established values to the new ones, making use of suggestions mainly implicit in daily experiences and interactions. Despite the strength of these processes of cultural canalization, people find particular ways of positioning and interpreting social suggestions, drawing singular life trajectories and developing themselves as unique beings. This is truthful also in case of highly institutionalized settings like the military, in which people play in many forms an agentic role in their own development, being prepared to perform their professional duties in very complex and challenging activity contexts. This book is an invitation to dive deeper into human experiences lived in the military through qualitative and in-depth approaches, observing their affective qualities, the meanings they acquire and how they shape individuals' identities, fostering the development and try-out of specific ethical and moral values. The present work can contribute to research and professional practice in fields related to human development, social processes, education and people management in the military, as well as in other institutional contexts, especially by highlighting the affective, meaningful and moral-ethical dimensions of cultural experiences.

This is a must-read volume on globalization in which some of the foremost scholars in the field discuss the latest issues. Truly providing a global perspective, it includes authorship and discussions from the Global North and South, and covers the major facets of globalization: cultural, economic, ecological and political. It discusses the historical developments in governance preceding globalization, the diverse theoretical and methodological approaches to globalization, and analyzes underdevelopment, anti-globalization movements, global poverty, global inequality, and the debates on international trade versus protectionism. Finally, the volume looks to the future and provides prospects for inter-civilizational understanding, rapprochement, and global cooperation. This will be of great interest to academics and students of sociology, social anthropology, political science and international relations, economics, social policy, social history, as well as to policy makers.

In this extraordinary work, Peter Alexander Meyers shows how the centerpiece of the Enlightenment--"society "as the symbol of collective human life and as the fundamental domain of human practice--was primarily composed and animated by its most ambivalent figure: Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Displaying this new "society" as an evolving field of interdependence, "Abandoned to Ourselves" traces the emergence and moral significance of dependence itself within Rousseau's encounters with a variety of discourses of order, including theology, natural philosophy, and music. Underpinning this whole scene we discover a modernizing conception of the human Will, one that runs far deeper than Rousseau's most famous trope, the "general Will." As "Abandoned to Ourselves" weaves together historical acuity with theoretical insight, readers will find here elements for a reconstructed sociology inclusive of things and persons and, as a consequence, a new foundation for contemporary political theory.

This book is grounded in psychosocial research that explores the complex intergenerational transmission of memories within families and the transgenerational social issues that form a part of those memories. The author demonstrates that the organising framework of moving back and forth between inter- and transgenerational processes is key to mapping those relationships leading to the ideas of generational companionship, a multigenerational self and intergenerational mentalisation. Drawing on sociological and psychoanalytic approaches, it provides a framework for thinking about continuity and discontinuity in the lives of individuals and in the longer sweep of the generations. The role and potential for a psychosocial approach in deep-level problem solving is addressed through chapters on psychotherapy and on psychosocial interventions. Social imagination in personal and social healing is a core theme, as is the study of the relationship between creative and destructive forces that play out in human life. The book will be an invaluable resource for students and scholars of psychosocial research and psychotherapy as well as in memory studies, history, genealogy and social theory.

This book illustrates how leisure, as with other complex ideas that hold currency in today's world, suffers at the level of common sense, due to a combination of oversimplification, moral depreciation, and even lack of recognition. Leisure's modern legacy is both profound and immense, as a product of approximately 45 years of steady research, application and theory development. The common sense view of free-time activities, therefore, can and should be challenged. Stebbins provides this confrontation by tackling four particular themes: that gatekeepers within the institutions of higher education and funding agencies for research often fail to attach adequate resources to the idea of leisure; that the general population are guided by certain common sense definitions and largely unaware of how an informed view of free time could be beneficial; that practitioners within certain fields continue to refuse to engage with the idea of leisure despite its benefit for their clients; and that the weak reception of the science of leisure within mainstream social sciences suggests a similarly warped understanding of how people use their free time. Leisure's Legacy will be of interest to scholars of Leisure Studies and all those wishing to learn more about the vital importance of leisure in modern Western society.

Niklas Luhmann ranks as one of the most important sociologists and social theorists of the twentieth century. Through his many books he developed a highly original form of systems theory that has been hugely influential in a wide variety of disciplines.

In "Introduction to Systems Theory," Luhmann explains the key ideas of general and sociological systems theory and supplies a wealth of examples to illustrate his approach. The book offers a wide range of concepts and theorems that can be applied to politics and the economy, religion and science, art and education, organization and the family. Moreover, Luhmann's ideas address important contemporary issues in such diverse fields as cognitive science, ecology, and the study of social movements.

This book provides all the necessary resources for readers to work through the foundations of systems theory - no other work by Luhmann is as clear and accessible as this. There is also much here that will be of great interest to more advanced scholars and practitioners in sociology and the social sciences.

Philip Rieff earned recognition as one of the most profound social theorists of culture and authority of the twentieth century. Through such works as "Freud: The Mind of the Moralist" and "The Triumph of the Therapeutic, " he proved himself an incisive interpreter of Freud and his legacy. His work now culminates with the long-awaited trilogy "Sacred Order/Social Order, " a three-volume work on social theory and contemporary culture.

Arnold Eisen chose the selections for the final volume of the trilogy in consultation with Philip Rieff. All of the selections bear on the nature of the "Jew of culture." Rieff explicitly and consistently identified with this ideal-type, named for the first time in "Fellow Teachers, " and crucial in one form or another to everything he wrote. For the rest of Rieff's long career, "Jew of culture" would serve as foil, countertype, corrective, and adversary to the "therapeutics" who represented both Rieff's analysands and his antagonists. The purpose of this collection of Rieff's writings, undertaken at his suggestion, is to trace the evolution of the "Jew of culture" over the course of his work. In doing so we gain particular insight into his distinctive theory of society and the self; we also come to better understand the theorist.

The critical theory of the Frankfurt School has undergone numerous and at times fundamental changes over the last ninety years. Since the late 1960s, it has been characterized primarily by Jurgen Habermas's "communicative turn" and a focus on normative foundations. Today, that "second generation" exists side-by-side with a "third generation" represented most prominently by Axel Honneth's turn toward recognition, ethical life, and the normative reconstruction of social institutions. This volume brings together critical voices on the state and direction of Frankfurt School theory today by examining Honneth's theory in light of both current challenges and the intellectual and political ambitions that have shaped the tradition from its beginning. United in their strong commitment to critical scholarship, the authors collected here approach Honneth's work from different backgrounds, employ a wide variety of methodologies, and write in different genres, ranging from the sober scholarly analysis to programmatic and political appeals. The collective aim of these reflections is not to reject Honneth's theory but to build upon his work and incorporate his themes of recognition and social freedom into a new project of critical theory that can prove adequate to the political and social crises of our time.

By studying how different societies understand categories such as time and causality, the Durkheimians decentered Western epistemology. With contributions from philosophy, sociology, anthropology, media studies, and sinology, this volume illustrates the interdisciplinarity and intellectual rigor of the "category project" which did not only stir controversies among contemporary scholars but paved the way for other theories exploring how the thoughts of individuals are prefigured by society and vice versa.

Setting the context for the upheavals and transformations of contemporary China, this text provides a re-assessment of Max Weber's celebrated sociology of China. Returning to the sources drawn on by Weber in The Religion of China: Confucianism and Taoism, it offers an informed account of the Chinese institutions discussed and a concise discussion of Weber's writings on 'the rise of modern capitalism'. Notably it subjects Weber's argument to critical scrutiny, arguing that he drew upon sources which infused the central European imagination of the time, constructing a sense of China in Europe, whilst European writers were constructing a particular image of imperial China and its Confucian framework. Re-examining Weber's discussion of the role of the individual in Confucian thought and the subordination, in China, of the interests of the individual to those of the political community and the ancestral clan, this book offers a cutting edge contribution to the continuing debate on Weber's RoC in East Asia today, against the background of the rise of modern capitalism in the "little dragons" of Singapore, Taiwan, Hong Kong and South Korea, and the "big dragons" of Japan and the People's Republic of China.

The body is central to many professional and policy concerns. Focusing on health and social care, this book shows how important the body can be to a range of issues such as disability, old age, sexuality, consumption, food, and public space. Twigg shows how constructions of the body affect how we see different social groups, and explores the significance of the body in the provision and delivery of care. Written in a lively and accessible style, the book offers fresh insights into classic areas of health, social care, and society.

This innovative study engages critically with existing conceptualisations of diaspora, arguing that if diaspora is to have analytical purchase, it should illuminate a specific angle of migration or migrancy. To reveal the much-needed transformative potential of the concept, the book looks specifically at how diasporas undertake translation and decolonisation. It offers various conceptual tools for investigating diaspora, with a specific focus on diasporas in the Global North and a detailed empirical study of the Kurdish diaspora in Europe. The book also considers the backlash diasporas of colour have faced in the Global North. -- .

This revised edition of Patrick Baert's widely acclaimed "Social Theory in the Twentieth Century," now benefitting from the collaboration of Filipe Carreira da Silva has been brought right up-to-date with cutting-edge developments in social theory today. It offers an easy-to-read but provocative account of the development of social theory, covering a range of key figures and classic schools of thought. The authors bridge the gap between philosophy and social theory, locating the theoretical views of individuals such as Michel Foucault, Anthony Giddens and Jurgen Habermas within wider historical traditions.

The revised edition includes new material on French pragmatist sociology and cultural sociology, and on contemporary social thinkers such as Zygmunt Bauman, Ulrich Beck, Manuel Castells, Randall Collins, Michael Mann, Saskia Sassen and Theda Skocpol. The authors conclude with a bold, new pragmatist agenda for social theory and the social sciences.

Written in a lively style, and avoiding jargon, "Social Theory in the Twentieth Century and Beyond" is aimed at students who wish to gain an understanding of the main debates and dilemmas driving social theory. Like its predecessor, it will be a standard introduction to modern social theory for students in sociology, politics and anthropology.

Raimo Tuomela, late Professor Emeritus at the Centre for Philosophy of Social Sciences (TINT), University of Helsinki, is widely regarded as one of the most important philosophers of our time. He published extensively on various topics within social philosophy; particularly, on social action, cooperation, group belief, group responsibility, group reasoning, social practices, and institutions. To celebrate his legacy, this volume engages with and delves deeply into his philosophy of sociality. By gathering original essays from a world-class line-up of social ontologists, social action theorists, and social philosophers, this collection provides the first comprehensive and critical treatment of Tuomela's outstanding contribution to social ontology and collective intentionality.

Identifying scientism as religion's secular counterpart, this collection studies contemporary contestations of the authority of science. These controversies suggest that what we are witnessing today is not an increase in the authority of science at the cost of religion, but a dual decline in the authorities of religion and science alike. This entails an erosion of the legitimacy of universally binding truth claims, be they religiously or scientifically informed. Approaching the issue from a cultural-sociological perspective and building on theories from the sociology of religion, the volume unearths the cultural mechanisms that account for the headwind faced by contemporary science. The empirical contributions highlight how the field of academic science has lost much of its former authority vis-a-vis competing social realms; how political and religious worldviews define particular research findings as favorites while dismissing others; and how much of today's distrust of science is directed against scientific institutions and academic scientists rather than against science per se.

The first emphasis of the volume is on developments in the social theory of environmental issues, the environment, and the environmental crisis. The second emphasis is on the increasingly questionable possibility of shared knowledge at a time of increasing fragmentation of common frameworks, distraction from key issues, and dilution of the idea of objectivity. The thematic emphasis on environmental challenges and issues, includes one contribution on climate change, the resource crunch, and the global growth Imperative, along with critical responses by other experts in this field, and two contributions on the development of planetarian accountancy, and the ubiquity of risk in consumer societies. Further contributions address issues relating to the dialectic of selfhood, the aftermath of postmodernism, limitations inherent to feminist perspectives, the project of public sociology, the fortieth anniversary of Jurgen Habermas' classic, Knowledge and Human Interests, and the need for critical theory to rely on social research.

This comprehensive handbook synthesizes the often-fractured relationship between the study of biology and the study of society. Bringing together a compelling array of interdisciplinary contributions, the authors demonstrate how nuanced attention to both the biological and social sciences opens up novel perspectives upon some of the most significant sociological, anthropological, philosophical and biological questions of our era. The six sections cover topics ranging from genomics and epigenetics, to neuroscience and psychology to social epidemiology and medicine. The authors collaboratively present state-of-the-art research and perspectives in some of the most intriguing areas of what can be called biosocial and biocultural approaches, demonstrating how quickly we are moving beyond the acrimonious debates that characterized the border between biology and society for most of the twentieth century. This landmark volume will be an extremely valuable resource for scholars and practitioners in all areas of the social and biological sciences. The chapter 'Ten Theses on the Subject of Biology and Politics: Conceptual, Methodological, and Biopolitical Considerations' is open access under a CC BY 4.0 license via link.springer.com. Versions of the chapters 'The Transcendence of the Social', 'Scrutinizing the Epigenetics Revolution', 'Species of Biocapital, 2008, and Speciating Biocapital, 2017' and 'Experimental Entanglements: Social Science and Neuroscience Beyond Interdisciplinarity' are available open access via third parties. For further information please see license information in the chapters or on link.springer.com.

This pioneering book delivers a systematic account of agonistic democracy, and a much-needed analysis of the core components of agonism: pluralism, tragedy, and the value of conflict. It also traces the history of these ideas, identifying the connections with republicanism and with Greek antiquity. Mark Wenman presents a critical appraisal of the leading contemporary proponents of agonism and, in a series of well-crafted and comprehensive discussions, brings these thinkers into debate with one another, as well as with the post-structuralist and continental theorists who influence them. Wenman draws extensively on Hannah Arendt, and stresses the creative power of human action as augmentation and revolution. He also reworks Arendt's discussion of reflective judgement to present an alternative style of agonism, one where the democratic contest is linked to the emergence of a militant form of cosmopolitanism, and to prospects for historical change in the context of neoliberal globalisation.

Concern with authority is as old as human history itself. Eve's sin was to challenge the authority of God by disobeying his rule. Frank Furedi explores how authority was contested in ancient Greece and given a powerful meaning in Imperial Rome. Debates about religious and secular authority dominated Europe through the Middle Ages and the Reformation. The modern world attempted to develop new foundations for authority - democratic consent, public opinion, science - yet Furedi shows that this problem has remained unresolved, arguing that today the authority of authority is questioned. This historical sociology of authority seeks to explain how the contemporary problems of mistrust and the loss of legitimacy of many institutions are informed by the previous attempts to solve the problem of authority. It argues that the key pioneers of the social sciences (Marx, Durkheim, Simmel, Tonnies and especially Weber) regarded this question as one of the principal challenges facing society.

This book explores how changes that occurred around 1989 shaped the study of the social sciences, and scrutinizes the impact of the paradigm of neoliberalism in different disciplinary fields. The contributors examine the ways in which capitalism has transmuted into a seemingly unquestionable, triumphant framework that globally articulates economics with epistemology and social ontology. The volume also investigates how new narratives of capitalism are being developed by social scientists in order to better understand capitalism's ramifications in various domains of knowledge. At its heart, Beyond Neoliberalism seeks to unpack and disaggregate neoliberalism, and to take readers beyond the analytical limitations that a traditional framework of neoliberalism entails. This book is a result of discussions at and support from the Irmgard Coninx Fundation.

De-centering queer theory seeks to reorient queer theory to a different conception of bodies and sexuality derived from Eastern European Marxism. The book articulates a contrast between the concept of the productive body, which draws its epistemology from Soviet and avant-garde theorists, and Cold War gender, which is defined as the social construction of the body. The first part of the book concentrates on the theoretical and visual production of Eastern European Marxism, which proposed an alternative version of sexuality to that of western liberalism. In doing so it offers a historical angle to understand the emergence not only of an alternative epistemology, but also of queer theory's vocabulary. The second part of the book provides a Marxist, anti-capitalist archive for queer studies, which often neglects to engage critically with its liberal and Cold War underpinnings. -- .

This volume explores contemporary social conflict, focusing on a sort of violence that rarely receives coverage in the evening news. This violence occurs when powerful institutions seek to manipulate the thoughts of marginalized people-manufacturing their feelings and fostering a sense of inferiority-for the purpose of disciplinary control. Many American institutions strategically orchestrate this psychic violence through tactics of systemic humiliation. This book reveals how certain counter-measures, based in a commitment to human dignity and respect for every person's inherent moral worth, can combat this violence. Rothbart and other contributors showcase various examples of this tug-of-war in the US, including the politics of race and class in the 2016 presidential campaign, the dehumanizing treatment of people with mental disabilities, and destructive parenting styles that foster cycles of humiliation and emotional pain.

This book provides a comprehensive overview of caste in contemporary India. With contributions from scholars like Valerian Rodrigues, B.B. Mohanty, Surinder Jodhka, and Anand Teltumbde, it discusses wide-ranging themes like the trajectory of caste in post-independence India; Dalits and cultural identity; the paradox of being a Dalit woman; caste violence and social mobility; Ambedkar’s quest for the right of social equality; social security for the inclusive development of Dalits; discrimination and exclusion of Dalits in education; and Dalit merit and institutional injustice, and presents an overview of the struggles for distributive justice in India. This volume will be of importance to scholars and researchers of Dalit studies, social justice, exclusion studies, caste studies, affirmative action, political studies, sociology, social anthropology, and South Asian politics.

This book explores why animals, at some point, disappeared from the realm and scope of sociology. The role of sociology in the construction of a science of the 'human' has been substantial, building representations of the human sphere of life as unique. Within the sociological tradition however, animals have often been invisible, even non-existent. Through in-depth comparisons of the texts of prominent early sociologists Emile Durkheim and Edward Westermarck, Tuomivaara shows that despite this exclusion, representations of animals and human-animal relations were far more varied in early works than in the later sociological cannon. Addressing a significant gap in the interdisciplinary field of animal studies, Tuomivaara presents a close reading of the historical treatment of animals in the works of Durkheim and Westermarck to determine how the human-animal boundary was established in sociological theory. The diverse forms in which animals and 'the animal' appear in the works of early classical sociology are charted and explored, alongside the sociological themes that bring animals into these texts. Situated in contemporary theory, from critical animal studies to posthumanism, this important book lays the groundwork for a disciplinary shift away from this sharp human-animal dualism.