'Identity' and 'selfhood' are terms used routinely throughout the human sciences that seek to analyze and describe the character of everyday life and experience. Yet these terms are seldom defined or used with any precision, and scant regard is paid to the historical and cultural context in which they arose or to which they are applied.
This innovative book provides fresh historical insights in terms of the emergence, development, and interrelationship of specific and varied notions of identity and selfhood, and outlines a new sociological framework for analyzing.
This is the first historical/sociological framework for discussion of issues which have till now, generally been treated as 'philosophy' or 'psychology', and as such it is essential reading for those undergraduates and postgraduates of sociology, philosophy and history and cultural studies interested in the concepts of identity and self. It covers a broader range of material than is usual in this style of text, and includes a survey of relevant literature and precise analysis of key concepts written in a student friendly style.

Contemporary society constitutes a different form of modernity and Ferguson's innovative and thoughtful analysis calling for a return to phenomenology demonstrates that a relatively neglected perspective within contemporary sociological thought continues to provide significant insights into modern experiences' - Barry Smart, Portsmouth University This may very well be the most thorough and authoritative analysis of phenomenological sociology ever achieved." - W.P. Nye , Hollins University What is phenomenological sociology? Why is it significant? This innovative and thought-provoking book argues that phenomenology was the most significant, wide-ranging and influential philosophy to emerge in the twentieth century. The social character of phenomenology is explored in its relation to the concern in twentieth century sociology with questions of modern experience. Phenomenology and sociology come together as 'ethnographies of the present'. As such, they break free of the self-imposed limitations of each to establish a new, critical understanding of contemporary life. By reading phenomenology sociologically and sociology phenomenologically, this book reconstructs a phenomenological sociology of modern experience. Erudite and assured, this book opens up a series of new questions for contemporary social theory that theorists and students of theory can ill-afford to ignore. The text contains a treasure trove of insights and propositions that will stimulate debate and research in both sociology and philosophy.

Originally published in 1992, this remarkable book challenges many of the assumptions governing the Sociology of Religion and the Sociology of Culture by arguing that Western religion is neither science nor morality - it is the promise of happiness. Learned and incisive, it will be essential reading for students of religion, culture and anyone interested in the character of Modernity.

Originally published in 1992, this remarkable book challenges many of the assumptions governing the Sociology of Religion and the Sociology of Culture by arguing that Western religion is neither science nor morality - it is the promise of happiness. Learned and incisive, it will be essential reading for students of religion, culture and anyone interested in the character of Modernity.

From literary theory to social anthropology, the influence of Freud runs through every part of the human and social sciences. In The Lure of Dreams, Harvie Ferguson shows how Freud's writings and particularly The Interpretation of Dreams contribute, both in their content and in the baroque and dream-like forms in which they are cast, to our understanding of the character of modernity. He argues that the recent tendency to view Freud's work mainly as a product of nineteenth-century developments in biology and medicine have obscured what is most important and suggestive for us in his writings. Instead Harvie Ferguson discusses the development of Freud's ideas in the context of the Viennese fin de siecle culture in which they were nurtured, and examines the extent to which they reflect a breakdown of classical forms of rationalism in both the sciences and the arts and, more generally, the rehabilitation of dreams in late modernity. This novel and stimulating approach to Freud and to the dilemmas of modernity and postmodernity will fascinate everyone with an interest in the development of modern consciousness.

This work examines the connections between the emergence of modern society and the experience of melancholy. The idea of "sadness without a cause" has played an important part in human self-understanding throughout the development of Western society. But with the emergence of modernity, melancholy has become its most pervasive and significant experience. The affinity between melancholy and modernity is examined through a comprehensive re-examination of the writings of Soren Kierkegaard. The whole range of Kierkegaard's work is set in the context of a social and historical theory of melancholy. From this perspective Kierkegaard emerges as an important and most typical psychologist of the modern era.

eBook available with sample pages: HB:0415117224

In this rich and original work, the author argues that science is the highest expression of bourgeois thought and whilst it may have liberated mankind, it has also devised new forms of repression, discipline and control.

In this rich and original work, the author argues that science is the highest expression of bourgeois thought and whilst it may have liberated mankind, it has also devised new forms of repression, discipline and control.

'Identity' and 'selfhood' are terms used routinely throughout the human sciences that seek to analyze and describe the character of everyday life and experience. Yet these terms are seldom defined or used with any precision, and scant regard is paid to the historical and cultural context in which they arose or to which they are applied.
This innovative book provides fresh historical insights in terms of the emergence, development, and interrelationship of specific and varied notions of identity and selfhood, and outlines a new sociological framework for analyzing.
This is the first historical/sociological framework for discussion of issues which have till now, generally been treated as 'philosophy' or 'psychology', and as such it is essential reading for those undergraduates and postgraduates of sociology, philosophy and history and cultural studies interested in the concepts of identity and self. It covers a broader range of material than is usual in this style of text, and includes a survey of relevant literature and precise analysis of key concepts written in a student friendly style.

Few concepts have come to dominate the human sciences as much as modernity, yet there is very little agreement over what the term actually means. Every aspect of contemporary human reality--modern society, modern life, modern times, modern art, modern science, modern music, the modern world--has been cited as a part of modernity's distinctive and all-embracing presence. But what is the exact nature of the reality to which the term modern refers? Has not such a promiscuous, ill-defined concept come to obscure and confuse rather than clarify a genuine understanding of our experience?

Harvie Ferguson proposes a new view of modernity, arguing that, although it may variously be associated with the Renaissance, the European discovery of the New World, the Reformation, the Industrial Revolution, and many other significant ruptures with primitive or premodern society, modernity fails as an idea if it only defines itself against what it replaced. Instead, he writes, modernity finds its clearest definition through an exploration of subjectivity.

For the modern world there is no higher authority than experience. No longer is the human world subordinate to a divine reality beyond the capacity of its own senses. This idea finds its greatest expression in the philosophy of doubt originated by Descartes. Doubt seemed the radical starting point from which to found a wholly modern philosophy that makes the distinction between subject and object, but those who came after Descartes soon reached the limits of self-discovery and became trapped in deepening levels of despair.

This despair in turn found expression in the concepts of self and other, and eventually in a dialectic of ego and world, which distinguishes and links together the most important social, cultural, and psychological aspects of modernity. Moving beyond these dualities of subject and object, mind and body, ego and world, and replacing them with the triad of body, soul, and spirit, Ferguson redraws the map of contemporary experience, finding links with the premodern world that modernity's self-founding concealed.

Contemporary society constitutes a different form of modernity and Ferguson's innovative and thoughtful analysis calling for a return to phenomenology demonstrates that a relatively neglected perspective within contemporary sociological thought continues to provide significant insights into modern experiences' - Barry Smart, Portsmouth University This may very well be the most thorough and authoritative analysis of phenomenological sociology ever achieved." - W.P. Nye , Hollins University What is phenomenological sociology? Why is it significant? This innovative and thought-provoking book argues that phenomenology was the most significant, wide-ranging and influential philosophy to emerge in the twentieth century. The social character of phenomenology is explored in its relation to the concern in twentieth century sociology with questions of modern experience. Phenomenology and sociology come together as 'ethnographies of the present'. As such, they break free of the self-imposed limitations of each to establish a new, critical understanding of contemporary life. By reading phenomenology sociologically and sociology phenomenologically, this book reconstructs a phenomenological sociology of modern experience. Erudite and assured, this book opens up a series of new questions for contemporary social theory that theorists and students of theory can ill-afford to ignore. The text contains a treasure trove of insights and propositions that will stimulate debate and research in both sociology and philosophy.