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Rethinking Progress provides a challenging reevaluation of one of
the crucial ideas of Western civilization; the notion of progress.
Progress often seems to have become self-defeating, producing
ecological deserts, overpopulated cities, exhausted resources,
decaying cultures, and widespread feelings of alienation. The
contributors, from all over the world, present their diversified
perspectives on the fate of progress.
Theorist Clifford Geertz's influence extends far beyond
anthropology. Indeed the case could be made that he has been
abandoned by anthropology and that his legacy has been transferred
to a more diffuse community of scholars interested in
interpretation. This volume reflects the breadth of his influence,
looking at Geertz as a theorist rather than as an anthropologist.
To date, there has been no impartial, comprehensive, and
authoritative work published on this critical figure. Contributors
include an interdisciplinary team of leading scholars investigating
the three core components of contested legacy: theory, method, and
writing.
The 2016 U.S. presidential election revealed a nation deeply
divided and in flux. This volume provides urgently needed insights
into American politics and culture during this period of
uncertainty. The contributions answer the election's key mysteries,
such as how contemporary Christian evangelicals identified in the
unrepentant candidate Trump a hero to their cause, and how working
class and economically struggling Americans saw in the rich and
ostentatious candidate a champion of their plight. The chapters
explain how irrationality is creeping into political participation,
and demonstrate how media developments enabled a phenomenon like
"fake news" to influence the election. At this polarized and
contentious moment, this volume satisfies the urgent need for works
that carefully analyze the forces and tensions tearing at the
American social fabric. Simultaneously intellectual and accessible,
this volume is designed to illuminate the 2016 U.S. presidential
election and its aftermath for academics and students of politics
alike.
Jeffrey C. Alexander brings together new and leading contributors
to make a powerful and coherently argued case for a new direction
in cultural sociology, one that focuses on the intersection between
performance, ritual and social action. Performance has always been
used by sociologists to understand the social world but this volume
offers the first systematic analytical framework based on the
performance metaphor to explain large-scale social and cultural
processes. From September 11, to the Clinton/Lewinsky affair, to
the role of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission,
Social Performance draws on recent work in performative theory in
the humanities and in cultural studies to offer a novel approach to
the sociology of culture. Inspired by the theories of Austin,
Derrida, Durkheim, Goffman, and Turner, this is a path-breaking
volume that makes a major contribution to the field. It will appeal
to scholars and students alike.
In case studies that examine wrenching historical and contemporary
crises across five continents, cultural sociologists analyze the
contingencies of trauma construction and their fateful social
impact. How do some events get coded as traumatic and others which
seem equally painful and dramatic not? Why do culpable groups often
escape being categorized as perpetrators? Why are some horrendously
injured parties not seen as victims? Why do some trauma
constructions lead to moral restitution and justice, while others
narrow solidarity and trigger future violence? Expanding the
pioneering cultural approach to trauma, contributors from around
the world provide answers to these important questions. Because
Mao's trauma narrative gave victim status only to workers, the
postwar revolutionary government provided no cultural and emotional
space for the Chinese people to process their massive casualties in
the war against Japan. Even as the emerging Holocaust narrative
enlarged moral sensibilities on a global scale, the Jewish
experience in Europe exacerbated Israeli antagonism to Arabs and
desensitized them to Palestinian suffering. Because postwar Germans
came to see themselves as perpetrators of the Holocaust, the
massively destructive Allied fire bombings of German cities could
not become a widely experience cultural trauma. Because political
polarization in Columbia blocked the possibilities for common
narration, kidnapping were framed as private misfortunes rather
than public problems. Because Poland's postwar Communist government
controlled framing for the 1940 Katyn Massacre, the mass killing of
Polish military officers was told as an anti-Nazi not an
anti-Soviet story, and neither individual victims nor the Polish
nation could grieve. If Japanese defeat in World War II was framed
as moral collapse, why has the nation's construction of victims,
heroes, and perpetrators remained ambiguous and unresolved? How did
the Kosovo trauma remain central to Serbian history, providing a
powerful rationale for state violence, despite the changing
contours and contingencies of Serbian history?
It is not only a paradox but something of an intellectual scandal
that, in an era so shaken by radical actions and ideologies, social
science has had nothing theoretically new to say about radicalism
since the middle of the last century. Breaching the Civil Order
fills this void. It argues that, rather than seeing radicalism in
substantive terms - as violent or militant, communist or fascist -
radicalism should be seen more broadly as any organized effort to
breach the civil order. The theory is brilliantly made flesh in a
series of case studies by leading European and American social
scientists, from the destruction of property in the London race
riots to the public militancy of Black Lives Matter in the US, the
performative violence of the Irish IRA and the Mexican Zapatistas
to the democratic upheavals of the Arab Spring, and from Islamic
terrorism in France to Germany's right-wing populist Pegida.
The South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) is a
modern social drama that enabled the nation 's apartheid past to be
constructed as a cultural trauma, and by doing so created a new
collective narrative of diversity and inclusion. The TRC relied
primarily on testimonies from victims and perpetrators of apartheid
violence who came forward to tell their stories in a public forum.
Rather than simply serving as data for setting the historical
record straight, this book shows that it was not only the content
of these testimonies but also how these stories were told and what
values were attached to them that became significant. Goodman
argues that the performative nature of the TRC process effectively
designated the past as profane and simultaneously imagined a sacred
future community based on democratic idealism and universal
solidarity.
How do real individuals live together in real societies in the real
world?
Jeffrey Alexander's masterful work, The Civil Sphere, addresses
this central paradox of modern life. Feelings for others--the
solidarity that is ignored or underplayed by theories of power or
self-interest--are at the heart of this novel inquiry into the
meeting place between normative theories of what we think we should
do and empirical studies of who we actually are. A grand and
sweeping statement, The Civil Sphere is a major contribution to our
thinking about the real but ideal world in which we all reside.
The South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) is a
modern social drama that enabled the nation 's apartheid past to be
constructed as a cultural trauma, and by doing so created a new
collective narrative of diversity and inclusion. The TRC relied
primarily on testimonies from victims and perpetrators of apartheid
violence who came forward to tell their stories in a public forum.
Rather than simply serving as data for setting the historical
record straight, this book shows that it was not only the content
of these testimonies but also how these stories were told and what
values were attached to them that became significant. Goodman
argues that the performative nature of the TRC process effectively
designated the past as profane and simultaneously imagined a sacred
future community based on democratic idealism and universal
solidarity.
This is the first anthology to thematize the dramatic upward and
downward shifts that have created the new social theory, and to
present this new and exciting body of work in a thoroughly
trans-disciplinary manner. In this revised second edition readers
are provided with a much greater range of thinkers and
perspectives, including new sections on such issues as imperialism,
power, civilization clash, health, and performance. The first
section sets out the main schools of contemporary thought, from
Habermas and Honneth on new critical theory, to Jameson and Hall on
cultural studies, and Foucault and Bourdieu on poststructuralism.
The sections that follow trace theory debates as they become more
issues-based and engaged. They are: the post-foundational debates
over morality, justice and epistemological truth the social meaning
of nationalism, multiculturalism, globalization identity debates
around gender, sexuality, race, the self, and post-coloniality.
This new edition provides more ample biographical and intellectual
introductions to each thinker, and substantial introductions to
each of the major sections. The editors introduce the volume with a
newly revised, interpretive overview of social theory today. The
New Social Theory Reader is an essential, reliable guide to current
theoretical debates.
This volume addresses the key question of the intersection of
sociology and politics, and asks what a non-Marxist cultural
perspective can offer the Left. Written by leading scholars, it
develops new conceptions of social critique, new techniques of
interpretive analysis, and new concepts for the sociology of
democratic practice. It is a volume for the twenty-first-century,
where global and local meet, when critical theory must examine its
most fundamental presuppositions.
This volume addresses the key question of the intersection of
sociology and politics, and asks what a non-Marxist cultural
perspective can offer the Left. Written by leading scholars, it
develops new conceptions of social critique, new techniques of
interpretive analysis, and new concepts for the sociology of
democratic practice. It is a volume for the twenty-first-century,
where global and local meet, when critical theory must examine its
most fundamental presuppositions.
This collection of original essays brings a dramatically different
perspective to bear on the contemporary 'crisis of journalism'.
Rather than seeing technological and economic change as the primary
causes of current anxieties, The Crisis of Journalism Reconsidered
draws attention to the role played by the cultural commitments of
journalism itself. Linking these professional ethics to the
democratic aspirations of the broader societies in which
journalists ply their craft, it examines how the new technologies
are being shaped to sustain value commitments rather than
undermining them. Recent technological change and the economic
upheaval it has produced are coded by social meanings. It is this
cultural framework that actually transforms these 'objective'
changes into a crisis. The book argues that cultural codes not only
trigger sharp anxiety about technological and economic changes, but
provide pathways to control them, so that the democratic practices
of independent journalism can be sustained in new forms.
The influential authors significantly update their popular
introductory text that invites students to reflect on their lives
in the context of the combustible leap from modern to postmodern
life. The authors show how culture is central to understanding many
world problems as they challenge readers to confront the problems
and possibilities of an era in which the futures of the physical
and social environments seem uncertain. As culture rapidly changes
in the 21st century, the authors have successfully incorporated
these nuances with many important updates on race and racism, Black
Lives Matter, the rise of populist politics, ISIS, new social
media, feminist perspectives on sex work, trans and non-gender
conforming identities, and more. New to this edition: New data,
text box examples, photos, exercises, study questions, and glossary
terms appear throughout. New discussions added of arts-based and
participatory approaches to research, historical changes in the
perception of deviance, legalization of marijuana; Islam vs.
secularism in France, new forms of socialization, heteronormative
and essentialist language related to sex and gender, intersections
of social class and other identities, the prison industrial
complex, informal sharing economies, atheism, and more. New text
boxes include: Young Saudis Find Freedom in their Phones How One
Stupid Tweet Blew Up Justine Sacco's Life School-to-Prison Pipeline
India's Reproductive Assembly Line Workers Feel Pain of Layoffs
Like Prohibition, the fight over guns is about something else
Micro-aggression and Changing Moral Cultures Praise for A
Contemporary Introduction to Sociology "Treats sociology as a
living, vibrant discipline. The book is a masterful synthesis
written in a style that is at once sophisticated, engaging, and
accessible." -Peter Kivisto, Augustana College "Alexander and
Thompson have produced the modern textbook we have all been waiting
for-comprehensive and coherent, but above all intelligent. Designed
to make teaching sociology unproblematic, the book is the ideal
combination of theory, evidence, and accessibility." -Bryan S.
Turner, editor of The Cambridge Dictionary of Sociology "Sets new
standards in speaking directly to students of the most significant
recent developments in sociology and social changes they are
living. It shows how inspiring the sociological imagination can be
in areas like media, sexuality, gender relations, inequality, and
globalization. -Lyn Spillman, University of Notre Dame "A truly
contemporary sociology, one that mines the classics of sociology
for insights into a profoundly changed, postmodern world. Most
important, the book reminds us of sociology's capacity to
surprise." -Francesca Polletta, University of California-Irvine "An
extraordinary textbook that synthesizes a wealth of sociological
studies. The book is engaging and readable, key concepts are
clearly defined, and important theories are succinctly explicated.
I highly recommend it to students and faculty alike." -William
Julius Wilson, Harvard University
A collection of papers which were the outcome of a conference
organized by the editors of Jagiellonian University in Drakow,
Poland, which took place between June 28 and July 1, 1988. The
topic was "Social progress and sociological theory: movements,
forces, and ideas at the end of the twentieth century". The meeting
was the first material result of our ongoing efforts to organize
and "invisible college" of sociological theoriest on an
international scale, and effort that has now come to fruition as a
"working group" of the International Sociological Association, to
be established as a Research Committee on Theory.
Culture is increasingly important to American social science, but
in what way? This book volume addresses the core issues of the
sociology of culture questions about the social role of meaning, on
the one hand, and questions about the methods sociologists use to
study culture and society, on the other in a manner that makes
clear their relevance to sociology as a whole. Part I of "Meaning
and Method" is made up of essays by leading cultural sociologists
on how the turn to culture has changed the sociological study of
organizations, economic action, and television, and concludes with
Georgina Born s methodological statement on the sociology of art
and cultural production. Part II contains a highly original, and at
times heated, debate between Richard Biernacki and John H. Evans on
the appropriateness of abstract and quantifiable coding schemes for
the sociological study of culture. Ranging from the philosophy of
science to the concrete, practical problems of interpreting masses
of cultural data, the debate raises the controversy over the
interpretation of culture and the explanation of social action to a
new level of sophistication."
Culture is increasingly important to American social science, but
in what way? This book volume addresses the core issues of the
sociology of culture-questions about the social role of meaning, on
the one hand, and questions about the methods sociologists use to
study culture and society, on the other-in a manner that makes
clear their relevance to sociology as a whole. Part I of "Meaning
and Method" is made up of essays by leading cultural sociologists
on how the turn to culture has changed the sociological study of
organizations, economic action, and television, and concludes with
Georgina Born's methodological statement on the sociology of art
and cultural production. Part II contains a highly original, and at
times heated, debate between Richard Biernacki and John H. Evans on
the appropriateness of abstract and quantifiable coding schemes for
the sociological study of culture. Ranging from the philosophy of
science to the concrete, practical problems of interpreting masses
of cultural data, the debate raises the controversy over the
interpretation of culture and the explanation of social action to a
new level of sophistication.
This original, scholarly collection of essays investigates the
intersections of large-scale international migration and
solidarity-building. Unpacking how civil courage occurs, under what
forms, and what sustains it, Carlo Tognato, Bernadette Nadya
Jaworsky, and Jeffrey C. Alexander bring together authors to
explore a new theory of the exemplary individual or collective in
the recent age of "migration crises"-actors who stand against
injuries or injustices toward migrants, even when it is costly or
risky in a context of hostility or indifference. A resource for
those interested in the triggers and safeguards of democracy and
civil society, and for scholars and practitioners alike, this
volume offers empirical case studies from the US, Europe,
Australia, and Latin America of cross-group solidarity efforts.
The influential authors significantly update their popular
introductory text that invites students to reflect on their lives
in the context of the combustible leap from modern to postmodern
life. The authors show how culture is central to understanding many
world problems as they challenge readers to confront the problems
and possibilities of an era in which the futures of the physical
and social environments seem uncertain. As culture rapidly changes
in the 21st century, the authors have successfully incorporated
these nuances with many important updates on race and racism, Black
Lives Matter, the rise of populist politics, ISIS, new social
media, feminist perspectives on sex work, trans and non-gender
conforming identities, and more. New to this edition: New data,
text box examples, photos, exercises, study questions, and glossary
terms appear throughout. New discussions added of arts-based and
participatory approaches to research, historical changes in the
perception of deviance, legalization of marijuana; Islam vs.
secularism in France, new forms of socialization, heteronormative
and essentialist language related to sex and gender, intersections
of social class and other identities, the prison industrial
complex, informal sharing economies, atheism, and more. New text
boxes include: Young Saudis Find Freedom in their Phones How One
Stupid Tweet Blew Up Justine Sacco's Life School-to-Prison Pipeline
India's Reproductive Assembly Line Workers Feel Pain of Layoffs
Like Prohibition, the fight over guns is about something else
Micro-aggression and Changing Moral Cultures Praise for A
Contemporary Introduction to Sociology "Treats sociology as a
living, vibrant discipline. The book is a masterful synthesis
written in a style that is at once sophisticated, engaging, and
accessible." -Peter Kivisto, Augustana College "Alexander and
Thompson have produced the modern textbook we have all been waiting
for-comprehensive and coherent, but above all intelligent. Designed
to make teaching sociology unproblematic, the book is the ideal
combination of theory, evidence, and accessibility." -Bryan S.
Turner, editor of The Cambridge Dictionary of Sociology "Sets new
standards in speaking directly to students of the most significant
recent developments in sociology and social changes they are
living. It shows how inspiring the sociological imagination can be
in areas like media, sexuality, gender relations, inequality, and
globalization. -Lyn Spillman, University of Notre Dame "A truly
contemporary sociology, one that mines the classics of sociology
for insights into a profoundly changed, postmodern world. Most
important, the book reminds us of sociology's capacity to
surprise." -Francesca Polletta, University of California-Irvine "An
extraordinary textbook that synthesizes a wealth of sociological
studies. The book is engaging and readable, key concepts are
clearly defined, and important theories are succinctly explicated.
I highly recommend it to students and faculty alike." -William
Julius Wilson, Harvard University
Leading sociologists who live and work in East Asia examine their
region's most dangerous and explosive social problems, and some of
their most stunning success stories, from the viewpoint of Civil
Sphere Theory. This new and increasingly influential sociological
understanding of democracy aims to describe and explain the moral
codes and institutional foundations of democratic solidarity, as it
manifests itself within a distinct social sphere. Part of a
multi-volume project, this collection includes cases from Japan,
mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and South Korea, bringing
together efforts by sociologists based in East Asian academic
institutions. Through an extraordinary blend of sophisticated
social theory and path-breaking empirical research, The Civil
Sphere in East Asia aims to advance civil sphere theory by
globalizing and regionalizing it at the same time.
Theorist Clifford Geertz's influence extends far beyond
anthropology. Indeed the case could be made that he has been
abandoned by anthropology and that his legacy has been transferred
to a more diffuse community of scholars interested in
interpretation. This volume reflects the breadth of his influence,
looking at Geertz as a theorist rather than as an anthropologist.
To date, there has been no impartial, comprehensive, and
authoritative work published on this critical figure. Contributors
include an interdisciplinary team of leading scholars investigating
the three core components of contested legacy: theory, method, and
writing.
Abbott helps social science students discover what questions to
ask. This exciting book is not about habits and the mechanics of
doing social science research, but about habits of thinking that
enable students to use those mechanics in new ways, by coming up
with new ideas and combining them more effectively with old ones.
Abbott organizes his book around general methodological moves, and
uses examples from throughout the social sciences to show how these
moves can open new lines of thinking. In each chapter, he covers
several moves and their reverses (if these exist), discussing
particular examples of the move as well as its logical and
theoretical structure. Often he goes on to propose applications of
the move in a wide variety of empirical settings. The basic aim of
Methods of Discovery is to offer readers a new way of thinking
about directions for their research and new ways to imagine
information relevant to their research problems. Methods of
Discovery is part of the Contemporary Societies series.
In case studies that examine wrenching historical and contemporary
crises across five continents, cultural sociologists analyze the
contingencies of trauma construction and their fateful social
impact. How do some events get coded as traumatic and others which
seem equally painful and dramatic not? Why do culpable groups often
escape being categorized as perpetrators? Why are some horrendously
injured parties not seen as victims? Why do some trauma
constructions lead to moral restitution and justice, while others
narrow solidarity and trigger future violence? Expanding the
pioneering cultural approach to trauma, contributors from around
the world provide answers to these important questions. Because Mao
s trauma narrative gave victim status only to workers, the postwar
revolutionary government provided no cultural and emotional space
for the Chinese people to process their massive casualties in the
war against Japan. Even as the emerging Holocaust narrative
enlarged moral sensibilities on a global scale, the Jewish
experience in Europe exacerbated Israeli antagonism to Arabs and
desensitized them to Palestinian suffering. Because postwar Germans
came to see themselves as perpetrators of the Holocaust, the
massively destructive Allied fire bombings of German cities could
not become a widely experience cultural trauma. Because political
polarization in Columbia blocked the possibilities for common
narration, kidnapping were framed as private misfortunes rather
than public problems. Because Poland s postwar Communist government
controlled framing for the 1940 Katyn Massacre, the mass killing of
Polish military officers was told as an anti-Nazi not an
anti-Soviet story, and neither individual victims nor the Polish
nation could grieve. If Japanese defeat in World War II was framed
as moral collapse, why has the nation s construction of victims,
heroes, and perpetrators remained ambiguous and unresolved? How did
the Kosovo trauma remain central to Serbian history, providing a
powerful rationale for state violence, despite the changing
contours and contingencies of Serbian history?"
This is the first anthology to thematize the dramatic upward and
downward shifts that have created the new social theory, and to
present this new and exciting body of work in a thoroughly
trans-disciplinary manner. In this revised second edition readers
are provided with a much greater range of thinkers and
perspectives, including new sections on such issues as imperialism,
power, civilization clash, health, and performance. The first
section sets out the main schools of contemporary thought, from
Habermas and Honneth on new critical theory, to Jameson and Hall on
cultural studies, and Foucault and Bourdieu on poststructuralism.
The sections that follow trace theory debates as they become more
issues-based and engaged. They are: the post-foundational debates
over morality, justice and epistemological truth the social meaning
of nationalism, multiculturalism, globalization identity debates
around gender, sexuality, race, the self, and post-coloniality.
This new edition provides more ample biographical and intellectual
introductions to each thinker, and substantial introductions to
each of the major sections. The editors introduce the volume with a
newly revised, interpretive overview of social theory today. The
New Social Theory Reader is an essential, reliable guide to current
theoretical debates.
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