Download or read book Anxiety Modern Society and the Critical Method written by Joel Michael Crombez and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2021-03-08 with total page 425 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Anxiety, Modern Society, and the Critical Method Joel Michael Crombez accounts for the production of anxiety in modern societies and provides a method and theory for its diagnosis and treatment.

Download or read book Planetary Sociology written by Harry F. Dahms and published by Emerald Group Publishing. This book was released on 2023-05-05 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Including contributions from senior scholars in the field who do not rely on the paradigm of planetary Sociology, this volume of Current Perspectives in Social Theory illustrates the importance of scrutinizing links between individual identity and social structure, without employing the paradigm of planetary sociology.

Download or read book Twilight of the Self written by Michael Thompson and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2022-08-09 with total page 441 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this new work, political theorist Michael J. Thompson argues that modern societies are witnessing a decline in one of the core building blocks of modernity: the autonomous self. Far from being an illusion of the Enlightenment, Thompson contends that the individual is a defining feature of the project to build a modern democratic culture and polity. One of the central reasons for its demise in recent decades has been the emergence of what he calls the "cybernetic society," a cohesive totalization of the social logics of the institutional spheres of economy, culture and polity. These logics have been progressively defined by the imperatives of economic growth and technical-administrative management of labor and consumption, routinizing patterns of life, practices, and consciousness throughout the culture. Evolving out of the neoliberal transformation of economy and society since the 1980s, the cybernetic society has transformed how that the individual is articulated in contemporary society. Thompson examines the various pathologies of the self and consciousness that result from this form of socialization—such as hyper-reification, alienated moral cognition, false consciousness, and the withered ego—in new ways to demonstrate the extent of deformation of modern selfhood. Only with a more robust, more socially embedded concept of autonomy as critical agency can we begin to reconstruct the principles of democratic individuality and community.

Download or read book Negativity in Psychoanalysis written by Duane Rousselle and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-12-22 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Negativity in Psychoanalysis examines the role of negativity in psychoanalytic theory and its application in clinical settings. While theories around negativity and death drive have become routinized within philosophical interpretations of Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalysis, they often mask an inherent positivity. This volume assembles highly esteemed psychoanalytic theorists and clinicians for an in-depth discussion on the topic. It features comprehensive introductions to Freudian and Lacanian perspectives, alongside contemporary clinical and cultural issues. The book also investigates how psychoanalytic negativity influences and is influenced by social, theological, and philosophical dialogues. This work will prove invaluable for practicing psychoanalysts and those in training, while also appealing to academics and scholars in critical and cultural theory, continental and post-continental philosophy, and sociology, especially those whose research intersects clinical and theoretical traditions.

Download or read book The Uncontrollability of the World written by Hartmut Rosa and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2020-10-06 with total page 105 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The driving cultural force of that form of life we call ‘modern’ is the desire to make the world controllable. Yet it is only in encountering the uncontrollable that we really experience the world – only then do we feel touched, moved and alive. A world that is fully known, in which everything has been planned and mastered, would be a dead world. Our lives are played out on the border between what we can control and that which lies outside our control. But because we late-modern human beings seek to make the world controllable, we tend to encounter the world as a series of objects that we have to conquer, master or exploit. And precisely because of this, ‘life,’ the experience of feeling alive and truly encountering the world, always seems to elude us. This in turn leads to frustration, anger and even despair, which then manifest themselves in, among other things, acts of impotent political aggression. For Rosa, to encounter the world and achieve resonance with it requires us to be open to that which extends beyond our control. The outcome of this process cannot be predicted, and this is why moments of resonance are always concomitant with moments of uncontrollability. This short book – the sequel to Rosa’s path-breaking work on social acceleration and resonance – will be of great interest students and scholars in sociology and the social sciences and to anyone concerned with the nature of modern social life.

Download or read book Nonreligion in Late Modern Societies written by Anne-Laure Zwilling and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2022-06-14 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume presents results from new and ongoing research efforts into the role of nonreligion in education, politics, law and society from a variety of different countries. Featuring data from a wide range of quantitative and qualitative studies, the book exposes the relational dynamics of religion and nonreligion. Firstly, it highlights the extent to which nonreligion is defined and understood by legal and institutional actors on the basis of religions, and often replicates the organisation of society and majority religions. At the same time, it displays how essential it is to approach nonreligion on its own, by freeing oneself from the frameworks from which religion is thought. The book addresses pressing questions such as: How can nonreligion be defined, and how can the “nones” be grasped and taken into account in studies on religion? How does the sociocultural and religious backdrop of different countries affect the regulation and representation of nonreligion in law and policymaking? Where and how do nonreligious individuals and collectives fit into institutions in contemporary societies? How does nonreligion affect notions of citizenship and national belonging? Despite growing scholarly interest in the increasing number of people without religion, the role of nonreligion in legal and institutional settings is still largely unexplored. This volume helps fill the gap, and will be of interest to students, researchers, policymakers and others seeking deeper understanding of the changing role of nonreligion in modern societies.

Download or read book Anxiety in a Risk Society written by Iain Wilkinson and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2002-08-27 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Few would dispute that we are living at a time of high anxiety and uncertainty in which many of us will experience a crisis of identity at some point or another. At the same time, news media provide us with a daily catalogue of disasters from around the globe to remind us that we inhabit a world of crisis, insecurity and hazard. Anxiety in a Risk Society : looks at the problem of contemporary anxiety from a sociological perspective highlights its significance for the ways we make sense of risk and uncertainty argues that the relationship between anxiety and risk hinges on the nature of anxiety. Iain Wilkinson believes that there is much for sociologists to learn from those who have made the condition of anxiety the focus of their life's work. By making anxiety the focus of sociological inquiry, a critical vantage point can be gained from which to attempt an answer to the question: Are we more anxious because we are more risk conscious? This is an original and thought-provoking contribution to the understanding of late modernity as a risk society.

Download or read book Game Value written by Vedat Yiğitoğlu and published by Vedat Yigitoglu. This book was released on 2020-04-05 with total page 183 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ‘Game’ as a term, implies the game beyond its meaning and expands on it. This work solidifies the idea that, in essence games are “a form of communication” between numerous planes of thought. As such along with their rising importance, it’s no longer sufficient for games to be investigated under any single discipline, instead requiring the subject to be investigated under a variety of disciplines. In this sense, while various other works on the nature of games have tried to draw their own borders; defining their own terminologies and methods, it had at times advanced forth in an almost purist fashion; each keeping close watch on their own wellestablished areas. However, in order to completely comprehend games and their inner-workings, an inter-disciplinary approach is a necessity. in this work, “games” are being investigated in its anthropocosmological meaning, and as a form of new media. Language games, digital games, and topics like gamification are taken into account in a uniformed sense, by a variety of thinkers who are qualified as game philosophers, each with their own area expertise.

Download or read book The Body Keeps the Score written by Bessel A. Van der Kolk and published by Penguin Books. This book was released on 2015-09-08 with total page 466 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Originally published by Viking Penguin, 2014.

Download or read book Critical Infrastructures Key Resources Key Assets written by Adrian V. Gheorghe and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-11-12 with total page 442 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the face of increasing failures, comments attributed to Albert Einstein loom large: “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.” There is a pervasive feeling that any attempt to make sense of the current terrain of complex systems must involve thinking outside the box and originating unconventional approaches that integrate organizational, managerial, social, political, cultural, and human aspects and their interactions. This textbook offers research-based models and tools for diagnosing and predicting the behavior of complex techno-socio-economic systems in the domain of critical infrastructures, key resources, key assets and the open bazaar of space, undersea, and below-ground systems. These models exemplify emblematic models in physics, within which the critical infrastructures, as well as society itself and its paraphernalia, share the profile of many-body systems featuring cooperative phenomena and phase transitions – the latter usually felt as disruptive occurrences. The book and its models focus on the analytics of real-life-business actors, including policy-makers, financiers and insurers, industry managers, and emergency responders.

Download or read book Pre histories and Afterlives written by Anna Holland and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-12-02 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "If the past is indeed a foreign country, then how can we make sense of its richness and difference, without approaching it on our terms alone? 'Pre-histories' and 'afterlives', methods that have emerged in recent work by Terence Cave, offer new ways of shaping the stories we tell of the past and the analyses we offer. In this volume, distinguished contributors engage in a dialogue with these two new critical methods, exploring their uses in a range of contexts, disciplines, languages and periods. The contributors are Terence Cave, Marian Hobson, Anna Holland, Neil Kenny, Mary McKinley, Richard Scholar, Kate E. Tunstall, and Wes Williams."

Download or read book Damaged Life written by Tod Sloan and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2002-09-26 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This text presents an analysis of modernity's impact on the psyche. Modernization has brought many material benefits, yet we are constantly told how unhappy we are: crime, divorce, suicide, depression and anxiety are rampant. How can this contradiction be reconciled? Tod Sloan develops an integrated theory of the self in society by combining perspectives on personality development and sociohistorical processes to explore our complex response to modernization. He discusses the implications of postmodern theory for psychology and proposes concrete responses to address the issue of mass emotional suffering. His book is aimed at those working within psychology and related disciplines such as sociology and social policy, as well as anyone seeking enlightenment about the predicament of the self in contemporary society.

Download or read book Reflexive Methodology written by Mats Alvesson and published by SAGE. This book was released on 2009-09-02 with total page 361 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Praise for the First Edition: 'Reflexive Methodology is a textbook indispensable to any young researcher. It does not tell its readers how to do research. It does something much more important: It shows how research has been done in the qualitative tradition, thus encouraging the readers to make their own choices' - Barbara Czarniawska, Goteborg University 'I would go so far as to argue that this book should be on the reading list of all social scientists and philosophers with an interest in the theory and practice of research' - Prometheus Reflexive Methodology established itself as a groundbreaking success, providing researchers with an invaluable guide to a central problem in research methodology - how to put field research and interpretations in perspective, paying attention to the interpretive, political and rhetorical nature of empirical research. Now thoroughly updated, the Second Edition includes a new chapter on positivism, social constructionism and critical realism, and offers new conclusions on the applications of methodology. It also provides further illustrations and updates that build on the acclaimed and successful first edition. Reflexivity is an essential part of the research process. In this book, Mats Alvesson and Kaj Skoldberg make explicit the links between techniques used in empirical research and different research traditions, giving a theoretically informed approach to qualitative research. The authors provide balanced reviews and critiques of the major schools of grounded theory, ethnography, hermeneutics, critical theory, postmodernism and poststructuralism, discourse analysis, genealogy and feminism. This book points the way to a more open-minded, creative interaction between theoretical frameworks and empirical research. It continues to be essential reading for students and researchers across the social sciences.

Download or read book Benjamin Adorno and the Experience of Literature written by Corey McCall and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-06-27 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection features original essays that examine Walter Benjamin’s and Theodor Adorno’s essays and correspondence on literature. Taken together, the essays present the view that these two monumental figures of 20th-century philosophy were not simply philosophers who wrote about literature, but that they developed their philosophies in and through their encounters with literature. Benjamin, Adorno, and the Experience of Literature is divided into three thematic sections. The first section contains essays that directly demonstrate the ways in which literature enriched the thinking of Benjamin and Adorno. It explores themes that are recognized to be central to their thinking—mimesis, the critique of historical progress, and the loss and recovery of experience—through their readings of literary authors such as Baudelaire, Beckett, and Proust. The second section continues the trajectory of the first by bringing together four essays on Benjamin’s and Adorno’s reading of Kafka, whose work helped them develop a distinctive critique of and response to capitalism. The third and final section focuses more intently on the question of what it means to gain authentically critical insight into a literary work. The essays examine Benjamin’s response to specific figures, including Georg Büchner, Robert Walser, and Julien Green, whose work he sees as neglected, undigested, or misunderstood. This book offers a unique examination of two pivotal 20th-century philosophers through the lens of their shared experiences with literature. It will appeal to a wide range of scholars across philosophy, literature, and German studies.

Download or read book Critical Criminology written by Russell Hogg and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-01-11 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Exploring the key issues and future prospects facing critical criminology, this book brings together leading authorities in the field from the UK, Australasia and the USA.

Download or read book Thinking Through Fashion written by Agnès Rocamora and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2015-10-23 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Learning how to think through fashion is both exciting and challenging, being dependent on one s ability to critically engage with an array of theories and concepts. This is the first book designed to accompany readers through the process of thinking through fashion. It aims to help them grasp both the relevance of social and cultural theory to fashion, dress, and material culture and, conversely, the relevance of those fields to social and cultural theory. It does so by offering a guide through the work of selected major thinkers, introducing their concepts and ideas. Each chapter is written by an expert contributor and is devoted to a key thinker, capturing the significance of their thought to the understanding of the field of fashion, while also assessing the importance of this field for a critical engagement with these thinkers ideas. This is a guide and reference for students and scholars in the fields of fashion, dress and material culture, the creative industries, sociology, cultural history, design and cultural studies."

Download or read book David Riesman and Critical Theory written by Amirhosein Khandizaji and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2021-08-17 with total page 169 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Although David Riesman wrote over half a century ago, his concept of autonomy as presented in The Lonely Crowd (1950) speaks directly to the intellectual and emotional disarrangements of the twenty-first century. The current malaise produced by the excesses of commodity culture, information technology, the hyperreal, and “fake news” militate against our ability to think critically about contemporary society. And while postmodern authors insist that this bewildering situation weakens and assails our critical thinking skills, Riesman’s notion of autonomy refuses to capitulate to such a somber interpretation. Rather, he is convinced that individuals have the intellectual and emotional mettle to think for themselves and not be drawn into the demands of a commercialized culture and a commodity-driven lifestyle. As we pick and choose the terms of our engagement, we can remain aloof from society’s engulfing influence and preserve the oppositional thinking needed for democracy. To illustrate this point most clearly, this book puts Riesman into conversation with the writings of Theodor Adorno, whose evaluation of the critical faculty’s ability to withstand “the culture industry” is famously pessimistic.