Download or read book Social Theory and the Politics of Identity written by Craig Calhoun and published by Wiley-Blackwell. This book was released on 1994-10-20 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New social movements of the post-war era have brought to prominence the idea that identity can be a crucial focus for political struggle. Linked to an increasing recognition that social theory itself must put the politics of identity on center stage, this volume impels social theorists not only to make sense of the "world out there", but also to make sense of differences within the discourse of theory.

Download or read book Social Theory of International Politics written by Alexander Wendt and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1999-10-07 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drawing upon philosophy and social theory, Social Theory of International Politics develops a theory of the international system as a social construction. Alexander Wendt clarifies the central claims of the constructivist approach, presenting a structural and idealist worldview which contrasts with the individualism and materialism which underpins much mainstream international relations theory. He builds a cultural theory of international politics, which takes whether states view each other as enemies, rivals or friends as a fundamental determinant. Wendt characterises these roles as 'cultures of anarchy', described as Hobbesian, Lockean and Kantian respectively. These cultures are shared ideas which help shape state interests and capabilities, and generate tendencies in the international system. The book describes four factors which can drive structural change from one culture to another - interdependence, common fate, homogenization, and self-restraint - and examines the effects of capitalism and democracy in the emergence of a Kantian culture in the West.

Download or read book Social Theory after the Internet written by Ralph Schroeder and published by UCL Press. This book was released on 2018-01-04 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The internet has fundamentally transformed society in the past 25 years, yet existing theories of mass or interpersonal communication do not work well in understanding a digital world. Nor has this understanding been helped by disciplinary specialization and a continual focus on the latest innovations. Ralph Schroeder takes a longer-term view, synthesizing perspectives and findings from various social science disciplines in four countries: the United States, Sweden, India and China. His comparison highlights, among other observations, that smartphones are in many respects more important than PC-based internet uses. Social Theory after the Internet focuses on everyday uses and effects of the internet, including information seeking and big data, and explains how the internet has gone beyond traditional media in, for example, enabling Donald Trump and Narendra Modi to come to power. Schroeder puts forward a sophisticated theory of the role of the internet, and how both technological and social forces shape its significance. He provides a sweeping and penetrating study, theoretically ambitious and at the same time always empirically grounded.The book will be of great interest to students and scholars of digital media and society, the internet and politics, and the social implications of big data.

Download or read book A Social Theory of Freedom written by Mariam Thalos and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-03-17 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In A Social Theory of Freedom, Mariam Thalos argues that the theory of human freedom should be a broadly social and political theory, rather than a theory that places itself in opposition to the issue of determinism. Thalos rejects the premise that a theory of freedom is fundamentally a theory of the metaphysics of constraint and, instead, lays out a political conception of freedom that is closely aligned with questions of social identity, self-development in contexts of intimate relationships, and social solidarity. Thalos argues that whether a person is free (in any context) depends upon a certain relationship of fit between that agent’s conception of themselves (both present and future), on the one hand, and the facts of their circumstances, on the other. Since relationships of fit are broadly logical, freedom is a logic—it is the logic of fit between one’s aspirations and one’s circumstances, what Thalos calls the logic of agency. The logic of agency, once fleshed out, becomes a broadly social and political theory that encompasses one’s self-conceptions as well as how these self-conceptions are generated, together with how they fit with the circumstances of one’s life. The theory of freedom proposed in this volume is fundamentally a political one.

Download or read book Identity Before Identity Politics written by Linda Nicholson and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2008-11-20 with total page 195 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the late 1960s identity politics emerged on the political landscape and challenged prevailing ideas about social justice. These politics brought forth a new attention to social identity, an attention that continues to divide people today. While previous studies have focused on the political movements of this period, they have neglected the conceptual prehistory of this political turn. Linda Nicholson's engaging book situates this critical moment in its historical framework, analyzing the concepts and traditions of racial and gender identity that can be traced back to late eighteenth-century Europe and America. She examines how changing ideas about social identity over the last several centuries both helped and hindered successive social movements, and explores the consequences of this historical legacy for the women's and black movements of the 1960s. This insightful study will be of particular interest to students and scholars of political history, identity politics and US history.

Download or read book Theorising Modernity written by Martin O'Brien and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-07-10 with total page 237 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is modernity? Do we all experience modernity in the same way? How should we understand contemporary social change? This volume explores questions of modernity through critical engagements with the work of Anthony Giddens, focusing in particular on the relationships between his social theory and political sociology. Three substantive areas - reflexivity, environment and identity - are examined theoretically through the relationships between reflexivity and rationality, life politics and institutional power, and universalism and 'difference'. As well as specifically addressing Giddens' reconstruction of sociology, the contributors also explore a wide variety of critical issues currently occupying centre stage in social theory. These include questions about the character of contemporary societies, the periodisation of social change, the processes of change by which societies are constantly made and remade by people, the relationships between the 'social' and the 'natural', the formation and maintenance of identities and matters of epistemology and methodology in social science. Theorising Modernity will be of interest to undergraduate and postgraduate students of sociology, modern political thought, social geography and social policy and to social scientists trying to make sense of the modernity debate. Martin O'Brien is Research at the University of Derby. Sue Penna is a Lecturer in Applied Social Science at Lancaster University. Colin Hay is a Lecturer in the Department of Political Science and International Studies at the University of Birmingham (UK), a Visiting Fellow of the Department of Political Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (US) and Research Affiliate of the Centre for European Studies at Harvard University (US).

Download or read book Politics and the Ends of Identity written by Kathryn Dean and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-08-13 with total page 549 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First published in 1997, this volume responds to the issue that identity can no longer be taken for granted, and features contributions from experts in politics, history and social theory on the concepts of identity politics and selfhood in cultures around the world. Stemming from the work of Erik Erikson, on the concept of identity, these articles expand to include Islam, Japan, India and America, along with a contemplation of international ideas of national sovereignty. They argue as a whole against notions of a growing global homogeneity of identity and against an ‘end to history’.

Download or read book Modernity and Self Identity written by Anthony Giddens and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2013-04-30 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This major study develops a new account of modernity and its relation to the self. Building upon the ideas set out in The Consequences of Modernity, Giddens argues that 'high' or 'late' modernity is a post traditional order characterised by a developed institutional reflexivity. In the current period, the globalising tendencies of modern institutions are accompanied by a transformation of day-to-day social life having profound implications for personal activities. The self becomes a 'reflexive project', sustained through a revisable narrative of self identity. The reflexive project of the self, the author seeks to show, is a form of control or mastery which parallels the overall orientation of modern institutions towards 'colonising the future'. Yet it also helps promote tendencies which place that orientation radically in question - and which provide the substance of a new political agenda for late modernity. In this book Giddens concerns himself with themes he has often been accused of unduly neglecting, including especially the psychology of self and self-identity. The volumes are a decisive step in the development of his thinking, and will be essential reading for students and professionals in the areas of social and political theory, sociology, human geography and social psychology.

Download or read book Political Power and Social Theory written by Diane E. Davis and published by Emerald Group Publishing. This book was released on 2009-12-21 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It is time to consider changes in the field of comparative-historical sociology, as the discipline seeks to accommodate old and new trends as well as the transforming spatial scales in which political power and social theory are increasingly embedded. This title showcases articles that pursue similar themes.

Download or read book Speaking through the Mask written by Norma Claire Moruzzi and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2018-09-05 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hannah Arendt was famously resistant to both psychoanalysis and feminism. Nonetheless, psychoanalytic feminist theory can offer a new interpretive strategy for deconstructing her equally famous opposition between the social and the political. Supplementing critical readings of Arendt's most significant texts (including The Human Condition, On Revolution, Rahel Varnhagen, The Origins of Totalitarianism, Eichmann in Jerusalem, and The Life of the Mind) with the insights of contemporary psychoanalytic, feminist, and social theorists, Norma Claire Moruzzi reconstitutes the relationship in Arendt's texts between constructed social identity and political agency. Moruzzi uses Julia Kristeva's writings on abjection to clarify the textual dynamic in Arendt's work that constructs the social as a natural threat; Joan Riviere's and Mary Ann Doane's work on feminine masquerade amplify the theoretical possibilities implicit in Arendt's own discussion of the public, political mask. In a bold interdisciplinary synthesis, Moruzzi develops the social applications of a concept (the mask) Arendt had described as limited to the strictly political realm: a new conception of (political) agency as (social) masquerade, traced through the marginal but emblematic textual figures who themselves enact the politics of social identity.

Download or read book The Misguided Search for the Political written by Lois McNay and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2014-06-05 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There has been a lively debate amongst political theorists about whether certain liberal concepts of democracy are so idealized that they lack relevance to ‘real’ politics. Echoing these debates, Lois McNay examines in this book some theories of radical democracy and argues that they too tend to rely on troubling abstractions - or what she terms ‘socially weightless’ thinking. They often propose ideas of the political that are so far removed from the logic of everyday practice that, ultimately, their supposed emancipatory potential is thrown into question. Radical democrats frequently maintain that what distinguishes their ideas of the political from others is the fundamental concern with unmasking and challenging unrecognized forms of inequality and domination that distort everyday life. But this supposed attentiveness to power is undermined by the invocation of rarefied models of political action that treat agency as an unproblematic given and overlook certain features of the embodied experience of oppression. The tendency of radical democrats to define democratic agency in terms of dynamics of perpetual flux, mobility and agonism passes over too swiftly the way in which objective structures of oppression are often taken into the body as subjective dispositions, leaving individuals with the feeling that they are unable to do little more than endure a state of affairs beyond their control. Drawing on the work of Adorno, Bourdieu and Honneth, amongst others, McNay argues that in order to make good the critique of power, radical democratic theory should attend more closely to a phenomenology of negative social experience and what it can reveal about the social conditions necessary for effective political agency.

Download or read book Identity Theory written by Peter J. Burke and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2022-11-22 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The concept of identity has become widespread within the social and behavioral sciences, cutting across disciplines from psychiatry and psychology to political science and sociology. Introduced more than fifty years ago, identity theory is a social psychological theory that attempts to understand person's identities, their sources in interaction and society, their processes of operation, and their consequences for interaction and society from a sociological perspective. In this fully updated second edition of Identity Theory, Peter J. Burke and Jan E. Stets expand and refine their discussion of identity theory. Each chapter has been significantly revised and chapters have been added to address new theoretical developments and empirical research in the field. They cover identity characteristics, the processes and outcomes of identity verification, and the operation of identities to detail in particular the role of emotional, behavioral, and cognitive processes. In addition, Burke and Stets explore the multiple identities individuals hold from their multiple positions in society and organizations as well as the multiple identities activated by many people interacting in groups and organizations. Written in an accessible style, this revised edition of Identity Theory continues to make the full range of this powerful theory understandable to readers at all levels.

Download or read book Identity and Control written by Harrison C. White and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2008-06 with total page 451 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this completely revised edition of one of the foundational texts of network sociology, Harrison White refines and enlarges his groundbreaking theory of how social structure and culture emerge from the chaos and uncertainty of social life. Incorporating new contributions from a group of young sociologists and many fascinating and novel case studies, Identity and Control is the only major book of social theory that links social structure with the lived experience of individuals, providing a rich perspective on the kinds of social formations that develop in the process. Going beyond traditional sociological dichotomies such as agency/structure, individual/society, or micro/macro, Identity and Control presents a toolbox of concepts that will be useful to a wide range of social scientists, as well as those working in public policy, management, or associational life and, beyond, to any reader who is interested in understanding the dynamics of social life.

Download or read book Social Postmodernism written by Linda Nicholson and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1995-09-14 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Social Postmodernism defends a postmodern perspective anchored in the politics of the new social movements. The volume preserves the focus on the politics of the body, race, gender, and sexuality as elaborated in postmodern approaches. But these essays push postmodern analysis in a particular direction: toward a social postmodernism which integrates the micro-social concerns of the new social movements with an institutional and cultural analysis in the service of a transformative political vision.

Download or read book Social Theory and the Politics of Higher Education written by Mark Murphy and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2020-12-10 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Social Theory and the Politics of Higher Education brings together an international group of scholars who shine a theoretical light on the politics of academic life and higher education. The book covers three key areas: 1) Institutional governance, with a specific focus on issues such as measurement, surveillance, accountability, regulation, performance and institutional reputation. 2) Academic work, covering areas such as the changing nature of academic labour, neoliberalism and academic identity, and the role of gender and gender studies in university life. 3) Student experience, which includes case studies of student politics and protest, the impact of graduate debt and changing student identities. The editors and chapter authors explore these topics through a theoretical lens, using the ideas of Michel Foucault, Niklas Luhmann, Barbara Adams, Donna Massey, Margaret Archer, Jürgen Habermas, Pierre Bourdieu, Hartmut Rosa, Norbert Elias and Donna Haraway, among others. The case studies, from Africa, Europe, Australia and South America, draw on a wide range of research approaches, and each chapter includes a set of critical reflections on how social theory and research methodology can work in tandem.

Download or read book Social Theory Re Wired written by Wesley Longhofer and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-06-22 with total page 943 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This third edition of Social Theory Re-Wired is a significantly revised edition of this leading text and its unique web learning interactive programs that "allow us to go farther into theory and to build student skills than ever before," according to many teachers. Vital political and social updates are reflected both in the text and the online supplements. "System updates" to each section offer an expanded set of contemporary theory readings that focus on the impacts of information/digital technologies on each of the text’s five big themes: 1) the Puzzles of Social Order, 2) the Social Consequences of Capitalism, 3) the Darkside of Modernity, 4) Subordinated/Alternative Knowledges, and 5) Self-Identity and Society. New to this edition: The "big ideas/questions" thematic structure of the text as well as the connections between classical and contemporary theorists continues to be popular with instructors. This feature is enhanced in the new edition An expanded "Podcast Companions" series now pairs at least one podcast to every reading in the book Many new updates to the exercise platform allow students to theorize and build theory on their own New readings excerpts include such important recent work as: Shoshana Zuboff’s "The Age of Surveillance Capitalism," Ruha Benjamin’s "Race After Technology," David Graeber’s "Of Flying Cars and the Declining Rate of Profit," Sherry Turkle’s “Always-On/Always-on-You.”

Download or read book Shifting Boundaries written by Tim Schouls and published by UBC Press. This book was released on 2011-11-01 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Canada is often called a pluralist state, but few commentators view Aboriginal self-government from the perspective of political pluralism. Instead, Aboriginal identity is framed in terms of cultural and national traits, while self-government is taken to represent an Aboriginal desire to protect those traits. Shifting Boundaries challenges this view, arguing that it fosters a woefully incomplete understanding of the politics of self-government. Taking the position that a relational theory of pluralism offers a more accurate interpretation, Tim Schouls contends that self-government is better understood when an “identification” perspective on Aboriginal identity is adopted instead of a “cultural” or “national” one. He shows that self-government is not about preserving cultural and national differences as goods in and of themselves, but rather is about equalizing current imbalances in power to allow Aboriginal peoples to construct their own identities. In focusing on relational pluralism, Shifting Boundaries adds an important perspective to existing theoretical approaches to Aboriginal self-government. It will appeal to academics, students, and policy analysts interested in Aboriginal governance, cultural studies, political theory, nationalism studies, and constitutional theory.