Download or read book The Logic of Practice written by Pierre Bourdieu and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 1990 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Our usual representations of the opposition between the "civilized" and the "primitive" derive from willfully ignoring the relationship of distance our social science sets up between the observer and the observed. In fact, the author argues, the relationship between the anthropologist and his object of study is a particular instance of the relationship between knowing and doing, interpreting and using, symbolic mastery and practical masteryor between logical logic, armed with all the accumulated instruments of objectification, and the universally pre-logical logic of practice. In this, his fullest statement of a theory of practice, Bourdieu both sets out what might be involved in incorporating one's own standpoint into an investigation and develops his understanding of the powers inherent in the second member of many oppositional pairsthat is, he explicates how the practical concerns of daily life condition the transmission and functioning of social or cultural forms. The first part of the book, "Critique of Theoretical Reason," covers more general questions, such as the objectivization of the generic relationship between social scientific observers and their objects of study, the need to overcome the gulf between subjectivism and objectivism, the interplay between structure and practice (a phenomenon Bourdieu describes via his concept of the habitus), the place of the body, the manipulation of time, varieties of symbolic capital, and modes of domination. The second part of the book, "Practical Logics," develops detailed case studies based on Bourdieu's ethnographic fieldwork in Algeria. These examples touch on kinship patterns, the social construction of domestic space, social categories of perception and classification, and ritualized actions and exchanges. This book develops in full detail the theoretical positions sketched in Bourdieu's Outline of a Theory of Practice. It will be especially useful to readers seeking to grasp the subtle concepts central to Bourdieu's theory, to theorists interested in his points of departure from structuralism (especially fom Lévi-Strauss), and to critics eager to understand what role his theory gives to human agency. It also reveals Bourdieu to be an anthropological theorist of considerable originality and power.
Download or read book The Logic of Social Practices written by Raffaela Giovagnoli and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-02-04 with total page 198 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book reports on cutting-edge research concerning social practices. Merging perspectives from various disciplines, including philosophy, biology, and cognitive science, it discusses theoretical aspects of social behavior along with models to investigate them, and also presents key case studies. Further, It describes concepts related to habits, routines, and rituals and examines important features of human action, such as intentionality and choice, exploring the influence of specific social practices in different situations. Based on a workshop held in June 2018 at the 6th World Congress of Universal Logic, UNILOG2018, in Vichy, and including additional invited chapters, the book offers fresh insights into the fields of social practice and the cognitive, computational, and philosophical tools to understand them.
Download or read book Outline of a Theory of Practice written by Pierre Bourdieu and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1977-06-02 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Through Pierre Bourdieu's work in Kabylia (Algeria), he develops a theory on symbolic power.
Download or read book Social Practices written by Theodore R. Schatzki and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1996-09-13 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book addresses key topics in social theory such as the basic structures of social life, the character of human activity, and the nature of individuality. Drawing on the work of Wittgenstein, the author develops an account of social existence that argues that social practices are the fundamental phenomenon in social life. This approach offers new insight into the social formation of individuals, surpassing and critiquing the existing practice theories of Bourdieu, Giddens, Lyotard, and Oakeshott.
Download or read book The Social Theory of Practices written by Stephen P. Turner and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2018-03-08 with total page 159 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents the first analysis and critique of the idea of practice as it has developed in the various theoretical traditions of the social sciences and the humanities. The concept of a practice, understood broadly as a tacit possession that is 'shared' by and the same for different people, has a fatal difficulty, the author argues. This object must in some way be transmitted, 'reproduced', in Bourdieu's famous phrase, in different persons. But there is no plausible mechanism by which such a process occurs. The historical uses of the concept, from Durkheim to Kripke's version of Wittgenstein, provide examples of the contortions that thinkers have been forced into by this problem, and show the ultimate implausibility of the idea of the interpersonal transmission of these supposed objects. Without the notion of 'sameness' the concept of practice collapses into the concept of habit. The conclusion sketches a picture of what happens when we do without the notion of a shared practice, and how this bears on social theory and philosophy. It explains why social theory cannot get beyond the stage of constructing fuzzy analogies, and why the standard constructions of the contemporary philosophical problem of relativism depend upon this defective notion.
Download or read book Logics of History written by William H. Sewell Jr. and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2009-07-27 with total page 425 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While social scientists and historians have been exchanging ideas for a long time, they have never developed a proper dialogue about social theory. William H. Sewell Jr. observes that on questions of theory the communication has been mostly one way: from social science to history. Logics of History argues that both history and the social sciences have something crucial to offer each other. While historians do not think of themselves as theorists, they know something social scientists do not: how to think about the temporalities of social life. On the other hand, while social scientists’ treatments of temporality are usually clumsy, their theoretical sophistication and penchant for structural accounts of social life could offer much to historians. Renowned for his work at the crossroads of history, sociology, political science, and anthropology, Sewell argues that only by combining a more sophisticated understanding of historical time with a concern for larger theoretical questions can a satisfying social theory emerge. In Logics of History, he reveals the shape such an engagement could take, some of the topics it could illuminate, and how it might affect both sides of the disciplinary divide.
Download or read book The Logic of Social Practices II written by Raffaela Giovagnoli and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2024-01-28 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book reports on cutting-edge research concerning social practices. Merging perspectives from various disciplines, including philosophy, biology, psychology and cognitive science, and economy, it discusses theoretical aspects of social behavior along with models to investigate them, and presenting key case studies as well. Further, it describes concepts related to habits, routines, and rituals and examines important features of human action, such as intentionality and choice, exploring the influence of specific social practices in different situations. Based on a workshop held on April 2022 at the World Congress on Universal Logic (UNILOG 22), in Crete, and including additional invited chapters, the book offers fresh insights into the fields of social practice and the cognitive, computational, and philosophical tools to understand them.
Download or read book The Logic of Social Science written by James Mahoney and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2021-08-17 with total page 410 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Mahoney's starting point is the problem of essentialism in social science. Essentialism--the belief that the members of a category possess hidden properties ("essences") that make them members of the category and that endow them with a certain nature--is appropriate for scientific categories ("atoms", for instance) but not for human ones ("revolutions," for instance). Despite this, much social science research takes place from within an essentialist orientation; those who reject this assumption goes so far in the other direction as to reject the idea of an external reality, independent of human beings, altogether. Mahoney proposes an alternative approach that aspires to bridge this enduring rift in the social sciences between those who take a scientific approach and assume that social science categories correspond to external reality (and thus believe that the methods used in the natural sciences are generally appropriate for the social sciences) and those who take a constructivist approach and believe that because the categories used to understand the social world are humanly-constructed, they cannot possibly follow the science of the natural world. As the name suggests, scientific constructivism brings in aspects of both views and attempts to unite them. Drawing from cognitive science, it focuses on using the rational parts of our brain machinery to overcome the limitations and deeply seated biases (such as essentialism) of our evolved minds. Specifically, Mahoney puts forth a "set-theoretic analysis" that focuses on "sets" of categories as they exist in the mind that are also subject to the mathematical logic of set-theory. He spends the first four chapters of the book establishing the foundations and methods for set-theoretic analysis, the next four chapters looking and how this analysis fits with the existing tools of social science, and the final four chapters focusing on how this approach can be used to study and understand cases"--
Download or read book On the Logic of the Social Sciences written by Jürgen Habermas and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2015-10-07 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this wide-ranging work, now available in paperback, Habermas presents his views on the nature of the social sciences and their distinctive methodology and concerns. He examines, among other things, the traditional division between the natural sciences and the social sciences; the characteristics of social action and the implications of theories of language for social enquiry; and the nature, tasks and limitations of hermeneutics. Habermas' analysis of these and other themes is, as always, rigorous, perceptive and constructive. This brilliant study succeeds in highlighting the distinctive characteristics of the social sciences and in outlining the nature of, and prospects for, critical theory today.
Download or read book The Logic of Social Practices II written by Raffaela Giovagnoli and published by Springer. This book was released on 2023-12-30 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book reports on cutting-edge research concerning social practices. Merging perspectives from various disciplines, including philosophy, biology, psychology and cognitive science, and economy, it discusses theoretical aspects of social behavior along with models to investigate them, and presenting key case studies as well. Further, it describes concepts related to habits, routines, and rituals and examines important features of human action, such as intentionality and choice, exploring the influence of specific social practices in different situations. Based on a workshop held on April 2022 at the World Congress on Universal Logic (UNILOG 22), in Crete, and including additional invited chapters, the book offers fresh insights into the fields of social practice and the cognitive, computational, and philosophical tools to understand them.
Download or read book The Constitution of Social Practices written by Kevin McMillan and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-10-02 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Practices – specific, recurrent types of human action and activity – are perhaps the most fundamental "building blocks" of social reality. This book argues that the detailed empirical study of practices is essential to effective social-scientific inquiry. It develops a philosophical infrastructure for understanding human practices, and argues that practice theory should be the analytical centrepiece of social theory and the philosophy of the social sciences. What would social scientists’ research look like if they took these insights seriously? To answer this question, the book offers an analytical framework to guide empirical research on practices in different times and places. The author explores how practices can be identified, characterised and explained, how they function in concrete contexts and how they might change over time and space. The Constitution of Social Practices lies at the intersection of philosophy, social theory, cultural theory and the social sciences. It is essential reading for scholars in social theory and the philosophy of social science, as well as the broad range of researchers and students across the social sciences and humanities whose work stands to benefit from serious consideration of practices.
Download or read book An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology written by Pierre Bourdieu and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 1992-07-15 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Preface by Pierre Bourdieu Preface by Loic J.D. Wacquant I Toward a Social Praxeology: The Structure and Logic of Bourdieu's Sociology, Loic J.D. Wacquant 1 Beyond the Antinomy of Social Physics and Social Phenomenology 2 Classification Struggles and the Dialectic of Social and Mental Structures 3 Methodological Relationalism 4 The Fuzzy Logic of Practical Sense 5 Against Theoreticism and Methodologism: Total Social Science 6 Epistemic Reflexivity 7 Reason, Ethics, and Politics II The Purpose of Reflexive Sociology (The Chicago Workshop), Pierre Bourdieu and Loic J.D. Wacquant 1 Sociology as Socioanalysis 2 The Unique and the Invariant 3 The Logic of Fields 4 Interest, Habitus, Rationality 5 Language, Gender, and Symbolic Violence 6 For a, Realpolitik of Reason 7 The Personal is Social III The Practice of Reflexive Sociology (The Paris Workshop), Pierre Bourdieu 1 Handing Down a Trade 2 Thinking Relationally 3 A Radical Doubt 4 Double Bind and Conversion 5 Participant Objectivation Appendixes, Loic J.D. Wacquant 1 How to Read Bourdieu 2 A Selection of Articles from, Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales 3 Selected Recent Writings on Pierre Bourdieu.
Download or read book The Logic of Social Research written by Arthur L. Stinchcombe and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2020-07-08 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Arthur L. Stinchcombe has earned a reputation as a leading practitioner of methodology in sociology and related disciplines. Throughout his distinguished career he has championed the idea that to be an effective sociologist, one must use many methods. This incisive work introduces students to the logic of those methods. The Logic of Social Research orients students to a set of logical problems that all methods must address to study social causation. Almost all sociological theory asserts that some social conditions produce other social conditions, but the theoretical links between causes and effects are not easily supported by observation. Observations cannot directly show causation, but they can reject or support causal theories with different degrees of credibility. As a result, sociologists have created four main types of methods that Stinchcombe terms quantitative, historical, ethnographic, and experimental to support their theories. Each method has value, and each has its uses for different research purposes. Accessible and astute, The Logic of Social Research offers an image of what sociology is, what it's all about, and what the craft of the sociologist consists of.
Download or read book The Dynamics of Social Practice written by Elizabeth Shove and published by SAGE. This book was released on 2012-05-17 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Everyday life is defined and characterised by the rise, transformation and fall of social practices. Using terminology that is both accessible and sophisticated, this essential book guides the reader through a multi-level analysis of this dynamic. In working through core propositions about social practices and how they change the book is clear and accessible; real world examples, including the history of car driving, the emergence of frozen food, and the fate of hula hooping, bring abstract concepts to life and firmly ground them in empirical case-studies and new research. Demonstrating the relevance of social theory for public policy problems, the authors show that the everyday is the basis of social transformation addressing questions such as: how do practices emerge, exist and die? what are the elements from which practices are made? how do practices recruit practitioners? how are elements, practices and the links between them generated, renewed and reproduced? Precise, relevant and persuasive this book will inspire students and researchers from across the social sciences. Elizabeth Shove is Professor of Sociology at Lancaster University. Mika Pantzar is Research Professor at the National Consumer Research Centre, Helsinki. Matt Watson is Lecturer in Social and Cultural Geography at University of Sheffield.
Download or read book The Logic of Writing and the Organization of Society written by Jack Goody and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1986-12-18 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Author is particularly concerned with ancient Near East and contemporary West Africa.
Download or read book The Cultural Logic of Computation written by David Golumbia and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009-04-30 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Advocates of computers make sweeping claims for their inherently transformative power: new and different from previous technologies, they are sure to resolve many of our existing social problems, and perhaps even to cause a positive political revolution. In The Cultural Logic of Computation, David Golumbia, who worked as a software designer for more than ten years, confronts this orthodoxy, arguing instead that computers are cultural “all the way down”—that there is no part of the apparent technological transformation that is not shaped by historical and cultural processes, or that escapes existing cultural politics. From the perspective of transnational corporations and governments, computers benefit existing power much more fully than they provide means to distribute or contest it. Despite this, our thinking about computers has developed into a nearly invisible ideology Golumbia dubs “computationalism”—an ideology that informs our thinking not just about computers, but about economic and social trends as sweeping as globalization. Driven by a programmer’s knowledge of computers as well as by a deep engagement with contemporary literary and cultural studies and poststructuralist theory, The Cultural Logic of Computation provides a needed corrective to the uncritical enthusiasm for computers common today in many parts of our culture.
Download or read book Genocide as Social Practice written by Daniel Feierstein and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 2014-05-14 with total page 277 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Genocide not only annihilates people but also destroys and reorganizes social relations, using terror as a method. In Genocide as Social Practice, social scientist Daniel Feierstein looks at the policies of state-sponsored repression pursued by the Argentine military dictatorship against political opponents between 1976 and 1983 and those pursued by the Third Reich between 1933 and 1945. He finds similarities, not in the extent of the horror but in terms of the goals of the perpetrators. The Nazis resorted to ruthless methods in part to stifle dissent but even more importantly to reorganize German society into a Volksgemeinschaft, or people’s community, in which racial solidarity would supposedly replace class struggle. The situation in Argentina echoes this. After seizing power in 1976, the Argentine military described its own program of forced disappearances, torture, and murder as a “process of national reorganization” aimed at remodeling society on “Western and Christian” lines. For Feierstein, genocide can be considered a technology of power—a form of social engineering—that creates, destroys, or reorganizes relationships within a given society. It influences the ways in which different social groups construct their identity and the identity of others, thus shaping the way that groups interrelate. Feierstein establishes continuity between the “reorganizing genocide” first practiced by the Nazis in concentration camps and the more complex version—complex in terms of the symbolic and material closure of social relationships —later applied in Argentina. In conclusion, he speculates on how to construct a political culture capable of confronting and resisting these trends. First published in Argentina, in Spanish, Genocide as Social Practice has since been translated into many languages, now including this English edition. The book provides a distinctive and valuable look at genocide through the lens of Latin America as well as Europe.
