Download or read book Understanding Rationalization and How It Limits Life written by Michael D. Coe and published by CreateSpace. This book was released on 2014-07-17 with total page 26 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rationalization - How we miss living life and morph into fear and unhappiness! Rationalization from the psychological position is an excuse or a defense mechanism, where feelings or positions get explained away so that the positions become more palatable than dealing with the reality. It is a way for people to justify not doing or acting in the way a situation would naturally require for true resolution. The rationalized behavior is then made to seem like the proper way of doing something as opposed to the real correct way of handling an issue. This process can cause people to put off doing what is necessary to solve a problem, deal with real feelings, and take appropriate action, and instead, rationalize a different, perhaps inappropriate and ineffective course. It can be intentional or unintentional, but it always seems to be a better and easier way out of a problem, rather than the actual, most appropriate method.

Download or read book Constituent Power and Constitutional Order written by M. Spång and published by Springer. This book was released on 2014-06-25 with total page 205 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Constituent power of the people is a core concept of modern politics but what does this concept actually mean? This book addresses this question, sketching how constituent power of the people has been conceived since the early modern revolutions.

Download or read book Max Weber Rationality and Modernity written by Sam Whimster and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-04-04 with total page 409 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book brings together leading figures in history, sociology, political science, feminism and critical theory to interpret, evaluate, criticize and update Weber's legacy. In a collection of specially commissioned pieces and translated articles the Weberian scholarship recognizes Max Weber as the figure central to contemporary debates on the need for societal rationality, the limits of reason and the place of culture and conduct in the supposedly post-religious age. In Part 1, Wolfgang Mommsen, Wilhelm Hennis, Guenther Roth and Wolfgang Schluchter provide a full and varied account of the theme of rationalization in the world civilizations. In Part 2 Pierre Bourdieu and Barry Hindess critically examine Weber's social action model, and Johannes Weiss and Martin Albrow address the putative 'crisis' of Western rationality. In Part 3 Jeffrey Alexander, Ralph Schroeder, Bryan Turner, Roslyn Bologh and Sam Whimster scrutinize Weber's understanding of modernity with its characteristic plurality of 'gods and demons'; they focus on its implications for individuality and personality, the body and sexuality, feminism and aesthetic modernism. Part 4 turns to politics, law and the state in the contemporary world: Colin Gordon on liberalism, Luciano Cavalli on charismatic politics, Stephen Turner and Regis Factor on decisionism and power and Scott Lash on modernism, substantice rationality and law. This book was first published in 1987.

Download or read book Rationalization Defeats Itself written by Matthew Gill and published by . This book was released on 2010 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This paper argues that the development of accounting can be well described as a process of rationalization. However, this need not imply the inexorable homogenization of economic activity, because beyond a certain point, rationalization defeats itself. Highly rationalized accounting leaves its users and creators disillusioned with it and inclined to exploit it as an abstract construct rather than to sustain it as a compelling system of knowledge. The paper explores the implications of this finding both for our understanding of how accounting influences economic life and for the future of the accounting profession.

Download or read book Quantitative Semiotic Analysis written by Dario Compagno and published by Springer. This book was released on 2018-01-16 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ​This contributed volume gives access to semiotic researches adopting a quantitative stance. European semiotics is traditionally based on immanent methodologies: meaning is seen as an autonomous dimension of human existence, whose laws can be investigated via purely qualitative analytical and reflexive analysis. Today, researches crossing disciplinary boundaries reveal the limitations of such an homogeneous practice. In particular, two families of quantitative research strategies can be identified. On the one hand, researchers wish to naturalize meaning, by making semiotic results interact with those coming from Neurophysiological and psychological sciences. On the other hand, statistical and computational tools are adopted to work on linguistic and multimedia corpora. The book acts to put the two approaches into dialogue.

Download or read book Understanding Self help mutual Aid written by Thomasina Borkman and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 1999 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Self-help groups have encountered fierce criticism as places where individuals join to share personal problems and to engage in therapeutic intervention without the aid of skilled professionals. These groups have flourished since the 1970s and continue to serve more people than professional therapy. Yet these groups have been criticized as fostering a culture of whiners and victims, and not using professional help as needed. Thomasina Jo Borkman debunks this commonly held assessment, and also examines the reasons for these groups' enduring popularity since the 1960s--more people attend these meetings (word?) than see professional therapists. What accounts for their success and popularity? Understanding Self-Help / Mutual-Aid Groups is the first book to describe three stages of individual and group evolution that is part of this organization's very structure; it also reconceptualizes participants' interactions with professionals. The group as a whole, Borkman posits, draws on the life experiences of its membes to foster nurturing, support, and transformation through a "circle of sharing." Groups create more positive and less stigmatizing "meaning perspectives" of the members' problems than is available from professionals or lay folk culture.

Download or read book Modern Sociological Theory written by George Ritzer and published by SAGE Publications. This book was released on 2017-01-23 with total page 598 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The authors are proud sponsors of the 2020 SAGE Keith Roberts Teaching Innovations Award—enabling graduate students and early career faculty to attend the annual ASA pre-conference teaching and learning workshop. Now with SAGE Publishing, and co-authored by one of the foremost authorities on sociological theory, the Eighth Edition of Modern Sociological Theory by George Ritzer and Jeffrey Stepnisky provides a comprehensive overview of the major theorists and theoretical schools, from the Structural Functionalism of early 20th century through the cutting-edge theories of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. The integration of key theories with biographical sketches of theorists and the requisite historical and intellectual context helps students to better understand the original works of contemporary thinkers.

Download or read book The Rationalizing Voter written by Milton Lodge and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2013-04-22 with total page 301 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Political behavior is the result of innumerable unnoticed forces and conscious deliberation is often a rationalization of automatically triggered feelings and thoughts. Citizens are very sensitive to environmental contextual factors such as the title 'President' preceding 'Obama' in a newspaper headline, upbeat music or patriotic symbols accompanying a campaign ad, or question wording and order in a survey, all of which have their greatest influence when citizens are unaware. This book develops and tests a dual-process theory of political beliefs, attitudes and behavior, claiming that all thinking, feeling, reasoning and doing have an automatic component as well as a conscious deliberative component. The authors are especially interested in the impact of automatic feelings on political judgments and evaluations. This research is based on laboratory experiments, which allow the testing of five basic hypotheses: hot cognition, automaticity, affect transfer, affect contagion and motivated reasoning.

Download or read book The Dark Side of Modernity written by Jeffrey C. Alexander and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2013-04-25 with total page 184 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book, one of the world’s leading social theorists presents a critical, alarmed, but also nuanced understanding of the post-traditional world we inhabit today. Jeffrey Alexander writes about modernity as historical time and social condition, but also as ideology and utopia. The idea of modernity embodies the Enlightenment’s noble hopes for progress and rationality, but its reality brings great suffering and exposes the destructive impulses that continue to motivate humankind. Alexander examines how twentieth-century theorists struggled to comprehend the Janus-faced character of modernity, which looks backward and forward at the same time. Weber linked the triumph of worldly asceticism to liberating autonomy but also ruthless domination, describing flights from rationalization as systemic and dangerous. Simmel pointed to the otherness haunting modernity, even as he normalized the stranger. Eisenstadt celebrated Axial Age transcendence, but acknowledged its increasing capacity for barbarity. Parsons heralded American community, but ignored modernity’s fragmentations. Rather than seeking to resolve modernity’s contradictions, Alexander argues that social theory should accept its Janus-faced character. It is a dangerous delusion to think that modernity can eliminate evil. Civil inclusion and anti-civil exclusion are intertwined. Alexander enumerates dangerous frictions endemic to modernity, but he also suggests new lines of social amelioration and emotional repair.

Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Max Weber written by Edith Hanke and published by . This book was released on 2020-01-03 with total page 674 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Active at the time when the social sciences were founded, Max Weber's social theory contributed significantly to a wide range of fields and disciplines. Considering his prominence, it makes sense to take stock of the Weberian heritage and to explore the ways in which Weber's work and ideas have contributed to our understanding of the modern world. Using his work as a point of departure, The Oxford Handbook of Max Weber investigates the Weberian legacy today, identifying the enduring problems and themes associated with his thought that have contemporary significance: the nature of modern capitalism, neo-liberal global economic policy, nationalism, religion and secularization, threats to legality, the culture of modernity, bureaucratic rule and leadership, politics and ethics, the value of science, power and inequality. These problems are global in scope, and the Weberian approach has been used to address them in very different societies. Thus, the Handbook also features chapters on Europe, Turkey, Islam, Judaism, China, India, and international politics. The Handbook emphasizes the use and application of Weber's ideas. It offers a journey through the intellectual terrain that scholars continue to explore using the tools and perspectives of Weberian analysis. The essays explore how Weber's concepts, hypotheses, and perspectives have been applied in practice, and how they can be applied in the future in social inquiry, not only in Europe and North America, but globally. The volume is divided into six parts exploring, in turn: Capitalism in a Globalized World, Society and Social Structure, Politics and the State, Religion, Culture, and Science and Knowledge.

Download or read book Philosophy and Literature in Times of Crisis written by Michael Mack and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2014-02-27 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Highlighting literature and philosophy's potential impact on economics, health care, bioethics, public policy and theology, this book analyses the heuristic value of fiction. It alerts us to how we risk succumbing to the deceptions of fiction in our everyday lives, because fictional representations constantly feign to be of the real and claim a reality of their own. Philosophy and literature disclose how the substantive sphere of social, economic and medical practice is sometimes driven and shaped by the affect-ridden and subjective. Analysing a wide range of literature-from Augustine, Shakespeare, Spinoza and Deleuze to Kafka, Sylvia Plath, Philip Roth, W. G. Sebald and Jonathan Littell-Michael Mack rethinks ethical attitudes towards the long or eternal life. In so doing he shows how philosophy and literature turn representation against itself to expose the hollowness of theologically grand concepts that govern our secular approach towards ethics, economics and medicine. Philosophy and literature help us resist our current infatuation with numbers and the numerical and contribute towards a future politics that is at once singular and diverse.

Download or read book Sociological Theory written by George Ritzer and published by SAGE Publications. This book was released on 2017-01-05 with total page 751 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The authors are proud sponsors of the 2020 SAGE Keith Roberts Teaching Innovations Award—enabling graduate students and early career faculty to attend the annual ASA pre-conference teaching and learning workshop. Now with SAGE Publishing, and co-authored by one of the foremost authorities on sociological theory, the Tenth Edition of Sociological Theory by George Ritzer and Jeffrey Stepnisky gives readers a comprehensive overview of the major theorists and schools of sociological thought, from sociology′s origins through the early 21st century. Key theories are integrated with biographical sketches of theorists, and are placed in their historical and intellectual context. This text helps students better understand the original works of classical and contemporary theorists, and enables them to compare and contrast the latest substantive concepts.

Download or read book Reasons and Rationalizations The Limits to Organizational Knowledge written by Chris Argyris and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2006-01-05 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is the purpose of social science and management research? Do scholars/researchers have a responsibility to generate insights and knowledge that are of practical (implementable) value and validity?We are told we live in turbulent and changing times, should this not provide an important opportunity for management researchers to provide understanding and guidance? Yet there is widespread concern about the efficacy of much research:These are some of the puzzles that Chris Argyris addresses in this short book.Argyris is one of the best known management scholars in the world - a leading light whose work has consistently addressed fundamental organizational questions, and who has provided some of the key concepts and building blocks of our understanding of organizational learning - single and double learning, theory in use, and espoused theory etc.In this book he questions many of the assumptions of organizational theory and research, and his investigation is not confined to academic analysis. He also scrutinizes that capacity for 'unproductive reasoning' (self-deception and rationalization) that is common amongst managers, consultants, and indeed more generally. As well as engaging with the work of leading organizational researchers (Sennett, Gabriel, Burgelman, Czarniawska, Grint, for example)he also ponders the work of theconsultants, commentators, and accountants who endorsed Enron.Throughout his purpose is to affirm the goal and values of useful knowledge. His style is direct but fair, challenging, if at times uncompromising. Drawing on his own wealth of experience of researching and working with organizations, this book will be a reference point for all concerned to develop useful knowledge and confront the defences and deceptions that are only too commonplace in the business and academic worlds.

Download or read book Habermas and Contemporary Society written by J. Sitton and published by Springer. This book was released on 2003-08-15 with total page 214 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over the last four decades Jürgen Habermas has forged an innovative and much-discussed theory of contemporary capitalist society. Building on Max Weber's thesis that the dynamic of capitalism actually erodes individual freedom and the meaningfulness of social life - famously resulting in a culture of 'specialists without spirit, sensualists without heart' - Habermas traces contemporary social conflict to resistance to this dynamic by a variety of social groups. His theory of 'communicative action' attempts to show the possibilities in contemporary society for moving toward a more balanced social life that, unlike other political currents today, would not sacrifice the truly progressive features of complex modern societies. By marginalizing methodological and other more specialized theoretical concerns, this book focuses on Habermas's substantive portrayal of contemporary society and its discontents.

Download or read book Expatriate Writing written by Gerhard Fischer and published by Rodopi. This book was released on 2009 with total page 528 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume presents the work of internationally renowned scholars from Australia, Germany, Italy, South Africa, the UK and the US. The focus on W.G. Sebald¿s writing as that of an expatriate author offers a fresh and productive approach to Sebald scholarship. In one way or another, all 28 essays in this innovative, bi-lingual collection take up the notion of Sebald¿s experience as an expatriate writer: be it in the analysis of intertextual, transmedial and generic border crossings, on the ¿exposure to the other¿ and the experience of alterity, on the question of identity construction and performance, on affinities with other expatriate writers, on the recurring topics of ¿home¿, ¿exile¿, ¿dislocation¿ and ¿migration¿, or on the continuing work of ¿memory¿ to work through and to preserve the consciousness of a destructive past that has informed the childhood as much as the adult life-world of the author. Gerhard Fischer is Head of German Studies at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia. His research interests and publications are in modern theatre and drama, World War I, and migration history and multiculturalism. As convenor of the Sydney German Studies Symposia, he has edited a number of volumes on modern German literature, including Heiner Müller: ConTEXTS and HISTORY (Tübingen 1995), Debating Enzensberger: Great Migration and Civil War (Tübingen 1996), and, with David Roberts, Schreiben nach der Wende: Ein Jahrzehnt deutscher Literatur, 1989¿1999 (2nd.ed. Tübingen 2008). The latest volume in the series is The Play within the Play (with Bernhard Greiner, Amsterdam/New York, NY 2007).

Download or read book Life Imaginaries Environmental Rationality and Dialogue of Savoirs written by Enrique Leff and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-09-16 with total page 267 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Shifting from the idea that our current ‘environmental question’ arises from the history of metaphysics and its focus on ‘Being’ over ‘Life’—and the attendant explorations of the thought of Heidegger and Heraclitus—this book unfolds a philosophical and sociological proposal for transitioning toward the sustainability of life. With a focus on the imaginaries of life of indigenous peoples, it moves from political ecology to a political ontology, centered on the territorial, cultural, and existential rights of various peoples of the Earth. Arguing for an environmental rationality founded on three principles—the diversity of life, a politics of difference, and an ethics of otherness—it calls for a dialogue of knowledge in a world of manifold worlds, for an historical transition toward sustainability of life on our planet. It will therefore appeal to scholars of sociology, philosophy, and political theory working on questions of social and environmental justice, sustainability, and alternatives to capitalism.

Download or read book The Law of Contract written by Hugh Collins and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2003-07 with total page 500 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume provides an advanced analysis of the law of contract for undergraduate courses covering the law of contract and the law of obligations.