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Applied ethics and social problems: Moral questions of birth, society and death

Tony Fitzpatrick

Designed to address practical questions, applied ethics is one of the most exciting areas in contemporary philosophy. Yet the relevance of ethical theories to social policy has been under-explored. ... More

Designed to address practical questions, applied ethics is one of the most exciting areas in contemporary philosophy. Yet the relevance of ethical theories to social policy has been under-explored. The book is concerned with applying debates, theories and methods from moral philosophy to contemporary ethical issues relating to the disciplinary field (social policy) investigating the interactions of social problems, justice and wellbeing. This book presents introductions to the three most influential moral philosophies — consequentialism, Kantianism and virtue ethics — then relates these to some of the most urgent questions in contemporary public debates about the future of welfare services. These include taxing unhealthy habits, drug legalisation, parental choice in education, abortion, euthanasia, and migration and cultural diversity. In each case the author asks a perennial question: what are the legitimate boundaries of state action and individual liberty?Less

Becoming Mead: The Social Process of Academic Knowledge

Daniel R. Huebner

This study contributes to the sociology of knowledge and the history of the human sciences by tracing the complex social action processes through which knowledge is produced about a major classical ... More

This study contributes to the sociology of knowledge and the history of the human sciences by tracing the complex social action processes through which knowledge is produced about a major classical author, George Herbert Mead. The case raises acute questions regarding how authoritative knowledge comes to be produced about an intellectual and about the social nature of knowledge production in academic scholarship. Instead of treating Mead’s problematic reputation as a separate topic of study from his own intellectual biography, the analysis reconceptualizes both as essentially knowledge production processes with empirical connections in identifiable social actions. Substantive chapters utilize archival and primary document research to examine the centrality of Mead’s public speaking and engagement with the social problems of territorial Hawaii, the variety of representations Mead’s students made of his courses and his students’ influences on him, the problematic process of constructing posthumous volumes attributed to Mead, the mobilization of controversial claims about him by former students on the basis of their sense of his approval and collaboration, the development of patterns of published reference to Mead along lines of social connection and in response to local institutional transformations, and the reconstruction of domains of Mead’s research that have been neglected in dominant accounts of his philosophy. The study provides a novel, productive approach to knowledge making in scholarship, which focus on empirical social action processes as they connect and change over time instead of any single set of documents, concepts, mechanisms, or individuals.Less

Challenging governance theory: From networks to hegemony

Jonathan S. Davies

This book develops a Gramscian account of contemporary governance. It critiques the fashionable view that there has been a shift from hierarchy to networks, arguing instead that the ideology of ... More

This book develops a Gramscian account of contemporary governance. It critiques the fashionable view that there has been a shift from hierarchy to networks, arguing instead that the ideology of network governance is part of the neoliberal hegemonic project. However, there are major barriers to accomplishing this project.Less

Cultural Trauma and Collective Identity

Jeffrey Alexander

In this collaboratively authored work, five sociologists develop an ambitious theoretical model of “cultural trauma” and on this basis build a new understanding of how social groups interact with ... More

In this collaboratively authored work, five sociologists develop an ambitious theoretical model of “cultural trauma” and on this basis build a new understanding of how social groups interact with emotion to create new and binding understandings of social responsibility. Looking at the “meaning making process” as an open-ended social dialogue in which strikingly different social narratives vie for influence, the chapters outline a strongly constructivist approach to trauma and apply this theoretical model in a series of extensive case studies, including the Nazi Holocaust, slavery in the United States, and September 11, 2001.Less

Dangerous Digestion: The Politics of American Dietary Advice

E. Melanie DuPuis

Throughout American history, ingestion (eating) has functioned as a metaphor for interpreting and imagining this society and its political systems. Discussions of American freedom itself are pervaded ... More

Throughout American history, ingestion (eating) has functioned as a metaphor for interpreting and imagining this society and its political systems. Discussions of American freedom itself are pervaded with ingestive metaphors of choice (what to put in) and control (what to keep out). From the country's founders to the abolitionists to the social activists of today, those seeking to form and reform American society have cast their social-change goals in ingestive terms of choice and control. But they have realized their metaphors in concrete terms as well, purveying specific advice to the public about what to eat or not. These conversations about “social change as eating” reflect American ideals of freedom, purity, and virtue. Drawing on social and political history as well as the history of science and popular culture, this book examines how American ideas about dietary reform mirror broader thinking about social reform. Inspired by new scientific studies of the human body as a metabiome—a collaboration of species rather than an isolated, intact, protected, and bounded individual—the author invokes a new metaphor—digestion—to reimagine the American body politic, opening social transformations to ideas of mixing, fermentation, and collaboration. In doing so, the author explores how social activists can rethink politics as inclusive processes that involve the inherently risky mixing of cultures, standpoints, and ideas.Less

Does Policy Analysis Matter?: Exploring Its Effectiveness in Theory and Practice

Lee S. Friedman (ed.)

How well can democratic decision making incorporate the knowledge and expertise generated by public policy analysts? This book examines the historical development of policy analysis (a new ... More

How well can democratic decision making incorporate the knowledge and expertise generated by public policy analysts? This book examines the historical development of policy analysis (a new professional class of advisors that began developing during the 1950s in the United States), as well as its use in legislative and regulatory bodies and in the federal executive branch. The chapters show that policy-analytic expertise effectively improves governmental services only when it complements democratic decision making. When successful, policy analysis fosters valuable new ideas, better use of evidence, and greater transparency in decision processes. The book concludes by assessing the development and impact of the policy-analytic profession and suggests that the growth in the voluntary employment of analysts not only by governments of all types as well as private sector and nonprofit agencies is a key indicator of the profession's effectiveness and value.Less

The Essential Hirschman

Albert O. Hirschman

Jeremy Adelman (ed.)

This book brings together some of the finest essays in the social sciences, written by one of the twentieth century's most influential and provocative thinkers. The author was a master essayist, one ... More

This book brings together some of the finest essays in the social sciences, written by one of the twentieth century's most influential and provocative thinkers. The author was a master essayist, one who possessed the rare ability to blend the precision of economics with the elegance of literary imagination. In an age in which our academic disciplines require ever-greater specialization and narrowness, it is rare to encounter an intellectual who can transform how we think about inequality by writing about traffic, or who can slip in a quote from Flaubert to reveal something surprising about taxes. The essays gathered here span an astonishing range of topics and perspectives, including industrialization in Latin America, imagining reform as more than repair, the relationship between imagination and leadership, routine thinking and the marketplace, and the ways our arguments affect democratic life. Throughout, we find humor, unforgettable metaphors, brilliant analysis, and elegance of style that give the author such a singular voice. Featuring an introduction that places each of these essays in context as well as an insightful afterword, this book is the ideal introduction to the author for a new generation of readers and a must-have collection for anyone seeking his most important writings in one book.Less

Ethnic Boundary Making: Institutions, Power, Networks

Andreas Wimmer

The book introduces a new theory that overcomes essentializing approaches to ethnicity all the while avoiding the pitfalls of excessive constructivism. It suggests understanding ethnic/racial ... More

The book introduces a new theory that overcomes essentializing approaches to ethnicity all the while avoiding the pitfalls of excessive constructivism. It suggests understanding ethnic/racial boundaries as the outcome of a negotiation process between actors who pursue different boundary making strategies, depending on institutional incentives, their position within power hierarchies, and their pre-existing networks of alliances. This theory contrast with mainstream approaches in the social sciences, where ethnic groups are often treated as self-evident units of observation and ethnic culture and solidarity as self-explanatory variables, thus overlooking the process through which certain ethnic cleavages but not others become culturally meaningful, politically salient, and associated with dense networks of solidarity. By paying systematic attention to variation in the nature of ethnic boundaries, the book also overcomes the exclusive focus on fluidity, malleability, and contextual instability that characterizes radically constructivist approaches. This book introduces a series of epistemological principles, theoretical stances, research designs, and modes of interpretation that allow to disentangle ethnic from other processes of group formation and to assess in how far ethnic boundaries structure the allocation of resources, invite political passion, and represent primary aspects of individual identity. Using a variety of qualitative and quantitative research techniques, several chapters exemplify how this agenda can be realized in concrete empirical research: on how local residents in immigrant neighborhoods draw symbolic boundaries against each other, on the ethnic and racial composition of friendship networks, and how ethnic closure influences the cultural values of Europeans.Less

The Explanation of Social Action

John Levi Martin

The social sciences have increasingly placed all their bets on a notion of explanation that turns on linking abstractions through causal relations. This explanatory vocabulary is, if analysts deem it ... More

The social sciences have increasingly placed all their bets on a notion of explanation that turns on linking abstractions through causal relations. This explanatory vocabulary is, if analysts deem it necessary, set against that developed by actors, and we justify this by pointing to everyday people’s limited abilities to survive destructive interrogation of their motives. We are wronger than they; it is possible to produce a rigorous social science that systematizes and organizes actors’ experiences as opposed to negating them. Such an approach would partake of the formal characteristics of an aesthetics, and this book attempts to make a sustained plausibility argument for such a social aesthetics.Less

Fracture: Adventures of a broken body

Ann Oakley

The starting point of this book is the fracture of the author's right arm in the grounds of a hotel in the USA. What begins as an accident becomes a journey into some critical themes of modern ... More

The starting point of this book is the fracture of the author's right arm in the grounds of a hotel in the USA. What begins as an accident becomes a journey into some critical themes of modern Western culture: the crisis of embodiment and the perfect self; the confusion between body and identity; the commodification of bodies and body parts; the intrusive surveillance and profiteering of medicine and the law; the problem of ageing; and the identification of women, particularly, with bodies — from the intensely ambiguous two-in-one state of pregnancy to women's later transformation into unproductive, brittle skeletons. This book mixes personal experience (the author's and other people's) with ‘facts’ derived from other literatures, including the history of medicine, neurology, the sociology of health and illness, philosophy, and legal discourses on the right to life and people as victims of a greedy litigation system. The book spans the genres of fiction/non-fiction, autobiography and social theory.Less

Getting Your Way: Strategic Dilemmas in the Real World

James M. Jasper

Getting other people to do what another person want is a useful skill. Whether you are seeking a job, negotiating a deal, or angling for that big promotion, you are engaged in strategic thought and ... More

Getting other people to do what another person want is a useful skill. Whether you are seeking a job, negotiating a deal, or angling for that big promotion, you are engaged in strategic thought and action. In such moments, you imagine what might be going on in another person's head and how they will react to what you do or say. At the same time, you might also tries to pick the best way to realize your goals, both with and without the other person's cooperation. This book teaches its readers how to win that game by offering a fuller understanding of how strategy works in the real world. As we all know, rules of strategy are regularly discovered and discussed in popular books for business executives, military leaders, and politicians. Those works, with their trendy lists of pithy maxims and highly effective habits, can help people avoid mistakes or even think anew on how to tackle their problems. But they are merely suggestive, as each situation we encounter in the real world is always more complex than anticipated, more challenging than we might have hoped. This book shows how to anticipate those problems before they actually occur—by recognizing the dilemmas all strategic players must negotiate, with each option accompanied by a long list of costs and risks.Less

Hannah Arendt, Totalitarianism, and the Social Sciences

Peter Baehr

This book examines the nature of totalitarianism as interpreted by some of the finest minds of the twentieth century, focusing on Hannah Arendt's claim that totalitarianism was an entirely ... More

This book examines the nature of totalitarianism as interpreted by some of the finest minds of the twentieth century, focusing on Hannah Arendt's claim that totalitarianism was an entirely unprecedented regime and that the social sciences had integrally misconstrued it. A sociologist who is a critical admirer of Arendt, the author looks sympathetically at Arendt's objections to social science and shows that her complaints were in many respects justified. Avoiding broad disciplinary endorsements or dismissals, he reconstructs the theoretical and political stakes of Arendt's encounters with prominent social scientists such as David Riesman, Raymond Aron, and Jules Monnerot. In presenting a systematic appraisal of Arendt's critique of the social sciences, the author examines what it means to see an event as unprecedented. Furthermore, he adapts Arendt and Aron's philosophies to shed light on modern Islamist terrorism, and to ask whether it should be categorized alongside Stalinism and National Socialism as totalitarian.Less

A Humanist Science

Philip Selznick

This book brings to light the value-centered nature of the social sciences. The work challenges the supposed separation of fact and value, and argues that human values belong to the world of fact and ... More

This book brings to light the value-centered nature of the social sciences. The work challenges the supposed separation of fact and value, and argues that human values belong to the world of fact and are the source of the ideals which govern social and political institutions. By demonstrating the close connection between the social sciences and the humanities, the author reveals how the methods of the social sciences highlight and enrich the study of such values as well-being, prosperity, rationality, and self-government. The book moves from the animating principles that make up the humanist tradition to the values which are central to the social sciences, analyzing the core teachings of these disciplines with respect to the moral issues at stake. Throughout the work, the author calls attention to the conditions that affect the emergence, realization, and decline of human values.Less

The Impact of Co-Production: From Community Engagement To Social Justice

Aksel Ersoy (ed.)

This book brings together scholars, artists, practitioners, and community activists to explore the possibilities for — and tensions of — social justice work through collaboration between communities ... More

This book brings together scholars, artists, practitioners, and community activists to explore the possibilities for — and tensions of — social justice work through collaboration between communities and the academy. Amid a widespread institutional emphasis on increased involvement and co-production with the community, what can we expect when long-established community-oriented research practices collide with the day-to-day work of activism? How should we think about the key tenets and terms of that research, and the ongoing critique of them mounted by activists, artists, and other community members? Deploying case studies from the United Kingdom, Australia, Sweden, and Canada, and taking in universities, independent research organizations, and museums and galleries, this book breaks new ground in our understanding of the possibilities, and pitfalls, of co-production.Less

Institutions Count: Their Role and Significance in Latin American Development

Alejandro Portes and Lori D. Smith (eds)

What leads to national progress? The growing consensus in the social sciences is that neither capital flows, nor the savings rate, nor diffuse values are the key, but that it lies in the quality of a ... More

What leads to national progress? The growing consensus in the social sciences is that neither capital flows, nor the savings rate, nor diffuse values are the key, but that it lies in the quality of a nation's institutions. This book is the first comparative study of how real institutions affect national development. It seeks to examine and deepen this insight through a systematic study of institutions in five Latin American countries and how they differ within and across nations. Postal systems, stock exchanges, public health services and others were included in the sample, all studied with the same methodology. The country chapters present detailed results of this empirical exercise for each individual country. The introductory chapters present the theoretical framework and research methodology for the full study. The summary results of this ambitious study presented in the concluding chapter draw comparisons across countries and discuss what these results mean for national development in Latin America.Less

Interrogating India's Modernity: Democracy, Identity, and Citizenship

Surinder Jodhka (ed.)

Written as a tribute to the contributions of Dipankar Gupta to the study of Indian society and the discipline of sociology in India, this festschrift volume brings together essays of some of the ... More

Written as a tribute to the contributions of Dipankar Gupta to the study of Indian society and the discipline of sociology in India, this festschrift volume brings together essays of some of the best-known scholars in the social sciences. Some of these essays are based on rich empirical work, while others explore conceptual domains of the contemporary processes of social change. Still others provide critical commentaries on the functioning of the Indian state and its various administrative organs. Woven around the themes of modernity, identity, and citizenship, the volume explores the dynamics of democratic politics and changing social order of Indian society. The Western idea of modernity had been a source of fascination for a large majority of the nationalist leadership and the newly emergent middle classes of India at the time of its independence in 1947. It was perhaps relatively easier to frame a ‘modern’ Constitution after extensive deliberations with a wide range of interests and opinions. However, institutionalization of an organizational framework where there is a healthy democratic political system and a culture of social relations informed by the modern idea of citizenship has been much more difficult. While, on the one hand, these emergent complexities of the Indian experience raise some very important practical/political questions, on the other, the process of change and churning that Indian society has been undergoing over the last five or six decades also throw-up a fascinating set of questions for the social scientists to engage with. The scholarship of Dipankar Gupta and of those who have contributed to this volume is a good example of this engagement.Less

Magazines and the Making of America: Modernization, Community, and Print Culture, 1741-1860

Heather A. Haveman

From the colonial era to the onset of the Civil War, this book looks at how magazines and the individuals, organizations, and circumstances they connected ushered America into the modern age. How did ... More

From the colonial era to the onset of the Civil War, this book looks at how magazines and the individuals, organizations, and circumstances they connected ushered America into the modern age. How did a magazine industry emerge in the United States, where there were once only amateur authors, clumsy technologies for production and distribution, and sparse reader demand? What legitimated magazines as they competed with other media, such as newspapers, books, and letters? And what role did magazines play in the integration or division of American society? From their first appearance in 1741, magazines brought together like-minded people, wherever they were located and whatever interests they shared. As America became socially differentiated, magazines engaged and empowered diverse communities of faith, purpose, and practice. Religious groups could distinguish themselves from others and demarcate their identities. Social reform movements could energize activists across the country to push for change. People in specialized occupations could meet and learn from one another to improve their practices. Magazines built translocal communities—collections of people with common interests who were geographically dispersed and could not easily meet face-to-face. By supporting communities that crossed various axes of social structure, magazines also fostered pluralistic integration. Looking at the important role that magazines had in mediating and sustaining critical debates and diverse groups of people, this book considers how these print publications helped construct a distinctly American society.Less

Modernity in Indian Social Theory

A Raghuramaraju (ed.)

Indian society is extremely complex, particularly in the twentieth century. However, this complexity has not been captured by Indian social theory. One reason is the theoretical burden caused by ... More

Indian society is extremely complex, particularly in the twentieth century. However, this complexity has not been captured by Indian social theory. One reason is the theoretical burden caused by historical events such as colonialism, which incidentally brought modernity to India. Western modernity is mainly normative, and its norms include the concept of autonomous individual, freedom, and instrumental rationality. This normative project is sought to be ruthlessly implemented through modern programmes of secularism, nationalism, urbanization, and industrialization where the pre-modern is sought to be disinherited. This book explores the limitations surrounding Indian social theorists' views on Indian society. It discusses Partha Chatterjee's perspectives on Indian nationalism, Javeed Alam's interpretation of Indian secularism and the use of plural character of Indian society by some Indian social scientists, and Gopal Guru's proposal to move Dalits' lived experience from literature into social theory. The book also examines the limitations surrounding the reading of contemporary texts and activities of thinkers such as Mahatma Gandhi, Swami Vivekananda, B.R. Ambedkar, and Aurobindo Ghosh.Less

Moral Time

Donald Black

Conflict is ubiquitous and inevitable, but people generally dislike it and try to prevent or avoid it as much as possible. So why do clashes of right and wrong occur? And why are some more serious ... More

Conflict is ubiquitous and inevitable, but people generally dislike it and try to prevent or avoid it as much as possible. So why do clashes of right and wrong occur? And why are some more serious than others? This book presents a new theory of conflict that provides answers to these and many other questions. The heart of the theory is a completely new concept of social time. The book claims that the root cause of conflict is the movement of social time, including relational, vertical, and cultural time—changes in intimacy, inequality, and diversity. The theory of moral time reveals the causes of conflict in all human relationships, from marital and other close relationships to those between strangers, ethnic groups, and entire societies. Moreover, the theory explains the origins and clash of right and wrong not only in modern societies but across the world and across history, from conflict concerning sexual behavior such as rape, adultery, and homosexuality, to bad manners and dislike in everyday life, theft and other crime, racism, anti-Semitism, anti-Americanism, witchcraft accusations, warfare, heresy, obscenity, creativity, and insanity. The book concludes by explaining the evolution of conflict and morality across human history, from the tribal to the modern age. It also provides surprising insights into the postmodern emergence of the right to happiness and the expanding rights of humans and non-humans across the world. The book offers an incisive, powerful, and radically new understanding of human conflict—a fundamental and inescapable feature of social life.Less

Narrative Politics: Stories and Collective Action

Frederick W. Mayer

This book seeks to answer two questions: one theoretical, the other empirical. How do individuals come together to act collectively in their common interest? Why is it that those who promote ... More

This book seeks to answer two questions: one theoretical, the other empirical. How do individuals come together to act collectively in their common interest? Why is it that those who promote collective action so often turn to stories? Answering these questions requires recognizing the power of story to overcome the obstacles to collective action: to surmount the temptation to free ride, to coordinate group behaviour, and, indeed, in the first instance, to arrive at a common understanding of the collective interest. Humans are, whatever else we, a storytelling, story-consuming animal. We use stories to make sense of our experience and to imbue it with meaning. Our self-narratives define our sense of identity and script our actions. Because we are constituted by narrative, we can be moved by the stories told to us by others. That is why leaders who call a community to action seek to engross it in a story in which tragedy and triumph hang in the balance, in which taking part in the collective action becomes a moral imperative rather than a matter of calculated self-interest. Drawing on insights from political science and sociology, behavioral economics and neuroscience, history and cultural studies, literature and narrative theory, this book sheds light on a wide range of political phenomena from social movements to electoral politics.Less