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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

Bourdieu and Affect: Towards a Theory of Affective Affinities

Steven Threadgold

A Bourdieusian contribution to studies of affect provides a more comprehensive understanding of the everyday moments that make, transform and remake the social contours of inequality, and how those ... More

A Bourdieusian contribution to studies of affect provides a more comprehensive understanding of the everyday moments that make, transform and remake the social contours of inequality, and how those relations are contested and resisted. By teasing out the affective elements already implicit in concepts like habitus, illusio, cultural capital, field and symbolic violence, this book develops a theory of affective affinities to consider how emotions and feelings are central to how class is affectively delineated along with material and symbolic relations. This includes theorising habitus as one’s history rolled up into an affective ball of immanent dispositions, an assemblage of embodied affective charges. Sketching fields as having their own affective atmospheres and structures of feeling, while considering everyday settings that the concept of field cannot capture. Drawing upon illusio, social gravity and social magic to unpack how the embodied nature of the forms of capital mean they operate in affective economies mediating transmissions of affective violence. The book concludes by critically engaging with aspects of social change due to the rise of reflexivity, irony and cynicism and proposing the figure of the accumulated being to challenge the dominance of homo economicus.Less

The Bourdieu Paradigm: The Origins and Evolution of an Intellectual Social Project

Derek Robbins

In two parts, the book examines, first, the attempts of three thinkers of the first half of the twentieth century to reconcile, in different socio-cultural contexts, the legacy of idealist philosophy ... More

In two parts, the book examines, first, the attempts of three thinkers of the first half of the twentieth century to reconcile, in different socio-cultural contexts, the legacy of idealist philosophy with the claims of empirical social science, and, secondly, the trajectory of Bourdieu’s career in France from philosophy student to sociological researcher to political activist. It traces a progression from thought to action, but an emphasis on action informed by thought. It poses the question whether Bourdieu’s attempted integration of intellectualism and empiricism correlated with his particular socio-historical situation or whether it offers a global paradigm for advancing inter-cultural understanding. The book is of interest in confronting the question whether socio-political organization is best understood by social scientists or by participants in society, by experts or by the populace. It will stimulate general consideration of the relevance of a sociological perspective in everyday life and how much that perspective should be dependent on inherited concepts. Part I analyses the work of Alfred Schutz, Aron Gurwitsch and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Part II that of Pierre Bourdieu. The book is methodologically meticulous in situating these works socio-historically. It provides an introduction to some ideas in social philosophy and shows how these ideas became instrumental in generating a theory of practice. The book is aimed at post-graduate students and staff in all disciplines in the Humanities, and Human and Social sciences, but, more generally, it should interest all academics concerned about the contemporary social function of intellectuals.Less

The calling of social thought: Rediscovering the work of Edward Shils

Christopher Adair-Toteff and Stephen Turner (eds)

Edward Shils was an important figure in twentieth century social theory, and a true transatlantic thinker who divided his time between the University of Chicago and the U.K. He was friends with many ... More

Edward Shils was an important figure in twentieth century social theory, and a true transatlantic thinker who divided his time between the University of Chicago and the U.K. He was friends with many important thinkers in other fields, such as Michael Polanyi and Saul Bellow. He became known to sociologists through his brief collaboration with Talcott Parsons, but his own thinking diverged both from Parsons and conventional sociology. He developed but never finalized a comprehensive image of human society made up of personal, civic, and sacred bonds. But much of his thought was focused on conflicts: between intellectuals and their societies, between tradition and modernity, ideological conflict, and conflicts within the traditions of the modern liberal democratic state. This book explores the thought of Shils, his relations to key figures, his key themes and ideas, and his abiding interests in such topics as the academic tradition and universities. Together, the chapters provide the most comprehensive picture of Shils as a thinker, and explain his continuing relevance.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

Experience, Caste, and the Everyday Social

Gopal Guru and Sundar Sarukkai

This book develops a radically new way of understanding the social by focussing on different experiences we have of the everyday empirical reality. This book offers a new way of understanding the ... More

This book develops a radically new way of understanding the social by focussing on different experiences we have of the everyday empirical reality. This book offers a new way of understanding the social processes of societies in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, all of which have complex experiences of the everyday social. The authors begin with the argument that the everyday social is the domain where the first experiences of the social are formed and these experiences influence to a great extent meaning-making of the structural social. Following a critique of some dominant trends in social ontology, they discuss in detail, and with many common examples, how the social is experienced through the perceptual capacities of sight, touch, sound, taste, and smell. They then discuss the relation between experience of belongingness and the social, and show how the social gets authority in a way similar to how natural gets authority in the natural sciences. Moreover, the social appears through the invocation of we-ness, suggestive of a social self. The everyday social also creates its sense of time, a social time which orders social experiences such as caste. Finally, the authors explain how the ethics of the social is formed through the relationship of Maitri (drawn from Ambedkar) between the different socials that constitute a society. This is not just a new theory of the social but is filled with illustrations from the everyday experiences of India, including the diverse experiences of caste.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

Generally Speaking: An Invitation to Concept-Driven Sociology

Eviatar Zerubavel

Defying the conventional split between “theory” and “methodology,” this book introduces a yet unarticulated and thus far never systematized method of theorizing designed to reveal abstract social ... More

Defying the conventional split between “theory” and “methodology,” this book introduces a yet unarticulated and thus far never systematized method of theorizing designed to reveal abstract social patterns. Insisting that such methodology can actually be taught, it tries to make the mental processes underlying the practice of a “concept-driven sociology” more explicit. Many sociologists tend to study the specific, often at the expense of also studying the generic. To correct this imbalance, the book examines the theoretico-methodological process by which we can “distill” generic social patterns from the culturally, historically, and situationally specific contexts in which we encounter them. It thus champions a “generic sociology” that is pronouncedly transcontextual (transcultural, transhistorical, transsituational, and translevel) in its scope. In order to uncover generic, transcontextual social patterns, data need to be collected in a wide range of social contexts. Such contextual diversity is manifested multi-culturally, multihistorically, multisituationally, as well as at multiple levels of social aggregation. True to its message, the book illustrates generic social patterns by drawing on numerous examples from diverse cultural contexts and historical periods and a wide range of diverse social domains, as well as by disregarding scale. Emphasizing cross-contextual commonality, generic sociology tries to reveal formal “parallels” across seemingly disparate contexts. This book features the four main types of cross-contextual analogies generic sociologists tend to use (cross-cultural, cross-historical, cross-domain, and cross-level), disregarding conventionally noted substantive differences in order to note conventionally disregarded formal equivalences.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

India Tomorrow: Conversations with the Next Generation of Political Leaders

Pradeep Chhibber and Harsh Shah

The next generation of political leaders will determine India’s future. We know their names, but not what lies behind what we hear or see in the event/news-focussed coverage in newspapers and ... More

The next generation of political leaders will determine India’s future. We know their names, but not what lies behind what we hear or see in the event/news-focussed coverage in newspapers and television channels. For instance, what moves them? Who inspires them? What are their passions and interests outside of politics? Where do they stand on some of India’s most contentious political issues? Do they have any regrets about their political careers? How do they explain some of the inconsistencies in their words and actions? Have their career choices come with significant personal costs? We set out to write a book that would give readers a snapshot of contemporary Indian politics, and its future, through the stories of 20 of the country’s most prominent next-generation politicians, each of whom we would interview in person. The goal was simple—to understand their personalities and ideologies, and offer readers unique insights. This book does not focus much on the quotidian aspects of politics but rather attempts to unravel the personalities, aspirations, ideologies, interests, passions, and motivations of the leaders featured. In doing so, it explores issues and tensions that lie at the heart of contemporary India’s politics, including but not limited to divisions of caste and religion, institutional decline, federalism, and centre–state relations, integration of Jammu & Kashmir, dynastic politics, and women empowerment.Less