Order and Agency in Modernity

Order and Agency in Modernity PDF

Author: Kwang-ki Kim

Publisher: State University of New York Press

Published: 2012-02-01

Total Pages: 197

ISBN-13: 0791487776

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

In this unique analysis of three prominent theorists of modern sociology, theory is understood as implicitly, but importantly, reflecting especially modern problems of individual and social life. From the grand-theoretical systems of Talcott Parsons to the unique symbolic interactionism of Erving Goffman and the radically mundane ethnomethodology of Harold Garfinkel, a wide variety of noted sociological theories have addressed central issues of sociology against the backdrop of modern society. When this modern backdrop is brought into the foreground of analysis, sociological theories assume new depth and breadth and new historical significance. The author outlines features of the modern experience, drawing upon neglected cultural theorists of modernity, and then shows how these features of modernity are reflected and incorporated in the scholarship of Parsons, Goffman, and Garfinkel. The result is an original and eclectic analysis that illuminates previously overlooked dimensions to modern sociological theory, and suggests new possibilities for meaningful and rewarding comparisons between theoretical traditions.

Power in Modernity

Power in Modernity PDF

Author: Isaac Ariail Reed

Publisher:

Published: 2020

Total Pages: 283

ISBN-13: 022668945X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

"Isaac Reed's Power in Modernity aims to be a major contribution to social theory. It is a bold and innovative theoretical reimagining of power. Drawing on an eclectic range of ideas from across the humanities and social sciences, Reed rethinks the fundamentals of sociological theorizing of power-upsetting canonical traditions and remaking them with insights from poststructuralism, postcolonial theory, and critical race studies. First, Reed conceptualizes power as having three aspects: relational, discursive, and performative. He explores these aspects in relation to three different kinds of social actors-rector, agent, and other-and their connections. In essence, Reed brings power in the actions of individuals into relation with a wide range of institutional circumstances of power while neatly finessing the outmoded agency/structure binary. The result is a framework for the analysis of power that allows us to see both its sometimes fragile and precarious character, as well as its more typical stability and durability. We also get a window onto the episodic performances of power and how they institutionalize or unravel social orders. Power in Modernity is sure to be of interest to political sociologists and social theorists especially, and it will serve sociologists and other social scientists well who are interested in how power operates across many different social situations"--

Ethnomethodology's Program

Ethnomethodology's Program PDF

Author: Harold Garfinkel

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2002

Total Pages: 320

ISBN-13: 9780742516427

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Since the 1967 publication of Studies in Ethnomethodology, Harold Garfinkel has indelibly influenced the social sciences and humanities worldwide. This new book, the long-awaited sequel to Studies, comprises Garfinkel's work over three decades to further elaborate the study of ethnomethodology. 'Working out Durkheim's Aphorism, ' the title used for this new book, emphasizes Garfinkel's insistence that his position focuses on fundamental sociological issues--and that interpretations of his position as indifferent to sociology have been misunderstandings. Durkheim's aphorism states that the concreteness of social facts is sociology's most fundamental phenomenon. Garfinkel argues that sociologists have, for a century or more, ignored this aphorism and treated social facts as theoretical, or conceptual, constructions. Garfinkel in this new book shows how and why sociology must restore Durkheim's aphorism, through an insistence on the concreteness of social facts that are produced by complex social practices enacted by participants in the social order. Garfinkel's new book, like Studies, will likely stand as another landmark in sociological theory, yet it is clearer and more concrete in revealing human social practices.

Remaking Modernity

Remaking Modernity PDF

Author: Julia Adams

Publisher: Duke University Press

Published: 2005-02

Total Pages: 636

ISBN-13: 9780822333630

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

DIVA sociology collection reviewing the state-of-historical-study in a wide range of areas while showcasing the use of poststructuralist approaches to studying family, gender, war, protest & revolution, state-making, social provisions, colonialism, trans/div

Foundations of Modernity

Foundations of Modernity PDF

Author: Isa Blumi

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-06-16

Total Pages: 342

ISBN-13: 1136718133

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Investigating how a number of modern empires transform over the long 19th century (1789-1914) as a consequence of their struggle for ascendancy in the Eastern Mediterranean and Middle East, Foundations of Modernity: Human Agency and the Imperial State moves the study of the modern empire towards a comparative, trans-regional analysis of events along the Ottoman frontiers: Western Balkans, the Persian Gulf and Yemen. This inter-disciplinary approach of studying events at different ends of the Ottoman Empire challenges previous emphasis on Europe as the only source of change and highlights the progression of modern imperial states. The book introduces an entirely new analytical approach to the study of modern state power and the social consequences to the interaction between long-ignored "historical agents" like pirates, smugglers, refugees, and the rural poor. In this respect, the roots of the most fundamental institutions and bureaucratic practices associated with the modern state prove to be the by-products of certain kinds of productive exchange long categorized in negative terms in post-colonial and mainstream scholarship. Such a challenge to conventional methods of historical and social scientific analysis is reinforced by the novel use of the work of Louis Althusser, Talal Asad, William Connolly and Frederick Cooper, whose challenges to scholarly conventions will prove helpful in changing how we understand the origins of our modern world and thus talk about Modernity. This book offers a methodological and historiographic intervention meant to challenge conventional studies of the modern era.

Challenging Women's Agency Activism Eahb

Challenging Women's Agency Activism Eahb PDF

Author: WIESNER-HANKS

Publisher:

Published: 2021-01-28

Total Pages:

ISBN-13: 9789463729321

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Examining women's agency in the past has taken on new urgency in the current moment of resurgent patriarchy, Women's Marches, and the global #MeToo movement. The essays in this collection consider women's agency in the Renaissance and early modern period, an era that also saw both increasing patriarchal constraints and new forms of women's actions and activism. They address a capacious set of questions about how women, from their teenage years through older adulthood, asserted agency through social practices, speech acts, legal disputes, writing, viewing and exchanging images, travel, and community building. Despite family and social pressures, the actions of girls and women could shape their lives and challenge male-dominated institutions. This volume includes thirteen essays by scholars from many disciplines, which analyze people, texts, objects, and images from many different parts of Europe, as well as things and people that crossed the Atlantic and the Pacific.

Reflexive Modernization

Reflexive Modernization PDF

Author: Ulrich Beck

Publisher: Stanford University Press

Published: 1994

Total Pages: 236

ISBN-13: 9780804724722

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Three prominent social thinkers discuss how modern society is undercutting its formations of class, stratum, occupations, sex roles, the nuclear family, and more. Reflexive modernization, or the way one kind of modernization undercuts and changes another, has wide ranging implications for contemporary social and cultural theory, as this provocative book demonstrates.

Muslim Subjectivities in Global Modernity

Muslim Subjectivities in Global Modernity PDF

Author:

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2020-03-09

Total Pages: 299

ISBN-13: 9004425578

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

This book gives an account of the ways in which Islamic traditions have contributed to the construction of modern Muslim selfhoods. They underpin Eisenstadt’s argument that religious traditions can play a pivotal role in the historically different interpretations of modernity.

Social Theory and Modern Sociology

Social Theory and Modern Sociology PDF

Author: Anthony Giddens

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2013-04-25

Total Pages: 416

ISBN-13: 0745666647

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

In this book Anthony Giddens addresses a range of issues concerning current developments in social theory, relating them to the prospects for sociology in the closing decades of the twentieth century. Composed of closely integrated papers, all written over the past few years, the book includes seven essays not previously published, plus two have not appeared in English before. In assessing the likely future evolution of sociology in particular, and the social sciences in general, the author both draws upon ideas established in his more abstract theoretical writings and examines critically competing traditions of thought. Those looking for an accessible introduction to Gidden's writing will find in this book a set of clear expositions of his basic ideas. By situating these ideas in relation to the critical assessment of the views of others, however, the author provides new sources of insight into the distinctiveness of his own claims.