Theorizing Modernity

Theorizing Modernity PDF

Author: Peter Wagner

Publisher: SAGE

Published: 2001-01-22

Total Pages: 158

ISBN-13: 1412933765

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

This book argues that sociology has lost its ability to provide critical diagnoses of the present human condition because sociology has stopped considering the philosophical requirements of social enquiry. The book attempts to restore that ability by retrieving some of the key questions that sociologists tend to gloss over, inescapability and attainability. The book identifies five key questions in which issues of inescapability and attainability emerge. These are the questions of the certainty of our knowledge, the viability of our politics, the continuity of our selves, the accessibility of the past, and the transparency of the future. The book demonstrates how these questions are addressed in different forms and by different intellectual means during the past 200 years and shows how they persist today.

Theorising Modernity

Theorising Modernity PDF

Author: Martin O'Brien

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2014-07-10

Total Pages: 237

ISBN-13: 1317884183

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

What is modernity? Do we all experience modernity in the same way? How should we understand contemporary social change? This volume explores questions of modernity through critical engagements with the work of Anthony Giddens, focusing in particular on the relationships between his social theory and political sociology. Three substantive areas - reflexivity, environment and identity - are examined theoretically through the relationships between reflexivity and rationality, life politics and institutional power, and universalism and 'difference'. As well as specifically addressing Giddens' reconstruction of sociology, the contributors also explore a wide variety of critical issues currently occupying centre stage in social theory. These include questions about the character of contemporary societies, the periodisation of social change, the processes of change by which societies are constantly made and remade by people, the relationships between the 'social' and the 'natural', the formation and maintenance of identities and matters of epistemology and methodology in social science. Theorising Modernity will be of interest to undergraduate and postgraduate students of sociology, modern political thought, social geography and social policy and to social scientists trying to make sense of the modernity debate. Martin O'Brien is Research at the University of Derby. Sue Penna is a Lecturer in Applied Social Science at Lancaster University. Colin Hay is a Lecturer in the Department of Political Science and International Studies at the University of Birmingham (UK), a Visiting Fellow of the Department of Political Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (US) and Research Affiliate of the Centre for European Studies at Harvard University (US).

Theorizing Modernism

Theorizing Modernism PDF

Author: Johanna Drucker

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Published: 1994

Total Pages: 234

ISBN-13: 9780231080835

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

The final section explores concepts of the artist as a producing subject and of the viewer as a produced subject with respect to such artists as Pablo Picasso, Marcel Duchamp, Andy Warhol, and Sherrie Levine.

A Theory of Modernity

A Theory of Modernity PDF

Author: Agnes Heller

Publisher: Blackwell Publishing

Published: 1999-06-02

Total Pages: 313

ISBN-13: 9780631216124

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Written by one of the most influential figures in post-World-War-II social thought, A Theory of Modernity is a comprehensive analysis of the main dynamics of modernity, which discusses the technological, social and political elements of modernism. Heller's unique exploration of the traditional works from Hegel, Marx, Weber, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Foucault, and Arendt combined with the wisdom gained from her life experiences, allows the reader to grasp the essence of modernity. Some of her encounters are idiosyncratic, while others are shared with all who lived through the Holocaust and totalitarian dictatorships. This engaging and enlightening view of modernity is an essential read for academics, researchers, and students of twentieth-century philosophy.

Modernity in Indian Social Theory

Modernity in Indian Social Theory PDF

Author: A. Raghuramaraju

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2010-12-06

Total Pages: 221

ISBN-13: 0199088365

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Unlike the West, India presents a fascinating example of a society where the pre-modern continues to co-exist with the modern. Modernity in Indian Social Theory explores the social variance between India and the West to show how it impacted their respective trajectories of modernity. A. Raghuramaraju argues that modernity in the West involved disinheriting the pre-modern, and temporal ordering of the traditional and modern. It was ruthlessly implemented through programmes of industrialization, nationalism, and secularism. This book underscores that India did not merely the Western model of modernity or experience a temporal ordering of society. It situates this sociological complexity in the context of the debates on social theory. The author critically examines various discourses on modernity in India, including Partha Chatterjee’s account of Indian nationalism; Javeed Alam’s reading of Indian secularism; the use of the term pluralism by some Indian social scientists; and Gopal Guru’s emphasis on the lived Dalit experience. He also engages with the readings on key thinkers including Vivekananda, Aurobindo, Gandhi, and Ambedkar.

Theorizing the Avant-Garde

Theorizing the Avant-Garde PDF

Author: Richard John Murphy

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 1999-04-22

Total Pages: 340

ISBN-13: 9780521648691

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

In Modernism, Expressionism and Theories of the Avant Garde, Richard Murphy mobilises theories of the postmodern to challenge our understanding of the avant-garde. He assesses the importance of the avant-garde for contemporary culture and for the debates among theorists of postmodernism such as Jameson, Eagleton, Lyotard and Habermas. Murphy reconsiders the classic formulation of the avant-garde in Lukacs and Bloch, especially their discussion of aesthetic autonomy, and investigates the relationship between art and politics via a discussion of Marcuse, Adorno and Benjamin. Combining close textual readings of a wide range of films as well as works of literature, it draws on a rich array of critical theories, such as those of Bakhtin, Todorov, MacCabe, Belsey and Raymond Williams. This interdisciplinary project will appeal to all those interested in modernist and avant-garde movements of the early twentieth century, and provides a critical rethinking of the present-day controversy regarding postmodernity.

Mead and Modernity

Mead and Modernity PDF

Author: Filipe Carreira da Silva

Publisher: Lexington Books

Published: 2010-07-08

Total Pages: 252

ISBN-13: 9780739150054

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Filipe Carreira da Silva addresses the basic questions 'How should we read Mead?' and 'Why should we read Mead today' by showing that the history of ideas and theory-building are closely-related endeavors. Following a contextualist approach in exploring the meaning of Mead's writings, Carreira da Silva reads the entire corpus of Mead's published and unpublished writings in light of the context in which they were originally produced, from concrete events like the American involvement in World War I to more general debates like that of the nature of modernity. Mead and Modernity attests to the relevance of Mead's ideas by assessing the relative merits of his responses to three fundamental modern problematics: science, selfhood, and democratic politics. The outcome is an innovative intellectual portrait of Mead as a seminal thinker whose contributions extend beyond his well-known social theory of the self and include important insights into the philosophy of science and radical democratic theory.

Expectations of Modernity

Expectations of Modernity PDF

Author: James Ferguson

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 1999-10-01

Total Pages: 352

ISBN-13: 052092228X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Once lauded as the wave of the African future, Zambia's economic boom in the 1960s and early 1970s was fueled by the export of copper and other primary materials. Since the mid-1970s, however, the urban economy has rapidly deteriorated, leaving workers scrambling to get by. Expectations of Modernity explores the social and cultural responses to this prolonged period of sharp economic decline. Focusing on the experiences of mineworkers in the Copperbelt region, James Ferguson traces the failure of standard narratives of urbanization and social change to make sense of the Copperbelt's recent history. He instead develops alternative analytic tools appropriate for an "ethnography of decline." Ferguson shows how the Zambian copper workers understand their own experience of social, cultural, and economic "advance" and "decline." Ferguson's ethnographic study transports us into their lives—the dynamics of their relations with family and friends, as well as copper companies and government agencies. Theoretically sophisticated and vividly written, Expectations of Modernity will appeal not only to those interested in Africa today, but to anyone contemplating the illusory successes of today's globalizing economy.

Voices of Modernity

Voices of Modernity PDF

Author: Richard Bauman

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2003-07-03

Total Pages: 378

ISBN-13: 9780521008976

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Language and tradition have long been relegated to the sidelines as scholars have considered the role of politics, science, technology and economics in the making of the modern world. This novel reading of over two centuries of philosophy, political theory, anthropology, folklore and history argues that new ways of imagining language and representing supposedly premodern people - the poor, labourers, country folk, non-europeans and women - made political and scientific revolutions possible. The connections between language ideologies, privileged linguistic codes, and political concepts and practices shape the diverse ways we perceive ourselves and others. Bauman and Briggs demonstrate that contemporary efforts to make schemes of social inequality based on race, gender, class and nationality seem compelling and legitimate, rely on deeply-rooted ideas about language and tradition. Showing how critics of modernity unwittingly reproduce these foundational fictions, they suggest new strategies for challenging the undemocratic influence of these voices of modernity.

Lanterna Rally - Theme by Grace Themes