Matei Candea (ed.): The Social after Gabriel Tarde: Debates and Assessments (2009)
Filed under book | Tags: · actor-network theory, social science, society, sociology
The social sciences and humanities are now being swept by a Tardean revival, a rediscovery and reappraisal of the work of this truly unique thinker, for whom ‘everything is a society and every science a sociology’. Tarde is being brought forward as the misrecognised forerunner of a post-Durkheimian era. Reclaimed from a century of near-oblivion, his sociology has been linked to Foucaultian microphysics of power, to Deleuze’s philosophy of difference, and most recently to the spectrum of approaches related to Actor Network Theory. In this connection, Bruno Latour hailed Tarde’s sociology as “an alternative beginning for an alternative social science”. This volume asks what such an alternative social science might look like.
Publisher Routledge, 2009
CRESC (Culture, Economy and the Social) series
ISBN 0415543398, 9780415543392
287 pages
PDF (updated on 2012-7-17)
Comment (0)Kate Holbrook, Ann S. Kim, Brian Palmer, Anna Portnoy (eds.): Global Values 101: A Short Course (2006)
Filed under book | Tags: · activism, economy, ethics, journalism, law, mass media, moral theory, politics, religion, sociology, war, women
Global Values 101 grew out of one of the most popular courses ever offered at Harvard University, in which some of the most original thinkers of our day sat down with students and explored how ideas have made them-and can make us-more engaged, involved, and compassionate citizens. In these engrossing, essay-length interviews, which address the topics of war, religion, the global economy, and social change, Amy Goodman, host of the popular radio program Democracy Now, speaks about the role of the independent media as gatekeeper and witness; Lani Guinier, author of Tyranny of the Majority, reveals that students’ SAT scores more accurately describe the kind of car their parents drive than the grades they will earn in college and shows the way to a more equitable college admissions system; Howard Zinn, author of A People’s History of the United States, explores the American Dream and exposes the myth of the “good war”; economist Juliet Schor, author of Born to Buy and The Overspent American, explains why Americans are willing to sacrifice quality of life to attain financial success; former “mall rat” Naomi Klein, author of No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies, urges readers to go global while fighting global conglomerates; and Katha Pollitt, author of Reasonable Creatures: Essays on Women and Feminism, employs her incisive wit to explore what it really means to be a feminist in the Twenty First century.
For anyone who has been moved by idealism and longed to become a more proactive citizen, this collection offers a range of stories on how progressive ethics can inform, inspire, and ultimately transform lives.
Publisher Beacon Press, 2006
ISBN 0807003050, 9780807003053
276 pages
David Toews: The Social Occupations of Modernity: Philosophy and Social Theory in Durkheim, Tarde, Bergson and Deleuze (2001)
Filed under thesis | Tags: · criticism, modernity, ontology, philosophy, social ontology, social theory, society, sociology
“This thesis explores the relationship between occupations and the ontology of the social. I begin by drawing a distinction between the messianic and the modern as concentrated in the affective transformation of vocation into occupation. I then, in the Introduction, sketch an ontic-ontological contrast proper to the modern, between modernity, as the collective problematization of social diversity, and the contemporary, as the plural ground of need which provides a source for these problematizations. I argue that this distinction will enable me to shed new light on the occupational as a distinctly modern event.” (from Abstract)
PhD thesis
University of Warwick, Department of Philosophy, August 2001
Supervisors: Peter Wagner, Keith Ansell-Pearson
270 pages