Bryan S. Turner

Bio: Bryan S. Turner is an academic researcher from Australian Catholic University. The author has contributed to research in topics: Citizenship & Politics. The author has an hindex of 70, co-authored 511 publications receiving 21116 citations. Previous affiliations of Bryan S. Turner include King's College London & City University of New York.

From Orientalism to Global Sociology

Abstract: Although in sociology and anthropology the debate over `understanding alien belief systems' is well known, in the last decade the problem of orientalism has become particularly prominent, partly as a consequence of global political changes. This article outlines the main features of the debate and suggests various lines of analytical development which may help to resolve a number of remaining conceptual issues. Orientalism has been defined as a discourse which produces the orient as an object of power and knowledge. The discourse has a number of major themes: it provides an explanation of oriental stagnation, offering covertly a legitimation of western supremacy and colonial power; by categorizing oriental politics as despotic, because the orient excludes individualism, it offered a critique of mass democracy; and it contrasted the rationality of the occident with the sensual irrationalism of the orient. While the critique of orientalism in the 1970s was intellectually and morally important, there are som...

British sociology and public intellectuals: consumer society and imperial decline

Abstract: The following is the lecture given for the BJS 2005 Public Sociology Debate given at the London School of Economics and Political Science on ll October 2005. This lecture on the character of British sociology provides a pretext for a more general inquiry into public intellectual life in postwar Britain. The argument put forward falls into several distinctive sections. First, British social science has depended heavily on the migration of intellectuals, especially Jewish intellectuals who were refugees from fascism. Second, intellectual innovation requires massive, disruptive, violent change. Third, British sociology did nevertheless give rise to a distinctive tradition of social criticism in which one can argue there were (typically home-grown) public intellectuals. The main theme of their social criticism was to consider the constraining and divisive impact of social class, race and gender on the enjoyment of expanding social citizenship. Fourth, postwar British sociology came to be dominated by the analysis of an affluent consumer society. Finally, the main failure of British sociology in this postwar period was the absence of any sustained, macro-sociological analysis of the historical decline of Britain as a world power in the twentieth century.

Reflections on embodiment and vulnerability

Abstract: Bodies matter as our experience of them is the basis both for social life and also for much medical and social research. There has been a spectacular increase in academic research on the body in the last twenty years or so. This paper—although a review of three ethnographic studies on the seemingly disparate and narrow fields of the embodiment of working class experience, boxing, and ballet—illuminates the broader relationships between the body, self, and society. Our paper works on three levels: firstly, as an account of the “lived experience” of embodied vulnerability; secondly, as an application of Bourdieu’s theoretical schema, and thirdly, as a philosophically grounded critique of radical social constructionist views of the body.

Governing as gardening: Reflections on soft authoritarianism in Singapore

Abstract: The idea of ‘soft authoritarianism’, as a general description of many Asian societies, can be defined as a political system in which there are minimal components of democracy such as elections and political parties but, as a consequence of rapid modernisation, state control of the economy and an emphasis on export-driven growth, basic social and political rights are often compromised. Typically, these states govern in the name of constitutionalism but often use the law to suppress political activity on the part of citizens. These societies have often replaced the rule of law with neo-Confucian rule of virtue in which the duties of the citizen to the state are more important than the responsibilities of the state towards the citizen. In these authoritarian polities, the state constructs an educational system to discipline the electorate rather than to create an informed citizenry, simply because there is low trust between leaders and electorate. The duty of the passive citizen is merely to consent to the l...

Simmel, Rationalisation and the Sociology of Money

Abstract: Simmel was born in 1858. Raised in the centre of the Jewish business culture of Berlin. Simmel studied history and philosophy, becoming a Privatdozent in 1885. Although he published numerous books and artickes, simmel was excluded from influential university positions as a result of the pervasive anti-Semitism of the period and it was bot until 1914 that Simmel was finally promoted to a full professorship at the University of Strasbourg. Like Durkheim. Simmel was both the object of anti-Semitic prejudice and a fervent supporter of the nationalist cause in the First World War. Simmel died in 1918 if cancer of the liver.1 This basic and naive factual biography of Simmel in many respects provides many of the themes in Simmel's sociology. First, his sociology is held to be the brilliant reflection of the glittering, cospospolitan world of pre-war Berlin and that his commentary on that world took the form of impressionism his sociological essays are snapshots sub specie aeternitatis”? simmel's perspective has ...

Possessions and the extended self.

Abstract: Our possessions are a major contributor to and reflection of our identities A variety of evidence is presented supporting this simple and compelling premise Related streams of research are identified and drawn upon in developing this concept and implications are derived for consumer behavior Because the construct of extended self involves consumer behavior rather than buyer behavior, it appears to be a much richer construct than previous formulations positing a relationship between self-concept and consumer brand choice

In a Different Voice. Psychological Theory and Women’s Development. Cambridge, MA (Harvard University Press) 1982.

Abstract: Introduction 1. Woman's Place in Man's Life Cycle 2. Images of Relationship 3. Concepts of Self and Morality 4. Crisis and Transition 5. Women's Rights and Women's Judgment 6. Visions of Maturity References Index of Study Participants General Index

The archaeology of knowledge

Abstract: We may not be able to make you love reading, but archaeology of knowledge will lead you to love reading starting from now. Book is the window to open the new world. The world that you want is in the better stage and level. World will always guide you to even the prestige stage of the life. You know, this is some of how reading will give you the kindness. In this case, more books you read more knowledge you know, but it can mean also the bore is full.