A general and systematic account of the role of knowledge in society aimed to stimulate both critical discussion and empirical investigations. This book is concerned with the sociology of 'everything that passes for knowledge in society'. It focuses particularly on that 'common-sense knowledge' which constitutes the reality of everyday life for the ordinary member of society. The authors are concerned to present an analysis of knowledge in everyday life in the context of a theory of society as a dialectical process between objective and subjective reality. Their development of a theory of institutions, legitimations and socializations has implications beyond the discipline of sociology, and their 'humanistic' approach has considerable relevance for other social scientists, historians, philosophers and anthropologists.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/info/41035161

The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge

1. Introduction 2. The emergence of learning activity as a historical form of human learning 3. The zone of proximal development as the basic category of expansive research 4. The instruments of expansion 5. Toward an expansive methodology 6. Epilogue.

Learning by expanding: An activity-theoretical approach to developmental research

Norms have never been absent from the study of international politics, but the sweeping “ideational turn” in the 1980s and 1990s brought them back as a central theoretical concern in the field. Much theorizing about norms has focused on how they create social structure, standards of appropriateness, and stability in international politics. Recent empirical research on norms, in contrast, has examined their role in creating political change, but change processes have been less well-theorized. We induce from this research a variety of theoretical arguments and testable hypotheses about the role of norms in political change. We argue that norms evolve in a three-stage “life cycle” of emergence, “norm cascades,” and internalization, and that each stage is governed by different motives, mechanisms, and behavioral logics. We also highlight the rational and strategic nature of many social construction processes and argue that theoretical progress will only be made by placing attention on the connections between norms and rationality rather than by opposing the two.

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International Norm Dynamics and Political Change

This article aims (1) to analytically disaggregate agency into its several component elements (though these are interrelated empirically), (2) to demonstrate the ways in which these agentic dimensions interpenetrate with forms of structure, and (3) to point out the implications of such a conception of agency for empirical research. The authors conceptualize agency as a temporally embedded process of social engagement, informed by the past (in its “iterational” or habitual aspect) but also oriented toward the future (as a “projective” capacity to imagine alternative possibilities) and toward the present (as a “practical‐evaluative” capacity to contextualize past habits and future projects within the contingencies of the moment).

What is agency

Introduction 1 Contentious politics and social movements: Part I The Birth of the Modern Social Movement: 2 Modular collective action 3 Print and association 4 Statebuilding and social movements Part II From Contention to Social Movements: 5 Political opportunities and constraints 6 The repertoire of contention 7 Framing contention 8 Mobilising structures and contentious politics Part III The Dynamics of Movement: 9 Cycles of contention 10 Struggling to reform 11 Transnational contention/conclusion: the future of social movements

Power in Movement: Social Movements and Contentious Politics

This edition makes easily accessible the most important parts of Marx's and Engels's major early philosophical work, The German Ideology, a text of key importance for students.

http://fs2.american.edu/dfagel/www/Class%20Readings/Marx/The%20German%20Ideology.pdf

The German Ideology

Written: Late 1847; First Published: February 1848; Source: Marx/Engels Selected Works, Vol. One, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1969, pp. 98-137; Translated: Samuel Moore in cooperation with Frederick Engels, 1888; Transcribed: by Zodiac and Brian Baggins; Proofed: and corrected against 1888 English Edition by Andy Blunden 2004; Copyleft: Marxists Internet Archive (marxists.org) 1987, 2000, 2010. Permission is granted to distribute this document under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License.

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Manifesto of the Communist Party

Compiles the significant writings of Marx and Engels in an attempt to trace the origins and meaning of classical Marxism

The Marx-Engels Reader

"The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State (1884)" was a provocative and profoundly influential critique of the Victorian nuclear family. Engels argued that the traditional monogamous household was in fact a recent construct, closely bound up with capitalist societies. Under this patriarchal system, women were servants and, effectively, prostitutes. Only Communism would herald the dawn of communal living and a new sexual freedom and, in turn, the role of the state would become superfluous.

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The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State

THE GREAT MORTALITY AMONG CHILDREN of the working class, and especially among those of the factory operatives, is proof enough of the unwholesome conditions under which they pass their first years. These influences are at work, of course, among the children who survive, but not quite so powerfully as upon those who succumb. The result in the most favourable case is a tendency to disease, or some check in development, and consequent less than normal vigour of the constitution. A nine-year-old child of a factory operative that has grown up in want, privation, and changing conditions, in cold and damp, with insufficient clothing and unwholesome dwellings, is far from having the working strength of a child brought up under healthier conditions. At nine years of age it is sent into the mill to work 61/2 hours (formerly 8, earlier still, 12 to 14, even 16 hours) daily, until the thirteenth year; then twelve hours until the eighteenth year. The old enfeebling influences continue, while the work is added to them. . . . but in no case can its [the child’s] presence in the damp, heavy air of the factory, often at once warm and wet, contribute to good health; and, in any case, it is unpardonable to sacrifice to the greed of an unfeeling bourgeoisie the time of children which should be devoted solely to their physical and mental development, and to withdraw them from school and the fresh air in order to wear them out for the benefit of the manufacturers. . . .

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Friedrich Engels

Papers

The German Ideology

Manifesto of the Communist Party

The Marx-Engels Reader

The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State

The Condition of the Working Class in England