Bourdieu in hyperspace: from social topology to the space of flows

Abstract: No abstract available.

Abstract: Digital culture is identified as both a component of the current digital transformation of society and an epistemological obstacle toward the sociological analysis of the same phenomenon. Two theoretical distinctions are bought in to remove this obstacle: medium/form and metric/nonmetric. Digital culture is then analysed as a nonmetric form specifically and criticized for leaving aside other social forms, most notably metric forms such as the flows of information connected with the operations of algorithms for instance.

Abstract: ICT and the increasing availability of digital data are dramatically changing the processes of research and knowledge production in the social sciences and humanities (SSH). Whereas the methodological momentum in digital humanities and computational social sciences is already immense, theory development in the SSH is much less dynamic and consists mainly of digital resurrections of the classics of our fields. The contributions to this virtual special issue of Technological Forecasting and Social Change do, therefore, not constitute efforts at presenting new social theories of the digital transformation, but rather, efforts at digitally transforming social theory. This introduction presents an overview of the topic and the contributions and outlines key elements of a research agenda on the digital transformation of social theory.

Abstract: The metric/nonmetric distinction not only provides a solution to the problem of structure and agency (diagnosed as case of forced perspective) but also help in bringing a renewed unity in the field of sociological theory. This chapter uses the distinction to organize the ideas of Pierre Bourdieu, Anthony Giddens and Michel Foucault along a single continuum. Bourdieu’s concepts (field, habitus, capital, practice) illuminate the nonmetric aspects of social reality while missing the metric ones. Giddens offers the opposite image: his structuration theory sheds light on the metric aspects of social reality (notably through the concept of time-space distanciation), but leaves the nonmetric aspects in the dark. Foucault falls in-between the two: his analysis of power mixes nonmetric elements with metric ones, although he fails to formulate the relation between them in the form of one distinction.

Abstract: From the Publisher: This ambitious book is an account of the economic and social dynamics of the new age of information. Based on research in the USA, Asia, Latin America, and Europe, it aims to formulate a systematic theory of the information society which takes account of the fundamental effects of information technology on the contemporary world. The global economy is now characterized by the almost instantaneous flow and exchange of information, capital and cultural communication. These flows order and condition both consumption and production. The networks themselves reflect and create distinctive cultures. Both they and the traffic they carry are largely outside national regulation. Our dependence on the new modes of informational flow gives enormous power to those in a position to control them to control us. The main political arena is now the media, and the media are not politically answerable. Manuel Castells describes the accelerating pace of innovation and application. He examines the processes of globalization that have marginalized and now threaten to make redundant whole countries and peoples excluded from informational networks. He investigates the culture, institutions and organizations of the network enterprise and the concomitant transformation of work and employment. He points out that in the advanced economies production is now concentrated on an educated section of the population aged between 25 and 40: many economies can do without a third or more of their people. He suggests that the effect of this accelerating trend may be less mass unemployment than the extreme flexibilization of work and individualization of labor, and, in consequence, a highly segmented socialstructure. The author concludes by examining the effects and implications of technological change on mass media culture ("the culture of real virtuality"), on urban life, global politics, and the nature of time and history. Written by one of the worlds leading social thinkers and researchers The Rise of the Network Society is the first of three linked investigations of contemporary global, economic, political and social change. It is a work of outstanding penetration, originality, and importance.

Abstract: Preface Editor's Introduction General Introduction Part I The Economy of Linguistic Exchanges Introduction 1. The Production and Reproduction of Legitimate Language 2. Price Formation and the Anticipation of Profits Appendix: Did You Say 'Popular'? Part II The Social Institution of Symbolic Power Introduction 3. Authorized Language: The Social Conditions for the Effectiveness of Ritual Discourse 4. Rites of Institution 5. Description and Prescription: The Conditions of Possibility and the Limits of Political Effectiveness 6. Censorship and the Imposition of Form Part III Symbolic Power and the Political Field 7. On Symbolic Power 8. Political Representation: Elements for a Theory of the Political Field 9. Delegation and Political Fetishism 10. Identity and Representation: Elements for a Critical Reflection on the Idea of Region 11. Social Space and the Genesis of 'Classes' Note Index

Abstract: Edward Shils's attempt to work out a macrosociological theory which does justice both to the spiritual and intellectual dispositions and powers of the mind and to the reality of the larger society is an enterprise that has spanned several decades. In his steps toward the development of this theory he has not proceeded deductively; rather he has worked from his own concrete observations of Western, Asian, and African societies. Thus, despite the inevitable abstractness of marcrosociological theory, the papers in this volume-which have been published separately since the Second World War-have a quality of vivid substantiality that makes the theoretical statements they present easier to comprehend. Professor Shils has attempted to develop a theory that has a place for more than those parts of society that are generated from the biological nature of human beings and those parts that are engendered by the desires of individuals, acting for themselves or for groups and categories of individuals, to maintain and increase their power over other human beings and to secure material goods and services for themselves. He has argued that there are constituents of society in which human beings seek and cultivate connections with objects that transcend those needed to satisfy biological necessity and the desire for material objects and power over others. This third stratum of social existence, he concludes, cannot be reduced to the other two and cannot be disregarded in any serious attempt to understand the function of any society. Thus Edward Shils, without disregarding its many valuable achievements, has nevertheless parted ways with much of modern sociology. For this collection of papers the author has written an introductory intellectual autobiography that places each essay in the setting of the development of his thought and that connects it with his other writings.

Abstract: Building on her seminal contribution to social theory in Culture and Agency, in this 1995 book Margaret Archer develops her morphogenetic approach, applying it to the problem of structure and agency. Since structure and agency constitute different levels of stratified social reality, each possesses distinctive emergent properties which are real and causally efficacious but irreducible to one another. The problem, therefore, is shown to be how to link the two rather than conflate them, as has been common theoretical practice. Realist Social Theory: The Morphogenetic Approach not only rejects methodological individualism and holism, but argues that the debate between them has been replaced by a new one, between elisionary theorising and emergentist theories based on a realist ontology of the social world. The morphogenetic approach is the sociological complement of transcendental realism, and together they provide a basis for non-conflationary theorizing which is also of direct utility to the practising social analyst.