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Reflexive Modernization: Politics, Tradition and Aesthetics in the Modern Social Order
TLDR
In this paper, three prominent social thinkers discuss the implications of "reflexive modernization" for social and cultural theory today, and the three authors offer critical appraisals of each other's viewpoints.Abstract:
The theme of reflexivity has come to be central to social analysis. In this book three prominent social thinkers discuss the implications of "reflexive modernization" for social and cultural theory today. Ulrich Beck's vision of the "risk society" has already become extraordinarily influential. Beck offers a new elaboration of his basic ideas, connecting reflexive modernization with new issues to do with the state and political organization. Giddens offers an in-depth examination of the connections between "institutional reflexivity" and the de-traditionalizing of the modern world. We are entering, he argues, a phase of the development of a global society. A "global society" is not a world society, but one with universalizing tendencies. Lash develops the theme of reflexive modernization in relation the aesthetics and the interpretation of culture. In this domain, he suggests, we need to look again at the conventional theories of postmodernism; "aesthetic modernization" has distinctive qualities that need to be uncovered and analyzed. In the concluding sections of the book, the three authors offer critical appraisals of each other's viewpoints, providing a synthetic conclusion to the work as a whole.read more
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Social reporting, engagements, controversies and conflict in an arena context
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The imagination of ‘society’ in measurements of immigrant integration
TL;DR: The authors pointed out that social scientific measurements of immigrant integration operate as a form of social imagination, that is, of the routinized and professionalized visualization of social life, and that through such measurements, images of ‘society' are produced that feed into larger social imaginaries.
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Education and Family Components of Identity in the Transition from School to Work
TL;DR: The Basic Skills Agency for England and Wales who funded the surveys of the 1958 and 1970 cohorts involving the assessment of basic skills were sponsored by the Social Statistics Research Unit, City University, Northampton Square, London EC1V 0HB, UK as discussed by the authors.
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Policy Changes and the Labour Force Participation of Older Workers: Evidence from Six Countries*
TL;DR: This paper reviews the different policy approaches taken in the six countries included in the Workforce Aging in the New Economy (WANE) project, placing Canadian policy approaches in relation to those taken in Australia, Germany, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
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Review: Structuration Theory and Information Systems Research
Matthew R. Jones,Helena Karsten +1 more
TL;DR: The work of the contemporary British sociologist Anthony Giddens, and in particular his structuration theory, has been widely cited by Information Systems researchers as discussed by the authors, and their implications for Information Systems research discussed.