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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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I write, therefore I am: texts in the city
TL;DR: The authors argue that graffiti represents forms of text that directly challenge presumptions of private ownership and corporate power, that draw our attention to the materiality and spatiality of the city, and that act to create what Giddens, Beck et al. and Beck have called narratives of the self.
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Successful subjectivities? The successification of class, ethnic and gender positions
Simon Bradford,Valerie Hey +1 more
TL;DR: This paper explored how class, gender and ethnicity shape discourses of success and how they are implicated in their distribution, and suggested that understanding this is vital in the pursuit of social justice.
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Third Way social governance: Where is the state?
TL;DR: In this paper, an alternative framework for re-conceptualising state-community relations and delivering improved community outcomes is proposed, which is based on the notion of network governance, and suggests possible social governance methodologies for actioning this framework.
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Food safety in everyday life: Shopping for vegetables in a rural city in Vietnam
TL;DR: In this paper, a social practices theory based approach was used to analyze in detail the sales practices of sellers and the purchasing practices of consumers in a Vietnamese provincial city and concluded that in situations where wet-markets serve as the dominant channel for distributing and purchasing fresh food, the efficacy of government and retail induced food safety strategies depends on their articulation within existing food purchasing routines of Vietnamese consumers.
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Habermas, Critical Theory and Selves-Directed Learning.
TL;DR: In this paper, a focus on learning networks allows a perspective transformation from the purely individualistic instrumental rationality of self-directed learning towards communicative interaction via learning encounters and the possibility of satisfying the emancipatory conditions of communicative rationality within communities of selfdirected learners in life and work.