Politics

Abstract: In Development as Freedom Amartya Sen quotes the eighteenth century poet William Cowper on freedom: Freedom has a thousand charms to show, That slaves howe'er contented, never know. Sen explains how in a world of unprecedented increase in overall opulence, millions of people living in rich and poor countries are still unfree. Even if they are not technically slaves, they are denied elementary freedom and remain imprisoned in one way or another by economic poverty, social deprivation, political tyranny or cultural authoritarianism. The main purpose of development is to spread freedom and its 'thousand charms' to the unfree citizens. Freedom, Sen persuasively argues, is at once the ultimate goal of social and economic arrangements and the most efficient means of realizing general welfare. Social institutions like markets, political parties, legislatures, the judiciary, and the media contribute to development by enhancing individual freedom and are in turn sustained by social values. Values, institutions, development, and freedom are all closely interrelated, and Sen links them together in an elegant analytical framework. By asking "What is the relation between our collective economic wealth and our individual ability to live as we would like?" and by incorporating individual freedom as a social commitment into his analysis, Sen allows economics once again, as it did in the time of Adam Smith, to address the social basis of individual well-being and freedom.

Abstract: Introduction - Scott Lash and Brian Wynne PART ONE: LIVING ON THE VOLCANO OF CIVILIZATION - THE CONTOURS OF THE RISK SOCIETY On the Logic of Wealth Distribution and Risk Distribution The Politics of Knowledge in the Risk Society PART TWO: THE INDIVIDUALIZATION OF SOCIAL INEQUALITY - LIFE-FORMS AND THE DEMISE OF TRADITION Beyond Status and Class? 'I am I' Gendered Space and the Conflict Inside and Outside the Family Individualization, Institutionalization and Standardization Life Situations and Biographical Patterns De-Standardization of Labour PART THREE: REFLEXIVE MODERNIZATION: ON THE GENERALIZATION OF SCIENCE AND POLITICS Science Beyond Truth and Enlightenment? Opening up the Political

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: Part I * Thick Description: Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture Part II * The Impact of the Concept of Culture on the Concept of Man * The Growth of Culture and the Evolution of Mind Part III * Religion As a Cultural System * Ethos, World View, and the Analysis of Sacred Symbols * Ritual and Social Change: A Javanese Example * Internal Conversion in Contemporary Bali Part IV * Ideology As a Cultural System * After the Revolution: The Fate of Nationalism in the New States * The Integrative Revolution: Primordial Sentiments and Civil Politics in the New States * The Politics of Meaning * Politics Past, Politics Present: Some Notes on the Uses of Anthropology in Understanding the New States PART V * The Cerebral Savage: On the Work of Claude Lvi-Strauss * Person, Time, and Conduct in Bali * Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight

Abstract: What makes us modern? This is a classic question in philosophy as well as in political science. However it is often raised without including science and technology in its definition. The argument of this book is that we are modern as long as we split our political process in two - between politics proper, and science and technology. This division allows the formidable expansion of the Western empires. However it has become more and more difficult to maintain this distance between science and politics. Hence the postmodern predicament - the feeling that the modern stance is no longer acceptable but that there is no alternative. The solution, advances one of France's leading sociologists of science, is to realize that we have never been modern to begin with. The comparative anthropology this text provides reintroduces science to the fabric of daily life and aims to make us compatible both with our past and with other cultures wrongly called pre-modern.