Showing papers on "Social theory published in 1988"

Cognition in practice : mind, mathematics, and culture in everyday life

Abstract: Most previous research on human cognition has focused on problem-solving, and has confined its investigations to the laboratory. As a result, it has been difficult to account for complex mental processes and their place in culture and history. In this startling - indeed, disco in forting - study, Jean Lave moves the analysis of one particular form of cognitive activity, - arithmetic problem-solving - out of the laboratory into the domain of everyday life. In so doing, she shows how mathematics in the 'real world', like all thinking, is shaped by the dynamic encounter between the culturally endowed mind and its total context, a subtle interaction that shapes 1) Both tile human subject and the world within which it acts. The study is focused on mundane daily, activities, such as grocery shopping for 'best buys' in the supermarket, dieting, and so on. Innovative in its method, fascinating in its findings, the research is above all significant in its theoretical contributions. Have offers a cogent critique of conventional cognitive theory, turning for an alternative to recent social theory, and weaving a compelling synthesis from elements of culture theory, theories of practice, and Marxist discourse. The result is a new way of understanding human thought processes, a vision of cognition as the dialectic between persons-acting, and the settings in which their activity is constituted. The book will appeal to anthropologists, for its novel theory of the relation of cognition to culture and context; to cognitive scientists and educational theorists; and to the 'plain folks' who form its subject, and who will recognize themselves in it, a rare accomplishment in the modern social sciences.

Deconstructing Equality-Versus-Difference : or, The Uses of Poststructuralist Theory for Feminism

Abstract: That feminism needs theory goes without saying (perhaps because it has been said so often). What is not always clear is what that theory will do, although there are certain common assumptions I think we can find in a wide range of feminist writings. We need theory that can analyze the workings of patriarchy in all its manifestations – ideological, institutional, organizational, subjective – accounting not only for continuities but also for change over time. We need theory that will let us think in terms of pluralities and diversities rather than of unities and universals. We need theory that will break the conceptual hold, at least, of those long traditions of (Western) philosophy that have systematically and repeatedly construed the world hierarchically in terms of masculine universals and feminine specificities. We need theory that will enable us to articulate alternative ways of thinking about (and thus acting upon) gender without either simply reversing the old hierarchies or confirming them. And we need theory that will be useful and relevant for political practice. It seems to me that the body of theory referred to as poststructuralism best meets all these requirements. It is not by any means the only theory nor are its positions and formulations unique. In my own case, however, it was reading poststructuralist theory and arguing with literary scholars that provided the elements of clarification for which I was looking.

A theory of social interaction

Abstract: This book provides an analysis of the fundamental problem areas of social science. Jonathan Turner concentrates on the relation between micro and macro analyses in the understanding of social interaction. A range of theories of interaction - including those by G.H. Mead, Alfred Schutz, Erving Goffman, Harold Garfinkel and Jurgen Habermas - are subjected to critical analysis. Turner gives an analysis to those areas covered half a century ago by Talcott Parsons in his celebrated "The Structure of Social Action". Turner believes, with Parsons, that there are invariant and universal properties of the social universe which can be understood in an analytical fashion. His portrayal of these dimensions, however, diverges fundamentally from that of Parsons and incorporates ideas drawn from contemporary debates in social theory.

Social Theory and Archaeology.

Abstract: Archaeological theory and method have recently become the subject of vigorous debate centred on the growing realization that archaeological theory is social theory and as such can be looked at by means of a wide variety of sociological frameworks, such as structuralism and post-structuralism, Marxism and critical theory. In this analysis, Shanks and Tilley argue against the functionalism and positivism which result from an inadequate assimilation of social theory into the day-to-day practice of archaeology. Aimed at an advanced undergraduate audience, the book presents a challenge to the traditional idea of the archaeologist as explorer or discoverer and the more recent emphasis on archaeology as behavioural science. The authors examine and evaluate the new possibilities for a self-reflexive, critical and political practice of archaeology, productively linking the past to the present.

Disability Beyond Stigma: Social Interaction, Discrimination, and Activism

Abstract: This article critiques the assumptions about the nature and meaning of disability advanced in social-psychological writing, suggests the origins of these assumptions, and proposes a return to a Lewinian/minority-group analysis of the situation of people with disabilities. It concludes by placing the articles in this issue of the Journal of Social Issues in context and by presenting questions in need of further exploration.

Social Closure: The Theory of Monopolization and Exclusion

Abstract: The development and inequalities of society have traditionally been analysed in terms of stratification and class. Raymond Murphy argues that important inequalities of power remain unanalysed by traditional social theories, and that the concept of social closure, suggested by Max Weber, provides a means of capturing the common and essential features of types of subordination that appear quite different on the surface. Seemingly unrelated forms of domination based on private property, the bureaucratic Communist Party, credentials, status, race, language, and gender, are tied together by Weber's notion of social closure as the underlying principle of all systems of inequality in power. The book suggests improvements to the conceptions of closure, power, and social class, and turns closure theory back on itself to analyse the scholarly field. It develops a conceptualization of the rules of social closure and their transformation, and compares the Weberian concept of closure with the Marxian concept of exploitation. Raymond Murphy examines the way in which Western society, in the elusive pursuit of mastery and control, has transformed its codes of social closure by the process of formal rationalization. He shows how this formal rationalization of monopolization and exclusion has led to substantively irrational results. Professor Murphy's conclusion - that Weber's theories of social closure and rationalization provide a conceptual basis for going beyond a narrow focus on one particular means of monopolization to an analysis of monopolization and exclusion per se - marks an important and original advance in the development of the ideas of Weber and in social theory generally.

The Postmodern Challenge: Reconstructing Human Geography

Abstract: In this paper, I argue in favour of regarding human geography as part of the social theory movement. By confronting the intellectual disarray in human geography, and addressing the challenge of postmodernism and deconstruction, the discipline could attain a pivotal role in the social sciences and humanities.

The micro-macro problem in social theory

Abstract: This paper will locate and examine the micro-macro problem in the context of the larger problem of levels, the latter tending to include solutions to the former. Levels theory is meta-theoretical, for it is presuppositional to substantive or "sectors" theory. Levels theory constitutes the levels and therefore the "kinds" of social reality, while substantive theory looks for causal connections within and among the levels. The priority of levels over sectors theory, however, is only analytic. Historically the influence can be reversed, as levels shift in power relative to each other. The rise of Durkheim's sacred self in the Nineteenth century or Luhmann's social system in the Twentieth are dramatic examples of these shifts. But despite the intimate connection between levels and sectors-the vertical and the horizontal, so to speak-I will simplify the discussion and attempt to treat the former with a minimum of reference to the latter.

States, War, and Capitalism: Studies in Political Sociology

Abstract: 1. The Autonomous Power of the State: Its Origins, Mechanisms and Results 2. States, Ancient and Modern 3. State and Society, 1180-1815: An Analysis of English State Finances 4. Capitalism and Militarism 5. War and Social Theory: Into Battle with Classes, Nations and States 6. The Roots and Contradictions of Modern Militarism 7. Ruling Class Strategies and Citizenship 8. The Decline of Great Britain.

The Question of Women in Chinese Feminism

Abstract: "The Question of Women in Chinese Feminism" is a history of ideas about women in twentieth-century China. Tani E. Barlow tracks the categories that Chinese intellectuals have developed to think about women and connects these paradigms to transnational debates about eugenics, gender, sexuality, and the psyche. Contending that Chinese feminism has a basis in eugenicist thought, Barlow describes how the emergence of social science perspectives during the 1920s lent the liberation of Chinese women an urgency by suggesting that women should choose their own sexual partners; the health of the nation, it was argued, depended in part on the biological mechanisms of natural selection. Barlow demonstrates that feminism has been integral to thinking about the nation and development in China. At the same time, she shows that Chinese feminism both borrowed from and contributed to emerging feminist formations around the world.Bringing together social theory, psychoanalytic thought, the ethics of mass movements, literary criticism, and revolutionary political ideologies, Barlow reveals how Chinese feminist theory changed in response to the social upheavals of colonial modernity, revolution, modernization, and market socialism. She discusses prominent Chinese feminists, including the fiction writer Ding Ling, who was, for more than fifty years, a leading revolutionary; the early-twentieth-century theorist Gao Xian; the literary scholar Li Xiaojiang, a major proponent of women's studies; and the contemporary film and cultural critic Dai Jinhua. Barlow's exploration of Chinese feminism provides an in-depth examination of one of the most compelling and significant feminist movements in modern history.

The Domestication of the Human Species

Abstract: In this exciting new book the author of Man, the Promising Primate takes domestication as the starting point for his continued inquiry into human evolution. Peter J. Wilson believes that the most radical and far-reaching innovation in human development was this settling down into a built environment, and he argues that it had a crucial effect on human psychology and social relations. His insights not only offer an enriched understanding of human behavior and human history but also point the way toward amendments to long-standing social theories.

Phenomenology of Communication: Merleau Ponty's Thematics in Communicology and Semiology

Abstract: This work presents the first systemic account of the author's innovative theory of semiotic phenomenology and its place in the philosophy of communication and language. The creative and compelling project presented here spans more than fifteen years of systematic eidetic and empirical research into questions of human communication. Using the thematics of Merleau-Ponty's existential phenomenology, the author explores the concepts and practices of the human sciences that are grounded in communication theory, information theory, language, logic, linguistics, and semiotics. The hermeneutic discussion ranges over contemporary theories that include Roman Jakobson's phenomenological structuralism, the semiotics of Umberto Eco, Charles Pierce, and Alfred Schutz, the theory of speech acts offered by Jurgen Habermas and John Searle, and Michel Foucault's phenomenological rhetoric of discourse. In general, this highly developed study offers the reader a fresh account of the problematic issues in the philosophy of communication. It is a work that any scholar in communication, philosophy, linguistics, or social theory would welcome for its scope and sustained research.

The Discourse of Gender and Sport: From Femininity to Feminism

Abstract: The argument presented here is that the sociological discourse of gender and sport, in other words the way the topic is approached, the assumptions surrounding its investigation, and the ways in which new knowledge is generated has been determined without sufficient recognition of its own ideological foundations. Gender, it is argued, is a major social and theoretical category that, along with social class, race, age, ethnicity, and others, must be incorporated into all theoretically based social analyses of sport. The paper reviews the development of the gender and sport discourse from its origins in social psychological research that focused on the supposed conflict between femininity and athleticism, to the more sophisticated yet functionalist notion of “sex roles” and its application to sport, and finally to the emerging feminist paradigm that is informed by a growing body of feminist social theory. The final section argues for a transformation of the gender and sport discourse toward a truly emancipa...

The Recent Work of Jürgen Habermas: Reason, Justice and Modernity

Abstract: Acknowledgements List of abbreviations Introduction 1. Rationality, social theory and political philosophy 2. Action, rationality and normative discourse 3. Justice and the foundations of communicative ethics 4. Toward a minimal ethics and orientation for political theory 5. Communicative reason, modernity and contemporary capitalism 6. The two tasks of critical theory Notes Bibliography Index.

Choice, Rationality and Social Theory

Abstract: The rational choice approach to social behaviour rationality, egoism and social atomism models of the actor rationality, action and deliberation individualism and social structure.

Tautology and paradox in the self-descriptions of modern society

Abstract: Over the past two decades, Niklas Luhmann has elaborated a general functionalist theory of social systems that continues the program of the "grand tradition" in social theory to develop theories of universal range and applicability. But while current discussions in social theory focus on reinterpreting, reconstructing, and synthesizing the "classics," Luhmann's work is based on recent developments in general systems theory, cybernetics, biological epistemology, and information theory-to name just a few. At present, Luhmann's theory of social systems is the only general social theory that can claim to introduce a new paradigm to the field. Utilization of research traditions external to particular scientific disciplines always impedes the recognition andeventually-the adaptation of innovative paradigms. But if accepted, Luhmann's proposal will radically change the conventional ways of doing social theory. Luhmann (1984) interprets his theory of social systems as a special case of general systems theory. Together with machines, organisms, and psychic or personal systems, social systems constitute the generic class of "systems in general." The category of "social systems" itself comprises interaction systems, organizations, and entire societies. Three fundamental theoretical decisions structure this hierarchical schema. First, Luhmann avoids the frequently criticized "organismic analogy" in which most previous systemstheoretical models of society were trapped (Turner, 1986). Although organisms and social systems belong to the same generic

Mass Communication and Modern Culture: Contribution to a Critical Theory of Ideology:

Abstract: This paper argues that the analysis of culture and mass communication should be regarded as central concerns of sociology and social theory. It develops a framework for the analysis of culture and shows how this framework can be applied to the study of mass communication. Focusing on the medium of television, the paper highlights some of the distinctive characteristics of mass communication and examines some of the factors involved in the production, construction and reception of media messages. It is argued that this approach enables the analyst to pose questions concerning the ideological character of mass communication in a new and more fruitful way.

The religious identity of the church and its social and political mission in South Africa 1948-1984 : a historical and theological analysis

Abstract: This study is concerned with the identity of the Church and its social and political mission in South Africa. Here the argument is that the religious identity of the Church is fulfilled in the realization of the Kingdom of God through the historical event of incarnation which liberates human identity from oppression and alienation. This doctrine in turn, it is contended, depends for its relevance upon the significance of the concepts of prolepsis and commitment for the mission of the Church, Prolepsis signifies that the Church exists to bear witness to that which has come and is coming in Jesus Christ, In this way the thesis attempts to situate the proclamation of the Kingdom of God in relation to a particular problem of oppression and exploitation in South Africa, Hence commitment should be understood as the fulfilment of Black identity and thus as a liberation which brings about the transformation of the South African identity as a whole. In this thesis the hermeneutic circle as a theory of interpretation is applied in the theological and historical analysis of the South African social formation. Part One of the thesis lays the theoretical foundations of the study by developing the hypothesis and discussing identity theories and methodology. Part Two contains an analysis of South African social reality in which the variable of class is identified as that which underpins the South African social structure. Consequently, Apartheid is explained with reference to the economy rather than race. It is an economic rather than a racial factor. Part Three consists of a theological and sociological analysis of South Africa; it employs the Marxist social theory of alienation and applies the conception of identity advocated by the Liberation Movements of Southern Africa, particularly the African National Congress. It is concluded that the religious identity is a crucial factor in the emergence of a full humanity.

A History of thought and practice in educational administration

Abstract: Feel lonely? What about reading books? Book is one of the greatest friends to accompany while in your lonely time. When you have no friends and activities somewhere and sometimes, reading book can be a great choice. This is not only for spending the time, it will increase the knowledge. Of course the b=benefits to take will relate to what kind of book that you are reading. And now, we will concern you to try reading a history of thought and practice in educational administration as one of the reading material to finish quickly.

The rediscovery of chronos: the new role of time in sociolocical theory:

Abstract: This paper traces the new role of time in social theory, beyond the dissatisfaction with theories of change. This is done by identifying four developments: the clarification of historically independent processes, the new critique of positivism, the re-evaluation of `micro sociology' and the emphasis on self-reference. These are specified on the basis of the work of Giddens and Luhmann, and related to the concept of time used by these authors. I argue that their predominantly naturalistic sui generis concept of time cannot do justice to the theoretical programmes they are implementing, and propose to focus instead on temporality and its conceptualisation. Temporality is defined on the basis of an invariant core that can be abstracted from the variety of operational culture-specific concepts of time. The paper closes with a discussion of some of the consequences of this shift from (naturalistic) time to social temporality.

Civil Society And Social Theory

Abstract: Social movements in the East and the West, the North and the South have come to rely on various interesting, albeit eclectic syntheses inherited from the history of the concept of civil society. They presuppose (in different corn-binations) something like the Gramscian tripartite framework of civil society, state and economy, while preserving key aspects of the Marxian critique of bourgeois society. But they have also integrated liberal claims on behalf of individual riglxic, the stress of Hegel, Tocqueville and others on societal plurality, the emphasis of Durkheiin on the component of social solidarity, and the defense of the public sphere and political participation stressed by Habermas and Arendt.2