Showing papers on "Social theory published in 2007"

Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning

Abstract: Meeting the Universe Halfway is an ambitious book with far-reaching implications for numerous fields in the natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities. In this volume, Karen Barad, theoretical physicist and feminist theorist, elaborates her theory of agential realism. Offering an account of the world as a whole rather than as composed of separate natural and social realms, agential realism is at once a new epistemology, ontology, and ethics. The starting point for Barad’s analysis is the philosophical framework of quantum physicist Niels Bohr. Barad extends and partially revises Bohr’s philosophical views in light of current scholarship in physics, science studies, and the philosophy of science as well as feminist, poststructuralist, and other critical social theories. In the process, she significantly reworks understandings of space, time, matter, causality, agency, subjectivity, and objectivity. In an agential realist account, the world is made of entanglements of “social” and “natural” agencies, where the distinction between the two emerges out of specific intra-actions. Intra-activity is an inexhaustible dynamism that configures and reconfigures relations of space-time-matter. In explaining intra-activity, Barad reveals questions about how nature and culture interact and change over time to be fundamentally misguided. And she reframes understanding of the nature of scientific and political practices and their “interrelationship.” Thus she pays particular attention to the responsible practice of science, and she emphasizes changes in the understanding of political practices, critically reworking Judith Butler’s influential theory of performativity. Finally, Barad uses agential realism to produce a new interpretation of quantum physics, demonstrating that agential realism is more than a means of reflecting on science; it can be used to actually do science.

Making our Way through the World: Human Reflexivity and Social Mobility

Abstract: How do we reflect upon ourselves and our concerns in relation to society, and vice versa? Human reflexivity works through 'internal conversations' using language, but also emotions, sensations and images Most people acknowledge this 'inner-dialogue' and can report upon it However, little research has been conducted on 'internal conversations' and how they mediate between our ultimate concerns and the social contexts we confront In this book, Margaret Archer argues that reflexivity is progressively replacing routine action in late modernity, shaping how ordinary people make their way through the world Using interviewees' life and work histories, she shows how 'internal conversations' guide the occupations people seek, keep or quit; their stances towards structural constraints and enablements; and their resulting patterns of social mobility

Neoliberalism and education

Abstract: The discourses and practices of neoliberalism, including government policies for education and training, public debates regarding standards and changed funding regimes, have been at work on and in schools in capitalist societies since at least the 1980s. Yet we have been hard pressed to say what neoliberalism is, where it comes from and how it works on us and through us to establish the new moral order of schools and schooling, and to produce the new student/subject who is appropriate to (and appropriated by) the neoliberal economy. Beck (1997) refers to the current social order as the ‘new modernities’ and he characterizes the changes bringing about the present forms of society as having been both surreptitious and unplanned, that is, as being invisible and difficult to make sense of. In eschewing a theory in which anyone or any group may have been planning and benefiting from the changes, he falls back on the idea of natural and inevitable development, and optimistically describes the changes of the las...

Out of Order Understanding Repair and Maintenance

Abstract: This article seeks to demonstrate the centrality of maintenance and repair to an understanding of modern societies and, particularly, cities. Arguing that repair and maintenance activities present ...

Imagining Transgender: An Ethnography of a Category

Abstract: Imagining Transgender is an ethnography of the emergence and institutionalization of transgender as a category of collective identity and political activism. Embraced by activists in the early 1990s to advocate for gender-variant people, the category quickly gained momentum in public health, social service, scholarly, and legislative contexts. Working as a safer-sex activist in Manhattan during the late 1990s, David Valentine conducted ethnographic research among mostly male-to-female transgender-identified people at drag balls, support groups, cross-dresser organizations, clinics, bars, and clubs. However, he found that many of those labeled “transgender” by activists did not know the term or resisted its use. Instead, they self-identified as “gay,” a category of sexual rather than gendered identity and one rejected in turn by the activists who claimed these subjects as transgender. Valentine analyzes the reasons for and potential consequences of this difference, and how social theory is implicated in it. Valentine argues that “transgender” has been adopted so rapidly in the contemporary United States because it clarifies a model of gender and sexuality that has been gaining traction within feminism, psychiatry, and mainstream gay and lesbian politics since the 1970s: a paradigm in which gender and sexuality are distinct arenas of human experience. This distinction and the identity categories based on it erase the experiences of some gender-variant people—particularly poor persons of color—who conceive of gender and sexuality in other terms. While recognizing the important advances transgender has facilitated, Valentine argues that a broad vision of social justice must include, simultaneously, an attentiveness to the politics of language and a recognition of how social theoretical models and broader political economies are embedded in the day-to-day politics of identity.

The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity: Twelve Lectures

Abstract: The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity is a tour de force that has the immediacy and accessibility of the lecture form and the excitement of an encounter across, national cultural boundaries. Habermas takes up the challenge posed by the radical critique of reason in contemporary French poststructuralism.Tracing the odyssey of the philosophical discourse of modernity, Habermas's strategy is to return to those historical "crossroads" at which Hegel and the Young Hegelians, Nietzsche and Heidegger made the fateful decisions that led to this outcome. His aim is to identify and clearly mark out a road indicated but not taken: the determinate negation of subject-centered reason through the concept of communicative rationality. As The Theory of Communicative Action served to place this concept within the history of social theory, these lectures locate it within the history of philosophy. Habermas examines the odyssey of the philosophical discourse of modernity from Hegel through the present and tests his own ideas about the appropriate form of a postmodern discourse through dialogs with a broad range of past and present critics and theorists.The lectures on Georges Bataille, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, and Cornelius Castoriadis are of particular note since they are the first fruits of the recent cross-fertilization between French and German thought. Habermas's dialogue with Foucault - begun in person as the first of these lectures were delivered in Paris in 1983 culminates here in two appreciative yet intensely argumentative lectures. His discussion of the literary-theoretical reception of Derrida in America - launched at Cornell in 1984 - issues here in a long excursus on the genre distinction between philosophy and literature. The lectures were reworked for the final time in seminars at Boston College and first published in Germany in the fall of 1985.Jurgen Habermas is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Frankfurt. The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity is included in the series Studies in Contemporary German Social Thought, edited by Thomas McCarthy.

Complexity Theory, Systems Theory, and Multiple Intersecting Social Inequalities:

Abstract: This article contributes to the revision of the concept of system in social theory using complexity theory. The old concept of social system is widely discredited; a new concept of social system can more adequately constitute an explanatory framework. Complexity theory offers the toolkit needed for this paradigm shift in social theory. The route taken is not via Luhmann, but rather the insights of complexity theorists in the sciences are applied to the tradition of social theory inspired by Marx, Weber, and Simmel. The article contributes to the theorization of intersectionality in social theory as well as to the philosophy of social science. It addresses the challenge of theorizing the intersection of multiple complex social inequalities, exploring the various alternative approaches, before rethinking the concept of social system. It investigates and applies, for the first time, the implications of complexity theory for the analysis of multiple intersecting social inequalities.

Rethinking Modernity: Postcolonialism and the Sociological Imagination

Abstract: Acknowledgements Introduction: Postcolonialism, Sociology, and the Politics of Knowledge Production PART 1: SOCIOLOGY AND ITS HISTORIOGRAPHY Modernity, Colonialism and the Postcolonial Critique European Modernity and the Sociological Imagination From Modernization to Multiple Modernities: Eurocentrism Redux PART 2: DECONSTRUCTING EUROCENTRISM: CONNECTED HISTORIES The Renaissance and Myths of European Cultural Integrity The French Revolution and Myths of the Modern Nation-State The Industrial Revolution and Myths of Industrial Capitalism Conclusion: Sociology and Social Theory After Postcolonialism: Toward A Connected Historiography References Index

Creative Explorations: New Approaches to Identities and Audiences

Abstract: How do you picture identity? What happens when you ask individuals to make visual representations of their own identities, influences, and relationships? Drawing upon an array of disciplines from neuroscience to philosophy, and art to social theory, David Gauntlett explores the ways in which researchers can embrace people's everyday creativity in order to understand social experience. Seeking an alternative to traditional interviews and focus groups, he outlines studies in which people have been asked to make visual things - such as video, collage, and drawing - and then interpret them. This leads to an innovative project in which Gauntlett asked people to build metaphorical models of their identities in Lego. This creative reflective method provides insights into how individuals present themselves, understand their own life story, and connect with the social world. Creative Explorations is a lively, readable and original discussion of identities, media influences, and creativity, which will be of interest to both students and academics. Shortlisted for the 2007 Times Higher award, 'Young Academic Author of the Year'.

Towards a theory of children's participation

Abstract: framework for understanding what we mean when we talk about ‘children’s participation’. It does this by mapping some of the territory denoted by ‘children’s participation’, reviewing some of the criticisms that have made of participatory practice, and looking at some ways of conceptualising the field using a combination of existing models and new concepts from political and social theory, in particular from the work of Young and Bourdieu.

Bilingualism as Ideology and Practice

Abstract: Bilingualism is today as much a topic of academic research and public debate as it has ever been in the period since the end of World War II, as globalization and the new economy, migration and the expanded and rapid circulation of information, keep the question at the forefront of economic, political, social and educational concerns. The purpose of this book is to explore one particular set of approaches to the topic which seems particularly useful for understanding what bilingualism might mean today, in this context of social change, and how new understandings of it, as ideology and practice, also contribute to linguistic and social theory. In particular, the book aims to move the field of bilingualism studies away from a ‘common-sense’, but in fact highly ideologized, view of bilingualism as the coexistence of two linguistic systems, and to develop a critical perspective which allows for a better grasp on the ways in which language practices are socially and politically embedded. The aim is to move discussions of bilingualism away from a focus on the whole bounded units of code and community, and towards a more processual and materialist approach which privileges language as social practice, speakers as social actors and boundaries as products of social action.

Embeddedness and the Intellectual Projects of Economic Sociology

Abstract: In this review, we explore how the concept of embeddedness has shaped—and been shaped by—the evolution of the subfield of economic sociology. Although embeddedness is often taken as a conceptual umbrella for a single, if eclectic, approach to the sociological study of the economy, we argue that in fact the concept references two distinct intellectual projects. One project, following from Granovetter's (1985) well-known programmatic statement, attempts to discern the relational bases of social action in economic contexts. Another project, drawing from Polanyi's [1944 (2001), 1957, 1977] social theory, concerns the integration of the economy into broader social systems. Critically, these two formulations of embeddedness involve different views of the relationship between the economic and the social. The implication is that the obstacles to theoretical integration in economic sociology, while not insurmountable, are greater than is typically acknowledged.

Feminism After Bourdieu

Abstract: How might Bourdieu's social philosophy and social theory be of use to feminism? And how might it relate to - or possibly even fruitfully reframe - the ongoing problematics and current theoretical issues of feminism? In this volume contributors will use, critique, critically extend and develop Bourdieu's social theory to address some of the most pressing issues of our times. And in so doing they will address both ongoing and key contemporary problematics in contemporary feminist theory. These include the problematic of theorizing social agency (and especially the problematic of social versus performative agency); the issue of the relationship of social movements (and especially women's movements) to social change; the politics of cultural authorization; the theorization of technological forms of embodiment (that is the theorization of embodiment post bounded conceptions of the body); the relations of affect to the political; and the articulation of principles of what might be termed a new feminist materialism which goes beyond Bourdieu's own social logics.

Understanding Authority in Classrooms: A Review of Theory, Ideology, and Research

Abstract: Authority is a fundamental, problematic, and poorly understood component of classroom life. A better understanding of classroom authority can be achieved by reviewing writings on social theory, educational ideology, and qualitative research in schools. Social theories provide important analytical tools for examining the constitutive elements of authority but fall short of explaining its variability and contextual influences. Discussion of educational ideologies offers insights into the debates, historical contexts, and policy and reform agendas that shape the politics of authority while neglecting empirical realities. Qualitative studies present empirical data and analyses on the challenges intrinsic to classroom relations, but, exceptions aside, they often lack explicit attention to authority. More research focused on classroom authority as a social construction is needed to address critical educational concerns for contemporary practitioners, policy makers, and researchers.

Institutions and Individuals: Interaction and Evolution

Abstract: The conceptualization of the relation between individual and structure is central to social science. After making some key definitions, this paper overviews some recent developments in the social theory of structure and agency, and makes a novel addition, based on a concept of habit derived from pragmatism and Veblenian institutional economics. Processes of habituation provide a mechanism of ‘reconstitutive downward causation’ where institutional circumstances may affect individual preferences. Finally, special characteristics of organizations are discussed, endorsing an evolutionary analytical approach that combines insights from both evolutionary economics and organization science.

Grasping the Phenomenology of Sporting Bodies

Abstract: The last two decades have witnessed a vast expansion in research and writing on the sociology of the body and on issues of embodiment. Indeed, both sociology in general and the sociology of sport specifically have well heeded the long-standing and vociferous calls `to bring the body back in' to social theory. It seems particularly curious therefore that the sociology of sport has to date addressed this primarily at a certain abstract, theoretical level, with relatively few accounts to be found that are truly grounded in the corporeal realities of the lived sporting body; a `carnal sociology' of sport, to borrow Crossley's (1995) expression. To portray and understand more fully this kind of embodied perspective, it is argued, demands engaging with the phenomenology of the body, and this article seeks to contribute to a small but growing literature providing this particular form of `embodied' analysis of the body in sport. Here we identify some useful intellectual resources for developing a phenomenology of sporting experience, specifically its sensory elements, and also subsequently examine the potential for its evocative portrayal and effective analysis via different kinds of textual forms.

Bending Gender, Ending Gender: Theoretical Foundations for Social Work Practice with the Transgender Community

Abstract: Gender is a ubiquitous social construct that wields power over every individual in our society. The traditional dichotomous gender paradigm is oppressive, especially for transgendered people whose sense of themselves as gendered people is incongruent with the gender they were assigned at birth. Transgendered individuals are targeted for mistreatment when others attempt to enforce conventional gender boundaries. This article discusses gender-based oppression and the resulting psychosocial difficulties experienced by many transgendered individuals. The discussion advances a critical analysis of the dominant gender paradigm using two alternative theoretical perspectives on gender--queer theory and social constructionism. The article argues that the transgender community is an at-risk population and that empowering practice with this population calls on social workers to target society's traditional gender dichotomy for change. An overview of practice implications and research needs is provided.

Theory and explanation in child welfare: education and looked-after children

Abstract: Empirical child welfare research in England takes insufficient account of wider social theory. Intellectual, professional and political reasons for this are discussed. The implications are considered in relation to one important social problem: the low educational achievement of children looked after by local authorities (‘in care’). It is concluded that the absence of a broader sociological perspective has led to insufficient and simplistic explanations from researchers and policy-makers of low achievement among looked-after pupils. It is unwise to rely on official statistics on educational outcome indicators for looked-after pupils. Previous conceptualization of poor educational performance has been inadequate, and we should refer to low achievement, not ‘underachievement’. The socio-economic risk factors that are linked with family breakdown and admission to care also predict low educational achievement, such as social class and poverty. Social mobility and transition to adulthood are increasingly problematic in England, making it difficult for care leavers to improve their social position. Parental maltreatment is strongly linked with educational failure. Other countries may do no better than England does. Thus, it is by no means obvious that the care system necessarily jeopardizes looked-after children’s education.

Social Theories of Risk and Uncertainty: An Introduction

Abstract: 1. Introduction: The contribution of sociology to the discourse on risk and uncertainty:Jens O. Zinn. 2. Risk society and reflexive modernisation: Wolfgang Bonss. 3. Governmentality and risk:Pat O'Malley. 4. Systems theory and risk:Klaus-Peter Japp & Isabel Kusche. 5. Edgework, risk and uncertainty: Stephen Lyng. 6. Culture and risk: John Tulloch. 7. Comparison and perspectives of sociological theorizing on risk and uncertainty: Jens O. Zinn

A review of social identity theory with implications for training and development

Abstract: Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to review social identity theory and its implications for learning in organizations.Design/methodology/approach – This article is a conceptual paper based on a multidisciplinary review of the literature on social identity theory. This article explains the theoretical concepts, constructs, and findings of an identity‐based view of learning in organizations. The article describes the theoretical foundations of social identity theory and its elaboration as self‐categorization theory, along with some of the limitations of the theory. Important implications for workplace learning are presented.Findings – Although multiple factors influence how people work, social identity theory portends to be a unifying theory of organizational behavior because what and how people think as members of social groups influences subsequent behavior and attitudes in social systems. This influence has important implications for workplace learning..Practical implications – The social identities...

For emergence : Refining archer's account of social structure

Abstract: The question of social structure and its relationship to human agency remains one of the central problems of social theory. One of the most promising attempts to provide a solution has been Margaret Archer's morphogenetic approach, which invokes emergence to justify treating social structure as causally effective. Archer's argument, however, has been criticised by a number of authors who suggest that the examples she cites can be explained in reductionist terms and thus that they fail to sustain her claim for the independent causal effectiveness of social structure. This paper offers an alternative argument to support the emergentist claim for the causal effectiveness of social structure, and shows how this argument refutes a representative critique of social emergence.

Social Practices and Normativity

Abstract: Turner’s The Social Theory of Practices effectively criticized conceptions of social practices as rule-governed or regularity-exhibiting performances. Turner’s criticisms nevertheless overlook an a...

Situational crime prevention and its discontents: rational choice theory versus the 'culture of now'

Abstract: The rational choice theory of crime and its cognate field of study, situational crime prevention, have exerted a considerable influence in criminal justice policy and criminology. This article argues that, while undeniably useful as a means of reducing property or acquisitive crime, rational choice-inspired situational crime prevention initiatives are limited when it comes to offering protection against a growing number of so-called ‘expressive crimes’. Developing this critique, the article will criticize the sociologically hollow narrative associated with rational choice theories of crime by drawing on recent research in social theory and consumer studies. It argues that the growing tendency among many young individuals to engage in certain forms of criminal decision-making ‘strategies’ may simply be the by-product of a series of subjectivities and emotions that reflect the material values and cultural logic associated with late modern consumerism.

Sociology and postcolonialism: another 'missing' revolution?

Abstract: Sociology is usually represented as having emerged alongside European modernity. The latter is frequently understood as sociology’s special object with sociology itself a distinctively modern form of explanation. The period of sociology’s disciplinary formation was also the heyday of European colonialism, yet the colonial relationship did not figure in the development of sociological understandings. While the recent emergence of post-colonialism appears to have initiated a reconsideration of understandings of modernity, with the development of theories of multiple modernities, I suggest, however, that this engagement is more an attempt at recuperating the transformative aspect of post-colonialism than engaging with its critiques. In setting out the challenge of post-colonialism to dominant sociological accounts, I will also address ‘missing feminist/queer revolutions’, suggesting that by engaging with post-colonialism there is the potential to transform sociological understandings by opening up a dialogue beyond the simple pluralism of identity claims.

Knowing one's place: space, theory, education

Abstract: In the latter parts of the twentieth century social theory took a spatial turn, one that education has yet to undertake, at least in any concerted way. Nonetheless, this paper aims to demonstrate that there could be, and perhaps is, a more decided turn towards unraveling spatial questions underpinning educational processes and practices. In this paper, we briefly set out the key ‘trajectories’ of space in social theory. We also examine what happens when spatial theories ‘escape’ traditional disciplinary confines and ask, in a rudimentary way: to what extent education is education any longer when spatial dimensions are added to its fields of concern? This paper concludes by ‘mapping’ various spatial foci in critical educational studies.

Employment insecurity and social theory: the power of nightmares

Abstract: Data from the countries which social theorists had in mind when they elaborated the idea of a new age of employment insecurity do not support their theories. If the age of insecurity is dawning anywhere, it is in Spain, Mexico, Portugal, Turkey, Finland and Poland. It is not plausible that these examples inspired Beck, Giddens and Sennett. The causes of the different trends revealed by international comparison are more likely to be found in complex, multi-factoral explanations than in an age of insecure employment. The theorists became wedded to their diagnosis because of the problems they encountered in doing theory after the demise of Marxism and the post-modern turn made their critiques insecure. Their need for legitimation made their theorizing vulnerable to co-option in dystopian nightmares that served powerful interests.

A Social Theory of the Nation-State: The Political Forms of Modernity Beyond Methodological Nationalism

Abstract: Introduction Part 1: Understanding the Nation-State 1. The Critique of Methodological Nationalism: A Debate in Two Waves 2. A Claim to Universalism: Breaking the Equation between the Nation-State and Society Apart Part 2: Classical Social Theory 3. Karl Marx (1818-1883): The Rise of Capitalism and the Historical Elusiveness of the Nation-State 4. Max Weber (1864-1920): Politics and the Sociological Equivocations of the Nation-State 5. Emile Durkheim (1857-1917): Moral Universalism and the Normative Ambiguity of the Nation-State Part 3: Modernist Social Theory 6. Talcott Parsons (1902-1979): The Totalitarian Threat to the Nation-State 7. Raymond Aron (1905-1983), Barrington Moore (1913-2005) and Reinhardt Bendix (1916-1991): Industrialism and the Historicity of the Nation-State Part 4: Contemporary Social Theory 8. Michael Mann (1942- present) and Eric Hobsbawm (1919- present): Classes, Nations and Different Conceptions of the Nation-State 9. Manuel Castells (1942- present) and Globalization Theorists: The 'Definitive' Decline of the Nation-State 10. Niklas Luhmann (1927-1998) and Jurgen Habermas (1929- present): World Society, Cosmopolitanism and the Nation-state. Closing Remarks

Welfare Reform and Sexual Regulation

Abstract: Inspired by the political interventions of feminist women of color and Foucauldian social theory, Anna Marie Smith explores the scope and structure of the child support enforcement, family cap, marriage promotion, and abstinence education measures that are embedded within contemporary United States welfare policy. Presenting original legal research and drawing from historical sources, social theory, and normative frameworks, the author argues that these measures violate the rights of poor mothers. Drawing on several historical precedents the author shows that welfare policy has consistently constructed the sexual conduct of the racialized poor mother as one of its primary disciplinary targets. The book concludes with a vigorous and detailed critique of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's support for welfare reform law and an outline of a progressive feminist approach to poverty policy.

Ação econômica e estrutura social: o problema da imersão

Abstract: How behavior and institutions are affected by social relations is one of the classic questions of social theory. This paper concerns the extent to which economic action is embedded in structures of social relations, in modern industrial society. Although the usual neoclassical accounts provide an "undersocialized" or atomized-actor explanation of such action, reformist economists who attempt to bring social structure back in do so in the "oversocialized" way criticized by Dennis Wrong. Under- and oversocialized accounts are paradoxically similar in their neglect of ongoing structures of social relations, and a sophisticated account of economic action must consider its embeddedness in such structures. The argument is illustrated by a critique of Oliver Williamson’s "markets and hierarchies" research program.