Social theory

About: Social theory is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 11421 publications have been published within this topic receiving 624898 citations.

Dilemmas of the American Self

Abstract: Preface 1. The Ubiquity of the Self 2. Social Theory as Cultural Text 3. A View of American Culture 4. Modernity, Society, and Community 5. A Theory of Identity 6. Strategies of Self-Construction 7. In the Last Analysis Notes Bibliography Index

Signs of Recognition: Powers and Hazards of Representation in an Indonesian Society

Abstract: Webb Keane argues that by looking at representations as concrete practices we may find them to be thoroughly entangled in the tensions and hazards of social existence. This book explores the performances and transactions that lie at the heart of public events in contemporary Anakalang, on the Indonesian island of Sumba. Weaving together sharply observed narrative, close analysis of poetic speech and valuable objects, and far-reaching theoretical discussion, Signs of Recognition explores the risks endemic in representational practices. An awareness of risk is embedded in the very forms of ritual speech and exchange. The possibilities for failure and slippage reveal people's mutual vulnerabilities and give words and things part of their power. Keane shows how the dilemmas posed by the effort to use and control language and objects are implicated with general problems of power, authority, and agency. He persuades us to look differently at ideas of voice and value. Integrating the analysis of words and things, this book contributes to a wide range of fields, including linguistic anthropology, cultural studies, social theory, and the studies of material culture, art, and political economy.

The Power of Feelings: Personal Meaning in Psychoanalysis, Gender, and Culture

Abstract: In the middle of the twentieth century, leading cultural critics and visionaries-Erik Erikson, Lionel Trilling, Herbert Marcuse, and many others-turned to psychoanalysis as a measure of human personal and cultural fulfillment Now, as we enter a new millennium, Nancy J Chodorow, well known as a feminist theorist and psychoanalyst, takes her place in this line of eminent thinkers and revitalizes their project Psychoanalysis, she claims, offers in its clinical goals and its vision of possibility insight into the nature of subjectivity and the quality of good relations with others It continues centuries of reflection and imagination about the good life In this pathbreaking book, Chodorow draws upon her broad knowledge and background in social theory, her feminism, and her experience as a psychoanalyst In extensively elaborated chapters on psychoanalytic theory, she argues that a psychoanalysis that takes as its starting point the immediacy of unconscious fantasy and feeling found in the clinical encounter can illuminate our understanding of individual subjectivity and potentially transform all sociocultural thought Creating a dialogue between feminism, anthropology, and psychoanalysis, she holds that feminism, anthropology, and other cultural theories require that psychoanalysts take seriously how cultural meanings help to constitute psychic life At the same time, psychoanalysis demonstrates that contemporary theories of meaning cannot neglect the unconscious realm, which has just as much power as culture does to create meaning for the individual Chodorow acknowledges postmodern accounts of the decentering and fragmentation of individuality but argues that psychoanalysis gives us an account of subjectivity that incorporates forms of wholeness and depth of experience, without which we cannot have a meaningful life

Social Theories of Risk Perception: At Once Indispensable and Insufficient

Abstract: This article provides a critical comparative review of Ulrich Beck's and Mary Douglas's social theories of risk. The author is particularly concerned to highlight the partiality of their favoured renditions of the social reality of risk perception in relation to the accumulated evidence of empirical research. Their contrasting (and opposing) conceptions of the social processes through which people may negotiate the meaning of `hazard' in terms of `risk' are presented as ideal-types which are both indispensable and insufficient for explaining the cultural complexity of this phenomenon. Moreover, insofar as the lived experience of complexity may be made the object of sociological concern, it is suggested that we might be in a better position to evaluate the cultural significance of risk as a product of this experience.