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Social theory
About: Social theory is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 11421 publications have been published within this topic receiving 624898 citations.
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01 Jan 2003
TL;DR: Sensual Relations as mentioned in this paper is an exploration of the relationship between sensory experience and cultural expression, arguing that the conventional exclusion of sensuality from intellectual inquiry and reclaiming sensation as a fundamental domain of social theory.
Abstract: With audacious dexterity, David Howes weaves together topics ranging from love and beauty magic in Papua New Guinea to nasal repression in Freudian psychology and from the erasure and recovery of the senses in contemporary ethnography to the specter of the body in Marx. Through this eclectic and penetrating exploration of the relationship between sensory experience and cultural expression, Sensual Relations contests the conventional exclusion of sensuality from intellectual inquiry and reclaims sensation as a fundamental domain of social theory. David Howes is Professor of Anthropology, Concordia University, Montreal, Quebec.
423 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors address key implications in momentous current global energy choices, both for social science and for society, by considering contending forms of transformation centring on renewable energy, nuclear power and climate geoengineering.
Abstract: This paper addresses key implications in momentous current global energy choices – both for social science and for society. Energy can be over-used as a lens for viewing social processes. But it is nonetheless of profound importance. Understanding possible ‘sustainable energy’ transformations requires attention to many tricky issues in social theory: around agency and structure and the interplay of power, contingency and practice. These factors are as much shaping of the knowledges and normativities supposedly driving transformation, as they are shaped by them. So, ideas and hopes about possible pathways for change – as well as notions of ‘the transition’ itself – can be deeply constituted by incumbent interests. The paper addresses these dynamics by considering contending forms of transformation centring on renewable energy, nuclear power and climate geoengineering. Several challenges are identified for social science. These apply especially where there are aims to help enable more democratic exercise of social agency. They enjoin responsibilities to ‘open up’ (rather than ‘close down’), active political spaces for critical contention over alternative pathways. If due attention is to be given to marginalised interests, then a reflexive view must be taken of transformation. The paper ends with a series of concrete political lessons.
420 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, two within-subject policy-capturing studies support the notion that media choice research has focused on attempts to determine what theory best explains people's choices of communication media.
Abstract: Recent media choice research has focused on attempts to determine what theory best explains people's choices of communication media. Two within-subject policy-capturing studies support the notion t...
418 citations
TL;DR: Herman as mentioned in this paper explored the political and cultural significance of psychology in post-World War II America and found that psychology has become a voice of great cultural authority, informing everything from family structure to government policy.
Abstract: Psychological insight is the creed of our time. A quiet academic discipline two generations ago, psychology has become a voice of great cultural authority, informing everything from family structure to government policy. How has this fledgling science become the source of contemporary America's most potent ideology? In this groundbreaking book - the first to fully explore the political and cultural significance of psychology in post-World War II America - Ellen Herman tells the story of Americans' love affair with the behavioral sciences. It began during wartime. The atmosphere of crisis sustained from the 1940s through the Cold War gave psychological "experts" an opportunity to prove their social theories and behavioral techniques.Psychologists, sociologists, and anthropologists carved a niche within government and began shaping military, foreign, and domestic policy. Herman examines this marriage of politics and psychology, which continued through the tumultuous 1960s. Psychological professionals' influence also spread among the general public. Drawn by promises of mental health and happiness, people turned to these experts for enlightenment. Their opinions validated postwar social movements from civil rights to feminism and became the basis of a new world view. Fascinating and long overdue, this book illuminates one of the dominant forces in American society.
412 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the most prominent ways in which social justice has been and is being thought about within various traditions of social theory and concludes by sketching out a framework for conceptualizing social justice in the context of education policy research.
Abstract: Within recent studies of education policy, social justice has been an under‐theorized concept. This paper is an attempt to begin to remedy this situation. It critically examines some of the most prominent ways in which social justice has been and is being thought about within various traditions of social theory and concludes by sketching out a framework for conceptualizing social justice in the context of education policy research. However, the main purpose of the paper is not to provide a definitive conceptualization of social justice but to open up a debate which might usefully inform the work of the education policy research community.
411 citations