Contemporary Social Theory

Globalism, Nationalism, Tribalism establishes a new basis for understanding the changing nature of polity and community and offers unprecedented attention to these dominant trends. The book charts the contradictions and tensions we all encounter in an era of increasing globalization, from genocide and terrorism to television and finance capital.

Globalism is treated as an uneven and layered process of spatial expansion, not simply one of disorder, fragmentation or rupture. Nor is it simply a force of homogenization.

Nationalism is taken seriously as a continuing and important formation of contemporary identity and politics. The book rewrites the modernism theories of the nation-state without devolving into the postmodernist assertion that all is invention or surface gloss.

Tribalism is given the attention it has long warranted and is analyzed as a continuing and changing formation of social life, from the villages of Rwanda to the cities of the West.

Theoretically adept and powerfully argued, this is the first comprehensive analysis that brings these crucial themes of contemporary life together.

Contents
PART ONE: RETURNING TO A THEORY OF SOCIAL FORMATION / Social Relations in Tension
/ Contending Approaches in Outline / Theory in the Shadow of Terror / PART TWO: RETHINKING
FORMATIONS OF PRACTICE AND BEING / Constituting Customary Community / Communication
and Exchange, Money and Writing / Time and Space, Calendars and Maps / Bodies and Symbols, Blood
and Milk / PART THREE: REWRITING THE HISTORY OF THE PRESENT / State Formation:
From Kingdoms and Empires to Nation-States / Nation Formation: From the Medieval to the
Postmodern / Global Formation: From the Oecumene to Planet Exploitation / Conclusion: Principles for
a Postnational World

April 2006 · 392 pages
Cloth (0-7619-5513-5)
Paper (0-7619-5514-3)
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Design and designer's role have changed. It is now not only about adding aesthetic value and functionality to a product. The human centric approach of design generates questions of how design education can adapt and modify to magnify the role of a designer as a social leader and be responsible towards socially conscious design. Social innovation does involve the convergence of human involvement with contemporary society for a significant change. Hence, the role and scope of design is increased towards creating an impact on society and culture. Through the study of secondary data in the form of case studies, this paper attempts to identify how through design we can have innovative solutions towards social issues.

Dans le sociétés occidentales, les parents sont soumis à des injonctions contradictoires. D'un côté, celle d'être un "bon parent"; de l'autre celles de la participation active à d'autres sphères de la société, notamment celle du marché du travail, à être disponible, mobile, flexible, etc.
L'origine de ces injonctions semble résider dans la nature singulière du projet de parentalité au sein du paradigme libéral. Le neutralité de l'Etat vis à vis des projets individuels peine à être étendu à celui de faire naître et d'élever des enfants. L'implication plus globale de la collectivité dans l'éducation des enfants devrait être repensée pour permettre une conception plus cohérente du modèle libéral.

This is an unusual book. Combining social science fiction, utopianism, pragmatism, sober analysis, and innovative social theory, the authors address one of the biggest dilemmas of our age – how to solve the problems arising from mass displacement. As early versions of the solution proposed by Robin Cohen and Nicholas Van Hear filtered out, their vision of a new, networked, transnational archipelago, called Refugia, was immediately denounced or met with scepticism by established refugee scholars. Others were more intrigued, more open-minded, or perhaps just holding their fire until this book was finally published. As it at least has the virtue of originality, why not judge the proposal for yourself? Read it and craft your own critique. The authors have initiated an openly pro-refugee vision that all can help to shape. Written in a clear and direct style, this book will appeal to scholars, students and practitioners, as well as to an informed public ready to engage with this pressing issue.

[published in Routledge's "Philosophy and Method in the Social Sciences" series]

This study starts from a simple premise:  human practices are a fundamental constituent — arguably “the” fundamental constituent — of social reality.  It then poses the following question:  What would social scientists’ research look like if they took this insight quite seriously?

That, of course, would depend on what practices are in fact like:  what their generic features are, how they are constituted, how they might be identified and characterised and explained, how they function in concrete contexts, how they might change across time and space.  These are the kinds of questions that this book tries to tackle, insisting that their answers hold important implications for the effective practice of social science.

The book thus attempts to build a philosophical infrastructure for the empirical study of practices in the social sciences and humanities.  At the same time, it also tries to explore the implications of this ontology of human practices for issues in social theory and in the philosophy of the social sciences.  The book thus stands at the intersection of the philosophy of social science, social theory, and the social sciences.

Focusing on Beckett's Waiting for Godot and Beck's account of 'freedom's children', this essay explores the dilemmas and potentials of the 'risk society'. Godot enacts the mess of Western culture and its radically debilitated capacity to support the gift of sociality, while revealing the unconscious ground of desire, destructiveness and repetition that sociality both incorporates and represses. Can 'freedom's children' renovate the gift of sociality under such unpropitious conditions?

Power is often taken to be a central concept in social and political thought that can contribute to the explanation of many different social phenomena. This article argues that in order to play this role, a general theory of power is required to identify a stable causal capacity, one that does not depend on idiosyncratic social conditions and can thus exert its characteristic influence in a wide range of cases. It considers three promising strategies for such a theory, which ground power in (1) the ability to use force, (2) access to resources, or (3) collective acceptance. It shows that these strategies fail to identify a stable causal capacity. The lack of an adequate general theory of power suggests that the concept lacks the necessary unity to play the broad explanatory role it is often accorded.

El presente trabajo pretende ser el primer acercamiento sobre el uso que las principales instituciones de cultura de gobierno en México dan a las redes sociales en boga hoy en día: facebook y twitter. Las preguntas iniciales que me planteo son: ¿cuántas instituciones culturales de gobierno en México utilizan las redes sociales para difundir sus actividades?, ¿tienen cuenta en facebook y twitter?, ¿cómo las utilizan?, ¿con qué frecuencia?, ¿a qué cuenta le dan más prioridad?, ¿existe una comunicación entre las instituciones culturales?, ¿se limitan a difundir sus actividades o también entran en diálogo con los demás usuarios? 

The present work is intended to be the first approach to the virtual social networks –Facebook and Twitter- usage by the major official institutions of culture in Mexico. The initial questions that I set are: how many official cultural institutions in Mexico use social networks to publicize their activities? do they have an account on Facebook and Twitter?, how often are they used?, what account do they use the most?, is there a formal communication between these cultural institutions?, are these social networks used to publish their activities only, or they are also an ordinary way to interact with common users?

The process of redefining national and ethnic identities often relies on a close relationship between cultural and linguistic traditions, political movements and
religious communities. This manuscript seeks to understand how the religious
aspect influenced regional identity-building under conditions of colonial rule in
India. The paper draws on a project concerning itself with the political implications
of regional identities during the twenties and thirties of the 20th century. The
project compares the movements of the Sikhs, the Tamil "Non-Brahmans" and
the Pakhtuns.
It is intended to outline the evolution of the religious aspect in these movements
through three major stages of political mobilisation: revivalism, loyalism
and radicalism. The issue seems to be of particular interest in the Indian case
for two reasons:
- Was there any common pattern behind the influence of religion on group
identity? What were the similarities and the differences in the role of religion
in the three movements?
- Was there any peculiarity in the Indian case under colonial rule as compared
to the time of independence?

From 2008 to 2009, “herbivore men (sôshoku danshi or sôshoku-kei danshi in Japanese)” became a trendy, widely used term in Japanese. It flourished in all sorts of media, including TV, the Internet, newspapers and magazines, and could even occasionally be heard in everyday conversation. As it became more popular its original meaning was diversified, and people began to use it with a variety of different nuances. In December of 2009 it made the top ten list of nominees for the “Buzzword of the Year” contest sponsored by U-CAN. By 2010 it had become a standard noun, and right now, in 2011, people do not seem particularly interested in it. Buzzwords have a short lifespan, so there is a high probability that it will soon fall out of use. The fact remains, however, that the appearance of this term has radically changed the way people look at young men. It can perhaps even be described as an epochal event in the history of the male gender in Japan.

The entry begins with a definition of geography and with a description of what the discipline shares with the other social sciences and what makes it distinctive among them. Terminological clarifications are provided with regard to the relationship between human geography and physical geography, and between human geography and urban geography. After a brief history and overview of human geography’s engagement with social theory, the entry offers a discussion of the politicization of contemporary human geography and of how this phenomenon is reflected in theory building and concept development.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118430873.est0464

In this paper I offer a contribution to the recent conceptual debate that has taken place regarding the understanding and use of Ulrich Beck’s theory of individualisation in the sociology of youth. I seek to defend Beck’s position against the vast hostility it has faced from authors working in this field by showing how much of this critique has been premised on very problematic and easily countered interpretations of his perspective. In particular, I argue many have failed to properly grasp the complex and contradictory nature of this approach because they miss the emphasis he places on the way in which individualisation is fundamentally institutionalised under contemporary conditions. In order to illustrate this point, I will discuss several examples in which this trend towards institutionalised individualisation can be observed. By highlighting this aspect of Beck’s work that has thus far been largely unexplored, I hope to help foster an understanding of the individualisation thesis which renders it as productive in youth research as more than simply an object of critique. In order to help clarify and operationalise my argument I draw upon writings from social policy and the life-course approach, since these areas have engaged with the topic of individualisation in a more sophisticated and grounded manner than in youth studies.

Liberalism is a term employed in a dizzying variety of ways across the humanities and social sciences. This essay seeks to reframe how the liberal tradition is understood. I start by delineating different types of response – prescriptive, comprehensive, explanatory – that are frequently conflated in answering the question “what is liberalism?” I then discuss assorted methodological strategies employed in the existing literature: after rejecting “stipulative” and “canonical” approaches, I outline a contextualist alternative. On this (comprehensive) account, liberalism is best characterised as the sum of the arguments that have been classified as liberal, and recognised as such by other self-proclaimed liberals, over time. In the remainder of the article I present an historical analysis of shifts in the meaning of liberalism in Anglo-American political thought between 1850 and 1950, focusing in particular on how John Locke came to be seen as a liberal. I also explore the emergence of the category of "liberal democracy". I argue that the scope of the liberal tradition was massively expanded during the middle decades of the twentieth century, such that it came to be seen by many as the constitutive ideology of the West. This capacious (and deeply confusing) understanding of liberalism was produced by a conjunction of the ideological wars fought against “totalitarianism” and assorted developments in the social sciences. Today we both inherit and inhabit it.

""This paper introduces issues around the integration of media arts within core visual art education addressing a specific aspect of contemporary cultural production, the YOUTUBE video.
This presentation directly links to contextual presentation of contemporary and historical materials within current teaching programs. ""  For a multimedia & updated version of this paper go to
http://jeremy-blank.blogspot.com.au/2013/02/contact_15.html

Having developed his action frame of reference and his voluntaristic theory of action in The Structure of Social Action (described in Part A), Talcott Parsons turned his attention to the social system per se. He developed some key concepts to characterise the structure of social interaction and then expanded the scope of his framework to cover all aspects of society including some initial thoughts on how it maintains its stability and how it changes. In 1951 the results were published in two books, Towards a General Theory of Action (with Shils) and The Social System. In these books he introduces his system of ‘pattern variables’. Further developments published in Working Papers in the Theory of Action (with Bales and Shils) and Economy and Society (with Smelser) focused on the relationship between the social and the economic system introducing the ‘four-function paradigm’ or AGIL model. This paper summarizes the attempt by Parsons to develop an extensive and arguably comprehensive foundational basis for sociology. At the same time sufficient detail is provided to enable the reader to appreciate the complexity and depth of social theory in general and the functionalism of Parsons in particular. A subsequent paper (Part C) examines criticisms of functionalism, describes other schools of social theory in relation to it, and discusses the use made of social theory in OR.

A princípio, esta investigação versa sobre as teorias empiristas contemporâneas a partir do programa empirista estabelecido pelo filósofo da ciência Bas van Fraassen, a partir da década de 1980. Assim, o nosso problema de pesquisa parte do referido autor, em seus pontos fortes e fracos, para realizarmos um diálogo com concepções empiristas atualmente em desenvolvimento: o empirismo contextual crítico de Helen Longino e empirismo social de Miriam Solomon. Depois, traçamos um panorama da discussão entre filósofos e sociólogos da ciência, abrangendo o empirismo lógico e as várias propostas dentro da sociologia da ciência: o funcionalismo de Robert K. Merton, o Programa Forte, e as teorias microssociológicas de Karin Knorr-Cetina e Bruno Latour. Tal painel possibilita uma visão mais ampla dos fundamentos teóricos tanto do programa empirista de van Fraassen como das teorias empiristas de Longino e de Solomon. No mais, o exame da sociologia da ciência foi de grande valia pelos argumentos arregimentados em favor do caráter social do conhecimento: ponto este que é crucial na nossa defesa empirista. Em seguida, examinamos criticamente o projeto empirista de van Fraassen, para podermos cotejá-lo com as novas teorias empiristas de Longino e de Solomon, as quais também são analisadas nos seus pormenores. Então, com base nas questões específicas do empirismo de van Fraassen, verificamos de que forma as mencionadas teorias empiristas contribuem, ou até resolvem flancos teóricos do filósofo em tela. Por fim, elaboramos uma proposta empirista que tentou reunir de modo harmonioso e competente as teses mais importantes dos/as autores/as em questão, visando a construção de uma teoria da ciência empirista aplicada às ciências sociais, no caso, à teoria social atual.

This research, conducted by the author when a Senior Researcher at Newcastle University, UK, was funded by a UK governance organisation to help them assess, integrate and improve their understanding of the governed population.

ABSTRACT: Governance organisations have been urged to develop more holistic evidence-based approaches with partners to better deal with issues affecting the governed population. This presupposes an understanding of the population, yet there has been little research work addressing how governance organisations come to understand their governed population, nor how this understanding can be improved upon within such organisations.

This case study examined in-depth how understanding of a governed population was developed within one UK local governance organisation and it explored how such understanding might be developed and improved through more holistic and evidence-based organisational learning within the organisation and its governance partnerships.

The research methodology involved placement within the governance organisation, participant observations on several projects and innovative initiatives, observations within, across, and outside the organisation, and also interviews with varied key stakeholders.

The study examined:

- stakeholder engagement and networks
- current and varied understandings of the population
- mechanisms actually used for developing understandings
- the influence of context on organisational learning

and analysed these to arrive at a recommendations to improve organisational understanding of the governed population.

In the case studied, significant strengths were found: including innovative past learning trials for development, extensive ongoing networking activities, and many varied and accumulating quantitative datasets available across partnerships.

However, entrenched organisational approaches and practices constrained the development of holistic evidence-based understanding, for instance: the absence of systematic maintained collective learning processes; weak recording and forgetting of understandings; methodological exclusion of stakeholders from the development of understanding; the relative neglect of qualitative data, explanations, investigations, interpretations, and reflexivity; and also implicit organisational acceptance of such limitations and low aspirations.

Nonetheless, untapped opportunities existed to enable change including: latent practitioner knowledge and innovative management champions, the desire for improvement and raised aspirations within learning networks, and the development potential of alterative learning approaches.

It was concluded that more holistic evidence-based understanding was possible, but required new learning approaches beyond those then in use in both local government or academia.   

Recommendations are made to utilise and develop improved organisational learning approaches trialed and reported in the case study.

It is argued that the case study findings, conclusions, and recommendations may be applicable to other similar local governance organisations and partnerships that seek to better understand local populations, services and interventions.

The work was also submitted for, and awarded, an MPhil (at Newcastle University, supervised by Prof. Patsy Healy)

This article reviews an English translation of "First Principles of Islamic Economics" (Leicester: Islamic Foundation, 2011) by Maulana Sayyid Abu’l A‘la Maududi (1903–1979), a foundational document of the field, that was published in Urdu in 1969. After a brief Introduction the selections in this book are arranged in two parts: Islam’s philosophy (or system, the words are used interchangeably) of economic life, and the application of this philosophy to some specific economic issues. The article reviews the text, and provides a brief guide to the semantic minefield that readers of translated texts on Islamic economics must traverse.

In his recent book Weltrisikogesellschaft Ulrich Beck addresses some of the critics moved to his influent risk society theory since 1986. In doing this he ends up with refining, and enriching his theory by considering the huge debate it has stimulated during last two decades. In these paper I discuss these revisions of the risk society theory, reconsidering them on the light of other influent sociologies of risk.

“Theory and research that capture the contours of collectives have been fundamental objectives of social science since its inception.” (Cohen, 1989: 273). There are different traditions of thought that have adopted different perspectives and conceptualised the social reality emphasising one aspect over the other, drawing inspiration from the conceptual development of natural science. However, in the recent past, according to Giddens and Turner, a dramatic change has occurred within the philosophy of natural sciences which has inevitably influenced thinking about the social sciences. This, according to them, has resulted in the proliferation of approaches in theoretical thinking (1989: 2). Anthony Giddens stands out and enjoys a distinctive position, through the evolution of his theory of structuration, giving a major new perspective to the contemporary social thought. This paper attempts to locate the significance of Gidden’s theory in the development of sociological thought and dwells on the salient features of his theory.

This is the typescript version of Chapter 4 from out book Weber's Rationalism and Modern Society (Palgrave 2015).  It is the most up-to-date translation of Weber's classic essay "Class, Status, Party," which was first translated by Hans Gerth and C. Wright Mills.

This essay aims at exploring the theoretical implications for the foucauldian research project of some key concepts developed by Georges Canguilhem. Namely the concept of «norms», «normativity», and «normalization». I believe these concepts crucial for understanding the development of the genealogical project on which Michel Foucault embarked during the Seventies, and particularly for obtaining a deeper understanding of the idea of disciplinary power as part of the broader biopolitical project. This preliminary conceptual exploration between Canguilhem and Foucault, will also provide some useful theoretical tools to better understand the position of the legal phenomenon within the foucauldian genealogy of modern power.

This book offers a much-needed new political theory of an old phenomenon. The last decade alone has marked the highest number of migrations in recorded history. Constrained by environmental, economic, and political instability, scores of people are on the move. But other sorts of changes—from global tourism to undocumented labor—have led to the fact that to some extent, we are all becoming migrants. The migrant has become the political figure of our time.

Rather than viewing migration as the exception to the rule of political fixity and citizenship, Thomas Nail reinterprets the history of political power from the perspective of the movement that defines the migrant in the first place. Applying his "kinopolitics" to several major historical conditions (territorial, political, juridical, and economic) and figures of migration (the nomad, the barbarian, the vagabond, and the proletariat), he provides fresh tools for the analysis of contemporary migration.

Antonio Gramsci's Prison Notebooks are today acknowledged as a classic of the human and social sciences in the twentieth century. The influence of his thought in numerous fields of scholarship is only exceeded by the diverse interpretations and readings to which it has been subjected, resulting in often contradictory 'images of Gramsci'. This book draws on the rich recent season of Gramscian philological studies in order to argue that the true significance of Gramsci's thought consists in its distinctive position in the development of the Marxist tradition. Providing a detailed reconsideration of Gramsci's theory of the state and concept of philosophy, The 'Gramscian moment' argues for the urgent necessity of taking up the challenge of developing a 'philosophy of praxis' as a vital element in the contemporary revitalisation of Marxism.