Suchergebnisse

The history of legislation in Illinois in regard to canals, including the present scheme for a drainage ship canal.--The story of the Erie Canal. ; Mode of access: Internet.

"In this comprehensive and clear introduction to contemporary social theory, Anthony Elliott and Charles Lemert explore the major theoretical traditions from the Frankfurt School to the digital revolution and beyond. Fully revised and updated, this second edition has been expanded to consider the most recent developments in social theory, including a new chapter on the digital revolution and the increasingly significant impact of technological developments (such as artificial intelligence, machine learning and robotics) on society, culture, and politics. Introduction to Contemporary Social Theory provides the reader with a superb overview of key developments in social theory, including the Frankfurt School, American pragmatism, structuralism, post-structuralism, feminism, globalization and world-systems theory. In doing so, the textbook explores the ideas of a wide range of social theorists, including Theodor Adorno, Herbert Marcuse, Talcott Parsons, Erving Goffman, Harold Garfinkel, Michel Foucault, Jacques Lacan, Jacques Derrida, C. Wright Mills, Anthony Giddens, Pierre Bourdieu, Julia Kristeva, Jürgen Habermas, Judith Butler, Slavoj Žižek, Manuel Castells, Cornel West, Immanuel Wallerstein and Zygmunt Bauman. This textbook provides stylish exposition with powerful social critique and original insights. It will be indispensable to students and academics alike"--

'Society' is one of the most fundamental frequently used words in public life; it is also a foundational term in the social sciences. In our own time, however, the idea of ʹsocietyʹ has never been so much in dispute and so little understood. For some critics, society is simply too consensual for a world of intensive discord. For others, the idea of ʹsocietyʹ is oppressive - the very notion, so some argue, is dismissive of the infinite social differences that shape global realities. In this erudite and original book, two of the worldʹs leading social theorists, Anthony Elliott and Bryan S. Turner, focus on unravelling the different meanings of society as a way of introducing the reader to contemporary debates in social theory. The authors provocatively argue that all ideas of society can be assigned to one of three analytical categories, or some combination of these: structure, solidarity or creation. In developing a fresh characterization of the nature of the social, Elliott and Turner introduce the concepts of ʹenclavedʹ, ʹstickyʹ and ʹelasticʹ societies as a means of understanding global transformations. -- Back cover.

chapter Introduction -- chapter 1 Individualism for beginners When Caoimhe met Annie somewhere in global space -- chapter 2 Was the free individual just a dream? Snapshots of individualism and the illusion of the good society -- chapter 3 Living in a privatized world Coping with globalization -- chapter 4 On the individualist arts of sex Intimacy, eroticism and the newly lost individual -- chapter 5 The self and other ethical troubles Ethics, social differences and the truths of multiculturalism -- chapter 6 Surviving the new individualism Living aggressively in deadly worlds.

AbstractIn recent years, there has been a rapidly growing body of work in the social sciences that underscores the prevalence of the phenomenon of 'social acceleration'—the speeding up of social life— in many parts of theWestern world. Although research on social acceleration has tended to analyze the phenomenon on a social‐structural level, there is also a need to investigate how social acceleration has 'ramifications for the socially dominant forms of self‐relation'. One way to gain a more in‐depth understanding of this facet of social acceleration is to investigate the speeding up of social life through the prism of the self. The central argument of this article is that there are at least five images of the self which can be associated with the social acceleration phenomenon: (1) the 'detached' self, (2) the 'reflexive' self, (3) the 'reinventive' self, (4) the 'stationary' self and (5) the 'decelerating' self. By explaining how these kinds of self relate to the speeding up process, we seek to advance a more nuanced and sophisticated theory of social acceleration, which captures some of the complexities and paradoxes that the phenomenon involves.

Although sociology can be commonsensically and parsimoniously defined as the study of society, the problems of defining such terms as 'society', 'the social', and 'the social system' remain an ongoing irritant of sociological theory. In addition to these traditional conceptual problems, there is currently a strong sense that 'society' as an empirical reality and 'society' as a concept are in crisis. Given the contemporary view of 'the end of the social' there is also manifestly a potent and nostalgic interest in the past as a time of comforting solidarity and meaningfulness. To clarify this debate, we start by making a distinction between three approaches to society, namely structure, solidarity and creation. Nostalgia hinges around the certainties that followed from reliable social structures, and from the comfort of community. We illustrate these forms of nostalgia through an examination of the social philosophy of Alasdair MacIntyre. Recognizing that his criticisms of the loss of virtue represent a powerful indictment of modernity, we argue that past societies were also fractured by moral discord. More importantly, MacIntyre rules out the possibility of moral re-invention by excluding the rise of human rights as a moral framework. In conclusion, the forms of social creativity may not enjoy the 'sticky' solidarity of the past, but they do testify Georg Simmel's idea of the social (Vergesellschaftung).

The Routledge Companion to Contemporary Japanese Social Theory breaks new ground in providing a detailed, systematic appraisal of the major traditions of social theory prominent in Japan today - from theories of identity and individualization to globalization studies. The volume introduces readers to the rich diversity of social-theoretical critique in contemporary Japanese social theory.The editors have brought together some of the most influential Japanese social scientists to assess current trends in Japanese social theory, including Kazuhisa Nishihara, Aiko Kashimura, Masahiro Ogino, Yumik