Max Weber's Theory of Modernity
Max Weber's Theory of Modernity

Author: Dr Michael Symonds

Publisher: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.

Published: 2015-08-28

Total Pages: 209

ISBN-13: 1472462866

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Weber’s theory of meaning and modernity is articulated through an understanding of his account of the way in which the pursuit of meaning in the modern world has been shaped by the loss of Western religion and how such pursuit gives sense to the phenomena of human suffering and death. Through a close, scholarly reading of Weber’s extensive writings and Vocation Lectures, the author explores the concepts of ‘paradox’ and ‘brotherliness’ as found in Weber’s work, in order to offer an original exposition of Weber’s actual theory of how meaning and meaninglessness work in the modern world.

Modernity Theory
Modernity Theory

Author: John Jervis

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2018-12-29

Total Pages: 166

ISBN-13: 1137496762

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Modernity theory approaches modern experience as it incorporates a sense of itself as ‘modern’ (modernity), along with the possibilities and limitations of representing this in the arts and culture generally (modernism). The book interrogates modernity in the name of a fluid, unsettled, unsettling modernism. As the offspring of the Enlightenment and the Age of Sensibility, modernity is framed here through a cultural aesthetics that highlights not just an instrumental, exploitative approach to the world but the distinctive configuration of embodiment, feeling, and imagination, that we refer to as ‘civilization’, in turn both explored and subverted through modernist experimentalism and reflexive thinking in culture and the arts. This discloses the rationalizing pretensions that underlie the modern project and have resulted in the sensationalist, melodramatic conflicts of good and evil that traverse our contemporary world of politics and popular culture alike. This innovative approach permits modernity theory to link otherwise fragmented insights of separate humanities disciplines, aspects of sociology, and cultural studies, by identifying and contributing to a central strand of modern thought running from Kant through Benjamin to the present. One aspect of modernity theory that results is that it cannot escape the paradoxes inherent in reflexive involvement in its own history.

Social Acceleration
Social Acceleration

Author: Hartmut Rosa

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Published: 2013-05-14

Total Pages: 514

ISBN-13: 0231148348

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Hartmut Rosa advances an account of the temporal structure of society from the perspective of critical theory. He identifies in particular three categories of change in the tempo of modern social life: technological acceleration, evident in transportation, communication, and production; the acceleration of social change, reflected in cultural knowledge, social institutions, and personal relationships; and acceleration in the pace of life, which happens despite the expectation that technological change should increase an individual's free time. According to Rosa, both the structural and cultural aspects of our institutions and practices are marked by the "shrinking of the present," a decreasing time period during which expectations based on past experience reliably match future results and events. When this phenomenon combines with technological acceleration and the increasing pace of life, time seems to flow ever faster, making our relationships to each other and the world fluid and problematic. It is as if we are standing on "slipping slopes," a steep social terrain that is itself in motion and in turn demands faster lives and technology. As Rosa deftly shows, this self-reinforcing feedback loop fundamentally determines the character of modern life.

Modernity in Indian Social Theory
Modernity in Indian Social Theory

Author: A. Raghuramaraju

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2010-12-06

Total Pages: 221

ISBN-13: 0199088365

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Unlike the West, India presents a fascinating example of a society where the pre-modern continues to co-exist with the modern. Modernity in Indian Social Theory explores the social variance between India and the West to show how it impacted their respective trajectories of modernity. A. Raghuramaraju argues that modernity in the West involved disinheriting the pre-modern, and temporal ordering of the traditional and modern. It was ruthlessly implemented through programmes of industrialization, nationalism, and secularism. This book underscores that India did not merely the Western model of modernity or experience a temporal ordering of society. It situates this sociological complexity in the context of the debates on social theory. The author critically examines various discourses on modernity in India, including Partha Chatterjee’s account of Indian nationalism; Javeed Alam’s reading of Indian secularism; the use of the term pluralism by some Indian social scientists; and Gopal Guru’s emphasis on the lived Dalit experience. He also engages with the readings on key thinkers including Vivekananda, Aurobindo, Gandhi, and Ambedkar.

Theories of Modernity and Postmodernity
Theories of Modernity and Postmodernity

Author: Bryan S. Turner

Publisher: Sage Publications Limited

Published: 1990

Total Pages: 200

ISBN-13:

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This book encapsulates the recent debate on the concepts of modernity and postmodernity. Arguments over modernism and its aftermath are traced to their origins in art, architecture and literature. The authors then focus on the contribution of sociology to this cultural dispute through the theories of Weber, Simmel, Habermas, Lyotard and Baudrillard. Throughout, Theories of Modernity and Postmodernity demonstrates the connections between traditional problems of sociological theory and the contemporary debate around modernity.

The Subject of Modernity
The Subject of Modernity

Author: Anthony J. Cascardi

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 1992-03-19

Total Pages: 332

ISBN-13: 9780521423786

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The question of modernity has provoked a vigorous debate in the work of thinkers from Hegel to Habermas. Anthony J. Cascardi offers an historical account of the origins and transformations of the rational subject of self as it is represented in Descartes, Cervantes, Pascal, Hobbes and the Don Juan myth.

Habermas: A Very Short Introduction
Habermas: A Very Short Introduction

Author: James Gordon Finlayson

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 2005-05-26

Total Pages: 185

ISBN-13: 0192840959

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This book provides a clear and readable overview of the works of today's most influential German philosopher. It analyses the theoretical underpinnings of Habermas's social theory, and its applications in ethics, politics, and law. Finally, it examines how his social and political theory informs his writing on contemporary, political, and social problems.

Ulrich Beck
Ulrich Beck

Author: Mads Peter Sørensen

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2012

Total Pages: 210

ISBN-13: 0415693691

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

In Ulrich Beck, Mads P. Sørensen and Allan Christiansen provide an extensive and thorough introduction to the German sociologist's collected works. Focusing on the theory outlined in Beck's chief work, Risk Society, and on his theory of second modernity, Sørensen and Christiansen explain the sociologist's ideas and writing in a clear and accessible way.

Modernity and Self-Identity
Modernity and Self-Identity

Author: Anthony Giddens

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2013-04-30

Total Pages: 305

ISBN-13: 0745666485

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This major study develops a new account of modernity and its relation to the self. Building upon the ideas set out in The Consequences of Modernity, Giddens argues that 'high' or 'late' modernity is a post traditional order characterised by a developed institutional reflexivity. In the current period, the globalising tendencies of modern institutions are accompanied by a transformation of day-to-day social life having profound implications for personal activities. The self becomes a 'reflexive project', sustained through a revisable narrative of self identity. The reflexive project of the self, the author seeks to show, is a form of control or mastery which parallels the overall orientation of modern institutions towards 'colonising the future'. Yet it also helps promote tendencies which place that orientation radically in question - and which provide the substance of a new political agenda for late modernity. In this book Giddens concerns himself with themes he has often been accused of unduly neglecting, including especially the psychology of self and self-identity. The volumes are a decisive step in the development of his thinking, and will be essential reading for students and professionals in the areas of social and political theory, sociology, human geography and social psychology.