This edited collection calls for renewed attention to the concept of the sociological imagination, allowing social scientists to link private issues to public troubles. Inspired by the eminent Glasgow-based sociologist, John Eldridge, it re-engages with the concept and shows how it can be applied to analyzing society today.
This edited collection calls for renewed attention to the concept of the sociological imagination, allowing social scientists to link private issues to public troubles. Inspired by the eminent Glasgow-based sociologist, John Eldridge, it re-engages with the concept and shows how it can be applied to analyzing society today.
The Routledge International Handbook of C. Wright Mills Studies brings together leading scholars of the work of radical sociologist C. Wright Mills to showcase its impact across the social sciences. Showing how Mills’ thought can be taken up - and in some cases, sympathetically reformulated - to tackle problems of power and politics, it presents an authoritative state-of-the-art overview of Mills’ groundbreaking ideas and his far-reaching theoretical and methodological impact. Crucially, the volume also illustrates the value of thinking with Mills in addressing the complexities of contemporary capitalist democracies. As such, it will appeal to scholars of sociology, anthropology, organization studies, peace and conflict studies, criminology, politics and public administration.
Bringing together leading interpreters of Zygmunt Bauman’s sociology, this volume thinks with and beyond Bauman’s work in order to show its continued relevance as a theory in its own right, as an object of criticism and as a stepping stone towards a fuller understanding of contemporary society. The volume deals with some proposed omissions and absences in Bauman’s sociology, with chapters comparing Bauman’s ideas to those of other prominent social thinkers as well as chapters devoted to teasing out some problems and pitfalls in his work. Paying attention to central concepts and themes of Bauman’s thought, authors engage with various aspects of his work, considering potential deficiencies in his ethical perspective, his neglect of the religious dimensions of modernity, his lack of consideration for ethnicity and gender, his overlooking the importance of socialisation in liquid modernity and his problematic argument for individual choice and freedom in a world that is increasingly closed down by consumer capitalism. Beyond Bauman aspires to show that despite Bauman's status as a key sociological thinker, there are also certain deficiencies in his work demand critical discussion. It will be of use to scholars of sociology, contemporary society, social theory and modernity.
This new book gathers together essays concerning the strategic modes of appropriation that Bourdieu practiced with regard to Marx, together with their various outcomes. It is especially devoted to the practice of critique that both thinkers exercised vigilantly throughout their careers, as this is the terrain on which we can best illuminate the debt that Bourdieu acknowledged to Marx. Ongoing dialogue with the entire body of Marxian critique is a constant in Bourdieu's writings. This is most clearly evidenced by the adoption of a critical perspective on the social world that denotes a massive Marxian presence. It is reinforced by the repeated references to Marx’s texts that the sociologist scatters throughout his works. Indeed, in the interlinked set of critiques underpinning the architecture of his work, in the plethora of questions he raises, and in the scientific practice he adopts, Bourdieu attaches himself to the Marxian model — notwithstanding his polemical remarks and his own deviations, or, we might even say, by virtue of them. The book is divided into three interconnected sections for ease of access: critique of domination, critique of economic practices and theories, and critique of ideology. As the first volume in English to explore the relationship between Bourdieu and Marx, this book is vital reading for students and scholars of social and anthropological theory.
This Spring 2011 (IX, 2) issue of Human Architecture: Journal of the Sociology of Self-Knowledge, entitled “Learning Transformations: Applied Sociological Imaginations from First Year Seminars and Beyond,” includes nine UMass Boston undergraduate student papers: seven from two sections of the first year seminar, Soc. 110G: “Insiders/Outsiders,” one from the course “Youth and Society” (Soc. 201), and another from the course “Elements of Sociological Theory” (Soc. 341), all taken during the 2010-2011 academic year at UMass Boston. The authors cultivate their sociological imaginations of the link between their personal troubles and broader public issues by exploring topics such as: difficulties with writing; struggles with overachievement; adolescent depression; pessimism; obsession with body self-image; pornography and love; drunken driving; feminine identity formation; and coping with personal traumas amid parental, sibling, and societal dysfunctions. The editor points to the significance of publishing undergraduate scholarships of learning and their sociological self-studies, highlighting the extent to which the origins of the present journal entitled “human architecture” can itself be traced to his own “student selves” and early undergraduate education in architecture at U.C. Berkeley, and specifically to a seminar he took with his undergraduate teacher and advisor, the late “professor of design” and renowned painter, Jesse Reichek. Contributors include: Thanh D. Pham, Iris M. Rivas, Melissa Mejia, Ryan J. Canillas, Michaela Volpe, Rose Bautista, Jennifer Cervantes, Ann Barnes, Melanie Maxham, and Mohammad H. Tamdgidi (also as journal editor-in-chief). Human Architecture: Journal of the Sociology of Self-Knowledge is a publication of OKCIR: The Omar Khayyam Center for Integrative Research in Utopia, Mysticism, and Science (Utopystics). For more information about OKCIR and other issues in its journal’s Edited Collection as well as Monograph and Translation series visit OKCIR’s homepage.
Documentary has never attracted such audiences, never been produced with such ease from so many corners of the globe, never embraced such variety of expression. The very distinctions between the filmed, the filmer and the spectator are being dissolved. The Act of Documenting addresses what this means for documentary's 21st century position as a genus in the “class” cinema; for its foundations as, primarily, a scientistic, eurocentric and patriarchal discourse; for its future in a world where assumptions of photographic image integrity cannot be sustained. Unpacked are distinctions between performance and performativy and between different levels of interaction, linearity and hypertextuality, engagement and impact, ethics and conditions of reception. Winston, Vanstone and Wang Chi explore and celebrate documentary's potentials in the digital age.
How has the concept of productive imagination been developed in post-Kantian philosophy? This important and innovative volume explores this question, with particular focus on hermeneutics, phenomenology and neo-Kantianism. The essays in this collection demonstrate that imagination is productive not only because it fabricates non-existent objects, but also because it shapes human experience and co-determines the meaning of the experienced world. The authors show how imagination forms experience at the kinaesthetic, pre-linguistic, poetic, historical, artistic, social and political levels. The volume offers both a thematic and a historical overview of productive imagination understood as Kant originally wanted us to understand it.
This volume offers a new and expanded history of the documentary form across a range of times and contexts, featuring original essays by leading historians in the field In a contemporary media culture suffused with competing truth claims, documentary media have become one of the most significant means through which we think in depth about the past. The most rigorous collection of essays on nonfiction film and media history and historiography currently available, A Companion to Documentary Film History offers an in-depth, global examination of central historical issues and approaches in documentary, and of documentary's engagement with historical and contemporary topics, debates, and themes. The Companion's twenty original essays by prominent nonfiction film and media historians challenge prevalent conceptions of what documentary is and was, and explore its growth, development, and function over time. The authors provide fresh insights on the mode's reception, geographies, authorship, multimedia contexts, and movements, and address documentary's many aesthetic, industrial, historiographical, and social dimensions. This authoritative volume: Offers both historical specificity and conceptual flexibility in approaching nonfiction and documentary media Explores documentary's multiple, complex geographic and geopolitical frameworks Covers a diversity of national and historical contexts, including Revolution-era Soviet Union, post-World War Two Canada and Europe, and contemporary China Establishes new connections and interpretive contexts for key individual films and film movements, using new primary sources Interrogates established assumptions about documentary authorship, audiences, and documentary's historical connection to other media practices. A Companion to Documentary Film History is an ideal text for undergraduate and graduate courses covering documentary or nonfiction film and media, an excellent supplement for courses on national or regional media histories, and an important new resource for all film and media studies scholars, particularly those in nonfiction media.