In Social Myths and Collective Imaginaries, G?rard Bouchard conceptualizes myths as vessels of sacred values that transcend the division between primitive and modern. These vessels become so influential as to make an indelible impression on people's minds.
Myths are a major, universal sociological mechanism which is still rather poorly understood Demonstrates the relevance and the potential of myths as a research area Provides a timely shift in the usual focus of national studies, which typically centers on ethnicity, immigration, integration, citizenship, cultural diversity and nationalism Demonstrates the nature and the functioning of myths in contemporary societies, as a nexus of meanings that feed identities, memory and utopias Contributions from international authors
‘The Internet is broken and Paolo Bory knows how we got here. In a powerful book based on original research, Bory carefully documents the myths, imaginaries, and ideologies that shaped the material and cultural history of the Internet. As important as this book is to understand our shattered digital world, it is essential for those who would fix it.’ — Vincent Mosco, author of The Smart City in a Digital World The Internet Myth retraces and challenges the myth laying at the foundations of the network ideologies – the idea that networks, by themselves, are the main agents of social, economic, political and cultural change. By comparing and integrating different sources related to network histories, this book emphasizes how a dominant narrative has extensively contributed to the construction of the Internet myth while other visions of the networked society have been erased from the collective imaginary. The book decodes, analyzes and challenges the foundations of the network ideologies looking at how networks have been imagined, designed and promoted during the crucial phase of the 1990s. Three case studies are scrutinized so as to reveal the complexity of network imaginaries in this decade: the birth of the Web and the mythopoesis of its inventor; and the histories of two Italian networking projects, the infrastructural plan Socrate and the civic network Iperbole, the first to give free Internet access to citizens. The Internet Myth thereby provides a compelling and hidden sociohistorical narrative in order to challenge one of the most powerful myths of our time. This title has been published with the financial assistance of the Fondazione Hilda e Felice Vitali, Lugano, Switzerland.
Sociology, emerging in the 19th century as the study of national societies, is the intellectual product of its time, power relations and social imaginaries. As a discursive practice that was enmeshed in the meta-narratives of modernity, the discipline of sociology bears the inherent capacity to shape socially shared concepts and construct collective identities. This book examines the relationships between sociology and projects of national identity construction, and presents a critique of Shmuel N. Eisenstadt, the prominent Israeli sociologist known as the "father of Israeli sociology". The book focuses on Eisenstadt’s sociology of Israel as a case of knowledge construction within an ideological system and examines the relationships between his various sociological analyses of Israeli society and the Zionist imaginary, namely the deeply entrenched political myths and historiographical narratives that constitute Israel’s hegemonic national identity. By emphasizing the interrelation between textuality, identity, and loaded language, the volume seeks to demythologize Eisenstadt’s sociology of Israel. Three major concepts in Eisenstadt’s scholarship are specifically thematized: integration, civilization, and modernities. In each of these foci, the author shows how Eisenstadt’s sociological conjectures reproduce dominant Zionist historiographical representations of the past, rationalize prevalent social hierarchies, reify the boundaries of a national collective "Self", and render legitimacy to Israel’s governing ethnocratic tendencies, underlying the premises of the Zionist settler-colonial project. Sociological Knowledge and Collective Identity will appeal to those interested in the interconnectedness of sociology and political memory, as well as in a radical postcolonial reconstruction of sociology.
Why are some societies more successful than others at promoting individual and collective well-being? This book integrates recent research in social epidemiology with broader perspectives in social science to explore why some societies are more successful than others at securing population health. It explores the social roots of health inequalities, arguing that inequalities in health are based not only on economic inequalities, but on the structure of social relations. It develops sophisticated perspectives on social relations, which emphasize the ways in which cultural frameworks as well as institutions condition people's health. It reports on research into health inequalities in the developed and developing worlds, covering a wide range of national case studies, and into the ways in which social relations condition the effectiveness of public policies aimed at improving health.
This Handbook provides the requisite theoretical and methodological guidelines for undertaking social research addressing relevant contemporary social issues.
What are the imagined communities that compel men to kill or to die for an idea of a nation? This notion of nationhood had its origins in the founding of the Americas, but was then adopted and transformed by populist movements in nineteenth-century Europe. It became the rallying cry for anti-Imperialism as well as the abiding explanation for colonialism. In this scintillating, groundbreaking work of intellectual history Anderson explores how ideas are formed and reformulated at every level, from high politics to popular culture, and the way that they can make people do extraordinary things. In the twenty-first century, these debates on the nature of the nation state are even more urgent. As new nations rise, vying for influence, and old empires decline, we must understand who we are as a community in the face of history, and change.