The Uncontrollability of the World
The Uncontrollability of the World

Author: Hartmut Rosa

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2020-10-06

Total Pages: 145

ISBN-13: 150954416X

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The driving cultural force of that form of life we call ‘modern’ is the desire to make the world controllable. Yet it is only in encountering the uncontrollable that we really experience the world – only then do we feel touched, moved and alive. A world that is fully known, in which everything has been planned and mastered, would be a dead world. Our lives are played out on the border between what we can control and that which lies outside our control. But because we late-modern human beings seek to make the world controllable, we tend to encounter the world as a series of objects that we have to conquer, master or exploit. And precisely because of this, ‘life,’ the experience of feeling alive and truly encountering the world, always seems to elude us. This in turn leads to frustration, anger and even despair, which then manifest themselves in, among other things, acts of impotent political aggression. For Rosa, to encounter the world and achieve resonance with it requires us to be open to that which extends beyond our control. The outcome of this process cannot be predicted, and this is why moments of resonance are always concomitant with moments of uncontrollability. This short book – the sequel to Rosa’s path-breaking work on social acceleration and resonance – will be of great interest students and scholars in sociology and the social sciences and to anyone concerned with the nature of modern social life.

Resonance
Resonance

Author: Hartmut Rosa

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2019-07-26

Total Pages: 551

ISBN-13: 1509519920

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The pace of modern life is undoubtedly speeding up, yet this acceleration does not seem to have made us any happier or more content. If acceleration is the problem, then the solution, argues Hartmut Rosa in this major new work, lies in “resonance.” The quality of a human life cannot be measured simply in terms of resources, options, and moments of happiness; instead, we must consider our relationship to, or resonance with, the world. Applying his theory of resonance to many domains of human activity, Rosa describes the full spectrum of ways in which we establish our relationship to the world, from the act of breathing to the adoption of culturally distinct worldviews. He then turns to the realms of concrete experience and action – family and politics, work and sports, religion and art – in which we as late modern subjects seek out resonance. This task is proving ever more difficult as modernity’s logic of escalation is both cause and consequence of a distorted relationship to the world, at individual and collective levels. As Rosa shows, all the great crises of modern society – the environmental crisis, the crisis of democracy, the psychological crisis – can also be understood and analyzed in terms of resonance and our broken relationship to the world around us. Building on his now classic work on acceleration, Rosa’s new book is a major new contribution to the theory of modernity, showing how our problematic relation to the world is at the crux of some of the most pressing issues we face today. This bold renewal of critical theory for our times will be of great interest to students and scholars across the social sciences and humanities.

Social Acceleration
Social Acceleration

Author: Hartmut Rosa

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Published: 2013-05-14

Total Pages: 514

ISBN-13: 0231148348

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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.

Coping with Lack of Control in a Social World
Coping with Lack of Control in a Social World

Author: Marcin Bukowski

Publisher: Psychology Press

Published: 2016-11-03

Total Pages: 400

ISBN-13: 1317340159

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Coping with Lack of Control in a Social World offers an integrated view of cutting-edge research on the effects of control deprivation on social cognition. The book integrates multi-method research demonstrating how various types of control deprivation, related not only to experimental settings but also to real life situations of helplessness, can lead to variety of cognitive and emotional coping strategies at the social cognitive level. The comprehensive analyses in this book tackle issues such as: Cognitive, emotional and socio-behavioral reactions to threats to personal control How social factors aid in coping with a sense of lost or threatened control Relating uncontrollability to powerlessness and intergroup processes How lack of control experiences can influence basic and complex cognitive processes This book integrates various strands of research that have not yet been presented together in an innovative volume that addresses the issue of reactions to control loss in a socio-psychological context. Its focus on coping as an active way of confronting a sense of uncontrollability makes this a unique, and highly original, contribution to the field. Practicing psychologists and students of psychology will be particularly interested readers.

High-speed Society
High-speed Society

Author: Hartmut Rosa

Publisher: Penn State Press

Published: 2010-11-01

Total Pages: 325

ISBN-13: 0271047704

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Everywhere, life seems to be speeding up: we talk of &“fast food&” and &“speed dating.&” But what does the phenomenon of social acceleration really entail, and how new is it? While much has been written about our high-speed society in the popular media, serious academic analysis has lagged behind, and what literature there is comes more from Europe than from America. This collection of essays is a first step toward exposing readers on this side of the Atlantic to the importance of this phenomenon and toward developing some preliminary conceptual categories for better understanding it. Among the major questions the volume addresses are these: Is acceleration occurring across all sectors of society and all dimensions of life, or is it affecting some more than others? Where is life not speeding up, and what results from this disparity? What are the fundamental causes of acceleration, as well as its consequences for everyday experience? How does it affect our political and legal institutions? How much speed can we tolerate? The volume tackles these questions in three sections. Part 1 offers a selection of astute early analyses of acceleration as experienced in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Part 2 samples recent attempts at analyzing social acceleration, including translations of the work of leading European thinkers. Part 3 explores acceleration&’s political implications.

Way of the Pilgrim
Way of the Pilgrim

Author: Gordon R. Dickson

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2013-11-26

Total Pages: 561

ISBN-13: 1627934782

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Imagine an Earth totally dominated by an alien race. Imagine that humans and their technology are completely powerless against these invaders. Imagine a world in which people are nothing more than cattle to their new masters Now imagine that one man discovers a key that might free mankind, but he must learn how to care and how to love before he can believe in that key

You and Your Profile
You and Your Profile

Author: Hans-Georg Moeller

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Published: 2021-05-25

Total Pages: 149

ISBN-13: 0231551592

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More and more, we present ourselves and encounter others through profiles. A profile shows us not as we are seen directly but how we are perceived by a broader public. As we observe how others observe us, we calibrate our self-presentation accordingly. Profile-based identity is evident everywhere from pop culture to politics, marketing to morality. But all too often critics simply denounce this alleged superficiality in defense of some supposedly pure ideal of authentic or sincere expression. This book argues that the profile marks an epochal shift in our concept of identity and demonstrates why that matters. You and Your Profile blends social theory, philosophy, and cultural critique to unfold an exploration of the way we have come to experience the world. Instead of polemicizing against the profile, Hans-Georg Moeller and Paul J. D’Ambrosio outline how it works, how we readily apply it in our daily lives, and how it shapes our values—personally, economically, and ethically. They develop a practical vocabulary of life in the digital age. Informed by the Daoist tradition, they suggest strategies for handling the pressure of social media by distancing oneself from one’s public face. A deft and wide-ranging consideration of our era’s identity crisis, this book provides vital clues on how to stay sane in a time of proliferating profiles.

To Save Everything, Click Here
To Save Everything, Click Here

Author: Evgeny Morozov

Publisher:

Published: 2013-03-05

Total Pages: 434

ISBN-13: 1610391381

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The award-winning author of The Net Delusion shows how the radical transparency we've become accustomed to online may threaten the spirit of real-life democracy

Trust and Power
Trust and Power

Author: Niklas Luhmann

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2018-03-15

Total Pages: 224

ISBN-13: 1509519467

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In this important book, Niklas Luhmann uses his powers as an analyst of the social system to examine two of the most important concepts which hold that system together and allow it to evolve: trust and power. He criticises those theoretical accounts whose roots lie in what he refers to as ideologies – accounts which use implicit beliefs in particular conceptions of human nature to explain and predict social action in a one-dimensional way. Theories of rational choice and moralistic explanations are taken to task, as are the theories of both Marx and Habermas. Luhmann's unique scientific sociology underpins every page and enables him to highlight the potential shortcomings of these narrative approaches. Underlying this approach is the idea that ideologically-based social theory, whether critical or conservative, is unable to do justice to the complexities existing within the parameters of social systems, individuals, and the interactions between them. He aims to show instead how only a painstaking systems analysis can capture these intricacies. Although written over 40 years ago, Luhmann's complex vision of the operations of trust and power provides a wealth of insights of considerable value to scholars and students grappling with contemporary social and economic problems. The editors' introduction to this new edition and the significant revisions they have made to the translation will help to reveal the richness and clarity of this vision and its relevance to the ways that trust and power operate in today's society.