System, Structure, and Contradiction

System, Structure, and Contradiction PDF Author: Jonathan Friedman
Publisher: Rowman Altamira
ISBN: 0585246599
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 358

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Book Description
The first edition of System, Structure, and Contradiction was an important step in merging the materialist determinism of the structuralist Marxists with the cultural, ideological approach favored by anthropologists. By reconciling these two traditionally warring schools of thought, the author provided a more nuanced understanding of the various factors that drive social change and social complexity. Though viewed through the lens of an ethnographic and historical case study of the Kachin of Burman, Friedman's theory has had a major impact on the work of archaeologists, anthropologists, world-systems scholars, and Marxist theorists alike. This new edition of Friedman's much-cited work contains the full text of the original volume (never published in North America) along with two related articles by the author, and a comprehensive new introduction that brings his theoretical notions, and the debate over this book, to the present. A classic work of anthropological and social theory, it will be of interest to scholars and their advanced students in anthropology and related disciplines.

System, Structure, and Contradiction

System, Structure, and Contradiction PDF Author: Jonathan Friedman
Publisher: Rowman Altamira
ISBN: 0585246599
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 358

Get Book Here

Book Description
The first edition of System, Structure, and Contradiction was an important step in merging the materialist determinism of the structuralist Marxists with the cultural, ideological approach favored by anthropologists. By reconciling these two traditionally warring schools of thought, the author provided a more nuanced understanding of the various factors that drive social change and social complexity. Though viewed through the lens of an ethnographic and historical case study of the Kachin of Burman, Friedman's theory has had a major impact on the work of archaeologists, anthropologists, world-systems scholars, and Marxist theorists alike. This new edition of Friedman's much-cited work contains the full text of the original volume (never published in North America) along with two related articles by the author, and a comprehensive new introduction that brings his theoretical notions, and the debate over this book, to the present. A classic work of anthropological and social theory, it will be of interest to scholars and their advanced students in anthropology and related disciplines.

Central Problems in Social Theory

Central Problems in Social Theory PDF Author: Anthony Giddens
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 9780520039759
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 308

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Book Description
"One of the most creative among the younger generation of critical social theorists, Giddens stands alone in his concern for the classical tradition on sociology; but he also makes brilliant use of the latest philosophical and theoretical work of several contemporary schools and disciplines. A very important book for all of social science."—Jeffrey C. Alexander

Vagueness and Contradiction

Vagueness and Contradiction PDF Author: Roy Sorensen
Publisher: Clarendon Press
ISBN: 0191588067
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 214

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Book Description
Did Buddha become a fat man in one second? Is there a tallest short giraffe? Epistemicists answer 'Yes!' They believe that any predicate that divides things divides them sharply. They solve the ancient sorites paradox by picturing vagueness as a kind of ignorance. The alternative solutions are radical. They either reject classical theorems or inference rules or reject our common sense view of what can exist. Epistemicists spare this central portion of our web of belief by challenging peripheral intuitions about the nature of language. So why is this continuation of the status quo so incredible? Why do epistemicists themselves have trouble believing their theory? In Vagueness and Contradiction Roy Sorensen traces our incredulity to linguistic norms that build upon our psychological tendencies to round off insignificant differences. These simplifying principles lead to massive inconsistency, rather like the rounding off errors of calculators with limited memory. English entitles speakers to believe each 'tolerance conditional' such as those of the form 'If n is small, then n + 1 is small.' The conjunction of these a priori beliefs entails absurd conditionals such as 'If 1 is small, then a billion is small.' Since the negation of this absurdity is an a priori truth, our a priori beliefs about small numbers are jointly inconsistent. One of the tolerance conditionals, at the threshold of smallness, must be an analytic falsehood that we are compelled to regard as a tautology. Since there are infinitely many analytic sorites arguments, Sorensen concludes that we are obliged to believe infinitely many contradictions. These contradictions are not specifically detectable. They are ineliminable, like the heat from a light bulb. Although the light bulb is not designed to produce heat, the heat is inevitably produced as a side-effect of illumination. Vagueness can be avoided by representational systems that make no concession to limits of perception, or memory, or testimony. But quick and rugged representational systems, such as natural languages, will trade 'rationality' for speed and flexibility. Roy Sorensen defends epistemicism in his own distinctive style, inventive and amusing. But he has some serious things to say about language and logic, about the way the world is and about our understanding of it.

System, Structure, and Contradiction

System, Structure, and Contradiction PDF Author: Jonathan Friedman
Publisher: Rowman Altamira
ISBN: 9780761989349
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 364

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Book Description
Combines and applies Marxist materialist and world systems approaches towards social anthropology to a study of the Kachin and related tribal groups of Burma (Myanmar). In addition to the original text of the first volume, an introduction placing the work in the context of the theoretical controversies it has engendered is included, as are two articles related to historical and religious issues not discussed explicitly in the main body of the text. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

System and Structure

System and Structure PDF Author: Anthony Wilden
Publisher: Psychology Press
ISBN: 9780415264884
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 664

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Book Description
Tavistock Press was established as a co-operative venture between the Tavistock Institute and Routledge & Kegan Paul (RKP) in the 1950s to produce a series of major contributions across the social sciences. This volume is part of a 2001 reissue of a selection of those important works which have since gone out of print, or are difficult to locate. Published by Routledge, 112 volumes in total are being brought together under the name The International Behavioural and Social Sciences Library: Classics from the Tavistock Press. Reproduced here in facsimile, this volume was originally published in 1980 and is available individually. The collection is also available in a number of themed mini-sets of between 5 and 13 volumes, or as a complete collection.

Contradiction in Motion

Contradiction in Motion PDF Author: Songsuk Susan Hahn
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501731149
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 240

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Book Description
"Everything is contradictory," Hegel declares in Science of Logic. In this analysis of one of the most difficult and neglected topics in Hegelian studies, Songsuk Susan Hahn tackles the status of contradiction in Hegel's thought. Properly philosophical thinking in the Hegelian mode recognizes that contradiction pervades all organic forms of life. Contradiction in Motion presents Hegel's doctrine of contradiction, once widely dismissed, as one deserving serious consideration. The book argues that contradiction is not a sign of error or incoherence, but rather plays an important role in the development of Hegel's system. The first part of the book sets up Hegel's logic of organic wholes in such a way as to motivate his claim that everything is contradictory. Hahn explores how Hegel tests his abstract logical and methodological apparatus against the more concrete, unmanageable aspects of empirical nature. The second and third parts of the book examine the extent to which Hegel's organic model informs his aesthetics and ethics. Hahn reveals the privileged role of art forms in expressing our consciousness of organic unity and shows how Hegel's organic-holistic conception of cognition and nature, with its distinctively contradictory stance, can be incorporated coherently into his ethics.

Emancipation After Hegel

Emancipation After Hegel PDF Author: Todd McGowan
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 023154992X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 296

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Book Description
Hegel is making a comeback. After the decline of the Marxist Hegelianism that dominated the twentieth century, leading thinkers are rediscovering Hegel’s thought as a resource for contemporary politics. What does a notoriously difficult nineteenth-century German philosopher have to offer the present? How should we understand Hegel, and what does understanding Hegel teach us about confronting our most urgent challenges? In this book, Todd McGowan offers us a Hegel for the twenty-first century. Simultaneously an introduction to Hegel and a fundamental reimagining of Hegel’s project, Emancipation After Hegel presents a radical Hegel who speaks to a world overwhelmed by right-wing populism, authoritarianism, neoliberalism, and economic inequalities. McGowan argues that the revolutionary core of Hegel’s thought is contradiction. He reveals that contradiction is inexorable and that we must attempt to sustain it rather than overcoming it or dismissing it as a logical failure. McGowan contends that Hegel’s notion of contradiction, when applied to contemporary problems, challenges any assertion of unitary identity as every identity is in tension with itself and dependent on others. An accessible and compelling reinterpretation of an often-misunderstood thinker, this book shows us a way forward to a new politics of emancipation as we reconcile ourselves to the inevitability of contradiction and find solidarity in not belonging.

Class, Race and Gold

Class, Race and Gold PDF Author: Frederick A Johnstone
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000620131
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 268

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Book Description
Originally published in 1976, this book is a sociological and historical study of class and race relations in a crucial sector of South Africa – the gold mining industry, during and following the First World War. The author develops a Marxist structuralist explanation of the system of racial discrimination, and then goes in to examine the significant historical events of this formative period, notably those surrounding the strike and uprising of the white workers in 1922. The book explains a system of racial domination essentially in terms of the class positions and problems of the dominating groups, and examines historical developments concerning race in terms of class.

Toward a Marxist Anthropology

Toward a Marxist Anthropology PDF Author: Stanley Diamond
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
ISBN: 3110807718
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 505

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Book Description


Political Theory and Power

Political Theory and Power PDF Author: Sarah Joseph
Publisher: Foundation Books
ISBN: 9788175962033
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 184

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Book Description
This book draws attention to certain significant changes in the way in which power has been defined and it also examines some of the critical responses which those changes have evoked. The objective is not to try and evolve a universally acceptable and comprehensive definition of power, and of realted terms like authority and influence. The argument of the book is that, that would be an impossible project since social and political theories themselves constitute an intervention into political discourse of a society and they may implicitly or explicitly embody a political perspective.