Totalitarian Experience and Knowledge Production

Totalitarian Experience and Knowledge Production PDF Author: Svetla Koleva
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004333630
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 316

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Book Description
Totalitarian Experience and Knowledge Production examines, in a comparative perspective, sociology as practiced in six European Communist countries marked by various forms of totalitarianism in the period 1945-1989. In contrast to normative sociology’s view that such coexistence is essentially impossible, the author argues that sociology could function in these undemocratic societies insofar as sociologists succeeded in establishing relatively autonomous institutional and cognitive zones. Based on the self-reflection of scholars who had practiced their profession during that period, the book reveals the tribulations of the scientific identity of sociology under the specific social-political conditions of totalitarian societies. It becomes evident that the basic principle that made sociological knowledge possible was freedom of thought in search for scientific truth despite the ‘truth’ imposed by political authority.

Totalitarian Experience and Knowledge Production

Totalitarian Experience and Knowledge Production PDF Author: Svetla Koleva
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004333630
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 316

Get Book Here

Book Description
Totalitarian Experience and Knowledge Production examines, in a comparative perspective, sociology as practiced in six European Communist countries marked by various forms of totalitarianism in the period 1945-1989. In contrast to normative sociology’s view that such coexistence is essentially impossible, the author argues that sociology could function in these undemocratic societies insofar as sociologists succeeded in establishing relatively autonomous institutional and cognitive zones. Based on the self-reflection of scholars who had practiced their profession during that period, the book reveals the tribulations of the scientific identity of sociology under the specific social-political conditions of totalitarian societies. It becomes evident that the basic principle that made sociological knowledge possible was freedom of thought in search for scientific truth despite the ‘truth’ imposed by political authority.

The Future Is History (National Book Award Winner)

The Future Is History (National Book Award Winner) PDF Author: Masha Gessen
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 159463453X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 530

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Book Description
WINNER OF THE 2017 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD IN NONFICTION FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARDS WINNER OF THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY'S HELEN BERNSTEIN BOOK AWARD NAMED A BEST BOOK OF 2017 BY THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW, LOS ANGELES TIMES, WASHINGTON POST, BOSTON GLOBE, SEATTLE TIMES, CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR, NEWSWEEK, PASTE, and POP SUGAR The essential journalist and bestselling biographer of Vladimir Putin reveals how, in the space of a generation, Russia surrendered to a more virulent and invincible new strain of autocracy. Award-winning journalist Masha Gessen's understanding of the events and forces that have wracked Russia in recent times is unparalleled. In The Future Is History, Gessen follows the lives of four people born at what promised to be the dawn of democracy. Each of them came of age with unprecedented expectations, some as the children and grandchildren of the very architects of the new Russia, each with newfound aspirations of their own--as entrepreneurs, activists, thinkers, and writers, sexual and social beings. Gessen charts their paths against the machinations of the regime that would crush them all, and against the war it waged on understanding itself, which ensured the unobstructed reemergence of the old Soviet order in the form of today's terrifying and seemingly unstoppable mafia state. Powerful and urgent, The Future Is History is a cautionary tale for our time and for all time.

An Invitation to Non-Hegemonic World Sociology

An Invitation to Non-Hegemonic World Sociology PDF Author: Eric Macé
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1538161036
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 371

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Book Description
Although sociology is present as a discipline or as a social practice in most countries in the world, its future as a not-only Western social science has hardly been addressed before. In this book, a team of interdisciplinary scholars have been working together not so much to offer one single response to the question than to raise important issues at stake for the future of sociology. Is it universal? Can it be indigenous? How is it possible – and is it even desirable – to write its history differently so as to know better about its early world diffusion and gradual Westernization? Do we need to expand or change its canon? This collection brings together essays that are all engaged in international discussions concerning the universality of sociology, or more precisely the epistemological and theoretical conditions of this universality. The postcolonial and decolonial critiques of the Eurocentrism of sociology are the basis for a reflection on how to continue to do sociology in a non-hegemonic way. That is, sociological ways of describing reality - including the history of sociology and its canon - that are not limited by Western-centrism or other nationalist or religious hegemonies.

Post-Western Sociology - From China to Europe

Post-Western Sociology - From China to Europe PDF Author: Laurence Roulleau-Berger
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351185330
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 365

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Book Description
This book is rooted in an epistemological approach to sociology in which the boundaries between Western and non-Western sociologies are acknowledged and built on. It argues that knowledge is organised in conceptual spaces linked to paradigms and programmes which in turn are linked to ethnocentred knowledge processes; that until recently Western approaches, including Post-Colonial, French Social Science and American approaches, have dominated non-Western theories; and that Western theories have sometimes seemed incapable of explaining phenomena produced in other societies. It goes on to argue that the blurring of boundaries between Western and non-Western sociologies is very important; and that such a Post-Western approach will mean co-production and co-construction of common knowledge, the recognition of ignored or forgotten scientific cultures and a "global change" in sociology which imposes theoretical and methodological detours, displacements, reversals and conversions. The book brings together a wide range of Western and Chinese sociologists who explore the consequences of this new approach in relation to many different issues and aspects of sociology.

Democracy and the Post-totalitarian Experience

Democracy and the Post-totalitarian Experience PDF Author: Leszek Koczanowicz
Publisher: Rodopi
ISBN: 9042016353
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 253

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Book Description
This book presents the work of Polish and American philosophers about Poland's transition from Communist domination to democracy. Among their topics are nationalism, liberalism, law and justice, academic freedom, religion, fascism, and anti-Semitism. Beyond their insights into the ongoing situation in Poland, these essays have broader implications, inspiring reflection on dealing with needed social changes.

The Devil in History

The Devil in History PDF Author: Vladimir Tismaneanu
Publisher: University of California Press
ISBN: 0520282205
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 334

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Book Description
The Devil in History is a provocative analysis of the relationship between communism and fascism. Reflecting the author’s personal experiences within communist totalitarianism, this is a book about political passions, radicalism, utopian ideals, and their catastrophic consequences in the twentieth century’s experiments in social engineering. Vladimir Tismaneanu brilliantly compares communism and fascism as competing, sometimes overlapping, and occasionally strikingly similar systems of political totalitarianism. He examines the inherent ideological appeal of these radical, revolutionary political movements, the visions of salvation and revolution they pursued, the value and types of charisma of leaders within these political movements, the place of violence within these systems, and their legacies in contemporary politics. The author discusses thinkers who have shaped contemporary understanding of totalitarian movements—people such as Hannah Arendt, Raymond Aron, Isaiah Berlin, Albert Camus, François Furet, Tony Judt, Ian Kershaw, Leszek Kolakowski, Richard Pipes, and Robert C. Tucker. As much a theoretical analysis of the practical philosophies of Marxism-Leninism and Fascism as it is a political biography of particular figures, this book deals with the incarnation of diabolically nihilistic principles of human subjugation and conditioning in the name of presumably pure and purifying goals. Ultimately, the author claims that no ideological commitment, no matter how absorbing, should ever prevail over the sanctity of human life. He comes to the conclusion that no party, movement, or leader holds the right to dictate to the followers to renounce their critical faculties and to embrace a pseudo-miraculous, a mystically self-centered, delusional vision of mandatory happiness.

Telling October

Telling October PDF Author: Frederick C. Corney
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 9780801489310
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 324

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Book Description
'Telling October' chronicles the construction of an official 'foundation narrative' by the Soviet Union as the new state sought to legitimise itself by portraying the October Revolution as the inevitable culmination of a historical process.

China and Orientalism

China and Orientalism PDF Author: Daniel Vukovich
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136505938
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 208

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Book Description
This book argues that there is a new, Sinological form of orientalism at work in the world. It has shifted from a logic of ‘essential difference’ to one of ‘sameness’ or general equivalence. "China" is now in a halting but inevitable process of becoming-the-same as the USA and the West. Orientalism is now closer to the cultural logic of capitalism, even as it shows the afterlives of colonial discourse. This shift reflects our era of increasing globalization; the migration of orientalism to area studies and the pax Americana; the liberal triumph at the "end" of history and the demonization of Maoism; an ever closer Sino-West relationship; and the overlapping of anti-communist and colonial discourses. To make the case for this re-constitution of orientalism, this work offers an inter-disciplinary analysis of the China field broadly defined. Vukovich takes on specialist work on the politics, governance, and history of the Mao and reform eras, from the Great Leap Forward to Tiananmen, 1989; the Western study of Chinese film; recent work in critical theory which turns on ‘the China-reference"; and other global texts about or from China. Through extensive analysis, the production of Sinological knowledge is shown to be of a piece with Western global intellectual political culture. This work will be of great interest to scholars of Asian, postcolonial and cultural studies.

Totalitarian Science and Technology

Totalitarian Science and Technology PDF Author: Paul R. Josephson
Publisher: Humanity Books
ISBN:
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 188

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Book Description
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Cosmopolitanism in Hard Times

Cosmopolitanism in Hard Times PDF Author:
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004438025
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 432

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Book Description
This reference book provides the reader with an exhaustive array of epistemological, theoretical, and empirical explorations related to the field of cosmopolitanism studies. It considers the cosmopolitan perspective rather as a relevant approach to the understanding of some major issues related to globalization than as a subfield of global studies. In this unique contribution to conceptualizing, establishing, experiencing, and challenging cosmopolitanism, each chapter seizes the paradoxical dialectic of opening up and closing up, of enlightenment and counter-enlightenment, of hope and despair at work in the global world, while the volume as a whole insists on the moral, intellectual, structural, and historical resources that still make cosmopolitanism a real possibility — and not just wishful thinking — even in these hard times. Contributors include: John Agnew, Daniele Archibugi, Paul Bagguley, Esperança Bielsa, Estevão Bosco, Stéphane Chauvier, Daniel Chernilo, Vincenzo Cicchelli, VittorioCotesta, Stéphane Dufoix, David Held, Robert Holton, Yasmin Hussain, David Inglis, Lauren Langman, Pietro Maffettone, Sylvie Mesure, Magdalena Nowicka, Sylvie Octobre, Delphine Pagès-El Karaoui, Massimo Pendenza, Alain Policar, Frédéric Ramel, Laurence Roulleau-Berger, Hiro Saito, Camille Schmoll, Bryan S. Turner, Clive Walker, and Daniel J. Whelan. With an Afterword by Arjun Appadurai.