The Fragility of Modern Societies

The Fragility of Modern Societies PDF Author: Nico Stehr
Publisher: SAGE
ISBN: 1847876749
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 234

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Book Description
This book argues that knowledge is now central to the modern economy and its productive processes. It is also essential for social relations, social cohesion and conflict resolution. We have moved from a society based around heavy commodities to symbolic goods, from situated markets to non-place-specific locations, from machines to software and from things to ideas. These changes produce new forms of social interaction and new perspectives on identity, practice and association. This penetrating book slices through the cliches and blind alleys of discussions around the knowledge society to reveal the tendons of contemporary change. Written with insight and panache the book explains the momentous nature of the changes associated with the knowledge society.

The Fragility of Modern Societies

The Fragility of Modern Societies PDF Author: Nico Stehr
Publisher: SAGE
ISBN: 1847876749
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 234

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book argues that knowledge is now central to the modern economy and its productive processes. It is also essential for social relations, social cohesion and conflict resolution. We have moved from a society based around heavy commodities to symbolic goods, from situated markets to non-place-specific locations, from machines to software and from things to ideas. These changes produce new forms of social interaction and new perspectives on identity, practice and association. This penetrating book slices through the cliches and blind alleys of discussions around the knowledge society to reveal the tendons of contemporary change. Written with insight and panache the book explains the momentous nature of the changes associated with the knowledge society.

Societal Dynamics and Fragility

Societal Dynamics and Fragility PDF Author: Alexandre Marc
Publisher: World Bank Publications
ISBN: 0821396560
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 246

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Book Description
Societal Dynamics and Fragility aims to address the social dimensions of fragility. Prepared as a complement to the 2011 World Development Report, this book frames fragility as a problem not only of state capacity, but also of relationships in society. Drawing on analytical work in Liberia, Central African Republic, Yemen, Indonesia (Aceh) and Haiti, it recommends placing social cohesion at the center of development efforts in fragile environments by cultivating an in-depth understanding of the societal dynamics at play in each context and adapting programs to address the sources of division that hinder state building. Specifically, the book advocates a focus on perceptions of injustice at least as much as measurable inequalities, and for creating space to facilitate constructive connections between institutions, especially between customary and state structures as well as often-nascent civil society institutions.

The Fragility of Things

The Fragility of Things PDF Author: William E. Connolly
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 0822377160
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 254

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Book Description
In The Fragility of Things, eminent theorist William E. Connolly focuses on several self-organizing ecologies that help to constitute our world. These interacting geological, biological, and climate systems, some of which harbor creative capacities, are depreciated by that brand of neoliberalism that confines self-organization to economic markets and equates the latter with impersonal rationality. Neoliberal practice thus fails to address the fragilities it exacerbates. Engaging a diverse range of thinkers, from Friedrich Hayek, Michel Foucault, Hesiod, and Immanuel Kant to Voltaire, Terrence Deacon, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Alfred North Whitehead, Connolly brings the sense of fragility alive as he rethinks the idea of freedom. Urging the Left not to abandon the state but to reclaim it, he also explores scales of politics below and beyond the state. The contemporary response to fragility requires a militant pluralist assemblage composed of those sharing affinities of spirituality across differences of creed, class, gender, sexual orientation, and ethnicity.

Knowledge Societies

Knowledge Societies PDF Author: Nico Stehr
Publisher: SAGE Publications Limited
ISBN:
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 318

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Book Description
In this analysis of the central role that knowledge plays in our life, Nico Stehr examines the premises of existing social theory and explores the knowledge relations in advanced societies. The planned result is a significant synthesis of social theory.

Crisis and Critique

Crisis and Critique PDF Author: Rodrigo Cordero
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317622502
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 245

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Book Description
Fragility is a condition that inhabits the foundations of social life. It remains mostly unnoticed until something breaks and dislocates the sense of completion. In such moments of rupture, the social world reveals the stuff of which it is made and how it actually works; it opens itself to question. Based on this claim, this book reconsiders the place of the notions of crisis and critique as fundamental means to grasp the fragile condition of the social and challenges the normalization and dissolution of these ‘concepts’ in contemporary social theory. It draws on fundamental insights from Hegel, Marx, and Adorno as to recover the importance of the critique of concepts for the critique of society, and engages in a series of studies on the work of Habermas, Koselleck, Arendt, and Foucault as to consider anew the relationship of crisis and critique as immanent to the political and economic forms of modernity. Moving from crisis to critique and from critique to crisis, the book shows that fragility is a price to be paid for accepting the relational constitution of the social world as a human domain without secure foundations, but also for wishing to break free from all attempts at giving closure to social life as an identity without question. This book will engage students of sociology, political theory and social philosophy alike.

The Fragility of Freedom

The Fragility of Freedom PDF Author: Joshua Mitchell
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 9780226532097
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 292

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Book Description
In this fresh interpretation of Tocqueville's thought, Joshua Mitchell explores the dynamic interplay between religion and politics in American democracy. Focusing on Democracy in America, The Fragility of Freedom examines Tocqueville's key works and argues that his analysis of democracy is ultimately rooted in an Augustinian view of human psychology. As much a work of political philosophy as of religion, The Fragility of Freedom argues for the importance of a political theology that recognizes moderation. "An intelligent and sharply drawn portrait of a conservative Toqueville."—Anne C. Rose, Journal of American History "I recommend this book as one of a very few to approach seriously the sources of Tocqueville's intellectual and moral greatness."—Peter Augustine Lawler, Journal of Politics "Mitchell ably places Democracy in America in the long conversation of Western political and theological thought."—Wilfred M. McClay, First Things "Learned and thought-provoking."—Peter Berkowitz, New Republic

The Moral Fabric in Contemporary Societies

The Moral Fabric in Contemporary Societies PDF Author: Graçzyna Skñapska
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9789004131149
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 400

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Book Description
These IIS annals delve into the issues of trust, economic inequalities, multiple modernities, postcommunism, corruption, and, finally, genocide and its social consequences. The book opens and closes with reflections on the theoretical aspects of what constitutes the moral fabric today.

Nico Stehr: Pioneer in the Theory of Society and Knowledge

Nico Stehr: Pioneer in the Theory of Society and Knowledge PDF Author: Marian T. Adolf
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319769952
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 380

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Book Description
This unique volume brings together a selection of the most important texts of Nico Stehr for the first time and puts them in dialogue with original research that draws on his prolific work. Covering five decades of pioneering sociological research on the theory of society and knowledge, the book introduces the reader to Stehr’s seminal inquiries into the economic, political and social role of knowledge. Original concepts, such as his groundbreaking studies on the Knowledge Society, are introduced as the volume traces Stehr’s pursuit of social scientific research as a source of practical knowledge for modern society. The book comprises three parts devoted to the many facets and the remarkable range of Nico Stehr’s oeuvre. Part 1 provides an introduction to the significance of his pioneering work and career. Part 2 demonstrates the practical application of Nico Stehr’s research as seen through the eyes of eminent scholars. Part 3 presents a selection of the milestones of his publications.

Portfolio Society

Portfolio Society PDF Author: Ivan Ascher
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 1935408747
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 193

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Book Description
A bold extension of Marx's Capital for the twenty-first century: at once a critique of modern finance and of the societies under its spell. As financial markets expand and continue to refashion the world in their own image, the wealth of capitalist societies no longer presents itself, as it did to Karl Marx in the nineteenth century, as a “monstrous collection of commodities.” Instead, it appears as an equally monstrous collection of financial securities, and the critique of political economy must proceed accordingly. But what would it mean to write Capital in the twenty-first century? Are we really to believe that risk, rather than labor, is now regarded as the true fount of economic value? Can it truly be the case that the credit relation—at least in the global North—has replaced the wage relation as the key site of exploitation and political struggle? And finally, if precarity is indeed the name of today's proletarian condition, what possible future does it actually portend, what analysis does it require? Through a series of creative substitutions, in Portfolio Society Ivan Ascherextends Marx's critical project in bold and unexpected ways. Ascher not only explains some of the often mystifying processes of contemporary finance, he also invites us to consider what becomes of capitalism itself in those places where the relation of capital to its own future is now mediated by financial markets. In the end, we may find that much has changed and much has not; relations of domination endure, and mystifications abound, but the devil is in the details, and that is where Ascher directs our attention. At once a critique of modern finance and of the societies under its spell, Portfolio Society succeeds in revealing the potential limits of Capital, while reveling still in its limitless potential.

Knowledge

Knowledge PDF Author: Nico Stehr
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 9780415317399
Category : Knowledge, Sociology of
Languages : en
Pages : 378

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Book Description
The increasing investment in scientific knowledge, in its production, distribution and reproduction, is acquiring greater social significance. Everything that is regarded as knowledge in society has become a legitimate subject matter for academic investigations from various disciplines and for practitioners.