Description

Book Synopsis

Through stories, conversations, and essays, this book pursues interwoven critical and philosophical inquiries into the nature of the contemporary in the North Atlantic, asking how are we to live as intellectuals, individually and in community?

Social Thought From the Ruins: Quixoteâs Dinner Party is the product of informal discussion and academic work done over the last two decades among an international group of social scientists. An extended critique of academic life today and the context of our own thinking, this book interrogates aspects of our modernity, with its pervasive sense of crisis and uncertainty, and the difficulty of thinking clearly about things like the state and power, data and violence. Reflecting that the US, indeed the North Atlantic countries, seem to have entered autumn, David A. Westbrook asks what spring might be. Will the critical social sciences have anything to offer the exercise of power, or are we doomed to incessant and ineffectual critique? Can bureaucracy be made at least more accountable, if not democratic? Conversely, can we feel less alienated from the structures of power that rule us, or that fail to govern at all? Can we feel at home?

Social Thought From the Ruins

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    A Paperback by David A. Westbrook

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      Book details

      Publisher Taylor & Francis
      Published 8/18/2025
      ISBN-13 9781041004011
      978-1041004011
      ISBN-10 104100401X
      Also in:
      Social theory

      Description

      Book Synopsis

      Through stories, conversations, and essays, this book pursues interwoven critical and philosophical inquiries into the nature of the contemporary in the North Atlantic, asking how are we to live as intellectuals, individually and in community?

      Social Thought From the Ruins: Quixoteâs Dinner Party is the product of informal discussion and academic work done over the last two decades among an international group of social scientists. An extended critique of academic life today and the context of our own thinking, this book interrogates aspects of our modernity, with its pervasive sense of crisis and uncertainty, and the difficulty of thinking clearly about things like the state and power, data and violence. Reflecting that the US, indeed the North Atlantic countries, seem to have entered autumn, David A. Westbrook asks what spring might be. Will the critical social sciences have anything to offer the exercise of power, or are we doomed to incessant and ineffectual critique? Can bureaucracy be made at least more accountable, if not democratic? Conversely, can we feel less alienated from the structures of power that rule us, or that fail to govern at all? Can we feel at home?

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