Search results for ""Author Marcus"

One of the most important texts of modern times, Herbert Marcuse's analysis and image of a one-dimensional man in a one-dimensional society has shaped many young radicals' way of seeing and experiencing life. Published in 1964, it fast became an ideological bible for the emergent New Left. As Douglas Kellner notes in his introduction, Marcuse's greatest work was a 'damning indictment of contemporary Western societies, capitalist and communist.' Yet it also expressed the hopes of a radical philosopher that human freedom and happiness could be greatly expanded beyond the regimented thought and behaviour prevalent in established society. For those who held the reigns of power Marcuse's call to arms threatened civilization to its very core. For many others however, it represented a freedom hitherto unimaginable.

Read more less

The now legendary Dialectics of Liberation congress, held in London in 1967, was a unique expression of the politics of dissent. Existential psychiatrists, Marxist intellectuals, anarchists, and political leaders met to discuss key social issues. Edited by David Cooper, The Dialectics of Liberation compiles interventions from congress contributors Stokely Carmichael, Herbert Marcuse, R. D. Laing, Paul Sweezy, and others, to explore the roots of social violence.Against a backdrop of rising student frustration, racism, class inequality, and environmental degradation-a setting familiar to readers today-the conference aimed to create genuine revolutionary momentum by fusing ideology and action on the levels of the individual and of mass society. The Dialectics of Liberation captures the rise of a forceful style of political activity that came to characterize the following years.

Read more less

Everyone needs and deserves housing. But today our homes are being transformed into commodities, making the inequalities of the city ever more acute. Profit has become more important than social need. The poor are forced to pay more for worse housing. Communities are faced with the violence of displacement and gentrification. And the benefits of decent housing are only available for those who can afford it.In Defense of Housing is the definitive statement on this crisis from leading urban planner Peter Marcuse and sociologist David Madden. They look at the causes and consequences of the housing problem and detail the need for progressive alternatives. The housing crisis cannot be solved by minor policy shifts, they argue. Rather, the housing crisis has deep political and economic roots-and therefore requires a radical response.

Read more less

In the Spirit of the Ancestors celebrates the vitality of contemporary Pacific Northwest Coast art by showcasing a selection of objects from the Burke Museum's collection of more than 2,400 late-twentieth- and early-twenty-first-century Native American works. Essays focus on contemporary art while exploring the important historical precedents on which so many artists rely for training and inspiration. Margaret Blackman reflects on building one of the largest collections of Northwest Coast serigraphs, and Joe David reminisces about his artistic journey through mask-making. Shaun Peterson, Lisa Telford, and Evelyn Vanderhoop discuss the historical precedents for working in styles that were kept alive only by a few critical artists and are now making a comeback. Robin K. Wright explores the history of box drums and their revival. Emily Moore discusses the repatriation of two stolen house posts and proposes a new concept of "propatriation" to describe the resulting commissioning of contemporary posts to take their place. Kathryn Bunn-Marcuse explores the power of adornment and how clothing, jewelry, and personal adornments like tattooing express tribal and personal identity in ways both connected to the past and grounded in the present. The diversity of approaches presented by these contributors speaks to artists, collectors, academics, tribal communities, and all those interested in Pacific Northwest Coast art. Splendid color photographs of works never before published will delight everyone. Watch the trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E15hbqvHo4w&list=UUge4MONgLFncQ1w1C_BnHcw&index=7&feature=plcp

Read more less

During the Second World War, three prominent members of the Frankfurt School--Franz Neumann, Herbert Marcuse, and Otto Kirchheimer--worked as intelligence analysts for the Office of Strategic Services, the wartime forerunner of the CIA. This book brings together their most important intelligence reports on Nazi Germany, most of them published here for the first time. These reports provide a fresh perspective on Hitler's regime and the Second World War, and a fascinating window on Frankfurt School critical theory. They develop a detailed analysis of Nazism as a social and economic system and the role of anti-Semitism in Nazism, as well as a coherent plan for the reconstruction of postwar Germany as a democratic political system with a socialist economy. These reports played a significant role in the development of postwar Allied policy, including denazification and the preparation of the Nuremberg Trials. They also reveal how wartime intelligence analysis shaped the intellectual agendas of these three important German-Jewish scholars who fled Nazi persecution prior to the war. Secret Reports on Nazi Germany features a foreword by Raymond Geuss as well as a comprehensive general introduction by Raffaele Laudani that puts these writings in historical and intellectual context.

Read more less

An interdisciplinary encounter between new materialist and object-oriented studies and literary criticism. Through a rethinking of the relationship between the subject and object, the human and the nonhuman, this volume shows how literature and post-anthropocentric theory can illuminate each other in mutually productive ways. Focusing on how the study of literature is an underdeveloped field within 'the material turn', the introduction and each of the eleven chapters examine ways in which new materialist and object-oriented theory opens the study of literature in new ways just as they demonstrate the deep entanglements in literature of human and nonhuman realities. The collection includes an Afterword by Timothy Morton and hands-on analyses and close readings of individual works by such diverse writers as Hans Christian Andersen, Djuna Barnes, Sylvia Plath, Georges Perec, Ayi Kwei Armah, Jeanette Winterson and Paolo Bacigalupi.

Read more less

Inseparable from its communities, Northwest Coast art functions aesthetically and performatively beyond the scope of non-Indigenous scholarship, from demonstrating kinship connections to manifesting spiritual power. Contributors to this volume foreground Indigenous understandings in recognition of this rich context and its historical erasure within the discipline of art history. By centering voices that uphold Indigenous priorities, integrating the expertise of Indigenous knowledge holders about their artistic heritage, and questioning current institutional practices, these new essays "unsettle" Northwest Coast art studies. Key themes include discussions of cultural heritage protections and Native sovereignty; re-centering women and their critical role in transmitting cultural knowledge; reflecting on decolonization work in museums; and examining how artworks function as living documents. The volume exemplifies respectful and relational engagement with Indigenous art and advocates for more accountable scholarship and practices.

Read more less

Philosophy and the Problems of Work brings together for the first time important philosophical perspectives on the subjects of labor and work, spanning analytical and Continental traditions. This comprehensive collection engages contemporary debates in political theory and the philosophy of economics, including the perspectives of classical and welfare liberals, anarchists, and feminists, about the nature and meaning of work in modern technological society, the issues of meaningful work and exploitation, justice and equality, the welfare state and democratic rights, and whether market socialism is a competitive alternative to traditional capitalism. An introduction by the editor charts the historical development of these issues in philosophical and political discussions and examines the central importance of the organization and structures of work for both individual self-realization and human societies generally.Philosophy and the Problems of Work brings together for the first time important philosophical perspectives on the subjects of labor and work, spanning analytical and Continental traditions. This comprehensive collection engages contemporary debates in political theory and the philosophy of economics, including the perspectives of classical and welfare liberals, anarchists, and feminists, about the nature and meaning of work in modern technological society, the issues of meaningful work and exploitation, justice and equality, the welfare state and democratic rights, and whether market socialism is a competitive alternative to traditional capitalism. An introduction by the editor charts the historical development of these issues in philosophical and political discussions and examines the central importance of the organization and structures of work for both individual self-realization and human societies generally.

Read more less

In Civilization and Its Discontents Freud extends and clarifies his analysis of religion; analyzes human unhappiness in contemporary civilization; ratifies the critical importance of the death drive theory; and contemplates the significance of guilt and conscience in everyday life. The result is Freud’s most expansive work, one wherein he discusses mysticism, love, interpretation, narcissism, religion, happiness, technology, beauty, justice, work, the origin of civilization, phylogenetic development, Christianity, the Devil, communism, the sense of guilt, remorse, and ethics. A classic, important, accessible work, Freud reminds us again why we still read and debate his ideas today. Todd Dufresne’s introduction expands on why, according to the late Freud, psychoanalysis is the key to understanding individual and collective realities or, better yet, collective truths. The Appendices include related writings by Freud, contemporary reviews, and scholarly responses from Marcuse, Rieff, and Ricoeur.

Read more less

This exciting collection of original essays provides students and professionals with an international and comparative examination of changes in global cities, revealing a growing pattern of social and spatial division or polarization.

Read more less

Toward a Concrete Philosophy explores the reactions of Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer, and Herbert Marcuse to Martin Heidegger prior to their dismissal of him once he turned to the Nazi party in 1933. Mikko Immanen provides a fascinating glimpse of the three future giants of twentieth-century social criticism when they were still looking for their philosophical voices. By reconstructing their overlooked debates with Heidegger and Heideggerians, Immanen argues that Adorno, Horkheimer, and Marcuse saw Heidegger's 1927 magnum opus, Being and Time, as a serious effort to make philosophy relevant for life again and as the most provocative challenge to their nascent materialist diagnoses of the discontents of European modernity. Our knowledge of Adorno's "Frankfurt discussion" with "Frankfurt Heideggerians" remains anecdotal, even though it led to a proto-version of Dialectic of Enlightenment's idea of the entwinement of myth and reason. Similarly, Horkheimer's enthusiasm over Heidegger's legendary post–World War I lectures and criticism of Being and Time have escaped attention almost entirely. And Marcuse's intriguing debate with Heidegger over Hegel and the origin of the problematic of "being and time" has remained uncharted until now. Reading these debates as fruitful intellectual encounters rather than hostile confrontations, Toward a Concrete Philosophy offers scholars of critical theory a new, thought-provoking perspective on the emergence of the Frankfurt School as a rejoinder to Heidegger's philosophical revolution.

Read more less

Toward a Concrete Philosophy explores the reactions of Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer, and Herbert Marcuse to Martin Heidegger prior to their dismissal of him once he turned to the Nazi party in 1933. Mikko Immanen provides a fascinating glimpse of the three future giants of twentieth-century social criticism when they were still looking for their philosophical voices. By reconstructing their overlooked debates with Heidegger and Heideggerians, Immanen argues that Adorno, Horkheimer, and Marcuse saw Heidegger's 1927 magnum opus, Being and Time, as a serious effort to make philosophy relevant for life again and as the most provocative challenge to their nascent materialist diagnoses of the discontents of European modernity. Our knowledge of Adorno's "Frankfurt discussion" with "Frankfurt Heideggerians" remains anecdotal, even though it led to a proto-version of Dialectic of Enlightenment's idea of the entwinement of myth and reason. Similarly, Horkheimer's enthusiasm over Heidegger's legendary post–World War I lectures and criticism of Being and Time have escaped attention almost entirely. And Marcuse's intriguing debate with Heidegger over Hegel and the origin of the problematic of "being and time" has remained uncharted until now. Reading these debates as fruitful intellectual encounters rather than hostile confrontations, Toward a Concrete Philosophy offers scholars of critical theory a new, thought-provoking perspective on the emergence of the Frankfurt School as a rejoinder to Heidegger's philosophical revolution.

Read more less

Herbert Marcuse, Erich Fromm, Max Horkheimer, Franz Neumann, Theodor Adorno, Leo Lowenthal--the impact of the Frankfurt School on the sociological, political, and cultural thought of the twentieth century has been profound. The Dialectical Imagination is a major history of this monumental cultural and intellectual enterprise during its early years in Germany and in the United States. Martin Jay has provided a substantial new preface for this edition, in which he reflects on the continuing relevance of the work of the Frankfurt School.

Read more less

Gentrification and displacement of low-income communities of color are major issues in New York City and the city’s zoning policies are a major cause. Race matters but the city ignores it when shaping land use and housing policies. The city promises “affordable housing” that is not truly affordable. Zoned Out! shows how this has played in Williamsburg, Harlem and Chinatown, neighborhoods facing massive displacement of people of color. It looks at ways the city can address inequalities, promote authentic community-based planning and develop housing in the public domain. Tom Angotti and Sylvia Morse frame the revised edition of this seminal work with a tribute to the late urbanist and architect Michael Sorkin and his progressive and revolutionary approaches to cities as well as a new preface about changes in city policy since Mayor Bill de Blasio left office and what rights citizens need to defend. The book includes a foreword by the late, distinguished urban planning educator Peter Marcuse and individual chapters by community activist Philip DePaola, housing policy analyst Samuel Stein, and both the editors.

Read more less

Although successive generations of the Frankfurt School have attempted to adapt Critical Theory to new circumstances, the work done by its founding members continues in the twenty-first century to unsettle conventional wisdom about culture, society and politics. Exploring unexamined episodes in the school's history and reading its work in unexpected ways, these essays provide ample evidence of the abiding relevance of Horkheimer, Adorno, Benjamin, Marcuse, Löwenthal, and Kracauer in our troubled times. Without forcing a unified argument, they range over a wide variety of topics, from the uncertain founding of the School to its mixed reception of psychoanalysis, from Benjamin's ruminations on stamp collecting to the ironies in the reception of Marcuse's One-Dimensional Man, from Löwenthal's role in Weimar's Jewish Renaissance to Horkheimer's involvement in the writing of the first history of the Frankfurt School. Of special note are their responses to visual issues such as the emancipation of colour in modern art, the Jewish prohibition on images, the relationship between cinema and the public sphere, and the implications of a celebrated Family of Man photographic exhibition. The collection ends with an essay tracing the still metastasising demonisation of the Frankfurt School by the so-called Alt Right as the source of "cultural Marxism" and "political correctness," which has gained alarming international resonance and led to violence by radical right-wing fanatics.

Read more less

Michel Foucault’s The History of Sexuality—the first volume of which was published in 1976—exerts a vast influence across the humanities and social sciences. However, Foucault’s interest in the history of sexuality began as early as the 1960s, when he taught two courses on the subject. These lectures offer crucial insight into the development of Foucault’s thought yet have remained unpublished until recently.This book presents Foucault’s lectures on sexuality for the first time in English. In the first series, held at the University of Clermont-Ferrand in 1964, Foucault asks how sexuality comes to be constituted as a scientific body of knowledge within Western culture and why it derived from the analysis of “perversions”—morbidity, homosexuality, fetishism. The subsequent course, held at the experimental university at Vincennes in 1969, shows how Foucault’s theories were reoriented by the events of May 1968; he refocuses on the regulatory nature of the discourse of sexuality and how it serves economic, social, and political ends. Examining creators of political and literary utopias in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, from Sade to Fourier to Marcuse, who attempted to integrate “natural” sexualities, including transgressive forms, into social and economic life, Foucault elaborates a double critique of the naturalization and the liberation of sexuality. Together, the lectures span a range of interests, from abnormality to heterotopias to ideology, and they offer an unprecedented glimpse into the evolution of Foucault’s transformative thinking on sexuality.

Read more less

How have politics and activism been transformed by digital media, including digital television, online social networking and mobile computing? Since the emergence of new technologies, new modes of cooperation, deliberation and representation have risen to the fore, @ is for Activism maps out how political relationships have been reconfigured and new have emerged through the use of new technologies. A host of critical thinkers populate the study, from Martin Heidegger and Herbert Marcuse criticism of technology's close relation to capitalism, to media networks' actualising the Habermasian ideal of collective communicative action, Hands delineates the potentials and the pitfalls of a technologised politics. From anti-war activism, to global justice movements, peer production and 'Twitter' activism, we see how politics is being shaped by the new technological environment.

Read more less

Get Classical Sociological Theory, Fourth Edition and Contemporary Sociological Theory, Fourth Edition in a combined set This combined set includes the newly revised fourth edition of two world-class introductions to sociological debates: Classical Sociological Theory and Contemporary Sociological Theory. For a generation of students, these two anthologies have provided a definitive guide to the theoretical foundations of sociology and the continuing impact of early theorists, as well as a thorough introduction to current perspectives and approaches in sociology and social science. Classical Sociological Theories features readings by leading scholars like Marx, Durkheim, Weber, Mead, Simmel, Freud, Du Bois, Adorno, Marcuse, Parsons, and Merton, also including the most influential theories arising out of the Enlightenment era and the work of de Tocqueville. Contemporary Sociological Theories offers in-depth yet accessible sources that examine micro-sociological analysis, symbolic interactionism, network theory, phenomenology, critical theory, structuralism, feminist theory, debates over modernity and postmodernity, and more. This set is the most accessible and complete overview of sociological theory available. Both volumes: Feature a collection of readings carefully selected based on their theoretical sophistication and accessibility Present substantial primary source texts with detailed introductions, rather than brief excerpts and basic overviews Provide historical and intellectual perspective to each selected reading in the book Include extensive references to further readings and resources Ideal for undergraduate courses in social and sociological theory as well as courses in wider social science programs such as human geography, anthropology, criminology, and urban studies, Classical Sociological Theory and Contemporary Sociological Theory, together offer a perfect combination for a thorough overview of sociological theory. Each volume can be purchased on its own or in a set with the textbook.

Read more less

Since the linguistic turn in Frankfurt School critical theory during the 1970s, philosophical concerns have become increasingly important to its overall agenda, at the expense of concrete social-scientific inquiries. At the same time, each of the individual social sciences especially economics and psychology, but also political science and sociology have been moving further and further away from the challenge key representatives of the so-called first generation of Frankfurt School critical theorists (Adorno, Horkheimer, and Marcuse) identified as central to the promise and responsibility of social science: to illuminate those dimensions of modern societies that prevent the reconciliation of facts and norms. As professional disciplines, each individual social science, and even philosophy, is prone to ignoring both the actuality and the relevance for research of alienation and reification as the mediating processes that constitute the reference frames for critical theory. Consequently, mainstream social-scientific research tends to progress in the hypothetical: we study the social world as if alienation, reification, and more recent incarnations of those mediating processes had lost their shaping forcewhile, in the context of globalization, their manifestations are ever more apparent, and tangible. The chapters included in this volume of "Current Perspectives in Social Theory" highlight the problematic nature of mainstream perspectives, and the growing need to reaffirm how the specific kind of critique the early Frankfurt School theorists advocated is not less, but far more important today. Contributions examine the links between political geographies and globalization; Marxism and public sociology; anti-Semitic workers and Jewish stereotypes; governmental rationality and state power; restricted eros and contemporary politics; Marcuse and the psycho-politics of transformation; contemporary theory and consumer society; and the theory of C. Wright Mills. This book includes nine chapters from some of the most respected personalities in the field and a broad and diverse look at social science and critical theory.

Read more less

Members of the Frankfurt School have had an enormous effect on Western thought, beginning soon after Max Horkheimer became the director of the Institute for Social Research at the University of Frankfurt am Main, in 1930. Also known as the Horkheimer Circle, the group included such eminent intellectuals as Theodor Adorno, Herbert Marcuse, Erich Fromm, Leo Lowenthal, and Friedrich Pollock. Fleeing Nazi oppression, Horkheimer moved the Institute and many of its affiliated scholars to Columbia University in 1934, where it remained until 1950. Until now, the conventional portrayal of the Institute has held that its members found refuge by relocating to Columbia but that they had little contact with, or impact on, American intellectual life. With insight and clarity, Thomas Wheatland demonstrates that the standard account is wrong. Based on deep archival research in Germany and in the United States, and on interviews conducted with luminaries such as Daniel Bell, Bernadine Dohrn, Peter Gay, Todd Gitlin, Nathan Glazer, Tom Hayden, Robert Merton, and others, Wheatland skillfully traces the profound connections between the Horkheimer Circle’s members and the intellectual life of the era. Reassessing the group’s involvement with the American New Left in the 1960s, he argues that Herbert Marcuse’s role was misunderstood in shaping the radical student movement’s agenda. More broadly, he illustrates how the Circle influenced American social thought and made an even more dramatic impression on German postwar sociology. Although much has been written about the Frankfurt School, this is the first book to closely examine the relationship between its members and their American contemporaries. The Frankfurt School in Exile uncovers an important but neglected dimension of the history of the Frankfurt School and adds immeasurably to our understanding of the contributions made by its émigré intellectuals to postwar intellectual life.

Read more less

Designing Cities is the first reader to be published in the thriving field of urban design. It has been assembled to appeal to a broad range of readers interested in how the design of cities comes about. Provides a complex and integrated perspective on the field of urban design. Carefully structured, so that students will gain an understanding of the theoretical context from which urban design has emerged. Includes work by Manuel Castells, David Harvey, Christian Norberg-Schultz, Peter Marcuse and others.

Read more less

Designing Cities is the first reader to be published in the thriving field of urban design. It has been assembled to appeal to a broad range of readers interested in how the design of cities comes about. Provides a complex and integrated perspective on the field of urban design. Carefully structured, so that students will gain an understanding of the theoretical context from which urban design has emerged. Includes work by Manuel Castells, David Harvey, Christian Norberg-Schultz, Peter Marcuse and others.

Read more less

The first philosophers of the Frankfurt School famously turned to the psychoanalytic theories of Sigmund Freud to supplement their Marxist analyses of ideological subjectification. Since the collapse of their proposed "marriage of Marx and Freud," psychology and social theory have grown apart to the impoverishment of both. Returning to this union, Benjamin Y. Fong reconstructs the psychoanalytic "foundation stone" of critical theory in an effort to once again think together the possibility of psychic and social transformation. Drawing on the work of Hans Loewald and Jacques Lacan, Fong complicates the famous antagonism between Eros and the death drive in reference to a third term: the woefully undertheorized drive to mastery. Rejuvenating Freudian metapsychology through the lens of this pivotal concept, he then provides fresh perspective on Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer, and Herbert Marcuse's critiques of psychic life under the influence of modern cultural and technological change. The result is a novel vision of critical theory that rearticulates the nature of subjection in late capitalism and renews an old project of resistance.

Read more less

Theodor Adorno (1903-69) was undoubtedly the foremost thinker of the Frankfurt School, the influential group of German thinkers that fled to the US in the 1930s, including such thinkers as Herbert Marcuse and Max Horkheimer. His work has proved enormously influential in sociology, philosophy and cultural theory. Aesthetic Theory is Adorno's posthumous magnum opus and the culmination of a lifetime's investigation. Analysing the sublime, the ugly and the beautiful, Adorno shows how such concepts frame and distil human experience and that it is human experience that ultimately underlies aesthetics. In Adorno's formulation ‘art is the sedimented history of human misery'.

Read more less

The first philosophers of the Frankfurt School famously turned to the psychoanalytic theories of Sigmund Freud to supplement their Marxist analyses of ideological subjectification. Since the collapse of their proposed "marriage of Marx and Freud," psychology and social theory have grown apart to the impoverishment of both. Returning to this union, Benjamin Y. Fong reconstructs the psychoanalytic "foundation stone" of critical theory in an effort to once again think together the possibility of psychic and social transformation. Drawing on the work of Hans Loewald and Jacques Lacan, Fong complicates the famous antagonism between Eros and the death drive in reference to a third term: the woefully undertheorized drive to mastery. Rejuvenating Freudian metapsychology through the lens of this pivotal concept, he then provides fresh perspective on Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer, and Herbert Marcuse's critiques of psychic life under the influence of modern cultural and technological change. The result is a novel vision of critical theory that rearticulates the nature of subjection in late capitalism and renews an old project of resistance.

Read more less

Reframing American Landscape: Women, Land, + Art illuminates the accomplishments of Susie Barstow and her circle, who painted the landscape in the nineteenth century and places them in conversation with women-identifying artists working today who expand and challenge how we think about “land” and “landscape” in our contemporary moment. Engaging diverse multigenerational perspectives and creative practices, this publication launches an expanded narrative around land and art that strongly positions women in the canon of American landscape art. It includes a deep look at the nineteenth-century landscape painter conversation with artists working today. For the first time, the nineteenth-century landscape painter Susie Barstow is given a solo exhibition and an in-depth publication. Well known during her lifetime, Barstow was written out of art history, but this book, which accompanies an exhibition of the same name, illuminates the significant accomplishments of the artist, and in doing so redefines the history of the Hudson River School. This book further explores how artists working today continue to engage landscape using multi-disciplinary artistic practices and diverse critical perspectives, that at times challenge art and historical narratives. Artists such as Ebony G. Patterson, Mary Mattingly, Tanya Marcuse, Anna Plesset, Wendy Red Star, Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, Kay WalkingStick, Saya Woolfalk, Cecilia Vicuña, and others, complicate and redefine how we now understand land through art.

Read more less

Gentrification and displacement of low-income communities of color are major issues in New York City and the city’s zoning policies are a major cause. Race matters but the city ignores it when shaping land use and housing policies. The city promises “affordable housing” that is not truly affordable. Zoned Out! shows how this has played in Williamsburg, Harlem and Chinatown, neighborhoods facing massive displacement of people of color. It looks at ways the city can address inequalities, promote authentic community-based planning and develop housing in the public domain. Tom Angotti and Sylvia Morse frame the revised edition of this seminal work with a tribute to the late urbanist and architect Michael Sorkin and his progressive and revolutionary approaches to cities as well as a new preface about changes in city policy since Mayor Bill de Blasio left office and what rights citizens need to defend. The book includes a foreword by the late, distinguished urban planning educator Peter Marcuse and individual chapters by community activist Philip DePaola, housing policy analyst Samuel Stein, and both the editors.

Read more less

Since the linguistic turn in Frankfurt School critical theory during the 1970s, philosophical concerns have become increasingly important to its overall agenda, at the expense of concrete social-scientific inquiries. At the same time, each of the individual social sciences especially economics and psychology, but also political science and sociology have been moving further and further away from the challenge key representatives of the so-called first generation of Frankfurt School critical theorists (Adorno, Horkheimer, and Marcuse) identified as central to the promise and responsibility of social science: to illuminate those dimensions of modern societies that prevent the reconciliation of facts and norms. As professional disciplines, each individual social science, and even philosophy, is prone to ignoring both the actuality and the relevance for research of alienation and reification as the mediating processes that constitute the reference frames for critical theory. Consequently, mainstream social-scientific research tends to progress in the hypothetical: we study the social world as if alienation, reification, and more recent incarnations of those mediating processes had lost their shaping forcewhile, in the context of globalization, their manifestations are ever more apparent, and tangible. The chapters included in this volume of "Current Perspectives in Social Theory" highlight the problematic nature of mainstream perspectives, and the growing need to reaffirm how the specific kind of critique the early Frankfurt School theorists advocated is not less, but far more important today. Contributions examine the links between political geographies and globalization; Marxism and public sociology; anti-Semitic workers and Jewish stereotypes; governmental rationality and state power; restricted eros and contemporary politics; Marcuse and the psycho-politics of transformation; contemporary theory and consumer society; and the theory of C. Wright Mills. This book includes nine chapters from some of the most respected personalities in the field and a broad and diverse look at social science and critical theory.

Read more less

From 'Covfefe' to #FraudNewsCNN and #FakeNews, Donald Trump's tweets have caused an international frenzy. He is a reality TV and Twitter-President, who uses digital and entertainment culture as an ideological weapon - as an expression of his authoritarianism. This book delves into new political-economic structures as expressed through political communication to explain the rise of authoritarian capitalism, nationalism and right-wing ideology throughout the world. Christian Fuchs does this through updating Marxist theory and the Frankfurt School's critical theory. He re-invigorates the works on authoritarianism of Franz L. Neumann, Theodor W. Adorno, Erich Fromm, Herbert Marcuse, Max Horkheimer, Wilhelm Reich, Leo Lowenthal and Klaus Theweleit in the age of Trump and Twitter. In the age of big data and social media, Digital Demagogue studies the expressions of ideology, nationalism and authoritarianism today and discusses prospects for overcoming capitalism and renewing the Left.

Read more less

A world-class introduction to the historical and continuing impact of classical theory on sociological debate The latest edition of Classical Sociological Theory offers students a definitive guide to the theoretical foundations of sociology and the continuing impact of the ideas explored by early theorists, including Marx, Durkheim, Weber, Mead, Simmel, Freud, Du Bois, Adorno, Marcuse, Parsons, and Merton. The prestigious editors have integrated several readings on the most influential theories arising out of the Enlightenment era and the work of de Tocqueville. Readers are introduced to seminal works in classical sociological theory by way of editorial introductions that lend historical and intellectual perspective to the included readings. The readings themselves have been selected based on their combinations of theoretical sophistication and accessibility. From analyses of self and society to examinations of critical theory and structural-functional analysis, Classical Sociological Theory remains the gold standard in classical theory readers. The Fourth Edition of this widely taught book includes: Selections that trace the history of classical sociological theory, from its undisciplined roots to its modern influence on contemporary sociological debate Readings describing the “pre-history” of sociology, including ideas from the Enlightenment and de Tocqueville Editorial introductions that place selected works firmly in their intellectual, philosophical, and historical contexts for the benefit of the student A distinguished and scholarly team of editors with a wide and deep range of expertise Perfect for undergraduate and graduate students of social and sociological theory, Classical Sociological Theory is also a thought-provoking resource ideal for use in courses taught in human geography, anthropology, criminology, and urban studies programs.

Read more less

Michel Foucault’s The History of Sexuality—the first volume of which was published in 1976—exerts a vast influence across the humanities and social sciences. However, Foucault’s interest in the history of sexuality began as early as the 1960s, when he taught two courses on the subject. These lectures offer crucial insight into the development of Foucault’s thought yet have remained unpublished until recently.This book presents Foucault’s lectures on sexuality for the first time in English. In the first series, held at the University of Clermont-Ferrand in 1964, Foucault asks how sexuality comes to be constituted as a scientific body of knowledge within Western culture and why it derived from the analysis of “perversions”—morbidity, homosexuality, fetishism. The subsequent course, held at the experimental university at Vincennes in 1969, shows how Foucault’s theories were reoriented by the events of May 1968; he refocuses on the regulatory nature of the discourse of sexuality and how it serves economic, social, and political ends. Examining creators of political and literary utopias in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, from Sade to Fourier to Marcuse, who attempted to integrate “natural” sexualities, including transgressive forms, into social and economic life, Foucault elaborates a double critique of the naturalization and the liberation of sexuality. Together, the lectures span a range of interests, from abnormality to heterotopias to ideology, and they offer an unprecedented glimpse into the evolution of Foucault’s transformative thinking on sexuality.

Read more less

This book traces the genealogy of ideas of reason, self and sexuality in the West, opening the way to a richer and more diverse understanding of sexual experience. Western philosophy and religion have distorted and continue to distort our experience of sex and love through three far-reaching constellations of reason, self and sexuality. Thinkers like Plato, Aquinas and Kant helped to fashion an ascetic ideal of reason hostile to bodily pleasures and sexual diversity. By contrast, philosophical hedonism advocates a less demanding conception of rationality and defends sexual pleasure. But this approach of thinkers like Hume, Bentham, La Mettrie and de Sade is still one-sided and limiting. A third constellation, Romanticism avoids the limitations of both forms of rationalism, but in the name of a religion of love and passion that ultimately threatens the integrity of the self. In Reason and Sexuality in Western Thought, a richer understanding of sexual experience is traced to a dissident philosophical tradition. In their different ways Montaigne, Spinoza, Hegel and Kierkegaard, Marcuse and Foucault contribute to a more holistic, multi-layered and open conception of reason, sexuality and the self. This book will be essential reading for all students of philosophy and gender studies.

Read more less

No project holds a more prominent place in the development of modern European thought than the critical theory. Usually associated with various members of the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research of the 1920s and 1930s, critical theory has been enormously influential and quite controversial in its manifold claims. Of Critical Theory and Its Theorists provides unique interpretations of critical theory's most important representatives: Georg Lukacs, Walter Benjamin, Theodor W. Adorno, Herbert Marcuse, Erich Fromm, Jürgen Habermas, and others. Inspired by the interdisciplinary character of the original enterprise, Stephen Bronner ranges across many fields, from philosophy and aesthetics to politics and anthropology, reconstructing the radical aims of critical theory, and evaluating its success, its failings and its legacy. Of Critical Theory and its Theorists offers a panoramic view of an exciting tradition, and a bold new perspective, from one of America's most prominent analysts of continental politics and philosophy.

Read more less

We live in a world of technical systems designed in accordance with technical disciplines and operated by personnel trained in those disciplines. This is a unique form of social organization that largely determines our way of life, but the actions of individuals and social protest still play a role in developing and purposing these rational systems. In Technosystem, Andrew Feenberg builds a theory of both the threats of technocratic modernity and the potential for democratic change.Feenberg draws on the tradition of radical social criticism represented by Herbert Marcuse and the Frankfurt School, which recognized the social effects of instrumental rationality but did not advance a convincing alternative to the new forms of domination imposed by rational systems. That is where the fine-grained analyses of Science, Technology, and Society (STS) studies can contribute. Feenberg uses these approaches to reconcile the claims of rationality with the agency of a public increasingly mobilized to intervene in technically based decisions. The resulting social theory recognizes emerging forms of resistance, such as protests and hacking, as essential expressions of public life in the “rational society.”Combining the most salient insights from critical theory with the empirical findings of STS, Technosystem advances the philosophical debate over the nature and practice of reason in modern society.

Read more less

In this accomplished, sophisticated and up-to-date account of the state of critical social theory today, Craig Browne explores the key concepts in critical theory (like critique, ideology, and alienation), and crucially, goes on to relate them to major contemporary developments such as globalization, social conflict and neo-liberal capitalism. Critical theory here is not solely the work of Adorno, Horkheimer, Marcuse and Habermas. The book begins with the Frankfurt School but uses this as a base to then explore more contemporary figures such as: Nancy Fraser Axel Honneth Luc Boltanski Cornelius Castoriadis Ulrich Beck Anthony Giddens Pierre Bourdieu Hannah Arendt A survey of critical social theory for our times, this is an essential guide for students wishing to grasp a critical understanding of social theory in the modern world.

Read more less