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For a translational sociology: Illuminating translation in society, theory and research European Journal of Social Theory (IF 2.333) Pub Date : 2021-03-26 Esperança Bielsa
This article argues for a non-reductive approach to translation as a basic social process that shapes both the world that sociologists study and the sociological endeavour itself. It starts by referring to accounts from the sociology of translation and translation studies, which have problematized simplistic views of processes of cultural globalization. From this point of view, translation can offer
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The philosopher as engaged citizen: Habermas on the role of the public intellectual in the modern democratic public sphere European Journal of Social Theory (IF 2.333) Pub Date : 2021-03-24 Peter J. Verovšek
Realists and supporters of ‘democratic underlabouring’ have recently challenged the traditional separation between political theory and practice. Although both attack Jürgen Habermas for being an idealist whose philosophy is too removed from politics, I argue that this interpretation is inaccurate. While Habermas’s social and political theory is indeed oriented to truth and understanding, he has sought
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No (sociological) excuses for not going green: How do environmental activists make sense of social inequalities and relate to the working class? European Journal of Social Theory (IF 2.333) Pub Date : 2021-03-05 Hadrien Malier
Some environmental activists occasionally use the argument that poverty is ‘no excuse’ for not going green and denounce discourses putting forward social conditions as unduly exculpatory. Employing participant observation among middle-class activists mobilising to diffuse environmental lifestyles in socially diverse suburbs near Paris (France), the article explores their relation to the working class
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Adventures in the anti-humanist dialectic: Towards the reappropriation of humanism European Journal of Social Theory (IF 2.333) Pub Date : 2021-02-18 Kieran Durkin
The hegemonic discourse on humanism in the contemporary academy – a critical discourse in the form of a theoretical anti-humanism – is marked by a certain degree of impoverishment. This impoverishment is the result of many contextual factors, including the ideological purposes to which the discourse has been put, but also the effects of internal workings of the paradigm associated with anti-humanism
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Social science as apologia European Journal of Social Theory (IF 2.333) Pub Date : 2021-02-17 Federico Brandmayr
The social sciences are predominantly seen by their practitioners as critical endeavours, which should inform criticism of harmful institutions, beliefs and practices. Accordingly, political attacks on the social sciences are often interpreted as revealing an unwillingness to accept criticism and an acquiescence with the status quo. But this dominant view of the political implications of social scientific
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Network concepts in social theory: Foucault and cybernetics European Journal of Social Theory (IF 2.333) Pub Date : 2021-02-17 Vincent August
Network concepts are omnipresent in contemporary diagnoses (network society), management practices (network governance), social science methods (network analysis) and theories (network theory). Instigating a critical analysis of network concepts, this article explores the sources and relevance of networks in Foucault’s social theory. I argue that via Foucault we can trace network concepts back to cybernetics
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Habermas on people-building in the European Union European Journal of Social Theory (IF 2.333) Pub Date : 2021-02-11 Regina Queiroz
Habermas maintains that neoliberalism precludes the building of a European demos and entails a regression towards the exclusionary but still democratic nation state. Although this article agrees with Habermas’s claim regarding the regressive impact of neoliberalism, it argues that this regression is best described as moving not towards an exclusionary but still democratic national people but rather
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Explanations and excuses in French sociology European Journal of Social Theory (IF 2.333) Pub Date : 2021-02-03 Federico Brandmayr
The terrorist attacks that struck France in 2015 had reverberations throughout the country’s intellectual fields. Among the most significant was a widespread polemic that turned around whether sociological explanations of the attacks amounted to excuses and justifications for terrorists. When prominent politicians and pundits made allegations of this nature, sociologists reacted in three main ways:
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Excuse and justification: What’s explanation and understanding got to do with it? European Journal of Social Theory (IF 2.333) Pub Date : 2021-01-27 Nigel Pleasants
A well-worn French proverb pronounces ‘tout comprendre c’est tout pardonner’ (‘to understand all is to forgive all’). Is forgiveness the inevitable consequence of social scientific understanding of the actions and lives of perpetrators of serious wrongdoing? Do social scientific explanations provide excuses or justifications for the perpetrators of the actions that the explanations purport to explain
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Techniques of futuring: On how imagined futures become socially performative European Journal of Social Theory (IF 2.333) Pub Date : 2021-01-27 Jeroen Oomen, Jesse Hoffman, Maarten A. Hajer
The concept of the future is re-emerging as an urgent topic on the academic agenda. In this article, we focus on the ‘politics of the future’: the social processes and practices that allow particular imagined futures to become socially performative. Acknowledging that the performativity of such imagined futures is well-understood, we argue that how particular visions come about and why they become
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Political justice, political obligation and the European Union: Lessons from Habermas European Journal of Social Theory (IF 2.333) Pub Date : 2021-01-19 Gabriele De Angelis
What principles of political justice ought to apply to the European Union? This question is particularly relevant considering the deepening integration process that resulted from the crises of the past decade. Habermas’s conception of a transnational democracy allows identification of the methodological components of transnational political justice: to unite in a transnational polity, people belonging
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Realising immigration as a human right: public justification and cosmopolitan solidarity European Journal of Social Theory (IF 2.333) Pub Date : 2021-01-18 David Martínez, Alexander Elliott
According to David Miller, immigration is not a human right. Conversely, Kieran Oberman makes a case for immigration as a human right. We agree with the latter view, but we show that its starting point is mistaken. Indeed, both Miller and Oberman discuss the right to immigration within the liberal paradigm: it is a right or not depending on the correct balance between the interests of the citizens
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Habermas on Rawls and the normative foundations of democracy European Journal of Social Theory (IF 2.333) Pub Date : 2021-01-13 Krzysztof Kędziora
The debate between Jürgen Habermas and John Rawls concerns the question of how to do political philosophy under conditions of cultural pluralism, if the aim of political philosophy is to uncover the normative foundation of a modern liberal democracy. Rawls’s political liberalism tries to bypass the problem of pluralism, using the intellectual device of the veil of ignorance, and yet paradoxically at
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Friendship and solidarity European Journal of Social Theory (IF 2.333) Pub Date : 2021-01-12 Harry Blatterer
This article explores a particular connection between friendship and social solidarity and seeks to contribute to understanding the societal significance of non-institutionalised relationships. Commonly the benefits of friendship are assumed to accrue to friends only. But this is only part of the story. Friendship, as instantiation of intimacy and site of moral learning, is conducive to solidarity
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‘In the vertigo of this freedom’: Democracy between procedural and divided popular sovereignty European Journal of Social Theory (IF 2.333) Pub Date : 2020-12-31 Matteo Bozzon
The aim of this article is to investigate the Habermasian way of problematizing the European political situation through consideration of the conceptual framework within which he develops his proposal. I begin by clarifying various conceptual difficulties that emerge when thinking about politics within the European Union. I then focus on the concept of popular sovereignty as procedure, which Habermas
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Explaining away crime: The race narrative in American sociology and ethical theory European Journal of Social Theory (IF 2.333) Pub Date : 2020-12-28 Stephen Turner
Rates of crime for Blacks in the United States in the post-slavery era have always been high relative to Whites. But explaining, or minimizing, this fact faces a major problem: individual excuses for bad acts point to deficiencies, in the agent, which are perhaps forgivable, such as mental deficiency or a deprived childhood, but at the price of treating the agent as less than a full member of the moral
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The COVID pandemic and social theory: Social democracy and public health in the crisis European Journal of Social Theory (IF 2.333) Pub Date : 2020-11-10 Sylvia Walby
Social theory is developing in response to the coronavirus (COVID) crisis. Fundamental questions about social justice in the relationship of individuals to society are raised by Delanty in his review of political philosophy, including Agamben, Foucault and Žižek. However, the focus on the libertarian critique of authoritarianism is not enough. The social democratic critique of neoliberalism lies at
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Political theology and religious pluralism: Rethinking liberalism in times of post-secular emancipation European Journal of Social Theory (IF 2.333) Pub Date : 2020-11-04 Saul Newman
Recent debates in liberal political theory have sought to come to terms with the post-secular condition, characterised by deep religious pluralism, the resurgence of right-wing populism, as well as new social movements for economic, ecological and racial justice. These forces represent competing claims on the public space and create challenges for the liberal model of state neutrality. To better grasp
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Theorising medical psychotherapy: Therapeutic practice between professionalisation and deprofessionalisation European Journal of Social Theory (IF 2.333) Pub Date : 2020-10-05 Sabine Flick
Psychotherapists in mental health institutions as a professional group are part of the medical system, and from this perspective, as representing an occupation that serves the public health interests, as well as those of the individual seeking help. Despite the different existing therapeutic approaches and diverse forms of therapy deriving from these approaches critical theories, however, consider
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From the humanism of critical theory to critical humanism European Journal of Social Theory (IF 2.333) Pub Date : 2020-09-29 Oliver Kozlarek
Following Max Horkheimer, I will first attempt to reconstruct an anthropology that essentially wants to be understood as critical social research. I will then pursue the question of humanism in critical theory. In doing so, I want to show that a reference to a normatively substantive humanism does actually exist in critical theory. On the other hand, I want to show that this humanism is anything but
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Social nothingness: A phenomenological investigation European Journal of Social Theory (IF 2.333) Pub Date : 2020-09-24 Susie Scott
This article identifies and explores the realm of ‘social nothingness’: objects, people, events and places that do not empirically exist, yet are experienced as subjectively meaningful. Taking a phenomenological approach, I investigate how people perceive, imagine and reflect upon the meanings of unlived experience: whatever is significantly not present, never appeared or cannot happen to them. These
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The ‘populist moment’: An expression that teaches us more about how we perceive our time than about this time itself European Journal of Social Theory (IF 2.333) Pub Date : 2020-09-10 Manuel Cervera-Marzal
Four recent books believe that we have entered the ‘era of populism’. After 30 years of neoliberal hegemony, we would now be living a new historical period in which political life would be more and more confrontational, personalized and emotional. Through a reconstruction of the main arguments of Ilvo Diamanti, Marc Lazar, Chantal Mouffe, Pierre Rosanvallon and Arnaud Zacharie, this article aims to
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The return of society European Journal of Social Theory (IF 2.333) Pub Date : 2020-08-28 François Dubet
This article is a plea for the idea of society in sociological theory. Even though the industrial national societies no longer exist, the successive crises that we have encountered show that we need a general concept to account for social life. Thus sociology should be enabled to remain a moral and political philosophy.
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Anti-equivalence: Pragmatics of post-liberal dispute European Journal of Social Theory (IF 2.333) Pub Date : 2020-08-17 William Davies
In the early twenty-first century, liberal democracies have witnessed their foundational norms of critique and deliberation being disrupted by a combination of populist and technological forces. A distinctive style of dispute has appeared, in which a speaker denounces the unfairness of all liberal and institutional systems of equivalence, including the measures of law, economics and the various other
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The politics of becoming: Disidentification as radical democratic practice European Journal of Social Theory (IF 2.333) Pub Date : 2020-07-08 Hans Asenbaum
Current radical democratic politics is characterized by new participatory spaces for citizens’ engagement, which aim at facilitating the democratic ideals of freedom and equality. These spaces are, however, situated in the context of deep societal inequalities. Modes of discrimination are carried over into participatory interaction. The democratic subject is judged by its physically embodied appearance
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Alienation and the task of geo-social critique European Journal of Social Theory (IF 2.333) Pub Date : 2020-05-28 Pierre-Louis Choquet
In this article, I argue that the concept of alienation should be mobilized to develop a ‘geo-social’ critique of the generic forms of life that sustain contemporary capitalist societies, in a time when the stability of the Earth system is increasingly at risk. I contend that retrieving the full heuristic potential of the concept demands engaging the fields where it has been traditionally discussed
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Fields and individuals: From Bourdieu to Lahire and back again European Journal of Social Theory (IF 2.333) Pub Date : 2020-05-20 Will Atkinson
Bernard Lahire’s critique of Pierre Bourdieu’s sociology aims to establish a ‘dispositionalist-contextualist’ vision of human agency capable of fully sociologising biography and individuality. Whil...
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Theorising French neoliberalism: The technocratic elite, decentralised collective bargaining and France’s ‘passive neoliberal revolution’ European Journal of Social Theory (IF 2.333) Pub Date : 2020-04-06 Charles Masquelier
Despite experiencing an early and protracted neoliberal transformation, France has exhibited an acutely ambiguous stance towards neoliberal practice. This is illustrated by, for example, regular na...
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Between social spaces European Journal of Social Theory (IF 2.333) Pub Date : 2020-02-13 Sida Liu
Sociologists often imagine society as spaces, yet how social spaces are related remains ambiguous in most theories. In developing his field theory, Bourdieu used extensively the concept of homology...
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Air-appropriation: The imperial origins and legacies of the Anthropocene European Journal of Social Theory (IF 2.333) Pub Date : 2020-02-04 Andreas Folkers
This article elucidates the spatial order that underpins the politics of the Anthropocene – the ecological nomos of the earth – and criticizes its imperial origins and legacies. It provides a critical reading of Carl Schmitt’s spatial thought to not only illuminate the spatio-political ontology but also the violence and usurpations that characterize the Anthropocene condition. The article first shows
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Biopolitical bordering: Enacting populations as intelligible objects of government European Journal of Social Theory (IF 2.333) Pub Date : 2020-01-26 Stephan Scheel
Since Foucault introduced the notion of biopolitics, it has been fiercely debated—usually in highly generalized terms—how to interpret and use this concept. This article argues that these discussions need to be situated, as biopolitics have features that do not travel from one site to the next. This becomes apparent if we attend to an aspect of biopolitics that has only received scant attention so
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The (anti-)social gift? Mauss’s paradox and the triad of the gift European Journal of Social Theory (IF 2.333) Pub Date : 2020-01-26 Seung Cheol Lee
Marcel Mauss’s discussion of the gift relies on a paradox: although gift-giving is the foundational act of building a society, in order for a gift to be circulated, society must be always-already presupposed so that the gift can reach and be recognized by its destination. This article focuses on how this paradox has been addressed in anthropological and philosophical studies of the gift, by reviewing
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Towards an integrative sociological theory of empathy European Journal of Social Theory (IF 2.333) Pub Date : 2019-11-27 Kevin McCaffree
Sociological theories of morality have grown in prevalence over the last decade and a half. These theories often focus on developing single concepts such as identity, reputation or emotion, or they provide sweeping historical accounts. Such theories often also take the construct of empathy for granted, as an inevitable consequence of morality. Here, I present a mechanistic theory of empathy which operates
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The ‘migrant experience’: An analytical discussion European Journal of Social Theory (IF 2.333) Pub Date : 2019-11-21 Vince Marotta
The idea of experience has been taken at face value in scholarly accounts of the migration experience, consequently very little attention has been given to how this idea has acquired its meaning and how it relates to the category of the ‘migration experience’. This article provides an analytical investigation into the nature of the phenomenon known as the ‘migrant experience’; firstly, by examining
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Book review: The New Power Elite: Inequality, Politics and Greed European Journal of Social Theory (IF 2.333) Pub Date : 2019-11-06 Heinz Sünker
Based on the classical sociological study by C. Wright Mills from 1956, the authors of The New Power Elite aim to follow the critical spirit of their predecessor from the start. They point out that the questions which need to be asked about today’s elite are not complicated in as much as they are concerned with clearly observable situations – to whit that a group of the very wealthy in the finance
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Book review: Classification Struggles European Journal of Social Theory (IF 2.333) Pub Date : 2019-10-16 Bridget Fowler
Classification Struggles is the English translation of Bourdieu’s first lectures at the Collège de France, published in 2015 as Sociologie Générale Vol. I (Paris: Seuil, pp. 703); it should be noted that the lectures translated here represent only April–June 1982 (i.e. only pp. 7–194 of the French volume). However, the value of this book is much enhanced by the scholarly glosses from the editors of
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Refusing the ‘Foolish Wisdom of Resignation’: Kaupapa Māori in conversation with Adorno European Journal of Social Theory (IF 2.333) Pub Date : 2019-08-29 Monika Kirloskar-Steinbach, Carl Mika
Drawing on select works of Adorno, we will first rehearse his reasons for a rejuvenation of philosophy and apply them to philosophers working on world philosophical traditions. We will then analyse Adorno’s arguments pertaining to the theory–praxis relation to ascertain whether his thought could accommodate a study of world philosophical traditions for the simple reason that they are present in a particular
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Populism and the yearning for closure: From economic to cultural fragility European Journal of Social Theory (IF 2.333) Pub Date : 2019-08-01 Sibylle van der Walt
Since the Brexit-vote and the election of a far-right businessman as President of the United States, the social sciences have been struggling to explain the societal conditions that nourish the increasing appeal of far-right parties and leaders in the Western world. The article’s main thesis is that the currently leading sociological paradigm, the theory of globalization losers, is not sufficient to
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From revisionism to retrotopia: Stability and variability in Zygmunt Bauman’s theory of culture European Journal of Social Theory (IF 2.333) Pub Date : 2019-08-01 Dariusz Brzeziński
This article examines the evolution of Zygmunt Bauman’s theory of culture during his over-sixty-year-long scholarly activity. Bauman wrote his first books on the theory of culture (Culture and Society; Sketches in the Theory of Culture) when he was a Professor at Warsaw University. The ideas put forward at that time were later developed in his writings. This applies in particular to the critical nature
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The entrepreneur of the self beyond Foucault’s neoliberal homo oeconomicus European Journal of Social Theory (IF 2.333) Pub Date : 2019-07-25 Tim Christiaens
In his lectures on neoliberalism, Michel Foucault argues that neoliberalism produces subjects as ‘entrepreneurs of themselves’. He bases this claim on Gary Becker’s conception of the utility-maximizing agent who solely acts upon cost/benefit-calculations. Not all neoliberalized subjects, however, are encouraged to maximize their utility through mere calculation. This article argues that Foucault’s
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The eroticization of biopower: Masochistic relationality and resistance in Deleuze and Agamben European Journal of Social Theory (IF 2.333) Pub Date : 2019-07-16 Hannah Richter
This article examines Gilles Deleuze’s and Giorgio Agamben’s thoughts on the immanent creativity emergent from formal, impersonal life as a pathway for resistance to biopolitics. In Coldness and Cruelty, Deleuze explores masochism as the inversion of the sadistic, biopolitical use of the body which can bring forth genuinely new expressions. Agamben dismisses masochistic creativity because it leaves
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Religion and the spontaneous order of the market: Law, freedom, and power over lives European Journal of Social Theory (IF 2.333) Pub Date : 2019-07-16 Elettra Stimilli
This article focuses on a religious structure that is intrinsic to the contemporary mechanisms that have enabled the global domination of economic power: faith in the market. Following Foucault’s transition from biopolitics to governmentality, this article articulates the mechanism that generates the ability for human beings to give shape and value to their lives. Through a reading of Schmitt and Hayek
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Luc Boltanski’s pragmatic sociology: A Bourdieusian critique European Journal of Social Theory (IF 2.333) Pub Date : 2019-07-02 Will Atkinson
Luc Boltanski’s programme of pragmatic sociology, now gaining substantial attention among English-speaking sociologists, was forged in opposition to the supposed excesses and blind spots of Pierre Bourdieu’s ‘critical sociology’. After outlining the main lines of development of Boltanski’s project and emphasizing the major points of difference with Bourdieu, the article offers a critical Bourdieusian
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Dispossessing academics: The shift to ‘appropriation’ in the governing of academic life European Journal of Social Theory (IF 2.333) Pub Date : 2019-06-26 John Welsh
This article offers a critical theoretical exploration of the transformation of academic life that is currently taking place under the sign of ‘neoliberalization’. The main aim is to differentiate appropriation from exploitation as strategies of surplus labour dispossession, to identify the growth of appropriative techniques in academic life, and to situate the proliferation of such techniques in the
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Becoming Socrates: Five elements of the consecration process and the case of Jan Patočka European Journal of Social Theory (IF 2.333) Pub Date : 2019-06-12 Dominik Želinský
This article explores the phenomenon of consecration, which, so far, has been neglected by sociologists of intellectuals. Contrary to the common Bourdieusian approach to consecration, which conflates it with legitimization, consecration is conceptualized as a process of the symbolic elevation of a figure, or an object, to the level of sacred symbols relevant to a particular community. Five analytically
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Postdemocracy and biopolitics European Journal of Social Theory (IF 2.333) Pub Date : 2019-06-02 Roberto Esposito
The problem facing society today, which is only superficially defined in terms of ‘postdemocracy’ or exorcised as populism, is not the limits or defects of democracy, but, on the contrary, its completion in the figure of its opposite. One must be aware that the horizon has profoundly and irreversibly changed. At this point, what is at stake is no longer a simple reform of society’s institutions; rather
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Towards a social theory of fear: A phenomenology of negative integration European Journal of Social Theory (IF 2.333) Pub Date : 2019-05-30 Domonkos Sik
Despite its undisputed importance, fear is yet to become a distinct research area for social theory. However, without a clear conceptualization of fear, the explanation of significant phenomena, such as the risk-related anxiety or the conflict of the global and the local, remains incomplete. This article aims at reintroducing fear at the fundamental level of social integration. First, the social contract
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Esposito’s affirmative biopolitics in multispecies homes European Journal of Social Theory (IF 2.333) Pub Date : 2019-05-27 Heather Lynch
Drawing on Roberto Esposito’s conceptualization of ‘affirmative biopolitics’, this article examines the relationship between bedbugs and humans in the Glasgow neighbourhood of Govanhill. Through an analysis of ethnographic field notes and interviews with people who live in the area, this article traces their experiences from first encounters. The trajectory of this experience shows a shift from a desire
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Eight theories of societalization: Toward a theoretically sustainable concept of society European Journal of Social Theory (IF 2.333) Pub Date : 2019-05-27 Volker H Schmidt
This article critically engages a recent essay Jeffrey Alexander has published on ‘societalization’, whose conceptualization it finds problematic; first, because in contrast to the impression conveyed by the essay, the term itself is anything but new (as shown in a summary of six theories of societalization which precede Alexander’s by decades, in two cases, by more than a century), and, second, because
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Risky disciplining: On interdisciplinarity between sociology and cognitive neuroscience in the governing of morality European Journal of Social Theory (IF 2.333) Pub Date : 2019-05-27 Matthew Wade
The neuroscience of morality presents novel approaches in exploring the cognitive and affective underpinnings of moral conduct, and is steadily accumulating influence within discursive frames of biocitizenship. Many claims are infused with varieties of neuro-actuarialism in governing morally risky subjects, with implications that other fields should observe closely. Sociologists and other social scientists
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Hazardous intersections: Crossing disciplinary lines in developmental psychology European Journal of Social Theory (IF 2.333) Pub Date : 2019-05-13 Douglas E. Sperry, Peggy J. Miller, Linda L. Sperry
This article extends Lemieux’s concern for the interdisciplinary tension between philosophy and sociology to the intradisciplinary tension within psychology between approaches to the study of children focusing on universal principles and approaches adopting a contextual lens. This tension arises both in how development is defined and in the methods chosen for its study. This tension is exemplified
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Socioeconomic inequalities of suicide: Sociological and psychological intersections European Journal of Social Theory (IF 2.333) Pub Date : 2019-05-08 Amy Chandler
Suicide is complex; yet suicide research is dominated by ‘psy’ disciplines which can falter when seeking to explain social patterning of suicide rates, and how this relates to individual actions. This article discusses a multidisciplinary report which aimed to advance understandings of socioeconomic inequalities in suicide rates in the UK. Contrasts are drawn between health psychology and sociology
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Sociology at the individual level, psychologies and neurosciences European Journal of Social Theory (IF 2.333) Pub Date : 2019-05-08 Bernard Lahire
The French sociological tradition has long regarded the ‘individual’ as a reality situated outside its area of intellection and investigation. According to Durkheim, the individual is a psychological object par excellence. Sociology has thus long favored the study of collectives (groups, classes, categories, institutions, microcosms), suggesting that the individual was a reality which, in itself, fell
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Introduction to special issue, Sociology and psychology: What intersections? European Journal of Social Theory (IF 2.333) Pub Date : 2019-05-02 Baptiste Brossard, Nicolas Sallée
This article is the introduction to the special issue ‘Sociology and psychology: what intersections?’ In addition to presenting the articles included in this issue, the present text outlines the general stakes of interdisciplinarity between psychology and sociology. It argues that interdisciplinarity requires a specific conversion work between disciplines and that, in the particular case of sociology
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Introduction to the politics of life: A biopolitical mess European Journal of Social Theory (IF 2.333) Pub Date : 2019-04-24 Greg Bird, Heather Lynch
This introduction to the special issue focuses on the messiness of biopolitics. The biopolitical is a composite mixture of heterogeneous, and sometimes conflicting, forces, discourses, institutions, laws, and practices that are embedded in and animated by material social relations. In the now extensive literature on biopolitics, our biopolitical era is characterized by the blending and mixing of what
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Introduction to Garfinkel’s ‘Notes on Language Games’: Language events as cultural events in ‘systems of interaction’ European Journal of Social Theory (IF 2.333) Pub Date : 2019-04-16 Anne Warfield Rawls
This article discusses ‘Notes on Language Games’, written by Harold Garfinkel in 1960 and never before published, one of three distinct versions of his famous ‘Trust’ argument, i.e., that constitutive criteria define shared events, objects, and meanings. The argument stands in contrast to an approach to cultural anthropology that was becoming popular in 1960 called ‘ethnoscience’. In this previously
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Materialized ideology and environmental problems: The cases of solar geoengineering and agricultural biotechnology European Journal of Social Theory (IF 2.333) Pub Date : 2019-04-11 Ryan Gunderson, Diana Stuart, Brian Petersen
This article expands upon the notion of ideology as a material phenomenon, usually in the form of institutionalized, taken-for-granted practices. It draws on Herbert Marcuse and related thinkers to conceptualize technological solutions to environmental problems as materialized ideological responses to social-ecological contradictions, which, by concealing these contradictions, reproduce existing social
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From homo sacer to homo dolorosus: Biopower and the politics of suffering European Journal of Social Theory (IF 2.333) Pub Date : 2019-04-01 Charles Wells
This article argues that the indefinite detention and torture of prisoners at the Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp and the intentional destabilization of Palestinian civilian life in the Israeli occupied Palestinian territories are indicative of the emergence of a new postmodern form of power. Coining the term homo dolorosus – the man who is available to be made to suffer – this article seeks to understand
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On the use of definitions in sociology European Journal of Social Theory (IF 2.333) Pub Date : 2019-03-03 Richard Swedberg
Definitions may seem marginal to the sociological enterprise but can be very useful; however, they can also lead to serious errors. Examples of both are given in this article. Different types of definitions are presented, and their relevance for sociology is highlighted. A stipulative definition, for example, is very useful in sociology, as opposed to lexical and ostensive definitions. The definition
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Notes on language games as a source of methods for studying the formal properties of linguistic events1 European Journal of Social Theory (IF 2.333) Pub Date : 2019-02-24 Harold Garfinkel
One of three distinct approaches to his famous ‘Trust’ argument, this paper written by Garfinkel in 1960, and never before published, proposed a rethinking of rules, games and linguistic classifications in interactional terms consistent with Wittgenstein’s language games. Garfinkel had been working in collaboration with Parsons since 1958 to craft an approach to culture that would replace conceptual
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