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A Theological Approach to Vulnerability: Towards a Humane Ethics
by Carolina Montero OrphanopoulosThis book explores the symbols of vulnerability, narratives of vulnerability, and ethical norms of vulnerability in the Bible. Focusing on the great Tradition of the Church—from Stoic and Neoplatonic influence to the Moral Systems—and the approach to the Second Vatican Council, the volume helps to comprehend, deepen and clarify the concept of vulnerability. As a theory, it addresses the construction of ethics of vulnerability, its characteristics, the fundamental categories it should include. Reinforced by “An Interdisciplinary Approach to Vulnerability: Towards a Humane Ethics (Vol I)”, written by the same author, this book hopes to lead the discourse of Christian ethics towards a better understanding and ultimately build towards a greater integration of the vulnerability of the human being.
A Theory About Control
by Jack P. GibbsMoving beyond his 1989 book, Control: Sociology's Central Notion, Jack Gibbs develops in this new book a comprehensive theory of control in all its biological, technological, and human dimensions. His treatment goes beyond conventional ideas about social control to show why self-control and proximate control are essential to understanding human interaction. He also argues that thinking of control in terms of the counteraction of deviance is insufficient. Tests of Gibbs's control theory, based on data from sixty-six countries, add credence to his claim that control could be the central notion for sociology and perhaps for other social sciences.
A Theory of Accumulation and Secular Stagnation: A Malthusian Approach to Understanding a Contemporary Malaise
by Daniel AronoffA Theory of Accumulation and Secular Stagnation.
A Theory of Action Identification (Basic Studies in Human Behavior Series)
by Daniel M. Wegner Robin R. VallacherFirst published in 1985. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
A Theory of African American Offending: Race, Racism, and Crime (Criminology and Justice Studies)
by Shaun L. Gabbidon James D. UnneverA little more than a century ago, the famous social scientist W.E.B. Du Bois asserted that a true understanding of African American offending must be grounded in the "real conditions" of what it means to be black living in a racial stratified society. Today and according to official statistics, African American men – about six percent of the population of the United States – account for nearly sixty percent of the robbery arrests in the United States. To the authors of this book, this and many other glaring racial disparities in offending centered on African Americans is clearly related to their unique history and to their past and present racial subordination. Inexplicably, however, no criminological theory exists that fully articulates the nuances of the African American experience and how they relate to their offending. In readable fashion for undergraduate students, the general public, and criminologists alike, this book for the first time presents the foundations for the development of an African American theory of offending.
A Theory of Applied Linguistics: Ιmagining and Disclosing the Meaning of Design (Educational Linguistics #65)
by Albert WeidemanThis book adopts as conceptual focus the technical mode of experience, exploring this characteristic mode of design as the angle from which the discipline of applied linguistics takes its cue. What makes applied linguistic concept formation possible? A number of elementary concepts and ideas are so basic to the discipline that they can neither be ignored nor avoided. These ‘primitives’ are identified by examining the connections among the technical and other modalities, such as the spatial, the physical, the social, economic, aesthetic, juridical and the ethical. A theory of applied linguistics must be robust enough to do justice to different modernist and postmodernist paradigms operating in the discipline, systematically identifying and assessing their strengths and blind spots. The book offers a response to the question of the usefulness of theory. The principles of design revealed in the theoretical analysis are given shape in developing imaginative language interventions to solve vexing language problems not for the sake of theory, but for the benefit of those affected. The book is intended for use both as a reference and as a comprehensive, unifying perspective of what the field is, by scholars in applied linguistics and related fields (TESOL, ESL, ESP, EAP, SLA studies, language assessment and testing, language policy development), by postgraduate students or those who teach or study applied linguistics.
A Theory of Citizenship: Organizing Plurality in Contemporary Democracies
by Herman R. Van GunsterenDoes vital citizenship require moral consensus? Or is it the ability to organize our differences, that allows people to live together as citizens in a republic? Whereas liberal, republican, and communitarian theories of citizenship analyzed the conditions of citizenship, the central message of this book is that the practical exercise of citizenship, under conditions that are far from ideal, is the main source of its vitality. Instead of arguing for more participation, it focuses on the citizenship of those who, for whatever reason, are already active in the public sphere. Herman van Gunsteren develops a theory of citizenship well suited to the era of political reform that was inaugurated by the revolutions of 1989.
A Theory of Fairness and Social Welfare
by Marc Fleurbaey François ManiquetThe definition and measurement of social welfare have been a vexed issue for the past century. This book makes a constructive, easily applicable proposal and suggests how to evaluate the economic situation of a society in a way that gives priority to the worse-off and that respects each individual's preferences over his or her own consumption, work, leisure, and so on. This approach resonates with the current concern to go "beyond the GDP" in the measurement of social progress. Compared to technical studies in welfare economics, this book emphasizes constructive results rather than paradoxes and impossibilities, and shows how one can start from basic principles of efficiency and fairness and end up with concrete evaluations of policies. Compared to more philosophical treatments of social justice, this book is more precise about the definition of social welfare and reaches conclusions about concrete policies and institutions only after a rigorous derivation from clearly stated principles.
A Theory of Group Structures: Volume I: Basic Theory
by Kenneth D. MackenzieFirst published in 1976, this A Theory of Group Structures is a study of the aggregation of individuals into groups, which cuts across many different social sciences. Volume one attempts to formulate a more rigorous theory of group structures by providing consistent definitions, assumptions, measures, methodology, theory and results. This book will be of interest to students of all social sciences.
A Theory of Group Structures: Volume II: Empirical Tests
by Kenneth D. MackenzieFirst published in 1976, this A Theory of Group Structures is a study of the aggregation of individuals into groups, which cuts across many different social sciences. Volume two examines a sequence of twelve experiments and reports empirical tests of the theory presented in volume one. The result is a major revision of existing research into problems of group structure and a case study in paradigm development. This book will be of interest to students of all social sciences.
A Theory of Imagining, Knowing, and Understanding (SpringerBriefs in Psychology)
by Luca TateoThis is a book about imaginative work and its relationship with the construction of knowledge. It is fully acknowledged by epistemologists that imagination is not something opposed to rationality; it is not mere fantasy opposed to intellect. In philosophy and cognitive sciences, imagination is generally “delimiting not much more than the mental ability to interact cognitively with things that are not now present via the senses.” (Stuart, 2017, p. 11) For centuries, scholars and poets have wondered where this capability could come from, whether it is inspired by divinity or it is a peculiar feature of human mind (Tateo, 2017b). The omnipresence of imaginative work in both every day and highly specialized human activities requires a profoundly radical understanding of this phenomenon. We need to work imaginatively in order to achieve knowledge, thus imagination must be something more than a mere flight of fantasy. Considering different stories in the field of scientific endeavor, I will try to propose the idea that the imaginative process is fundamental higher mental function that concurs in our experiencing, knowing and understanding the world we are part of. This book is thus about a theoretical idea of imagining as constant part of the complex whole we call the human psyche. It is a story of human beings striving not only for knowledge and exploration but also striving for imagining possibilities.
A Theory of Moral Education
by Michael HandChildren must be taught morality. They must be taught to recognise the authority of moral standards and to understand what makes them authoritative. But there’s a problem: the content and justification of morality are matters of reasonable disagreement among reasonable people. This makes it hard to see how educators can secure children’s commitment to moral standards without indoctrinating them. In A Theory of Moral Education, Michael Hand tackles this problem head on. He sets out to show that moral education can and should be fully rational. It is true that many moral standards and justificatory theories are controversial, and educators have an obligation to teach these nondirectively, with the aim of enabling children to form their own considered views. But reasonable moral disagreement does not go all the way down: some basic moral standards are robustly justified, and these should be taught directively, with the aim of bringing children to recognise and understand their authority. This is an original and important contribution to the philosophy of moral education, which lays a new theoretical foundation for the urgent practical task of teaching right from wrong.
A Theory of Narrative
by Rick AltmanNarrative is a powerful element of human culture, storing and sharing the cherished parts of our personal memories and giving structure to our laws, entertainment, and history. We experience narrative in words, pictures, and film, yet regardless of how the tale is told, story remains independent from the media that makes it concrete. Narrative follows humans wherever they travel and adapts readily to new forms of communication. Constantly evolving and always up-to-date, narrative is a necessary strategy of human expression and a fundamental component of human identity.In order to understand human interaction, award-winning scholar Rick Altman launches a close study of narrative's nature, its variation in different contexts, and the method through which it makes meaning. Altman's approach breaks away from traditional forms of analysis, identifying three basic strategies: single-focus, dual-focus, and multiple-focus. Unpacking an intentionally diverse selection of texts, Altman demonstrates how these strategies function in context and illustrates their theoretical and practical applications in terms of textual analysis, literary and film history, social organization, religion, and politics. He employs inventive terminology and precise analytical methods throughout his groundbreaking work, making this volume ideal for teaching literary and film theory and for exploring the anatomy of narrative on a more general level.
A Theory of Proculturation: Development of the self through intercultural communication (SpringerBriefs in Psychology)
by Vladimer Lado GamsakhurdiaIn each connection with new cultural contexts a new hybrid state of cultural adaptation is constructed enabling people to adjust to new conditions by creating innovative solutions for the self. This book aims to provide a brief presentation of innovative cultural psychological theory of proculturation reflecting and oriented on the understanding of semiotic and developmental dynamics of higher mental phenomena while engaging alien signs through intercultural communication. The exploration and theoretical understanding of developmental dynamics (such as self and identity construction) of people who live in immigration or multicultural, or even multi-ethnic societies, the research builds its new focus in contrasts with the acculturation theories currently present in social psychology. The theory of proculturation has been built in opposition to cross-cultural psychological theories as well as mainstream theories of acculturation research dominated by bidimensional theoretical models. Instead, this theory is constructed based on theoretical explorations which are rooted in cultural semiotics and developmental psychological paradigm on human psychology.
A Theory of System Justification
by John T. JostA leading psychologist explains why nearly all of us—including many of those who are persecuted and powerless—so often defend the social systems that cause misery and injustice. Why do we so often defend the very social systems that are responsible for injustice and exploitation? In A Theory of System Justification, John Jost argues that we are motivated to defend the status quo because doing so serves fundamental psychological needs for certainty, security, and social acceptance. We want to feel good not only about ourselves and the groups to which we belong, but also about the overarching social structure in which we live, even when it hurts others and ourselves. Jost lays out the wide range of evidence for his groundbreaking theory and examines its implications for our communities and our democracy. Drawing on twenty-five years of research, he provides an accessible account of system justification theory and its insights. System justification helps to explain deep contradictions, including the feeling among some women that they don’t deserve the same salaries as men and the tendency of some poor people to vote for policies that increase economic inequality. The theory illuminates the most pressing social and political issues of our time—why has it been so hard to combat anthropogenic climate change?—as well as some of the most intimate—why do some black children prefer white dolls to black ones and why do some people stay in bad relationships? Jost’s theory has far-reaching implications, and he offers numerous insights that political activists and social justice advocates can use to promote change.
A Theory of Truces (Palgrave Studies In Ethics And Public Policy)
by Nir EisikovitsA Theory of Truces.
A Theory of Urbanity: The Economic and Civic Culture of Cities
by Anton ZijderveldCities provide for people, not just functionally in terms of jobs, obligations and practical pursuits, but also, and above all, emotionally. We like some cities and detest others. Despite shared rationalizations and common modes of administration and design, each city has its own culture. A culture is typically human in that it contains all dimensions of the human, personal condition--from the lowest to the most sublime. Urban culture comprises both economic and civic culture, and is the source of a city's vitality. For today's urban sprawls, which have a weak and failing economic and civic culture, the task of the urban administration and various economic and civic organizations is to strengthen conditions that can prevent the emergence of urban anomie. With suburbanization, the edge city, and the emergence of cyberspace, some argue that cities, as integrated places of working and living, are things of the past. Zijderveld argues that people are and remain social animals, who like and need one another's company, particularly in their economic, socio-cultural, and political activities. Throughout the ages, cities have provided the environment in which people fulfill these needs. Anton Zijderveld discusses urban preferences, the organizations and ramifications of urbanity, the modernization of urban culture, the uneasy alliance between urbanity and the interventionist state, and the cultural dimensions of urban renewal. Zijderveld sees the economic and civic culture of the city as the centerpiece of contemporary urban management and contemporary urban democracy. In this sense, the new technology is an ally of the new urban renewal. Most postmodern treatises on the end of the city are impressionistic and unsystematic. In contrast, Zijderveld puts the qualitative dimensions of city life into focus, catching its pulse and cultural rhythms in a systematic context that prior studies have lacked. As such, it will be of great interest to urban administrators, p
A Theory of the Classical Novel (Routledge Library Editions: The Nineteenth-Century Novel #23)
by Everett KnightFirst published in 1969, this book asserts that two concepts, structure and praxis, make it impractical for scholars to ignore the necessity of a theory of the novel — with the term ‘classical novel’ used to cover western fiction. The author argues that the novel is fundamentally an ‘enterprise’ — an aspect of the praxis of a particular social class — and that the ways of orthodox scholarship are also a praxis. The investigator must enquire into the nature of their questions as those traditionally put to literature are inspired by ‘irrelevant’ nineteenth century positivism. In the author’s view the book is necessarily a theory of the classical novel and a manifesto for the student movement.
A Thousand Pieces of Gold: Growing Up Through China's Proverbs
by Adeline Yen MahIn this poignant memoir the New York Times bestselling author of Falling Leaves, Adeline Yen Mah, provides a fascinating window into the history and cultural soul of China. Combining personal reflections, rich historical insights, and proverbs handed down to her by her grandfather, Yen Mah shares the wealth of Chinese civilization with Western readers. Exploring the history behind the proverbs, she delves into the lives of the first and second emperors and the two rebel warriors who changed the course of Chinese life, adding stories from her own life to beautifully illustrate their relevance and influence today.
A Thrice-Told Tale: Feminism, Postmodernism, and Ethnographic Responsibility
by Margery WolfA Thrice-Told Tale is one ethnographer's imaginative and powerful response to the methodological issues raised by feminist and postmodernist critics of traditional ethnography. The author, a feminist anthropologist, uses three texts developed out of her research in Taiwan--a piece of fiction, anthropological fieldnotes, and a social science article--to explore some of these criticisms. Each text takes a different perspective, is written in a different style, and has different "outcomes," yet all three involve the same fascinating set of events. A young mother began to behave in a decidedly abherrant, perhaps suicidal manner, and opinion in her village was sharply divided over the reason. Was she becoming a shaman, posessed by a god? Was she deranged, in need of physical restraint, drugs, and hospitalization? Or was she being cynically manipulated by her ne'er-do-well husband to elicit sympathy and money from her neighbors? In the end, the woman was taken away from the area to her mother's house. For some villagers, this settled the matter; for others the debate over her behavior was probably never truly resolved. The first text is a short story written shortly after the incident, which occurred almost thrity years ago; the second text is a copy of the fieldnotes collected about the events covered in the short story; the third text is an article published in 1990 in American Ethnologist that analyzes the incident from the author's current perspective. Following each text is a Commentary in which the author discusses such topics as experimental ethnography, polyvocality, authorial presence and control, reflexivity, and some of the differences between fiction and ethnography. The three texts are framed by two chapters in which the author discusses the genereal problems posed by feminist and postmodernist critics of ethnography and presents her personal exploration of these issues in an argument that is strongly self-reflexive and theoretically rigorous. She considers some feminist concerns over colonial research methods and takes issues with the insistence of some feminists tha the topics of ethnographic research be set by those who are studied. The book concludes with a plea for ethnographic responsibility based on a less academic and more practical perspective.
A Time for Critique (New Directions in Critical Theory #58)
by Didier Fassin Bernard E. HarcourtIn a world of political upheaval, rising inequality, catastrophic climate change, and widespread doubt of even the most authoritative sources of information, is there a place for critique? This book calls for a systematic reappraisal of critical thinking—its assumptions, its practices, its genealogy, its predicament—following the principle that critique can only start with self-critique.In A Time for Critique, Didier Fassin, Bernard E. Harcourt, and a group of eminent political theorists, anthropologists, sociologists, philosophers, and literary and legal scholars reflect on the multiplying contexts and forms of critical discourse and on the social actors and social movements engaged in them. How can one maintain sufficient distance from the eventful present without doing it an injustice? How can one address contemporary issues without repudiating the intellectual legacies of the past? How can one avoid the disconnection between theory and action? How can critique be both public and collective? These provocative questions are addressed by revisiting the works of Foucault and Arendt, Said and Césaire, Benjamin and Du Bois, but they are also given substance through on-the-ground case studies that treat subaltern criticism in Palestine, emancipatory mobilizations in Syria, the antitorture campaigns of Sri Lankan activists, and the abolitionism of the African American critical resistance and undercommons movements in the United States. Examining lucidly the present challenges of critique, A Time for Critique shows how its theoretical reassessment and its emerging forms can illuminate the imaginative modalities to rejuvenate critical praxis.
A Tolerant Country?: Immigrants, Refugees and Minorities (Routledge Library Editions: Racism and Fascism #1)
by Colin HolmesIn this book, first published in 1991, Colin Holmes examines responses to those immigrants and refugees who have been coming to Britain since the late nineteenth century as well as the perception and treatment of British-born minorities. He attempts to explain the hostility which these groups have encountered and reveals behind complex feelings and circumstances which have often gone unrecognised.
A Tradition That Has No Name: Nurturing the Development of People, Families, and Communities
by Jacqueline S. Weinstock Mary Field Belenky Lynne A. BondMary Field Belenky, Lynne A. Bond, and Jacqueline S. Weinstock hoping to carry Belenky's theoretical work in the bestselling Women's Ways of Knowing into the realm of everyday life, created the Listening Partners project, designed to help young women isolated in rural poverty give voice to their personal and communal needs and come together to create social change. A Tradition That Has No Name explores this project and the work of other women who have created organizations to give voice to and strengthen traditions of community organizing and leadership, particularly as they have developed in communities of women marginalized by race and class. Ranging across cultures and classes--from struggling inner-city neighborhoods to affluent middle-class suburbs, from African American communities in the South to poor rural communities in Vermont--the book teaches us how to appreciate the ways women create networks of listening and community-building, and how to bring these little-recognized traditions of women's activism to the forefront of public life. It is these "public homeplaces" women create together, the authors argue, that hold the key to empowering communities and creating social change.
A Transdisciplinary Study of Global Mobilities: Identities on the Move
by Eduardo Tasis Moratinos Ti-Han Chang Alícia Moreno GiménezIdentities on the Move interrogates the categories given and adopted by people on the move through a transdisciplinary and global approach that includes social and political sciences and the arts. It brings together experiences of displacement from a variety of cultural and national backgrounds, including Brazilians, Chinese, Koreans, South Italians, Africans, Muslims, Arabophobe migrants, Iranians, Pakistanis, Bosnians, Latin Americans and Eastern Europeans. It looks at their identity-negotiating processes in different geographies across the globe, namely Japan, UK, Palestine, Italy, Australia, Europe and North America. This multi-geographical and multi-disciplinary approach allows us to decentralise previous narratives of migration by reformulating them against coloniality and invisibility and presenting them within a richer and changing contemporary map of dynamic identities. The global scale of the case studies included in this volume also allows for a wider exploration of thematic concepts within the (trans)formation of displaced identities, such as assimilation versus alienation, memory and trauma, stigmatisation, enculturation, acculturation and deculturation. In a nutshell, this volume highlights current complexities of identity formation in a global scene that is moving away from homogenous nations by presenting a multi-layered and multi-spatial notion of belonging.
A Translational Sociology: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Politics and Society (Translation, Politics and Society)
by Esperança BielsaA Translational Sociology provides an interdisciplinary investigation of the key role of translation in society. There is a growing recognition of translation’s intervention in the intellectual history of sociology, in the international reception of social theory, and in approaches to the global literary and academic fields. This book brings attention to aspects of translation that have remained more elusive to sociological interpretation and analysis, investigating translation’s ubiquitous presence in the everyday lives of ordinary people in increasingly multilingual societies and its key intervention in mediating politics within and beyond the nation. In order to challenge a reductive view of translation as a relatively straightforward process of word substitution that is still prevalent in the social sciences, this book proposes and develops a broader definition of translation as a social relation across linguistic difference, a process of transformation that leaves neither its agent nor its object unchanged. The book offers elaborations of the social, cultural and political implications of such an approach, as a broad focus on these various perspectives and their interrelations is needed for a fuller understanding of translation’s significance in the contemporary world. This is key reading for advanced students and researchers of translation studies, social theory, cultural sociology and political sociology.