Sociology Archives - Page 2 of 5

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Pressed for Time: The Acceleration of Life in Digital Capitalism

An excerpt from Judy Wajcman’s latest book

May 31, 2018 • by Judy Wajcman

There is a widespread perception that life is faster than it used to be, and smartphones and the Internet are continually being blamed. In Pressed for Time, Judy Wajcman explains why we immediately interpret our experiences with digital technology as inexorably accelerating everyday life. She argues that we are not mere ...

Pressed for Time: The Acceleration of Life in Digital Capitalism

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The Banality of Good and Evil

Reflections of an anti-sociologist

May 25, 2018 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb

I want to make it simple and to the point. That’s the best way to go. But some days, as I think and write, things become more complicated, and I struggle. Today is such a day. I wanted to write a straightforward post on a straightforward theme, on mistakes and ...

Uncategorized

Two Idiocies and a Maybe

Or the Political Limits of “Social Psychology”

March 13, 2018 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

We live in the academic Age of Science. I write “academic” quite deliberately. In the broader world, we live in an age of fakery, idiocy, and a hatred of all forms of science and scientific reasoning. The Age of Trump. But in the academy, Science reigns supreme. Big Data. Laboratory experiments. ...

Feature

How Castoriadis read Weber

Meaning, values, and imaginary institution

March 6, 2018 • by Yannis Ktenas

I. The interest Cornelius Castoriadis had in Max Weber’s work, although quite apparent and confessed by the philosopher himself, has not drawn sufficient attention by scholars and commentators. [1] It is no coincidence that the first and the last texts Castoriadis published while living both deal with Weber. The first of these was ...

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Ricoeur and Castoriadis in Discussion

An excerpt from Suzi Adams’ new book

December 5, 2017 • by Suzi Adams

The dialogue is, however, peppered with some persistent misunderstandings. At one point, Castoriadis notes that they seem to be speaking ‘at cross purposes’. This can be attributed – at least in part – to the various seminar series that each had given in the years prior to the radio encounter, ...

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Confronting Financialization Demands a Radical Cultural Politics

An excerpt from Cultures of Financialization

September 18, 2017 • by Max Haiven

Rather than (or in addition to) castigating finance as purely the realm of capitalist excess, greed, cruelty and extortion, we may also need to see finance, and the broader processes of financialization, as both symptomatic and revelatory of some deeper, more profound and potent truths about our society. Financialization is, ...

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Uneasy Street: The Anxieties of Affluence

An excerpt from Rachel Sherman’s new book

September 11, 2017 • by Rachel Sherman

Scott told me he had been self-conscious about his wealth since he was a child. He recalled feeling sensitive to comments classmates and others would make about the size of his family’s house. He said, “I just felt like, ‘Yeah, this is kind of different. And, it’s something to hide.’” ...

Education

The New Authoritarianism and the Structural Transformation of the Mediated Public Sphere I

Reviewing the work of Jurgen Habermas and Hannah Arendt with an assist from Nancy Fraser

August 18, 2017 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb

It’s been two weeks since my return from Wroclaw. I am getting over the shock of teaching about the rise of the new authoritarianism, as the Polish parliament, The Sejm, seemed to be hammering the final nails into the coffin of Polish democracy. It turned out to be a little ...

The New Authoritarianism and the Structural Transformation of the Mediated Public Sphere I

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Leaderless Crowds

Reflections on the Power of Affects, from Gustave Le Bon to Frédéric Lordon

July 5, 2017 • by Léa Barbisan

In his book The Politics of Crowds, Christian Borch notes that even though “crowds and masses... seem to sustain themselves in the margins of contemporary sociological thinking... the mass media recurrently reports on new mass events, explicitly labeled thus, typically in the form of mass protests, mass disasters such as ...

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Peter Berger’s Last Visit to The New School for Social Research

Revisiting The Social Construction of Reality

July 1, 2017 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb

Although circumstances did not permit Peter Berger to attend in person The New School’s conference commemorating the upcoming fiftieth anniversary of the publication of The Social Construction of Reality, it was wonderful to have him with us via Skype (nicely captured with me in the accompanying surreal photo). ...

Peter Berger’s Last Visit to The New School for Social Research

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The Whiskey Rebellion, Political Crisis, and the Sociology of Elite Interpretation

From the early modern to the contemporary USA, part 2

May 10, 2017 • by Isaac Ariail Reed

Among the grievances that fueled the rebels we can include an early modern version of a bailout. Government issued bonds had been used to pay the soldiers in the Continental Army during the revolutionary war. During the economic depression of the 1780s, speculators had bought these up for pennies on ...

The Whiskey Rebellion, Political Crisis, and the Sociology of Elite Interpretation

Education

What Hannah Arendt Really Wants

Reclaiming Space for the Vita Activa

May 5, 2017 • by Nuri Can Akin

There is an obvious reason why people in the U.S. have started to read George Orwell, Sinclair Lewis, Vaclav Havel, and Hannah Arendt again.[1] I must admit I share their concern: From the very first actions of the Trump administration, it became clear that the country has taken an authoritarian ...