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The Political Sociology And Anthropology Of Evil Tricksterology
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Book Synopsis The Political Sociology and Anthropology of Evil: Tricksterology by : Agnes Horvath
Download or read book The Political Sociology and Anthropology of Evil: Tricksterology written by Agnes Horvath and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-10-10 with total page 207 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers a new approach to the problem of evil through an examination of the anthropological figure of the ‘trickster’. A lesser known and much more recent term than evil, the authors use the trickster to facilitate a greater understanding of the return of evil in the modern era. Instead of simply opposing ‘good’ and ‘evil’, the figure of the trickster is used to pursue the trajectories of similarities and quasi-similarities through imitation. After engaging with the trickster as presented in comparative anthropology and mythology, where it appears in tales and legends as a strange, erratic outsider, the authors seek to gain an inside perspective of trickster knowledge through an examination of mythology and the classical world, including both philosophers and poets. The book then goes on to trace the trickster through prehistory, using archaeological evidence to complement the diverse narratives. In this way, and by investigating the knowledge and customs surrounding evil, the authors use the figure of the trickster to provide an unprecedented diagnosis of the contemporary world, where external, mechanical rationality has become taken for granted and even considered as foundational in politics, economics, and technologised science. The authors advance the idea that the modern world, with its global free markets, mass mediatic democracy and technologised science, represents a universalisation of trickster logic. The Political Sociology and Anthropology of the Evil will be of interest to scholars working in the fields of social theory, political anthropology and political sociology, as well as those interested in the ways in which evil can infiltrate reality.
Book Synopsis The Political Sociology and Anthropology of Evil by : Ágnes Horváth
Download or read book The Political Sociology and Anthropology of Evil written by Ágnes Horváth and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Book Synopsis Post-Truth Society by : Arpad Szakolczai
Download or read book Post-Truth Society written by Arpad Szakolczai and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-11-29 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It is widely asserted that we are now living in a post-truth society. What that means, this book argues, is that the contemporary global world is thoroughly infested not only with trickster figures but an entire and operational trickster logic; or, that we now live in a Trickster Land – an argument advanced by the claim that in modernity liminality has become permanent; or that modern life is patently absurd. The first part of the book presents a series of ‘guides’ to this condition, in the form of key thinkers and writers who can help us understand and navigate our Trickster Land. Such guides include Hermann Broch, Lewis Hyde, Roberto Calasso, Michel Serres, Sándor Márai, Colin Thubron and Albert Camus. The second part goes on to discuss five main regions of Trickster Land: art, thought, the economy, politics and society. This last, central chapter of the book contrasts trickster logic with the basic, foundational logic of social life, presented as gift-giving by Marcel Mauss and as sociability by Georg Simmel, and which is expressed here, combining Heraclitus and Plato with the Gospel of John, by three basic terms of ancient Greek culture, as arkhé charis logos: meaningful social life originally and in its essence is animated by the power of kind benevolence. This volume will appeal to scholars of social theory, anthropology and sociology with interests in political thought and contemporary culture.
Book Synopsis Beyond Liminality by : Jack David Eller
Download or read book Beyond Liminality written by Jack David Eller and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-07-08 with total page 199 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Beyond Liminality: Ontologies of Abundant Betweenness examines the concept of liminality in the social sciences and humanities, and advocates for a more critical use of the concept while offering more precise alternatives. Originally conceived in response to the near-universal ritualization of changes of status (i.e., "rites of passage"), liminality was a welcome and much-needed correction to the reigning static and structural models of culture at the time. However, it soon escaped its initial realm and was enthusiastically—and mostly uncritically—absorbed by many if not all scholarly disciplines. The very success of the concept suggests that there is something about it that resonates with our own cultural sentiments. However, the assumptions that underlie diagnoses of liminality are seldom noted and even more seldom analyzed and critiqued. This book examines the history of the concept, its evolution, and its current status, and asks whether liminality accurately reflects lived realities which might better be described by fluidity, hybridity, multiplicity, constant motion and recombination, and abundant betweenness. Beyond Liminality: Ontologies of Abundant Betweenness is key reading for scholars and students across the social sciences and humanities interested in ritual, performance, identity formation, rights, ontology, and epistemology.
Book Synopsis The Technologisation of the Social by : Paul O'Connor
Download or read book The Technologisation of the Social written by Paul O'Connor and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-12-31 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In an era of digital revolution, artificial intelligence, big data and augmented reality, technology has shifted from being a tool of communication to a primary medium of experience and sociality. Some of the most basic human capacities are increasingly being outsourced to machines and we increasingly experience and interpret the world through digital interfaces, with machines becoming ever more ‘social’ beings. Social interaction and human perception are being reshaped in unprecedented ways. This book explores this technologisation of the social and the attendant penetration of permanent liminality into those aspects of the lifeworld where individuals had previously sought some kind of stability and meaning. Through a historical and anthropological examination of this phenomenon, it problematises the underlying logic of limitless technological expansion and our increasing inability to imagine either ourselves or our world in other than technological terms. Drawing on a variety of concepts from political anthropology, including liminality, the trickster, imitation, schismogenesis, participation, and the void, it interrogates the contemporary technological revolution in a manner that will be of interest to sociologists, social and anthropological theorists and scholars of science and technology studies with interests in the digital transformation of social life.
Book Synopsis China at a Threshold by : James B. Cuffe
Download or read book China at a Threshold written by James B. Cuffe and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-11-28 with total page 187 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Once the world’s most technologically advanced civilisation, China is poised to yet again take this mantle, having made incredible technological strides over recent decades; but what does this in fact mean? What will this mean for Chinese society, and what ramifications might it have for the future? This book offers an account of social change under the growing influence of communications technology in media-saturated urban China. The challenges presented by the rise of technology and its pervasive nature in the mediation of all facets of everyday life pose questions not just for Chinese society but for all contemporary media societies. Drawing on theories from the philosophy of technology and conceptual tools from political anthropology, this title moves beyond debates surrounding mediative technology as a liberating or malevolent force. China at a Threshold addresses academic concerns surrounding communications technology and state control, looking for an interpretative approach to understand the role media might play in social change so that we might ascertain its impact on social relations. Urging a reconsideration in our understanding of technology as neither liberative nor oppressive, the author advances a proposal that brings social forces into play in their own right. Taking inspiration from thinkers in philosophy and anthropology, this title investigates storytelling and liminal characters as real agents in social change so that we might identify alternative forces for change not reducible to technological impact or human proclivity.
Book Synopsis Constraining Government by : Zoltán Balázs
Download or read book Constraining Government written by Zoltán Balázs and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2021-04-19 with total page 215 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Moderate government is a time-honored and cherished doctrine. It has been considered the best solution of preventing tyranny and anarchy alike. However, expositions of the doctrine tend either to be entrenched by the technicalities of constitutional and public choice theory, or to remain largely exhortative. This book aims at providing a larger and more commonsensical defense of it. It addresses the issue of moderation but within a broader perspective of reflecting on how governments have developed with inherent constraints. This offers an analysis of the Antigone and Measure for Measure to discuss the necessary fall of tyranny, and the problems of how to distinguish between order and disorder. It is then argued that doing political theory is another important constraint on governments. Even conceptions that envision an unconstrained sort of government run into difficulties and as an unintended consequence, confirm the soundness of the idea that governing is an inherently constrained business. The book then takes issue with the recently growing awareness, associated with political realism, that governing is as much a personal as an institutional activity. In this context, the virtue of moderation will be discussed, and shown how it grows out of the experience of shame, whereby we are made conscious of our limitations of control over ourselves. Governing is to a large part about control, and as a personal activity it preserves the centrality of shame, and the insight that moderation is the best way to maintain effective control without pretending to have full control. Then, the book discusses three offices of government, traditionally considered to be the pivotal ones: the legislator, the chief executive, and the judge. Each will be analyzed by help of three fundamental distinctions: normal vs exceptional times, personal vs institutional aspects, and governing vs anti-governing. They highlight and confirm the inherent constraints of each office. Finally, three political conceptions of governing will be discussed, ending with a reflection on the principle of the separation of powers.
Book Synopsis Modern Leaders: Between Charisma and Trickery by : Agnes Horvath
Download or read book Modern Leaders: Between Charisma and Trickery written by Agnes Horvath and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-07-26 with total page 219 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book considers the current striking rise of ‘outsider’ political leaders, catapulted, apparently, from nowhere, to take charge of a nation. Arguing that such leaders can be better understood with the help of the anthropologically based concept of ‘the trickster’, it offers studies of contemporary political figures from the world stage – including Presidents Macron, Tsipras, Orbán and Bolsonaro, among others – to examine the ways in which charismatic and trickster modalities can become intertwined, especially under the impact of theatrical public media. Looking beyond the commonly invoked notion of ‘charisma’ to revisit the question of political leadership in light of the recent rise of new type of ‘outsider’ leaders, Modern Leaders: Between Charisma and Trickery offers an account of leadership informed by social and anthropological theory. As such, it will appeal to scholars across the social sciences with interests in political thought and the problem of political leadership.
Book Synopsis Breaking Down Joker by : Sean Redmond
Download or read book Breaking Down Joker written by Sean Redmond and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-12-30 with total page 299 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Breaking Down Joker offers a compelling, multi-disciplinary examination of a landmark film and media event that was simultaneously both celebrated and derided, and which arrived at a time of unprecedented social malaise. The collection breaks down Joker to explore its aesthetic and ideological representations within the social and cultural context in which it was released. An international team of authors explore Joker’s sightlines and subtexts, the affective relationships, corrosive ideologies, and damning, if ambivalent, messages of this film. The chapters address such themes as white masculinity, identity and perversion, social class and mobility, urban loneliness, movement and music, and questions of reception and activism. With contributions from scholars from screen studies, theatre and performance studies, psychology and psychoanalysis, geography, cultural studies, and sociology, this fully interdisciplinary collection offers a uniquely multiple operational cross-examination of this pivotal film text and will be of great importance to scholars, students, and researchers in these areas.
Book Synopsis Art and Enchantment by : Patrick Curry
Download or read book Art and Enchantment written by Patrick Curry and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-03-17 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book concerns the experience of enchantment in art. Considering the essential characteristics, dynamics and conditions of the experience of enchantment in relation to art, including liminality, it offers studies of different kinds of artistic experience and activity, including painting, music, fiction and poetry, before exploring the possibility of a life oriented to enchantment as the activity of art itself. With attention to the complex relationship between wonder in art and the programmatic disenchantment to which it is often subject, the author draws on the thought of a diverse range of philosophers, sociological theorists and artists, to offer an understanding of art through the idea of enchantment, and enchantment through art. An accessible study, richly illustrated with experience – both that of the author and others – Art and Enchantment will appeal to scholars and students of sociology, anthropology, philosophy, and anyone with interests in the nature of aesthetic experience.
Book Synopsis Liminality and the Philosophy of Presence by : Franziska Hoppen
Download or read book Liminality and the Philosophy of Presence written by Franziska Hoppen and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-03-16 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book departs from the attempt by political theory to confront the challenges of political life with new concepts, offering instead a mode of thought so far excluded from the canon of political theory: the philosophy of presence. Making the experience of liminality the very centre of thought, it shows how embracing ‘in-betweenness’ allows us to discern the limits of both the political order and contemporary political theory. Through an examination of the works of Gustav Landauer, Eric Voegelin, Simone Weil and Václav Havel, the author demonstrates the manner in which ‘in-betweenness’ may be cultivated by way of the philosophy of presence as a method of self-enquiry into existence as it is experienced subjectively. Arguing that since externalisation is the essence of politics and that the way to a more just society lies inwards, through a confrontation with liminality, this study of how to read philosophers of presence renders their work intelligible to the contemporary discourse of crisis and will appeal to scholars of social, political and anthropological theory and philosophy.
Book Synopsis Political Anthropology as Method by : Arpad Szakolczai
Download or read book Political Anthropology as Method written by Arpad Szakolczai and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-02-27 with total page 243 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores considerations of method in the field of political anthropology, contending that this constitutes a distinct approach within the broader area of the human, social and political sciences. Faithful to the basic guiding ideas of anthropology, it nonetheless challenges and rejects the pretended stance of scientific neutrality and advances a position that engages with the notion of participation, recognising its value and arguing that participation is essential to the development of a proper social and political understanding. An outline of what political anthropology can offer by way of methods, this invitation to consider the development of methodological ideas beyond the presumed ‘scientific’ and ‘universalistic’ approaches that dominate in the social sciences will appeal to scholars of anthropology, sociology and politics with interests in questions of method and methodology.
Book Synopsis A Friendship That Lasted a Lifetime by : Gerhard Wagner
Download or read book A Friendship That Lasted a Lifetime written by Gerhard Wagner and published by University of Missouri Press. This book was released on 2011-02-21 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Scholarly correspondence can be as insightful as scholarly work itself, as it often documents the motivating forces of its writers’ intellectual ideas while illuminating their lives more clearly. The more complex the authors’ scholarly works and the more troubled the eras in which they lived, the more substantial, and potentially fascinating, their correspondence. This is especially true of the letters between Alfred Schutz (1899–1959) and Eric Voegelin (1901–1985). The scholars lived in incredibly dramatic times and produced profound, complex works that continue to confound academics. The communication between these two giants of the social sciences, as they sent their thoughts to one another, was crucial to the work of both men. A Friendship That Lasted a Lifetime: The Correspondence between Alfred Schutz and Eric Voegelin demonstrates that Schutz and Voegelin shared a remarkable friendship: they first met as students in Vienna in the 1920s and found themselves great partners in discussion; years later they were pushed out of Europe by Nazi pressure and went to work at separate American universities. For twenty years they wrote each other, developing their respective scientific works in that dialogue. The letters bear witness to their friendship during the years they spent in exile in the United States, and they document the men’s tentative attempts at formulating the theories of “lifeworld” and “gnosis” associated with Schutz and Voegelin today. The entire collection of 238 letters was printed in German in 2004, but this edited volume is the first to present their correspondence in English and offers a selection of the most important letters—those that contributed to the thinkers’ theoretical discussions and served as background to their most significant thoughts. Editors Gerhard Wagner and Gilbert Weiss do not analyze Schutz’s and Voegelin’s works in light of the correspondence—rather, they present the collection to create a framework for new interpretations. A Friendship That Lasted a Lifetime takes a unique look at two major social scientists. This volume is a valuable resource in the study of Voegelin’s political philosophy and Alfred Schutz’s contribution to American sociology and marks an important addition to the literature on these remarkable men. Showing how scholarly discourse and the dialogue of everyday life can shed light on one another, the book finally presents this correspondence for an American audience and is not to be missed by scholars of philosophy and sociology.
Download or read book TechGnosis written by Erik Davis and published by North Atlantic Books. This book was released on 2015-03-17 with total page 457 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: TechGnosis is a cult classic of media studies that straddles the line between academic discourse and popular culture; it appeals to both those secular and spiritual, to fans of cyberpunk and hacker literature and culture as much as new-thought adherents and spiritual seekers How does our fascination with technology intersect with the religious imagination? In TechGnosis—a cult classic now updated and reissued with a new afterword—Erik Davis argues that while the realms of the digital and the spiritual may seem worlds apart, esoteric and religious impulses have in fact always permeated (and sometimes inspired) technological communication. Davis uncovers startling connections between such seemingly disparate topics as electricity and alchemy; online roleplaying games and religious and occult practices; virtual reality and gnostic mythology; programming languages and Kabbalah. The final chapters address the apocalyptic dreams that haunt technology, providing vital historical context as well as new ways to think about a future defined by the mutant intermingling of mind and machine, nightmare and fantasy.
Book Synopsis Global Pandemics and Epistemic Crises in Psychology by : Martin Dege
Download or read book Global Pandemics and Epistemic Crises in Psychology written by Martin Dege and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-07-22 with total page 132 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Using COVID-19 as a base, this groundbreaking book brings together several renowned scholars to explore the concept of crisis, and how this global event has shaped the discipline of psychology. It engages directly with the challenges that psychology continues to face when theorizing societal issues of gender, race, class, history, and culture, while not disregarding "lived" experiences. This edited volume offers a set of pathways to rethink psychology beyond its current scope and history to become more apt to the conditions, needs, and demands of the 21st century. The book explores topics like resilience, interpersonal relationships, mistrust in the government, and access to healthcare. Dividing the book into three distinct sections, the contributors first examine the current crisis within psychology, then go on to explore how psychology theorizes the subject and the other in a social world of perpetual political, economic, cultural, and social crises, and lastly consider the role of crises in the creation of new theorizing. This is essential reading for advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students of theoretical and philosophical psychology, social psychology, community psychology, and developmental psychology.
Book Synopsis Political Alchemy: Technology Unbounded by : Agnes Horvath
Download or read book Political Alchemy: Technology Unbounded written by Agnes Horvath and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-03-21 with total page 189 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores politics as a form of alchemy, understood as the transformation of entities through an alteration of their identities. Identifying this process as a common denominator of many political phenomena, such as EU integration, mediatisation, communism or globalisation, the author demonstrates not only the widespread presence of alchemical techniques in politics, but also the acceleration of their deployment. A study of the steady growth of power as it reaches a continuous and permanent stage, thus avoiding the inherent difficulties connected with birth and death of political organisations and institutions, this volume reveals political alchemy to be a form of self-sustaining growth through sterile multiplication, devoid of meaning. Revealing both the integrative and disintegrative nature of a political process that, while appearing to work in the interests of all, in fact produces apathy, desperate mobilisation and despair by crushing concrete entities such as personality and tradition, Political Alchemy: Technology Unbounded will appeal to scholars of sociology and anthropology with interests in social theory and political thought.
Book Synopsis Liminal Politics in the New Age of Disease by : Agnes Horvath
Download or read book Liminal Politics in the New Age of Disease written by Agnes Horvath and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2022-12-21 with total page 251 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Liminal Politics in the New Age of Disease explores the phenomenon of ‘liminal politics’: an open-ended ‘state of exception’ in which normal rules no longer apply, and things which were previously unimaginable become possible – even appearing remarkably quickly to represent a ‘new normal’. With attention to the emergency measures introduced to counter the spread of Covid-19, it shows how the emergency suspension of democratic accountability, ordinary life and civil liberties, while accidental, can lend itself to orchestration and exploitation for the purpose of political gain by ‘trickster’ or ‘parasitic’ figures. An examination of the cloning of political responses from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, with little consideration of their rational justification or local context, this volume interrogates the underlying dynamics of a global technological mimetism, as novel technocratic interventions are repeated and the way is opened for new technologies to reorganise social life in a manner that threatens the disintegration of its existing patterns. As such, it will appeal to scholars and students of sociology, social theory and anthropological theory with interests in political expediency and the transformation of social life.
