Suchergebnisse

This work is devoted to developing as well as expounding the theory of the cultural sciences of the philosopher Alfred Schutz (1899-1959). Drawing on all of Schutz's seven volumes in English, the book shows how his philosophical theory consists of the reflective clarifications of the disciplinary definitions, basic concepts, and distinctive methods of particular cultural sciences as well as their species and genus. The book first expounds Schutz's own theories of economics, jurisprudence, political science, sociology, and psychology. It then extends his approach to other disciplines, offering new theories of archaeology, ethnology, and psychotherapy in his spirit in order to stimulate the development of Schutzian theories in these and other disciplines. The second part of the book contains complementary philosophical chapters devoted to culture, groups, ideal types, interdisciplinarity, meaning, relevance, social tension, and verification.

This work is devoted to developing as well as expounding the theory of the cultural sciences of the philosopher Alfred Schutz (1899-1959). Drawing on all of Schutz's seven volumes in English, the book shows how his philosophical theory consists of the reflective clarifications of the disciplinary definitions, basic concepts, and distinctive methods of particular cultural sciences as well as their species and genus. The book first expounds Schutz's own theories of economics, jurisprudence, political science, sociology, and psychology. It then extends his approach to other disciplines, offering

AbstractThe subject of this article is the relationship between cultural sociology and approaches to culture in other social science disciplines. What are the characteristics of the theoretical environment, in which cultural sociology is operating? The article begins by reviewing the literature on interdisciplinarity. Many authors argue that interdisciplinarity is increasing or should be increasing, but the general consensus is that disciplinary isolation is the norm. From this perspective, the relationships between disciplines can be understood in terms of trading zones, in which fields in different disciplines have little in common, theoretically, or empirically. Interdisciplinary communication in 'trading zones' requires that participants laboriously construct a set of terms that permits them to exchange ideas. Alternatively, I propose that clusters of fields in different disciplines are linked by free‐floating paradigms. Participants in disciplines that share 'free‐floating paradigms' are able to communicate with one another more readily. The article presents evidence for the second interpretation, drawn from survey articles in disciplinary handbooks. Disciplines and fields in which the study of culture draws from the same pool of paradigms and models and shares a set of lines of inquiry with cultural sociology include traditional disciplines, such as anthropology, communication, geography, history and psychology, and interdisciplinary fields, such as cultural studies, communication, feminist theory, material culture, science studies, and visual culture. Interdisciplinary fields – particularly cultural studies – perform an important role in diffusing paradigms across disciplinary boundaries. Free‐floating paradigms are associated with the work of major theorists, such as Lévi‐Strauss, Barthes, Foucault, Bourdieu, Lyotard, Baudrillard, Clifford Geertz, Bruno Latour, Adorno, Gramsci, and Habermas.

AbstractThe cosmopolitan sociology of Ulrich Beck has been widely recognized as making vital contributions to crosscutting conversations on globalization and transnational studies, including these debates that are being played out on the pages of Global Networks. Beck's impassioned critique of 'methodological nationalism' in his own discipline of sociology, in particular, has often served as a springboard for programmatic calls to attend more closely to transnational actors, issues, and processes. However, beyond the occasional acknowledgement, comparatively less attention has been paid so far to the potentialities, specificities, and practicalities of Beck's affirmative alternative vision for the socio‐cultural sciences, that of 'methodological cosmopolitanism'. Building on and extending out from research experiences obtained in Beck's East Asia and Europe‐focused Cosmopolitan Climate Change (Cosmo‐Climate) project, this special theme brings together experts from across a range of socio‐cultural research fields to discuss and critically interrogate the challenges and capacities of doing methodological cosmopolitanism.

This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. Cultural Science introduces a new way of thinking about culture. Adopting an evolutionary and systems approach, the authors argue that culture is the population-wide source of newness and innovation; it faces the future, not the past. Its chief characteristic is the formation of groups or 'demes' (organised and productive subpopulation; 'demos'). Demes are the means for creating, distributing and growing knowledge. However, such groups are competitive and knowledge-systems are adversarial. Starting from a rereading of Darwinian evolutionary theory, the book utilises multidisciplinary resources: Raymond Williams's 'culture is ordinary' approach; evolutionary science (e.g. Mark Pagel and Herbert Gintis); semiotics (Yuri Lotman); and economic theory (from Schumpeter to McCloskey). Successive chapters argue that: -Culture and knowledge need to be understood from an externalist ('linked brains') perspective, rather than through the lens of individual behaviour; -Demes are created by culture, especially storytelling, which in turn constitutes both politics and economics; -The clash of systems - including demes - is productive of newness, meaningfulness and successful reproduction of culture; -Contemporary urban culture and citizenship can best be explained by investigating how culture is used, and how newness and innovation emerge from unstable and contested boundaries between different meaning systems; -The evolution of culture is a process of technologically enabled 'demic concentration' of knowledge, across overlapping meaning-systems or semiospheres; a process where the number of demes accessible to any individual has increased at an accelerating rate, resulting in new problems of scale and coordination for cultural science to address. The book argues for interdisciplinary 'consilience', linking evolutionary and complexity theory in the natural sciences, economics and anthropology in the social sciences, and cultural, communication and media studies in the humanities and creative arts. It describes what is needed for a new 'modern synthesis' for the cultural sciences. It combines analytical and historical methods, to provide a framework for a general reconceptualisation of the theory of culture – one that is focused not on its political or customary aspects but rather its evolutionary significance as a generator of newness and innovation.

This book traces the evolution of climate change research, which, long dominated by the natural sciences, now sees greater involvement with disciplines studying the socio-cultural implications of global warming. While most of social climate change research focuses on how people deal with environmental stresses and possible ways of adaptation, this volume foregrounds the question: What are the theoretical and methodological challenges of investigating climate change in different disciplines? In their Introduction, the editors chart the changing role of the social and cultural sciences in climate change research, delineating different research strands that have emerged over the past few years. Part I of the book explores the prospects and challenges of interdisciplinarity in climate change research, connecting the points of view of a plant ecologist, a historian and a social anthropologist. Parts II and III provide ethnographic insights in a wide range of 'climate cultures' by exploring the social and cultural implications of global warming in particular contexts and communities, stretching from hunter communities in the High Arctic and the Canadian Subarctic over Dutch and Cape Verdian island communities and the metropolitan citizens of Tokyo to pastoralist families in the West African Sahel. Thereby, Parts II and III explore ethnography's potential to produce locally-grounded knowledge about global phenomena, such as climate change. Uniting the different approaches, all authors engage critically with the research subject of climate change itself, reflecting on their own practices of knowledge production and epistemological presuppositions

Cultural Science is a new way of thinking about culture. The book synthesises recent work across different disciplines, setting out a new, evolutionary approach to cultural studies. Engaging with scientific traditions in a way that previous literature has failed to do, it promises to be break new ground in social scientific scholarship.

How We Use Stories and Why That Matters guides the reader through the tangled undergrowth of communication and cultural expression towards a new understanding of the role of group-mediating stories at global and digital scale. It argues that media and networked systems perform and bind group identities, creating bordered fictions within which economic and political activities are made meaningful. Now that computational and global scale, big data, metadata and algorithms rule the roost even in culture, subjectivity and meaning, we need population-scale frameworks to understand individual, micro-scale sense-making practices. To achieve that, we need evolutionary and systems approaches to understand cultural performance and dynamics. The opposing universes of fact (science, knowledge, education) and fiction (entertainment, story and imagination) – so long separated into the contrasting disciplines of natural sciences and the humanities – can now be understood as part of one turbulent sphere of knowledge-production and innovation. Using striking examples and compelling analysis, the book shows what the New York Shakespeare Riots tell us about class struggle, what Death Cab for Cutie tells us about media, what Kate Moss's wedding dress tells us about authorship, and how Westworld and Humans imagine very different futures for Artificial Intelligence: one based on slavery, the other on class. Together, these knowledge stories tell us about how intimate human communication is organised and used to stage organised conflict, to test the 'fighting fitness' of contending groups – provoking new stories, identities and classes along the way.

How We Use Stories and Why That Matters guides the reader through the tangled undergrowth of communication and cultural expression towards a new understanding of the role of group-mediating stories at global and digital scale. It argues that media and networked systems perform and bind group identities, creating bordered fictions within which economic and political activities are made meaningful. Now that computational and global scale, big data, metadata and algorithms rule the roost even in culture, subjectivity and meaning, we need population-scale frameworks to understand individual, micro-scale sense-making practices. To achieve that, we need evolutionary and systems approaches to understand cultural performance and dynamics. The opposing universes of fact (science, knowledge, education) and fiction (entertainment, story and imagination) – so long separated into the contrasting disciplines of natural sciences and the humanities – can now be understood as part of one turbulent sphere of knowledge-production and innovation. Using striking examples and compelling analysis, the book shows what the New York Shakespeare Riots tell us about class struggle, what Death Cab for Cutie tells us about media, what Kate Moss's wedding dress tells us about authorship, and how Westworld and Humans imagine very different futures for Artificial Intelligence: one based on slavery, the other on class. Together, these knowledge stories tell us about how intimate human communication is organised and used to stage organised conflict, to test the 'fighting fitness' of contending groups – provoking new stories, identities and classes along the way.