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"In a series of interviews this book explores the formative experiences of a generation of critical theorists whose work originated in the midst of what has been called 'the postmodern turn,' including discussions of their views on the evolution of critical theory over the past 30 years and their assessment of contemporary politics"--

"In a series of interviews this book explores the formative experiences of a generation of critical theorists whose work originated in the midst of what has been called 'the postmodern turn, ' including discussions of their views on the evolution of critical theory over the past 30 years and their assessment of contemporary politics"--

"During the past ten years the terms public sociology, civil society, and governance have been used with increasing frequency to describe a wide array of practices, from public intellectuality and political action to governing and public service. These concepts are often used interchangeably and with different meanings across varying disciplines. The capacity for these concepts to convey critical ideas is an important foundation for debating what it means to practice knowledge publically and to govern democratically. In Public Sociology and Civil Society: Governance, Politics, and Power Patricia Nickel weaves together various disciplinary understandings of the practice of knowledge and governance through the lens of recent debates over the ideal of public sociology and its emphasis on civil society.

Although the charity thrift shop is typically treated as an apolitical nonprofit entity, it plays a significant cultural and political role in the contemporary practice of governing. In this article, I am concerned with how well-being is distributed through the governance of time and labor as it intersects with the circulation of the thrift shop commodities that fund the welfare mix. I am simultaneously concerned with how these practices of power—which are frequently degrading for those who have few options other than to interface with the institutions within which these practices originate—come to be rehabilitated as charity, in a cycle that mirrors the circulation of consumer goods upon which they depend for funding. I draw on critical theories of philanthropy, consumer culture, the welfare state, and time, as they contribute to our understanding of the inculcation of ascetics in relationship to contemporary practices of power. I substantiate these claims through an exploration of how the charity thrift shop belongs to a circuit of ascetic production involving the degradation and rehabilitation of consumer goods, which then, through the funding of training programs that belong to a particular temporal political economy, dictates the ability of many to achieve well-being by managing the degradation and rehabilitation of individuals.

In its materialization of regard and disregard, the 2015 introduction of the Starbucks luxury line prompts new questions about the impact of an emergent app ascetic on the everyday practice of order. In this article, I build on previous studies of time and power, while simultaneously exploring the material practice of luxury narrated by, but practiced in contrast to, promises of community and social consciousness. I argue that time is made luxurious through the power to redistribute how one is positioned in relation to others and that this materialization reveals the role of disregard in luxury relations more generally. I examine how the formation of luxury lines that involve inserting oneself in spatial and temporal relation to others exposes the underlying disregard involved in the practice of ordering and consuming in time and space. I then explore the ways in which this practice exposes how consumption of luxury lines of material goods—particularly those goods produced by companies that make a claim to benevolence—has involved a false sense of accord narrated by tales of community-producing luxury that purport to be practicing regard for others in the practice of rewarding oneself.

This essay inquires into the institutionalization of the author as a governing practice. I observe the experience of two authors—Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and "Mr. Perestroika"—in relationship to two institutions—the Soviet Writers' Union and the American Political Science Association—as they contest the imperative to produce cultural/knowledge representations on behalf of the present. Drawing on Michel Foucault's identification of the political practice of parrēsia and its relationship to ontologies of veridiction, I argue that the institutionalization of the author stabilizes a circuitry of value in which the performance imperative dominates transformative thought.