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Globalization and everyday life
In: The new sociology
What's new about globalization? -- Globalization and the social -- Beyond the nation-state? -- Virtual sociality -- Global inequalities and everyday life -- Global terrors and risks
Social theory and the crisis of state socialism
In: Studies of communism in transition
Book Review: Sight Readings Photographers and American Jazz, 1900–1960
In: Cultural sociology, Band 17, Heft 2, S. 302-304
ISSN: 1749-9763
Social Theory, Photography and the Visual Aesthetic of Cultural Modernity
In: Cultural sociology, Band 14, Heft 2, S. 139-159
ISSN: 1749-9763
Social theory and photographic aesthetics both engage with issues of representation, realism and validity, having crossed paths in theoretical and methodological controversies. This discussion begins with reflections on the realism debate in photography, arguing that beyond the polar positions of realism and constructivism the photographic image is essentially ambivalent, reflecting the ways in which it is situated within cultural modernity. The discussion draws critically on Simmel's sociology of the visual to elucidate these issues and compares his concept of social forms and their development with the emergence of the photograph. Several dimensions of ambivalence are elaborated with reference to the politics and aesthetics socially engaged photography in the first half of the 20th century. It presents a case for the autonomy of the photographic as a social form that nonetheless has the potential to point beyond reality to immanent possibilities. The discussion exemplifies the processes of aesthetic formation with reference to the 'New Vision' artwork of László Moholy-Nagy and the social realism of Edith Tudor Hart.
Who betrayed the Jews? – The realities of Nazi persecution in the Holocaust: by Agnes Grunwald-Spier, Stroud, Gloucestershire, Amberly Publishing, 2017, 655 pp., £20.00 (paperback), ISBN 978 1 4456 7118 5
In: Holocaust studies: a journal of culture and history, Band 25, Heft 4, S. 531-533
ISSN: 2048-4887
A moral theory of solidarity: Avery Kolers Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016, ix + 194 pp., ISBN: 978-0-19-876978-1
In: Contemporary political theory: CPT, Band 17, Heft S4, S. 252-255
ISSN: 1476-9336
Shame and the City – 'Looting', Emotions and Social Structure
In: The sociological review, Band 62, Heft 1, S. 117-136
ISSN: 1467-954X
The sociology of violence is an emerging field but one in which there remains a tension between structural explanations and phenomenological-situational ones that focus on the micro conditions of violence. This article proposes an analytical framework for connecting these levels through a critical appropriation of Scheff's theory of the shame-rage cycle. It argues that while shame is a significant condition for violent action, Scheff does not have a theory of violence in itself but treats the connections between shame-rage and violence as largely self-evident. While emotions such as shame have agental properties, as Scheff and others argue, these need to be situated within structural and cultural conditions that are likely to evoke shame. Moreover, to develop Scheff's approach further, violence needs to be understood as being communicative and invoking normative justifications, which mediate the effects of shame-rage. This analysis is developed with reference to recent instances of collective disorder, especially the English riots in August 2011, which is based on published research and media accounts from participants. The acquisition of consumer goods through 'looting' was public performance in spaces where a 'moral holiday' permitted a brief revaluation of the social order. Through this example the article shows how an underlying configuration of inequality, exclusion and shame coalesced into events in which the violence was a form of performative communication. This articulated 'ugly feelings' that invoked normative justification for participation, at least at the time of the disturbances. The discussion provides an integrated account of structural-emotional conditions for violence combined with the dynamics of situated actions within particular spaces. It aims to do two things –to provide a framework for analysing the structural and affective bases for violence and to offer a nuanced understanding of 'violence' with reference to public disorder.
Book Review Symposium: Steven Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nature: A History of Violence and Humanity
In: Sociology: the journal of the British Sociological Association, Band 47, Heft 6, S. 1224-1225
ISSN: 1469-8684
Mark of Cain: Shame, desire and violence
In: European journal of social theory, Band 16, Heft 3, S. 292-309
ISSN: 1461-7137
Violence presents a paradox. There is evidence that violence is universal in all in human societies. However, in writing mostly from the standpoint of relatively peaceful social spaces, violence often appears exceptional, and a product of the breakdown of integrating social institutions and conventions. Norbert Elias persuasively identified growing thresholds of repugnance towards violence with the transition to modernity, although understanding the balance between formalization and informalization poses some critical questions about his thesis. The discussion begins with these as a means of opening a broader discussion of theories of violence which are developed through a critical analysis of Girard's and Gans' theories. It is argued that these may offer a way of addressing the informalization problem in a context of mimetic consumption desires in a context of apparent but false equalization in contemporary societies.
Mary Elise Sarotte, 1989: The Struggle to Create Post-Cold War Europe
In: European history quarterly, Band 42, Heft 3, S. 531-532
ISSN: 1461-7110
Civil Society and the Public Sphere
In: The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Political Sociology, S. 240-251
Migration and Remembrance: Sounds and Spaces of Klezmer 'Revivals'
In: Cultural sociology, Band 4, Heft 3, S. 357-378
ISSN: 1749-9763
This article discusses the cultural meanings of recent revivals in Yiddish music in the USA and central Europe. It does this with reference to Adorno's critique of lyrical celebration of the past as a means of forgetting. It examines the criticisms that recent 'Jewish' cultural revivals are kitsch forms of unreflective nostalgia and considers the complexity of meanings here. It then explores the ways in which klezmer might be an aural form of memory and suggests that revivals can represent gateways into personal and collective engagement with the past. It further argues that experimental hybrid forms of new klezmer potentially open new spaces of remembrance and expressions of Jewish identity.