tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4486641877026778105.post7482747066086336859..comments2024-03-29T07:14:55.029+00:00Comments on All That Is Solid ...: Social Theory Reading ListPhilhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06298147857234479278noreply@blogger.comBlogger15125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4486641877026778105.post-84387174492281222472014-02-21T13:49:28.573+00:002014-02-21T13:49:28.573+00:00Some updates. A few, not a lot. I would like to ha...Some updates. A few, not a lot. I would like to have a life outside of work and home occasionally!Philhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06298147857234479278noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4486641877026778105.post-35538925083407044592014-02-19T17:35:24.377+00:002014-02-19T17:35:24.377+00:00Marx & Goffman. All the rest are ghosts at th...Marx & Goffman. All the rest are ghosts at the feast Mashitup Harrynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4486641877026778105.post-76247560591587885052014-02-19T17:29:40.223+00:002014-02-19T17:29:40.223+00:00Lovely to see Erving Goffman there. A much underr...Lovely to see Erving Goffman there. A much underrated sociologist, particularly his stuff about framing and defining the situation.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4486641877026778105.post-48732025932149176562014-02-19T15:49:17.539+00:002014-02-19T15:49:17.539+00:00" *understanding* the dense prose was real fe..." *understanding* the dense prose was real feather-in-my-cap stuff back in the day."<br /><br />undergraduates still do that to this day.<br /><br />i would also add loic wacquant for the work he's done on the body ("carnal" sociology, although i actually hate that term), urban inequality and the kind of carcereal society we've developed for ourselves here in the states.<br /><br />lesAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4486641877026778105.post-40261109110561241812014-02-19T15:04:58.861+00:002014-02-19T15:04:58.861+00:00Oh, I'd burn all those and just move Capital u...Oh, I'd burn all those and just move Capital up your list. All the rest are footnotes. And nowhere near as interesting as the footnotes in Capital.Stuarthttp://leftunityleamingtonspa.wordpress.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4486641877026778105.post-55114340474817662562014-02-19T12:07:43.983+00:002014-02-19T12:07:43.983+00:00I always liked Althusser, Mike. Reading For Marx a...I always liked Althusser, Mike. Reading <i>For Marx</i> and *understanding* the dense prose was real feather-in-my-cap stuff back in the day. I'm not inclined to write his project off either. Perhaps different to other commentators, I see it as an attempt to render Marx intelligible in light of the terms and theoretical advances in French social science of the day. The result was unwieldy and overly abstract, but I remain convinced there's something in it ...Philhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06298147857234479278noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4486641877026778105.post-19475527042252294692014-02-19T01:21:46.891+00:002014-02-19T01:21:46.891+00:00I would add (although I'm geared towards crim/...I would add (although I'm geared towards crim/border stuff):<br /><br />Giorgio Agamben - Homo Sacer<br /><br />Homi Bhabha - The Location of Culture<br /><br />Tara Brabzaon - From Revolution to Revelations<br /><br />Gilles Deleuze & Felix Guattari - Anti-Oedipus; A Thousand Plateaus<br /><br />Michel Foucault - The Birth of Biopolitics; Secuirty, Terrirtory, Population<br /><br />David Garland - The Culture of Control<br /><br />Paul Gilroy - There Ain't No Black in the Union Jack; After Empire<br /><br />Stuart Hall, et al - Resistance Through Rituals; Policing the Crisis<br /><br />Steve Redhead - The Jean Baudrillard Reader<br /><br />Edward Said - Orientalism<br /><br />Imogen Tyler - Revolting Subjects<br /><br />Nick Vaughan-Williams - Border Politics<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Evanhttp://hatfulofhistory.wordpress.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4486641877026778105.post-57157290538462639392014-02-18T23:30:56.337+00:002014-02-18T23:30:56.337+00:00Althusser was important to read in the 1960s and 1...Althusser was important to read in the 1960s and 1970s because his 'innovations' (to be polite) in Marxist theory spoke to the deepening crisis of post-1956/1968 Western Communism. So a course on the intellectual history of the post-war European left should probably include his work. As a guide to Marx his work is best ignored.<br /><br />As for Giddens. The most overrated social theorist alive? Probably. Turgid, banal and derivative. Derek Sayer once wrote a very astute critical appraisal of Giddens’ much vaunted theory of ‘structuration’, making the case that it bore a striking resemblance to Marx’s theory of alienated labour. Worth reading. I still resent the time I wasted reading Giddens when I was an undergraduate and postgraduate. Hours I can never have back. <br /><br />Zizek can be fun in small measures. His commentaries on Lenin and Robespierre are entertaining and occasionally profound. His introduction to Trotsky’s Terrorism & Communism is shockingly indulgent of the book’s Jacobin authoritarianism.<br /><br />I would include some stuff by Ranciere: On The Shores of Politics and Hatred of Democracy. And his early critique of Althusser. He pointed out that Althusser had no clothes at a time when almost everyone else was celebrating his genius. <br /><br />And Adorno: Negative Dialectics. <br /><br />MikeAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4486641877026778105.post-59087123528043952032014-02-18T22:15:00.305+00:002014-02-18T22:15:00.305+00:00Les, I've already done Lefebvre and David Harv...Les, I've already done Lefebvre and David Harvey. But Bauman is a serious omission - I'll lump him in.<br /><br />Cheers for that list, Boursin. Perhaps something to move on to after I've completed this one? ;)Philhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06298147857234479278noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4486641877026778105.post-43011528993075775682014-02-18T22:12:25.140+00:002014-02-18T22:12:25.140+00:00Ah, but Phil, I feel compelled to read The Poverty...Ah, but Phil, I feel compelled to read The Poverty of Theory. It's sat on my shelf unread for about 15 years! But yes, Schutz! The plan isn't absolutely rigid - if something crops up during the reading that sounds interesting I'll probably seek it out.Philhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06298147857234479278noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4486641877026778105.post-481965005572560732014-02-18T17:44:25.651+00:002014-02-18T17:44:25.651+00:00nothing by zygmunt bauman? there's the bauman ...nothing by zygmunt bauman? there's the bauman reader, published by oxford press, or his whole "liquid" series: liquid modernity, liquid modernity, liquid love, liquid life, liquid fear, liquid times. also, how about david harvey's "the condition of postmodernity" or something by henri lefebvre on the sociology of everyday life or the social production of space?<br /><br />lesAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4486641877026778105.post-14054690015764812412014-02-18T17:12:44.095+00:002014-02-18T17:12:44.095+00:00Is Maurice Duverger still relevant?Is Maurice Duverger still relevant?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4486641877026778105.post-55460376096054385852014-02-18T17:04:44.142+00:002014-02-18T17:04:44.142+00:00Brian Barry, Democracy, Power and Justice (1989)
...Brian Barry, <i>Democracy, Power and Justice</i> (1989)<br /><br />Marshall Berman, <i>All That Is Solid Melts Into Air</i> (1982)<br /><br />G. A. Cohen, <i>Karl Marx's Theory of History</i> (1978); <i>If You're an Egalitarian, How Come You're So Rich?</i> (2000)<br /><br />William E. Connolly, <i>The Terms of Political Discourse</i> (1974)<br /><br />Bernard Crick, <i>In Defence of Politics</i> (5th ed. 2000)<br /><br />Guy Debord, <i>Society of the Spectacle</i> (1967)<br /><br />Jon Elster, <i>Ulysses and the Sirens</i> (1979); <i>Sour Grapes</i> (1983)<br /><br />Raymond Geuss, <i>History and Illusion in Politics</i> (2001); <i>Philosophy and Real Politics</i> (2008)<br /><br />Colin Hay, <i>Why We Hate Politics</i> (2007)<br /><br />Albert O. Hirschman, <i>Exit, Voice and Loyalty</i> (1970); <i>Shifting Involvements</i> (1982); <i>The Rhetoric of Reaction</i> (1991)<br /><br />Paul Ormerod, <i>The Death of Economics</i> (1994)<br /><br />Hanna Fenichel Pitkin, <i>Wittgenstein and Justice</i> (1972)<br /><br />Bernard Yack, <i>The Fetishism of Modernities</i> (1997)<br /><br />I would definitely bother with Thompson. As a social theorist. But if a non-Thompsonian critique of Althusser is called for, Gavin Kitching's neglected <i>Marxism and Science: Analysis of an Obsession</i> (1994)Boursinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01564272695539641314noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4486641877026778105.post-87224983915228085902014-02-18T16:17:59.181+00:002014-02-18T16:17:59.181+00:00I read Castells when I had an interest in the orig...I read Castells when I had an interest in the origins of the activists in radical social movements. He informed us in the grand manner of European intellectuals that it was well known that the leaderships of the environmental movements were of petit-bourgeois origin. Imagine my excitement. However, try as I might I could find no reference to any evidence that might justify such a claim. It appeared it was something that one just knew. In the light of such grand pronouncements I find myself warming to Anglo-Saxon empiricism.Kennoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4486641877026778105.post-40696471858595311192014-02-18T15:24:34.593+00:002014-02-18T15:24:34.593+00:00I guess Empire is unavoidable, but I wouldn't ...I guess Empire is unavoidable, but I wouldn't bother with Multitude unless you're actually teaching a unit on Negri Studies. He was an appalling stylist in the 1970s and he's only got worse since then.<br /><br />Do read Schutz if you have a moment(!) - easy reading and mindblowing. Habermas took the idea of the Umwelt from him & completely bollixed it. I'm tempted to recommend Dewey - the Pragmatists have had a bad rap since Rorty, but they don't deserve it.<br /><br />It pains me to say it, but I'm not sure I'd bother with Thompson (as a social theorist) either. If you read What's Left? by Lisa Jardine & the late Julia Swindells you'll never see EPT and 'socialist humanism' in the same light again.<br /><br />Philhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07009879034507926661noreply@blogger.com