Identity' and 'selfhood' are terms routinely used throughout the human sciences that seek to analyze and describe the character of everyday life and experience. Yet these terms are seldom defined or used with any precision, and scant regard is paid to the historical and cultural context in which they arose, or to which they are applied. This innovative book provides fresh historical insights in terms of the emergence, development, and interrelationship of specific and varied notions of identity and selfhood, and outlines a new sociological framework for analyzing it. This is the first historical/sociological framework for discussion of issues which have until now, generally been treated as 'philosophy' or 'psychology', and as such it is essential reading for those undergraduates and postgraduates of sociology, philosophy and history and cultural studies interested in the concepts of identity and self. It covers a broader range of material than is usual in this style of text, and includes a survey of relevant literature and precise analysis of key concepts written in a student-friendly style.
The connections between the emergence of modern society and the experience of melancholy are explored through a comprehensive re-examination of Soren Kierkegaard's rich and insightful writings.
Few concepts have come to dominate the human sciences as much as modernity, yet there is very little agreement over what the term actually means. Every aspect of contemporary human reality--modern society, modern life, modern times, modern art, modern science, modern music, the modern world--has been cited as a part of modernity's distinctive and all-embracing presence. But what is the exact nature of the reality to which the term modern refers? Has not such a promiscuous, ill-defined concept come to obscure and confuse rather than clarify a genuine understanding of our experience? Harvie Ferguson proposes a new view of modernity, arguing that, although it may variously be associated with the Renaissance, the European discovery of the New World, the Reformation, the Industrial Revolution, and many other significant ruptures with primitive or premodern society, modernity fails as an idea if it only defines itself against what it replaced. Instead, he writes, modernity finds its clearest definition through an exploration of subjectivity. For the modern world there is no higher authority than experience. No longer is the human world subordinate to a divine reality beyond the capacity of its own senses. This idea finds its greatest expression in the philosophy of doubt originated by Descartes. Doubt seemed the radical starting point from which to found a wholly modern philosophy that makes the distinction between subject and object, but those who came after Descartes soon reached the limits of self-discovery and became trapped in deepening levels of despair. This despair in turn found expression in the concepts of self and other, and eventually in a dialectic of ego and world, which distinguishes and links together the most important social, cultural, and psychological aspects of modernity. Moving beyond these dualities of subject and object, mind and body, ego and world, and replacing them with the triad of body, soul, and spirit, Ferguson redraws the map of contemporary experience, finding links with the premodern world that modernity's self-founding concealed.
From literary theory to social anthropology, the influence of Freud runs through every part of the human and social sciences. In The Lure of Dreams, Harvie Ferguson shows how Freud's writings and particulary The Interpretation of Dreams contribute, both in their content and in the baroque and dream-like forms in which they are cast, to our understanding of the character of modernity. This novel and stimulating approach to Freud and to the dilemmas of modernity and postmodernity will fascinate everyone with an interest in the development of the modern consciousness.
Contemporary society constitutes a different form of modernity and Ferguson′s innovative and thoughtful analysis calling for a return to phenomenology demonstrates that a relatively neglected perspective within contemporary sociological thought continues to provide significant insights into modern experiences′ - Barry Smart, Portsmouth University This may very well be the most thorough and authoritative analysis of phenomenological sociology ever achieved." - W.P. Nye , Hollins University What is phenomenological sociology? Why is it significant? This innovative and thought-provoking book argues that phenomenology was the most significant, wide-ranging and influential philosophy to emerge in the twentieth century. The social character of phenomenology is explored in its relation to the concern in twentieth century sociology with questions of modern experience. Phenomenology and sociology come together as ′ethnographies of the present′. As such, they break free of the self-imposed limitations of each to establish a new, critical understanding of contemporary life. By reading phenomenology sociologically and sociology phenomenologically, this book reconstructs a phenomenological sociology of modern experience. Erudite and assured, this book opens up a series of new questions for contemporary social theory that theorists and students of theory can ill-afford to ignore. The text contains a treasure trove of insights and propositions that will stimulate debate and research in both sociology and philosophy.
Originally published in 1992, this remarkable book challenges many of the assumptions governing the Sociology of Religion and the Sociology of Culture by arguing that Western religion is neither science nor morality - it is the promise of happiness. Learned and incisive, it will be essential reading for students of religion, culture and anyone interested in the character of Modernity.
In this rich and original work, the author argues that science is the highest expression of bourgeois thought and whilst it may have liberated mankind, it has also devised new forms of repression, discipline and control.
This innovative and thought-provoking book argues that phenomenology was the most significant, wide-ranging and influential philosophy to emerge in the twentieth century. The social character of phenomenology is explored in its relation to the concern in twentieth century sociology with questions of modern experience. By reading phenomenology sociologically and sociology phenomenologically, this book reconstructs a phenomenological sociology of modern experience. Erudite and assured, this book opens up a series of new questions for contemporary social theory that theorists and students of theo.
Driscoll remembers a time when he could fly. And he can remember why he stopped. His childhood seems to belong to someone else and he would like to get it back. His father is going mad. Driscoll knows he can cure him, but he has fallen in love and is distracted by some curious symptoms of his own. He’s losing control and knows it. His imagination is playing tricks on him. But there’s still a chance that things will work out. Something must have happened – But what? Driscoll´s Folly is a novel, set in the West of Scotland, between the mid 1950s and the late 1970s. Part confession, part suicide note, it is a suburban psychological thriller that charts the developing madness of its central character. The facts of the case are simple. A young man kills his father. In a matter of months his physical and mental condition collapses. The crime is detected and he is confined in a psychiatric hospital. Driscoll´s Folly is a series of texts produced by the young man during the succeeding period of treatment. It is a desperate attempt to reconstruct his life-story in such a way that it does not lead to his father´s death and his own madness. But he fails. The fabrication ends by confirming the very events it set out to deny. Cover image from Bernard Forest de Bélidor (Paris, 1782) Architectura Hydraulkica, courtesy of Glasgow University Library.
Primarily known for his film work, Luke Fowler?s Two-Frame Films explores the relationship between the artist and the still-image. Fowler uses a half-frame camera whose obsolescent format forces the printing of two images in one standard 35 mm frame. Considered as a whole, the paired images reveal an event unfolding ? a meaningful narrative posed by photographic sets, sometimes close in temporal proximity (the blink of time passing, perhaps), while at other times, the intervals are more expansive, challenging the viewer to connect visible terminal points in a satisfying way. Fowler experimented with different film stocks, subjects and framing, and the images are inextricably linked to his filmmaking as evidenced by the elements of montage, colour and reflectivity that permeate the series. In both still and moving image, Fowler considers how an event might be abstracted by the camera apparatus in a subjective ordering of reality that is emphasised by the dialectic between paired images. The photographs are a means of personally testing the ability of the camera to authentically bear witness to an event, and its fallibility as a medium of representation.
This is a new portrait of society and identity in high industrial Britain, focusing on the sea as connector, not barrier. It argues that the port cities and their hinterlands formed a 'floating commonwealth' whose interaction with one another and with nationalist and imperial politics created an intense political and cultural synergy.
Identity' and 'selfhood' are terms routinely used throughout the human sciences that seek to analyze and describe the character of everyday life and experience. Yet these terms are seldom defined or used with any precision, and scant regard is paid to the historical and cultural context in which they arose, or to which they are applied. This innovative book provides fresh historical insights in terms of the emergence, development, and interrelationship of specific and varied notions of identity and selfhood, and outlines a new sociological framework for analyzing it. This is the first historical/sociological framework for discussion of issues which have until now, generally been treated as 'philosophy' or 'psychology', and as such it is essential reading for those undergraduates and postgraduates of sociology, philosophy and history and cultural studies interested in the concepts of identity and self. It covers a broader range of material than is usual in this style of text, and includes a survey of relevant literature and precise analysis of key concepts written in a student-friendly style.
In this rich and original work, the author argues that science is the highest expression of bourgeois thought and whilst it may have liberated mankind, it has also devised new forms of repression, discipline and control.
In the 1970s and 1980s there was a steady transfer of power in mainland Europe to new, powerful regional authorities and these, in their turn, started to build up a new form of intra-European co-operation. With the acceleration of European integration, the rise of the multinational firm and new media and transport technologies, the traditional defence-based nation-states are under threat. In this challenging study, Christopher Harvie alters the ways in which we have traditionally surveyed the European past by setting the positive and negative aspects of the present European situation in their historical context. He reappraises the actors of `national' politics, the persistence of types of civic and internationalist discourse and finally looks at the transactions which have created `bourgeois regionalism', and its implications for the future of Europe. Harvie argues that we are only beginning to realise the shift in consciousness, as well as in politics and administration, that an integrated Europe will involve.
This is a new portrait of society and identity in high industrial Britain, focusing on the sea as connector, not barrier. It argues that the port cities and their hinterlands formed a 'floating commonwealth' whose interaction with one another and with nationalist and imperial politics created an intense political and cultural synergy.
Scotland and Nationalism provides an authoritative survey of Scottish social and political history from 1707 to the present day. Focusing on political nationalism in Scotland, Christopher Harvie examines why this nationalism remained apparently in abeyance for two and a half centuries, and why it became so relevant in the second half of the twentieth century. This fourth edition brings the story and historiography of Scottish society and politics up-to-date. Additions also include a brand new biographical index of key personalities, along with a glossary of nationalist groups.
Wilkinson's incisive history of the Supreme Court's halting role in integrating education focuses on the two most controversial Supreme Court decisions of this generation and the country's reaction to them.
First published in 1977, Scotland and Nationalism, Christopher Harvie's acclaimed study of Scottish culture and politics since the Union of 1707, has been extensively rewritten to bring the story entirely up-to-date, drawing on the remarkable output of Scottish historians and writers in more recent years. A new chapter discusses the whole of the Referendum and Devolution, and a rewritten last chapter examines topics like the Dunblane massacre, forms of popular culture, and the development of nationalist feeling in a wider cultural context. Beneath the political level, but interacting with it, Harvie sees the evolution of a "civic republicanism" which, unless checked by real measures of federalism, renders the future of the Union unpromising.
An historical and critical work on the role of fiction in British politics, focusing on Disraeli, Galt, Eliot, Trollope, Wells and Cary among others. This witty book is the first treatment of its subject for nearly seventy years.
This introductory history takes Scotland through two world wars and subsequent social exhaustion, through the re-energising adjustments loosely referred to as 'the sixties' to a final endgame of Union versus Independence. The novel structure of Harvie's history mirrors that of a grand engineering project, or a structure as complex as the Forth Railway Bridge: 'three periods of change rendered as towers, and two great cantilevered arches of life-in-common, over which day-to-day life proceeds'.
How did the intellectually intimidating, industrious architect of the New Labour project become its maligned and feckless undertaker? In this scathing, witty indictment of Gordon Brown's tenure as prime minister, Christopher Harvie says goodbye to Broon by exploring the Britain New Labour helped create. It is a place where the gap between rich and poor grows ever wider and manufacturing has been replaced by 'retail, entertainment and recreation' (for which read shopping, gambling and drinking). Now that the casino economy has veered wildly out of control, and our public utilities and industries have been auctioned to the highest bidder, Broonland is both an essential anatomy of a country on the brink of collapse and a caustic, darkly funny portrait of a decade that took Britain from boom through bust to busted.
First published as part of the best-selling The Oxford Illustrated History of Britain, Christopher Harvie and Colin Matthew's Very Short Introduction to Nineteenth-Century Britain is a sharp but subtle account of remarkable economic and social change and an even more remarkable political stability. Britain in 1789 was overwhelmingly rural, agrarian, multilingual, and almost half Celtic. By 1914, when it faced its greatest test since the defeat of Napoleon, it was largely urban and English. Christopher Harvie and Colin Matthew show the forces behind Britain's rise to its imperial zenith, and the continuing tensions within the nations and classes of the 'union state'. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.
Vietnam's bold economic reforms initiated under the title of Doi Moi in 1986 have produced spectacular economic outcomes which have fascinated economists, business people, commerce students, political scientists and government advisors alike worldwide. This book surveys important aspects of these developments, analyses the main contributing factors, provides useful references on developing and transitional economies, and details soundly researched prospects in trade, investment and business in this new rapidly developing market economy in East Asia.
This text examines some of the most important performance in Britain from the mid-1980s into the new millennium. It considers contemporary British theatre in relation to national and supranational identities, critical concepts like globalisation and diaspora, and contemporary contexts such as the election of New Labour.
In this warm and intimate memoir Judge Wilkinson delivers a chilling message. The 1960s inflicted enormous damage on our country; even at this very hour we see the decade’s imprint in so much of what we say and do. The chapters reveal the harm done to the true meaning of education, to our capacity for lasting personal commitments, to our respect for the rule of law, to our sense of rootedness and home, to our desire for service, to our capacity for national unity, and to our need for the sustenance of faith. Judge Wilkinson seeks not to lecture but to share, in the most personal sense, what life was like in the 1960s and to describe the influence of those frighteningly eventful years upon the present day. Judge Wilkinson acknowledges the good things accomplished by the Sixties and nourishes the belief that from that decade we can learn ways to build a better future. But he asks his own generation to recognize its youthful mistakes and pleads with future generations not to repeat them. The author’s voice is one of love and hope for America. Our national prospects depend on facing honestly the full magnitude of all we lost during one momentous decade and of all we must now recover.
No. 3 in the 2002 Academy of Parish Clergy Top Ten Books of the Year! Cities--the anvil of civilization, the center of power, the metaphor for society itself--have been with us for thousands of years. Here converge piety and trade, security and politics. Yet just two hundred years ago only 3 percent of the world's population lived in cities. Today half does. Despite this tremendous explosion of urban growth, the work of the church has generally lagged behind. The city presents serious challenges that cry out for answers: poverty, racism, human exploitation and government corruption. How can the church move ahead in the midst of these demands with the gospel of hope? Here, in one comprehensive volume, Harvie Conn and Manuel Ortiz, two noted scholars and proven practitioners of urban ministry, address the vital work of the church in the city. Their dual goal: to understand the city and God's work in it. Through four great waves of development, Conn and Ortiz trace the history of the city around the world. Then they tackle the critical issue of a biblical basis for urban mission. How does the Bible view the city? Are we closer to God in the country than the city? Does the Bible have an anti-urban bias? These questions are given a thorough analysis that unveils God's urban mandate as reflected in both Old and New Testaments. From this foundation the authors unpack the multifaceted nature of the city as place, as process, as center, as power, and as a place of change and stability. They move us beyond fragmented stereotypes to a new way of seeing that is holistic enough for a fully biblical ministry to develop. In addition, Conn and Ortiz lay out what the social sciences have to offer urban mission, including ethnographic and demographic studies. While showing how such studies have identified unreached cities and unreached groups within cities, they do not become captive to research but demonstrate how to keep kingdom priorities in view. Finally, Urban Ministry focuses on the essential element of leadership. While there are many books on the topic, little has been said about the particular issues and needs of urban leadership. Therefore, the authors give significant attention to developing and mentoring leaders while equipping the laity for ministry in the city. This is the essential text for bringing God's kingdom to the city through the people of God.
Few concepts have come to dominate the human sciences as much as modernity, yet there is very little agreement over what the term actually means. Every aspect of contemporary human reality--modern society, modern life, modern times, modern art, modern science, modern music, the modern world--has been cited as a part of modernity's distinctive and all-embracing presence. But what is the exact nature of the reality to which the term modern refers? Has not such a promiscuous, ill-defined concept come to obscure and confuse rather than clarify a genuine understanding of our experience? Harvie Ferguson proposes a new view of modernity, arguing that, although it may variously be associated with the Renaissance, the European discovery of the New World, the Reformation, the Industrial Revolution, and many other significant ruptures with primitive or premodern society, modernity fails as an idea if it only defines itself against what it replaced. Instead, he writes, modernity finds its clearest definition through an exploration of subjectivity. For the modern world there is no higher authority than experience. No longer is the human world subordinate to a divine reality beyond the capacity of its own senses. This idea finds its greatest expression in the philosophy of doubt originated by Descartes. Doubt seemed the radical starting point from which to found a wholly modern philosophy that makes the distinction between subject and object, but those who came after Descartes soon reached the limits of self-discovery and became trapped in deepening levels of despair. This despair in turn found expression in the concepts of self and other, and eventually in a dialectic of ego and world, which distinguishes and links together the most important social, cultural, and psychological aspects of modernity. Moving beyond these dualities of subject and object, mind and body, ego and world, and replacing them with the triad of body, soul, and spirit, Ferguson redraws the map of contemporary experience, finding links with the premodern world that modernity's self-founding concealed.
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