Jeffrey Alexander, Philip Smith
Oxford University Press.
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Since sociologists returned to the study of culture in the past several decades, a pursuit all but anathema for a generation, cultural sociology has emerged as a vibrant field. Edited by three leading cultural sociologists, The Oxford Handbook of Cultural Sociology...
Palgrave Macmillan, 2012
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Iconic Power is a collection of original articles that explores social aspects of the phenomenon of icon. Having experienced the benefits and realized the limitations of so called “linguistic turn,” sociology has recently acknowledged a need to further expand its...
Social Science History, vol. 35 #1, pp. 1-17
Abstract:
As agents, we all act on behalf of others and of our own accord: these are socially and historically interrelated orientations to action in contemporary America. But as chains of accountability erode at work and in the economy, as layers of aides and representatives proliferate in...
In: Narrating Trauma: On the Impact of Collective Suffering. Edited by Ron Eyerman, Jeffrey C. Alexander and Elizabeth Breese, 107-132. Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers 2011
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The legendary status of the Holocaust as a sacred evil has inspired international human rights law, new restrictions on national sovereignty, and newly powerful moral strictures against ethnic and racial cleansing. Yet, even as this markedly universalizing...
Bloomsbury Publishing
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Jeffrey C. Alexander examines what was new about Egypt’s Spring revolution. Why was it so compelling to watch, and what made it so effective and does it have implications for democratic movements internationally.
Using international news reports and translations of the...
Jeffrey Alexander, Philip Smith
Palgrave Connect
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Theorist Clifford Geertz’s influence extends far beyond anthropology. Indeed the case could be made that he has been abandoned by anthropology and that his legacy has been transferred to a more diffuse community of scholars interested in interpretation. This volume...
The seventeenth century was called the Dutch Golden Age. Over the course of eighty years, the tiny United Provinces of the Netherlands overthrew Spanish rule and became Europe’s dominant power. Eventually, though, Dutch hegemony collapsed as quickly as it had risen. In The Familial State,...
A state-of-the-field survey of historical sociology, Remaking Modernity assesses the field’s past accomplishments and peers into the future, envisioning changes to come. The seventeen essays in this collection reveal the potential of historical sociology to transform understandings of social and...
Sociologica
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In its hermeneutically rich reconstructions of “Axial Age” breakthroughs in the world’s great religions, RHE provides an all-important historical explanation for the autonomy of culture vis-à-vis social structure in the present day. Powerfully documenting “Eastern...
Theory, Culture & Society, January 2014 vol. 31, no. 1, 3-24
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Avant-garde theatre is often invoked as the bellwether for a society that has become postdramatic – fragmented, alienated, and critical of efforts to create collectively shared meanings. A theatre whose sequenced actions have no narrative (so the story goes) mirrors a...
Philosophy & Social Criticism, May 2013, vol. 39 no. 4-5, 341-347
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Despite anxieties about the growing power of neo-liberalism, the crisis of the EU and the upsurge of right-wing political movements, it is important to recognize that utopian movements on the left have also in recent years been symbolically revitalized and...
Ethnic and Racial Studies, 36(4): 531-556, 2013
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Documenting the extraordinary potency and reach of the European backlash against multiculturalism, this essay provides a new theoretical model for explaining it. Rather than focusing primarily on demographic and institutional facts about Islamic immigration – such...
April 2015, Political Power and Social Theory, Volume 28, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, pp.269 - 285, April 2015
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Imperial crisis is the analytical axis on which turn two national states of emergency: the Weimar Republic (1918–1933) and the United States on the so-called “Eve of Destruction” (1965–1975). But while Max Weber disagreed with Carl Schmitt with respect to the problem of...
Political Power and Social Theory, Vol. 28, June 2011
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Patrimonial Capitalism and Empire, published in the Political Power and Social Theory book series, explores the interconnected formations of patrimonial politics, empire and capitalism, and includes essays by Adams (with George Steinmetz, University of Michigan), and Malik Martin (...
Journal of Cultural Economy, 4:4, 477-488, 2011
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In this essay, the author analyzes social science thinking about the capitalist market from instrumentalism to institutionalism and the recent turn toward more cultural economics, and propose to enlarge the latter opening via the ‘strong program’ in...
