Culture/power/history: A Reader in Contemporary Social TheoryNicholas B. Dirks, Geoff Eley, Sherry B. Ortner The intellectual radicalism of the 1960s spawned a new set of questions about the role and nature of "the political" in social life, questions that have since revolutionized nearly every field of thought, from literary criticism through anthropology to the philosophy of science. Michel Foucault in particular made us aware that whatever our functionally defined "roles" in society, we are constantly negotiating questions of authority and the control of the definitions of reality. Such insights have led theorists to challenge concepts that have long formed the very underpinnings of their disciplines. By exploring some of the most debated of these concepts--"culture," "power," and "history"--this reader offers an enriching perspective on social theory in the contemporary moment. |
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... experience of working together , through all the drafting , discussion , and redrafting , has been immensely pleasurable and rewarding . To describe accurately our range of indebtedness , innumerable people would have to be acknowledged ...
... experience , their members coming to see popular behavior as something to be educated , im- proved , disciplined . At the same time , the people on whose behalf such movements claim to speak often find the language and the mechanics of ...
... experiences not easily assimilable to the conventional narratives of political history and social development ... experience , in the settings of ordinary desire and the trials of making it through , that the given power relations ...
... experiences can ever be wholly consistent or totally determining . " Identities " may be seen as ( vari- ably successful ) attempts to create and maintain coherence out of inconsistent cultural stuff and inconsistent life experience ...
... experience is construed rather than with some unmediated no- tion of experience itself , with the centrality of symbols for formulating and expressing meanings that are pervasive as well as shared . His characteristi- cally American ...
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Culture/power/history: A Reader in Contemporary Social Theory Nicholas B. Dirks,Geoff Eley No preview available - 1994 |