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Articles 1 - 14 of 14
Full-Text Articles in Theory, Knowledge and Science
Freedom And Heteronomy In The Anthropocene, Alexander M. Stoner, Harry F. Dahms
Freedom And Heteronomy In The Anthropocene, Alexander M. Stoner, Harry F. Dahms
Journal Articles
No abstract provided.
Scrutinizing Precarity: In Search Of Emancipatory Potential, Jaime Aznar Erasun
Scrutinizing Precarity: In Search Of Emancipatory Potential, Jaime Aznar Erasun
Emancipations: A Journal of Critical Social Analysis
This paper provides a review and discussion on the emancipatory potential of the notion of ‘precarity’. Since the 1980s, the notion of ‘precarity’ has been used increasingly by scholars and activists to account for variegated grievances. Specifically, it has been used to address issues related to the transformations of labour in the XXIst century: neoliberal reorganization of labour markets, increasing unavailability of stable jobs, increased personal debts, debilitating labour unions or the lack of accessible housing among other issues. However, beyond structural grievances voiced by everyday workers, precarity can also serve as an analytical tool to pin down socially induced …
Marx, Critical Theory, And The Treadmill Of Production Of Value: Why Environmental Sociology Needs A Critique Of Capital, Alex Stoner
Journal Articles
This chapter explores the domestication of Marx’s critique of political economy within Marxist-oriented environmental sociology, and treadmill of production (ToP) theory, in particular. The aim is to explicate the theoretical resources for a rigorous critique of capital-induced planetary degradation. Shortcomings of ToP theory pertaining to the conceptualization of capital and value are identified. The reasons for these shortcomings, including how they might be addressed, are elaborated by reconsidering key aspects of Marx’s critical theory of modern capitalist society. The chapter contributes to current discussions in both critical theory and environmental sociology by demonstrating the continued relevance of Marx’s critical theory …
Things Are Getting Worse On Our Way To Catastrophe: Neoliberal Environmentalism, Repressive Desublimation, And The Autonomous Ecoconsumer, Alex Stoner
Journal Articles
The aim of neoliberal environmentalism was to unleash the market to protect the environment; but as it turns out, things are getting worse on our way to catastrophe. Despite persistent failures, neoliberal environmentalism remains prevalent—and apparently without alternative. This paper directs focus on an often-overlooked dimension of this apparent stasis: the nexus of self and society in advanced capitalism, as shown in the linkage between neoliberal environmentalism and the autonomous ecoconsumer. Marcuse’s concept of repressive desublimation is engaged to better understand how environmentalist desire is currently being thwarted in ways that inhibit movement toward socioecological emancipation. The paper provides an …
Constructing Commonmentalities: Toward Collaborative Governance, Knowledge And Subjectivity, Imil Ferrara
Constructing Commonmentalities: Toward Collaborative Governance, Knowledge And Subjectivity, Imil Ferrara
Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects
Western society’s intractable social and environmental problems arise outside the bounds of classical liberal ideation, challenging the utilitarian rationality, decision-making faculty, and popular legitimacy of our liberal institutions. Through a qualitative analysis of three collaborative, community-based institutions, this study aims to identify and illuminate alternative conceptions and organizational relationships, which transcend liberal shortcomings and succeed precisely where liberal institutions have failed. It draws on Michel Foucault’s account of liberal governance, discourse and subject formation, but employs a complex-systems lens to move from critical deconstruction to intentional normative construction, from radical subjectivism to a collaborative pragmatic realism, and from the critique …
Can The Lifeworld Save Us From Neoliberal Governmentality? Social Work, Critical Theory, And Habermas, Stephanie A. Bryson
Can The Lifeworld Save Us From Neoliberal Governmentality? Social Work, Critical Theory, And Habermas, Stephanie A. Bryson
The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare
Two years have passed since the 2016 election of Donald J. Trump, and U.S. social work is revisiting its radical stirrings and grappling with its conservative moorings. In this paper, I will argue that as U.S. social work appraises the adequacy of its intellectual leaders, the cultural relevance of its practice models, and its stance toward the Enlightenment ideals of reason, truth, and justice, it might usefully re-examine its relationship to the critical theory legacy of the Frankfurt School, especially the thinking of Jürgen Habermas. My goal is in this essay is to suggest ways in which Habermasian thinking could …
The Environmental Kuznets Curve Hypothesis As A Problematic: Beyond "Falsificationism", Paul Erb
The Environmental Kuznets Curve Hypothesis As A Problematic: Beyond "Falsificationism", Paul Erb
Masters Theses
Halfway into its third decade, the debate surrounding the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) hypothesis has stalled with political economists and socio-ecologists ascendant and modernization theorists scrambling to give their apparently moribund perspective new life. But beyond the rise and fall of the EKC, there remains a second-order question and decades of data: how do the theoretical perspectives of these contenders shape what their protagonists do and don't see? How have they mistaken episodes of "talking past each other" for genuine dialogue? Which perspective has had the biggest impact on the other’s way of thinking? A qualitative and quantitative analysis compares …
Automation, Work, And Ideology: The Next Industrial Revolution And The Transformation Of "Labor", Anthony Jack Knowles Ii
Automation, Work, And Ideology: The Next Industrial Revolution And The Transformation Of "Labor", Anthony Jack Knowles Ii
Masters Theses
Over the last several decades, scholars and commentators from a variety of different fields, expertise, and ideological positions have written on automation technologies and their potential to cause technological unemployment. As a sociological analysis and critical examination of how experts ideologically frame these issues, this thesis demonstrates that ideology plays a crucial role in the revived debate over automation and technological displacement. Weberian ideal types are developed to demonstrate how three major ideological positions—liberal, conservative, and radical—approach and frame the link between automation, technological displacement, and the potential for technological unemployment. The qualitative tools of ideal type construction and theme …
Environmental Gentrification And Development In A Rural Appalachian Community: Blending Critical Theory And Ethnography, Rhiannon A. Leebrick
Environmental Gentrification And Development In A Rural Appalachian Community: Blending Critical Theory And Ethnography, Rhiannon A. Leebrick
Doctoral Dissertations
The purpose of this dissertation is twofold: first, to explore the relevance of environmental gentrification, a concept largely applied to urban settings, as a means to understand social change in rural and small town Appalachia; and secondly, drawing upon political economy perspectives within environmental sociology and the tradition of early Frankfurt School critical theory, to contextualize the process of environmental gentrification within global capitalism. Conflicts over green economic development, including the maintenance of idyllic vistas, appear to have arisen among various groups with opposing interests and perceptions. These conflicts are complex, affected by the rise of gentrification accompanying uneven development …
Georg Lukács (1885-1971) And The Critique Of Reification: On The Dialectical Genesis Of The Great Acceleration, Alexander M. Stoner, Andony Melathopoulos
Georg Lukács (1885-1971) And The Critique Of Reification: On The Dialectical Genesis Of The Great Acceleration, Alexander M. Stoner, Andony Melathopoulos
Book Sections/Chapters
This chapter situates Lukács' critique of reification (1923) in relation to the emergence of the Great Acceleration. We develop Lukács' critique through the issue of the increasing rationalization of industrial and administrative work in the early twentieth century. In do so, we show how Lukács is able to relocate the continued relevance of Marx's insights with respect to the deeper structure of capitalist society in his consideration of the differential manner in which proletariat and bourgeois class consciousness approach the problem of social contradictions. We then discuss how, for Lukács, the overcoming of reification (or the failure to do so) …
Critique And Transformation: On The Hypothetical Nature Of Ecosystem Service Value And Its Neo-Marxist, Liberal And Pragmatist Criticisms, Andony P. Melathopoulos, Alex Stoner
Critique And Transformation: On The Hypothetical Nature Of Ecosystem Service Value And Its Neo-Marxist, Liberal And Pragmatist Criticisms, Andony P. Melathopoulos, Alex Stoner
Journal Articles
Ecosystem service valuation (ESV) attempts to transform the opposition of human economic necessity and ecological conservation by valuing the latter in terms of the services rendered by the former. However, despite a number of ESV-inspired sustainability initiatives since the 1990s, global ecological degradation continues to accelerate. This suggests that ESV has fallen far short of its goals of sustainable social transformation—a failure which has generated considerable criticism. This paper reviews three prominent lines of ESV criticism: 1) the neo-Marxist criticism, which emphasizes the “fictitious” character of ecosystem commodities; 2) the liberal criticism through Friedrich Hayek's concept “scientistic objectivism”; and 3) …
Sociobiophysicality And The Necessity Of Critical Theory: Moving Beyond Prevailing Conceptions Of Environmental Sociology In The Usa, Alex Stoner
Journal Articles
Today, to perceive the link between society and environment does not require that we engage in an effort of great abstraction. What remains paradoxical is that the intensity and scale of societally induced environmental degradation, which rose to historically unprecedented levels during the latter half of the 20th century, is synchronous with an equally impressive increase in public concern for and attention to the biophysical world. This article examines values-based and traditional Marxist-oriented approaches to environmental sociology in the USA in order to assess whether or not – and if so, how exactly – these approaches help us make sense …
Diabolical Frivolity Of Neoliberal Fundamentalism, Sefik Tatlic
Diabolical Frivolity Of Neoliberal Fundamentalism, Sefik Tatlic
Sefik Tatlic
Today, we cannot talk just about plain control, but we must talk about the nature of the interaction of the one who is being controlled and the one who controls, an interaction where the one that is “controlled” is asking for more control over himself/herself while expecting to be compensated by a surplus of freedom to satisfy trivial needs and wishes. Such a liberty for the fulfillment of trivial needs is being declared as freedom. But this implies as well the freedom to choose not to be engaged in any kind of socially sensible or politically articulated struggle.
Book Review: Bogen On Social Theory, Rules, And Order, James Chriss
Book Review: Bogen On Social Theory, Rules, And Order, James Chriss
Sociology & Criminology Faculty Publications
Reviews the book "Order Without Rules: Critical Theory and the Logic of Conversation," by David Bogen.