Jeffrey Alexander je americký sociolog a přední světový společenský teoretik, který stojí v čele školy kulturní sociologie. Svůj přístup nazývá „silným programem“, v němž zkoumá hluboké kulturní kódy a symbolické systémy, které formují lidské chování a společenské struktury. Jeho práce se zaměřuje na to, jak se významy vytvářejí, šíří a jak ovlivňují naše kolektivní životy a vnímání reality. Alexanderův vliv spočívá v propojení teoretické sociologie s detailní empirickou analýzou, čímž nabízí nový pohled na sociální řád a kulturní dynamiku.
Focusing on Clifford Geertz as a theorist, this volume explores his significant influence across various disciplines beyond Anthropology. It offers a comprehensive and impartial examination of his contributions, filling the gap for an authoritative work on this pivotal intellectual figure.
In this book Jeffrey Alexander develops a new sociological theory of social crisis and applies it to a wide range of cases, from the church paedophilia crisis to the #MeToo movement. He argues that crises are triggered not by objective social strains but by the discourse and institutions of the civil sphere. When strains become subject to the utopian aspirations of the civil sphere, there emerges widespread anguish about social justice and the future of democratic life. Once admired institutional elites come to be represented as perpetrators and the civil sphere becomes legally and organizationally intrusive, demanding repairs in the name of civil purification. Resisting such repair, institutional elites foment backlash, and a war of the spheres ensues. This major new work by one of the world’s leading social theorists will be of great interest to students and scholars in sociology, politics, and the social sciences generally.
Max Weber
"A provocative analysis of some of the central aspects of Weber's theoretical and methodological work."--S.N. Eisenstadt
Sadzę, że mocny program socjologii, którego podwaliny położone zostały w tej książce, jest jedyną systematyczną teoretyczną próba, by uczynić znaczenia czymś centralnym dla makrosocjologii nowoczesności. Nie sadzę jednak, by nie było innych, bardzo poważnych i bardzo twórczych wysiłków w tym samym kierunku. William Sewell, Jr, Viviana Zelizer, Robin Wagner-Pacifici i Michele Lamont to tylko najbardziej wybitne postaci spośród tych, które zapoczątkowały równoległe wysiłki zbadania względnej autonomii głębokich znaczeń, podtrzymujących życie wewnętrzne tak zwanych materialnych struktur społecznych w dzisiejszych czasach. Ponieważ wysiłki te czerpią z tych samych źródeł – prac Clifforda Geertza, Mary Douglas, Emile’a Durkheima i Talcotta Parsonsa – istnieje wiele znaczących homologii pomiędzy naszymi wspólnymi staraniami. z Wprowadzenia Jeffreya C. Alexandra, s. X
Even as the specter of populism haunts contemporary societies, scholars have not been able to agree about what it is. Except for one thing: a deviation from democracy, the source, it seems, of the precarious position in which so many societies find themselves today. This volume aims to break the Gordian knot of "populism" by bringing a new social theory to bear and, in so doing so, suggesting that normative judgments about this misunderstood phenomenon need to be reconsidered as well. Populism is not a democratic deviation but a naturally occurring dimension of civil sphere dynamics, fatal to democracy only at the extremes. Because populism is highly polarizing, it has the effect of inducing anxiety that civil solidarity is breaking apart. Left populists feel as if civil solidarity is an illusion, that democratic discourse is a fig leaf for private interests, and that the social and cultural differentiation that vouchsafes the independence of the civil sphere merely reflects the hegemony of narrow professional interests or those of a ruling class. Right populists share the same distrust, even repulsion, for the civil sphere. What seems civil to the center and left, like affirmative action or open immigration, they call out as particularistic; honored civil icons, such as Holocaust memorials, they trash. How can the sense of a vital civil center survive such censure from populism on the left and the right? Populism in the Civil Sphere provides compelling answers to these fundamental questions. Its contributions are both sophisticated theoretical interventions and deeply researched empirical studies, and it will be of great interest to anyone concerned about the most important political developments of our time
What binds societies together and how can these social orders be structured in a fair way? Jeffrey C. Alexander's masterful work, The Civil Sphere, addresses this central paradox of modern life. Feelings for others - the solidarity that is ignored or underplayed by theories of power or self-interest - are at the heart of this novel inquiry into the meeting place between normative theories of what we think we should do and empirical studies of who we actually are. Solidarity, Alexander demonstrates, creates inclusive and exclusive social structures and shows how they can be repaired. It is not perfect, it is not absolute, and the horrors which occur in its lapses have been seen all too frequently in the forms of discrimination, genocide, and war. Despite its worldly flaws and contradictions, however, solidarity and the project of civil society remain our best hope: the antidote to every divisive institution, every unfair distribution, every abusive and dominating hierarchy. This grand, sweeping statement and rigorous empirical investigation is a major contribution to our thinking about the real but ideal world in which we all reside.
Performativity has emerged as a critical new idea across the humanities and social sciences, from literary and cultural studies to the study of gender and the philosophy of action. In this volume, Jeffrey Alexander demonstrates how performance can reorient our study of politics and society. Alexander develops a cultural pragmatics that shifts cultural sociology from texts to gestural meanings. Positioning social performance between ritual and strategy, he lays out the elements of social performance - from scripts to mise-en-scène, from critical mediation to audience reception - and systematically describes their tense interrelation. This is followed by a series of empirically oriented studies that demonstrate how cultural pragmatics transforms our approach to power. Alexander brings his new theory of social performance to bear on case studies that range from political to cultural power: Barack Obama's electoral campaign, American failure in the Iraqi war, the triumph of the Civil Rights Movement, terrorist violence on September 11th, public intellectuals, material icons, and social science itself. This path-breaking work by one of the world's leading social theorists will command a wide interdisciplinary readership.
In this book, one of the world s leading social theorists presents a critical, alarmed, but also nuanced understanding of the post-traditional world we inhabit today. Jeffrey Alexander writes about modernity as historical time and social condition, but also as ideology and utopia.
