Overview
This wide-ranging analysis of key issues and debates in contemporary social theory draws social theory, cultural studies and psychoanalysis together in a bold configuration. This book challenges the widespread view that social theory seems to have lost its way as a result of the diversification on conceptual approaches. In outlining an approach that places imagination and creativity at the centre of social theory, it argues that theoretical pluralism - from post-structuralism to postmodernism, from psychoanalysis to deconstruction - represents not the demise, but the renewal of critical social theory. The book opens with critical readings of the terrain of contemporary social theory and theorists, among them Ulrich Beck, Anthony Giddens, Jurgen Habermas, Jacques Lacan, Cornelius Castoriadis and Julia Kristeva. It follows this with an analysis of key debates in critical social theory. Questions relating to the globalization of risk, citizenship, morality and ethics, politics and norms, and sexuality and desire are all explored.
Full Product Details
Author: Anthony Elliott ,
Charles Lemert
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Imprint: Rowman & Littlefield
Dimensions:
Width: 15.70cm
, Height: 1.90cm
, Length: 23.50cm
Weight: 0.431kg
ISBN: 9780742526891
ISBN 10: 0742526895
Pages: 240
Publication Date: 28 July 2003
Audience:
General/trade
,
Professional and scholarly
,
College/higher education
,
General
,
Professional & Vocational
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: No Longer Our Product
Availability: Out of stock
The supplier is temporarily out of stock of this item. It will be ordered for you on backorder and shipped when it becomes available.
Reviews
Anthony Elliott is certainly among the rising stars in the early morning sky of social theory. Critical Visions demonstrates, by the freshness of its arguments, that the direction of social theory is, necessarily, always toward the new. -- Charles Lemert, Andrus Professor of Sociology, Wesleyan University With thoroughness and insight Elliott reviews contemporary social theory, ranging widely across topical issues in an interdisciplinary blending of sociology, linguistics, post-structuralism, and psychoanalysis. His style is lucid, lively, and critical-always engaging with current debates while pushing them forward in original directions. This book is essential reading for those wishing to understand the current state of social theory. -- Larry Ray, University of Kent Critical Visions is a really useful reading for those interested in understanding what is happening with the social theory nowadays. Metapsychology Online Reviews Critical Visions challenges us with the question whether the moral sciences (sociology, politics, psychoanalysis, and ethics) can survive their own identity crisis-given the problematic status of both their (liberal) subject and of their theoretical object (knowledge/power). After an incisive review of the considerable revisions introduced by all the major theorists of the seismic shifts in modernity and its reflexive improvisation of risky identities and relationships, Elliott poses serious ethical concerns about our ability to get beyond ultimately narcissistic investments in community, hybridity, and otherness which may undermine citizenship and cosmopolitanism. -- John O'Neill, York University
Anthony Elliott is certainly among the rising stars in the early morning sky of social theory. Critical Visions demonstrates, by the freshness of its arguments, that the direction of social theory is, necessarily, always toward the new.--Lemert, Charles
Anthony Elliott is certainly among the rising stars in the early morning sky of social theory. Critical Visions demonstrates, by the freshness of its arguments, that the direction of social theory is, necessarily, always toward the new. -- Charles Lemert, Wesleyan University, from the Foreword With thoroughness and insight Elliott reviews contemporary social theory, ranging widely across topical issues in an interdisciplinary blending of sociology, linguistics, post-structuralism, and psychoanalysis. His style is lucid, lively, and critical-always engaging with current debates while pushing them forward in original directions. This book is essential reading for those wishing to understand the current state of social theory. -- Larry Ray, University of Kent Critical Visions is a really useful reading for those interested in understanding what is happening with the social theory nowadays. Metapsychology Critical Visions challenges us with the question whether the moral sciences (sociology, politics, psychoanalysis, and ethics) can survive their own identity crisis-given the problematic status of both their (liberal) subject and of their theoretical object (knowledge/power). After an incisive review of the considerable revisions introduced by all the major theorists of the seismic shifts in modernity and its reflexive improvisation of risky identities and relationships, Elliott poses serious ethical concerns about our ability to get beyond ultimately narcissistic investments in community, hybridity, and otherness which may undermine citizenship and cosmopolitanism. -- John O'Neill, Distinguished Research Professor of Sociology, York University, Toronto
Author Information
Charles Lemert is Andrus Professor of Sociolgy at Wesleyan University in Connecticut, and is the author of many widely read books, including, most recently, Social Things, 3rd Edition; Dark Thoughts: Race and the Eclipse of Society; and Postmodernism Is Not What You Think/ How Globalization Threatens Modernity. Anthony Elliott is professor of social and political theory at the University of the West of England, where he is director of the Centre for Critical Theory. His recent books include Concepts of the Self (2001), Psychoanalytic Theory: An Introduction (2002), and Critical Visions (2003).
