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9781509538249

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This thrilling book starts with John Dewey's puzzle: when and how does a problem that is troubling only a few people in a specific social sphere get transformed into a moral crisis for the whole of society? With his unique mixture of knowledge and imagination, Jeffrey Alexander formulates an elegant and complex answer to this question and, in so doing, highlights a central mechanism in the normative ordering of contemporary societies. Axel Honneth, Columbia University Few concepts better describe our age than that of 'crisis', from the economic meltdown of 2008 to the #MeToo movement of today. In a dazzling variety of case studies, Alexander shows that these crises suggest not collapse but vitality, not 'danger and impurity' but sacredness and the quest for order. Read this urgent and startling book to understand why Jeffrey Alexander is one of the world's leading social and cultural theorists. Eva Illouz, Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris

This thrilling book starts with John Dewey's puzzle: when and how does a problem that is troubling only a few people in a specific social sphere get transformed into a moral crisis for the whole of society? With his unique mixture of knowledge and imagination, Jeffrey Alexander formulates an elegant and complex answer to this question and, in so doing, highlights a central mechanism in the normative ordering of contemporary societies. Axel Honneth, Columbia University Few concepts better describe our age than that of 'crisis', from the economic meltdown of 2008 to the #MeToo movement of today. In a dazzling variety of case studies, Alexander shows that these crises suggest not collapse but vitality, not 'danger and impurity' but sacredness and the quest for order. Read this urgent and startling book to understand why Jeffrey Alexander is one of the world's leading social and cultural theorists. Eva Illouz, Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris This is a very clearly written and highly insightful book. Situated within the context of Alexander's wider intellectual project, it comprises one more case in the indictment against orthodox forms of social theory and theorizing. Cultural Sociology

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Jeffrey C. Alexander is the Lillian Chavenson Saden Professor of Sociology at Yale University.

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