Alternative Modernities

Alternative Modernities PDF Author: Dilip Parameshwar Gaonkar
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 9780822327141
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 382

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Book Description
A special issue of PUBLIC CULTURE, this volume of essays examines modernity from transnational and transcultural perspectives, holding that within different cultures, there are different starting points of the transition to modernity that lead to differen

Alternative Modernities

Alternative Modernities PDF Author: Dilip Parameshwar Gaonkar
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 9780822327141
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 382

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Book Description
A special issue of PUBLIC CULTURE, this volume of essays examines modernity from transnational and transcultural perspectives, holding that within different cultures, there are different starting points of the transition to modernity that lead to differen

Alternative Modernity

Alternative Modernity PDF Author: Andrew Feenberg
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 9780520915701
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 268

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Book Description
In this new collection of essays, Andrew Feenberg argues that conflicts over the design and organization of the technical systems that structure our society shape deep choices for the future. A pioneer in the philosophy of technology, Feenberg demonstrates the continuing vitality of the critical theory of the Frankfurt School. He calls into question the anti-technological stance commonly associated with its theoretical legacy and argues that technology contains potentialities that could be developed as the basis for an alternative form of modern society. Feenberg's critical reflections on the ideas of Jürgen Habermas, Herbert Marcuse, Jean-François Lyotard, and Kitaro Nishida shed new light on the philosophical study of technology and modernity. He contests the prevalent conception of technology as an unstoppable force responsive only to its own internal dynamic and politicizes the discussion of its social and cultural construction. This argument is substantiated in a series of compelling and well-grounded case studies. Through his exploration of science fiction and film, AIDS research, the French experience with the "information superhighway," and the Japanese reception of Western values, he demonstrates how technology, when subjected to public pressure and debate, can incorporate ethical and aesthetic values.

Zhou Zuoren and an Alternative Chinese Response to Modernity

Zhou Zuoren and an Alternative Chinese Response to Modernity PDF Author: Susan Daruvala
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 1684173396
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 385

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Book Description
"This book explores the issues of nation and modernity in China by focusing on the work of Zhou Zuoren (1885-1967), one of the most controversial of modern Chinese intellectuals and brother of the writer Lu Xun. Zhou was radically at odds with many of his contemporaries and opposed their nation-building and modernization projects. Through his literary and aesthetic practice as an essayist, Zhou espoused a way of constructing the individual and affirming the individual’s importance in opposition to the normative national subject of most May Fourth reformers. Zhou’s work presents an alternative vision of the nation and questions the monolithic claims of modernity by promoting traditional aesthetic categories, the locality rather than the nation, and a literary history that values openness and individualism."

Alternative Modernity

Alternative Modernity PDF Author: Andrew Feenberg
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520089863
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 263

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Book Description
In this new collection of essays, Andrew Feenberg argues that conflicts over the design and organization of the technical systems that structure our society shape deep choices for the future. A pioneer in the philosophy of technology, Feenberg demonstrates the continuing vitality of the critical theory of the Frankfurt School. He calls into question the anti-technological stance commonly associated with its theoretical legacy and argues that technology contains potentialities that could be developed as the basis for an alternative form of modern society. Feenberg's critical reflections on the ideas of Jürgen Habermas, Herbert Marcuse, Jean-François Lyotard, and Kitaro Nishida shed new light on the philosophical study of technology and modernity. He contests the prevalent conception of technology as an unstoppable force responsive only to its own internal dynamic and politicizes the discussion of its social and cultural construction. This argument is substantiated in a series of compelling and well-grounded case studies. Through his exploration of science fiction and film, AIDS research, the French experience with the "information superhighway," and the Japanese reception of Western values, he demonstrates how technology, when subjected to public pressure and debate, can incorporate ethical and aesthetic values.

Shanghai Reflections

Shanghai Reflections PDF Author: Mario Gandelsonas
Publisher: Princeton Architectural Press
ISBN: 9781568983264
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 236

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Book Description
Student projects sponsored by Princeton, Hong Kong, and Tongji universities and reviewed by critics.

Alternatives to Democracy in Twentieth-Century Europe

Alternatives to Democracy in Twentieth-Century Europe PDF Author: Sabrina P. Ramet
Publisher: Central European University Press
ISBN: 9633863104
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 492

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Book Description
Alternatives to Democracy in Twentieth-Century Europe examines the historical examples of Soviet Communism, Italian Fascism, German Nazism, and Spanish Anarchism, suggesting that, in spite of their differences, they had some key features in common, in particular their shared hostility to individualism, representative government, laissez faire capitalism, and the decadence they associated with modern culture. But rather than seeking to return to earlier ways of working these movements and regimes sought to design a new future – an alternative future – that would restore the nation to spiritual and political health. The Fascists, for their part, specifically promoted palingenesis, which is to say the spiritual rebirth of the nation. The book closes with a long epilogue, in which Ramet defends liberal democracy, highlighting its strengths and advantages. In this chapter, the author identifies five key choke points, which would-be authoritarians typically seek to control, subvert, or instrumentalize: electoral rules, the judiciary, the media, hate speech, and surveillance, and looks at the cases of Viktor Orbán’s Hungary, Jarosław Kaczyński’s Poland, and Donald Trump’s United States.

Critically Modern

Critically Modern PDF Author: Bruce M. Knauft
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 9780253215383
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 346

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Book Description
"Critically Modern makes a critical intervention in one of the great debates of the moment. It offers a variety of rich and fascinating empirical analyses of 'modern' phenomena from diverse societies, and contributes a powerful (and largely missing) voice to the growing literature on globalization and modernity outside anthropology." —Charles Piot "In these essays theory and ethnography are presented in ways that make them mutually enriching. The volume should appeal to scholars across the entire range of disciplines that deal with modernity and/or globalization." —Edward LiPuma Are there multiple ways of being "modern" in the world today? How do people in various parts of the world become modern in their own distinct ways? Does the current focus on modernity in the social sciences resurrect a series of dichotomies ("traditional" and "modern," "the West" and "the Rest," "developed" and "undeveloped") that social theorists have sought to move beyond in recent years? Or do inflections of modernity capture key features of ideology and influence in the contemporary world? Combining rich ethnographic analysis with incisive theoretical critiques, this timely volume is certain to make an important mark in anthropology and in all related fields in which modernity is a central problematic. Contributors: Donald L. Donham, Robert J. Foster, Jonathan Friedman, Ivan Karp, John D. Kelly, Bruce M. Knauft, Lisa B. Rofel, Debra A. Spitulnik, Michel-Rolph Trouillot, and Holly Wardlow.

Places on the Margin

Places on the Margin PDF Author: Rob Shields
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136134441
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 356

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Book Description
The debate on modernity and postmodernity has awakened interest in the importance of the spatial for cultural formations. But what of those spaces that exist as much in the imagination as in physical reality? This book attempts to develop an alternative geography and sociology of space by examining `places on the margin'.

Insurgent Universality

Insurgent Universality PDF Author: Massimiliano Tomba
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0190883081
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 305

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Book Description
Scholars commonly take the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen of 1789, written during the French Revolution, as the starting point for the modern conception of human rights. According to the Declaration, the rights of man are held to be universal, at all times and all places. But as recent crises around migrants and refugees have made obvious, this idea, sacred as it might be among human rights advocates, is exhausted. This book suggests that we need to think of a different idea of universality that exceeds the juridical universialism of the Declaration. Insurgent Universality investigates alternative trajectories of modernity that have been repressed, hindered, and forgotten. Investigating radical upheavals, Tomba excavates an alternative idea of universality that is based on popular political practices that disrupt and reject the existing political and economic order. The book shows how this tradition builds bridges between European and non-European political and social experiments.

Rethinking the French New Right

Rethinking the French New Right PDF Author: Tamir Bar-On
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135966265
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 268

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Book Description
This book focuses on the philosophy, politics and impact of the 'New Right' which originated in France and has since influenced activism, ideology and policy in a number of European countries. This book explores the idea that revolutionaries do not necessarily need to come from the left, nor use arms in order to overturn liberal democracy. In the post-World War Two era, the extremists of the revolutionary right took three different paths: 1) parliamentary; 2) extra-parliamentary; and 3) metapolitical. The New Right (nouvelle droite – ND in France) took the metapolitical path, but that did not mean it abandoned its revolutionary desire to smash liberal democracy throughout Europe. The book examines four interpretations of the New Right. These interpretations include the following: 1) The New Right as a fascist or quasi-fascist movement; 2) The New Right as a challenge to the traditional right-left dichotomy, which has structured European political debates for more than 200 years; 3) The New Right as an alternative modernist movement, which rejects liberal and socialist narratives of modernity; accepts the technical but not political or cultural effects of modernity; and longs for a pan-European political framework abolishing liberal multiculturalism and privileging ethnic dominance of so-called original Europeans; and 4) The New Right as a variant of political religion and conversionary processes. The book concludes by analysing the positions, cultural and political impact, and relationship to democracy of the New Right. This work will be of great interest to students and scholars of racism, fascism, extremism, European politics, French politics and contemporary political theory.