Social Theory

To cite:
Wilkins, A. 2017. Rescaling the local: Multi-academy trusts, private monopoly and statecraft in England. Journal of Educational Administration and History, 49 (2), 171-185

For the past six years successive UK governments in England have introduced reforms intended to usher in less aggregated, top-down, bureaucratically overloaded models of service delivery as well as secure conditions for greater school autonomy.  Yet the ‘hollowing out’ of local government has not resulted in less bureaucracy on the ground or less regulation from above, nor has it diminished hierarchy as an organising principle of education governance.  In some cases, monopolies and monopolistic practices dominated by powerful bureaucracies and professional groups persist, albeit realised through the involvement of new actors and organisations from business and philanthropy.  In this paper I adopt a governmentality perspective to explore the political significance of large multi-academy trusts (MATs) – private sponsors contracted by central government to run publicly funded schools – to the generation of new scalar hierarchies and accountability infrastructures that assist in bringing the gaze of government to bear upon the actions of schools that are otherwise less visible under local government management.  On this account, it is argued, MATs are integral to statecraft and the invention and assemblage of particular apparatuses for intervening upon specific organisations, spaces and peoples.

In his text On the Reproduction of Capitalism, Louis Althusser references an appendix to the text, which remains either lost or unfinished: an appendix titled ‘The Ideology of Work.’ Inspired by the potential contents of this appendix, this paper discusses how Althusser has – and might have – considered the relationship between ideology and work within his writings and what the consequences of this consideration may be for the Marxist sociology of work today. The paper suggests the co-existence of two discussions of the ‘ideology of work’ between Althusser’s writings, constructed at similar times: one grounded in an analysis of ideology as the product of state apparatus (found in On the Reproduction of Capitalism); another grounded in ideology as an epistemological obstacle (found in The Humanist Controversy). The paper argues that the sociology of work has implicitly reproduced a harmful separation of these two analyses in its own thinking about the relationship between work and ideology, productive of economistic and humanist deviations of which it cannot make sense. The paper concludes with a call to revisit the tensions present in Althusser’s understandings of ‘the ideology of work’, with a view to reconstructing a method useful for the Marxist sociology of work.

È "lavoro di partito" tutto ciò che contribuisce al movimento reale che abolisce lo stato di cose presente. In Marx la teoria del partito non è del tutto esplicita, però è facile da ricavare da molti dei suoi scritti. Nel Manifesto il quadro teorico offre già una buona traccia per una lettura di tutto ciò che egli scriverà successivamente: i comunisti sono coloro che anticipano la società futura; non fanno già più parte di questa società anche se vivono dentro di essa. L'enorme importanza di questo concetto non è stata capita dalla maggior parte di coloro che si richiamano a Marx.

Post-modern theology is highly suspicious of social theory and its secular origins. After all, the founder who gave us the word “sociology” also coined the term “positivism.” An alternative strategy is that of Bernard Lonergan, a theologian with a highly developed sociological imagination. He was quite aware of the secularity but devoted a life-time in trying to think through some of the key issues. His was a mind on the move and perhaps it is not surprising that his contribution has yet to be assimilated.
In this paper I shall take a look at a key text from Lonergan’s magnum opus, Insight. I will suggest that, in a sense, this may be regarded as “social physics” (another phrase from Auguste Comte). As we shall see, Lonergan’s thought wrestled with many issues of concern to the other founders of sociology: Karl Marx, Émile Durkheim, and Max Weber, but his vision is quite original, and in fact, he will draw on Arnold J. Toynbee.
I do not believe Lonergan’s work is beyond criticism—as his later developments suggest—so I will try to identify some difficulties by examining closely some of those later changes. Before offering my appraisal, then, I will look at Lonergan’s social theory from five periods. First, I shall simply record his interest in the 1930s by referring to some work he retained in a file but never published. Then I shall give a more careful exposition of a chapter written in the early 1950s. I will suggest that Lonergan’s deployment of mathematical analogies to understand social theory underwent some changes and so I will look at that transition in the 1960s. I will then be able to take a glance at the new way Lonergan presented his ideas in Method in Theology (1972) and go on to sample a few developments in the last decade up to 1980. In my appraisal we will be able to see some of the strengths and weaknesses Lonergan encountered in his project of social physics and perhaps make a small increase to the stock of ideas myself.

As the majority perpetrators of sexual violence, it is plausible to see men as responsible for war rape not only as individuals, but also as collective bystanders, facilitators and beneficiaries. Following recent criticisms of individual legal and moral responsibility for rape as a war crime in international law, this article examines how we might think of war rape as a collective action in moral and sociological terms. First, it assesses existing moral arguments for the responsibility of men in groups for rape, primarily with reference to the work of Claudia Card, Larry May and Robert Strikwerda. Critiquing elements of these arguments, it explores the difficulties in talking about ‘men’ as a coherent group and in discussing ‘collectives’ themselves. Second, the article draws out the connection between accounts of moral responsibility and accounts of causal responsibility. Drawing on critiques of collective responsibility and the long-standing agency/structure problem, it argues that causal accounts focusing on structure pose a serious challenge to ideas of both individual and collective moral responsibility. The complexities of the relationship between moral and causal claims are illustrated through a discussion of Susan Brownmiller and Catharine MacKinnon’s influential perspectives on rape. The seeming paradox of responsibility is emphasised as a problem to be addressed by gender and feminist perspectives that seek to pursue both ethical and sociological inquiry into the workings of masculinity and the political means for undoing gendered wrongs.

There are more types of borders today than ever before in history. Borders of all kinds define every aspect of social life in the twenty-first century. From the biometric data that divides the smallest aspects of our bodies to the aerial drones that patrol the immense expanse of our domestic and international airspace, we are defined by borders. They can no longer simply be understood as the geographical divisions between nation-states. Today, their form and function has become too complex, too hybrid. What we need now is a theory of the border that can make sense of this hybridity across multiple domains of social life.

Rather than viewing borders as the result or outcome of pre-established social entities like states, Thomas Nail reinterprets social history from the perspective of the continual and constitutive movement of the borders that organize and divide society in the first place. Societies and states are the products of bordering, Nail argues, not the other way around. Applying his original movement-oriented theoretical framework "kinopolitics" to several major historical border regimes (fences, walls, cells, and checkpoints), Theory of the Border pioneers a new methodology of "critical limology," that provides fresh tools for the analysis of contemporary border politics.

Glocal Spirituality:  Consumerism and Heritage in Puerto Rican Brujería
With the recent intensification of the circulation of ritual experts and commodities, folk religions such as Puerto Rican brujería (witch-healing) have entered a transnational arena of ritual experimentation and eclecticism. Concomitantly, the politics of identity, operating at local-political and global-commercial stages, propel the search for origins and the production of essential identities, leading to the revitalization and orthodoxy of folk religions as well as their folklorization, following a local—though globally pervasive—heritage discourse.  Why glocal spirituality? My main argument is that both these forces—the actual insertion into global circulations that promote a high degree of ritual eclecticism and the local demand for an essential Puerto Rican national identity that promote orthodoxy—work in tandem creating a complex set of conditions for ritual practice and meaning.
How can these apparently contradictory processes be theorized within folklore studies? From a historic-pragmatic perspective to ritual and through an intimate ethnographic account that traces the encounters between practitioners, clients and suppliers of ritual goods, I will show how these two processes work in tandem. That is, without an a-priori public recognition of brujos (witch-healers) as repositories of Puerto Rican wisdom (in the context of the unresolved neocolonial political status of the island), the fame and celebrity that enabled the open incorporation of African based rituals, of bureaucratic gestures and interventions, and transnational religious commodities could not have been viable. Critics of the culture industry and consumerism tend to suggest that commercial forces inherently taint the authenticity of culture, and in this case would taint the spiritual effectiveness of brujería. For practitioners and clients, however, material and spiritual progress not only are not at odds but also are intimately connected. Indeed, practitioners are driven by the attainment of “blessings”—defined by material success as well as spiritual power—which presume the spirituality of commodities and the thinghood of spirituality. Especially in a world guided by capitalist modes of production and the sensuous insatiable consumption of life styles and self-images, brujos and their clients take advantage of the opportunities opened up by multiculturalism and identity politics. They openly expand the pantheon of spirits as well as their ritual expertise, protected by the idiom of heritage—yet outside of its constraints, showing that more than endangered species they are active participants in these glocal forces, speaking to them in their own particular modern yet spiritual idiom.

Investigations into the political economy of globalization usually concentrate upon three related developments—the expansion of international trade and the growth in transnational production, including the rise of transnational corporations;  the creation of a world-wide market for finance and credit;  and finally, the development of regimes and institutions of global economic governance.  By comparison, the role and significance of labour and labourers tends to be neglected in most studies. Yet, from its very inception, the process of globalization has been marked by the different methods of organizing work and organizing the activity of workers themselves.

This volume goes some way in restoring labour to a proper place in the globalization literature. The title 'Globalizing Labour' has a dual meaning. On the one hand it refers to increasing connectedness of workers and work as the globalization of integrated trade, financial and production systems merges economic activity from around the world. Labour is globalizing in the sense that it is connected to world-wide production and exchange structures. On the other hand, the title refers to the activities of workers themselves as their political and economic activities influence broader globalization structures. Labour is globalizing in the sense that workers are themselves building organizational links between different communities and are engaging global power structures whether they be globalizing corporations or international organizations. This volume introduces the subject of labour and globalization by examining four elements of the relationship. Firstly, the historical relationship between labour and globalization is briefly reviewed. Secondly, the condition of various forms of labour since the end of the Cold War is surveyed. Thirdly, the issue of labour, the state and regulation of globalizing corporations is highlighted. The volume concludes with some thoughts on key issues facing global labour in the twenty-first century.

“Power is war, the continuation of war by other means”: Foucault’s reversal of Clausewitz’s formula has become a staple of critical theory — but it remains highly problematic on a conceptual level. Elaborated during Foucault’s 1976 lectures (“Society Must Be Defended”), this work-hypothesis theorises “basic warfare” [la guerre fondamentale] as the teleological horizon of socio-political relations. Following Boulainvilliers, Foucault champions this polemological approach, conceived as a purely descriptive discourse on “real” politics and war, against the philosophico-juridical conceptuality attached to liberal society (Hobbes’s Leviathan being here the prime example).
However, in doing so, Foucault did not interrogate the conceptual validity of notions such as power and war, therefore interlinking them without questioning their ontological status. This problematic conflation was partly rectified in 1982, as Foucault proposed a more dynamic definition of power relations: “actions over potential actions”.
I argue, somewhat polemically, that Foucault’s hermeneutics of power still involves a teleological violence, dependent on a polemological representation of human relations as essentially instrumental: this resembles what Derrida names, in “Heidegger’s Ear”, an “anthropolemology”. However, I show that all conceptualisation of power implies its self-deconstruction. This self-deconstructive (or autoimmune) structure supposes an archi-originary unpower prior to power: power presupposes an excess within power, an excessive force, another violence making it both possible and impossible. There is something within power located “beyond the power principle” (Derrida). This (self-)excess signifies a limitless resistantiality co-extensive with power-relationality. It also allows the reversal of pólemos into its opposite, as unpower opens politics and warfare to the messianic call of a pre-political, pre-ontological disruption: the archi-originary force of différance. This force, unconditional, challenges Foucault’s conceptualisations of power, suggesting an originary performativity located before or beyond hermeneutics of power-knowledge, disrupting theoreticity as well as empiricity by pointing to their ontological complicity.
The bulk of this essay is dedicated to sketching the theoretical implications of this deconstructive reading of Foucault with respect to the methodology and conceptuality of political science and social theory.

Abstract

This book is theoretical, in which the relevant parts of sociological and anthropological specialist literature on football and social processes were synthetically summarized. I focused only on the theories that were relevant to me, excluding popular literature dealing with the strategic-tactical connections of soccer as a physical game, the bibliography presenting the practice of the physical training and nutrition of the body, as well as the rich storehouse of related psychological and pedagogical writings and that of the literature referring to the economic and financial, marketing and promotion component of the issue. The biographical books of famous football players are not discussed, either. In the introductory part the sociological literature of football is delineated, making reference to the themes and questions raised, explanatory models, paradigmatic viewpoints, which characterize the „sociology of football”, as a specialized branch with a scientific status, recognized as such by the academic field. In fact, the possible taxonomy, the possible spectrum of the questions raised is examined. By a small detour the social role of sports, and the connections between the mass media and sports, particularly football are discussed, and references are provided on how soccer can indeed be a social issue. Football is seen as a rite, a postmodern deep play as a legitimacy and political-manipulative instrument, about the phenomena of violence, hooliganism and the ultras, about the relationship between soccer and criminality, inequality, racism, anti-Semitism, or masculinity, identity and modernization. We primarily relied on English language, mostly British and American specialized literature, as the largest part of the specialist literature was produced there. (This reflects well the English origins of modern age football, “they invented it” and spread it across the globe. Then they were the ones to write the most about it).

So, the Sociology of Football is an encompassing synthesis of the sociology of football; it also contains illustrations and talkative examples from Romanian football and changing social reality.

On this first level, I have presented the literature on the following issues: violence in football as the most prominent topic in the sociology of football; the role of football as a producer of identity, collective consciousness, and as laic ritual of postmodern society; the relationship between soccer and masculinity. In this last respect, I argue that highly mediated star players can define patterns of normative masculinity as sex symbols and as integral parts of a culture of celebrity. Thus, the way media presents football in general and players in particular, characterizing them and describing their expectations, is in fact the method they build normative patterns of masculinity strongly and closely related to national character. It relates to the way an imagined community looks on itself: it represents outer (aesthetics, the way it looks like) and inner (moral, the way it behaves) characteristics, the here and now of valid characters of masculinity, traits blend with qualities of national ones. I have also looked at the symbiotic relation between football and political power, since power structures football (playing style, economic, political, and logistic conditions, legitimate goals football may express and institute). However, soccer feeds back on politics, shapes to a certain extent the behaviour of political elites (for example legitimizes certain decisions, raises questions, or represents a context in which certain problems can be formulated). The relation between football and media is another important subject treated here: football is highly mediated and has become a TV show on its own, the practice of football, and the logic of media institutions are closely related. Media “produce” football because it needs football and thus football can be perceived as a commoditized popular culture product. In the current era of global media, entertainment industry produces this good.

New materialism is a term ascribed to a range of contemporary perspectives in the arts, humanities and social sciences that have in common a theoretical and practical ‘turn to matter’.  This turn emphasizes the materiality of the world and everything – social and natural – within it, and differentiates new materialisms from a post-structuralist focus upon texts, ‘systems of thought’ and ‘discourses’, focusing upon social production rather than social construction

VITA
Life in a Zone of Social Abandonment
With photographs by Torben Eskerod

Updated Blurb (2013)

Zones of social abandonment are emerging everywhere in Brazil’s big cities—places like Vita, where the unwanted, the mentally ill, the sick, and the homeless are left to die. This haunting, unforgettable story centers on a young woman named Catarina, increasingly paralyzed and said to be mad, living out her time at Vita. Anthropologist João Biehl leads a detective-like journey to know Catarina; to unravel the cryptic, poetic words that are part of the “dictionary” she is compiling; and to trace the complex network of family, medicine, state, and economy in which her abandonment and pathology took form.

An instant classic, Vita has been widely acclaimed for its bold fieldwork, theoretical innovation, and literary force. Reflecting on how Catarina’s life story continues, this updated edition offers the reader a powerful new afterword and gripping new photographs following Biehl and Eskerod’s return to Vita. Anthropology at its finest, Vita is essential reading for anyone who is grappling with how to understand the conditions of life, thought, and ethics in the contemporary world.

University of California Press, 2013

Awards
2013 J.I. Staley Prize, School for Advanced Research

2007 Margaret Mead Award, Society for Applied Anthropology and American Anthropological Association.

2006 Anthony Leeds Prize, Society for Urban, National, and Transnational/Global Anthropology.

2006 Stirling Prize, Society for Psychological Anthropology.

2006 Outstanding Book Award, Benjamin L. Hooks Institute for Social Change.

2005 Eileen Basker Memorial Prize, Society for Medical Anthropology.

Honorable Mention, 2005 Victor Turner Prize for Ethnographic Writing, Society for Humanistic Anthropology.

Abstract: In this paper, we outline a number of features of an interdisciplinary and pluralistic approach to economics. As a suitable example of how an interdisciplinary cooperation can unfold, we focus attention on the relations between institutional economics and psychoanalysis. In the first ...

My thesis in this paper is that anxiety plays a central role in the shaping of modern subjectivity and agency.  My argument is that anxiety in contemporary society is distinct from the forms of anxiety that plagued industrial society in that it is a more complete and totalizing phenomenon that acts to constrict selfhood and regress the ego to more primitive states.  As a result, the modern self loses its capacities for civic life and consciousness as anxiety grips the psyche.  In what follows, I will reconstruct the theory of anxiety as a relational, and hence social phenomenon, that interpenetrates with the development of the self.  Next, I will explore the thesis that a civic self is a specific manifestation of our psychic and agentic capacity for cognition and affect for “others,” one that, as it is reduced, is replaced with a need for security and group narcissism. After this, I will explore how the dynamics of contemporary society (what I call the “cybernetic society”) enhances and totalizes anxiety in such a way that withdrawal from civic life gives further impetus to the psyche’s need for connection to stave off existential angst, giving more force to strivings for group identification and exclusion of others.

Globalism, Nationalism, Tribalism establishes a new basis for understanding the changing nature of polity and community and offers unprecedented attention to these dominant trends. The book charts the contradictions and tensions we all encounter in an era of increasing globalization, from genocide and terrorism to television and finance capital.

Globalism is treated as an uneven and layered process of spatial expansion, not simply one of disorder, fragmentation or rupture. Nor is it simply a force of homogenization.

Nationalism is taken seriously as a continuing and important formation of contemporary identity and politics. The book rewrites the modernism theories of the nation-state without devolving into the postmodernist assertion that all is invention or surface gloss.

Tribalism is given the attention it has long warranted and is analyzed as a continuing and changing formation of social life, from the villages of Rwanda to the cities of the West.

Theoretically adept and powerfully argued, this is the first comprehensive analysis that brings these crucial themes of contemporary life together.

Contents
PART ONE: RETURNING TO A THEORY OF SOCIAL FORMATION / Social Relations in Tension
/ Contending Approaches in Outline / Theory in the Shadow of Terror / PART TWO: RETHINKING
FORMATIONS OF PRACTICE AND BEING / Constituting Customary Community / Communication
and Exchange, Money and Writing / Time and Space, Calendars and Maps / Bodies and Symbols, Blood
and Milk / PART THREE: REWRITING THE HISTORY OF THE PRESENT / State Formation:
From Kingdoms and Empires to Nation-States / Nation Formation: From the Medieval to the
Postmodern / Global Formation: From the Oecumene to Planet Exploitation / Conclusion: Principles for
a Postnational World

April 2006 · 392 pages
Cloth (0-7619-5513-5)
Paper (0-7619-5514-3)
""

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Conde Flores, Alberto (2017). El fin de los teóricos. La formación de científicos sociales en tiempos de globalización. En Rubén Ibarra Reyes et al (Coords.). La humanidad frente a los desafíos del capitalismo decadente. Universidad de Zacatecas.

This is the typescript  of: Mitchell Dean, ‘Foucault and the neoliberalism controversy’, in  D. Cahill, M. Cooper, M. Konings, and D. Primrose (eds), The Sage Handbook of Neoliberalism. London: Sage, pp. 40-54.

It includes reviews of a) the current controversy of Foucault's relation to neoliberalism (2012-2016), b) Foucault's views of neoliberalism and the arts of government, and c) his view of neoliberal subjectivity,  and refections on Foucault and d)  his intellectual habitus, e) his political and historical context, and f) his relation to neoliberalism as an ideal, a concrete political program and a social policy framework. It argues that there are three specific elements of what might be considered neoliberalism to which Foucault had an affirmative relationship: 1. the form of regulation without 'subjectification' imagined by the Chicago School; 2. the political faction of the French Socialists, the Second Left; and 3. the critique of the welfare state as inducing dependency.

Theorizing a sociology of emotion that links micro-level resources to macro-level forces, this article extends previous work on emotional capital in relation to emotional experiences and management. Emerging from Bourdieu's theory of social practice, emotional capital is a form of cultural capital that includes the emotion-specific, trans-situational resources that individuals activate and embody in distinct fields. Contrary to prior conceptualizations, I argue that emotional capital is neither wholly gender-neutral nor exclusively feminine. Men may lay claim to emotional capital as a valued resource within particular fields. The concept of emotional capital should be seen as distinct from emotion management and felt emotional experience and distinctions between primary and secondary sources of capital clarify the simultaneously durable and evolving nature of capital and the habitus. To illustrate these conceptual refinements, I use interview and diary data from male nurses. Men bring primary emotional capital, developed during primary socialization, to the nursing profession while also developing secondary capital through occupational socialization centered on empathy and compassion. The construct of emotional capital is refined as a structured yet dynamic resource developed through primary and secondary socialization and activated and embodied in everyday emotion practice.

Osmanlı İmparatorluğunu ve Türkiye`yi yaklaşık iki asırdır Mason Bektâşilerin kurduğu derin örgütler yönetiyor. Masonik Bektâşi yapının geçmişte kullandığı İttihat ve Terakki geleneği Ergenekon ile bugün ortaya çıkmış gözüküyor. Mason Bektâşilik ve Geleneksel Bektâşilik arasında ki savaşta 1997de yol ayrımına gelindi. Bu savaşın sonuçları ise en fazla Masonik Bektâşilikten kurtulmaya çalışan Alevileri etkileyecektir. Encümen-i Daniş laik bir Mason Bektâşi tarikatı mı, yoksa derin devletin Büyük Devlet Jürisi mi? Bir asırdır Türk Silahlı kuvvetlerine, bürokrasiye, yargıya yerleşen, Türkderin devleti Ergenekonun gerçek sahipleri Mason Bektâşiler mi? Mason Bektâşiler elit Bektâşiliği neden savunuyor ve Anadolu Aleviliğinden kendilerini ayrı görüyorlar? Sabataycıların, Masonlukla Bektâşiliği mezcederken kullandıkları Hurufilik ile Kabala arasındaki ilişki nedir? Alisiz Aleviliği neden icat ettiler, Aleviliği İslam dışına çıkarma gayretleri başarıya ulaşabilir mi? Bektâşiler ve Alevilerin çoğu neden solcu Kemalist`tir veya kendilerini Kemalist olarak tanımlıyorlar? Yabancı istihbaratlar, Masonik Bektâşilerle birlikte Alevi sorununu provoke mi edecekler?

Social research in lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) aging is a rapidly growing field, but an examination of the use of theory has not yet been conducted for its impact on the field’s direction. We conducted a systematic review of empirical articles published in LGBTQ aging in the years 2009–2017 (N ¼ 102). Using a typology of theory use in scholarly articles, we analyzed these articles for the types of theories being used, the degree to which theories were used in each article, and the analytical function they served. We found that 52% of articles consistently applied theory, 23% implied or partially applied theory, and 25% presented as atheoretical. A wide range of theories were used and served multiple analytical functions such as concept development and explanation of findings. We discuss the strengths and weaknesses of theory use in this body of literature, especially with respect to implications for future knowledge development in the field.

O presente trabalho consiste em  uma  reflexão sobre  a ontolo- gia do sujeito implícita à teoria  da agência de Margaret Archer. Com base  nas  vertentes mais individualistas do pragmatismo, Archer apropria-se da  noção  de  conversações interiores a fim de destacar o caráter reflexivo e privado do self, revelando uma concepção de  sujeito hiperreflexivo e autocentrado. A herme- nêutica de Gadamer é apresentada como uma  alternativa a esta ontologia. Argumento que  sua  teoria da  interpretação repousa sobre  uma  concepção dialógica de  sujeito cujas  conversações interiores sublinham a centralidade das práticas na construção da  subjetividade. Ao estabelecer que  a (auto)compreensão de- pende de um encontro com a diferença e a alteridade, Gadamer, ao mesmo tempo que nega a autotransparência e o fechamento do sujeito, abre  a possibilidade  de (auto)consciência e reflexi- vidade na agência humana.

This paper presents a frame work for hardware acceleration for post video processing system implemented on FPGA. The deblocking filter algorithms ported on SOC having Altera NIOS-II soft core processor.SOC designed with the help of SOPC builder .Custom instructions are chosen by identifying the most frequently used tasks in the algorithm and the instruction set of NIOS-II processor has been extended. Deblocking filter new instruction added to the processor that are implemented in hardware and interfaced to the NIOS-II processor. New instruction added to the processor to boost the performance of the deblocking filter algorithm. Use of custom instructions the implemented tasks have been accelerated by 5.88%. The benefit of the speed is obtained at the cost of very small hardware resources.

Why do women in contemporary western societies experience contradiction between their autonomous and maternal selves? What are the origins of this contradiction and the associated ‘double shift’ that result in widespread calls to either ‘lean in’ or ‘opt out’? How are some mothers subverting these contradictions and finding meaningful ways of reconciling their autonomous and maternal selves?


In Modern Motherhood and Women’s Dual Identities, Petra Bueskens argues that western modernisation consigned women to the home and released them from it in historically unprecedented, yet interconnected, ways. Her ground-breaking formulation is that western women are free as ‘individuals’ and constrained as mothers, with the twist that it is the former that produces the latter.


Bueskens’ theoretical contribution consists of the identification and analysis of modern women’s duality drawing on political philosophy, feminist theory and sociology tracking the changing nature of discourses of women, freedom and motherhood across three centuries. While the current literature points to the pervasiveness of contradiction and double-shifts for mothers, very little attention has been paid to how (some) women are subverting contradiction and ‘rewriting the sexual contract’. Bridging this gap, Bueskens’ interviews ten ‘revolving mothers’ to reveal how periodic absence, exceeding the standard work-day, disrupts the default position assigned to mothers in the home, and in turn disturbs the gendered dynamics of household work.


A provocative and original work, Modern Motherhood and Women’s Dual Identities will appeal to graduate students and researchers interested in fields such as Women and Gender Studies, Sociology of Motherhood and Social and Political Theory.


Endorsements:


Petra Bueskens has been in the forefront of the new, and very welcome field of motherhood studies.  In Modern Motherhood and Women's Dual Identities: Rewriting the Sexual Contact [she analyses] the psychic, social, cultural and political challenges posed by the dual identities of mother and citizen, elegantly and capaciously ranges across 400 years of theory, up to the present, that address them, as well as providing psychologically-attuned interview documentation of how women feel and think, daily and throughout their maternal lives.
Nancy J Chodorow
Author, The Reproduction of Mothering, The Power of Feelings, Individualizing Gender and Sexuality, and other works Professor Emerita of Sociology, University of California, Berkeley


This creative and theoretically rich book re-examines the social contradictions and penalties faced by women who want to be both caring mothers and autonomous public individuals.  Taking us beyond the logic of the "sexual contract," Bueskens introduces us to the "revolving mothers" who offer a glimpse of the social revolution required to undo the gendered separation of spheres.  A fascinating and compelling study.
Dr. Sharon Hays, author of the The Cultural Contradictions of Motherhood



In this lucid, timely and important new book, Petra Bueskens takes up the formidable task of investigating the 'new sexual contract' in late modernity that leaves women strung out between the promise of autonomy in the public sphere, and the demands of motherhood that isolate and intensify mothering work in the home, both freeing and constraining women at once. Bueskens brings into view this impossible contradictory duality by producing both a new social theory of dualism, and the empirical evidence to show that it is possible to force changes in the sexual contract at the level of individual family organization. Through tracking a small group of women who both choose to mother and also spend protracted periods of time away from the family, she shows how these women produce radical shifts in the gendered dynamics of the household. Her bold and vital claim is that we can rewrite the sexual contract only if we understand the historical and contemporary double-bind that produces women's liberty as it undermines it, making motherhood still the unfinished business of feminism.
Dr. Lisa Baraitser, Reader in Psychosocial Studies, Birckbeck University, author of Maternal Encounters


Modern Mothers' Dual Identities: Rewriting the Sexual Contract cogently and compellingly elucidates a central debate in motherhood studies and a persistent dilemma in most mothers' lives; namely the contradiction between women's maternal and individualized selves.  Through her lucid theoretical ruminations on the 'new sexual contract' in late modernity and by way of an innovative empirical study on 'revolving mothers', Bueskens delivers the needed blueprints to actualize the potential of what she incisively terms 'the individualized mother'.
Dr. Andrea O'Reilly, Professor of Women's Studies, York University, Toronto, Founder and Director of the Motherhood Initiative and author of Matricentric Feminism.



In this engaging and timely book, Petra Bueskens tackles a central challenge of modern life - how to reconcile the contradictory roles of women as citizens, individual workers and mothers. She traces the history through the theoretical views of motherhood, integrating the multiple strands in a sophisticated and fascinating synthesis. She highlights periodic maternal absence as a bridge between individualism and constraint, revealing both the ambiguities and a potential way to progress women's liberation. The book is an absorbing read that makes an invaluable contribution to our understanding of contemporary motherhood.
Dr. Lyn Craig, Professor of Sociology/ARC Future Fellow, The University of Melbourne, author of Contemporary Motherhood.

Um tratado prático-teorético é fundamentalmente um tratado de filosofia social e de metafísica, na medida em que trata da filosofia prática em sua relação específica, por um lado, com uma teoria do conhecimento e da linguagem, e por outro lado, com a própria questão da teoria do social, enquanto teorização do ser social (ontologia social e epistemologia social), da intersubjetividade (teoria moral, filosofia política, antropologia e psicologia filosóficas) e dos domínios regionais de objetos de investigação (sobretudo as ciências empíricas, incluindo, além da antropologia cultural e da psicologia social, a própria lingüística e abordagens neurocientíficas da linguagem e de fenômenos mentais), em sua diferença programática entre um uso teórico e um uso prático da razão em suas tentativas de fundamentar ou justificar a crença de que as coisas são o que são, em contraposição a por que devem ser assim e não de outro modo.

Esta reseña pretende hacer un recorrido por el desarrollo de Yannis Stavrakakis en “Lacan y lo Político”. Así como en el libro, la misma se estructura en tres ejes: el sujeto, el objeto y lo político. Stavrakakis comienza describiendo la constitución y características del sujeto en la teoría lacaniana, sujeto marcado por la falta y estructurado por el lenguaje; para luego pasar a una definición del objeto en términos similares a la del sujeto, esto es, correspondientemente tachado por una falta en el Otro que condiciona a la realidad en su relación con el sujeto; estas dos definiciones de lo subjetivo y lo objetivo se completan cruzándose en la noción de lo político, como forma de la relación entre ambos ámbitos tal como están definidos por la teoría lacaniana, con sus límites e intentos. Al respecto el autor se pregunta qué tiene para decir un psicoanalista sobre lo social, ámbitos que se suponen distanciados de igual forma que se suponen distanciados la subjetividad psíquica y la objetividad social. La respuesta comienza con la anulación de esa distancia entre la psiquis y la sociedad, articulándolas en un mismo plano de la existencia que resulta ser el ámbito de lo político.