Violence and the Philosophical Imaginary

Violence and the Philosophical Imaginary PDF Author: Ann V. Murphy
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 1438440324
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 149

Book Description
Images of violence enjoy a particular privilege in contemporary continental philosophy, one manifest in the ubiquity of violent metaphors and the prominence of a kind of rhetorical investment in violence as a motif. Such images have also informed, constrained, and motivated recent continental feminist theory. In Violence and the Philosophical Imaginary, Ann V. Murphy takes note of wide-ranging references to the themes of violence and vulnerability in contemporary theory. She considers the ethical and political implications of this language of violence with the aim of revealing other ways in which identity and the social bond might be imagined, and encourages some critical distance from the images of violence that pervade philosophical critique.

Modern Social Imaginaries

Modern Social Imaginaries PDF Author: Charles Taylor
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 9780822332930
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 240

Book Description
DIVAn accounting of the varying forms of social imaginary that have underpinned the rise of Western modernity./div

The Cambridge Handbook of Social Representations

The Cambridge Handbook of Social Representations PDF Author: Gordon Sammut
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107042003
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 499

Book Description
This Handbook provides the requisite theoretical and methodological guidelines for undertaking social research addressing relevant contemporary social issues.

Social Imaginaries

Social Imaginaries PDF Author: Suzi Adams
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1786607778
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 228

Book Description
Written by members of the Social Imaginaries Editorial Collective, these programmatic essays showcase new critical interventions in understandings of social imaginaries and the human condition. They include a new comparative approach to theorizing Castoriadis, Ricoeur, and Taylor; the rethinking of the creative imagination in relation to common sense; analyses of political imaginaries in neoliberal and constitutional contexts from perspectives drawing on Gauchet and Lefort; and the taking up questions of historical continuity and discontinuity in civilizational worlds. In addressing pressing questions concerning social imaginaries, the book advances the field as a whole. The book includes a Foreword by George H. Taylor. This book is a must-read for all scholars interested in social and political imaginaries and will appeal to researchers and graduate students working across a wide variety of disciplines in the human sciences.

Political Violence and the Imagination

Political Violence and the Imagination PDF Author: Mathias Thaler
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000090639
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 223

Book Description
Using a variety of theoretical reflections and empirically grounded case studies, this book examines how certain kinds of imagination – political, artistic, historical, philosophical – help us tackle the challenge of comprehending and responding to various forms of political violence. Understanding political violence is a complex task, which involves a variety of operations, from examining the social macro-structures within which actors engage in violence, to investigating the motives and drives of individual perpetrators. This book focuses on the faculty of imagination and its role in facilitating our normative and critical engagement with political violence. It interrogates how the imagination can help us deal with past as well as ongoing instances of political violence. Several questions, which have thus far received too little attention from political theorists, motivate this project: Can certain forms of imagination – artistic, historical, philosophical – help us tackle the challenge of comprehending and responding to unprecedented forms of violence? What is the ethical and political value of artworks depicting human rights violations in the aftermath of conflicts? What about the use of thought experiments in justifying policy measures with regard to violence? What forms of political imagination can foster solidarity and catalyse political action? This book opens up a forum for an inclusive and reflexive debate on the role that the imagination can play in unpacking complex issues of political violence. The chapters in this book were originally published in a special issue of the journal, Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy.

Imaginary Social Worlds

Imaginary Social Worlds PDF Author: John L. Caughey
Publisher: Lincoln : University of Nebraska Press
ISBN:
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 296

Book Description
The violent fantasies of such figures as Mark David Chapman, killer of John Lennon, and John Hinckley, would-be assassin of President Reagan, have commonly been interpreted, by professionals and public alike, as socially aberrant--as the result of psychological instability. John L. Caughey's provocative study shows not only that such fantasies are shaped by enculturation, but also that they are closely linked in content and form to the more benign imaginative constructs of "normal" Americans. A new departure in the study of American society, this book takes a cultural approach to imaginary social experience, viewing the imaginary social interactions in dreams, fantasies, memories, anticipations, media involvement, and hallucinations as social processes because they involve people in pseudo-interactions with images of other people. Drawing on his anthropological research in the United States, Pakistan, and Micronesia, Caughey explores from a phenomenological perspective the social patterning that prevails in each of these imaginary worlds. He analyzes the kinds of identities and roles the individual assumes and examines the kinds of interactions that are played out with imagined persons. Caughey demonstrates that imaginary social relationships dominate much of our subjective social experience. He also shows that these imaginary relationships have many important connections to actual social conduct. Moreover, cultural values dictate the texture of the mental processes: imaginary conversations both reflect and reinforce the basic beliefs of the society, imagined anticipations of the reactions of real other people can serve social control functions, and media figures affect actual social relations by serving as mentors and role models. Caughey's arresting reappraisal of the world of fantasy is, in the words of James P. Spradley, "an outstanding job of scholarship" and "a unique contribution to the field of anthropology in general, to the study of culture and cognition, and to the study of American culture specifically."

Coexistence in the Aftermath of Mass Violence

Coexistence in the Aftermath of Mass Violence PDF Author: Eve Zucker
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
ISBN: 0472054651
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 283

Book Description
Coexistence in the Aftermath of Mass Violence demonstrates how imagination, empathy, and resilience contribute to the processes of social repair after ethnic and political violence. Adding to the literature on transitional justice, peacebuilding, and the anthropology of violence and social repair, the authors show how these conceptual pathways—imagination, empathy and resilience—enhance recovery, coexistence, and sustainable peace. Coexistence (or reconciliation) is the underlying goal or condition desired after mass violence, enabling survivors to move forward with their lives. Imagination allows these survivors (victims, perpetrators, bystanders) to draw guidance and inspiration from their social and cultural imaginaries, to develop empathy, and to envision a future of peace and coexistence. Resilience emerges through periods of violence and its aftermaths through acts of survival, compassion, modes of rebuilding social worlds, and the establishment of a peaceful society. Focusing on society at the grass roots level, the authors discuss the myriad and little understood processes of social repair that allow ruptured societies and communities to move toward a peaceful and stable future. The volume also illustrates some of the ways in which imagination, empathy, and resilience may contribute to the prevention of future violence and the authors conclude with a number of practical and policy recommendations. The cases include Cambodia, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Somaliland, Colombia, the Southern Cone, Iraq, and Bosnia.

The Radical Imagination

The Radical Imagination PDF Author: Doctor Alex Khasnabish
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1780329032
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 282

Book Description
The idea of the imagination is as evocative as it is elusive. Not only does the imagination allow us to project ourselves beyond our own immediate space and time, it also allows us to envision the future, as individuals and as collectives. The radical imagination, then, is that spark of difference, desire and discontent that can be fanned into the flames of social change. Yet what precisely is the imagination and what might make it 'radical'? How can it be fostered and cultivated? How can it be studied and what are the possibilities and risks of doing so? This book seeks to answer these questions at a crucial time. As we enter into a new cycle of struggles marked by a worldwide crisis of social reproduction, scholar-activists Max Haiven and Alex Khasnabish explore the processes and possibilities for cultivating the radical imagination in dark times. A lively and crucial intervention in radical politics, social research and social change, and the collective visions and cultures that inspire them.

Social Imaginaries in a Globalizing World

Social Imaginaries in a Globalizing World PDF Author: Hans Alma
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110434156
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 381

Book Description
How to study the contemporary dynamics between the religious, the nonreligious and the secular in a globalizing world? Obviously, their relationship is not an empirical datum, liable to the procedures of verification or of logical deduction. We are in need of alternative conceptual and methodological tools. This volume argues that the concept of ‘social imaginary’ as it is used by Charles Taylor, is of utmost importance as a methodological tool to understand these dynamics. The first section is dedicated to the conceptual clarification of Taylor's notion of social imaginaries both through a historical study of their genealogy and through conceptual analysis. In the second section, we clarify the relation of ‘social imaginaries’ to the concept of (religious) worldviewing, understood as a process of truth seeking. Furthermore, we discuss the practical usefulness of the concept of social imaginaries for cultural scientists, by focusing on the concept of human rights as a secular social imaginary. In the third and final section, we relate Taylor's view on the role of social imaginaries and the new paths it opens up for religious studies to other analyses of the secular-religious divide, as they nowadays mainly come to the fore in the debates on what is coined as the ‘post-secular.’

Computer Games and the Social Imaginary

Computer Games and the Social Imaginary PDF Author: Graeme Kirkpatrick
Publisher: Polity
ISBN: 0745641105
Category : Games & Activities
Languages : en
Pages : 229

Book Description
Computer games have fundamentally altered the relation of self and society in the digital age. Analysing topics such as technology and power, the formation of gaming culture and the subjective impact of play with computer games, this text will be of great interest to students and scholars of digital media, games studies and the information society.