The Rhetoric of Reaction PDF Download

Author: Albert O. Hirschman
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674768680
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 216

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Book Description
Hirschman maps the diffuse and treacherous world of reactionary rhetoric in which conservative public figures, thinkers, and polemicists have been arguing against progressive agendas and reforms for 200 years. Ultimately, he shows that progressives are apt to employ related rhetorical postures, which are as biased as their reactionary counterparts.

Author: Cass R. Sunstein
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
In The Rhetoric of Reaction, published in 1991, Albert Hirschman identified three standard objections to reform proposals: perversity, futility, and jeopardy. In Hirschman's account, these objections define reactionary rhetoric. As Hirschman had it, a proposal would be “perverse” if it would aggravate the very problem it is meant to solve; it would be “futile” if it would achieve nothing (e.g., not even dent the problem); it would produce “jeopardy” if it would endanger some other goal, value, or hard-won achievement (such as liberty or economic growth). The rhetoric of reaction comes from both left and right, though in Hirschman's account, it is a special favorite of the right. Hirschman urged that in light of the rote and even mechanical character of the rhetoric of reaction, some apparently “original and brilliant insights” end up looking “rather less impressive, and sometimes even comical.” In many ways, ours is an Era of Reactionary Rhetoric. The perversity, futility, and jeopardy theses have often been invoked to challenge reforms, including nudges, in such areas as environmental protection, gun control, road safety, COVID-19, food safety, climate change, occupational safety, and civil rights. While the three theses are sometimes supported by the evidence, they are often a form of motivated reasoning -- evidence-free speculations, thus confirming Hirschman's suggestion that the rhetoric of reaction has “a certain elementary sophistication and paradoxical quality that carry conviction for those who are in search of instant insights and utter certainties.” The long-term challenge is to avoid perversity, futility, and jeopardy - both by meeting the rhetoric of reaction and (more fundamentally) by devising reform proposals that cannot plausibly be subject to reactionary objections.

Author: Albert O. Hirschman
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674276604
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 180

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Book Description
An innovator in contemporary thought on economic and political development looks here at decline rather than growth. Albert O. Hirschman makes a basic distinction between alternative ways of reacting to deterioration in business firms and, in general, to dissatisfaction with organizations: one, “exit,” is for the member to quit the organization or for the customer to switch to the competing product, and the other, “voice,” is for members or customers to agitate and exert influence for change “from within.” The efficiency of the competitive mechanism, with its total reliance on exit, is questioned for certain important situations. As exit often undercuts voice while being unable to counteract decline, loyalty is seen in the function of retarding exit and of permitting voice to play its proper role. The interplay of the three concepts turns out to illuminate a wide range of economic, social, and political phenomena. As the author states in the preface, “having found my own unifying way of looking at issues as diverse as competition and the two-party system, divorce and the American character, black power and the failure of ‘unhappy’ top officials to resign over Vietnam, I decided to let myself go a little.”

Author: Albert O. Hirschman
Publisher: Brookings Institution Press
ISBN: 0815726430
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 227

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Book Description
Originally published in 1967, the modest and plainly descriptive title of Development Projects Observed is deceptive. Today, it is recognized as the ultimate volume of Hirschman's groundbreaking trilogy on development, and as the bridge to the broader social science themes of his subsequent writings. Though among his lesser-known works, this unassuming tome is one of his most influential. It is in this book that Hirschman first shared his now famous "Principle of the Hiding Hand." In an April 2013 New Yorker issue, Malcolm Gladwell wrote an appreciation of the principle, described by Cass Sunstein in the book's new foreword as "a bit of a trick up history's sleeve." It can be summed up as a phenomenon in which people's inability to foresee obstacles leads to actions that succeed because people have far more problem-solving ability that they anticipate or appreciate. And it is in Development Projects Observed that Hirschman laid the foundation for the core of his most important work, Exit, Voice, and Loyalty, and later led to the concept of an "exit strategy."

Author: Richard Shorten
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000518418
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 261

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Book Description
The Ideology of Political Reactionaries offers a new perspective on the beliefs reactionaries share, presenting a theory of reactionary ideology in the process. Rather than taking self-contradictions in the reactionary imagination as a reason for diminishment, complexity is taken as a challenge. The book argues that the features that unite reactionaries lie in rhetoric. Reactionaries make three persuasive appeals: to decadence, conspiracy, and indignation. They also display some recurrent styles. The book’s rhetorical approach entails a critique of the alternative approaches to reactionary politics (dubbed as ‘dispositional’, ‘sociological’, and ‘conceptual’). At the heart of the book is the textual analysis of the writings of a range of figures who are chosen in deliberate diversity and who have interacted with political audiences in different eras and settings: Edmund Burke, Joseph de Maistre, Sarah Palin, Donald Trump, Adolf Hitler, Éric Zemmour, Joe McCarthy, Anders Breivik, and Nigel Farage. Analysis of their writings helps the book to reckon with some particular puzzles of ideologies and rhetoric. These puzzles include the proximity of reactionaries to conservatism, the ambiguity of their nostalgia, the myth of their essential charisma, and the apparent fetishisation of facts. The Ideology of Political Reactionaries ought to interest anyone concerned about current ideological trends and, in particular, students and scholars of politics and history.

Author: Albert O. Hirschman
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674715585
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 282

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Book Description
In the substantial essays that open this collection, Hirschman reappraises points he made in such books as Exit, Voice, and Loyalty, The Strategy of Economic Development, and the Rhetoric of Reaction. Subsequent essays fruitfully reexplore the themes of Latin American development and market society that have occupied him throughout his career. Hirschman also forays into new puzzles, such as the likely impact, negative or otherwise, of the Eastern European revolutions of 1989 on the Third World, the on-and-off connections between political and economic progress, and the role of conflict in enhancing community spirit in a liberal democracy.

Author: Craig R. Smith
Publisher: Waveland Press
ISBN: 1478635665
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 518

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Book Description
For two decades, students and instructors have relied on award-winning author Craig Smith’s detailed description and analysis of rhetorical theories and the historical contexts for major thinkers who advanced them. He employs key themes from important philosophical schools in this well-researched chronicle of rhetoric and human consciousness. One is that rhetoric is a response to uncertainty. The modern philosophers, like the naturalists of ancient Greece and the Scholastics who preceded them, tried to end uncertainty by combining the discoveries of science and psychology with rationalism. Their aim was progress and a consensus among experts as to what truth is. However, where modernism proved ineffective, rhetoric was revived to fill the breach. Another significant theme is that different conceptions of human consciousness lead to different theories of rhetoric, and for every major school of thought, another school of thought forms in reaction. Classic and contemporary examples demonstrate the usefulness of rhetorical theory, especially its ability to inform and guide. By providing probes for rhetorical criticism, discussions also demonstrate that rhetorical criticism illustrates, verifies, and refines rhetorical theory. Thus, the synergistic relationship between theory and criticism in rhetoric is no different than in other arts: Theory informs practice; analysis of successful practice refines theory. Smith’s absorbing study has been expanded to include thorough treatments of rhetoric in the Romantic Era, feminist and queer theory, and historical context for the creation of rhetorical theory and its use in public address.

Author: Jeremy Adelman
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691163499
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 760

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Book Description
The life and times of one of the most provocative thinkers of the twentieth century Worldly Philosopher chronicles the times and writings of Albert O. Hirschman, one of the twentieth century's most original and provocative thinkers. In this gripping biography, Jeremy Adelman tells the story of a man shaped by modern horrors and hopes, a worldly intellectual who fought for and wrote in defense of the values of tolerance and change. This is the first major account of Hirschman’s remarkable life, and a tale of the twentieth century as seen through the story of an astute and passionate observer. Adelman’s riveting narrative traces how Hirschman’s personal experiences shaped his unique intellectual perspective, and how his enduring legacy is one of hope, open-mindedness, and practical idealism.

Author: Albert O. Hirschman
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400848512
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 189

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Book Description
In this volume, Albert Hirschman reconstructs the intellectual climate of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to illuminate the intricate ideological transformation that occurred, wherein the pursuit of material interests--so long condemned as the deadly sin of avarice--was assigned the role of containing the unruly and destructive passions of man. Hirschman here offers a new interpretation for the rise of capitalism, one that emphasizes the continuities between old and new, in contrast to the assumption of a sharp break that is a common feature of both Marxian and Weberian thinking. Among the insights presented here is the ironical finding that capitalism was originally supposed to accomplish exactly what was soon denounced as its worst feature: the repression of the passions in favor of the "harmless," if one-dimensional, interests of commercial life. To portray this lengthy ideological change as an endogenous process, Hirschman draws on the writings of a large number of thinkers, including Montesquieu, Sir James Steuart, and Adam Smith. Featuring a new afterword by Jeremy Adelman and a foreword by Amartya Sen, this Princeton Classics edition of The Passions and the Interests sheds light on the intricate ideological transformation from which capitalism emerged triumphant, and reaffirms Hirschman's stature as one of our most influential and provocative thinkers. Some images inside the book are unavailable due to digital copyright restrictions.

Author: Alan G. Gross
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 298

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Book Description
Alan Gross applies the principles of rhetoric to the interpretation of classical and contemporary scientific texts to show how they persuade both author and audience. This invigorating consideration of the ways in which scientists--from Copernicus to Darwin to Newton to James Watson--establish authority and convince one another and us of the truth they describe may very well lead to a remodeling of our understanding of science and its place in society.