Böcker av Jeffrey C. Alexander

In this book Jeffrey Alexander develops the view that cultural sociology and cultural pragmatics are vital for understanding the structural turbulence and political possibilities of contemporary social life.

This volume addresses the key question of the intersection of sociology and politics, and asks what a non-Marxist cultural perspective can offer the Left.

While persuasively explaining Obama's success, this book also demonstrates a fundamental but rarely appreciated truth about political power in modern democratic societies namely, that winning power and holding on to it have as much to do with the ability to use symbols effectively and tell good stories as anything else.

In this book, one of the world s leading social theorists presents a critical, alarmed, but also nuanced understanding of the post-traditional world we inhabit today. Jeffrey Alexander writes about modernity as historical time and social condition, but also as ideology and utopia.

* This is a new, original social theory of trauma by one of the world s leading social theorists. * Argues that traumas are not merely psychological but collective experiences and that they play a key role in defining the origins and outcomes of critical social conflicts.

* This is a new study of the relationship between performance and power from one of the world s leading social theorists * In this volume, Jeffrey Alexander develops a cultural pragmatics that shifts cultural sociology from texts to gestural meanings and examines the elements of social performance.

Updated edition of the cutting edge text which invites students to reflect on new forms of postmodern life, and the role of culture in society.

Explores the cultural and social construction of trauma through case studies of historical and contemporary crises across the world.

Theorist Clifford Geertz's influence extends far beyond Anthropology. This volume reflects the breadth of his influence, looking at Geertz as a theorist rather than as an anthropologist. To date there has been no impartial, comprehensive, and authoritative work published on this critical figure.

The Performance of Politics develops a new way of looking at democratic struggles for big time power by explaining and analysing the 2008 Presidential campaign in the United States. Through a series of simple but telling concepts about meaning and performance in public life, Jeffrey Alexander argues that images, emotion, and performance are the central features of the battle for power

Renowned sociologist Talcott Parsons's last major project, a masterly work that lives up to its billing as 'a general book on American society'.

Addresses the core issues raised by a cultural sociology, including a far-reaching debate over the tools sociologists use to develop theory.

Societies are not governed only by power and self-interest. What then does make societies function? How do real individuals live together in real societies in the real world? This work addresses this central paradox of modern life.

The South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) is a modern social drama that enabled the nation's apartheid past to be constructed as a cultural trauma. This book argues that the performative nature of the TRC effectively designated the past as profane and put a sacred community based on democratic idealism and universal solidarity.

In this collaboratively authored work, five distinguished sociologists develop an ambitious theoretical model of "e;cultural trauma"e;-and on this basis build a new understanding of how social groups interact with emotion to create new and binding understandings of social responsibility. Looking at the "e;meaning making process"e; as an open-ended social dialogue in which strikingly different social narratives vie for influence, they outline a strongly constructivist approach to trauma and apply this theoretical model in a series of extensive case studies, including the Nazi Holocaust, slavery in the United States, and September 11, 2001.

A collection of papers which were written for a conference on the topic of "Social progress and sociological theory: movements, forces and ideas at the end of the 20th century".