In everyday life, we generally assume that we can make our own decisions on matters which concern our own lives. We assume that a life followed only according to decisions taken by other people, against our will, cannot be a well-lived life – we assume, in other words, that we are and should be autonomous. However, it is equally true that many aspects of our lives are not chosen freely: this is true of social relations and commitments but also of all those situations we simply seem to stum...

Being Human in the Digital World is a collection of essays by prominent scholars from various disciplines exploring the impact of digitization on culture, politics, health, work, and relationships. The volume raises important questions about the future of human existence in a world where machine readability and algorithmic prediction are increasingly prevalent and offers new conceptual frameworks and vocabularies to help readers understand and challenge emerging paradigms of what it means ...

This new book by Beate Rössler is a work of real quality and originality on an extremely topical issue: the issue of privacy and the relations between the private and the public.Rössler investigates the reasons why we value privacy and why we ought to value it. In the context of modern, liberal societies, Rössler develops a theory of the private which links privacy and autonomy in a constitutive way: privacy is a necessary condition to lead an autonomous life. The book develops a t...

Written by a select international group of leading privacy scholars, Social Dimensions of Privacy endorses and develops an innovative approach to privacy. By debating topical privacy cases in their specific research areas, the contributors explore the new privacy-sensitive areas: legal scholars and political theorists discuss the European and American approaches to privacy regulation; sociologists explore new forms of surveillance and privacy on social network sites; and philosophers revis...

Many educational practices are based upon ideas about what it means to be human. Thus education is conceived as the production of particular subjectivities and identities such as the rational person, the autonomous individual, or the democratic citizen. Beyond Learning asks what might happen to the ways in which we educate if we treat the question as to what it means to be human as a radically open question; a question that can only be answered by engaging in education rather than as a que...

Social theory is the theoretical core of the social sciences, clearly distinguishable from political theory and cultural analysis. This book offers a unique overview of the development of social theory from the end of the Second World War in 1945 to the present day. Spanning the literature in English, French and German, it provides an excellent background to the most important social theorists and theories in contemporary sociological thought, with crisp summaries of the main books, argume...

This new edition of a well-regarded book provides a concise and exceptionally clear introduction to Habermas's work, from his early writings on the public sphere, through his work on law and the state, to his more recent discussion of science, religion and contemporary Europe. Outhwaite examines all of Habermas's major works and steers a steady course through the many debates to which they have given rise.A major feature of the book is that it provides a detailed critical analysis o...

In this enormously influential book, Jurgen Habermas examines the deep tensions and crisis tendencies which underlie the development of contemporary Western societies and develops a powerful analysis of the legitimation problems faced by modern states.Habermas argues that Western societies have succeeded to some extent in stabilizing the economic fluctuations associated with capitalism, but this has created a new range of crisis tendencies which are expressed in other spheres. Stat...

Erving Goffman (1922-82) was arguably one of the most influential American sociologists of the twentieth century. A keen observer of the interaction order of everyday life, Goffman's books, which have sold in the hundreds of thousands, continue to be widely read and his concepts have permanently entered the sociology lexicon. This volume consists of ten original essays, all written by prominent Goffman scholars, that critically assess Goffman's many contributions to various areas of study,...

The wide-ranging work of Rahel Jaeggi, a leading voice of the new generation of critical theorists, demonstrates how core concepts and methodological approaches in the tradition of the Frankfurt School can be updated, stripped of their dubious metaphysical baggage, and made fruitful for critical theory in the twenty-first century. In this thorough introduction to Jaeggi’s work for English-speaking audiences, scholars assess and critique her efforts to revitalize critical theory.Jae...

This book gives a clear and readable overview of the philosophical work of Jürgen Habermas, the most influential German philosopher alive today, who has commented widely on subjects such as Marxism, the importance and effectiveness of communication, the reunification of Germany, and the European Union. Gordon Finlayson provides readers with a clear and readable overview of Habermas's forbiddingly complex philosophy using concrete examples and accessible language. He then goes on to analyse...

An independently minded champion of ‘the project of modernity’ in a supposedly post-modern age, Jurgen Habermas (1929- ) is one of the most widely influential thinkers of our times.An easy-to-use A-Z guide to a body of work that spans philosophy, sociology, politics, law and cultural theory, Habermas: The Key Concepts explores Habermas’ writings on:capitalismgeneticslawneo-conservatismuniversal pragmatics.