This book presents neopragmatism as a fresh theoretical framework for the social and spatial sciences. Instead of relying on fixed truths or rigid subject-object divisions, it moves beyond traditional theoretical oppositions. At its core, the book applies Richard Rorty’s vocabulary theory and a panrelationalist perspective, viewing the world as a dynamic network of relations shaped through language. This approach is enriched by insights from discourse theory, conflict theory, and actor-net...

Landscape appears stable and consistent. At least, this is a common perception of landscape. This view ignores the contingency of landscape, which is evident in the past and future as well as in the present and not just in relation to the physical spaces into which 'landscape' is projected but also in relation to social constructions and individual experience. The contingency of landscape becomes clear in inverse landscapes, which illustrate states and processes that are not impossible, bu...

This book explores the importance of freedom and liberalism in the context of socialities, individualities and materialities. The authors provide a highly unusual and innovative blending of concepts about space and landscape through a deeply theoretical exploration of liberalism.Liberalism is often problematized in contemporary discussions with regard to gentrification, environmental problems and inequality. In contrast, this book refers to a liberalism that maximizes life chances ...

Originally published in German, Christoph Wulf's Anthropology sets its sights on a topic as ambitious as its title suggests: anthropology itself. Arguing for an interdisciplinary and intercultural approach to anthropology that incorporates science, philosophy, history, and many other disciplines, Wulf examines—with breathtaking scope—all the ways that anthropology has been understood and practiced around the globe and through the years.Seeking a central way to understand a...

In this book, the author develops a relational concept of space that encompasses social structure, the material world of objects and bodies, and the symbolic dimension of the social world. Löw’s guiding principle is the assumption that space emerges in the interplay between objects, structures and actions. Based on a critical discussion of classic theories of space, Löw develops a new dynamic theory of space that accounts for the relational context in which space is constituted. This innov...

This book provides an introduction to the basic principles of discourse research, offering practical research strategies for doing discourse analyses in the social sciences. The book includes guidance on developing a research question, selecting data and analyzing it, and presenting the results. The author has extensive practical experience in the field of discourse research and shows, throughout, how the methods suggested are compatible with numerous research questions and problems in soc...

This book offers a concise overview of the development of intercultural philosophy since the early 1990s, focusing on one of its key pioneers Heinz Kimmerle (1930– 2016).Building on influences from Gadamer, Heidegger, Derrida and Ramose, Kimmerle’s approach to intercultural philosophy is radical and fosters epistemic justice. Kimmerle critically reflected on his own western philosophical tradition, highlighting the problems of a discourse based on a dominant concept of rationality,...

The basic concern of the volume is to determine the preconditions of personality development and to show their significance and their perspectives for educational science and for pedagogical practice. First, these basic preconditions of becoming oneself are collected in a single volume and discussed in terms of their significance for science and for educational practice. In all fundamental dimensions are understood as precondition of becoming oneself. “Bildung” is here for the first time u...

The first study of its kind, The Impact of Idealism assesses the impact of classical German philosophy on science, religion and culture. This second volume explores German Idealism's impact on the historical, social and political thought of the nineteenth, twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Each essay focuses on an idea or concept from the high point of German philosophy around 1800, tracing out its influence on the intervening period and its importance for contemporary discussions. New...

In the face of great challenges, utopian thinking is currently in vogue. The fact that utopias, with their ideas of an idealized target society, are not compatible with the basic features of an Open Society was already pointed out by Karl Popper in his book 'Die Offene Gesellschaft und ihre Feinde' (The Open Society and its Enemies) under the impression of National Socialism and Stalinism. In the present book, further forms of Closed Societies and the principal similarities (and difference...

Psychologists and philosophers have assumed that psychological knowledge is knowledge about, and held by, the individual mind. Psychological Knowledge challenges these views. It argues that bodies of psychological knowledge are social institutions like money or the monarchy, and that mental states are social artefacts like coins or crowns.Martin Kusch takes on arguments of alternative proposals, shows what is wrong with them, and demonstrates how his own social-philosophica...

This book deals with central elements of the cultural, political and social background of Austrian economic theory in general and Menger's version of it in particular. It draws on Menger's theoretical writings as well as on his explicitly methodological works as source material.