Author: Pierre Bourdieu File Type: pdf A synthesis of forty years work by Frances leading sociologist, this book pushes the critique of scholarly reason to a new level. It is a brilliant example of Bourdieus unique ability to link sociological theory, historical information, and philosophical thought.Pascalian Meditations makes explicit the presuppositions of a state of scholasticism, a certain leisure liberated from the urgencies of the world. Philosophers, unwilling to engage these presuppositions in their practice, have brought them into the order of discourse, not so much to analyze them as to legitimate them. This situation is the primary systematic, epistemological, ethical, and aesthetic error that Bourdieu subjects to methodological critique.This critique of scholarly reason is carried out in the name of Pascal because he, too, pointed out the features of human existence that the scholastic outlook ignores he was concerned with symbolic power he refused the temptation of foundationalist thinking he attended (without populist naivete) to ordinary people and he was determined to seek the raison detre of seemingly illogical behavior rather than condemning or mocking it.Through this critique, Bourdieu charts a negative philosophy that calls into question some of our most fundamental presuppositions, such as a subject who is free and self-aware. This philosophy, with its intellectual debt to such other heretical philosophers as Wittgenstein, Austin, Dewey, and Peirce, renews traditional questioning of the concepts of violence, power, time, history, the universal, and the purpose and direction of existence.ReviewThis book will surely endure a a major classic of late twentieth-century social theory._Philosophy in ReviewThis latest book by Frances preeminent sociologist provides a compact presentation of his concerns, methods, and leading concepts. . . . The book will be an excellent introduction to Bourdieus fruitful thought for philosophers and social theorists.EthicsFrom the Inside FlapA synthesis of forty years work by Frances leading sociologist, this book pushes the critique of scholarly reason to a new level. It is a brilliant example of Bourdieus unique ability to link sociological theory, historical information, and philosophical thought.Pascalian Meditations makes explicit the presuppositions of a state of scholasticism, a certain leisure liberated from the urgencies of the world. Philosophers, unwilling to engage these presuppositions in their practice, have brought them into the order of discourse, not so much to analyze them as to legitimate them. This situation is the primary systematic, epistemological, ethical, and aesthetic error that Bourdieu subjects to methodological critique.This critique of scholarly reason is carried out in the name of Pascal because he, too, pointed out the features of human existence that the scholastic outlook ignores he was concerned with symbolic power he refused the temptation of foundationalist thinking he attended (without populist naivete) to ordinary people and he was determined to seek the raison detre of seemingly illogical behavior rather than condemning or mocking it.Through this critique, Bourdieu charts a negative philosophy that calls into question some of our most fundamental presuppositions, such as a subject who is free and self-aware. This philosophy, with its intellectual debt to such other heretical philosophers as Wittgenstein, Austin, Dewey, and Peirce, renews traditional questioning of the concepts of violence, power, time, history, the universal, and the purpose and direction of existence.

Author: Luis Camnitzer File Type: pdf Artist, educator, curator, and critic Luis Camnitzer has been writing about contemporary art ever since he left his native Uruguay in 1964 for a fellowship in New York City. As a transplant from the periphery to the center, Camnitzer has had to confront fundamental questions about making art in the Americas, asking himself and others What is Latin American art? How does it relate (if it does) to art created in the centers of New York and Europe? What is the role of the artist in exile? Writing about issues of such personal, cultural, and indeed political import has long been an integral part of Camnitzers artistic project, a way of developing an idiosyncratic art history in which to work out his own place in the picture. This volume gathers Camnitzers most thought-provoking essaystexts written to make something happen, in the words of volume editor Rachel Weiss. They elaborate themes that appear persistently throughout Camnitzers work art world systems versus an art of commitment artistic genealogies and how they are consecrated and, most insistently, the possibilities for artistic agency. The theme of translation informs the texts in the first part of the book, with Camnitzer asking such questions as What is Latin America, and who asks the question? Who is the artist, there and here? The texts in the second section are more historically than geographically oriented, exploring little-known moments, works, and events that compose the legacy that Camnitzer draws on and offers to his readers.

Author: Alfred Reginald Radcliffe-Brown File Type: pdf African Systems of Kinship and Marriage is a classic. Seldom out of print since its first publication in 1950, it is still, thirty-six years later, the most wide-ranging and respected survey of these aspects of African social life.In his introduction Radcliffe-Brown provides a masterly analysis of the main features of African kinship systems and the theoretical problems arising from the study of them. The contributions range from examination of kinship systems among the Swazi, the Tswana, the Zulu, the Nuer, the Ashanti to double descent among the Yako and dual descent in the Nuba groups of the Sudan. The names of the contributors are those of anthropologists still viewed today as giants in their field Evans-Pritchard, Meyer Fortes, Max Gluckman, Hilda Kuper, Nadel, A.I. Richards, Schapera and Monica Wilson.

Author: Tariq Ali File Type: epub Pakistan 1968 the history of a revolution Even as they were taking place, the events that shook Pakistan in 196869 were underplayed in the Western media. Following a long period of tumult, a radical coalitionled by Zulfikar Ali Bhuttobrought down the military regime of Field Marshal Ayub Khan, just as it was celebrating its tenth glorious anniversary. Students, soon joined by workers and later by virtually every subaltern social stratum (including sex workers), took on the state apparatus of a corrupt and decaying military dictatorship created and backed by the United States. They were joined by workers, lawyers, white-collar employees, and, despite severe repression, they won. The fundamentalist party Jamaat-i-Islami opposed the movement and faced complete isolation. The most popular chants were Socialism is on the way and Food, clothes, shelter. Ayub was forced to resign. His weak-kneed successor had to permit the countrys first general election, probably the freest in its tormented history. In his riveting account, written in 1970 in the white heat of events, Tariq Ali offers an eyewitness perspective, showing that this powerful popular movement was the sole real victory of the 1960s revolutionary wave. The election cracked open all the contradictions of the old state, as Ali had predicted. The military and the West Pakistani ruling elite refused to accept the results and embarked on a civil war. The result was the birth of a new state, as East Pakistan broke away to become Bangladesh. **Review Provides an excellent account of the Ayub regime and of the 196869 rising. Fred Halliday, *New Left Review* About the Author Tariq Ali has written more than two-dozen books on world history and politics--the most recent of which are The Clash of Fundamentalisms, The Obama Syndrome and The Extreme Centre--as well as the novels of his Islam Quintet and scripts for the stage and screen. He is a long-standing member of the editorial committee of New Left Review and lives in London.