Social Gerontology

"Of any theoretical outlook, none more than Marx’s holds the concept of need so centrally. Human need, as an idea, figures  heavily in his theory of alienation, his materialist conception of history and his economic analysis of capitalism. The sociological conception of needs presented in Marx’s work and later elaborations offers significant insights into the way material and historical circumstances condition human nature. Marx wanted to show that beyond abstract “natural needs”, human beings are essentially nothing and potentially anything. However, his diagnosis of capitalism argues that through alienation, our needs are currently constrained and disfigured. Instead, Marx prescribed communism, where production proceeds on a rational and "human” basis, and where humanity flourishes as needs become unlimited in both abundance and character. This thesis will argue that Marx and subsequent Marxists never succeeded in taking communism beyond a postulated ideal. This has led to conflicting trends within Marxism, none of which have satisfactorily grounded their prescriptions in material reality. This thesis will show how subsequent theorists, specifically Durkheim and Freud, offer powerful counter-perspectives to Marx’s optimistic view of human nature. Both of these thinkers argue, in different ways, that the human subject may not be as coherent, perfectible or rational as Marx assumed."

Daniel Bell’s The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism lies at the intersection of the three main theoretical currents of sociological thought, those of Karl Marx, Émile Durkheim and Max Weber. His ‘three realms’ methodology moves away from deterministic accounts that subordinate the political and cultural to the economic realm. By granting each realm an autonomy and principles of their own, Bell locates the contradictions of capitalism in the friction between them. With constant innovation, individual expressiveness and libertarian social values becoming forces in-and-of-themselves, prevailing social structures and the roles within them are left looking increasingly incoherent, illegitimate and meaningless. Likewise, the shift from Protestant asceticism to modernist hedonism creates a sharp tension between the demand for a disciplined and responsible workforce and the demand for economic growth through unrestrained and instantly gratifying consumerism. The result is a complex of crisis scenarios which were manifest with the end of the post-war boom. However, as other commentators have pointed out, Bell’s prophetic theses often seem to fail under the light of subsequent history.

Social theory arose as a response to two distinct needs in modern society: the need to categorize and organize information for the sake of technological progress, and the need to orient subjects who found social transformation and secularization was making meaning ever more elusive. This gives rise to two distinct methods in theorizing society: the scientific and the narrative. The first concerned with categorizing and organizing parts of the social whole for instrumental use, the second is concerned with providing meaning for modern subjects feeling disorientated by the collapse of traditional world-views. By looking at how these approaches are manifest in three key sources of modern social theory – that of early 19th century positivism, Marxism and the philosophy of Nietzsche – this paper seeks to better understand how social theories emerge as responses to and a part of the social worlds they examine.

Historically, sociological texts have frequently claimed that modernity is in or heading toward a situation of “crisis”. Likewise, “crisis” often recurs in the description of discrete moment or periods of time. The prevalence of “crisis” or crisis-thinking in sociology warrants a close examination of the term, especially as it is often deployed in seemingly contradictory and unreflexive ways. But this paper asks not so much what crisis is, or what crisis means; rather what does crisis do? It is argued that “crisis” must not be understood as an unproblematic description of events “out there”, and instead functions as a rhetorical device that assumes and exploits pre-existing knowledge and anxieties in order to invoke cognitive associations and affective responses in the audience. Rather than seeing this as an error of value-free science, such affect must be seen as necessary in creating convincing, expressive and intelligible explanations of modern life.

“Crisis” has been a recurrent paradigm of political and social discourse since the late 18th century. Recently, crisis-talk has again become almost ubiquitous in the aftermath of the “Global Financial Crisis”, as well as a host of other proclaimed crises (such as the Eurozone crisis, refugee crises, the climate crisis, and so on) affecting the world today. Contemporary academic treatments of crisis can be divided into two broad categories: first, diagnostic and prescriptive interventions which formulate accounts of crisis that mobilize the rhetorical and normative force of crisis semantics in order to further political agendas or social projects, and second, critical interrogations of the concept of crisis itself, its role in social and political discourse,
its rhetorical effects and its semantic associations. This thesis falls into the latter category. I examine the paradigm of crisis as it appears in the work of four thinkers—Georg Lukács, Reinhart Koselleck, Hannah Arendt and Jürgen Habermas; each chosen because they demonstrate an exemplary level of critical reflexivity towards the way crisis is used both within their own work and in the work of others. Through examining these thinkers individually over four chapters, I reconstruct the crisis paradigm as an intellectual and political tradition which operates by disclosing a world wherein there is the possibility of failure. This paradigm is able to put the considerable semantic connotations and cultural resources of crisis to use in coming to diverse insights and placing various demands upon the political and social life of modernity. While this thesis illustrates the aporias and limitations of the crisis paradigm, as well as its potential utility for social control and ideological manipulation, I conclude that despite its shortcomings the crisis paradigm remains a potentially fruitful means for furthering theoretical innovation and facilitating democratic politics.

The Kickstarter crowdfunding platform has promised to subvert what many developers and players see as a hierarchical computer games industry which is skewed toward benefiting large corporate publishers. With crowdfunding, developers appeal directly to players as a direct source of funding, ostensibly allowing them to create the games players want to play. While initial successes of some computer game Kickstarter campaigns generated enthusiasm, it remains to be seen whether crowdfunding represents a “game changer” that can permanently disrupt established practices of corporate publishers. This article argues that the developer/player funding relationship contains limitations and tensions of its own, most notably a reliance on nostalgia for classic gaming experiences, a greater level of public scrutiny over the development process, and constraints on the capacity to modify project goals during the post-investment phase.

Recent scholarship has drawn on Koselleck’s methods of conceptual history and his diagnosis of ‘crisis’ in modernity to make sense of 21st-century developments in political, social and economic life and thought. This review essay looks at two texts that, in different ways, test Koselleck’s ideas in challenging and innovative ways. Lara’s use of conceptual history to shed light on the debates over secularization demonstrates how concepts become central to struggles over the definition of politics – definitions which thereafter disclose the possibilities and set the agenda for future political action. Roitman continues Koselleck’s interest in the concept of crisis and shows how conceptual history can be used to sharpen our awareness of undisclosed content and theoretical blind spots. Both show how conceptual history serves as a ‘semantic check’ on political concepts, demanding greater reflexivity and the setting of realistic political goals.

This article explores some of the concerns which are being raised about algorithms with recourse to Habermas’s theory of communicative action. The intention is not to undertake an empirical examination of ‘algorithms’ or their consequences but to connect critical theory to some contemporary concerns regarding digital cultures. Habermas’s ‘colonization of life-worlds’ thesis gives theoretical expression to two different trends which underlie many current criticisms of the insidious influence of digital algorithms: the privatization of communication, and the particularization of knowledge and experience. Habermas’s social theory therefore offers a useful framework for exploring some of the
normative and political problems that are attributed to ‘algorithmic culture’ and ‘big data’.

According to Judith Butler, the actualization of Georg Lukács opens up a perspective that fundamentally challenges the concepts that have circulated in literary-theoretical debates since the 1960s. The publishers of the volume Aesthetics of Form as Social Philosophy share this conviction and focus entirely on the concept of form, understood in the broadest sense as the result of a demarcation that in the first place opens up the framework for communication and social interaction.

Die Aktualisierung von Georg Lukács, so Judith Butler 2010, eröffnet eine Perspektive, welche die seit den 1960er Jahren in den literaturtheoretischen Debatten kursierenden Begriffe nachhaltig durcheinanderbringt. Die Herausgeber des Bandes schließen sich dieser Einschätzung an und fokussieren ganz auf den Begriff der Form, verstanden im weitesten Sinne als Resultat einer Grenzziehung, welche überhaupt erst den Rahmen für Kommunikation und soziale Vermittlung eröffnet.

This book examines how 20th century theorists have used a discourse of “crisis” to frame their conceptualizations of modernity. Through an investigation of four key thinkers (Georg Lukács, Hannah Arendt, Reinhart Koselleck and Jürgen Habermas), Gilbert argues that scholars in the social sciences and humanities should be cautious of treating crises as explananda for research. Instead, the book calls for sociological analysis of the role of “crisis” within social scientific discourse, and examines how “crisis” has been used as a conceptual frame for legitimating theoretical agendas. Gilbert’s “sociology of concepts” approach presents crisis as a paradigm of modern thought, and, more generally, reflects on how concepts can become the carriers of diverse intellectual traditions and debates. The Crisis Paradigm will be of interest to students and scholars of social and critical theory, politics, sociology and history, as well as those working in the fields of media studies, communication and discourse analysis.