This book brings together leading figures in history, sociology, political science, feminism and critical theory to interpret, evaluate, criticize and update Weber's legacy. In a collection of specially commissioned pieces and translated articles the Weberian scholarship recognizes Max Weber as the figure central to contemporary debates on the need for societal rationality, the limits of reason and the place of culture and conduct in the supposedly post-religious age. In Part 1, Wolfgang Mommsen, Wilhelm Hennis, Guenther Roth and Wolfgang Schluchter provide a full and varied account of the theme of rationalization in the world civilizations. In Part 2 Pierre Bourdieu and Barry Hindess critically examine Weber's social action model, and Johannes Weiss and Martin Albrow address the putative 'crisis' of Western rationality. In Part 3 Jeffrey Alexander, Ralph Schroeder, Bryan Turner, Roslyn Bologh and Sam Whimster scrutinize Weber's understanding of modernity with its characteristic plurality of 'gods and demons'; they focus on its implications for individuality and personality, the body and sexuality, feminism and aesthetic modernism. Part 4 turns to politics, law and the state in the contemporary world: Colin Gordon on liberalism, Luciano Cavalli on charismatic politics, Stephen Turner and Regis Factor on decisionism and power and Scott Lash on modernism, substantice rationality and law.  This book was first published in 1987.

Max Weber, Rationality and Modernity

Politics & Social Sciences

Lash, Scott

Social Sciences

Allen And Unwin

LASH, S. / S. WHIMSTER, EDS.: MAX WEBER, RATIONALITY AND MODERNITY. MAIDSTONE, KENT, 1987, xvii 394 p. Encuadernacion original. Nuevo.

Max Weber: Rationality and Modernity

Unwin Hyman

The End of Organized Capitalism

Business & Money

Urry, JOHN

Economics

University of Wisconsin Press

The End of Organized Capitalism argues that—despite Marx’s and Weber’s insistence that capitalist societies become increasingly more ordered—we now live in an era of “disorganized capitalism.” The book is devoted to a systematic examination of the shift to disorganized capitalism in five Western nations (Britain, the United States, France, West Germany, and Sweden). Through the analysis of space, class, and culture, Lash and Urry portray the restructuring of capitalist social relations that has resulted from this disorganization. They adduce evidence for the claims that in each of the nations there is a movement toward a deconcentration of capital within nation-states; toward the increased separation of banks, industry and the state; and toward the redistribution of productive relations and class-relevant residential patterns. The authors also show that national disparities in contemporary, disorganized capitalism can be understood through close examination of the extent to which, and mode in which, capitalism became historically organized in each of the five countries under consideration. The lucid arguments and judicious comparisons in this book will be of great interest to political scientists, sociologists, geographers, economists, and historians.

This authoritative and revealing book provides the first sociological examination of postmodernism. Lash examines the differences betweeen modernism and postmodernism, providing a clear explanation of why postmodernism is important. This book should be of interest to students of sociology, communications, philosophy, visual arts, and modern languages.

Sociology of postmodernism (International library of sociology)

Routledge

China Constructing Capitalism: Economic Life and Urban Change (International Library of Sociology)

China has been growing at over ten per cent annually since 1978, but this has only come to very widespread notice in the past decade. This received wisdom about China has been largely of two types, both of which – more or less – understand China in the context of neoliberalism. The more business- or business studies-oriented literature seems to argue that if China does not adapt the rule of clear and distinct property and contract law – in short, of Western institutions – its economy will stall. The second set of voices is more clearly from the left, arguing that the Chinese economy, and city, is neo-liberal. For them, China does not diverge widely from the Anglo-American model that, from 2008, has brought the world economy to its knees. China Constructing Capitalism takes issue with these analyses. The authors argue that it is not Western neo-liberalism that is constructing the Chinese economy, but instead that China is constructing its own version of capitalism. The two central theses of their argument are: <ul>
<li>economic life – neo-liberal economic life is individualized and disembedded, while the China model is relational and situated
</li> <li>urban change – China has created a form of ‘local state capitalism’ which stands in contrast to neoliberal versions of the city.</li> </ul> This book analyses China as a 'risk culture', examining among others Chinese firms and political ties, property development, migrant urbanisms and share trading rooms. It scrutinises the ever-present shadow of the risk-averse (yet uncertainty-creating) state. China Constructing Capitalism is a must-read for social scientists, policy makers and investors.

Keith, Michael

Arnoldi, Jakob

Rooker, Tyler

Reference

This book is Lash's most comprehensive statement in social and cultural theory. It is a book addressed to sociologists and philosophers, to students of urban life, modern languages, cultural studies and the visual arts.  Alongside the Enlightenment has emerged another modernity. This second modernity has - in opposition to the Enlightenment rationality of progress, order, homogeneity and cognition - initiated a different rationality of uncertainty, transience, experiment, and the unknowable. This second, this other modernity, is present in notions of 'difference' and 'reflexivity' so central to the contemporary world-view. The logic, however, of such notions can, itself, lead to the same unhappy abstraction of the first modernity. What is forgotten, Scott Lash argues, is the dimension of the ground. This book consists of explorations into this ground: as place, community, belonging, sociality, tradition, life-world; as symbol, sensation, in the tactile character of the sign. The book addresses the other modernity's forgotten ground.  The first and second modernities co-existed in a state of irresolvable tension along the history of western industrial capitalism. This is thrown into crisis, Lash argues, with the turn of the twenty-first century emergence of the global information culture. What are the implications of this explosion of first and second modernities into today's technological culture? When the previously existing third space of difference is exploded into the general indifference of information and communication flows? How might we lead our lives in an age in which difference - and indeed the ground itself - become primarily a matter for memory, for mourning?

Another Modernity: A Different Rationality

History

World

Wiley/Blackwell

This book is Lash's most comprehensive statement in social and cultural theory. It is a book addressed to sociologists and philosophers, to students of urban life, modern languages, cultural studies and the visual arts. 
Alongside the Enlightenment has emerged another modernity. This second modernity has - in opposition to the Enlightenment rationality of progress, order, homogeneity and cognition - initiated a different rationality of uncertainty, transience, experiment, and the unknowable. This second, this other modernity, is present in notions of 'difference' and 'reflexivity' so central to the contemporary world-view. The logic, however, of such notions can, itself, lead to the same unhappy abstraction of the first modernity. What is forgotten, Scott Lash argues, is the dimension of the ground. This book consists of explorations into this ground: as place, community, belonging, sociality, tradition, life-world; as symbol, sensation, in the tactile character of the sign. The book addresses the other modernity's forgotten ground. The first and second modernities co-existed in a state of irresolvable tension along the history of western industrial capitalism. This is thrown into crisis, Lash argues, with the turn of the twenty-first century emergence of the global information culture. What are the implications of this explosion of first and second modernities into today's technological culture? When the previously existing third space of difference is exploded into the general indifference of information and communication flows? How might we lead our lives in an age in which difference - and indeed the ground itself - become primarily a matter for memory, for mourning?

In this thought-provoking new book, Anthony Smith analyses key debates between historians and social scientists on the role of nations and nationalism in history. In a wide-ranging analysis of the work of historians, sociologists, political scientists and others, he argues that there are three key issues which have shaped debates in this field: first, the nature and origin of nations and nationalism; second, the antiquity or modernity of nations and nationalism; and third, the role of nations and nationalism in historical, and especially recent, social change. Anthony Smith provides an incisive critique of the debate between modernists, perennialists and primordialists over the origins, development and contemporary significance of nations and nationalism. Drawing on a wide range of examples from antiquity and the medieval epoch, as well as the modern world, he develops a distinctive ethnosymbolic account of nations and nationalism. This important book by one of the world’s leading authorities on nationalism and ethnicity will be of particular interest to students and scholars in history, sociology and politics.

Polity

Three prominent social thinkers discuss how modern society is undercutting its formations of class, stratum, occupations, sex roles, the nuclear family, and more. Reflexive modernization, or the way one kind of modernization undercuts and changes another, has wide ranging implications  for contemporary social and cultural theory, as this provocative book demonstrates.

Reflexive Modernization: Politics, Tradition and Aesthetics in the Modern Social Order

Giddens, Anthony

BECK, ULRICH

Polity Press

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Lash, Scott. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Lash, Scott

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Lash, Scott. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Max Weber, Rationality and Modernity

Max Weber: Rationality and Modernity

The End of Organized Capitalism

The End of Organized Capitalism

Sociology of postmodernism (International library of sociology)

China Constructing Capitalism: Economic Life and Urban Change (International Library of Sociology)

Another Modernity: A Different Rationality

Another Modernity: A Different Rationality

The End of Organized Capitalism

Reflexive Modernization: Politics, Tradition and Aesthetics in the Modern Social Order