Summary
Contents
Subject index
This book explores the relationships between visual culture, social theory and the individual. Visual culture has emerged as a central area of debate and research in contemporary sociology, yet the field is still underdefined. In particular, the relationship between visual culture and the individual remains obscure. Sociologists have insisted that all aspects of the individual are open to sociological explanation. The result is that the individual sometimes seems to have been theorized away from sociological understanding. Using a wide range of resources from Bourdieu's action theory and the contribution of actor network theory, through to the artistic explorations of Francis Bacon and Barnett Newman, this book shows how th
Actor Network Theory: The Place of the Subject within Constructionist Sociology
Actor Network Theory: The Place of the Subject within Constructionist Sociology
The search for an adequate characterisation of sociology vis-à-vis the subject is not achieved by confrontation with the work of Bourdieu alone. We cannot characterise sociology in general as anti-subjective simply on the basis of Bourdieu's inheritance of the triple legacy of Marx, Durkheim and Weber. We have seen that in the battle with Weber, Bourdieu is conceptually victorious with his notion of habitus, and we have also seen that he claims the Machiavellian tradition for himself with the implicit declaration (retreated from only when caught unawares within the field of culture) that fields are the true social subjects. In contrast to this, there ...
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