Thursday, February 16, 2017

Political Sociology



Keith Faulks (2000) defines political sociology as follows:

"At its broadest level, political sociology is concerned with the relationship between politics and society. Its distinctiveness within the social sciences lies in its acknowledgement that political actors, including parties, pressure groups and social movements, operate within a wider social context. Political actors therefore inevitably shape, and in turn are shaped by, social structures such as gender, class and nationality. Such social structures ensure that political influence within society is unequal. It follows from this that a key concept in political sociology is that power, where power is defined as the capacity to achieve one's objectives even when those objectives are in conflict with the interests of another actor. Political sociologists therefore invariably return to the following question: which individuals and groups in society possess the capacity to pursue their interests, and how is this power exercised and institutionalized."

Political Sociology: A Critical Introduction (Paperback) by Keith Faulks
http://www.amazon.com/Political-Sociology-A-Critical-Introduction/dp/0814727093
(Preview facility is there)


LSE (London School of Economics) - M.Sc. - Political Sociology



Political Sociology - Bibliography

Allardt, Erik; and Littunen, YrjoÖ (editors) 1964 Cleavages, Ideologies and Party Systems: Contributions to Comparative Political Sociology. Transactions of the Westermarck Society, Vol. 10. Helsinki: The Society.


Almond, Gabriel A.; and Verba, Sidney 1963 The Civic Culture: Political Attitudes and Democracy in Five Nations. Princeton Univ. Press.


Dahl, Robert A. (1961) 1963 Who Governs? Democracy and Power in an American City. New Haven: Yale Univ. Press.


Duverger, Maurice (1951) 1962 Political Parties: Their Organization and Activity in the Modern State. 2d English ed., rev. New York: Wiley; London: Methuen. → First published in French.

Key, V. O. Jr. 1961 Public Opinion and American Democracy. New York: Knopf.

Kornhauser, William 1959 The Politics of Mass Society. Glencoe, III.; Free Press.

Lasswell, Harold D. 1936 Politics: Who Gets What, When, How? New York: McGraw-Hill.


Lipset, Seymour M. 1960 Political Man: The Social Bases of Politics. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday.

Marx, Karl (1852) 1964 The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte. New York: International Publishers. → First published in German. A paperback edition was published in 1964.

Marx, Karl; and Engels, Friedrich (1845–1846) 1939 The German Ideology. Parts 1 and 3. With an introduction by R. Pascal. New York: International Publishers. → The full text was first published in 1932 as Die deutsche Ideologic and republished by Dietz Verlag in 1953.

Michels, Robert (1911) 1959 Political Parties: A Sociological Study of the Oligarchical Tendencies of Modern Democracy. New York: Dover. → First published as Zur Soziologie des Parteiwesens in der modemen Demokratie. A paperback edition was published in 1962 by Collier.

Mills, C. Wright 1956 The Power Elite. New York: Oxford Univ. Press.


Mosca, Gaetano (1896) 1939 The Ruling Class (Elementi di scienza politica). New York: McGraw-Hill

Neumann, Franz (1942) 1963 Behemoth: The Structure and Practice of National Socialism, 1933–1944. 2d ed. New York: Octagon Books.

Rokkan, Stein (editor) 1962 Approaches to the Study of Political Participation. Ada sociologica 6, no. 1/2.


Schumpeter, Joseph A. (1942) 1950 Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy. 3d ed. New York: Harper; London: Allen & Unwin. → A paperback edition was published by Harper in 1962.


Weber, Max (1919) 1946 Politics as a Vocation. Pages 77–128 in Max Weber, From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology. Translated and edited by Hans H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills. New York: Oxford Univ. Press.

Weber, Max (1921) 1946 Class, Status, Party. Pages 180–195 in Max Weber, From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology. Translated and edited by Hans H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills. New York: Oxford Univ. Press.

Updated on 19 February 2017,  20 July 2013

Sunday, November 6, 2016

The Concepts of Ethos and Ethics


In modern usage, ethos denotes the disposition, character, or fundamental values particular to a specific person, people, corporation, culture, or movement.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethos

Neoliberalism - A Review



The term neoliberalism was coined at a meeting in Paris in 1938. Two men who came to define the ideology, Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek attended the meeting.

In The Road to Serfdom, published in 1944, Hayek argued that government planning, by crushing individualism, would lead inexorably to totalitarian control. The Road to Serfdom was widely read. It came to the attention of some very wealthy people, who saw in the philosophy an opportunity to free themselves from regulation and tax. In 1947, Hayek founded an organisation to spread the doctrine of neoliberalism,  the Mont Pelerin Society. It was generously supported  by millionaires and their foundations.

Hayek created a transatlantic network of academics, businessmen, journalists and activists.  A series of thinktanks came up to refine and promote the ideology. Among them were the American Enterprise Institute, the Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute, the Institute of Economic Affairs, the Centre for Policy Studies and the Adam Smith Institute. The supporters of neoliberalism financed number of academic positions and departments, particularly at the universities of Chicago and Virginia.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/apr/15/neoliberalism-ideology-problem-george-monbiot

Monday, January 25, 2016

Postulates of Capitalism






“Postulate” is a mathematical term.  It is defined by “The Basic Postulates & Theorems of Geometry” Web page as follows: “Postulates are statements that are assumed to be true without proof.”


Postulates of Traditional Marginalism


The first postulate, and perhaps the most important postulate of traditional marginalism, is that “The wage is equal to the marginal product of labour.” “That is,” Keynes explained, “the wage of an employed person is equal to the value which would be lost if employment were to be reduced by one unit (after deducting any other costs which this reduction of output would avoid); subject, however, to the qualification that the equality may be disturbed, in accordance with certain principles, if competition and markets are imperfect.”

The second “postulate” is that “the utility of the wage when a given volume of labour is employed is equal to the marginal disutility of that amount of employment.” It is assumed by the marginalists that no worker really wants to work at all. Performing labor for a capitalist boss is a definite “disutility” from the worker’s point of view. On the other hand, the money that the workers obtain in exchange for their “labor” enables the workers to buy commodities that have a definite utility for them. Indeed, without the “utility” provided by the wage, which the worker can only obtain by selling his or her “labor,” the worker couldn’t live at all.
https://critiqueofcrisistheory.wordpress.com/the-ideas-of-john-maynard-keynes-pt-1/the-ideas-of-john-maynard-keynes-pt-2/

Friday, August 29, 2014

Religion is an instinct



The Religious Instinct
Thaomas J Hardy
1913
Long Man Green and Co.

http://archive.org/stream/religiousinstinc00hardrich#page/14/mode/2up

Human Nature has a wonderful way of being right and wrong at the same time. Right as regards its instinct and wrong as regards the direction it takes.

http://www.jstor.org/stable/3155298?seq=1





Updated 29 Aug 2014, 20 Oct 2012.