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This book provides an overview and analysis of the thought of figures across the human and social sciences on the character, causes, and consequences of discontent in modern societies. Exploring the important social and cultural conditions associated with modernity, it focuses on the contributions of 38 prominent scholars from the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries - philosophers, historians, and social scientists - on the subject of discontent and social malaise, and individual and collective well-being. Thematically organized, this volume offers brief portraits of the lives and key ideas of these thinkers, leading toward a presentation of modernity as a "differentiated complaint." Reclaiming an important tradition in the human and social sciences that sees life on a grand scale, that integrates personal affairs with social and cultural matters, and that dares people to recommit themselves to this broader vision of human involvement, Anatomies of Modern Discontent will appeal to readers across the social sciences and humanities, particularly those with interests in social theory, sociology, and philosophy.
List of contents
Introduction: Modernity's Challenges to Self Part I: New Patterns of Social Experience 1. Karl Marx: Alienation under Capitalism 2. Emile Durkheim: The Search for Social Connection 3. Max Weber: Rationalization's Iron Grip 4. Georg Simmel: Marginality as the Modern Condition 5. Erich Kahler: Split from Without - and Within 6. Robert Nisbet: The Eclipse of Community 7. Robert Bellah: Communitarianism and Religion in a Post-Traditional World 8. Daniel Bell: Capitalism's Contradictions 9. Hannah Arendt: Politics as Possibility Part II: Culture Transformed 10. Johan Huizinga: The Decline of the Play Spirit 11. Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno: The Perils of Enlightenment 12. David Riesman: Seeking Autonomy in the Other-Directed Society 13. Daniel Boorstin: Extravagant Expectations 14. Lewis Mumford: In the Shadows of the Machine 15. Jane Jacobs: Cities Where People Matter 16. Marshall Berman: Swimming in the Maelstrom 17. Christopher Lasch: Cultural Narcissism 18. Juliet Schor: The Work and Spend Cycle Part III: Forms of Inequality 18. C. Wright Mills: Social Structure, Elites, and Masses 19. Michel Foucault: Knowledge as Control 20. Simone De Beauvoir: Woman as Other 21. W.E.B. Du Bois: Divided Consciousness 22. Franz Fanon: The Long Reach of Colonialism 23. Margaret Mead: The Enculturation of Gender 24. Lillian Rubin: Worlds of Pain 25. Betty Friedan: Responding to Traps of Gender and Age 26. William Julius Wilson: Dilemmas of the Truly Disadvantaged Part IV: Modern Selves 27. Sigmund Freud: Repression and Other Conflicts 28. Erich Fromm: Society Against Self 29. Herbert Marcuse: Resistance in the Affluent Society 30. Norman O. Brown: Embracing Life - and Death 31. Jean-Paul Sartre: Nausea - and Reorientation 32. Erving Goffman: Managing Modern Identities 33. Arlie Hochschild: Commercialized Feeling 34. Anthony Giddens: Challenges to Self in a Runaway World 35. Kenneth Gergen: Saturated Selves 36. Martin Buber: Personhood as Dialogue Conclusion: An Anatomy of Modern Discontent
Summary
This book provides an overview and analysis of the thought of forty figures across the human and social sciences on the character, causes, and consequences of discontent in modern societies, exploring the important social and cultural conditions associated with modernity and ultimately characterising it as a ‘differentiated complaint’.
