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Social Criticism
Social criticism is a form of academic or journalistic criticism focusing on social issues in contemporary society, in respect to perceived injustices and power relations in general. Social criticism of the Enlightenment The origin of modern social criticism go back at least to the Age of Enlightenment. According to the historian Jonathan Israel the roots of the radical enlightenment can be found in Spinoza and his circle. Radical enlighteners like Jean Meslier were not satisfied with the social criticism of the time, which was essentially a criticism of religion. The focus of his criticism was the suffering of the peasants. In addition, there was also a criticism of civilization for religious reasons, such as that which emanated from the Quakers in England. Jean-Jacques Rousseau developed a social criticism in his political philosophy which influenced the French Revolution andin his pedagogy. Academic forms The positivism dispute between critical rationalism, e.g. between ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Criticism
Criticism is the construction of a judgement about the negative or positive qualities of someone or something. Criticism can range from impromptu comments to a written detailed response. , ''the act of giving your opinion or judgment about the good or bad qualities of something or someone or the act of saying that something or someone is bad'' Criticism falls into several overlapping types including "theoretical, practical, impressionistic, affective, prescriptive, or descriptive". , ''"The reasoned discussion of literary works, an activity which may include some or all of the following procedures, in varying proportions: the defence of literature against moralists and censors, classification of a work according to its genre, interpretation of its meaning, analysis of its structure and style, judgement of its worth by comparison with other works, estimation of its likely effect on readers, and the establishment of general principles by which literary works can be evaluated and u ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Social Philosophy
Social philosophy is the study and interpretation of society and social institutions in terms of ethical values rather than empirical relations. Social philosophers emphasize understanding the social contexts for political, legal, moral and cultural questions, and the development of novel theoretical frameworks, from social ontology to care ethics to cosmopolitan theories of democracy, natural law, human rights, gender equity and global justice. Subdisciplines There is often a considerable overlap between the questions addressed by social philosophy and ethics or value theory. Other forms of social philosophy include political philosophy and jurisprudence, which are largely concerned with the societies of state and government and their functioning. Social philosophy, ethics, and political philosophy all share intimate connections with other disciplines in the social sciences and the humanities. In turn, the social sciences themselves are of focal interest to the philosophy ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
George Orwell
Eric Arthur Blair (25 June 1903 – 21 January 1950) was an English novelist, poet, essayist, journalist, and critic who wrote under the pen name of George Orwell. His work is characterised by lucid prose, social criticism, opposition to all totalitarianism (both authoritarian communism and fascism), and support of democratic socialism. Orwell is best known for his allegorical novella ''Animal Farm'' (1945) and the Utopian and dystopian fiction, dystopian novel ''Nineteen Eighty-Four'' (1949), although his works also encompass literary criticism, poetry, fiction and polemical journalism. His non-fiction works, including ''The Road to Wigan Pier'' (1937), documenting his experience of working-class life in the industrial north of England, and ''Homage to Catalonia'' (1938), an account of his experiences soldiering for the Republican faction (Spanish Civil War), Republican faction of the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939), are as critically respected as George Orwell bibliograph ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Brave New World
''Brave New World'' is a dystopian novel by English author Aldous Huxley, written in 1931, and published in 1932. Largely set in a futuristic World State, whose citizens are environmentally engineered into an intelligence-based social hierarchy, the novel anticipates huge scientific advancements in reproductive technology, sleep-learning, psychological manipulation and classical conditioning that are combined to make a dystopian society which is challenged by the story's protagonist. Huxley followed this book with a reassessment in essay form, '' Brave New World Revisited'' (1958), and with his final novel, ''Island'' (1962), the utopian counterpart. This novel is often compared as an inversion counterpart to George Orwell's '' Nineteen Eighty-Four'' (1949). In 1998 and 1999, the Modern Library ranked ''Brave New World'' at number 5 on its list of the 100 Best Novels in English of the 20th century. In 2003, Robert McCrum, writing for ''The Observer'', included ''Brave ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Leonard Huxley ( ; 26 July 1894 – 22 November 1963) was an English writer and philosopher. His bibliography spans nearly 50 books, including non-fiction novel, non-fiction works, as well as essays, narratives, and poems. Born into the prominent Huxley family, he graduated from Balliol College, Oxford, with a degree in English literature. Early in his career, he published short stories and poetry and edited the literary magazine ''Oxford Poetry'', before going on to publish travel writing, satire, and screenplays. He spent the latter part of his life in the United States, living in Los Angeles from 1937 until his death. By the end of his life, Huxley was widely acknowledged as one of the foremost intellectuals of his time. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature nine times, and was elected Companion of Literature by the Royal Society of Literature in 1962. Huxley was a pacifist. He grew interested in philosophical mysticism, as well as universalism, addressin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dystopian Novel
Utopian and dystopian fiction are subgenres of speculative fiction that explore extreme forms of social and political structures. Utopian fiction portrays a setting that agrees with the author's ethos, having various attributes of another reality intended to appeal to readers. Dystopian fiction offers the opposite: the portrayal of a setting that completely disagrees with the author's ethos. Some novels combine both genres, often as a metaphor for the different directions humanity can take depending on its choices, ending up with one of two possible futures. Both utopias and dystopias are commonly found in science fiction and other types of speculative fiction. More than 400 utopian works in the English language were published prior to the year 1900, with more than a thousand others appearing during the 20th century. This increase is partially associated with the rise in popularity of science fiction and young adult fiction more generally, but also larger scale social change that ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jack London
John Griffith London (; January 12, 1876 – November 22, 1916), better known as Jack London, was an American novelist, journalist and activist. A pioneer of commercial fiction and American magazines, he was one of the first American authors to become an international celebrity and earn a large fortune from writing. He was also an innovator in the genre that would later become known as science fiction. London was part of the radical literary group "The Crowd" in San Francisco and a passionate advocate of animal welfare, Labor rights, workers' rights and socialism.Swift, John N. "Jack London's 'The Unparalleled Invasion': Germ Warfare, Eugenics, and Cultural Hygiene." American Literary Realism, vol. 35, no. 1, 2002, pp. 59–71. .Hensley, John R. "Eugenics and Social Darwinism in Stanley Waterloo's 'The Story of Ab' and Jack London's 'Before Adam.'" Studies in Popular Culture, vol. 25, no. 1, 2002, pp. 23–37. . London wrote several works dealing with these topics, such as his ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Iron Heel
''The Iron Heel'' is a dystopian and political novel in the form of science fiction by American writer Jack London, first published in 1908. Plot The main premise of the book is the rise of a socialist mass movement in the United Statesstrong enough to have a real chance of winning national elections, getting to power, and implementing a radical socialist regime. Conservatives feel alarmed and threatened by this prospect, to the point of seizing power and establishing a brutal dictatorship in order to avert it. The novel is told via the framing device of a manuscript found centuries after the action takes place and footnotes by a scholar, Anthony Meredith, circa 2600 AD or 419 B.O.M. (the Brotherhood of Man). Jack London writes at two levels, sporadically having Meredith correcting the errors of Avis Everhard through his own future prism, while at the same time exposing the often incomplete understanding of this distant future perspective. Meredith's introduction also reveal ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Revolution
In political science, a revolution (, 'a turn around') is a rapid, fundamental transformation of a society's class, state, ethnic or religious structures. According to sociologist Jack Goldstone, all revolutions contain "a common set of elements at their core: (a) efforts to change the political regime that draw on a competing vision (or visions) of a just order, (b) a notable degree of informal or formal mass mobilization, and (c) efforts to force change through noninstitutionalized actions such as Political demonstration, mass demonstrations, Protest, protests, strikes, or violence." Revolutions have occurred throughout human history and varied in their methods, durations and outcomes. Some revolutions started with List_of_peasant_revolts, peasant uprisings or guerrilla warfare on the periphery of a country; others started with urban insurrection aimed at seizing the country's capital city. Revolutions can be inspired by the rising popularity of certain political Ideology, ideo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Discourse
Discourse is a generalization of the notion of a conversation to any form of communication. Discourse is a major topic in social theory, with work spanning fields such as sociology, anthropology, continental philosophy, and discourse analysis. Following work by Michel Foucault, these fields view discourse as a system of thought, knowledge, or communication that constructs our world experience. Since control of discourse amounts to control of how the world is perceived, social theory often studies discourse as a window into Power (social and political), power. Within theoretical linguistics, discourse is understood more narrowly as linguistic information exchange and was one of the major motivations for the framework of dynamic semantics. In these expressions, denotations are equated with their ability to update a discourse context. Social theory In the humanities and social sciences, discourse describes a formal way of thinking that can be expressed through language. Discourse i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cultural Studies
Cultural studies is an academic field that explores the dynamics of contemporary culture (including the politics of popular culture) and its social and historical foundations. Cultural studies researchers investigate how cultural practices relate to wider systems of power associated with, or operating through, social phenomena. These include ideology, class structures, national formations, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender, and generation. Employing cultural analysis, cultural studies views cultures not as fixed, bounded, stable, and discrete entities, but rather as constantly interacting and changing sets of practices and processes. Cultural studies was initially developed by British Marxist academics in the late 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, and has been subsequently taken up and transformed by scholars from many different disciplines around the world. Cultural studies is avowedly and even radically interdisciplinary and can sometimes be seen as anti-disciplinary. A key c ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Psychoanalysis
PsychoanalysisFrom Greek language, Greek: and is a set of theories and techniques of research to discover unconscious mind, unconscious processes and their influence on conscious mind, conscious thought, emotion and behaviour. Based on The Interpretation of Dreams, dream interpretation, psychoanalysis is also a talk therapy method for treating of mental disorders."All psychoanalytic theories include the idea that unconscious thoughts and feelings are central in mental functioning." Milton, Jane, Caroline Polmear, and Julia Fabricius. 2011. ''A Short Introduction to Psychoanalysis''. Sage Group, SAGE. p. 27."What is psychoanalysis? Of course, one is supposed to answer that it is many things — a theory, a research method, a therapy, a body of knowledge. In what might be considered an unfortunately abbreviated description, Freud said that anyone who recognizes transference and resistance is a psychoanalyst, even if he comes to conclusions other than his own. … I prefer to think ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
