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Merton (Robert)

Education

O.O.P.S. vs M.O.O.C.s: Midterm Report, Part 2

April 27, 2015 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb

The O.O.P.S. courses Rethinking Capitalism and Feminism, Capitalism and Social Transformation share a critical understanding: capitalism, as we are experiencing it, is undesirable and not the only political economy possible. They also both analyze how major social problems are directly linked to the present order of capitalism, from ...

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Theory & Practice

The Social Condition, Modern Identity and Youth

April 19, 2015 • by Josephine Ott
When we turn the sociological focus away from social effects and social construction towards the social condition, it becomes clear that our everyday life is structured around thousands of decisions that are influenced by an underlying social condition: the self as subject and object, as a distinctive being on its ...
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Uncategorized

Thoughts on Iddo Tavory’s Visit with the Social Condition Seminar

February 24, 2015 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb
In the fourth week of our seminar, Iddo Tavory joined us. He did so in three different ways. In his writing: two of his articles (one co-authored with Nina Eliasoph) were the primary reading assignments – his, on morality, and theirs, on coordinating futures. In conversation: he also contributed to ...
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Theory & Practice

Ambiguity, Ambivalence, and the Social Condition and Politics: Thoughts Following our Third Session

February 19, 2015 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb
The assignment for the students last week was to read Donald Levine on modernity and ambiguity and Robert Merton on the sociology of ambivalence. These works anticipate the study of the social condition. Levine, by the way, was my dissertation supervisor, and I believe the sensibility that led him to ...
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Uncategorized

Classical Sociology and the Social Condition

February 8, 2015 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb
In last week’s meeting of the social condition class, we reviewed classical sociological studies, considering how they reveal or conceal the dilemmas and tensions built into the social fabric, how they illuminate or obfuscate the social condition. We looked closely at the closing pages of Max Weber’s Protestant Ethnic and ...
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Uncategorized

Overhearing in the Public Sphere

October 1, 2013 • by Daniel Dayan

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Overhearing in the Public Sphere
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