Marx and the Politics of Abstraction

Erscheinungsjahr 2011
ISBN: 978-90-04-20137-8
Verlag: Brill

Buch, Englisch, Band 31, 242 Seiten, Format (B × H): 168 mm x 246 mm, Gewicht: 540 g

Reihe: Studies in Critical Social Sciences

Many scholars see science and politics as mutually exclusive realms, where the latter's influence contaminates former's purity. Karl Marx's critics often interpret him within this framework, where his value-laden judgments render his analysis of capitalism moot. Though defenders argue that Marx rejects an objective-subjective dichotomy, this book offers a different interpretation. Through the method of critique Marx examines problems and biases in putatively neutral forms of scientific knowledge, specifically models that fail to capture the relations of power and knowledge dominant in capitalist society. By incorporating these relations into his abstractions and tracing their historical movement, Marx's corrective to malformed approaches to scientific knowledge more readily lays bare capitalist society’s exploitative and distortive nature. This book demonstrates these principles and applies them to conventional sociological methods, theories of religion, and class analysis.

Zielgruppe

All those interested in sociological theory, the philosophy of science, Marxist studies, and political science, as well as feminists, methodologists, post-structuralists, and other critical forms of inquiry.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Paolucci, Paul

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Soziologie Allgemein Feminismus, Feministische Theorie
• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Wissenschaftstheorie, Wissenschaftsphilosophie
• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Politische Ideologien Marxismus, Kommunismus
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Soziologie Allgemein Gesellschaftstheorie

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Author’s Foreword

1. Science and Politics
2. Critique and Method
3. Inquiry and Abstraction
4. Relational Sociology and Dialectic
5. Teleology and Dialectic
6. Marx’s Political Science
Afterword

References
Index

Über Autor(innen)

Paul B. Paolucci, Ph.D. (2001) in Sociology, University of Kentucky, is Professor of Sociology at Eastern Kentucky University. He has published several works on Marxist theory, method, and political economics, including Marx's Scientific Dialectics (Brill, 2007).