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Is the study of living systems a useful metaphor for political science? In this book, Dr. Dobuzinskis argues for further exploration of biopolitical models to explain the complexity of political theory and social change. His discussion emphasizes the new cybernetics, which considers not only self-regulating but also self-organizing or self-producing systems. Self-organizing systems operate in an autonomous sphere comparable to the autonomy of the political community and the political actors who compose this community. The autonomy of these systems is maintained through dynamic equilibration processes that entail not only the preservation of a given structure but also, at crucial times, the creative rearrangement of the existing structure and its transformation into a new pattern of relations. From this perspective, a political crisis is both a threat to the political system and the occasion of its renewal; stability may also mean decay. Emphasizing the links that have developed historically between the natural and social sciences, this book is a reflection on the merits of and difficulties involved in representing the evolutionary process at the political level as the problematic reproduction of national communities and states.
This interpretation of classical sources of democratic theory describes routes to self-government. It meshes interpretations of Aristotle's political and ethical writings and the republican ideals of Jefferson and Madison with insights derived from modern sciences of complexity.
In The Fragility of Things, eminent theorist William E. Connolly focuses on several self-organizing ecologies that help to constitute our world. These interacting geological, biological, and climate systems, some of which harbor creative capacities, are depreciated by that brand of neoliberalism that confines self-organization to economic markets and equates the latter with impersonal rationality. Neoliberal practice thus fails to address the fragilities it exacerbates. Engaging a diverse range of thinkers, from Friedrich Hayek, Michel Foucault, Hesiod, and Immanuel Kant to Voltaire, Terrence Deacon, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Alfred North Whitehead, Connolly brings the sense of fragility alive as he rethinks the idea of freedom. Urging the Left not to abandon the state but to reclaim it, he also explores scales of politics below and beyond the state. The contemporary response to fragility requires a militant pluralist assemblage composed of those sharing affinities of spirituality across differences of creed, class, gender, sexual orientation, and ethnicity.
This work provides an introduction to the work of Michel Foucault. It offers an assessment of all of Foucault's work, including his final writings on governmentality and the self. McNay argues that the later work initiates an important shift in his intellectual concerns which alters any retrospective reading of his writings as a whole. Throughout, McNay is concerned to assess the normative and political implications of Foucault's social criticism. She goes beyond the level of many commentators to look at the values from which Foucault's work springs and reveals the implicit assumptions underlying his social critique. The author also provides an account and assessment of recent literature on Foucault, including that of Habermas and Taylor. She discusses Foucault's position in the modernity/postmodernity debate, his own ambivalence to Enlightenment thought and his place in recent developments in feminist and cultural theory.
This book integrates the theories of complex self-organizing systems with the rich body of discourse and literature developed in what might be called ‘social theory of cities and urbanism’. It uses techniques from dynamical complexity and synergetics to successfully tackle open social science questions.
This book investigates self-organizing institutions that resolve institutional collective action dilemmas in federalism, urban governance, and regional management of natural resources.
Extensive previous research has investigated environmental conflict management issues in networked settings and the design of policy networks, but the emergence and evolution of self-organizing policy networks are still not fully understood. Especially misunderstood is the problem of how the multiple motivations or incentives of competing policy actors in conflictual situations affect their structures of interaction, as this issue has not been studied systematically. This book aims to address the following research questions: how do policy stakeholders cope strategically with collective action or environmental conflict resolution? How do they utilize or maintain formal and informal policy networks to resolve problems effectively? What motivates them to engage or be involved in collaborative or conflictual networks? What influences their networking or their decisions on partner selection for conflict resolution? This book consists of four studies. The goal of the first study is to examine the form of a policy network by focusing on how policy networks emerge and evolve at the micro-level to solve collective action dilemmas endemic to decentralized and democratized policy decision-making processes, particularly in the environmental conflict resolution arena. The goal of the second study is to examine the main policy actors and structural characteristics of network governance evolution in the dynamic process of environmental conflict resolution. The goal of the third study is to highlight the role of policy tie formality in the evolution of multiplex ties in the environmental conflict resolution process. The goal of the fourth study is to demonstrate the relationships between patterns of interactions among policy actors and their modified and adjusted strategic behaviours within policy networks and across advocacy coalitions.
With his insightful and wide-ranging theory of recognition, AxelHonneth has decisively reshaped the Frankfurt School tradition ofcritical social theory. Combining insights from philosophy,sociology, psychology, history, political economy, and culturalcritique, Honneth’s work proposes nothing less than anaccount of the moral infrastructure of human sociality and itsrelation to the perils and promise of contemporary sociallife. This book provides an accessible overview of Honneth’s maincontributions across a variety of fields, assessing the strengthsand weaknesses of his thought. Christopher Zurn clearly explainsHonneth’s multi-faceted theory of recognition and itsrelation to diverse topics: individual identity, morality, activistmovements, progress, social pathologies, capitalism, justice,freedom, and critique. In so doing, he places Honneth’stheory in a broad intellectual context, encompassing classic socialtheorists such as Kant, Hegel, Marx, Freud, Dewey, Adorno andHabermas, as well as contemporary trends in social theory andpolitical philosophy. Treating the full range of Honneth’scorpus, including his major new work on social freedom anddemocratic ethical life, this book is the most up-to-date guideavailable. Axel Honneth will be invaluable to students and scholarsworking across the humanities and social sciences, as well asanyone seeking a clear guide to the work of one of the mostinfluential theorists writing today.
Rainer Forst develops a critical theory capable of deciphering the deficits and potentials inherent in contemporary political reality. This calls for a perspective which is immanent to social and political practices and at the same time transcends them. Forst regards society as a whole as an ‘order of justification’ comprising complexes of different norms referring to institutions and corresponding practices of justification. The task of a ‘critique of relations of justification’, therefore, is to analyse such legitimations with regard to their validity and genesis and to explore the social and political asymmetries leading to inequalities in the ‘justification power’ which enables persons or groups to contest given justifications and to create new ones. Starting from the concept of justification as a basic social practice, Forst develops a theory of political and social justice, human rights and democracy, as well as of power and of critique itself. In so doing, he engages in a critique of a number of contemporary approaches in political philosophy and critical theory. Finally, he also addresses the question of the utopian horizon of social criticism.
This book argues that we are undergoing a transition from industrial capitalism to a new form of capitalism - what the author calls & lsquo; cognitive capitalism & rsquo;