Bøger af Steven Lukes

What is power? Is it, as Betrand Russell suggested, "the production of intended effects", or is it the capacity to produce them? And which effects count? Or is Max Weber's definition of power as "the probability that an actor in a social relationship will be in a position to carry out his own will despite resistance" more accurate. What are the outcomes of power and who holds it? These are some of the fundamental questions answered in this colection of classic views of power. Steven Luke's lucid and accessible introduction on the nature of power leads to pieces by Bertrand Russell, Max Weber, Robert Dahl, Hannah Arendt, Jurgen Habermas, Talcott Parsons, Nicos Polantzas, Alvin I. Goldman, Georg Simmel, J. K. Galbraith, Michel Foucault, Gerhard Lenski and Raymond Aron. The book thus provides students of politics and sociology with all the most important readings in a key area of political theory.

The Curious Enlightenment of Professor Caritat is a brilliant fictional journey through Western political philosophy by one of our most original thinkers. Professor Caritat, a middle-aged Candide, walks naively through the neighbouring countries of Utilitaria, Communitaria and Libertaria, in his quest to find the best of all possible worlds. Cut loose from the confines of his ivory tower, this wandering professor is made to confront the perplexed state of modern thinking in this dazzling comedy of ideas.

This study of Durkheim seeks to help the reader to achieve a historical understanding of his ideas and to form critical judgments about their value. To some extent these tow aims are contradictory. On the one hand, one seeks to understand: what did Durkheim really mean, how did he see the world, how did his ideas related to one another and how did they develop, how did they related to their biographical and historical context, how were they received, what influence did they have and to what criticism were they subjected, what was it like not to make certain distinctions, not to see certain errors, of fact or of logic, not to know what has subsequently become known? On the other hand, one seeks to assess: how valuable and how valid are the ideas, to what fruitful insights and explanations do they lead, how do they stand up to analysis and to the evidence, what is their present value? Yet it seems that it is only by inducing oneself not to see and only by seeing them that one can make a critical assessment. The only solution is to pursue both aims¿seeing and not seeing¿simultaneously. More particularly, this book has the primary object of achieving that sympathetic understanding without which no adequate critical assessment is possible. It is a study in intellectual history which is also intended as a contribution to sociological theory.

In this classic text, Steven Lukes discusses what 'individualism' has meant in various national traditions and across different provinces of thought, analysing it into its component unit-ideas and doctrines.

The law was central to Durkheim's sociological theory and to his efforts to establish sociology as a distinctive discipline. The editors, both world-renowned Durkheim scholars, provide a comprehensive analysis of the intellectual significance and distinctiveness of Durkheim's work on the subject.