-
9Postmodern Contentions: Epochs, Politics, SpaceGuilford Press. 1993.John Paul Jones III, Wolfgang Natter, and Theodore Schatzki are co-Directors of the University of Kentucky Committee on Social Theory. They are members, respectively, of the departments of Geography, Germanic Languages and Literatures, and Philosophy.
-
1The Grammar of Politics: Wittgenstein and Political Philosophy (review)Clio: A Journal of Literature, History, and the Philosophy of History 34 (1-2): 190-198. 2005.
-
1Practice mind-ed ordersIn Karin Knorr Cetina, Theodore R. Schatzki & Eike von Savigny (eds.), The Practice Turn in Contemporary Theory, Routledge. pp. 42--55. 2000.
-
62Nature and technology in historyHistory and Theory 42 (4). 2003.This essay sketches an expanded theoretical conception of the roles of nature and technology in history, one that is based on a social ontology that does not separate nature and society. History has long been viewed as the realm of past human action. On this conception, nature is treated largely as an Other of history, and technology is construed chiefly as a means for human fulfillment. There is no history of nature, and the history of technology becomes the history of useful products. The essa…Read more
-
29Book Review: On Interpretive Social Inquiry (review)Philosophy of the Social Sciences 35 (2): 231-249. 2005.This essay addresses various issues about interpretive social investigation that arise in recent books by Berel Lerner and by Mark Risjord. The general topics considered are the relation between interpretation and explanation, the explanation of action, and alternative rationalities. Part 1 centers on Risjord’s attempt to draw interpretation into the explanatory enterprise, among other things pointing out the limiting assumptions of his account and asking whether social investigation has epistem…Read more
-
61Wittgenstein and the social context of an individual lifeHistory of the Human Sciences 13 (1): 93-107. 2000.This article argues that two significant implications of Wittgenstein’s writings for social thought are (1) that people are constitutively social beings and (2) that the social context of an individual life is nexuses of practice. Part one concretizes these ideas by examining the constitution of action within practices. It begins by criticizing three arguments of Winch’s that suggest that action is inherently social. It then spells out two arguments for the practice constitution of action that a…Read more
-
158A new societist social ontologyPhilosophy of the Social Sciences 33 (2): 174-202. 2003.This article delineates a new type of social ontologysite ontologyand defends a particular version of that type. The first section establishes the distinctiveness of site ontologies over both individualist ontologies and previous societist ones. The second section then shows how site ontologies elude two pervasive criticisms, that of incompleteness directed at individualism and that of reification leveled at societism. The third section defends a particular site ontology, one that depicts the …Read more
-
340Social Practices: A Wittgensteinian Approach to Human Activity and the SocialCambridge University Press. 1996.This book addresses key topics in social theory such as the basic structures of social life, the character of human activity, and the nature of individuality. Drawing on the work of Wittgenstein, the author develops an account of social existence that argues that social practices are the fundamental phenomenon in social life. This approach offers insight into the social formation of individuals, surpassing and critiquing the existing practice theories of Bourdieu, Giddens, Lyotard and Oakeshott.…Read more
-
39On studying the past scientificallyInquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 49 (4). 2006.This critical review of Aviezer Tucker's Our Knowledge of the Past: A Philosophy of Historiography examines the character, scope, and limits of scientific historiography, the overall topic of Tucker's book. The review begins by arguing that the book both unwittingly juggles two criteria for scientific, as opposed to nonscientific, historiography - the production of knowledge and Kuhnian disciplinary matrices - and wrongly construes the subject matter of such historiography to be present evidence…Read more
-
28Aerobics as political model and schoolingJournal of Social Philosophy 25 (2): 29-43. 1994.Among the theses promulgated by the Frankfort School theorists during the forties and fifties was the decline of the individual under contemporary capitalism. The chief agent of this decline was identified as the culture industry, which served the reigning system by integrating people into its particular regime of production, reproduction, and consumption. By dominating minds, homogenizing behaviors, and normalizing tastes, this industry prepared people for capitalist toil. In so doing, it also …Read more
-
79Elements of a Wittgensteinian philosophy of the human sciencesSynthese 87 (2). 1991.In this paper, a Wittgensteinian account of the human sciences is constructed around the notions of the surface of human life and of surface phenomena as expressions. I begin by explaining Wittgenstein's idea that the goal of interpretive social science is to make actions and practices seem natural. I then explicate his notions of the surface of life and of surface phenomena as expressions by reviewing his analysis of mental state language. Finally, I critically examine three ideas: (a) that the…Read more
-
132The time of activityContinental Philosophy Review 39 (2): 155-182. 2006.This essay analyzes the time of human activity. It begins by discussing how most accounts of action treat the time of action as succession, using Donald Davidson's account of action as illustration. It then argues that an adequate account of action and its determinants, one able to elucidate the ``indeterminacy of action,'' requires an alternative conception of action time. The remainder of the essay constructs a propitious account of the time and determination of action. It does so by criticall…Read more
-
209The Practice Turn in Contemporary Theory (edited book)Routledge. 2000.This book provides an exciting and diverse philosophical exploration of the role of practice and practices in human activity. It contains original essays and critiques of this philosophical and sociological attempt to move beyond current problematic ways of thinking in the humanities and social sciences. It will be useful across many disciplines, including philosophy, sociology, science, cultural theory, history and anthropology
-
Todd May, Our Practices, Our Selves. Or, What it Means to be Human Reviewed byPhilosophy in Review 22 (5): 340-342. 2002.
-
15Review of Stephen H. Daniel (ed.), Current Continental Theory and Modern Philosophy (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2006 (8). 2006.
-
10Book Review: Science of Science and Reflexivity (review)Philosophy of the Social Sciences 36 (4): 496-499. 2006.
-
79Wittgenstein + Heidegger on the stream of lifeInquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 36 (3). 1993.This paper combines views of Wittgenstein and Heidegger into an account of mind/ action. It does this by suggesting that these two philosophers be viewed in part as descendants of Life?philosophy (Lebensphilosophie). Part I describes the conception of life that informs and emerges from these thinkers. Parts Two and Three detail particular aspects of this conception: Wittgenstein on the constitution of states of life and Heidegger on the flow?structure of the stream of life. The Conclusion offers…Read more
-
21Book Review: Bourdieu: A Critical Reader (review)Philosophy of the Social Sciences 32 (3): 445-449. 2002.
-
6The Social and Political BodyGuilford Press. 1996.Beginning with the provocative premise that the body is the anchor of the social order, this unique book delves into the multidimensional relationship between sociopolitical bodies and human bodies. Celebrated authors, including Judith Butler and Emily Martin, explore the ways that prevailing economic and political institutions affect our physical selves and how we experience them, and, in turn, the ways that our bodily senses, energies, activities, and desires reinforce or challenge the societa…Read more
-
35Simulation theory and the verstehen school: A Wittgensteinian approachIn K. R. Stueber & H. H. Kogaler (eds.), Empathy and Agency: The Problem of Understanding in the Human Sciences, Boulder: Westview Press. 2000.
-
253Practices and actions a Wittgensteinian critique of Bourdieu and GiddensPhilosophy of the Social Sciences 27 (3): 283-308. 1997.This article criticizes Bourdieu's and Giddens's overintellectualizing accounts of human activity on the basis of Wittgenstein's insights into practical under standing. Part 1 describes these two theorists' conceptions of a homology between the organization of practices (spatial-temporal manifolds of action) and the governance of individual actions. Part 2 draws on Wittgenstein's discussions of linguistic definition and following a rule to criticize these conceptions for ascribing content to the…Read more
-
54Mind/Action for Wittgenstein and HeideggerSouthwest Philosophy Review. forthcoming.The paper outlines how Wittgenstein and Heidegger's views can be combined to form a general account of mind and action. It accomplishes this by interpreting Heidegger of the "Being and Time" era and Wittgenstein of the "Philosophical Investigations" onwards asdescendents of the School of Thought called life philosophy. Heidegger is construed as analyzing the occurrence of The Stream of Life, while Wittgenstein is understood as examining (a) The appearances of The Stream in The World and (b) The …Read more
-
32Frederick A. Olafson, "Heidegger and the Philosophy of Mind" (review)Journal of the History of Philosophy 28 (3): 466. 1990.
-
59The Temporality of TeleologyNew Yearbook for Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy 5 123-143. 2005.
Lexington, Kentucky, United States of America