has been an increasing dissatisfaction with the constraints and lacunae in the underlying tenets of social constructionism and it has been challenged by a number of important developments and trends in social theory and research such as materialism and practice theory. It may appear strange to start a chapter on new materialism with a discussion of social constructionism, but the latter’s popularity in housing studies and the links between the two approaches make this way of proceeding useful. In part, new materialism was adopted as a reaction to the social
important is how they point to the complex and dynamic relation of materialism and discourse in this age of increased virtuality and digitalization. They reveal the ways conventionally ‘immaterial’ processes and resources – such as mobile objects – have profound and commonly unpredictable social and political effects. Reflected, furthermore, is the critical need to make concrete the material forces and relations underpinning these digital objects and applications, as well as the ideological assumptions and fantasies which have given them birth and shaped their everyday
well-being’ or CICT ( Sikka, 2022 , 2023 ) . Following a précis of this definition, I apply my ‘auto-ethnographic and rhizomatic socio-material feminist approach to science and technology’ method in four phases, via: (1) a case study-driven overview of Purearth, a UK-based wellness company; (2) a deeper discussion of method; (3) the application of new materialism to the company and its products through the use of an ‘agential cut’; and (4) an auto-ethnographic exegesis through which I chronicle and reflect on my consumption of Purearth’s ‘Immunity Drinks Pack’ over
platform. Our study extends previous research on the topic of Facebook users and digital privacy by interviewing a wide range of Australians across a range of age groups, educational backgrounds and geographical locations, and by developing a vital materialism theoretical perspective. Vital materialism views humans as always part of more-than-human assemblages, involving other people, other living things, objects, place and space, and acknowledges the distributed nature of agencies across humans and nonhumans. Thus far, this approach has received little attention in
’ve arrived at an inflection point, where CCO theorizing must engage with a body of thought not conventionally associated with communicative thinking. I’ll lay out the challenge and then present a possible path (one I’ll quickly reject). In the next section, it’ll take a few pages to arrive at the intellectual connection, but I’ll be arguing for the necessity of engaging with a body of thought called new materialism(s) if CCO thinking is to develop novel theorizations of the firm under communicative capitalism. New materialism(s) and CCO theorizing The preceding
Interest 2014: 18). It appears that people do expect more today from life, but not necessarily money. Conclusions The notion that there is something wrong in the early 21st century, due to a combination of marketisation, materialism and technology, is a familiar refrain in the early 2010s. Thomas Piketty’s book Capital in the Twenty-First Century was the best-selling hardback book in the US in early 2014. Piketty advocates taxation rates of up to 80% on wealth, arguing that wealth plays a pivotal role in defining inequality. However, he offers no methodology of
enduring functioning of the model needs to be compatible with the materialist analysis of human behaviour. In this article, I argue that Hobbes’s attempts to render his science of politics compatible with his materialism are only partly successful; a fuller compatibility is achieved in the political writings of Spinoza. Keywords: Hobbes; Spinoza; materialism; reason; sovereign; peace Hobbes’s science of politics rests on a dual analysis of human beings: humans as complex material bodies in a network of mechanical forces, prone to passions and irrationality; and humans as
representation and social work, including recent developments such as materialism and the use of objects, as well as the ontological turn in anthropology. I have tried to draw together some examples, using issues drawn from previous chapters, relating to a few key symbols that (in keeping with the uncertainties of social work) are characterised by ambivalence, in particular: • ‘family’; • professionalism; and • work placements, being relevant to ambiguous, liminal spaces between education and the workplace as part of a rite of passage into professional social work
What’s left of post-Marxism? In particular, the concepts and categories developed by the Argentine political theorist Ernesto Laclau during the 1970s, and later with Chantal Mouffe and others in the 1980s and 1990s. This question is not readily answerable, or at least appears in the negative, for the second decade of the 21st century has seen the welcome reconstruction of materialism, economic contexts, production, totality, and dialectics as vital explanatory tools in coming to think critically about the present conjecture. 1 Long gone then, or at least
particular and the universal, the concrete and the abstract, in relation to martial arts practices. The focus on these concepts opens up the ability to contemplate new concrete universals. Key words Laclau and Mouffe • martial arts • materialism • post-Marxism To cite this article: Rowcroft, A. (2019) The limits of post-Marxism: the (dis)function of political theory in film and cultural studies: a reply to Paul Bowman, Global Discourse, vol 9, no 2, 347–50, DOI: 10.1332/204378919X15526540593606 What’s left of post-Marxism? In particular, the concepts and categories
