Culture, Rhetoric and the Vicissitudes of Life

Culture, Rhetoric and the Vicissitudes of Life
Author: Michael Carrithers
Publisher: Berghahn Books
Total Pages: 195
Release: 2009-06-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1845459245

Inspired by the Rhetoric Culture Project, this volume focuses on the use of imagery, narrative, and cultural schemes to deal with predicaments that arise during the course of life. The contributors explore how people muster their resources to understand and deal with emergencies such as illness, displacement, or genocide. In dealing with such circumstances, people can develop new rhetorical forms and, in the process, establish new cultural resources for succeeding generations. Several of the contributions show how rhetorical cultural forms can themselves create emergencies. The contributors bring expertise from a variety of disciplines, including anthropology and communications studies, underlining the volume’s wider relevance as a reflection on the human condition.

Elias Canetti and Social Theory

Elias Canetti and Social Theory
Author: Andrea Mubi Brighenti
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 217
Release: 2023-01-12
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1350344435

Elias Canetti is a key thinker in the trend towards the renewal of social theory for the 21st century. He is increasingly being recognised in the social and political sciences for the seminal text, Crowds and Power (1960). While this work can sometimes be criticised for its alleged anti-historicity, anti-modernism, fixation on death, and a dark vision of humankind, Crowds and Power can, in fact, be interpreted as a study and a critique of the mono-dimensionality and the obsessiveness of power. In Canetti's own words, it is an attempt 'to find the weak spot of power' and, ultimately, an invitation to recognise and explore the endless richness of human transformations. Elias Canetti and Social Theory argues that the alleged anti-modernism of Canetti actually makes him more contemporary than many contemporary social-political thinkers. It deals with key concepts within socio-political theory including: commands, increase, resistance, and commonality. Each of these ideas is connected with real, lived social realities making this book a compelling argument for Canetti's crucial relevance today.