The Norms of Answerability: Social Theory Between Bakhtin and Habermas

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State University of New York Press, Feb 1, 2012 - Social Science - 272 pages
Greg M. Nielsen brings Mikhail Bakhtin's ethics and aesthetics into a dialogue with social theory that responds to the sense of ambivalence and uncertainty at the core of modern societies. Nielsen situates a social theory between Bakhtin's norms of answerability and Jürgen Habermas's sociology, ethics, and discourse theory of democracy in a way that emphasizes the creative dimension in social action without reducing explanation to the emotional and volitional impulse of the individual or collective actor. Some of the classical sources that support this mediated position are traced to Alexander Vvedenskij's and Georg Simmel's critiques of Kant's ethics, Hermann Cohen's philosophy of fellowship, and Max Weber's and George Herbert Mead's theories of action. In the shift from Bakhtin's theory of interpersonal relations to a dialogic theory of societal events that defends the bold claim that law and politics should not be completely separated from the specificity of ethical and cultural communities, a study of citizenship and national identity is developed.
 

Contents

Theory on the Borders of Sociology
1
1 DIVERSITY AND TRANSCULTURAL ETHICS
23
2 COMMUNICATIVE ACTION OR DIALOGUE?
49
3 THE WORLD OF OTHERS WORDS
67
4 ON THE SOURCES OF YOUNG BAKHTINS ETHICS Kant Vvedenskij Simmel Cohen
89
5 ACTION AND EROS KantWeberBakhtin
109
6 REFLEXIVE SUBJECTIVITY MeadBakhtin
125
7 CITIZENSHIP AND NATIONAL IDENTITY
143
8 A DIALOGUE ON THE NATION IN POSTNATIONAL TIMES
167
On Culture and the Political
201
NOTES
209
BIBLIOGRAPHY
225
INDEX
241
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About the author (2012)

Greg M. Nielsen is Associate Professor of Sociology at Concordia University and Adjunct Professor in the Graduate Programme in Social and Political Thought at York University. He is also the author of Le Canada de Radio-Canada: Sociologie Critique et Dialogisme Culturel.

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