Best Social Theory Quotes | Short & Famous Sayings

“Bullshit jobs proliferate today in large part because of the peculiar nature of managerial feudalism that has come to dominate wealthy economiesーbut to an increasing degree, all economies. They cause misery because human happiness is always caught up in a sense of having effects on the world; a feeling which most people, when they speak of their work, express through a language of social value. Yet at the same time they are aware that the greater the social value produced by a job, the less one is likely to be paid to do it.”

Jobs Work Economics Social Theory Social Value

Book:Bullshit Jobs: A Theory

Source: Bullshit Jobs: A Theory

“Our standard of progress was conceived for a different era with different problems. Our statistics no longer capture the shape of our economy. And this has consequences. Every era needs its own figures. In the eighteenth century, they concerned the size of the harvest. In the nineteenth century, the radius of the rail network, the number of factories, and the volume of coal mining. And in the twentieth century, industrial mass production within the boundaries of the nation-state. But today it's no longer possible to express our prosperity in simple dollars, pounds, or euros. From healthcare to education, from journalism to finance, we're all still fixated on 'efficiency' and 'gains,' as though society were nothing but one big production line. But it's precisely in a service-based economy that simple quantitative targets fail... It's time for a new set of figures.”

Economy Society Gdp Gross Domestic Product Social Theory

Book:Utopia for Realists: How We Can Build the Ideal World

Source: Utopia for Realists: How We Can Build the Ideal World

“European women's "sexual fear" appears to arise in special circumstances of unequal power structures at times of particular political pressure: when the dominant power group perceives itself as threatened and vulnerable. Protecting the virtue of white women was the pretext for instituting draconian measures against indigenous populations [...] the actual level of rape and sexual assault bore no relation to the hysteria that the subject aroused.”

History Psychology Feminism Sociology Race Relations Social Theory Gender Studies History Of Ideas

Book:Beyond the Pale: White Women, Racism, and History

Source: Beyond the Pale: White Women, Racism, and History

“Sociology suffers from a certain problem: any social knowledge it produces gets fed back into the system, which is thereby changed. This means that sociology is always describing the social field the way it was before sociology described it.”

Sociology Social Theory Metamodernism Reflexivity

Book:Metamodernism: The Future of Theory

Source: Metamodernism: The Future of Theory

“The widely mis-interpreted 1998 'meltdown' of East Asia was a financial symptom of the renewed reality: In fact, it was the first round the world recession again to begin in East Asia and spread from there to the West, instead of vice versa. That marked the beginnings of the return back 360 degrees around the world of the world economic center to Asia where it had always been before those two eighty-year period of temporary Western ascendance. The stock market crash in Hong Kong and the devaluation of the Thai baht and the Indonesian rupia took only 80 seconds to make themselves felt in the London City and on New York's Wall Street. How much of a cultural lag do we still need for popular perception and social theory to catch up with global reality?”

Indonesia Thailand Wall Street East Asia Social Theory London City Global Economic Crisis Popular Perception

Author:André Gunder Frank

“Violence is a social and political problem, not just a biological and psychological one. Nonetheless, the phenomena we call ‘social’ and ‘political’ are not external happenings that mysteriously affect human affairs… they are shared understandings among individuals at a given time and place.”

Philosophy Science Politics Psychology Violence Society Human Nature Sociology Evolutionary Psychology Social Theory

Book:The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature

Source: The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature

“Marxism is the science of the laws governing the development of nature and society, the science of the revolution of the oppressed and exploited masses, the science of the victory of socialism in all countries, the science of building communist society.”

Activism Socialism Communism Political Science Woke Social Theory

Author:Joseph V. Stalin

“Like all social theories, internationalism must seek its basis in the economic and technical fields; here are to be found the most profound and the most decisive factors in the development of society.”

Found Social Economic Fields Theory Development Bases Profound Factors Internationalism Social Theory Development Of Society

Author:Christian Lous Lange

“Universities are an example of organizations dominated wholly by intellectuals; yet, outside pure science, they have not been an optimal milieu for the unfolding of creative talents. In neither art, music, literature, technology and social theory, nor planning have the Universities figured as originators or as seedbeds of new talents and energies.”

Art Literature Energy Social Technology Creative Talent Example Theory Pure Organization University Planning Unfolding Optimal Art Music Milieu New Talent Social Theory

Author:Eric Hoffer

“The economic and social theories used by those who take part in the social struggle ought to be judged not by their objective value but primarily for their effectiveness in arousing emotions. The scientific refutation of them which can be made is useless, however correct it may be objectively.”

May Made Used Values Social Emotion Struggle Economic Theory Ought Objectives Useless Judged Effectiveness Refutation Social Theory

Book:Manual of political economy

Source: Manual of political economy

“Such abstraction which refuses to accept the given universe of facts as the final context of validation, such "transcending" analysis of the facts in the light of their arrested and denied possibilities, pertains to the very structure of social theory.”

Facts Light Universe Given Social Accepting Possibility Theory Structure Finals Refuse Analysis Denied Abstraction Arrested Validation Transcending Social Theory

Book:One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society

Source: One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society

“The judgment that human life is worth living, or rather can and ought to be made worth living, ... underlies all intellectual effort; it is the a priori of social theory, and its rejection (which is perfectly logical) rejects theory itself.”

Humans Made Life Is Social Effort Theory Ought Judgment Intellectual Human Life Rejection Rejects Logical Worth Living Life Is Worth Living Social Theory

Book:One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society

Source: One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society

“We supported the cooperative movement among farmers. The movement was still young and stubbornly opposed to the commercial distributors. I believed it to be one of the most helpful undertakings, for according to my social theories any organization run by citizens for their own welfare is preferable to the same action by the government.”

“Change the instruments and you will change the entire social theory that goes with them”

Social Theory Instruments Social Theory

Author:Bruno Latour

“While the poet entertains he continues to search for eternal truths, for the essence of being. In his own fashion he tries to solve the riddle of time and change, to find an answer to suffering, to reveal love in the very abyss of cruelty and injustice. Strange as these words may sound I often play with the idea that when all the social theories collapse and wars and revolutions leave humanity in utter gloom, the poet--whom Plato banned from his Republic--may rise up to save us all.”

Source: Aspects of I.B. Singer

“Since the early days, [the church] has thrown itself violently against every effort to liberate the body and mind of man. It has been, at all times and everywhere, the habitual and incorrigible defender of bad governments, bad laws, bad social theories, bad institutions. It was, for centuries, an apologist for slavery, as it was an apologist for the divine right of kings.”

“Finding Mecca in America weaves social theory and concrete ethnography into a significant contribution on Muslims in the United States, illuminating broader questions about the integration of minority and immigrant groups along the way. This is an important work and a joy to read.”

“The logic of all this seems to be that it is all right for young people in a democracy to learn about any civilization or social theory that is not dangerous, but that they should remain entirely ignorant of any civilization or social theory that might be dangerous on the ground that what you don't know can't hurt you ... a complete denial of the democratic principle that the general diffusion of knowledge and learning through the community is essential to the preservation of free government.”

Source: Freedom and Responsibility in the American Way of Life

“Widely dispersed knowledge concerning the important role of basic cooperative processes among living beings may lead to the acceptance of cooperation as a guiding principle both in social theory and as a basis for human behavior. Such a development when it occurs will alter the course of human history.”

“If you look at a lot of traditional societies, they're all organized along what we might call anarchist guidelines, but it's not like the Zapatistas were reading European social theory.”

Ifs Looks Might Reading Social Theory Traditional Organized Anarchist Guidelines Social Theory

Author:Rebecca Solnit

“Despite long-standing claims by elites that Blacks, women, Latinos, and other similarly derogated groups in the United States remain incapable of producing the type of interpretive, analytical thought that is labeled theory in the West, powerful knowledges of resistance that toppled former social structures of social inequality repudiate this view. Members of these groups do in fact theorize, and our critical social theory has been central to our political empowerment and search for justice.”

Source: Fighting Words: Black Women and the Search for Justice

“The only debatable issue, it seems to me, is whether it is more ridiculous to turn to experts in social theory for general well-confirmed propositions, or to the specialists in the great religions and philosophical systems for insights into fundamental human values.”

Humans Wells Seems Values Turns Social Issues Theory Philosophical Fundamentals Insight Ridiculous Experts Propositions Specialists Human Values Social Theory

Book:The Chomsky Reader

Source: The Chomsky Reader

“To do evil a human being must first of all believe that what he's doing is good... Ideology - that is what gives devildoing its long-sought justification and gives the evildoer the necessary steadfastness and determination. That is the social theory which helps to make his acts seem good instead of bad in his own and others' eyes, so that he won't hear reproaches and curses but will receive praise and honors.”

“Most institutions demand unqualified faith; but the institution of science makes skepticism a virtue.”

Inspirational Science Faith Belief Virtue Demand Scientist Institutions Skepticism Disbelief Unqualified Social Theory

Book:The Sociology of Science: Theoretical and Empirical Investigations

Source: The Sociology of Science: Theoretical and Empirical Investigations

“I would say that, intellectually, Catholicism had no more impact on me than did social theory.”

Social Theory Catholic Impact Catholicism Social Theory

Author:Paul Farmer

“With such global events looming over us like mountains, nay, like entire mountain ranges, it may seem incongruous and inappropriate to recall that the primary key to our being or non-being resides in each individual human heart, in the heart’s preference for specific good or evil. Yet this remains true even today, and it is, in fact, the most reliable key we have. The social theories that promised so much have demonstrated their bankruptcy, leaving us at a dead end.”

“In restating this basic Christian doctrine, Benedict argues that it is not only for Christians alone. Others may not share the Christian faith in God, but the Christian proclamation that hope comes from within the person- in the realm of faith and conscience - is for them too. It offers an important protection against stifling and occasionally brutal social systems built on false hopes that come from outside the person, founded on political idealogies, economic models and social theories.”

“Writers are greatly respected. The intelligent public is wonderfully patient with them, continues to read them, and endures disappointment after disappointment, waiting to hear from art what it does not hear from theology, philosophy, social theory, and what it cannot hear from pure science. Out of the struggle at the center has come an immense, painful longing for a broader, more flexible, fuller, more coherent, more comprehensive account of what we human beings are, who we are and what this life is for.”

Source: There Is Simply Too Much to Think About: Collected Nonfiction

“The science, the art, the jurisprudence, the chief political and social theories, of the modern world have grown out of Greece and Rome-not by favour of, but in the teeth of, the fundamental teachings of early Christianity, to which science, art, and any serious occupation with the things of this world were alike despicable.”

Source: Collected essays