ABSTRACT

Providing interpretations and drawing critically from classical and modern social theory, post-structuralism, and psychoanalytic theory, this original study offers an alternative way of thinking about the social and the individual. It offers critical analyses of, among others, Marx, Giddens, Bourdieu, Derrida, Laclau and Mouffe, Castoriadis, Freud and modern psychoanalytic theorists, and considers their roles in advancing our present-day conceptualization of the social and the self. In theorizing that behaviour is both socially determined and autonomous, it avoids the impasses of either individualist or structuralist approaches.

chapter |4 pages

Introduction

part I|64 pages

Posing the Questions

chapter 1|16 pages

Overture: A Return to Marx

chapter 2|24 pages

Positivism and Hermeneutics

chapter 3|22 pages

Objectivism and Rationalism

part II|53 pages

Structuration and Indeterminacy

chapter 4|11 pages

Giddens's Theory of Structuration

chapter 5|11 pages

Bourdieu's Theory of Practice

chapter 6|7 pages

Derrida and ‘Différance’

part III|85 pages

Psyche and Society

chapter 9|13 pages

The Specificity of the Unconscious

chapter 10|28 pages

The Structuring of the Psyche

chapter 11|21 pages

The Social Individual

chapter 12|21 pages

Society and Psyche