Tad Skotnicki
Biographic Data
| ID | 102425 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Tad Skotnicki |
| GIVEN NAMES | Tad |
| FAMILY NAME | Skotnicki |
| SIGNATURE | SKOTNICKI T |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of North Carolina at Greensboro |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-8050-027X |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 17 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 47 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 17 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2015 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Capitalist Totality and Developmental Explanation
This article proposes that social scientists have not appreciated how argumentative practices—the way we make claims with the aid of concepts and distinctions—can assume an invariant form. This invariant form raises difficulties for arguments that appeal to totality and other broadly critical notions. To illustrate and critique this state of affairs, the article sketches this invariant form and contrasts it with a form of argument involving appea…
Two ways of arguing with culture
Arguing with culture—that is, making claims with and about culture—seems to require one to assert something about what culture does. But I propose that such a requirement unduly limits sociologists to an invariant, positivist form of argument. By examining claims making with and about culture in terms of mereology, or part-whole relations, I distinguish two modes of arguing with culture: fragmentary and constitutive. The former revolves around cl…
Meaning and the Commodity Form
Social scientists often treat the commodity form and commodity fetishism as concepts that reduce meaning to an economic base. The paper claims that this view is misguided and, furthermore, that these concepts enable us to formulate a dynamic approach to meaning in economic life. Building on recent discussions of commodity fetishism, I outline this dynamic approach to meaning and the commodity form. This approach demands attention to three issues:…
Commodities, Commodity Fetishism, and Commodification
Commodities seem to be trivial, obvious things; trivial and obvious in that they are everywhere and generic. They seem to describe something that has always existed in human civilizations. Yet commodities and the process of commodification also seem to have become particularly relevant to social life over the last several centuries. This entry traces the lineage and prospects for the study of commodities and commodification, with special attentio…
Modern Dramas: Transcendence and Immanence in Power in Modernity
Purity Politics? Moral Sensibilities and the Commodity Form
This paper provides a comparative historical account of a contemporary phenomenon: the tendency to equate “ethical” goods with aesthetic quality. Studies of moral markets suggest that this equation of ethics and quality would reveal a process whereby these pre-existing moral sensibilities are conveyed through and fought over in the market. Yet this paper argues that we should also examine how markets forms can condition moral sensibilities in the…
Strategizing against Sweatshops: The Global Economy, Student Activism, and Worker Empowerment
Toward a theory of alienation: Futurelessness in Financial Capitalism
Portfolio Society: On the Capitalist Mode of Prediction
Commodity Fetishism as Semblance
With the aid of Hannah Arendt's distinction between authentic and inauthentic semblances, this article reconstructs Karl Marx's notion of commodity fetishism as a phenomenological concept. It reveals two distinct interpretive moments in the fetish: the interpretation of goods as anonymous in exchange and the interpretation of commodity-exchange as natural. As authentic semblances, interpretations in commodity-exchange cannot be 'seen through' or …
Sociology towards death: Heidegger, time and social theory
In this article, we draw on the existential phenomenology of Martin Heidegger to propose an approach to sociology that takes human experiences of finitude and possibility as crucial topics of investigation. A concern with death is not absent in sociological thought. To the contrary, Durkheim's Suicide grounds a sociological research tradition into death and dying. Yet Heidegger's existentialism renders our finitude - not just death - a matter of …
Unseen suffering: Slow Violence and the Phenomenological Structure of Social Problems
Protest Politics in the Marketplace: Consumer Activism in the Corporate Age
Nothing conjures the anxieties of affluence like the politics of consumption. Does consumer politics augur the collapse of democratic engagement and public life? Or does it promise to renew democratic participation, rights, and privileges? The scholarship on politics and consumption has tacked between these poles, with every lament begetting an apologia and vice versa. In Protest Politics in the Marketplace, political scientist Caroline Heldman t…
Commodity Fetishism and Consumer Senses: Turn-of-the-Twentieth-Century Consumer Activism in the United States and England
At the turn of the twentieth century, the National Consumers' League, the Co-operative Wholesale Society, and the Women's Co-operative Guild encouraged people to become ethical consumers. I argue that we can explain their common strategies by invoking commodity fetishism. By casting their consumer activism as a practical response to the fetish of commodities, we explain: 1) activists' use of sensory techniques - both figurative and literal - to c…
That British Sound”: Talk of Nationalness in Global Capitalism
This article proposes the concept of “nationalness” to account for the persistent circulation of national labels as a tool of distinction. We argue that the concept expands on the traditional conception of nation as country of origin to include cultural notions of sensuous and aesthetic qualities that are semiotically tied to national “essence.” Nationalness connects products to nations not only through indexicality but also iconicity. It is made…
Three layers of history in recurrent social movements: The Case of Food Reform
Using the understudied genre of food reform movements for illustration, we advocate greater attention to recurrent social movements. Analysis of these movements calls for combining three levels of historical analysis. One links the incidence and character of mobilization to long-term, large-scale historical changes; the second shows how periods of activism are also animated and shaped by specific historical contexts; and the third tracks legacies…
Agency as an Explanatory Key: Theoretical Issues
In philosophy agency designates the inalienable ability of individuals to make choices about their conduct that are not determined by the environment. In empirical social science, however, agency designates not autonomous free will but the launching of patterned action that surpasses constraints in the setting and that directs the course of institutional change. Many social scientists have limited the explanatory task they take on to show that ag…
Three layers of history in recurrent social movements: The Case of Food Reform
Using the understudied genre of food reform movements for illustration, we advocate greater attention to recurrent social movements. Analysis of these movements calls for combining three levels of historical analysis. One links the incidence and character of mobilization to long-term, large-scale historical changes; the second shows how periods of activism are also animated and shaped by specific historical contexts; and the third tracks legacies…
Commodity Fetishism as Semblance
With the aid of Hannah Arendt's distinction between authentic and inauthentic semblances, this article reconstructs Karl Marx's notion of commodity fetishism as a phenomenological concept. It reveals two distinct interpretive moments in the fetish: the interpretation of goods as anonymous in exchange and the interpretation of commodity-exchange as natural. As authentic semblances, interpretations in commodity-exchange cannot be 'seen through' or …
Sociology towards death: Heidegger, time and social theory
In this article, we draw on the existential phenomenology of Martin Heidegger to propose an approach to sociology that takes human experiences of finitude and possibility as crucial topics of investigation. A concern with death is not absent in sociological thought. To the contrary, Durkheim's Suicide grounds a sociological research tradition into death and dying. Yet Heidegger's existentialism renders our finitude - not just death - a matter of …
Toward a theory of alienation: Futurelessness in Financial Capitalism
Unseen suffering: Slow Violence and the Phenomenological Structure of Social Problems
Strategizing against Sweatshops: The Global Economy, Student Activism, and Worker Empowerment
Meaning and the Commodity Form
Social scientists often treat the commodity form and commodity fetishism as concepts that reduce meaning to an economic base. The paper claims that this view is misguided and, furthermore, that these concepts enable us to formulate a dynamic approach to meaning in economic life. Building on recent discussions of commodity fetishism, I outline this dynamic approach to meaning and the commodity form. This approach demands attention to three issues:…
Commodity Fetishism and Consumer Senses: Turn-of-the-Twentieth-Century Consumer Activism in the United States and England
At the turn of the twentieth century, the National Consumers' League, the Co-operative Wholesale Society, and the Women's Co-operative Guild encouraged people to become ethical consumers. I argue that we can explain their common strategies by invoking commodity fetishism. By casting their consumer activism as a practical response to the fetish of commodities, we explain: 1) activists' use of sensory techniques - both figurative and literal - to c…
That British Sound”: Talk of Nationalness in Global Capitalism
This article proposes the concept of “nationalness” to account for the persistent circulation of national labels as a tool of distinction. We argue that the concept expands on the traditional conception of nation as country of origin to include cultural notions of sensuous and aesthetic qualities that are semiotically tied to national “essence.” Nationalness connects products to nations not only through indexicality but also iconicity. It is made…
Agency as an Explanatory Key: Theoretical Issues
In philosophy agency designates the inalienable ability of individuals to make choices about their conduct that are not determined by the environment. In empirical social science, however, agency designates not autonomous free will but the launching of patterned action that surpasses constraints in the setting and that directs the course of institutional change. Many social scientists have limited the explanatory task they take on to show that ag…
That British Sound”: Talk of Nationalness in Global Capitalism
This article proposes the concept of “nationalness” to account for the persistent circulation of national labels as a tool of distinction. We argue that the concept expands on the traditional conception of nation as country of origin to include cultural notions of sensuous and aesthetic qualities that are semiotically tied to national “essence.” Nationalness connects products to nations not only through indexicality but also iconicity. It is made…
Three layers of history in recurrent social movements: The Case of Food Reform
Using the understudied genre of food reform movements for illustration, we advocate greater attention to recurrent social movements. Analysis of these movements calls for combining three levels of historical analysis. One links the incidence and character of mobilization to long-term, large-scale historical changes; the second shows how periods of activism are also animated and shaped by specific historical contexts; and the third tracks legacies…
Commodity Fetishism and Consumer Senses: Turn-of-the-Twentieth-Century Consumer Activism in the United States and England
At the turn of the twentieth century, the National Consumers' League, the Co-operative Wholesale Society, and the Women's Co-operative Guild encouraged people to become ethical consumers. I argue that we can explain their common strategies by invoking commodity fetishism. By casting their consumer activism as a practical response to the fetish of commodities, we explain: 1) activists' use of sensory techniques - both figurative and literal - to c…
Protest Politics in the Marketplace: Consumer Activism in the Corporate Age
Nothing conjures the anxieties of affluence like the politics of consumption. Does consumer politics augur the collapse of democratic engagement and public life? Or does it promise to renew democratic participation, rights, and privileges? The scholarship on politics and consumption has tacked between these poles, with every lament begetting an apologia and vice versa. In Protest Politics in the Marketplace, political scientist Caroline Heldman t…
Sociology towards death: Heidegger, time and social theory
In this article, we draw on the existential phenomenology of Martin Heidegger to propose an approach to sociology that takes human experiences of finitude and possibility as crucial topics of investigation. A concern with death is not absent in sociological thought. To the contrary, Durkheim's Suicide grounds a sociological research tradition into death and dying. Yet Heidegger's existentialism renders our finitude - not just death - a matter of …
Unseen suffering: Slow Violence and the Phenomenological Structure of Social Problems
Portfolio Society: On the Capitalist Mode of Prediction
Commodity Fetishism as Semblance
With the aid of Hannah Arendt's distinction between authentic and inauthentic semblances, this article reconstructs Karl Marx's notion of commodity fetishism as a phenomenological concept. It reveals two distinct interpretive moments in the fetish: the interpretation of goods as anonymous in exchange and the interpretation of commodity-exchange as natural. As authentic semblances, interpretations in commodity-exchange cannot be 'seen through' or …
Purity Politics? Moral Sensibilities and the Commodity Form
This paper provides a comparative historical account of a contemporary phenomenon: the tendency to equate “ethical” goods with aesthetic quality. Studies of moral markets suggest that this equation of ethics and quality would reveal a process whereby these pre-existing moral sensibilities are conveyed through and fought over in the market. Yet this paper argues that we should also examine how markets forms can condition moral sensibilities in the…
Strategizing against Sweatshops: The Global Economy, Student Activism, and Worker Empowerment
Toward a theory of alienation: Futurelessness in Financial Capitalism
Commodities, Commodity Fetishism, and Commodification
Commodities seem to be trivial, obvious things; trivial and obvious in that they are everywhere and generic. They seem to describe something that has always existed in human civilizations. Yet commodities and the process of commodification also seem to have become particularly relevant to social life over the last several centuries. This entry traces the lineage and prospects for the study of commodities and commodification, with special attentio…
Modern Dramas: Transcendence and Immanence in Power in Modernity
Meaning and the Commodity Form
Social scientists often treat the commodity form and commodity fetishism as concepts that reduce meaning to an economic base. The paper claims that this view is misguided and, furthermore, that these concepts enable us to formulate a dynamic approach to meaning in economic life. Building on recent discussions of commodity fetishism, I outline this dynamic approach to meaning and the commodity form. This approach demands attention to three issues:…
Capitalist Totality and Developmental Explanation
This article proposes that social scientists have not appreciated how argumentative practices—the way we make claims with the aid of concepts and distinctions—can assume an invariant form. This invariant form raises difficulties for arguments that appeal to totality and other broadly critical notions. To illustrate and critique this state of affairs, the article sketches this invariant form and contrasts it with a form of argument involving appea…
Two ways of arguing with culture
Arguing with culture—that is, making claims with and about culture—seems to require one to assert something about what culture does. But I propose that such a requirement unduly limits sociologists to an invariant, positivist form of argument. By examining claims making with and about culture in terms of mereology, or part-whole relations, I distinguish two modes of arguing with culture: fragmentary and constitutive. The former revolves around cl…
Sociology (13 works) · Economics (9 works) · Political science (8 works) · Epistemology (7 works) · Philosophy (6 works) · Commodity (5 works) · Market economy (5 works) · Philosophy (5 works) · Psychology (5 works) · Aesthetics (4 works)