Jeffrey Alexander
Biographic Data
| ID | 3877911 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Jeffrey Alexander |
| GIVEN NAMES | Jeffrey |
| FAMILY NAME | Alexander |
| SIGNATURE | ALEXANDER J |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Michigan |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-2567-1463 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 30 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 172 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 29 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1984 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2023 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
A Contemporary Introduction to Sociology: Culture and Society in Transition
The influential authors significantly update their popular introductory text that invites students to reflect on their lives in the context of the combustible leap from modern to postmodern life. The authors show how culture is central to understanding many world problems as they challenge readers to confront the problems and possibilities of an era in which the futures of the physical and social environments seem uncertain. As culture rapidly ch…
En defensa de la democracia liberal. La superposición del binomio "acción-reacción" y la politización de la vida social como amenazas a la democracia
El presente artículo aborda la amenaza que para la democracia liberal representa la actual dinámica de acción-reacción [frontlash-backlash] en un contexto de fuerte politización de la vida social y desbordamiento de la política institucional. La dialéctica acción-reacción es consustancial al proceso democrático, pero el protagonismo que han cobrado en este nuevo milenio los conflictos en torno a la identidad colectiva, las formas expresivas binar…
Theoretical Logic in Sociology
This four volume work, originally published in the 1980s and out of print for some years, represents a major attempt to redirect the course of contemporary sociological thought. Jeffrey Alexander analyses the most general and fundamental elements of sociological thinking about action and order and their ramifications for empirical study. He insists that sociological thought need not choose between voluntary action and social constraint. The four …
The Civil Sphere in Latin America
Social thinkers have criticized Latin American development as incomplete, backward, and anti-modern. This volume demonstrates that, while often deeply compromised and fragmented, Latin American civil spheres have remained resilient, institutionally and culturally, generating new oppositional movements, independent journalism, rebellious intellectuals, electoral power, and critical political parties. In widely different arenas, dissidents have emp…
Contemporary Introduction to Sociology
The first edition of A Contemporary Introduction to Sociology was the first truly new introductory sociology textbook in decades. Written by two leading sociologists at the cutting edge of theory and research, the text reflected the idioms and interests of contemporary American life and global social issues. The second edition continues to invite students to reflect upon their lives within the context of the combustible leap from modern to postmo…
Contemporary Introduction to Sociology: Culture and Society in Transition
Modern Reconstruction of Classical Thought (Theoretical Logic in Sociology): Talcott Parsons
In this volume the author maintains that sociology must learn to combine the insights of both Durkheim and Marx and that it can only do so on the presuppositional ground that Weber set forth. Alexander maintains that the idealist and materialist traditions must be transformed into analytic dimensions of multidimensional and synthetic theory. This volume focusses on the writing of Talcott Parsons, the only modern thinker who can be considered a tr…
Classical Attempt at Theoretical Synthesis (Theoretical Logic in Sociology): Max Weber
The limits of one-dimensional theory are strikingly revealed in the schools that the founders of the major sociological traditions established. In this volume Max Weber is presented as the theorist who laid out new starting points and the author considers his work as a response, in part, to the idealist tradition which (in Volume 2), he maintains that Durkheim represents. As Weber was less able to avoid ambiguity, the author examines the weakness…
The Antinomies of Classical Thought: Marx and Durkheim (Theoretical Logic in Sociology)
This volume challenges prevailing understanding of the two great founders of sociological thought. In a detailed and systematic way the author demonstrates how Marx and Durkheim gradually developed the fundamental frameworks for sociological materialism and idealism. While most recent interpreters of Marx have placed alienation and subjectivity at the centre of his work, Professor Alexander suggests that it was the later Marx's very emphasis on a…
Positivism, Presupposition and Current Controversies (Theoretical Logic in Sociology)
This volume begins by challenging the bases of the recent scientization of sociology. Then it challenges some of the ambitious claims of recent theoretical debate. The author not only reinterprets the most important classical and modern sociological theories but extracts from the debates the elements of a more satisfactory, inclusive approach to these general theoretical points
Social Science as Reading and Performance: A Cultural-Sociological Understanding of Epistemology
In the age of the 'return to the empirical' in which the theoretical disputes of an earlier era seem to have fallen silent, we seek to excavate the intellectual conditions for reviving theoretical debate, for it is upon this recovery that deeper understanding of the nature and purpose of empirical social science depends. We argue against the all too frequent turn to ontology, whereby critical realists have sought an epistemological guarantor of s…
The Strong Program in Cultural Theory: Elements of a Structural Hermeneutics
Team leadership and patient outcomes in US psychiatric treatment settings
Cultural Trauma and Collective Identity
The paper deals with the theory of collective trauma, which is built within the framework of the “strong program” in cultural sociology by Jeffrey Alexander. The theory highlights the importance of the trauma in the shaping of contemporary Western collective identities. The central message of the theory is the avoidance of the “naturalism fallacy”, i.e. of such a vision of the trauma, which doesn’t differ seriously the fact of collective percepti…
The New Social Theory Reader
Mainstream and Critical Social Theory: Collection: Classical, Modern and Contemporary
Theorizing the Good Society: Hermeneutic, Normative and Empirical Discourses
This paper examines two fundamentally different ways that recent philosophical thinkers have theorized the good society and demonstrates that each tradition has engaged in revisionist efforts that brings it toward its rival tradition. Rawls and Habermas represent the of this contemporary effort, establishing neo-Kantian positions in the sixties and seventies that represent an initial effort at theorizing the good society in terms of an historical…
The Effects of Managed Care on Physician and Clinical Integration in Hospitals
OBJECTIVE: To empirically estimate the effects that managed care has had on physician and clinical integration in urban hospitals. DATA SOURCES: The 1993 Hospital-Physician Relationship Survey conducted for the Prospective Payment Assessment Commission, augmented with data from a variety of secondary sources. The entire 1,495 responding hospitals were used to construct measures of integration; 591 responding hospitals in urban areas were used for…
Modernizmas, anti-, post- ir neomodernizmas: Socialiniųteorijų Pastangos Suprasti Mūsų Laikų 'Naująjį Pasaulį
Translation: Alexander, Jeffrey C. 1994. 'Modern, Anti, Post, and Neo: How Social Theories Have Tried to Understand the 'New World' of 'Our Time'. Zeitschrift für Soziologie. 23 (3): 167-197. (Editor's note: the issue presents the first part of the article
The Classical Tradition in Sociology: The European Tradition
The Classical Tradition in Sociology: The American Tradition
Fin de Siecle Social Theory: Relativism, Reduction, and the Problem of Reason
In four interwoven studies, the book identifies the central dilemma that provokes contemporary social theory, and proposes a new way to resolve it. The dream of reason that marked the previous de siecle foundered in the face of the cataclysms of the 20th century, when war, revolution and totalitarianism came to be seen as themselves products of In response, there emerged the profound scepticism about rationality that has so starkly defined the fi…
Honneth’s New Critical Theory of Recognition
Axel Honneth’s The Struggle for Recognition: The Moral Grammar of Social Conflicts represents at once an intriguing and revealing turn in the post-Habermasian tradition of the Frankfurt School, an important and original development in critical social theory more generally understood, and an ambitious and stimulating, if still inadequate
Modern, Anti, Post, Neo
To give it its full subtitle: ‘How Intellectuals Have Coded, Narrated, and Explained the “New World of Our Time”’. An earlier version of this text appeared in the Zeitschrift für Soziologie, vol. 23, no. 2, 1994. A more elaborate variant is forthcoming in my book Fin-de-Siècle Social Theory
Organizational Demography and Turnover: An Examination of Multiform and Nonlinear Heterogeneity
This paper advances the study of organizational demography and turnover by testing propositions derived from Blau's theory of heterogeneity and social structure. In a sample of 398 U.S. community hospitals, voluntary nursing turnover was examined in relation to three demographic dimensions-educational preparation, tenure and employment status-among nurse staff. The form of relationships between turnover and heterogeneity was specified to test whe…
Theoretical Logic in Sociology
This four volume work, originally published in the 1980s and out of print for some years, represents a major attempt to redirect the course of contemporary sociological thought. Jeffrey Alexander analyses the most general and fundamental elements of sociological thinking about action and order and their ramifications for empirical study. He insists that sociological thought need not choose between voluntary action and social constraint. The four …
Social Science as Reading and Performance: A Cultural-Sociological Understanding of Epistemology
In the age of the 'return to the empirical' in which the theoretical disputes of an earlier era seem to have fallen silent, we seek to excavate the intellectual conditions for reviving theoretical debate, for it is upon this recovery that deeper understanding of the nature and purpose of empirical social science depends. We argue against the all too frequent turn to ontology, whereby critical realists have sought an epistemological guarantor of s…
Positivism, Presupposition and Current Controversies (Theoretical Logic in Sociology)
This volume begins by challenging the bases of the recent scientization of sociology. Then it challenges some of the ambitious claims of recent theoretical debate. The author not only reinterprets the most important classical and modern sociological theories but extracts from the debates the elements of a more satisfactory, inclusive approach to these general theoretical points
Theorizing the Good Society: Hermeneutic, Normative and Empirical Discourses
This paper examines two fundamentally different ways that recent philosophical thinkers have theorized the good society and demonstrates that each tradition has engaged in revisionist efforts that brings it toward its rival tradition. Rawls and Habermas represent the of this contemporary effort, establishing neo-Kantian positions in the sixties and seventies that represent an initial effort at theorizing the good society in terms of an historical…
Team leadership and patient outcomes in US psychiatric treatment settings
The Antinomies of Classical Thought: Marx and Durkheim (Theoretical Logic in Sociology)
This volume challenges prevailing understanding of the two great founders of sociological thought. In a detailed and systematic way the author demonstrates how Marx and Durkheim gradually developed the fundamental frameworks for sociological materialism and idealism. While most recent interpreters of Marx have placed alienation and subjectivity at the centre of his work, Professor Alexander suggests that it was the later Marx's very emphasis on a…
The Classical Tradition in Sociology: The American Tradition
Organizational Demography and Turnover: An Examination of Multiform and Nonlinear Heterogeneity
This paper advances the study of organizational demography and turnover by testing propositions derived from Blau's theory of heterogeneity and social structure. In a sample of 398 U.S. community hospitals, voluntary nursing turnover was examined in relation to three demographic dimensions-educational preparation, tenure and employment status-among nurse staff. The form of relationships between turnover and heterogeneity was specified to test whe…
The Classical Tradition in Sociology: The European Tradition
The organizational foundations of nursing roles: An empirical assessment
Classical Attempt at Theoretical Synthesis (Theoretical Logic in Sociology): Max Weber
The limits of one-dimensional theory are strikingly revealed in the schools that the founders of the major sociological traditions established. In this volume Max Weber is presented as the theorist who laid out new starting points and the author considers his work as a response, in part, to the idealist tradition which (in Volume 2), he maintains that Durkheim represents. As Weber was less able to avoid ambiguity, the author examines the weakness…
Against Historicism/ for Theory: A Reply to Levine
While Levine's reply to my essay demonstrates the broad grounding in historical considerations that we have come to expect both from him and his students, it also betrays a reluctance to grapple with the distinctively theoretical issues which were that essay's raison d'etre. To demonstrate this failure, and to make the original theoretical points more pointed still, I will discuss briefly the two central issues that Levine raises
Sociology at Ucla
The organizational foundations of nursing roles: An empirical assessment
Sociology at Ucla
Against Historicism/ for Theory: A Reply to Levine
While Levine's reply to my essay demonstrates the broad grounding in historical considerations that we have come to expect both from him and his students, it also betrays a reluctance to grapple with the distinctively theoretical issues which were that essay's raison d'etre. To demonstrate this failure, and to make the original theoretical points more pointed still, I will discuss briefly the two central issues that Levine raises
Durkheimian Sociology: Cultural Studies
Modern, Anti, Post, Neo
To give it its full subtitle: ‘How Intellectuals Have Coded, Narrated, and Explained the “New World of Our Time”’. An earlier version of this text appeared in the Zeitschrift für Soziologie, vol. 23, no. 2, 1994. A more elaborate variant is forthcoming in my book Fin-de-Siècle Social Theory
Organizational Demography and Turnover: An Examination of Multiform and Nonlinear Heterogeneity
This paper advances the study of organizational demography and turnover by testing propositions derived from Blau's theory of heterogeneity and social structure. In a sample of 398 U.S. community hospitals, voluntary nursing turnover was examined in relation to three demographic dimensions-educational preparation, tenure and employment status-among nurse staff. The form of relationships between turnover and heterogeneity was specified to test whe…
Does the Hospital Board Need a Doctor: The Influence of Physician Board Participation on Hospital Financial Performance
In this study, the authors attempted to determine if physician board participation enhances or impairs the operational performance of a hospital. Two theories—managerialism and agency theory—are compared to determine if participation on the hospital board by inside (i.e., medical staff) and outside physicians provides informational advantages (managerialism) or poses the threat for opportunism (agency theory). Using hospital operating margin to m…
Honneth’s New Critical Theory of Recognition
Axel Honneth’s The Struggle for Recognition: The Moral Grammar of Social Conflicts represents at once an intriguing and revealing turn in the post-Habermasian tradition of the Frankfurt School, an important and original development in critical social theory more generally understood, and an ambitious and stimulating, if still inadequate
The Classical Tradition in Sociology: The European Tradition
The Classical Tradition in Sociology: The American Tradition
Fin de Siecle Social Theory: Relativism, Reduction, and the Problem of Reason
In four interwoven studies, the book identifies the central dilemma that provokes contemporary social theory, and proposes a new way to resolve it. The dream of reason that marked the previous de siecle foundered in the face of the cataclysms of the 20th century, when war, revolution and totalitarianism came to be seen as themselves products of In response, there emerged the profound scepticism about rationality that has so starkly defined the fi…
The Effects of Managed Care on Physician and Clinical Integration in Hospitals
OBJECTIVE: To empirically estimate the effects that managed care has had on physician and clinical integration in urban hospitals. DATA SOURCES: The 1993 Hospital-Physician Relationship Survey conducted for the Prospective Payment Assessment Commission, augmented with data from a variety of secondary sources. The entire 1,495 responding hospitals were used to construct measures of integration; 591 responding hospitals in urban areas were used for…
Modernizmas, anti-, post- ir neomodernizmas: Socialiniųteorijų Pastangos Suprasti Mūsų Laikų 'Naująjį Pasaulį
Translation: Alexander, Jeffrey C. 1994. 'Modern, Anti, Post, and Neo: How Social Theories Have Tried to Understand the 'New World' of 'Our Time'. Zeitschrift für Soziologie. 23 (3): 167-197. (Editor's note: the issue presents the first part of the article
Theorizing the Good Society: Hermeneutic, Normative and Empirical Discourses
This paper examines two fundamentally different ways that recent philosophical thinkers have theorized the good society and demonstrates that each tradition has engaged in revisionist efforts that brings it toward its rival tradition. Rawls and Habermas represent the of this contemporary effort, establishing neo-Kantian positions in the sixties and seventies that represent an initial effort at theorizing the good society in terms of an historical…
Mainstream and Critical Social Theory: Collection: Classical, Modern and Contemporary
The New Social Theory Reader
Cultural Trauma and Collective Identity
The paper deals with the theory of collective trauma, which is built within the framework of the “strong program” in cultural sociology by Jeffrey Alexander. The theory highlights the importance of the trauma in the shaping of contemporary Western collective identities. The central message of the theory is the avoidance of the “naturalism fallacy”, i.e. of such a vision of the trauma, which doesn’t differ seriously the fact of collective percepti…
The Strong Program in Cultural Theory: Elements of a Structural Hermeneutics
Team leadership and patient outcomes in US psychiatric treatment settings
Social Science as Reading and Performance: A Cultural-Sociological Understanding of Epistemology
In the age of the 'return to the empirical' in which the theoretical disputes of an earlier era seem to have fallen silent, we seek to excavate the intellectual conditions for reviving theoretical debate, for it is upon this recovery that deeper understanding of the nature and purpose of empirical social science depends. We argue against the all too frequent turn to ontology, whereby critical realists have sought an epistemological guarantor of s…
Modern Reconstruction of Classical Thought (Theoretical Logic in Sociology): Talcott Parsons
In this volume the author maintains that sociology must learn to combine the insights of both Durkheim and Marx and that it can only do so on the presuppositional ground that Weber set forth. Alexander maintains that the idealist and materialist traditions must be transformed into analytic dimensions of multidimensional and synthetic theory. This volume focusses on the writing of Talcott Parsons, the only modern thinker who can be considered a tr…
Classical Attempt at Theoretical Synthesis (Theoretical Logic in Sociology): Max Weber
The limits of one-dimensional theory are strikingly revealed in the schools that the founders of the major sociological traditions established. In this volume Max Weber is presented as the theorist who laid out new starting points and the author considers his work as a response, in part, to the idealist tradition which (in Volume 2), he maintains that Durkheim represents. As Weber was less able to avoid ambiguity, the author examines the weakness…
The Antinomies of Classical Thought: Marx and Durkheim (Theoretical Logic in Sociology)
This volume challenges prevailing understanding of the two great founders of sociological thought. In a detailed and systematic way the author demonstrates how Marx and Durkheim gradually developed the fundamental frameworks for sociological materialism and idealism. While most recent interpreters of Marx have placed alienation and subjectivity at the centre of his work, Professor Alexander suggests that it was the later Marx's very emphasis on a…
Positivism, Presupposition and Current Controversies (Theoretical Logic in Sociology)
This volume begins by challenging the bases of the recent scientization of sociology. Then it challenges some of the ambitious claims of recent theoretical debate. The author not only reinterprets the most important classical and modern sociological theories but extracts from the debates the elements of a more satisfactory, inclusive approach to these general theoretical points
Contemporary Introduction to Sociology
The first edition of A Contemporary Introduction to Sociology was the first truly new introductory sociology textbook in decades. Written by two leading sociologists at the cutting edge of theory and research, the text reflected the idioms and interests of contemporary American life and global social issues. The second edition continues to invite students to reflect upon their lives within the context of the combustible leap from modern to postmo…
Sociology (22 works) · Epistemology (18 works) · Philosophy (17 works) · Contemporary Sociological Theory and Practice (13 works) · Philosophy (10 works) · Psychology (10 works) · Social science (9 works) · Political science (7 works) · Sociology (7 works) · Critical Theory and Philosophy (6 works)