Polity imprint: 1443 books
Sovereignty
The Evolution of an Idea
Language: English
Release Date: April 26, 2013
Sovereignty is at the very centre of the political and legal arrangements of the modern world. The idea originated in the controversies and wars, both religious and political, of 16th and 17th century Europe and since that time it has continued to spread and evolve. Today sovereignty is a global system...
The Crisis of the European Union
A Response
Language: English
Release Date: March 3, 2014
Translated by Ciaran Cronin.
In the midst of the current crisis that is threatening to derail the historical project of European unification, Jürgen Habermas has been one of the most perceptive critics of the ineffectual and evasive responses to the global financial crisis, especially by the...
Controlling Crime, Controlling Society
Thinking about Crime in Europe and America
Language: English
Release Date: May 2, 2013
How did anxieties about crime and deviance emerge in the modern world, first in Europe and then in America? How did they come to occupy centre-stage in the ongoing drama played out in public discourse? And how have theories of crime and deviance related to the actual practices of social control and...
The Theory of Communicative Action
Reason and the Rationalization of Society, Volume 1
Language: English
Release Date: October 7, 2015
Here, for the first time in English, is volume one of Jurgen Habermas's long-awaited magnum opus: The Theory of Communicative Action. This pathbreaking work is guided by three interrelated concerns: (1) to develop a concept of communicative rationality that is no longer tied to the subjective and...
A Social History of Knowledge II
From the Encyclopaedia to Wikipedia
Language: English
Release Date: April 17, 2013
Peter Burke follows up his magisterial Social History of Knowledge, picking up where the first volume left off around 1750 at the publication of the French Encyclopédie and following the story through to Wikipedia. Like the previous volume, it offers a social history (or a retrospective sociology...
A Social History of the Media
From Gutenberg to the Internet
Language: English
Release Date: July 26, 2018
Written by two leading social and cultural historians, the first two editions of A Social History of the Media became classic textbooks, providing a masterful overview of communication media and of the social and cultural contexts within which they emerged and evolved over time.
This third...
The French Historical Revolution
The Annales School 1929 - 2014
Language: English
Release Date: January 20, 2015
This book provides a critical history of the movement associated with the journal Annales, from its foundation in 1929 to the present. This movement has been the single most important force in the development of what is sometimes called ‘the new history’.
Renowned cultural historian, Peter...
The Power of Images
Siena, 1338
Language: English
Release Date: May 4, 2018
Where can the danger be lurking? Two soldiers are huddled together, one gazing up at the sky, the other darting a sideward glance. They derive a tacit reassurance from their weapons, but they are both in their different ways alone and scared. They were painted by Ambrogio Lorenzetti in the Palazzo...
Lectures on Negative Dialectics
Fragments of a Lecture Course 1965/1966
Language: English
Release Date: November 5, 2014
This volume comprises one of the key lecture courses leading up to the publication in 1966 of Adorno's major work, Negative Dialectics. These lectures focus on developing the concepts critical to the introductory section of that book. They show Adorno as an embattled philosopher defining his own methodology...
by Theodor W. Adorno
Language: English
Release Date: November 10, 2017
Language: English
Release Date: November 10, 2017
This volume of lectures on aesthetics, given by Adorno in the winter semester of 1958–9, formed the foundation for his later Aesthetic Theory, widely regarded as one of his greatest works.
The lectures cover a wide range of topics, from an intense analysis of the work of Georg Lukács to...
Letters to his Parents
1939-1951
Language: English
Release Date: October 17, 2014
'My dears: this is but a brief note to welcome you to the new world, where you are now no longer all too far away from us. ‘ So begins Adorno’s letter to his parents in May 1939, welcoming them to Cuba where they had just arrived after fleeing from Nazi Germany at the last minute. At the end of...
Metaphysics
Concept and Problems
Language: English
Release Date: December 10, 2014
This volume makes available in English for the first time Adorno's lectures on metaphysics. It provides a unique introduction not only to metaphysics but also to Adorno's own intellectual standpoint, as developed in his major work Negative Dialectics.
Metaphysics for Adorno is defined by a...
History and Freedom
Lectures 1964-1965
Language: English
Release Date: November 5, 2014
Despite all of humanity's failures, futile efforts and wrong turnings in the past, Adorno did not let himself be persuaded that we are doomed to suffer a bleak future for ever. One of the factors that prevented him from identifying a definitive plan for the future course of history was his feelings...
by
Language: English
Release Date: October 16, 2014
Language: English
Release Date: October 16, 2014
Fleeing the Nazis, Theodor W. Adorno lived in New York City as a refugee from 1938 until 1941. During these years, he was intensively involved in a study of how the recently developed techniques for the nation-wide transmission of music over radio were transforming the perception of music itself....