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Instrumental Marxism
Instrumental Marxism, or elite model, is a theory which reasons that policy makers in government and positions of power tend to "share a common business or class background, and that their decisions will reflect their business or class interests". It perceives the role of the state as more personal than impersonal, where actions such as nepotism and favoritism are common among those in power, and as a result of this, the shared backgrounds between the economic elite and the state elite are discernible. The theory argues that due to the high concentration of wealth within the State that the actions of State actors seek to secure and increase their wealth by passing policies that benefit the economically superior class. It is also noted that businessmen-become-politicians who have a say in policy making “are not very likely, all the same, to find much merit in policies which appear to run counter to what they conceive to be in the interests of business.” Instrumental Marxism tends ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pearson Education
Pearson Education is a British-owned education publishing and assessment service to schools and corporations, as well for students directly. Pearson owns educational media brands including Addison–Wesley, Peachpit, Prentice Hall, eCollege, Longman, Scott Foresman, and others. Pearson is part of Pearson plc, which formerly owned the ''Financial Times''. It claims to have been formed in 1840, with the current incarnation of the company created when Pearson plc purchased the education division of Simon & Schuster (including Prentice Hall and Allyn & Bacon) from Viacom and merged it with its own education division, Addison-Wesley Longman, to form Pearson Education. Pearson Education was rebranded to Pearson in 2011 and split into an International and a North American division. Although Pearson generates approximately 60 percent of its sales in North America, it operates in more than 70 countries. Pearson International is headquartered in London, and maintains offices across ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Elite
In political and sociological theory, the elite (french: élite, from la, eligere, to select or to sort out) are a small group of powerful people who hold a disproportionate amount of wealth, privilege, political power, or skill in a group. Defined by the ''Cambridge Dictionary'', the "elite" are "those people or organizations that are considered the best or most powerful compared to others of a similar type." American sociologist C. Wright Mills states that members of the elite accept their fellows' position of importance in society. "As a rule, 'they accept one another, understand one another, marry one another, tend to work, and to think, if not together at least alike'." It is a well-regulated existence where education plays a critical role. Universities in the US Youthful upper-class members attend prominent preparatory schools, which not only open doors to such elite universities as Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and the University of Pennsylvania, but also to the universit ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Eponymous Political Ideologies
An eponym is a person, a place, or a thing after whom or which someone or something is, or is believed to be, named. The adjectives which are derived from the word eponym include ''eponymous'' and ''eponymic''. Usage of the word The term ''eponym'' functions in multiple related ways, all based on an explicit relationship between two named things. A person, place, or thing named after a particular person share an eponymous relationship. In this way, Elizabeth I of England is the eponym of the Elizabethan era. When Henry Ford is referred to as "the ''eponymous'' founder of the Ford Motor Company", his surname "Ford" serves as the eponym. The term also refers to the title character of a fictional work (such as Rocky Balboa of the ''Rocky'' film series), as well as to ''self-titled'' works named after their creators (such as the album ''The Doors'' by the band the Doors). Walt Disney created the eponymous Walt Disney Company, with his name similarly extended to theme parks such as ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Elite Theory
In political science and sociology, elite theory is a theory of the State that seeks to describe and explain power relationships in contemporary society. The theory posits that a small minority, consisting of members of the economic elite and policy-planning networks, holds the most power—and that this power is independent of democratic elections. Through positions in corporations or on corporate boards, and influence over policy-planning networks through the financial support of foundations or positions with think tanks or policy-discussion groups, members of the "elite" exert significant power over corporate and government decisions. The basic characteristics of this theory are that power is concentrated, the elites are unified, the non-elites are diverse and powerless, elites' interests are unified due to common backgrounds and positions and the defining characteristic of power is institutional position. Elite theory opposes pluralism (more than one system of power), a trad ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Classical Marxism
Classical Marxism refers to the economic, philosophical, and sociological theories expounded by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels as contrasted with later developments in Marxism, especially Marxism–Leninism. Karl Marx Karl Marx (5 May 1818, Trier, Germany – 14 March 1883, London) was an immensely influential German philosopher, sociologist, political economist and revolutionary socialist. Marx addressed a wide range of issues, including alienation and exploitation of the worker, the capitalist mode of production and historical materialism, although he is most famous for his analysis of history in terms of class struggles, summed up in the opening line of the introduction to ''The Communist Manifesto'': "The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles". The influence of his ideas, already popular during his life, was given added impetus by the victory of the Russian Bolsheviks in 1917 October Revolution and there are few parts of the wor ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Miliband–Poulantzas Debate
The Miliband–Poulantzas debate was a debate between Marxist theorists Ralph Miliband and Nicos Poulantzas concerning the nature of the state in capitalist societies. Their exchange was published in ''New Left Review'', beginning with Poulantzas's review of Miliband's 1969 work on bourgeois democracies, ''The State in Capitalist Society''. The exchange is typically characterized as a debate between Miliband's instrumentalist model of the capitalist state and Poulantzas' structural position; however, Bob Jessop argues that this account is misleading. Debate In ''The State in Capitalist Society'', Miliband presents his theory of how the state functions to serve capitalist interests. It does so, he claims, because of (1) the social origins of members of the government and (2) the personal ties and influence between members of the government and ruling-class elites. Poulantzas disagrees with Miliband's approach, adopting a structural position. He claims the state is objectively a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ralph Miliband
Ralph Miliband (born Adolphe Miliband; 7 January 1924 – 21 May 1994) was a British sociologist. He has been described as "one of the best known academic Marxists of his generation", in this manner being compared with E. P. Thompson, Eric Hobsbawm and Perry Anderson. Miliband was born in Belgium to working-class Polish Jewish immigrants. He fled to Britain in 1940 with his father, to avoid persecution when Nazi Germany invaded Belgium. Learning to speak English and enrolling at the London School of Economics, he became involved in left-wing politics and made a personal commitment to the cause of socialism at the grave of Karl Marx. After serving in the Royal Navy during the Second World War, he settled in London in 1946 and naturalised as a British subject in 1948. By the 1960s, he was a prominent member of the New Left movement in Britain, which was critical of established socialist governments in the Soviet Union and Central Europe (the Eastern Bloc). He published several b ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sociology
Sociology is a social science that focuses on society, human social behavior, patterns of social relationships, social interaction, and aspects of culture associated with everyday life. It uses various methods of empirical investigation and critical analysis to develop a body of knowledge about social order and social change. While some sociologists conduct research that may be applied directly to social policy and welfare, others focus primarily on refining the theoretical understanding of social processes and phenomenological method. Subject matter can range from micro-level analyses of society (i.e. of individual interaction and agency) to macro-level analyses (i.e. of social systems and social structure). Traditional focuses of sociology include social stratification, social class, social mobility, religion, secularization, law, sexuality, gender, and deviance. As all spheres of human activity are affected by the interplay between social structure and ind ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Structure And Agency
In the social sciences there is a standing debate over the primacy of structure or agency in shaping human behaviour. ''Structure'' is the recurrent patterned arrangements which influence or limit the choices and opportunities available. ''Agency'' is the capacity of individuals to act independently and to make their own free choices. The structure versus agency debate may be understood as an issue of socialization against autonomy in determining whether an individual acts as a free agent or in a manner dictated by social structure. Structure, socialization and autonomy The debate over the primacy of structure or of agency relates to an issue at the heart of both classical and contemporary sociological theory: the question of social ontology: "What is the social world made of?" "What is a cause of the social world, and what is an effect?" "Do social structures determine an individual's behaviour or does human agency?" Structural functionalists such as Émile Durkheim see structu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Formal And Effective Rights
Formal and effective rights refers to the distinction between the theoretical rights of legalism and the measurable rights within implemented policies. It is argued that the gap between the two concepts stems from the difficulties in realising the theoretical concepts into manageable effective rights. Also, while there is a greater consensus regarding the formal rights, due partly on diplomacy motives, the actual implementation process is much more complex. See also * Claim rights and liberty rights * Human rights Human rights are moral principles or normsJames Nickel, with assistance from Thomas Pogge, M.B.E. Smith, and Leif Wenar, 13 December 2013, Stanford Encyclopedia of PhilosophyHuman Rights Retrieved 14 August 2014 for certain standards of hu ... References {{reflist Human rights concepts ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
State (polity)
A state is a centralized political organization that imposes and enforces rules over a population within a territory. There is no undisputed definition of a state. One widely used definition comes from the German sociologist Max Weber: a "state" is a polity that maintains a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence, although other definitions are not uncommon.Cudworth et al., 2007: p. 95Salmon, 2008p. 54 Absence of a state does not preclude the existence of a society, such as stateless societies like the Haudenosaunee Confederacy that "do not have either purely or even primarily political institutions or roles". The level of governance of a state, government being considered to form the fundamental apparatus of contemporary states, is used to determine whether it has failed. In a federal union, the term "state" is sometimes used to refer to the federated polities that make up the federation. (Other terms that are used in such federal systems may include “ province ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Marxists
Marxism is a left-wing to far-left method of socioeconomic analysis that uses a materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to understand class relations and social conflict and a dialectical perspective to view social transformation. It originates from the works of 19th-century German philosophers Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. As Marxism has developed over time into various branches and schools of thought, no single, definitive Marxist theory exists. In addition to the schools of thought which emphasize or modify elements of classical Marxism, various Marxian concepts have been incorporated and adapted into a diverse array of social theories leading to widely varying conclusions. Alongside Marx's critique of political economy, the defining characteristics of Marxism have often been described using the terms dialectical materialism and historical materialism, though these terms were coined after Marx's death and their t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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