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False necessity, or anti-necessitarian social theory, is a contemporary social theory that argues for the plasticity of social organizations and their potential to be shaped in new ways. The theory rejects the assumption that laws of change govern the history of human societies and limit human freedom. [ 1 ]
Politics was published in three volumes: False Necessity: Anti-Necessitarian Social Theory in the Service of Radical Democracy, the longest volume, is an explanatory and programmatic argument of how society might be transformed to be more in keeping with the context-smashing potential of the human imagination; Social Theory: Its Situation and ...
The thesis of formative context is central to Unger's theory of false necessity, which rejects the idea of a closed number of institutional arrangements of human societies, e.g. feudalism and capitalism, and that these arrangements are the product of historical necessity, as theories of liberalism or Marxism claim. Rather, Unger argues that ...
Social theories are analytical frameworks, or paradigms, that are used to study and interpret social phenomena. [1] A tool used by social scientists, social theories relate to historical debates over the validity and reliability of different methodologies (e.g. positivism and antipositivism), the primacy of either structure or agency, as well as the relationship between contingency and necessity.
In his work on false necessity – or anti-necessitarian social theory – Unger recognizes the constraints of structure and its molding influence upon the individual, but at the same time finds the individual able to resist, deny, and transcend their context. The varieties of this resistance are negative capability.
Roberto Mangabeira Unger (/ ˈ ʌ ŋ ɡ ər /; born 24 March 1947) is a Brazilian philosopher and politician. [3] [4] His work is in the tradition of Western philosophy and classical social theory, and is developed across fields in legal theory, philosophy and religion, social and political theory, progressive alternatives, and economics. [5]
Circulus (theory) Class reductionism; Classical Marxism; Cognitive miser; Collectivist anarchism; College for Advanced Studies in Social Theory; Communicative action; Compliance problem; Consensus theory; Conservatism; Consumer culture theory; Contractualism; Conversion theory of minority influence; Cultural pluralism; Cumulative inequality ...
For Polanyi, the effort by classical and neoclassical economics to make society subject to the free market was a utopian project and, as Polanyi scholars Fred Block and Margaret Somers claim, "When these public goods and social necessities (what Polanyi calls "fictitious commodities") are treated as if they are commodities produced for sale on the market, rather than protected rights, our ...