Peter M.R. Stirk – författare

Stivers argues that our expectations of technology in society have led to the generation of a multitude of imitation technologies that function as magical practices once did. This is particularly true in the fields of psychology, management and the mass media, where their paramount purpose is human adjustment and control. Advertising and television, in particular, symbolically connect consumer goods and services to desired outcomes - the utopian goals of success, happiness and health.

From the launch of the Journal of Social Research in 1932 to the recent work of Jurgen Habermas on law and democracy, the Frankfurt School has produced some of the most ambitious and influential theories of the past century. This new introduction to the critical theory of the School provides a thorough, concise and up-to-date assessment of thinkers including Pollock, Marcuse, Horkheimer, Adorno, Neumann, Lowenthal, Fromm, Kirchheimer and Habermas. Peter Stirk's lively account places the formative work of the School within the context of the Weimar Republic and of Nazi Germany. He contrasts this environment with the very different background of 1950s Germany in which Habermas embarked on his academic career. Stirk goes on to discuss the enduring relevance of political theory to the contemporary political agenda. In particular, he illustrates the continuing validity of the Frankfurt School's criticism of positivist, metaphysical and more recently postmodernist views, and its members' attempts to incorporate psychological perspectives into broader theories of social dynamics.He assesses their contribution to key areas of contemporary debate, including morality, interest, individual and collective identity and the analysis of authoritarian and democratic states. Specifically focused on the interests and needs of social scientists, philosophers and historians of ideas, Critical Theory, Politics and Society is an essential book both for students and for all those who wish to grasp the contours of critical theory and to understand its enduring relevance.

This book examines the question of European unity, from 1918 to 1939. It focuses on the diversity of the various ideas and images of unity, illustrating how seriously they were taken by political actors at the time, and on the complex interplay of ideology and interest which shaped the idea and reality of Europe in this turbulent period. European Unity in Context takes an interdisciplinary approach to the question of Europe, incorporating the perspectives of historians, social scientists and literary specialists and thus offers valuable insights for students and scholars in history, politics, and literature alike.

This volume evaluates the notion of European Unity in a period when European identity was subjected to the destructive consequences of Nazi and Fascist domination of much of the Continent. By presenting the competing visions of transformation and reconstruction played out during the war years the book aims to provide broader-based and more complex insights into forces that shaped the post-war period than those in conventional accounts that locate the thinking about European unity only in the years after 1945.