On Social Closure Theorizing Exclusion, Exploitation, and Elimination

by Mackert, Jürgen

• ISBN13: 9780197781685
• ISBN10: 0197781683
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2024-11-11
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

On Social Closure reinvigorates the idea of social closure as a basic sociological concept for understanding the strategies powerful groups use to improve their life chances at the expense of the less powerful. Jürgen Mackert provides sociological tools for analysing three critical forms of closure in the world today: exclusion in the context of neoliberalism; exploitation within global capitalism; and elimination in the ongoing legacy of settler colonialism, thereby transcending Eurocentric analyses. Mackert puts forward a mechanism-based explanatory approach identifies two critical social mechanisms that operate in various kinds of social closure struggles. The first explains how human beings, social groups, or communities are denied access to resources, rights, or critical networks, while the second explains how the powerful exert control that leaves the less powerful vulnerable and unable to fight back.

Through a critical reconsideration and revision of existing concepts and by bringing in new ones, Jürgen Mackert develops a novel theoretical approach to social closure.

Author Biography

Jürgen Mackert is Professor of Sociology at the University of Potsdam, Germany. He was a temporary professor for the 'structure of modern societies' at the University of Erfurt (2004/05) and a visiting professor of political sociology at Humboldt University (2008/09).

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction: A New Approach to Social Closure

Part I: The Misguided Path or the "Theory of Social Closure"
Chapter 1: A Critical Discussion of The Theory of Social Closure
Chapter 2: Frank Parkin: Social Closure as Exclusion and Usurpation
Chapter 3: Raymond Murphy: Rules, Structures, and Forms of Social Closure
Chapter 4: Critical Shortcomings of the Theory of Social Closure
Chapter 5: Going Beyond the Theory of Social Closure

Part II: Basic Terms, Concepts and Methodology for Closure Theory
Chapter 6: Reconsidering, Problematizing, and Introducing Critical Concepts for Closure Theory
Reconsidering Max Weber's Approach
Chapter 7: Max Weber's Critical Basic Terms for Theorizing Social Closure Reconsidered
Chapter 8: Max Weber's Closure Analyses: Three Contexts
Chapter 9: Beyond Max Weber: Towards a New Idea of Social Closure
New Concepts for Closure Theory
Chapter 10: "Group Action" and "Acting in Solidarity"
Chapter 11: Power in Closure Analysis
Chapter 12: "Life Chances/Chances of Survival": The Real Goal of Closure Struggles
Chapter 13: Discussion

Part III: Theorizing Social Closure
Chapter 14: A New Approach to Social Closure
Conceptualization
Chapter 15: Three Forms of Social Closure
Chapter 16: Power and Social Closure
Chapter 17: A New Concept of "Life-Chances/Chances of Survival" in the Opportunity Structure
Chapter 18: Reorganizing Relations of Social Closure: The Two Critical Mechanisms "Denial of Access" and "Intervention into Community Closure"
Chapter 19: A New Concept of Social Closure
Typology
Chapter 20: A Typology of Social Closure
Explanation
Chapter 21: Towards an Explanation of Social Closure
Chapter 22: Explaining Social Closure
Chapter 23: The Explanatory Logics of Social Closure

Conclusion: Social Closure and the Global Struggle for Life Chances/Chances of Survival

References
Index