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Dick Pels undertakes a broad historical inquiry into the intellectual origins and present-day effects of the concepts and roles of power and property. He uses a series of case studies to study competing concepts of proprty from rival theories such as marxism, anarchism and fascism.
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PROPERTY AND POWER IN SOCIAL THEORY
In social and political theories of class inequality and stratification property and power perform a key role. However, theorists have yet to clearly define these concepts, their mutual boundaries and their scopes of application. Moreover, a ‘primacy puzzle’ remains unsolved: is power ultimately dependent upon property, or property upon power? Which is primary, which derivative? Dick Pels seeks answers to the property/power puzzle by undertaking a broad historical inquiry into its intellectual origins and present-day effects. He re-examines the increasingly misleading terms of the debate between property and power by placing the traditional controversy within the framework of intellectual rivalry. He traces the intricate pattern of rivalry between the two concepts through a series of case studies, including: • • • • •
Marxism vs. anarchism the fascist assertion of the primacy of the political social science as power theory the managerial revolution the knowledge society and the new intellectual classes
Having examined knowledge as property-and-power, Pels elaborates a radical and reflexive theory of intellectual rivalry. Property and Power in Social Theory unravels the dialectics of social-scientific dichotomies and provides a novel and informative way of organizing twentieth-century social theory. This work makes a valuable contribution to sociological theory and to the history of thought. Dick Pels is Professor of the Social Theory of Knowledge in the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Groningen. He is also sc