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The contemporary importance of A. N. Whitehead (1861–1947) lies in his direct yet productive challenge to the culture of thought inherent in modernity, a challenge that suffuses science, social theory and philosophy alike. Unlike some of the more destructive aspects of postmodernism and poststructuralism, Whitehead’s diagnosis of the conceptual fault lines of the modern era does not entail a passive relativism. Instead, he calls for a renewal of our concepts, offering a positive, philosophical approach based on becoming, relativity, and a reconception of subjectivity and the social. This book outlines Whitehead’s philosophy, using it to reorient a range of specific questions and topics within contemporary social theory.
‘Whitehead’s work is scantly mentioned in the social sciences and his name has gone unrecognized. Halewood’s book offers a corrective to this omission… Halewood gives us a review of Whiteheadian thought that is sophisticated and thorough yet still within the reach of, say, an advanced undergraduate… Halewood’s book does the important work of elucidating how Whiteheadian process-relational thought offers a useful framework for the social sciences of today.’ —Michael Carolan, ‘Process Studies’
Acknowledgements; List of Abbreviations; Chapter One: A Culture of Thought – The Bifurcation of Nature; Chapter Two: Introducing Whitehead’s Philosophy – The Lure of Whitehead; Chapter Three: ‘A Thorough-Going Realism’ – Whitehead On Cause and Conformation; Chapter Four: The Value of Existence; Chapter Five: Societies, the Social and Subjectivity; Chapter Six: Language and the Body – From Signification to Symbolism; Chapter Seven: This Nature Which Is Not One; Chapter Eight: Capitalism, Process and Abstraction; Notes; Bibliography; Index