Full Description
This text provides an overview of major critical theorists from across disciplines—including the humanities, social sciences, and education—that discusses the importance of these critical perspectives for the advancement of LIS research and scholarship.
The practical application of library and information science is based upon 75 years of critical theory and thought. Therefore, it is essential for students and faculty in LIS to be familiar with the work of a wide range of critical theorists. The aim of Critical Theory for Library and Information Science: Exploring the Social from Across the Disciplines is to provide a comprehensive introduction to the critical theorists important to the LIS audience, and to give insights into how such theory can be incorporated into actual LIS research and practice.
This book consists of chapters on individual critical theorists ranging from Aglietta to Habermas to Spivak, written by an international group of library and information science scholars. Each chapter provides an overview of the theoretical stance and contributions of the theorist, as well as relevant critical commentary. This book will be particularly valuable as a reference text of core readings for those pursuing doctoral or masters level degrees in LIS.
Contents
Introduction: The Necessity for Theoretically Informed Critique in Library and Information Science (LIS)
Gloria Leckie and John Buschman
1. Michel Aglietta and Regulation Theory
Siobhan Stevenson
2. Roland Barthes: On Semiology and Taxonomy
Hans Dam Christensen
3. Roy Bhaskar's Critical Realism
John M. Budd
4. Social Capital, Symbolic Violence, and Fields of Cultural Production: Pierre Bourdieu and Library and Information Science
Lisa Hussey
5. Beyond a Signpost for Resistance: The Promise of Michel de Certeau's Practices of Everyday Life for LIS Scholarship
Paulette Rothbauer
6. Michel Foucault: Discourse, Power/Knowledge, and the Battle for Truth
Michael R. Olsson
7. Deconstructing the Library with Jacques Derrida: Creating Space for the "Other" in Bibliographic Description and Classification
Joseph Deodato
8. Transformative Library Pedagogy and Community-Based Libraries: A Freirean Perspective
Martina Riedler and Mustafa Yunus Eryaman
9. Psychoanalysis as Critique in the Works of Freud, Lacan, and Deleuze and Guattari
Ronald E. Day and Andrew J. Lau
10. Anthony Giddens' Influence on Library and Information Science
Howard Rosenbaum
11. The Public Library as a Space for Democratic Empowerment: Henry Giroux, Radical Democracy, and Border Pedagogy
Mustafa Yunus Eryaman
12. Hegemony, Historic Blocs, and Capitalism: Antonio Gramsci in Library and Information Science
Douglas Raber
13. The Social as Fundamental and a Source of the Critical: Jürgen Habermas
John E. Buschman
14. Martin Heidegger's Critique of Informational Modernity
Ronald E. Day
15. Bruno Latour: Documenting Human and Nonhuman Associations
Will Wheeler
16. Jean Lave's Practice Theory
Sanna Talja
17. Henri Lefebvre and Spatial Dialectics
Gloria J. Leckie and Lisa M. Given
18. Herbert Marcuse: Liberation, Utopia, and Revolution
Ajit Pyati
19. Chantal Mouffe's Theory of Agonistic Pluralism and Its Relevance for Library and Information Science Research
Joacim Hansson
20. Antonio Negri on Information, Empire, and Commonwealth
Nick Dyer-Witheford
21. Ferdinand de Saussure: Duality
Paul Solomon
22. Investigating the Textually Mediated Work of Institutions: Dorothy E. Smith's Sociology for People
Rosamund K. Stooke
23. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak: Deconstructionist, Marxist, Feminist, Postcolonialist
Hope A. Olson and Melodie J. Fox
Index
About the Editors and Contributors
