A. N. Whitehead and Social Theory

Michael Halewood is a Senior Lecturer in Social Theory at the University of Essex. He has published articles and chapters on Whitehead’s relation to Deleuze, Badiou and Butler, as well as pieces on John Dewey, subjectivity and materiality, the body, language and sociality. He has also edited a special section of the journal ‘Theory, Culture and Society’ dedicated to Whitehead, and is an International Academic Advisor to the Whitehead Research Project.

• 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

‘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’