Abstract
John Friedmann addresses a central question of Western political theory: how, and to what extent, history can be guided by reason. In this comprehensive treatment of the relation of knowledge to action, which he calls planning, he traces the major intellectual traditions of planning thought and practice. Three of these--social reform, policy analysis, and social learning--are primarily concerned with public management. The fourth, social mobilization, draws on utopianism, anarchism, historical materialism, and other radical thought and looks to the structural transformation of society "from below." After developing a basic vocabulary in Part One, the author proceeds in Part Two to a critical history of each of the four planning traditions. The story begins with the prophetic visions of Saint-Simon and assesses the contributions of such diverse thinkers as Comte, Marx, Dewey, Mannheim, Tugwell, Mumford, Simon, and Habermas. It is carried forward in Part Three by Friedmann's own nontechnocratic, dialectical approach to planning as a method for recovering political community
Keywords
VisionPoliticsDialecticAction (physics)Historical materialismEpistemologySociologyRelation (database)MaterialismSocial scienceEnvironmental ethicsPolitical sciencePhilosophyLawMarxist philosophyAnthropology
Related Publications
Educational Research: An Introduction
I. INTRODUCTION. 1. The Nature of Educational Research II. PLANNING A RESEARCH STUDY. 2. The Research Process: From Proposal to Final Report 3. Ethics and Site Relations 4. Revi...
Bringing the State Back in
Until recently, dominant theoretical paradigms in the comparative social sciences did not highlight states as organizational structures or as potentially autonomous actors. Inde...
Revivals, Awakenings, and Reform: An Essay on Religion and Social Change in America, 1607-1977
In Revivals, Awakenings, and Reform, McLoughlin draws on psychohistory, sociology, and anthropology to examine the relationship between America's five great religious awakenings...
An Analysis of Conflicting Social Norms
T HIS PAPER illustrates an empirical procedure for studying role obligations, with particular reference to simultaneous role obligations which conflict. The writer became especi...
Does coping help? A reexamination of the relation between coping and mental health.
In a longitudinal community survey of 291 adults, we explored the relation between coping strategies and psychological symptoms. Respondents completed the revised Ways of Coping...
Publication Info
- Year
- 2020
- Type
- book
- Citations
- 1489
- Access
- Closed
External Links
Social Impact
Altmetric
PlumX Metrics
Social media, news, blog, policy document mentions
Citation Metrics
1489
OpenAlex
144
CrossRef
Cite This
John Friedmann
(2020).
Planning in the Public Domain: From Knowledge to Action.
Princeton University Press eBooks
.
https://doi.org/10.1515/9780691214009
Identifiers
- DOI
- 10.1515/9780691214009