Paul Hirst

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Paul Quentin Hirst (born May 20, 1946 in Holberton, Devon , † June 16, 2003 in London ) was a British sociologist and political scientist. From 1985 until his death he was a professor at Birkbeck University of London .

Live and act

He studied at the University of Leicester and the University of Sussex . From 1969 he taught at Birbeck College. In 1972 he was one of the founders of the Department of Politics and Sociology. In 1978 he became a “reader” and seven years later a professor.

In the 1970s he and Barry Hindess became one of the main personalities of neo-Marxism with Althusser influences. At the end of the 1970s and 1980s, Hirst turned into a critic of Louis Althusser . Borrowing from Foucault , Quine and Wittgenstein , he criticized essentialism and the possibility in principle of a general theory against “constructionist imperialism”. In his work on the democratic system of government he turned to the British thinkers of political pluralism: JN Figgis, George Douglas Howard Cole and Harold Laski . During the late 1980s and early 1990s, Hirst developed "associationalism", which propagated the democratization of society as an alternative to state socialism and the liberal market economy. He also wrote articles on critical legal theory.

In his later work with Grahame Thompson , he criticized the fashionable theories of globalization . He pointed out the continuing importance of the nation state. His book on war and power is a historical-sociological analysis of the modern state. His last publication Raum und Macht shows the limits and formal powers of power in the spatial conditions of the state.

In 1933 he founded the London Consortium with Mark Cousins, Colin MacCabe, and Richard Humphreys . He chaired the executive committee of Charter 88 and was one of the first and regular contributors to openDemocracy .

Fonts (selection)

  • with B. Hindess: Pre-Capitalist Modes of Production. Routledge & Kegan Paul, London 1975.
  • On Law and Ideology. MacMillan, London 1979.
  • with P. Woolley: Social Relations and Human Attributes. Routledge, London 1982.
  • Law, Socialism and Democracy. Harper Collins, London 1986.
  • Carl Schmitt's Decisionism. In: Telos. 72 (summer). Telos Press, New York 1987.
  • Representative Democracy and its Limits. Polity, Cambridge 1990.
  • Associative Democracy. Polity, Cambridge 1993.
  • From Statism to Pluralism. UCL Press, London 1997.
  • and Thompson, G. Globalization in Question. Polity, Cambridge 1999.
  • War and Power in the 21st Century. Polity, Cambridge 2001.
  • Space and Power: Politics, War and Architecture. Polity, Cambridge 2005.

literature

  • Roger Cotterrell: Paul Hirst (1946-2003). In: Socio-Legal Newsletter. No. 41, Winter 2003, pp. 6-7 (English).
  • Ben Pimlott: Paul Hirst . In: The Guardian . June 20, 2003 (English, co.uk - obituary).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Professor Paul Hirst (1946–2003). (No longer available online.) Bbk.ac.uk, June 18, 2003, archived from the original on August 3, 2016 ; accessed on November 13, 2016 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.bbk.ac.uk
  2. ↑ Mark Cousins, Colin MacCabe: Professor Paul Hirst . In: The Independent . June 19, 2003 (English, co.uk ).
  3. ↑ a b Ben Pimlott: Paul Hirst . In: The Guardian . June 20, 2003 (English, theguardian.com ).
personal data
SURNAME Hirst, Paul
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Hirst, Paul Quentin (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British sociologist and political scientist
DATE OF BIRTH May 20, 1946
PLACE OF BIRTH Holberton, Devon
DATE OF DEATH June 16, 2003
Place of death London