Paul Hirst
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Paul Hirst (1947-2003) was a British sociologist. He became Professor of Social Theory at Birkbeck, University of London.
He studied at the University of Leicester and the University of Sussex before taking up a lectureship at Birkbeck College in 1969. In 1972, he was one of the founding members of the Department of Politics and Sociology at Birkbeck.
During the 1970s he became well known (along with Barry Hindess) as the main figure in British Althusserianism. During the late 1970s and 1980s, Hirst became a critic of Althusser's brand of Marxism, and of Marxism more generally. In his work on democratic governance, he turned towards the ideas of the English political pluralists: J. N. Figgis, G. D. H. Cole, and Harold Laski. During the late 1980s and early 1990s, Hirst developed a theory of associationalism which attempted to revive social democracy by providing an alternative to state socialism and free-market liberalism.
His later work resulted in an influential critique of the idea of economic globalisation and a recognition of the importance of warfare in shaping the modern world.
With Mark Cousins, Colin MacCabe, and Richard Humphreys, he founded the London Consortium in 1993.
[edit] Selected bibliography
- Hirst, P. and Hindess, B. Pre-Capitalist Modes of Production. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1975.
- Hirst, P. On Law and Ideology. London: MacMillan, 1979.
- Hirst, P. and Woolley, P. Social Relations and Human Attributes. London: Routledge, 1982.
- Hirst, P. Law, Socialism and Democracy. London: Harper Collins, 1986.
- Hirst, P. Representative Democracy and its Limits. Cambridge: Polity, 1990.
- Hirst, P. Associative Democracy. Cambridge: Polity, 1993.
- Hirst, P. From Statism to Pluralism. London: UCL Press, 1997.
- Hirst, P. and Thompson, G. Globalisation in Question. Cambridge: Polity, 1999.
- Hirst, P. War and Power in the 21st Century. Cambridge: Polity, 2001.
- Hirst, P. Space and Power: Politics, War and Architecture. Cambridge: Polity, 2005.
