Rethinking the ‘race‐class debate’ in South African historiography

This article argues that revisionist historiography has constituted a debate with its liberal opponents which has an ‘either‐or’ form: either class or race has analytic primacy, and either segregation/apartheid is functional or dysfunctional to capitalist growth. This has led revisionists into reductionism and factionalism, despite frequent disclaimers to the contrary. Failure to conceptualise and address the relative independence of social factors has, as a corollary, a functionalist rendition of their relationship to capitalist interests and development. By way of illustration an article by Wolpe and a book by Saul and Gelb are criticised for analytical shortcomings. Finally revised conceptualisations of the relationships between race and class and between capitalist development and racial policies are proposed.     

Acting your age? Sports science and the ageing body

The medicalisation of aging and old age constructs ageing as first and foremost a biomedical event and as a process of inevitable decline. In sports science and sports medicine the functional decrements normally associated with ageing are being addressed. There is evidence reported in the scientific literature suggesting that certain exercise interventions can ‘reduc[e] or prevent[…] functional declines linked to secondary aging’ [Goggin, N.L., and Morrow, J.R. Jr. (2001). "Physical Activity Behaviors of Older Adults." Journal of Aging and Physical Activity 9, 58–66.].However a sociological critique is necessary. Whilst sports science seeks to position itself as a key player in the fight against ageing, it also opens the potential for the reconstruction of the ageing body as fit. However the evidence that exercise can fundamentally reshape older bodies is equivocal. A new frame is proposed which divorces exercise from anti-ageing purposes and uses the science of exercise to enable older people to recover a sense of physical competence as a creative pursuit in its own right.     

“Changing the world”: epistemic communities,and the democratizing power of science

This paper puts forward the argument that science can not only “save the world” but also “change the world.” While much has been written about the evident power of science to bring politicians to change their policies in order to “save the world,” e.g. the environment, less attention has been drawn on the hidden power of science to “change the world,” i.e. to frame and shape political orders and constituencies so that they get more democratic in the deliberative sense of the term, both at international and domestic scales. The paper sheds light on how science can induce democratizing effects in domestic constituencies. It can do that by the intermediary of three distinct enumerative mechanisms: “teaching,” “empowering,” and “taming.” These mechanisms, it is argued, are especially likely to become effective in those transnational institutional settings linking scientists and technical experts on the one side, with political and societal actors, on the other side, or in what Haas calls “epistemic communities.”     

Shifting boundaries: Doing social science in the 1990s—A personal odyssey

Drawing on my own 40 years as a social scientist, I argue, as have others in recent years, that rather than a contaminant, one's own biography can be a useful tool in social analysis. I place my personal struggle with this issue in a larger cultural context and point to a shift in the boundaries between public and private, which has profound implications for the way we teach, write, and do research.Presidential address delivered at the Eastern Sociological Society Annual Meetings, Baltimore, Maryland, March 19, 1994.     

Governing the liberal self in a ‘post-truth’ era: science,class and the debate over GMOs

ABSTRACT

This essay examines four case studies in which prominent commentators in media sites that target the liberal-leaning, educated class – The Daily Show, Slate magazine, the New York Times, and Real Time with Bill Maher – announced that they had changed their minds on the issue of genetically modified foods (GMOs). Though each had previously been sceptical of the technology, they now embraced it in the name of science and humanitarianism, and urged audiences to do the same. These cases were flashpoints in a broader shift in which the liberal, educated middle class – a formation historically critical of GMOs–has increasingly denounced scepticism about biotechnology as a pernicious ‘anti-science’ conservatism. This liberal pro-GMO discourse posits itself as a matter of truth versus lies. We argue, however, that the manner in which it framed GMO opposition as irrational and immoral threatened attachments that have long been central to liberal, educated middle class selfhood and capital – attachments to being a caring and rational self. Moreover, this discourse intensified as this class was experiencing heightened cultural and economic instability under neoliberalism, the post-industrial labour economy, and the aftermath of the Great Recession. Through their narratives of coming to believe in GMOs, our case studies provide their audiences with technologies, in the Foucauldian sense, for making classed selves and shoring up this class’ claims to authority under these conditions. We suggest that this swell of cultural technologies aiming to cultivate liberal support for GMOs has a great deal to teach us about the class dynamics of the so-called ‘post-truth’ era.     

Public attitudes toward science and technology: what have the surveys told us?

Surveys of public attitudes toward science and technology over the last two decades show a very high level of favorable response. Public confidence in science sagged in the seventies and, though science suffered considerably less than most other major social institutions, a larger tiny minority now view it as harmful than in the fifties. The most striking aspect of public attitudes toward science, and scientists, however, is that they appear to be based on nebulous and distorted conceptions which are dominated by themes of applied technology.     

Revis(it)ing nuclear history: narrative conflict at the bradbury science museum ∗

Nuclear criticism theorizes culture as the site of struggle between ideological narratives seeking authority over the meaning of nuclear symbols. Following the end of the cold war, various groups have conducted this struggle through public discourse about U.S. nuclear weapons organizations. This paper examines symbolic conflict over the history and future of one such organization, the Los Alamos National Laboratory. This conflict was conducted between pro-nuclear Laboratory officials and employees of its Bradbury Science Museum, and local anti-nuclear activists. The conflict centered around the activists' construction of an alternative exhibit that was placed in the Museum, and that challenged its dominant narrative of nuclear history. Analysis reveals that the identities and activities of these two groups can be distinguished by three sets of opposing constructs: nuclearism/pacifism; monologue/dialogue, and fact/narrative. These frames guided the groups' interpretive practices, and heuristically condense the heteroglossia of post-cold war debate about nuclear history. They clarify, in turn, the process by which cultural memory is constructed and transformed to serve nuclear-ideological interests.     

When Robert E. Park was (Re) writing “the city”: Biography,the social survey,and the science of sociology

Sociological production is a situated and embodied activity carried out by individuals inserted in actual social relations. Considering that this feature has an influence upon the content of scholarly literature and that it can be revealed in the scientific text itself, I propound a new interpretation of the writing process of Robert E. Park's “The City,” the famous paper he published initially in 1915. Customarily depicted as a manifesto for an autonomous urban sociology, I argue on the contrary that its general economy has to be linked to Park's biographical background. When he affiliated with the Sociology Department at the University of Chicago, Park was brought to teach a course on the social survey. “The City” was to be the academic expression of his point of view on the topic. Park's biographical encounters with some active promoters of the social survey approach are evidenced and their influence onhis 1915 essay is carefully analyzed, showing notably that curious intellectual omissions in “The City” can be traced back to these previous encounters. Park's latter texts, and the 1925 revised version of “The City” in particular, are shown to provide the interwar sociologists with a peculiar narrative about the history of sociology: Park's predecessors are deliberately confined in a pre-scientific stage of the discipline and Park's original essay is presented as a seminal research program destined to be later fulfilled by the newly established urban sociologists. The author wishes to thank the anonymous reviewers for their insightful and helpful comments on the first draft of the paper, Lawrence T. Nichols for his kindly editorial guidence, and Jacques Marquet and Felice Dassetto for their marerial support.     

Staging the world in late‐qing China: Globe,nation, and race in a 1904 Beijing opera

This essay takes the first Beijing Opera of China's early twentieth‐century reformist opera movement as an exemplary text and performative context through which to analyze the production of a new historical consciousness in late‐Qing China (1895–1911). Performed in Shanghai in 1904, the opera is centrally concerned with the modern partition of Poland. The essay argues that the opera's interpretation of history is a deliberate intervention into China's turbulent socio‐political atmosphere and helps mark an attempt to popularize through performance a new synchronic global consciousness that links China's contemporary history to the non‐Western world of global transformation at the turn of the twentieth century.     

Occupational social status and race in north‐south interregional migration

For the United States generally, a positive relationship has been found between occupational social status and migration propensity. However, the addition of two variables has greatly altered this relationship. The strength of the relationship for blacks was much weaker than for whites. The relationship disappeared for both races for interregional (South/non‐South) migration. More blue‐collar migration from the South to the non‐South was counteracted by more white‐collar migration from the non‐South to the South. Implications of these findings for the so‐called push‐pull theory of migration as well as public policies are discussed.     

Is doctor-patient race concordance associated with greater satisfaction with care?

We examined a national sample of African American, white, Hispanic, and Asian American respondents to test the hypothesis that doctor-patient race concordance is predictive of patient satisfaction. Our analysis examined racial/ethnic differences in patient satisfaction among patients in multiple combinations of doctor-patient race/ethnicity pairs. Additionally, we outline the determinants of doctor-patient race concordance. The analysis used the 1994 Commonwealth Fund Minority Health Survey to construct a series of multivariate models. We found that for respondents in each race/ethnic group, patients who had a choice in the selection of their physician were more likely to be race concordant. Whites were more likely to be race concordant with their physician compared to African American, Hispanic, and Asian American respondents. Among each race/ethnic group, respondents who were race concordant reported greater satisfaction with their physician compared with respondents who were not race concordant. These findings suggest support for the continuation of efforts to increase the number of minority physicians, while placing greater emphasis on improving the ability of physicians to interact with patients who are not of their own race.     

Openings,absences and omissions: Aspects of the treatment of ‘race’, culture and ethnicity in British cultural studies

Abstract

British cultural studies has, in an innovative and exciting way over the last three or four decades, opened up spaces for the serious analysis of many aspects of culture, including those inextricably related to questions of ‘race’, ethnicity and subordinated groups in urban environments in Britain. However, there have been a number of weaknesses and omissions with regard to Britain's black, Caribbean-descended population. Some of these are possibly the result of earlier, unresolved theoretical and methodological disputes within the field of cultural studies; others stem, perhaps, from an over-reliance on approaches arising out of youth subcultural analytical frameworks. Consequently, less than the required attention has been paid to the active cultures of achievement developed by the adult, black working-class population of Caribbean descent in Britain from the 1950s to the 1990s.     

The Star’s first draft: a news organization revises the next narrative of race in post‐apartheid South Africa

The evolution of South Africa’s news media has been fraught with uncertainties as the nation’s news organizations negotiate organizational and occupational ideologies and reporting strategies in the post‐apartheid era. The mainstream English press in particular has been struggling for a sense of identity despite a history of anti‐apartheid ‘watchdog’ activity. This essay examines a major Johannesburg English newspaper and its principal rival from 1999 to 2005, the critical years just before and just after a showdown with the larger society over charges of racism in the news. It shows how organizational cultures of newspapers and their ideological schemata may be affected both by transformations in the political systems and by the unfolding of major news events, such as the government’s reaction to the AIDS pandemic.     

Developing selves: photography,Cold War science and ‘backwards’ people in the Peruvian Andes, 1951–1966

This article explores how social science applications of photography employed in the early 1950s to both understand and change so-called ‘backwards’ people became entangled with, and drew momentum from, the geopolitical concerns of the early Cold War. Specifically, I address the employment of photography in the Cornell-Peru Project in the Andean community of Vicos, a decade-long research experiment combining development anthropology and fashionable modernisation theory emanating out of the behavioural sciences. In addition to development activities that were to serve as the catalysts of change (agricultural improvement, health and education), researchers at Vicos were at pains to uncover and validate the inner ‘predispositions’ towards change and modernity they hoped were lurking inside villagers. Reflecting Cold War priorities and concerns, researchers sought to locate a particular developing indigenous subject – one closer to liberal capitalism (and its values of self-reliance and individualism) and away from communal nature of indigenous society that too strongly resembled Soviet models of development and collectivisation. Along with an arsenal of other psychological projective tests, researchers hoped the camera’s lens would reveal this change through such subtle cues as the rearrangement of home interiors and modifications in dress, style and comportment, as well as the development of visual literacy. Following the photographic work of famed photographer and formative visual anthropologist, John Collier, Jr., during a year at Vicos, this article ultimately explores the limitations of the behavioural sciences’ hopeful uses of photography.     

Thinking with restriction: immigration restriction and Polish Jewish accounts of the post-liberal state,empire, race,and political reason 1926–39

This paper investigates how educated Jewish observers struggled to understand the causes of the global immigration restriction that so impacted East European Jewry in the 1920s and 1930s, and uses their competing explanations, convictions, and uncertainties to reveal underlying structures of Jewish political understanding in the interwar period more broadly. Efforts to explain restriction, the ways in which it seemed both to target Jews and to be part of a general closure of the developed world, and questions of timing demanded reflection on the most fundamental questions of the interwar political order. Did state policies flow from economic reason, and did nationalisation, democratisation, and socialisation of domestic politics alter this causal pattern? In a world where closed borders were the default, what difference did statehood or statelessness make? What was the meaning and implication of the deployment of “race” in others' debates about restriction, and what role did global race-thinking play in determining population policies? What was the causal significance of specifically anti-Jewish animus, its nature, and the role of Jews' own choices in determining their situation? Analyzing a number of loci of Jewish social policy debate, the essay focuses particularly on the diasporist emigration activist Il'ya Dizhur, the Zionist sociologist Aryeh Tartakover, and the cooperative-movement activist Majer Pollner.