From critical sociology to public intellectual: Pierre Bourdieu and politics

By the late 1990s, Pierre Bourdieu had become the primary public intellectual of major social scientific status at the head of the anti-globalization movement that emerged in France and in other Western European countries. This article discusses how Bourdieu became a leading public intellectual, a role that seems to contrast with his early years as a professional sociologist. It explores what seemed to change in Bourdieu’s activities and outlook as sociologist and what seems to have remained constant. It identifies several institutional conditions that seemed necessary for Bourdieu to be able to play the kind of public intellectual role he did in his later years. Bourdieu’s movement from a peripheral position to a central location in the French intellectual field, the changing character of the field itself, the growing influence of the mass media in French political and cultural life, the failures of the French Socialists in power, a cultural legacy of leading critical intellectuals in France, a unifying national issue of globalization, and the political conjuncture in 1995 all intersected in ways that opened a path for Bourdieu to choose new and more frequent forms of political action. His responses to that combination of factors at different moments reveal both a striking continuity in desire to preserve the autonomy of intellectual life and a change in view and strategy on how best to do that. The article concludes with a brief evaluation of Bourdieu’s public intellectual role.     

Intellectual paths of Thailand’s first generation China scholars: a research note on encountering and choices of Khien Theeravit and Sarasin Viraphol

This article studies the oral history interviews of two China scholars in Thailand by drawing upon each scholar’s encountering and choices. The focal points of the interviews are placed on their professional as well as social and on their local as well as international encountering with Chinese that shaped their choices and consequently their different intellectual paths and contribution to the knowledge and understanding of China in Thailand. The analysis compares and contrasts the factors similar and different to the first generation China scholars in Thailand.     

The ideology of neuroscience and intellectual disability: reconstituting the ‘disordered’ brain

During the last two or three decades, neuroscience has changed how we understand brain functioning. This shift, which is re-conceptualizing the relationship between the materiality of the brain and consciousness, is bound to have implications for intellectual disability, which is commonly seen as a condition of the brain. At present, examinations of intellectual disability that deploy techniques and concepts from neuroscience constitute a growing research field that has been welcomed in some quarters of the disability research community. The purpose of this article is to urge for caution as regards this development. I argue that the neuroscience of intellectual disability is embodying ideological propositions that need to be problematized. By theorizing the relationship between biology and politics and examining neuroscientific publications on intellectual disability, I argue that this strand of research is underpinned by a discursive division between normal and pathological, that it therefore constitutes a continuation of understanding intellectual disability as a ‘disorder’ and that any firm separation between the ‘nature’ of intellectual disability and processes of power is inherently problematic. To be able to critically approach the neuroscience of intellectual disability, it is vital that disability researchers problematize the relationship between biology and politics.     

China’s minority preferential policies and the schooling of indigenous Tibetan children: the weakest link

Since the introduction of the Chinese colonial education system into Tibet in the 1960s, the Tibetan language has been caught in the crossfire. Because of Tibetan language’s perceived strong relationship with national identity and its alleged separatist implications, the Chinese leadership has always maintained an uneasy and sceptical outlook on it. Textbooks in Lhasa and other urban areas are exceedingly written in Chinese. The invalidation of mother tongue in the schooling process causes serious emotional trauma resulting in low academic achievement and low proficiency in the native language. The People’s Republic of China’s constitution guarantees the freedom of all nationalities ‘to use and develop their own spoken and written languages’. The trajectory of Tibetan language has, however, reflected the political winds sweeping across the plateau rather than educational imperatives. Therefore, this conceptual paper uses language-as-problem, language-as-right and language-as-resource framework for the critical analysis of language policy in occupied Tibet. Additionally, the role of social media is explored in language revitalisation despite PRC’s draconian language policing political agenda. A strong additive bilingual education with the sustained use of Tibetan language of instruction is advanced for enhancing both Tibetan and Chinese proficiency and academic achievements of indigenous children.     

INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY AND THE NATURE OF SCIENCE

The debate about the patenting of research is perhaps the most passionate now taking place about science and scientific culture. It is widely maintained that the expansion of patenting since about 1980 betrays a scientific tradition to which norms of universalism and common ownership of knowledge were central. This paper goes back to mid-twentieth century debates about science and intellectual property (IP) to argue that many of the norms we take as so central to science were themselves first articulated to critique patenting practices. In particular, it looks at how an economist (Arnold Plant), a scientist/philosopher (Michael Polanyi), and an information theorist (Norbert Wiener) responded to such practices. It especially focuses on the role of intellectual-property concerns in the making of Polanyi's philosophy of science, which it excavates through a reading of his unpublished papers. This reveals that the modern field of ‘science studies’ is indebted for some of its key concepts to an earlier generation of patent wars – an inheritance that exemplifies some of the strange ways in which the sociopolitical meanings of ideas can change from generation to generation. The point is not that present-day critics of scientific patenting are wrong, but that the very terms of the debate are more deeply-seated in the development of scientific culture than any of us has realized.     

The peculiar convergence of Jeffrey Alexander and Erik Olin Wright

Jeffrey Alexander and Erik Olin Wright are among the leading sociologists of their generation. Each has published his magnum opus in the past several years: The Civil Sphere (Alexander) and Envisioning Real Utopias (Wright). This paper—a dual review essay—lays out the core arguments of each work; situates each within the personal and intellectual contexts of its production; and critically assesses each in terms of its contributions to sociological theory and research. It also argues that the works converge (unexpectedly, given Alexander’s intellectual origins in neo-functionalism and Wright’s in neo-Marxism) upon a common intellectual position, that of Deweyan pragmatism. It tries to make sense of Alexander’s and Wright’s peculiar dual voyage in a Deweyan direction and offers some reflections as to what that journey might tell us about social theory and political thought today.     

‘Green Tibetans’ in China: Tibetan geopiety and environmental protection in a multilayered Tibetan landscape

This article examines how certain Tibetans and Han Chinese converts to Tibetan Buddhism in Diqing Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture and Beijing are articulating various forms of environmental discourse, both in terms drawn from Tibetan ‘geopiety’, and/or from a Western model of environmental protection. In relation to these trends, I further explore how certain Tibetans are articulating their understanding of Tibetan Buddhism within an apparently localised context, while other Tibetans are more obviously appropriating from discourses originating in the West and/or wider Chinese society to become more ‘modern’, while at the same time retaining a conceptualisation of Tibetan Buddhism that is hybridised between traditional and modernist understandings. I also explore how some Han practitioners may seek to become more ‘Tibetan’ by endorsing localised forms of Tibetan Buddhism and/or ‘performing’ certain Tibetan modes of religiosity, while others, due in part to geographical distance from the Tibetan landscape and cultural context, endorse an understanding of Tibetan Buddhism which is more closely tied to discourses of environmental protection originating in the West. In both Tibetan and Han Chinese cases, informants reflect upon their own beliefs and identity by gazing at the Other (Tibetan, Han, or Westerner), and marking out differences and similarities between Self and Other.     

Speaking trajectories: Meaghan Morris,antipodean theory and Australian cultural studies

Over the last 30 years, the term discourse has spread throughout both the social sciences and the humanities. There is a widespread consensus that the current usage of the term ‘discourse’ originated with Foucault. This paper has three related goals: first, it demonstrates that the current usage of ‘discourse‘ did not originate with Foucault, and in some ways contradicts his own limited technical usage. Second, an intellectual history is presented that explains where the term originated – in French and British theory of the 1960s and 1970s – and how it was propagated and transformed by Anglo-American cultural studies theorists. By extending this intellectual history through the 1990s, the paper documents how Anglo-American scholars increasingly began to attribute the concept to Foucault, and how this has contributed to two important misreadings of Foucault. In conclusion, this history is drawn upon to explore and clarify several competing usages of the term in contemporary cultural studies.     

Clothing and social movements: Tibet and the politics of dress

The ‘cultural turn’ in social movement studies has brought a renewed outlook on new social movements and lifestyle movements. In this development on the symbolic challenge of contemporary movements, research has expanded to both music and art. However, little is known about the role of clothing in movements and how activists use it for social change. In making the case for a greater consideration of clothing’s tactical use in identity work, this paper explores the case of the Tibetan Lhakar movement. I argue that for Lhakar activists, clothing is the materialization of the political consciousness of the movement and symbolically acts as a mechanism of communication in shaping its political goals. By using social media to observe individualized collective actions of wearing Tibetan clothing, the paper demonstrates how activists frame and create new political opportunity structures for civic participation in a one party state that controls all speech and movement.     

The failure of education in preparing Tibetans for market participation

Since the Chinese government began implementing economic reforms in the late 1970s, China has undergone profound economic change and growth. However, this growth has not been equitable, and the present economic gap between east and west China is wide. The Tibetans, a minority group in the ‘west’, are in a particularly dire situation. Although China's strategic policy of developing the west has provided many business opportunities, Tibetans are poorly equipped to respond to and take advantage of these opportunities. The reasons restricting effective market participation are complex and difficult to assess. There are no easy answers. Many political, social, cultural and environmental factors explain the difficulties encountered by Tibetan communities. However, by studying current educational practice with a focus on secondary education in Tibetan areas of China, this paper argues that poor education is among crucial factors explaining the inability of Tibetans to compete economically with non-Tibetan migrants.     

Understanding 2016: China,Brexit and Trump in the history of uneven and combined development

This article uses the theory of uneven and combined development (U&CD) to produce a novel explanation of ‘Brexit and Trump’ – the two shock political events of 2016. The argument proceeds in three steps. First, we identify the global conjuncture of historical unevenness in which the votes occurred: how the neoliberal transformation of the advanced capitalist countries was synchronized with the radically different process of primitive accumulation in China. Second, we apply the theory of U&CD to this peculiar ‘simultaneity of the non‐simultaneous’: the ‘big country’ effects of China's industrialization, we find, were thrice multiplied by its combination with the advanced sectors of the world economy, which accelerated China's take‐off, brought forward its export phase, and widened its export profile at a moment of maximum openness in international trade. Finally, this produced the pattern of development that led to the events of 2016: the resultant trade shocks intensified the internal inequalities of British and American societies in ways that match the geography of the Leave and Trump votes. The analysis has a wider intellectual implication too, for the phenomena of historical unevenness and combination are intrinsic to the history of the global political economy; and the theory of U&CD therefore has a unique contribution to make to the field of International Political Economy.     

A Prophet in his Hometown? the Academic Reception of Thomas Piketty’s “Capital in the Twenty-First Century” Across Disciplines in France and in the United States

This article analyzes the reception of Thomas Piketty’s “Capital in the twenty-first century” from September 2013 to June 2015 in France, where it was first released, and in the United States, by academics who come from a variety of disciplines. We discuss the “spontaneous sociology” offered by some of the actors of this reception and analyze, using their remarks as a starting point, the major predictors of the content of an academic review of Piketty. Our results highlight the strong effect of passing time on the content of the reviews – three clear phases can be identified in the reception of the book showing a “proteus effect” pattern. They also emphasize the importance of understanding how academic disciplines structure the debate – much more so than the country of residence. In fact, most of the opinions academics express on Piketty’s book are tied to their departmental affiliations. We look at how this link articulates the intellectual structures of the disciplines with field theory. Our results suggest a strong autonomy of the social scientific field from more general public concerns.     

The Engaged Academic: Academic Intellectuals and the Psychiatric Survivor Movement

This paper considers some political and ethical issues associated with the ‘academic intellectual’ who researches social movements. It identifies some of the ‘lived contradictions’ such a role encounters and analyses some approaches to addressing these contradictions. In general, it concerns the ‘politico-ethical stance’ of the academic intellectual in relation to social movements and, as such, references the ‘theory of the intellectual’ associated with the work of Antonio Gramsci. More specifically, it considers that role in relation to one political ‘field’ and one type of movement: a field which we refer to, following the work of Peter Sedgwick, as ‘psychopolitics’, and a movement which, since the mid- to late-1980s, has been known as the ‘psychiatric survivor’ movement—psychiatric patients and their allies who campaign for the democratisation of the mental health system. In particular, through a comparison of two texts, Nick Crossley's Contesting Psychiatry and Kathryn Church's Forbidden Narratives, the paper contrasts different depths of engagement between academic intellectuals and the social movements which they research.     

China’s modern image – contemporary Chinese art

Abstract

As a worldwide cultural phenomenon, contemporary art in China has not only been used as a diplomatic language but also a reflection of contemporary Chinese culture. Contemporary Chinese art, as an emerging field to display China’s global role, provides an important perspective to study China’s self-position in global relations, China’s diplomacy in exercising its soft power, contemporary Chinese culture, and the reinvention of China’s cultural/national identity in post-Mao China. Using the 2000 Shanghai Biennale and the Chinese pavilion at the 54th Venice Biennale as case studies, this article investigates how the fluid construct of Chineseness is successfully promoted and demonstrated through the government’s support of contemporary Chinese art.     

Migrant Workers Home and its practices on shaping the culture and community of ‘New Working Class’: a criticism on cultural-political activism in contemporary China

ABSTRACT

New Workers Home (Beijing, China) has been the most important site of activism and organizing of New Workers culture in Mainland China over the past 15 years. Beyond today’s intellectual atmosphere of liberal and ‘left-phobia’ in China, exploring the formation of a New Working Class can give us a new sense of class discourse and imagination of socialist China in the dimensions of both knowledge and activism. Based on my half-year fieldwork in New Workers Home and participant observation in knowledge and activism of New Workers culture, this paper aims at providing an in-depth analysis of the implications and tensions in the Migrant Workers Home’s imagination of New Workers culture and the organization’s energy and internal turbulence in their imagination of the community of the New Working Class, through reviewing their cultural actions focusing on the ‘cultural battlefield’ and community culture of Pi Cun (an urban fringe village in Beijing), their wider actions in social enterprise, ecological agriculture, organizational works among New Workers and their own organization’s internal situation. The outline of the problematics in this paper can be drawn by putting forward the following questions. How is the New Workers culture shaped by Migrant Workers Home? According to the situation of New Workers in contemporary China, what is its imagination of this forming class? How does it intervene the forming of a New Working Class with its cultural activism? By establishing a museum, college, social enterprises and ecological farms, how do these practices show its imagination of labours’ culture and politics? Located in Beijing and facing special political conditions, how does it arrange the guidelines and strategies of movements? What are the dilemmas of these practices, strategies and real politics?     

中国新媒介二十年与青年网络社会的建构

从1994年至2014年的20年间,中国社会发生了巨大的变化。这种巨大变化特别体现在媒介的不断创新。2014是中国互联网发展的第20年。20年间,伴随新媒介同步出现了一个新的"青年族群",即"80后"和"90后",尤其是"90后",直接被称之为"互联网一代"。本文旨在分析中国互联网20年间与青年相关的具有代表性的网络事件,通过新媒介事件的"原点"来观测中国新青年的网络社会是如何建构的。     

Muriel Dimen: Teacher,Mentor, Psychoanalytic Scholar

ABSTRACT

This essay is split in content and intent. In the first part, I share my reflections from my long personal relationship with Muriel Dimen, who taught, supervised, and mentored me as a young candidate and beginning scholar. In this part, I try convey how staunch and thorough her commitment, how extraordinary her generosity was in supporting the intellectual development of a new generation of emerging psychoanalytic thinkers and theorists.

The second part, written in an entirely different tone, takes on the body of work Dimen produced in the last decade of her life, which focused on sexual boundary violations. This work highlights the hybridity of her thinking and the brilliance of her mind. I flesh out the genealogy of her reflections on this topic and discuss in some depth how her last, posthumously published paper changes the terms of the conversation in this very difficult matter. In this topic, as she had previously done in many others, Dimen’s contribution introduced an entirely novel way to think about the recalcitrant problem of sexual abuses in the consulting room.     

Emerging Social Work Field Education Trends in China

MSW field education in China has been adopting Western models. However, this adaptation cannot address all educational and professional training needs in China. This study used an exploratory qualitative study design and interviewed 54 MSW students regarding their field experiences at a university in Shanghai. Results revealed six key themes: field education curriculum design’s influence on student field experiences, faculty advisers’ influence on student field experiences, field agencies’ expectations toward MSW intern performance, field agencies’ capacity to host MSW interns, student perceptions of their professional competencies, and students’ coping strategies to manage challenges in field practicum. Competency-based social work field education is a potential solution to address the current social work field education challenges in China.     

Machinisme, marxisme, humanisme : Georges Friedmann avant et après-guerre

Georges Friedmann (1902-1977) is known as the founder, following WW II, of a “sociology of humanist work”. Before the war, he was a Marxist intellectual, close to the Communist Party, who admired the young Soviet Union. How this political and ideological itinerary affected his sociology of labor, has never been systematically analyzed. To do so, “machinism” (mechanization), a key concept in the first part of Friedmann’s writing, is scrutinized. This concept came not from Marx, but from Michelet’s romantic conception of history, with which Friedmann was familiar. Following the war, it was given up for the pair “natural/technical milieu”; but this shift in vocabulary did not radically alter Friedmann’s views. Questions arise about how the intellectual itinerary of the founder of French labor sociology, who was shaped by the political trauma experienced by his generation, has lastingly affected this discipline.     

Homology and isomorphism: Bourdieu in conversation with New Institutionalism

Bourdieusian Field Theory (BFT) provided decisive inspiration for the early conceptual formulation of New Institutionalism (NI). This paper attempts to reinvigorate the stalled intellectual dialogue between NI and BFT by comparing NI's concept of isomorphism with BFT's notion of homology. I argue that Bourdieu's understanding of domination‐oriented social action, transposable habitus, and a non‐linear causality, embodied in his neglected concept of homology, provides an alternative theorization of field‐level convergence to New Institutionalism's central idea of institutional isomorphism. To showcase how BFT can be useful for organizational research, I postulate a habitus‐informed and field‐conditioned theory of transference to enrich NI's spin‐off thesis of ‘diffusion’. I propose that while NI can benefit from BFT's potential of bringing social structure back into organizational research, BFT can enrich its social analysis by borrowing from NI's elaboration of the symbolic system of organizations.