Reflections on Donald J. Trump’s First 100 Days

The arrival of Donald J. Trump as President of the United States is frightening to U.S. intellectuals on many grounds, not the least of which is his narrow conception of who and what is an “American.” This essay explores this broad worry but also reflects more personally on those dangers. It contrasts visions of ‘America’ and argues that the U.S. is indeed a house divided unto itself, but not in terms of geography or citizenship. And, contrary to much wishful thinking over the years, that right-wing of the U.S. population is not a fringe element of U.S. society.     

‘The Light of Knowledge Follows the Impulse of Revolutions’: Prince Saunders,Baron de Vastey and the Haitian Influence on Antebellum Black Ideas of Elevation and Education

This article details the influence that Haitian ideas about education had on early black intellectuals. Following the successful slave revolution, leaders of the new Haitian state set out to develop a new educational system. African-American observers paid close attention to these developments and often attempted to mimic them. Especially important was the black traveller and activist Prince Saunders, who was hired by the Haitian King Henry Christophe to build schools. Combining social and intellectual history, this article argues that black intellectuals in the North were inspired by the memory and symbol of Haiti to develop an education system and elevation ideology that served explicitly political purposes.     

British sociology and public intellectuals: consumer society and imperial decline

The following is the lecture given for the BJS 2005 Public Sociology Debate given at the London School of Economics and Political Science on ll October 2005. This lecture on the character of British sociology provides a pretext for a more general inquiry into public intellectual life in postwar Britain. The argument put forward falls into several distinctive sections. First, British social science has depended heavily on the migration of intellectuals, especially Jewish intellectuals who were refugees from fascism. Second, intellectual innovation requires massive, disruptive, violent change. Third, British sociology did nevertheless give rise to a distinctive tradition of social criticism in which one can argue there were (typically home-grown) public intellectuals. The main theme of their social criticism was to consider the constraining and divisive impact of social class, race and gender on the enjoyment of expanding social citizenship. Fourth, postwar British sociology came to be dominated by the analysis of an affluent consumer society. Finally, the main failure of British sociology in this postwar period was the absence of any sustained, macro-sociological analysis of the historical decline of Britain as a world power in the twentieth century.     

On the Social Construction of Hellenism Cold War Narratives of Modernity,Development and Democracy for Greece

Hellenism is one of those overarching, ever‐changing narratives always subject to historical circumstances, intellectual fashions and political needs. Conversely, it is fraught with meaning and conditioning powers, enabling and constraining imagination and practical life. In this essay I tease out the hold that the idea of Hellas has had on post‐war Greece and I explore the ways in which the American anti‐communist rhetoric and discussions about political and economic stabilization appropriated and rearticulated Hellenism. Central to this history of transformations are the archaeologists; the archaeologists as intellectuals, as producers of culture who, while stepping in and out of their disciplinary boundaries, rewrote and legitimized the new ideological properties of Hellenism while tapping into the resources of their profession.     

Scandalous Scarcities: Black Slave Women, Plantation Domesticity, and Travel Writing in Nineteenth-Century Cuba

This article draws on the writing of North American and European travelers to illustrate the ways in which enslaved black women became central to Cuba's visions of colonial prosperity in the mid-nineteenth century. Such literature highlights the anxieties that plagued Cuban colonial elites as the slave trade consistently brought fewer African women than men to the island. As mothers, wives, and caretakers of domestic space, black and African women became critical to planters' dreams of continued wealth and stability. To further encourage this idealized culture of respectable domesticity, white Cuban elites erected slave cabins and barracks whose physical arrangements could increase slaves' compulsion to marry, and enhance managers' ability to survey and oversee the enslaved populations. Thus white Cuban elites hoped that enslaved women – and the ideas about marriage, home, and family such women were thought to inspire – would help to produce plantation regimes as orderly and disciplined as they were prosperous.     

青年知识分子精神文化生活的困境与出路

成长起来的青年知识分子正处在中国社会的转型期,他们承受着比以往更大的生存与发展压力,其精神文化生活也因此出现了种种困境。对1312名青年知识分子的问卷调查表明,当代青年知识分子群体的精神文化生活存在对精神文化产品利用有限,精神文化活动内容单一,精神文化生活满意度低等问题。因此,完善公共文化服务体系,提升青年知识分子精神文化生活的地位非常重要。     

关于当代中国知识分子犬儒化的反思与矫正

知识分子是社会的良知,他们本该以深厚的学养和勇敢的担当积极关注社会公共生活。可是,进入新世纪以来,伴随着大众文化的流行和消费主义的盛行,中国知识分子走向了犬儒化。时代对知识分子提出了新要求,作为一名现代的知识分子,在多元文化时代要坚守自己的价值立场,同时以自己的专业知识背景积极介入社会公共生活,对社会现实保持一种怀疑和批判的态度。     

Ideological or religious? Contending visions on the future of Alevi identity

Establishing a coherent collective identity within the modern urban context among people who have different ideological, social and religious orientations, and social and economic backgrounds, is an ongoing struggle within the Alevi community in Turkey. This study tries to understand how alternative positions on Alevi identity dynamically construct the boundaries, moral contents and the new shape of Alevi identity in modern urban contexts through use of various discursive resources. At least two main contending ‘positions’ on Alevi identity try to institutionalise Alevi identity in modern urban contexts, which are ‘Ideological Position’ and ‘Religious Position’. Those discourse positions constitute different visions about the past and the future of the Alevi community as well as the cultural and the political boundaries of Alevi identity. More importantly, those positions resonate in ordinary citizens’ life stories as well as group narratives. This study utilises the analytical frame of ‘positioning theory’ to shed light on the complexities of identity negotiation.     

Liberal subjects: elementary education and native agency in the British West Indies,c. 1834–1860

ABSTRACT

This article argues that missionaries in the British West Indies conceived of elementary education as a key element of the transition from slavery to freedom in the 1830s and 40s. They suggested that elementary schools and teacher training colleges could not only teach Christianity and literacy, but also create a black middle class, inculcate the values of capitalism in the free black population more broadly, and even lay the foundation for an educational and religious mission to Africa led by free blacks. However, these utopian hopes were short-lived. By the 1850s, frustration and anger over the perceived slow pace of change and financial difficulties set in among both missionaries and the black teachers who had once been so central to missionaries’ hopes for the future of the Atlantic world.     

An “Oasis of Freedom” in a “Closed Society”: The Development of Tougaloo College as a Free Space in Mississippi's Civil Rights Movement, 1960 to 19641

Abstract Based on archival research and in‐depth interviews, this study explores how Tougaloo College in Jackson, Mississippi developed into a pivotal movement center in Mississippi's civil rights movement and the ways in which Tougaloo's faculty and administrators as organic intellectuals helped to create, maintain, and augment such a free space and the social networks who utilized it. The school served as an interracial “safe haven” for those involved in and sympathetic to the civil rights movement who in turn, helped to cultivate networks, ideas, and strategies that contributed to the movement in meaningful ways. The school's heritage, its sources of financial support, and its relative physical isolation allowed Tougaloo College to challenge Mississippi's closed society from within.     

Parenting and child-caretaking among black men who have sex with men and associated sexual and reproductive health factors: a brief report

Abstract

The purpose of this exploratory study was to examine the prevalence of parenting and child-caretaking among a sample of black men who have sex with men (MSM), as well as associations between parenting roles and sexual and reproductive health (SRH) factors. Parenting and SRH data were derived from a survey of 199 black MSM. Nearly half of the sample reported being a father or father-figure (44.4%), almost a third indicated serving as caretaker of a child (29.1%), and one in five have a biological child (20.1%). Over half of the sample reported at least one of these three parenting/child-caretaking roles (52.5%). Two significant differences were observed for sexual health variables: men with biological children were significantly more likely to report using condoms inconsistently (55.0% vs. 35.7%, p = .026) and engaging in transactional sex work (36.8% vs. 21.0%, p = .041). Given the observed prevalence, parenting and child-caretaking among black MSM warrant further inquiry as factors that may influence SRH outcomes and care utilization. Services and interventions tailored to black MSM should consider these men’s potential roles and responsibilities as parents and caretakers of children.     

The politics of meaning: Modern Chinese nationalists’ efforts to redefine the English word “nation”

A semantic transformation of the English word “nation” has occurred in recent China. The once popular “ethnic group” connotation of “nation” has been dropped, while the “state-nation” connotation has become increasingly prominent. The change can be attributed to the efforts of Chinese intellectuals who wished to redefine the word—an endeavor which began nearly 100 years ago. The dynamics behind this redefinition has arisen from a nationalist desire to eliminate the threat to the territorial unity of China brought about by the idea of “national self-determination.” By manipulating the politics of meaning, that is, redefining “nation” as “state-nation,” Chinese intellectuals have eventually converted the original separatist slogan into a slogan of maintaining national unity.     

The New Immigrants and the Making of a Multicultural Society: A Critical Analysis of Contemporary Ethnographic Approaches

This article discusses the work and personal experience of the exile, Egyptian novelist and short story writer, Albert Cossery. Selections of his prose which revealingly portray lower class life in Egypt in the first half of the twentieth century are considered, granting us a candid view of life as lived by the masses of Egyptians during this period. Also investigated is Cossery's personal development as an Egyptian Greek Catholic intellectual whose education and cultural inclination predisposed him to write in French. His life is of particular interest because it mirrors some typical dilemmas faced by minority intellectuals during the transformation of a developing nation from foreign rule to national independence.     

Putting empathic feelings into words during times of crisis: The impact of differential verbal empathy expressions on organizational reputation

Organizations in crisis should, above all, demonstrate compassion, concern, and empathy to relieve psychological distress among their stakeholders. In addition, a display of empathy can mitigate reputational damage as well. But how can an organization in crisis put expressions of empathy into words? This study examines three distinct manners to verbally express empathy (i.e., claiming vs. demonstrating understanding; cognitive vs. affective empathy; intensified vs. unintensified verbal expression of empathy) and explores their impact on the post-crisis reputation through three experimental studies. The first two studies also examine the crisis type as a potential boundary condition. The results confirm that an expression of empathy can help protect an organization’s reputation, during both a victim crisis and a preventable crisis. When an organization expresses empathy for those who suffer from a crisis, the public may in turn experience empathic concern towards the organization, which helps to alleviate reputational damage. The positive effect of empathy expressions differs, however, depending on the way in which it is verbally articulated.     

A Nobel Trinity: Jane Addams,Emily Greene Balch and Alva Myrdal

The aim of the paper is to present unusual achievements of three women sociologists who won the Nobel Peace Prize. Its goal is also to contribute to a long standing discussion of the role sociologists as public intellectuals. By focusing on Addams, Balch and Myrdal’s scholarly and public life, the paper demonstrates what social scientists can offer in the role of public intellectuals and debates what are the source of intellectuals’ public standing. The paper concludes by arguing that these three intellectuals’ successful achievement of their goals was possible because of their professional credential and because of their courage to take on risky actions for purposes to institutionalise social or cultural change.     

THE BODY AND CITIZENSHIP IN SOCIAL MOVEMENT RESEARCH: Embodied Performances and the Deracialized Self in the Black Civil Rights Movement 1961–1965

In political and cultural theory, the body has been central to our understandings of political power, yet, the body remains absent in social movement research. This article examines the role of the body in social movements, focusing on how social movements shape bodily postures and techniques of affective self-mastery to represent idealized citizenship. Based on archival data and the concepts of performativity and performance, I use the cases of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference's Citizenship Schools and Role-Playing Simulations and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee's Community Centers to show how the deracialized body was materialization of liberal civic culture that sought to: (1) severe identification with the racial group in favor of identifying with an idealized national identity; and (2) change what counts as good citizenship to change who counts as good citizens. I analyze the movement's pedagogy focusing on the ritualized repetition of embodied movements that deracialized the black political body by embedding idealized citizenship into bodily postures, which increased the probability for a successful performance. Although the deracialized body was vital to the passage of the national legislation, it served to hide geographical and economic differences within the black population, producing the false correlation of national policy change with local change.     

Homework: Routine,social aesthetics and the ambiguity of everyday life

Routine is a central feature of everyday life, yet its peculiar rhythms, and the range of experiences associated with it, are often neglected within cultural studies and sociology. Simmel’s attempt to provide a sociological aesthetics is seen as a project that needs reanimating for the study of everyday life routines. This does not mean, however, that Simmel is the only, or the best, guide to the aesthetic dimensions of everyday routine life. In an attempt to provide some co-ordinates for instigating a socio-aesthetic approach to routine, this paper discusses a number of writers who couple aesthetics and the everyday, and who might provide frameworks for the study of experiential aspects of routine life. It also suggests that an inverted reading of John Dewey could provide socio-aesthetic study with the ‘formless’ forms required to bring everyday background routines into the foreground. The socio-aesthetic study of cooking undertaken by Luce Giard provides an example of the complexity of such an approach. Lastly the article looks briefly at new directions for ‘everyday life aesthetics’, more specifically at Henri Lefebvre’s unfinished project of rhythmanalysis.     

‘Between Two Evils,I Refuse To Choose The Lesser’

For French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, the issue of the agency of intellectuals was paramount. Bourdieu maintained that intellectuals have a fearsome form of social responsibility. Having witnessed the ‘institutional misuse of authority’ common among academics, the ‘canonized stupidity’ that was part and parcel of the educational system, the faddishness of intellectual trends and the ‘cult of “transgression”‘ that underwrote this faddishness, Bourdieu crafted an alternative position and practice that were to bear fruit in the context of the fight against neo-liberalism during the last two decades of the twentieth century. This essay provides an examination of Bourdieu's theory of the gap between theory and practice, how intellectuals shape and are influenced by this gap and what can and should be done to challenge it.     

Aging in a rural place: the elusive source of well-being

The overall purpose of this study was to provide more insight into the explanation of the rural-urban paradox of perceived life condition through objective and subjective measures of rural within-group disparities. The objectives of the study were: (1) compare the general life condition and subjective well-being of four subgroups of the elderly: white males, white females, black males and black females; (2) determine the similarity of correlates of subjective well-being among the groups; and (3) determine qualitatively, some of the more elusive sources of well-being among the rural elderly as a group. Quantitative data on the life situation and morale of 365 rural by-passed elderly 65 years and older, and qualitative information on 30 corresponding adults were analyzed. The results from the quantitative analyses showed within-group socioeconomic differences among the rural elderly yet no differences in their morale. This finding paralleled that usually observed for rural-urban groups. This phenomena appeared to be explained qualitatively in part through associationistic theory or the extent to which older adults made positive associations with their rural environment. Several factors, elusive in nature, appeared to diminish differences in subjective well-being and they included: a strong sense of friend and neighbor network; a sense of personal space; and the ability to maintain a strong value system as seen through continued activities (gardening, visiting, helping), friend network exchange and religious participation. Implications for researchers and practitioners are provided.     

THE INTELLECTUAL IN QUESTION

Although contemporary scholars in various disciplines readily appropriate many of his ideas, Antonio Gramsci's theory of intellectuals remains curiously unappreciated. From the standpoint of the oft-lamented crisis of the contemporary intellectual, however, it represents a resource that is both indispensable and difficult to retrieve. In this article the historical and sociological nuances of Gramsci's theory, as well as the powerful, yet unheeded lessons of his own life as an intellectual will be examined. In particular, Gramsci's analysis of the social affiliation and political agency of the intellectual provides the framework necessary to explain the rise and ongoing crisis of the academic intellectual as a historically unprecedented figure. This point will be illustrated by examining the case of influential academic intellectuals such as Michael Walzer and Michel Foucault. The article concludes with some reflections on the merits of Gramsci's distinctive way of being an intellectual.