Lights of disenchantment: a study of Max Weber’s thesis on the ‘disenchantment of the world’ from the perspective of visual studies

At the end of 1917, during a conference at Munich University, the German sociologist Max Weber (1864–1920) made a bold announcement: ‘The fate of our times is characterized by rationalization and intellectualization and, above all, by the “disenchantment of the world”.’ In this article, I provide an interpretation of the notion of ‘disenchantment of the world.’ Subsequently, I present visual material that might further illuminate Weber’s idea. In the third part, I strictly concentrate my attention on one argument suggested by Weber: in ‘disenchanted’ societies ‘mysterious incalculable forces do not come into play anymore.’ Through two exemplary sculptures by the Danish artist Bertel Thorvaldsen (1770–1884), I continue my visual excursus on the ‘disenchantment’ thesis by connecting Weber’s account on the intellectualisation of religious world-views with the autonomisation of the aesthetic sphere. The overall ambition of this article lies in providing an introductory account to an important intellectual problem and historical process through visual and textual analysis.     

‘It's capitalism on coke!’: From temporary to permanent liminality in organization studies

In recent years, organization studies have become increasingly aware of the concept of liminality. In our review and critique of this reception of liminality in organization studies, we emphasize that liminality involves a fundamental suspension of ordinary social structures. Although the prevailing use of the concept in anthropology as well as in organization studies has conceptualized liminality as a temporary state, we focus on permanent liminality. Yet the idea of permanent liminality leads to an inevitable paradox, because the concept, by definition, is a temporary state. Conceptualizing liminality as a constant state of social limbo, we show that the paradox in permanent liminality stems from the impossibility of drawing clear distinctions between different social spheres, especially as they apply to modern work–life. Examining a case study about a management consultant, we illustrate the paradox of liminality in terms of a zone of indistinction between work and life as it is reflected in an empirical self-narrative about a consultancy ‘lifestyle’. We further link these findings to a possible transition from disciplinary societies to societies of control.     

Material as actor in the enactment of social norms: Engaging with a sociomaterial perspective in childhood studies to avoid the ‘traps of closure’

This article employs a sociomaterial perspective and explores how material artefacts take part in the enactment of social norms by analysing empirical examples from two different childhood studies projects in Norway. Drawing on interview data with tweens, (children aged 8–12), and observational data from an early education and care institution (ECEC), we argue that material, in this case toys and makeup, make a difference in the enactment of social norms in children's everyday lives. Our aim is to demonstrate the malleability of a sociomaterial perspective and show how this can lead to new insights and open childhood studies as a field.     

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.     

Female narratives of ‘new’ citizens’ belonging(s) and identities in Europe: case studies from the Netherlands and Britain

Public discourses on citizenship, identity and nationality, which link geographical borders and the political boundaries of a community, are infused with tensions and contradictions. This paper illustrates how these tensions are interwoven with multilayered notions of home, belonging, migration, citizenship and individual's ‘longing just to be’, focusing on the Dutch and the British context. The narratives of a number of Dutch and British women, who either immigrated to the respective countries or were born to immigrants, illustrate how the growing rigid integration and assimilative discourses in Europe contradict an individual anchoring in national and local communities. The narratives of women participating in these studies show multilayered angles of belonging presenting an alternative to the increasing strong argument for a fixed notion of positioning and national belonging. The female ‘new’ citizens in our study tell stories of individual choices, social mobility and a sense of multiple belonging in and across different communities.     

Constructions of ‘vulnerability’ in comparative perspective: Scottish protection policies and the trouble with ‘adults at risk’

This paper places Scottish adult support and protection (ASP) policy in the context of debates about the nature of ‘vulnerability’ and its usefulness as a defining concept in law and social policy. It examines the construction of ‘adults at risk’ in ASP policy, using a comparison with the construction of children in Scottish child protection policy, on the one hand, and women in Scottish domestic abuse policy, on the other, to illuminate the nature of the vulnerability that ASP considers itself to be addressing. It then problematises this construction, drawing both on the social model of disability and on an ethic of care. It concludes that current ASP policy remains underpinned by unhelpful assumptions about disabled people, older people and people with mental or physical health problems. A more inclusive understanding of vulnerability would be more empowering to these people and others, in policies concerned with mistreatment and abuse.     

‘Nomadic’ organization and the experience of journeying: Through liminal spaces and organizing places

This paper explores the author's experience of ‘nomadic’ organization [Deleuze, G., and F. Guattari. 1988. A Thousand Plateaus. London: Continuum] through the findings of an ethnographic study of an annual folk-culture community festival in a rural region of Sweden. The study concerned the practices of one small village community organizing group, of which the author was a member, in contributing to the festival. Using autoethnographic methods, the author brings together phenomenological theories of embodied knowledge [Merleau-Ponty, M. 1962. The Phenomenology of Perception. Abingon: Routledge; Küpers, W. 2011. “Dancing on the Līmen – Embodied and Creative Inter-Places as Thresholds of Be(com)ing: Phenomenological Perspectives on Liminality and Transitional Spaces in Organisation and Leadership.” Tamara – Journal for Critical Organization Inquiry Special Issue on Liminality 9 (3–4): 45–59.] and process theories or organizing [Chia, R. 1999. “A Rhizomic Model of Organizational Change and Transformation: Perspective from a Metaphysics of Change.” British Journal of Management 10 (2): 209–227; Tsoukas, H., and R. Chia. 2002. “On Organizational Becoming: Rethinking Organizational Change.” Organization Science 13 (5): 567–582] to examine his experiences of nomadic ‘journeying’. This highlights his movement in and through liminal spaces, both physical and metaphorical, as part of the research project, and his engagement with fellow participants in the co-construction of a place as part of the festival site organization. The impacts of these experiences on the author and their implications for the spatial relations of organizing are examined using fragments of reflexion, incorporating photographic and poetic elements.     

‘Eyesight to the Blind’: Secular and Religious Dialogue in the ‘Devil's Music’

I adopt a dialogic approach to refute Paul Oliver’s claim that there is no challenge to the authority of the black Church or religion in the segregated ‘race records’ of the first half of the 20th century in the United States. I dismiss the claims of some black theologians that the presence of biblical imagery in the blues means that performers were essentially religious. I show that the dialogue between secular song and religious sermons on record involved mutual parody, satire, and polemic in a common speech genre. Attacks on the Church, its members, clergy, and doctrines were common. Recorded sermons spoke back in defense. Mikhail Bakhtin's concepts offer purchase on the relations between secular and religious recordings in an ongoing struggle for hegemony in black cultural production.     

Growing up on the sidelines: identity negotiations of Palestinian youth from ‘collaborating’ families relocated to Israel

By examining the experiences of the children of Palestinian collaborators whose families have relocated to Israel, this study explores how youth negotiate self within the context of marginalisation and cultural dislocation. Due to the actions of their parents, the research participants have become outsiders and outcasts in their Palestinian communities of origin, outsiders in Israel, and outsiders among Israeli-Arabs. Based on qualitative, in-depth interviews with 11 Palestinian male youths, we describe and analyse the experience of identity negotiation in the context of fear and their families’ past deceit. Our findings highlight that the youths’ identities are negotiated by engaging in a dialogue of self on belonging and not belonging that is based on visions of their past, present and future selves. This is accompanied by a forced dialogue with others, explaining who they are in order to fit in with the ‘audience’, a presentation that is then acted out.     

‘Us’ and ‘them’: the limits and possibilities of a ‘politics of neurodiversity’ in neoliberal times

The neurodiversity movement claims that there are neurological differences in the human population, and that autism is a natural variation among humans – not a disease or a disorder, just ‘a difference’. A ‘politics of neurodiversity’ is based on the claim that the ‘neurodiverse’ population constitutes a political grouping comparable with those of class, gender, sexuality or race. This paper considers the limits and possibilities of neurodiverse political activism, and concludes by calling for a politics of identity that does not depend on a politics of ‘us’ and ‘them’.     

Exploring the ‘craftedness’ of multimedia narratives: from creation to interpretation

This paper emerges from a comparative study of two community-based multimedia storytelling projects in Toronto and Montreal, and the multimedia narratives participants produced in those projects. Following current scholarship in visual methods that acknowledges the significance for research of the medium’s formal qualities, the authors offer the concept of ‘craftedness’ as one which might help researchers grapple with the significance of the processes of both creating and interpreting visual data. Through a study of the visual data produced in these two projects, they examine three qualities of this aesthetic experience captured in the notion of craftedness, which seem to both complicate and enable processes of self-representation and interpretation: aesthetic distance, visual excess and the visualisation of the unrepresentable. Taking seriously the craftedness of multimedia works highlights the complexities of interpreting visual data and the dilemmas of representing ourselves and others.     

Doing sociological research: the genre of ‘owning up’

This paper presents an account of an access encounter, and uses this case to reinforce the potential for access meetings to provide a rich source of ethnographic data. The paper originates from one of the authors' experience of negotiating research access in a UK local authority social services department. In response to a summary research proposal sent in advance that expressed interest in social work with men, a gatekeeper expressed his concern during an initial meeting that the author might be a ‘paedophile’ wanting to make contact with others of a similar persuasion. This encounter, and the issue of sexual abuse that it introduced, highlights a number of ethical, epistemological and gendered tensions for ethnographic work, which this paper attempts to negotiate. Some of the potential implications of this specific access meeting are discussed, and set within broader methodological and empirical contexts.     

Polanyi’s two transformations revisited: a ‘bottom up’ perspective

ABSTRACT

In The Great Transformation, Karl Polanyi offers a ‘top-down’ analysis of the rise and demise of Europe’s unregulated market system. He assumes that changes in the organization of the international economy provide particular kinds of opportunities for states to act which, in turn, shapes the extent to which social forces will be able to influence state policy. Consequently, his analysis focuses, first, on the international institutions created by the self-regulating market system; then on the ‘liberal state’ which these made possible; and finally on how the system impacts ‘society as a whole’. The account which this analysis produces systematically underplays the social struggles which propelled and emerged from the rise of Europe’s nineteenth century system and which ultimately led to its demise. In revisiting the two periods that are the focus of Polanyi’s analysis, this article assumes that states and interstate systems reflect the interests of powerful social forces. Thus, working from the ‘bottom up’, it focuses on the class interests that produced Europe’s market system, the state and international structures which reflected and supported them, and the social struggles that ultimately brought about the collapse of the system. What this ‘bottom up’ account reveals is the centrality of a ‘double movement’, not of market expansion and a protective countermove on the part of ‘society as a whole’, but of dominant classes monopolizing economic opportunities from global expansion, and a rising ‘red tide’ of disaffected workers. This double movement, it argues, better explains the demise of the system and the changes that ensued from it.     

From ‘Employab-ility’ to ‘Entrepreneurial-ity’ in Spain: youth in the spotlight in times of crisis

This paper discusses the processes of individualisation of work and redefinition of the referential category of worker fostered by youth employability schemes in Spain. Employability measures proposed by the recent Spanish Youth Guarantee Implementation Plan and its antithetical youth representations (as a group ‘without qualities’ – the ‘NEETS’– while at the same time as a referential value and cultural model – ‘the young entrepreneur’-) will be analysed. These paradoxes strengthened by employability policies, and further aggravated in the wake of the current economic crisis, do not give rise to political contradictions due to the depolitisation promoted by employability policies: social problems are converted into individual deficits. These processes of psychologisation of work are further discussed on the basis of a recent study on employment counselling and career guidance to help to enhance the employability of jobless people in three Spanish cities, Seville, Madrid and Valencia. These tools are aimed at fostering employability of unemployed people with a high risk of social exclusion and are emblematic concerning the principle of employability (new governance tools, different intervention logics/principles). Some paradoxes concerning employability policies (entrepreneuriality) in the current labour market crisis will be outlined.     

Transsexuals,homosexuals, and sissy boys: On the mathematics of follow‐up studies

Demographics, sexual behavior, and self‐perceptions of a self‐defined sadomasochistic (S/M) sample of 178 men are described. These men either returned a questionnaire published in an S/M magazine or completed a questionnaire after being solicited at an S/M support‐group meeting. The composite respondent was heterosexual, well‐educated, relatively affluent, interested in both dominant and submissive roles (switchable), and engaged in a wide range of sexual activities, both S/M and non‐S/M. Most of the respondents first acknowledged interest and engaged in S/M acts as a young adult, after other sexual orientation issues were settled. Although most respondents were satisfied with the S/M aspect of their sexuality, a small percentage (approximately 6%) expressed distress concerning their behavior, and 16% had sought help from a therapist regarding their S/M desires. These data are generally similar to those obtained from a similar investigation of a West German sample (Spengler, 1975, 1977). The data from a smaller sample (N = 47) of women collected at the same time are described briefly.     

‘Outcasts from the world’: same-sex sexuality,authority, and belonging in post-emancipation Jamaica

In 1839, Jamaican plantation attorney Alexander Grant sued missionaries John Stainsby and Samuel Oughton for slander; they had accused Grant of ‘lewd and indecent practices’ with enslaved and apprenticed men. Missionaries and abolitionist supporters on one side, and Grant and the plantocracy on the other, used the scandal to challenge their opponents’ suitability to shape post-emancipation society. The trials show that sex – and same-sex sexuality – was central to the contest for social authority. Several freedmen testified that Grant had coerced them into sexual interactions. Grappling with archival silences, the essay considers how the admissions affected their sense of masculinity and communal belonging.     

Resisting to the Neoliberal Urban Fabric: Housing Rights Movements and the Re-appropriation of the ‘Right to the City’ in Rome,Italy

This paper scrutinises the phenomenon of collective squatting for housing in Rome (Italy), which has reached remarkable proportions and developed new characteristics since the start of the 2008 crisis. Based upon two pieces of ethnographic research within the housing movement organisations Coordinamento Cittadino di Lotta per la Casa (Urban Coordination of Housing Struggles) and Blocchi Precari Metropolitani (Precarious Metropolitan Block), the authors aim to enlarge empirical knowledge of the case under study and provide renewed analytical instruments for understanding housing mobilisations. These organisations appear to be more than grassroots approaches to housing deprivation; they also represent alternative forms of social reproduction in post-welfare neoliberal cities. Indeed, squats configure themselves as sites for broader political elaboration. For this reason, we propose to analyse housing squatting using the notion of ‘urban commons’. The introduction of this notion to analyse housing movements helps in the theoretical elaboration of a re-appraised ‘right to the city’, in line with current urban challenges.     

‘That unit of civilisation’ and ‘the talent peculiar to women’: British employers and their servants in the nineteenth-century Indian empire

Domestic servants across the British Empire were instrumental in constructing colonial domesticity. In metropole and colony, they marked the physical boundaries of the house and family and the categorical boundaries of class, gender and racial difference. However, in colonial India, the gender and racial status of Indian servants, relative to both their colonial employers and their metropolitan counterparts, disrupted the dynamics of dependence that structured metropolitan employer/servant relations and identities. Despite efforts to dutifully ‘civilise’ households according to a ‘British’ standard, the day-to-day reality was one in which ambivalence and uncertainty towards servants were commonplace among colonisers and where servants participated in the creation of a way of life that was specifically colonial, even while it sought to preserve and proselytise ‘Britishness’.