Happiness and capability: Introduction to the symposium

The aim of this symposium is to move beyond the established, narrow measures of well-being. It does so by bringing together insights from the happiness approach and the capability approach, both of which are at the forefront of theorizing on welfare in economics. The reason is that the connection happiness–capability is extremely stimulating and potentially able of opening up a very promising field of research. For this purpose, the symposium consists of overview papers by leading scholars and practitioners and of papers dealing with key conceptual and empirical issues on the frontier of combined happiness and capability research.     

Introduction: a symposium on social justice

In recent years South African studies have been radically transformed by a new school of work. The essential thrust of this new Marxist school has been to reconceptualise, retheorise and reanalyse the relationship between the economic system and the racial system in South Africa. The traditional liberal school has failed to see the ways and the extent to which important forms of racial domination have actually been integral and functional components of South African capitalism. The Marxist school must not let its strengths in political economy numb it from a sensitivity to cultural, ideological and psychological factors that are not always reducable to, or subsumable within, questions of political economy.     

Vygotsky,Consciousness, and the German Psycholinguistic Tradition

This article argues that Vygotsky's choice of word meaning as the basic unit of analysis for cultural psychology connects him to a German psycholinguistic tradition—exemplified in the work of G. W. F. Hegel and J. G. Herder—distinct from the Marxist tradition. While later commentators criticize Vygotsky's reliance on word meaning, arguing that it cannot explain the formation of consciousness, this German psycholinguistic tradition provides intellectual resources for rethinking the relationship between language and consciousness. Consciousness, through this model, arises from linguistic interactions, and is therefore not separable from language. Thus, word meaning encapsulates consciousness itself, not just its mediation in the world.     

Being Affected: Spinoza and the Psychology of Emotion

This paper describes the relevance of Spinoza's Ethics for contemporary thought on the psychology of emotion. Spinoza's account of the passions completely inverts the Cartesian primacy given to mind. For Spinoza the critical task is to formulate an ethics of knowing, which begins with an understanding that body and mind are two attributes of the same substance. Increasing the capacity of the body to both be affected and affect others is the means by which the knowing subject progresses. The article sketches out the key concepts involved in this system and shows how they sensitize us to a post-cognitive understanding of emotion in Proust's Swann's Way.     

Lev S. Vygotsky: The Man and the Era

Our interpretive essay situates the life and thought of the famed psychologist-educator, Lev S. Vygotsky within the confines of the frequently deadly political and ideological struggles taking place in the Soviet Union during the 1920s and 1930s. We analyze from a psychological point of view Vygotsky's rise and fall in a situation of revolutionary social change, class struggle, class hatred, ideological warfare, deliberately induced mass starvation, and the development of a totalitarian state based on the systematic use of terror. Whereas most Western psychologists have given minimal attention to the political and educational purposes for which Vygotsky's psychology was created, we emphasize that his Marxist orientation had a central influence both on his scientific preoccupations and on the course of his life. His revolutionary identity was anchored in a highly dynamic community with shared goals possessing a semi-sacred quality. Consequently, he experienced his later exclusion from this community as a kind of social and spiritual death.     

Spinoza in the history of cultural psychology and activity theory

ABSTRACT

This review of the place of Spinoza in the history of cultural-historical activity theory begins with a synopsis of Ilyenkov’s influential essay “Spinoza—Thought as an Attribute of Substance” and adds further points. I go on to look at the historical context of Spinoza’s work, the mixed character of his legacy, and the need to see Spinoza as one moment in an entire historical development.     

Introduction to Roundtable on Global Woman

For this roundtable discussion of Barbara Ehrenreich and Arlie Hochschild's anthology, Global Woman, the editors of SGS asked five psychoanalytic thinkers to comment on the collection. That highly important volume has as its theme the global transfer from the Third World to the First World of female labor forces that work in the sex trade or become mail-order brides, maids, nannies, and other kinds of caretakers. Ehrenreich and Hochschild then respond to the psychoanalytic essays. The introduction discusses some of the themes raised both in the book and in the responses. It highlights some of the places where a psychoanalytic and a sociological view complement each other and places where they might clash. The roundtable raises two important questions: what can psychoanalysis contribute to understanding the intrapsychic and interpersonal dislocations wrought by globalization; and what is globalization's effect on the practice of psychoanalysis?     

Introduction to the Special Issue on Boundaries and Links

Sociological Forum -     

Introduction to the Special Issue on Work and Families

Qualitative Sociology -     

Introduction to special section on blockchains and financial globalization

This special section shifts analytical attention onto efforts undertaken by dispersed sets of actors operating in online communities to mobilize a novel internet‐based technology that mysteriously appeared at the height of market volatility in 2008. Applications of blockchain technologies and the challenges presented to longstanding patterns of financial globalization are analysed by a group of scholars with backgrounds in anthropology, political science and sociology. This introductory article first elaborates what blockchain technologies consist of before foreshadowing the insights that the following interdisciplinary investigations yield for comprehending the implications that technological changes pose for global finance specifically and globalization more generally.     

Response to symposium on Artifacts and Allegiances: How Museums Put the Nation and the World on Display

The author responds to the contributions to this symposium, highlighting her ideas about diversity management regimes, the urban cultural armature, global museum assemblages, the cosmopolitan-nationalism continuum, and new methods for studying the global and for engaging in constructive critique.