Putting Adam Ferguson in his place

This paper re-conceptualizes the relationship between Ferguson's life and work by locating him in his biographical and geographical context for the purposes of better understanding his proto-sociological writings. Ferguson's work is relatively unknown outside limited sets of literature and current representations of the link between his life and work risk misplacing him as both Scotsman and sociologist. The popular portrayal suggests there is a strong connection between his Highland background and his famous book An Essay on the History of Civil Society. It will be argued that this claim reproduces the social construction of space in Scottish society and is based on stereotypical views of his birthplace and upbringing. Ferguson did not construct an autobiographical narrative to offer his own understanding of the link between his life and work. This reflects the strengths and weaknesses of sociology as it was developing in the eighteenth century. The 'self' was not recognized as an object of intention or symbolic construction. Ferguson's writings analysed modernity as it was emerging in eighteenth-century Lowland Scotland and contrary to common opinion, there was no self-identity as a Highlander to shape his understanding of that social process.     

The Medium Is the Mass: Marshall McLuhan's Catholicism and catholicism

Conflicting assumptions have been proffered about Marshall McLuhan's Roman Catholic beliefs: (a) that he was a "compartmentalized Catholic" who kept his Sunday beliefs separate from his Monday-to-Saturday academic thinking; (b) that his Catholicism was ubiquitous, and thus the "global village" is a longing for one world body as camouflaged Teilhard de Chardin; (c) that McLuhan was an academic who addressed all topics, including religious ones, orally and in writing but not with a proselytizing perspective; (d) that as a convert to Catholicism (in the spirit of Chesterton and Lewis) he was a clever and subtle evangelical who infused academe with adapted theology; and (e) that some mixture of these assumptions is likely to be true, although McLuhan kept his articles of faith largely off the record. Based on interviews with McLuhan and with some of his closest colleagues and friends, as well as on research about the religious vein within McLuhan's writing, I report aspects of the "Marist McLuhan," that is, the McLuhan moved by Mary, and by her church, as well as aspects of McLuhan's theological subtext within his writing and thinking.     

Rupert B. Vance on Population

Rupert B. Vance, a distinguished sociologist, was a true Renaissance man whose writings spanned a variety of disciplines and touched on many issues of public as well as professional interest. As is typical of such scholars, his writings are published in a broad range of books, journals, newspapers, and other outlets. Reed and Singal (1982) brought together a selection of his writings on the South as a region, but his works in other areas have not been synthesized. The effort here is to assess his contributions to the field of population. Although no great ideas in population analysis are associated with his name, a review of his publications shows that he often was ahead of his time in dealing with issues and his influence on the field can be profoundly felt.     

HERBERT BLUMER'S CONCEPTUAL IMPACT

Blumer's conceptual development was particularly crucial to the development of sociology. Despite his many talents, Blumer's importance as a sociologist stems from his profound theoretical contributions. He affected the discipline through his insistence on precision of thought in a field that let fuzzy ideas and meaningless numbers take its place. In addition, he offered a serious axiomatic-deductive theory to sociology. Although we do not always recognize his impact, few sociologists are untouched by his work. Ultimately Blumer's impact is what we make it by our own practice.     

Constitutions, voting and democracy: A review

This review of William Riker's work suggests that his interest in rational choice theory was based on his desire to understand profound constitutional transformation in U.S. political history. Although he argued that “anything can happen in politics,” his use of the notion of heresthetic allowed him to focus on key contingent events. Indeed his later work added depth to his inductive generalizations on the nature of “federal bargains” and coalition formation.  Recent work by Austen-Smith and Banks, Merrill and Grofman, and Lijphart is also discussed in the light of Riker's earlier ideas on voting and democracy. Received: 25 February 2000/Accepted: 16 March 2000     

THE PROBLEM OF TEMPORALITY IN THE WORK OF GEORG SIMMEL

While Georg Simmel's work is predominantly recognized as contributing to the formal analysis of social interaction and temporally is an issue not conceived of as a feature of his work, formal analysis is not incompatible with a temporal approach to the study of social life. This article discusses issues of temporality as they appeared in the work of Georg Simmel by first presenting some general comments about his work and its status within the discipline, as well as some problems present in his writings that contribute to confusion regarding his views on temporality as well as formal sociology itself. Next, his views on temporality as they relate to his dualistic perspective are discussed. This is followed by a discussion of his evolutionary epistemology, which is also relevant to the issue of temporality in his work. In conclusion, the ways in which Simmel's view of temporality could enhance current sociological inquiry are discussed.     

Lenin in Heidiland

In July 1916 Vladimir Lenin and his wife Nadezhda Krupskaia left on their annual holiday in the Swiss Alps. For eight weeks they stayed in the remote Kurhaus Tschudiwiese, high in the St Gallen Oberland south of Zurich, in a region now known as Heidiland. Lenin’s interest was in hiking, certainly not in Heidi, nor in plotting the revolution that was to topple Tsar Nicholas II less than six months after his return to civilization. As a result, this episode was ignored by virtually all Soviet writers and by most Western biographers. This article seeks to fill that lacuna by discussing Lenin’s little-known holiday pursuits and the limited work he pursued in his mountainous retreat. Particular attention is given to his extensive but often divisive and partially suppressed correspondence with Grigorii Zinov'ev, Inessa Armand, Roman Malinovskii, and Nikolai Bukharin. The picture that emerges is of a more human, non-geometric individual than that found in his Western and Soviet biographies. Visitors to Heidiland today will see many reflections of the fictional orphan and her idyllic stay in these mountains but none of the authentic Russian revolutionary who was to become the first leader of the new Soviet state.     

Ilyenkov on Aesthetics: Realism,Imagination, and the End of Art

It is sometimes claimed that Evald Ilyenkov's writings, particularly those on the problem of the ideal, best express the philosophical framework of Russian cultural-historical psychology and activity theory. In this article I consider a neglected part of Ilyenkov's legacy: his work on aesthetics. Ilyenkov's writings on art cast significant light on his views of culture and mind and on the humanistic vision at the center of his philosophy. In 1964, on a rare trip to the West, Ilyenkov visited an exhibition of pop art in Vienna. He was disgusted by what he saw and wrote a scathing critique entitled "Chto tam, v Zazerkal'e?" ("What's there, through the looking glass?"). Does Ilyenkov's antipathy to pop-and, indeed, to so-called modern art in general-show him to be enamored of a narrow, reactionary form of socialist realism? If so, how can this be squared with his reputation as a creative, critical voice within Soviet Marxism? I examine Ilyenkov's other writings on aesthetics in search of a nuanced interpretation of his reaction to pop. I consider his idea that art should serve to cultivate higher forms of perception and his attendant concepts of aesthetic sensibility and imagination, and I explore how these notions contribute to his view of the unity of the cognitive virtues, his hostility to the division of labor, and his ideal of genuine human activity, guided by reason. Such themes are vital constituents of Ilyenkov's humanism, which celebrates free, creative activity as a life principle that must assert itself against the mortifying forces of mechanization and standardization. Although these ideas may not entirely redeem Ilyenkov's hostility to modern art, they reveal his stance to be far more sophisticated than appears at first sight.     

The Judaic Roots of Neil Postman's Cultural Commentary

Over a period of some 4 decades, Neil Postman's intellectual production took the form of a cultural commentary that addressed topics relating to education, communication, and American culture, informed by a media ecology perspective. This article focuses on the relationship between Postman's religious heritage and his scholarship, noting that he rarely made overt reference to his background, and mostly to support the traditional melting pot ideal of American culture. It is argued that Postman saw himself as being religious without being observant and, in his writing, was often critical of religious close-mindedness and fanaticism without dismissing or derogating the value of religion in general. The Judaic roots of his cultural commentary can be seen in particular in his emphasis on the distinction between verbal and visual communication, and his critique of image culture; in the importance he attached to the word in both its oral and written forms; in his ability to distance himself from contemporary American culture and his call to say no to media and technologies such as television and the computer; in his ongoing concern with education and schooling; and in his concern with social justice and moral responsibility, which informed his approach to media ecology and formed the basis of his argument that we ought to regard social science in general as a form of storytelling and moral theology.     

What will be,will be: An Interview with Jurgen Hargens

Graham Martin met Jurgen Hargens at the International Editor's meeting prior to the Second International Conference on Family Therapy in New York, in October 1985, and was struck by his passionate idealism, his development of an international journal almost single-handed, and his forceful defence of the need for a journal which focussed on systemic issues.     

Autobiography and Memory: Gustavus Vassa,alias Olaudah Equiano,the African

Recent scholarship has raised doubts about whether or not abolitionist Olaudah Equiano, who was known in his own lifetime as Gustavus Vassa, was born in Africa. While baptismal and naval documents indicate that he was born in South Carolina, it is argued here that his autobiographical account is nonetheless accurate, although allowing for reflection and information that was learned later in life. Information on facial markings (ichi) and other cultural features that are recounted in Vassa's account indicate that he had first hand experience of his Igbo homeland and that he was about the age he thought he was at the time of his forced departure from the Bight of Biafra on a slave ship in 1754.     

Becoming a Social Worker: Chris' Account

Chris Murray, a young African-American male, admitted on a scholarship to a social work masters program, reflexively explores his negotiation of difference in dialogue with an Australian female social work educator twice his age. Standpoint theory and the concept of intersectionality are used to frame Chris' experiences at a private northeast US university after achieving an undergraduate degree in his southern home state. His initial access to university came through military service. Chris was interviewed by the author as part of her international study project examining social work students' experience of diversity in the classroom. The open-ended interview was designed to allow self-identity of difference. Chris ethnographically recounts to a stranger a subjectivity statement of who he is in relation to studying social work. Chris' story works the hyphen between the binary of subjectivity and objectivity through the particulars of his personal history and world-view and his expectation that I as a social work educator share his seeking of social justice. His detailing of what moved him to become a social worker and contextual complexities negotiated along the way connect to wider discourses on how agency and structure play out in lived experience in seeking social justice.     

From Potent Dead to Potent Places? Reflections on Muslim Saint Shrines in South Asia

This paper analyses the issue of the thaumaturgy of the Muslim saints in South Asia by focusing on the notion of potent place rather than on the exemplary lives of these figures and on their exceptional relations to God. Nevertheless, there is an important contradiction between the ubiquity of the saint, his residence with God and his strict localisation in space. To establish a firm relation with him and obtain his intercession, devotees must visit him precisely where his corpse was buried. Generally, this place was already potent or extra-ordinary before the inhumation of the saint. Does the process of the saint’s institutionalisation through the rites performed on his body transfer the potency of the place onto the saint and the power of the saint to the place? The analysis will draw on fieldwork enquiries conducted at the shrine of the martyr Ghāzī Miyāñ, the oldest (eleventh century) and most popular Muslim heroic figure in Northern India and Nepalese Terai, and at the shrines of two popular Sufi saints of Sindh (Pakistan), Lāl Shahbāz Qalandar and Bodlo Bahār.     

UNDER THE BRIDGES OF POLK COUNTY:

The obituary was short, to the point. It noted that he was thirty-seven years old, had died of pneumonia at Broadlawns Medical Center, and was survived by a wife, a daughter, his mother, five brothers and two sisters. Nine of the twenty-two lines that appeared on June 1, 1993, in the Des Moines Register reported on demographics about these relatives. Between the middle and last name was inserted, in quotation marks, the word "Wolfman." The information, squeezed in with other similar summaries about other people who had died recently, noted that he was a "self-employed carpenter," that he was from, and his family continued to be in and around, Fort Worth, Texas, and that the services would be at Hamilton's Funeral Home, with burial at Rest-haven Cemetery in West Des Moines.
It is not possible that twenty-two short lines could do justice to thirty-seven years of any person's life. Yet that is what he was allotted. The summer after he died was the summer of the Great Iowa Flood. Wolfman, as everyone called him, never lived to experience the natural event that brought notoriety to the city and devastation to the lives of so many people who shared his community but never knew he existed. I doubt that many people in Des Moines who brushed against his life even knew that his real name was Billy Dean Roberts.     

THORSTEIN VEBLEN'S ECONOMIC SYSTEM

This study provides a foundation for an understanding of Veblen's economics by displaying its various parts as components of a system, and analyzing and evaluating them. An examination is made of Veblen's views on the subject-matter of economics, his general theory of economic change, his theory of economic change under capitalism, and his prediction of the end of capitalism, under the emergence of a new economic order. It is shown that he constructed a highly general theory economic change that was scientific in character, but that in dealing with capitalism he wrote primarily as a social philosopher and ideologist.     

Can Cultural Beliefs Cause a Gender Identity Disorder?

Abstract

Gender identity disorder (GID) is a relatively rare disorder with an unclear etiology. This case report involves a boy from Thailand who was thought by his parents at birth, on the basis of a birthmark, to be the reincarnation of his maternal grandmother. He subsequently demonstrated cross-gender behavior. A link between his parents' cultural beliefs and the boy's cross-gender behavior is explored. Implications for the causes of other cases of GID are explored, and in particular, the question of whether parental expectations, as exemplified by these parents' cultural beliefs, can be a contributor to the formation of GID is considered.     

The Science of Practice and the Practice of Science: Pierre Bourdieu and the History of Science

Pierre Bourdieu is one of the most celebrated and widely known French sociologists of his time. During his long and very productive career, Bourdieu worked not only on very diverse areas of sociology, such as art, religion, the legal system, and education, but also on the culture of the Kabyle, on the marriage strategies of bachelors in Southern France, and on the sociology of the French intellectuals of his era. However, despite his international influence, his work has remained virtually unutilized within most contemporary historiography of science. This article aims to fill this lacuna. After a short presentation of his main theoretical concepts, I discuss Bourdieu's work on scientific practice. I then present his more historically oriented work and finish by suggesting some ways Bourdieu's insights can be useful for history of science.     

"The World's Against Me As A Black Man": Charles Mingus and Segregated America

This paper examines how the artistic output of Charles Mingus was influenced by the question of race in U.S. politics. Employing material from the liner notes of Mingus's albums, his autobiography, and interviews for his oral history, I argue that issues of race and their political manifestation were forced upon Mingus by the circumstances of American politics. Mingus's experience as an African American vehemently opposed to segregated race relations and alert, throughout his life, to racism, is part of his compositional presence.     

The unwed adolescent father's perceptions of his family and of himself as a father

The study reported in this paper investigated how an adolescent father's relationship with his family of origin affects his relationship with his own child. The dependent variable was parental behavior. The adolescent father's perceived role conceptions of his parents and his feeling and attitudes toward his family were the independent variables. The study included a non-random sample of 43 African-American unwed adolescent fathers. The findings of the study indicated a father's parental behavior was influenced by his perceived role conceptions of his mother and his feelings and attitudes toward his family of origin.     

Killing the Father: Childhood and Renewal of Self-Narrative in Dambudzo Marechera's Fiction

Abstract

The contradictory impulses that characterise writing on Dambudzo Marechera's life and times were foreshadowed a long time ago in 1971 in an obligatory testimonial by his high school principal, Father Daniel Pearce, an Anglican priest. I discuss briefly the ways in which he maps Marechera's life, and suggest that he prefigured so much of its seeming intricacy and mythical qualities. Subsequent critics of his writing have only elaborated the contradictory templates of Father Pearce's hagiographic writing. What his critics have often missed in these writings and readings is Marechera's own effort at renewing his own self-narrative in the face of such readings of himself. The source of this narrative regeneration is in his recollection and uses of childhood to reflect on a longing for self-capitalisation, which is achieved by setting aside the narratives of the father (in multiple symbolic senses). His ideas of self-writing should be gleaned from his understanding and uses of childhood.