The Constitution and Slavery: A Special Relationship

In their efforts to understand how antebellum American abolitionists interpreted the relationship between slavery and the United States Constitution, scholars have underestimated abolitionists' concern with the question ‘Is the Constitution a pro-slavery document?’ Drawing on abolitionist newspapers, periodicals and correspondence, this article shows that the anti-slavery constitutional theories of the 1830s did not presume slavery to be unconstitutional, nor did they assume that the Constitution was pro-slavery, and therefore irrelevant to the abolitionist cause. These constitutional interpretive subtleties laid the foundations for the more prominent and radical theories that came in the following decade from the pens of Wendell Phillips and Lysander Spooner.     

The Two Hundred and Fifty Year Transition: How the American Empire Became Capitalist

This paper aims to rethink United States history from the colonial era through the Civil War and Reconstruction by examining how capitalism and empire joined together as the logic of expansion increasingly became driven by the logic of capital over approximately two hundred and fifty years. Specifically, it argues that (what became) the United States originated as a ‘society with capitalism’ and became a ‘capitalist society’. This transition was a highly complex and uneven process as a variety of social forms developed and interacted, and in which there was not one road to capitalism, but a variety, depending on the historical circumstance. To accomplish this, first, the article reviews the Marx‐Weber debate to develop a theoretical and methodological approach to the historical sociology of capitalism. The remainder of the paper focuses on narrating an empirical interpretation of the transition to capitalism including the diversity of labor forms capital historically utilized.     

Macro impacts on caseworker decision-making in child welfare: a cross-national comparison

This paper focuses on the factors impacting on decision-making in child and family social work through a cross-national comparison. In doing so, the larger arena of the political and social contexts of both the United States and Northern Ireland are examined. For each of the countries we describe the historical and political context of child welfare, particularly the tension between child safety and family support, and how children's rights are attended to and interpreted in each country. This discussion also examines the extent to which decision-making in each jurisdiction is influenced by constitutional imperatives, with particular reference to the US Constitution and the European Convention on Human Rights. From this general comparison we conclude with observations about child welfare decision-making within the national context and offer suggestions for further theoretical development in this area whilst also examining where the practices in each jurisdiction may benefit from review.     

THE HI/STORIES OF HONG KONG

This paper examines the formation of modernity in three colonialist epics of Hong Kong and the recent historical and fictional works that aim to rewrite the history of the ‘local’. Adopting a challenge-response structure, the paper argues that the colonialist epics construct a monolithic discourse of modernity-as-progress via the amnesia of conflicts, tensions, and processes of domination and negotiation in the rural and everyday space of colonial Hong Kong. It is stressed that to piece together the above anomalies is not an attempt to restore a pre-given ‘native’ to but rather an endeavour to examine how the ‘local’ as divergent historical agents shaped and has been shaped by the political, social, and economic environment of Hong Kong and the larger world outside. This can be called a model of dialectics composed of an internal dialectic and a dialectic of articulation. In this regard, with the benefit of the rapprochement of history and anthropology and a non-linear view of history, this paper is a historical bricolage of the anomalous history of Hong Kong, aiming to destabilize the Hong Kong historical grand narrative. Through rethinking the impact of the colonial experience, this paper hopes to liberate alterity and diversity in historical interpretations and imaginations.     

The Political and Economic Consequences of Defining Sustainable Agriculture in the US

Despite the increasing popularity of sustainably produced foods, a concrete definition of sustainable agriculture has been elusive. Even the US Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) article, “What is Sustainable Agriculture?” starts with the idea that “Some terms defy definition. ‘Sustainable agriculture’ has become one of them” (Gold 2011). This essay explores (1) the history of sustainable agriculture as a concept in the United States, (2) the political and economic forces that have impacted and stifled the process of defining sustainable agriculture, and (3) the implications for social justice that come with creating a specific definition of sustainable agriculture. Recognizing that the ability to define a varied set of agricultural practices as “sustainable” (or not) is an important source of political, economic, or social power, this essay explains how such processes might impact the future of food systems in the United States.     

Nativist Cosmopolitans: Institutional Reflexivity and the Decline of "Double-Consciousness" in American Nationalist Thought

Debate in the field of historical sociology on the subject of American citizenship and nationality tends to support one of two theories. The exceptionalist argument holds that American nationalist discourse has historically been based on the universal ideals of liberty enshrined in the Constitution, and has been inclusive in character. Critics contend that this was not the case – arguing that the narrative of American national identity has typically been grounded on exclusive ethno‐cultural criteria like race, religion or language. This essay attempts to demonstrate that the truth encompasses, yet transcends, both positions. This is not because there were conflicting parties in the nineteenth century nationality debate – indeed, there was a great deal of elite consensus as to the meaning of American nationhood prior to the twentieth century which simultaneously affirmed both the universalist and particularist dimension of Americanism. How to explain this apparent contradiction, which Ralph Waldo Emerson termed “double‐consciousness?” This paper suggests that the nineteenth century popularity of dualistic statements of American nationhood, and the eclipse of such conceptions in the twentieth, is a complex sociological phenomenon that can only fully be explained by taking into account the development of institutional reflexivity in the United States.     

Shadowing history: National narratives and the persistence of the everyday

The issue this paper wishes to address is how history, as encoded in historiography of history-writing, is actually based upon its capacity to conceal, disguise and indeed suppress the everyday. This is especially true when you consider that most history is really driven by the nation state and that far from envisaging a history free or rescued from the nation, most history-writing ends up reinforcing it. In other words, history’s primary vocation has been to displace the constant danger posed by the surplus of everyday life, to overcome its apparent ‘trivia’, ‘banalities’ and untidiness in order to find an encompassing register that will fix meaning. With Hegel, narrative was given the role of supplying the maximal unity by which to grasp the meaning of history. What immediately got privileged was, of course, the nation state in the making of world historical events or and ultimately class, subjects who can claim world historical agency. By the same measure, the surplus or messy residues of modern life, especially its immensely staggering complexities, its endless incompletions and repetitions – all irreducible – are repressed or in some instances the microcosmic is sometimes mobilized to reinforce macrocosmic meaning. (This has frequently been called history from below and what Germans have called Alltagsgeschichte.) What I would like to do is explore the category of everydayness, ushered in with the masses and the appearance of the subaltern, as a minimal unity that provides its own principle of historical temporality that easily challenges the practice of history-writing as we know it.     

Organizing the past: A history and its (de)construction

This paper explores some aspects of the textuality of historical narrative as a mode of organizing the past, drawing its inspiration from the work of Hayden White. The paper is unusual in that it takes as its central text for analysis a piece of historical narrative constructed ‘naively’ by the author prior to the writing of the current paper. This text, which attempts to account for the varying development of the discipline of Business History in Britain and the United States, is explored for its narrative implications and implicit story-lines. The reactions of a number of readers of the original text are also examined, and an attempt is made to account for these in terms of the types of story each reader understands the text to be telling.     

Arguing with a Monument: Frederick Douglass’ Resolution of the ‘White Man Problem’ in his ‘Oration in Memory of Lincoln’

This revisionist view applies an ‘interracial turn’ lens to Frederick Douglass’ 1876 Freedmen’s Monument Speech, in which he critiqued the myth of Lincoln as ‘the liberator.’ After sketching interracial dynamics in Douglass ante bellum career, I do a close reading of visual rhetoric in this oration. Read through a history of Douglass’ complex but ultimately fecund relationships with white men, the speech constitutes a performative resolution of Douglass’ ‘white man problem,’ I argue. A historically situated reading of Douglass’ rhetoric reveals the maturity of his political thought, which calls on future audiences to reassess Douglass’ identity, and legacy. A ‘revised Douglass’ charted a path by which the United States could revise its own ‘white male problem.’ Douglass’ model is timely, given recurring episodes of interracial vio-lence, and the social and rhetorical unrest they spark. As a figure who battled racialism and lived a ‘more attractive alternative,’ Douglass provides deep legitimation for an ‘interracial turn’ in fields including American Studies, communication, ethnography, rhetorical studies, and literary criticism.     

Educational hyperactivity: The historical emergence of a concept

In this article, I discuss the historical emergence of the medical concept of ‘behavioural disorders’, ‘attentional disorders’ and hyperactivity among schoolchildren. Present concepts of hyperactivity, which are becoming more frequent when describing the disruptive behaviour of children in schools in Europe and the United States, have a long history. This history in Europe can perhaps best be viewed in the context of the introduction of education for the masses which took place at the end of the nineteenth century throughout Europe. The subsequent history of dealing with ‘dysfunctional’ children in schools has been defined by a tug-of-war between various professions (medical, psychiatric, educational, psychological) as to the nature of such behaviour and the possible remedies.     

Limits and Possibilities of the Postmodern Narrative Self

The task of theorising the self has been of little interest historically in systemic therapy, yet becomes more interesting in the postmodern turn to the narrative metaphor and social constructionist ideas. Within this frame, the self is theorised as relational, fluid, and existing in narrative. The ‘postmodern narrative self’ counters modernist assumptions of self as an autonomous and fixed ‘internal’ entity, and brings with it theory and practice possibilities. However, any theory also brings limits, and this paper explores the limits of the central ideas of the postmodern narrative self. Through questioning and discussion, an argument is made for holding a dialectic in our thinking about the relational and autonomous self, for acknow-ledging very real boundaries on the fluidity of self, and for thinking of narrative as one way of knowing self, rather than exclusively constituting the ‘being’ of self.     

Managing ‘American Islam’

Focusing on the case of Islam in post-9/11 United States, this article highlights the particularity of how US secularism is enacted by the state. In much sociological theory, the United States has been understood to be a neutral and non-interfering state with regard to religion, thereby fostering a pluralist religious context of free consumer choice. Some Muslim reformists have argued that this context makes the US highly fertile ground upon which to reform Islam and to improve women's status in Islam. This article argues that, in the context of the US-led ‘war on terror’, the government has drawn on and amplified this discourse in the service of producing a representation of the US as tolerant, while also seeking to promote a concept of ‘true’ Islam and produce patriotic Muslim citizens. At the center of this discourse are contested portrayals of Muslim women as symbolic of a modern and liberated Islam that is uniquely ‘American’ and opposed to other presumably oppressive Islams. While this context may in fact promote the reform of Islam, it does so with state involvement rather than as a result of state neutrality.     

“It Did Not Affect Me”: The (IR)Relevance of the German Reunification in Autobiographical Narratives of East Germans

How do individuals make sense of events that are associated with major social‐systemic changes? The paper explores the relationship between “German reunification” and processes of meaning making and identity formation by former citizens of the German Democratic Republic. Analyzing twenty‐six in‐depth, life‐history interviews of East Germans born in two different generational cohorts, I examine the various narrative strategies employed that allow these East Germans to embed the experience of the German reunification through means of narrative emplotment. Diverting from a notion that it is historical events that shape our autobiographical memories, I argue that historical events are selected from a historical tool kit which provides individuals with narrative resources from which narrative identity can be formulated. A video abstract is available at https://youtu.be/d69JXE0Ryqw .     

Les professionnels du droit comme acteurs du politique : revue critique de la littérature nord-américaine et enjeux pour une importation en Europe continentale

For many years, North-American social sciences have been analyzing legal professionals as political actors, while in Continental Europe the relationship among law, politics, and society has remained under-examined. At the moment, a central project for US sociolegal studies is exporting to other political and legal contexts hypotheses previously tested inside US borders, raising the question of the generalizability and/or the globalization of US socio-legal analyses. After briefly describing why social sciences have been focusing on law and social changes in the United States, this article aims to determine what prerequisites are necessary for exporting sociolegal studies outside the US, devoting particular attention to historically contingent —and nationally-distinct— relations between law, political power and the social sciences.     

The European right to be forgotten: A challenge to the United States Constitution’s First Amendment and to professional public relations ethics

This paper explains how the European right to be forgotten violates the free flow of information in society, as evidenced by conflicts with the United States Constitution and ethical principles of professional communicators worldwide. As Europe imposes new data protection laws and incorporates the right to be forgotten that promotes censorship through search engine de-linking, United States constitutional law scholars ponder the implications of World Wide Web censorship, while journalists and public relations professionals struggle to understand how accurate transparent communication could occur in an ecosystem that allows for arbitrary information removal and the creation of memory holes. This article explains why the European notion of the right to be forgotten challenges U.S. constitutional law and professional public relations ethics, imperiling the online marketplace of ideas and eroding disclosure of information. The European Data Protection Directive and recent right to be forgotten movements directly conflict with the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment and professional communications ethics codes. The First Amendment of the U.S. Bill of Rights indicates the specific rights of citizens to freedom from government intervention into freedom of expression and freedom of the press. Recent actions by Google to honor European requests to remove data upon request collide with First Amendment theoretical concepts and contemporary constitutional law. Both the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) and the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC) construct ethical principles for members that call for the active promotion of the free flow of information and the ethical disclosure of information. The European Data Protection Directive’s right to be forgotten silences these core professional communication ethics and more significantly imperils the robust information exchange in a global society, ultimately altering the discourse and debate in democratic countries. This paper addresses the status of the right to be forgotten in the United States and indicates how adopting such a provision in the United States would violate First Amendment theories, as evidenced by the Marketplace of Ideas Theory, the Meiklejohnian Theory, and the Absolutist Theory, and would counter traditional public relations ethics codes, conducted in a context of dialogic ethics that calls for adherence to core values advocating for transparency, disclosure, and free flow of information.     

Unthinking Modernity: Historical‐Sociological,Epistemological and Logical Pathways

Modernity remains the privileged theoretical frame and narrative for long term processes at the global scale, notwithstanding the heterogeneously contested definition of its spatiotemporal coordinates, the irreconcilability of contradictions inherent to its alleged emancipatory power and the accusations of complicity with Eurocentrism. This article explores some logical, epistemological and historical‐sociological contradictions inherent in the effort to produce non‐euorcentric categories of social and historical analysis, and explains why such an effort is doomed to failure if modernity keeps on being accepted as the epistemic territory within which such an effort is located. Eurocentrism is thus defined as palingenetic, to the extent it constantly shifts its contextual meaning while reformulating European centrality in different and ever‐changing modalities; such properties of Eurocentrism as a paradigm are conceptualized in terms of its ability to operate by means of consequential isomorphism. Evidences from recent debates in history of scientific modernity are considered, in order to articulate analytical tensions between connected histories and dialogical civilizational narratives of East and West relation at the global scale. The impossibility to explain the ‘why’ of modernity according to a coherent ‘how’ of modernity without falling into Eurocentric structures of thinking is assessed. Finally, theoretical project of “unthinking modernity” is introduced as a possible way to reframe the problem of Eurocentric limits in historical and social sciences.     

Narrative and Frame Alignment in Social Movements: Labor Problem Novels and the 1929 Gastonia Strike

Research on social movements and frame alignment has shed light on how activists draw new participants to social movements through meaning making. However, the ‘framing perspective’ has failed to interrogate how the form or genre in which frames are deployed affects the communication of meaning. The burgeoning literature on social movements and narrative would seem to point to one discursive form of importance to meaning making in social movements, but scholars have failed to connect their insights with the literature on framing. In this article, I analyze five novels published in response to a 1929 communist-led strike in Gastonia, North Carolina. I argue that labor movement activists deployed these long-form narratives for the purposes of ‘frame alignment,’ specifically ‘frame amplification’ and ‘frame transformation,’ and I show how these narratives conveyed frames in ways that other discursive forms could not. The study raises new questions about the selection and reception of discursive forms in social movements.     

Using Adjuncts in Social Work Education: Challenges and Rewards

Adjunct faculty have become an essential addition to social work programs in the United States. Full-time social work faculty have not been able to meet the demands created by continued growth of BSW and MSW programs. The number of doctoral students in social work programs has not kept up with the growth of the programs. A survey of program directors available through the Association of Baccalaureate Social Work Program Director's (BPD) listserv in the United States found that respondents saw adjunct faculty as assets to social work programs. The survey results indicated that adjunct faculty provide a ‘value added’ component. Adjuncts need to receive an orientation and continual training to help prepare them for classroom management and become aware of university policies. Adjuncts can be retained if they receive training, have frequent contact with faculty, and have access to university resources.