Thinking the Unthinkable/Global Realities: Eleven Theses on Marx’s Eleventh Thesis*

Marx’s Eleventh Thesis has long been code for the social theorist’s duty ultimately to do more than think to world. Global realities early in the twenty‐first century have rendered the Eleventh Thesis feeble if not futile. There is no singular ”world“ (not a trivial fact). Social thought must encounter a series of Unthinkables that Marx himself understood to a degree but, in the Eleventh Thesis, as in all of his general and specific politic advice, believed were not definitive barriers to what amounted to liberal politics that history has proven will always be thwarted by the resisted of regressive forces.     

Briefly Noted

The biennial International Drug Policy Reform Conference, sponsored by the Drug Policy Alliance and held Nov. 7–9 in St. Louis, Missouri, was full of varying sessions on harm reduction and reform — 45 of them in all. An article by Filter editor Will Godfrey summed up his perspective — he was the only print reporter so far to have covered the entire conference. We asked him what his feeling was about the prospects for treatment and harm reduction working together, as they have in the past. “There's plenty of friction, but there can and should be rapprochement between the harm‐reduction and traditional treatment communities,” he told ADAW. “Many people in the harm‐reduction movement pursue traditional recovery, and there are treatment folks who support harm reduction. All should be trying to save lives and empower people. Harm reductionists' legitimate concerns about mainstream treatment include its coercive or controlling deployment, its frequent eschewal of evidence‐based practices and its promotion of abstinence at the expense of stigmatizing people who use drugs. Treatment advocates often overlook that most people who use drugs are fine. And in any case, everyone must be free to choose their own path.” But the fact that two approaches — one more radical than the other — coexist still is bound to make some treatment providers uncomfortable. After all, some of the speakers said that even supervised consumption sites are unfair to drug users, who have no need to be “supervised,” and instead should be free to use drugs. All viewpoints were there. “There's constant debate in the harm‐reduction movement about working to change systems that inflict harm from the inside, versus calling for radical reforms from the outside,” said Godfrey. “I think both approaches are simultaneously necessary.” Not everyone saw the conflict. “I have to say that I didn't see an anti‐public health movement there at all,” Maia Szalavitz, who is writing a history of harm reduction and is respected in both harm reduction and some, at least, treatment camps, told ADAW. “There has always, of course, been tension between activists and researchers and between people who want to fight within the system and those who want to tear it all down.” For the Filter article, go to https://filtermag.org/drug‐policy‐reform‐movement/ .     

Environmental Risks and Environmental Justice,Or How Titanic Risks Are Not So Titanic After All*

Some of the best‐known social scientific theories of risks are those that have been elaborated by Anthony Giddens and Ulrich Beck. Although their arguments differ greatly, they agree in seeing the technologically induced risks of today’s “Risk Society” as global—so pervasive that they transcend all socioeconomic as well as geopolitical and national boundaries. Most empirical work, however, provides greater support for a theoretical tradition exemplified by Short and Erikson. In this paper, we argue that many of the technological mega‐risks described by Giddens and Beck as “transcending” social boundaries are better described as “Titanic risks,” referring not so much to their colossal impact as to the fact that—as was the case for the majority of the victims on the Titanic—actual risks are related to victims’ socioeconomic as well as sociogeographic locations. Previous research has shown this to be the case with high‐risk technologies, such as nuclear energy and weaponry, and also with localized ones, such as toxic waste disposal. This article illustrates that the same is true even for the most genuinely “global” risks of all, namely those associated with global climate disruption.     

Interpretative Freedom and New Combination: The Way in Which the “Middle Class” Has Been Narrated

The English words “middle class” have experienced much more connotations and denotations—typically “bourgeoisie,” “white‐collar,” and professional—than any other class‐referring word since the latter half of the 18th century. On the one hand, in response to such diverse narrations during about two and a half centuries, I partially agree with some of the nominalistic theories of class, in that the middle classes were not created until they were named by contemporaries. On the other hand, my view diverges from those theories, in my asserting that the contemporaries have had an interpretative freedom to recognize “middle classes” only within the bounds of plausibility on the side of the realistic social world. The typical middle class in each period has emerged in such a way that Schumpeter's new combination is performed in a stage of recession by new entrepreneurs, who will move into the “middle” strata and hold some cultural leadership but still obtain inconsistent statuses, to be recognized as “middle class”ex post facto in a boom time. Two Kondratieff's cycles have had one recognition of the typical “middle class.” The new combination is one of the pressures bringing middle classes into a modern society, contrary to the so‐called class decomposition into the two poles.     

Telling Others How You Live—Refining Goffman's Stigma Theory Through an Analysis of Housing Strugglers in a Homeowner Nation

This article revisits Goffman's stigma theory from the perspective of housing studies. We elaborate on Goffman's approach by exploring how housing tenure can work as a proxy for moral character. We interviewed twenty‐seven people who are excluded from access to homeownership in two cities in Norway, which is a “homeowner nation.” These individuals are unable to enter the dominant “homeowner class” for different reasons, including drug‐dependency, mental illness, refugee background, low socioeconomic status; thus, they must access housing through other tenures; private renting or social housing. To many of them, housing becomes a stigma, in Goffman terms, an “undesired differentness.” Social housing is known to carry stigma in Norway. It was thus a paradox, that those with the softest differentness—private rental—were most likely to practice (Goffman:) “information control” over their housing situation. Goffman's theoretical apparatus, and his distinction between the discreditable and the discredited in particular, helped us make this paradox comprehensible. Through this analysis, refinements to Goffman's theory were discovered. We suggest that “multiple stigmas,” which was not seen clearly by Goffman himself, should be a key notion in stigma studies. We use this notion to distinguish between possible sub‐types to the discredited‐discreditable distinction.     

The particularity of the universal: critical reflections on Bourdieu’s theory of symbolic power and the state

A critical review of Bourdieu’s theory of the state is developed here against the backdrop of both his wider theoretical project and empirical studies. Elaborating the concepts of symbolic capital, symbolic violence, and symbolic domination, the centrality that Bourdieu accords to symbolic forms is compared to benchmark Weberian accounts that start with the state monopoly of violence. Reviewing also some of the burgeoning secondary literature discussing his theory of the state, Bourdieu’s writings, which encompass various antinomies, are shown to vacillate between two distinct perspectives—a strong and a weak theory of the state. His rejection of the “physicalist” approaches of Marx, Elias, and Tilly is elaborated and subject to a counter-critique, particularly in relation to the notion of symbolic “violence.” Bourdieu’s account of the state is shown to be as much a political as theoretical intervention. His antagonism towards Marxist accounts in particular is shown to be rooted in a pragmatic interest in the role of the “left hand of the state” in progressive reform; and this perspective is traced back to the twin influences of Durkheim and Hegel, French republicanism, and in particular the potential of the state to express a universal interest. At the same time, compared with sophisticated Marxist and Weberian accounts and the work of Norbert Elias and Gramsci, Bourdieu’s theory is shown to be severely lacking in the way that he deals with violence and coercion. His “expanded materialism,” particularly with the “strong theory,” bends the stick too far and overplays the symbolic basis of consent. Nevertheless, Bourdieu’s insights with regard to the pervasive influences of state practices of classification, taxonomy, delegation, and naming are shown to have real utility with regard to focused empirical investigations of the state in modern societies.     

Environmental Degradation,Disproportionality, and the Double Diversion: Reaching Out,Reaching Ahead,and Reaching Beyond

Abstract Rather than seeking ivory‐tower isolation, members of the Rural Sociological Society have always been distinguished by a willingness to work with specialists from a broad range of disciplines, and to work on some of the world's most challenging problems. What is less commonly recognized is that the willingness to reach beyond disciplinary boundaries can contribute not just to the solution of real‐world problems, but also to the advancement of the discipline itself. This point is increasingly being illustrated in studies of environment‐society relationships. Most past discussions of humans' roles in environmental problems have focused on overall or average human impacts, but rural sociologists have played leading roles in identifying what I have come to call “the double diversion.” First, rather than being well‐represented by averages, environmental damages are often characterized by high levels of disproportionality, with much or most of the harm being created by the diversion of environmental rights and resources to a surprisingly small fraction of the relevant social actors. The dispropor‐tionality appears to be made possible in part through the second diversion, namely distraction—the diversion of attention, largely through the taken‐for‐granted but generally erroneous assumption that the environmental harm “must” be for the benefit of us all. There are good reasons why rural sociologists would have been among the first to notice both of these “diversions”— and why they will give even greater attention to both in the future.     

Family Therapy … What's in a Name?*

The 2nd Australian and New Zealand Family Therapy Conference, held in Melbourne in July 1992, invited those making presentations to address the Conference theme Family Therapy … what's in a name? In a closing address to a plenary session of the Conference, I used the metaphor of first names (family) and surnames (therapy) to suggest that names are central to issues of identity. Our first name of “family” differentiates us within the larger group who share the surname “therapy”; but what does it mean to belong to the larger group sharing the name “therapy”? Historically, much of family therapy's energy has gone into issues concerned with establishing difference — difference within family therapy in terms of models and approaches, and difference from other approaches to therapy. Yet now perhaps family therapy would benefit from exploring what it shares in common with others who hold the same surname of “therapy”, with the possibility such dialogue could lead to mutual enrichment.     

Is counseling ‘required’ with medications to treat opioid use disorder?

In “No Strings Attached: More Opioid Addicts Get Meds Without Talk Therapy,” an article by Beth Schwartzapfel of the Marshall Project published in USA Today May 9 ( https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/investigations/2019/05/09/opioid‐crisis‐drugs‐no‐therapy/1131110001/ ), both sides were excellently reported. Kenneth B. Stoller, M.D., longtime methadone researcher from Johns Hopkins, was quoted as saying that medications without any talking is “selling patients short.” Some Twitter participants immediately charged that Stoller was kicking patients off medication if they weren't participating in counseling (which he doesn't do and the article doesn't say he does), and a protracted debate on Mother's Day led us to ask Stoller himself — who does not tweet — to respond. We copied and pasted the comments so he could see them. His response is below. (To see the Twitter thread, go to https://twitter.com/ADAWnews/status/1127175604959436800 .)     

The Eighteenth Brumaire in historical context: reconsidering class and state in France and Syria

This article seeks to reinterpret the process of state and class formation in “peripheral” societies—notably Syria—through a contextualized reading of Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire influenced by the approach of Political Marxism (PM). In light of PM’s claim that capitalism did not emerge in France until the late nineteenth century, it draws a picture of post-revolutionary French society in which the legacy of the precapitalist Absolutist state still determined the nature of ruling class reproduction and class struggle, centered on the state apparatus as the principal source of appropriation. These insights on the nature of ruling class appropriation and the centrality of the state are then applied to the case of post-Ottoman Syria, uncovering parallels with class struggles in post-revolutionary France rooted in the “Jacobin” politics of a state-dependent bourgeoisie of officials and officers. It proposes to rethink the contested moments of transition in terms of “alternative modernities” that developed in the absence of generalized capitalist relations of production.

     

Ages,Life Stages,and Generational Cohorts: Decomposing the Immigrant First and Second Generations in the United States1

This article focuses on problems with the definition and empirical identification of immigrant “first” and “second” generations in the United States. These loosely conceived aggregates are decomposed into a typology of distinct generational cohorts defined by age and life stage at migration for the foreign born and by parental nativity for the U.S. born. Differences in educational and occupational attainment and in language and other aspects of acculturation are then examined to consider whether the practice of “lumping” these generational cohorts together, or “splitting” them into distinctive units of analysis, is empirically supported by available evidence. The paper concludes with some thoughts on data needs and methodological considerations in the study of immigrant generations.

相似文献   

Briefly Noted

We asked Jerry Rhodes, former top executive at CRC (now Acadia) and a leader in opioid treatment program management, what he thinks of methadone as a medication to be used in primary care to treat opioid use disorder (OUD), as some people — including former Office of National Drug Control Policy Director Michael Botticelli — recommended last year (see ADAW, July 16, 2018). “I take issue with that,” said Rhodes. “Methadone is a dangerous drug in an unregulated environment,” he told ADAW. Buprenorphine is prescribed this way, but “buprenorphine is a relatively safe drug, and methadone isn't,” he said. A veteran of many battles over methadone, including the near‐elimination of opioid treatment programs, Rhodes told ADAW that “you don't give unfettered access to methadone” to patients with OUD. “Be careful what you wish for” is his advice. This has the potential to cause harm, he said. “Only people who don't understand the history of its utilization would recommend this.”     

Facing Facts: An Analysis of the Early “Nude Self-Portraits” by Robert Giard

Early in his career, photographer Robert Giard took on an elemental aesthetic “chore”: the self-portrait. The project was an amalgam; it was the self-portrait in the sense that he was the model, and it was the nude in the sense that he was naked. But in his handling of these 2 genres, Giard broke with these categories as they are typically understood. Grouping his “self-portraits” under 3 rubrics—“candid,” “headless,” and “neoclassical”—Giard appeared to toy with standard definitions. Words and images suggest tensions held in balance: disclosure vs. concealment; confession vs. secrecy; present vs. retrospective; identification vs. obfuscation; personal vs. impersonal. Indeed, these “self-portraits,” in which the subject concealed his face, encourage us, aware that Giard was a gay man, to wonder if these pictures are not an obvious metaphor for the status of homosexuals at the period in which they were made.     

Lightning Rods in the Local Moral Economy: Debating Unauthorized Migrants' Deservingness in Israel

Localized debates about who unauthorized migrants are and what they do, or do not, deserve unfold in a culturally specific register that is deeply charged with emotion and moral valuation. Structuring such debates are vernacular discursive frames that emerge from, and reflect, a common “local moral economy.” Taking Israel as case study, this article examines six elements of the country's local moral economy – biopolitical logic, historical memory, political emotion, popularized religion, an ideology of “fruitful multiplication,” and hasbara (“public diplomacy”/propaganda) – and explores their impact on public debates about unauthorized and irregular forms of migration. Here, as elsewhere, conventionalized distinctions that frame much migration scholarship – e.g. “economic” vs. “political” migrants, “migrant workers” vs. “refugees,” even the terms “authorized” and “unauthorized” themselves – bear but limited salience. Migration researchers who hope to influence local policy debates must recognize the weight and influence of local moral economies, and the chasms that divide vernacular from conventionalized frames. Achieving this sort of nuanced understanding is, at root, an ethnographic challenge.     

Despite years of failed treatments,patient cuts back on drinking

A social worker, a mother and conference calls all united for what looks at this time like a happy outcome for one young man, despite the failure of multiple treatments. Residential treatment, individual counseling, Vivitrol, AA attendance, an interventionist and a stint at an unlicensed rehabilitation center all may have helped in this case study of a young man — age 36 by the time he started working with Patrick Doyle, a social worker who is a family coach enlisted by the patient's parents. But ultimately, they all failed, and the young man was in risky territory, with binges and blackouts. What saved him was his mother's decision to stand up to the insistence by the “recovery team” on total abstinence. The recovery team included Doyle, who recounted the story to ADAW last week, the parents, the therapist, and the interventionist.     

Toward A Renewed Sociological Jurisprudence: From Roscoe Pound to Herbert Blumer and Beyond

This article, based on the Distinguished Lecture presented on August 21, 2001, at the annual meeting of the Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction in Anaheim, California, proposes a synthesis of Herbert Blumer's macrosociological perspective on the race question with Roscoe Pound's philosophy and science of law (i.e., his so‐called sociological jurisprudence), Joseph Tussman's and Jacobus tenBroek's juridical methodology, and Philip Selznick's sociology of responsive law. The compound so produced will help to establish a foundation for a praxiological sociology of American constitutional law. The article focuses on the problem of legislative‐made “classifications” and their relations to the legitimate public purposes entailed in the enactment of statutes, laws, and decrees. Such classifications become problematic when they are said to be “underinclusive,” “over‐inclusive,” or both in seeking to effect their aims. Strategic research sites for this issue are racial and ethnic classifications that single out one or a limited cluster of racial or ethnic groups for special benefits (“affirmative action”) or restitution (“reparations”). Calling for a reinvigoration of Pound's pragmatic approach to sociological jurisprudence, I show how Blumer's analysis of the “color line”—when seen in relation to the original intent of the makers of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth post‐Civil War Amendments to the U.S. Constitution and, using Tussman's and tenBroek's showing of how such categorizations might be both methodically evaluated and applied to the challenged classifications—provides grounds for reconsidering whether the latter are instances of “reverse discrimination” and, hence, violations of the constitutional requirement of “equal protection of the law.” The science of law is a science of social engineering having to do with that part of the whole field which may be achieved by the ordering of human relations through the action of politically organized society. —Roscoe Pound, Justice According to Law We did not hold it necessary to wait for nature to put a canal across the Isthmus of Panama, and we shall not much longer hold it necessary to wait for nature to dig the legal canals that will give security to neglected human interests which clamor for recognition and protection. —Roscoe Pound, “Juristic Problems of National Progress”     

Vygotsky’s Anomalous Spinozism

Abstract

This article exposes sources and influences of Spinoza in some of Vygotsky’s works, keeping in mind its meaning for the creation of a “new man” in Soviet Socialism. We try to understand the features of Vygotsky´s reading of Spinoza in an active dialogue with contemporary studies of 17th-century philosophy and its consequences for a materialist psychology. In this direction, we discuss references to Spinoza done by Vygotsky in the context of the latter’s argumentative style as well as studies of Engels, Plekhanov and Deborin as possible sources in Vygotsky´s approach to Spinoza. Paraphrasing Negri´s take on Spinoza as the “wild anomaly” of the 17th-century, we argue that Vygotsky performed an anomalous reading of Spinoza. In spite of the similarities with Deborin´s view of the modern philosopher, Vygotsky had plans that were more ambitious for Spinozist materialism and determinism. We trace the anomalous way in that the latter´s materialism reveals itself as one of randomness and contingency, against a rigidly structured projection of state, society, or model of human beings. We cannot figure out exactly which “model of man“ Vygotsky had in mind in his take on Spinoza, but we are able to recognize some core aspects in his reasoning. Roughly, these include the unity between mind and body, which can take the most diverse forms in the common body of multitude; the bases of consciousness in the affection; the integration, in the psychological systems, of affect, will, and desire; and the Spinozan ethics as a reference to life.     

Rehearsals in Citizenship: BBC Stop‐Motion Animation Programmes For Young Children

This paper examines new managerial discourses and practices in which the dialectic of labour is reconstructed as a series of acts of self‐understanding, self‐examination and “self‐work”, and through which the “self qua self” is constituted as the central object of management technologies. We interrogate concepts such as “excellence”, “total quality”, “performance”, “knowledge”, “play at work” and “wellness” in order to decipher the ways in which managerialism deploys what we term therapeutic habitus, and projects a new horizon of “human resourcefulness” as a store of unlimited potentialities. We invoke management’s wider historical–cultural context to situate managerialism within the framework of modernity as a cultural epoch whose main characteristic is what we term “derecognition of finitude”. It is the modern synthesis — with the “self” at the centre of its system of values — that provides the ground for current elaborations of subjectivity by managerialism. The paper examines how current vocabularies and practices in organizations use “work” to rearticulate discursively the human subject as an endless source of performativity by configuring work as the site of complex and continuous self‐expression. Management thus acquires a new discursive outline: instead of appearing as an authoritarian instance forcing upon workers a series of limitations, it now presents itself as a therapeutic formula mediating self‐expression by empowering individuals to work upon themselves to release their fully realized identity.