Controversy and Ideological Hegemony in Sociological Theory*

Sociological theory has been characterized by the recurrence of several controversies since its inception. The relationship between the individual and society represents one of these. Cooley's notion of the individual and society being twin-born has been labeled one of the major breakthroughs in this controversy. According to Tiryakian, Cooley's work signaled the end of that controversy, but still it reappears. Drawing heavily from Mannheim, Berger and Pullberg, and Therborn, we examine the recurrence of the individual versus society controversy. Sociology, we contend, occupies an alienated position within capitalist society where positivist epistemology serves as an ideological veil, concealing the existence of ontological presuppositions, distorting social reality, and preventing any meaningful attempt to understand the development of sociology, or the recurrence of the individual-society controversy. As an ideological veil, positivism contributes to the recurring bifurcation of social reality. The dominance of positivism within sociology, moreover, gives it a hegemonic status, further negating any recognition that the individual and society are interdependent.     

An “Oasis of Freedom” in a “Closed Society”: The Development of Tougaloo College as a Free Space in Mississippi's Civil Rights Movement, 1960 to 19641

Abstract Based on archival research and in‐depth interviews, this study explores how Tougaloo College in Jackson, Mississippi developed into a pivotal movement center in Mississippi's civil rights movement and the ways in which Tougaloo's faculty and administrators as organic intellectuals helped to create, maintain, and augment such a free space and the social networks who utilized it. The school served as an interracial “safe haven” for those involved in and sympathetic to the civil rights movement who in turn, helped to cultivate networks, ideas, and strategies that contributed to the movement in meaningful ways. The school's heritage, its sources of financial support, and its relative physical isolation allowed Tougaloo College to challenge Mississippi's closed society from within.     

Donald Trump's discursive field: A juncture of stigma contests over race,gender, religion,and democracy

Donald Trump's election to the U.S. Presidency in 2016 qualifies as one of the more shocking events in American political history. This article reviews the literature on the social construction of Donald Trump's political career. It finds prominent ideological laminations over racism, Islamophobia, nativism, sexism, Christianity, and right‐wing populism in Trump's discursive field. This article argues that Trump's discursive field comprises a juncture of stigma contests over the moral worth of numerous collective identities including men, women, racial minorities, immigrants, Muslims, Christians, and the middle class. Such stigma contests likely exacerbate recognition gaps created by neoliberal policies. This review suggests that scholars should continue to examine the connection between Trump's political career and stigmatization. Moreover, cultural sociologists should ready themselves to track the dialectical response to Trump and to assess the lasting impact on the American normative order.     

Postwar Reconfigurations of the US Empire and Global Military Occupation: Struggles against Enclosure in Okinawa

This article argues through an examination of an anti‐base struggle that erupted in early 1950 in Isahama, Okinawa that it is necessary to consider the ways that the so‐called new imperialism of the post‐World War II period required the transformation of social relations, even in places like Okinawa that are regarded as exceptional sites where US bases and facilities operate through the suspension of sovereignty. It asserts that a focus on the gendered dimensions of antagonisms that developed in Okinawa as the US built its military complexes there allows us to see how local communities, often led by women, fundamentally challenged the base‐related enclosures and pushed against the constant ideological work that the language of exception played in normalizing capitalist social relations in general. Finally, it claims that while Okinawa's case may not seem meaningful if taken in its singularity, if we keep in mind that the islands were just one locale within a global military empire that was comprised of hundreds of military complexes containing thousands of bases scattered throughout 64 countries at the height of the Cold War, the destabilizing force of struggles against enclosures as material and ideological sites through which capitalist social relations were naturalized should not be underestimated as valuable shapers of the post‐World War II American empire.     

Social Integration in Post‐Multiculturalism: An Analysis of Social Integration Policy in Post‐war Britain

Social integration is one of the most urgent issues in Western countries, where cultural diversity has been recognized to make social unity danger. In the past, social integration used to be tackled by multiculturalism, which was an effort to recognize cultural diversity as a positive aspect of society. However, multiculturalism is losing the moral support of society because multiculturalism itself could not be a social glue among different people; rather it is thought to make society unstable. Thus, a new philosophy and policy is required to manage the issues of social integration in a globalized social environment. In order to create social integration, on one hand, people with different backgrounds need to share the same concept of society. On the other hand, people have to become accustomed to cultural diversity. However, this is not easily accomplished because both measures for social integration seem to be politically contradictory and incompatible. How, and by what reasons, could these two conditions of social integration be satisfied? To answer this question, this paper scrutinizes the changes in social integration policy in post‐war Britain. I divide social integration policy in Britain into three stages focusing on the relationship between social unity and cultural diversity: from after World War II to 1979; Thatcher's and Major's Conservative Governments; and Blair's new Labour Government. The social integration policy and philosophy of the new Labour Government in particular is important because it represents post‐multiculturalism discourse for social integration. The Labour Government tried to establish social integration by introducing an abstract common identity, which both the majority and minority groups could accept and which is compatible with various cultural or religious conventions and teaching, as it were, citizenship and Britishness, as a set of liberal values. Although the Labour Government's policy itself was controversial, it is giving us a reference point for the debate on social integration in a post‐multicultural era.     

The sociologist and the state. An assessment of Pierre Bourdieu's sociology

This paper provides an assessment of Pierre Bourdieu's sociology based on a reading of his posthumously published lectures on the state in Sur l'État. It argues that the state was a foundational element in Bourdieu's rendition of the symbolic order of everyday life. As such, the state becomes equally pivotal in Bourdieu's sociology, the applicability of which rests on the existence of the state, which stabilizes the social fields and their symbolic action that constitute the object of sociology. The state, which Bourdieu considers a ‘meta'‐ordering principle in social life, ensures that sociology has a well‐ordered object of study, vis‐à‐vis which it can posit itself as ‘meta‐meta’. The state thus functions as an epistemic guarantee in Bourdieu's sociology. A critical analysis of Bourdieu's sociology of the state offers the chance of a more fundamental overall assessment of Bourdieu's conception of sociology that has relevance for any critical sociological perspective that rests on the assumption of a meta‐social entity, such as the state in Bourdieu's work, as a final ordering instance.     

Rethinking biomedicine in the age of translational research: Organisational,professional, and epistemic encounters

In the most recent decade, translational research (TR) has played a pivotal role in the production and circulation of medical knowledge and technologies, thus redefining biomedicine's moral force, its cultural authority, and its status in society. As a major component of contemporary life sciences, TR—or more commonly, translational biomedicine—aims to transfer more quickly and effectively the findings of basic science into therapeutic interventions for patients by means of innovative organisational arrangements, research methodologies, protocols, and professional roles. This article brings together sociological research examining translational biomedicine from different perspectives to accomplish two goals. First, it offers a comprehensive introduction to the social science debate concerning the growing adoption of a TR framework in biomedicine, with a special focus on the organisational, professional, and epistemological issues. Second, the article has an operational purpose to raise questions about the main methodological repercussions for social scientists facing the investigation of TR as a complex and multi‐sited phenomenon that challenges traditional qualitative/quantitative research approaches.     

Living history,undoing linearity: memory‐work as a research method in the social sciences

If we accept that social research is not simply a matter of representation, but involves actively intervening in and constructing our current social and political conditions, we are then presented with a set of problems about representation and intervention. The methodology, memory‐work, is introduced here as one specifically developed for the purposes of undertaking politically engaged social research. In this paper, I describe the rationale and method of memory‐work, emphasizing the ways in which it involves undoing the subject of linear, causal, biographical narratives and a notion of the subject as collectively constituted. I elucidate the method by drawing on an example from research about HIV subjectification in which the notion of individual responsibility arose as a problem for memory‐workers—it simultaneously enables and constrains actively working on oneself and one's world. Discussing this research leads to a consideration of the ways in which the methodology needs to be adapted to reflect the specific concerns of one's time and place. I conclude with a discussion of the important but limited notion of history entailed in the original conception of memory‐work.     

A Different Kind of Whiteness: Marking and Unmarking of Social Boundaries in the Construction of Hegemonic Ethnicity

This article proposes a new theoretical approach to the analysis of hegemonic ethnicity through an examination of the construction of white ethnicity among Ashkenazim (Jews of European origin) in Israel. Contrary to the theory of symbolic ethnicity, I argue that “Ashkenaziness” in Israel is not an optional, voluntary identity; rather, it is constituted by employing narratives that continually establish cultural, color‐based, and ethnic boundaries between Ashkenazim and Mizrahi Jews. In certain social and ideological circumstances, however, boundary marking is not enough to maintain a privileged status. From the narratives of Ashkenazi Jews—the Israeli version of whites—it emerges that not only do they demarcate social boundaries between themselves and other groups, thereby preserving the ethnic hierarchy, but they are constantly engaged in blurring or erasing these same boundaries, allowing Ashkenazim to remain a transparent, unmarked social category. This dual practice of marking and unmarking is a result of the tension between the Jewish‐Zionist and Western‐secular images of the state. While Israel's Jewish discourse supposedly negates intra‐Jewish ethnic conflicts, the Western ideal identifies Ashkenazim with the state, thus solidifying their power and preserving their privileged status.     

Toward a Sociology of Nature

Although we often believe that nature stands apart from social life, our experience of nature is profoundly social. This paper unpacks this paradox in order to (1) explain sociology's neglect of the environment and (2) introduce the articles in this special issue on “the sociology of nature.” I argue that sociology's disinterest in the biophysical world is a legacy of its classical concern with tracing society's “Great Transformation” from gemeinschaft to gesellschaft: while early anthropologists studied “primitive” societies that allegedly had not yet completed “the passage from nature to culture” (Lévi‐Strauss 1963 : 99), pioneering sociologists presumed that industrialization and urbanization liberated “modern” society from nature and therefore focused their attention on “urbanism as a way of life” (Wirth 1938 ). As exemplified by the articles in this symposium, environmental sociology critiques the nature‐culture and town‐country dualisms. One of environmental sociology's core contributions has been demonstrating that nature is just as much a social construction as race or gender; however, its more profound challenge to the discipline lies in its refutation of the sociological axiom that social facts can be explained purely through reference to other social facts. “Environmental facts” are a constitutive feature of social life, not merely an effect of it.     

THE GLOBAL VORTEX: SOCIAL WELFARE IN A NETWORKED WORLD

This paper examines the impact of economic globalization on the organization and delivery of social welfare services. Sennett's analysis of the modern networked organization is linked to psychodynamic theory in relation to the loss of ‘containment’ resulting from the demise of the post‐war welfare bureaucracies. This changing environment has generated an anxiety‐ridden and risk‐obsessed society that features surveillance, control and the gradual diminution of civil liberties. The impact of these changes on the ethics of professional social welfare practice has been profound. It is argued that public moral debate in the context of pluralist ethics is required not only for upholding a relational based social welfare practice, but also for preserving an open and compassionate democratic society. The paper concludes with a set of questions that provides a framework whereby practitioners can assess the extent to which different practice organizations support relational practice. This typology can be a tool to enable practitioners to exercise moral agency when making career choices in today's fluid organizational world.     

Change and continuity in youth transitions in Eastern Europe: Lessons for Western sociology*

This paper argues that the evidence from research among young people in post‐communist countries vindicates and should consolidate confidence in the Western sociology of youth's conventional transitions paradigm which seeks links between social origins, routes and destinations. Contrary to claims about postmodern fluidity, individualisation, and a blurring of traditional structural boundaries, the expected links between origins, routes and destinations have persisted throughout the transformation of the former communist countries. The relevant evidence also confirms the primacy of education‐to‐work and family/housing life stage transitions. Other aspects of young people's lives – their uses of leisure, levels and patterns of social and political participation, and socio‐political attitudes, for example – become meaningful and explicable only when set in the context of the routes that individuals’ lives have taken, and the stages that they have reached, vis‐à‐vis their school‐to‐work and family and housing transitions. The paper proceeds to argue that the exceptionally thorough changes that are still in process in East‐Central Europe and the former USSR reveal with exceptional clarity the processes whereby young people's life chances are structured in ways that are not of the individuals’ own making. It has been, and it remains, possible to observe how young adults learn from their own youth life stage transition experiences and, where applicable, use the assets that they acquire or retain, to advantage their own children thereby structuring the opportunities that confront all members of subsequent cohorts of young people. Finally, it is argued that the sociological approach being advocated is uniquely able to use the evidence from young people as a window through which to identify the impact of the ongoing macro‐changes in former communist countries among different socio‐demographic groups in the wider populations.     

The perception of housing conditions in Nigeria by the urban poor

This paper provides a critical analysis of the urban poor's attitudes towards housing conditions in Nigeria. The concept of housing inequality as well as the various types and scales of disparity in housing services availability are discussed. Although inequality is a moral issue, this paper is mainly concerned with its ideological and scientific content. And in order to identify and characterise the dimensions of inequality theoretically and empirically, a case study of Idi-Araba, an officially-designated slum area in Metropolitan Lagos in Nigeria, was carried out. Some of the theories which attempt to explain low-income and the poor housing users' attitudes towards their settlements, towards public housing policies and towards social and economic inequalities are presented and tested. The study posits that the problems of housing in Nigeria today cannot be restrictedly defined in terms of housing costs, building materials, manpower availability, land tenurial systems and so on. In order for it to be possible for us to understand them adequately, the problems must be seen as an unavoidable and persisting aspect of structural inequality in our society. Clarification of users' disposition of minds towards government housing policies is essential in order to begin to formulate the elements of various reforms that are necessary to reduce inequality in housing.     

Liberalism,Group Rights,Language and Personal Identity

The notion of minority community group (henceforth group) rights has become firmly entrenched in the constitutional vocabulary in many countries in recent years Yet liberal political theorists continue to define rights in individualistic terms. For some liberals, while it is meaningful to talk about individual rights, it is meaningless to talk about group rights. For communitarians, on the other hand, since individuals are embedded in some shared social context and since some groups do have legal and moral rights and responsibilities, it makes sense to speak of group rights. In some societies, community groups are treated as a unit‐‐potentially as a right‐and‐duty‐bearing unit. The paper attempts to show how some recent liberals attempt to justify group rights by recognising “culture” as a “primary good”, thus basing cultural rights on a foundation consistent with liberal theory. The “cases” selected for discussion attempt to illustrate how liberal societies have wrestled with linguistic group rights within individualistic liberal frameworks.     

Free agent or ‘conscious automaton’? Contrasting interpretations of the individual in Spencer's writing on social and moral life

Herbert Spencer remains an important and intriguing figure in thinking about political, social and moral matters. At present his writings in relation to idealist thought, social policy, sociology and ethics are undergoing reassessment. This article is concerned with some recent interpretations of Spencer on individuals in social life. It looks in some detail at Spencer's work on psychology and sociology as well as on ethics, seeking to establish how Spencer understood people as social individuals. In particular the neglect of Spencer's denial of freedom of the will is identified as a problem in some recent interpretations. One of his contemporary critics, J.E. Cairnes, charged that Spencer's own theory of social evolution left even Spencer himself the status of only a ‘conscious automaton’. This article, drawing on a range of past and present interpretative discussions of Spencer, seeks to show that Spencerian individuals are psychically and socially so constituted as to be only indirectly responsive to moral suasion, even to that of his own Principles of Ethics as he himself acknowledged. Whilst overtly reconstructionist projects to develop a liberal utilitarianism out of Spencer to enliven political and philosophical debate for today are worthwhile—dead theorists have uses—care needs to be taken that the original context and its concerns with the processes associated with innovation (and decay) in social life are not thereby eclipsed, the more so since in some important respects they have recently received little systematic attention even though the issues have contemporary relevance in sociology.     

实现“中国梦”与构筑当代青年的精神支柱

确立以中国特色社会主义核心价值体系为主导的思想素质和精神支柱,是青年群体实现"中国梦"和人生理想所必备的道德品质成长的基石。精神境界高尚,思想政治素质优良,当代青年运动的方向就能始终代表着时代前进的步伐,成为推动经济与社会发展的生力军。进入新的历史时期,面对国际国内的各种挑战,我们要以科学发展观为指导,以为人民群众服务的社会实践为载体,大力弘扬爱国主义和民族精神,进一步强化思想道德建设,不断构筑当代青年群体强大精神支柱,引导他们在全面建设小康社会、实现"中国梦"的新征程中,奋发进取,继往开来,成长为社会主义的合格建设者和可靠接班人。     

Everyday incivility: towards a benchmark

Commonplace incivility is a topic of longstanding interest within social theory, perhaps best exemplified by Goffman's studies of the interaction order. Nevertheless we know very little about its distribution and expression in everyday life. Current empirical work is dominated by criminological agendas. These tend to focus on more serious and illegal activities rather than minor deviant acts that are simply inconsiderate or rude. The paper reports findings from a focus group study conducted in Melbourne, Australia that set out to benchmark everyday incivilities. The results suggest that perpetrators of incivility have a surprisingly broad social distribution as does the range of locales that might be characterised as ‘high risk’. Turning to the work of Putnam and Wolfe, we call for a research focus on low‐level incivilities as key symptoms of the state of civic virtue and the strength of moral ties within civil society. Drawing on Virilio, Bauman and Durkheim, it is suggested that the experience of incivility is underpinned by the growth of freedom and movement in contemporary urban settings, and has ambivalent implications that not only invoke boundary maintenance and retreatism, but also offer the possibility for boundary expansion and tolerance of difference.     

Subjectivity in Feminist Science and Technology Studies: Implications and Applications for Sociological Research

Feminist science and technology studies calls the researcher to reconsider subjectivity in three ways. First, who or what has subjectivity? Second, is subjectivity a property of an individual being with sentience, or is it a more diffuse process? Third, who or what acts in meaningful ways to impact social relations (and are thus worthy of sociological study)? According to feminist STS, the conferral of subjectivity has been nationalized, racialized, and sexualized, and the influence of non‐human life and non‐living matter has been underemphasized. We suggest that sociological research could benefit from a more expansive understanding of subjectivity and a more interactive (or “entangled”) notion of social–material relations. Human relations and action need not just be considered in the context of the human and social but can also be considered in relation to the non‐human and material. To make the implications of feminist STS more concrete, we offer specific applications of feminist STS methodologies across a range of sociological methods and topics.     

Portraits and collaborations: a reflection on the work of Wendy Ewald

This reflection on the work of Wendy Ewald as a photographer, storyteller and teacher highlights Ewald's methodology, her manner of presenting work and her images. First, in describing Ewald's artistic practice, I discuss the innovative ways she collaborates with children, sharing control over the process of visually representing children's lives, their stories and their faces. I also describe her influence as an educator and suggest that researchers as well may benefit from Ewald's approach to exploring individuals' social realities. Next, I propose that Ewald's body of work provides a rich source of material for those interested in the analysis of visual culture. As an example, I focus on Ewald's American Alphabets, which presents four visual alphabets and deals with questions of identity and language. The collaborative images simultaneously address and raise sociological questions and offer a compelling visual example of the confluence of gender, race and social class. I finish with a discussion of Ewald's two latest collaborations—In Peace and Harmony: Carver Portraits in Richmond, Virginia and Towards a Promised Land from Margate, England. In these new works, Ewald places larger‐than‐life portraits in symbolically meaningful public spaces. Her public art involves a complicated and conceptual exploration of context.