Credit and civilization

This paper analyses financial credit in order to re-examine the work of Norbert Elias, particularly his association of interdependency complexity with social discipline, and his approach to contradiction. Following a discussion of these issues, the paper examines Elias's writing on money and explores the emergence of financial credit networks in early modern England. Attention is paid to credit networks and social discipline, to credit and the state, and to the contradictory images associated with the transition to modern cash economies. From one perspective, early modern credit networks might be read as a confirmation of Elias, particularly his argument that interdependency complexity, changing power balances and self-restraint are interwoven. Yet the development of modern cash money raises questions, not just in relation to Elias's treatment of money, but also with regard to his assumptions about social discipline and his approach to ambivalence and contradiction. Drawing on the foregoing discussion, the paper argues that the relation between interdependency complexity and social discipline is contingent and variable, and that interdependency complexity may simultaneously encourage contradictory processes, such as those of civilizing and barbarity.     

Material civilization: things and society

This paper argues that although classical sociology has largely overlooked the importance of social relations with the material world in shaping the form of society, Braudel's concept of 'material civilization' is a useful way to begin to understand the sociological significance of this relationship. The limitations of Braudel's historical and general concept can be partially overcome with Elias's analysis of the connection between 'technization' and 'civilization' that allows for both a civilizing and a de-civilizing impact of emergent forms of material relation that both lengthen and shorten the chains of interdependence between the members of a society. It is suggested that the concept of the 'morality of things' employed by a number of commentators is useful in summarizing the civilizing effects of material objects and addressing their sociological significance. From the sociology of consumption the idea of materiality as a sign of social relationships can be drawn, and from the sociology of technology the idea of socio-technical systems and actor-networks can contribute to the understanding of material civilization. It is argued that the concept of 'material capital' can usefully summarize the variable social value of objects but to understand the complexity of material civilization as it unfolds in everyday life, an analysis of 'material interaction' is needed. Finally the paper suggests some initial themes and issues apparent in contemporary society that the sociological study of material civilization might address; the increased volume, functional complexity and material specificity of objects and the increased social complexity, autonomy and substitutability that is entailed. A theory of 'material civilization' is the first step in establishing a sociology of objects.     

Norbert Elias: A Milestone in Historical Psycho-Sociology The Making of the Social Person

Abstract The originality of Elias's perspective and the significance of the subject he has chosen in his main works The Civilizing Process and The Court Society will be evaluated and explained in the light of the history and rediscovery of his work in West Germany and of some roots of the psycho-sociological historical approach. The paper begins with an intellectual-biographical note, introduces the crucial aspects of Elias's main work, offers a critical debate and concludes with a historical-intellectual rooting of the investigation.     

“经验研究”与“理论研究”——古典社会学、心理学的诠释学意涵

当前中国社会学中的一个突出问题是,"经验研究"与"理论研究"两个阵营之间相互质疑。然而,从当代诠释学的角度则有"经验"与"理论"一致性的命题:经验是文本的类似物。这一命题原创性地蕴含在社会学和心理学的奠基者詹姆斯、涂尔干、弗洛伊德和韦伯的思想之中,而本文的主体部分即发掘这些古典思想的诠释学意涵。文章指出,基于这一诠释学命题的理论建构,在解决中国社会学中两个阵营对峙问题的同时,将文化自觉置于学科建设的基础位置。     

The importance of survival units for Norbert Elias's figurational perspective

In this paper, we argue that Norbert Elias's concept of survival unit is a distinctive part of the development of his figurational sociology and one of the most consistent contributions to relational thinking. The survival unit is a particular form of figuration which provides security and the material foundations for life such as food and shelter. Every human being is born into a survival unit. This unit is a relational concept which cannot be conceived outside a relationship with other survival units.
By introducing the concept of survival unit Elias overcomes one of the key problems in relational sociology: how to demarcate primary social relations. Elias argues that human societies from very early on have been divided into survival units. These survival units are demarcated and constituted in their relationship to other survival units. Consequently, their boundaries are generated in a confrontation with other survival units.
This relationship can be peaceful or conflict ridden but in the last resort it can end with violent confrontation. Only the survival unit with the ability to defend a domain of sovereignty will survive. This observation places Elias among the few sociologists with an understanding of the role of warfare in social relationships.     

Making sense of middle-class politics: a secondary analysis of the 1987 British general election survey

In the past decade the Nuffield class schema has become the established way of operationalising social class measures in survey analyses. This paper carries out secondary analysis of the 1987 British General Election Survey to analyse the relationship between voting patterns and middle-class groups. It argues that the Nuffield class schema actually obstructs a proper understanding of the relationship between class and politics, and that in order to develop an adequate account of middle-class politics it is necessary to develop an alternative theoretical perspective drawing on the new sociology of the professions, and on the sociology of state formation. The paper concludes with some tentative remarks on the changing characteristics of middle-class politics.     

Religion, Rationality, and Experience: A Response to the New Rational Choice Theory of Religion

This paper is a critical response to the newest version of the rational choice theory of religion (RCTR). In comparison with previous critiques, this paper takes aim at RCTR's foundational assumption of psychological egoism and argues that the thesis of psychological egoism is untenable. Without that thesis, the normative aspects of religious commitment cannot be reduced validly to instrumental reason. On neither conceptual nor empirical grounds therefore can religion or religious commitment be defined comprehensively in terms of exchange theory. With the failure of psychological egoism as a point of departure, the paper articulates an alternative theory of religion, one based on the epistemic rationality grounded in religious experience and religious emotion .     

Conspiracy culture,blame culture,and rationalisation1

This paper outlines an approach to conspiracy culture that attempts to resolve the conundrum posed by the parallel logics of conspiracy and sociological theorising, without reducing the former to an irrational response to hidden social forces. Rather, from a re‐crafting of Weber's rationalisation thesis as an analysis of the developmental logic of theories of suffering, it argues that conspiracy culture is an outcome of the means of moral accounting, or blame attribution, that inform mundane reasoning in modernity, as also are the human sciences. As part of this, the paper sketches a tentative framework of moral accounting in relation to the notion of ‘blame culture’ based in part on a distinction between a culture of blaming and the blaming of culture. This is used to argue that there is nothing irrational about conspiracy culture – or at least no more so than there is about sociology.     

Violence,fear of crime,and Islam scepticism

Many authors have raised the question whether Islam scepticism is different from more general expressions of xenophobia. This paper argues that in order to give the thesis of a differentiation between these attitudes a fair chance (1) it should be tested among the more highly educated part of the population, and (2) the analysis should include controls for determinants that might be specific to Islam scepticism. Therefore this contribution researches the specificity of Islam scepticism among first-year university students. Five forms of prejudice are distinguished, alongside Islam scepticism. It is observed: (1) that Islam scepticism is empirically distinct from those forms of prejudice; (2) that there are nonetheless very strong relationships between the different forms of prejudice and Islam scepticism, and the latter is to a large extent determined by more general forms of prejudice; (3) yet, even when such influences are taken into account, the latter attitude is still additionally influenced by feelings of insecurity.     

Health E-types?

This paper presents a simple typology of different forms of engagement with the Internet by families with children with various forms of chronic illness. The analysis is informed by ongoing debates about the nature, distribution and efficacy of reflexivity in contemporary social life, especially as it relates to the changing nature of information and knowledge. Drawing upon qualitative interviews with sixty-nine parents and sixteen children, the paper offers a nuanced account of the manner in which laypeople are engaging with e- health. It is an account that argues that any reading of the 'digital divide' that is based upon a simple homology between socio-structural location, reflexivity and differential ability to gain material purchase from information in the 'information age' is misjudged.     

Sociology's misfortune: disciplines, interdisciplinarity and the impact of audit culture

This paper is about tendencies to the subversion of sociology as a discipline. It connects external factors of the wider socio-political environment of higher education in the UK, especially those associated with the audit culture and new systems of governance, with the internal organization of the discipline. While the environment is similar for all social science subjects, the paper argues that there are specific consequences for sociology because of characteristics peculiar to the discipline. The paper discusses these consequences in terms of the changing relationship between sociology and the growing interdisciplinary area of applied social studies as a form of 'mode 2 knowledge'. It argues that while sociology 'exports' concepts, methodologies and personnel it lacks the internal disciplinary integrity of other 'exporter' disciplines, such as economics, political science and anthropology. The consequence is an increasingly blurred distinction between sociology as a discipline and the interdisciplinary area of applied social studies with a potential loss of disciplinary identity. The paper concludes with a discussion of how this loss of identity is associated with a reduced ability to reproduce a critical sensibility within sociology and absorption to the constraints of audit culture with its preferred form of mode 2 knowledge.     

Civic Sectors in Transformation and Beyond: Preliminaries for a Comparison of Six Central and Eastern European Societies

The paper presents a comparative analysis of the recent developments in the civil societies in six Central and East European (CEE) countries: the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland. Focusing on the level of civil society organizations (CSO), it first discusses the changes in their role as social actors and co-operation within the civic sector itself. Second, it examines the process of civic–public sector partnership consolidation, and third, some of the more recent challenges that the civic initiatives in these countries are facing. It aims to highlight the diversity of patterns of civil society development in the region and argues for a reassessment of its ‘weakness’ thesis.     

Race, Identities and Lives

This paper uses an individual biography to make an analysis of racialized identity. It explores the connections between subjectivity and the broader social scenes in which it operates, and argues that identity is the outcome of a negotiation between existential conceptions of the self in racial terms, and the administrative mechanisms through which individuals are dealt with as members of social categories. By thinking about identity in terms of specific forms of alterity, mobility and conceptions of home, this paper argues that lives acquire race through their social practices and spatial arrangements.     

Identity,impairment and disablement: exploring the social processes impacting identity change in adults living with acquired neurological impairments

The social model of disability acknowledges the impact of impairments but argues that disablement is socially constructed. Taking a theoretical perspective, underpinned by the social model of disability and elements of social identity theory, we investigated the relationship between impairment, disablement and identity change in adults living with an acquired neurological impairment. Through the thematic analysis, three themes emerged: changing self described the personal factors for identity change in people acquiring impairment; changing communities explored the contextual factors creating both socially constructed disablement and identity change; and influencing identity change considered strategies adopted by individuals to both counter socially constructed disablement and promote exploration of identity. A systemic change towards acknowledgement and valuing a disabled identity may counter socially constructed disablement and support enablement and social inclusivity.     

Globalizing Firms and Small Communities: The Apparel Industry's Changing Connection to Rural Labor Markets*

Abstract This paper explores changing relationships between apparel firms and rural labor markets in Wisconsin over the last decade. Mainstream explanations of recent changes in the apparel industry suggest that rural communities will lose tedious or physically demanding, low‐skilled apparel manufacturing jobs but will gain more information‐intensive and desirable “apparel service” employment. Through case studies of apparel firms located in two Wisconsin communities, the paper argues that current changes in the industry not only affect communities unevenly but, even in regions where apparel service firms have provided significant numbers of new jobs, these jobs are less well paid, more casually structured, and less secure than manufacturing employment has been. The paper argues that current concepts of the economic embeddedness of firms in communities need to be refined to permit consideration of the kinds of leverage and voice that community organizations have in confronting new forms of corporate capital. The two case studies demonstrate that corporate embeddedness and its labor market outcomes are linked to changes in the global market in which firms compete.     

Unpacking the State: The Implications for the Third Sector of Changing Relationships Between National and Local Government

The drive to welfare reform has revolutionalized the relationship between the state and the third sector in many countries. But this article argues that, if we are to understand the impact of the changing role of the state on the third sector, then we must first understand the dynamics of the relationship between national and local government. It compares two countries—the U.K. and Italy—where national-local government relations have developed in different directions, and suggests a number of avenues for further analysis of this three-way relationship.     

Mentoring and the new curriculum of academic work

Abstract

This paper argues that institutional agendas associated with the development of the enterprise model of the university in many western countries are changing the nature of work and in so doing demanding new work practices and identities of academic staff (or faculty). Within this climate academic staff are exhorted to expand and enhance their performance repertoire, leading to the growth in emphasis on the professional development of academic (and other) staff. This paper considers the role of formal mentoring, in particular mentoring of women faculty, in promoting self-review and self-regulation in this increasingly performance driven climate. It argues that mentoring plays an important role in promoting specific dispositions and behaviours suited to the enterprise model.     

Poverty,Delinquency, and Educational Attainment: Cumulative Disadvantage or Disadvantage Saturation?

Data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY) were analyzed to test two competing hypotheses regarding how poverty affects the relationship between delinquency and educational attainment. The cumulative-disadvantage perspective argues that poor youth suffer greater consequences for their involvement in delinquency than middle- and upper-class youth in terms of their educational attainment. Contrary to this perspective, the disadvantage-saturation thesis predicts that delinquency is less con-sequential for the educational attainment of poor youth than it is for nonpoor youth. Results from ordinary least squares and logistic regression analyses support the latter hypothesis. Theoretical and policy implications are discussed.     

From Solidarity to Fluidarity: Social movements beyond 'collective identity'--the case of globalization conflicts

Over the 1980s 'collective identity' became established as one of the orthodoxies of the sociology of social movements. This paper considers this development, and argues that 'collective identity' does not allow a conceptualization and exploration of critical dimensions of action and identity emerging in contemporary globalization conflicts. Drawing on fieldwork undertaken with Direct Action groups in Australia and the USA, this paper considers (i) the role of affinity groups, (ii) the question of representation, (iii) network culture and fluidarity, and (iv) the narrative structure of action. In the light of these, the paper critiques the 'collective identity' model, while also suggesting limits to the 'personalized commitment' thesis (Lichterman, The Search for Political Community , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996) advanced in relation to Green activists. The paper argues in the context of network societies, the analysis of processes of action and identity within contemporary social movements must shift from 'solidarity' to one of 'fluidarity', and from 'collective identity' to one of 'public experience of self'.     

Beyond economic insecurity and cultural backlash: Economic nationalism and the rise of the far right

Far‐right parties gain in electoral support across the globe. Studies describe this phenomenon either as a cultural backlash or as a reaction to growing economic inequality. The economic inequality perspective suggests that the transforming workforce in post‐industrial societies gives rise to economic insecurity among those who feel left behind. In contrast, the cultural backlash thesis argues that the increasing support for far‐right parties represents a rejection of values such as cosmopolitanism and multiculturalism. More recent scholarship sought to show how economic and cultural factors combined increase the support for the far right. Most of these studies investigate public opinion polls, voting behaviour, and voters´ socio‐economic contexts. This paper reviews these studies and argues that the way in which far‐right political parties construct an interconnection of economic and cultural ideas in discourse is largely neglected in the existing body of literature. The paper concludes that the concept of economic nationalism captures how these two components are intertwined; economic nationalist discourse in far‐right political manifestos and speeches provides a more complete comprehension how public opinion is being shaped. This contribution offers a starting point for future studies to examine how cultural values, such as nationalism, reconstruct and influence articulation of economic policy.