Reconstructing Colonialism: Graphic Layout and Design,and the Construction of Ideology*

Le lien entre l'image et l'idéologie est un des thèmes les plus étudiés en sociologie visuelle. Il existe néanmoins une sérieuse lacune dans notre compréhension des procédés visuels auxquels on a recours pour créer une idéologie. Cet article, au moyen d'une analyse du rôle de la juxtaposition et de l'enchaînement visuels dans la publication gouvernementale britannique The Colonies in Pictures, atteste un mécanisme jusqu'ici ignoré dans la formation de l'idéologie. Je soutiens que la publication reconstruit une idéologie coloniale britannique en faisant passer de l'ethnicitéà la culture le marqueur utilisé pour distinguer le britannique du non‐britannique. Une telle reconstruction avait été rendue nécessaire en raison du contexte historique qui a suivi la Deuxième Guerre mondiale et a permis aux Britanniques de conserver une main‐mise sur l'économie des colonies tout en leur accordant une autonomie politique. The connection between image and ideology is one of the most analysed themes in visual sociology. Despite this, there exists a serious omission in our understanding of the visual processes used to create ideology. This article, through the analysis of the role of visual juxtaposition and sequencing in the British government publication The Colonies in Pictures, documents a previously ignored mechanism for ideology formation. I argue that the publication reconstructs British colonial ideology by shifting the marker used to distinguish between British and non‐British from ethnicity to culture. Such a reconstruction was necessitated by the historical circumstances following World War II and enabled the British to retain economic control over the colonies while granting political autonomy.     

Colonialism and underdevelopment in Kigoma region,Tanzania: a social structural view*

This paper examines the impact on the social structure of Kigoma Region, Tanzania, of the imposition of British colonial rule and the coercion of the population to work for the plantations and other enterprises established under British auspices. As a consequence of indirect rule and economic exploitation, the networks of the ruling stratum were strengthened, while those of the commoners fell apart. These structural changes led to the creation of a crime-ridden society that became less egalitarian and less conducive to individual well-being. The paper concludes with some observations on the social dimensions of underdevelopment. L'article examine l'effet de l'imposition du régime colonial britannique et de la contrainte au travail dans les plantations et autres entreprises établies sous les auspices britanniques sur la structure sociale de la Région du Kigoma, Tanzanie. Les conséquences du contrôle indirect et de l'exploitation économique ont renforcé les réseaux de la strate dominante alors que ceux des gens ordinaires se sont désintégrés. Ces changements structuraux ont donné naissance à une société remplie de crimes qui est devenue moins égalitaire et moins favorable au bien-être individuel. Quelques remarques sur les dimensions sociales du sous-développement terminent l'article.     

State Building,State Autonomy and the Identity of Society: The Case of the Israeli State*

Abstract Into the conventional framework of the state civil-society relationship, which usually includes the state's autonomy and the state's strength, this paper adds a dimension - the identity of the collectivity. The collective identity is from one side the common 'symbolic space’ for both the state and the actors of the civil society, and from the other side the ‘battlefield’ between the state, the society and the different components of the civil society. These tensions stem in a great measure from the emphasis of some aspects over others (for example the primordial vs. civic ingredients) of the collective identity. These interpretations have far reaching implications on the rules-of-the-game in the state and on the state-society relationship. Its identity is central to the determination of the various societal boundaries of the collectivity. This approach is exemplified through analysis of the building of the Israeli state and its transformation from a community to a nation-state, and again from a nation-state to a community state, in a perspective of about 75 years. The article fundamentally challenges the conventional presentation and analysis of the social and political history of Israel.     

The Deflective Power of Reproductive Technologies:

Advances in reproductive technologies are altering women's experience of maternity and childbirth. They increase medical intervention while decreasing women's options and control over maternity. Although presented as increasing individual choices for women, their potential is to restrict choices for women as a group. The Baby M case illustrates that women's experience of maternity is belittled even in the least technologically dependent arrangement of surrogacy. These technologies deflect pressures for social reforms by promising technological fixes for reproductive difficulties. Often these problems have social causes. Women delay motherhood and increase reproductive risks, for example. to conform to male career timetables. Reforming employment policies is blunted, though, by the technological turn. These technologies should not be allowed to deflect the women's movement from pressuring for social change.     

Rationality and Freedom: Weber and Beyond*

In the tradition of German social thought from Kant and Hegel through Toennies and Simmel, the development of rationality in modern Europe is associated with an increase of human freedom. Weber's work departs from that tradition by providing an incomparably differentiated framework for the analysis of rationality and by associating modern European rationalization with a curtailment of freedom. More careful examination of Weber's oeuvre, however, indicates that he, too, connected rationalization with the growth of freedom in many respects. His amended argument remains valuable today, although ways in which it stands to be improved by incorporating subsequent analyses are suggested.     

State and Nation in Medieval France

Abstract The modernist theory of the nation is criticised for being unable to explain the existence of the idea of the nation and of national sentiments in the medieval period. By focusing on the central role played by the monarchy in the making of the French state in the Middle Ages it is possible to show the legitimating importance of French language and of French culture in that period. Furthermore, the appearance of the idea of France as an 'imagined community', even if it was only shared by a small minority of people, proves that by the end of the Middle Ages there was a clear sense of national identity.     

Beyond the Binaries: Depolarizing the Categories of Sex,Sexuality, and Gender*

Most sociological research designs assume that each person has one sex. one sexuality, and one gender, congruent with each other and fixed for life. Postmodern feminists and queer theorists have been interrogating bodies, desires, and genders, but sociology has not. Deconstructing sex, sexuality, and gender reveals many possible categories embedded in social experiences and social practices. As researchers, as theorists, and as activists, sociologists have to go beyond paying lip service to the diversity of bodies, sexualities, genders. The sociologist's task should be to deconstruct the conventional categories of sex, sexuality, and gender and build new complex, cross-cutting constructs into research designs. There are revolutionary possibilities inherent in rethinking the categories of gender, sexuality, and physiological sex. Sociological data that challenge conventional knowledge by reframing the questions could provide legitimacy for new ways of thinking. Data that undermine the supposed natural dichotomies on which the social orders of most modern societies are still based could radically alter political discourses that valorize biological causes, essential heterosexuality, and traditional gender roles in families and workplaces.     

Colonialism and its Contradictions: Indians, Blacks and Social Power in Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century Mexico

Abstract This article examines patterns in the black/Indian relationship in Mexico during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It focuses on microlevels of society and on the practice of power in two pivotal domains, one centered on instances of labor coercion and civil control, and the other on what was labelled "witchcraft." The analysis suggests that Spanish colonialism embodied contradictions at its very foundations as it created sites of power for both blacks and Indians, who were alternately constituted as dominating and subordinated subjects vis-à-vis each other and the Spanish colonizers.     

Colonialism,genocide, and Tibet

A central element of the narrative circulated by the Tibet Movement has been that China has carried out genocide and practised colonialism in Tibet. These notions are, for the most part, uncritically accepted by politicians and the media, especially in the West. This essay challenges such characterizations as inept and as obstacles to resolving the Tibet Question. It looks at whether convincing empirical evidence of physical and cultural genocide in Tibet exists, in light of the most common understanding of such practices as rooted in efforts to destroy a people and its culture. The essay also considers what the contours of colonialism have been in light of its principal modern experience, that of European, US and Japanese colonization, and determines whether the Tibet case fits these characteristics. The essay concludes that a critique of China's policies and practices in Tibet would be best served by focusing on actual problems experienced by Tibetans.     

Science, Power, Bodies: The Mobilization of Nature as State Formation

Abstract This paper brings together recently developed perspectives in science studies and the historical sociology of state formation. It focuses on how scientific and government practices together construct the relationalities, identities, natures, and material environments of the bodies that constitute the modern state. The paper argues that the modern state is an effect of these practices, a techno-scientific political formation in which political government and scientific practice are woven together in a heterogeneous yet definitive network.     

The Quaker Ethic and the Fixed Price Policy: Max Weber and Beyond*

Max Weber undertook his research on the Quakers and their fixed price policy as part of his attempt to understand the role of the Puritan sects in the rise of early modern capitalism. Although his comments on the group were sympathetic and penetrating, they suffered from inattention to the historical context. He failed to see, for instance, that the Quakers’economic policies in large part reflected their resentful frustration over the Puritans’failure to institute popular political, economic, and religious proposals. This paper corrects Weber's portrait of the Quakers and their unique fixed price policy by paying close attention to the social climate in which they formulated this economic innovation. In doing so the research establishes an important relationship between religious doctrines and social frustrations that Weber himself did not see, but that existed in Nietzsche's theory of “resentment,” and in Eduard Bernstein's analysis of the earliest Quakers.