Intellectual spaces of practice and hope: power and culture in Portugal from the 1940s to the present

This paper examines configurations of power, authority and culture in Portugal in the twentieth century, and intellectual practices and spaces related to those configurations and in opposition to them. Portuguese national history and essentialized versions of Portugueseness are analysed in the work of such distinguished and influential intellectuals as António Sérgio, António José Saraiva and Eduardo Lourenço, in articulation with the role of high culture in the process of nation building throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. One particular structure of attitude and reference, constructed in the latter half of the nineteenth century, is foregrounded with reference to the History of Portugal by Oliveira Martins, in the context of the persistent contradictions and conflicts between progressive and conservative, modernizing and traditional, ‘historical’, formations and projects. In such a context, moments of oppositional, alternative and independent projects are worth looking into. Two decisive moments of social change in the second half of the twentieth century were the 1940s, and the late 1960s and early 1970s. The paper pays attention to the politics of culture of Neo-Realismo in the 1940s and its consequences for high and popular culture over the following decades, especially in the years leading to the democratic revolution of 25 April 1974. A brief analysis of the 1990s is articulated to the study of the change-producing projects in the 1940s and 1960s as part of the cultural studies practice the paper argues for.     

WEBER AND INTERPRETIVE SOCIOLOGY IN AMERICA

This article examines the role of Weber's methodological writings on verstehende Soziologie in the construction of an American variant of interpretive sociology during the first half of the twentieth century. It thereby illustrates the connections between intellectual appropriation and the academic institutionalization of competing sociological schools. After reviewing Weber's general reception in American sociology, it focuses on the respective relevance of Weber for symbolic interaction, which developed out of the Chicago School; Parsonian action theory; and the phenomenological social theory of Alfred Schutz. Three conclusions emerge. First, the symbolic interactionists and their predecessors operated with the implicit assumption that they did not need Weber. Second, Weber was not only intellectually valuable to Parsons, but also useful in his quest for intellectual hegemony. Finally, Schutz, in offering a third, alternative and competing interpretation of Weber, served to complicate this struggle between the two American sociological schools.     

The “Peculiar Eclipsing” of Women in Sociological Theory: Moving from Nearly Total to Partial

This paper revisits the observation made by Ward and Grant (Current Perspective in Social Theory 11:117–140, 1991) that there had been a “peculiar eclipsing” of women in sociological theory. It provides longitudinal studies of women’s participation and recognition in three conventional outlets for sociological theorizing: the theory section of the American Sociological Association (ASA); sociological theory textbooks; and sociological theory journals. It finds that the percentage of ASA Theory Section members who were women increased from 12% in 1982 to 31% in 2008, but is not nearly as high as the 53% in all ASA sections taken together; that women’s recognition in sociological theory textbooks grew, more between the 1980s and the 2000s than between the 1960s and the 1980s, undoubtedly reflecting the increasing respectability of feminist theory within the profession; and that women’s relative participation as authors in sociology theory journals increased from the 1980s to the 2000s by about 33%, but nowhere near as much as their participation as authors in the American Sociological Review, where their relative participation in the 2000s was more than three times what it had been in the 1980s. We speculate that, given women’s increasing leadership roles in both the Theory section and the theory journals, women may be using less conventional outlets for their theorizing than is offered by either the section or the journals.     

Language,ethnicity, and the nation-state: on Max Weber’s conception of “imagined linguistic community”

Methodological nationalism in sociological theory is unfit for the current globalized era, and should be discarded. In light of this contention, the present article discusses Max Weber’s view of language as a way to relativize the frame of the national society. While a “linguistic turn” in sociology since the 1960s has assumed that the sharing of language—linguistic community—stands as an intersubjective foundation for understanding of meaning, Weber saw linguistic community as constructed. From Weber’s rationalist, subjectivist, individualist viewpoint, linguistic community was a result of social actions, not a prior entity as assumed by German metaphysical organicism (and historicist holism). Indeed, Central Europe in Weber’s era was a battlefield of linguistic nationalism(s); in contrast to the national societies of the Cold War period, national borders were unstable and ultimately the multiethnic empires of the region were dismantled after World War I into ethnolinguistic nation-states. Experience of this contemporary reality brought Weber to the core of the relationship between language and politics: A language community is an imaginary one demarcated not by language itself but by conscious opposition against outsiders, with monolingual contexts within borders created artificially by homogenizing policies like linguistic standardization and national education—the first modernity of language. In this way, Weber felt, language can be a means to domination.     

The final step: the issue of euthanasia of people with mental disabilities in Denmark

A number of Danish studies on the history of mental disability have been published in recent years, yet little attention has been devoted to the issue of euthanasia. It has been assumed that the Danes generally opposed radical German ideas about euthanasia of people with disabilities, especially after 1945. This article, however, will contend that a breeding ground for euthanasia was created during the early twentieth century and that many Danes were influenced by Nazi propaganda in the 1940s. Debates about euthanasia of people with mental disabilities continued way up to the 1970s. In fact, discussions about euthanasia or ‘mercy killing’ (medlidenhedsdrab) had their heyday in the years after World War II. Actual cases of ‘mercy killing’ of mentally disabled children appeared in this period. This article will argue that knowledge about the past is important in light of current debates in Europe about similar issues.     

Haunting and the Aesthetics of Trauma in A Woman in Berlin and For Those Who Can Tell No Tales: Redefining Cultural Memory

ABSTRACT

This paper offers a comparative analysis of the aesthetics of trauma in the German film A Woman in Berlin and the Bosnian film For Those Who Can Tell No Tales, both of which address wartime rapes that happened in mid-to late twentieth century Europe. We use trauma studies as well as Avery Gordon's sociological theory of haunting to examine how two historical episodes of war-time rape (post-WWII Germany and late twentieth century Bosnia) have created ghostly effects that can be seen in the periodic return to these histories through artistic productions. Gordon argues that a traumatic past continues to co-exist with the present in the form of ghosts; thus, we need to produce case studies of haunting that attend to the social and political effects/affects of the ghostly and how they complicate our accounts of social trauma and oppression. We focus on: (1) the national and transnational reception of the two narratives; (2) the films’ similarities and differences regarding the cinematography of trauma, narrative styles used and female agency; and (3) masculinity and the male voices’ ‘right’ to tell a story. We conclude by addressing the limits of representation in both films and their role in challenging the dominant cultural memory.     

On several problems regarding the development of demographic theory in China since the founding of the People's Republic

Policy theory over the last 30 years, as Comrade Tian sees it, can be divided into 3 developmental stages: 1) from 1949 to 1957 saw the rise of "population controlism" represented by the sociological school; 2) from the late 1950s into the early 1960s featured the "new Population Theory" represented by Ma Yinchu, and a "theory of human hands and power" formulated in the course of criticism and repudiation; and 3) after the 1960s population studies were at a state of standstill or only 1/2 active. While advocating birth control, Comrade Mao Zedong showed inadequacy in regard to demographic theory and in practice he lacked sufficient understanding of the gravity of New China's population problem. In reviewing the developmental history of demographic theory in new China, it would be very inappropriate not to analyze and evaluate realistically Mao Zedong's thinking on population but only criticize certain of his faults. The main manifestations in Comrade Tian Xueyuan's division of the stages of development of new China's population theory are: 1) the first stage is unable to reflect accurately the objective reality of a healthy development of China's population theory, 2) the third stage includes 2 entirely different developmental periods before and after the smashing of the "gang of four," and 3) Tian's stages did not convey the development and change in Comrade Mao Zedong's demographic thinking in the different stages and their influence on the development of China's population theory. Tian Xueyuan and Zedong differ in terms of content of the developmental stages of population theory, not in terms of the time of the stages.     

Organizational theory: From classical sociology to the 1970s

Organizations are the fundamental building blocks of modern societies. So it is not surprising that they have always been at the center of sociological research, starting with Marx and Weber. And although Durkheim did not explicitly analyze organizations, his work has clear implications for the study of organizations. We review the insights of these three pioneering sociologists and then discuss ideas about organizations proposed by other scholars, from both management and sociology, from 1910 to the mid‐1970s. Marx, Weber, and Durkheim's theoretical frameworks were tools for understanding the transition to modernity. Marx and Weber saw organizations as sites of class struggle and rationalization, respectively, while Durkheim focused on social cohesion and collective sensemaking, both of which underpin organizations. Later theorists focused more closely on the meso‐level and micro‐level processes that happen within and between organizations. These later theorists emphasized pragmatic concerns of optimizing organizational efficiency and labor productivity (scientific management and human relations theories), processes of affiliation and hierarchy (Simmel), limits to rational decision‐making (the Carnegie School), and environmental conditions that shape organizational processes and outcomes (contingency theories). A companion paper describes the three perspectives (demographic, relational, and cultural) that have dominated sociological research on organizations since the mid‐1970s.     

Max Weber's Science of Composition

Starting from the recently translated biography of Max Weber by Joachim Radkau, this essay re‐evaluates Weber's “science of reality” in relation to his personality, the cultural context of the early twentieth century, and the position of Weber's thought in the sociological canon. The argument progresses through sequentially enlarged analyses, which propose that Weber's general style of thinking is a type of dissonant composition that places emphasis on the many relationships between cultural reality and the concepts derived from it, and not as much on its content. The logic of such a compositional approach to reality is based on similar principles found in sound and music, which Weber in fact uses in a more latent as well as more active form, to pursue his aim of a style of thinking as “aesthetics of dissonance”. The latter is a sort of “methodological wedge” that pries open the many layers of reality. As such, Weber's “science of reality” is an early “classical” example of a recent and much needed call for a social science as the “art of listening”.     

LEVINE'S VISIONS OF THE GERMAN TRADITION IN THE LIGHT OF WEBER

This article illuminates Levine's analysis of the German tradition in his book Visions of the Sociological Tradition in the light of Max Weber's concept of verstehen . According to Levine, the understanding of subjective meaning is the most important theme of thinkers whose ideas resulted in the founding of sociology in Germany. Visions is more than a history of sociological theory, its broadest purpose being to stimulate a dialogue among competing "narratives' that will reduce the fragmentation in contemporary sociology and also address the moral dilemmas in contemporary society. This dialogical purpose provides a criterion for selecting ideas that best represent the various sociological traditions. Considering Weber in the context of Levine's book will not only clarify the German tradition but will also lead to both support and criticism of his dialogical thesis.     

Jean-Paul Sartre and the philosophy of négritude: Race,self, and society

In this article, Jean-Paul Sartre’s relationship to the négritude movement and black intellectuals in Paris between the 1940s and the 1960s is examined in sociological and historical context. Sartre’s version of négritude, developed in his 1948 treatise “Orphée noir” prefacing Léopold Senghor’s collection of African and Malagasy poetry, is analyzed in terms of its role in shaping the discourses and debates surrounding négritude and the relationship of black intellectuals to the rest of French society. Sartre’s phenomenological theories of race, juxtaposing dominant and subaltern ideologies, are contrasted with his dialectic of négritude. The antinégritude movement of the late 1960s is also considered with reference to Sartre’s theories and inspiration. During this period, the relationship that Sartre established with Martinican intellectual and revolutionary Frantz Fanon helped to place Sartre into prominence as an activist and a theorist of decolonization and Third World politics. Sartre’s theories of race, self, and society were integral to both his early and later works and warrant review as approaches to the sociology of culture and sources of reflection for contemporary postcolonial studies.

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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.     

American unemployment in historical perspective

During the twentieth century, the annual average unemployment rate reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics data has varied between 1.2 and 24.9 percent. This article, derived from our recent book,Out of Work: Unemployment and Government in 20th Century America, examines and explains variations in unemployment over time. These large fluctuations in unemployment probably account for this century’s obsession with joblessness. Alfred Marshall’sPrinciples of Economics, published in 1890, barely mentions unemployment. Only two short generations later, unemployment was the dominant topic of interest among economists, and the most influential economics book of this century, Keynes’sGeneral Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, was concerned largely with explaining its existence.     

Towards a historical sociology of constitutional legitimacy

This article has two primary objectives. First, it sets out the methodological argument that the conventional antinomy between normative and sociological approaches to questions of state legitimacy depends on a series of false constructions, and that normative and sociological – or specifically historical–sociological – analyses of states and the processes by which they obtain legitimacy can be (and ought to be) mutually reinforcing. This argument hinges on the claim that historical sociology should renounce some of its common presuppositions regarding the coercive functions of state power and reformulate itself as a normative social science, identifying and promoting models of statehood likely to obtain legitimacy in modern differentiated societies. Second, it sets out the more substantive argument that the legitimization of states can be observed both as an evolutionary or adaptive dimension of state formation and as a process of theoretical self-reflection in which the societies where states are located construct and refine the most adequate form for the transmission of the power they designate as political. In this respect, the article questions common assumptions about politics and legitimacy and makes a case for a change of paradigm in the analysis of these concepts. Through this change of paradigm, politics itself and the methods used for securing legitimacy for politics are constructed as abstracted articulations of a society’s own needs and exigencies. The article borrows elements from the systemic-functionalist sociology of Niklas Luhmann to develop the argument. In this context, the article also uses historical case studies to outline a theory of constitutions and constitutional rights. This theory explains how constitutions and constitutional rights help to generate legitimacy for states by enabling modern political systems, both normatively and functionally, to reflect and stabilize their position in society, to control the volume of politics in a society, and to elaborate socially adequate techniques for applying and restricting political power. The article concludes by suggesting that historical–sociological analyses of the functions of rights and constitutions can provide a key to proposing both normatively and sociologically founded models of legitimate statehood.

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Sociological theory: Looking forward

A brief model of the rise, salience, criticism, and relative decline of theoretical perspectives in sociology is sketched, citing the dominance of sociological positivism in the early part of the twentieth century as an example. Classical evolutionary theory and structural-functionalism are also mentioned as illustrations. Viewing the contemporary theoretical scene, the author sees a kind of peaceful pluralism as a visible motif, and some modest signs of integrative or synthetic theoretical activity on the horizon. He is the author of many books and articles on sociological theory, economic sociology, collective behavior and social movements, and the sociology of education. Most recently he edited theHandbook of Sociology (1988).     

A cross-national consensus on a unified sociological theory?

Can a standard set of sociological theories be formulated that would command consensus across the globe? Sociology developed in the context of nation-specific knowledge communities and hence constitutes a singular endeavor anchored deeply in the respective regions of its birth. Every society’s mode of sociology analysis varies. A case study — Sociology in the US — illustrates this position. A discussion of the original contours and developmental trajectory of German Sociology is utilized in order further to isolate the uniqueness of sociological theory’s ?location” in American Sociology. Pivotal differences continue to anchor nation-specific traditions and approaches to sociological theory, all of which preclude standardization attempts.     

Global generations: social change in the twentieth century

The concept of generation within sociology has until recently been a marginal area of interest. However, various demographic, cultural and intellectual developments have re-awakened an interest in generations that started with the classic essay by Karl Mannheim. To date, the sociological literature has generally conceptualized generations as nationally bounded entities. In this paper we suggest that the sociology of generations should develop the concept of global generations. This conceptual enhancement is important because the growth of global communications technology has enabled traumatic events, in an unparalleled way, to be experienced globally. The late nineteenth and early twentieth century was the era of international generations, united through print media, and the mid-twentieth century saw the emergence of transnational generations, facilitated by new broadcast communications. However, the latter part of the twentieth century is the period of global generations, defined by electronic communications technology, which is characterized, uniquely, by increasing interactivity. The 1960s generation was the first global generation, the emergence of which had world-wide consequences; today with major developments in new electronic communications, there is even more potential for the emergence of global generations that can communicate across national boundaries and through time. If in the past historical traumas combined with available opportunities to create national generations, now globally experienced traumas, facilitated by new media technologies, have the potential for creating global generational consciousness. The media have become increasingly implicated in the formation of generational movements. Because we are talking about generations in the making rather than an historical generation, this article is necessarily speculative; it aims to provoke discussion and establish a new research agenda for work on generations.     

Firing Back: Against the Tyranny of the Market 2

Pierre Bourdieu, Verso, 2003, 96 pp., ISBN 185984 6580, NewPress, New York, USA. Pierre Bourdieu (1930–2002) was a highly influential socialscientist of the twentieth century, on a par with Marx, Durkheimand Weber of the nineteenth, and Foucault, Derrida and Habermasof his own century. Yet, the relevance and insights of thesecontinental intellectuals is often missed and misunderstoodin the pragmatic Anglo-American intellectual culture. If youread this short collection of trenchant essays as a startingpoint for entering Bourdieu's world, you can, however, see thevirtue of theoretical thinking to practice. Despite     

Deparochialising the Canon: The Case of Sociological Theory

Sociological theory is not irrelevant to the South but needs to be deparochialised. The parochiality of sociological theory as it exists today can clearly be seen from the canon. The canon would have us believe that sociological theory was the sole creation of a few white men who lived in the nineteenth century. The absence of non-European thinkers in accounts of the history of sociological theory is particularly glaring in cases where non-Europeans had not only contributed to systematic thinking about the nature of society in the modern period but also influenced the development of sociology in the West. Typically, a history of social thought or a course on social thought and theory would cover theorists such as Montesquieu, Vico, Comte, Spencer, Marx, Weber, Durkheim, Simmel, Toennies, Sombart, Mannheim, Pareto, Sumner, Ward, Small, and others. Generally, both non-Western thinkers as well as women founders are excluded. Although sociology is slow to take a decolonial turn, there are now efforts to critique and rethink the canon. This article is a contribution in the direction of critiquing and expanding the canon to render it less parochial.     

Development, Diversity, and Conflict in the Sociology of Science *

The sociology of science has undergone considerable growth and diversification in recent years. Early sociology of science was developed within philosophical debates regarding the nature of science and the social bases of knowledge in general. Karl Mannheim and Max Scheler in the 1920s gave these discussions a specifically sociological bent. In the 1930s, the theme was made into an explicit sociology of science both by Marxists and by the functionalist Robert Merton, and both approaches were followed up during the next 30 years. The takeoff of the sociology of science into a flourishing research area occurred in the early 1960s, with the publication of works by Derek Price and by Thomas Kuhn, as well as important studies by Joseph Ben-David and by Warren Hagstrom. In the 1970s, sociology of science burgeoned into a variety of approaches: citation and network studies, conflict theory, social constructivism, ethnomethologically-influenced studies of laboratory life, and others. The idealized functionalist image of science has largely given way to more critical, relativist, and highly empirical approaches to science.