Political power beyond the State: problematics of government

This paper sets out an approach to the analysis of political power in terms of problematics of government. It argues against an overvaluation of the 'problem of the State' in political debate and social theory. A number of conceptual tools are suggested for the analysis of the many and varied alliances between political and other authorities that seek to govern economic activity, social life and individual conduct. Modern political rationalities and governmental technologies are shown to be intrinsically linked to developments in knowledge and to the powers of expertise. The characteristics of liberal problematics of government are investigated, and it is argued that they are dependent upon technologies for 'governing at a distance', seeking to create locales, entities and persons able to operate a regulated autonomy. The analysis is exemplified through an investigation of welfarism as a mode of 'social' government. The paper concludes with a brief consideration of neo-liberalism which demonstrates that the analytical language structured by the philosophical opposition of state and civil society is unable to comprehend contemporary transformations in modes of exercise of political power. ¹     

The outside and family therapy: A perspective from the relational thinking of Gilles Deleuze

This article was inspired by a reflection on what unfolded with the COVID-19 virus, especially how it brought to light the interconnectedness of individual and collective well-being. This calls for a reassessment of the family therapy approach, which has traditionally focussed on the internal dynamics of the family to explain problems faced by individuals inside the family system without taking into account social, political and historical aspects. This approach, which is referred to in the article as ‘familialism,’ is challenged using the relational philosophy put forward by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, and a fresh viewpoint is also given from the concept of the ‘outside.’ This outside perspective seeks to prevent the family system from closing in on itself, allowing for the creation of open systems. By doing so, it is argued, it is possible to incorporate different elements of the social, political and historical order in therapeutic practice and prevent underestimating the complexity of the human experience.     

Theory in Weberian Marxism: Patterns of Critical Social Theory in Lukács and Habermas

For Weberian Marxists, the social theories of Max Weber and Karl Marx are complementary contributions to the analysis of modern capitalist society. Combining Weber's theory of rationalization with Marx's critique of commodity fetishism to develop his own critique of reification, Georg Lukács contended that the combination of Marx's and Weber's social theories is essential to envisioning socially transformative modes of praxis in advanced capitalist society. By comparing Lukács's theory of reification with Habermas's theory of communicative action as two theories in the tradition of Weberian Marxism, I show how the prevailing mode of "doing theory" has shifted from Marx's critique of economic determinism to Weber's idea of the inner logic of social value spheres. Today, Weberian Marxism can make an important contribution to theoretical sociology by reconstituting itself as a framework for critically examining prevailing societal definitions of the rationalization imperatives specific to purposive-rational social value spheres (the economy, the administrative state, etc.). In a second step, Weberian Marxists would explore how these value spheres relate to each other and to value spheres that are open to the type of communicative rationalization characteristic of the lifeworld level of social organization.     

Portrayal and betrayal: Bourdieu, photography and sociological life

Through an examination of Bourdieu's Algerian fieldwork the article raises general questions regarding the place of photography in sociological research. In the midst of a colonial war Bourdieu used photography to make visual fieldnotes and record the mixed realities of Algeria under colonialism. Bourdieu also used photography to communicate to the Algerians an ethical and political commitment to their cause and plight. It is argued that his photographs do not simply portrayal or communicate the realities of Algeria. They are, paradoxically, at the same time full of information and mysterious and depthless. In order to read them it is necessary to ethnographically situate them in their social and historical context. It is suggested that the photographs can also be read as an inventory of Bourdieu's attentiveness as a researcher, his curiosity and ultimately his sociological imagination. They betray his concerns as a researcher but also can be used to raise ethical and political questions beyond Bourdieu's own attempts at reflexive self-analysis. The article concludes with a discussion of how Bourdieu's sociological life might contribute to the craft of sociology today.     

Standardization as a Means for Globalizing a Commodity: The Case of Rapeseed in China*

Abstract Not all commodities are things, nor are all things available in society commodities. Then, what are commodities? Using the case of rapeseed and its products in China, this paper examines the role of grades and standards (G&S) in simultaneously determining the life of things as commodities and the position of humans as market participants. In the first section, we summarize our conceptual understandings of commodities. Next, the paper examines tests and trials to which rapeseed in China were subjected by the mid 1990s. We then discuss how G&S represent political processes among commodity chain actors for creating, legitimizing and maintaining the social relations between things and people. Lastly, we discuss our conclusion that the analysis of tests and trials helps us understand the process of commodification as simultaneous transformations of humans and things in a commodity chain while reorganizing linkages among these actors.     

Pierre Bourdieu on social transformation,with particular reference to political and symbolic revolutions

This article challenges what is now the orthodoxy concerning the heritage of Bourdieu (1930–2002): namely, the judgement that his distinctive sociological innovation has been his theory of social reproduction, and that he has failed to provide a necessary theory of social change. Yet Bourdieu consistently claimed to offer a theory of social transformation as well as accounting for continuities of power. Indeed, he provides two substantive keys for an understanding of historical transformation—first, a theory of prophets (religious or secular) as the authors of heresies or “symbolic revolutions” that dispel current doxa; second, a theory of the “corporatism of the universal”: the role of intellectuals or other educated professionals in pursuit of social justice and other universalistic goals. Moreover, Bourdieu fuses his theories of “symbolic revolutions” with a materialist analysis of their social preconditions, including a fresh account of social crises. Crises—war, famine, recession, and especially the intensified precarity of the educated—have, for him, a profound impact, both within differentiated fields and across fields. Conflicts that become effectively synchronized across fields acquire great resonance within the wider field of power, particularly due to hysteresis or “maladjusted habitus.” Indeed, the appearance of crises, together with new prophetic heresies, leads the subordinate classes to question the taken-for-granted order of things and to orchestrate their resistance. Alongside his corpus of published writings, this article draws widely on Bourdieu’s posthumously published lectures. These cast a distinctive new light on how his well-known conceptual instruments can aid us in the study of historical change. They also expand on how social science itself might be used to facilitate progressive social movements.

     

Fighting Words: What We Can Learn from Hitler's Hyperbole

The question of why human beings fight wars continues to stalk modern thought. This article treats Hitler's national socialist discourse as an extreme example of the social construction of a social problem, a cultural paradigm of how to talk people into fighting revolutions and wars. Drawing upon recent work in rhetorical studies by Gusfield and others, I show how political agents concoct a rhetoric of motives which they use to incite their followers to fight their enemies. The formal and poetic features of this system of discourse are identified and explicated. We can learn many things from Hitler. By identifying his technique, we can recognize when political agents are using the same technique and counter its seductive effects. We learn that the main effect of war rhetoric is social integration through the constitution of common enemies. And finally, we realize that wars are made to happen through the calculated use of symbolic practices. War is not, as many have argued, a fall into a latent animality, but an expression of our symbol-mindedness–our capacity to make and use hyperboles.     

Simmel's Legacy for Contemporary Value Theory: A Critical Assessment

In this essay I critically assess Georg Simmel's legacy for contemporary value theory and provide the rudiments of an alternative approach. My central thesis is that Simmel fails to satisfactorily conceptualize the nature and origin of value because of his devotion to an asocial, Cartesian–Kantian conception of mind, human freedom, and agency. In contrast, I incorporate recent data from neuroscience, social self theory, developmental psychology, and elements of Marx's theory of the commodity form to provide the terms of a postmetaphysical, intersubjective alternative.     

Setting the record straight: Tsvangirai’s memoir At the Deep End as a rival narrative

In this paper, an argument is put forward that through literary and political patronage Morgan Tsvangirai constructed a life narrative that is meant to challenge the ZANU-PF hegemonic discourse of demonisation that presents and depicts him as a political puppet to the British whose agenda is to effect regime change in Zimbabwe. He thus makes use of the book as a political and literary tool to set the record straight. It is further argued that different narrative strategies such as modesty topos, blended voices and historical archiving are used to position Tsvangirai as a political messiah in Zimbabwe, whose involvement in politics was not by accident but a fulfilment of his destiny, cause and calling. Therefore, memoir writing is seen more as an act of defiance and personal archiving for political gain than an interest in one’s personal history. Personal history is instead made to replace national history. The self is the nation and his story is the story of the nation.     

Foundations of British sociology 1880–1930: contexts and biographies

‘This paper provides an overview of aspects of the history of British sociology. In particular, it tries to answer critical historical work by among others, Perry Anderson and Philip Abrams, which sought to explain the supposed indigenous ‘failure’ to develop academic sociology in Britain before the 1960s. It is argued that a narrowly academic reading of the history of sociology cannot do justice to its role in the service of social administration and public enlightenment and may exaggerate the degree to which sociology from its foundations was conceived as a purely intellectual discipline. The paper points to a thriving sociological culture in Britain in the generation before the First World War, though it was one in which many contributions came from philosophers, natural scientists and political economists rather then self‐proclaimed ‘sociologists’. It ends with a brief review of Patrick Geddes and Victor Branford, a founder of the Sociological Society and editor of the Sociological Review, whose biographies and eclectic social and international interests tell us something about the personalities and political interests of early British sociological pioneers.’     

Employment,flexible working and the family

This paper assesses some of the implications of one of the major social changes to have taken place in the West during the second half of the twentieth century--that is, the increased employment of women, together with normative changes in gender relations and in women's expectations. These changes have been linked to an increase in individualism, which itself is associated with the transcendence of 'first modernity'. Thus it is suggested that new approaches to social analysis are required (Beck). Here it is argued that, rather than develop completely new approaches in order to grasp the changes that are under way, the 'economic' and the 'social' (that is, employment and the family) should be seen as intertwined, rather than approached as separate phenomena. Past debates in feminism, changes in the family, and flexible employment are critically examined. The growing tensions between employment and family life are discussed. It is argued that these changes are associated with the intensification of capitalist development, rather than reflecting a fundamental transformation of society. Existing approaches to the analysis of social change, including Polanyi's analysis of the development of 'counter-movements' against the 'self-regulating' market, will, therefore, still be relevant to our enquiries. In the concluding section, a programme of research that would examine these changes is outlined.     

Bourdieu, Smith and disinterested judgement

The paper presents a sympathetic critique of Bourdieu7rsquo;s work in terms of the tension between its critical intentions and its leanings towards sociological reductionism. Although Bourdieu argues against such reductionism in his methodological pronouncements, his empirical studies tend to reduce actors' putative disinterested judgements to functions of their habitus in relation to the social field and to unconscious strategies of distinction. Further, his concept of (non-monetary) forms of capital occludes the difference between use-value and exchange-value and the corresponding distinction between the pursuit of goods and the pursuit of distinction, which are vital for both explanation and critique. Moreover his suspicion of normative judgement on the part of social science and his concealment of his own normative standpoint subvert his critiques. Thus in relation to Bourdieu's analysis of the role of mis-recognition in social life I argue that this requires a delineation of the extent of justified recognition. In developing the argument I draw upon Adam Smith's analysis of moral sentiments and his critique of undeserved recognition and the pursuit of distinction. Where Bourdieu is dismissive about moral issues, Smith treats moral sentiments as irreducible to interest or instrumental action and as a significant element in the reproduction of social order. The paper concludes with some implications for the nature of critique in social theory.     

The Human Habitat: a Systemization and Critique of Park’s Theory from a Radical Interactionist Perspective

When Park died, he left his theory of the human habitat not only incomplete, but in considerable disarray. Although few present-day scholars have demonstrated much interest in building on this critical body of Park’s work, which he based on dominance, it probably represents his most important contribution to American sociology. I argue that the key to systemizing his highly discursive account of the human habitat is to view it from an emergent social evolutionary perspective, which makes it possible to differentiate his notion of “community” from “society,” as well as explain how the two concepts can logically be viewed as both separate and unified entities. A community is not only a necessary stage in the social evolutionary process of producing a society, but it also provides the habitat needed for a society’s later emergence. Among other things, Park’s theory of the human habitat is also criticized for its failure to (1) distinguish dominance from domination, (2) identify the reciprocal relationship existing between power and domination, (3) accurately characterize the nature of the economic order operating in communities, and (4) demarcate a pre-lingual, lingual and literate communal stages that precedes in the social evolutionary process the possible development of a society. In passing, I also point out critical, but often overlooked aspects of Park’s theory of the human habitat that contradict popular characterizations of his work as being purblind to the operation of dominance and power, social Darwinist, conservative, sexist, and racist. Finally, I deduce the implications of his theory for the future emergence of a “world society.”     

George Herbert Mead and the “Division Of Labor”: Macrosociological Implications Of Mead'S Social Psychology*

By presenting some results of an extensive reconstruction of George Herbert Mead's work published as yet only in German it is argued that Mead's work as a whole and particularly his social psychology contain an implicit conception of social order. This can be characterized as the idea that it is not normative integration as such, but communicative coordination that makes possible human society and social order. This is shown by findings on the early development of Mead's ideas (Hegelianism, Definition of the Psychical), on German influences in Mead, and on the meaning of democracy as self-government in Mead's political biography. Some hints to a comparison of Mead with other concepts of social order (Durkheim; negotiated order approach) are given.     

Diversity,civic virtues and ecological austerity

A single global culture and a unique set of world institutional arrangements, based on an ever-increasing consumption of natural resources and environmental pollution is not sustainable nor can be sustained. In this paper some key ideological and moral com­ponents of the urgently required changes towards a culture of sustainability are examined, together with the implications, difficulties and requirements for its embodiment both in individual practices and in social institutions. In particular, it is argued that the values and attitudes which promote the protection and integration of diversity—both cultural and biological—and restrain the current trends in natural resource consumption and environmental pollution are to be developed by the citizenry if global societies are to survive. In the domains of political participation, rational dialogue and civic virtue, sustainability is akin to the inherited republican ideals of liberty, equality and fraternity. Sustainability must now become an indispensable fourth moral pillar in the structuration of society and, in particular, in the coming world republican polity, which will necessarily take account of the diversity of cultures and institutions. It is shown that, otherwise, the now developing unsustainable global society would otherwise cease to exist.     

Disability Studies: a historical materialist view

This paper presents an historical materialist view of recent accounts of disability in Western societies. This view is presented in two main parts: first, as an in-depth appraisal of the field of disability studies, and secondly, as an outline for an alternative, historical materialist account of disablement. The critical assessment of disability studies finds that recent accounts of disability are in the main seriously deficient in terms of both epistemology and historiography (though some important exceptions are identified). In particular, four specific areas of theoretical weakness are identified: theoretical superficiality, idealism, the fixation with normality, and an unwillingness to consider history seriously. It is argued that these deficiencies have prevented the field of disability studies from realising its potential to challenge the structures which oppress impaired people. From this critical epistemological perspective, an outline is made of an alternative, materialist account of disability, stressing both theoretical and political agendas.     

Making social work more Bourdieusian: why the social professions should critically engage with the work of Pierre Bourdieu

In recent years, some attempts have been made to ascertain if the work of the late Pierre Bourdieu has relevance for the work of social workers and others located in the social professions. It is important to support this exploration, but to expand it by also seeking to incorporate the overtly ‘political’ Bourdieu and to highlight some of the issues which preoccupied him. It is argued that his work, when viewed in a more rounded way, may contain a number of key ‘messages’ for social work in the early twenty-first century.     

Relationality and social interaction1

This paper explores Bourdieu's account of a relational social space, and his relative neglect of social interaction within this framework. Bourdieu includes social capital as one of the key relational elements of his social space, but says much less about it than economic or cultural capital, and levels of social capital are rarely measured in his work. Bourdieu is reluctant to focus on the content of social networks as part of his rejection of substantialist thinking. The neglect of substantive networks creates problems for Bourdieu's framework, because many of Bourdieu's core concepts rest upon assumptions about their interactional properties (in particular, the prevalence of homophilous differential association) which are left unexamined. It is argued here that Bourdieu's neglect of the substance of social networks is related to the criticisms that Bourdieu's framework often encounters, and that this neglect bears re‐examination, since it is helpful to think of the ways in which differentiated social networks contribute to the development of habitus, help form fields, and so constitute the intersubjective social relations within which sociality, and practice more generally, occur.     

Robert W. Cox and the Idea of History: Political Economy as Philosophy

Abstract

Within the discipline of international political economy (IPE), the work of Robert Cox is usually associated with the tradition of historical materialism, especially its Gramscian-inspired version. In this paper, however, I explore some of the less visible elements of Cox's thought. In particular, I highlight a variant of historicism which, although not without a connection to Gramsci's conception of the philosophy of praxis and absolute historicism, is more fully aligned with the work of Collingwood, Vico, Braudel, and Carr. I identify this as a variant of historical idealism, and I suggest that it is this element of his thought which provides a deep intellectual coherence to his work across the different stages of his career. Furthermore, I argue that this use of the idea of history distinguishes Cox's approach from more radical and constructivist accounts of world order, and allows him to connect his framework of historical structures to his method of diachronic change, which centres ultimately on his conception of intersubjectivity. I close by suggesting that Cox's interest in civilizations is deeply connected to these formative historicist influences, which in turn helps to account for why his later work resonates less well with much contemporary historical materialist IPE analysis.