Happiness Research: A Review of Critiques

In the short decades since the introduction of positive psychology instigated broader interdisciplinary research, interest in happiness has been growing in academia, the media and public policy. Numerous critiques of these developments have been forwarded from a variety of theoretical and disciplinary traditions. This article discusses three such criticisms: the culture‐bound and normative character of happiness, ‘bad science’ and scientism, and diminished subjectivity and individualisation. It is argued that criticism, particularly internal criticism, evidences the maturity of the field. However, the depth of some critiques may also indicate that interest in happiness is bound with broader cultural preoccupations and is likely to be superseded.     

MARXISM, POSITIVISM, AND SCIENTIFIC SOCIOLOGY: Social Gravity and Historicity

Marxism and positivism are often thought to be incompatible perspectives in sociology. Yet, Marxism has a long history of commitment to scientific inquiry. Here, we juxtapose these two scientific paradigms—Marxism and positivism—in ways that can enhance both, while highlighting in particular the power of the former. We argue that many of the key theoretical claims of Marxism can be explored in terms of analytic concepts congruent with and easily accessible to the contemporary positivist tradition. Marxist criticisms of the cruder versions of the positivist program are not antiscience but are rather rational critiques based on scientific principles.     

‘It's [the] Culture,Stupid!’ Why ‘Adding Culture’ is Unlikely to Make Any Serious Difference to International Developmentalism

What major difference adding an extra ingredient—‘culture’—may make to a standard concoction—‘international developmentalism’—depends in part on how friendly the concoction is to what is to be added—and (with apologies to Jan Nederveen Pieterse) stirred. Therefore any hopes for any cultural re-turn in development studies should not neglect their cognitive iconography and the obstacles this may pose to what is desired. Six strands in the iconography of international developmentalism are highlighted in this paper: its high doctrine/low scholarship character, appetite for single best-fitting regression-type modelling and die-hard positivism, reliance on lethal binaries that kill existential and practical concerns, disposition to ready-made solutions in search of problems to attach themselves to, and ‘no politics please we are experts’ stances.     

Social Theory and Feminist Theory: The Need for Dialogue

Two developments in social theory, one somewhat older than the other, are raising a similar set of concerns. One, the older, is the critique of positivism as a model for social understanding, and in its most exemplary form provides the underpinnings for the trenchant criticism that has come out of the Frankfurt School. The second, the mole recent, comes out of Women's Studies and, like the critical theory of Jurgen Habermas and his predecessors, speaks to the need to understand human beings based on methods other than empiricism.
I should like to propose the joining in dialogue of the two, for while I see them as having much in common, I recognize a carefully considered set of arguments coming out of the Frankfurt School, arguments which could enhance the very understanding of the world of women that feminist scholarship has as its objective.
After explicating some key arguments out of Alfred Schutz, the paper indicates where the Frankfurt School parts ways with the phenomenological tradition. Of particular import is Habermas' "emancipatory interest." Certain recent writings in feminist theory are looked at for the kind of attack they make on scientism and for the rationale behind their call for a turn to the phenomenological or hermeneutic method. The paper then raises concerns about (1) the importance of understanding the historical debates on positivism; (2) the danger of conflating intuition and hermeneutics; and (3) the suggestions that women may occupy a privileged standpoint from which to interpret the social world.     

From Scientism to Science: How Contemporary Epistemology Can Inform Practice Research

Fifty years ago, social work understood research as depicted by logical positivism and its successors, and an obsolete scientism still held sway. This paper will briefly trace the history of the epistemological debate that has taken place in social work in the last 30?years, which is directly related to the credibility of agency-based research and of qualitative methods as well as to issues in knowledge development about oppressed groups. Contemporary epistemologies--realism and pragmatism--offer frameworks that are compatible with what is needed for practice-relevant research and knowledge development: firm grounding for methodological pluralism, attention to the social and political nature of science, the embrace of theory, and an end to scientism without resort to relativism. If these changes in epistemological thinking can be fully embraced, the twentyfirst century can be a very productive one for agency-based and practice-relevant social work research.     

Formulating worker consciousness

A study of history presupposes a set of concepts. This paper elaborates one such concept, ‘worker consciousness’. It sets out to formulate worker consciousness through first of all specifying a method of conceptualization and then applying this to the derivation of worker consciousness.

The part on method makes a distinction between the material object and its representation in thought and argues that there is no one to one correpondences between these two. This implies that there is no simple correlation between concepts and reality.

In deriving worker consciousness it is argued that a clear analytical distinction needs to be made between on the one hand, individual consciousness and on the other hand, collective consciousness, of which worker consciousness is but one form. The paper then relates worker consciousness to economic struggle, distinguishing this from class consciousness which embodies political struggle.     

Intermittent labour forms in U.K. agriculture: Some implications for rural areas

Intermittent labour forms — generally conceived as ‘seasonal or casual workers’, but also including labour supplied by agricultural contractors or, under cooperative arrangements, by neighbours or family members — are an established and increasingly important part of the U.K. agricultural labour market. Unfortunately, relatively little is known about either the precise level or the detailed character of such labour. Although the MAFF June Census does collect data on ‘seasonal or casual’ workers it is limited in both its scale and depth of coverage. In this paper, the results of a survey of intermittent labour forms on farms in part of north Wales and the north and south west Midlands are discussed. In general, it is shown that the true extent of intermittent employment is almost certainly much greater — perhaps by a factor of five or more — than the MAFF Census figures would imply. From the survey data it is demonstrated that farms across the range of product and size structures make extensive use of both directly-recruited and indirectly-recruited (contract) labour. More specifically, a restructuring process and the substitution of such labour forms for regular labour is evident.Having considered the level and character of intermittent employment in modern agriculture the paper goes on to consider some of the implications for rural economies. In general it is argued that the use of intermittent labour has almost certainly precipitated some radical changes in the organisation of the farm labour force and in the ability of farmers or growers to service their own needs from within. Moreover, the restructuring process has served to erode the viability of the rural economic and social structure by replacing stable job opportunities with alternatives that offer only a marginal form of job experience and limited income and which cannot in isolation support rural communities.     

"Free- Will Talk" and Sociology

Hardcore positivistic or humanistic sociologies are rare. In the history of sociology the two extremes have tended to converge, producing an awkward hybrid. A watered-down positivism is brought to the rescue of a stalled Verstehen sociology, or vice versa, and a difficulty like the free nature of human action is covered over with a veneer of pragmatism. Here it will be argued that Paul Tibbetts'recent recasting of the positivism-humanism debate in sociology into an arbitrary choice between linguistic grids perpetuates this unsatisfactory practice. Five propositions will be advanced in opposition to Tibbetts'perspective. First, it will be argued that Tibbetts'discussion clouds the real issues at stake through his failure to really transcend the positivist framework of analysis. Second, it will be shown that the humanistic pre-supposition of voluntarism involves an ontological commitment to a model of rational agency which provides a methodological base for the "scientific" treatment of human freedom. Third, this commitment constitutes a necessary presupposition of all sciences of human action. Fourth, this fact means there are good epistemological reasons why a sociologist's choice of a linguistic grid is not arbitrary. Finally, it will be proposed that the most promising pattern of convergence between humanistic sociology and positivism stems from the formulation of a rough spectrum of principles of rationality to undergird a differentiation of "degrees" and not "kind" between what Tibbetts calls "free-will talk" and "causal-deterministic talk."     

The theoretical underpinnings of Chicago sociology in the 1920s and 30s

This paper looks at the work of the Chicago School in the 1920s and 1930s from the standpoint of the debate between positivism and its critics within the discipline of sociology. It is argued that, despite appearances to the contrary, Chicago sociology at this time is based on a rejection of the principles of positivism. It is an attempt to apply the principles of interpretative understanding to the practical problems of empirical research.     

Constructing an Interior Public: uchi and soto in the Japanese Sharehouse

The present article considers how the categories of private and public spheres (uchi and soto)—key terms of Japanese social behavior—are constructed through material practices in the home. In response to earlier discussions of uchi and soto that emphasized their stability, the article will explore how, in practice, their distinction is not absolute but relative, and relatively fluid. Based on fieldwork in a Japanese sharehouse, I discuss how residents used personal belongings, signs, and techniques of self-presentation to make claims about the nature of shared space, and what these claims reflected about their understandings of public and private in the more conventional Japanese home.     

Showing humanity: violence and visuality in Kashmir

ABSTRACT

This paper examines the burst of visual production that emerged from and around Indian-occupied Kashmir in July 2016, when the Indian paramilitary and police began to implement for the first time a tactic of mass blinding as a way of quelling surging protests against the Indian state. I consider a selection of visual texts that intervene in the optical regime undergirding the Indian occupation, one that has arguably elicited Indian support in part via a systematic erasure of the humanity of Kashmiris who favour self-determination (or ‘azadi’). In the face of this optical regime, I examine the visual and narrative tactics through which pro-azadi Kashmiris stake claims to humanity – by putting wounded Kashmiri bodies on spectacular display, graphically foregrounding Kashmiri bodily vulnerability in acts of public grieving, and seeking to interpellate a global political community through an appeal to a shared humanity. As these urgent claims to a larger human community are voiced, this paper asks what it means for Kashmiris to take on the burden of ‘performing humanity’ in these ways, especially given the explicit cautions in visual studies and human rights scholarship around spectacular exhibitions of vulnerability. Rather than assume that showcasing vulnerability can never incite transformation, I closely examine the possibilities of particular visual forms—photojournalism and digital activism—in relaying vulnerability and attempting to claim and recraft humanity.     

‘Freedom Narratives’ of Transatlantic Slavery

It is argued that what have usually been called ‘slave narratives’ sometimes more accurately describe ‘freedom narratives’, especially when individuals who had regained their freedom wrote or dictated such accounts. Most stories that are associated with slavery often focus on the quest for and achievement of freedom through escape, self-purchase or other means. Moreover, it is argued here that there is a distinction between narratives composed by individuals who had once been free in Africa and those who were born into slavery in the Americas. By focusing on the lives of four individuals, Venture Smith, Gustavus Vassa (Olaudah Equiano), Mahommah Gardo Baquaqua, and Muhammad Kaba Saghanughu, this article assesses the importance of regaining lost freedom as a motive in compiling the narratives and life histories of these individuals. Smith, Vassa and Baquaqua left autobiographical accounts of their lives, while Kaba left a significant paper trail that allows a study of his life, moving from freedom in Africa to slavery and then emancipation in Jamaica. Mediated by the ‘Middle Passage’, these texts demonstrate a consciousness of lost freedom and the importance of re-achieving that status, however contested and understood.     

Racial and religious discrimination: The inexorable relationship between schools and the individual

Institutional racism remains a difficult and nebulous practice to analyse. This is due, in part, to the sophisticated and complex discriminatory mechanisms that operate through and between institutions. Furthermore, this is affected by the inequity that is experienced by both those who are employed and those who are serviced by the organisation. It is argued in this paper that a false dichotomy has existed in earlier constructions of institutions, whereby the individual and their conscious (or unconscious) actions can be separated from practices and procedures. In many respects, this has served to absolve the perpetrators of discriminatory practices. This paper claims that racisms actually operate in multiple ways and include other forms of discrimination. Religion, for example, has been ignored in most discussions about institutional racism. To exemplify this, data are drawn from a case study about the educational experiences of Muslim pupils in an anonymous state-funded primary school in the north-west of Britain. Evidence suggests that powerful prejudicial discourse, immersed in unequal power relationships, was maintained by teachers and school procedures, where pupils were, at best, misunderstood and, at worst, deliberately discriminated against.     

Reason's other: the emergence of the disabled subject in the Northern renaissance

By the late fifteenth century, the debate over the role of reason and the constitution of the human subject freed public discourse from its reliance on God and placed the rational individual at the centre of social and political thought. The emphasis on rationality necessitated a parallel discourse on its opposite—‘reason’s Other'. In this period, representations of disabled people change in response to this new paradigm. Late medieval cultural documents, such as those of Brant and Bosch, employ folly as a metaphorical device, associated with the qualities of Everyman. However, with the rise of renaissance humanism, the benign metaphors of folly associated with the abstract everyman quickly become inscribed on the bodies of those people who would be constructed as reason's ‘Other’—people with intellectual and physical disabilities—and the abstract discourse of folly is transformed into a much more direct representational association of disability with depravity.

What a piece of work is man! how noble in reason! how infinite in faculty! … the paragon of animals! Hamlet II.ii     

A CRITIQUE OF METHODOLOGICAL REASON

In this essay, we argue that, following their perception of practices in the natural sciences the social sciences have reified methodology, making it the chief imperative of social investigation and using it to ground their knowledge claims. We find this to be the case even in the work of social scientists who try to overcome or reject the dominant positivist paradigm. We argue that this obsession with method has led the social sciences to abandon thinking-beyond-the-given in favor of small, specialized studies whose justification is no longer substantive but methodology driven. After a review of the history of the role of method in traditional philosophies of science, the essay turns to the work of recent critics of social science who have become increasingly dissatisfied with modeling the social sciences after the natural ones. We distinguish between a hermeneutic and phenomenological critique of positivism, both of which, we argue, end up reproducing the scientism they reject. We identify this problem in our careful readings of some of the most influential critics of Popperian scientific philosophy. In the final section, we distinguish between contemporary social science, situated in what we term the epistemological paradigm, and our own critical science, stemming from an alternate, ontohistorical tradition in the history of ideas. Here, we begin to lay out what a critical, nonmethodology-driven, reflective and historical science might look like.     

What's the Use of Family Therapy?

This paper, a plenary address to the Australian Family Therapy Conference, is concerned with the role of family therapy in society and the abuse of professional power. It is argued that family therapy is part of the medicalisation of marriage and the family, through which problems are defined — often inappropriately — as relationship problems and experts (therapists) are created. Aspects of professional power are identified; its pursuit is not in the interests of families, especially those with greatest needs. Proposals to tackle these obstacles are made regarding practice and training in therapy, and the management of professional power.     

North Central Sociological Association: Members Perspectives—Past and Present

Abstract

Recollections of past officers provide the basis for a history of the North Central Sociological Association (NCSA). Foci include the early environment, school participation, and forces behind its growth and current character. Contemporary issues of big school domination and image are examined through data on current numbers, school affiliations, and convention participation. The latter part of the paper, based on a 1976 NCSA membership survey, compares criticisms of American Sociological Association national meetings with those of North Central, summarizing the asserts and deficits of each. Conclusions are drawn about the identifying characteristics and functions of a regional association given the image it assumes and its organizational goals.     

Real sex/fake gender: a reply to Robert Willmott

A series of claims relating to the sociological problematic of sex/gender are made by Robert Willmott in a critique of my article Goodbye to Sex and Gender (Hood-Williams, 1996). In his account he claims that: sociology is ‘impossible’ and feminism ‘impotent’ without the sex/gender distinction; that sex belongs to an order of real world objects that is ontologically distinctly from, and irreducible to, gender and that to oppose this view is to favour conflation; that men are ontologically distinct from women. In reply I argue that it is absurd to say that sociology, which pre-dates the sex/gender distinction by two hundred years, or feminism (also historically prior), cannot function without it; that the distinction between the real and the ideational rests on an ontology that is itself discursive and that the critique of the general distinction made between sex and gender does not necessitate conflating the objects of biological and sociological discourses; that men and women are no more ontologically distinct than people with black skins are from those with white. The ‘real world’– an idea no longer of any use, not even a duty any longer – an idea grown useless, superfluous, consequently a refuted idea: let us abolish it! (Nietzsche)     

Placing democratization within the global frame: sociological approaches to universalism, and democratic contestation in contemporary Turkey

The process of democratization in Turkey is enhanced by both proximity to the European Union's enlargement process and universalistic discourses of personhood rights, and, at the same time, compromised by a nationalistic rejection of global human rights and democratic norms and state‐led resistance to political pluralism. One key feature of the democratization process is the way in which contending parties—the Kemalist elite, religious and ethnic minorities, the European Union—attempt to legitimise their claims by appeals to universal principles. The paper examines three sociological/social theory approaches to universalism (Beck, Laclau, Robertson) and demonstrates their usefulness for an understanding of political contestation in contemporary Turkey. It is argued that the work of these theorists allows us to move beyond a simplistic polarisation of the universal and the particular, where the state represents the universal and minorities the particular. The conceptualisation of universalism advanced by Beck, Laclau and Robertson points to the need to understand the processes of democratization within a sociologically informed globalization framework.     

Paretos hermeneutischer Positivismus

An analysis of Pareto’s action theory making use of practical syllogism has as a result the differentiation of an externalist and an internalist part of his model of action. The externalist part is positivist in character and therefore unacceptable. It contains two classical positivist positions: a strict demarcation between metaphysics and science and the conspiracy-theory of error. Both were rightly criticised by Karl Popper. The internalist part contains the principle “reasons as causes”, which was later made famous by Donald Davidson. In comparison with Max Weber it will be shown that this is the rationality principle of interpretative sociology. Bringing internalist and externalist perspective together Pareto’s position can be called hermeneutical positivism. The article describes an hitherto neglected effect of positivist epistemology on sociology, and specifies action-theoretical fundaments of interpretative and explanative sociology.