Totalitarianism in America? Robert Nisbet on the “Wilson War State” and Beyond

This article examines Robert Nisbet’s claim that the first totalitarian experiment of the twentieth century occurred not in the Soviet Union or in Nazi Germany, but in the United States during the First World War. Totalitarianism appeared in the form of mass propaganda, surveillance and repression. It was accompanied by a messianic desire of Woodrow Wilson and his team to transform America into a “national community.” By 1920, American totalitarianism was effectively at an end but, claimed Nisbet, it left a legacy of centralization that, over successive Democratic and Republican administrations, has stripped the Republic’s citizens of social authority and independence; the political trumped the social. Nisbet’s depiction of American totalitarianism is contrasted with Hannah Arendt’s argument that totalitarianism, thus far in history, is restricted to Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union under Stalin.     

Until Further Notice: Post-Modernity and Socio-Territorial Belonging

One of social theory's main concerns is the analysis of the changes that take place in human societies. This article systematizes existing knowledge about the characteristics of post-modern societies by incorporating it into Ferdinand Tönnies’ classical theory of societal change. Post-modern societies are defined as societies in which people are essentially separated, yet still tightly connected in spite of everything that divides them. Tönnies characterizes community as ‘organic’ and society as ‘mechanic’. In this article, contemporary societies are defined as ‘digital’. Their ‘psychological’ foundation, or founding will, is found in the concept of ‘imagination’. New forms of relationships accompany the coming of the digital society. Relationships with other individuals and with the territory are defined as ‘fluid’.     

Riverside Days: Recollection of Robert Nisbet as a Teacher

Robert Nisbet returned to full time teaching at the University of California, Riverside, in 1964, after ten years as Dean and Vice-Chancellor. The author was an undergraduate student in sociology at Riverside during the years 1965-67 and recalls Nisbet as a teacher. This was a prolific period in Nisbet’s writing career and many of the ideas that appeared in his books were introduced and explored in the courses that he taught. Two of these courses – “Community” and “History and Systems of Sociology” – are discussed in detail. The presentation of the material in these courses provides insight into how Nisbet understood the themes of the sociological tradition and how he thought these were best communicated to students. The paper also considers how Nisbet, an avowed conservative, was perceived by some of his undergraduate students during a time of cultural ferment and political unrest in America.     

Unsettling connections: transnational networks,development and African home associations

With the transnational turn in the social sciences attention has now turned to ‘global civil society’, ‘transnational civil society’, ‘transnational networks’ and, most recently, ‘migrant’ or ‘diasporic civil society’. Claims are being made about the developmental potential of these new configurations of civil society, and the global connections forged by migrant and diaspora associational life have been reified into things called ‘networks’ for the purpose of enrolling them into development policy. In this article, we challenge the network model through an analysis of transnational Cameroonian and Tanzanian home associations. The idea of a network suggests an overly robust and ordered set of linkages for what are in effect often loose and transient connections. African home associations draw attention to the historically‐embedded and mundane ways in which forms of associational life can be ‘transnational’ outside the formalized structures and Eurocentric development hierarchies created by international NGOs and other development institutions. Although they form largely invisible connections operating outside these hierarchies, African home associations unsettle assumptions about the geography of civil society and its relationship with development. Close attention to the histories and geographies of African home associations reveals that power and agency more often lie with migrants and elites within Africa than with the transnational diaspora.     

Decentering technology in discourse on discrimination*

ABSTRACT

Algorithmic discrimination has become one of the critical points in the discussion about the consequences of an intensively datafied world. While many scholars address this problem from a purely techno-centric perspective, others try to raise broader social justice concerns. In this article, we join those voices and examine norms, values, and practices among European civil society organizations in relation to the topic of data and discrimination. Our goal is to decenter technology and bring nuance into the debate about its role and place in the production of social inequalities. To accomplish this, we rely on Nancy Fraser’s theory of abnormal justice which highlights interconnections between maldistribution of economic benefits, misrecognition of marginalized communities, and their misrepresentation in political processes. Fraser’s theory helps situate technologically mediated discrimination alongside other more conventional kinds of discrimination and injustice and privileges attention to economic, social, and political conditions of marginality. Using a thematic analysis of 30 interviews with civil society representatives across Europe’s human rights sector, we bring clarity to this idea of decentering. We show how many groups prioritize the specific experiences of marginalized groups and ‘see through’ technology, acknowledging its connection to larger systems of institutionalized oppression. This decentered approach contrasts the process-oriented perspective of tech-savvy civil society groups that shy from an analysis of systematic forms of injustice.     

Sociology as an Art Form: One Facet of the Conservative Sociology of Robert Nisbet

Robert Nisbet’s ideas on sociology as an art form are examined in the light of Nisbet’s intellectual biography as we as in the tradition of other writers who have approached sociology and history as an art. Nisbet conceived sociology as an art of landscape and portraiture, in which neither theory nor methods should be allowed to become ‘idols of the profession.’ His thought on sociology as an art is best understood as part of a long-term effort to re-center sociology in a conservative intellectual tradition.     

Civil Society in Comparative Perspective: Involvement in Voluntary Associations in North America and Western Europe

Involvement in voluntary associations is analyzed from the perspective of questions raised in the debate about civil society. After demarcating the concept of civil society in relation to the community, the market, and the state, expectations are formulated about the negative effects of modernization and individualization on volunteering and the positive effects of volunteering on social capital and public discourse. World Values 1990 data are used for inter- and intranational analyses. Neither rankings of thirteen Western nations nor in-depth analyses of the U.S., the Netherlands, and Italy support worried reflections about the effects of modernization. The Idea that involvement in voluntary associations is conducive to social cohesion and political democracy finds empirical support. Both mere membership of an association and actual volunteering within such an association appear to be important in this respect.     

The Family in the Light of a New Relational Theory of Primary,Secondary and Generalized Social Capital

The aim of this article is to pinpoint the relevance of family relationships in the studies on ‘social capital’. In order to clarify this perspective, Pierpaolo Donati outlines a new approach called ‘relational approach’. According to it, social capital is a property and a quality of social relationships, not an attribute of individuals or social structures as such. This theory has two major advantages: first, it leads to differentiate those components of social capital which are usually conflated; second, it permits to identify various forms of social capital (primary, secondary-communitarian and civic or generalized). Riccardo Prandini criticizes the sociological prejudices which consider the family mainly as an obstacle for the full deployment of ‘liquid’ and ‘modern’ social relations. The family's social capital is defined as the reciprocal orientations of the family's members which are able to generate trust and therefore cooperative actions. Empirical evidence shows that the family's social capital is strictly connected to the emergence of pro-social attitudes in individuals, particularly in terms of social trust and participation in civil associations.     

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.     

Negotiating Emancipation

The idea of the public sphere is integral to the scholarship and practice of Women in Development. Unlike the private sphere, it is constructed as that space in society that provides enabling conditions for women’s emancipation. With the advent of neoliberal development and the consequent re-organization of relationships between individuals, states and markets, traditional views on the public sphere are beginning

to falter. There is a growing need to investigate the usefulness of the notion of the contemporary public sphere for women’s emancipation. This article unpacks the construct of the public sphere: the spaces it refers to, the peculiarity of its ideologies and the constructions of women’s emancipation. It reviews two bodies of scholarship, western feminist political theory and gender critiques of neo-liberal development, and

examines the recent theoretical debates on women’s political identity within the public sphere. The article highlights that emancipation of women (their political identities) in the time of neo-liberalism is a complex interplay of gender constructions within and between states, markets and civil societies.     

Legitimation,Ambivalence, Condemnation: Three Sociological Visions of the American University in the 1960s and 1970s

This article compares three great works on higher education, all written in the 1960s and 1970s. Special attention goes to how the authors assessed the impact of federal research funding on the identity of professors and their commitment to teaching. The article reveals a spectrum of perspectives, ranging from Parsons and Platt’s justification of the new research complex to Robert Nisbet’s denunciation of the decline of solidarity among professors and students.     

Liberal dreams: Materialism and evolutionary civil society in the projection of nation in Southeast Asia

This article focuses on the introduction of ethnicity into Southeast Asia, as a component of the nineteenth century British projection of empire. The argument is that rather than projecting a cosmopolitan vision of community, British liberalism naturalised ethnicity through the concept of civil society. This presented a global vision of societies being independent and emerging from the local landscape. These liberal notions of civil society represent an early incarnation of self-determination. The British Empire in Southeast Asia emerged within this intellectual climate, and its early construction reflected this vision. In essence, the British Empire in Southeast Asia was founded on the nebulous idea of providing self-determination to Southeast Asian nations. This notion of self-determination was a qualified concept of independence, framed around opening these civil societies to British trading hegemony.     

‘Big Society’ in the UK: A Policy Review

Alongside the UK Coalition Government’s historic public spending cuts, the ‘Big Society’ has become a major narrative in UK political discourse. This article reviews key features of Big Society policies against their aims of rebalancing the economy and mending ‘Broken Britain’, with particular reference to their implications for children and young people, and for the voluntary and community sector working with them. Although many positives are acknowledged, flaws are identified in the lack of attention paid to the unique position of children in society, and in an inconsistent conceptualisation of the voluntary sector on which Big Society policies rely.     

Problems of Taxonomy,Issues of Class,Citizenship, Consumption,and Avdot’ia Smirnova’s KoKoKo (2012)

Sundry discussions of Russian society by scholars, journalists, and politicians suffer from imprecise taxonomy, wielding labels such as middle class, civil society, and creative class in an automatic transfer of discursive categories long defining Western societies to one at increasing odds with numerous Western values. As various surveys by Russian sociologists have indicated, a ‘middle class’ and ‘civil society’ in the traditional sense do not exist in Russia. Moreover, even ‘the intelligentsia’, as historically defined, seems to have diminished, evaporated, or emigrated. Indeed, the incisive portrayal of contemporary Russian class distinctions in Avdot’ia Smirnova’s film KoKoKo (2012) exposes the impotence of the self-serving intelligentsia, contrasted to the vitality and drive of ‘the people’, who may be the only hope for Russia’s future – neither the radiant future fantasized by the Soviet Union nor the democratic future that seemed possible after perestroika, but one that meaningful resistance to the authoritarianism of Putin’s regime will need to elaborate step by painstaking step.     

TECHNOLOGIES OF CIVIL SOCIETY

Emerging technologies of communication and cooperation are increasingly mediated through flows of connectivity and information, leading to distributed forms of civil participation. In this article I discuss ‘technologies of civil society’ whereby people who are investing in information-access, increased mobility and knowledge-sharing contribute to multiple networks of co-participation and cooperation. Civil society is increasingly becoming visible through the technologies used to receive, organize and utilize the information flows. In order to sustain cooperation, complex interrelations between individuals and their technically mediated communications must of necessity be deliberate and intentional strategies. I argue that communication technologies are informing strategies of civil participation and cooperation at ever more accelerated rates, aiding bottom-up strategies of organization.

‘A society's fitness is determined by its social cognitive map’ (Robert Artigiani)     

Transnational Debt Groups: The Challenges of Campaigning Within the Internationalising State

A central question facing transnational civil society campaigns is where they can exercise power most effectively in a globalising world. Is the nation state still a worthy site for struggle, or has power shifted significantly to the international arena? Taking transnational debt campaigning as a case study, and using Robert Cox’s concept of the internationalising state, this article examines these questions. While building common cause transnationally, and developing a transnational profile, were important dimensions of debt campaigning, the evidence from the study is that debt campaigns focussed strongly on national governments in order to influence international decision-makers. In this context, the article argues that transnational debt campaigns were re-articulating their governments towards greater accountability to domestic societies, countering the thrust towards the internationalisation of the state.     

John Ogbu and minority education in Japan

This paper discusses John Ogbu and his work in the context of Japan. First, his interest in Japan, his interactions with Japanese educators and researchers, and their responses to his work are discussed. Then Ogbu’s cultural model from the author’s fieldwork experiences is examined and a relational and dialectic perspective is proposed to study ‘the system’ and ‘community forces’ to capture generational changes and the interethnic dynamics of the school–community relationship.     

Cultivating listening spaces for civil society: Reorienting public relations amid Hannah Arendt’s urgent pluralism

The article explores how the ideas of Hannah Arendt can further public relations’ understanding of organizational listening and its role in civil society. We draw on three major theoretical concepts from Arendt and scholars studying her work—plurality, interspaces, and lamp holders—and contextualize them within existing civil society research in public relations. Reading Arendt into organizational listening and civil society literature yields insights for how public relations contributes to the maintenance of structures and spaces for deliberation and civil society. Her theory points toward the concepts of bracketing and unbracketing as ways to enter civic spaces with an awareness of power and identity. As research on organizational listening has yet to fully identify how listening can contribute to supporting representative deliberation in polarized societies, this paper helps to theoretically position listening within civil society and provides initial suggestions as to how civic-minded listening can be incorporated into public relations practices aimed at building community.     

America in the Psyche of Bangla Authors: Opening of the Space by Tagore

The essay, divided into five sections, explores how the Cultural Space called ‘America’ (and ‘Americanism’) are reflected in the works of a far-away literary-cultural community called Bangla (or Bengali) in South Asia, and how this inter-relationship was strengthened by Rabindranath Tagore. It begins with the post-Tagore post-WWII literary scene where America occurs as a backdrop and then touches upon Tagore’s contemporaries who referred to America. But it focuses on how Tagore, in his polemical writing, views the role of America in the international arena, or how he conceptualises Indo-American relations while commenting on American Society and its beliefs and practices — especially how it handles linguistic plurality, majority-minority relationships, and less-privileged groups. In particular, it discusses the concepts such as Individuality, Plurality, Diversity, Liberty and Civilization — all relevant for foreign policy initiatives then as well as now, and how America is viewed as a land of promise and opportunity.     

Transnational political action and ‘global civil society’ in practice: the case of Oxfam

The term ‘global civil society’ has taken on increasing significance within scholarly debate over the past decade. In this article we seek to understand transnational political agency via the study of a particular transnational actor, Oxfam. We argue that various schools of thought surrounding the global civil society concept, in particular the prevailing liberal‐cosmopolitan approach, are unable to conceptualize transnational political action in practice – due largely, in the case of liberal‐cosmopolitanism, to a shared normative agenda. We also assess what contribution literature on development and civil society has made to the analysis of groups such as Oxfam. In investigating Oxfam's own perceptions of its context and the meanings of its agency, we discover an anti‐political perspective derived from an encounter between Oxfam's longstanding commitment to liberal internationalism and globalization discourse. Existing scholarship has insufficiently identified the local or parochial nature of the identities of global civil society actors.