Social Research 

About: Social Research is an academic journal published by New School. The journal publishes majorly in the area(s): Politics & Democracy. It has an ISSN identifier of 0037-783X. Over the lifetime, 856 publications have been published receiving 24644 citations.

Life as Narrative

Abstract: indeed may not be quite possible But I have no doubt it is worth a try It has to do with the nature of thought and with one of its uses It has been traditional to treat thought, so to speak, as an instrument of reason Good thought is right reason, and its efficacy is measured against the laws of logic or induction Indeed, in its most recent computational form, it is a view of thought that has sped some of its enthusiasts to the belief that all thought is reducible to machine computability But logical thought is not the only or even the most ubiquitous mode of thought For the last several years, I have been looking at another kind of thought (see, eg, Bruner, 1986), one that is quite different in form from reasoning: the form of thought that goes into the construction not of logical or inductive arguments but of stories or narratives What I want to do now is to extend these ideas about narrative to the analysis of the stories we tell about our lives: our "autobiographies" Philosophically speaking, the approach I shall take to narrative is a constructivist one a view that takes as its central premise that "world making" is the principal function of mind, whether in the sciences or in the arts But the moment one applies a constructivist view of narrative to the self-narrative, to the autobiography, one is faced with dilemmas Take, for example, the constructivist view that "stories" do not "happen" in the real world but, rather, are constructed in people's heads Or as Henry James once put it, stories happen to people who know how to tell them Does that mean that our autobiographies are constructed, that they had better be viewed not as a record of what

The boundaries of languages and disciplines : How ideologies construct difference

Abstract: Les AA. affirment que l'on tend a identifier une langue et un espace geographique specifique, une nation, une culture. Ils estiment que cette perspective derive de l'analyse des processus de differenciation politique qui ont marque l'histoire de l'Europe. Ils considerent dans le meme temps qu'elle est inadequate. Ils montrent que les frontieres entre langues et dialectes sont des constructions sociales. Ils etudient les processus grâce auxquels une unite linguitique devient une unite sociale definie. Ils comparent ce type de phenomene aux differenciations qui s'operent au sein des disciplines scientifiques. Ils mettent en relief les processus ideologiques qui les sous-tendent

Governing by Numbers: Why Calculative Practices Matter

Abstract: Sociologists are busy rediscovering the economy (Callon, 1998; Fligstein, 1990; Granovetter, 1985). The roles of networks that connect and form agents figure large in this revival of interest in the market as a social institution (Callon, 1998: 8). Until recently, however, little attention has been devoted in the sociological literature to the calculative practices that make the economy visible and measurable qua economy (Callon, 1998; Hopwood and Miller, 1994; Miller, 1998). In particular, the emergence and roles of the calculative practices of accounting have been overlooked or marginalized in the sociological literature. This paper calls for greater attention to these practices, and argues that it is important to examine their emergence, and the ways in which new calculative practices alter the capacities of agents, organizations, and the connections among them. It also examines how they alter the power relations that they shape and are embedded within, and how particular calculative practices enable new ways of acting upon and influencing the actions of individuals. Calculative practices, in other words, should be analyzed as "technologies of government" (Rose and Miller, 1992: 183) as the mechanisms through which programs of government are articulated and made operable. Rather than focusing on the ways in which the economy is shaped by economics, attention is directed at the ways in which accounting shapes social and economic relations.

Capitalism by democratic design? Democratic theory facing the triple transition in East Central Europe

Abstract: CONVERGENCE THEORIES OF THE 1960S AND 1970S PREDICTED THAT THE two rival political-economic systems would more or less rapidly assimilate each other and inevitably move toward one another. The East was to be enriched with market elements, while the "mixed" economic order of Western capitalism had already adopted elements of state intervention into production and distribution processes. The problem with this theory, as is now becoming apparent, was that only the West was capable of "mixing," whereas the socialist societies were constantly on the verge of "capsizing" through concessions made to political liberalization (party competition, freedom of opinion), national independence, decentralized forms of ownership, and competitive price formation, to say nothing about "economic democracy." Western admixtures were regularly taken back. Everywhere the self-transformation of socialist societies foundered on the political elites' justified fear of downward paths. The "oil-spill thesis," which predicts that the entire system will be spoiled when just a single "alien" element or move is introduced, turned out precisely not to apply to those systems for which it was meant to hold true in the 1920s by von Mieses that is, Western capi-

Things of Boundaries

Abstract: L'A. affirme qu'il n'existe pas de frontieres preexistant entre les entites du monde social. Il estime, au contraire que ce sont ces fontieres qui creent les objets. Il tente de montrer que les entites sociales voient le jour quand les acteurs sociaux elaborent des distinctions entre les groupes qu'ils forment et lorsque des limites separant differentes realites sociales apparaissent, creant des zones differenciees au sein de l'espace social. Il retrace l'histoire et l'apparition du terme travail social a partir de 1870