Showing papers in "Social Research in 2004"

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

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-

Liberalism and the Right to Culture

Abstract: JlTuman beings have a right to culture- not just any culture, but their own. The right to culture has far-reaching implications for the liberal conception of the state. A culture essentially requires a group, and the right to culture may involve giving groups a status that contradicts the status of the individual in a liberal state. The right to culture may involve a group whose norms cannot be reconciled with the conception of the individual in a liberal society. For example, the group may recognize only arranged marriages and not those resulting from the free choice of the partners. Protecting cultures out of the human right to culture may take the form of an obligation to support cultures that flout the rights of the individual in a liberal society. And this is not the only difficulty- there is also the problem that this right may be used to protect cultures within a state which reject the "civil religion," the "ethos," the "narrative" or the "meta-narrative," or any other appellation you may choose for the shared values and symbols of the state's citizens. But these shared values and symbols are meant to serve as the focus for citizens' identification with the state, as well as the source of their willingness to defend it even at the risk of their lives. A central problem for the liberal society's protection of the right to culture- especially if the culture involved is not itself liberal- is that protecting it often requires the state to use

Philosophy and Politics

Abstract: with the trial and condemnation of Socrates, which in the history of political thought plays the same role of a turning point that the trial and condemnation of Jesus plays in the history of religion. Our tradition of political thought began when the death of Socrates made Plato despair of polis life and, at the same time, doubt certain fundamentals of Socrates' teachings. The fact that Socrates had not been able to persuade his judges of his innocence and his merits, which were so obvious to the better and younger of Athens' citizens, made Plato doubt the validity of persuasion. We have difficulty in grasping the importance of this doubt, because "persuasion" is a very weak and inadequate translation of the ancient peithein, the political importance of which is indicated by the fact that Peitho, the goddess of persuasion, had a temple in Athens. To persuade, peithein, was the specifically political form of speech, and since the Athenians were proud that they, in distinction to the barbarians, conducted their political affairs in the form of speech and without compulsion, they considered rhetoric, the art of persuasion, the highest, the truly political art. Socrates' speech in the Apology is one of its great examples, and it is against this defense that Plato writes in the Phaedo a "revised apology" that he called, with irony, "more persuasive" (pithanoteron, 63B), since it ends with a myth of the Hereafter, complete with bodily punishments and rewards, calculated to frighten rather than merely persuade the audience. Socrates' point in his defense before the citizens and judges of Athens had been

What Does It Mean to Be an "American"?

Abstract: 1 here is no country called America. We live in the United States of America, and we have appropriated the adjective "American" even though we can claim no exclusive title to it. Canadians and Mexicans are also Americans, but they have adjectives more obviously their own, and we have none. Words like "unitarian" and "unionist" won't do; our sense of ourselves is not captured by the mere fact of our union, however important that is. Nor will "statist," even "united statist," serve our purposes; a good many of the citizens of the United States are antistatist. Other countries, wrote the "American" political theorist Horace Kallen, get their names from the people, or from one of the peoples, who inhabit them. "The United States, on the other hand, has a peculiar anonymity."1 It is a name that doesn't even pretend to tell us who lives here. Anybody can live here, and just about everybody doesmen and women from all the world's peoples. (The Harvard Encyclopedia of American Ethnic Groups begins with Acadians and Afghans and ends with Zoroastrians.2) It is peculiarly easy to become an American. The adjective provides no reliable information about the origins, histories, connections, or cultures of those whom it designates. What does it say, then, about their political allegiance?

Economic Methodology: Heterogeneity and Relevance

Abstract: questions will be asked than will, in fact, be answered. The intention is to propose a broad-based critique of contemporary economic methodology starting off from the recognition of the deep-seated heterogeneity of the subject matter of economics. There is a good deal of discontent about the methods and traditions in vogue in contemporary economic theory. I shall argue that while parts of that disquiet are well grounded, they have to be separated from others that seem to take insufficient note of the particular nature of the exercises under attack. In particular, some reproaches are based on an inadequate recognition of the diversity of motivations and concerns underlying different types of economic theory. In reading the literature, I am sometimes reminded of an old story concerning two estranged brothers one a general and the other a bishop who meet after many years in a desolate railway station and find their old dislikes revived. The bishop asks the general: "Assistant Station Master, tell me when is the next train to London?" The general replies to the bishop: "Madam, in your condition, do you think it is safe to travel?" Our ability to misrepresent or misunderstand what others are up to is quite striking. As a consequence oddly inappropriate broadsides can come mixed with pertinent and penetrating criticisms. The need for sorting out is, thus, quite central. To some extent, this is what

Fear and Courage: A Psychological Perspective

Abstract: the population and the authorities greatly over-predicted how much fear would be provoked, especially during air raids on civilian populations. For example, in 1934 Winston Churchill warned the House of Commons to anticipate massive damage and casualties from repeated air attacks. He said the dangers were material but "no less formidable than these material effects are the reaction which will be produced upon the mind of the civilian population. We must expect . . . that at least 3 million or 4 million people will be driven out into the open country around the Metropolis" (Jenkins, 2002: 476). Contrary to the virtually universal expectation that repeated air attacks would produce mass panic and very large numbers of psychiatric casualties, people endured astonishingly well (Janis, 1951). The expected panic and uncontrollable fear did not occur.

What are we so afraid of? A terror management theory perspective on the politics of fear

Abstract: humans are capable of experiencing. People will do almost anything to avoid being afraid. When, despite their best efforts, these feelings do break through, people go to incredible lengths to shut them down. Ever since Freud's seminal theorizing, psychologists have been fascinated with the role that fear and anxiety play in both normal everyday behavior and serious individual and social pathologies. This article will focus on a theory, and the very large body of research that supports it, that suggests that fear and anxiety are inherent aspects of the human condition. But although all animals including humans experience fear when they are faced with clear and present dangers to their survival, only humans experience anxiety, a more diffuse form of fear in which it is not always obvious just what it is we are afraid of. It is becoming increasingly clear that this core anxiety inherent in the human condition plays a role in just about everything we do. I am not suggesting that anxiety is the only psychological process that needs to be understood if we want to understand why people do the things they do. But a complete and well-rounded understanding of the human condition requires that we comprehend the roots of this anxiety and how it affects us in ways that we have no way of becoming

Narrative Techniques of Fear Mongering

Abstract: how has it come about that there are so many fears and scares in the air, and so many of them are unfounded? Why, as crime rates plunged over the past decade, did substantial numbers of Americans say in surveys that they believe the crime rate is rising or remaining steady? Why, despite numerous studies showing that the number of drug users declined substantially during past two decades, did large numbers of Americans rank drug use as the greatest danger to America's youth? Why, at a time when most Americans are living longer and healthier, do many people feel they are at great risk of early death from obscure disorders? I suggest that the answer to these and related questions lies, in large measure, in the immense power and money that await individuals and organizations who can tap into Americans' moral insecurities for their own benefit. By fear mongering, politicians sell themselves to voters, TV and print newsmagazines sell themselves to viewers and readers, advocacy groups sell memberships, quacks sell treatments, lawyers sell class-action lawsuits, and corporations sell consumer products. A particularly illustrative current example of the last of these is the highly successful marketing of antibacterial soaps, which tend to be more expensive than conventional soaps, confer no greater protection in normal household settings, and may well contribute to the emergence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Much of the answer to why there are so many misbegotten fears in the air resides in how fear mongers sell their scares. In no small

McCarthyism: Political Repression and the Fear of Communism

Abstract: I would like to know whether I will be able to work." Unfortunately, as his attorney explained, Parker could not clear his record because "there are no facts which have been alleged anywhere ... to give him any knowledge of the charges on which the conclusion of a poor security risk is based. Therefore, it is impossible for him to respond adequately to the charges."1 Unemployable since being identified as a security risk, Parker was desperate to clear up his case and go back to sea, but as long as his status was unresolved, he could not even draw unemployment.2 Parker's encounters with the Alice in Wonderland world of the

Rationality and Ideology in Economics

Abstract: “Rationality” has played a central role in shaping and establishing the hegemony of contemporary mainstream economics. As the specific claims of robust neoclassicism fade into the history of economic thought, an orientation toward situating explanations of economic phenomena in relation to rationality has increasingly become the touchstone by which mainstream economists identify themselves and recognize each other. This is not so much a question of adherence to any particular conception of rationality, but of taking rationality of individual behavior as the unquestioned starting point of economic analysis. As we shall see, mainstream economics has room for various concepts of rationality (“full rationality”, “bounded rationality”, “substantive rationality”, “procedural rationality”, to list a few) and for vigorous debates over their relative merits. Grounding economics in the concept of rationality connects economics firmly to the Hobbesian-Lockean tradition of political philosophy, which purports to explain the political and economic organization of modern society as the necessary result of the interaction of naturally constituted rational individuals confronting each other as competitors for scarce resources. To avoid the terrible consequences of anarchic struggle, these rational individual actors are supposed, according to this “just-so” story, to agree to institutions of property and political authority, which constitute the framework of modern society. A hallmark of these institutions is that they are in themselves in principle democratic and egalitarian (everyone has an equal right to vote or to hold property) but lead inexorably to sharp inequalities in economic well-being. It is not hard to see that an economic science whose philosophical starting point was not rational individual action would create an embarrassing discord with this political tradition. The whole point of the Hobbes-Locke “discourse” (to use the jargon of

Fear and the brain

Abstract: Threats come in many forms. A snake on the ground in front of you is a biologically prepared threat, and so is being face-to-face with an angry human. Evolution has put this kind of information into our brains as a way of dealing with recurring and common themes. When we encounter them we have the familiar fight/flight response. But not all threats are genetically programmed. Most of the things that make us afraid are things we have learned about in our lives. Biological research over the past two decades has made considerable progress in understanding how the brain learns about danger. Most of this work has been conducted in animals. For some people, words like "biological," "brain," and "animals" imply genetic predetermination. But this is not true. First of all, biological does not mean genetic. Nurture is just as much a part of biology as nature. The research we will describe in this paper in fact is all about how we learn to be afraid through experience. Second, it is important to realize that the brain is a rich source of information about human nature. By studying psychology through the brain, we can discover things about the mind that we cannot learn by studying the mind alone. Third, much of the progress in understanding the brain basis of psychological functions has come from studies of animals . This is certainly true of fear. While animals are not people, the brain and body of animals, like rats, respond similarly to the human brain and body when threatened. Muscles tense. Blood pressure rises. Stress hormones are released. This is all part of the physiological solu-

Markets and Their Social Construction

Abstract: My objective is to outline a model of how markets arise and work and are worked. My argument is that markets are neither given nor transcendental but are constructed by the actions of firms and governments. Several qualifications apply. First, a model is given, not a theory. A model is a set of variables structured in a particular way to explain something. A theory is a hypothesis specified as a particular explanation, the social space to which it is applied, the evidence by which it will be tested, and the decision rule governing acceptance or rejection. Second, no model can answer all questions. To answer other questions, other models are needed. Third, every element of the model can be combined with different theories.

Fear and Liberty

Abstract: When a nation's security is threatened, are civil liberties at undue risk? If so, why? Consider a plausible account. In the midst of external threats, public overreactions are predictable. Simply because of fear, the public and its leaders will favor measures that do little to protect security but that compromise important forms of freedom.1 The internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II is perhaps the most salient example, but there are many more. Consider, for example, the McCarthy period, restrictions on dissident speech during World War I, Lincoln's suspension of habeas corpus during the Civil War, and the imposition of martial law in Hawaii in 1941. Many people believe that some of the actions of the Bush administration, in the aftermath of the September 11 attack, fall in the same basic category. Is it really necessary to hold suspected terrorists in prison in Guantanamo? For how long? For the rest of their lives? In explaining how public fear might produce unjustified intrusions on civil liberties, I emphasize two potential sources of error: the availability heuristic and probability neglect. The availability heuristic, widely used by ordinary people, can lead to a grossly exaggerated sense of risk, as salient incidents make citizens think that a risk is far more serious than it actually is. When probability neglect is at work, people focus on the "worst case" and disregard the question whether it is likely that the worst case will occur an approach that can also lead to excessive regulation. With an understanding of the availability heuristic and probability neglect, I believe that we are able to have a better appreciation of the sources of unsupportable intrusions on civil

Squaring the hermeneutic circle

Abstract: the appearance of a novel interpretive social science, and much must already have been written to introduce this literature to the public. There is bound to be more, but it is not my intention here to contribute to that enterprise. I do not propose to analyze or explain the emergence or progress of this intellectual development, nor to predict its future course. This essay is concerned first with the implications of an image that invariably turns up in the writings of the new interpreters, "the hermeneutic circle." It will then go on to ask what, if anything, this notion contributes to our sociological understanding, and specifically what place it might have in a comprehensive theory of the "sciences of man," a phrase that most usually refers to anthropology, history, sociology, and political science in their less formal and mathematical aspects. I shall try to do this in the most simple and everyday language, because, in spite of appearances, the issues at stake do not call for, and have not evoked, the kind of precision that alone can justify a resort to a specialized vocabulary. At first sight, my qualifications for this undertaking must seem poor at best. I am not, after all, either a philosopher of science or a practicing social scientist. I do, however, have a fair amount of experience in interpreting the classics of political theory, and hermeneutics, whatever else it may mean, is first and foremost a way of reading scriptures.

Economics as Universal Science

Abstract: HjCONomics has become the imperial social science. It is the only branch of social inquiry that enjoys a Nobel prize. It has been celebrated in a massive four-volume, 4-million word "dictionary," through which there runs, like an Ariadne's thread, the assumption that economics has finally escaped the parochial boundaries of its former kingdom of production and distribution, and can now lay claim to a realm that extends from family affairs to sports, from anthropology to political science.1 More to the point, economics has earned the flattery of imitation by its sister social sciences. Its formal mode of argument, mathematical apparatus, spare language, and rigorous logic have made it the model for the "softer" social sciences. Thus it is with the shock of recognition, not of surprise, that we read Jack Hirshleifer's tribute to the "expanding domain" of economics:

Courage in dark places: Reflections on terrorist psychology

Abstract: "Staying in the airplane when it hits the building say what you want about it, it's not cowardly." Echoing this, Ted Turner, the founder of CNN, said during a speech at Brown University that "I think they [the 19 hijackers] were brave at the very least." In all cases, these comments provoked fierce and overwhelming criticism. In most cases, the intense pressure forced the protagonists to backtrack and modify their original statements. There was a profound and widely felt outrage in the United States that the 9/11 terrorists should be described in such terms. Yet, were these views inaccurate? Inflammatory and controversial the

The dark side of democratic courage

Abstract: recent student ranks courage alongside love as the most popular theme in world literature (Miller, 2000: 8-12). By contrast, other virtues, such as justice, patience, or self-control, are the favorite topics of abstract philosophizing, but, on the face of it, they are boring to contemplate (cf. Shklar, 1990: 15-19; Miller, 2000: 8). The peculiar allure of courage is one clue to its darker, more problematic dimensions. To illuminate these dimensions, I will examine courage as a feature of political rhetoric and practice, since it is on the enlarged stage of politics that the opportunities and dangers presented by courage stand out in highest relief. More immediately, in the post9/11 world, we are saturated with the images and rhetoric of courage. When politicians call the terrorists "cowardly," they gain political capital by presenting themselves in the manly garb of combat. Just before delivering a speech to the nation on May 1, 2003, President George W. Bush sported a flight suit and flew in the navigator's seat of a Navy plane to the USS Abraham Lincoln. Upon deplaning, he said, "I

The Nation and Nationalism in Germany

Abstract: lar political orders have legitimated themselves through ideas of the nation, and the most diverse actions have appealed to a national interest. Both an extreme nationalism as well as a lack of national feeling have been attributed to the German people. The most recent history of Germany includes the belated and incomplete formation of a national state by Prussia, the expansion of the German national state into a continental empire by Hitler, and the division of the German national state by the Allied powers in the Second World War. With the exception of the Poles, there is hardly another European nation with a history so full of changes as the Germans. In the German example, therefore, some of the characteristics and functional connections of the nation

Courage as a Virtue

Abstract: COURAGE IS AN IMPOSSIBLE SUBJECT. NO MATTER WHAT ANYONE SAYS, people (including myself) will always respect, even admire, courage regardless of the purpose or the cause in which it is displayed. One of the worst reproaches in the world is to be called a coward, accused of lacking in courage again, almost no matter what the purpose or cause. It is merely clumsy propaganda (though clever in intention) to label as cowards the suicide hijackers who destroyed the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. It is, I suppose, the shocking element of surprise in the attack that unconsciously helps to spare such propaganda the derision it deserves. Cowardly was the one terrible thing the suicide hijackers were not. If their religion cast an invincible spell on them, it nonetheless remains true that they needed courage to carry out their plot a sort of courage that is closer to that shown by martyrs than by battlefield soldiers. And if we want to condemn their courage we have to say more than that they acted on behalf of a cause we abhor. In any case, bad causes do not usually stand in the way of admitting, despite Bush's propaganda, that courage is often shown in them. To come to terms with our impulse really means that we should try to hold fast to the thought that the virtue of courage cannot be shown in a bad cause. We have to suggest furthermore that virtuous action should alone receive unperplexed and self-consistent admiration. Only in virtuous action can the virtue of courage be shown. In a bad cause, another kind of courage is shown, which we should learn to censure; it is an unvirtuous courage because it does not intend a moral effect and it works with the force and effect of a vice.

The anatomy of courage

Abstract: 'cowardly' is to be used, it might be more aptly applied to those who kill from beyond the range of retaliation, high in the sky, than to those willing to die themselves in order to kill others. In the matter of courage (a morally neutral virtue) whatever may be said of the perpetrators of last Tuesday's slaughter they were not cowards." George Ochoa, in a letter to the New Yorker two weeks later, took a different view and cited Aristotle's analysis of courage in support of it: "Aristotle made the case that a courageous person is one who faces fearful things as he ought and as reason dictates 'for the sake of what is noble.' If Susan Sontag thinks that the terrorists acted for the sake of what is noble and followed a reasonable course of action to achieve that

The worldly philosopher behind The Worldly Philosophers

Abstract: six. From that point forward, best has only become better. Bob was a worldly philosopher from the start. Let me give just one example. When I was nine or ten years old, my aunt and uncle took me to see a play called Up Pops the Devil In the course of the story, the female protagonist tells a friend she is pregnant but her husband is unaware of this. I was stunned. My understanding at that point of my life was that procreation was the sole purpose of the act of love. No other motivations were involved. On the basis ofthat assumption, how could a wife be pregnant without her husband's knowledge? I gave the matter a great deal of thought but failed to come up with an explanation. Then I consulted my best friend, who had a worldly response to my conundrum: "Maybe they did it once and forgot about it," he suggested. As the years went by, Bob and I shared life's exciting experiences of growing up. Girls, fine art, theater, ballet, literature, food, and drink we did it all, usually with Bob leading the way. He studied jazz piano and played with wonderful skill and naturalness while I studied classical with fingers less nimble than his. Later, we frequently sat together at the piano and improvised four-handed modern music compositions, sometimes lasting as long as an hour. How we wish we had recorded these masterpieces for posterity!

The making of a Bourgeois Revolution

Abstract: TO ENTERTAIN ANY THEORY ABOUT REVOLUTION," WRITES JOHN DUNN, " and it is not even possible to identify just what events do constitute revolutions without assuming some theory about the meaning of revolution is to assume a political posture. . . . The value-free study of revolutions is a logical impossibility for those who live in the real world" (Dunn, 1972: 1-2). For the student of revolutions the problem is complicated by the fact that the political postures assumed spontaneously by those who write or speak about them, and, if not careful, by himself or herself, are not necessarily coherent or consistent. We live in an era when rapid and fundamental change has become the norm in everyday life, so that the terms "revolution" and "revolutionary" extend far beyond the field of political science. Moreover, common discourse identifies them, much in the eighteenth-century manner, with progress and the improvement of life, so that, as advertising agencies understand only too well, the word "revolutionary," when attached to a new microwave oven as distinct from a political regime, will sell the product more effectively, even among those most passionately committed to the defense of the status quo against subversion. Nevertheless, the primary political meaning of "revolution" remains profoundly controversial, as the historiography of the subject demonstrates, and as the debates surrounding the bicentenary of the French Revolution of 1789 demonstrate even more unmistakably. What usually happens to revolutions sufficiently distant from the present and two centuries are, by the news agency standards that domiORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN SOCIAL RESEARCH VOL. 56, NO. 1 (SPRING I989)

The Politics of Fear

Abstract: Indeed, its specific goal is to distort the political reality of a nation by creating fear in the general population that is hugely disproportionate to the actual dangers that the terrorists are capable of posing. That is one of the reasons it was so troubling to so many when the widely respected arms expert David Kay concluded a lengthy, extensive investigation in Iraq for the Bush administration with these words: "We were all wrong." The real meaning of those words, and of Kay's devastating verdict, is that for more than two years, President George W. Bush and his administration have been (wittingly or unwittingly) distorting America's political reality by force-feeding the American people a grossly exaggerated fear of Iraq that was hugely disproportionate to the actual danger posed by Iraq. Now how could that happen? Could it possibly have been intentional? It's a serious question more serious than the laughter from the audience might imply. And there are some clues to the answer.

Liberalism at Bay, Conservatism at Play: Fear in the Contemporary Imagination

Abstract: AMONG THE GREAT COMMONPLACES OF MODERN POLITICAL THOUGHT is the opposition betw een freedom and fear. From Montesquieu to the Frankfurt School, from Franklin Roosevelt to Burmese opposi­ tion leader Aung San Suu Kyi, fear has been viewed as the enemy o f independent selfhood and political decency and has been opposed in the name o f liberty, liberal values, the Enlightenm ent, or civiliza­ tion itse lf (Montesquieu, 1988; Kant, 1991 [1970]: 54-55; Sidgwick, 1891: 41; Inaugural Addresses of the Presidents of the United States, 1961: 235; Horkheimer and Adorno, 1986: 3; Neumann, 1957; Shklar, 1989: 29; Kyi, 1991: 180-85). At the same time, many political theorists have suggested that fear may well be a necessary condition o f selfhood and a free society. For theorists like Locke and Burke, fear is something to be cherished, not because it alerts us to real danger or propels us to take necessary action against it, but because fear is supposed to arouse a

Sleeping Beauty Awakes: Self-Interest, Feminism, and Fertility in the Early Twentieth Century

Abstract: THE STORY OF THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CAPITALISM AND THE pursuit of individual self-interest has focused for the most part on men in search of money. A gendered perspective reveals a more complicated narrative. The pursuit of wealth was to use Robert Heilbroners word "legitimated" for men far earlier (and with far greater enthusiasm) than for women. A moral double standard can be traced particularly clearly from Adam Smith (who questioned the benevolence of the butcher and the baker but never that of the wife and mother) to Alfred Marshall (who feared that wage employment would tempt women to neglect their family duties). Ideologies of gender mediated and slowed the advance of individualism; legitimation of the female pursuit of wealth did not unfold rapidly in capitalist countries until the latter half of the twentieth century. (excerpt)

The seductiveness of moral disgust

Abstract: looked at closely, is not a pretty thing. "What redeems it is the idea only." The ferocious rapacity of Kurtz's search for ivory is ennobled in his own eyes by his plans to bring civilization to the savages. In the end, of course, this idea redeems nothing at all. When Marlow finds Kurtz, at the final bend of the river, all there is to show of Kurtz's civilizing mission is a row of native heads stuck on pikes and the tattered remains of Kurtz's concluding report to the International Society for the Suppression of Savage Customs, on the final page of which the delirious Kurtz had scribbled, "Exterminate all the Brutes!" Conrad's work is a fable about late-nineteenth-century imperialism at the end of its tether, paralyzed by futility and sapped by the temptations of an all destroying nihilism. It is also about the seductions of moral disgust: having failed to civilize the savages, Kurtz turns against them all the force of his own moral self-disillusion. We tell ourselves that we are living in a postimperial age. What is "new" about the new world order, supposedly, is that it is not imperial. Decolonization in Africa and Asia, the collapse of the Soviet empire, the general triumph of the principle of national self-determination all lead us to think that the reflexes and impulses laid bare so mercilessly by Conrad now belong to the forgotten history of our conscience. Central to this assumption is the idea that the interventions of the post-1989 period were humanitarian rather than imperial in their

Structuralist Economics: Worldly Philosophers, Models, and Methodology

Abstract: help us better understand the capitalist setting in which we will most likely have to shape our collective destiny for the foreseeable future" (Heilbroner, 1999: 310). These words are part of Robert Heilbroner's manifesto in the last chapter of his classic book, The Worldly Philosophers. They reflect aspirations underlying the theories put together over nearly 200 years by the great economic thinkers he reviews: Adam Smith, David Ricardo, Thomas Malthus, John Stuart Mill, Karl Marx, Alfred Marshall, Thorstein Veblen, John Maynard Keynes, Joseph Schumpeter. Their legacy is a quest for "socially as well as economically successful capitalisms." Beyond their faith in the usefulness of economics, Heilbroner's worldly philosophers had something else in common. They concentrated on structure in the sense of analyzing economic issues within a framework of institutions and agents interacting with each other through mechanisms that themselves complete and make the society a sustainable system. Smith, for example, is concerned with "how is

Civil Courage and Human Dignity: How to Regain Respect for the Fundamental Values of Western Democracy

Abstract: courage might be thought to be a timeless effort. Yet these reflections are stimulated by current experiences that challenge us and call for reassuring thoughts. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, I led a seminar, along with Joachim Gauck, the director of the Stasi document center, on civil courage. Our hope was to understand the reasons some people collaborated with the Stasi, the security arm of the former East Germany, and why other people resisted. It seemed natural to compare the situation in East Germany with that which existed in Germany itself under National Socialism to determine what motivated people to resist collaboration with the National Socialist regime and what strengthened those people who helped to protect and hide Jews from persecution. They, we pointed out, practiced civil courage. At that time, however, we would not have thought to ask if suicide terrorist attacks were proof of courage, let alone civil courage. Yet the argument is now

Ethics and Biogenetic Art

Abstract: IN A FORMER ARTICLE IN THIS JOURNAL, I DWELT AT SOME LENGTH ON the tendency of the fruits of technological invention to acquire a force of their own and, as it were, make themselves independent of their makers (Jonas, 1982) "Once developed by doing in the small, they have a way of enforcing their employment in the large and ever larger and making that employment an incessant need of life" In ascribing to the creations of technology a "life of their own," I was speaking figuratively, and exaggerating somewhat Strictly speaking, what I said referred not to the creations themselves, the concrete objects produced, but to the process of their creation and utilization, an abstract system function that acts through man As long as the creations of technology tools in the broadest sense are inanimate objects, as has always been the case hitherto, it is still "man" who has to activate them, who can turn them on and off at will, and who also chooses to bring about their further development, that is, technological progress, by means of new invention, even though this choice or will is, de facto, largely deprived of its options and pushed by the aforementioned compulsions of current use in the single direction of going ahead "Man" in this context means such abstract notions as "society," "the economy," "politics," "nation-state," etc, yet the arche hineseos, the prime cause of movement, is still to be found in "man" and, ultimately, in actual individuals Thus, however true it may be that the collective-technological "sorcerer's apprentice" that we are can no longer get rid of the spirits he has summoned, nevertheless it would still be theoretically possible