Showing papers in "Theory and Society in 1974"

Three faces of cruelty: Towards a comparative sociology of violence

Abstract: In our contemporary society, ferocious cruelty is no longer structurally induced; it is no longer part of the dominant ceremonial order, although we still find individual cases. In this sense, modern society appears more humane. But at the same time, the dangers of callousness increase; and the technological efficiency of modern instruments of destruction makes its consequencess all the more appalling while it hides them from view. Between these opposing trends, ascetic cruelty has had its ups and downs, cresting during periods of mobilized conflict. There is no evolutionary trend towards kindness and happiness. Ferociousness once increased, then declined; callousness and asceticism now oppose each other as defenders and challengers of the status quo. And the institutionalized asceticism of a victorious revolutionary movement easily amalgamates with the callousness of an established bureaucratic regime. The demons can be exorcised, but only by seeing them for what they are. Those who claim that the demons can be exorcised only by action in the world, not by theorizing about them, seem to be possessed by demons of their own, especially the demon of asceticism; one senses here the communal hostility of the ascetic to the individual luxury of intellectual contemplation. And here is the danger. Those who deny everything for the self deny it as well for others; our altruism, taken too exclusively, is an infinite regress, passing a bucket from hand to hand that never reaches the fire. When we act, we call out the demons to meet us. Be careful: they are ourselves.

Epistemology and the sociology of knowledge: The contributions of mannheim, mills, and merton

Abstract: In the natural and social sciences alike, there exists a rather rigid separation between those thinkers concerned with the practice of knowledge and those concerned with questions about the theory of knowledge. This is in contrast to the situation for the early Greeks and, much later, for such seventeenth century thinkers as Descartes and Locke, where there clearly existed an explicit concern with the connection between the theory and practice of knowledge. Just as clearly, the twentieth century has witnessed an obvious separation between the interest and practices of scientists and philosophers, and, consequently, between "science" and "epistemology".

The metaphoricality of Marxism and the context-freeing grammar of socialism

Abstract: Whatever may be said of the failures of Marxism, these are essentially intellectual and theoretical failures-for example, the failure of its predictionsthat are, quite properly, important to intellectuals and scholars. Yet Marxism has in no realistic sense been a failure as a politics. For if by "politics" we mean the struggle for power in the state, then Marxist politics has had an historically unparalleled success. Indeed, it is impossible to understand the revolutions of the twentieth century without seeing the role that Marxism and Marxists have played in them. In about half a century something like half the world has come under the governance of those defining themselves as Marxists. No other system of thought in human history has ever had so extensive a success, let alone in so brief a period.

Habermas talking: An interview

Abstract: It was at Frankfurt University that Jurgen Habermas made his reputation as the new theoretical force continuing the tradition of the Horkheimer-AdornoMarcuse brand of Critical Theory. It was also at Frankfurt that Habermas' popularity with the Left student movement changed dramatically from mutual support to bitter condemnation from many students. In recent years, owing to a combination of new trends in the German Left and also his own retreat into research work at Starnberg, Habermas has become more and more isolated from German Left activists. On the one hand, he is roundly (but unfairly) condemned as a "cop-out" by many elements of the existing student movement who still retain incorrect memories of his role in the student-administration confrontation at Frankfurt. Habermas did not call the police in at Frankfurt (in fact he strongly opposed this move behind the scenes but could not bring himself to publicly criticize Adorno due to his personal friendship and justifiably great concern over Adorno's deteriorating health), but he did criticize various student tactics as being short-sighted and counter-productive which earned him abundant criticism from many students. On the other hand, he has never been loved by the academic establishment as well as being almost universally excluded from Marxist ranks in Germany and abroad (with the notable exception of Marxists such as the Praxis group in Yugoslavia).

Towards a sociology of social anthropology

Abstract: The framework that I have used, I suggest, provides insights into how the paradigms in our discipline, or any discipline for that matter, are generated, become dominant and, ultimately, are replaced. Since the formulation of scientific theory is in part a social process, we may also have gained insights into the way this process is speeded up or slowed down.

Advances towards a critical criminology

Abstract: In The New Criminology we attempted to elaborate the elements of what we called an "immanent critique" of existing theories of crime, deviance and social control. In part, this critique was organised around a formal model, which was intended to draw attention to the various analytical stages required in the explanation of rule-creation and/or rule-breaking. It is now our position not only that these processes are fully social in nature, but also that they are paramountly conditioned by the facts of material reality. Breaking with individual (that is, with genetic, psychological and similar) explanations, and seeking social explanations instead has thrust upon us political economy as the primary determinant of the social framework. We shall argue later that the processes involved in crime-creation are bound up in the final analysis with the material basis of contemporary capitalism and its structures of law. It is clear that our "normative theory" was not simply "useful" in enabling the immanent critique, but also that it formed the elements of a radical

Nations, parties, and participation: A critique of political sociology

Abstract: Studies of the political behavior of the citizens of various countries, the course and outcomes of elections, and the organization and functioning of parties dominated the time and intellectual energies of political sociologists in the 1960s. Much of this work was associated with Stein Rokkan, scholars connected with him, or those whose work was facilitated by him.1 This paper makes use of a collection of essays and articles, Citizens, Elections, Parties (written over a period of nearly fifteen years of Rokkan's influence on scholarship) in order to raise some issues concerning dominant intellectual perspectives in the field and the implications for research priorities.2

Reassessments of sociological history: The empirical validity of the conflict tradition

Abstract: The conflict tradition does not end with Max Weber, but there is room for only the barest sketch of subsequent or even contemporary developments. We have already covered many of the follow-ups of the Marx-Weber line of conflict sociology. Among these, there is the important line of influence inwhich Michels served as the link between Weber's historical theory of organizational politics and the organizational studies of the 1940–60's. Studies of stratification, although often pursued with naive theoretical categories, have gradually accumulated a great deal of evidence bolstering and refining the classical principles explained above; and some work, especially since the time of C. Wright Mills (but not necessarily influenced by him) has made a conscious effort to build on classical theory.

Millenarianism in the modern world

Abstract: The point has been made that millenarian movements flourish in a relatively isolated agrarian milieu. I have argued that the relationships between this milieu and disaster make millenarianism a predominantly rural form of unrest, ill-suited to the polyglot character of city life. If that is true, an obvious corollary should be that millenarian movements are eventually destined to disappear. As urban, industrial indeed, as some would have it, postindustrial society expands, such archaisms as chiliastic sects are bound to constitute early casualties. E.J. Hobsbawm and others argue that the apparent upthrust of such groups in recent times represents only the dying paroxysms of agrarian society. The city, which as recently as the turn of the century had been overwhelmingly a Western social form, very rapidly diffused into the non-Western world. "In 1900 . .. there were fourteen cities with a population of one million or more, and of these six ... were in Europe, three in Asia, three in North America, and two in South America. By 1960, when the total had risen to sixty-nine, the distribution had changed radically. No less than twenty-six (i.e. more than thirty-seven per cent) were in Asia."1 Examples might be multiplied, but the major point should be clear enough: a major transformation has steadily reduced the size and importance of the reservoirs from which millenarian movements have traditionally drawn their adherents.

Marxism and social theory

Abstract: Marx's treatment of ideology and ideologues has certain symptomatic silences. It possesses a "dark secret" in which the existence of the secret itself lays hidden. Having focussed its analysis on what is hidden in other theories and in bourgeois society, Marxism may seem to some the embodiment of a healthy candor that has no secrets of its own. The accusor, of course, classically diverts attention from his own guilt by accusing another. That his accusation has this self-protective function, however, does not mean that it was intended to do so, nor does it mean that his accusation is untrue.

A politics in search of the political

Abstract: As with most of his work, Jurgen Habermas' newest book, Legitimationsprobleme im Spdtkapitalismus is both programmatic and provocative. Habermas brings together a wealth of material and theoretical argumentation drawn mainly from the collective research efforts of the Max Planck Institut in Starnberg, of which he is co-director. In this sense, the book is a report to the public on the Institut's activities.1 The goal of Habermas' work is, however, broader. He sees the need to develop a theory which will serve both to guide and understand current research1 a, and at the same time to suggest the types of political activity which are possible and meaningful in modem capitalism. Underlying both of these is Habermas' remarkable stress on the power of reason as a tool for analysis and as that which, ultimately, constitutes our uniqueness as humans. His particular project is that of Enlightenment. The analysis of modem capitalism attempts to show why this "old European idea" has retained and even increased its actuality.

Words of power: The power of words

Abstract: The original “hapiness of words” (Foucault) is gone ; there are no “innocent languages” (Barthes) anymore. All are related to social experiences, because a language “originates in and has its primary reference to the everyday life.” (Berger and Luckman, 1967, p.38) Any language is related to a given society, and both language and society are shaped by history. Obviously, American and French histories have been quite different.

Watergate: Harbinger of the American prince

Abstract: Let me begin by pointing out the obvious. No one did predict these concrete events and that emphatically, and most significantly, includes the participants in Watergate. Had the participants themselves been able to predict, whether by sociology or scapulamancy, the concrete events as they have unfolded, they would certainly not have done the things that helped to produce the events their very predictability would have prevented them, thereby destroying their predictability, as Popper 'and many other social thinkers have long pointed out. No sociologist or student who has gone beyond the myths of introductory sociology would expect sociology to predict such concrete events. Human beings are necessarily partially free to construct the concrete events that occur in this world and no theory, notwithstanding the "law" of large numbers, can predict just what these concrete constructions will be. But human beings are also partially constrained in making their choices by the "realistic alternatives" they believe exist in the physical and social world in which they live, so there are partial, though changing, uncertain and conflicting patterns in our social lives. (These basic issues of freedom and constraints, certain and uncertain, order and disorder, predictability and unpredictability, have been dealt with in such nauseating detail in earlier works, such as my own works on American Social Order, and Existential Sociology, that I need hardly elaborate upon them here.) The only serious issue of predictability for sociologists concerns whether we can predict the vague and conflicting trends or patterns of events in our society, how concrete these predictions can be, and whether such predictions actually flow from our theoretical understandings or merely from our common sense understanding of the trends in society.

The “Gulag Archipelago” and the left

Abstract: One can wholeheartedly sympathize with Roy Medvedev's prefatory comment that this is a "provisional opinion" on the Gulag Archipelago. "No one will," Medvedev believes, "rise from his chair after reading this book the same as he sat down to open it at page 1. In this sense there is quite simply nothing in either Russian literature or the literature of the world with which I can compare Solzhenitsyn's book."' While Medvedev is undoubtedly correct in his estimation of the traumatic consequences which a reading of the Gulag will induce for Soviet readers, he over-estimates the sensitivity of most Western readers who have either not experienced Soviet conditions or who do not care about the meaning of the October Revolution because they have always opposed it, or because they grew to oppose it. Solzhenitsyn's books have been evaluated by non-Soviet critics largely in terms of literary style and quality, and not enough in terms of what social repercussions would follow from the publication within the U.S.S.R. of works such as The First Circle. With the Gulag it is different. Everywhere during the last year, governments, the media, critics, all have been endorsing or condemning the book. There is no doubt about the massive anti-communist propaganda campaign which has been associated with Western publication, just as there is no doubt about the political capital which Soviet authorities have manipulated by pointing to the Gulag's promotion in the capitalist world.

Speaking seriously: Part II

Abstract: All that has been said in my previous article about the authority which the community grants de-authored speech may or may not accord with your interpretation, yet the security which "convincing" accounts provide (whether or not they succeed in convincing) threatens to dissolve the issue of the effortless intelligibility of a text for both writer and reader. Let us "go back" and address that intelligibility.

Watergate: Government by negation

Abstract: The perspective of critical theory pretends to offer no concrete predictions of either the events or the public understanding of matters such as Watergate. But it does offer some analyses of the bases of "Watergate" events and why these events are presently part of the "public".1 Most empirical sociology, as Birnbaum puts it, "is largely a strained gloss on a reality we do not believe we can change".2 In essence, critical sociology offers itself as the negation of that reality, asserting-the possibility of change. Aware of the prophetically affirmative nature of most social science, critical theory eschews concrete prophecy with the negative.3