Showing papers in "Theory and Society in 1987"

Citizenship, social theory, and social change

Abstract: The concept of citizenship the nature of the citizen status and role, its rights, duties, and powers, and the nature of the community of citizens is much used but little analyzed in social policy analysis. And, outside of political philosophy, it is surprisingly little used or analyzed in social theory in general. Some of the reasons for the relative neglect may have to do with the assumptions that ground the enterprise of political sociology and that render it, unlike "political economy," merely a department of sociology rather than a general version of social theory. These assumptions tend to hold that political phenomena like states, citizens, and their activities are dependent variables that can be understood and explained by reference to deeper historical and social forces. In the classic tradition of the social theory, social changes in the mode of production (Marx), in the rationalization process (Weber), and in the development of the division of labor (Durkheim) have all been used to explain political phenomena. Sociology's underlying suspicion of eighteenth century "bourgeois" individualism and contractarian political philosophy tends to be carried over against the notion of the citizen that may be assumed to embody them. Thus political sociology tends, when examining the political phenomena of citizen's actions, struggles and movements, to reveal their impotence, dependency, and in any case their ignorance, in respect of the powers of such phenomena as the state's bureaucracy, the ruling groups and elites, dominant and mystifying ideologies, and ultimately socioeconomic forces.

The paradigm of economic sociology

Abstract: ions Many economists agree that the notion of separate utility maximizers presents serious problems of analysis. In a well-known article in the Journal of Economic Literature Lee E. Preston has noted that "... very few of the interactions between real firms and their host environments can be usefully formulated within the conventional (that is, neoclassical) framework."25 To counteract problems of this type, economists have developed concepts such as that of "externalities," and also glanced at "generalized morality," "custom" and the like.26 This content downloaded from 207.46.13.57 on Mon, 08 Aug 2016 06:19:01 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

System and life-world in Habermas's theory of communicative action

Abstract: In his recent Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns1 Jurgen Habermas develops a "two-level" theory of modern societies within which he attempts to integrate the action-theoretical and systems-theoretical sociological perspectives. One can distinguish four stages in the development of this theory: 1) its action-theoretical foundations in the notion of communicative action, 2) Habermas's construction of the concept of the "life-world" as the social background to communicative action, 3) his critical review of systems-theoretical concepts, and finally 4) his construction of a model of society that can integrate insights from both the action-theoretical and systems-theoretical approaches a highly generalized model of social process as "interchange" between the functionally organized economic and administrative systems, on one hand, and the "components" of the communicatively structured "life-world," on the other.

Culture-as-text in the work of Clifford Geertz

Abstract: The notion that the world is a text, often obscure in its meaning and thus in need of interpretation, has been entertained periodically since falling out of favor in the early modern period. With Baudelaire and Mallarm6, for instance, Symbolist poetic theory presupposed an articulate cosmos, a \"forest of symbols\" whose sometimes confused messages might be understood and enunciated in an Orphic language corresponding with that of Nature itself. Indeed, the possibility that language takes on unusual forms so as to inhabit the world at large (and in a fuller sense than our metaphoric references to the \"language\" of the bees or the genetic \"code\" would suggest) has been evoked consistently on the periphery of contemporary discourse. The essentially semantic character of the universe was a tenet of Ldvi-Strauss's structuralism, for example, while the universality of textuality has been argued by those like Jacques Derrida who reject structuralism yet retain its emphasis on language as the fundamental modality of existence.

The Romantic and the Marxist critique of modern civilization

Abstract: The first critics of modern bourgeois society, of the capitalist civilization created by the Industrial Revolution were - more than half a century before Marx - the Romantic poets and writers Romantic anti-capitalism was born in the second half of the eighteenth century, but it has not ceased to be an essential component of modern culture up to the present What is usually designated as the Romantic Movement in the arts and literature, mainly situated at the beginning of the nineteenth century, is only one of its multiple and extremely various manifestations As a weltanschauung, ie an all embracing worldview, a style of thought, a basic structure offeeling, it can be found not only in the work of poets and writers of imagination and fantasy such as Novalis, E T A Hoffmann and the surrealists, but also in the novels of true realists like Balzac, Dickens, and Thomas Mann; not only among artists like Delacroix or the Pre-Raphaelite painters, but also among political economists like Sismondi or sociolo

The state and the social structures of welfare in advanced industrial democracies

Abstract: I develop here an analysis of the contemporary welfare state in advanced industrial democracies. The central thesis is that mature welfare states have their structures and benefits woven into social structures that they themselves have reshaped. This makes it difficult to dismantle or roll back welfare states even when governments of the ideological persuasion of Margaret Thatcher or Ronald Reagan attain office. Welfare states, whatever their institutional differences, are deeply integrated into the social and political structure of contemporary industrial societies. In an important sense, the analysis implies that the form or character of these contemporary industrial democracies has been transformed significantly by the development of welfare states, that is, substantial state intervention into the political economy and social structures. Allowing for some variation among countries, the division between state and economy is much less clearcut than in the nineteenth century or in the pre-1945 period. However, welfare states do not constitute simply a further stage of capitalist development and level of state intervention but a more fundamental restructuring of these countries. Through an examination of the contemporary form of welfare states and social structures greater purchase upon recent political developments, including the advent of ideologically conservative governments, can be attained. Indeed, without analyzing the form of the welfare state and its integration into advanced industrial democracies it is difficult to explain, for example, why the Thatcher and Reagan administrations have been less effective than they desired in retrenching welfare state expenditures and commitments. It is because the latter are an integral part of society (both culturally and structurally) that such attacks are unlikely to succeed.

A theory of prison riots

Abstract: Prison riots vary immensely in form. In some riots, inmates issue manifestos; in others, they loot as a disorganized mass; in others they turn on each other. Some riots are characterized by political organization and demand-making others by weak and chaotic structures of leadership, and conflict and violence among inmates themselves. In some riots, prisoners inflict suffering on hostages; in others, inmates treat hostages well, providing them food and bedding before themselves; in still others, inmates do not take hostages, even when the opportunity arises. What accounts for this variation?

Destroyed by the dialectic

Abstract: In the early twentieth-century new middle-class groups broke into the vision of social science wearing masks and costumes. Nearly a century later, ever more important in social processes, they are still largely inscrutable.' In the sociological literature these strata have been called everything and its opposite professional and managerial revolutionaries, the core of the "technostructure," new corporatistic egotists, a new class, labor aristocrats, new workers, new "petit bourgeois," new bourgeois, denizens of "contradictory class locations," parts of the collective laborer, non-productive workers, the social cement of democracy, basic threats to democracy ... and we could go on... 2 We suspect, in fact, that the variable geometry of the new middle classes in sociological discussion has as much to do with the desires of sociologists to act on the social world as to explain it.3

The growth of public and private bureaucracies

Abstract: Bureaucratization is a pervasive fact of modern life. Not only have strong central governments emerged over the last century (and more recently in the United States), but large centrally administered firms have become the dominant economic actors in modern societies. The facts of bureaucratic growth are indisputable. By any measure, the size and influence of government have increased almost continuously to the present time. And whether measured by the intensity of supervision or the intensity of administration, bureaucratic growth in private enterprises has also occurred, in some instances more rapidly than in government.' These developments are hardly surprising, and they have not passed unnoticed. Governmental bureaucracy is regularly disparaged by the political right. The left has been more sensitive to increased concentration of productive capacity in giant corporate bureaucracies. Rhetoric aside, however, the causes of bureaucratic growth have not been sufficiently understood, and its consequences have not been sufficiently anticipated. One of the most fundamental social transformations of the last century, and one fraught with economic as well as political consequences, has been all but ignored by the social sciences.

Role as a cultural concept

Abstract: The observation that the concept of roles is a relatively modern concept may seem utterly trivial. Sociology itself is a fairly modern discipline and therefore any sociological concept is necessarily of modern origin. Such an observation at first appears useless. But I would like to argue that it is not, and that a careful analysis of that apparent banality may help to clarify some important questions concerning the practices of theory choice in sociology. A brief history of the concept shows its relevance.

Eros and Civilization after thirty years

Abstract: It has been over thirty years since the publication of Eros and Civilization, the book that Herbert Marcuse, as well as many of his critics, have regarded as his most significant work.' Eros is based almost entirely upon a reinterpretation of Freudian psychology. Yet, even as Eros sharply attacks revisionists who would deviate from this psychology, it introduces a theme that Marcuse would develop more fully in subsequent articles, such as "The Obsolescence of the Freudian Concept of Man" (1963).2 Marcuse argues that key Freudian categories such as the Oedipus complex no longer seem to capture the experience of growing up in a one-dimensional society. In such a society the male child no longer develops his ego in a protracted and highly personalized conflict with father, who represents the reality principle. Rather, the child is "pre-socialized" by the administrative organs of the state, such as the schools. The father is either absent, seen as ineffectual in comparison with the power of the state, or both. The result is new generations far more compliant, and significantly weaker in ego strength, than previous generations, who grew up in the shelter of the patriarchal bourgeois family. It is as though today the child is socialized by the capitalist state before he has an opportunity to develop his own ego.

Professional authority and state power

Abstract: The relation between professional authority and state power is not to be found in the political clout of the A.M.A. or the A.B.A. nor in the fact that lawyers work at every level of government and doctors often occupy key policy making positions. The relation between state power and professional authority that I have tried to underline is more diffuse and embedded in the very work doctors and lawyers do. But even this claim can be misleading, because what's at issue here is not how doctors and lawyers use their expert authority to extract consent from and normalize patients and clients. In fact, it is the erosion or deconstitution, as I have called it, of this authority by the commodification of legal and medical services that has brought out more subtle problems and more revealing ties to state power. The HMO doctor who has to advise a patient about emergency service coverage is a good example of the way in which medical service, state administrative power, and economic interests are visibly intertwined in the actual provision of medical care at the ground level. When we take this one step further, the role of the state in the crisis of the professions begins to emerge. State licensing laws and insurance regulations are restructuring the already fragile relations among patient, doctor, HMO, and insurer. The patient in this example, outraged by pseudo-medical advice on emergency coverage, may soon recognize that it is not only the doctor who is incapable of assessing his or her medical needs. The political domain itself is becoming a maze of tort laws and tort reform proposals. What difference does all of this make? Right now, for the professions it may mean slightly more competition among practitioners and, for some, a loss of status. For the state it means a new kind of oversight and intervention. Instead of licensing professional autonomy, state power is now being used to stabilize the process of commodification by encouraging backsliders and disciplining those who would go too far. One reason unethical behavior is drawing closer state scrutiny is its high economic costs. Joel Brinkley, “Medical Discipline Laws,” , September 2, 1985. 1, 18. Although these are obviously important consequences, I have tried to emphasize a more theoretical one. At the same time the state is being drawn into the commodification of professional services, the professions are losing their ability to interpret persuasively the origins and scope of human needs. This means that the repoliticization Habermas and Offe anticipate makes even more sense. Not only is the state's role in previously private matters subject to criticism, it seems unable to provide a forum for critical needs interpretation of the pragmatic sort at a time in which the professions are seen as derelict in their traditional duty of needs interpretation. This point can be made more precise by distinguishing two ways in which my analysis of professional authority is related to Habermas's and Offe's work. I have not analyzed professional authority in general, but medical and legal professional authority in the United States in particular. One implication of this study is that the prospects for democratic social movements in the United States along the lines Habermas and Offe sketch may depend upon the commodification of professional services more than simply the general intervention of the state into private economic, educational, and family affairs. This peculiar feature of a strong American social movement would be the result of the traditional popular dichotomy between authority and power, the historical role of the professions in needs interpretation in the United States, and the current radical deconstitution of medical and legal authority. Habermas and Offe seem more concerned with the more mature European social movements than with events in the United States. My analysis applies and amends their legitimation crisis thesis, and the repoliticization hypothesis especially, in the U.S. case. But, like a good case study, it also suggests a way in which the general theoretical framework that guided it in turn can be revised. In my analysis it is the concept of needs interpretation that has general theoretical significance for the legitimation crisis thesis. One problem critics have noted in the legitimation crisis thesis is its inadequate account of what motivates or will motivate such as crisis. Habermas's own treatment of the difference between a legitimation crisis and a motivational crisis is notably weak. David Held, “Crisis Tendencies, Legitimation and the State,” 187–189. The case of the deconstitution of professional authority suggests that the motivational basis for a legitimation crisis cannot be deduced from greater state intervention in private domains but that it nonetheless may have its roots in basic changes in the political economy. The commodification of medical and legal services is part of a larger transformation in capitalist political economies that I have not been able to describe here. Although I have called this commodification an “internal” process, it most certainly reflects larger trends and changes, both domestically and internationally. What the deconstitution of professional authority suggests is that 1) it may be possible to gain greater clarity about the motivational basis of a potential legitimation crisis through the concept of needs interpretation, 2) this motivational basis is not a simple function of the macroeconomy, but still 3) how effective professional and political needs interpretation are will depend upon the pace and range of commodification. An earlier version of this article was delivered at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association in New Orleans, Louisiana, August 29–September 1, 1985. I am grateful to Cynthia Negrey, Jay Budziszewski, Mark Kann, and especially Richard Peterson for helpful suggestions. I am also grateful to the Editors of for suggesting revisions in the original argument.

Images of the Jew

Abstract: There is hardly an aspect of contemporary history more irritating and mystifying than the fact that of all the great unsolved political questions of our century, it should have been this seemingly small and unimportant Jewish problem that had the dubious honor of setting the whole infernal machine in motion. Such discrepancies between cause and effect outrage our common sense, to say nothing of the historian's sense of balance and harmony.