One dimensional man
About: This article is published in Philosophical Books.The article was published on 1965-05-01. It has received 2842 citations till now.
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TL;DR: The demarcation of science from other intellectual activities is an analytic problem for philosophers and sociologists and is examined as a practical problem for scientists in this article, where a set of characteristics available for ideological attribution to science reflect ambivalences or strains within the institution: science can be made to look empirical or theoretical, pure or applied.
Abstract: The demarcation of science from other intellectual activities-long an analytic problem for philosophers and sociologists-is here examined as a practical problem for scientists. Construction of a boundary between science and varieties of non-science is useful for scientists' pursuit of professional goals: acquisition of intellectual authority and career opportunities; denial of these resources to "pseudoscientists"; and protection of the autonomy of scientific research from political interference. "Boundary-work" describes an ideological style found in scientists' attempts to create a public image for science by contrasting it favorably to non-scientific intellectual or technical activities. Alternative sets of characteristics available for ideological attribution to science reflect ambivalences or strains within the institution: science can be made to look empirical or theoretical, pure or applied. However, selection of one or another description depends on which characteristics best achieve the demarcation in a way that justifies scientists' claims to authority or resources. Thus, "science" is no single thing: its boundaries are drawn and redrawn inflexible, historically changing and sometimes ambiguous ways.
3,402 citations
Cites background from "One dimensional man"
...Still others define science as an ideology itself (Marcuse, 1964); for Habermas (1970:115) the form of scientific knowledge embodies its own values of prediction and control, and thus may substitute for "the demolished bourgeois ideology" in legitimating structures of domination and repression....
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TL;DR: In this paper, a review of the corporate social reporting literature, its major theoretical preoccupations and empirical conclusions, attempts to re-examine the theoretical tensions that exist between “classical” political economy interpretations of social disclosure and those from more “bourgeois” perspectives.
Abstract: Takes as its departure point the criticism of Guthrie and Parker by Arnold and the Tinker et al. critique of Gray et al. Following an extensive review of the corporate social reporting literature, its major theoretical preoccupations and empirical conclusions, attempts to re‐examine the theoretical tensions that exist between “classical” political economy interpretations of social disclosure and those from more “bourgeois” perspectives. Argues that political economy, legitimacy theory and stakeholder theory need not be competitor theories but may, if analysed appropriately, be seen as alternative and mutually enriching theories from alternative levels of resolution. Offers evidence from 13 years of social disclosure by UK companies and attempts to interpret this from different levels of resolution. There is little doubt that social disclosure practice has changed dramatically in the period. The theoretical perspectives prove to offer different, but mutually enhancing, interpretations of these phenomena.
2,923 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors examined accounts of travelers in terms of Erving Goffman's front versus back distinction and found that tourists try to enter back regions of the places they visit because these regions are associated with intimacy of relations and authenticity of experiences.
Abstract: The problem of false consciousness and its relationship to the social structure of tourist establishments is analyzed. Accounts of travelers are examined in terms of Erving Goffman's front versus back distinction. It is found that tourists try to enter back regions of the places they visit because these regions are associated with intimacy of relations and authenticity of experiences. It is also found that tourist settings are arrenged to produce the impression that a back region has been entered even when this is not the case. In tourist settings, between the front and the back there is a series of special spaces designed to accommodate tourists and to support their beliefs in the authenticity of their experiences. Goffman's front-back dichotomy is shown to be ideal poles of a continuum, or a variable.
2,627 citations
Cites background from "One dimensional man"
...David Riesman's "other directed" (1950) and Herbert Marcuse's "one-dimensional" men (1964) are products of a traditional intellectual concern for the superficiality of knowledge in mass industrial society, but the tourist setting per se is just beginning to prompt intellectual commentary....
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TL;DR: In this paper, the authors trace the rise of the modern cultural engineering paradigm of branding, premised upon a consumer culture that granted marketers cultural authority, and describe the current post-postmodern consumer culture, which is premised on the pursuit of personal sovereignty through brands.
Abstract: Brands are today under attack by an emerging countercultural movement. This study builds a dialectical theory of consumer culture and branding that explains the rise of this movement and its potential effects. Results of an interpretive study challenge existing theories of consumer resistance. To develop an alternative model, I first trace the rise of the modern cultural engineering paradigm of branding, premised upon a consumer culture that granted marketers cultural authority. Intrinsic contradictions erased its efficacy. Next I describe the current postmodern consumer culture, which is premised upon the pursuit of personal sovereignty through brands. I detail five postmodern branding techniques that are premised upon the principle that brands are authentic cultural resources. Postmodern branding is now giving rise to new contradictions that have inflamed the antibranding sentiment sweeping Western countries. I detail these contradictions and project that they will give rise to a new post-postmodern branding paradigm premised upon brands as citizen-artists.
1,797 citations
Book•
29 Jul 1983TL;DR: In this paper, the authors present a list of states that are essentially by-products of rationality, bias, and ideology, including sour grapes, as well as byproducts of belief, bias and ideology.
Abstract: Preface and acknowledgements 1. Rationality 2. States that are essentially by-products 3. Sour grapes 4. Belief, bias and ideology References Index.
1,221 citations
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TL;DR: The concept of alienation has been extensively analyzed outside tourism studies to understand human existence within society as mentioned in this paper, however, it has been scarcely researched within tourism studies and, as is argued in this paper, alienation adds theoretical depth to the sociological study of tourism and resituates discussions on authenticity within the context of capitalist relations of production, consumerism, and existentialism.
58 citations
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TL;DR: Singaporeans were industrialized, militarized, disciplined by a system of punishment and reward, and administered according to a technocratic rationality seeking to eliminate 'irrational' desires and the chaos of erotic instincts.
Abstract: At least two significant obstacles today prevent Singapore from progressing economically: a population unable to reproduce itself; and a people that generally lack creativity and entrepreneurship. Both are unintended consequences of earlier authoritarian policies of a paternalistic and patriarchal postcolonial government. Singaporeans were industrialized, militarized, disciplined by a system of punishment and reward, and administered according to a technocratic rationality seeking to eliminate ‘irrational’ desires and the chaos of erotic instincts. Subsequently, an Asian values campaign helped to form a conservative, censorious and electorally significant moral majority. Today, Singaporean society is described as sexually repressed and repressive. Singapore’s ‘new economy’, however, requires not only a large enough workforce, but also a stimulating, non-repressive climate conducive to imagination, innovation and adventure, one that can also attract and retain globally mobile talent. This article explores ...
57 citations
Posted Content•
TL;DR: The authors make the case that marginalized groups in society might find their voice in projects that are intentionally contextualized and publicly reflective, and enumerate some conditions under which emancipatory discourse and liberationist struggle may coincide.
Abstract: This paper takes up an important question that has puzzled learning theorists in the critical tradition, namely, are the dialogic practices of emancipatory discourse sufficient to change oppressive conditions in the power structure of modern organization? In other words, can critical dialogic processes change the social order to close the gap between a privileged class of managers and workers, or do we require class struggle and structural reform? By elaborating on such methods as dialogue, public reflection, and action science, the author attempts to make the case that marginalized groups in society might find their voice in projects that are intentionally contextualized and publicly reflective. These methods have found applications in some illustrated critical pedagogies, though not without strain induced from conventional institutions. The paper concludes with an enumeration of some conditions under which emancipatory discourse and liberationist struggle may coincide.
56 citations
TL;DR: If there is no independent reality, if the entire world is a social construction, and if facts are statements of a certain kind, it stands to reason that there are no objective truth, then scientific research is not a quest for truth as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: If there is no independent reality, if the entire world is a social construction, and if facts are statements of a certain kind, it stands to reason that there is no objective truth. In other words, if there is nothing &dquo;out there&dquo; that was not previously &dquo;in here,&dquo; the very expression &dquo;correspondence of ideas with facts&dquo; makes no sense. And if there is no objective truth, then scientific research is not a quest for truth. Or, to put it in a somewhat milder way, &dquo;what counts as truth can vary from place to place and from time to time&dquo; (Collins 1983,88). This is the kernel of epistemological relativism, which is in turn part and parcel of cultural relativism (see Jarvie 1984 for the influence of the latter on contemporary philosophy). If relativism were true, there should be, at least potentially, as many &dquo;alternative&dquo; mathematics as social (or ethnic or other) groups: masculine and feminine mathematics, white and black, Western and Eastern, and so on. As Bloor (1976) and Restivo (1983) remind us, this was indeed a thesis of the once popular obscurantist and pompous phi-
56 citations
TL;DR: The question of what power is has been implicitly reduced to the question of how power works as discussed by the authors, and in fact any hope of solving the latter presupposes a proper answer to the former.
Abstract: “Power” is the modal concept of politics; nevertheless, as a concept, it is significantly under-theorized This may seem an unlikely proposition, given the frequency of discussions of power; however, for decades the debate revolved mainly around empirical and operational questions, while a proper conceptual definition has rarely, if ever, been thematized The question of what power is has been implicitly reduced to the question of how power works But the two are not the same, and in fact any hope of solving the latter presupposes a proper answer to the formerI will show how most discussions of power – across political science and philosophy, from Weber to Lukes, including Dahl and Searle amongst others – are not conceptual, even when explicitly presented as such, but rather empirical and operational In fact, these discussions revolve mainly around factual implications and preconditions of power, while the presupposed concept does not vary much (with few exceptions, which are anyway untenable on their own merits) Commonly employed definitions can be reduced to a single form, which is tautological: “one has power if one can (=has the power to) do such and such” This circularity is due precisely to the shared presupposition that power is just like a phenomenon or an object, to be empirically observed To better understand the concept of power we should, instead, examine its categorial form – “power” represents not a thing, but a condition under which certain things may be done and thought – corresponding to possibility, as opposed to necessityThe best way to see this is to turn to Arendt, whose often misunderstood idea of power is the key to a proper comprehension of this basic category of politics While the link between power and communication has been a staple of Arendtean studies, it has often been reduced to normative or aspirational understandings, which tend to obscure its deeper significance It is rather the formal aspect of the concept of power which allows us to get right its categorical role in defining politics, including the crucial role of persuasion within it Some implications of this way of looking at the concept – chiefly the stark distinctions necessity/freedom and society/politics for which Arendt is still notorious – seems to be very unpalatable for current social science and political theory However, absent an adequate non-circular definition of power, this way deserves at least to be tried
56 citations