Showing papers on "Elitism published in 1999"

Knowledge, science, and relativism

Abstract: Introduction to Volume 3 John Preston 1. The problem of theoretical entities 2. Knowledge without foundations 3. How to be a good empiricist: a plea for tolerance in matters epistemological 4. Outline of a pluralistic theory of knowledge and action 5. Experts in a free society 6. Philosophy of science: a subject with a great past 7. On the limited validity of methodological rules 8. How to defend society against science 9. Let's make more movies 10. Rationalism, relativism and scientific method 11. Democracy, elitism and scientific method 12. Appendix.

Enduring elite democracy in Botswana

Abstract: Botswana has long been viewed as a ‘shining light’ of democracy in southern Africa. But, as a predominant party system, where extensive powers are concentrated in the hands of a presidency that is not directly elected by the people, and a record of official discouragement of free expression by the press exists, the polity is characterized by elitism, centralized political power and weak executive accountability. In some democratic aspects Namibia and South Africa appear to have overtaken Botswana in recent years, notwithstanding the latter's impressive economic growth. Civil society is weak. The citizens have yet to express dissatisfaction with their passive and restricted form of democracy and to demand an end to the inequalities on which the elitism and non‐participation rest. Thus the durability of Botswana's elite democracy, stabilized as it is by the presence of electoral competition between unevenly matched parties, seems guaranteed for the foreseeable future.

Beyond Right and Left: Democratic Elitism in Mosca and Gramsci

Abstract: A study of the connection between Gaetano Mosca and Antonio Gramsci, maintaining that they both belong to the same political tradition of democratic elitism. It argues that Gramsci's political theory is a constructive critique of Mosca's.

Making the University Fit for Critical Intellectuals: recovering from the ravages of the postmodern condition

Abstract: The author observes that ‘postmodernism’ in its most widely used sense was born of disillusionment with the university's role in state‐driven attempts at social control. Specifically, Lyotard saw the teaching function impeding the natural proliferation of research trajectories. And while he may have correctly identified the reactionary social role of the university in his day, the use of the curriculum to curb, reorient and channel research is not itself reactionary. In fact, it has been a potent vehicle for democratising social life by inhibiting the emergence of new knowledge‐based forms of elitism. The author illustrates this point by considering the role of history across the academic curriculum today, singling out the humanities and ‘softer’ social sciences for their pedagogical attentiveness to the contingent character of research developments. If there is a role for critical intellectuals in academic life, it is in terms of spreading this ‘prolescience’ mentality in whatever discipline the...

Elitism in the Stories of US Art Museums The Power of a Master Narrative

Abstract: Institutions familiar to the public are defined by master narratives that describe their activities and imply who is invited to take part. For art museums in this country, a master narrative of eli...

Race, Higher Education, and American Society

Abstract: This article explores three connected premises: first, that folk beliefs about the immutable nature of race are prevalent in society today; second, that there is a social and cultural reluctance to discuss the American racialized worldview; and, third, that there is the potential for American policy makers and society at large to reembrace biological determinism and social Darwinism at the millennium The author suggests that anthropologists have a major role to play in educating a wider public about race, cultural pluralism, and diversity in education Anthropologists should do this by (1) articulating for a general audience what race is and what it is not; (2) providing an anthropological analysis of higher education as a public right or a public good; (3) providing an anthropological analysis of the contemporary American culture of education and educational success; and (4) explaining American paradoxical behavior concerning affirmative action

Elitism in nursing

Abstract: This chapter will examine issues of elitism within nursing, attempt to explain certain elitist phenomena that have developed in nursing over the past 30 years and review possible connections between elitism and technology The chapter will explore the topic only in relation to nursing in the United Kingdom, thus acknowledging the importance of certain historical traditions that permeate and layer nursing culture here but may not be relevant elsewhere. This is an exploratory, even somewhat tentative, chapter because there has been a very real absence of this topic in the nursing literature. Hence the chapter is reflective in nature and draws on personal nursing experience as well as social theories and theorists in order to illustrate certain aspects of the very complex subject of nursing.

Teaching about Elites in the Era of Equality.

Abstract: TEACHING RESPONSIBLY about modern world history requires us as instructors and historians to look the past fully in the eye. We are all susceptible to the lure of what interests us and to personal biases. Availability of materials also can skew the nature of reality. Objectivity may be impossible, but it is our duty to preserve and present a past that comes as close to the truth as possible. An example of teachers and textbook writers failing in that task is in the portrayal of landed elites during the modern era, especially in the nineteenth century. Medievalists and early modern historians do a more thorough job than modernists in presenting the importance of and complexities inherent in the social, cultural, economic, and political roles of aristocracies. Those who study recent times tend to assume that the central place nobles take in the work of historians of earlier eras is due to the antediluvian character of the period, or to the dearth of documents relating to any group below the level of the elite in societies where illiteracy was the norm. Modernists pride themselves on the breadth and depth of their understanding of nineteenth and twentiethcentury society. The purpose of this paper, however, is to suggest that we have largely lost sight of one of the most significant forces that shaped the contemporary world. The landed elites of eighteenth and nineteenth century Europe, America, and Asia left an indelible imprint on the twentieth. Some were slave

The Elite Theory of Entrepreneurship Challenged: It's a New Day and a New Niche:

Abstract: Journal of Career Development, l~ol. 26(1), Fall 1999 Although the number of academic journals that focus on issues concerning businesses owned by people of color is limited, there has been an increase in scholarly research on ethnic business enterprises in recent years. The term &dquo;ethnic business enterprise&dquo; is used in discussions when businesses owned by two or more ethnic groups are investigated and the owners’ race or ethnicity is relevant. In my quest to develop informative and interesting tools to illustrate some of the alleged and real differences and to advance the understanding of ethnic business enterprises, I submitted a case study to a major entrepreneurship journal concerning a successful Black-owned company in the defense industry. The case was rejected on the premise that, amongst other things, the business opportunity presented was not an entrepreneurial venture.1 One reviewer wrote, &dquo;[I] don’t know that this busi-

Deconstructing the Rejection Letter: A Look at Elitism in Article Selection

Abstract: The authors examine the law review article selection process, suggesting unfair practices (elitism) in article acceptance. The authors conducted an empirical study to evaluate the article selection process, and concluded that the status of the author’s school, not necessarily the quality of the article, predominately affects article selection.

Structure, routine and transformation: movements from below at the end of the century

Abstract: This (very provisional) paper draws on the Irish experience of counter cultures to think about the shape and direction of movements from below at the end of the century and to find ways of asking "where do we go from here?" It starts by trying to make sense of the existing directions of counter cultural movement projects, which it sees as organic challenges to everyday social routines ("ordinary life") that are extended to the point of challenging large-scale power structures ("politics"). It does this by looking at some of the political tensions in the Irish versions of these projects: between strategies of mainstreaming and ghettoising, of consensus and disruption, of populism and elitism, and trying to identify the internal divisions of interest and rationality that underlie these tensions. If we want to be able to choose our directions well and to bring others along with us, we need to find ways of evaluating these choices that are neither arbitrary nor automatic. This paper suggests that it is possible to develop an immanent critique which asks how adequate different strategies are to the counter cultural project as a whole. This might mean, for example, using comprehensiveness rather than one-sidedness, scope rather than limits, or compatibility rather than contradiction as yardsticks to judge the relationship between a political strategy and a movement. On this basis it suggests that a strategy oriented to the development of counter-hegemony, conflict and popular mobilisation might come closest to being adequate to the existing movement. To develop an appropriate strategy and to make it happen are two different things, and the paper then goes on to try to think about the social construction of this kind of strategy. It does this by looking at the organisational frameworks, communicative structures and techniques of the self involved in building and sustaining a counter culture capable of taking such a direction, and examines some historical and contemporary models ("1968", 1980s movement scenes, and contemporary "cultures of resistance") for possible points of reference. It also asks the crucial question of who within the counter culture might find such a strategy attractive, what kind of movement it "constructs" and what its chances of internal success might be. The paper then tries to see where the current situation, and the strategy it argues for, fit within the longer history of transformative politics and movement politics. It suggests that there has been a revival from the late 1960s on of themes that were important on the radical left until the early 1920s, but were increasingly marginalised with the closure of organised capitalism and the collusion in mid-century of the mainstream left with organisation from above and taken-for-granted forms of social life. An important question within contemporary capitalism is how far the changed circumstances of weak states and contested everyday cultures, as well as the "movement legacy" of decommodified areas, offer space for such a strategy. The paper finishes by taking issue with the claim, made both by many on the neo-traditionalist left and its postmodern critics, that the critique of structural inequality and that of everyday routine are necessarily opposed to one another. It argues that relating the two has been a key part of the relationship between intellectuals and movements on the left since Marx and Morris, and that it is crucial for any attempt to transform social relationships to change both the structural arrangements they generate and the everyday routines which reproduce them. If a coherent and emancipatory alliance of the two critiques can be developed, it is worth serious attention, whether or not it appears in a form we find congenial.

Deconstructing the Rejection Letter: A Look at Elitism in Article Selection

Abstract: The authors examine the law review article selection process, suggesting unfair practices (elitism) in article acceptance. The authors conducted an empirical study to evaluate the article selection process, and concluded that the status of the author’s school, not necessarily the quality of the article, predominately affects article selection.

‘Jane’s Fighting Ships’: Persuasion as Cultural Critique

Abstract: According to Harold Bloom in his curiously pyrrhic victory of literary elitism, the aesthetic is uncontaminated with the ideological.1 One gathers that the ideological forms a low diet which can be fed to the troglodytes of cultural studies while the politics-free zone of high culture can be left to the initiated. (Curiously, he has some glowing pages on Persuasion which persuade us to share a sense of Persuasion’s ‘extraordinary aesthetic distinction’ (p. 254), a judgement which nothing that follows is intended to diminish or demean.)

Teching Down without Copping Out: Service-Learning as a Counter to Technological Elitism.

Abstract: Service-learning places students and educational institutions in direct contact with surrounding communities, teaches them greater appreciation for persons of different social privileges, and helps them to recognize the necessity of social intervention in distributing the benefits of democracy Service-learning is inherently democratizing by combating the separation of higher education from its beneficiaries, and by avoiding the social stratification that new technologies can bring Including a service component in education can offset the individualistic focus of technologized learning and encourages students to take responsibility for how they and their classmates learn Contains 5 references (EF) Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document ts, Minor changes have been made to improve reproduction quality Teching Down Without Copping Out: Service-Learning as a Counter to Technological Elitism Roy Schwartzman, PhD Assistant Professor of Speech Communication Department of Theatre, Speech, and Dance University of South Carolina Columbia, SC 29208 (803) 777-0055 office and fax docroy@mindspringcom Presented at the 85th Annual National Communication Association Convention 6 November 1999 Chicago, IL US DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION Office of Educational Fiesearch and Improvement EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC) This document has been reproduced as received from the person or organization originating it (2) vI o Points of view or opinions stated in this document do not necessarily represent official OERI position or policy C1) ST COPY MUM 2 1 PERMISSION TO REPRODUCE AND DISSEMINATE THIS MATERIAL HAS BEEN GRANTED BY

‘Who can we shoot?’ democratic Élitism, Marxism, and American progressivism

Abstract: (1999). ‘Who can we shoot?’ democratic Elitism, Marxism, and American progressivism. International Review of Sociology: Vol. 9, No. 2, pp. 183-195.