Showing papers on "Face (sociological concept) published in 1976"

On the Concept of Face

Abstract: The concept of face is clarified and distinguihed from other closely related constructs: authority, standards of behavior, personality, status, dignity, honor, and prestige. The claim to face may rest on the basis of status, whether ascribed or achieved, and on personal or nonpersonal factors; it may also vary according to the group with which a person is interacting. Basic differences are found between the processes involved in gaining versus losing face. While it is not a necessity for one to strive to gain face, losing face is a serious matter which will, in varying degrees, affect one's ability to function effectively in society. Face is lost when the individual, either through his action or that of people closely related to him, fails to meet essential requirements placed upon him by virtue of the social position he occupies. In contrast to the ideology of individualism, the question of face frequently arises beyond the realm of individual responsibility and subjective volition. Reciprocity is inhere...

Ethical responsibility in science in the face of uncertain consequences.

Abstract: Life is a gamble, as someone or other has noted. So, for that matter, is science. Until very recently, however, both the public and the profession assumed that the only real wager in science lay in the cost, time and effort necessary t o achieve empirical truth. Theories needed to be developed and experiments conducted; not all of them, or even most, would produce fruitful knowledge. But that was a risk that had t o be taken, so great was the general probability of beneficial results in the long run. Unfortunately, society now knows that the gamble of science is far more complicated than that supposed in the earlier model. Science can, directly and indirectly, produce useful knowledge and help improve the human lot. It can also, directly and indirectly, bring about great harm. Life should not play such dirty tricks o n us, but it does. Its nastiest piece of mischief is the price it makes us pay for the possession of power, especially the power of science. Without power (we like t o think) we are a t the mercy of nature and other human beings; we need power t o survive and prosper, whether in the family, in politics, o r in coping with the forces of natural chance and fate. Yet the perversity of things is such that the greater the power we possess, the greater are the hazards of also being possessed by it. We solve old problems only t o create new ones in the process, becoming ever more deeply entangled in dangerous paradoxes of our own making. How, then, are we t o possess power without being possessed by it? That is the larger and more fundamental question underlying the problem of ethical responsibility in science. The greater the power of science to intervene in nature, animate or inanimate, the greater the possibility of doing harm as well as good. The scientific community has been well-prepared t o take responsibility (and credit) for the benefits it bestows; and it is right that it should. But t o what extent should it be prepared to take equal responsibility (and blame) for the harm it can and does produce? That is a question that has never been faced squarely, either by the scientific profession or by the general public. The reasons often given for this omission have an initial plausibility: science is only a means of gaining knowledge, not of using it socially or politically; the uses made of science are usually well beyond the power of scientists to monitor or control; if the quest for scientific knowledge is to be condemned because some of that knowledge may be misused, then so must the quest for all knowledge. Moreover, if the scientist is t o be held accountable for results that neither he nor anyone else could have foreseen, then moral accountability for all human action becomes problematic. Who among us can know what all the consequences will be when we marry a wife, conceive a child, read a book, vote for a president, go out to dig in the garden or d o scientific research? Life, t o repeat, is a gamble. That is a powerful line of defense. But it will not do. Even in the relatively pedestrian cases mentioned above, we recognize some duties and responsibilities, even as we grant that no one can be held responsible for everything that might

The social democratic party of western germany: a study of a parliamentary party in the face of incipient dissensus

Abstract: The current Social Democratic Party caucus in the West German Bundestag is reputed to contain a left and right wing. The left wing is called the Leverkusener Kreis and the right wingers are labelled the Kanalarbeiter. Despite the alleged existence of the two wings, no major voting rebellion has occurred in the SPD caucus. We first attempted to determine whether wings do indeed exist in the Fraktion. Then we tried to ascertain why no rebellion has occurred by examining variables which should be related to the maintenance of caucus unity. Most of our data were derived from interviews of 2 8 SPD deputies. We were able to identify a left wing, with the re­ maining deputies in our sample probably belonging to the mainstream of the Fraktion. Out of the eight variables we examined, five were .able to help us account for the absence of rebellion. Through smallest space analysis and factor analysis we also discovered some clues as to why the left wing has not rebelled. The three variables which were not strongly asso­ ciated with the absence of open voting rebellion are: party versus individually oriented goals in seeking candidacy, role norms within the caucus concerning the binding

Political Powerlessness as Reality

Abstract: A sense of political alienation is certainly not unique to our era, as seen in the writings of the fifteenth-century French poet Deschamps. Many commentators on modern social life nevertheless view estrangement from power and politics as a fundamental and pervasive characteristic of all urban-industrial-bureaucratic societies: ‘Rarely before have men experienced such mass resignation before the forces of society, such a sense of distance from the sources of power, such defeatism in the face of an explosive world situation’ (Keniston, 1960).