scholarly journals C. Wright Mills’ The Sociological Imagination and the Construction of Talcott Parsons as a Conservative Grand Theorist

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Helmut Staubmann
Keyword(s):  
World View ◽  
Modern Society ◽  
Sociological Imagination ◽  
Power Relationships ◽  
Talcott Parsons ◽  
Political Issues ◽  
The Real ◽  
The Social ◽  
Adequate Evaluation ◽  
To Come

Abstract C. Wright Mills was one of the most important critics of Talcott Parsons who succeeded in establishing the image of Parsons as a conservative “grand theorist” out of touch with the real world and its real problems, as passed on in sociological textbooks. In this essay, it is argued that Mills’ “translation of Parsons into English” is a one-sided interpretation based on his own theoretical premises, which he called the sociological imagination. The way Mills conceptualized sociological imagination leans towards an ideological world-view with political ambitions but lacks the necessary theoretical differentiation for an adequate evaluation of Parsons’ general theory of action and the conceptualization of the social system in particular. Given Mills’ premises, it appeared to him as if Parsons could not deal with social conflict, social change, domination and power relationships, which laid the foundations of a narrative quite distinct from the “real” Parsons. The conceptual deficiencies of Mills’ sociological imagination lead into theoretical antinomies and the practical inability to resolve political issues outside of forceful intervention as suggested in the theoretical tradition of Thomas Hobbes. Independent of a political positioning, Parsons’ sophistications in his understanding of power as one of several generalized symbolic media of interaction beyond the Hobbesian utilitarian model are necessary to come to terms with the increased complexity of modern society, both in theoretical and in political terms.

Rome's marble yards

2001 ◽  
Vol 14 ◽  
pp. 167-198 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Clayton Fant
Keyword(s):  
Eastern Desert ◽  
Building Projects ◽  
The Real ◽  
The Social ◽  
Real Importance ◽  
To Come ◽  
Vast Network

By the death of Augustus, imperial building projects in Rome were being supplied by marble from Africa (Chemtou), Asia (Docimium), Egypt (various alabaster sources), Aegean Greece (Chios, Euboea, and Paros), Attica (Pentelikon), and from Luna (Carrara) in N Italy. A vast network of quarries in Egypt's Eastern Desert was already under development, and their granites and porphyry began to be seen at Rome in the middle of the Julio-Claudian era. By the Antonines, marble from Scyros, Thasos, Proconnesos, and Iasos was also arriving in Rome.Quantities in this period reached several thousand blocks per year. Relative to demand, was this a lot or a little? The Roman marble trade has always attracted attention because of the facilities and the organizational feats that brought so much exotic stone to the capital and thence outward, but the real importance of the answer lies in the use of marble. Whether marble was easy or hard to come by and what distinguished the grades and colors — even whether all grades and colors were available to customers up and down the social ladder — are prerequisite questions for understanding the choices open to imperial and private architects, to sculptors with great or humble commissions, and even to wall-painters with faux architecture to apply to a wall.

scholarly journals Don Quixote and the social system: Interpreting Ronald Laing’s concept of ontological insecurity from Alfred Schütz’ and Talcott Parsons’ theories of social action

2019 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 191-207
Author(s):  
Christopher Schlembach
Keyword(s):  
Social Action ◽  
Social System ◽  
Theoretical Perspective ◽  
Modern Society ◽  
Don Quixote ◽  
Alfred Schutz ◽  
Talcott Parsons ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Social ◽  
Alfred Schütz

Alfred Schütz and Talcott Parsons, two towering authorities of Weberian social thought are rarely interpreted in the same theoretical perspective (with the exception of Harold Garfinkel). This article intends to show that Schütz’s later writings about the constitution of social reality in the pluralized and differentiated modern society and Parsons’s concept of the social system converge with reference to their common problem of understanding interaction. In this article, I use Ronald Laing’s psychiatric thought of the early 1960s as a starting point to discuss some of the points of intersection between Schütz and Parsons. Laing argued that psychosis is not a phenomenon of the individual mind. Rather it must be understood in terms of an interaction system that is constituted by doctor and patient. The patient cannot maintain ego borders strong enough to establish a role-based social relationship and feels ontologically insecure. It is necessary to understand the patient in his existential position which constitutes his self as a kind of role. Schütz and Parsons reflected on similar interaction systems. Schütz analyzed the little social system that is established between Don Quixote and Sancho Panza; Parsons addressed the social system between doctor and patient. It is argued that Schütz and Parsons analyzed the conditions under which a social system can be established, but they also look at its breakdown leading to the situation as described by Laing.

‘Dishonourable’ youth, guilds, and the changed world view of sex, illegitimacy, and women in late-sixteenth-century Germany

2003 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 345-372 ◽  
Author(s):  
MARIA R. BOES
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
World View ◽  
Unwed Mothers ◽  
The Social ◽  
To Come

This study focuses on two closely related exclusionary guild policies implemented in Germany towards the latter part of the sixteenth century: the barring of illegitimates and women. The article addresses the reasons for and, more importantly, the repercussions of these exclusions, which affected many cultural and mentality patterns and led to the social and psychological scarring of illegitimates and their unwed mothers for centuries to come.

scholarly journals Formation of sociological imagination in students of technical institutions in education in the process of teaching sociology

2021 ◽  
pp. 17-22
Author(s):  
L. Lipich ◽  
O. Balagura
Keyword(s):  
Social Problems ◽  
Modern Society ◽  
Social World ◽  
Social Processes ◽  
Sociological Imagination ◽  
Educational Institutions ◽  
Teaching Sociology ◽  
Educational Role ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Status

The article is devoted to the problem of formation of sociological imagination in the process of teaching sociology to students studying in technical educational institutions. The concept of “sociological imagination”, introduced into scientific circulation by the American sociologist Wright Mills, is being clarified. It turns out that the concept of sociological imagination has acquired the status of one of the main in modern sociology and began to play an important educational role, and in sociological science, respectively, methodological and methodological. Attention is paid to the peculiarities of teaching sociology in technical educational institutions, and in view of this, the problem of forming the sociological imagination of students. The fact is that sociology in technical educational institutions is not professional, so it is taught exclusively as a general discipline of worldview. The purpose of teaching sociology in such higher education institutions is to promote the formation of students’ sociological imagination, ie to help future specialists in engineering to develop the ability to think socially, ie to adequately perceive, comprehend and interpret social processes and phenomena, analyze and be ready to solve complex social problems. The solution of this problem involves the use of such methods of teaching sociology, which would be related to the specific practices of modern society, taking into account the universal and professional interests of future professionals. The own experience of teaching sociology at the National Transport University is analyzed. There are examples of using different methods of teaching sociology, aimed at forming a sociological imagination that allow students to perceive the social world around them and relate their professional problems with general social problems, educate and shape their civic position and increase their general cultural level.

scholarly journals SPEECH PECULIARITIES OF YOUNG UZBEK MOTHERS

2021 ◽  
pp. 107-117
Keyword(s):  
Social Role ◽  
World View ◽  
Modern Society ◽  
Social Needs ◽  
Young Mothers ◽  
Research Material ◽  
Child Interaction ◽  
The People ◽  
The Social

Phenomena of motherhood is an independent existential value, as far as it satisfies social needs, that is an aspiration of individuals for selfactualization, descendant realization, the desire to leave a fully lived life. A notion of language personality is of concern which is different from the functional viewpoints of speech and communicative personalities. Motherhood changes both a female personality structure touching upon her motivational component, world-view, and her social status in the community, therefore, self-appraisal, her own image defines a woman’s language personality in the social role of a mother. Important features of a child's normal mental development are his/her speech, vocabulary and mastery of grammatical features. According to the specific features of speech, a person can display not only the external and perceptual properties of objects but also the ability to reflect internal, important interactions and relationships. A child's speech develops only as a result of interaction with the people around him/her, in which a mother is a key figure in this relationship. This article is devoted to the study of the peculiarities of speech of the Uzbek young mothers. The study examines the lexical and communicative properties of the Uzbek mothers of various social statuses and ages. The study includes an introduction that describes the concept of motherhood in modern society based on researches devoted to the study of the same context and methodology. In addition, the results and analyses of this article are illustrated with statistical diagrams and examples. The research material was an anonymous social questionnaire to study the sociolinguistic analysis of mothers' speech behavior in modern society. The purpose of the study is to analyze and compare a mother-child interaction ways in the young mothers’ examples. The analysis shows that mothers at a young age and various statuses use different words of address towards a child. In addition, the study explores the concept of motherhood and communicative features of mother's speech in the social role of motherhood.

scholarly journals Adichie’s Thematic Construction of a Post-Colonial Nigerian Nation-State in Two Excerpts from Her Purple Hibiscus: An Experiential Meaning Scrutiny

2018 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 81-90
Author(s):  
Daniel T. Yokossi ◽  
Léonard A. Koussouhon
Keyword(s):  
English Language ◽  
Systemic Functional Linguistics ◽  
World View ◽  
Political Issues ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Functional Linguistics ◽  
The Social ◽  
Verbal Processes ◽  
Insight Into ◽  
Experiential Meaning

Abstract This article digs into Adichie’s world view of the post-colonial Nigeria via her use of the English language in two extracts culled from her Purple Hibiscus. To go into details, the study examines how Adichie makes use of particular types of transitivity patterns to weave into her text her thematic construction of Nigeria after independence. To this end, the Experiential Meaning has been used as a theoretical lens given that the exploration of the transitivity properties in/of a text can provide a full insight into how the writer encodes his/her experience of the world therein as advocated by Systemic Functional Linguistics scholars like Halliday (1971/1976), and his followers Hassan (1985/1989), Eggins (2004), and Matthiessen (2004/2006). As a matter of fact, the study offers a linguistic analysis of the selected extracts, a summary of the findings, and the ensuing interpretation. Actually, the interpretation of the findings has revealed that Adichie has encoded tremendous meanings through her outstanding use of such process types as material, mental and verbal processes. The distribution of these key processes in the analyzed extracts per participant has also highlighted both some of the author's key characters and to what extent these latter ones embody her perceptions of the social, religious and political issues that she artistically tries to castigate in her novel under examination. The study ultimately opens up to further explorations embracing such other fields of the Systemic Functional Linguistics as the interpersonal and textual meanings.

Conclusion

1989 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marjorie Lamberti
Keyword(s):  
School Reform ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Modern Society ◽  
The Political ◽  
Ministry Of Education ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
Political Conflicts ◽  
The Social ◽  
To Come

In the imperial era schoolteachers and left-wing liberals in Prussia viewed the confessional school under the supervision of school inspectors who were clergymen as an anachronism in a modern society. Its survival defied their expectation that demographic mobility and urbanization would increase the confessional mixture of the school enrollments and disproved their contention that the imperatives of national and social integration should make interconfessional schooling the goal of every modern state. Disheartened and demoralized after years of striving in vain to achieve their pedagogic ideal, the leaders of the Prussian Teachers’ Association could not easily admit or accept the reasons for their failure. After the enactment of the school law of 1906, they contrived an explanation—“they wanted to fight Social Democracy through the law”—that obscured their inability to influence public opinion and the programs of the major parties and obviated a more probing investigation of why the political conflicts over the school question stretching over half a century ended with a law that made confessional schooling the rule. The alarm of the governing class over the growth of the Social Democratic party affected the fate of school reform in Prussia far less than the experience of introducing the changes at the height of a religiopolitical conflict that deepened the divisions within the nation. The circumstances in which the interconfessional schools were opened in the 1870s gave them the reputation of being a “Kulturkampf institution” and this unfortunate association of school reform with Kulturkampf politics remained in the consciousness of both Catholics and Protestants for years to come. Although the Ministry of Education under Adalbert Falk formulated a moderate and prudent policy for establishing interconfessional schools gradually with some consideration to the pedagogic benefits of the innovation, the liberals who agitated for the reform and the city officials who introduced it were more radical and were motivated by political objectives as well as by educational interests. The campaign for school reform became entangled in the political battle that zealous Kulturkdmpfer waged against the Catholic church and the Center party. The introduction of interconfessional schooling did not have popular consent.

Digital sets: power and subjectivity in the era of new media

2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-36
Author(s):  
Artem Feigelman
Keyword(s):  
New Media ◽  
Social Dynamics ◽  
Modern Society ◽  
The Real ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Moment ◽  
Antonio Negri ◽  
Digital Footprints

This paper is a reply to Evgeniy Maslanov’s article “Challenges of Digitalization for Technogenic Civilization”. Emphasizing the total impact of digitalization on modern society, the author tends to agree with E. Maslanov that at the moment human existence is proceeding in a hybrid mode, for which the “real-virtual” dichotomy seems irrelevant. Being in this mode, a person leaves a digital footprint on the network, which forms her or his digital identity. The latter turns out to be “transparent”, vulnerable to instrumental influence from outside. Digital footprints are totalized into gigantic amounts of big data that can be used for social manipulation, as evidenced by the Cambridge Analytica case study. The manipulative activity of Cambridge Analytica fits into the context of the post-truth policy, which tends to ignore the facts in favor of false information that brings pragmatic benefits to the subject of the statement. This article argues that the complexity of social dynamics characteristic of the digital age is balanced by new means of description and analysis that enable us to better understand and navigate modernity. Nevertheless, a total description and thus stabilization of social reality seems impossible, given its advantageously network nature. The flip side of digitalization includes increased control within labor relations, blurring the boundaries between work and home as blurring the distinction between the “real” and the virtual. Along with it, the digital space is becoming a space of emancipation, where individuals-singularities form sets freed from violent unity (in the terms of Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri). The multitudes unfold their subjectivity in opposition to the social system, to which they oppose networked col-lective action and solidarity. The article concludes about the dialectical role of digitalization, which can serve as both a means of control and a means of emancipation. Thus, the challenges of digitalization seem not so much a technological call as a social one.

scholarly journals Pendidikan Demokrasi, Persaudaraan, dan Persatuan Indonesia dalam terang Dokumen Persaudaraan Manusia (2019)

MELINTAS ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 35 (3) ◽  
pp. 279-300
Author(s):  
Konstantinus Frederikus Jawa
Keyword(s):  
Young People ◽  
Values Education ◽  
Social Situations ◽  
The Real ◽  
Building Process ◽  
The Social ◽  
Personal Resilience ◽  
To Come ◽  
Character Building ◽  
Scientific Achievements

Education is a medium to bring people towards enlightenment. Education is meant to foster students or young people to be able to embrace life with maturity in faith, personal resilience, and sensitivity to social situations, especially changes that happen today. The spirit of national democracy in Indonesia can be realised through values education in schools so that these become material for a character building process. Values internalised in the education comprise of respect, care, acceptance, solidarity, appreciation, and sensitivity to the suffering of others. In being compassionate to the suffering others, students are called to come out of their comfort zones and to get involved with people who suffer and are in need, especially those who are victims of injustice due to the system in the society. The cultivation of human compassion can be carried on by promoting fraternity, that is, through the real encounters with people of different backgrounds, religions, races, and ethnicities. Building human fraternity in education asks that students are fostered to exercise dialogue of life and are given opportunities to encounter others in living communication. Through the real encounters, they may sense the actual changes in the social reality so that education is not limited to scientific achievements, but touches their affective and psychomotor aspects as well.

Biography after the End of Metaphysics: A Critique of Epigenetic Evolution

1986 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 189-204 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Novak
Keyword(s):  
Ego Development ◽  
World View ◽  
Modern Society ◽  
Cultural Critique ◽  
Modern Culture ◽  
Cultural Setting ◽  
Psychological Analysis ◽  
The Social ◽  
Original Insight ◽  
The Relationship

This article places Erik Erikson's model of ego development against the ground of modern culture. It finds that this model fails to see the relationship between individual crises and the modern postmetaphysical world view, where the meaning of life is in question. The article suggests that Erikson's description of crisis and ego integration remains sound, but that this process should be tied to the specific problems associated with living in modern society. The article ends by returning to Erikson's original insight: that we need to locate the life cycle in the social-cultural setting in which it unfolds. This will make the study of biography at once a psychological analysis and a cultural critique.

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