Postmodernism and the Crisis of the Intellectual: Reflections on Reflexivity, Universities, and the Scientific Field

1996 ◽  
Vol 14 (5) ◽  
pp. 507-527 ◽  
Author(s):  
Keith Bassett
Keyword(s):  
Scientific Field ◽  
Contemporary Society ◽  
Social Category ◽  
Universal Class ◽  
Social Responsibilities ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Social ◽  
Reflexive Sociology ◽  
Grand Vision

In this paper the author takes up the issue of the social responsibilities of academics, raised in recent articles in this journal, through a discussion of the crises facing contemporary intellectuals. The paper begins with a plea for a reflexive sociology of intellectuals, and after a brief review of early debates on the role of intellectuals, the author concentrates on Gouldner's grand vision of intellectuals as a ‘flawed universal class’. In the next section the forces that have undermined such grand visions in the past few decades, precipitating the current crises, are discussed. The author then categorises a range of positions that have been recently developed to justify some continuing role for intellectuals as a social category in contemporary society. This discussion leads on to a focus on the work of Bourdieu, which seems to the author to offer the most productive framework for thinking about these issues. But in the last section he raises a number of problems that might be tackled through the incorporation of some feminist approaches.

scholarly journals Play! A Special Issue

Sexualities ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 136346072110136
Author(s):  
Caroline Bem ◽  
Susanna Paasonen
Keyword(s):  
Video Games ◽  
Sexual Pleasure ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Sexuality Studies ◽  
The Past ◽  
Sexual Representation ◽  
The Social ◽  
Sexual Play ◽  
Sex Toys

Sexuality, as it relates to video games in particular, has received increasing attention over the past decade in studies of games and play, even as the notion of play remains relatively underexplored within sexuality studies. This special issue asks what shift is effected when sexual representation, networked forms of connecting and relating, and the experimentation with sexual likes are approached through the notion of play. Bringing together the notions of sex and play, it both foregrounds the role of experimentation and improvisation in sexual pleasure practices and inquires after the rules and norms that these are embedded in. Contributors to this special issue combine the study of sexuality with diverse theoretical conceptions of play in order to explore the entanglements of affect, cognition, and the somatic in sexual lives, broadening current understandings of how these are lived through repetitive routines and improvisational sprees alike. In so doing, they focus on the specific sites and scenes where sexual play unfolds (from constantly morphing online pornographic archives to on- and offline party spaces, dungeons, and saunas), while also attending to the props and objects of play (from sex toys and orgasmic vocalizations to sensation-enhancing chemicals and pornographic imageries), as well as the social and technological settings where these activities occur. This introduction offers a brief overview of the rationale of thinking sex in and as play, before presenting the articles that make up this special issue.

scholarly journals Malaysia’s Vision 2020 and the Role of leadership in Economic Development

2017 ◽  
Vol 13 (8) ◽  
pp. 49
Author(s):  
Mahmoud Safy Mahmoud ◽  
Hoda Mitkees
Keyword(s):  
National Development ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Social Aspects ◽  
Vision 2020 ◽  
New Economic Policy ◽  
Developed Country ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Social ◽  
Economic Growth Rates

Malaysia has adopted several developmental plans since 1969 starting with the New Economic Policy (NEP), passing by the National Development Plan (NDP) and ending with the Vision 2020 adopted in 1991 under the rule of Mahathir Mohammed (1981-2003), whereby Malaysia has aimed to become a developed country by 2020. Looking for the future, Malaysia 2020 should build upon the older developmental plans; however there are some new elements that need to be considered if Malaysia is to continue on its successful developmental path. This paper aims at focusing on the issues that still need to be considered in Vision 2020 from an outsider point of view. This paper addresses the questions of what Malaysia’s economic plans adopted in the past which were able to achieve high economic growth rates while preserving at the same time the social aspects. And the paper focuses on trade policy in Malaysia under Mahathir rule, identifying how was it shaped and how likely it will continue in 2020. The paper identifies the challenges likely to be faced by Malaysia in the coming period and how such issues should be tackled in Vision 2020.

scholarly journals Indestructible Pasts and Paranoid Presents: John Franzen against Active Forgetting in Purity

2019 ◽  
pp. 21-34
Author(s):  
Cristina Garrigós
Keyword(s):  
Traumatic Event ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Contemporary Society ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Past ◽  
Personal Archives ◽  
Conscious Process ◽  
Unconscious Desire ◽  
Selection Of

Forgetting and remembering are as inevitably linked as lifeand death. Sometimes, forgetting is motivated by a biological disorder, brain damage, or it is the product of an unconscious desire derived from a traumatic event (psychological repression). But in some cases, we can motivate forgetting consciously (thought suppression). It is through the conscious repression of memories that we can find self-preservation and move forward, although this means that we create a fable of our lives, as Nietzsche says in his essay “On the Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life” (1997). In Jonathan Franzen’s novel, Purity (2015), forgetting is an active and conscious process by which the characters choose to forget certain episodes of their lives to be able to construct new identities. The erased memories include murder, economical privileges derived from illegal or unethical commercial processes, or dark sexual episodes. The obsession with forgetting the past links the lives of the main characters, and structures the narrative of the novel. The motivated erasure of memories becomes, thus, a way that the characters have to survive and face the present according to a (fake) narrative that they have constructed. But is motivated forgetting possible? Can one completely suppress facts in an active way? This paper analyses the role of forgetting in Franzen’s novel in relation to the need in our contemporary society to deny, hide, or erase uncomfortable data from our historical or personal archives; the need to make disappear stories which we do not want to accept, recognize, and much less make known to the public. This is related to how we manage information in the age of technology, the “selection” of what is to be the official story, and how we rewrite our own history

scholarly journals Designing the social estate of odnodvortsy of the western provinces in 1831

2017 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 135-140
Author(s):  
Constantin Vadimovich Troianowski
Keyword(s):  
19Th Century ◽  
Legal Status ◽  
Social Hierarchy ◽  
Social Category ◽  
The Past ◽  
Imperial Russia ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Right ◽  
The 19Th Century

This article investigates the process of designing of the new social estate in imperial Russia - odnodvortsy of the western provinces. This social category was designed specifically for those petty szlachta who did not possess documents to prove their noble ancestry and status. The author analyses deliberations on the subject that took place in the Committee for the Western Provinces. The author focuses on the argument between senior imperial officials and the Grodno governor Mikhail Muraviev on the issue of registering petty szlachta in fiscal rolls. Muraviev argued against setting up a special fiscal-administrative category for petty szlachta suggesting that its members should join the already existing unprivileged categories of peasants and burgers. Because this proposal ran against the established fiscal practices, the Committee opted for creating a distinct social estate for petty szlachta. The existing social estate paradigm in Russia pre-assigned the location of the new soslovie in the imperial social hierarchy. Western odnodvortsy were to be included into a broad legal status category of the free inhabitants. Despite similarity of the name, the new estate was not modeled on the odnodvortsy of the Russian provinces because they retained from the past certain privileges (e.g. the right to possess serfs) that did not correspond to the 19th century attributes of unprivileged social estates.

scholarly journals MUSEUMS, MIGRATION AND CULTURAL DIVERSITY – RECOMMENDATIONS FOR MUSEUM WORK

Muzealnictwo ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 58 (1) ◽  
pp. 84-92 ◽  
Author(s):  
Margherita Sani
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Institutions ◽  
European Level ◽  
Social Responsibilities ◽  
The Social ◽  
Migration Flows ◽  
Methodological Approaches ◽  
Theoretical Issues ◽  
Effective Integration ◽  
The Eu

The role of museums in society has expanded significantly in the last decades: from temples of knowledge to forums for debate and discussion, from repositories of objects to people-centred institutions with social responsibilities and functions. This shift reflects an ongoing trend to democratise museums and make them more accessible to wider audiences and responsive to the public’s changing needs, in particular the interests of local communities, whose composition has changed in recent years to include migrants and people of different ethnic backgrounds. With annual migration flows to the EU as a whole projected to increase from about 1 043 000 people in 2010 to 1 332 500 by 2020, the question of how cultural institutions can contribute to effective integration and dialogue has become more relevant than ever. Funders and society at large expect museums to play their part in facilitating the integration and peaceful coexistence of newcomers, with financial resources being made available, also at the EU level, to support them in this effort. Many questions can be raised as to whether it is right and appropriate to charge museums with these responsibilities and whether this would push the boundaries of their work too far and give the social function an exceedingly prominent role over the traditional conservation and educational tasks museums already fulfil. But this discussion seems to be already obsolete in the light of the growing body of evidence on good practices available at the European level. This essay aims to illustrate some of them, as well as to discuss some underpinning theoretical issues and methodological approaches.

scholarly journals Rola języka w uwalnianiu się z dziedzicznych traum

Politeja ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (2(65)) ◽  
pp. 189-204
Author(s):  
Katarzyna Marcol
Keyword(s):  
Collective Memory ◽  
Cultural Memory ◽  
Social Position ◽  
Traumatic Experiences ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
The 19Th Century ◽  
The Village

The Role of Language in Releasing from Inherited Traumas. Negotiations of the Social Position of the Silesian Minority in Serbian Banat The aim of the paper is to show the dependence between language, collective memory (also post-memory) and sense of identity. This issue is analysed using the example of an ethnic minority living in the village of Ostojićevo (Banat, Serbia) called ‘Toutowie.’ Their ancestors came in the 19th century from Wisła (Silesian Cieszyn, Poland); they left their homes because of great hunger and were looking for jobs in Banat. Narratives about the past contain traumatic experiences of the past generations transmitted in the Silesian dialect and constituting communicative memory. At the same time, a new Polish national identity is being constructed, supported by institutions and authorities; it carries a new image of the world and creates a new cultural memory. This new identity – shaped on the basis of national categories – leads to changes of its self-identification and gives the opportunity to raise its social position in the multi-ethnic Banat community.

Paul and the Author of 1 Clement as Entrepreneurs of Identity in Corinthian Crises of Leadership

2021 ◽  
pp. 0142064X2110647
Author(s):  
Katja Kujanpää
Keyword(s):  
Social Identity ◽  
Identity Construction ◽  
Active Role ◽  
Social Psychological ◽  
The Past ◽  
Psychological Theories ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Identity Approach

When Paul and the author of 1 Clement write letters to Corinth to address crises of leadership, both discuss Moses’ παρρησία (frankness and openness), yet they evaluate it rather differently. In this article, I view both authors as entrepreneurs of identity and explore the ways in which they try to shape their audience’s social identity and influence their behaviour in the crisis by selectively retelling scriptural narratives related to Moses. The article shows that social psychological theories under the umbrella term of the social identity approach help to illuminate the active role of leaders in identity construction as well as the processes of retelling the past in order to mobilize one’s audience.

Conclusion

2018 ◽  
pp. 189-206
Author(s):  
Michael P. Roller
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Social Control ◽  
Everyday Life ◽  
Symbolic Violence ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Social ◽  
Semiotic Systems ◽  
Oppressed Group

The conclusion revisits the three major inquiries addressed in the text, drawing together the evidence and contexts provided in the previous seven chapters. The first investigates the role of objective settings, such as the systemic and symbolic violence of landscapes and semiotic systems of racialization in justifying or triggering moments of explicit subjective violence such as the Lattimer Massacre. The second inquiry, traces the trajectory of immigrant groups into contemporary patriotic neoliberal subjects. In other terms, it asks how an oppressed group can become complicit with oppression later in history. The third inquiry traces the development of soft forms of social control and coercion across the longue durée of the twentieth century. Specifically, it asks how vertically integrated economic and governmental structures such as neoliberalism and governmentality which serve to stabilize the social antagonisms of the past are enunciated in everyday life.

scholarly journals L’entrepreneur social, une catégorie émergeante au Québec

2018 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mélanie Claude ◽  
Stéphanie Gaudet
Keyword(s):  
Social Services ◽  
The State ◽  
Social Entrepreneur ◽  
Social Category ◽  
Social Responsibilities ◽  
The Social ◽  
Services Sociaux ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Institutional Actors ◽  
The Way

Cet article pose un regard critique sur la catégorie de l’entrepreneur social présente dans le paysage socioéconomique québécois contemporain. L’objectif est de comprendre comment les processus de formalisation et d’informalisation de l’État participent à la construction de cette catégorie sociale. Pour ce faire, nous établissons quatre périodicités des dynamiques d’informalisation des services sociaux de l’État depuis les années 1960. Ces dynamiques ouvrent la voie à une ambiguïté grandissante du partage des responsabilités sociales. Ce mouvement d’informalisation cependant n’est ni unidirectionnel ni unidimensionnel. Nous expliquons qu’il s’agit de changements dans des dynamiques de partage de pouvoirs entre les sphères du marché et du communautaire que tente de réguler l’État. Ceux-ci bénéficient à certains acteurs institutionnels et ouvrent la voie à une nouvelle catégorie sociale elle-même empreinte d’ambiguïté : l’entrepreneur social.This article takes a critical look at the category of “social entrepreneur” present in the socioeconomic realm of contemporary Québec. Its objective is to understand how State processes of formalization and informalization contribute to the construction of such a social category. To that end, we describe four consecutive periods in the informalization of social services by the State since the 1960s. These four periods, as they unfold, contribute to an increasing ambiguity regarding how social responsibilities are to be shared. This process of informalization, however, is neither one-directional nor onedimensional. In our article, we observe that it reflects fluctuations in power between market and community that the State has been trying to regulate. These fluctuations benefit certain institutional actors and pave the way for a new, somewhat ambiguous, social category, that of the social entrepreneur.

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