Towards a Notion of the Ideological Unconscious: Marx, Althusser, Juan Carlos Rodríguez

2017 ◽  
Vol 25 (4) ◽  
pp. 139-165
Author(s):  
Malcolm K. Read
Keyword(s):  
Present Article ◽  
Economic Crisis ◽  
Matrix Effect ◽  
Social Formation ◽  
Louis Althusser ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Matrix ◽  
History Of ◽  
To Come

Abstract In the context of the recent economic crisis, scholars have once again felt compelled to revisit the work of Louis Althusser, to reconsider some of his seminal insights, if only to repeat earlier criticisms. Regretfully, however, they remain unable to come to terms with the crucial Althusserian notion of ideological unconsciousness, which they insist on viewing through the prism of the libidinal (Lacanian) unconscious. Perforce, the latter concept, and its associated categories, has then proceeded insidiously to corrode Marxism’s indigenous equivalents from within. The present article traces the history of the ideological unconscious from its beginnings in Marx, through Althusser, to its explicit reformulation, in the work of the Spaniard, Juan Carlos Rodríguez, as an ideological unconscious, understood as the matrix effect of the social formation.

Conclusion

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefan Winter
Keyword(s):  
Middle Eastern ◽  
Rich Diversity ◽  
The Social ◽  
Local Contexts ◽  
History Of ◽  
Religious Oppression ◽  
The Rich ◽  
To Come

This concluding chapter summarizes key themes and presents some final thoughts. The book has shown that the multiplicity of lived ʻAlawi experiences cannot be reduced to the sole question of religion or framed within a monolithic narrative of persecution; that the very attempt to outline a single coherent history of “the ʻAlawis” may indeed be misguided. The sources on which this study has drawn are considerably more accessible, and the social and administrative realities they reflect consistently more mundane and disjointed, than the discourse of the ʻAlawis' supposed exceptionalism would lead one to believe. Therefore, the challenge for historians of ʻAlawi society in Syria and elsewhere is not to use the specific events and structures these sources detail to merely add to the already existing metanarratives of religious oppression, Ottoman misrule, and national resistance but rather to come to a newer and more intricate understanding of that community, and its place in wider Middle Eastern society, by investigating the lives of individual ʻAlawi (and other) actors within the rich diversity of local contexts these sources reveal.

Urban Change in Early Medieval Italy: The Example of Pavia

1966 ◽  
Vol 34 ◽  
pp. 82-130 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. A. Bullough
Keyword(s):  
Present Article ◽  
Social History ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Early Medieval ◽  
Medieval Studies ◽  
Medieval Italy ◽  
Warm Hospitality ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
The City

Prefatory Note.—My interest in Pavia goes back at least to 1951 when I was elected Rome Scholar in Medieval Studies. I began seriously to collect material for the history of the city in the early Middle Ages in the winter and spring of 1953 when I enjoyed the warm hospitality of the Collegio Ghislieri, thanks to the efforts made on my behalf by the late Hugh Last, to whose memory this article is dedicated. The published proceedings of the Reichenau and Spoleto congresses on ‘The early medieval town’ in the 1950s clearly underlined the need for detailed studies of particular towns; but the lack of adequate archaeological evidence discouraged me from attempting such a study of early medieval Pavia. In 1964, however, Dr. A. Peroni, Director of the Museo Civico invited me to read a supplementary paper on this topic to the Convegno di Studio sul Centro Storico di Pavia held in the Università degli Studi at Pavia on July 4th and 5th of that year. The present article is an amplified and corrected version of that paper: I have made no substantial alterations to my account of the ‘urbanistica’ of early medieval Pavia—written for an audience of architects and art-historians as well as of historians—but have dealt more fully with the social history of the city in this period. Professor Richard Krautheimer read a draft of the revised version and made some pointed and helpful comments. I am greatly indebted to Dr. Peroni, not merely for the invitation to present the original paper but also for supplying illustrations and answering queries at a time when he and his staff were engaged in helping to repair the ravages of the Florence floods.

THE DYNAMICS OF FIELDWORK AMONG THE TALENSI: MEYER FORTES IN NORTHERN GHANA, 1934–7

Africa ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 83 (4) ◽  
pp. 623-645 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Parker
Keyword(s):  
Social Life ◽  
Northern Ghana ◽  
Political Landscape ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Field Notes ◽  
To Come ◽  
The One ◽  
Social Anthropologist ◽  
Complex Characters

ABSTRACTThis article examines the encounter between the social anthropologist Meyer Fortes and his wife Sonia, on the one hand, and the Talensi people of northern Ghana, on the other, in the years 1934–7. Based in large part on the Forteses’ extensive corpus of recently archived field notes, diaries and other papers, it argues that the quotidian dynamics of that encounter were in many ways quite different from those of Talensi social life as enshrined in Meyer's famous published monographs. Far from entering a timeless world of enduring clanship and kinship, the Forteses grappled with a society struggling to come to terms with the forces of colonial change. The focus is on the couple's shifting relationship with two dominant figures in the local political landscape in the 1930s:TongranaNambiong, the leading Talensi chief and their host in the settlement of Tongo, andGolibdaanaTengol, a wealthy ritual entrepreneur who dominated access on the part of ‘stranger’ pilgrims to the principal oracular shrine in the adjacent Tong Hills. These two bitter rivals were, by local standards, commanding figures – yet both emerge as psychologically complex characters riddled with anxiety, unease and self-doubt. The ethnographic archive is thereby shown to offer the possibility of a more intimate history of the interior lives of non-literate African peoples on remote colonial frontiers who often passed under the radar of the state and its documentary regime.

Pomoc jako wartość w historii języka polskiego

Język Polski ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 101 (1) ◽  
pp. 96-109
Author(s):  
Beata Raszewska-Żurek
Keyword(s):  
Present Article ◽  
Modern Times ◽  
Social Concept ◽  
Continuity And Change ◽  
Common Heritage ◽  
A Value ◽  
Spiritual Culture ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Polish Language

The present article analyses the evaluation of the social concept pomoc (help) from the Old Polish period until the modern times. Contemporarily pomoc expressed by the lexeme pomoc (‘help’) is positively marked in terms of axiology, which manifests itself e.g. in the collocations potrzebować pomocy ‘to require help/assis-tance’, dziękować za pomoc ‘to thank for help’, and above all – warto pomagać ‘it is worthwhile to help’. An integral part of spiritual culture, values constitute an important common heritage, and their understanding throughout centuries is characterised by both continuity and change, which is reflected in the language in which values are referred to and spoken about. The purpose of the present article is to establish whether and when help began to be recognised as a value or whether its evaluation underwent change during the course of more than six centuries. The analysis covered the contextual instances of the usage of the lexeme pomoc(the principal exponent of the concept pomoc) in the history of the Polish language in pursuit of those ele-ments of utterances which indicate the evaluation of the concept – combinations featuring the names of other values, axiologically marked adjectives or metaphorical approaches. On the basis of an analysis of the usage of the lexeme pomoc one may state that since the earliest times pomoc has been considered a value and that this is still the case, and the changes of its evaluation are slight. Therefore, this entity is universal in nature.

Hasidism Reappraised

1996 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Social History ◽  
Jewish History ◽  
Social Functions ◽  
The Social ◽  
Modern Jewish History ◽  
History Of ◽  
Intellectual Context ◽  
Extensive Introduction ◽  
State Of Research ◽  
To Come

Hasidism has been a seminal force and source of controversy in the Jewish world since its inception in the second half of the eighteenth century. Indeed, almost every ideological trend that has made itself felt among Jews since that time has claimed to have derived some inspiration from this vibrant movement. While this is sure testimony to its vitality and originality, it has also given rise to many misconceptions as to what hasidism is about. This book offers a wide-ranging treatment of the subject in all its aspects. The book encompasses a complete field of modern scholarship in a discipline that is central to the understanding of modern Jewish history and the contemporary Jewish world. The book is dedicated to the memory of Joseph Weiss, and its opening section assesses his contribution to the study of hasidism in the context of his relationship with Gershom Scholem and Scholem's long-standing influence on the field. The remaining chapters are arranged thematically under seven headings: the social history of hasidism; the social functions of mystical ideals in the hasidic movement; distinctive outlooks and schools of thought within hasidism; the hasidic tale; the history of hasidic historiography; contemporary hasidism; and the present state of research on hasidism. The book also incorporates an extensive introduction that places the various articles in their intellectual context, as well as a bibliography of hasidic sources and contemporary scholarly literature. It shows an intellectual world at an important juncture in its development and points to the direction in which scholarly study of hasidism is likely to develop in the years to come.

State and Society, Marriage and Adultery: Some Considerations Towards a Social History of Pre-Colonial Asante

1981 ◽  
Vol 22 (4) ◽  
pp. 477-494 ◽  
Author(s):  
T. C. McCaskie
Keyword(s):  
Social History ◽  
Small Sample ◽  
The State ◽  
Social Formation ◽  
The Social ◽  
State And Society ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Republic ◽  
Compensatory Damages ◽  
Relations Of Power

The present paper is one of a series of essays in the social history of the West African forest kingdom of Asante (presently situated in the Republic of Ghana). It concentrates on an examination of the phenomena of marriage and adultery in the Asante past, and it seeks to locate the fundamental subject of relations between the sexes within the broader framework of the superordinate relationship between the state and the social formation. Anthropological and historical work on Asante is reviewed in the light of these concerns, and an attempt is made to identify and to describe some of the crucial concepts and imperatives embedded in the ideology of the state. The argument is adduced throughout that the state was interventionist in relation to the social formation, and that it was the state that simultaneously defined the rules making for differentiation and presided over (and monitored) the rewards and penalties surrounding this process. The accumulation (the consumption) of women is interpreted as being one strand in the economics of power and differentiation; similarly, compensatory damages for adultery (ayɛfere sika) and the phenomenon of ‘child marriage’ (ɔyere akoda) are interpreted as indicators of the relations of power between men. The paper concludes with the presentation of a small sample of career histories; these are intended to convey some idea of the interventionist power of the state in peoples' lives. Underlying and informing the detailed matter of the paper is a general concern with the understanding of ideology and thought – an exercise in reconstruction that is a sine qua non for the writing of Asante (and African) social history.

The Economics of Authoritarianism in North Africa

2014 ◽  
pp. 674-688
Author(s):  
Raj M. Desai ◽  
Anders Olofsgård ◽  
Tarik M. Yousef
Keyword(s):  
North Africa ◽  
Economic History ◽  
Policy Mix ◽  
North African ◽  
Origin And Evolution ◽  
Social Contracts ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Fiscal Austerity ◽  
To Come

This chapter examines the origin and evolution of the authoritarian bargain, or the provision of government welfare in exchange for political control, in North Africa. Following independence, North African states supported significant economic intervention and redistribution. Despite initial successes, these arrangements proved unsustainable and were to come under severe stress in subsequent decades. Fiscal austerity, along with reforms to governing social contracts, created a more durable system with its own internal logic, but also with internal contradictions. Recent upheaval in North Africa, the birthplace of the so-called Arab Spring protests, may be traced to resulting structural rigidities, coupled with the governments’ poor record in responding to a variety of crises. The recent economic history of North Africa, finally, shows how the policy mix that favors redistribution, equity, and security over growth has taken an increasing toll on precisely the social sectors it was intended to protect.

Reconsidering the Crisis Agreements of the 1930s: The Defence of Democracy in a Comparative Scandinavian Perspective

2018 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-15
Author(s):  
Kristina Krake
Keyword(s):  
Economic Policy ◽  
Empirical Study ◽  
Present Article ◽  
Economic Crisis ◽  
Interwar Period ◽  
Political Movements ◽  
Political Space ◽  
Political Practice ◽  
Social Democratic ◽  
The Social

This article examines the Scandinavian countries’ response to extreme political movements in the interwar period. Historians have considered the crisis agreements of the 1930s as pivotal to Scandinavian resistance to fascism. The present article revises this explanation by conducting a comparative empirical study of political practice and rhetoric. The comparison makes it clear that the socio-economic measures were primarily aimed at combating the economic crisis. However, the social democratic labour parties conceptualised their social and economic policy as a defence of democracy after Hitler seized power in Germany. The findings indicate that the social democratic solution to the depression in Scandinavia left no political space for either communism or fascism.

scholarly journals TEN RILLINGTON PLACE AND THE CHANGING POLITICS OF ABORTION IN MODERN BRITAIN

2014 ◽  
Vol 57 (4) ◽  
pp. 1085-1109 ◽  
Author(s):  
EMMA L. JONES ◽  
NEIL PEMBERTON
Keyword(s):  
Central Element ◽  
Blind Spot ◽  
Public Acceptance ◽  
The Social ◽  
Modern Britain ◽  
History Of ◽  
To Come ◽  
Working Class Women ◽  
Post War ◽  
The 1960S

ABSTRACTThis article addresses the social, cultural, and political history of backstreet abortion in post-war Britain, focusing on the murders of Beryl Evans and her daughter Geraldine, at Ten Rillington Place in 1949. It shows how the commonplace connection of John Christie to abortion and Beryl Evan's death was not a given in the wider public, legal, political, and forensic imagination of the time, reflecting the multi-layered and shifting meanings of abortion from the date of the original trials in the late 1940s and 1950s, through the subsequent judicial and literary reinvestigations of the case in the 1960s, to its cinematic interpretation in the 1970s. Exploring the language of abortion used in these different contexts, the article reveals changes in the gendering of abortionists, the increasing power and presence of abortion activists and other social reformers, the changing representation of working-class women and men, and the increasing critique of the practice of backstreet abortion. The case is also made for a kind of societal blind spot on abortion at the time of both the Evans and Christie trials; in particular, a reluctance to come to terms with the concept of the male abortionist, which distorted the criminal investigations and the trials themselves. Only when public acceptance for legalizing abortion grew in the more liberal climate of the 1960s and beyond did a revisionist understanding of the murder of Beryl Evans, in which abortion came to be positioned as a central element, gain a sustained hearing.

Social Work and Neurosciences: Speeches and Theoretical Contributions

2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 179-186
Author(s):  
M.ª João Cabral Sacadura ◽  
Helena Neves Almeida
Keyword(s):  
Nervous System ◽  
Social Work ◽  
Present Article ◽  
Human Behavior ◽  
Human Sciences ◽  
The Social ◽  
Scientific Approach ◽  
History Of ◽  
Level Of Knowledge ◽  
The Brain

Abstract The concept of “neuroscience” sometimes referred to as “the last frontier of biology” (Squire et al., 2008, p. 3) was introduced in the mid-1960s and is now recognized as a multidisciplinary field that analyzes the nervous system to understand the biological basis of human behavior. The ongoing developments and the arising production regarding the deepening of the structure, functions and functioning of the brain and its interaction with the environment enabled the identification of key elements reaching an unprecedented level of knowledge in the history of humankind. The multidisciplinary scientific approach, including non-clinical areas such as music, philosophy, education, mathematics, economics and physics, has also contributed to its further deepening. In the light of this scenario of interdependencies and disciplinary alliances, the discipline of the social and human sciences - social work - whose subject is conceived “from and for the practice” (Parton, 1996) in the day-to-day work with challenging social problems of various types and with different publics. Therefore, the present article aims to analyze what has been done to date since 2001, namely the input and contributions of authors and researchers in the field as well as to understand the input of neuroscience developments in their education and research. Also worth mentioning is the identification and relevance of the links between these domains which have contributed to the enrichment of the profession.

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