scholarly journals Collectives of intellectuals: Their cohesiveness, accountability, and who can speak on their behalf

2020 ◽  
Vol 68 (5) ◽  
pp. 1143-1158
Author(s):  
Marcos González Hernando ◽  
Patrick Baert
Keyword(s):  
Collective Identity ◽  
Public Intellectual ◽  
Public Debate ◽  
Positioning Theory ◽  
The Public ◽  
Common Position ◽  
Common Identity ◽  
Object Of Study ◽  
Modes Of Engagement ◽  
Sociology Of Intellectuals

As of late, the sociology of intellectuals has made important inroads into its object of study. Much of this has been achieved by problematising the modes of engagement intellectuals undertake and multiplying the types of actor that can be considered to have intellectual authority, going beyond the traditional mould of the ‘authoritative’ public intellectual. However, relatively few have theorised how intellectuals associate themselves in groups: how collectives, whether in the form of institutions or not, negotiate their public interventions and position themselves as a group in the public debate. This article delves into this issue, with an emphasis on how ‘intellectual collectives’ reach a common identity and decide who can intervene ‘on their behalf’ – what we call prosopopoeia. Informed by positioning theory, and based on two variables (presence of a single organisational basis and purported intellectual cohesiveness), this article contributes to current debates on the sociology of intellectuals by analysing how collectives of intellectuals intervene in the public debate, reach some form of coordination with their peers, police the boundaries of their collective identity, and, in the process, attain a common position across audiences.

Rethinking Kant as a public intellectual

2016 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 100-108
Author(s):  
Sofie Møller
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Public Intellectual ◽  
Public Debate ◽  
The Political ◽  
Middle Ground ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Past

In Kant’s Politics in Context, Reidar Maliks offers a compelling account of Kant’s political philosophy as part of a public debate on rights, citizenship, and revolution in the wake of the French Revolution. Maliks argues that Kant’s political thought was developed as a moderate middle ground between radical and conservative political interpretations of his moral philosophy. The book’s central thesis is that the key to understanding Kant’s legal and political thought lies in the public debate among Kant’s followers and that in this debate we find the political challenges which Kant’s political philosophy is designed to solve. Kant’s Politics in Context raises crucial questions about how to understand political thinkers of the past and is proof that our understanding of the past will remain fragmented if we limit our studies to the great men of the established canon.

Milton Friedman (1912-2006)

2007 ◽  
pp. 155-174
Author(s):  
Julio H. Cole
Keyword(s):  
Free Market ◽  
Early Morning ◽  
Public Intellectual ◽  
Free Market Economy ◽  
The Public ◽  
Milton Friedman ◽  
Television Documentary ◽  
Bona Fide ◽  
World Class ◽  
Policy Arena

Milton Friedman, who died in the early morning of November 16, 2006, was a world-famous economist, and an ardent and effective advocate of the free market economy. Much of his celebrity derived from his role as public intellectual, an aspect of his work that was reflected largely in popular books, such as Capitalism and Freedom (1962) and the hugely successful Free to Choose (1980) -both co-authored with his wife, Rose (and the latter based on the television documentary of the same title)- and in the Newsweek opinion columns he wrote for many years. Though he was already well-known by the time he received the Nobel Prize in Economics, in 1976, both his stature as public figure and his effectiveness as policy advocate were greatly enhanced by that award, and this is what has been mostly stressed in the vast outpouring of obituaries and public testimonials prompted by his recent passing. It is important to recall, however, that there was another aspect of his career, one which most professional economists (and probably Friedman himself) would regard as far more important than his incursions in the policy arena. Indeed, even if "Friedman the public intellectual" had never existed, "Friedman the economic scientist" would still be renowned and respected (though perhaps not as a bona fide world-class celebrity), and his memory will live long in the lore of economics It is primarily this other aspect of his life and work that I wish to focus on in this essay.

The SORS Decision-Making Support System: A statistical tool for better policy making in the Republic of Serbia

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-11
Author(s):  
Miladin Kovačević ◽  
Katarina Stančić
Keyword(s):  
Policy Making ◽  
Modern Society ◽  
Monitoring And Evaluation ◽  
Public Debate ◽  
Statistical Tool ◽  
The Public ◽  
System A ◽  
The Republic ◽  
Trusted Data

Modern society is witnessing a data revolution which necessarily entails changes to the overall behavior of citizens, governments and companies. This is a big challenge and an opportunity for National Statistics Offices (NSOs). Especially after the outbreak of COVID-19, when the public debate about the number of mortalities and tested and infected persons escalated, trusted data is required more than ever. Which data can modern society trust? Are modern societies being subjected to opinion rather than fact? This paper introduces a new statistical tool to facilitate policy-making based on trusted statistics. Using economic indicators to illustrate implementation, the new statistical tool is shown to be a flexible instrument for analysis, monitoring and evaluation of the economic situation in the Republic of Serbia. By taking a role in public policy management, the tool can be used to transform the NSO’s role in the statistical system into an active participant in public debate in contrast to the previous traditional, usually passive role of collecting, processing and publishing data. The tool supports the integration of statistics into public policies and connects the knowledge and expertise of official statisticians on one side with political decision makers on the other.

scholarly journals Trusting the Corona-Warn-App? Contemplations on trust and trustworthiness at the intersection of technology, politics and public debate

2021 ◽  
pp. 026732312110283
Author(s):  
Judith Simon ◽  
Gernot Rieder
Keyword(s):  
Technology Development ◽  
Public Debate ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
Initial Development ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Debates ◽  
Moral Duties ◽  
Moral Demands

Ever since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, questions of whom or what to trust have become paramount. This article examines the public debates surrounding the initial development of the German Corona-Warn-App in 2020 as a case study to analyse such questions at the intersection of trust and trustworthiness in technology development, design and oversight. Providing some insights into the nature and dynamics of trust and trustworthiness, we argue that (a) trust is only desirable and justified if placed well, that is, if directed at those being trustworthy; that (b) trust and trustworthiness come in degrees and have both epistemic and moral components; and that (c) such a normatively demanding understanding of trust excludes technologies as proper objects of trust and requires that trust is directed at socio-technical assemblages consisting of both humans and artefacts. We conclude with some lessons learned from our case study, highlighting the epistemic and moral demands for trustworthy technology development as well as for public debates about such technologies, which ultimately requires attributing epistemic and moral duties to all actors involved.

Social inclusion, a challenge for deliberative democracy? Some reflections on Habermas’s political theory

2020 ◽  
pp. 136843102098378
Author(s):  
Isabelle Aubert
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Social Inclusion ◽  
Public Debate ◽  
The Public ◽  
Iris Marion Young ◽  
Alexander Kluge ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Nancy Fraser ◽  
Theory Of Democracy

This article explains how the issue of inclusion is central to Habermas’s theory of democracy and how it is deeply rooted in his conception of a political public sphere. After recalling Habermas’s views on the public sphere, I present and discuss various objections raised by other critical theorists: Oskar Negt and Alexander Kluge, Nancy Fraser, Axel Honneth and Iris Marion Young. These criticisms insist on the paradoxically excluding effects of a conception of democracy that promotes civic participation in the public debate. Negt, Kluge and Fraser develop a Marxist line of analysis that question who can participate in the public sphere. Honneth and Young criticize in various ways the excluding effect of argumentation: are unargumentative speeches excluded from the public debate? I show how Habermas’s model can provide some responses to these various objections by drawing inspiration from his treatment of the gap between religious and post-metaphysical world views.

scholarly journals The transformative public of Jane Addams

Journalism ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 146488492095858
Author(s):  
Leena Ripatti-Torniainen
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual History ◽  
Social Ethics ◽  
Public Intellectual ◽  
Political Life ◽  
The Public ◽  
Jane Addams ◽  
Journalism Studies ◽  
Social Divisions ◽  
The Social ◽  
Political Inquiry

This article provides an alternative contribution to journalism studies on a foundational concept by analysing texts of Jane Addams, a public intellectual contemporary with the seminal scholars Walter Lippmann and John Dewey. The author uses methods of intellectual history to construct the concept of the public from Addams’s books: Democracy and Social Ethics and The Newer Ideals of Peace, showing that all three authors, Lippmann, Dewey and Addams, discuss the same topic of individuals’ changed engagement with public political life. Addams departs from Lippmann and Dewey in setting out from the standpoints of exclusion and cosmopolitanism. Her argument regarding the public, as constructed by the author, consists of two premises. First, public engagement is a method of democratic inclusion as well as social and political inquiry for Addams. She sees the extension of relationality across social divisions as a necessary method to understand society and materialise democracy. Second, Addams emphasises cooperative and reflexive involvement especially in the characteristic developments of a time. She considers industrialisation and cosmopolitanism as characteristic developments of her own era. Addams suggests an in-principle cosmopolitan concept of the public that includes marginalised persons and groups. Compared to Lippmann’s and Dewey’s accounts of the public, Jane Addams’s argument is more radical and far more sensitive to the social inequality and plurality of a drastically morphing society.

100 Years of State Pension: Learning from the Past

2009 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 483-501
Keyword(s):  
Financial Reporting ◽  
Public Interest ◽  
Public Debate ◽  
The State ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Past ◽  
Tangible Evidence ◽  
State Pension

The President (Mr R. S. Bowie, F.F.A.): Tonight's topic is ‘100 years of state pension: — learning from the past’. I am reminded of the expression: why are the bankers so keen to find new ways of losing money when the old ways seem to have worked perfectly well!The state pension has been going in a recognisable form for only 100 years and only for the last 60 as a universal pension; and only for the last 30 years in the form that we all might recognise today.If the Actuarial Profession can bring value to something from the past, it is to bring a perspective and a context to it so that we can learn from it. In this way, the Profession can create an informed climate within which public debate on matters of public interest can take place. As you will all know, the Financial Reporting Council are pressing the Profession hard to give tangible evidence of its commitment to the public interest, and this book falls into that category, creating an informed background for debate on a matter of huge public interest.

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