scholarly journals Saussure and the Political Potential of Language

MELINTAS ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-23
Author(s):  
Min Seong Kim
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Historical Development ◽  
The Political ◽  
Ernesto Laclau ◽  
Ferdinand De Saussure ◽  
Political Implications ◽  
The Social ◽  
Political Dimensions ◽  
General Linguistics ◽  
The Many

Although the linguistic theory of Ferdinand de Saussure is widely recognised as the forerunner of structuralism, it is often treated in the humanities and social sciences today as a stepping stone toward more sophisticated, generalised semiotics and theories of discourse. As a result, social and political implications of Saussure’s original conception of language have frequently been underestimated. Drawing from the classic lecture Course in General Linguistics and the fragmented notes collected in Writings in General Linguistics, this article offers a reconstruction of the social and political dimensions that were present, albeit in an inchoate form, within Saussure’s own theorisation. To act as a foil to the reconstructed Saussurean position, this article calls upon an essay that charts the historical development of the concept of discourse authored by Ernesto Laclau, who is perhaps the most politically oriented thinker among the many inheritors of the Saussurean legacy.

Individuals and Aggregates

1980 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 229-250
Author(s):  
Paul F. Bourke ◽  
Donald A. DeBats
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social History ◽  
Integrated Approach ◽  
Electoral Behavior ◽  
The Political ◽  
Social Basis ◽  
Political Implications ◽  
The Social ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Vexing Question

After more than a decade's impressive achievement in the “new” social history and the “new” political history, two distinct though related problems require us to reconsider the data appropriate to these inquiries. First, recent commentators (Foner, 1974; Formi-sano, 1976) have pointed to the relative failure of research in these areas to converge, a failure made more obvious in the light of the programmatic optimism of the 1960s which held out the prospect of an integrated approach to the social basis of politics and to the political implications of social structure. Second, there has been in recent years some acknowledgment by historians (see below) of the vexing question of inferences across levels of data, a matter central to other social sciences and particularly pressing for historians of electoral behavior.

scholarly journals UNIVERSALISM AND AMBIGUOSNESS: COMMENTS ON WAGAR ' S PRAXIS OF WORLD INTEGRATION

1996 ◽  
pp. 112-116
Author(s):  
Teivo Teivainen
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Implications ◽  
The Social

Theoretical discourses that emphasize difference, fragmentation and contingency have presented various challenges to the social sciences of today. The political implications of these discourses have generally been expressed in rather vague terms and often simply left unspecified. In this context, W. Warren Wagar's bold and provocative defence of the universalist values of the European Enlightenment is a most welcome contribution.

The Politics of Pronouncement: Notes on Publishing in the Social Sciences

1969 ◽  
Vol 39 (3) ◽  
pp. 558-570
Author(s):  
Thomas Cottle
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Ethnic Groups ◽  
Communication Media ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Public ◽  
Political Implications ◽  
The Social ◽  
The University

Focussing on the estranged reaction of individuals to scholarly writings about their ethnic groups, Thomas Cottle explores a network of political implications surrounding publishing in the social sciences. This network extends from published content through the act of publishing itself. He describes the interactions of political motives, conceptions of the university, communication media, and the public to convey a sense of the political ramifications of publishing in the social sciences.

PENSAMENTO POLÍTICO EM GIORGIO AGAMBEN

Professare ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 109
Author(s):  
Claudemir Aparecido Lopes
Keyword(s):  
Political Freedom ◽  
State Of Exception ◽  
The Political ◽  
State Control ◽  
Giorgio Agamben ◽  
Modern Democracy ◽  
Social Fabric ◽  
Contemporary Politics ◽  
Political Implications ◽  
The Social

<p class="resumoabstract">O professor Giorgio Agamben tem elaborado críticas à engenhosa estrutura política ocidental moderna. Avalia os mecanismos de controle estatal, nos quais os denomina ‘dispositivos’, cuja força está na imbricação às normas jurídico-teológicas com seus similares ritos e liturgias. Suas ocorrências e legitimidade preponderam no tecido social cuja organização sistêmica se põe quase como elemento natural e não cultural. O texto tem por objetivo explorar a concepção política de Agamben sobre a política contemporânea, especialmente considerando seu livro: ‘Estado de Exceção’, cuja investigação apresenta a possibilidade de atenuação dos direitos de cidadania e o enfraquecimento da prática da liberdade política e o processo de relação dos indivíduos no meio social através da redução das subjetividades ‘autênticas’. Analisamos ainda a transferência do mundo sacro elaborado pelos teólogos católicos presente na modernidade à política cuja democracia moderna faz do homem (sujeito) tornar-se objeto do poder político. Faz também, reflexão dos conceitos de subjetivação e dessubjetivação relacionando-os às implicações políticas do homem moderno. A pesquisa é bibliográfica com ênfase na análise dos conceitos elaborados por Agamben, especialmente quanto ao ‘dispositivo’. Conclui que o indivíduo ocidental, de modo geral, sofre o processo de dessubjetivação e está ‘nu’, indefeso e alienado politicamente. Ele precisa voltar-se ao processo de ‘profanação’ dos dispositivos para libertar-se das vinculações orientadoras que forçosamente o descaracteriza enquanto ser ativo e livre.</p><p class="resumoabstract"><strong>Palavras-chave</strong>: Política. Liberdade. Subjetivação.</p><h3>ABSTRACT</h3><p class="resumoabstract">Professor Giorgio Agamben has been criticizing the ingenious modern Western political structure. It evaluates the mechanisms of state control, in which it calls them 'devices', whose strength lies in the overlap with legal-theological norms with their similar rites and liturgies. Its occurrences and legitimacy preponderate in the social fabric whose systemic organization is almost as a natural and not a cultural element. The text aims to explore Agamben's political conception of contemporary politics, especially considering his book 'State of Exception', whose research presents the possibility of attenuating citizenship rights and weakening the practice of political freedom and the individuals in the social environment through the reduction of 'authentic' subjectivities. We also analyze the transfer of the sacred world elaborated by the Catholic theologians present in the modernity to the politics whose modern democracy makes of the man - subject - to become object of the political power. It also reflects on the concepts of subjectivation and desubjectivation, relating them to the political implications of modern man. The research is bibliographical with emphasis in the analysis of the concepts elaborated by Agamben, especially with regard to the 'device'. He concludes that the Western individual, in general, suffers the process of desubjectivation and is 'naked', defenseless and politically alienated. He must turn to the process of 'desecration' of devices to free himself from the guiding bindings that forcibly demeanes him while being active and free.</p><p class="resumoabstract"><strong>Keywords</strong>: Politics. Freedom. Subjectivity. </p><p> </p>

“We Speak the Truth!”

2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 53-80
Author(s):  
Sari Hanafi
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Content Analysis ◽  
Social Science ◽  
The Political ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Social Phenomena ◽  
The Social ◽  
Academic Qualifications

This study investigates the preachers and their Friday sermons in Lebanon, raising the following questions: What are the profiles of preachers in Lebanon and their academic qualifications? What are the topics evoked in their sermons? In instances where they diagnosis and analyze the political and the social, what kind of arguments are used to persuade their audiences? What kind of contact do they have with the social sciences? It draws on forty-two semi-structured interviews with preachers and content analysis of 210 preachers’ Friday sermons, all conducted between 2012 and 2015 among Sunni and Shia mosques. Drawing from Max Weber’s typology, the analysis of Friday sermons shows that most of the preachers represent both the saint and the traditional, but rarely the scholar. While they are dealing extensively with political and social phenomena, rarely do they have knowledge of social science

The Politics of Global Health Inequalities

2019 ◽  
pp. 58-84
Author(s):  
Yusra Ribhi Shawar ◽  
Jennifer Prah Ruger
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Critical Theory ◽  
Global Health ◽  
Health Inequalities ◽  
Health Inequality ◽  
The Political ◽  
State Of Health ◽  
Political Determinants ◽  
The Social

Careful investigations of the political determinants of health that include the role of power in health inequalities—systematic differences in health achievements among different population groups—are increasing but remain inadequate. Historically, much of the research examining health inequalities has been influenced by biomedical perspectives and focused, as such, on ‘downstream’ factors. More recently, there has been greater recognition of more ‘distal’ and ‘upstream’ drivers of health inequalities, including the impacts of power as expressed by actors, as well as embedded in societal structures, institutions, and processes. The goal of this chapter is to examine how power has been conceptualised and analysed to date in relation to health inequalities. After reviewing the state of health inequality scholarship and the emerging interest in studying power in global health, the chapter presents varied conceptualisations of power and how they are used in the literature to understand health inequalities. The chapter highlights the particular disciplinary influences in studying power across the social sciences, including anthropology, political science, and sociology, as well as cross-cutting perspectives such as critical theory and health capability. It concludes by highlighting strengths and limitations of the existing research in this area and discussing power conceptualisations and frameworks that so far have been underused in health inequalities research. This includes potential areas for future inquiry and approaches that may expand the study of as well as action on addressing health inequality.

scholarly journals Has the Credibility of the Social Sciences Been Credibly Destroyed? Reanalyzing the “Many Analysts, One Data Set” Project

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
pp. 237802312110244
Author(s):  
Katrin Auspurg ◽  
Josef Brüderl
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Causal Reasoning ◽  
Research Question ◽  
Social Science Research ◽  
Science Research ◽  
Skin Tone ◽  
Data Set ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Many ◽  
Definition Of

In 2018, Silberzahn, Uhlmann, Nosek, and colleagues published an article in which 29 teams analyzed the same research question with the same data: Are soccer referees more likely to give red cards to players with dark skin tone than light skin tone? The results obtained by the teams differed extensively. Many concluded from this widely noted exercise that the social sciences are not rigorous enough to provide definitive answers. In this article, we investigate why results diverged so much. We argue that the main reason was an unclear research question: Teams differed in their interpretation of the research question and therefore used diverse research designs and model specifications. We show by reanalyzing the data that with a clear research question, a precise definition of the parameter of interest, and theory-guided causal reasoning, results vary only within a narrow range. The broad conclusion of our reanalysis is that social science research needs to be more precise in its “estimands” to become credible.

The Distribution of Emotions: Affective Politics of Emancipation

Hypatia ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 580-596 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brigitte Bargetz
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Feminist Theory ◽  
Affect Theory ◽  
The Political ◽  
Social Sciences And Humanities ◽  
The Social

Currently, affect and emotions are a widely discussed political topic. At least since the early 1990s, different disciplines—from the social sciences and humanities to science and technoscience—have increasingly engaged in studying and conceptualizing affect, emotion, feeling, and sensation, evoking yet another turn that is frequently framed as the “affective turn.” Within queer feminist affect theory, two positions have emerged: following Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick's well‐known critique, there are either more “paranoid” or more “reparative” approaches toward affect. Whereas the latter emphasize the potentialities of affect, the former argue that one should question the mere idea of affect as liberation and promise. Here, I suggest moving beyond a critique or celebration of affect by embracing the political ambivalence of affect. For this queer feminist theorizing of affective politics, I adapt Jacques Rancière's theory of the political and particularly his understanding of emancipation. Rancière takes emancipation into account without, however, uncritically endorsing or celebrating a politics of liberation. I draw on his famous idea of the “distribution of the sensible” and reframe it as the “distribution of emotions,” by which I develop a multilayered approach toward a nonidentitarian, nondichotomous, and emancipatory queer feminist theory of affective politics.

The Mathematics of Society: Variation and Error in Quetelet's Statistics

1985 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 51-69 ◽  
Author(s):  
Theodore M. Porter
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Natural Sciences ◽  
The Political ◽  
Social Sphere ◽  
The Social

“Let us apply to the political and moral sciences the method founded upon observation and upon calculus, the method which has served us so well in the natural sciences.” The social sciences have known no truer follower of Laplace's dictum than Adolphe Quetelet. His mécanique sociale, later physique sociale, was conceived as the social analogue to Laplace's mecanique celeste, and embodied the results of an unswerving commitment not only to the presumed method of celestial physics, but even to its concepts and vocabulary. It is too weak to say that Quetelet's goal was the transmission of the achievements of celestial physics into the social sphere. He aspired to nothing less than imitation.

scholarly journals Making Home(s) in Displacement

2022 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hilde Heynen
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
The Political ◽  
Place Making ◽  
Spatial Practices ◽  
Spatial Practice ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
The Social ◽  
Interdisciplinary Scholarship ◽  
Architectural Perspective ◽  
The Relationship

Making Home(s) in Displacement critically rethinks the relationship between home and displacement from a spatial, material, and architectural perspective. Recent scholarship in the social sciences has investigated how migrants and refugees create and reproduce home under new conditions, thereby unpacking the seemingly contradictory positions of making a home and overcoming its loss. Yet, making home(s) in displacement is also a spatial practice, one which intrinsically relates to the fabrication of the built environment worldwide. Conceptually the book is divided along four spatial sites, referred to as camp, shelter, city, and house, which are approached with a multitude of perspectives ranging from urban planning and architecture to anthropology, geography, philosophy, gender studies, and urban history, all with a common focus on space and spatiality. By articulating everyday homemaking experiences of migrants and refugees as spatial practices in a variety of geopolitical and historical contexts, this edited volume adds a novel perspective to the existing interdisciplinary scholarship at the intersection of home and displacement. It equally intends to broaden the canon of architectural histories and theories by including migrants' and refugees' spatial agencies and place-making practices to its annals. By highlighting the political in the spatial, and vice versa, this volume sets out to decentralise and decolonise current definitions of home and displacement, striving for a more pluralistic outlook on the idea of home.

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