The Right of Philosophy and the Facts of History: Foucault, Derrida, Descartes

Author(s):  
Gabriel Rockhill

This chapter proposes a counter-history of a seminal debate in the transition from structuralism to post-structuralism. It calls into question the widespread assumption that Derrida rejects Foucault’s structuralist stranglehold by demonstrating that the meaning of a text always remains open. Through a meticulous examination of their respective historical paradigms, methodological orientations and hermeneutic parameters, it argues that Derrida’s critique of his former professor is, at the level of theoretical practice, a call to return to order. The ultimate conclusion is that the Foucault-Derrida debate has much less to do with Descartes’ text per se, than with the relationship between the traditional tasks of philosophy and the meta-theoretical reconfiguration of philosophic practice via the methods of the social sciences.

2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 189-202
Author(s):  
Stefania Operto

Abstract In the social sciences, the term “rite” identifies a set of practices and knowledge that contribute to forming the cultural models of a given society and has the aim of transmitting values and norms, institutionalization of roles, recognition of identity and social cohesion. This article examines the relationship between technology and ritual and the transformations in society resulting from the diffusion of new technologies. Technological progress is not a novelty in human development; though it is the first time in the history of humanity that technology has pervaded the lives of individuals and their relationships. The analyses conducted seem to show that the ritual is not intended to disappear but to change; to change forms and places. Postmodern societies have undergone profound modifications, but the conceptual category of ritual continues to be applicable to many human behaviors and it would be a mistake to support the idea that rituals are weakening.


Philosophy ◽  
1988 ◽  
Vol 63 (246) ◽  
pp. 487-499 ◽  
Author(s):  
H. P. Rickman

The history of philosophy provides part of the history, or pre-history, of the social sciences. As they were struggling into being, or even before they existed, philosophy was hammering out some of the conceptual tools, lines of approach and basic hypotheses. One of the constantly recurring themes in the history of philosophy which has a direct bearing on the social sciences is the relationship between mind and matter.


Author(s):  
Daniel R. Huebner

This chapter traces novel aspects of the relationship between George Herbert Mead and John Dewey. It identifies major aspects of Dewey’s reception in and engagement with the social sciences. Dewey’s influence in the social sciences is closely connected with Mead, both in the sense that Dewey’s ideas relevant to the social sciences have been developed in substantial collaboration with Mead and in the sense that Dewey has been interpreted by later social scientists primarily through Mead’s work and the work of Mead’s students and colleagues. Dewey and Mead worked to develop functional and later social psychology, social reform efforts, educational theory, the social history of thought, and other aspects of pragmatist philosophy. Dewey also had moderate influence on the sociologists and anthropologists at Columbia, institutional economists at Chicago and elsewhere, and later European social theorists, and his publications and correspondence about Mead after the latter’s death influenced Mead’s own legacy.


2019 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 87-111 ◽  
Author(s):  
Megan Warin ◽  
Emma Kowal ◽  
Maurizio Meloni

A history of colonization inflicts psychological, physical, and structural disadvantages that endure across generations. For an increasing number of Indigenous Australians, environmental epigenetics offers an important explanatory framework that links the social past with the biological present, providing a culturally relevant way of understanding the various intergenerational effects of historical trauma. In this paper, we critically examine the strategic uptake of environmental epigenetics by Indigenous researchers and policy advocates. We focus on the relationship between epigenetic processes and Indigenous views of Country and health—views that locate health not in individual bodies but within relational contexts of Indigenous ontologies that embody interconnected environments of kin/animals/matter/bodies across time and space. This drawing together of Indigenous experience and epigenetic knowledge has strengthened calls for action including state-supported calls for financial reparations. We examine the consequences of this reimagining of disease responsibility in the context of “strategic biological essentialism,” a distinct form of biopolitics that, in this case, incorporates environmental determinism. We conclude that the shaping of the right to protection from biosocial injury is potentially empowering but also has the capacity to conceal forms of governance through claimants’ identification as “damaged,” thus furthering State justification of biopolitical intervention in Indigenous lives.


Author(s):  
Mats Alvesson ◽  
Yiannis Gabriel ◽  
Roland Paulsen

This chapter introduces ‘the problem’ of meaningless research in the social sciences. Over the past twenty years there has been an enormous growth in research publications, but never before in the history of humanity have so many social scientists written so much to so little effect. Academic research in the social sciences is often inward looking, addressed to small tribes of fellow researchers, and its purpose in what is increasingly a game is that of getting published in a prestigious journal. A wide gap has emerged between the esoteric concerns of social science researchers and the pressing issues facing today’s societies. The chapter critiques the inaccessibility of the language used by academic researchers, and the formulaic qualities of most research papers, fostered by the demands of the publishing game. It calls for a radical move from research for the sake of publishing to research that has something meaningful to say.


Author(s):  
Svend Brinkmann ◽  
Michael Hviid Jacobsen ◽  
Søren Kristiansen

Qualitative research does not represent a monolithic, agreed-on approach to research but is a vibrant and contested field with many contradictions and different perspectives. To respect the multivoicedness of qualitative research, this chapter will approach its history in the plural—as a variety of histories. The chapter will work polyvocally and focus on six histories of qualitative research, which are sometimes overlapping, sometimes in conflict, and sometimes even incommensurable. They can be considered articulations of different discourses about the history of the field, which compete for researchers’ attention. The six histories are: (a) the conceptual history of qualitative research, (b) the internal history of qualitative research, (c) the marginalizing history of qualitative research, (d) the repressed history of qualitative research, (e) the social history of qualitative research, and (f) the technological history of qualitative research.


2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Catherine Jami

Abstract In recent decades research in the social sciences, including in the history of science, has shown that women scientists continue to be depicted as exceptions to the rule that a normal scientist is a man. The underlying message is that being an outstanding scientist is incompatible with being an ordinary woman. From women scientists’ reported experiences, we learn that family responsibilities as well as sexism in their working environment are two major hindrances to their careers. This experience is now backed by statistical analysis, so that what used to be regarded as an individual problem for each woman of science can now be identified as a multi-layered social phenomenon, to be analysed and remedied as such. Over the last five years, international scientific unions have come together to address these issues, first through the Gender Gap in Science Project, and recently through the setting up of a Standing Committee for Gender Equality in Science (SCGES) whose task is to foster measures to reduce the barriers that women scientists have to surmount in their working lives.


2010 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 221-265 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philippe Fontaine

ArgumentFor more than thirty years after World War II, the unconventional economist Kenneth E. Boulding (1910–1993) was a fervent advocate of the integration of the social sciences. Building on common general principles from various fields, notably economics, political science, and sociology, Boulding claimed that an integrated social science in which mental images were recognized as the main determinant of human behavior would allow for a better understanding of society. Boulding's approach culminated in the social triangle, a view of society as comprised of three main social organizers – exchange, threat, and love – combined in varying proportions. According to this view, the problems of American society were caused by an unbalanced combination of these three organizers. The goal of integrated social scientific knowledge was therefore to help policy makers achieve the “right” proportions of exchange, threat, and love that would lead to social stabilization. Though he was hopeful that cross-disciplinary exchanges would overcome the shortcomings of too narrow specialization, Boulding found that rather than being the locus of a peaceful and mutually beneficial exchange, disciplinary boundaries were often the occasion of conflict and miscommunication.


Book Reviews: Studies in Sociology, Race Mixture, Hunger and Work in a Savage Tribe, Interpretations, 1931–1932, Faith, Hope and Charity in Primitive Religion, Genetic Principles in Medicine and Social Science, The Reorganisation of Education in China, Social Decay and Eugenical Reform, The Social and Political Ideas of Some Representative Thinkers of the Revolutionary Era, L. T. Hobhouse, His Life and Work, Corner of England, World Agriculture—An International Study, Small-Town Stuff, Methods of Social Study, Does History Repeat Itself? The New Morality, Culture and Progress, Language and Languages: An Introduction to Linguistics, The Theory of Wages, The Santa Clara Valley, California, Social Psychology, A History of Fire and Flame, Sin and New Psychology, Sociology and Education, Mental Subnormality and the Local Community: Am Outline or a Practical Program, Tyneside Council op Social Service, Reconstruction and Education in Rural India, The Contribution of the English Le Play School to Rural Sociology, Kagami Kenkyu Hokoku, President's, Pioneer Settlement: Co-Operative Studies, Birth Control and Public Health, Pioneer Settlement: Co-Operative Studies, Ourselves and the World: The Making of an American Citizen, The Emergence of the Social Sciences from Moral Philosophy, The Comparable Interests of the Old Moral Philosophy and the Modern Social Sciences, The World in Agony, Sheffield Social Survey Committee, Housing Problems in Liverpool, Council for the Preservation of Rural England, Forest Land Use in Wisconsin, The Growth Cycle of the Farm Family, The Farmer's Guide to Agricultural Research in 1931, A History of the Public Library Movement in Great Britain and Ireland, The Retirement of National Debts, Public and Private Operation of Railways in Brazil, The Indian Minorities Problem, The Meaning of the Manchurian Crisis, The Drama of the Kingdom, Social Psychology, Competition in the American Tobacco Industry, New York School Centers and Their Community Policy, Desertion of Alabama Troops from the Confederate Army, Plans for City Police Jails and Village Lockups

1933 ◽  
Vol a25 (1) ◽  
pp. 72-109
Author(s):  
R. R. Marbtt ◽  
E. E. Evans-Pritchard ◽  
E. O. Jambs ◽  
Florence Ayscough ◽  
C. H. Desch ◽  
...  

2008 ◽  
Vol 41 (3) ◽  
pp. 317-338 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lubomír Kopeček ◽  
Pavel Pšeja

This article attempts to analyze developments within the Czech Left after 1989. Primarily, the authors focus on two questions: (1) How did the Czech Social Democratic Party (ČSSD) achieve its dominance of the Left? (2)What is the relationship between the Social Democrats and the Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia (KSČM)? We conclude that the unsuccessful attempt to move the KSČM towards a moderate leftist identity opened up a space in which the Social Democrats could thrive, at the same time gradually assuming a pragmatic approach towards the Communists. Moreover, the ability of Miloš Zeman, the leader of the Social Democrats, to build a clear non-Communist Left alternative to the hegemony of the Right during the 1990s was also very important.


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