Thesis Eleven recent issues

Introduction

Roberts, D. — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 08:46:18 PDT

Tragedy, Theodicy and 9/11: Rhetorical Responses To Suffering and Their Public Significance

Pirro, R. — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 08:46:18 PDT

Two general sorts of responses to the suffering caused by the 9/11 attacks are distinguishable in the statements of public officials, journalists, and citizens: one manifests a tragic sensibility, another takes the form of theodicy. Each response entails a distinctive set of expectations about the nature of political agency and solidarity in a democracy. With its claim of access to a transcendental form of truth, theodicy promises a robust sense of political solidarity and agency based on a shared religious belief. Tragic modes of appeal muster their consolatory effects by appealing to intuitions or taste rather than religious belief and therefore potentially remain open to more diverse public audiences.

Revising Foucault's Model of Modernity and Exclusion: Gauchet and Swain On Madness and Democracy

Weymans, W. — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 08:46:18 PDT

This article reveals how Marcel Gauchet and his late wife Gladys Swain revise Foucault's history of madness and modernity by arguing that the history of modern civilization represents a recognition of the mad, rather than their exclusion. Turning to the French Revolution, the article then examines the relationship between disciplinary practices and a wider democratic context. It shows that while Foucault reduces democratic societies to proto totalitarian practices, Gauchet and Swain give a broader and more historically complex account of asylums and the democratic context in which they emerge. This allows them to see resistance in the asylum and in democratic societies in general: while Foucault thought the panoptic asylum revealed modernity's ultimate success, for Gauchet and Swain it proved only its failure. However, the article ends by arguing that, despite all their differences, Gauchet and Swain's critique of contemporary societies remains in some respects indebted to Foucault.

'Messianicity' in Social Theory? A Critique of a Thesis of Jacques Derrida

Harrington, A. — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 08:46:18 PDT

Jacques Derrida's vision of 'messianicity' in his book Specters of Marx and the essay 'Faith and Knowledge: The Two Sources of "Religion" at the Limits of Reason Alone' has been widely appreciated by scholars. Yet little fundamentally critical engagement appears to have been made with some important historical-sociological questions raised by Derrida's ideas in these texts. Drawing on earlier reference-points in 20th-century critical theory and sociology, the present article argues for some objections to Derrida's presentation of the significance of religious messianism in modern Western social and political thought. The central claim defended is that Derrida invidiously marginalizes some important non-messianistic idioms, sources and traditions of thinking about religious history and its bearing on contemporary social and political self-understanding.

What Is Work? Key Insights From the Psychodynamics of Work

Deranty, J.-P. — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 08:46:18 PDT

This article aims to present some of the main results of contemporary French psychodynamics of work. The writings of Christophe Dejours constitute the central references in this area. His psychoanalytical approach, which is initially concerned with the impact of contemporary work practices on individual health, has implications that go well beyond the narrow psycho-pathological interest. The most significant theoretical development to have come out of Dejours's research is that of Yves Clot, whose writings will constitute the second reference point in this article. The article attempts to demonstrate that the thick definition of work that Dejours and Clot operate with, as a result of their focus on its psychological function, speaks directly, in substantial and critical ways, to all disciplines with an interest in work, to philosophers, social theorists and social scientists, including economic theorists.

Labour Migration and Ties of Relatedness: Diasporic Houses and Investments in Memory in a Rural Philippine Village

Aguilar, F. — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 08:46:18 PDT

Putting migrant remittances into house construction and rebuilding is generally seen as either conspicuous consumption or productive investment, but in both cases the perspective is economistic. This article argues that only when the cultural dimension of economic action is understood will it be possible to comprehend migrant spending on houses. Specifically, this article seeks to understand why, in the case of the rural Tagalog village in this study, located in upland Batangas Province in the Philippines, overseas labour migrants build houses that they do not even live in, but are given to parents or simply left unoccupied. The explanation is framed in relation to the meanings of houses in a culture of bilateral kinship, which the Philippines shares with most parts of Southeast Asia, but inflected by distinct colonial influences. The article demonstrates the ways in which houses as memorials serve as idioms of ties of relatedness within kin groups and the broader community, ties that are being transformed by global migration and experienced differently yet maintained, renegotiated yet sustained transnationally.

Socialism and Culture: An Interview With Donald Sassoon

Beilharz, P. — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 08:46:18 PDT

For Marx and Marxism: An Interview With Kostas Axelos

Memos, C. — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 08:46:18 PDT

Anticipating Obama: An Interview With Zygmunt Bauman

Battiston, G. — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 08:46:18 PDT

Reviews: Sian Supski, It Was Another Skin: The Kitchen in 1950s Western Australia (Peter Lang, 2007)

Duruz, J. — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 08:46:18 PDT

Reviews: Elemer Hankiss, The Toothpaste of Immortality: Self-Construction in the Consumer Age (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006)

Wright, K. — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 08:46:18 PDT

Introduction

Auer, S., Finlay, C. — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 03:54:21 PDT

Violence and the End of Revolution After 1989

Auer, S. — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 03:54:21 PDT

The series of Velvet revolutions in 1989, which brought about the collapse of communism in Europe, seem to have vindicated those political theorists and activists who believed in the possibility of non-violent power. The relative success of the 1989 revolutions has validated a new paradigm of revolutionary change based on the assumption that radical changes were attainable through moderate means. Yet the legacy of these non-violent revolutions also points towards the limits of political strategies fundamentally opposed to violence. The article shows that the key architects of non-violent revolutions in 1989 were well aware of the contingent nature of all political actions, and were thus willing to take risks in their pursuit of freedom.

Hannah Arendt's Critique of Violence

Finlay, C. J. — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 03:54:21 PDT

This article critiques the idea of instrumental justification for violent means seen in Hannah Arendt's writings. A central element in Arendt's argument against theorists like Georges Sorel and Frantz Fanon in On Violence is the distinction between instrumental justifications and approaches emphasizing the `legitimacy' of violence or its intrinsic value. This doesn't really do the work Arendt needs it to in relation to rival theories. The true distinctiveness of Arendt's view is seen when we turn to On Revolution and resituate the later arguments of On Violence in the context of her ideas about the separation between revolution and liberation. Arendt's commitment to the American discovery in revolutionary politics of a means that needs no further ends to justify it permits a rereading of her conception of liberation as an attempt to envisage a violence that, while tactically instrumental, is at the same time politically non-instrumental. But while Arendt's view is distinct, the article also highlights important thematic continuities with the writings of Sorel and Walter Benjamin.

Politics, Violence and Revolutionary Virtue: Reflections On Locke and Sorel

Frazer, E., Hutchings, K. — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 03:54:21 PDT

John Locke (1632—1704) and Georges Sorel (1859—1922) are commonly understood as representing opposed positions vis-a-vis revolution — with Locke representing the liberal distinction between violence and politics versus Sorel's rejection of politics in its pacified liberal sense. This interpretation is shown by a close reading of their works to be misleading. Both draw a necessary link between revolution and violence, and both mediate this link through the concept of `war'. They both depoliticize revolution, as for both of them `war' is understood as extra-political. The revolutions of 1989 emphasize what actually is true of previous revolutions: they cannot coherently be thought of as extra-political.

The Limits of Terror: the French Revolution, Rights and Democratic Transition

Livesey, J. — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 03:54:21 PDT

The French Revolution has ceased to be the paradigm case of progressive social revolution. Historians increasingly argue that the heart of the revolutionary experience was the Terror and that the Terror prefigured 20thcentury totalitarianism. This article contests that view and argues that totalitarianism is too blunt a category to distinguish between varying experiences of revolution and further questions if revolutionary outcomes are ideologically determined. It argues that by widening the set of revolutions to include 17th and 18th century cases, as well as the velvet revolutions of the 1990s, we can reinterpret the French Revolution as a characteristic case of democratic transition with particular features.

Democratic Revolutions, Power and the City: Weber and Political Modernity

Rundell, J. — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 03:54:21 PDT

This article develops three interconnected arguments concerning the image of modernity as a revolutionary epoch and the way in which this image has been understood and theorized. These three lines of conceptualization, which can only be sketched in less rather than greater detail here, concern the constellation or figuration of modernity, its democratic dimension, and in reference to each, the work of Max Weber, especially The City. More specifically, the article argues that modern democracy is revolutionary when viewed as an open and self-instituting articulation of political power. Its modern revolutionary impulse begins in the Italian Renaissance city-states, the German `free' cities, and the Swiss federation where urban autonomy was matched by the creation of elected forms of rulership and the development of federated circulations of power.

An Interview With Agnes Heller

Heller, A., Auer, S. — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 03:54:21 PDT

Review Essay: The Many Faces of Harrison C. White: Challenges and Opportunities for Social Theory: G. Reza Azarian, The General Sociology of Harrison C. White: Chaos and Order in Networks (Palgrave Macmillan, 2005)

Alexander, M. — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 03:54:21 PDT

Review Essay: Exemplary Stories: On the Uses of Biography in Recent Sociology: Alan Sica and Stephen Turner (eds) The Disobedient Generation: Social Theorists in the Sixties (University of Chicago, 2005); Mathieu Deflem (ed.) Sociologists in a Global Age: Biographical Perspectives (Ashgate, 2007); Anthony Elliott and Charles Lemert, The New Individualism: The Emotional Costs of Globalization (Routledge, 2006)

de la Fuente, E. — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 03:54:21 PDT

Reviews: Akiko Busch, The Uncommon Life of Common Objects: Essays on Design and the Everyday (Metropolis Books, 2004)

Supski, S. — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 03:54:21 PDT

Reviews: Milan Zafirovski, Liberal Modernity and its Adversaries: Freedom, Liberalism and Anti-Liberalism in the 21st Century (Brill, 2007)

el-Ojeili, C. — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 03:54:21 PDT

Introduction: Charles Taylor

Smith, K. E. — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 04:03:32 PST

Meaning and Porous Being

Smith, K. E. — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 04:03:32 PST

In A Secular Age, Taylor introduces the idea of porous subjectivity by way of elucidating the mode of being typical of the enchanted pre-modern world, and juxtaposes it to the buffered self typical of the disenchanted modern world. The framing of the problem in this way, with the argument so clearly oriented as an attack on the latter position, risks a polarization that defaults to the former as the preferred option. These, though, are not our only choices. There is much to recommend Taylor’s notion of porous subjectivity as distinct from the buffered self of atomistic individualism. But Taylor associates the emergence of the disenchanted world with disengaged reason, and the existence of an enchanted world with a deeper mode of engagement in the world. If we instead focus upon modes of engagement with the world separate from the question of enchantment, we can perhaps further our understanding of human subjectivity and relations with others.

Democracy, Religion and Revolution

Browne, C. — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 04:03:32 PST

Charles Taylor’s conception of the relationship between democracy and social creativity developed through a critical synthesis of various traditions, including the Romantic Movement and liberal political philosophy. However, it is argued that Taylor’s understanding of the implications of religion and revolution significantly differentiates his standpoint from that of pragmatism and theories of democratic creativity. Taylor’s defence of religious transcendence is shown to give rise to tensions with the latter perspective. The theorists of democratic creativity suggest that democracy originates in the rupturing of religious significations and their closure of meaning. Taylor essentially inverts these arguments and perceives that the loss of transcendence may lead to a closed world structure. Taylor claims that the dilemmas of the modern immanent frame were prefigured in the French Revolution’s inability to generate an institutional form consistent with its understanding of democracy and that social creativity should be qualified in light of this historical experience.

Taylor on Solidarity

Smith, N. H., Laitinen, A. — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 04:03:32 PST

After characterizing Taylor’s general approach to the problems of solidarity, we distinguish and reconstruct three contexts of solidarity in which this approach is developed: the civic, the socio-economic, and the moral. We argue that Taylor’s distinctive move in each of these contexts of solidarity is to claim that the relationship at stake poses normatively justified demands, which are motivationally demanding, but insufficiently motivating on their own. On Taylor’s conception, we need some understanding of extra motivational sources which explain why people do (or would) live up to the exacting demands. Taylor accepts that our self-understanding as members of either particular communities or humanity at large has some motivational power, but he suspects that in many cases the memberships are too thin to resonate deeply and enduringly within us. In Taylor’s view, a realistic picture of what moves people to solidarity has to account for the extra motivation, when it happens. We propose an alternative view in which morality, democracy and socio-economic cooperation can be seen as separate spheres or relations which are normatively justified, motivationally demanding, but also sufficiently motivating on their own.

Plus Ca Change: Charles Taylor On Accommodating Quebec's mInority Cultures

Abbey, R. — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 04:03:32 PST

This article examines the 2008 report of the Quebec Government’s Consultation Commission on Accommodation Practices Related to Cultural Differences which was co-authored by Charles Taylor. Summarizing its main themes, it identifies points of intersection with Taylor’s political thought. Issues of citizen equality, including gender equality, secularism, integration and interculturalism, receive special attention.

Reply

Taylor, C. — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 04:03:32 PST

In Memoriam: Ricardo Manapat (1953--2008)

Zialcita, F. N. — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 04:03:32 PST

Review Essay: A Secular Age

Ross, D. — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 04:03:32 PST

Review: Glenda Ballantyne, Creativity and Critique: Subjectivity and Agency in Touraine and Ricoeur (Brill, 2007)

Corballis, T. — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 04:03:32 PST

Review: Paul Paolucci, Marx's Scientific Dialectics: A Methodological Treatise for a New Century (Brill, 2007)

el-Ojeili, C. — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 04:03:32 PST

Review: William E. Connolly, Pluralism (Duke University Press, 2005)

Brookes, J. — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 04:03:32 PST

Review: Deb J. Hill, Hegemony and Education: Gramsci, Post-Marxism and Radical Democracy Revisited (Rowman and Littlefield, 2007)

Donaldson, M. — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 04:03:32 PST

Introduction

Marginson, S. — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 02:49:17 PST

Open Source Knowledge and University Rankings

Marginson, S. — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 02:49:17 PST

The fecund growth of open source knowledge goods in the global communicative environment underlines their public good character. Once knowledge goods are disseminated, their cost and price tend towards zero. It is now obvious (as apparent in recent OECD policy documents) that commercial research and trade in intellectual property capture only a small fraction of open source knowledge, which is expanding even more rapidly than global markets. But for policy makers this poses the problem of how to assign stable and defensible value to free floating knowledge goods. Across the world, research universities have been positioned in a networked competition of institutions with globally mobile personnel and converging goals and organizational cultures. In rapid time global university ranking and the associated technologies of publication and citation ordering and counting have proved potent in arranging status, assigning value and shaping behaviours in higher education. We find that public goods are readily annexed to the longer-standing projects of producing university status and sustaining an imperial global geo-politics of knowledge. Here the relation between status production and free open source cultural production is not so much a contradiction as an antinomy. These issues are discussed in the light of the flourishing and fall of the lowland city-states of the Maya in Mesoamerica, a notable example of a status economy and of the interplay between status reproduction and cultural goods, a dynamic only partly nested in economic production. The article reviews the rankings technologies, led by the Shanghai Jiao Tong University research metrics, the global strategies of university executives, changing national policies on universities and research, and the aggregation of these effects in the emerging `arms race' in investment in innovation.

Education, Creativity and the Economy of Passions: New Forms of Educational Capitalism

Peters, M. A. — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 02:49:17 PST

This article reviews claims for creativity in the economy and in education distinguishing two accounts: 'personal anarcho-aesthetics' and 'the design principle'. The first emerges in the psychological literature from sources in the Romantic Movement emphasizing the creative genius and the way in which creativity emerges from deep subconscious processes, involves the imagination, is anchored in the passions, cannot be directed and is beyond the rational control of the individual. This account has a close fit to business as a form of 'brainstorming', 'mind-mapping' or 'strategic planning', and is closely associated with the figure of the risk-taking entrepreneur. By contrast, 'the design principle' is both relational and social and surfaces in related ideas of 'social capital', 'situated learning', and 'P2P' (peer-to-peer) accounts of commons-based peer production. It is seen to be a product of social and networked environments — rich semiotic and intelligent environments in which everything speaks. The article traces the genealogies of these two contrasting accounts of creativity and their significance for educational practice before showing how both notions are strongly connected in accounts of new forms of capitalism that require a rethinking of the notion of creativity and its place in schools and institutions of higher education. The article begins by providing a context in terms of a history of the knowledge economy and the historical tendency toward aesthetic or designer capitalism.

Innovation and Creativity: Beyond Diffusion -- On Ordered (Thus Determinable) Action and Creative Organization

Michelsen, A. — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 02:49:17 PST

The article confronts Cornelius Castoriadis's philosophy of 'the imaginary institution of society' with issues of innovation in a knowledge society and outlines a new notion of innovation as creative organization. It will take a critical approach to innovation from a historical perspective of postwar systems theory and introduce Castoriadis's philosophy as an interesting option in this regard. It proceeds in four parts: (a) First, it debates the limits of the commonplace metaphor of diffusion and adoption in today's debate on innovation. (b) Second, it will present aspects of Castoriadis's thought as an alternative, in particular his debate on imagination and the proto-institution of legein/teukhein — ordered action. (c) On this background it will treat a case from the Danish innovation industry, the firm Zentropa WorkZ's programme of 'Dramatic Innovation' as an interesting example of an innovation format addressing creativity. (d) In conclusion, it will briefly debate creative knowledge formation in a knowledge society by pondering relations between innovation and current science.

The Act of Collaborative Creation and the Art of Integrative Creativity: Originality, Disciplinarity and Interdisciplinarity

Rhoten, D., O'Connor, E., Hackett, E. J. — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 02:49:17 PST

Csikszentmihalyi (1999: 314) argues that 'creativity is a process that can be observed only at the intersection where individuals, domains, and fields intersect'. This article discusses the relationship between creativity and interdisciplinarity in science. It is specifically concerned with interdisciplinary collaboration, interrogating the processes that contribute to the collaborative creation of original ideas and the practices that enable creative integration of diverse domains. It draws on results from a novel real-world experiment in which small interdisciplinary groups of graduate students were tasked with producing an innovative scientific research problem and an integrative research proposal. Results show that while bisociative thinking assists in the creation of original research problems, both disciplinary skills and an interdisciplinary disposition are core to the integration of creative research proposals. Extrapolating from the results of this experiment, the article discusses the feasibility of preparing students for such work and the implications for universities and other intellectual centers.

A Transgressive Global Research Imagination

Kenway, J., Fahey, J. — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 02:49:17 PST

In this article we explore the ways in which the notion of the imagination might be mobilized to support researchers to develop transgressive research imaginations and communities with the capacities to think, 'be' and 'become' differently in a world of research increasingly governed by rampant reductionist rationality. To assist us we draw from the evocative views of imagination developed by Cornelius Castoriadis, the imagination's most radical exponent. In this article his ideas about knowledge and its links to the imagination will be deployed as we discuss the following questions: What does the notion of the imagination mean in the everyday world of university research? Is all research an act of the imagination? What might it mean to globalize the research imagination? We will also illustrate the ways in which the imagination is mobilized in (globalizing) research practice.

Social Subjectivity: Psychotherapy as Central Institution

Alexander, J. C. — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 02:49:17 PST

Review Essay: The Glass Half-Full? An Attempt To Contextualize Jeffrey C. Alexander's The Civil Sphere

Hess, A. — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 02:49:17 PST