American Social Theory Research Articles

Resistencias cotidianas en defensa del “buen vivir”: el caso de la comunidad Lapa, en el interior de Ceará

This article discusses contradictions involving social and territorial conflicts generated by a large-scale public water project, the communities affected by this project, and how they resisted this process, considering the historical context involving the development model imposed by capitalism in Latin America and government regulation, especially contemporary strategies to deterritorialize peasant groups. We examine the struggle by farmers in the Lapa community for the recognition of their territory and against violations of their rights after the construction of the Figueiredo dam in Potiretama, Ceará, Brazil. In our analysis, Latin American social theory and the sociology of conflicts dialog with empirical data obtained from interviews and bibliographic/documentary research conducted in 2018-2020. The farmers in Lapa were seen to utilize various forms of resistance: collective organization, activation of collective identities, occupations, social mobilizations, and maintenance of the traditional way of life. We conclude that the peasantry includes groups that resist and fight in the countryside against the fallacy of “a better life” in defense of “living well”.elocation-id: e2230112Received: 10.07.2021 • Accepted: 03.28.2022 • Publicado: 05.20.2022Original article / Blind peer review / Open access

Aníbal Quijano e a racionalidade alternativa na América Latina: diálogos com Mariátegui

RESUMO Este artigo tem como objetivo discutir a perspectiva “decolonial” de Aníbal Quijano (1930-2018) e seus usos a partir de José Carlos Mariátegui. Em primeiro lugar, relacionamos o contexto histórico latino-americano desde a década de 1980 ao esforço de interpretação de Mariátegui por Aníbal Quijano, balizado, sobretudo, pela formulação de uma teoria fundacional (filosófica, epistemológica, ética e política) sobre a especificidade da América Latina. Na sequência, Quijano redescobre, assim, certo Mariátegui associado à renovação crítica da teoria social latino-americana. Através de múltiplos mecanismos de difusão, ele estabelece uma reconhecida caracterização filosófica e epistemológica do arsenal mariateguiano, visto como bastião da crítica eurocêntrica (“racionalidade alternativa”), para legitimá-lo como referência fundamental da teoria da “colonialidade do poder”.

Searching for Mexico’s Lost Labor Subject: Historical and Biographical Milestones in the Constitution of the Sociology of Work in Mexico

This essay aims to weave together salient moments in the development of the Mexican labor movement, the reorganization of the economy and production starting in the 1980s, the development of Sociology of Work in Mexico, and snapshots from my own autobiography. The biographical perspective helps to illustrate a few parallel lives that formed part of a collective intellectual and political movement in the period under analysis. Our perspective is that the macro shifts are not reducible to the individual events of which they are composed; they may affect individuals’ actions, but they do not determine them. Peoples' actions are located within structures, but they require subjectivity to acquire meaning and orient said actions. At least that is how we have believed ourselves to be living all these years.The period of our study begins in the 1970s with the end of the import-substitution period in the Third World, the emergence of a powerful workers' movement in Mexico that questioned corporatist unions and political structures and lasted until the early 1980s when the reorganization of the economy and model of production in large companies happened. This moment also marked the beginnings of today’s Sociology of Work in Mexico, which broke with previous conceptions focused on the study of workers’ movements and with Dependency theories predominant in Latin American social theory. We found ourselves immersed in these processes, suffering the changes while at the same time, as a new generation of scholars emerged, attempting to exercise influence on union conceptions of labor. This history is the subject of the current essay.

Importing Freud: First‐wave psychoanalysis, interwar social sciences, and the interdisciplinary foundations of an American social theory

For all that has been written about Freud, one of the most significant sites for his initial importation into the U.S. remains largely unexamined: namely, within and through the social sciences. During these early years, social scientists were attracted to psychoanalysis for reasons that were not only personal and idiosyncratic, but also intellectual, social, and professional. Focusing on the University of Chicago's Division of Social Sciences and using oral histories, students records, course materials, as well as published sources, this essay explores this varied attraction and its substantive impact upon American social theory vis-à-vis the ideals and ideology of "social adjustment."

Transitions in American Social Theory and the Decline of Public Sociology at the End of the Twentieth Century

today): if charge is really to look at the implications of terrorist attack on then one would have to examine implications of role New York City plays in international economy and what attacks say about how it is seen elsewhere in world. But those questions, badly as they may need asking, were clearly beyond what sponsors of these volumes undertook to address. Nor did sponsors want to address pol icy implications. Yet there is at least one is sue that cries out for discussion, and arises directly from 9/11 recovery experience. New York witnessed an outpouring of civic concern, of citizen participation, of wide spread and diverse and intense interest in future of city, in months after 9/11, that was perhaps unprecedented in City's history. Five thousand people attended one mammoth session at its convention center looking at plans; multiple forums and focus groups met to discuss alternatives; profes sionals devoted time and energy to detailed interventions; pubic testimony at hearings was energetic; groups formed and mobilized about civic concerns throughout city. Yet it all ended up for nothing, or at most with marginal impact. What a tremendous oppor tunity was lost! This was perhaps second great tragedy of 9/11-that upsurge of collective concern for city's good was not able to break through selfish private and institutional and narrow political interests that ran show. Having said all this, if three volumes are simply seen as taking stock rather than as an analysis, as a summary of where particu lar groups and particular issues stand some four years after 9/11, they succeed admirably. It is only if aspiration was higher, for a social-science-grounded analysis of eco nomic, social, and political implications of terrorist attack on city (in words of foreword to each of three vol umes), that fault can be found. And even here, volumes remain useful for anyone wishing to carry task of analysis forward. One hopes that Russell Sage Foundation will not stop with rich but essentially de scriptive work reflected by three vol umes, but will go further to explore vital questions they raise.

Yellowstone as “Landscape Idea”: Thomas Moran and the Pictorial Practices of Gilded-Age Western Exploration

Between 1869 and 1872, Yellowstone's Upper Valley was explored and transformed from a terra incognita into the world's first national park. While locally organized exploration played an integral role in the emergence and diffusion of incipient geographical knowledge about Yellowstone, it was the “official” and “authoritative” 1871 expedition by Ferdinand V. Hayden, including photographer William H. Jackson and landscape painter Thomas Moran, which confirmed the region as worthy of federal protection. Integrating work in human geography, American western history, art history, and social theory, this article points to the important role landscape imagery played in the exploration and establishment of Yellowstone National Park.

The Pareto Theorem Restated and Examined: Democracy and Conservative Imposition of Morality by Law

In this paper, I restate and examine the Pareto Theorem in light of recent developments in American society. The Pareto Theorem postulates a direct association between government's interference in private life and power abuse, thus undemocratic outcomes. The Italian sociologist Vilfredo Pareto originally formulated the Theorem with reference to America. Pareto observed the US government's persistent predilection to impose morality by law and so directly interfere with private lives, resulting in extensive power abuses. The paper extends this observation to argue that such coercive imposition of morality reflects America's permanent conservative revolution with its peculiar dualism or contradiction between oppression in moral life and anarchy in economy. It argues that this contradictory combination of moral tyranny and economic license links American conservatism with traditional despotism and modern authoritarianism. This restatement of the Pareto Theorem aims at denying the scholarly and democratic legitimacy of neo-conservative analyses and projects in the US. Since the Pareto Theorem is almost unknown in American social theory and virtually unexamined in empirical research, this article is among the first endeavors in this direction, thus filling in a void in the literature.

Wendell Berry and the Agrarian Tradition: A Common Grace. By Kimberly A. Smith. Lawrence: University of Kansas Press. 2003. x + 270 pp. Notes, bibliography, index. Cloth $34.95

Farmer and conservationist Wendell Berry has published more than thirty books, making his name a household word among environmentalists. From his Kentucky farm, Berry preaches and practices stewardship of the land as he seeks to defend the value and traditions of farm life in an industrial capitalist society. A central figure in the greening of American agrarianism, Berry has been an advocate of small farming and traditional values who has tirelessly reminded readers that sustainable agriculture is more than a catchphrase. Kimberly Smith now reveals the depth of his ideas and their relevance for American social and political theory. Berry's central teaching focuses on the fragility of our natural and social worlds; Smith's timely book revisits the problem of living a meaningful life in a world filled with both deadly perils and unimagined possibilities. Here is the first book to explore the implications of this central tenet and other key aspects of Berry's thought, as well as his overall contribution to environmental theory and politics. Smith shows how the many strands of Berry's thought can be woven together into a coherent agrarian philosophy. Focusing on his relationship to the American agrarian and environmental traditions, the examines how Berry's ecological agrarianism derives from the concept of grace, or living in concert with nature and society. Along the way, she defends his social theory against accusations of utopianism, shows how his moral theory subverts the notion of rugged individualism usually associated with farming, and reviews his political theory's argument for decentralized democracy. By assessing Berry's reformulation of democratic agrarianism, Smith goes beyond any previous critiques of his writing, and her exploration of Berry's moral vision shows that such vision is more relevant as America continues to move further away from its agrarian past.

Freedom Is an Endless Meeting: Democracy in American Social Movements. By Francesca Polletta. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002. xii, 283 pp. $35.00, isbn 0-226-67448-7.)

In my view one reason that American social movement theory has not advanced very far is that it has not penetrated into the real-life texture of movement building, partly because of the need for comparative analysis. In Freedom Is an Endless Meeting, Francesca Polletta has produced a remarkable work of historical sociology that manages to probe the inner depths of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), the New Left, and early radical feminism (and, as bookends, early-twentieth-century labor and pacifist organizing and early-twenty-first-century global justice organizing) in a way that enhances her comparative framework—in part by stressing the continuities and interconnections of those key movements. She provides the fullest theoretical picture of participatory democracy, rich with nuance, ambiguity, and irony, that this reviewer has yet seen. In each case Polletta challenges familiar interpretations of the movements and then offers a more complex alternative narrative. Her main thesis is that the experiments with participatory democracy were not merely “expressive” or “prefigurative,” not just attempts to embody one's values in the present struggle, but efforts to be politically effective, to be instrumental, indeed, “strategic,” that were more successful than not (p. 7).

Parsons and Sorokin

This article compares the main elements of Parsons' and Sorokin's sociological work in the context of the formation and development of an American school of social theory during the 1930s-1950s. Of these elements, four are meta-theoretical, and four substantive or theoretical. Included in the first group are the problems of methodology, selection, convergence versus divergence, and interpretation. The possibility of social dynamics, the conception of the social system, micro versus macro-social and economic action comprise the second. The comparison suggests that the different roles of Parsons and Sorokin in American social theory are to be, in part, accounted for by extra-scientific rather than strictly scientific factors.

Wo'Lakol Kiciyapi

ABSTRACT This pilot study hypothesized that the ancient traditions of help and healing among traditional Lakota people represent an alternative or complementary model for understanding a distinctive approach to American social work theory and practice which includes “shamanic” or spirit healing as a constituent part of the help and healing process. Thirty-two individuals, Including traditional Lakota elders, educators, leaders, and mental health providers, were interviewed about their views on traditional ideas of help and healing and about social work and social service practices. The findings show that there were distinctive approaches to ensure social health and well-being among pre-reservation Lakota peoples, and that the traditions of help and healing are intimately linked to the “natural law” and to the ceremonial life of the tribe. The findings show a resurgence of traditional healing practices among the Lakota with important implications for Social Work theory and practice.

Henry George and Social Theory

Abstract. It was contended in Part 1 (in the January, 1995 issue) that Henry George should be recognized as an original American social theorist. He was a pioneering postmodern contributor to social theory who criticized the linear idea of progress and anticipated Durkheim's concept of the “collective consciousness.”He recognized the fateful consequences of the separation of political economy into “economics” and “sociology.” These include the loss of moral considerations from political economy, and the rise of a sociology that culminates in the proliferation of meaningless abstractions because it is premised on amoral economic assumptions. His theory of speculative land value as the cause of civilizations decline is recapitulated and shown in a larger context. The congruence between the concerns and conceptions of George and Weber is detailed.Part II concludes by tracing the tragic consequences for modern American social theory, from Spencer to Parsons, that result from confusing the value of commodities with the value of land, of private wealth with social value.

Henry George

Abstract. It is contended in Part I that Henry George should be recognized as an original American social theorist. He was a pioneering postmodern contributor to social theory who criticized the linear idea of progress and anticipated Durkheim's concept of the “collective consciousness,” He recognized the fateful consequences of the separation of political economy into “economics” and “sociology.” These include the loss of moral considerations from political economy, and the rise of a sociology that culminates in the proliferation of meaningless abstractions because it is premised on amoral economic assumptions. His theory’ of speculative land value as the cause of civilizations’ decline is recapitulated and shown in a larger context. The congruence between George's and Weber's concerns and conceptions is detailed. Part 11 (in the April 1995 issue) concludes by tracing the tragic consequences for modern American social theory, from Spencer to Parsons, that result from confusing the value of commodities with the value of land, of private wealth with social value.

Society and Culture in Early Modern SpainLucrecia's Dreams: Politics and Prophecy in Sixteenth-Century Spain. Richard L. KaganEmigrants and Society: Extremadura and Spanish America in the Sixteenth Century. Ida AltmanThe Avila of Saint Teresa: Religious Reform in a Sixteenth-Century City. Jodi BilinkoffTown and Country in Pre-industrial Spain: Cuenca, 1550-1870. David Sven ReherLiberty in Absolutist Spain: The Habsburg Sale of Towns, 1516-1700.

Previous articleNext article No AccessReview ArticleSociety and Culture in Early Modern Spain Lucrecia's Dreams: Politics and Prophecy in Sixteenth-Century Spain. Richard L. Kagan Emigrants and Society: Extremadura and Spanish America in the Sixteenth Century. Ida Altman The Avila of Saint Teresa: Religious Reform in a Sixteenth-Century City. Jodi Bilinkoff Town and Country in Pre-industrial Spain: Cuenca, 1550-1870. David Sven Reher Liberty in Absolutist Spain: The Habsburg Sale of Towns, 1516-1700. Helen Nader Gender and Disorder in Early Modern Seville. Mary Elizabeth Perry Frontiers of Heresy: The Spanish Inquisition from the Basque Lands to Sicily. William Monter Inquisition and Society in the Kingdom of Valencia, 1478-1834. Stephen Haliczer Spanish Imperialism and the Political Imagination: Studies in European and American Social and Political Theory, 1513-1830. Anthony Pagden Theatre in Spain, 1490-1700. Melveena McKendrick James AmelangJames Amelang Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The Journal of Modern History Volume 65, Number 2Jun., 1993 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/244641 Views: 8Total views on this site Copyright 1993 The University of ChicagoPDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Spanish Imperialism and the Political Imagination. Studies in European and Spanish American Social and Political Theory, 1513-1830. By Anthony Pagden. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990. Pp. viii, 184. Notes. Bibliography. Index. $22.50.)

Spanish Imperialism and the Political Imagination. Studies in European and Spanish American Social and Political Theory, 1513-1830. By Anthony Pagden. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990. Pp. viii, 184. Notes. Bibliography. Index. $22.50.)

Then and Now: The Treatment of Selected Theorists in American Social Theory Texts

A content analysis of 47 social theory textbooks reveals that certain social theorists are no longer given the coverage they once received. After examining some reasons for the general decline in coverage of many theorists, the continued popularity of Hegel, the decline of interest in Machiavelli and Vico, and the continued slight coverage of Ibn Khaldun, we discuss the impact of both the Cold War and scientific sociology on the content of theory texts.

Milton and Free Will: An Essay in Criticism and Philosophy (review)

Reviews179 ology for the social sciences, Hekman maintains that "methodological implications " can nevertiieless be drawn from his work. His "fusion of horizons," for example, avoids what she calls die "errors" of positivism and subjectivism. Hekman's study faUs to deliver on its promise of a major reorientation in our understanding of the social sciences. Like many odier exemplars of the once-again fashionable genre, "Grand Theory," the book neither substantiates nor exemplifies the "radical" proposals and methodological initiatives it announces . In the face of the postmodernist chaUenge, Hekman invokes that familiar subject of American social theory, "the normative values of our tradition " (p. 186). Hekman successfully "fuses horizons" with Mannheim and Gadamer, but she refuses to come fuUy to grips with alternative lines of theory and research. She upholds her program largely by advancing facUe dismissals of relevant work in the sociology of scientific knowledge, ethnomethodology, and interpretive sociology; and her critiques ofWittgenstein, Rorty, Habermas, Derrida, and Foucault often amount to heavy-handed, and sometimes outlandish , assertions, such as "Wittgenstein's essentiaUy epistemological approach" (p. 119), or Foucault's and Derrida's having "forgotten that historical, social and cultural grounds are necessary to human life" (p. 196). Hekman writes as one possessed of a truth which enables her to pinpoint the "errors" of other thinkers, and she repeatedly asserts that "it is not difficult to show" how these rivals go astray. The criticism underplays theextent towhich some ofdie rejected approaches not only anticipate the sorts of critique she gives, but offer refinements and singular applications of the themes she espouses. Boston UniversityMichael Lynch Milton andFree Will: An Essay in Criticism andPhilosophy, by William Myers; 258 pp. New York: Methuen, 1987, $62.00. The tide seems misleading; the book is not so much about MUton as it is a protracted and difficult worrying of the question of free wiU. "My argument," Myers writes, "involves a defense of traditional notions of truth, the self and God, which I believe rationalists, empiricists and deconstructionists have aU misread" (p. 4). It is a defense of the humanist tradition of free wiU "against the greattide ofempiricist and critical phUosophy which has dominated Western inteUectual discourse since Hume and Kant" (p. 60). I can imagine this book offering excitations to doctoral candidates pursuing symbolic logic or to erudite Jesuits in philosophy enclaves, but the reasonably inteUigent ordinary reader wiU find much of it to be like sucking a desiccated 180Philosophy and Literature lemon. It wiU support Sydney's conclusion that phUosophers are "hard of utterance and misty to be conceived." The experience of reading this book is at times so exasperating that one has the urge to resort to Samuel Johnson's solution: "Sir, said he, we know our wül is free, and there's an end on't." Part of the problem is that the writing is too often unnecessarily tangled and involuted. Here is a specimen: "... what Monod takes to be an historically unique, soteriological portentous event—acceptance of the postulate of objectivity—is rather an entirely normal, and therefore, on his premisses, a biologicaUy determined event" (p. 154). This book is odd, though, in that portions of it are intensely interesting and weU written. It is as though the writer has double selves: the Doctor Jekyll is an agüe and fascinating writer; the Mr. Hyde dourly serves academic solemnity. Within this phUosophical labyrinth the reader suddenly encounters the idea of being teletransported and replicated ceU by cell on Mars. Then, would my Self be my actual Self? Such passages are a relief from the thin air of recondite phUosophizing. Similarly, the reader is rewarded with acute discussions of James's The Portrait of a Lady. They are so good and so central that the tide could just as well have been fames and Free Will. If a reader can survive the first seven chapters, the last three wül make the effort worthwhile. They develop a brilliant defense of MUton's humanist conception of free wül. At the risk of blurring the argument, here is a glimpse of Myers's discussion. He uses deconstructionist theory, but opposes Barthes's position that the refusal to fix meaning is ultimately a denial...

German Engineers and American Social Theory: Historical Perspectives on Professionalization

When historians turn to the social sciences for help with the task of ordering their data or making their sources speak more clearly, the results can be rewarding in unexpected ways. So it is if one applies the twin concepts profession and professionalization to the German context-in particular, to the history of German engineers in the nineteenth century. At first sight, an idea like the “professionalization of the German engineers” seems straightforward enough. In tandem with the growth of Germany's science-based industries and unparalleled system of technical education, it suggests the emergence of the men who occupied the critical positions in these institutions and embodied technological progress. A notion such as the “rise of the German engineering profession,” therefore, stirs visions of a grand metamorphosis, in which the land of poets and thinkers—and of Junkers, bureaucrats, and mandarins—turned into the world of Siemens, Porsche, Mannesmann, Bosch, Diesel, Daimler-Benz, etc.

Moving Up and Moving Out: Confusing Ends and Means About Ghetto Dispersal

Assimilation is a pervasive ethos of American life. It is central to the nation's self-understanding and it is fundamental to much of American social theory and policy. See Gordon (1964), Glazer and Moynihan (1978), and Lieberson (1980). The disproportionate poverty and isolation of blacks has raised doubts about the receptive capacity of American society and has fostered a debate about the policy response required by the problem. In this paper, I argue that the assimilation model is relevant and useful to an analysis of urban black poverty. From the model, I derive a series of hypotheses that engage a long-running empirical debate over the relation between the segregated ghetto and economic opportunity. This analysis explores the relation between moving up (in socioeconomic status) and moving out (of the central-city ghetto). I argue that the call for ghetto dispersal as a means of breaking the 'underclass' stems from an incomplete understanding of ethnic group mobility within US society as well as of the pervasive tangle of limited opportunities facing blacks throughout the metropolitan region.

The Flight From Ambiguity: Essays in Social and Cultural Theory. By Donald N. Levine. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985. Pp. x + 248. $25.00.)

The essays turn about a single theme, the loss of the capacity to deal constructively with ambiguity in the modern era. Levine offers a head-on critique of the modern compulsion to flee ambiguity. He centers his analysis on the question of what responses social scientists should adopt in the face of the inexorably ambiguous character of all natural languages. In the course of his argument, Levine presents a fresh reading of works by the classic figures of modern European and American social theory Durkheim, Freud, Simmel and Weber, and Park, Parsons, and Merton.