v. 1. De la Renaștere la epoca "Luminilor".

In the past two decades academic and research literature on “corruption” has flourished. During the same period organizations and initiatives fighting against corruption have also significantly expanded, turning “anti-corruption” into a new research subject. However, despite a few exceptions there is a division of labor between scholars who study corruption itself and those who study the global anti-corruption industry. Juxtaposing corruption’s local discourses and anti-corruption international practices, this article is an attempt to bring together these two intertwined research dimensions and (...) explore how an ethnographic approach might contribute to framing them together. Firstly, it describes how corruption in Romania is often conceptualized and explained in terms of national heritage, something related to old and recent cultural history, including traditional folklore. Secondly, it explores how anti-corruption works in practice, focusing on international legal cooperation projects monitoring the progress and shortcomings both prior to and post Romania’s accession to the European Union. Finally, revealing the articulations of these two apparently unrelated research fields, the article argues that corruption’s local explanations and the circular logic of auditing observed within the anti-corruption industry share a common developmental ideology mirroring the crypto-colonialist structure of power relations and dependency among European nation-states emerging out of the Cold War. (shrink)

In this paper, we discuss how existentialism was criticized, disseminated, and gradually autochthonized in the main philosophical journals of Socialist Romania. We show that the early critique of existentialism was both a statement against contemporary bourgeois philosophy in general and a condemnation of the local philosophical production of the interwar period. In the 1950s, this kind of critique was attuned to the growing fame of several Romanian authors who had emigrated to the West (e.g., Emil Cioran, Mircea Eliade) and targeted (...) both past and contemporary irrationalism. Following a period of critique of existentialism without existentialists (i.e., without reference to individual authors), the 1960s discussions of existentialism were mainly driven by interest in a small number of existentialist authors. In particular, the evolution of Jean-Paul Sartre’s work and politics was analyzed as it straddled existentialism and Marxism. The 1970s saw the integration of selected existentialist concepts and themes, in an attempt to offer a Marxist alternative to existentialism in the form of philosophical anthropology. This led to a period of engagement with existentialists without existentialism across an increasing number of separate disciplines within the humanities and social sciences. In the 1980s, following the failure of Marxist philosophical anthropology and at the height of national communism, existentialism could also be autochthonized through the recovery of selected philosophers from the interwar period whose work had been previously criticized as irrationalist. (shrink)

This volume, Applied Social Sciences: Philosophy and Theology, provides the reader with an important set of essays related to the two aforementioned fields of study. Aesthetics plays a key role in contemporary philosophy and several authors examine its various aspects, such as the question of identification of works of art; the concept of â oesocial aestheticsâ ; the social therapeutic function that art can have; and the relationships among hermeneutics, aesthetics and communication sciences. Other papers deal with ethical (...) issues, such as the role of human values in applied ethics and moral determinations in public life. The meaning and role of postmodernism in philosophy and society is examined at length in various contributions to the volume, and the same is true for phenomenology at large. Even the theoretical seduction and practical failure of Marxism is addressed, while anthropological issues are studied with reference to truth and other key philosophical concepts. John Searleâ (TM)s theory of intentionality is seen as a factor for creating social institutions, and the real meaning of â oeglobalizationâ is investigated in another article. Many essays deal directly with theological and religious topics. For instance the alleged â oeillusionâ of religion versus its persistency is analyzed, along with the current relations between Church and civil government in Romania, the presence of different forms of Christianity in the Romanian nation, the dialogue between social theology and anthropological research, and the antinomic nature of the Church. All papers included in the volume are original and open new perspectives on the many issues addressed by the authors. Even the philosophical styles are different: hermeneutics, analytic philosophy, historical approach, postmodernism, communication theory and linguistic approach. Some papers are theoretical and others have a more empirical or historical flavour. There is however an underlying unity because they all purport to provide new ideas to professionals involved in the socio-humanistic field. The information is divided into chapters in order to help readers to form by themselves an image of the issues that are studied. However, the volume is not addressed only to specialists, and is accessible to a wider public interested in an interdisciplinary approach. (shrink)

British structural-functionalist anthropology famously faces an objection that it is incapable of dealing with the influence of wider processes. An analytical response to this objection, which at least needs to be registered, is that some wider processes can be ignored when there is causal overdetermination.

This is a one page handout presenting some objections A.R. Radcliffe-Brown makes to Frazer on rites and Frazer's evolutionism.

The pursuit of linguistic analysis should mean that philosophers pay attention to the facts: in particular, the philosophy of religion cannot ignore the comparative study of religion, social anthropology, etc. A main aim should be to discover a ?grammar? of religious experience, which may help to illuminate the reasons for certain patterns of religious belief, etc. Here it is necessary to resist the functionalist views of some social anthropologists, stemming from the conviction that religion is an illusion (...) and from a conflation of reasons and causes. But in so far as a functionalist approach applies, it can help to exhibit the accidental and ?non?religious? features of a given religion. (shrink)

This article is concerned to argue that the social sciences and notably social anthropology, must necessarily be concerned with the physical environment of the societies investigated (which includes the biological nature of its members), and not only with the social reality which is at the centre of their concern. This is argued with special reference to fields such as kinship and politics, and to social relationships such as paternity or feuding. The article is concerned to (...) refute arguments put forward in support of the logical autonomy of social studies, particularly in the sphere of kinship, in earlier articles by Barnes and Needham. (shrink)

A research project by the Schools of Theology and Psychology of Australia’s Charles Sturt University surveyed a large sample of Salvation Army officers. This article considers survey responses to two questions relating to end-of-life care: the use of pain medications that may shorten life, and the cessation of fluid and food intake. The results of the analyses are evaluated in terms of Michael Banner’s proposal that moral theology should more assiduously converse with ‘patient ethnographic study’, which the survey instantiates to (...) some extent. Banner’s proposal and the results of the survey are contrasted to Peter Singer’s analytical moral philosophical dictums on end-of-life care. The results are also compared to a metastudy by Andrea Rodríguez-Prat and Evert van Leeuwen of 14 ethnographic studies of those who wish to hasten death at the end of life. We conclude that respondents exemplify a form of moral reasoning that is embedded within Christian spirituality; counters the assumptions of Singer’s approach; contrasts the diminishment of ‘meaning’ at the end of life, as seen in Rodríguez-Prat and van Leeuwen; and deserves further respectful ethnographic study. (shrink)

The purpose. Explore the major ideological patterns of development of a socially philosophies of education in the context of the problems of institutionalization of knowledge about human and social development. To analyse system-integration aspect of social philosophy and education management in interaction of concepts of an instrumentalism of a pragmatism and a neopragmatism with model of «new humanism» in formation of socially valuable orientations. Methodology. Classification existing in the western philosophy of education and education of directions is spent, (...) proceeding from basic principles of philosophical school or a current, first of all considering those the purpose and means which are really involved by them in process of education, social development and socially-moral education and being based on the basic installations, the purpose expressed by that or other direction, how its supporters imagine the person, its requirement, a social role, модус behaviour which the education system and education urged to form. Scientific novelty. In conditions when against crisis of an education system of the government of the USA and the leading countries of Europe are compelled to begin its long-term reform, its theorists substantially pay attention to democratic workings out of concepts of an instrumentalism of a pragmatism/neopragmatism in modern social philosophy of education, in particular on their aspiration to introduce in process of social development, education and education idea and practical model both educational, and a social equality. Considering growing requirement of a practical embodiment of ideas of freedom, justice, aspiration to realization of the human rights proclaimed a society, supporters of the concept of «new humanism» see the main objective in blocking a way to conformism, to a manipulation behaviour of the person and to create conditions for its free self-expression, for realization by the person of a fundamental choice of acts in a concrete situation and by that to warn danger of formation of the unified form of behaviour. In it principles of «new humanism» approach with a position of «new humanism» instrumentalism and neopragmatism. Conclusions. Before social philosophy of education/education it is necessary to define a problem factors which cause achievement of its main objective, to state an estimation to moral principles and personal qualities with which actually the education/education theory connects realization of the problems, to show, why these, instead of any other principles and qualities open to the person possibility to choose in a concrete situation socially powerful both morally defensible and comprehensible line of conduct in public the relation. Statement of a question on necessity of the philosophical analysis of problems of education and education in a social context serves as an indicator of understanding philosophers, teachers of an increasing role of the human and moral factor in society development. And, at last, the aspiration to develop socially-philosophical bases of pedagogics in general and education in particular, testifies that the western and domestic philosophers, teachers, representatives of social and psychological sciences, at least, the majority of them, have realized the public importance of an education system and education, its global character. (shrink)

Suspending the social matter of social anthropology (along with other surprises).

This lecture is divided, roughly, into three parts. First, there is a general and perhaps rather simple-minded discussion of what are the ‘facts’ that social anthropologists study; is there anything special about these ‘facts’ which makes them different from other kinds of facts? It will be useful to start with the common-sense distinction between two kinds or, better, aspects of social facts; first—though neither is analytically prior to the other—and putting it very crudely, ‘what people do’, the aspect (...) of social interaction, and second, ‘what—and how—people think’, the conceptual, classifying, cognitive component of human culture. Now in reality, of course (and perhaps not so ‘of course’; people do tend to think of them as separate ‘things’), these two aspects are inextricably intertwined. But it is essential to distinguish them analytically, because each aspect gives rise to quite different kinds of problems of understanding for the social anthropologist. We shall see that the problem of how to be ‘objective’, and so to avoid ethnographic error, arises in both contexts, but in rather different forms in each. (shrink)

This lecture is divided, roughly, into three parts. First, there is a general and perhaps rather simple-minded discussion of what are the ‘facts’ that social anthropologists study; is there anything special about these ‘facts’ which makes them different from other kinds of facts? It will be useful to start with the common-sense distinction between two kinds or, better, aspects of social facts; first—though neither is analytically prior to the other—and putting it very crudely, ‘what people do’, the aspect (...) of social interaction, and second, ‘what—and how—people think’, the conceptual, classifying, cognitive component of human culture. Now in reality, of course (and perhaps not so ‘of course’; people do tend to think of them as separate ‘things’), these two aspects are inextricably intertwined. But it is essential to distinguish them analytically, because each aspect gives rise to quite different kinds of problems of understanding for the social anthropologist. We shall see that the problem of how to be ‘objective’, and so to avoid ethnographic error, arises in both contexts, but in rather different forms in each. (shrink)

According to Marilyn Strathern, it is, or was, an axiom of social anthropology that societies differ in how they handle the same facts. I present a challenge which I anticipate and respond to it.

Marilyn Strathern claims that it is, or was, an axiom of social anthropology that societies differ in how they handle the same facts. I present two clarifications neither of which looks suitable for axiomatic status.

This paper challenges Marilyn Strathern’s claim that it is, or was, an axiom of social anthropology that societies differ in how they handle the same facts. I present a set of foundational commitments for conducting social anthropology which leave the truth of the proposition as an empirical question of the discipline.

In Britain and also in France, arguments have been put forward against the claim that there are or have been paradigms in British social anthropology. But historian of anthropology Henrika Kuklicka supposes that there was a paradigm from the late 1920s to just before the 1960s. I raise an objection to her portrait of this research community and observe that her text implies two quite different replies.

This paper also gives feedback in response to the evening of presentations about the value of different disciplines to the social sciences, at the University of Manchester. I respond to Keir Martin on the value of social anthropology. Martin flagged that an anthropologist predicted the 2007-8 global financial crisis. I present a response I anticipate from economics.