In this article I undertake an analysis of erotic sexual intercourse - commonly, and more accurately, designated as love-making - in the spirit of Durkheim's social analysis of religion. Thus, based on a phenomenological semiotic analysis of the peculiar things we do and feel in the course of making love, I propose, first, to uncover the implicit `logic' that generates and governs these distinctly sociable doings and sociable feelings. Second, I proceed to suggest that the sameself logic, albeit in an (...) attenuated version, also generates and governs the broad class of `social occasions proper', and that this homology calls for gathering erotic and social occasions under one and the same rubric, which I propose to call the `socio-erotic' (since the term `social' has been denatured through overuse). Third, I conclude with a discussion of how socio-erotic domains fit into a larger world structured and governed mainly by interest-driven and power-driven conflictual fields. (shrink)

The article explores the relationship between visual culture and the fight for visibility and attention in contemporary society. It draws on a concept of visual culture which not only sees the rising significance of the visual and the proliferation of images as its defining traits, but also the fact that, today, people are—to a much higher degree—both consumers as well as producers of images. Based on this definition, it is argued that in visually oriented communication and media societies, the anthropologically (...) fundamental need for attention manifests itself as a fight for visibility which takes on the form of ever more extreme forms of public self-display. Furthermore, a portrait of two social figures—the star and the voyeur—will serve as further analysis and description of the social trends which can be tied to the emergence of today's visual culture. The article will close by discussing attention and visibility in terms of inclusion and exclusion and by proposing an analytical model for differentiating four modes of existence in a visual culture. (shrink)

In the second book of his Confessions, Augustine of Hippo presents his famous juvenile Pear Theft as an apparent case of acting under the guise of the bad. At least since Thomas Aquinas’ influential interpretation, scholars have usually taken Augustine’s detailed discussion of the case to be dispelling this “guise of the guise of the bad”, and to offer a solid “guise of the good”-explanation. This paper addresses an important challenge to this view: Augustine offers two different “guise of the (...) good”-explanations in his text rather than just one, and the two explanations seem to be mutually exclusive. A number of more recent attempts to reconcile Augustine’s two lines of explanation are discussed and found wanting, and a new suggestion is made. The proposed solution focuses on the Pear Theft as a joint action, and it departs from the Aquinian interpretation in that it accounts for a way in which the “guise of the bad”-hypothesis survives the explanation. (shrink)

Beginning with Kant, modernity has developed the secular dogma that human autonomy is incompatible with obedience to religious law. Can philosophy critique a faulty understanding of both autonomy and obedience? Can theology work out a healthy interaction between the two? In other words, can Christian faith integrate both a redefined autonomy and a redefined obedience?

The field of political psychology, like the social sciences more generally, is being challenged. New theoretical direction is being demanded from within and a greater epistemological sophistication and ethical relevance is being demanded from without. In response, an outline for a reconstructed political psychology is offered here. To begin, a theoretical framework for a truly integrative political psychology is sketched. In the attempt to transcend the reductionist quality of cross-disciplinary or multidisciplinary inquiry, the theoretical approach offered here emphasizes the dually (...) structured quality of social life as the singular product of both organizing social structures and defining discourse communities on the one hand and motivated, thinking individuals on the other. To further this theoretical effort, meta-theoretical considerations are addressed. The modernist-postmodernist debate regarding the status of truth and value is used as a point of departure for constructing the epistemological foundation for political psychology. In this light, structural pragmatic guidelines for theory construction, empirical research and normative inquiry are presented. While the focus remains on political psychology in particular, it is assumed that the criticisms of present research and the suggestions for future inquiry apply to the social sciences more generally. (shrink)

The British Psychological Society having established a ‘Philosophy and History’ section, a fresh look at the nature of the History of Psychology is called for. In this paper, I would like to make a contribution to this by raising some conundrums which have yet to be adequately addressed. First, though, what has happened in the History of Psychology so far? Psychologists have been writing histories of their discipline since the turn of the century; Baldwin's History of Psychology appeared in 1913, (...) for example, and the first volume of G. S. Brett's trilogy of the same title in 1912, a year which also saw Dessoir's Outlines of the History of Psychology translated into English. This early work was clearly aimed at providing a respectable genealogy for the nascent discipline; only about a fifth of Baldwin's work actually deals with experimental or empirical Psychology dating from later than the mid-nineteenth century, while Brett treats scientific approaches virtually as a coda to a survey of the history of the philosophy of mind. Psychology is presented as the legitimate heir to the main western philosophical tradition, sired on it, so to speak, by physiologists such as Helmholtz, Muller and Broca. In 1929, E. G. Boring published the first edition of his A History of Experimental Psychology, which dominated the field for decades along with Gardner Murphy's Historical Introduction of Modern Psychology of 1928, a lighter weight work but with a somewhat broader range, which served as an introductory text. Both went into subsequent editions, the latter as recently as 1972 . The series The History of Psychology in Autobiography, begun in 1930 and now in its seventh volume , contains professional autobiographies by the ageing eminent of varying levels of self-disclosure, wit and informative value. It is not, however, until the 1960s that a self-conscious sub-discipline calling itself ‘History of Psychology’ emerges within Psychology, being pioneered by the late R. I. Watson in the United States. New histories begin appearing, including Kantor's very positivistic The Scientific Evolution of Psychology Vol. 1 of 1963 and Hearnshaw's A Short History of British Psychology of 1964. In 1965, the Journal for the History of the Behavioral Sciences was started, formally signalling the arrival of the new sub-discipline on the scene. Subsequent events warrant a more critical appraisal. (shrink)

This volume - the joint effort of the research groups on practical philosophy and the history of political thought of the Institute of Philosophy of the Research Centre for the Humanities of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences - brings together scholarly essays that attempt to face the challenges of the contemporary situation. The authors come from rather divergent disciplinary backgrounds, including philosophy, law, history, literature and the social sciences, from different cultural and political contexts, including Central, Eastern and Western Europe, (...) and belong to different generations. But they all share an interest to bravely answer the large topical issues concerning universal morality, here and now. (shrink)

Prior generations’ electoral crises (e.g., gerrymandering) have dealt mainly with political maneuverings around geographical shifts. We analyze four recent (1998–2003) American electoral crises: the Clinton impeachment controversy, the 2000 Florida presidential election, the Texas legislators’ flight to Oklahoma and New Mexico, and the California gubernatorial recall. We show that in each case temporal manipulation was at least as important as geographical. We highlight emergent electoral practices surrounding the manipulation of time, which we dub “temporal gerrymandering.” We suggest a theory of (...) postmodern electoral crises, in which the rules of time and space are simultaneously in flux. These crises expose concerns with early American democratic theory, which was based on an understanding of “the people” as geographically and temporally unidimensional. Representative systems, therefore, were designed largely without reference to geographic and temporal complexity. (shrink)

This paper draws on the cultural-materialist paradigm articulated by Raymond Williams to offer a radical historicisation of identity and identity-politics in capitalist societies. A keywords analysis reveals surprisingly that identity, as it is elaborated in the familiar categories of personal and social identity, is a relatively novel concept in Western thought, politics and culture. The claim is not the standard one that people’s ‘identities’ became more important and apparent in advanced capitalist societies, but that identity itself came to operate as (...) a new and key mechanism for construing, shaping and narrating experiences of selfhood and grouphood in this period. From a cultural-materialist perspective, the emergence and evolution of this idea of identity can only be properly understood in relation to the social contexts of its use, namely, the new contexts of consumption of capitalist societies, and the development of new forms of group-based struggle from the 1960s. What the analysis shows is that it was the commercialisation and politicisation of older essentialist understandings of selfhood and grouphood in these contexts that has given rise to the concepts of personal and social identity as we know them today.By exploring the material conditions that have given rise to the contemporary powerful attachment to ‘identity’, this paper offers a new point of departure from which to pursue many issues of concern to critical theorists and radical activists today, including the conflict over identity politics in radical circles, the historical and social processes behind their development and at least partial co-option, and their relation to neoliberal political-economic formations today. (shrink)

Background: Conscience is an important concept in ethics, having various meanings in different cultures. Because a growing number of healthcare professionals are of immigrant background, particularly within the care of older people, demanding multiple ethical positions, it is important to explore the meaning of conscience among care providers within different cultural contexts. Research objective: The study aimed to illuminate the meaning of conscience by enrolled nurses with an Iranian background working in residential care for Persian-speaking people with dementia. Research design: (...) A phenomenological hermeneutical method guided the study. Participants and research context: A total of 10 enrolled nurses with Iranian background, aged 33–46 years, participated in the study. All worked full time in residential care settings for Persian-speaking people with dementia in a large city, in Sweden. Ethical considerations: The study was approved by the Regional Ethical Review Board for ethical vetting of research involving humans. Participants were given verbal and written study information and assured that their participation was voluntary and confidential. Findings: Three themes were constructed including perception of conscience, clear conscience grounded in relations and striving to keep a clear conscience. The conscience was perceived as an inner guide grounded in feelings, which is dynamic and subject to changes throughout life. Having a clear conscience meant being able to form a bond with others, to respect them and to get their confirmation that one does well. To have a clear conscience demanded listening to the voice of the conscience. The enrolled nurses strived to keep their conscience clear by being generous in helping others, accomplishing daily tasks well and behaving nicely in the hope of being treated the same way one day. Conclusion: Cultural frameworks and the context of practice needed to be considered in interpreting the meaning of conscience and clear conscience. (shrink)

An ethnographic or ethnomethodological turn in the history of the human sciences has been a Holy Grail at least since Cooter and Pumphrey called for it in 1994, but it has been little realized in practice. This article sketches out some ways to explore the reception, use and/or co-production of scientific knowledge using material generated by mediators such as mass-market paperbacks, radio, TV and especially newspapers. It then presents some preliminary findings, tracing the prevalence and, to a lesser extent, use (...) of selected social-science concepts in the USA and the UK from the 1930s to the 1970s. (shrink)

This paper deals with EMIL-S, a software tool box which was designed during the EMIL project for the simulation of processes during which norms emerged in an agent society. This tool box implements the cognitive architecture of normative agents which was designed during the EMIL project which is also discussed in other papers in this issue. This implementation is described in necessary detail, and two examples of its application to several different scenarios are given, namely a scenario in which persons (...) involved in micro finance are simulated and learn how to sanction free riders and how to learn from these sanctions, and a scenario in which simulated persons move through a simulated airport where they more often than not have to wait in queues and learn how to behave properly in queues. (shrink)

The authors argue that Erving Goffman developed concepts that contribute to an understanding of historical changes in the construction of the self and enable us to see the new forms that self-construction is taking in a society driven by consumption, marketing, and media. These concepts include: commercial realism; dramatic scripting; hyper-ritualization; the glimpse; and the dissolution or undermining of the real, the authentic, and the autonomous. By placing Goffman's under-discussed work, Gender Advertisements, in rapprochement with the work of Guy Debord, (...) Jean Baudrillard, and Fredric Jameson, we draw out shared concerns over the ways that the self becomes externally defined and incoherent in advanced consumer capitalism. We then turn to Goffman's “Territories of the Self” in order to show that Goffman balances his historicist analysis with a theory of a self that can maintain its coherence amidst the fragmenting forces of the media and the consumer society. Thus we document the continuing relevance of Goffman's thought for cultural and media analysis in contemporary consumer society. (shrink)

Emile Durkheim's "Antis?mitisme et crise sociale," written in 1899 during the Dreyfus Affair in France, is introduced. The introduction summarizes the principal contributions that "Antis?mitisme et crise sociale" makes to the sociology of anti-Semitism, relates those contributions to Durkheim's broader theoretical assumptions and concerns, situates his analysis of anti-Semitism in its social and historical context, contrasts it to other analyses of anti-Semitism (Marxist and Zionist) that were prominent in Durkheim's time, indicates some of the revisions and additions that a fuller (...) and more complete Durkheimian theory of anti-Semitism would entail, and highlights the significance of Durkheim's ideas for the contemporary study of ethnic and racial antagonism. While noting the limitations of Durkheim's analysis, the introduction concludes that "Antis?mitisme et crise sociale" has sadly regained its relevance in the light of a revival of anti-Semitism at the turn of the millennium. (shrink)

This article examines the way aspects of recent history were excluded in key studies emerging from psychoanalytic social psychology of the mid-20th century. It draws on work by Erikson, Marcuse and...

Bodily movement has a deeper meaning than modern sport science might recognize. It can have religious undertones, and in modern societies, it is sometimes related to the building of national identity. In the study, two cases of bodily practice are compared. Norwegian ski has a relation to friluftsliv (outdoor activities) and is highly significant for modern Norwegian identity. Indian yoga is related to the traditional ayurveda medicine and to Hindu spirituality, and obtained an important place in the process of anti-colonial (...) nationalism. The aim is to demonstrate how Norwegian skiing and Indian yoga as national body and movement cultures in different ways, show a complex connection between ‘ancient roots’ and modern transformations of cultural identity. Gliding on skis, sitting, and breathing in yoga make up the basis on which people have built identities of their collective ‘we’. (shrink)

This article examines how experimental psychology experienced a revolution as cognitive science replaced behaviorism in the mid-20th century. This transition in the scientific account of human nature involved making normal what had once been normative: borrowing ideas of democratic thinking from political culture and conceptions of good thinking from philosophy of science to describe humans as active, creatively thinking beings, rather than as organisms that simply respond to environmental conditions. Reflexive social and intellectual practices were central to this process as (...) cognitive scientists used anti-positivist philosophy of science simultaneously to justify their own work as valid and also as a model of human thinking. In the process, the normative philosophy of science or ‘good academic thinking’ that cognitive scientists used to reshape the discipline of psychology and characterize themselves became, at the same time, the descriptive model of human nature. (shrink)