dictionary
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
William James
Wilhelm Wundt
People and ideas systems
As outlined by Andrew Roberts of Middlesex University, London.Also available in a Romanian translation by Alexander Ovsov (February 2012)
Clicking on a theorist's date of birth will take you to that date on timeline. If the timeline has one of the theorist's works highlighted in colour, clicking on that will take you to web resources by and about the theorist. Not all these links are in place yet.
From our culture we inherit systems of ideas that help us
(speculatively) to interpret the world. One of the purposes of
Universities
is to be academic communities where people develop and test
these idea
systems.
We are often unable to explain the basis of the common
sense
theories we use, but the
academic
community
seeks to reveal the
axioms
or
first principles
on which systems of ideas
are built.
Theory Constrains Us
One of the features of any theory is that it constrains
one.
If you adopt a theory because it explains a certain part of
reality, you
have to accept its consequences for other parts.
A
state of nature theorist
might create a theory to explain politics. As the theory is
based on a
description of basic human nature, it will have consequences
for other
parts of the human reality. For example, it will
have consequences for our theories to explain gender
differences, and for
our theories to explain family relations.
Studying state of nature theorists gives you an
opportunity to develop
your skills in handling and developing theories that apply to
many
different areas of human reality. In reading about
Hobbes
and
Locke,
for example,
imagine how what they say about politics would apply to the
relations
within a family.
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Theodor Adorno born Frankfurt 11.9.1903, died Switzerland 7.8.1969
|
books - weblinks |
1936 Theodor Adorno's article "Über Jazz" (On Jazz)
1944 Adorno and Horkheimer Dialektik der Aufklärung: Philosophische Fragmente (Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosphical Fragments)
See Stuart Hall 1951
1966 Negative Dialectics
See 24.7.1967
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Aristotle born about 384BC, died 322BC Greek philosopher. Aristotle argued that men and women have different kinds of reason. A man's reason fits him for government, a women's reason fits her for domestic life. Compare with his tutor, Plato |
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Anthony Ashley Cooper Lord Ashley until 1851 7th Earl of Shaftesbury from 1851 Born 1801, died 1885 |
Conservative theorist and politician who worked with the working class movement in the 1830s and 1840s as a factory reformer. In 1832 he agreed to be the representative in parliament of the campaign to limit the work children could do in factories to 10 a day. The 1842, Coal Mines Act, which he piloted through the House of Commons, stopped women, and children under thirteen, from working underground.
Ashley's policies are an example of the paternalism (theory of dependence and protection) that Mill and Taylor criticised, and of the feudal socialism that Marx and Engels criticised.
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Johann Jakob Bachofen
Born 1815, died 1887 |
books |
See History of the family - Social Science Timeline 1861 - Jo Twomey 2004
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Zygmunt Bauman
Born 1925 Janina Lewinson Born 18.8.1926 Died 29.12.2009 (aged 83). |
Books
weblinks |
read the outline of Zygmunt and Janina's lives
Zygmunt Bauman is concerned with the analysis of modernity, His wife, Janina, was a survivor of the Warsaw Ghetto during the first world war. Reflecting on her experiences led Zygmunt to write Modernity and The Holocaust (1989) in which he argues that the bureaucracy that Max Weber, and many subsequent social theorists, argue is central to modernity, robs us of our morality and disables us from being critical of what we do.
Recently, Bauman has been particularly concerned with the analysis of what he calls the present liquid phase of modernity, which he contrasts with a previous solid phase. Bauman's term solid modernity could be compared to some other authors' use of the concept of industrial society and his term liquid modernity to the concepts of post modern society and networked society. (See concepts of modernity and recent modernity)
He approaches this analysis in the spirit of critical theory.
"One sometimes hears the opinion that contemporary society (appearing under the name of late modern or postmodern society, Ulrich Beck's society of 'second modernity' or, as I prefer to call it, the 'society of fluid modernity') is inhospitable to critique" (Bauman, Z. 2000 Liquid Modernity, p.23)
Malcolm Richardson suggests "very roughly, mid-19th century to late 20th century for the solid phase of modernity. Bauman speaks of hardware times, when transport and communication were mechanical, starting with the train - and software times, when communication is electronic: a period coming into full development with the world wide web.
Today, argues Bauman, everything is fluid and unstable: everyone is subject to continual change and uncertainty - in personal life just as much as, for example, in working life. What sociological concepts and theories can be developed to analyse a world where nothing seems permanent or certain? Do sociologists need to abandon old concepts and theories, and invent a radically new kind of sociology? Or can they build upon existing foundations and develop a sociology adequate to these 'liquid modern' times, by devising new concepts and theories, which enable us to grasp, for example, the nature of uncertainty and risk, and the seeming randomness of contemporary life? In the same way that classical sociologists, such as Marx and Weber attempted to develop a sociology of 'solid modernity, so Bauman is attempting to develop a sociology of 'liquid modernity', in a series of works, with titles such as Liquid Modernity (2000), Liquid Love (2003), Liquid Life (2005), Liquid Fear (2006), Liquid Times (2007).
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Cesare Beccaria
Born 15.3.1738, died 1794 |
books -
weblinks
life and works |
Many people consider the 18th century Italian writer, Cesare Beccaria, as the founder of the classical school of criminology and the late 19th century Italian writer, Cesare Lombroso, as the founder of the positivist school of criminology. The idea is expressed in the following work of David Porteous, Programme Leader MA Criminology at Middlesex University:
Beccaria reasoned that modern man
Will commit a crime if sure he can
Escape conviction and get richer
(A little crude but you get the picture)
Lombroso took a different view
Believing that most crime was due
Not to individuals making rational choices
But rather responding to biological forces.
See outline of Classical Criminology and Beccaria on the Crime Timeline
Cesare Beccaria's Dei delitti e delle pene was published in Italian in 1764. It was translated into French, and from the French into English as An Essay on Crimes and Punishment in 1767, with a commentary attributed to Voltaire.
Beccaria's Essay on Crimes and Punishment is called "classical" because the later "positivist school of criminology" saw itself as a modern development that moved beyond the classical by being more "scientific" than "philosophic".
Beccaria built on the idea of "social contract" used by state of nature theorists such as Hobbes and (later) Rousseau, and on theories later called utilitarian (Helvetius and David Hume).
See Analysis by Claudia Cavagna
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Jeremy Bentham
Born 1748, died 1832 An attorney's son, born in London. From 1763 Bentham studied law at Lincoln's Inn, but never practised. He was interested in the theory of law. |
crime
|
A fuller intellectual biography is being developed in the student reviews
external link to Wikipedia articles on: William Blackstone and Jeremy_Bentham
other weblinks
timeline, notes and texts
| In 1776 Bentham published A Fragment on Government. This criticised a passage in Blackstone's Commentaries. William Blackstone (1723- 1780) saw the English law embodying the collective wisdom of the society. Bentham descibed this a "fiction" - a set of ideas hiding the true motives of those who proclaimed them. The scientific study of law should be based on the understanding that humans pursue happiness and avoid pain. |
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| From 1785 to 1788, Bentham travelled on the Continent, including Russia. He formed the idea that he could become the Newton of morals and legislation. From 1787 to 1811 he was engaged in promoting the construction of an institution for remodelling human behaviour: The Panopticon |
|
Chambers Biographical Dictionary summarises Bentham as holding
- that laws should be socially useful and not merely reflect the
status
quo
- that human beings pursue pleasure and avoid pain
See utilitarianism and again here
- that desires may be broadly classified into self- and
other- regarding
- that the function of law is to award punishment and
rewards to maintain
a just balance between them.
|
Herbert Blumer
Born 7.3.1900, died 13.4.1987 Extracts |
crime
|
Herbert Blumer was based at the University of Chicago from 1925 to 1952, when he moved to Berkeley, California to develop its new Sociology department.
At Chicago, Blumer was influenced by George Herbert Mead, William Isaac Thomas, and Robert Park. When Mead died unexpectedly, in 1931, Blumer (a "young instructor") took over his class.
Blumer was the secretary treasurer of the American Sociological Association from 1930 to 1935, and the editor of the American Journal of Sociology from 1941 to 1952.
In 1936 Blumer published an article called "Social attitudes and non-symbolic interaction". By non-symbolic interaction he meant "spontaneous and direct response to the gestures and actions of the other individual, without the intermediation of any interpretation". Blumer suggested that this level of interaction is the one associated with feelings.
Writing about Social Psychology in 1937 he coined the term symbolic interactionist for theories developed from Mead. In this article he argues that Mead has "three stages" in the "growth of the self in the child"
Blumer wrote that socio-psychological views of what our original human nature is can be divided into three:
instinctual (typified by William McDougall)
stimulus- response (reflex) [ behaviourism] - and
Similarly, he divided views on the "group setting" of human development into three: He contrasted:
cultural determinism, which he said characterised the work of French theorists such as Levy Bruhl who used Durkheim's term collective representations to describe culture with the views of the
stimulus- response psychologists. These, he said, did not consider "forms of culture" as "real and separate things with a life of their own", but as "combinations of the activities of separate individuals". "The individual, alone, is real; the group is merely a convenient way of referring to a collection of individuals".
The symbolic interactionists agreed with the approach of seeing "the life of human groups" as creating customs, traditions and institutions. However, they did not regard these "forms of culture as consisting merely of so many different individual ways of acting". Forms of culture consist of
"common symbols, which are mutually shared and possessed by the members of the groups. Individual ways of acting are alike because these individuals are guiding their behaviour by a symbol which they share in common."
1962 "Society as Symbolic Interaction"
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Pierre Bourdieu
Born 1930, died 2002 |
Books
weblinks - including concepts |
Pierre Bourdieu's best known work on education is La Reproduction (1970), which was translated into English as Reproduction in Education, Society and Culture in 1977. This was done with Jean-Claude Passeron. Their first book on education (1963) was translated into English as The Inheritors: French Students and their Relations to Culture [See culture]
Reproduction is a term used in contrast with production. Production is making goods, reproduction is making people able to produce goods. The terms are used in
Pierre Bourdieu' work is concerned with cultural practices, and their associated institutions (e.g. schools and universities, art galleries and museums), and how they operate in maintaining the social hierarchy.
Bourdieu argues that social hierarchies
are reproduced primarily through cultural, rather than
economic,
mechanisms.
Our culture is assimilated from the social environment in which we grow-up, and is therefore strongly related to our social class background. It teaches us the ways of thinking, feeling and behaving which are specific to our class. So our class background is expressed in our habits of speech, the way we dress, our orientation to education and work, and all our personal tastes, including food, films, sport, and the décor of our homes.
Taste therefore is a badge of class. Our culture defines us as members of a particular social class, and distinguishes us from individuals in other social classes.
Bourdieu's Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste (1979) is based on his empirical research in France between 1963 and 1968. It shows how distinctions based on social class get reinforced in daily life.
He argues that power defines taste (see meaning of distinctions). The judgement of taste (of what is beautiful and pleasing) is called aesthetics. Bourdieu argues that each class has its own aesthetic, but that the tastes subordinate classes are culturally dominated by those of higher classes.
Even when the subordinate classes may seem to have their own particular idea of 'good taste':
"...[i]t must never be forgotten that the working-class 'aesthetic' is a dominated 'aesthetic' which is constantly obliged to define itself in terms of the dominant aesthetics..." (page 41)
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John Bowlby
Born 26.2.1907 Died 2.9.1990 |
books - web links |
Henry Peter Brougham
Born 1778, died 1868
Founder of the Social Science Association in 1857. Brougham was one of the founders of the Edinburgh Review in 1802. He moved to London in 1805 and became a barrister in 1808. He became a member of Parliament in 1810 and carried an Act that made it illegal to participate in the slave trade. He was the defence counsel for the Hunts when they were tried (in December 1812) for libelling George, the Prince Regent. In 1820 he defended Queen Caroline when George (now King) tried to divorce her. In 1822 he supported an unsuccessful scheme for national education. He was a major influence on founding the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge in 1826, and was a member of its General Committee. He was one of the founders of London University. In 1828, Brougham made a six hour speech, on which he consulted Jeremy Bentham, summarising the faults with the legal system. From November 1830 to December 1835, Brougham was Lord Chancellor. A commission intended to codify the criminal law, was appointed in 1833. Brougham was not an uncritical follower of Bentham, but he says that "the age of law reform and the age of Jeremy Bentham" were the same thing, and that Bentham was the "first legal philosopher" who had appeared in the world. (Leslie Stephens 1900 - external link)
Spartacus school-net
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke (1729-1797), the author of
Reflections on the French Revolution, published in
November 1790 criticised the French because
See Conservative
theory -
Social Science History Chapters
three -
four -
six -
Conservatism versus
progress -
Autumn 1793 -
"you chose to act as if you had never been moulded into civil society and
had everything to begin anew. You began ill, because you began by despising
everything that belonged to you... Respecting your forefathers, you would
have been taught to respect yourselves. You would not have chosen to
consider the French as a people of yesterday, as a nation of lowborn
servile wretches until the emancipating year of 1789... in your most
devoted submission you were actuated by a principle of public spirit ... it
was your country you worshipped in the person of your king"
(Burke. E. 1790,
par.61
| Bernard Burgoyne | books |
Bernard Burgoyne is a mathematician, a philosopher and a psychoanalyist who taught sociology for many years. He interested me in the relation between mathematics and social science, from the influence of Euclid's geometry on Hobbesian constructions of society to his presnt interest in topology as a way of comprehending aspects of mind, self and society.
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Cyril Burt
Born 3.3.1883 Died 10.10.1971 |
books |
School psychologist for the London County Council 1913-1931
Professor and Chair of Psychology at University College, London 1931-
1951 (?) in succession to
Charles Spearman
Amy Gdala (2003, p.36) introduces Cyril Burt as "the inventor of the cunning device known as the Intelligence Quotient or I.Q. score, by which each British citizen in the mid-twentieth century was graded for allocation within a division of labour that would significantly determine subsequent opportunities, talents and quality of life."
In 1931, Cyril Burt wrote:
" From the point of view of educational organisation, one of the most important facts revealed by intelligence tests is the wide range of individual differences, and its steady expansion from year to year. At the age of 5, children are spread out between the mental ages of about 3 and 7 - a total range of four or five years. By the age of 10 the range has doubled; and probably goes on enlarging until the end of puberty. "
" Older children, therefore, differ far more widely in intellectual capacity than younger children. During the infant period they can be grouped together without much regard to their different degrees of mental endowment. At the age of 8 or 9, however, to put together in a single room all those who are of the same age would be to organise a class that was extremely heterogeneous. By the age of 10, the children of a single age group must be spread over at least three different standards. And by the age of 12 the range has become so wide that a still more radical classification is imperative. Before this age is reached children need to be grouped according to their capacity, not merely in separate classes or standards, but in separate types of schools. "
In 1970, writing to Julie Ford, Cyril Burt said:
"The humblest types of operation require little more than unskilled manual labour. Although machinery is gradually taking over much that was previously performed by human muscle, dockers, navvies, and agricultural labourers will still be required for many centuries to come. Skilled manual labour requires not only greater intelligence, but also an aptitude for acquiring mechanical dexterity, which not everyone possesses. Clerical work and shopkeeping require intellectual abilities of a slightly higher order: The lower types of professional work, journalism and accountancy, for example, demand higher intelligence still and certain specific aptitudes, e.g. so-called 'verbal' and 'numerical' ability, which are partly innate. Administrative work and the higher professions - medicine, teaching and the law - require exceptionally high intellectual ability and a long preliminary training." (Burt, C. 1970 in Gdala, A. 2003, p.40)
Referring to Table 12 (p. 56) in Social Structure of England and Wales, Cyril Burt says
"broadly speaking, occupations requiring an average or medium degree of ability are by far the commonest... those requiring the highest and rarest degree of ability are comparatively few. I suggest therefore that what is needed is, not the abolition of classes, but the matching of each individual's occupational class with his innate abilities" (Burt, C. 1970 in Gdala, A. 2003, p.40)
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Judith Butler
Born 1956 |
books |
Judith Butler is the author of Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (1990), in which she argued against a biologically determined gender identity.
Judith Butler reinterpret Simone De Beauvoir's suggestion that "one is not born a woman, but, rather becomes one". De Beauvoir can be read as making a distinction between gender and sex in which gender is socially created around the natural body of sexual differences. Butler argues that
"there is no recourse to a body that has not always already been interpreted by cultural meanings; hence, sex could not qualify as a pre discursive anatomical facticity. Indeed, sex, by definition, will be shown to have been gender all along". (Butler, 1990 p.8).
Judith Butler uses some of Michel Foucault's ideas about the construction of self-identity to develop a performative theory of gender which argues that our sex is not something fixed and determinate, but something which is much more fluid and open. Butler develops the idea of Foucault, in a chapter called "docile bodies", that society inscribes on our bodies what we are.
The idea of perfomativity has a relationship to the idea of performance, but the emphasis is on the way discourses shape us rather than on our creatively acting a role. Looked at from this more active perspective, Butler argues that gender is something we continually act out, or perform, in everyday life. It's analogous to a drag artist performing a male or female character. But it is more habit than creativity. Creative performance, however, is needed to subvert the perfomativity that we are given.
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Thomas Carlyle
Born 1795, died 1881 |
books |
Thomas Carlyle argued against utilitarianism in a fiction called Sartor Resartus (Latin for "clothes maker repaired"), which he wrote in 1831 (published later). This argued for a social science based on the analysis of symbols. Clothes are typical social symbols. We are naturally naked, but in society we use clothes to convey meaning to one another. Although the movement of planets may be described on the model of a machine, Carlyle said social science requires the analysis of meanings. Religion had provided this, but, like old clothes, it no longer fits. The times require new clothes. Utilitarianism will not do, because it removes the significance of symbolic meanings, reducing them all to degrees of pain and pleasure in an effort to imitate the machine model used by physics.
In 1843 Carlyle (1795-1881) published Past and Present. This contrasted the human relations that, according to Carlyle, had existed between people in the past, with relations in the present which were reduced to money relations. He wrote (chapter 6)
"...the present Editor ... thinks that 'enlightened egoism' ... is not the rule by which man's life can be led. That 'laissez-faire,' 'supply-and- demand,' 'cash-payment for the sole nexus,' and so forth, were not, are not, and will never be, a practicable law of union for a society of men. That poor and rich, that governed and governing, cannot long live together on any such law of union."
John Stuart Mill was, at this time, a friend of Carlyle. In Manchester, Friedrich Engels read Carlyle with great enthusiasm.
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George Catlin
Born 1896, died 1979 |
books |
George Catlin was a trans-Atlantic political theorist who helped to develop political science and scientific sociology and also retained a respect for, and worked on, political philosophy as a field concerned with values rather than facts. He saw his work as related to logical positivism and spoke of a need for a "political logical positivism".
Catlin played an important part in the translation and adaption of Durkheim to Anglo-American social science. Whilst rejecting what he regarded as Durkheim's metaphysical concepts, he respected what he understood to be Durkheim's approach to social facts. (Catlin, G.E. 1938)
Catlin was both an English Labour politician and a USA academic. An anti- imperialist and anti-racist, he supported the struggles of Mahatma Gandhi for Indian independence.
Born in Liverpool, Catlin graduated from Oxford University and his post-graduate research developed into a short study of Thomas Hobbes. Francis Wormouth said of the politics of Catlin:
"The atomism of Hobbes, his reduction of politics to individual will and power, and his concern for psychology are all found in Catlin's system. The fiction of the Leviathan, however, is not found there; and the metaphysics of Hobbes is replaced by a thoroughgoing empiricism and an extensive reliance on history both as the source of data and as the proving-ground of hypotheses." (Wormuth, F. 1961, p. 807)
1923 Appointed to lecture at Cornell University, New York.
Catlin married the English novelist Vera Brittain (1893 - 1970) in 1925, and their children included Shirley Williams (born 27.7.1930) English politician and USA academic.
Catlin was supervising a translation of Durkheim's Rules of Sociological Method in November 1933 when his student George Simpson published a translation of Division of Labour in Society. The English translation of the Rules, with an introduction by Catlin, was not published until 1938
Catlin rejects much of what is central to Durkheim's work. Almost six pages of the 26 page introduction are devoted to attacking the concept of the collective consciousness. The preceding four pages criticise the idea of determination in history and society, which Catlin says Durkheim adopts as "the manifestation of the will or purpose of some occult collective mind" (pp xxii-xxiii). A further five pages criticises Durkheim's attempt to create a "science of morality", and most of the remaining pages are mainly critical. (See summary of sections)
However, Catlin says:
"Durkheim... is not singular among men of science in being more valuable in respect of the by-products of his theory than in his main contention." (Catlin, G.E. 1938 pxiv)
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Richard Crocket
Born 7.2.1914, died 3.12.2007 |
books and articles |
Born 5.1.1916, died 8.1.1984
See David Millard - Craig Fees - Glasgow Royal Mental Hospital - Cassel Hospital 1940 - Ingrebourne
Richard Crocket was a mid-twentieth century theorist of the therapeutic community. Like John Conolly before him, he reflected and built on his organisational circumstances and the work of others within those circumstances. Of the doctor beneath him at the Ingrebourne Centre,in Essex in 1957, he wrote:
"Dr Hamish Anderson, a senior psychiatrist, introduced social group methods of treatment there which he had known at Dingleton Hospital in Scotland. The results were so stimulating, not to say startling, that the staff became committed to these methods. At first they knew them as their own venture into social therapy. Then came information from Dr Maxwell Jones's activities at Belmont Hospital; and we realised that by a different route we had stumbled upon what was beginning to be known as a therapeutic community." (Crocket 1997, quoted by David Millard)
Crocket's concepts: community - network - social network - structure - power and decision-taking - authority and permissiveness.
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Charles Darwin
Born 1809, died 1882 |
timeline -
weblinks
books |
|
Thomas Henry Huxley
Born 1825 - Died 1895 |
timeline - weblinks |
Charles Darwin did not invent the theory of evolution - that had existed for a long time. He did make a credible case that evolution operated by a process of natural selection. This helped to convince scientists that evolution could be believed in as the way the different forms of life came into being. Within science, this was very contentious for many years. In the 1890s, for example, the Linnaean Society carefully awarded its gold medal equally to scientists who supported Darwin and scientists who opposed him.
Some people argue that Darwin developed his theory of natural selection as a result of careful observation. They point to the voyages from 1831 to 1836 on which he carefully noted the way birds varied from island to island. Other people argue that he developed it as a result of theoretical speculation. They point to his reading Malthus on population in 1838
Timeline links See primeval family - primeval migration - 1831 - 1838 - 1859 - 1871 - 1872 - 1893 -
|
Simone de Beauvoir
Born 1908, died 1986 |
books - weblinks |
French philosopher, novelist and social theorist who provided an ethics for existentialism in her Pour Une Morale de L'ambiguïté [English translation: "The Ethics of Ambiguity"] in 1947.
In 1949, she published Le deuxième sexe [English translation: "The Second Sex"]
"On ne naît pas femme: on le devient. Aucun destin biologique, psychique, économique ne définit la figure que revét au sein de la société la femelle humaine; c'est l'ensemble de la civilisation qui roduit intermédiaire entre le mâle et le castrat qu'on qualifie de féminin. Seule la médiation d'autrui peut constituer un individu comme un Autre."
"One is not born, but rather becomes a woman. No biological, psychological, or economic fate determines the figure that the human female presents in society; it is civilisation as a whole that produces this creature, intermediate between male and eunuch, which is described as feminine. Only the intervention of someone else can establish an individual as an Other."
|
Rene Descartes
Born 1596, died 1650 |
books |
French philosopher. One of the founders of European rationalism. (Where I outline his ideas)
Descartes argued that it empirical evidence is insubstantial, but one's own existence is certain, because in order to think you must be:
"I observed that, whilst I thus wished to think that all was false, it was absolutely necessary that I, who thus thought, should be somewhat; and as I observed that this truth, I think, therefore I am (cogito ergo sum), was so certain and of such evidence that no ground of doubt, however extravagant, could be alleged by the sceptics capable of shaking it, I concluded that I might, without scruple, accept it as the first principle of the philosophy of which I was in search"
From this first principle, his reason deduced, in no more than the turning of a page, that God exists and that truth lies in clear conception.
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John Dewey Born 20.10.1859, died 1.6.1952 |
books - weblinks - |
1859 - 1884 - 1894 - 1896 - 1904 - 1909 - 1916 - 1920 - 1922 - 1927 - 1930 - 1931 - 1935
An American philosopher who initiated a version of Pragmatism: a philosophical concept, which evaluates thought on the basis of usefulness for practical action.
At Johns Hopkins University, John Dewey was attracted to both the biological evolution ideas of Thomas Henry Huxley, the friend of Darwin, and Hegel's, earlier, historical analysis of the evolution of ideas. This was a perspective he shared with his friend George Herbert Mead
Dewey argued that it is only in the struggle of intelligent organisms with the surrounding environment that theories acquire significance, and only with a theory's success in this struggle that it becomes true. He rejected abstract conceptions of "truth", and quoted Charles Sanders Peirce (1839- 1914) the founder of American pragmatism) to define what truth is to him.
"The opinion which is fated to be ultimately agreed to by all who investigate is what we mean by the truth, and the object represented by this opinion is the real." (Dewey, J. 1938/Log, p. 345, quoting from volume 5, p.268 of the Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Pierce)
According to Dewey, the organisation of society does not grow out of ideas. For example, the American political system is not formed around the concept of democracy. It is the other way round. On the basis of changes which occur, and forms of active organisational practices, we develop ideas about community life.
In Reconstruction in Philosophy (1920), Dewey give this description of society:
"..society is one word, but infinitely many things. It covers all the ways in which by associating together men share their experiences, and built upon common interests and aims. (Dewey, J. 1920/RP, p. 200) "Society is the process of associating in such ways that experiences, ideas, emotions, values are transmitted and made common." (Dewey, J. 1920/RP, p. 207)
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Wilhelm Dilthey Born 1833, died 1911 |
books - weblinks - |
Emile Durkheim Born 15.4.1858, died 15.11.1917
|
Life and
works
See Social Science History, chapter six:
Durkheim is often contrasted with Spencer and with Weber See also Oby Barnes and Dina Ibrahim on family - education etc - Andrea Nagy's Durkheim Dewey Page and the Durkheim and Merton page |
|
|
Durkheim is often thought of as the founder of sociology, the
science of
society. He developed
Rousseau's
concept that society is not the sum of its individual members,
but is a
reality in itself, based on the general will. Durkheim removed
this from
its origin in
State of Nature Theory. He
argued that
humans
are by nature social. Society is not something that came about
by
individuals joining together. We have always been part of
society. Society
is, therefore, a reality which we can study, and Durkheim's
project was to
develop the scientific study of it.
See Social Science History, chapter six: Durkheim and Weber's contrasting imaginations: Who is the Sociologist?, for a fuller discussion of the issues |
crime
|
Durkheim's concepts society - altruism - anomie - categories of thought - church - collective conscience - collective representations - crime - division of labour - education - elementary forms - egoism - emotion (sentiment) - facts as things - forced and natural - freedom - function - habit - organism - profane - punishment - rate - religion - rules - sacred - social facts - space -
See also Group (types of) - institutions and mind - internalise - movement - Positivism - Pragmatism - Realism - sacrifice -
Timeline links See 1786 - 1822 - 1841 - 1858 - 1860 - 1880 - Durkheim and Weber - 1885 - 1887 - 1892 - 1893 - 1895 - 1896 - 1897 - 1901 - 1902 - 1903 - 1912 - 1917 - 1925 - 1937 - 1942 - 1967 - 1987 - 1989 - 2006 -
Albert Einstein
Born
1879,
died
1955
Einstein was a
theoretical physicist who created the general
theory
of relativity. This rejects an important part of
Newtonian
physics
which treats space and time as fixed dimensions that
provide a framework for all the bodies in the universe.
Instead, it considers space and time as relative to the
viewpoint of the observer and the object or process
being observed. See
proof
John Etienne Dominique
Esquirol
Born
1772,
died
1840
A student of Philippe Pinel who succeeded him as physician in chief at the Salpêtrière Hospital in Paris in 1811. In 1823 he became chief inspector at the University of Paris and in 1826 he was appointed chief physician at the asylum in Charenton, France. In 1838 he collected and amended his writings (from 1812) into Des maladies mentales, considées sous les rapports medédical, hygienique et médico-légal published in Paris. This was translated into English as Mental Maladies. A Treatise on Insanity in 1845 (Philadelphia). Several parts were translated individually much earlier and Esquirol's ideas were circulated in England by a number of doctors.
| Family | a part of society |
One of the reasons family is discussed by social theorists is its theoretical implication for social theory generally.
Robert Filmer, in the 17th century, and and Roger Scruton, in the 20th, for example, both construct views of society around the idea of family. Both theorists contrast the idea that "contract" is the foundation of society, with their own view that society is better understood by thinking about the relations that exist in the family, between parents and children. Scruton sees the family model as a "conservative" model and contract as the "liberal" model.
The title of Jean Jacques Rousseau's The Social Contract shows that it is in the contractual, liberal camp. However he combines his contractual theory with an analysis of family bonds as the basis of society:
"The family then may be called the first model of political societies: the ruler corresponds to the father, and the people to the children; and all, being free and equal, alienate their liberty only for their own advantage."
Family relations include those between adult partners as well as those between adults and children. Aristotle conceptualised the difference between these relations, but wives have often been thought of theoretically as similar to children in their relation to the male "head" of the household.
Harriet Taylor and John Stuart Mill, two liberal theorists, argued in an 1848 essay that an authoritarian, hierarchical, paternalist relationship in which women are dependent on men is unsuitable to a modern society based on self determination. Mill elaborated on this in The Subjection of Women (1869), arguing that egalitarian families would educate people for democratic political societies.
Sigmund Freud contrasted his theories of society and human relations, based on an analysis of the unconscious mind, with the consciously rational analysis of Mill (and Taylor). Mill imagined society and family based on freely determined relations been autonomous adults, educating children in a school of freedom. Freud analysed the family as the site of deadly conflicts, conflicts that are paralleled in society and history.
One of the issues in dispute between these theorists is the nature of science. Those who support the family model against a contract model tend to argue that their model is based on analysis of what is real (a "thing" as Durkheim would say) rather than on a philosophic rationalism that relates more to what some people might want society to be then to what it is. (See the positivist distinction between science and philosophy)
History of the family: Historically the family has taken different forms. Engels argues that the study of these forms began with a German writer Bachofen in 1861. To gain an broad overview of the forms Engels suggests, see my Summary of Historical Materialism which has links to extracts from Engels.
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William Farr
Born 1807, died 1883 |
books and weblinks |
English Statistician. Superintendent of the statistical department of the registrar-general from 1838 to 1880. He wrote many articles on medical matters before being appointed to the statistical department. Some of these were published in Thomas Wakley's journal The Lancet. Farr's article Vital Statistics was published in 1837 in MacCulloch's Account of the British Empire. Vital here means life. Farr was using statistics to study life and death. How he did so can be seen in his Report on the Mortality of Lunatics to the Statistical Society in 1841
Concepts: vital statistics: the statistics of health, sickness, diseases, and death - - excessive mortality and implicit natural death rate distinct from the statistical norm. Table. Life Table
William Ogle (1827-1912) succeded Farr as Superintendent of Statistics from 1880 to 1893. (See Edward Higgs)
John F. W. Tatham (1844-1924) was superintendent of statistics from 1893 to 1909 (See Edward Higgs
Thomas Henry Craig Stevenson (1870-1932) was superintendent of statistics from 1909 to (See Edward Higgs)
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Filmer claimed that the family is the natural form of government and that states are developed from it. Like Scruton today, he thought that imagining political society as a contract between people is unrealistic, and that the family is a better model for understanding political society. Filmer was an enthusiastic royalist, who wrote pamphlets in defence of the authority of the state, arguing that kings have a divine right to rule. He had a religious and a secular argument: The religious argument derives the ruler's right from Adam, the first man in the world according to the Jewish, Christian and Islamic bibles. God, according to the Bible, made Adam lord over creation and over his wife, and the ten commandments say that people should honour their parents. According to Filmer, this divine right to rule has passed down to all future kings. His secular argument is an attack on the idea that societies are constructed by us, for our own purposes. Filmer says that this is contrary to what we observe. Very little choice enters into the relations of everyday life. We accept what is already established.
|
|
Julienne Ford
Born 1946. |
books - extracts -
fairy timeline -
life as a Caryatid and others Mary Wollstonecraft and Julienne Ford |
1946?. "By the early spring of 1962... she was sixteeen" (Gdala, A. 2003 p.15)
1969 In Social Class and the Comprehensive School, Julie Ford attempted to test the final two, out of seven, propositions in a theory about comprehensive schools:
Proposition six Movement from a tripartite to a comprehensive organisattion of secondary education will cause:
(a) a greater development of talent
(b) a greater equality of opportunity for those with equal talent
(c) a widening of children's occupatuonal horizons
(d) a relative decline in the social interaction in school which takes place within the boundaries of anticipated occupational strata, and a relative increase acros such strata.
Proposition seven Conditons (C) and (D) will produce a tedency to greater frequency of flexible hierarchic models of stratification over rigid dichotomous models.
These propositions, she said, suggested five hypotheses:
1. Comprehensive schools will produce a greater development of talent than tripartite schools
2. Comprehensive schools will provide a greater equality of opportunity for those with equal talent.
3. The occupational horizons of children in comprehensive schools will be widened relative to those of children in trpartite schools
4. Comprehensive school children will show less tendency to mix only with children of their own social type than will tripartite school children
5. Comprehensive school children will tend to have views of the class system as a flexible hierarchy, while tripartite school children will tend to see this as a rigid dichotomy
As she examined the evidence for each hypothesis, she came to the conclusion that litle or none of it supported the hypothesis,
Social Class and the Comprehensive School does not have a section on methodology, apart from an appendix on one aspect. However, it generally works on the idea of creating a theory with propositions from which testable hypotheses are inferred, and then subjecting those hypotheses to the risk of not being supported by the evidence. Julie Ford's empirical research appears consistent with her work on methodology that follows.
Research methods and imagination - Bridging the credibility gap between
our inner worlds and the outer world
1975
In
Paradigms and Fairy Tales (1975) Julie
Ford explored the importance of
imagination to science and put forward
the idea that theories are like fairy tales.
Julie Ford says that composing "fairy tales" about the world
is an essential part of science. When we have imagined our fairy tales we
have
to find a way of selecting the ones that are most likely to be true, but
you must first make your fairy tale. She says that
"it is through
imagination and only through imagination that we mortals may transcend the
worlds of taken-for-granted-thoughts-already-thought."
We need to
"soar away
into the freedom of make-believe. For it is there that fairies dwell"
(Ford
1975 p.75).
In her glossary
she tells us, that fairies are ideas, and a
fairy tale is a "connection of ideas in the form of an explanatory story,
or
theory".
Julie Ford's approach is similar to that of Karl Popper (1963). She thinks that science is about thinking up fairy tales and then testing them to see which are falsified.
For some of her time, Julie Ford lives a fairy tale existence with Amy Gdala in what appears to be a parallel universe subject to warps.
|
Michel Foucault
Born 1926, died 1984 |
books - extracts -
weblinks
Also see timeline 1961 and Pearce |
Foucault investigates structures of ideas. He calls these structures "discourses". Examples of discourses include psychoanalysis and marxism.
He explores ideas as structures of power and as structures of discovery.
He explores how a structure of ideas, like the ideas that created institutions based on surveillance, are related to power.
He explores structures of ideas as a search for truth. He describes "truth" as a "system of ordered procedures" governing statements. Different discourses have different rules (ordered procedures) for how true statements are to be produced.
Foucault on Knowledge and Power
Foucault on Power November 1971 - You Tube
1975 In Discipline and Punish Foucault, M. 1975/1977 p.27), Foucault wrote:
"Perhaps, too, we should abandon a whole tradition that allows us to imagine that knowledge can exist only where the power relations are suspended and that knowledge can develop only outside its injunctions, its demands and its interests. Perhaps we should abandon the belief that power makes mad and that, by the same token, the renunciation of power is one of the conditions of knowledge (and not simply by encouraging it because it serves power or by applying it because it is useful); that power and knowledge directly imply one another; that there is no power relation without the correlative constitution of a field of knowledge, nor any knowledge that does not presuppose and constitute at the same time power relations."
1980 The following quotation from an essay entitled "Prison Talk" is often quoted as a summary of Foucault's argument about the relationship between knowledge and power:
"Knowledge and power are integrated with one another, and there is no point in dreaming of a time when knowledge will cease to depend on power; this is just a way of reviving humanism in a utopian guise. It is not possible for power to be exercised without knowledge, it is impossible for knowledge not to engender power." (Foucault, M. 1980, p.52)
| James George Frazer 1854-1941 | books - extracts |
James Frazer's interest in anthropology was first aroused, in Easter 1883, by reading E. B. Tylor's Primitive Culture (published in 1871). In the autumn of 1883 he met William Robertson Smith, who became his "most intimate friend" (E. O. James, DNB 1959)
At the invitation of Robertson Smith, James Frazer contributed the articles on Taboo and Totemism to the ninth edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica" (1888). He said that
"The researches I made for these articles', he explained, 'were the beginning of a systematic application to anthropology, and especially to a study of the backward races of men whom we call savages and barbarians." (quoted E. O. James, DNB 1959)
Frazer described Robertson Smith's Lectures on the Religion of the Semites, published in 1889, as marking "a new departure in the historical study of religion". (quoted E. O. James, DNB 1959)
James Frazer first published The Golden Bough: a study in comparative religion in two volumes in 1890. He expanded it to three volumes in 1900. The third edition began to be published in 1911. Extra volume appeared in 1911, 1912 and 1913, and an index volume in 1915. An aftermath volume was separately published in 1936. An abridged edition, by Frazer and his wife, was published in 1922.
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Sigmund Freud
Born 6.5.1856, died 23.9.1939. Freud was the founder of Psychoanalysis. Psychodynamic describes a theory derived from psychoanalysis |
|
It started with Blanche Whittman's faints. Click the picture to read about her. |
life and works
Do it yourself excavation of Freud
What Freud thought of John Stuart Mill
1856 - 1880 - 1883 - 1885 - 1889 - 1900 dreams - 1908 Little Hans - 1908 Strachey - 1908 Bloch - 17.2.1911 England - 1913 totem - 1928 - 1930 - 1933 - 1938 -
Many theories of human nature and society make reason a central and powerful element. Freud believed that he had discovered a scientific route to a source of human conduct that underlies, and overrides, reason.
Psychoanalysis is a technique of listening to people who have relaxed their guard on what they reveal (to themselves or others) of the contents of their minds.
On the basis of what he heard from his patients, using this technique, Freud claimed that central processes of our thinking are unconscious. A consequence of this is that reason cannot be relied on. When we give a reason for something we do, we are probably making it up - because the true reason is unconscious!
If Freud's basic theories are true, we need to rethink all social theories with reason as a central component. To be scientific, all human conduct needs to be interpreted in terms of a hidden drama that Freud discovered in the human unconscious. In 1913 he wrote:
"the beginnings of religion, morals, society and art converge in the Oedipus complex"
To explain the drama he believed relates the development of individuals and the development of societies, Freud used Greek mythology. He called a vital part of it the "Oedipus Complex" after a character in Greek myth who (unknowingly) killed his father and had sex with his mother.
According to Freud, the "performance" of this drama in our childhood, constructs our character. It is not our genitals that give us male or female personalities, but the roles we play in this drama with respect to our mother (or her equivalent) and her lover (conventionally, our father). Freud, therefore saw a distinction between male and female (personalities) as having a central effect on the content of our minds. He disagreed with those theorists (e.g. Plato, Wollstonecraft, Taylor and Mill) who had argued that, in almost everything except physical organs and ability to bear and breast feed children, men and women are essentially the same.
For Freud, the drama of the Oedipus Complex, revealed in psychoanalysis, explains why we accept authority. In this case, the authority of our father, but the issue is generalised to all authority. Freud argued this in his sociological writings, where he recounted a parallel anthropological myth of the slaying of the primal father and his resurrection in religious sacrament.
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Erich Fromm
Born 1900, died 1980 |
books - weblinks - commentary |
Eric Fromm was a close collaborator with the Frankfurt School in the early 1930s. He severed his connections with the Institute in 1939.
See timeline 1942
|
Francis Galton
Born 16.2.1822, died 17.1.1911 |
books - weblinks |
In Hereditary Genius (1869) Francis Galton endeavoured to prove that genius is mainly a matter of ancestry.
From about 1875 Experimenting with sweet peas. (See 1877). He used 100 seeds of each of seven different diameters (700 seeds in all). Using 100 seeds made it easy to calculate percentages. On graphs, he plotted the diameters of the original seeds against the diameters of the seeds from the plants grown from them.
|
The y=x line shows what the plot woudl have shown if parent sweet pea seeds
had offspring seeds of the same weight.
The other line shows that the average offspring of each size regressed towards an average size. |
In connection with the International Health Exhibition in 1884 to 1885 Galton set up a laboratory to measure human statistics, collecting data such as height, weight, and strength of a large number of people.
William Godwin
Born
1756,
died
1836
William Godwin's book Enquiry Concerning Political Justice, started in 1791 published in February 1793 is intended to "philosophically place the principles of politics on an immovable basis". It begins with a summary of those principles.
Godwin was educated as a rationalist dissenter from the established church. His political theories formed the basis of anarchism. His version of anarchism being a belief that the state would become unnecessary as human beings developed their powers of moral and political self-determination.
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Erving Goffman
Born 1922, died 1982 |
books -
extracts
weblinks |
The title of Erving Goffman's first book The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (1959) indicates his concern with the concepts developed by George Herbert Mead and the group of social theorists that Herbert Blumer called symbolic interactionsists. His biography suggests that he may have been just as heavily influenced by the concept of role in the work of Talcott Parsons.
Goffman developed his approach to interactionism in field studies in the Shetland Islands (1949 - 1951), leading to The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (1959).
From 1955 to 1956, he did one year's field research in St Elizabeth's Hospital, Washington, DC, leading to Asylums. Essays on the social situation of mental patients and other inmates in 1961.
Concepts used include self - career - extrusion - institution - underlife - social and psychological beginnings - stigma - civil inattention
|
Olympe de Gouges Born 1748, Died 1793 French feminist writer. |
|
Olympe de Gouges was a young widow who taught herself to
write. She
began to write in 1780 and published her memoirs in 1784. She
published her
first political pamphlet in November 1788 and numerous
political writings
followed, including her
Declaration of
the Rights of Woman.
Her vivid imagination overcame the disadvantages of her
bad spelling
and poor punctuation and her meaning forced its way through
her unorthodox
prose.
An enthusiastic writer of plays, she was also a champion
of freedom for
slaves.
In
December 1789
her play on The Slavery
of Black People was performed in a Paris theatre, but the
audience
hissed it and it had to be taken off after three performances.
She believed passionately that the philosophy of natural
freedom, that
inspired the
Declaration of the Rights of
Man,
should apply equally to every human being.
Her writings combine the image of
family
embracing the whole of humanity with that of a social contract
establishing
the law of reason for the whole of humanity. It was natural,
therefore, for
her pamphlet on the rights of women to embrace the family, the
nation as a
family, and human beings of all colours as one family.
External link to Wikipedia article on: Olympe de Gouges other weblinks
|
Antonio Gramsci
Born 22.1.1891, died 27.4.1937 |
books - timeline |
Leader of the Italian Communist Party who was imprisoned from late 1926 to 1934 by the Fascist Government of Italy. He was conditionally released in 1934 on health grounds, and died in hospital in 1937. His writings were published in Moscow in 1957.
Concepts used include: Intellectual - Fordism -
Wilhelm Griesinger
Born 1817, died 1869
German psychiatrist who argued E. H. Ackernecht's words) that:
"Normal people have many experiences analogous to states of insanity, for example in dreams, during febrile delirius and in toxic states. While dreaming and in the delirium of mental illness one reacts to bodily sensations without being aware of doing so. In both states critical faculties are lost and in both we notice the gratification of wishes which, unfulfilled in reality, had been repressed. Sleep induced by magnetism and somnambulism are also allied to states of insanity."
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Jürgen Habermas
Born 1929 |
books |
Jürgen Habermas is generally regarded as today's leading representative of the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory.
Like his predecessors ( Horkheimer, Adorno, and Marcuse), Habermas regards Marx's social theory (historical materialism) as inadequate. In particular, he argues that Marx's view of work and production as the basis of society is mistaken. Habermas argues that before people can work in production, they must be able to communicate. Communication therefore is the basis of human society.
Malcolm Richardson compares this to Mead and the Symbolic Interactionists. Mead argued that mind, self and society emerge together.
Habermas argues that the ability of people to communicate with one another freely, that is without let or hindrance, is the basis of a free and just society. When people can communicate in freedom, their actions can be guided by rational discussion, and disagreements can be resolved through force of argument. He calls this communicative action
See Habermas and the public sphere
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Stuart Hall
Born 1932 |
books - weblinks |
Born in Jamaica, Stuart Hall studied at Oxford University from 1951. He edited new left journals from 1957.
He was the Director of the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies from 1968 to 1979
At the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, Hall encouraged a marxist approach. It was not, however, the traditional position that sees ideas as part of a the "superstructure" that reflects the "base" of economics. Hall incorporated the ideas of marxist theorists such as Gramsci, in which a struggle for ideas is as important as any economic class struggle.
"New Ethnicities" is a paper that Stuart Hall wrote for a conference in 1988 on Black Film, British Cinema. In it, Stuart Hall discusses the development of ethnic identity in relation to recent films including My Beautiful Launderette (1985) and Sammy and Rosie Get Laid (1987) - Handsworth Songs - and Dreaming Rivers - The Passion of Remembrance (1986).
Hall argues that the struggles represented by and in these films had moved from an older focus on "blacks", as a single entity, and "white" culture, to more diverse issues and identities. He suggests that "a significant shift has been going on... in black cultural politics...". This is not a movement from one to the other but "two phases of one movement which constantly overlap and interweave". He identifies diversification as the second "moment" in the movement. The first moment was the construction of blackness as a concept of resistance:
"Politically, this is the moment when the term 'black' was coined as a way of referencing the common experience of racism in Britain and came to provide the organising category of a new politics of resistance, amongst groups and communities with, in fact, very different histories, traditions and ethnic identities.... Culturally, this analysis formulated itself in terms of a critique of the way blacks were positioned as the unspoken and invisible 'other' of predominantly white aesthetic and cultural discourses." (page 27)
In his paper, Hall speaks of the idea that the film "represents" a reality outside of itself. He says this idea is grounded in the "mimetic theory of representation": the idea that representations, like film, mime or imitate an exterior reality. But representations, he argues, can also form or shape reality.
"... events, relations, structures do have conditions of existence and real effects, outside the sphere of the discursive; but ... it is only within the discursive"... [that they have] ... "meaning. Thus, ... how things are represented" ... [plays] ... "a constitutive, and not merely a reflexive, after-the-event, role. This gives questions of culture and ideology, and the scenarios of representation - subjectivity, identity, politics - a formative, not merely an expressive, place in the constitution of social and political life." (Hall 1988 p.-)
Film is one of the cultural media that shapes our perceptions of ourselves, our identity. In the introduction to the conference, the film critic Ray Durgnat is quoted as describing film as "that cultural arena in which society reflects upon and adjusts its image of itself" (page 4). That was probably said at the time of mass cinema audiences, but, the introduction argues, "British cinema is alive and well and living on television" (page 6).
Stuart Hall's analysis of identity in contemporary societies examines the effects of migration and dispersal of ethnic groups within and between countries.
He argues that migration is the archetypal 20th/21st century experience, and that this has profoundly destabilised individual as well as collective identities.
"Now that, in the postmodern age, you all feel so dispersed, I become centred. What I've thought of as dispersed and fragmented comes, paradoxiacally, to be the representative modern experience" (quoted page 5)
On the issues of race and ethnicity, Hall has argued that there is no such thing as a single, or unique black identity. On the contrary, just as the whole idea of Britishness is now the subject of endless dispute, so also there are endless debates about what it means, for example, to be black British.
Hall adopts a historical and sociological perspective in order to understand of the global context in which individual and group identities are fashioned:
"If the black subject and black experience are not stabilised by Nature or by some other essential guarantee, then it must be the case that they are constructed historically, culturally, politically - and the term that refers to this is 'ethnicity'. The term ethnicity acknowledges the place of history, language and culture in the construction of subjectivity and identity..." (page 29)
British identity, he argues, was not shaped not by some essential quality of Britishness, but by its global network of trading and other relationships, especially with its former colonies. He is therefore critical of those who argue that there is - or ever has been - any such thing as a unified, national identity, such as Britishness, or Englishness. The idea of a national culture or a national identity is a social construction, a device which allows something as ethnically diverse and fragmented as, e.g. present day Britain, or USA, to be represented as a unified entity - as one nation.
Georg Friedrich Hegel
Born 1770, died 1831
German Professor of Philosophy. Hegel believed that the whole of history is the development of reason, and he attempted to describe it all. His work is monumental. It incorporates all the major strands of philosophy that he was aware of, from the beginning of time to his own time. Part of the intellectual structure that he provides is an analysis of society into three components. These are (roughly speaking) the state, the economy, and the family.
Hegel's thought is frequently looked at as a background to that of Marx and Engels, but it is also of value in its own right.
Hegel and Kant and the French Revolution
timeline, notes and texts external link to Wikipedia article
Martin Heidegger
Born 1889, died 1976
German existentialist philosopher. Heidegger had Nazi sympathies, but his wide influence has related to his philosophy, not his politics. He was a major influence on the left-wing French existentialist philosopher, Jean-Paul Sartre.
Judith Harding has the following passage from Heidegger on her wall. It is intended to remind her that what she calls "new ways of thinking about teaching and learning" are not new. She says it reminds her that these approaches have always been part of some thinking, "from Socrates on".
-
"Teaching is more difficult than learning. We know that; but
we rarely
think about it. And why is teaching more difficult than
learning? Not
because the teacher must have a larger store of information,
and have it
always ready. Teaching is more difficult than learning because
what
teaching calls for is this: to let learn. The real teacher, in
fact, lets
nothing else be learned than---learning. His conduct,
therefore, often
produces the impression that we properly learn nothing from
him, if by
'learning' we now suddenly understand merely the procurement
of useful
information. The teacher is ahead of his apprentices in this
alone, that he
has still far more to learn than they---he has to learn to let
them learn.
The teacher must be capable of being more teachable than the
apprentices.
The teacher is far less assured of his ground than those who
learn are of
theirs. If the relation between the teacher and the taught is
genuine,
therefore, there is never a place in it for the authority of
the know-it-
all or the authoritative sway of the official. It still is an
exalted
matter, then, to become a teacher---which is something else
entirely than
becoming a famous professor".
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Thomas Hobbes:
Born 1588, died 1679 Social Science History, chapter two: Hobbes, Filmer and Locke Timeline - Bacon - Galileo - Paris 1640 - Leviathan 1651 - Louis 14 - Back to England - not in Royal Society - |
Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau and, to a certain extent, Wollstonecraft, all used a type of theory that we call State of Nature Theory. This tries to explain human society and culture by imagining what men and women would be like if we were not part of society: if we were "uncivilised" or "in a state of nature".
Each theorist argues for different characteristics to our uncivilised, animal, natures. Consequently each theorist draws different conclusions about society and civilisation.
Concepts include war of all against all - tacit (unspoken) social contract
Robotics: "Bar Bot" (external link) is a 21st century Austrian Robot that talks to you about beer. It is driven by self-interest - a desire to drink beer. Once you have given it some money, it buys the beer, drinks the beer, and settles down to talk to you about giving it some more money to drink beer. Another Robot, or machine-human, is the more sophisticated Japanese "ifbot" (external link) (another), made by Yoshimichi Hashiba, which approaches (in some respects) the conversational skills of a five year old child. The theory behind machine- humans can be traced back to philosophical scientists such as Hobbes and Descartes
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Max Horkheimer born 14.2.1895, died 7.7.1973 |
books - weblinks |
Max Horkheimer was one of the central figures of the marxist-oriented Institute for Social Research (Institut für Sozialforschung) at the University of Frankfurt in Germany, founded by Carl Grünberg in 1923.
Horkheimer led it from 1930, when he became Director of the Institut. In his inaugural address he redefined Marx's "historical materialism" as a critique rather than a science and argued for the reintegration of philosophy with social science. (Swingewood, A. 2000, p. 131)
Hitler and the Nationalsozialist (Nazi - National Socialist) party came to power in Germany in 1933. Horkheimer fell foul of the NAZIS both as a Jew and for his marxist sympathies. They revoked his right to teach and the Institute closed in Germany. Horkheimer emigrated, first to Switzerland and then, in 1934, to the United States. In the USA the Institut was reestablished at Columbia University.
In 1937 Horkheimer's essay "Critical and traditional theory" introduced the term critical theory as opposed to traditional positivist science whose goal, he argued, is pure knowledge. Critical theory was committed to emancipation. (Swingewood, A. 2000, p. 131)
Horkheimer contrasted the established ideas about scientific theory with ideas that he called "self-knowledge" which evaluate reality rather than just describing it:
"the self-knowledge of present-day man is not a mathematical knowledge of nature which claims to be the eternal Logos, but a critical theory of society as it is, a theory dominated at every turn by a concern for reasonable conditions of life."
"...there is a human activity which has society itself for its object. The aim of this activity is not simply to eliminate one or other abuse, for it regards such abuses as necessarily connected with the way in which the social structure is organized....In the following pages this activity is called "critical" activity."
"the critical attitude of which we are speaking is wholly distrustful of the rules of conduct with which society as presently constituted provides each of its members"
In 1944, Adorno and Horkheimer published Dialektik der Aufklärung: Philosophische Fragmente (Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments). Kant in 1784 had argued that enlightenment liberates us from authority. Adorno and Horkheimer said that in reality, the outcome of history was that reason had collapsed under National Socialism -
"With the extension of the bourgeois commodity economy, the dark horizon of myth is illumined by the sun of calculating reason, beneath whose cold rays the seed of the new barbarism grows to fruition"
Horkheimer returned to Germany in 1950 to become a professor at Frankfurt University.
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David Hume
Born 1711, died 1776 |
books |
A Scottish philosopher and one of the founders of European empiricism.
Hume undermined confidence in the power of reason. He believed that all real knowledge is based on experience, but he argued that our powers to build knowledge on experience are very limited. (see What is Science?)
In the empirical tradition, reason builds on experience, and Hume's fundamental doubt about the validity of the process undermines the argument of Mary Wollstonecraft that reason is the power that is taking us, via a lot of accidents, towards an ever better future. (see What is Science?). Wollstonecraft, however, had read the German philosopher Kant, whose synthesis of the empirical and rational traditions salvaged the possibility of reliable knowledge, and with it the philosophical foundations of the belief in progress based on reason.
Hume's doubts can also be seen as opening the door for theories that explore below the surface of reason. For example, they opened the door to Freud's psychoanalysis and his theory of the unconscious.
Edmund Husserl
Born
8.4.1859,
died
27.4.1938
Immanuel Kant
Born
1724,
died
1804
German philosopher who made a very influential synthesis of rationalism and empiricism. Empiricists, such as Locke and Hume, argued that all our knowledge comes from experience, or from reflection on experience. Rationalists argued that empirical knowledge is uncertain and only reason can lead us to truth.
Knowledge that comes from experience is a-posteriori This is Latin for from what comes after and just means that the knowledge comes from (after) the experience. Hume's self-critical examination of empiricism appeared to show that very little knowledge could be reliably based on experience alone. In many fields, Hume's philosophy seemed to have proved that scientific knowledge is impossible. Kant's philosophy sought to explain why science can be relied on, even if experience, alone, is an inadequate base.
Kant argued that some knowledge is prior to experience of the world - and necessary to knowledge of the world. This knowledge is called a-priori (Latin meaning from what is before). However, he showed in his Critique of Pure Reason that reason on its own can not produce reliable results. He did this by using antinomies: An antinomy is proving two contradictory things at the same time. For example: the world has a beginning and an end/ the world is infinite. Or Everything has a cause/Everything does not have a cause. If pure reason can prove contradictions it is hardly reliable.
Reason, Kant argued, provides categories with which we interpret empirical observation. Both are needed to understand the world or to build a science. These categories are mental structures like space, time and causation that we use to structure our experiences. Because we cannot experience without organising what we experience, we have to distinguish between what actually exists (the thing in itself) and what we perceive (called the phenomena). The "thing in itself" is also called noumenon (single) or noumena (plural). It is the reality behind appearances.
| Kant reasoned, however, that there is a world to which reason gives us direct access. This is the world of morality, which he calls practical reason. This is a world of freedom rather than cause. It is a world that is special to being human. The nature of being human is to be governed by reason rather than instinct. An animal is caused to do something by its instincts. The beginning of morality in humans is saying "no" to instinct. |
crime
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Kant's idea of practical reason was developed from Rousseau's idea of the general will. It is something that comes from our being social.
"In man (as the only rational creature on earth), those natural capacities which are directed towards the use of his reason are such that they could be fully developed only in the species, but not in the individual."
Our moral freedom from instinct is not freedom to do what we please, but freedom to act according to the laws of reason that we discover.
"Reason, in a creature, is a faculty which enables that creature to extend far beyond the limits of natural instinct the rules and intentions it follows in using its various powers, and the range of its projects is unbounded. But reason does not itself work instinctively, for it requires trial, practice and instruction to enable it to progress gradually from one stage of insight to the next."
The moral laws we discover through reason are the categorical imperatives, unconditional moral obligations derived from pure reason. (the things we must do). Through his own reasoning, Kant concludes that there is one basic categorical imperative, the mother of them all:
"There is therefore but one categorical imperative, which may be thus stated: Act in conformity with that maxim, and that maxim only, which you can at the same time will to be a universal law."
James Philips Kay
Born
20.7.1804,
died
1877
Plain Kay until 1842 when he married the heiress to the Shuttleworth's of Gawthorpe and became Kay-Shuttleworth.
Born in Rochdale, Lancashire. He studied medicine at Edinburgh University from 1824 to 1827. He worked and studied conditions in slum areas of Manchester. He helped to set up the Ancoats and Ardwick Dispensary, and became its medical officer. His well known pamphlet on The Moral And Physical Condition of the Working Classes Employed In the Cotton Manufacture in Manchester, grew out of work with the Manchester Board of Health. He was secretary to the Board during the cholera epidemic of 1832. In 1833 he helped establish the Manchester Statistical Society. After an unsuccessful bid to become a Chancery Visitor in April 1833, he was appointed an Assistant Poor Law Commissioner in 1835. [See Charles Mott file] On 11.4.1839 he became Assistant Secretary to the Committee of the Privy Council on Education - although effectively running it. With E.C. Tufnell, he set up The Battersea Normal School (Teacher Training) at their own risk in 1840. He retired in 1849, when he was knighted.
Frank Emmett, who is researching the career of James Kay, has provided me with much of the information I have used about Kay. See also Spartacus School Net, Cotton Times
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Mary Lamb
Born 3.12.1764, died 20.5.1847 |
|
| extracts - web biography |
Mary Lamb is an early nineteenth century author of children's books who also wrote an article about needlework that can be regarded as an early feminist manifesto.
Mary worked with her brother, Charles and, as with other famous partnerships such as Thompson and Wheeler, Marx and Engels and Mill and Taylor, it is not necessarily possible of desirable to distinguish their work. The partnership is a social fact that can be analysed but should not be destroyed.
Children's books were a significant development in the conscience collective of the early nineteenth century. Mary and Charles were concerned to preserve the place of imagination or fantasy in the new culture. Mary Wollstonecraft, and other writers for children, used their stories to instill morality, whilst others, such as Priscilla Wakefield used children's stories to describe the discoveries of science. Mary and Charles both saw fantasy as a rather naughty, but essential, counterbalance to the more earnest efforts of morality and science.
After Mary's death, it was made public that there was a dark side to her family life that she, her family and friends had kept secret. In September 1796, in her 31st year, Mary had killed her own mother. She had been confined in a private madhouse and had spent the rest of her life sometimes living with her brother and at other times in the care and confinement of registered madhouses or unregistered accommodation for single lunatics.
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Ronald Laing Born Glasgow 7.10.1927, died 23.8.1989 |
books |
Scottish Psychiatrist and existentialist. Laing was a psychiatrist who argued that "insane" statements by mentally ill people are statements that make sense if correctly interpreted. He believed that the thought processes that psychiatrists call "schizophrenic" are the result of people being subjected to a particular form of self contradictory dialogue within their family. Laing's theories became part of a left wing political criticism of the family. Laing can be usefully contrasted with Scruton.
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David Cooper
Born Cape Town 1931, came to London 1955 |
books |
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Claude Lévi Strauss
Born 1908, died 2009 Dina Dreyfus |
books - weblinks |
Claude Lévi-Strauss was born in Brussels, but grew up in Paris. After studying philosophy and law at the University of Paris, Lévi- Strauss worked as a school teacher and was associated with Jean-Paul Sartre's intellectual circle.
In 1932 Claude married Dina Dreyfus. They lived and did their anthropological work in Brazil from 1935 to 1939. While holding the position of sociology at the University of Sao Paulo in Brazil, he studied the Indian peoples of Brazil.
Dina contracted an eye infection and returned to France in 1938. The couple separated in 1939 and later divorced. In 1946 Claude married Rose Marie Ullmo, and in 1954, Monique Roman.
Lévi-Strauss escaped from Vichy France in 1941 and made his way, eventually, to New York where he worked as a visiting professor at the New School for Social Research. He was impressed with the work of the the Russian structural linguist Roman Jakobson, who was also at the New School at the time.
In studying the relation between innate behaviour and social conditioning, Lévi-Strauss came to the conclusion that the main determinant of human behaviour is structure. He is therefore known as a Structuralist.
He focussed on language and myth as the principal vehicles of collective consciousness which formed the basis of stable social structures.
Lévi-Strauss's first major work, The Elementary Structures of Kinship was published in 1949.
He soon achieved wide renown for his complex and thoroughly researched studies of a bewildering array of social structures, and the way in which these structures were supported by systems of taboo and mythology. These structures he analysed with complex mathematical tools, the like of which were previously unseen in the field of sociology. See his 1958 Structural Anthropology.
From 1950 to 1974 Lévi-Strauss was director of studies at the Écol Pratique des Hautes Étude at the University of Paris, following his predecessor Emile Durkheim..
In The Savage Mind (1962), Lévi-Strauss wrote "The thirst for objective knowledge is one of the most neglected aspects of the thought of people we call 'primitive'". He argues that there is no fundamental break between the primitive mind and more evolved attitudes. This contrasts with the argument of Levy-Bruhl (1922) in La Mentalite Primitive that the mental life and habits of thought of primitive peoples differ fundamentally from those of civilised man. (See Park 1925)
Lévi-Strauss's structuralism was an effort to reduce the enormous amount of information about cultural systems to what he believed were the essentials, the formal relationships among their elements. He viewed cultures as systems of communication, and he constructed models based on structural linguistics, information theory, and cybernetics to interpret them.
Lévi-Strauss was a Communist who frequently took issue with those who adhered to a patronistic attitude towards other cultures, insisting on the cultural validity of the systems of beliefs that other peoples used in order to organise their own relation to the world. He was a Communist while in Paris, he said, but when he was with the hill-people somewhere in the Brazilian jungle, then he had to take an objective, not a partisan, view of the cultural values of the people.
Lucien Levy-Bruhl
Born
1857,
died
1939
1922 La Mentalite Primitive by Lucien Levy-Bruhl (1857-1939). Translated into English (London and New York) by Lilian A. Clare in 1923 [See Park, R.E. 1925/7 and 1925]
1925 Levy-Bruhl, Paul Rivet (1876-1958) and Marcel Mauss (1872-1950) created the Institut d'Ethnologie (Institute of Ethnology) at the Sorbonne, dedicated to the memory of Durkheim. Rivet and Mauss were the secretary-generals.
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Cesare Lombroso
Born 1835, died 1909 |
books -
extracts -
weblinks -
timeline
life and works |
A 1934 Encyclopedia says
"Criminology treats of the nature and causes of crime... Criminology owes its foundation as a separate science to Cesare Lombroso, an Italian-Jewish Professor of Forensic Medicine, author of L'Uomo Delinquente (1876) ("Criminal Man"). The interest of the book is now mainly historical, since the researches of such scientists as Prof. Karl Pearson, in London, have shown Lombrosos's statistics and conclusions to be unreliable" (Daily Express Encyclopedia 1934, Criminology entry)
Cesare Lombroso was an Italian criminologist, born in Verona on November 6th 1835, and died in Turin on October 19th 1909. He studied medicine at the universities of Pavia, Padua, Vienna, and Genoa. He showed a great interest in physiology and psychiatry, and combined with the study of anatomy of the brain resulted in his biological-based analysis of criminals. He became more eager after his experience of working at the Mental Health Hospital in which he was in charge from 1863 to 1872 [1871 to 1878?]. He promised to transform the study of criminality into an empirical science, whereby criminality was an illness and for so it required clinical examination. His new field of research is known as criminal anthropology. Lombroso rejected the classical school of criminology who argued that crime was a free choice of the individual. Instead of that, Lombroso drew upon Charles Darwin's theory of evolution to convince readers in the validity of his born criminal theory.
Lombroso's L'uomo delinquente was first published in Milan in 1876. By 1896-1897, when it reached its 5th edition it had three volumes. It was partially translated into English in 1911 as Criminal Man.
La donna delinquente la prostituta e la donna normale by Cesare Lombroso and Guglielmo Ferrero was published in Torino. 1893. It was published in English as The Female Offender in 1895.
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John Locke
Born 1632, died 1704 |
books - extracts |
John Locke was an English philosopher and one of the founders of European empiricism. His theory of knowledge is that everything in our heads ( ideas ) comes originally from observation of the real world. False ideas are the result of putting simple observations together in the wrong order. To obtain true ideas we must trace our ideas back to their original observations, to make sure that the ideas in our head hang together in the same order in reality. Reason is the power we use to trace our ideas back to their original observations. (See Locke's Essay on Understanding)
|
In his political theory, Locke was concerned to establish that
it can
be rational for subjects to protest against injustice in a
ruler.
He claimed that human beings are governed by reason before they enter into political society. This natural reason is enough to allow us to establish reasonably civilised relations without a ruler forcing his or her will upon us. When we do enter political society, it is in order more effectively to enforce the rule of reason. This law has to govern the conduct of the ruler as well as the subjects.
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external link to Wikipedia article other weblinks
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Bronislaw Malinowski
Born 1884, died 1942 |
books - weblinks |
An sociologist who spent the first world war confined to the Trobriand Islands, of the eastern tip of New Guinea.
In 1922 he published Argonauts of the Western Pacific in which he reported on his participant observation in the Trobriand Islands.
In 1927 he became the first Professor of Social Anthropology at London School of Economics.
See Functionalism
Thomas Malthus
Born 1766, died 1834
See Wealth and Poverty: Malthus and Ricardo
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Herbert Marcuse born 19.7.1898, died 1979 |
books - weblinks - extracts |
See timeline 1941
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Karl Marx
Born 1818, died 1883 and Friedrich Engels Born 1820, died 1895 |
Timeline 1848 and index of
Marx and Engels resources Marx books - extracts index Engels books - extracts index Life and works |
Marx and Engels were collaborators in the production of what they saw as a scientific analysis of human history from the perspective of socialism. They described themselves as communists, and their writings are the classical texts of communism and marxism.
As with all major theorists, there are different interpretations of their work. It is usually agreed, however, that they argued for a materialist interpretation of society and history. They used concepts about how human societies change the material world in order to exist, as the key concepts to explain everything that humans do. The key to history is an analysis of successive modes of production, and the motor that moves history is class conflict within those modes of production. The analysis of these would be a distinguishing feature of any marxist theory, whether it concerned crime, economics, psychology, music, literature, gender relations, family relations or whatever. This approach is called historical materialism. (See Marx and Engels: Scientific Socialism)
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Click weeping Stan to see what Engels' thought criminal statistics show us about the connection between crime and economics |
Some people argue that
Engels distorted
Marx. Whatever the
truth about
this, it is difficult to discuss Marx's views on gender
without discussing
Engels.
Towards the end of his life, Marx became interested in the
anthropological reports of
Lewis Henry Morgan
(1818-1881). Morgan
argued that human society has three inter-related spheres:
production,
reproduction (i.e. the family and child rearing) and
government. Something
happening in one sphere would have repercussions for something
happening in
another.
When Marx died, Engels inherited his manuscripts, including
his
notes on Morgan. Engels developed Marx's notes on historical
materialism
and the family into a book
The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the
State
in
1884.
This is an important book in its own right. It is also
important
because a number of modern
feminist
theorists have developed their theories
as criticisms of Engels.
In 1949, Simone De Beauvoir
started The Second Sex
by analysing
biological, psychoanalytic (Freudian) and historical
materialist (Engels)
perspectives on women, and argues that they are partial. From
her
existentialist view, biology, sex and economics cannot
determine a woman's
destiny
In 1971,
Shulamith Firestone also began with criticisms of
Engels and Freud.
The first chapter of her book The Dialectic of Sex is a
good
introduction to Engels, and I have used its chart to construct
my notes on
Engels.
The chart shows how, according to Engels, the state, the
family and the
economy change together over time. The notes
include a
description of the
tribal organisation of politics in the
Iroquois Confederation.
Engels speculates on the future relations of the genders under
communism.
William Morris was one of the (very) few marxist
socialists who has
imagined in print
what communism would be like. He did this in the novel
News
from Nowhere which he published in
1890.
"In our attempt to discover woman we shall not reject
certain contributions of biology, of psychoanalysis, and of
historical
materialism; but we shall hold that the body, the sexual life,
and the
resources of technology exist concretely for [a human being]
only in so far
as he [or she] grasps them in the total perspective of his [or
her]
existence."
Click for
Engels
spelling tips
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Marcel Mauss
Born 10.5.1872 (Épinal) died 10.2.1950 (Paris) |
books - weblinks |
Marcel Mauss was a nephew and then a colleague of Emile Durkheim
1895? Studied philosophy at the University of Bordeaux, where one of his teachers was his uncle, Émile Durkheim
Mauss edited the sections on religion and classification of the science of sociology in L'Année Sociologique. Most of Mauss's early published work was in collaboration with other scholars and was published in L'Année.
1899, with Henry Hubert, "The Nature and Function of Sacrifice"
1900-1902 Taught Hindu and Buddhist philosophy at the University of Paris
1902-1930 Professor in the history of religion of primitive peoples at the University of Paris.
1903, with Durkheim, "Primitive Classification"
"Every mythology is fundamentally a classification, but one which borrows its principles from religious beliefs, not from scientific ideas" (pp 77-78)
1904 Assisted Jean Jaurès to found the socialist daily newspaper L'Humanité. Mauss wrote for this.
1904, with Henry Hubert, "Prolegomena to a General Theory of Magic"
1908, with Henry Hubert, "Introduction to Religious Phenomena"
1908, Durkheim decided to publish the L'Année Sociologique only every third year.
1923/1924 "Essai sur le don. Forme et raison de l'échange dans les sociétés archaïques" published in L'Année Sociologique
Mauss did not carry out his own field-work. He used work like that of Bronislaw Malinowski's on exchange and social structure in Melanesia, to define exchange patterns cross-culturally, using Roman, Hindu, and Germanic examples as well. He sought to demonstrate that exchange is a "total social fact" in which economic and social motives are inseparable.
1925 Lucien Levy-Bruhl, Paul Rivet (1876-1958) and Marcel Mauss created the Institut d'Ethnologie Institute of Ethnology at the Sorbonne, dedicated to the memory of Durkheim. Rivet and Mauss were the secretary-generals. In addition to his University post, Mauss taught ethnography from 1927 to 1939 at the Institute of Ethnography. These lectures were compiled in the Manual of Ethnography (1947).
1930-1939 moved from the the University of Paris to the Collège de France.
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George Herbert Mead
Born 1863, died 1931 Extracts Life and works |
crime
|
social psychology lecture - theatrical concepts
self and body - books and articles - weblinks
1884 - 1887 - 1888 - 1891 - 1894 - 1896 - 1909 - 1913 - 1927 - 1930 - 1931 (death) - 1934 - 1939 -
Like his friend, John Dewey, George Herbert Mead was interested in both the biological evolution ideas of Charles Darwin, and Georg Friedrich Hegel's, earlier, historical analysis of the evolution of ideas.
|
From
1894 to
1904,
John Dewey was the first chair of Philosophy at the new
Univisity of Chicago, where he
developed his version of pragmatism.
Dewey arranged for his colleague Mead to lecture at Chicago, and Mead remained a lecturer in phiolosophy at Chicago until his death 1931 |
|
At Chicago University Mead developed theories that showed how social interaction by means of symbols could have developed from the conversation of gestures of animals.
After his death, some of Mead's students published lectures and articles by him as Mind, Self and Society, from the Standpoint of a Social Behaviourist (1934)
Mead's main contribution can be seen as his attempt to show how the human "self" is "not initially there, at birth, but arises in the process of social experience and activity" (Mead, G.H. 1934 chapter 18). What we call our self is something that develops in the process of social interaction using symbols. As a result theories based on Mead's were later called "symbolic interactionist".
Concepts used include - self - body - conversation in gestures - mind - emotion - society - institution
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Robert King Merton
Born 5.7.1910, died 2003 |
crime
|
|
extracts -
books -
weblinks -
timeline
life and works Durkheim and Merton page |
Robert Merton was a pupil of Talcott Parsons at Harvard University (1931). Like Parsons, he analyses society in terms of structure and function and investigates the relation between social structure and culture . Whereas Parsons concerns himself mainly with theory and with theory that explains the whole of society, Merton was most interested in theory on a smaller scale and how such theory could be developed to establish empirical relations with sociological data.
Merton was a postgraduate student and teaching assistant at Harvard from 1933 to 1936 and then a tutor and instructor from 1936 to 1939 - In 1937 Merton was acknowledged by Talcott Parsons for particularly helpful suggestions and criticisms after reading the manuscript of The Structure of Social Action.
It was also in 1937 that Merton published an article on "Social Structure and Anomie" in the American Sociological Review that Margaret Evans says "catapulted Merton into the sociological spotlight"
From 1939 to 1941, Merton was teaching at Tulane University in New Orleans
In 1941 Merton was given an appointment in Columbia University, New York. Here, he combined his theoretical interest with the empirical interests of Paul Lazarsfeld to create what Merton called "middle-range theory" - testable propositions, derived from fundamental theory, addressing observable phenomena.
Mass Persuasion: The Social Psychology of a War Bond Drive, a book that Merton co-authored in 1946 is said to have "significantly shaped public opinion research"
In 1949 Merton's Social Theory and Social Structure. Towards the codification of theory and research. Sought a
" functional analysis in sociolgy ...the description of the participants (and on-lookers) is in structural terms, that is, in terms of locating these people in their inter- connected social statuses."
This was published at a time when Talcott Parsons and many other leading United States theoriest were working on a common agreement about the theoretical concepts of sociology.
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Charlotte Mew
Born 15.11.1869, died 1928 |
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|
extracts -
books -
weblinks -
timeline
life and works - Freda and Charlotte |
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James Mill
Born 1773, died 1836 |
books - weblinks
|
James Mill, a shoemaker's son from Scotland who came to London in 1802. He became the disciple and chief propagandist of Jeremy Bentham from about 1808. Sometime before 1810 he also joined forces with the Quaker William Allen, cooperating with his magazine The Philanthropist, which became an important organ for utilitarian ideas. James Mill wrote the History of British India which was published in 1817 and 1818. Between 1816 and 1823 he wrote essays for the supplement of the Encyclopedia Britannica on government, law, the liberty of the press, prisons and prison discipline, colonies, the law of nations, and education. I have summarised the argument of his essay on government in Social Science History. He published the Elements of Political Economy in 1821 and 1822. In 1827 he was one of the founders of London University. In 1829 he published Analysis of the Human Mind , one of the first English text books of Psychology.
James Mill popularised the theoretical principles of Jeremy Bentham. It was James son, John Stuart Mill, who called those principles "utilitarianism". Utilitarianism is a theory with different possibilities according to how it is developed. The socialist version argued that the greatest human happiness would be obtained through cooperation. This was not James, version and, in the 1830s James Mill was the most widely read and influential of the Utilitarians. It was his version of the doctrine which most people would have recognised.
James broadened utilitarianism by linking it with other theories. He linked it to the egoistic psychology that Thomas Hobbes had developed. This argues that the foundation of any explanation of the human mind must be to trace its content back to the self-centred desires of the individual. He also linked utilitarianism to democracy, arguing that if we are all pursuing our own self-interest it is not safe to trust government to a minority. Every male adult must have a vote to act as a control on the government. He also linked it to laissez-faire economics, merging the theories of Bentham with those of Ricardo and other followers of Adam Smith.
It was the total package that James Mill put together that people often percieved as utilitarianism, but none of the links he made is a necessary one. Other utilitarians, includeing his own son, John Stuart Mill, as well as Thompson and Wheeler, made different links and constructed different versions of utilitrianism.
See timeline for
1820,
1825,
1827,
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John Stuart Mill
Born 1806, died 1873 and Harriet Taylor Born 1807, died 1858 |
books - weblinks
life and works |
John Stuart Mill was the son of James Mill.
Like his father, he was a utilitarian philosopher and a political economist. He was also a radical liberal politician.
John Stuart Mill's A System of Logic (1843) was one of the foundations of social science. It was written to stress the importance of deduction, reason, theory and hypothesis in science, and to explore the way they relate to empirical reality and induction.
Few people read Mill's Logic nowadays (although many condemn it without reading it), so this description may come as a surprise to some people. See proof.
Harriet Taylor provided the ideas for an article On the Probable Futurity of the Labouring Classes in a book by John Stuart Mill that was the standard text book on economics in the second half of the 19th century (Mill, J.S. 1848).
The article argues against paternalism and for self-determination. Paternalism is where a benevolent, but authoritarian, government provides for the welfare of the people. It is the kind of policy associated, at the time, with people like Lord Ashley.
Mill and Taylor argued that, after the basic necessities of life have been met, freedom is the most important human need. Freedom meaning, for them, the opportunity to develop one's own life according to one's own values, rather than living, however comfortably, under the control of someone else. The working class, they argued, were rightly taking this power into their own hands. Women, they added, should do the same.
In The Subjection of Women (1869), J.S. Mill argued that western society is developing from a hierarchical organisation (feudalism) to an organisation based on freedom under law. His book incorporated the ideas of the early French sociologists, St Simon and Comte, that societies are complex wholes in which legal structures, morals, customs, political, economic and family structures interrelate. The development of democracy and freedom in politics he argued, would need to be matched by a development of freedom and democracy within the family and in the relation between the sexes.
Juliet Mitchell
Psychoanalyst. Born New Zealand 1940. Lived in London
since 1944.
Many
feminist
theorists in the early 1970s criticised
Freud. Mitchell
is a feminist writer who argues that feminists like
Simone De
Beauvoir,
Betty Friedan, Eva Figes, Germaine Greer,
Shulamith
Firestone
and Kate
Millett, have created inadequate theories because they have
missed out the
essential Freud: his theory of the unconscious. Her 1974 book,
Psychoanalysis
and
Feminism, also discusses
Reich
and
Laing.
Montesquieu
Charles Secondat "Baron de Montesquieu" (l689-l755) was a French
aristocrat. He was a judge, but he sold this office to devote more of his
time to study. His two major works were the Persian Letters (1721)
and
The Spirit of the Laws (1748).
The Spirit of the Laws contains this message:
It is easy to find strange or bizarre parts to the book, but Montesquieu is
valued for the way he related elements to one another. The many parts of
the book hang together. In it he explored natural and human laws in a way
that enables us to analyse society as a whole, in relation to its parts, in
relation to its history and in relation to its environment.
"I beg one favour of my readers, ... that they will approve or
condemn the book entire, and not a few particular phrases."
Benedict Augustin Morel
Born
1809,
died
1873
Pioneer of the theory of degeneration:
"Les degenerations sont des deviations maladives du type normal de l'humanite hereditairement trans-missibles et evoluant progressivement vers la decheance." (Degenerations are deviations from the normal human type which are transmissible by heredity and which deteriorate progressively towards extinction.)
He worked on this theory from 1839 until 1857, giving it its final form in Traite des Degenerescences Physiques, Intellectuelles et Morales de I'Espece Humaine
Degeneration could be caused by intoxication, by malaria, alcohol, opium, soil conducive to cretinism, epidemics or food poisoning; the social environment; pathological temperament; moral sickness; inborn or acquired damage; or heredity. His law of two-fold fertilisation stated that combined physical and moral injuries were particularly dangerous. His law of progressivity stated that the first generation of a degenerate family might be merely nervous, the second would tend to be neurotic, the third psychotic, while the fourth consisted of idiots and died out.
Morel identified changes in the head, eye, ear, genitalia and intestines which were infallible stigmata (signs) of degeneration.
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Lewis Henry Morgan
Born 1818, died 1881 |
books |
In 1851 Lewis Henry Morgan published League of the Ho-dé-no-sau-nee, or Iroquois. Included a folding map and a "Schedule explanatory of the Indian map," arranged in three columns giving the corresponding English and Indian names of the localities, stream, etc., with their signification.
1870/1871 he published Systems of consanguinity and affinity of the human family
1877 he published Ancient society, or, researches in the lines of human progress from savagery, through barbarism to civilisation
Morgan argued that human society has three inter-related spheres: production, reproduction (i.e. the family and child rearing) and government. Something happening in one sphere would have repercussions for something happening in another.
Frederick Walker Mott
Born
23.10.1853,
died
8.6.1926
Asylum pathologist. From 1884 a lecturer in physiology at Charing Cross Hospital Medical School. Appointed in 1895 to run the London County Council Asylums' new Central Laboratory at Claybury. He also remained a lecturer at Charing Cross.
Pathology (1900 dictionary) explains the nature, causes and symptoms of diseases and a laboratory is a building or room designed for investigation and experiment. The microscope is usually considered as the scientific apparatus that made the laboratory study of disease important. Its uses included looking for tiny life forms that might generate disease and taking a close look at body tissues. A central laboratory for asylums would be concerned with diseases that were associated with asylums. Mott investigated the possible relation that both psychosis and neurosis might have to the body. But there were other diseases associated with asylums: "epidemic disorders, such as dysentery". "Asylum dysentery" or "asylum colitis" covered a variety of gastrointestinal infections to which the patients in asylums seemed particularly prone. (See Claybury)
Mott and Durham (1900) investigated the theory that asylum colitis was due to the degeneration of the nervous tissue of insane people leading to tissue damage in the intestines, which then became infected. This was the prevalent theory, but they found no evidence for it. They therefore argued that the gastrointestinal infections in asylums were spread within the asylum, and better hygiene would prevent them. For the reduction in disease following on this report, Mott was awarded the Stewart Prize (for work on the origin, spread and prevention of epidemic disease) by the British Medical Association in 1903.
Mott followed Henry Maudsley's guidance that advances in the study of mind would follow study of corresponding body changes. He worked to show that general paralysis of the insane is an end product of syphilis. His work on General Paralysis of the Insane was published in the first volume of Archives of Neurology, which he founded 1899. "Mott became firmly impressed by the idea that bodily changes are to be found in all types of psychosis" (Nature 1926).
" Dementia praecox offered the most promising field of study, and in a series of papers on the pathology of the gonads and other endocrine organs and the vegetative nervous system in this disease, he was able to demonstrate with certainty the existence of a widespread degenerative change preceding the far slighter evidences of degeneration that could be detected in the central nervous system in advanced cases. In other psychoses similar though less marked pathological changes were encountered" (Nature 26.6.1926 p.900).
"He considered the majority of the pathological changes that he discovered in insanity are congenital... he enunciated the "Law of Anticipation", in accordance with which the onset of the psychotic symptoms appears earlier in the successive generations of a degenerate family, and thus ultimately, owing to the production of infertile juvenile psychotics, the tainted stock disappears." (Nature 26.6.1926 p.900).
The laboratory work on which Mott based his conclusions about biological degeneracy underlying the mental symptoms of dementia praecox were published in The British Medical Journal in November and December 1919. In a leading article, the journal said Mott had made clear "the biological significance and purpose of psychosis".
| Max Müller 1823-1900 | books |
Born in Germany, Max Müller came to England in 1846 to study the manuscript of the Rig-Veda, the sacred hymn of hinduism. This was in the possession of the East India Company. In 1847, the company commissioned Müller to edit and publish the text. Müller was appointed professor of modern languages at Oxford University in 1854. See 1861 and 1870
|
George Peter Murdock
Born 11.5.1897, died 29.3.1985 |
books - weblinks |
A United States anthropologist who advocated an empirical and statistical approach by compiling data from independent cultures, and then testing hypotheses by subjecting the data to the appropriate statistical tests. He put together a team at Yale University which created a cross-cultural data set which is now used world-wide.
|
Franz Neumann
Born 23.5.1900, died 2.9.1954 |
books - weblinks - commentary |
"Political scientist with special expertise in law" (Held, D. 1980 p.14) Graduated from University of Frankfurt. Greatly influenced by his teacher (there?) Hugo Sinzheimer, founder of German labour law. 1925-1927 Taught at Academy of Labour. 1927 Settled in Berlin as a labour lawyer. From 1928 taught at "Hochschule fur Politik" in Berlin. Legal adviser to the SDP. Arrested April 1933 but escaped in May and studied at LSE under Harold Laski. In 1936 moved to the United States and joined the Institute of Social Research at Columbia University.
Published Behemoth, written at the Institute, in 1942.
After the war joined the faculty of Columbia, working in the Department of Government. 2.9.1954 (aged 55) killed in a car accident in Switzerland. Pollock spoke at his funeral (in Switzerland?).
Isaac Newton
born
1642,
died
1727
English
mathematician
and
physicist. In
Principia Mathematica
(1686) he
set out mathematical laws of mechanics and gravitation which
he applied to
bodies on earth and to the movement of the planets in the
heavens.
Newtonian mechanics has three laws of motion:
1) that a body continues in a state of rest or uniform motion in a straight line unless it is acted on by an external force;
2) that the rate of change of momentum of a moving body is proportional to the force acting to produce the change,
3) that if one body exerts a force on another, there is an equal and opposite force (or reaction) exerted by the second body on the first.
Newtonian dynamics is an example of what Khun calls a paradigm,
To fully prove a theory is either very difficult (John Stuart Mill thought Newton had done it); or impossible (Einstein, demonstrated that Newton had not done it).
|
Florence Nightingale
Born 12.5.1820, died 13.8.1910 |
books |
A young woman from an upper middle class English family, Florence Nightingale trained as a nurse (a very low class occupation) at Kaiserwerth (1851) and Paris. After the battle of the Alma in the Crimean War, she offered to organise a nursing department for the wounded soldiers at Scutari. In October 1854 she left Britain with thirty-eight nurses and arrived in the Crimea in time to receive the wounded from Inkermann (5.11.1856). She returned to England in 1856 and a fund of £50,000 was subscribed to enable her to form an institution for the training of nurses at St Thomas's and at King's College Hospital.
|
Robert
Owen
Born 1771, died 1858 |
Extracts -
books
-
weblinks
Lecture notes - reviews |
Robert Owen was the son of an ironmonger or saddler in Wales. He left home when he was ten years old to enter the retail drapery trade in London. In 1785 he went to Manchester where, with a partner and £100 capital, he began making "mules" (Machines for spinning cotton). He became manager (and later partner in) a Mr Drinkwater's factory. In 1799 he married David Dale's daughter and in 1800 became manager and part owner of Dale's New Lanark Mills. In his management of New Lanark's 2,000 workers Owen attempted to replace violence by reason. In 1813, funding from Bentham and others enabled to continue developing the social and educational aspect of his business community. In 1815 (via Peel) he promoted A Bill to Regulate the Employment of Children in Textile Factories. Between 1812 and 1816 he published his A New View of Society or Essays on the Formation of Human Character and in 1817 his Plan for the Relief of the Poor. His plan was rejected, Owen suspected this was because of the influence of Malthus. Owen turned to publicity and efforts to get a trial community started. His views on community management moved away from paternalism towards equality and self- management. From 1824 to 1829 he was in the USA trying to establish a model community at New Harmony. When he returned to England in 1829, he found he was a guru of the labour movement. In 1831 the first Co-operative Conference was held in Manchester. 1832-1834 National Equitable Labour Exchange. Grays Inn Road. In 1833, the third congress appointed Co- operative missionaries and, in the same year the Grand National Consolidated Union was formed, partly with the dream of bringing about a new cooperative moral order. 1834 Tolpuddle Martyrs and collapse of union. The New Moral World (Journal) was founded afterwards. 1839-1845 Queenswood Community, Hampshire. [1843 Rochdale Shop]
Paracelsus
Born
1491,
Died
1541
Phillipus Aureolus Theophratus Bombastus von Hohenheim, called Paracelsus
German doctor. About 1520 wrote a small book called Diseases which lead to a Loss of Reason, published in 1567. Published a clinical description of syphilis in 1530. His discussion of syphilis [Vom Holtz Guaiaco gründlicher heylung (1529) and Von der Franzüsischen kranckheit Drey Bücher (1530)] criticized current methods of treatment including the popular use of guaiac (a tropical wood resin known as the holy wood). Published his Der grossen Wundartzney (Great Surgery Book) in 1536. De Generatione Stultorum, published 1567, was translated by P. Cranefield and W. Federn as "The begetting of fools" in Bulletin of the History of Medicine 41.
Paracelsus was a pioneer of practical chemistry, analogies from which he applied to biology. For example, he argued that body organs separate the pure from the impure, just as a chemist would. So the stomach separates the parts of food that the body can use from the parts that it cannot. The waste part is got rid off through the intestines. Illness occurs when this ability in an organ fails, and poisons build up.
Paracelsus linked spiritual and material entities. His idea of pygmies (gnomes) as fairy forces associated with the earth, was drawn on by some to interpret the European discovery of very small humans in the African rain forest in the late nineteenth century.
Wikipedia on Paracelsus - An introduction to the writings of Paracelsus (archive) and Paracelsus - 500 years
|
Talcott Parsons
Born 1902, died 1979 and Anthony Giddens Born 18.1.1938, |
life and works -
books and articles
-
extracts
See Action and System and Society's parts and follow the links. |
Talcott Parsons is an American sociologist who studied the work of Max Weber in Germany in the 1920s (see life and works for details). He later translated some of Weber's work into English. Parson's was inspired by Weber to develop a general theory of society that is based on action (or inter-action between individual actors). To do this he made a creative synthesis of the theories of Alfred Marshall, Vilfredo Pareto, Emile Durkheim and Weber. He called his synthesis the "action frame of reference" (See Parsons).
This work was published as The Structure of Social Action. A study in social theory with special reference to a group of recent European writers in 1937
A central feature was that Parsons believed the social theorists he analysed were all, in their different ways, moving towards a resolution of what he called the Hobbesian problem of order. Simply stated, this is that the socially directed actions of individuals are integrated by the common value system of the society.
Parsons moved from the construction of a system focused on social action, to the integration of that perspective with systems theory. His integration of action theory and systems theory, The Social System, was published in 1951. (See Parsons)
From 1948 to 1951, Parsons was engaged in a massive inter-disciplinary "stock-take" with other American theorists of their "theoretical resources", with the aim of creating a common "general theory of action" for the psychological and social sciences. The results were published in 1951 as Towards a General Theory of Action - Theoretical Foundations for the Social Sciences, a book edited by Parsons and Edward Shils.
Parsons described the period from 1951, immediately after publication of The Social System and Towards a General Theory of Action, as one of "general theoretical effervescence". Working with others, he explored the "relations between the social system and individual personality". His developing theories described a
"convergence between Freud and Durkheim with respect to the internalisation of normative culture in the personality of the individual" (Parsons 1964 p.2. See extract)
In 1964, Parsons was described on the book-jacket of Social Structure and Personality as "the leading figure in American sociology" and the "major representative of the school of functionalism". In the same year, a poll of about 3,400 American sociologists showed that 80% thought functional analysis and theory of great value to contemporary sociology.
From 1964, Parsons completed his construction of social theory with work on the history of society and how societies change, arguing of a three stage model of evolutionary change: primitive, intermediate, and modern.
After Durkheim, I consider Talcott Parsons the most significant sociologist. His work established sociology as a science in the English speaking world, as much by the criticism it raised as by its substantial merits. In the mid 20th century, Parsons was the example of American scientific sociology. But, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, his theories were the centre of criticism in schools of sociology and the idea of a scientific sociology itself was criticised. In these dangerous times, British sociologist, Anthony Giddens, set out to rescue sociology from imminent death.
I believe that Parsons and Giddens are wrong,
but not as wrong as their critics. Their fault is not that
they treat
society as real, but that they do not treat it as real enough.
As an
American sociologist,
Parsons is not prepared to
treat social facts as
things
in the way Durkheim does. Like
John Stuart Mill
and
Max Weber,
he thinks sociology has to be developed from the study of the
actions of
human individuals. However, Parsons argues that individual
actions are
directed to other people and that, in the inter-action of
individuals, a
social system
emerges. Society,
therefore, emerges as a reality.
The main theorists discussed in Parsons's
The Structure of Social Action
are Alfred
Marshall; Vilfredo Pareto, Durkheim and Weber.
Parson's project is to find a way of conceptualising and analysing social systems without treating them as real. His critics have mainly been from the side of those who consider he went too far towards thinking about societies as real. In the 1960s and 1970s they took their arguments to the point where it seemed no sociology was possible, because the whole idea of society is a fantasy.
Anthony Giddens, in defending Sociology, has continued Parsons' project. Giddens defends the idea of social structure, but says:
-
"
Structure is not external to the individual but
rather almost
internal, as
memory traces. Structure has no existence independent of the
knowledge
agents have about what they do in their day-to-day activity,
and the
duality of structure is always the main grounding of
continuities in social
reproduction across time and space." (Quoted from
Gidden's web site)
|
Karl Pearson
Born 27.3.1857, died 27.4.1936 |
books |
Karl Pearson was appointed Gresham Chair of Geometry in January 1891. He gave 38 "Gresham" lectures, free and open to the public, between February 1891 and November 1893. On 20.11.1891 he introduced the term histogram to designate a "time-diagram" to be used for historical purposes. On 31.1.1893, he introduced the term standard deviation.
From 1891 to 1906 (when Weldon died) Pearson worked with Walter Frank Raphael Weldon, Professor of Zoology and Comparative Anatomy, on biometry (biological measurments) and evolutionary theory. Weldon introduced him to Francis Galton
In 1911 he was appointed to be the first occupant of the Chair of Eugenics established in connexion with the legacy bequeathed by Francis Galton.
Concepts: Sample - Population - Range - Deviation - Standard Deviation - variation - coefficient of variation - scales of measurement - variable - continuous variable - nominal variables - ordinal variables -
continuous variables were divided into interval scales and ratio scales by Stanley Smith Stevens in 1947
|
Jean Piaget
Born 9.8.1896, died 16.9.1980 |
books
-
weblinks
Piaget's theories and educational intervention |
A French speaking Swiss biologist, born in Neuchâtel, Switzerland. Piaget argued that the theory of the biological organism could be used, successfully, to explain human mental development. He argued that intellectual functioning is a special case of general biological functioning.
Living organisms adapt to their environment. To do this they must have some form of organisation or structure. Adaptation and structure are, therefore, features we can use to analyses the way any organism functions.
Piaget divides adaptation into two closely related parts, which he calls assimilation and accommodation
For Piaget, intellectual growth depends essentially on the child (or adult)'s own actions. It does not happen automatically as a result of biological growth.
Adapting to the environment, and organising our experiences, results in patterns or sequences of physical or mental actions in our minds, which Piaget calls schemas. These idea patterns are used by us for continuing our life activities, and are altered and developed as we do so. Piaget studied the development of these intellectual structure over time.
From birth to about 21 months is the period of sensori-motor intelligence. It is called this because the schemas developed require the direct support of what is sensed in the environment and experienced through moving the body. At this stage, a baby is only interested in a toy when it can be seen or sensed. If it goes out of sight, the baby loses interest. Piaget argues that there is major development of the child's mental schema when he or she is able to think of the toy as still existing when it can no longer see it.
Being able to imagine the missing object and think about it is an important step preparing the child for the development pre-operational thought - That is thought before it is used to perform operations. At this stage the child learns to use symbols for objects. He or she can use a signifier (image or word) for something signified (a significate). This is the process of a child learning to speak. We can think of it as taking place at around two years of age.
" Representational thought begins to emerge somewhere between eighteen and twenty-four months of age or the period between the sixth stage of the sensorimotor period and the beginnings of preoperational thought (Piaget 1955; Inhelder and Piaget 1964). It is characterised as the mental activity of evoking objects and events which are outside the immediate field of perception. Thus, representational activity extends the perceptual field of the child from the observable present to the past and future... Somewhere within the eighteen and twenty-four month period children become capable of re-enacting past events, such as re-enacting home experiences, e.g. preparing meals in the nursery's housekeeping corner or putting a doll to sleep" (Sigel Secrist and Forman 1973, p.30)
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Plato
born about 427BC, died 347BC Greek philosopher. Plato (following Socrates) argued that men and women have the same virtues, although usually present in different amounts. Reason is the virtue needed for government, so a women whose reason is strongly developed is as acceptable a candidate for the governing class as a man with similarly developed reason. This argument has led some commentators to consider Plato an early founder of feminist theory. Compare with Platos' pupil, Aristotle Life and works See the timeline for a brief summary of Plato's ideas and links to fuller explanations and to texts.
|
|
Karl Popper
born 28.7.1902, died 17.9.1994 |
books |
Karl Popper taught logic and scientific method at the London School of Economics from 1946 to 1969
This is the gist of an imaginary conversation reported by Julie Ford
"For Popper, the proper way to test a theory is not to attempt to prove it but to try to disprove it. In submitting a theory to genuinely risky test the well-behaved scientist attempts to falsify it"
As Popper and Julie discuss an experiment made by her and her friend, Ken, that the theory has to be one that can be falsified and is worth falsifying:
Julie: "we had a theory that led us to think that if you put jam, washing- up liquid, molasses, bleach, ad blancmange powder in a jam jar with some warm tea something interesting ought to happen.
Popper: Was there anything that your theory forbade your horrid concoction to do?
Julie: It was not allowed to just sit there and do nothing.
Popper: What happened?
Julie: Nothing.
Popper: I take it you discarded your theory?
Julie: No. We reckoned we had made a mistake in the ingredients. Ken went and got some colourless smelly liquid in a bottle, then he pored it into the jar and it all got hot and fizzy and foamy and pale at the top and dark at the bottom and spilling all over the top and the jar broke
(Based on Ford, J. 1975 p. 98)
James Cowles Prichard
born
1786,
died
1848
James Cowles Prichard helped to found both anthropology and psychiatry in England. Born in Bristol where the ships brought people from every part of the world, Prichard developed and early interest in the different types or races of humanity. Working on a combination of Biblical and secular theory, Prichard argued that all human beings had descended from common ancestors (Adam and Eve). He also argued that those common ancestors were black. Lighter skinned people evolved from these original ancestors, and as they did so, their intellects and civilisation evolved as well. Western Europeans were, he thought, the branch of the human family that had evolved furthest intellectually and culturally, but races would evolve to the same level with time.
Prichard also wrote the first English textbook for psychiatrists. It was based on French work, and included the concept of moral insanity.
external link about USA craniologist Samuel George Morton who took the contrary view to Prichard, believing the varieties of humanity had different origins - and black people are naturally inferior.
Richard Price
born
1723,
died
1791
Born Glamorganshire, Wales. Doctor of Divinity (Glasgow) 1769. Preacher at Newington Green 1758-1791. Published Observations on Civil Liberty and the War with America 1776
|
Joseph Priestley
born 1733, died 1804 |
books |
12.6.1766 "Joseph Priestley of Warrington, Doctor of laws, Author of a chart of Biography, and several other valuable works, a gentleman very well versed in mathematical and philosophical enquiries" became a Fellow of the Royal Society on the proposal (amongst others) of Richard Price and Benjamin Franklin -
1767: The history and present state of electricity, with original experiments
1768: An essay on the first principles of government and on the nature of political, civil, and religious liberty sets out principle of happiness of the great majority
1772: The history and present state of discoveries relating to vision, light, and colours
Also 1772 (Second edition 1782?) Institutes of natural and revealed religion
December 1772 to 1780 Priestley worked as the librarian to William Petty (1737-1805), Lord Shelburne, at Bowood House, Wiltshire.
1.8.1774: In the laboratory at Bowood House, Priestley isolated oxygen, which he called dephlogisticated air, air from which everything except its life giving properties has been removed. A few days later, he visited Paris with Shelburne and met Lavoisier, to whom he communicated his discovery. - 1774: Experiments and observations on different kinds of air
Phlogiston was a way of explaining burning. The theory argued that solid combustible materials contain phlogiston which escapes into the air when they are burnt. So, when a match burns, the black remains are the dephlogisticated material. A match will burn very brightly in oxygen, as (according to this theory) the air re-absorbs phlogiston. Lavoisier argued that this was wrong, claiming that when materials burn, there is a combination, not a separation of elements. In modern terms, a burning match involves carbon (in the match) joining with oxygen to form the gas carbon dioxide. Deciding that Priestley was wrong and Lavoisier right depended, in part, on discovering ways of accurately weighing the gases produced by combustion.
1775: Edited and annotated David Hartley's theory of the human mind: Hartley's (D.) Theory of the human mind; with essays relating to the subject of it
Philosophical empiricism; interspersed with various observations relating to different kinds of air (Also 1775)
1777 (Second edition 1782?) Disquisitions relating to matter and spirit and The doctrine of philosophical necessity illustrated
1782: An history of the corruptions of Christianity
1788: Lectures on history and general policy
14.7.1791: House burnt - moved from Birmingham to Hackney - 7.4.1794 The Priestley's sailed for America - 1795: Answer to Thomas Paine
6.2.1804 Died Northumberland, Pennsylvania, USA
|
Adolphe Quetelet
Born 22.2.1796, died 17.2.1874 |
Adolphe Quetelet's Sur l'homme et le dévelopment de ses facultés ou Essai de physique sociale was published in Paris in 1835. It was translated into English and published in 1842 as A Treatise on Man and the Development of his Faculties. Quetelet put forward the concept of the "average man".
Quetelet conceived of the qualities of an average person as the central values of measurements grouped in "curve of possibility" - which we now call a "normal curve".
This bell shaped picture drawn by Quetelet illustrates a distribution according to laws of probability. Quetelet showed that the distribution of naturally occurring features, such as the heights of adult men, approximated to the same shape. So, there would be very few very short men (left), large numbers of medium height men (around the central axis) and very few very tall men. Hidden in this picture was the possibility of measuring normality and abnormality (deviance) "scientifically".
Link to entry on Quetelet in International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences
| Wilhelm Reich (1897-1957) | books |
German Sexologist. Reich was one of a number of German theorists, between the wars, who tried to integrate the theories of Marx and Freud. Reich came to the conclusion that if we are to have political liberation, we must also have sexual liberation. According to him, political regimes control people by sexual as well as by political repression. The way to a better world is, for Reich, the opposite of the way that Plato argued for. Plato's ideal world is one where reason governs passion, Reich's is a world in which passion frees itself from the constraints and distortions that political repression builds into our character.
David Ricardo
Born
1772,
died
1823
See Wealth and Poverty:
Malthus
and
Ricardo
Also
the timeline for explanations and texts.
|
Jean Jacques Rousseau
Born 1712, died 1778
books (with links to extracts)
Student discussions of Rousseau on:
|
|
Rousseau helped to lay the foundations
for the social sciences, because he argued that
reason
within society is
radically different from reason outside society. So different,
in fact,
that reason can be said to not exist outside society.
Reason is engendered by human consciousness of the
general
will,
the
interest of all, as opposed to the narrow will of the
individual.
Women are closer to nature than men. They do not partake of
the general
will to the same extent as men as their closeness to the
biological
functions of childbearing and rearing makes them too concerned
with
defending their individual family to share in the rationality
of the wider
culture.
This is very important for society and
politics. Women, although unsuited to take part in politics,
inspire men to
patriotism because they stir in men the desire to defend their
hearth and
home. By arguing for separate and different reasons in men and
women,
Rousseau develops the tradition of
Aristotle.
See why criticism of slavery is an aspect of Rousseau's theory of society
|
Ferdinand de Saussure
Born 26.11.1857, died 22.2.1913 |
books - weblinks |
"Brief survey of the history of linguistics"
Ferdinand de Saussure described (spoken) "language ... as a product of society at work: it is a set of signs fixed by agreement between the members of that society"
See sign - structuralism
Georg Simmel
Born
1858,
died
1918
Georg Simmel attempted to create a sociology that is based on forms of interaction between people. He thought of society as a web or network of interactions. An institution, like the family, was thought of as a routine way in which individuals interact.
An example of a "form" is a "stranger". Simmel argued that sociologists should study what is invooved in relating to all people classified as strangers - what "shape" does our relationship to "strangers take". Here is his answer.
""The stranger is the person who comes today, and stays tomorrow.he is so to speak the potential wanderer; although he has not moved on.he is fixed within a particular spatial (i.e. territorial) group whose boundaries are similar to spatial boundaries. But his position in this group is determined, essentially by the fact that he has not belonged to it from the beginning, that he imports qualities into it, which do not, and cannot stem from the group itself.His position as a fully-fledged member involves both being outside it and confronting it.." (Simmel, 1908, in Wolfe, 1950, The Sociology of Georg Simmel, Free Press, p. 402). "
" The unity of nearness and remoteness involved in every human relation is organized, in the phenomenon of the stranger, in a way which may be most briefly formulated by saying that in the relationship to him, distance means that he, who is close by, is far, and strangeness means that he, who also is far, is actually near. For, to be a stranger is naturally a very positive relation; it is a specific form of interaction.The inhabitants of Sirius are not really strangers to us, at least not in any social logically relevant sense: they do not exist for us at all; they are beyond far and near.
The stranger, like the poor and like sundry "inner enemies," is an element of the group itself. His position as a full-fledged member involves both being outside it and confronting it. The following statements, which are by no means intended as exhaustive, indicate how elements which increase distance and repel, in the relations of and with the stranger produce a pattern of coordination and consistent interaction.
Throughout the history of economics the stranger everywhere appears as the trader, or the trader as stranger. As long as economy is essentially self- sufficient, or products are exchanged within a spatially narrow group, it needs no middleman: a trader is only required for products that originate outside the group. Insofar as members do not leave the circle in order to buy these necessities--in which case they are the "strange" merchants in that outside territory--the trader must be a stranger, since nobody else has a chance to make a living. "
Henri Saint Simon and
Auguste
Comte
Claude Henri Comte de Saint-Simon
Born
17.10.1760,
died
19.5.1825
Early French Socialist. Precursor of Sociology. See life and the outline of ideas as they were reflected in John Stuart Mill's account of his theories.
Saint Simon wrote L'Industrie (1817), L'Organisateur (1819), Du Systeme Industriel (1821), Catechisme des Industriels (1823), and Nouveau Christianisme (1825).
According to Saint-Simon, history consists of a succession of social orders and the movement from one order to the next is triggered by the rise of a new class . Different ideas fit different periods of history. (See Chart) The ideas that suited the medieval, or feudal, order of society do not suit the present day social order. The first of the leading peculiarities of the present age is that it is an age of transition. Mankind have outgrown old institutions and old doctrines, and have not yet acquired new ones. (See lecture notes on John Stuart Mill)
Saint Simon developed ideas about the role of science and scientists in society that Auguste Comte later called "positivism".
Auguste Comte
Born
20.1.1798,
died
1857
Disciple of Saint-Simon from 1818, to 1824. Author of Cours de Philosophie Positive (6 volumes), published 1830, to 1842; translated into English 1853. The word Sociologie was first coined in volume four (1839). Comte argued that sociology would have two closely inter-related parts, statics and dynamics. Statics would be about social organisation and stability, dynamics about change and history. John Stuart Mill thought that Comte had shown how to develop the study of history into a science.
Comte divided the history of ideas into
three stages:
1)
theological
2) philosophical
(critical) and
3) scientific
(positive).
Roger Scruton
Born 1944
English conservative theorist who distinguishes family and contract models of politics.
Scruton tries to establish a theoretical base for conservatism as distinct from liberalism.
He argues that conservatism is aligned with theories of society and political allegiance that take the family as the model. None of us chose our parents. There is no contract between us. We owe them allegiance because they have power over us and because they care for us. This loyalty, Scruton argues, is extended to the wider society.
In contrast to conservative theories, he says, liberal theories are based on contract. They assume some kind of bargain or agreement between the ruler and the subjects. Locke 's theory could be taken as an example here.
One of the theorists that Scruton criticises is Laing.
|
Mary Jane Seacole
Born 1805, died 1881 |
Author of Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands (1857)
|
Peter Sedgwick
Born 1934, died 8.9.1983 |
books - mental health and civil liberties |
From Wikipedia 28.9.2012:
Peter Sedgwick was a translator of Victor Serge, author of a number of books including PsychoPolitics and a revolutionary socialist activist.
He grew up in Liverpool, and won a scholarship to Balliol College, Oxford, where he became a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain. In 1956, after the Hungarian Revolution he left and joined the Socialist Review Group, later the International Socialists (forerunner to the Socialist Workers Party). He wrote for the group's press whilst also involved in the activities of rank-and-file members. He was opposed to the International Socialism group's renaming itself as the Socialist Workers Party in 1976, refusing to join the new organisation while always remaining a man dedicated to the far left. (Christopher Hitchens called him "a noble remnant of the libertarian left" and dedicated his book 'Letters To A Young Contrarian' to him.)
At one stage Peter Sedgwick earned his living as a lecturer in politics at the University of York.
Peter Sedgwick wrote a book on psychiatry called PsychoPolitics. In many respects this book predicted and explained the severe Thatcher/Reagan-era reductions in US and UK National Health Service psychiatric services, especially in the number of NHS beds for the mentally ill which were reduced by 80,000 in the UK during the 1980s. Peter Sedgwick identified that "politically correct" conceptions of mental illness, such as those of the anti-psychiatry writers Michel Foucault, R.D. Laing and Thomas Szasz, could be exploited by the right wing to reduce services. His ideas have not been forgotten and Peter Sedgwick's views about psychiatry have been developed and reinterpreted in a marxist and situationist context at the web site Psychopolitics.net.
Peter Sedgwick was found dead in 1983 in a canal in Northern England. He was editing the works of Victor Serge at the time of his death.
Peter Sedgwick's concepts: PsychoPolitics
Timeline links: On Schizophrenia From Within 1975 - PsychoPolitics 1982
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Adam Smith
Born 1723, died 1790
See Social Science History, chapter five:
lectures about: Adam Smith - Smith and Durkheim - Smith and Mauss - |
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Adam Smith was born in Kirkaldy, Scotland in 1723. When he was 28 he became Professor of logic (later of moral philosophy) at Glasgow University.
In 1759 Smith published his Theory of Moral Sentiments. In this he argued that human conduct is the result of the inter-play of six sentiments, grouped in balancing pairs:
The balance of these motives makes a natural harmony, so that people left to follow their sentiments naturally promote the common good. These ideas developed those of his teacher, Francis Hutcheson (1694-1746), who said that there is a natural order which is superior to anything humans can devise.
Smith's major work, The Wealth of Nations, took twelve years to write. It was published in 1776 (long after he had ceased being a professor - He died in 1790)
In terms of the balance of sentiments, Wealth of Nations is mainly concerned with the the habit of labour and a propensity to exchange. Smith argued that these led (without human design) to a world-wide division of labour, which was the main cause of the wealth of nations.
"The greatest improvement in the productive powers of labour, and the greater part of the skill, dexterity, and judgment with which it is anywhere directed, or applied, seem to have been the effects of the division of labour"
"This division of labour, from which so many advantages are derived, is not originally the effect of any human wisdom, which foresees and intends that general opulence to which it gives occasion. It is the necessary, though very slow and gradual consequence of a certain propensity in human nature which has in view no such extensive utility; the propensity to truck, barter, and exchange on thing for another."To barter is to exchange goods or services, as distinct from buying goods and serives for money. Truck has the same meaning as barter.
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Adam Smith argued that "self-love" is better for the economy than "sympathy" (althought sympathy is better for families). The social theory called Political Economy (now economics) was created on this principle. |
Thomas Spencer Baynes 24.3.1823-1887
Thomas Spencer Baynes was a journalist and academic with wide interests. In
Edinburgh Review his essays included one on Cox's Aryan Mythology in
October 1870,
Tylor's
Primitive Culture in January 1872, and Darwin
on the expression of emotions in April 1873.
In 1873 Baynes took on general editorship of the ninth edition of the
Encyclopaedia Britannica, the first volumes of which were published
in 1875. The last volumes were published, after his death. In the
"Prefatory Notice" (1.1.1875) Baynes said the Encyclopedia should function
as
Recent scientific advances had altered the classification of knowledge and
Baynes had taken advice from
T. H. Huxley and Clerk Maxwell about this. As well as "the
comparatively modern science of Anthropology" he would attempt a scientific
treatment of the arts, history, philosophy, geography, and mythology.
Edward Burnett Tylor wrote eleven articles for the Encyclopedia
William Robertson Smith was a Scottish theologian and social theorist. He
was Professor of Hebrew and Old
Testament Exegesis at the Free Church College in Aberdeen from 1870 to
May 1881, when he was sacked because of the implications of
Encyclopedia Britannica articles that he
wrote. These articles were for the ninth edition. A minor one on
Angel in volume two, and a major one on
Bible in volume
three, appeared in 1875.
Others were on Chronicles, Canticles, David and
Eve.
Volume 11 of the Encyclopedia Britannica appeared on 8.6.1880. It
contained Robertson Smith's articles on Haggai, Hebrew Language
and Literature and The Epistle to the Hebrews. These, especially
the major one on Hebrew language and literature, and an
article
in the [Cambridge] Journal of Philology (9.17. pages 75-100) on
1.6.1880, called "Animal Worship and Animal
Tribes among the Arabs and in the Old Testament" (a study in
totemism) finally led to his dismissal on 24.5.1881.
He spent the winter of 1879-1880 in Egypt, Palestine and Syria. The winter
of 1880-1881 was spent in Egypt and Arabia. He observed the customs of
desert communities and applied his observations on the use of
totems to his research.
Shortly after his dismissal, Robertson Smith became the associate editor in
chief of the ninth edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, which was
concluded in 1888. (Last volumes published 1889?). Articles he wrote
himself included Levites, Messiah, Prophet,
Priest,
Sacrifice (volume 21, 1886) and Tithes.
Robertson Smith published The Old Testament in the Jewish Church in
1881 and The Prophets of Israel in 1882
Robertson Smith met James
Frazer (at Trinity College, Cambridge) in 1883. Frazer's
articles on
Taboo and
Totem were published in volume 23 of
the Encyclopedia in 1888.
In
1887, Robertson Smith was appointed to give
a series of lectures
between 1888 and 1891 on "The Primitive Religions of the Semitic Peoples,
viewed in relation to other Ancient Religions, and to the Spiritual
Religion of the Old Testament and Christianity". He gave three series of
lectures and the first
was published as Lectures on the Religion of the Semites.
First series. The Fundamental Institutions in 1889. A revised edition
was published shortly after his death on 31.3.1894.
James Frazer's The
Golden Bough (1890) is dedicated "To my friend William Robertson Smith
in gratitude and admiration"
William Robertson Smith 8.11.1846-31.3.1894
Editors of the ninth edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica
"to some extent at least, an instrument as well as a register
of scientific progress"
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Socrates
We mainly know about Socrates through the work of Plato. If you click on the image of Socrates arguing it will take you to Socrates' dialogue with Meno over the nature of reason in men and women.
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Charles Edward Spearman
Born 10.9.1863, died 17.9.1945 |
books |
We all have specific abilities that can be given names. These might include our skills in language, mathematics, music, working with shapes, etc. In 1904, Charles Spearman published a paper suggesting a measure of general intelligence underlying these specific abilities.
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Herbert Spencer
Born 1820, died 1903 |
books - extracts |
Herbert Spencer was the most influential social theorist of the second half of the 19th century, his dominance matching or exceeding that of Parsons and his associates in the 1950s and 1960s. His thought became organised around the principles of "evolution and dissolution".
Spencer began his working life (from 17 to 26) as an engineer on the London to Birmingham railway. He published articles on bridge construction and geometry. He then became sub-editor of the Economist until 1853, after which he devoted himself to his theories and writing.
Published Social Statics in 1850 [?].
In 1852 Spencer published a paper called "A Theory of Population" which contained a more elaborate theory of the development of society than in his previous work. Included in this was the argument that an important aspect of the process of development had been "the struggle for existence" and the principle of "the survival of the fittest".
His Principles of Psychology in 1855 applied an evolutionary approach to mental life.
In 1857 he published an essay "Progress: its Law and Cause" [?] in which he argued that the law of evolution and dissolution applies to everything. It is the key to understanding the inorganic world, the organic world and what he called the super-organic world of society.
His huge Synthetic Philosophy was conceived in 1858.
"In 1858 he issued the prospectus for what was to be the great obsession of the remainder of his long life - the System of Synthetic Philosophy, a compendium of knowledge demonstrating the universality of evolution in all spheres and culminating in ethics. The Principles of Psychology he had already written (1855), but it was to reappear at twice its length within the system; and the opening volume of metaphysics, First Principles, was issued in 1862" (Peel, JDY 1972 p.xxii)
First Principles, published between 1860 and 1862, was about "those highest generalisations now being disclosed by science which are severally true not of one class of phenomena but of all classes of phenomena; and which are thus the keys to all classes of phenomena".
In 1864 he published Principles of Biology. In this he defined life as the continuous adjustment of internal to external relations. It consequently emphasised the need to adapt the organism to its environment. The universal process of evolution meant a progression from lower to higher forms, or, its reverse degeneration. The higher is the more complex and differentiated. Spencer argued that the function something serves determines what its structure will be. He also argued that use and disuse would adapt the organ and that this would be passed on. [Summary based on 1911 Encyclopedia]
In 1873 he published The Study of Sociology
In 1876 [?] he published volume one of his The Principles of Sociology
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Thomas Szasz
Born 1922, died 2012 |
books - mental health and civil liberties |
Thomas Szasz (1920-) called his most famous book: The Myth of Mental Illness. By Myth he does not mean that psychological disorders are not real experiences. He means that to call them illnesses is misleading because they share little in common with physical illness. Szasz says that psychological disorders have only one significant characteristic in common with bodily diseases. This is that the sufferer is to some extent disabled from performing some activities. (See his discussion of the two classes of disability. Szasz 1961/1972 p.54)
Psychological and bodily disorders differ, he says, in that
psychological disorders can only be understood if they are viewed as things
that do not just happen to a person, but are brought about by him: `Mental
illness' is not something a person has, it is something he
does or is
(Szasz 1972/Summary). Psychological disorders are
actions rather than events and they are of some value to the patient. The
patient, however, is not malingering. He is not fully aware of what he is
doing and it is the psychiatrist's job to help him find out. Physical
illnesses, on the other hand, just happen to a patient, and cannot be cured
by self-knowledge. You have to kill the bug, set the bone, or whatever.
Szasz has attempted to replace the illness model of mental disturbances
with an analysis in terms of meaningful (but perhaps unconscious)
communication. Hysteria, for example, is a psychological disorder that
manifests itself as physical illness. Szasz describes it as a dramatised
representation of the message My body is not functioning well. The mental
illness called depression is a dramatisation of the proposition I am
unhappy.
(Szasz 1961/1972 p.202)
William Thompson (1785-1833) and Anna
Wheeler
(1785-18??)
| Thompson and Wheeler were Irish social scientists, feminists and socialists. In nineteenth century England the principle social sciences were Utilitarianism and Political Economy. Utilitarianism was based on the theory that human beings attempt to maximise pleasure and minimize pain. It was a practical social science that sought to discover what kind of legislation and what kind of social policy would maximize the sum of human happiness and minimize the sum of human pain. |
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weblinks include biographical material
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Alexis de Tocqueville
Born Paris 29.7.1805, died 1859 |
books - timeline |
Tocqueville, a liberal French aristocrat, feared that in a democracy the "tyranny of the majority" would mean that the majority would not respect liberty and not respect the interests of minorities - as he thought happened in the French revolution.
Tocqueville came to the conclusion that the centralisation of power in the Government which he saw as a feature of the French revolution was due to the speed with which France passed from absolute monarchy to democracy.
"when equality starts developing among a people who have never known or long forgotten what freedom is, as one sees it happen on the Continent of Europe.. all powers seem spontaneously to rush to the centre." (Tocqueville, A. 1840 p. 875).
One of the guards against this tendency was a history of liberty:
"Among people who have long lived in freedom before they have become equal, the instincts engendered by freedom to some extent combat the inclinations prompted by equality, and though in that case the central power does increase its prerogatives, private persons never entirely lose their independence." (Tocqueville, A. 1840 p. 875).
The French masses were uneducated in the ways of democracy whereas the Americans were politically educated.
But how does one become politically educated? The answer (according to Mill following Tocqueville) was by political participation. Democracy is necessary to educate the people in the virtues of democracy. But you do not introduce it with a big bang and although eventually everyone would have a vote you maintain institutions to secure freedom.
Alexis de Tocqueville and the positive side of faction
Although factions, according to Madison, arise out of desirable political conditions (liberty and difference), they are not themselves good. He defined faction as:
"a number of citizens.. actuated by some common impulse.. adverse to the rights of other citizens or to the interests of the community."
The good side of factions was brought out by Tocqueville.
According to Tocqueville, liberty in pre-democratic times was preserved because (or when) the aristocracy exercised a countervailing power to the monarchy. Liberty in a democracy, on the other hand, could be threatened by the "tyranny of the majority".
However, his empirical studies in America suggested to Tocqueville that the free association of minorities outside government could also act as countervailing power. (See He was also impressed by the way Americans formed associations for every conceivable purpose and argued that this reduced the temptation, always present in a democracy, to expect the government to do everything. (See Tocqueville, A. 1840 (Vol.2) part 2, chap. 5 "On the Use which the Americans Make of Associations in Civil Life")
We might consider Tocqueville to be the theorist of the "voluntary association" and its importance to political liberty and the moral welfare of the masses.
Tocqueville's positive view of the political value of associations is shared by 20th century pluralists who argue the importance for democracy and liberty of maintaining a plurality of autonomous social, political and economic organizations.
See http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/DETOC/fem/home.htm
| Ferdinand Tönnies 1855-1936 | books - weblinks |
Tönnies argued that capitalism is based on relations of association (gesellschaft), which have replaced the communal relations (gemeinschaft) of the agricultural societies that preceded industrialisation.
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Geselle is a
word that has associations with high society. It is used when you say "to
go into society" and in the construction of words like evening dress.
Gemein is associated with low, vulgar society. It is a closer and warmer word that is used in relation to shared property and to religious communion.
| Edward Burnett Tylor 1832-1917 | books - extracts |
Edward Tylor believed that the past can be deduced from the present. He thought that the study of "primitive", or uncivilised, societies reveals the origins of all societies. He thought that the study of civilised societies can identify features (survivals) that are clues to older forms of thought in those societies. And he thought that a study of the laws that govern the human mind today, provides a basis for analysing the way that ideas originally started and how they developed.
In the early 1860s Tylor worked on the view of human culture that sees it as a continuous, progressive, development, or evolution. This view, he noted, had been held for thousands of years. Tylor's aim was to develop it into a science.
There were, Tylor believed, scientific laws governing the formation of culture and its development (see quotation). These laws are rooted in the nature of the human mind. To discover how we create language and culture he studied a system of gestures used in the Berlin Deaf-and-Dumb Institute. This language had been developed by the deaf-and-dumb inmates themselves, to communicate when they were brought together in an institution. In Researches into the Early History of Mankind and the Development of Civilisation (1865) he outlined his discoveries and tried to account for the similarities between different cultures and for the origin of culture. (See Chris Holdsworth, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography)
Charles Darwin read the Researches on the recomendation of Joseph Dalton Hooker and was impressed by it. He made several references to it in The Descent of Man - (external source)
In an article on "The Religion of Savages" in 1866, Tylor introduced the term animism to describe beliefs that imagined natural phenomena such as trees as having souls or spirits. Animism, he argued, was the root of religion.
Tylor's main tool for deducing the past from the present was what he termed "survivals". He introduced this concept in an 1869 article "On the Survival of Savage Thought in Modern Civilisation".
Tylor's main publication was the two volume Primitive Culture: Researches into the Development of Mythology, Philosophy, Religion, Art, and Custom. This was published in 1871. Volume one was about the origins of culture, and included Tylor's definition of culture. Volume two was about religion in primitive society. Primitive Culture was not, however, exclusively about pre-historic societies and technologically primitive modern societies. Tylor argued that a knowledge of the origins of culture is necessary to understand all culture and much of his book relates primitive thought to civilised thought. An example of how he theorised is in this comment on poetry:
"In so far as myth ... is the subject of poetry, and in so far as it is couched in language whose characteristic is that wild and rambling metaphor which represents the habitual expression of savage thought, the mental condition of the lower races is the key to poetry" (Tylor, E.B. 1871 pp 532-533)
In 1872 Tylor wrote a review of Adolphe Quetelet's Physique sociale (1869 - originally 1835) and Anthropométrie (1870). Quetelet's statistical and sociological approach influenced Tylor's subsequent writings.
T.S. Baynes, editor of the new Encyclopedia Britannica, reviewed Primitive Culture in January 1872. He asked Tylor to contribute the article on Anthropology. Tylor's six part article, first published in 1875, continued in the Encyclopedia through to the 11th edition (1911), or beyond.
Tylor's Anthropology: An Introduction to the Study of Man and Civilisation was published in 1881
On 30.5.1882, Oxford University accepted the donation of a collection of anthropological objects arranged according to the evolution of ideas. This collection had been put together by Augustus Henry Lane Fox Pitt Rivers. (external source). In the same year, Tylor was appointed as the new "Keeper of the Oxford University Museum of Natural History". The Pitt Rivers collection was to be housed in an extension to this museum. A condition of the bequest had been that the university appoint a lecturer in anthropology, and Tylor was appointed Reader in Anthropology (required to give 18 lectures a year) in 1883. (external source)
1883? James Frazer's interest in anthropology aroused by reading Primitive Culture
1889-1890 and 1890-1891: Gifford Lectures at Aberdeen. Lectures at Glasgow from 1888 were given by Max Müller - External link to Gifford Lectures website.
Sources include Robert Ranulph Marett DNB 1927 - Chris Holdsworth ODNB 2004
Lev Semenovich Vygotsky
Born
1896,
died
1934
Soviet psychologist who created the concept
zone of proximal development
to help theorists
think about the relationship between the active learner and
the teaching,
culture and society that his theory argues is essential to
that learning.
See also
Shirley Franklin
quote
from.
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Max Weber
born 1864 died 1920 See Social Science History, chapter six:
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Max Weber was a German political economist who became a founder of what we call sociology. However, he was critical of the kind of sociology that treats society as real.
Weber's idea about sociology is that it should be a theory of social action. Action is something that has meaning to the individual who does it. Sociology should start inside the individual with what his or her actions mean to him or her, and work outwards to understanding any laws or regularities that govern the whole of society.
Max Weber created a whole tool-box of concepts for social theorists to use. The tools include his definition of the Modern State. (see dictionary: modern and state)
Weber's analysis of the modern state involves a quotation from a marxist about the role of force. Weber says that force (coercion) is important but so is authority (which is related to legitimacy).
The modern state is based on a monopoly of legitimate force within a given territory. (see extracts. That is only the state, or those it delegates force to, can lawfully use violence in the area that the state governs. In the past a variety of institutions, starting with the family (sib) could use force. Now all force within a territory is controlled by the state.
It is useful to contrast the modern state, as Weber describes it, with:
- The structure of society in the
feudal times, which preceded it. In feudal society, power
was
not concentrated in a central authority. Different "lords" were owed
"homage" by "vassals" and a complex network of power existed.
- With societies that do not have a fixed territory, such as the tribal organisation of Iroquois Indians (described by Engels), which is based on family relations and can move about.
Weber argued that government needs to secure the subjective support of the governed: It needs people to think it right that it governs. Power is as much, or more, about ideas as it is about the use of force.
To say a government needs the support of the governed, does not mean that a government needs to be democratic. Weber argued that many different types of idea about the rightness of government could support it. The commonest reason is tradition - People support a government because it is what they are used to. Another legitimating idea is more common nowadays than it was in the past: People support a government because it is rational. Weber's third type is very important to him, because it is something that helps a society change and meet new situations: People support a leader because he or she has charisma
Concepts: power - rule - legitimate rule - authority - domination
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Mary Wollstonecraft
(1759-1797)
Wollstonecraft agreed with Rousseau that reason separates human beings from animals. She argued that all our beliefs and morals should be based on reason. She did not, however, think about reason as something static, something that is just given to us ready made. Reason, she argued, develops in history, and in our personal life, by experiment. We are not tied to what already exists, but can create new realities to test against experience. This means that we have to risk making horrible mistakes in order to develop and learn. |
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If, in reality, women tend to use their reason to flatter men, it is because male dominance has perverted reason. Reason is the same in women and men, and the future well being of human beings depends on all of us exercising our reason to establish rational human relations.
Wollstonecraft, therefore, is developing Plato's argument that reason is the governing virtue, and that it is the same in men and women. Unlike Plato, however, she does not see human passion as a wild, unruly element that reason must repress and govern, but as the inspiration for the experiments that develop reason.
The idea of passion that Wollstonecraft uses appears to include many forces that can drive human beings from within, such as emotions and desires (sex and hunger for example), creative imagination, fantasising, and theorising. I think she also relates it to breaking away from conventional morality - as when her passions drove her to form a sexual relationship outside marriage, and when she chose to openly keep and care for Fanny, the child conceived in this relationship, as a single mother.
Wilhelm Max Wundt
Born
1832 -
Died 1920
| books - timeline - biography - psychology laboratory - association - extracts - weblinks |
Wundt was appointed professor at Heidelberg University in 1864. From 1867 he taught physiological psychology and in 1873 published the first volume of his The Principles of Physiological Psychology.
In 1874 Wundt was appointed to professor of inductive philosophy at the University of Zurich and in 1875 professor at the University of Leipzig, where he remained for forty-five years.
Wundt was given
his first
laboratory (one room) in
1875. In 1879 he opened his first full
laboratory with more rooms and equipment. In 1883 he founded the
first (?) psychological journal, which was called Philosophische
Studien (Philosophical Studies). In 1897 he was given his own
building for a laboratory. Died in Grossbothen near Leipzig in 1920
(external link)
External link: Emil Kraepelin
Concepts used include - Parallelism -
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Jock Young
Born 1942 "I remember telling Andrew I was not christened "Jock". Stupid boy!" Main author of Taylor, Walton and Young 1973 The New Criminology. For a Social Theory of Deviance. |
1986: Centre for Criminology - 1998 The New Criminology Revisited - 1999 The Exclusive Society
What he says about himself
"I am a Professor of Sociology at the University of Kent's School of Social Policy, Sociology and Social Research. I am interested in processes of social inclusion and exclusion, how this relates to the phenomenon of othering and the way this plays out in the late modern period. I study moral panics, deviancy amplification, moral indignation and the punitive turn. I am particularly interested in how these processes of essentialisation and dehumanisation can lead people to excessive violence in the areas of terrorism and conventional warfare. Such concerns link quite closely to cultural criminology and an interest in an existentially informed sociology."
I began teaching at Enfield College of Technology and was a formerly professor at Middlesex University.
My published work includes:
The Drugtakers 1971.
The New Criminology 1973 (with I. Taylor and P. Walton).
The Manufacture of News 1981 (with S. Cohen).
What's to be Done About Law and Order? 1984 (with J. Lea).
Rethinking Criminology: The Realist Debate 1992 (with R. Matthews).
The Exclusive Society 1999.
My referencing suggestion for this page is a bibliography entry:
Roberts, Andrew 2.1994 - People and ideas systems Available at http://studymore.org.uk/bio.htm
and intext references to (Roberts, A. 2.1994 entry).
For example: (Roberts, A. 2.1994 Wollstonecraft)
See ABC Referencing for general advice.
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