Suchergebnisse

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Preface -- New Introduction: Writing Labor's History -- Introduction -- PART ONE. New Developments in Working Class Life and Labor -- 1. Lordstown: Disruption of the Assembly Line -- 2. Colonized Leisure, Trivialized Work -- PART TWO. The Formation of the American Working Class -- 3. Formation of the Industrial Working Class -- 4. Trade Unionism: Illusion and Reality -- 5. The Formation of the Professional Servant Class -- 6. The White-Collar Proletarians -- 7. The Unsilent Fifties -- Epilogue -- Short Bibliography -- Index

The relevance of sociological theory for explaining the recent dramatic changes in Eastern Europe is at hand. The impact of the downfall of communism has been compared with those Great Transformations along which sociology evolved as a science of crisis par excellence (Habermas). The actual elaboration of a sociological theory of post-communist transformation and its relation to East European studies is, nevertheless, anything but clear. The unexpected collapse of socialism was perceived as a failure of prognosis and led to self-critical debates in all social science disciplines. In this rethinking its basic concepts, sociology is exposed to pressure from different sides - above all from the polemic launched with the surprising revival of the theory of totalitarianism against the ,,liberalist social sciences across the board. Influential historians like Robert Pipes, Martin Malia, Robert Conquest, and Francois Furet followed by sociologists from Robert Nisbet to Seymour Lipset hold the fatal influence exerted by social science concepts on Eastern European and Soviet Studies during the last decades responsible for the whole intellectual disaster in Western Academe which became apparent after 1989. These approaches, as the neo-totalitarian accusation runs, elevated Soviet socialism to a modernization strategy and conceded a reform capacity which, in fact, was not available. Target of this critique are all attempts of a social history from below, sociological theories of action and especially the positivist illusion of modernization theory. Blinded by political motives, it is said, the insights of (neo-)totalitarianism theory into the inevitable collapse of communism were dismissed. In order to correctly draw the lines in the controversies between neototalitarianism theory and the social science approach, it is helpful to follow them along the changing career of the concept of totalitarianism thereby reconstructing the sociological arguments involved in the current discussion on the disintegration of socialist societies. On this line it will be argued (section 2), that the crisis of the classic theory of totalitarianism and the social science approach in Soviet studies did not follow from a politically motivated revisionism since the 1960s and 1970s. Analysing the socialist societies after 1945 was shaped from the very beginning by sociological, political science and economic models, which contrasted with fundamental assumptions of the classic concept of totalitarianism (section 3). The findings generated by this type of research as well as its limits are revealed when it comes to explaining the disintegration of Soviet socialism. The neo-totalitarianist's objection is correct that ranging socialism in an evolutionary scheme of ascending forms of society was problematic. This construction seems highly inadequate in view of the postcommunist crises and regressions (section 4). On the other hand, a coherent and self-reliant neo-totalitarianism theory is not visible (section 5). Instead the research on Eastern Europe after 1989 has seen an explosive growth of the social science approach in the course of which many revisionist theorems have been refuted, modified or confirmed. Nevertheless, the wave of social science theories entering the post-communist studies does not imply a way back to the golden age of classic modernization theory. The lesson to be learned from (neo-)totalitarianism theory concerns the stress it lays on domination and its specific irrationalities, variables which were indeed neglected by mainstream sociology and, after the Soviet breakdown, are ignored by the liberalist optimism of neoclassic reform programmes. The drama of the post-communist crises reminds us that there are no hidden hands and no evolutionary universals which would lead, quasi automatically, to modernity. On the other hand, the lesson to be learned from the social science approach is that even the most total totalitarianism did not result from a logic of history, but from certain constellations of interests, reciprocities between rulers and ruled, institutions of administration and value commitments, etc. which are quite accessible to a reconstruction in sociological terms.

Recognition lies at the heart of multiple contests around citizenship rights, identity politics, claims for material re-distribution, and demands for past harms to be acknowledged. This book seeks to consider where various contemporary contests over recognition are taking us. By looking at disputes around disability, race and ethnicity, nationalism, class, sexuality and ownership of the past, it explores the contemporary significance of recognition claims. In reflection of the global contexts of such disputes, the book draws on accounts from Europe, the USA, Latin America, the Middle East and Australasia. In doing so the book explores the following questions: Do we live in a moment where recognition is opening up to allow for greater space for varied or hybrid forms of living and mutual valuation, provided with rights and protection? Or is recognition paradoxically a means to narrow down options to more restrictive categories of acceptable ways of living and legitimate access to rights?

Proposals to end "boondoggling" in social science research are presented by the author, co-winner of the Woodrow Wilson Award for the best book in Political Science in 1963, American Business and Public Policy, and a lecturer in social science at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

What are the virtues of institutions we take for granted-universities, the study of the social sciences and humanities, and scholarship on professions such as law? What are the vices of the disciplinary structure of the social sciences, even in the law and society movement and criminology that started as interdisciplinary projects? Research on regulation within an interdisciplinary structure, the Regulatory Institutions Network, is used to illustrate the difficulties of attempts to change direction in the social sciences. The article advocates the creative destruction of disciplinary structures by organizing in tents that study institutionalization (rather than buildings that study categories of institutions). To keep pace with social change, pulling tents down and endlessly pegging out new ones is a path forward. A politics of defending universities and opposing the disciplines that have captured them does not mean advocacy of restructuring. If more interesting work issues from poorly funded tents than from disciplinary edifices, reformers can advance creative destruction.

What are the virtues of institutions we take for granted-universities, the study of the social sciences and humanities, and scholarship on professions such as law? What are the vices of the disciplinary structure of the social sciences, even in the law and society movement and criminology that started as interdisciplinary projects? Research on regulation within an interdisciplinary structure, the Regulatory Institutions Network, is used to illustrate the difficulties of attempts to change direction in the social sciences. The article advocates the creative destruction of disciplinary structures by organizing in tents that study institutionalization (rather than buildings that study categories of institutions). To keep pace with social change, pulling tents down and endlessly pegging out new ones is a path forward. A politics of defending universities and opposing the disciplines that have captured them does not mean advocacy of restructuring. If more interesting work issues from poorly funded tents than from disciplinary edifices, reformers can advance creative destruction.