Maxim Waldstein | Amsterdam University College (original) (raw)

Books by Maxim Waldstein

MA Thesis, Central-European University, Warsaw, 1998

The Mangle in Practice, eds. Andrew Pickering and Keith Guzik (Duke University Press, 2009), 2009

In The Mangle of Practice (1995), the renowned sociologist of science Andrew Pickering argued for... more In The Mangle of Practice (1995), the renowned sociologist of science Andrew Pickering argued for a reconceptualization of research practice as a “mangle,” an open-ended, evolutionary, and performative interplay of human and non-human agency. While Pickering’s ideas originated in science and technology studies, this collection aims to extend the mangle’s reach by exploring its application across a wide range of fields including history, philosophy, sociology, geography, environmental studies, literary theory, biophysics, and software engineering.

The Mangle in Practice opens with a fresh introduction to the mangle by Pickering. Several contributors then present empirical studies that demonstrate the mangle’s applicability to topics as diverse as pig farming, Chinese medicine, economic theory, and domestic-violence policing. Other contributors offer examples of the mangle in action: real-world practices that implement a self-consciously “mangle-ish” stance in environmental management and software development. Further essays discuss the mangle as philosophy and social theory. As Pickering argues in the preface, the mangle points to a shift in interpretive sensibilities that makes visible a world of de-centered becoming. This volume demonstrates the viability, coherence, and promise of such a shift, not only in science and technology studies, but in the social sciences and humanities more generally.

Contributors: Lisa Asplen, Dawn Coppin, Adrian Franklin, Keith Guzik, Casper Bruun Jensen,Yiannis Koutalos, Brian Marick, Randi Markussen, Andrew Pickering, Volker Scheid, Esther-Mirjam Sent, Carol Steiner, Maxim Waldstein

Недавно (в конце 2024 года), с товарищем поупражнялись в переводе названия сборника на русский язык. После нескольких шуточных попыток (Выжимка практики, Отжим практики, Практика отжимов/откатов...), пришли к такому серьезному переводу: ЖЕРНОВА ПРАКТИКИ. Так и назовем! Вполне соответсвует идее моего научного руководителя, Энди Пикеринга. Как продытожил мой товарищ, «книга о том как быть пропущенным через жернова инь и ян, но суметь собрать останки» ;)

Empire De/Centered: New Spatial Histories of Russia and the Soviet Union, ed. by Sanna Turoma and Maxim Waldstein (Routledge), 2013

In 1991 the Soviet empire collapsed, at a stroke throwing the certainties of the Cold War world i... more In 1991 the Soviet empire collapsed, at a stroke throwing the certainties of the Cold War world into flux. Yet despite the dramatic end of this 'last empire', the idea of empire is still alive and well, its language and concepts feeding into public debate and academic research. Bringing together a multidisciplinary and international group of authors to study Soviet society and culture through the categories of empire and space, this collection demonstrates the enduring legacy of empire with regard to Russia, whose history has been marked by a particularly close and ambiguous relationship between nation and empire-building, and between national and imperial identities. Parallel with this discussion of empire, the volume also highlights the centrality of geographical space and spatial imaginings in Russian and Soviet intellectual traditions and social practices; underlining how Russia's vast geographical dimensions have profoundly informed Russia's state and nation-building, both in practice and concept. Combining concepts of space and empire, the collection offers a reconsideration of the Soviet imperial legacy by studying its cultural and societal underpinnings from previously unexplored perspectives. In so doing it provides a reconceptualization of the theoretical and methodological foundations of contemporary imperial and spatial studies, through the example of the experience provided by Soviet society and culture.
ASIN ‏ : ‎ B00FG268EO

This book examines the history of Yuri Lotman's Tartu(or Moscow-Tartu) School of Semiotics, which... more This book examines the history of Yuri Lotman's Tartu(or Moscow-Tartu) School of Semiotics, which was active in the Soviet Union in the 1960s-1980s, and combines a comparative perspective on the Tartu paradigm with close attention to its social context. Comparing Tartu with other major idioms in cultural theory from Russian Formalism to (post-)structuralism, this study reconstructs its evolution from the early ideal of "exact science" to a variety of conceptual frameworks which combined an emphasis on the autonomy of cultural texts with elaborate analysis of the social and intellectual environment of their production and reception. Working from life history interviews, archival research, and textual analysis, the book demonstrates how this evolution reflected and refracted the intellectuals' changing strategies of negotiating personal and professional autonomy and authority within Soviet academia. The Tartu School serves as a window into the distinctive character of intellectual production and the phenomenon of an unofficial public sphere in the post-Stalinist Soviet Union and challenges still dominant Cold War assumptions about the nature of Soviet science, culture, and society.
ISBN-10 : 9783639056051
ISBN-13 : 978-3639056051

Papers by Maxim Waldstein

This essay follows up on my 2013 Ab Imperio article on Russian 'Liberal Mainstream' and Cultural ... more This essay follows up on my 2013 Ab Imperio article on Russian 'Liberal Mainstream' and Cultural Conservatism. This is a critical analysis of a Russian scholar's article on the linguistic analysis of territory. This scholar’s article is viewed as symptomatic of the right-wing turn in Russian human sciences. It is analyzed for the insights this article offers into national and to some extent transnational trends in the studies of national identity, empire, territory, and space, and in humanistic and social science methodology. The essay is written in Russian.
The reviewed article is also in Russian: Мария Голованивская,
О ЛИНГВИСТИЧЕСКИХ МЕТОДАХ АНАЛИЗА ТЕРРИТОРИИ
(НА ПРИМЕРЕ РЕГИОНАЛЬНЫХ ДОРОЖНЫХ СЕТЕЙ
И ЦЕНТРАЛЬНЫХ СТОЛИЧНЫХ ПЛОЩАДЕЙ)
This article was submitted several years ago for publication in a prestigious Russian academic journal. I reviewed it and advised the editors to reject it. Even so, the relevant material seemed important enough to warrant a longer piece. Here it is!

On the Waterfront. Newsletter of the friends of the IISH, 2024

The essay reflects on the legacies of Russian narodism (left-wing populism) and non-Bolshevik soc... more The essay reflects on the legacies of Russian narodism (left-wing populism) and non-Bolshevik socialism and their possible relevance for the contemporary world engulfed by right-wing populism. The premise of—and a source of the intrigue behind—this essay is the presence, in the archival collection of the International Institute of Social History in Amsterdam, of an apparently never-opened copy of the 1925 book by Viktor Chernov, the leader of the Party of Socialist-Revolutionaries in Russia of the early 20th century.

Amsterdam University College, 2018

The purpose of this report is to analyze the liberal arts and sciences curriculum at Amsterdam Un... more The purpose of this report is to analyze the liberal arts and sciences curriculum at Amsterdam University College with a focus on and through the lens of sociology. Some of its recommendations have been (partially) implemented. The 2018 AUC management, however, did not particularly like that this was "more than a mere report," and that this was an expert statement on the state of the institution and community. They wanted answers to their questions, while I defended the expert's right to ask my own questions. In effect, what emerged from a mere paper exercise is my draft vision of sociology and its place in liberal arts education, in addition to my vision for AUC and its future.

The Mangle in Practice: Science, Society, and Becoming, by Andrew Pickering and Keith Guzik, Dec 31, 2009

ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0822343738 In The Mangle of Practice (1995), the renowned sociologist of sci... more ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0822343738

In The Mangle of Practice (1995), the renowned sociologist of science Andrew Pickering argued for a reconceptualization of research practice as a "mangle," an open-ended, evolutionary, and performative interplay of human and non-human agency. While Pickering's ideas originated in science and technology studies, this collection aims to extend the mangle's reach by exploring its application across a wide range of fields including history, philosophy, sociology, geography, environmental studies, literary theory, biophysics, and software engineering.
The Mangle in Practice opens with a fresh introduction to the mangle by Pickering. Several contributors then present empirical studies that demonstrate the mangle's applicability to topics as diverse as pig farming, Chinese medicine, economic theory, and domestic violence policing. Other contributors offer examples of the mangle in action: real-world practices that implement a self-consciously "mangle-ish" stance in environmental management and software development. Further essays discuss the mangle as philosophy and social theory. As Pickering argues in the preface, the mangle points to a shift in interpretive sensibilities that makes visible a world of de-centered becoming. This volume demonstrates the viability, coherence, and promise of such a shift, not only in science and technology studies but in the social sciences and humanities more generally.

Contributors: Lisa Asplen, Dawn Coppin, Adrian Franklin, Keith Guzik, Casper Bruun Jensen, Yiannis Koutalos, Brian Marick, Randi Markussen, Andrew Pickering, Volker Scheid, Esther-Mirjam Sent, Carol Steiner, Maxim Waldstein

Новое Литературное Обозрение, 2011

8 стр. в https://magazines.gorky.media/nlo/2011/4

Contents: Introduction: empire and space: Russian and the Soviet Union in focus, Sanna Turoma and... more Contents: Introduction: empire and space: Russian and the Soviet Union in focus, Sanna Turoma and Maxim Waldstein Part I Eurasianism and Intellectual Construction of Space: The empire of language: space and structuralism in Russia's Eurasianism, Sergey Glebov Between Russia, Ukraine and Eurasia: Georgii Vernadskii's search for identity, Igor Torbakov Space as a destiny: legitimizing the Russian empire through geography and cosmos, Marlene Laruelle. Part II Spatial Science and Geographical Knowledge: The mapping of illiberal modernity: spatial science, ideology and the state in early 20th-century Russia, Nick Baron Regionalization, imperial legacy and the Soviet geographical tradition, Marina Loskutova. Part III Political and Cultural Economy of the (Post-)Soviet Space: The controlled space of socialist internationalism and its transgression: COMECON energy projects between 1970 and 1990, Ulrich Best The rearrangement of the post-Soviet space and the representation of Russia ...

Social Identities, 2002

The Russian empire has not yet succeeded in producing its own historical critique. This is a comm... more The Russian empire has not yet succeeded in producing its own historical critique. This is a commonplace of many studies of the Russian imperial experience (e.g. Engelstein, 2001; Thompson, 2000). Yet not all proposals on such a critique can be accepted, even if they are made by the empire’s ‘subalterns’. This is a starting point of the following reading of Ryszard Kapuscinski’s (1994) collection of travel notes entitled Imperium...

Realnost' i Subject, 2002

By analyzing various versions of the Modularity of Mind (MoM) Thesis, originally proposed by Jerr... more By analyzing various versions of the Modularity of Mind (MoM) Thesis, originally proposed by Jerry Fodor (1983), I discuss considerable advantages offered by the segmented and domain-specific architecture of the mind in comparison to more holistic images of cognition often presumed in socio-psychological theories of perception and learning. At the same time, I propose to retrieve the considerable explanatory power of the modularity theories from the assumption of the innateness of the modular cognitive functions and the image of one-way information processing. I argue that the relative encapsulation and selective domain-specificity of cognitive modules can be better understood within the framework of what I call an "ecological perspective on the architecture and evolution of the human mind," the perspective of which Vygotsky-Luria'с conception of activity is exemplary. The results are going to be appealing to the theorists and other students of human cognition who are trying to breach the gap between rationalism and empiricism as well as nativism and embedded/ situated cognition.

Novoe Literaturnoe Obozrenie, 2003

Эта статья продолжает разговор о значении “археологических” штудий Мишеля Фуко для современного г... more Эта статья продолжает разговор о значении “археологических” штудий Мишеля Фуко для современного гуманитарного знания (см.: НЛО. № 49). Подобно работам Лоры Энгельштейн и Александра Эткинда, она посвящена поиску путей переосмысления российского исторического опыта с учетом предпринятой Фуко и другими учеными проблематизации таких фундаментальных гуманитарных категорий, как “культура”, “цивилизация” и “нация”. В связи с этим особый интерес представляет опыт проводимых на Западе так называемых “постколониальных” исследований. Возникнув как направление в литературоведении, “постколониализм” на данном этапе представляет междисциплинарную гуманитарную исследовательскую программу, занимающуюся исторической критикой всевозможных форм этноцентризма, от европейского империализма до антиимпериалистического национализма стран “третьего мира”. Первоначально далекая от российской проблематики, постколониальная перспектива в последние годы привлекает пристальное внимание западных, особенно американских, специалистов по истории и культуре России (здесь можно упомянуть имена Л. Энгельштейн, М. Стайнберга, Ю. Слезкина, М. Бассина, а также участников нового журнала “Kritika”). Работа этих ученых, как представляется, достойна того, чтобы обратить на себя внимание как отечественной науки, так и западных “постколониалистов”, не занимающихся Россией.

New Literary Review (Moscow)

он нам несет?»: Об антропологизме в гуманитарных науках Современная российская гуманитарная наука... more он нам несет?»: Об антропологизме в гуманитарных науках Современная российская гуманитарная наука находится в состоянии «весеннего» бурления, ренессансной креативности, открытого поиска, правда, с пока еще не гарантированными шансами на успех. Такой в целом оптимистический, но, вместе с тем, и осторожный диагноз ставит интеллектуальной атмосфере в науках о литературе и культуре Николай Поселягин. Как и почти трехгодичной давности «полуманифест» Ирины Прохоровой [1] , статья Поселягинаэто попытка подвести предварительные итоги дискуссиям о гуманитаристике в России, а также внести вклад в «дальнейшую консолидацию под новым, но интуитивно уже хорошо знакомым знаменем». Речь идет о знаменах, на которых начертано: «новая антропология культуры» и «антропологический поворот». Особенностью статьи Н. Поселягина является ее эксплицитная направленность на идентификацию тех методологических и теоретических ресурсов, которые могли бы послужить «инвариантами» набирающей силу парадигмы (или «антипарадигмы», понимаемой не как единая доктрина, а как комплекс взаимосвязанных и тесно сотрудничающих течений).

Social Identities, Jan 1, 2002

If the East built the foundations of its culture on the ruthless subordination of man on to a hig... more If the East built the foundations of its culture on the ruthless subordination of man on to a higher power, the supernatural, then in the West it was the opposite, man was left to his own invention, which allowed for a broad, self-generated creativity … Vladimir Soloviev (cited by Kapuscinski with approval)

Media, Culture and Society, 2005, Volume 27, no. 5: 739-763, 2005

New technological advances usually produce waves of utopian hopes and aspirations. At present, th... more New technological advances usually produce waves of utopian hopes and aspirations. At present, this is true to the Internet, or ‘the web.’ Often portrayed as a borderless liberal space of equal opportunities and unconstrained communication, the web has recently gave a new impulse to the ideas of the public sphere and liberal democracy. However, contrary to these expectations, this paper emphasizes the profoundly contested nature of the communication on the net. Based on tracing an episode in the life of one Internet newsgroup, soc.culture.russian, the paper illuminates specific discursive practices through which domination, cooptation, resistance and exclusion enter the virtual space of Internet communications. Simultaneously, this study draws attention to the relative ‘truth’ of enthusiasm about the liberal affordances of the net. The Internet, it is argued, is liberal indeed but not so much due to the reign of liberal principles as due to the strategic advantage enjoyed by ‘liberal actors’ in newsgroup exchanges. It is thus the purpose of the study to trace the structuring impact of ‘liberal domination’ on the net.

MA Thesis, Central-European University, Warsaw, 1998

The Mangle in Practice, eds. Andrew Pickering and Keith Guzik (Duke University Press, 2009), 2009

Empire De/Centered: New Spatial Histories of Russia and the Soviet Union, ed. by Sanna Turoma and Maxim Waldstein (Routledge), 2013

On the Waterfront. Newsletter of the friends of the IISH, 2024

Amsterdam University College, 2018

The Mangle in Practice: Science, Society, and Becoming, by Andrew Pickering and Keith Guzik, Dec 31, 2009

ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0822343738 In The Mangle of Practice (1995), the renowned sociologist of sci... more ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0822343738

Contributors: Lisa Asplen, Dawn Coppin, Adrian Franklin, Keith Guzik, Casper Bruun Jensen, Yiannis Koutalos, Brian Marick, Randi Markussen, Andrew Pickering, Volker Scheid, Esther-Mirjam Sent, Carol Steiner, Maxim Waldstein

Новое Литературное Обозрение, 2011

8 стр. в https://magazines.gorky.media/nlo/2011/4

Social Identities, 2002

Realnost' i Subject, 2002

Novoe Literaturnoe Obozrenie, 2003

New Literary Review (Moscow)

Social Identities, Jan 1, 2002

Media, Culture and Society, 2005, Volume 27, no. 5: 739-763, 2005

Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History, Volume 8, Number 3, Summer 2007, pp. 561-596 , 2007

Topics: Nationalism and language policy Yuri Lotman as scholar and university administrator Esto... more Topics:
Nationalism and language policy
Yuri Lotman as scholar and university administrator
Estonia during the Soviet period
Soviet linguistic policies in Estonia
Soviet Intelligentsia's "cosmopolitanism" and Estonian nationalism

Ab Imperio, 2010

[English language essay. Russian abstract:] В своем эссе Максим Вальдштейн анализирует причины ма... more [English language essay. Russian abstract:] В своем эссе Максим Вальдштейн анализирует причины маргинальности исследований “второго мира” (т.е. истории и современности, в первую очередь, России и Восточной Европы) в контексте мировой/западной социальной и культурной теории. Высказываются также принципиальные соображения по поводу того, как эта маргинальность может быть преодолена. Истоки теоретической “незаметности” и неконсеквентности второго мира усматриваются в традиции описания этого региона в терминах пограничности, промежуточности и синкретичности по отношению к господствовавшим до недавнего времени в теории бинарным оппозициям типа Запад–Восток или модерн–традиция. Концептуализируемая в терминах Sonderweg’a (либо как отклонение от западной нормы, либо как “природа” российской цивилизации), эта промежуточность выводила и часто продолжает выводить второй мир за рамки доминирующих теоретических конструкций. Однако осуществляемая в последние десятилетия критика эссенциализма в гуманитарных и общественных науках способна радикально изменить ситуацию. Автор показывает, каким образом рассмотренная в контексте таких разных, но в равной мере антиэссенциалистских направлений, как постколониальные исследования и современная историческая социология, пограничность второго мира предстает в качестве богатого, но пока мало использованного потенциала научного мышления в неэссенциалистских терминах – терминах, подчеркивающих гибридность и сетевой характер социальных отношений и культурных конструктов. Эссе рассматривает условия, возможности и некоторые последствия углубления диалога между исследованиями второго мира и указанными научными течениями. Особенное внимание уделяется тому, как осуществляющаяся в рамках постколониальных исследований “провин-циализация Европы” может послужить ступенькой к действительной “депровинциализации второго мира”.

New Literary Observer (Russia), 2011

НЛО 2011, 110 ДЕСЯТЬ ОТЗЫВОВ НА СТАТЬЮ СЕРГЕЯ КОЗЛОВА Максим Вальдштейн ОСЕНЬ "ФИЛОЛОГИИ", ИЛИ РЕ... more НЛО 2011, 110 ДЕСЯТЬ ОТЗЫВОВ НА СТАТЬЮ СЕРГЕЯ КОЗЛОВА Максим Вальдштейн ОСЕНЬ "ФИЛОЛОГИИ", ИЛИ РЕДУКЦИЯ СЛОЖНОСТИ ГУМАНИТАРНОГО СООБЩЕСТВА (Заметки постороннего) Поначалу у меня были сомнения по поводу уместности моего участия в дискуссии вокруг статьи Сергея Козлова. Во-первых, обладая российским философским и американским социологическим образованием, я не имею прямого отношения к филологии. Во-вторых, сама постановка вопроса, ответом на который является данная статья ("Остается ли филология "царицей" гуманитарных наук?"), показалась мне узкоцеховой, точнее цехоцентричной. Действительно, много ли найдется нефилологов, готовых согласиться, что "филология", в каком-либо из известных нам смыслов этого слова, когда-либо была "царицей гуманитарных наук"? Если бы вопрос стоял о том, останется ли филология, скажем, важным ресурсом или даже фундаментом остальных гуманитарных наук, то был бы, по крайней мере, предмет для разговора. В конечном счете, все гуманитарии (включая в какой-то степени и обществоведов) имеют дело с текстами, причем, как правило, на языках, так или иначе отличающихся от (родного, повседневного и особенно научного) языка исследователя, а значит, требующих расшифровки и интерпретации. Однако значимость навыков "внимательного чтения" (close reading) еще не означает парадигматичности подходов, считающихся филологическими, для других наук. Даже когда, скажем, лингвистические подходы приобретают-таки интердисциплинарную значимость, это происходит, как правило, в результате их перевода на язык философии, иногда социологии. Поэтому нельзя не согласиться с С. Козловым, что поставленный на обсуждение вопрос приближается к вопросу о том, продолжаете ли вы пить коньяк по утрам. Рад, что мои нефилологические интуиции по этому поводу подтверждаются филологом, автором комментируемой статьи.

Ab Imperio, May 2013

In his reflection on the issues raised in Mark Lipovetsky’s essay, Maxim Waldstein expresses his ... more In his reflection on the issues raised in Mark Lipovetsky’s essay, Maxim Waldstein expresses his overall solidarity with Lipovetsky’s genealogy of the current discourse of the Russian intellectual establishment and proposes a sketch of his own contribution to this project: the study of the antinomies of intellectual nonconformism and cultural conservatism in the works of the Tartu semioticians and Sergei Averintsev. Furthermore, based on his critical assessment of Lipovetsky’s methodology, Waldstein proposes a strategy for how the dialogic interrogation of the key assumptions of contemporary Russian (liberal) mainstream may proceed. Waldstein agrees with Lipovetsky that the currently dominant intellectual discourse in Russia, even as represented by politically liberal intellectuals, is often plagued by ingrained elitism, xenophobia, and cultural conservatism. In part, this observation accounts for widespread suspiciousness toward Western trends such as feminism and for the inability of the Russian “liberal mainstream” to resist currently rising official neotraditionalism. Historically, this discourse goes back not only to the scientific modernism of the 1960s ITR intellectuals, which is Lipovetsky’s prime focus, but also to the cult of (high) culture, professed by iconic late Soviet humanists such as Yuri Lotman and Sergei Averintsev. Originally (and tacitly) aimed at protecting cultural and intellectual creativity from the Soviet state’s encroachments on its autonomy, Lotman’s and Averintsev’s cultural studies grew increasingly antagonistic toward the analogous intellectual trends in the West because of their alleged implications of cultural amnesia and permissiveness. As Waldstein shows by analyzing Lotman’s and Averintsev’s reflections on the nature of (artistic) play and humor, these authors combined the conservative rejection of any transgression with respect to the culturally normative and the cult of transgression in “high art,” classical literature, the artist’s personal self-fashioning or antitotalitarian humor. Originally embedded in the social strategies of intellectual and personal self-fashioning under the totalitarian regime, this intellectual position has outlived the Soviet regime and continues to serve as a paradigm for the contemporary liberal mainstream, but has lost much of its nonconformist and antiauthoritarian potential. In the context of today’s Russia, this perspective implies limiting playful and humoristic creativity to the enclosed social enclaves of the intellectuals’ inner circle while leaving the public sphere to official neotraditionalism.
In his critical assessment of Lipovetsky’s project, Waldstein points to its residual essentialism and teleology. In addition to traditional genealogy, or the search for roots and origins, he advocates more consistently embracing the Foucauldian project of “genealogy,” aimed at fragmenting the unified and discovering heterogeneity in what seems to be consistent with itself. In practice, this means not only engaging seriously with the late twentieth century Western reflexivity toward the project of the Enlightenment but also recovering and bringing into the conversations the “native” critical resources. As examples of such resources, Waldstein cites the less understood and valued ideas of Yuri Lotman. The expected outcome of such engagements is the renegotiation of the key assumptions of Russia’s current academic and intellectual discourse and reinvigoration of the public dialogue.

This is an informal review of my so far favorite film by this Russian auteur. It was written a co... more This is an informal review of my so far favorite film by this Russian auteur. It was written a couple of months ago, before the release of Leviathan. Leviathan is important, no doubt, but Elena is artistically stronger and it is a more intellectually complex statement.

Some reflections on Roland Barthes' theory of ideological consciousness (in Russian)

https://soc.kuleuven.be/ceso/staff/00128561 At the time when the interview was taken, Prof. Kuip... more https://soc.kuleuven.be/ceso/staff/00128561
At the time when the interview was taken, Prof. Kuipers was the head of the Department of Sociology at the University of Amsterdam

This is a complete English-language version of the abridged Russian version published in SotsIs (... more This is a complete English-language version of the abridged Russian version published in SotsIs (Sotsiologicheskie issledovaniia), 2010, vol. 3

Социологические исследования, 2010

This is an abridged Russian translation of the interview with Prof. Randall Collins which was tak... more This is an abridged Russian translation of the interview with Prof. Randall Collins which was taken in 2007 in Philadelphia.

This paper takes the reader on an extraordinary journey through the life of Max Weber. It is not ... more This paper takes the reader on an extraordinary journey through the life of Max Weber. It is not so much a story of a social science classic as of an academic whose life and work can teach us about resilience, vulnerability, failure, and creativity.
The paper was delivered at the "Resilience in the Face of Adversity: A Core Text Approach" conference in Tilburg, Netherlands, January 19-20, 2023. A much more developed version of this paper will be published in an edited volume by Routledge in 2025.

This is a talk delivered at the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies in 2009

Can one change a traditional hierarchical institution 1 radically and, nevertheless, sustain its ... more Can one change a traditional hierarchical institution 1 radically and, nevertheless, sustain its identity, i.e. retain a substantial amount of people who continue to identify themselves with it? Obviously, this depends on how radical this change is. Let us say, "very radical", i.e. it implies questioning the very existing principles of identity of this institution, redrawing and weakening its symbolic boundaries. What can keep, in this case, such an institution from dissociation? Or, rather, what can keep people to continue considering themselves as its members? To propose an attempt to answer this question, this paper considers the post-Vatican II Roman Catholic Church case. The latter is studied not only in its own right but rather as a "traditional hierarchical institution". One of the points of the paper is that certain patterns, observable in the case examined, can be generalized on a wider set of phenomena. Post-Vatican II modernization of the Catholic Church and the response of the laity. Since the 60s the Catholic Church undergoes radical change. Although it is not true that before the Second Vatican Council of 1962-65, it was an immutable institution, the amount of transformation last decades deserves to be called "revolutionary" (Tischner 1998: 7). These processes embrace all spheres of the church life: dogmatic teaching, power Relationships, and liturgical practice. This systematic nature of change is worth noting. However, the most interesting fact is that this change is intended to be not only a one-way process initiated from above but also a reciprocal process involving the active participation of the laity in making decisions. This process is a serious challenge to the traditional mechanisms of identity formation and maintenance on the level of an average believer. What were these mechanisms and what is the reaction of the average believer to their transformation? First, the likeliness of shared beliefs was one of the main demands of "good Catholics". The uniformity of faith was particularly emphasized since the Trident Council in the 16 th century as a response to and under the influence of the Reformation. After this Council, the first all-Catholic Catechism was published and, formally, remained in force till the beginning of the 90s of the 20 th centuries. Before, as in the Orthodox Church up to now, the catechisms were issued by parishes, dioceses, and even particular theologians as a recommended reading. This, certainly, does not imply that the desired uniformity has been ever achieved. If this were the only criterion of the identity of a Catholic, Catholicism would be rather a

Original, pre-conference abstract: The notion of “the moral development of the human species” has... more Original, pre-conference abstract:
The notion of “the moral development of the human species” has almost disappeared from the sociological theorizing and research as a result of the decades of often justified criticisms of this notion from post-positivistic and post-modernist perspectives. While political and moral philosophers have recently been actively reclaiming the idea of moral progress, we, sociologists, have largely ignored this trend. In this paper, I propose some reasons for revisiting this attitude and outline a project of how relevant debates can be reinterpreted from a sociological perspective. I proceed from the idea that sociological theory—from Durkheim to Parsons, Simmel to Elias, and Mead to Habermas—has a rich tradition to discussing moral development in terms like “value generalization,” “social learning” and “the civilizing process.” Disentangled from the vestiges of the 19th century notion of unilinear, deterministic and Eurocentric notion of “moral progress”(and “decline”), these ideas, I argue, are still fit to guide us interpreting contemporary research data and current social controversies. To the “idealistic” (the development of human reason) and biological-deterministic (evolutionary) approaches, sociology is able to offer a “materialistic” alternative, which directs the researcher’s attention to the changing forms of association and the developments in social technologies. In particular, I outline the interrelations and analogies between the developments in social technologies of control and surveillance (including the “technologies of the self”) and the trends in material technologies, especially communication technologies. In addition to these conceptual benefits, I explore the practical implications of the proposed perspective on moral development for analyzing and informing current public controversies on such issues as marriage equality and the refugee crisis.

This is a longer version of the presentation delivered in Ghent, Belgium, at The Glow in the Eyes... more This is a longer version of the presentation delivered in Ghent, Belgium, at The Glow in the Eyes conference (2009)