Collecting Literacy when Gathering, Storing and Disseminating Educational Media (original) (raw)
History of Political Thought, 2014
This article examines the historical thought of Peter Laslett against the background themes and dilemmas of British ‘Golden Age’ post-Second World War historiography, c.1945–1980. Laslett reappraised whig interpretations of English history, and extended these reappraisals to critiques of liberal political theory, in a similar vein as other Golden Age historians. The article argues that Laslett drew on themes from Michael Oakeshott’s idealist philosophy of history and Karl Mannheim’s sociology of knowledge in his revisions of Sir Robert Filmer, patriarchalism, John Locke and liberal political theory. Tracing these specific themes in Laslett’s thought is significant as it allows, first, for an understanding of the exact interpretive moves and speech acts that Laslett performed in writing his revisionist historical accounts. Second, this approach allows for an identification of the ways in which Laslett differed from both Oakeshott and Mannheim, and other Golden Age historians. The results of this article reveal several important aspects of Laslett’s historical thought: first, that, why and how Oakeshott and Mannheim had a profound influence on Laslett. Second, that Laslett’s inverted whiggism was similar to that of other Golden Age historians in exhibiting welfare state anachronisms, but that it was different from theirs in its particular critique of liberalism, and in its belief in the positive features of early modern patriarchalism. Third, underneath Laslett’s famous ambition to reform traditional political philosophy lay an unconventional form of inverted perennialism that reserved for present use only those aspects of past political philosophy that were entirely unique.
Prospects, 2021
This article attempts to re-evaluate Karl Mannheim's notion of "planning for freedom" within the context of contemporary global citizenship education (GCE). First, it examines Mannheim's distinctions between "planning", "founding", and "administration" and analyses his notion of principia media. It argues that Mannheim conceptualised "planned thinking" as a dynamic and interdependent type of thinking necessary for grasping the whole situation of a changing world. This kind of thinking is interdisciplinary and serves to develop human capacity, through higher education, towards the cultivation of active global citizens. Second, this article examines Mannheimian conceptions of "democratic personality", "integrative behaviour", and "creative tolerance", all of which are related to civility, which in turn is an indispensable aspect for GCE. The aim of this article is not to simply study Mannheim's thoughts in the strictest sense of the word. Rather, it interprets his insights in the context of current GCE's values and knowledge.
United by Action: Neurath in England
Jordi Cat – Adam Tamas Tuboly (Eds.), Neurath Reconsidered: New Sources and Perspectives. Dordrecht: Springer.
The aim of this paper is to give a biographical, historical, and philosophical reconstruction of Neurath's final years in England. Besides reconstructing Neurath's arrival to England, in the context of his life and philosophical introduction at Oxford, I will argue that since the 1930s, Neurath was eager to develop a brand for logical empiricism. This brand was based not on theoretical commitments, but on practical considerations and decisions. Using a detailed case study on Neurath's relation to the Hungarian sociologist of knowledge Karl Mannheim, I show that the development of their connections documents how Neurath gave more and more priority to practical aims during his English years. Finally, the concluding section points to some further considerations on Neurath's legacy.
THEIR `OWN PECULIAR WAY': KARL MANNHEIM AND THE RISE OF WOMEN
International Sociology, 1993
Mannheim's published works do not prepare scholars for the importance he attached to the study of women; and his origins in an intellectual milieu attracted to metaphysical dualism add interest to his attempted rapprochement with liberal feminism. This study explores a surprising parallel drawn by Karl Mannheim as teacher in the 1930s. Despite vital differences in their social genealogies, women and intellectuals both exemplify groups constitutive of social structure without fitting in the Marxist scheme of social classes. Both groups are in crisis owing to a disproportion between their objective social situations and the conceptions by which they orient themselves. Sociology provides a method, and crisis provides the impulse for both to gain clarity about themselves and their situations. The ensuing group consciousness enables each of them to counter socially oppressive power without abandoning valuable qualities in their distinct social identities for the sake of revolutionary mass mobilization. Mannheim's thesis requires a conception of constitutional negotiation of group divergences, but his sociological legacy of holistic change and organic integration denies him the political resources to realize such a vision.
Defenders of the race: Jewish doctors and race science in Fin-De-Siècle Europe
Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences, 1998
This book is part of a larger project to bring together articles by psychologists from the United States and the former Soviet Union and make them available to both English-and Russian-speaking audiences. The English-language version appeared first; the publication of the book in Russia, it is hoped, will follow shortly. The contributions to this volume were carefully chosen to reflect on contemporary changes in both post-Soviet and American societies. They are taken not from conventional academic subdivisions, but from the application of psychology to socially relevant issues: politics and persuasion, mental health, prejudice and ethnic conflicts, ecological and environmental problems. Following the editors' intention to highlight both differences and similarities between American and post-Soviet psychology, the book is organized in sections each containing parallel articles from U. S. and former Soviet scholars. Sometimes the articles complement each other, sometimes they stand in a striking but instructive contrast.
Pierre Bourdieu and cultural theory: Critical investigations
1997
This book is part of a larger project to bring together articles by psychologists from the United States and the former Soviet Union and make them available to both English-and Russian-speaking audiences. The English-language version appeared first; the publication of the book in Russia, it is hoped, will follow shortly. The contributions to this volume were carefully chosen to reflect on contemporary changes in both post-Soviet and American societies. They are taken not from conventional academic subdivisions, but from the application of psychology to socially relevant issues: politics and persuasion, mental health, prejudice and ethnic conflicts, ecological and environmental problems. Following the editors' intention to highlight both differences and similarities between American and post-Soviet psychology, the book is organized in sections each containing parallel articles from U. S. and former Soviet scholars. Sometimes the articles complement each other, sometimes they stand in a striking but instructive contrast. Interestingly, the view that U.S. psychology is a "normal" science and that psychology in the former Soviet Union should orient itself by reference to the former is shared by many American and non-American contributors. While U. S. authors do not always emphasize the particular American setting of their studies and sometimes generalize their conclusions across cultures, their post-Soviet counterparts tend to stress the particular context of research. Some non-Americans make what they see as their cultural uniqueness into a research subject (specific Russian patterns of truth and lie-telling, specific motives for alcohol abuse, etc.). Others emphasize how their approaches differ from approaches in the West (the use of "psychosemantics" in studies of political attitudes, an existential approach to post-traumatic disorder). Even when non-American authors evaluate the differences between their own and Western studies as quantitative rather than qualitative, hoping that the areas previously non-existent in Soviet psychology will soon develop (e.g., research in advertising and gerontology), they accept Western psychology as a model. The difference between American and post-Soviet contributors is also reflected in their style: if the former are written in an "objective" language, with balanced and well-supported conclusions, the articles by the post-Soviet authors are often emotional, even bitter and angry, where the problems of their countries are concerned. Placed side-by-side with the stylistically highly professional American articles, the post-Soviet writers may appear "biased" to a Western reader. (Sometimes, as in the article on lying, a comparative study and much more evidence is indeed needed to support the author's conclusion that lying became the habit of everybody in Soviet society.) A reader curious about the psychology of everyday life in the emergent countries of the former Soviet Union and willing to interpret all the contributions in context, will have a rich time. To the reviewer, the book provided an abundance of material with which to reflect on the differences between psychological communities. The book also aroused thoughts that BOOK REVIEWS of sexology and psychiatry effectively dismissed the idea that homosexuality was a function of anatomical development, championing instead a model of psychopathological deviance. Bleys documents how this process was reflected by ethnographic depictions of samesex sexual practices-depictions that were mustered regularly in nineteenth-and early twentieth-century debates about the etiology of homosexuality. In this regard, chapter five is particularly illuminating, since it presents the positions of some of the seminal figures in these debates, among them the German zoologist and anthropologist Ferdinand Karsch-Haack and the British writers John Addington Symonds, Henry Havelock Ellis, and Edward Carpenter. If Foucault's History of Sexuality functions as one of the conceptual pillars of The Geography of Perversion, Edward Said's Orientalism serves as the other one. But much like Said-who has been taken to task for presenting the "Orient" both as a Western invention and as a site of genuine cultural difference-Bleys occasionally wanders on treacherous epistemological ground. On the one hand, he seeks to show how shifting images of non-Western same-sex sexual practices reflected European understandings of sodomy and homosexuality-a mode of argument that renders all European accounts of non-Western sexuality inherently suspect, since they appear less as the product of unbiased ethnographic observation than the result of systematic projections of European cultural inventories. While Bleys effectively mines his sources for historical biases, he, on the other hand, repeatedly seeks to recuperate them as truthful renditions of "actual" conditions. Especially in his discussions of the Arab world, Bleys often criticizes western thinkers' long-standing preoccupation with Arab same-sex sexuality while confirming cultural prominence of this configuration by recourse to the very sources his study compromises and deconstructs. If The Geography of Perversion shares some conceptual problems with Said's Orientalism; it is to Bleys' credit to have attempted a project of similar magnitude. And much like its model, The Geography of Perversion will be a definitive text for years to come.
The nature of consciousness: Philosophical debates
Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences, 1998
This book is part of a larger project to bring together articles by psychologists from the United States and the former Soviet Union and make them available to both English-and Russian-speaking audiences. The English-language version appeared first; the publication of the book in Russia, it is hoped, will follow shortly. The contributions to this volume were carefully chosen to reflect on contemporary changes in both post-Soviet and American societies. They are taken not from conventional academic subdivisions, but from the application of psychology to socially relevant issues: politics and persuasion, mental health, prejudice and ethnic conflicts, ecological and environmental problems. Following the editors' intention to highlight both differences and similarities between American and post-Soviet psychology, the book is organized in sections each containing parallel articles from U. S. and former Soviet scholars. Sometimes the articles complement each other, sometimes they stand in a striking but instructive contrast. Interestingly, the view that U.S. psychology is a "normal" science and that psychology in the former Soviet Union should orient itself by reference to the former is shared by many American and non-American contributors. While U. S. authors do not always emphasize the particular American setting of their studies and sometimes generalize their conclusions across cultures, their post-Soviet counterparts tend to stress the particular context of research. Some non-Americans make what they see as their cultural uniqueness into a research subject (specific Russian patterns of truth and lie-telling, specific motives for alcohol abuse, etc.). Others emphasize how their approaches differ from approaches in the West (the use of "psychosemantics" in studies of political attitudes, an existential approach to post-traumatic disorder). Even when non-American authors evaluate the differences between their own and Western studies as quantitative rather than qualitative, hoping that the areas previously non-existent in Soviet psychology will soon develop (e.g., research in advertising and gerontology), they accept Western psychology as a model. The difference between American and post-Soviet contributors is also reflected in their style: if the former are written in an "objective" language, with balanced and well-supported conclusions, the articles by the post-Soviet authors are often emotional, even bitter and angry, where the problems of their countries are concerned. Placed side-by-side with the stylistically highly professional American articles, the post-Soviet writers may appear "biased" to a Western reader. (Sometimes, as in the article on lying, a comparative study and much more evidence is indeed needed to support the author's conclusion that lying became the habit of everybody in Soviet society.) A reader curious about the psychology of everyday life in the emergent countries of the former Soviet Union and willing to interpret all the contributions in context, will have a rich time. To the reviewer, the book provided an abundance of material with which to reflect on the differences between psychological communities. The book also aroused thoughts that BOOK REVIEWS of sexology and psychiatry effectively dismissed the idea that homosexuality was a function of anatomical development, championing instead a model of psychopathological deviance. Bleys documents how this process was reflected by ethnographic depictions of samesex sexual practices-depictions that were mustered regularly in nineteenth-and early twentieth-century debates about the etiology of homosexuality. In this regard, chapter five is particularly illuminating, since it presents the positions of some of the seminal figures in these debates, among them the German zoologist and anthropologist Ferdinand Karsch-Haack and the British writers John Addington Symonds, Henry Havelock Ellis, and Edward Carpenter. If Foucault's History of Sexuality functions as one of the conceptual pillars of The Geography of Perversion, Edward Said's Orientalism serves as the other one. But much like Said-who has been taken to task for presenting the "Orient" both as a Western invention and as a site of genuine cultural difference-Bleys occasionally wanders on treacherous epistemological ground. On the one hand, he seeks to show how shifting images of non-Western same-sex sexual practices reflected European understandings of sodomy and homosexuality-a mode of argument that renders all European accounts of non-Western sexuality inherently suspect, since they appear less as the product of unbiased ethnographic observation than the result of systematic projections of European cultural inventories. While Bleys effectively mines his sources for historical biases, he, on the other hand, repeatedly seeks to recuperate them as truthful renditions of "actual" conditions. Especially in his discussions of the Arab world, Bleys often criticizes western thinkers' long-standing preoccupation with Arab same-sex sexuality while confirming cultural prominence of this configuration by recourse to the very sources his study compromises and deconstructs. If The Geography of Perversion shares some conceptual problems with Said's Orientalism; it is to Bleys' credit to have attempted a project of similar magnitude. And much like its model, The Geography of Perversion will be a definitive text for years to come.
Journal of Asian Studies, 1997
This book is part of a larger project to bring together articles by psychologists from the United States and the former Soviet Union and make them available to both English-and Russian-speaking audiences. The English-language version appeared first; the publication of the book in Russia, it is hoped, will follow shortly. The contributions to this volume were carefully chosen to reflect on contemporary changes in both post-Soviet and American societies. They are taken not from conventional academic subdivisions, but from the application of psychology to socially relevant issues: politics and persuasion, mental health, prejudice and ethnic conflicts, ecological and environmental problems. Following the editors' intention to highlight both differences and similarities between American and post-Soviet psychology, the book is organized in sections each containing parallel articles from U. S. and former Soviet scholars. Sometimes the articles complement each other, sometimes they stand in a striking but instructive contrast.
A Measure of Perfection: Phrenology and the Fine Arts in America
American Historical Review, 1999
This book is part of a larger project to bring together articles by psychologists from the United States and the former Soviet Union and make them available to both English-and Russian-speaking audiences. The English-language version appeared first; the publication of the book in Russia, it is hoped, will follow shortly. The contributions to this volume were carefully chosen to reflect on contemporary changes in both post-Soviet and American societies. They are taken not from conventional academic subdivisions, but from the application of psychology to socially relevant issues: politics and persuasion, mental health, prejudice and ethnic conflicts, ecological and environmental problems. Following the editors' intention to highlight both differences and similarities between American and post-Soviet psychology, the book is organized in sections each containing parallel articles from U. S. and former Soviet scholars. Sometimes the articles complement each other, sometimes they stand in a striking but instructive contrast.