The aim of this article is to explore the contemporary situation around the question of political... more The aim of this article is to explore the contemporary situation around the question of political representation through the works of Eric Voegelin. While the theme of representation takes up little space in Voegelin's works, being restricted to The New Science of Politics, there its role is central, and is combined with the modern Gnosticism thesis, explaining both the major success and resounding actuality, but also controversiality of the book. The article explores the link established there between these two concerns, focusing on the discussion of Hobbes and Puritanism, and complements Voegelin's ideas by some affine approaches, like the works of Bernard Manin, Hasso Hofmann, and Alessandro Pizzorno. It then sketches the manner by which political representation, a medieval idea, in modern mass democratic politics became first a secularised principle, and then a mere trick.
The file contains an Interview made with John Calder by Arpad Szakolczai about Samuel Beckett, on... more The file contains an Interview made with John Calder by Arpad Szakolczai about Samuel Beckett, on 10 February 2014
Please, note that at the editing phase the name "Hamm" was altered by the "smart" computer to "Ham". Apologies for not spotting this earlier.
Abstract: The theatre is the modern liminoid equivalent of ritual liminality, according to Victor... more Abstract: The theatre is the modern liminoid equivalent of ritual liminality, according to Victor Turner. It is also, like most arts, a Janus-faced phenomenon: on one side, it is a way to systematically infect the public with mimetic desire and rivalry (this is the aspect emphasised, quite rightly, by Plato and René Girard); on the other, it also enables to express publicly views about the contemporary state of social and political life that otherwise would be difficult to speak about, or even censored. As example, the article will turn to the 1970s in Hungary, when the communist regime has become much softened, though at the same time generated the impression, in everyone, that it would last forever. More concretely, it will first shortly present and analyse the quite unique story of the Kaposvár theatre, which during the decade became, through a peculiar combination of ‘liminal’ factors, from a boring provincial spectacle to the number one theatrical event of the country, avidly followed by students and intellectuals, especially from the capital. An epilogue is devoted to the masterly article by Elemér Hankiss, the most important and influential intellectual living then in Hungary who became, for a time, the consensus president of the Hungarian Television after the collapse of communism. It exposes the infantilising character of communist power, by analysing a series of theatrical performances staged in a leading Budapest theatre in the late 1970s. Infantile adults are evidently caught in a permanent liminality, so Hankiss shows how theatre indeed was a main instrument in diagnosing the worst aspect of life under communist rule, its permanent liminality, reinforcing uncertainty and hopelessness.
NOTE: the published title (see DOI) is different
'Forget the study of politics! Forget methodologies of data management! This nonsense is foisted ... more 'Forget the study of politics! Forget methodologies of data management! This nonsense is foisted on us by an unholy alliance of science and the market whose only aim is to put a stop to thought. In this passionately argued book, Arpad Szakolczai ruthlessly exposes the insanity of reason eating at the fabric of our world. The anthropological task, he argues, is to search for a way, a method, that opens to the inner truth of life for the political animals we humans are. At once mischievous and erudite, contrarian and humble, Szakolczai speaks from the heart. His words should matter to us all.'
'At the moment we try to grasp modernity, or to relabel it as post-modernity, it eludes us. What ... more 'At the moment we try to grasp modernity, or to relabel it as post-modernity, it eludes us. What appears as the end of history becomes obsolete as soon as it is identified. What appears as the final disenchantment becomes a new mystery. Every 'critique' ends in irrelevance. Arpad Szakolczai has provided a novel and deep reflection on this situation, in terms of trickster logic, the continuing illusory promise to dispel mystery which creates a substitute mystery."
Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of Sociology, chief editor George Ritzer, 2nd edition, 2020
Walking on two feet is both the most simple and basic of activities, and is what has made us huma... more Walking on two feet is both the most simple and basic of activities, and is what has made us human. While for long ignored, walking as a practice and a theme is receiving increasingly attention, highlighted by the popularity of the Camino de Santiago. An embodied, multisensory, lived experience, involving participation and presence, walking brings out and alleviates the increasing unreality of the contemporary world. Central themes and methods in the sociology of walking include pre-historical sociology, the shift from walking culture to settlement, pilgrimage as a religious practice, autoethnography, and walking interview as a biographical method. Walking is homologous to thinking and drawing, each being lineal, and is compatible with a return to the thinking of Plato.
Abstract
This article situates the concept of liminality within anthropology, philosophy and soci... more Abstract This article situates the concept of liminality within anthropology, philosophy and sociology, and underlines the connections across the disciplines by showing how the role of experience is crucial to a full understanding of the term, however applied. In order to point to the dynamics of liminal moments, the article introduces three complementary terms, namely “imitation”, “trickster” and “schismogenesis”. The usefulness of the concept of liminality is then demonstrated via a diver- sity of examples, including the analysis of intellectual “generations”. Liminality helps to study events or situations that involve the dissolution of order, but which are also formative of institu- tions and structures. It is argued that the neglect of liminality in philosophy and social theory but also in social and political life is a serious hinder to a fuller grasp of some of the most problem- atic aspects of modernity.
Keywords: Experience, generational analysis, history of thought, imitation, liminality, Kant, Plato, schismogenesis, transition, transformation.
Agnes Horvath, Camil Francisc Roman and Gilbert Germain, Divinization and Technology: The Political Anthropology of Subversion , 2019
Instead of reducing subversion to secret plotting for the violent undermining of established powe... more Instead of reducing subversion to secret plotting for the violent undermining of established powers and authorities, this chapter starts from the presumption that we today, all of us, inside the advanced, democratic world, live inside subversion. In order to explore how such a situation could have emerged, the paper starts from similar diagnoses by Goethe and Dostoevsky, and then introduces a series of concepts from political anthropology, like trickster, imitation and liminality, to analyse the processes resulting in subversion. Focusing on the modern economy as a central modality of subversion, it argues that we do not live inside a market economy that developed gradually out of small-scale exchanges, but rather this economy should be conceived as a fairground that has become permanent. The chapter evokes three historical moments, and related trickster figures, central for such permanentisation of liminality. It finishes by presenting four concepts, utility, marginalism, interest and opportunity cost, which illustrate the trickster terminology of modern economics.
This paper explores the contribution of political anthropology to a sociological understanding of... more This paper explores the contribution of political anthropology to a sociological understanding of political life. This includes the intellectual background of politics and an in-depth diagnosis of the contemporary ills in political life, especially problems connected to leadership, as they manifested throughout the past century, only intensifying recently, while also restoring attention to the human element in politics. It discusses, in their interrelations, concepts like liminality, trickster, imitation, schismogenesis, and participation, demonstrating their usefulness for understanding contemporary politics, in particular its increasing unreality, corresponding to but also proliferating general trends of depersonalization. Political anthropology thus offers insights about getting out of the contemporary entrapment and returning back to the central, classical concerns of politics, securing the conditions of possibility to a real and meaningful life for everyone within a political community. The striking unreality of modern politics This paper explores the contribution of political anthropology to a sociological understanding of political life. It will combine such an anthropological perspective with a long-term historical orientation, an approach central for some of the most important and influential social theoretical analyses of politics, like the works of Max Weber, Michel Foucault, Reinhart Koselleck or Eric Voegelin, each inspired by Nietzschean genealogy and its effort to overcome 'modernocentrism', especially at the level of concept formation. Such contribution, it will be argued, concerns the intellectual background of politics and an in-depth diagnosis of the contemporary ills in political life, especially problems connected to leadership, as they manifested throughout the past century, only intensifying recently, while also restoring attention to the human element of politics. The special contribution of political sociology to politics lies in the study of factors beyond the narrow scope of politics per se, concerned with the broader sources and effects of political phenomena. It is in this sense that the foundations of political sociology were laid by Alexis de Tocqueville or Max Weber, though these classic figures are also claimed by political science, and of course such boundaries can never be drawn in a rigid manner. Yet, the direction in which political sociology was moving during the past decades made this endeavor considerably more narrow than it was intended by Tocqueville or Weber. The perspective 'social ' in political sociology much came to be interpreted as a way of judging whether politics confirmed to the ideals of the French Revolution, meaning freedom and especially equality, resumed in the
Modernity, or the combination of market economy, liberal democratic polity and a society driven b... more Modernity, or the combination of market economy, liberal democratic polity and a society driven by technological progress, we are led to believe, is the end-state of history; the glorious condition of a fully enlightened society of free citizens equipped with equal rights at which all traditional societies are bound to arrive, after a period of transition which might involve some temporary difficulties or ‘sacrifices’. However, and in contrast to this, modernity rather involves an infinite period of transition, in which the stable elements of social life, representing not just rigid external constraints on individual freedom, but also the condition of possibility of meaningful life, are one by one liquidated. This paper argues that the anthropological concept ‘liminality’ is particularly helpful to understand the formative aspects of transition experiences, like the Celtic Tiger phenomenon in Ireland. It also helps to move beyond the conventional ‘transition to modernity’ framework by pointing out that advanced modernity is identical to a permanent state of transitionality.
Since its birth, but especially since its academic institutionalisation, sociology is plagued by ... more Since its birth, but especially since its academic institutionalisation, sociology is plagued by a series of dualisms and dichotomies that seriously diminish the relevance of much of sociological work. This article offers to go beyond such dichotomies, approaching the unity of lived life, central for meaning and health, through reconceptualising 'experience'.
The aim of this paper is to interpret the recent concern with ‘experience’ as a return to the in-... more The aim of this paper is to interpret the recent concern with ‘experience’ as a return to the in-depth analysis of reality, searching for a balance in between types of contemporary scholasticism that escape into abstract theorising or number-crunching on the one hand, and the partisan involvement characteristic of various social movements, the politics of identity and political correctness on the other. Such a concern with experience is first situated on the horizon of modern Western thought that since centuries gave a privileged position, but also a quite peculiar reading, of ‘experience’, repeatedly trying to distance itself from scholasticism, but searching for some exclusive, objective reference point for experiences, and in this way ending up constructing and then taken for granting the schismatic object subject dichotomy that still plagues social theory. The paper was originally published in a German version in 2008 (‘Sinn aus Erfahrung’, in Kay Junge, Daniel Suber, and Gerold Gerber (eds.) Erleben, Erleiden, Erfahren: Die Konstitution sozialen Sinns jenseits instrumenteller Vernunft, (Bielefeld, Transcript-Verlag, 2008), pp. 63-99.)
A paper discussing the lead article of Ivan Szelenyi, "Entzauberung: Notes on Weber’s Theory of M... more A paper discussing the lead article of Ivan Szelenyi, "Entzauberung: Notes on Weber’s Theory of Modernity", in the May 2015 issue of "International Political Anthropology"
It is a standard practice to identify theories with their author. Though this practice seems all ... more It is a standard practice to identify theories with their author. Though this practice seems all too natural, it creates substantial confusion. This is the case with Foucault himself when he is seen as a theorist of power, with Discipline and Punish (1978a) and volume 1 of The ...
Between 1997 and 1999, Eric Voegelin's History of Political Ideas was posthumously publi... more Between 1997 and 1999, Eric Voegelin's History of Political Ideas was posthumously published in eight volumes and over 2000 pages by the University of Missouri Press. The work was written between 1939 and (about) 1950, but not published by the author during ...
This chapter attempts to present the most important ideas of contemporary East Central European s... more This chapter attempts to present the most important ideas of contemporary East Central European social theorists. It will have three particularities. While most of the best-known thinkers from the region were originally Marxists, little space will be devoted to them, as ...
The aim of this article is to explore the contemporary situation around the question of political... more The aim of this article is to explore the contemporary situation around the question of political representation through the works of Eric Voegelin. While the theme of representation takes up little space in Voegelin's works, being restricted to The New Science of Politics, there its role is central, and is combined with the modern Gnosticism thesis, explaining both the major success and resounding actuality, but also controversiality of the book. The article explores the link established there between these two concerns, focusing on the discussion of Hobbes and Puritanism, and complements Voegelin's ideas by some affine approaches, like the works of Bernard Manin, Hasso Hofmann, and Alessandro Pizzorno. It then sketches the manner by which political representation, a medieval idea, in modern mass democratic politics became first a secularised principle, and then a mere trick.
The file contains an Interview made with John Calder by Arpad Szakolczai about Samuel Beckett, on... more The file contains an Interview made with John Calder by Arpad Szakolczai about Samuel Beckett, on 10 February 2014
Please, note that at the editing phase the name "Hamm" was altered by the "smart" computer to "Ham". Apologies for not spotting this earlier.
Abstract: The theatre is the modern liminoid equivalent of ritual liminality, according to Victor... more Abstract: The theatre is the modern liminoid equivalent of ritual liminality, according to Victor Turner. It is also, like most arts, a Janus-faced phenomenon: on one side, it is a way to systematically infect the public with mimetic desire and rivalry (this is the aspect emphasised, quite rightly, by Plato and René Girard); on the other, it also enables to express publicly views about the contemporary state of social and political life that otherwise would be difficult to speak about, or even censored. As example, the article will turn to the 1970s in Hungary, when the communist regime has become much softened, though at the same time generated the impression, in everyone, that it would last forever. More concretely, it will first shortly present and analyse the quite unique story of the Kaposvár theatre, which during the decade became, through a peculiar combination of ‘liminal’ factors, from a boring provincial spectacle to the number one theatrical event of the country, avidly followed by students and intellectuals, especially from the capital. An epilogue is devoted to the masterly article by Elemér Hankiss, the most important and influential intellectual living then in Hungary who became, for a time, the consensus president of the Hungarian Television after the collapse of communism. It exposes the infantilising character of communist power, by analysing a series of theatrical performances staged in a leading Budapest theatre in the late 1970s. Infantile adults are evidently caught in a permanent liminality, so Hankiss shows how theatre indeed was a main instrument in diagnosing the worst aspect of life under communist rule, its permanent liminality, reinforcing uncertainty and hopelessness.
NOTE: the published title (see DOI) is different
'Forget the study of politics! Forget methodologies of data management! This nonsense is foisted ... more 'Forget the study of politics! Forget methodologies of data management! This nonsense is foisted on us by an unholy alliance of science and the market whose only aim is to put a stop to thought. In this passionately argued book, Arpad Szakolczai ruthlessly exposes the insanity of reason eating at the fabric of our world. The anthropological task, he argues, is to search for a way, a method, that opens to the inner truth of life for the political animals we humans are. At once mischievous and erudite, contrarian and humble, Szakolczai speaks from the heart. His words should matter to us all.'
'At the moment we try to grasp modernity, or to relabel it as post-modernity, it eludes us. What ... more 'At the moment we try to grasp modernity, or to relabel it as post-modernity, it eludes us. What appears as the end of history becomes obsolete as soon as it is identified. What appears as the final disenchantment becomes a new mystery. Every 'critique' ends in irrelevance. Arpad Szakolczai has provided a novel and deep reflection on this situation, in terms of trickster logic, the continuing illusory promise to dispel mystery which creates a substitute mystery."
Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of Sociology, chief editor George Ritzer, 2nd edition, 2020
Walking on two feet is both the most simple and basic of activities, and is what has made us huma... more Walking on two feet is both the most simple and basic of activities, and is what has made us human. While for long ignored, walking as a practice and a theme is receiving increasingly attention, highlighted by the popularity of the Camino de Santiago. An embodied, multisensory, lived experience, involving participation and presence, walking brings out and alleviates the increasing unreality of the contemporary world. Central themes and methods in the sociology of walking include pre-historical sociology, the shift from walking culture to settlement, pilgrimage as a religious practice, autoethnography, and walking interview as a biographical method. Walking is homologous to thinking and drawing, each being lineal, and is compatible with a return to the thinking of Plato.
Abstract
This article situates the concept of liminality within anthropology, philosophy and soci... more Abstract This article situates the concept of liminality within anthropology, philosophy and sociology, and underlines the connections across the disciplines by showing how the role of experience is crucial to a full understanding of the term, however applied. In order to point to the dynamics of liminal moments, the article introduces three complementary terms, namely “imitation”, “trickster” and “schismogenesis”. The usefulness of the concept of liminality is then demonstrated via a diver- sity of examples, including the analysis of intellectual “generations”. Liminality helps to study events or situations that involve the dissolution of order, but which are also formative of institu- tions and structures. It is argued that the neglect of liminality in philosophy and social theory but also in social and political life is a serious hinder to a fuller grasp of some of the most problem- atic aspects of modernity.
Keywords: Experience, generational analysis, history of thought, imitation, liminality, Kant, Plato, schismogenesis, transition, transformation.
Agnes Horvath, Camil Francisc Roman and Gilbert Germain, Divinization and Technology: The Political Anthropology of Subversion , 2019
Instead of reducing subversion to secret plotting for the violent undermining of established powe... more Instead of reducing subversion to secret plotting for the violent undermining of established powers and authorities, this chapter starts from the presumption that we today, all of us, inside the advanced, democratic world, live inside subversion. In order to explore how such a situation could have emerged, the paper starts from similar diagnoses by Goethe and Dostoevsky, and then introduces a series of concepts from political anthropology, like trickster, imitation and liminality, to analyse the processes resulting in subversion. Focusing on the modern economy as a central modality of subversion, it argues that we do not live inside a market economy that developed gradually out of small-scale exchanges, but rather this economy should be conceived as a fairground that has become permanent. The chapter evokes three historical moments, and related trickster figures, central for such permanentisation of liminality. It finishes by presenting four concepts, utility, marginalism, interest and opportunity cost, which illustrate the trickster terminology of modern economics.
This paper explores the contribution of political anthropology to a sociological understanding of... more This paper explores the contribution of political anthropology to a sociological understanding of political life. This includes the intellectual background of politics and an in-depth diagnosis of the contemporary ills in political life, especially problems connected to leadership, as they manifested throughout the past century, only intensifying recently, while also restoring attention to the human element in politics. It discusses, in their interrelations, concepts like liminality, trickster, imitation, schismogenesis, and participation, demonstrating their usefulness for understanding contemporary politics, in particular its increasing unreality, corresponding to but also proliferating general trends of depersonalization. Political anthropology thus offers insights about getting out of the contemporary entrapment and returning back to the central, classical concerns of politics, securing the conditions of possibility to a real and meaningful life for everyone within a political community. The striking unreality of modern politics This paper explores the contribution of political anthropology to a sociological understanding of political life. It will combine such an anthropological perspective with a long-term historical orientation, an approach central for some of the most important and influential social theoretical analyses of politics, like the works of Max Weber, Michel Foucault, Reinhart Koselleck or Eric Voegelin, each inspired by Nietzschean genealogy and its effort to overcome 'modernocentrism', especially at the level of concept formation. Such contribution, it will be argued, concerns the intellectual background of politics and an in-depth diagnosis of the contemporary ills in political life, especially problems connected to leadership, as they manifested throughout the past century, only intensifying recently, while also restoring attention to the human element of politics. The special contribution of political sociology to politics lies in the study of factors beyond the narrow scope of politics per se, concerned with the broader sources and effects of political phenomena. It is in this sense that the foundations of political sociology were laid by Alexis de Tocqueville or Max Weber, though these classic figures are also claimed by political science, and of course such boundaries can never be drawn in a rigid manner. Yet, the direction in which political sociology was moving during the past decades made this endeavor considerably more narrow than it was intended by Tocqueville or Weber. The perspective 'social ' in political sociology much came to be interpreted as a way of judging whether politics confirmed to the ideals of the French Revolution, meaning freedom and especially equality, resumed in the
Modernity, or the combination of market economy, liberal democratic polity and a society driven b... more Modernity, or the combination of market economy, liberal democratic polity and a society driven by technological progress, we are led to believe, is the end-state of history; the glorious condition of a fully enlightened society of free citizens equipped with equal rights at which all traditional societies are bound to arrive, after a period of transition which might involve some temporary difficulties or ‘sacrifices’. However, and in contrast to this, modernity rather involves an infinite period of transition, in which the stable elements of social life, representing not just rigid external constraints on individual freedom, but also the condition of possibility of meaningful life, are one by one liquidated. This paper argues that the anthropological concept ‘liminality’ is particularly helpful to understand the formative aspects of transition experiences, like the Celtic Tiger phenomenon in Ireland. It also helps to move beyond the conventional ‘transition to modernity’ framework by pointing out that advanced modernity is identical to a permanent state of transitionality.
Since its birth, but especially since its academic institutionalisation, sociology is plagued by ... more Since its birth, but especially since its academic institutionalisation, sociology is plagued by a series of dualisms and dichotomies that seriously diminish the relevance of much of sociological work. This article offers to go beyond such dichotomies, approaching the unity of lived life, central for meaning and health, through reconceptualising 'experience'.
The aim of this paper is to interpret the recent concern with ‘experience’ as a return to the in-... more The aim of this paper is to interpret the recent concern with ‘experience’ as a return to the in-depth analysis of reality, searching for a balance in between types of contemporary scholasticism that escape into abstract theorising or number-crunching on the one hand, and the partisan involvement characteristic of various social movements, the politics of identity and political correctness on the other. Such a concern with experience is first situated on the horizon of modern Western thought that since centuries gave a privileged position, but also a quite peculiar reading, of ‘experience’, repeatedly trying to distance itself from scholasticism, but searching for some exclusive, objective reference point for experiences, and in this way ending up constructing and then taken for granting the schismatic object subject dichotomy that still plagues social theory. The paper was originally published in a German version in 2008 (‘Sinn aus Erfahrung’, in Kay Junge, Daniel Suber, and Gerold Gerber (eds.) Erleben, Erleiden, Erfahren: Die Konstitution sozialen Sinns jenseits instrumenteller Vernunft, (Bielefeld, Transcript-Verlag, 2008), pp. 63-99.)
A paper discussing the lead article of Ivan Szelenyi, "Entzauberung: Notes on Weber’s Theory of M... more A paper discussing the lead article of Ivan Szelenyi, "Entzauberung: Notes on Weber’s Theory of Modernity", in the May 2015 issue of "International Political Anthropology"
It is a standard practice to identify theories with their author. Though this practice seems all ... more It is a standard practice to identify theories with their author. Though this practice seems all too natural, it creates substantial confusion. This is the case with Foucault himself when he is seen as a theorist of power, with Discipline and Punish (1978a) and volume 1 of The ...
Between 1997 and 1999, Eric Voegelin's History of Political Ideas was posthumously publi... more Between 1997 and 1999, Eric Voegelin's History of Political Ideas was posthumously published in eight volumes and over 2000 pages by the University of Missouri Press. The work was written between 1939 and (about) 1950, but not published by the author during ...
This chapter attempts to present the most important ideas of contemporary East Central European s... more This chapter attempts to present the most important ideas of contemporary East Central European social theorists. It will have three particularities. While most of the best-known thinkers from the region were originally Marxists, little space will be devoted to them, as ...
This is a conference call, for the International Political Anthropology online conference ‘Limina... more This is a conference call, for the International Political Anthropology online conference ‘Liminality, disease and politics’, 20-21 May 2021
The aim of this article is to present the understanding of the modern world that can be gained by... more The aim of this article is to present the understanding of the modern world that can be gained by studying the works of the Hungarian novelist Sándor Márai, whose novels suddenly became read all over the world in the new century. Apart from an analysis of his three main novels, Esther's Inheritance (1939), Conversations in Bolzano (1940), and Embers (1942), emphasis is placed on his wartime diaries, and especially the recollections of his encounters with the occupying Red Army during the last phase of WWII and the ensuing Communist takeover period. It is argued that the liminal time and place enabled Márai to capture some archetypal characters of the modern world, just as the dynamics of the processes that were unfolding, ending a civilisation, that can be understood through terms of political anthropology like trickster, liminality, schismogenesis and imitation.
The book "Walking into the Void: On the Social and Anthropological Significance of Walking", writ... more The book "Walking into the Void: On the Social and Anthropological Significance of Walking", written with Agnes Horvath, will be published October 31st 2017
Book to be published in October 2016 by Routledge
ISBN: 9781472473882
This will be the first boo... more Book to be published in October 2016 by Routledge ISBN: 9781472473882 This will be the first book in the new series "Contemporary Liminality" (series Editor: Arpad Szakolczai)
This series constitutes a forum for works that make use of concepts such as ‘imitation’, ‘trickster’ or ‘schismogenesis’, but which chiefly deploy the notion of ‘liminality’, as the basis of a new, anthropologically-focused paradigm in social theory. With its versatility and range of possible uses rivalling and even going beyond mainstream concepts such as ‘system’ ‘structure’ or ‘institution’, liminality is increasingly considered a new master concept that promises to spark a renewal in social thought.
In spite of the fact that charges of Eurocentrism or even ‘moderno-centrism’ are widely discussed in sociology and anthropology, it remains the case that most theoretical tools in the social sciences continue to rely on taken-for-granted approaches developed from within the modern Western intellectual tradition, whilst concepts developed on the basis of extensive anthropological evidence and which challenged commonplaces of modernist thinking, have been either marginalised and ignored, or trivialised. By challenging the assumed neo-Kantian and neo-Hegelian foundations of modern social theory, and by helping to shed new light on the fundamental ideas of major figures in social theory, such as Nietzsche, Dilthey, Weber, Elias, Voegelin, Foucault and Koselleck, whilst also establishing connections between the perspectives gained through modern social and cultural anthropology and the central concerns of classical philosophical anthropology Contemporary Liminality offers a new direction in social thought.
Prospective Proposals should be sent to: arpad@ucc.ie
This article aims at exploring a long-term historical perspective on which contemporary globalisa... more This article aims at exploring a long-term historical perspective on which contemporary globalisation can be more meaningfully situated. A central problem with established approaches to globalisation is that they are even more presentist than the literature on modernisation was. Presentism not only means the ignoring of history, but also the unreflective application to history of concepts taken from the study of the modern world. In contrast, it is argued that contemporary globalisation is not a unique development, but rather is a concrete case of a historical type. Taking as its point of departure the spirit, rather than the word, of Max Weber, this article extends the scope of sociological investigation into archaeological evidence. Having a genealogical design and introducing the concept of 'liminality', the article approaches the modern process of globalisation through reconstructing the internal dynamics of another type of historical change called 'social flourishing'. Taking up the Weberian approach continued by Eisenstadt in his writings on 'axial age', it moves away from situations of crisis as reference point, shifting attention to periods of revival by introducing the term 'epiphany'. Through the case of early Mesopotamia, it shows how social flourishing can be transmogrified into globalising growth, gaining a new perspective concerning the kind of 'animating spirit' that might have driven the shift from Renaissance to Reformation, the rise of modern colonialism, or contemporary globalisation. More generally, it will retrieve the long-term historical background of the axial age and demonstrate the usefulness and importance of archaeological evidence for sociology.
Empires are large and ever expanding political entities that became engaged in the pursuit of unl... more Empires are large and ever expanding political entities that became engaged in the pursuit of unlimited extension, thus incorporating different cultures and geographic areas. Empire-building thus has important affinities with globalising expansion, explaining the increasing contemporary interest in Gibbon's classic work about the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Following the best recent interpreters of Gibbon's undertaking, and the Weber-inspired historical theoretisations of Eisenstadt and Voegelin, the driving force of empire building is identified in an ever growing internal void that pushes a previously stable and flourishing entity towards the vain pursuit of unlimited growth. Just as empires are enormous, almost limitless entities, writing about them also conjures up a boundless task. Even further, attention devoted to the theme over the past decades, even centuries is also erratic. In some periods the theme becomes topical, resulting in the almost self-evident proposition that world history so far was basically the history of empires, only to lose centrality just as suddenly. The rise of the modern world has been characterised as the age of empire (Hobsbawm 1987), while two influential recent sociological investigations concerning the rise of the modern world almost ruled out the theme. In his books pioneering world systems analysis Immanuel Wallerstein argued that the distinguishing feature of the modern world is that it does not develop in the direction of an Empire (1974: 15). In his multi-volume study on the sources of social power Michael Mann originally focused on nation-states, finishing his second volume running the storyline up to 1914, in 1993; but then completing the third volume took him almost two more decades, involving the break-up of the planned final volume into two parts, restarting the story from 1890 and reincorporating empire-building. All this does not mean that Wallerstein or Mann ignored modern empires, only that these did not fit their vision of 'modernity' – a short-sightedness comparable to overlooking the systematic connections between warfare and modernity, characteristic of social theory. Given the vastness of the theme, this article will concentrate on major classics that possessed a vision broad enough to approach a comprehensive understanding of the phenomenon. The undertaking is further complicated due to the relative absence of the theme in Max Weber's work. Such striking omission is partly intelligible through connotations the word Reich acquired already by Weber's time. Weber was forced to use the expression 'big state' (Großstaat), a term partly cumbersome and misleading, focusing excessively on size, while using modernising terminology. Even further, Weber did not connect his comparative historical study on religions with the emergence of empire-building.
Discussion of the authors' forthcoming book "From Anthropology to Social Theory: Rethinking the S... more Discussion of the authors' forthcoming book "From Anthropology to Social Theory: Rethinking the Social Sciences" (Cambridge University Press, 2019).
Uploads
Papers by Arpad Szakolczai
Please, note that at the editing phase the name "Hamm" was altered by the "smart" computer to "Ham". Apologies for not spotting this earlier.
NOTE: the published title (see DOI) is different
This article situates the concept of liminality within anthropology, philosophy and sociology, and underlines the connections across the disciplines by showing how the role of experience is crucial to a full understanding of the term, however applied. In order to point to the dynamics of liminal moments, the article introduces three complementary terms, namely “imitation”, “trickster” and “schismogenesis”. The usefulness of the concept of liminality is then demonstrated via a diver- sity of examples, including the analysis of intellectual “generations”. Liminality helps to study events or situations that involve the dissolution of order, but which are also formative of institu- tions and structures. It is argued that the neglect of liminality in philosophy and social theory but also in social and political life is a serious hinder to a fuller grasp of some of the most problem- atic aspects of modernity.
Keywords: Experience, generational analysis, history of thought, imitation, liminality, Kant, Plato, schismogenesis, transition, transformation.
Keywords: liminality, genealogy, trickster, tradition, Polanyi, Foucault
Please, note that at the editing phase the name "Hamm" was altered by the "smart" computer to "Ham". Apologies for not spotting this earlier.
NOTE: the published title (see DOI) is different
This article situates the concept of liminality within anthropology, philosophy and sociology, and underlines the connections across the disciplines by showing how the role of experience is crucial to a full understanding of the term, however applied. In order to point to the dynamics of liminal moments, the article introduces three complementary terms, namely “imitation”, “trickster” and “schismogenesis”. The usefulness of the concept of liminality is then demonstrated via a diver- sity of examples, including the analysis of intellectual “generations”. Liminality helps to study events or situations that involve the dissolution of order, but which are also formative of institu- tions and structures. It is argued that the neglect of liminality in philosophy and social theory but also in social and political life is a serious hinder to a fuller grasp of some of the most problem- atic aspects of modernity.
Keywords: Experience, generational analysis, history of thought, imitation, liminality, Kant, Plato, schismogenesis, transition, transformation.
Keywords: liminality, genealogy, trickster, tradition, Polanyi, Foucault
ISBN: 9781472473882
This will be the first book in the new series "Contemporary Liminality" (series Editor: Arpad Szakolczai)
This series constitutes a forum for works that make use of concepts such as ‘imitation’, ‘trickster’ or ‘schismogenesis’, but which chiefly deploy the notion of ‘liminality’, as the basis of a new, anthropologically-focused paradigm in social theory. With its versatility and range of possible uses rivalling and even going beyond mainstream concepts such as ‘system’ ‘structure’ or ‘institution’, liminality is increasingly considered a new master concept that promises to spark a renewal in social thought.
In spite of the fact that charges of Eurocentrism or even ‘moderno-centrism’ are widely discussed in sociology and anthropology, it remains the case that most theoretical tools in the social sciences continue to rely on taken-for-granted approaches developed from within the modern Western intellectual tradition, whilst concepts developed on the basis of extensive anthropological evidence and which challenged commonplaces of modernist thinking, have been either marginalised and ignored, or trivialised. By challenging the assumed neo-Kantian and neo-Hegelian foundations of modern social theory, and by helping to shed new light on the fundamental ideas of major figures in social theory, such as Nietzsche, Dilthey, Weber, Elias, Voegelin, Foucault and Koselleck, whilst also establishing connections between the perspectives gained through modern social and cultural anthropology and the central concerns of classical philosophical anthropology Contemporary Liminality offers a new direction in social thought.
Prospective Proposals should be sent to: arpad@ucc.ie