Daniel Bell

This document critically reviews the theories of the avant-garde of both the Left and the Right put forward between the 1920s – the time of the vigorous assertion of the avant-garde – and the late 1970s – the beginning of the conservative turn led by Regan and Thatcher and reflected in cultural, change. The focus is on modern autonomous art and the historical avant-garde art movements. Art is first of all put in its place by locating it in the context of the institutional framework of modern society. This includes historical references to the emergence of the modern concept of art and of the philosophical discipline of aesthetics. The review of the theories opens with analyses of Ortega y Gassett and Poggioli’s proposals dating from 1925 and 1968 respectively. Important among the theories of the Left are those of the representatives of Critical Theory such as Lukács, Adorno, Benjamin, Marcuse and Bürger. Among the Right, both the German and American Neo-conservatives are considered, Gehlen, Ritter and Marquard representing the former and Bell that latter. The analysis closes with final reflections on the concepts of the autonomy of art and of the avant-garde which become comprehensible only within the context of rationalised and disenchanted (i.e. disillusioned and enlightened) modern society.

Soziologische Zeitdiagnosen sind ein zwischen akademischem Diskurs und öffentlicher Debatte angesiedeltes Genre, in dem die Gegenwart als Epochenbruch dargestellt wird. In diesem Beitrag wird erstens das Verhältnis zwischen Zeitdiagnosen und akademischer Soziologie umrissen. Zweitens werden einige Unterschiede zwischen Zeitdiagnosen und Gesellschaftstheorien diskutiert. Drittens wird das für Zeitdiagnosen charakteristische Argumentieren im Modus "stiller Revolutionen" nachgezeichnet: die Behauptung, sozialer Wandel sei umfassend und gegenwärtig und dennoch unsichtbar, d.h. latent. Der Beitrag schließt mit einigen Überlegungen zur Legitimität zeitdiagnostischen Argumentierens in der Soziologie und einem Ausblick auf weiterführende Forschung zu einer Wissenschaftssoziologie der Sozialwissenschaften.

Este trabajo pretende hacer un acercamiento sociológico precisamente a los “objetos” culturales como elemento de una identificación colectiva y a su vez como elementos que construyen la identidad, misma que es de carácter fútil debido a que estos objetos no dejan de ser por sí mismos capitales de consumo fácilmente adquiridos en el mercado.
Después de hacer una revisión conceptual de los términos de identidad e identificación y relacionándolo con la teoría crítica y la del interaccionismo simbólico pretendo hacer una revisión cuantitativa superficial que dé cuenta del carácter divergente del objeto de identificación como elemento subjetivo en la formación de la identidad

This paper investigates how key social issues related to American culture, social character, and politics are addressed in the work of two of America’s leading liberal sociologists, David Riesman and Daniel Bell. It maps out the trajectory of Riesman’s and Bell’s early contributions to a critique of mass society in post-war America, as well as Bell’s later formulation of “liberalism in crisis” and his assessment of culture in The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism. This analysis pays particular attention to the intellectual, biographical, and social settings that helped to shape the often conflicting ideas of each thinker, and examines the discursive shifts within liberal thinking as it attempted to explain and deal with perceived new social crises from the 1950s to the present.

Il saggio punta a leggere nell'opera di Daniel Bell la parabola nascente del neoconservatorismo sullo sfondo della Great Society e della radicalizzazione del movimento afroamericano, la crisi del Welfare State e la rinnovata centralità del mercato nello scenario globale degli anni Settanta. L'obiettivo è quello di mettere in luce come il neoconservatorismo sia una politica dei limiti del liberalismo di fronte alla «continuità» della «tradizione culturale» della società: una tensione, per molti versi condivisa dal neoli-beralismo in ascesa, a ristabilire l'ordine depositato nella "storia" del tessuto sociale e stratificato nei suoi rapporti di potere. The essay aims at reading in the works of Daniel Bell the path of neoconservatism since its very beginning against the background of the Great Society and the rise of the black movement, the crisis of the Welfare State and the renewed centrality of the market in the global scenario of the 1970s. The objective is to show that neoconservatism is basically a politics of the limits of liberalism in front of the «continuity» of the «cultural tradition» of society: an effort in many ways shared by rising neoliberalism to reestablish the order embedded in the "history" of the social fabric and in its power relations.

This paper argues that "intellectual property" and "information" represent the alienated form of labor in a high-tech economy.  It looks at the cultural, economic, and intellectual history of the information economy, using a variety of theoretical approaches to analyze the role that high-technology and intellectual property play in contemporary political economy.  It considers computing, biotech, pharmaceuticals, entertainment and higher education in light of the ideas of Paolo Virno, Michael Hardt, Antonio Negri, and other thinkers.

Las contradicciones culturales del capitalismo, publicado por Daniel Bell en 1976, ejerció una visible influencia en los debates intelectuales de esos años y ha mantenido una presencia relativamente constante en la literatura sociológica. Bell sostuvo principalmente que la cultura había cambiado radicalmente en una dirección que la hacían incompatible con la reproducción de la economía capitalista. A 40 años de la aparición del libro, en este artículo buscamos valorar la consistencia de esta tesis. Nuestra perspectiva es crítica. Queremos mostrar sus debilidades revelando el uso inmoderado de la idea de Weber sobre la relación entre ética protestante y desarrollo del capitalismo, las deficiencias de la teoría de la sociedad que construye Bell para pensar la existencia de contradicciones y la adopción de conceptos de cultura y religión demasiados restrictivos.

This study critically explores education to work transitions among young working class individuals in the city of Glasgow during the period of relative economic decline that followed the 2008 financial crisis. It seeks to understand how those ending their education and entering the labour market at 16/17 years old experience work and how far those experiences may have implications for formal education and the way we shape youth transitions. By focusing on the group most likely to experience sustained unemployment it is hoped a broad understanding of how education constructs expectations of work can be identified.

The following sociological study analyses whether the contemporary definition of work passed on to young people via education serves to reinforce their social position, thereby contributing to their relative failure to combat austerity and unwillingness to consider alternative work forms. By situating the research in the city of Glasgow a proposal for identifying broader trends across the UK and beyond within similar post-industrial working class environments is presented. The thesis specifically considers perceptions of work among final year secondary school pupils in an attempt to highlight not only how the reality of austerity is affecting school leavers’ aspirations but how it alters the way in which they perceive what work is.

The ongoing economic difficulties encountered in Scotland as a result of austerity has seen the country suffer a marked decline in youth employment during and after the financial crisis of 2008 with 26.4% of 16-19 year olds experiencing unemployment in 2010/11, an increase from 17.9% in 2007/8 (Anderson & Dowling, 2012). The reality that arises from the significant fiscal cuts associated with austerity is not only an economic consideration but a fundamental question of identity. The important role employment plays in shaping our identity within a community cannot be understated, or as Hughes (1975:209) puts it ‘there is something irrevocable about a choice of occupation’. Included within the social and economic capital we derive from our occupations are a number of other forms of capital which stem from culture to education (Stevenson, 2003). It is the hypothetical contention of the study that young people in Glasgow since the onset of the 2008 financial crisis are considerably deprived of many essential forms of capital and as such will be further disadvantaged going into an adulthood which is equally insecure.

In seeking to understand what constitutes work for those rapidly approaching the reality of having to find their first full time job arguments will be made to reconsider the theoretical foundations upon which we view youth transitions and reform careers advice post adolescence to further reflect the needs of those least likely to benefit from continued education. On a theoretical level, the research attempts to reconceptualise the ideas of André Gorz (1999) in relation to the new economic climate born out of the global financial crisis and seeks to understand them in terms of youth and young adulthood within Scotland and the wider UK. More generally, the research endeavours to inform policy debates on class, education and social mobility, specifically as a critique of the social consequences of fiscal austerity in communities already suffering from a sustained lack of investment. The analysis of young people’s transitional narratives after one year in the labour market presented herein will in turn inform a comprehensive understanding of how education prepares such individuals for the world of work.

Drawing on 230 detailed survey questionnaires and 30 in depth interviews with working class participants the following sociological study constitutes a unique research project based on a mixed-method design complemented by secondary sources leading to the following conclusions. There was little to suggest in either of the data collection stages that the young people who took part in this study have been exposed to or are cognisant of alternative work forms beyond the classic liberal model of employment and social security. Further, it would seem that young people opting for transitions directly from school to work actively embrace the precarious nature of this process, finding some element of pride in having opted for an ostensibly more difficult path. Many participants were largely hostile to narratives of welfare or social security and when radical alternatives such as Universal Basic Income were discussed there was a common tendency expressed to be dismissive of it. Further, there was a generally high prevalence of socially conservative attitudes regarding place, community, and identity evidenced throughout. Participants who had left education to pursue work immediately after school had by and large struggled in their year in the labour market with most reporting transitions fraught with difficulty and precarity framed by individualisation and alienation. Allied to this was a strong perception that this was a generation that had received a difficult hand in the economy, with accounts of resentment clear presenting evidence that the period of economic austerity from 2008 onwards has had a marked effect on how young people think about work.

Tarihteki her gelişme ve destekleyici fikirler karşıt fikirleri doğurduğu gibi sanayi devrimi de kısa sürede karşıtlarını var etti. İngiltere'de 1811 yılından itibaren örgütlenmeye başlayan işçiler yeni makinalarla donatılan atölyelerin kendilerini işsiz bırakacaklarını tahmin ediyordu. Ancak Luddite mensupları yalnızca teori geliştirmediler ve bunu aktif reaksiyona dönüştürdüler. Kendi aralarında oluşturdukları kod sistemiyle küçük gruplara bölünerek birbirlerine yalnızca rakamlarla hitap ederlerken belirledikleri atölyeleri ve fabrikalara saldırarak tahrip etmeye başladılar. Ancak zamanın şartlarına uymayanların bu şartları tersine çevirmeleri olanaklı değildir. Endüstrileşme o denli kalıcı olma yolunda ilerliyordu ki bu eylemler kısa sürede bastırılarak Luddite üyeleri ya idam edildiler ya da sürüne gönderildiler. Teknoloji ilerledikçe her toplumun muhafazakârları bu gelişmelere belirli oranlarda tepki göstermişlerdir. Üretim modellerinin gelişmesi istihdam olanaklarını geleneksel sektörlere daha fazla daraltacağı için gelişmeler bu bakımdan reddedilme olasılığına sahip olabilir. Ancak endüstri/teknoloji karşıtlığının devrim biçiminde devam ettirilmesi gerektiği reddiye alanına özgü özgün bir seçeneği var etmiştir. Amerikalı Matematik Doktoru Theodore Kaczynski, yazdığı Sanayi Toplumu ve Geleceği adlı manifestoda sanayi devrimi ve teknolojiyi büyük bir tehlike olarak tanımlamış ve mutlaka ortadan kaldırılması gerektiğini savunmuştur. 195.maddede: ''Devrim, uluslararası ve dünya çapında olmalıdır. Ülkeden ülkeye yayılma temelinde yürütülemez. Örneğin, ne zaman ABD'de teknolojik ilerlemenin ya da ekonomik büyümenin biraz kısıtlanması öne sürülse, insanlar histeri krizlerine tutulup, teknolojide geri kalırsak Japonların bizi geçeceğini söylüyorlar. Kutsal robotlar! Japonlar bizden daha çok araba satarsa, dünya yörüngesinden fırlar! (Milliyetçilik, teknolojinin en önemli destekçilerindendir.) Daha da mantıklısı, görece demokratik uluslar geri kalırken Çin, Vietnam ve Kuzey Kore gibi diktatörlükle yönetilen uluslar ilerlerse, sonunda diktatörlerin dünyaya hakim olacağı iddia edilebilir. Bu da endüstriyel sisteme mümkün olduğunca her yerde aynı zamanda saldırılmasının bir nedeni.'' 196.maddede ise ulusların yıkılmasının endüstriyel ulusları yıkıma götüreceğini belirtmiştir. Sanayi karşıtı bu tez ile ultra küresel tezler ulusların varlığına muhalefet noktasında birleşmişlerdir. Ancak ultra küresel tezler ulusların noktalanmalarını istikrar için gerekli görürlerken, Kaczynaski karşı devrim için lüzum addetmiştir: ''Devrimciler, dünya ekonomisini birbirine bağlayan anlaşmaları desteklemeyi düşünmelidirler. NAFTA veya GATT gibi serbest ticaret anlaşmaları kısa vadede doğaya zarar verebilir, ancak ülkelerarası ekonomik bağımlılığı güçlendirdiğinden uzun vadede yararlı olabilir. Güçlü bir 1 Türkiye Algı Merkezi, Politik Fütürist

Memulai sebuah presentasi ide-ide melalui sebuah teks (tulisan) yang mengalir bebas tanpa ikatan yang jelas dan tanpa batasan yang pasti, merupakan sebuah kebebasan bereksperesi yang nyata (menurut penulis). Kiranya begitulah tulisan ini terbentuk, berawal dari kebungungan-kebingungan, ketidakjelasan, kumpulan kontradiksi dari alam pikiran penulis tentang sebuah konsep ide. Yang pada akhirnya dewasa ini telah berproses dan menjadi bentuk baru yang sering kita sebut sebagai Ideologi. Mungkin pembaca juga akan merasa aneh dan kebingungan ketika membaca coretan-coretan kata penulis ini, karena memang penulis tidak berniat memberikan sebuah konfirmasi, kritik, ataupun deskripsi yang jelas dan rigid tentang sebuah konsep ideologi. Tulisan ini hanyalah sebuah bentuk pelampiasan berbagai macam absurditas dan pertentangan-pertentangan dalam otak penulis tentang sebuah gagasan "Ideologi". Banyaknya pertanyaan-pertanyaan dan keraguan yang muncul dalam pikiran penulis tentang sebuah ide, seperti apakah ide itu, apakah ide itu awal dari ideologi, apakah ideologi itu sebuah disiplin keilmuan, dan masih banyak kebingungan-kebingungan penulis tentang hal itu. Apakah kemudian ideologi itu bisa dijelaskan, ataukah malah keraguan terhadap ide-ide itu sendiri adalah sebuah bentuk ideologi, lagi-lagi penulis hanya memberikan hamparan kebingungan yang tidak jelas (mungkin) yang penulis alami. Mungkin tulisan ini tidak akan memberikan jawaban-jawaban terhadap pertanyaan-pertanyaan diatas karena lagi-lagi ini hanyalah sebuah manifestasi kompleksitas alam pikiran penulis. Meski demikian dalam keadaan sadar ataupun tidak sadar tanpa paksaan tulisan ini terlahir. Memanifestasikan sebuah kebingungan melalui tulisan ini memang abstrak dan tidak jelas karena memang sesuatu yang belum terlihat jelas lah yang penulis tampilkan dalam coretan-coretan ini. Setidaknya ada sebuah sarana dan arena dimana penulis ini dapat melampiaskan kompleksitas dan kekacauan yang terjadi dalam diri ini. Mungkin berawal dari ketidak jelasan dan kebingungan ini lah yang kemudian akan membawa pada sebuah pencerahan dalam diri, walaupun penulis juga tidak tahu apakah itu akan benar-benar terjadi.
Tulisan ini di tulis dan dipersembahkan dalam agenda Sekolah Ideologi yang diselenggarakan oleh Pimpinan Cabang Ikatan Mahasiswa Muhammadiyah Kabupaten Lamongan pada tanggal 28-30 April 2017

Until the disruption of the sociological orthodoxy in the 1960s and 1970s, most of the American sociological works shared a “logic of segregation” that scientifically shaped and legitimized the boundaries of distinction in American society. The aim of this paper is to shed light on how the logic of segregation affected the thought of the contemporary American sociologist Daniel Bell in three different phases of his intellectual journey: in the fifties when he was influenced by the structural-functionalist paradigm, then in the sixties, when he outlined the theory of post-industrial society and, finally, in the seventies, when the rise of a strong demand for social rights prompted him to deal with the paradoxes of the welfare state and the break-up of the American social order.

Within the field of art theory, “precarity” and “transience” call to mind the debates around dematerialization initiated in the 1960s. Lucy Lippard famously argued that, as an “escape attempt” from the market, conceptual artists developed strategies of dematerialization which correlated with non-object and ephemeral approaches. Rather than discuss dematerialization in relation to ephemerality, this paper seeks to take an opposite perspective: instead of the ephemeral in art, can we talk about indestructibility? Although it might seem counterintuitive to interconnect dematerialization and indestructibility, within the economic sphere, precarity and indestructibility appear dialectically conjoined: the increasingly precariousness of labour is pledged to the alleged “indestructibility” of neoliberal capitalism. To ask questions, then, about indestructibility in art is to invite questions about art’s criticality and oppositionality towards contemporary post-Fordist society.

Two films, which present destruction in the art gallery may serve as a visual contrast of how immaterial art has indestructibility as one of its dimensions. In Tim Burton’s Batman, the Joker and his henchmen destroy paintings and sculptures in Gotham City Museum, while in The International semi-automatic weaponry punctures holes through the Guggenheim, and yet, many of the artworks survive, for they are immaterial video projections. This paper will explore artists—Yves Klein’s voids and immaterial spaces above the Seine, and the work of John Gerrard—that rethink indestructibility through immateriality rather than trying to make material objects tougher, thereby showing the entwining of the precarious and permanence and demonstrating how a rereading of the dematerialization of art is possible.

Punktem wyjścia jest zaniepokojenie związane z zanikaniem fundamentów kultury europejskiej. W paradygmacie klasycznym artysta pracował na bazie idealnego obrazu w swej duszy. Ta wizja została odrzucona. Nowożytność zaproponowała ludzkości racjonalizm, wolność i równość. Efektem tych dobrych intencji jest psychodeliczny bazar. Człowiek idąc w nim jest zdezorientowany, a jego odczuwanie doprowadzone do granic wytrzymałości. Ta wykorzeniona istota skazane jest na kulturalne tułactwo. Ucieczką od tego impasu jest powrót do pytania Archimedesa o punkt oparcia i zastanowienie się nad tym, co w ludzkiej naturze niezmienne a co przypadkowe i przemijalne.


The Classic Pattern and Mass Man as Interpreted by the Contemporary Theorists of Society and Culture: Daniel Bell, Allan Bloom, and Jose Ortega y Gasset

SUMMARY
The starting point for the analysis is an anxiety associated with the vanishing of the foundations of European culture. In the classical paradigm, the artist worked on the basis of an ideal image that s/he carried in his/her soul. However, this vision was rejected. Modernity offered rationalism, freedom, and equality to the humankind. The result of this fundamental change is the so-called “psychedelic bazaar” – a certain form of culture continually offering new, surprising and often extreme experiences. By following them, a person is disoriented and his/her feeling is driven to the breaking point. Consequently, s/he is like an uprooted being condemned to cultural wandering. The way out of this impasse is to return to Archimedes’ question about the point of support, and to ponder over the invariable in human culture and the accidental and transitory.

Based on a discussion of the literature on the Christian Right and the tea party movement, the paper starts with a critique of the common notion of a fundamental divide between right-wing evangelicals and libertarians," i.e. "value" and "business conservatives.” It criticizes the false dichotomy between allegedly "material" economic interests and allegedly "immaterial" values. By doing so it problematizes the underlying return of Lukacs’ian/Frankfurt School type of theories of "false consciousness," which fall behind the achievements of Gramscian and post-Althusserian theorizations of ideology. Drawing on Gramsci's theory of hegemony, it then tries to reconstruct the emergence of historically specific free-market religiousness in the United States by looking at the sociology of religion and its political history up until the development of the welfare state. It points towards the lack of a religious/Christian Democracy cleavage in the U.S. and, as a consequence, the specifically particularist nature of the U.S. welfare state which, during the crisis of Fordism, facilitated the construction of a top-middle coalition in favor of rolling-back the welfare state and its transformation into a workfare state. Building on Gramsci as well as insights from geographical Marxism, the article then proceeds by linking the regional specifics of right-wing evangelicalism in the South and bordering Mid-West to U.S. capital's domestic spatial fixes during the late 1960s and early 1970s against static theories of hegemony, which focus solely on ideological vacuums rather than questions of class-making, class-unmaking and class-remaking as explanations for ideological developments. The paper concludes by making the case that challenging right-wing populism in the United States would necessitate a break with the neoliberal anti-discrimination approach professed by the liberal Democrats given that the unorganized Southern white working class majority was never part of any historic bloc and compromise, neither the Fordist one nor the neoliberal one.

Abstract: This article critically discusses the intellectual and conceptual shifts that have occurred in information society theories (and also policies) in the previous four decades. We will examine the topic by focusing on the work of Daniel Bell and Manuel Castells, arguably two of the most important infor-mation society theorists. A key element in the academic shift from “post-industrial ” (Bell) thinking to the discourse on “network society ” (Castells) is that it has brought forward a different way of under-standing the role of the state vis-a-vis the development of new information and communication tech-nologies, as well as a new assessment of the role of the state in the economy and society at large. Against the Keynesian undertones of Bell’s ideas, Castells ’ network society theory represents a ne-oliberally restructured version of “information society ” that is associated with the rise of flexibility, indi-viduality and a new culture of innovation. We argue that these chan...

Kısaca-Tarihsel Süreç İçerisinde Klasik Marksist/Materyalist Diyalektik ve Eleştirisi

Klasik Marksizm ve Klasik Marksizm'in Eleştirisi

Özgürcan Şenbayrak @Manikamoral @Mavi Artemis

https://anadolu.academia.edu/ÖzgürcanŞenbayrak
https://www.facebook.com/Manikamoral/
https://manikamoral.tumblr.com/

¿Qué papel juega la comunidad a la que pertenecemos a la hora de fijar la autoridad normativa de nuestras acciones? Con ayuda de la filosofía de Wittgenstein, se trata de defender aquí que no es la comunidad propia la autoridad última en nuestros afanes normativos.

כיצד מומצאת מחדש זהותה התרבותית של אירופה לאחר שואה וחורבן חסרי תקדים? כיצד המשיגו הוגים את החויה הניהיליסטית והגיבו אליה, ובאיזה אופן הם התמודדו עם האחר הלא-אירופי? ומהו היחס שבין פילוסופיה לפוליטיקה בעידן בו אירופה מאבדת את מרכזיותה ההיסטורית? קורס זה מתמקד בהגות אירופית בעשור הבתר-מלחמתי ומבקש לחשוף את הסטודנטים אל הזרמים ההגותיים והפולמוסים הפילוסופיים המרכזיים בה, תוך הקניית מושגים וכלים בסיסיים בהיסטוריה אינטלקטואלית המשלבת בין תולדות עם-ישראל להיסטוריה הכללית. במסגרת הקורס נקרא טקסטים שהפכו לאבני פינה בהגות של המאה העשרים לצד טקסטים מוכרים פחות שנכתבו בהקשר היסטורי דומה אותם נבקש לנתח הן מן הזוית הפילוסופית-הגותית וכן דרך הזוית ההיסטוריציסטית-קונטקסטואלית. נבקש לעמוד על המתח שבין שתי צורות קריאה אלה, ובאופן זה לפתח דיון אינטרדיסציפלינרי ואינטרטקסטואלי פורה. בין ההוגים שיידונו בקורס: סארטר, היידיגר, יאספרס, לאקאן, אדורנו, האייק, פופר, טלמון, ברלין, לוינאס, קלוד לוי-שטראוס, פאנון, פוגלין, ליאו שטראוס ועוד.

קורס משותף יחד עם סדריק כהן-סקלי

The article discusses Daniel Bell’s reflections on the American State between World War II and the political, economic and social crisis of the 1970s. The A. rejects the traditional image of US as a stateless society and shows how Bell’s sociological approach permits rethinking the American State, pointing out how the coming of post-industrial society brings about a new political organization, which draws on the interplay between public, private and hybrid governmental structures. This fluid and polycentric political organization - the post-industrial State - is presumed to reduce the increasing administrative overload, fueled by the expansion of social programs, and to defuse social unrest. Bell calls for a privatization of some social functions of the State, foreshadowing the contemporary transition from government to governance.

En este texto presentamos la traducción del primer capítulo de la obra The radical right. The New American Right Expanded and Updated, publicada en 1962. Dicho capítulo lleva por título “The dispossessed”. El libro, en el que participan numerosos autores, fue editado por el sociólogo Daniel Bell y el mencionado capítulo es de su autoría. En esta breve introducción a la versión española nos guían las siguientes preguntas: primero, por qué es interesante hoy leer y traducir a un autor como Daniel Bell. Segundo, en qué medida su contribución académica, junto a la de otros autores de su época, puede ser considerada un clásico contemporáneo, esto es, nos sirve para arrojar luz y aproximarnos al presente y a la realidad de un fenómeno como la derecha radical. Y tercero, hasta qué punto las propuestas y el análisis de Bell pueden aplicarse a otras corrientes políticas y actores radicales a la luz de los cambios acaecidos en el último medio siglo, en esta segunda modernidad de signo reflexivo.

This chapter explores possible clues to the nature of “Cold War liberalism” by comparing how different Western European and American sociologists interacted with the politics of the Cold War in the 1950s and the student movements of the 1960s. It shows how two different groups which, by the late 1950s, shared a sociological interpretation of postwar society as “industrial society,” had markedly different reactions to the Cold War, a divide that would resurface in the polarizing atmosphere of the late 1960s. Against an often rosy self-interpretation of “Cold War liberals” and their sympathizers, I argue that Cold War politics among sociologists did not reflect an abiding attachment to a “liberal tradition,” but rather an ad hoc antitotalitarian politics that often drew on pessimistic and elitist arguments against mass democracy and performed the very ideological inflation of politics it claimed to guard against. I thus suggest that a temperamental pessimism with a tendency to react against even the possibility of mass politics was more fundamental to “Cold War liberalism” in its own moment than the “liberal tradition” into which it would be fashioned later. Yet, at the same time, sociologists who veered into Cold War antitotalitarian politics still shared an interpretation of contemporary society with others who viewed mass politics and social contestation more positively. While examining the nature of Cold War liberalism, this chapter points to a larger context in which the meaning of both liberalism and socialism were contested and constricted—with the helping hand of sociology.

En este ensayo se reflexiona en torno a algunos recorridos genealógicos del término "revolución", su anclaje en el socialismo y los movimientos emancipatorios del Tercer Mundo  en el siglo XX y su derrota a fines de la década de 1980, y su potencial de interrogación crítica en el siglo XXI.

J.D. Salinger’s _Franny and Zooey_ opens with “Franny,” in which a generic narrator constructs a leading lady in accordance with various McLuhanian cultural clichés; while the longer narrative, “Zooey,” closes the text with a critical interpretation, by narrator and elder brother Buddy, of Franny’s crisis: an archetype of her vain tendencies to distort the fact of her construction by clichés from advertising, film, and elsewhere. Buddy’s wry cynicism toward Franny’s refusal to accept her social limitations uncannily resonates with an important social divide, sketched out by Daniel Bell, that existed between two generations of American ‘youth’ who came of age before and after WWII: the sensible, Twice-Born generation (of age in the 1930s, like Buddy), versus the self-directed After-Born (of age during the 1950s, like Franny). In this article, I explore Salinger’s expression of a crisis in social conceptions of womanhood during the 1950s and early-60s; situated just outside a realist frame, _Franny and Zooey_ refracts dominant sociological theories of the 50s (such as Daniel Bell’s), whose deliberations on society “after ideology” omit women’s experiences. In agreement with critics such as Alva Myrdal, Viola Klein, and Betty Friedan, I examine “Zooey” as reflecting the blind spots inherent in ‘post-ideological’ social discourses which construct feminine identity and maturity along a spectrum of clichés. Through its host of resonances with representations of women “after ideology,” _Franny and Zooey_ illustrates the ways outdated social norms and troubling mass cultural frameworks formulate women’s options concerning professional and personal success; a dark burlesque, _Franny and Zooey_ highlights the comic distortions and blind-spots inherent to ‘modern’ ‘leading ladies,’ like Franny Glass.

Forthcoming, Winter 2020.

As the economic malaise lingers on and mainstream active managers increasingly fail to deliver on “over-performance” expectations, institutional asset owners are switching to passive in droves. World Pension Council (WPC) experts estimate that the relative share of passive investments could double in the next five years, reaching up to 40% of pension and insurance assets by 2020.
Pension funds are collectively losing out on billions of dollars every year because of artificially low interest rates while the governments lower the debt servicing bills, resulting in a transfer of wealth from the future income of pensioners to enrich the Treasury department and a handful of financiers. . .

This paper addresses the shift in Allan Kaprow’s practice from the late 1960s toward a focus on organised labour, group dynamics and individual social relations. Termed Activities, the aim of these works differed from Kaprow’s earlier Happenings, a genre routed in theatre. While the latter presented clusters of choreographed life-like events in non-art contexts “to ritualize a mix of lifelike elements and fantasy”, Activities concentrated on heightening the consciousness of participants in the completion of otherwise mundane tasks . I will argue that these works functioned as resistance to an emergent post-industrial environment, and developed into a tool that Kaprow would describe as facilitating “basic research”, its value “measured by its practical yield."