Social Research articles from September 2004

Social Research archives from September 2004

Editor's introduction.(Editorial)
September 22, 2004... "TIME GOES BY," AND HERE WE ARE IN OUR SEVENTIETH YEAR--BETTER, we think, than ever. Our quarterly issues, which for many years have been largely thematic, continue to address serious concerns in the life of the mind and the state of the world...

A note on the seventieth anniversary of Social Research.(Editorial)
September 22, 2004... FOR SIX DECADES SOCIAL RESEARCH HAS CARRIED THE VOICES OF MEN and women who have explored fundamental human issues such as hate, love, violence, and altruism in ways that have forced the authors, and enabled their readers, to think beyond their...

Philosophy and politics.
September 22, 2004... THE GULF BETWEEN PHILOSOPHY AND POLITICS OPENED HISTORICALLY with the trial and condemnation of Socrates, which in the history of political thought plays the same role of a turning point that the trial and condemnation of Jesus plays in the...

The making of a "Bourgeois Revolution".
September 22, 2004... TO ENTERTAIN ANY THEORY ABOUT REVOLUTION," WRITES JOHN DUNN, "--and it is not even possible to identify just what events do constitute revolutions without assuming some theory about the meaning of revolution--is to assume a political...

The nation and nationalism in Germany.
September 22, 2004... THE MUTABILITY OF THE IDEA OF A NATION AND THE SIGNIFICANCE of the action based on this idea--namely, nationalism--emerges with special clarity in the case of Germany. The nation and nationalism are closely linked: the substantive determination...

Capitalism by democratic design? Democratic theory facing the triple transition in East Central Europe.
September 22, 2004... CONVERGENCE THEORIES OF THE 1960s AND 1970s PREDICTED THAT THE two rival political-economic systems would more or less rapidly assimilate each other and inevitably move toward one another. The East was to be enriched with market elements, while...

Liberalism and the right to culture.
September 22, 2004... SETTING UP THE PROBLEM HUMAN BEINGS HAVE A RIGHT TO CULTURE--NOT JUST ANY CULTURE, but their own. The right to culture has far-reaching implications for the liberal conception of the state. A culture essentially requires a group, and the...

The seductiveness of moral disgust.(Critical Essay)
September 22, 2004... HEART OF DARKNESS IN HEART OF DARKNESS, CONRAD OBSERVED THAT IMPERIALISM, WHEN looked at closely, is not a pretty thing. "What redeems it is the idea only." The ferocious rapacity of Kurtz's search for ivory is ennobled in his own eyes by...

Ethics and biogenetic art.
September 22, 2004... IN A FORMER ARTICLE IN THIS JOURNAL, I DWELT AT SOME LENGTH ON the tendency of the fruits of technological invention to acquire a force of their own and, as it were, make themselves independent of their makers (Jonas, 1982). "Once developed by...

Economic methodology: heterogeneity and relevance.
September 22, 2004... THIS IS AN ISSUE-RAISING, QUESTION-MONGERING PAPER. MANY MORE questions will be asked than will, in fact, be answered. The intention is to propose a broad-based critique of contemporary economic methodology starting off from the recognition of...

Economics as universal science.
September 22, 2004... ECONOMICS HAS BECOME THE IMPERIAL SOCIAL SCIENCE. IT IS THE ONLY branch of social inquiry that enjoys a Nobel prize. It has been celebrated in a massive four-volume, 4-million word "dictionary," through which there runs, like an Ariadne's...

What does it mean to be an "American"?
September 22, 2004... THERE IS NO COUNTRY CALLED AMERICA. WE LIVE IN THE UNITED STATES of America, and we have appropriated the adjective "American" even though we can claim no exclusive title to it. Canadians and Mexicans are also Americans, but they have...

Squaring the hermeneutic circle.
September 22, 2004... PROFESSIONAL TREND-WATCHERS CANNOT HAVE FAILED TO NOTICE the appearance of a novel interpretive social science, and much must already have been written to introduce this literature to the public. There is bound to be more, but it is not my...

A private reading of Andre Gide's public Journal.(Critical Essay)
September 22, 2004... WHEN I WAS EIGHT, MY MOTHER GAVE ME A DIARY WITH A LOCK AND a key. It was made in Turkey in the early 1960s. The fact that this fancy notebook was intended as a "diary" at that time in Turkey was in itself interesting. Until I received my...

Life as narrative.
September 22, 2004... I WOULD LIKE TO TRY OUT AN IDEA THAT MAY NOT BE QUITE READY, indeed may not be quite possible. But I have no doubt it is worth a try. It has to do with the nature of thought and with one of its uses. It has been traditional to treat thought, so...

The mythology of masquerading animals, or, bestiality.
September 22, 2004... CULTURES THROUGHOUT THE WORLD REPRESENT OUR DECEPTIVE relationships with animals as masquerades, which operate in both directions: in our rituals, humans often masquerade as animals, but in our myths we imagine that animals masquerade as...

Professional liars.
September 22, 2004... PREAMBLE: WHAT IS THE SUBJECT? MY TITLE IS A COME-ON, BUT IT SUGGESTS THE ISSUES THE PAPER embraces. The notion of a professional liar suggests someone who tells lies for a living, perhaps someone who tells lies well, with conviction and...

Literature and technology: nature's "lawful offspring in man's art".
September 22, 2004... MY RUBRIC MAY BE THOUGHT TO COVER AT LEAST THREE DIFFERENT questions, each of them vast and complex. The first concerns the technologies contributing to and shaping the formation of the activities and institutions of literature throughout...