Science As a Commodity: Disenchantment and Conspicuous Consumption
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Sociology As a Vocation 1 MICHAEL BURAWOY University of California-Berkeley [email protected]
Ó American Sociological Association 2016 DOI: 10.1177/0094306116653958 http://cs.sagepub.com FEATURED ESSAY Sociology as a Vocation 1 MICHAEL BURAWOY University of California-Berkeley [email protected] What does it mean to live for sociology, two spheres that must be kept apart. Weber today? In attempting to answer this question failed to grasp sociology’s place between I return to Max Weber’s famous lectures science and politics for two reasons: first, delivered toward the end of his life—one sociology as a discipline was still embryonic on science as a vocation and the other on pol- and pre-professional. It needed to be safe- itics as a vocation. He presented ‘‘Science as guarded from politics. Second, he had not a Vocation’’ in November 1917 toward the developed a coherent view of civil society end of World War I and the more pessimistic populated by institutions that could ground ‘‘Politics as a Vocation’’ in January 1919 a standpoint between science and politics.3 after Germany’s defeat.2 The essays them- Yet, and here is the paradox, his concep- selves exemplify Weber’s methodology— tion of sociology as an interpretive under- interpreting social action within the external standing of value-oriented social action calls conditions that shape it. Weber not only for its own value standpoint since sociology explicates the meaning of ‘‘vocation’’— cannot be its own exception. As a form of what it means to ‘‘live for’’ as well to ‘‘live social action it too must be impelled by value off’’ science and politics—but situates their commitments. -
151545957.Pdf
Universit´ede Montr´eal Towards a Philosophical Reconstruction of the Dialogue between Modern Physics and Advaita Ved¯anta: An Inquiry into the Concepts of ¯ak¯a´sa, Vacuum and Reality par Jonathan Duquette Facult´ede th´eologie et de sciences des religions Th`ese pr´esent´ee `ala Facult´edes ´etudes sup´erieures en vue de l’obtention du grade de Philosophiae Doctor (Ph.D.) en sciences des religions Septembre 2010 c Jonathan Duquette, 2010 Universit´ede Montr´eal Facult´edes ´etudes sup´erieures et postdoctorales Cette th`ese intitul´ee: Towards A Philosophical Reconstruction of the Dialogue between Modern Physics and Advaita Ved¯anta: An Inquiry into the Concepts of ¯ak¯a´sa, Vacuum and Reality pr´esent´ee par: Jonathan Duquette a ´et´e´evalu´ee par un jury compos´edes personnes suivantes: Patrice Brodeur, pr´esident-rapporteur Trichur S. Rukmani, directrice de recherche Normand Mousseau, codirecteur de recherche Solange Lefebvre, membre du jury Varadaraja Raman, examinateur externe Karine Bates, repr´esentante du doyen de la FESP ii Abstract Toward the end of the 19th century, the Hindu monk and reformer Swami Vivekananda claimed that modern science was inevitably converging towards Advaita Ved¯anta, an important philosophico-religious system in Hinduism. In the decades that followed, in the midst of the revolution occasioned by the emergence of Einstein’s relativity and quantum physics, a growing number of authors claimed to discover striking “par- allels” between Advaita Ved¯anta and modern physics. Such claims of convergence have continued to the present day, especially in relation to quantum physics. In this dissertation, an attempt is made to critically examine such claims by engaging a de- tailed comparative analysis of two concepts: ¯ak¯a´sa in Advaita Ved¯anta and vacuum in quantum physics. -
Affluenza - Pages 6/4/05 9:03 AM Page 3
Affluenza - pages 6/4/05 9:03 AM Page 3 Chapter 1 What is affluenza? Af-flu-en-za n. 1. The bloated, sluggish and unfulfilled feeling that results from efforts to keep up with the Joneses. 2. An epidemic of stress, overwork, waste and indebtedness caused by dogged pursuit of the Australian dream. 3. An unsustainable addiction to economic growth.1 Wanting In 2004 the Australian economy grew by over $25 billion, yet the tenor of public debate suggests that the country is in a dire situation. We are repeatedly told of funding shortages for hos- pitals, schools, universities and public transport, and politicians constantly appeal to that icon of Australian spirit, the ‘Aussie battler’. Political rhetoric and social commentary continue to emphasise deprivation—as if we are living in the nineteenth century and the problems facing the country have arisen because we are not rich enough. When the Labor Party lost the federal election in 2004 it declared that, like the conservatives, it must pay more attention to growth and the economy. It would seem that achieving an economic growth rate of 4 per cent is the magic potion to cure all our ills. But how rich do we have to be before we are no longer a nation of battlers? Australia’s GDP has doubled since 1980; at 3 Affluenza - pages 6/4/05 9:03 AM Page 4 AFFLUENZA a growth rate of 3 per cent, it will double again in 23 years and quadruple 23 years after that. Will our problems be solved then? Or will the relentless emphasis on economic growth and higher incomes simply make us feel more dissatisfied? In the private domain, Australia is beset by a constant rumble of complaint—as if we are experiencing hard times. -
What Drives Conspicuous Consumption? – the Case of Chinese Consumers
What Drives Conspicuous Consumption? – The Case of Chinese Consumers Y. Henry Xie, [email protected] Abstract Conspicuous consumption refers to a type of consumer behavior that people display wealth by spending a large proportion of their incomes on luxury products and services (Trigg, 2001). Different from other goods, the satisfaction that conspicuous goods provide buyers often comes from audience’s reaction, as opposed to product’s actual use (Wong, 1997). In other words, consumers exhibit certain conspicuous consumption behaviors due to their hopes to be seen more favorably in the greater social hierarchy (Podoshen, Li, & Zhang, 2011). Chinese consumers present lucrative growth opportunities for the world’s leading consumer product manufacturers and retailers that particularly target the luxury and upscale layer of the Chinese market, highlighting a rosy display of conspicuous consumption in China. Consumers purchase products for material needs and social needs such as prestige and self expression (Belk, 1988). In this current study, we examine the direct impact of individual traits / factors (i.e. face consciousness, interdependent self-concept, and cultural capital) on conspicuous consumption of Chinese consumers. According to Midgley and Dowling (1978), personality traits as well as social participation affect new product adoption and search behavior. In this current study, we particularly examine the impact of the individual traits of face consciousness, interdependent self-concept, and cultural capital, as conspicuous consumption is closely related to consumers’ desire for exclusivity and conformity, as well as social status (e.g. Amaldoss & Jain, 2005). We also examine the moderating effects of consumer innovativeness. This current study provides an insight into conspicuous consumption behaviors of Chinese consumers. -
MWS 20.1 (2020) 5] ISSN 1470-8078 Doi: 10.15543/Maxweberstudies.20.1.5
Max Weber Studies Download Charlemagne font to printer before printing this (use Adobe Downloader). NB. This note will not show up as the text is white—do not delete. MAX WEBER STUDIES Editor Professor Sam Whimster (London) Associate Editors: Dr Austin Harrington (Leeds), Prof Duncan Kelly (Cambridge) Review Editor: Associate Professor Joshua Derman (Hong Kong) Editorial Board Professor Martin Albrow (London), Professor Peter Baehr (Hong Kong), Professor Hinnerk Bruhns (Paris), Professor Hans Henrik Bruun (Copenhagen), Professor David Chalcraft (Liverpool), Dr Xiangqun Chang (London), Professor Sven Eliæson (Uppsala), Dr A’gnes Erde’lyi (Budapest), Dr Jean-Pierre Grossein (Marseille), Dr Edith Hanke (Munich), Professor Dirk Kaesler (Marburg), Pro- fessor S tephen Kalberg (Boston, MA), Professor Thomas Kemple (Vancouver, BC), Professor Sung Ho Kim (Seoul), Professor Rainer Lepsius† (Heidelberg), Professor Klaus Lichtblau (Frankfurt), Sérgio da Mata (Ouro Preto, Brazil), Álvaro Morcillo Laiz (Berlin), Professor Masahiro Noguchi (Tokyo), D r Dr David Owen (Southampton, UK), Professor Kari Palonen (Jyväskylä, Finland), Professor Gian- franco Poggi (Trento, Italy), Professor Larry Ray (Canterbury, UK), Professor Guenther Roth† (New York), Professor Lawrence Scaff (Detroit), Professor Ralph Schroeder (Oxford), Professor Wolfgang Schwentker (Osaka), Professor Alan Scott (New South Wales), Professor Alan Sica (Pennsylvania), Victor Strazzeri (Bern), Professor Richard Swedberg (Ithaca), Dr Keith Tribe (Worcester, UK), Pro- fessor Stephen Turner -
'Science and Religion' Is
Investigating the ‘Science’ in ‘Eastern Religions’: A methodological inquiry The trope of ‘science and religion’ is usually employed in western academic circles as a shorthand for the historical narratives and the philosophical analyses of the various overlaps, oppositions, and disjunctions between empirical scientific methodologies and specifically Christian doctrines of God, creation, and redemption. Over the last five decades or so, the key terms ‘science’ and ‘religion’, understood in terms of these referents, have been minutely scrutinised, and various typologies of the relations, some more amicable than the others, between these categories have been proposed. More recently, the rubric of ‘Eastern Religions’ has sometimes been added to these discussions, where this category encompasses diverse spiritual strands which have received varying degrees of scholarly attention. The engagements of Tibetan Mahayana Buddhisms with quantum physics and neurobiology have been quite extensively studied, and various interpretations of the empirical sciences have been offered also from certain Hindu Vedantic perspectives. From a historical perspective, there is a conceptual-institutional divergence between the discourses of ‘science and Christianity’ and of ‘science and eastern religions’, in that while European science and Christianity emerged from a common intellectual and institutional matrix of post- Reformation cultures, and were thus crucially shaped by their mutual borrowings and hostilities, European science is a more recent arrival in various -
The Privileged Defense: Affluenza's Potential Impact on Counselors In
Article 73 The Privileged Defense: Affluenza’s Potential Impact on Counselors in Court Proceedings Ashley Clark Clark, Ashley, PhD, NCC, DCC, ACS, is a recent graduate from Walden University’s Counselor Education and Supervision program and current program manager for the Rappahannock Rapidan Community Services’ Young Adult Coordinated Care program, an evidence-based early intervention program for adolescents and young adults experiencing the first onset of psychosis. Her research interests include disability issues in counseling and current approaches to multicultural counseling. Abstract Concerns regarding affluenza as an epidemic have been quietly raised in a sociological context and largely ignored in mainstream society for several decades. When the idea of affluenza was raised in the criminal court system by the defense’s evaluating psychologist during a high profile manslaughter case, however, the concerns regarding effects of affluenza rose to the forefront. In fact, the trial of Ethan Couch, product of affluent parents, caused public outcry when an affluenza defense was noted as a potential contributor to a seemingly lenient sentence. This paper provides a brief overview of the history and development of the affluenza concept, evaluates the impact of affluenza through a systemic lens, reviews systemic influences in court rulings, discusses the potential impact of counselors’ roles in the courtroom, and provides a case illustration to demonstrate this potential. Recent court cases involving perceived leniency for Caucasian defendants, which has been attributed to wealth and privilege, have unearthed concerns with the social concept of affluenza. Making headlines in 2013, affluenza was introduced by a court appointed psychologist in the case, State of Texas v. -
220 Artforum
220 ARTFORUM OCT.FEAT.Raymond.indd 220 9/6/12 5:07 PM Opposite page: Chris Johanson, Above: Chris Johanson, Same Untitled, 1996, acrylic on wood, Brain, Same Body, Different 60 x 40". Day, 2011, acrylic and latex on wood, 28 x 49". AS THE STORY GOES, about 12,000 years ago human beings migrated to the West Coast of North America. They came from Siberia by way of the Bering land bridge and brought with them a system of spiritual beliefs based in rituals of astral projection, animal metamorphosis, and the healing séance. Approxi- mately 11,500 years later, another migration arrived Golden State at the Pacific Coast, this time from Europe—human beings of a decidedly more monotheistic bent, intent JON RAYMOND ON THE ART OF CHRIS JOHANSON on transforming the wilderness into an open-air fac- tory of resource extraction. At this axis of magic and enterprise, ritual and engineering, Chris Johanson was born in San Jose, California, in 1968. After passing his childhood in the pre-Silicon Bay Area, he spent his teenage years skateboarding and listening to punk. He went to col- lege briefly but withdrew before graduating, to pursue the more pressing destiny of becoming a painter— OCTOBER 2012 221 OCT.FEAT.Raymond.indd 221 9/6/12 12:39 PM Johanson’s rough-hewn cartoon first of houses, then of art. His work met with rapid zines, posters, and other underground ephemera, acclaim, with early shows at Alleged Gallery in New offering a primitive rebuttal to the city’s storied style taps a realist vein, documenting York and inclusion in Yerba Buena Center for the countercultural graphics—Zap Comix as drawn by his peculiar, late--new age, Northern Arts’ 1997 Bay Area Now triennial. -
New Age Science 1
CHAPTER THREE NEW AGE SCIENCE 1 DaB ich erkenne, was die Welt im Innersten zusammenhalt, Schau alle Wirkenskraft und Samen und tu nicht mehr in W orten kramen J.W. von Goethe, Faust I THE QUEST FOR A UNIFIED WORLDVIEW One of the notable characteristics of New Age thinking is its high regard for modern science. This may seem surprising at first sight because New Agers also tend to distrust and reject academic rationalism; but, in fact, the contra diction is only apparent. Modern scientific developments-especially in theo retical physics-appeal to New Age concerns for two reasons. On the one hand, they are interpreted in such a way as to legitimate a spiritual worldview; but, at the same time ( and for the very same reasons) they also serve as weapons to attack the existing scientific consensus. This is possible because the "old" and the "new" science are perceived as radical opposites, if not in practice then at least in principle. Traditional science-associated with the academic estab lishment-is thoroughly condemned as materialistic and conducive to human alienation, but the New Age has discovered the new science as a potential ally against it. Following Thomas Kuhn's Structure of Scientific Revolutions2, New Age believers claim that established science reflects an outdated reductionis tic paradigm bound to be replaced by a new paradigm based on a holistic per spective. The suggestion that the evolutionary thrust of science now leads it to reject the very materialism it once helped to create is as inspiring to some peo ple as it is outrageous to others. -
A Structural Critique of Consumption: Inequality, Globalization and the Aspirational Gap
A structural critique of Consumption: Inequality, Globalization and the Aspirational Gap Juliet Schor Harvard university November 1997 First Draft. Do not cite. I. Is there a consumption "problem?" The choice of "consumption" as the theme of the Human Development Report raises the question of whether there is a particular "problem" with consumption? What is the relationship of consumption to human development? will the Report contain an implicit or explicit critique of consumption in contemporary societies? At least two very important problems are well-recognized. The first is inadequate levels of consumption among a large segment of the world's population. Here the consumption problem is often conceived of as one of exclusion within a two-group or two-class structure-- those with "enough" and those without enough. A second problem is the ecological impacts of consumption. Both these issues are being addressed by others, so I do not discuss them in this paper. I turn instead to another question. Assuming that the problem of poverty could be solved, so that everyone in the world had "enough" in some basic sense, and assuming that the ecological impacts of consumption could be minimized, is there still a "problem" with consumption? The argument of this paper is yes, there are structural problems associated with consumption in modern capitalist societies. (For a different, but related critique, see Schor 1997c.) 1 Within economics, the traditional approach is to posit consumption as the "solution" to wants and needs. In a classic utilitarian sense, consumption eliminates pain and produces pleasure. In a more general formulation, it creates "utility" or "well-being." Consumption is a good which solves the problem of various bads (hunger, cold, boredom, etc.). -
From Max Weber to Public Sociology Michael Burawoy1
From Max Weber to Public Sociology Michael Burawoy1 Growing up in a political as well as an intellectual environment, Max Weber not only sought to comprehend the world but also to change it. Arguably, he took Karl Marx’s 11th. Thesis on Feuerbach that “philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point, however, is to change it,” far more seriously than its author. Marx, after all, did not reflect, in any systematic fashion, on the place of intellectuals and their ideas in history. Equally, Emile Durkheim – perhaps because he saw sociology as a deeply moral science, devoted to deriving what ought to be from what is – did not seriously concern himself with political engagement. Among these three founding figures of sociology, it was only Weber, who paid sustained attention to science and politics both in his life and in his writing. He strove to fathom the relation between sociology of society and sociology in society, between theory and practice. Although the notion of public sociology was absent from his conceptual armory, of the three Weber offers the greatest contribution, albeit indi- rectly, to the meaning, challenges and possibilities of public sociology. In, thus, fill- ing out Weber’s reflexive sociology with the notion of public sociology, I show the continuing relevance of his framework for the problems facing sociology and soci- ety today. Instrumental and Value Rationality One hundred years ago the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Soziologie (German Socio- logical Society, DGS for short) held its inaugural meeting in Frankfurt. Max Weber had been a driving force behind its foundation. -
About Modern Society and Culture
UvA-DARE (Digital Academic Repository) The problem of disenchantment: scientific naturalism and esoteric discourse, 1900-1939 Asprem, E. Publication date 2013 Link to publication Citation for published version (APA): Asprem, E. (2013). The problem of disenchantment: scientific naturalism and esoteric discourse, 1900-1939. General rights It is not permitted to download or to forward/distribute the text or part of it without the consent of the author(s) and/or copyright holder(s), other than for strictly personal, individual use, unless the work is under an open content license (like Creative Commons). Disclaimer/Complaints regulations If you believe that digital publication of certain material infringes any of your rights or (privacy) interests, please let the Library know, stating your reasons. In case of a legitimate complaint, the Library will make the material inaccessible and/or remove it from the website. Please Ask the Library: https://uba.uva.nl/en/contact, or a letter to: Library of the University of Amsterdam, Secretariat, Singel 425, 1012 WP Amsterdam, The Netherlands. You will be contacted as soon as possible. UvA-DARE is a service provided by the library of the University of Amsterdam (https://dare.uva.nl) Download date:03 Oct 2021 1 The Intellectual Sacrifice You need to beware of the word Entzauberung as cautiously as you beware of the word secularization. Both describe processes where it is easy to have fanciful pictures of an earlier age, and as easy to have illusions of our own generation. We got rid of imps and demons but we pushed them into the subconscious and called them by different names.