Surely the absence of a sociology of morality has to be one of the major weaknesses of academic sociology, and a mysterious one at that. For Durkheim, one of sociology's founding…
Abstract
Surely the absence of a sociology of morality has to be one of the major weaknesses of academic sociology, and a mysterious one at that. For Durkheim, one of sociology's founding fathers, morality was to have a central place as an object of inquiry; moreover, he was passionately interested in it on the existential level, as was Weber.
This article applies political sociology and philosophy to the problem of declining morality in the American polity, particularly the moral contents and effects of the acts of…
Abstract
This article applies political sociology and philosophy to the problem of declining morality in the American polity, particularly the moral contents and effects of the acts of American presidents and their administrations during the cold war. It is not concerned with a politics of morality in the partisan sense of what is considered conservative or liberal. It examines the political morality of American leadership as a cold war world leader in the last half of the twentieth century and its direct effect upon the American republic and polity.
Many researchers who have studied drinking in Ireland have worked under the assumption that the Irish have a particularly acute problem with alcohol. Through an investigation of…
Abstract
Many researchers who have studied drinking in Ireland have worked under the assumption that the Irish have a particularly acute problem with alcohol. Through an investigation of historical and contemporary writings on the subject I demonstrate that the problem is more complicated than traditional images would lead one to believe. Generally it is not known that Ireland has one of the lowest rates of alcohol consumption in Europe and one of the highest percentages of abstainers, although it is also true that Ireland has one of the highest hospital admission rates for alcohol‐related illnesses. In an attempt to understand the complex variety of drinking behaviours in Ireland, I advocate the reinterpretation and use of the concept of ambivalence in the context of Irish drinking, adapting ideas of Barth (originally applied to Bah) in the process.
American sociology has long been concerned with the social conditioning of American character, particularly with regard to caring for others. This interest can be traced to Alexis…
Abstract
American sociology has long been concerned with the social conditioning of American character, particularly with regard to caring for others. This interest can be traced to Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America (1899[1838]) in which he reflected on how democratic participation in government and voluntary associations in the 1830s shaped the American character. Tocqueville believed that participation in social institutions, and especially voluntary societies, balanced the potentially excessive individualism he observed in the United States. David Riesman's The Lonely Crowd: A Study of Changing American Character (1950) picked up similar themes in an exploration of the isolation of the individual within modern society. These concerns reached a broad audience more recently in Robert N. Bellah, Richard Madsen, William M. Sullivan, Ann Swidler, and Steven M. Tipton's Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life (1985) in which the authors argued that the scale had swung in favor of individualism at the expense of commitment to the social good. Robert Wuthnow (1991) addressed these issues again in Acts of Compassion: Caring for Others and Helping Ourselves, in which he explored how in volunteer work, Americans attempted to reconcile compassion with individualism. These studies, primarily focusing on white, middle‐class Americans, have laid the groundwork for an exploration of the social nature of the American character within the context of caring for others.
Americans of all ages, all stations in life, and all types of dispositions are forever forming associations… of a thousand different types — religious, moral, serious, futile…
Abstract
Americans of all ages, all stations in life, and all types of dispositions are forever forming associations… of a thousand different types — religious, moral, serious, futile, very general and very limited, immensely large and very minute … [for] the greatest number of purposes … Nothing in my view deserves more attention than the intellectual and moral associations in America (Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, [1835] 1945).
Elizabeth Popp Berman and Catherine Paradeise
Universities in both North America and Europe are under substantial pressure. We draw on the papers in this volume to describe those pressures and explore their consequences from…
Abstract
Universities in both North America and Europe are under substantial pressure. We draw on the papers in this volume to describe those pressures and explore their consequences from an organizational standpoint. Building on the institutional logics perspective, field theories, world society theory, resource dependence, and organizational design scholarship, these papers show how the changing relationship between the state and higher education, cultural shifts, and broad trends toward globalization have led to financial pressures on universities and intensified competition among them. Universities have responded to these pressures by cutting costs, becoming more entrepreneurial, increasing administrative control, and expanding the use of rationalized tools for management. Collectively, these reactions are reshaping the field(s) of higher education and increasing stratification within and across institutions. While universities have thus far proven remarkably adaptive to these pressures, they may be reaching the limits of how much they can adapt without seriously compromising their underlying missions.
Details
Keywords
While many warn about the failures of politics, this article argues that politics serves to resolve conflicts of interests and values among us in a manner that limits the use of…
Abstract
While many warn about the failures of politics, this article argues that politics serves to resolve conflicts of interests and values among us in a manner that limits the use of violence and also protects and fosters value pluralism and freedom. Public administration scholars often look to science to improve governance but science cannot resolve our many conflicting ends and values, nor can it take proper account of the freedom and resulting sheer unpredictability that we have come to experience within our own tradition of politics. It is argued that the practice of politics requires not a science of governance, but simply a certain kind of toleration, namely a willingness to hear the other side and to engage in practices of adversary argument. Implications for the "politics of fear" are also discussed.