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Reputation and Community: The Centrality of Moral Judgment

Lawrence McNamara

in Reputation and Defamation

Without a clear sense of what reputation is, it will be difficult to make a judgment about the manner and extent of its protection under the law. To that end, this chapter commences the inquiry with ... More

Without a clear sense of what reputation is, it will be difficult to make a judgment about the manner and extent of its protection under the law. To that end, this chapter commences the inquiry with the aim of theorizing reputation. That is, it sets out to articulate the nature of the interest that the law seeks to protect. The selection of reputation, rather than defamation, as the analytical category is explained. A definition of reputation proposed that identifies community as the form of association upon which reputation rests, and it is argued that moral judgment is the central feature of reputation. This provides the best basis on which both reputation and defamation can be understood, and lays the foundations for the later resolution of some of the legal choices that the courts must make with respect to the scope and limits of protection for reputation.Less

The Leipzig Mission

Anna Maria Busse Berger

in The Search for Medieval Music in Africa and Germany, 1891-1961: Scholars, Singers, Missionaries

Bruno Gutmann was the most important missionary/ethnographer active in Tanganyika in the first half of the twentieth century. In addition to translating the New Testament into Chagga, he wrote ... More

Bruno Gutmann was the most important missionary/ethnographer active in Tanganyika in the first half of the twentieth century. In addition to translating the New Testament into Chagga, he wrote numerous ethnographic studies of Chagga law and society. His views on church music in the mission field are of great importance. Why was he so skillful in preserving Chagga culture, but did not advocate introduction of local music into the service? In his first years, he introduced Lutheran chorales because local music was morally not acceptable since it was invariably linked to "suspicious" rituals. However, when he returned to Germany in the 1920s his views changed: he fell under the spell of the Singbewegung which promoted a sense of Gemeinschaft by means of communal singing of folk music and early music. Gutmann was received by the movement with open arms: he talked about Gemeinschaft in Africa, and published extensively with Bärenreiter on African communities. As a result also Gutmann's attitude to music changed. When he returned to Africa he argued that the Lutheran chorales are inextricably linked to the gospel. Only in Africa is the community spirit still present necessary to perform the Lutheran chorale.Less

Communitarian IR Theory: “The Common Socius of Us All”

Daniel J. Levine

in Recovering International Relations: The Promise of Sustainable Critique

In Chapter 4 and 5, the case study format developed for realism is extended to two variants within what is broadly considered “liberal” IR. Chapter 4 explores liberal IR written from a ... More

In Chapter 4 and 5, the case study format developed for realism is extended to two variants within what is broadly considered “liberal” IR. Chapter 4 explores liberal IR written from a “communitarian” perspective: David Mitrany’s functionalism (with its roots in the Fabian tradition), and the more systematic work of Karl Deutsch and Emanuel Adler.Less

Individualist IR Theory: Disharmonious Cooperation

Daniel J. Levine

in Recovering International Relations: The Promise of Sustainable Critique

Mirroring the case study format developed in the previous two chapters, discussion is extended to “individualist” liberal IR theory: the work of Ernst Haas, Keohane and Nye, and Katzenstein and Sil.

Estranei alla massa: the New Neapolitan Cinema and the Crisis of Napoletanità

Alex Marlow-Mann

in New Neapolitan Cinema

Estranei alla massa (literally ‘outside the crowd’ or ‘beyond the masses’) is the title of an interesting documentary directed by Vincenzo Marra in 2001, which depicts the everyday lives of seven ... More

Estranei alla massa (literally ‘outside the crowd’ or ‘beyond the masses’) is the title of an interesting documentary directed by Vincenzo Marra in 2001, which depicts the everyday lives of seven members of the eponymous football supporters' club. The documentary and its title are emblematic of the way in which the New Neapolitan Cinema (NNC) has called into question the sense of social cohesion and communal belonging that underpinned the Neapolitan Formula (NF). This chapter examines how the discourse of napoletanità and the functions it served in the NF are undermined by the NNC through narratives emphasising social exclusion and existential alienation. It discusses the way a number of films have questioned the traditional image of the Gemeinschaft family and critiqued its patriarchal conception. Both of these themes converge in the archetypal figure of the scugnizzo to which the NNC has repeatedly returned. The chapter concludes by considering the possible responses to this crisis in napoletanità that the NNC pessimistically proposes: migration or extinction.Less

Village

Kai Erikson

in The Sociologist's Eye: Reflections on Social Life

This chapter focuses on one location where people have spent their lives —the village—paying particular attention to the ways of life that have emerged there. What we have been calling “the village ... More

This chapter focuses on one location where people have spent their lives —the village—paying particular attention to the ways of life that have emerged there. What we have been calling “the village ethos,” “gemeinschaft” or “folk ethos” is the way of life of the fishing village, the mountain hollow, the island community, as well as the kind of rural hamlet in which Kasia and Piotr Walkowiak grew up. It dominates the life of peasants everywhere. The chapter considers a number of themes that are common in village life everywhere, including an overarching sense of unity, niche, heritage, surveillance and tolerance, craft, leveling, and spirituality. It also calls on voices from parts of the world where a sense of community once remained strong to help illustrate the nature of the village ethos.Less

Groups, Teams, Networks, Trust, and Social Capital

Neil J. Smelser and John S. Reed

in Usable Social Science

The five phenomena identified in the chapter title—groups, teams, networks, trust, and social capital—are treated as different but interrelated manifestations of the informal side of organizational ... More

The five phenomena identified in the chapter title—groups, teams, networks, trust, and social capital—are treated as different but interrelated manifestations of the informal side of organizational life. All have experienced special vitality in all of the social sciences in the past few decades. Each is an identifiable element in social life, and each has a range of both positive and negative implications. Each is interpreted in the context of the vicissitudes of social scientists’ preoccupation with gemeinschaft, a long-standing principle in the social sciences that contrasts the communal side of life with large-scale societal organization.Less

Introduction

Adam Zachary Newton

in Jewish Studies as Counterlife: A Report to the Academy

Beginning with an epigraph from Nietzsche that calls philologists to the essential but often overlooked task of setting forth philology “as a problem,” the introduction poses the same challenge to ... More

Beginning with an epigraph from Nietzsche that calls philologists to the essential but often overlooked task of setting forth philology “as a problem,” the introduction poses the same challenge to Jewish Studies and its practitioners—from its philological and historicist origins in nineteenth-century Germany to its current state in North American colleges and universities. Two animal fictions by Franz Kafka, “Investigations of a Dog” and “A Report to an Academy,” as personalized by two Jewish Americanists in professions of critical faith, jointly set the stage for an exposition of the book’s twofold title. This is followed by a brief history of the field and an initial consideration of its several dilemmas in content as well as form. The chapter concludes with four overarching questions posed to and for JS and a brief outline of the rest of the book.Less

Contradictions in the Christmas Mood

Joe Perry

in Christmas in Germany: A Cultural History

This chapter suggests that the holiday opened space for the construction and enactment of social and political difference, and notes that in the late nineteenth century, German Jews, Social ... More

This chapter suggests that the holiday opened space for the construction and enactment of social and political difference, and notes that in the late nineteenth century, German Jews, Social Democrats, and working-class Germans shaped their own versions of Christmas. It explains that the alternative narratives and celebrations devised by these outsider groups drew on but also challenged the assumptions of bourgeois festivity. The chapter notes that sociologist Ferdinand Tonnies believed that celebrations such as Christmas could heal the fractures in the German body politic by recovering a sense of authentic Gemeinschaft (community) in the midst of an alienated modern Gesellschaft (society).Less

‘Belief shifts’: Ireland’s referendum and the journey from Gemeinschaft to Gesellschaft

Eugene O’Brien

in Tracing the Cultural Legacy of Irish Catholicism: From Galway to Cloyne and Beyond

This chapter examines the implications for Irish Catholicism that the ‘Yes’ vote in the May 2015 referendum on same-sex marriage may have for the social and cultural position of the Catholic church ... More

This chapter examines the implications for Irish Catholicism that the ‘Yes’ vote in the May 2015 referendum on same-sex marriage may have for the social and cultural position of the Catholic church in contemporary Ireland and in the future. His analysis channels the thinking of Ferdinand Tönnies, an early German sociologist and a contemporary of Durkheim and Weber, who used the German words ‘Gemeinschaft’ and ‘Gesellschaft’ to distinguish between two fundamentally different structural paradigms for social relations. O’Brien sees marriage as a core ideological signifier of ideological hegemony, and using the fantasy fiction of Terry Pratchett’s satire on religion entitled Small Gods as a lens, he looks at the referendum as a significant turning point in the definition of marriage, and by extension, in the transformation Irish society from the organic community of the Gemeinschaft, to the more postmodern and pluralist notion of the Gesellschaft.Less

Golden Ages and welfare alchemists

Robert Pinker

in Social Policy and Welfare Pluralism: Selected Writings of Robert Pinker

In this chapter, Robert Pinker discusses the idea of ‘Golden Age’ theories in social policy thought and what he calls ‘welfare alchemists’ whose visions these theories encapsulate. According to ... More

In this chapter, Robert Pinker discusses the idea of ‘Golden Age’ theories in social policy thought and what he calls ‘welfare alchemists’ whose visions these theories encapsulate. According to Pinker, these grand theories are in reality ideologies and can be collectivist or individualist in origin. Regardless of their origins, however, they fail to address the need for the compromises between values which are reached in pluralist and democratic social contexts. Pinker also provides an overview of the influence of classical political economy and the New Right on British social policies under different Conservative governments and goes on to describe socialism as a repository of Golden Age theorizing, along with the concept of community in relation to welfare pluralism. Finally, he examines the institutions of Gesellschaft and Gemeinschaft as well as the traditions of collectivism and individualism, arguing that they should not continue to coexist in democratic societies.Less

Locating the Short Story Cycle

Jennifer J. Smith

in The American Short Story Cycle

This chapter corrects the long-held assumption that the form began with modernist blockbusters and instead suggests that modernist writers revised a vibrant regionalist tradition to their own uses. ... More

This chapter corrects the long-held assumption that the form began with modernist blockbusters and instead suggests that modernist writers revised a vibrant regionalist tradition to their own uses. It trace the development of the cycle from a regionalist tradition often marked by an attention to the experiences of women and those living on the fringes of America. Nineteenth-century village sketch narratives, such as Caroline Kirkland’s A New Home, Who'll Follow? or, Glimpses of Western Life (1839), served to incorporate towns, distanced from cultural centers, into the national imaginary. These cycles depend upon the construction of a restricted geographic terrain to contain and ground the narratives; in other words, they stake out “limited locality” to encompass the stories. Sarah Orne Jewett’s The Country of the Pointed Firs (1896) and Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio (1919) continue to question the extent to which geographic proximity produces communal affiliation, which is often imagined as an antidote to the poisons of industrialization.Less

Social Change and Human Development: An Autobiographical Journey

Patricia M. Greenfield

in Advances in Culture and Psychology: Volume Two

This chapter reviews research on social change and human development that has culminated in the author’s Theory of Social Change and Human Development. At the heart of the theory is the notion that ... More

This chapter reviews research on social change and human development that has culminated in the author’s Theory of Social Change and Human Development. At the heart of the theory is the notion that sociodemographic factors drive cultural values, learning environments, and, ultimately, developmental trajectories. Changing sociodemographic conditions transform these values, environments, and pathways. The author’s research in Senegal, Mexico, the United States, and Italy demonstrates that the dominant direction of global social change—from subsistence to commerce, village to city, informal education at home to formal education at school, and low technology to high technology—results in more individualistic values, greater independence from family, more innovative thinking, and more abstract cognition. The theory has applicability to social change within a country and among migrants who change countries, as well as to both basic and applied research.Less

Immunity

Gervase Rosser

in The Art of Solidarity in the Middle Ages: Guilds in England 1250-1550

The medieval guilds—not merely craft-based organizations, but fraternities of all kinds—are introduced in the context of the perennial question of the grounds of possibility of human society. To ... More

The medieval guilds—not merely craft-based organizations, but fraternities of all kinds—are introduced in the context of the perennial question of the grounds of possibility of human society. To review the guilds’ response is also to engage with the current state of that question. What is the place of local organizations within the state? Are voluntary associations cradles of citizenship, or threats to public order? To prepare the ground for fresh analysis, older debates are here reviewed. The hypothesized opposition between ‘community’ and ‘the individual’ is problematized, and a different paradigm is proposed, drawing upon a definition of the person as comprising both inner and outer aspects. The guilds created a space within which the relationship between those aspects could be negotiated. The book is not an institutional history, but focuses instead on the social, political, and moral processes which were catalysed by participation in these diverse associations.Less

Communities of Learning

Mark R. Schwehn

in Exiles from Eden: Religion and the Academic Vocation in America

Thus far I have tried to show that our present-day conception of the academic vocation is based at least in part upon the transmutation of ideas that were originally religious in origin and ... More

Thus far I have tried to show that our present-day conception of the academic vocation is based at least in part upon the transmutation of ideas that were originally religious in origin and implication. In the next two chapters, I shall try to show why a reconception of the academic vocation should involve the reappropriation of certain religious virtues. I do not, however, intend this to be an atavistic undertaking: I have no patience for nostalgic returns to medieval syntheses of one sort or another. I shall accordingly argue in this chapter that what I take to be one of the main currents in contemporary thought—the resurgence of the question of community—both invites and to some extent warrants a religiously informed redescription of academic life and the academic vocation. In the next chapter, I will endeavor to provide just such a redescription as a corrective to the Weberian account I have already analyzed. The resurgent interest in the question of community is an exceptionally broad phenomenon that embraces social and political theory, jurisprudence, theology, literary criticism, cultural anthropology, even the history and philosophy of science. I shall, however, restrict my attention here to the manner in which the community question impinges upon activities and aspirations that are central to the tasks of higher education—teaching, learning, knowledge, and truth. At the risk of drastic oversimplification, I will summarize this more restricted development as follows: over the course of the last twenty or so years, the question of community has replaced the epistemological question as foundational for all other inquiries. The answers to basic human questions, such as, What can we know? or How should we live? or In what or whom shall we place our hope? have come to depend, for a large number of intellectuals, upon the answer to a prior question, Who are we? As a way of both documenting and deepening our sense of this decisive shift in the current climate of opinion, I propose to consider briefly two very influential books that appeared within four years of one another, Richard Rorty’s Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature and Parker Palmer’s To Know As We Are Known. Less

Gestural (In)visibility in Béla Balázs and Helmuth Plessner

Lucia Ruprecht

in Gestural Imaginaries: Dance and Cultural Theory in the Early Twentieth Century

This chapter juxtaposes the film criticism of Béla Balázs with the philosophical anthropology of Helmuth Plessner in order to carve out their approaches to gesture. It gives particular attention to ... More

This chapter juxtaposes the film criticism of Béla Balázs with the philosophical anthropology of Helmuth Plessner in order to carve out their approaches to gesture. It gives particular attention to Plessner’s “Grenzen der Gemeinschaft: Eine Kritik des sozialen Radikalismus” (“The Limits of Community: A Critique of Social Radicalism”) and Balázs’s “Der sichtbare Mensch oder die Kultur des Films” (“Visible Man or the Culture of Film”). Both authors have a pronounced interest in the potential of social gesture to inform public life, yet they articulate it in different ways: where Balázs bemoans too little gestural embodiment, Plessner sees too much of it. Balázs emphatically conjures up the promise of a gestural cure that he detects in the heightened corporeal expressivity of silent film; Plessner considers such expressivity as symptom not only of gestural, but also aesthetic, social and political ills.Less

The Legal History of the Dual State

Ernst Fraenkel

in The Dual State: A Contribution to the Theory of Dictatorship

This chapter aims to take an objective view of the appeal of National-Socialism. However, it is argued, people who had an ambivalent attitude toward National-Socialism suffered from two principal ... More

This chapter aims to take an objective view of the appeal of National-Socialism. However, it is argued, people who had an ambivalent attitude toward National-Socialism suffered from two principal misconceptions. Firstly, the German ideology of Gemeinschaft (community) is just a mask hiding the still existing capitalist structure of society. Secondly, this ideological mask equally hides the existence of the prerogative state operating by arbitrary means. Any critical examination which attempts to reveal the social structure of the National-Socialist state, it is stated, must discover whether or not the essential criteria of the dual state have appeared in any earlier historical period. The chapter, therefore, looks in detail at the history of the dual state in Prussia and Germany as a whole.Less