This article is concerned with the literal and metaphoric senses in which anthropology's accumulation of knowledge through the production of ethnography on the world's peoples can be considered an archive. The relevance of this concept to ethnography has a very different past, present, and emergent associations. The Human Area Relations Files project as visionary science dependent on the making of an archive of ethnography contrasts with the uses of the past ethnographic record in the pursuit of contemporary fieldwork in a (...) so-called postmodern world. (shrink)

This book challenges the conventional wisdom that improving democratic politics requires keeping emotion out of it. Marcus advances the provocative claim that the tradition in democratic theory of treating emotion and reason as hostile opposites is misguided and leads contemporary theorists to misdiagnose the current state of American democracy. Instead of viewing the presence of emotion in politics as a failure of rationality and therefore as a failure of citizenship, Marcus argues, democratic theorists need to understand that emotions (...) are in fact a prerequisite for the exercise of reason and thus essential for rational democratic deliberation and political judgment. Attempts to purge emotion from public life not only are destined to fail, but ultimately would rob democracies of a key source of revitalization and change. Drawing on recent research in neuroscience, Marcus shows how emotion functions generally and what role it plays in politics. In contrast to the traditional view of emotion as a form of agitation associated with belief, neuroscience reveals it to be generated by brain systems that operate largely outside of awareness. Two of these systems, "disposition" and "surveillance," are especially important in enabling emotions to produce habits, which often serve a positive function in democratic societies. But anxiety, also a preconscious emotion, is crucial to democratic politics as well because it can inhibit or disable habits and thus clear a space for the conscious use of reason and deliberation. If we acknowledge how emotion facilitates reason and is "cooperatively entangled" with it, Marcus concludes, then we should recognize sentimental citizens as the only citizens really capable of exercising political judgment and of putting their decisions into action. (shrink)

Remarkably accessible, Affective Intelligence and Political Judgment urges social scientists to move beyond the idealistic notion of the purely rational citizen to form a more complete, realistic model that includes the emotional side of ...

This article shows how, in recent works of cultural analysis, the concept of ‘assemblage’ has been been derived from key sources of theory and put to work to provide a structure-like surrogate to express certain prominent values of a modernist sensibility in the discourse of description and analysis. Assemblage is a sort of anti-structural concept that permits the researcher to speak of emergence, heterogeneity, the decentred and the ephemeral in nonetheless ordered social life. There are other related concepts, like collage, (...) which have been used to give these values substance in research, but currently assemblage is enjoying a popularity perhaps because of the continuing fascination of the work of Deleuze and Guattari. (shrink)

"Humanists and social scientists alike will profit from reflection on the efforts of the contributors to reimagine anthropology in terms, not only of methodology, but also of politics, ethics, and historical relevance. Every discipline in the human and social sciences could use such a book."--Hayden White, author of Metahistory.

The theory of affective intelligence dichotomizes challenging situations into threatening and risky ones. When people perceive a familiar threat, they tend to be dogmatic and partisan, since they are mobilizing decisive action based on habitual behaviors and nearly instinctual perceptions that have proved their worth in similar situations. When facing a novel risk, however, people tend to become more open‐minded and deliberative, since old solutions do not apply. An experiment with students' reactions to challenges to their opinions about a divisive (...) political issue suggests that, indeed, democratic citizens display the different competencies that are demanded by these two different types of situation. The actual conduct of political campaigns, too, can be expected to reflect the differences between trying to guard against defections from one's side by encouraging the appearance of routine partisan combat, and trying to promote defections from the other side by prompting anxiety, hence open‐minded deliberation. (shrink)

Clifford Geertz, in his 1973 'Inspection of Cultures', brought about an epistemological revolution. This book maps the circuits of cross-fertilisations among disciplines in the humanities and social sciences that have developed from Geertz's 'interpretive turn'.

This book offers a re-examination of the evidence about citizens' capacity for self-governance and what it means for the future of democratic politics, from both empirical and normative perspectives. Are ordinary citizens capable of governing themselves? For more than three decades, social scientists have accumulated evidence of the undemocratic propensities of many ordinary citizens. This has caused some to worry about the stability of existing democratic institutions, while others argue that the institutions themselves are the problem: politics needs to be (...) democratized further, giving citizens more opportunities to practice democratic politics and acquire democratic values. The thirty-three contributors to this volume enter this debate with new evidence on citizens' capacity for deliberative politics. They argue that previous methods of investigation significantly underestimate people's ability to govern themselves, and that the prospects for democracy are better than conventional wisdom suggests. Realization of these prospects will depend on citizens grasping the interplay of emotions and reason in political life, creating new opportunities for citizen deliberation, and reinvigorating the institutions of representative government. Theories of democracy in turn will have to accommodate this changing reality as citizens show themselves to be self-determining in their political activities. (shrink)

"The Traffic in Culture takes us along exciting new avenues in the investigation of art and society, global encounter, and the marketing of culture. These essays will become required reading to scholars in fields as diverse as art history, anthropology, sociology, and cultural studies."--Suzanne Preston Blier, Harvard University "These essays break new ground in charting out a critical ethnography of art. They address the complexities of cultural difference while ceasing to respect the boundary between 'Western' and 'non-Western' art which has (...) defined the scope of the anthropology of art for too long. This is contemporary critical anthropology at its best."--Nicholas Thomas, Australian National University. (shrink)

Within anthropology, as elsewhere in the human sciences, there is a tendency to divide knowledge making into two separate poles: conceptual (theory) vs. empirical (ethnography). In Theory Can Be More than It Used to Be, Dominic Boyer, James D. Faubion, and George E. Marcus argue that we need to take a step back from the assumption that we know what theory is to investigate how theory—a matter of concepts, of analytic practice, of medium of value, of professional ideology—operates (...) in anthropology and related fields today. They have assembled a distinguished group of scholars to diagnose the state of the theory-ethnography divide in anthropology today and to explore alternative modes of analytical and pedagogical practice. Continuing the methodological insights provided in Fieldwork Is Not What It Used to Be, the contributors to this volume find that now is an optimal time to reflect on the status of theory in relation to ethnographic research in anthropology and kindred disciplines. Together they engage with questions such as, What passes for theory in anthropology and the human sciences today and why? What is theory's relation to ethnography? How are students trained to identify and respect anthropological theorization and how do they practice theoretical work in their later career stages? What theoretical experiments, languages, and institutions are available to the human sciences? Throughout, the editors and authors consider theory in practical terms, rather than as an amorphous set of ideas, an esoteric discourse of power, a norm of intellectual life, or an infinitely contestable canon of texts. A short editorial afterword explores alternative ethics and institutions of pedagogy and training in theory. Contributors: Andrea Ballestero, Rice University; Dominic Boyer, Rice University; Lisa Breglia, George Mason University; Jessica Marie Falcone, Kansas State University; James D. Faubion, Rice University; Kim Fortun, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute; Andreas Glaeser, University of Chicago; Cymene Howe, Rice University; Jamer Hunt, Parsons The New School for Design and the Institute of Design in Umea, Sweden; George E. Marcus, University of California, Irvine; Townsend Middleton, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; Deepa S. Reddy, University of Houston–Clear Lake; Kaushik Sunder Rajan, University of Chicago. (shrink)

This path-breaking book reconceptualizes our understanding of political tolerance as well as of its foundations.

In this unique and comprehensive book, George McCarthy examines the influence of Greek philosophy, literature, arts, and politics on the development of twentieth-century German social thought. McCarthy demonstrates that the classical spirit vitalized thinkers such as Weber, Heidegger, Freud, Marcuse, Arendt, Gadamer, and Habermas. With the romancing of antiquity, they transformed their understanding of the modern self, political community, and Enlightenment rationality. By viewing contemporary social theory from the framework of the classical world, McCarthy argues, we are capable of (...) thinking beyond the limits of modernity to new possibilities of human reason, science, beauty, and social justice. (shrink)

Clifford Geertz, in his 1973 'Inspection of Cultures', brought about an epistemological revolution. This book maps the circuits of cross-fertilisations among disciplines in the humanities and social sciences that have developed from Geertz's 'interpretive turn'.

One of the major assumptions of John Zaller's RAS model of public opinion is that people need explicit cues from partisan elites in order to evaluate persuasive messages. This puts the public in the position of a passive audience, unable to scrutinize information or make independent decisions. However, there is evidence that people can, under some circumstances, evaluate and use information independently of elite cues. Thus, patterns of public opinion in the months before the Iraq war are inconsistent with the (...) predictions of Zaller's model. While the RAS model usually accounts for the dynamics of public opinion quite well, the situations in which it fails provide us with critical insights into the limits of elite influence. (shrink)

Peter Abelard (1079–1142 ce) was the most wide‐ranging philosopher of the twelfth century. He quickly established himself as a leading teacher of logic in and near Paris shortly after 1100. After his affair with Heloise, and his subsequent castration, Abelard became a monk, but he returned to teaching in the Paris schools until 1140, when his work was condemned by a Church Council at Sens. His logical writings were based around discussion of the “Old Logic”: Porphyry's Isagoge, aristotle'S Categories and (...) On Interpretation and boethius'S textbook on topical inference. They comprise a freestanding Dialectica (“Logic”; probably c.1116), a set of commentaries (known as the Logica [Ingredientibus], c. 1119) and a later (c. 1125) commentary on the Isagoge (Logica Nostrorum Petititoni Sociorum or Glossulae). In a work Abelard called his Theologia, issued in three main versions (between 1120 and c.1134), he attempted a logical analysis of trinitarian relations and explored the philosophical problems surrounding God's claims to omnipotence and omniscience. The Collationes (“Debates,” also known as “Dialogue between a Christian, a Philosopher and a Jew”; probably c.1130) present a rational investigation into the nature of the highest good, in which the Christian and the Philosopher (who seems to be modeled on a philosopher of pagan antiquity) are remarkably in agreement. The unfinished Scito teipsum (“Know thyself,” also known as the “Ethics”; c.1138) analyses moral action. (shrink)

Morality and politics, by B. Blanshard.--Love and justice, by R. O. Johann.--Responsibility and freedom, by K. Baier.--The mental health ethic, by T. S. Szasz.--Respect for persons, by E. E. Harris.--Ethics and revolution, by H. Marcuse.--Morality and ideology, by H. D. Aiken.--Utility and moral reasoning, by A. I. Melden.--Ethical fallibility, by C. L. Stevenson.

The Ideal of a Rational Morality collects the most important essays by the distinguished moral philosopher Marcus G. Singer. Its guiding theme is the concept of a morality based in reason, which is presupposed in ordinary moral contexts and provides an ideal for improving ordinary morality and correcting moral judgements. Singer makes compelling claims that certain fundamental presuppositions are inescapable in moral thought, that fundamental moral principles can be proved, and that the concepts of truth and 'common sense' are (...) essential to ethics.Subsequent essays proceed to analyse the nature of value judgements and of moral judgements, emphasising the vital importance of certain basic distinctions. There is a discussion of race and racism, presenting new ideas about the nature of both. The relation of law to morality is considered, as are the relations between moral judgements of individual persons and the actions and moral judgements of institutions, leading to an examination of the relations between moral issues and social problems. A particularly well-known essay on the Golden Rule is reproduced, where Singer's analysis shows it to be applicable and defensible as it stands, and finally the nature of happiness is explored through a discussion of John Stuart Mill's moral philosophy.Each essay is supplemented by a set of Additional Notes and Comments, with supplementary pieces and response to criticisms. The Ideal of a Rational Morality will be fascinating reading for anybody seeking rigour and clarity in ethical issues. (shrink)

The concept of authenticity is central to how people value many different types of objects and yet there is considerable disagreement about how individuals evaluate authenticity or how the concept itself should be defined. This paper attempts to reconcile previous approaches by proposing a novel view of authenticity. Specifically, I draw upon past research on psychological essentialism and propose that when people evaluate the authenticity of objects, they do so by evaluating the extent to which the object embodies or reflects (...) a valued essence. I suggest that this explanation of authenticity provides an overarching framework that describes how people evaluate object authenticity across a variety of contexts and I report the results of three experiments that directly test the predictions made by this explanation. (shrink)

This collection includes an Introduction and nine articles by contemporary scholars writing on essential topics in Marx’s thought. The topics include: Marx’s theory of history and historical development, his theories of alienation and economic exploitation, his views on ideology, and his critique of justice (including distributive justice) and rights. These essays emphasize the value—specifically with respect to issues in social, moral, and political philosophy—of textually self-conscious, scrupulously analytic investigations of Marx’s work. They afford clarification and elucidation of many of Marx’s (...) fundamental commitments and theories thereby facilitating an understanding of their implications for both effective explication and critical evaluation. Authors included are: G. A. Cohen, William Shaw, John E. Elliott, George E. Panichas, Allen W. Wood, Ziyad I. Husami, Gary Young, and Allen E. Buchanan. (shrink)

Na semana de Pentecostes de 1923, reuniu-se em um hotel na cidade de Ilmenau na Turíngia, região central da Alemanha, um grupo de intelectuais em um encontro que foi denominado “Semana de Trabalho Marxista” (Marxistische Arbeitswoche). Dele participaram seu idealizador – Felix Weil – e cerca de 20 pessoas. Destacaram-se entre os participantes Friedrich Pollock e Karl August Wittfogel. A intenção da “Semana de Trabalho Marxista” era discutir as obras Marxismo e filosofia, de Karl Korsch, e História e consciência de (...) classe, de Georg Lukács – autores um pouco mais velhos, mas igualmente jovens intelectuais cujas contribuições teóricas foram tidas como alento e retomada das reflexões marxistas a partir da perspectiva do jovem Marx. As ideias apresentadas por Korsch e Lukács se afastaram do marxismo clássico e ortodoxo até então em evidência na Europa Central. A “Semana de Trabalho Marxista” foi o embrião para a criação, um ano depois, do Instituto de Pesquisas Sociais, igualmente por iniciativa desses jovens e de seu mentor intelectual e agora patrono financeiro Felix Weil. Esse Instituto foi sediado como um anexo da Universidade de Frankfurt, totalmente custeado pelo aporte financeiro do pai de Felix Weil, o senhor Hermann Weil. Ao longo dos anos, o conhecimento teórico ali produzido ou a menção ao local em que esse conhecimento foi gestado se impuseram como marcas que passaram para a história do pensamento contemporâneo: Teoria Crítica e Escola de Frankfurt são nomes que praticamente se confundem quando se trata da concepção teórica produzida pelo Instituto de Pesquisas Sociais. As referências aos seus pensadores mais significativos – Theodor Adorno, Herbert Marcuse e Walter Benjamin – tornaram-se realidade a partir do momento em que Max Horkheimer chegou à posição de diretor do Instituto, em 1930, pois sob sua gestão foram formuladas as diretrizes teóricas, combinadas à realização de pesquisas empíricas com base nos métodos e campos de investigação das demais ciências parcelares (Psicologia, Sociologia, Economia, Direito etc.), em articulação com a Filosofia que caracterizam essa escola de pensamento à qual estes nomes estão umbilicalmente ligados. Sob sua “ditadura”[1] Horkheimer tentou, quando possível, conservar as diferenças de temas e objetos de estudo de cada autor, congregando os diferentes campos de conhecimento. Esses primeiros pensadores foram responsáveis por um movimento de ideias que cobriu boa parte do século XX, estendendo-se de 1930 a 1979. Uma segunda geração de teóricos ligados ao Instituto prosseguiu as reflexões iniciais, expandindo-as; outros se distanciaram delas. A teoria crítica da sociedade, assim, constituiu-se como uma fonte de pensamento e método de investigação e análise da realidade na qual fenômenos sociais, bem como determinados temas e objetos de estudo, vinculados a tal realidade, em seu movimento histórico, tornaram-se alvos de crítica permanente. Dentre tais aspectos a serem destacados, mencionamos o legado deixado pelos autores da teoria crítica – especificamente, Adorno, Horkheimer, Erich Fromm, dentre outros – de dados, discussões e análises de pesquisa empírica, de caráter interdisciplinar, voltados aos temas do autoritarismo, preconceito e formação do indivíduo sob as contradições sociais do capitalismo e seus desdobramentos histórico-sociais. Neste movimento, as ciências parcelares, já apontadas acima, tais como a Psicologia, Psicanálise, Economia, Ciências Sociais dentre outras foram convocadas como momentos teórico-metodológicos específicos para compor o projeto interdisciplinar do Instituto de Pesquisa Social, juntamente com a Filosofia, promovendo a premissa epistemológica fundamental da Teoria crítica: a pesquisa interdisciplinar. Em 2021, o Grupo de Pesquisa “Teoria Crítica e Filosofia Social”, sediado na UFU e desde 2003 registrado no Diretório de Grupos de Pesquisa do CNPq, organizou e realizou o “I Colóquio de Teoria Crítica da UFU: aporias da emancipação”. Foi a tentativa de integrar, em um evento online dos tempos da pandemia do Covid-19, as pesquisas desenvolvidas por professores da UFU espalhados em alguns de seus institutos e faculdades com outros pesquisadores do Brasil em torno das diversas possibilidades de apropriação da Teoria Crítica da Escola de Frankfurt. Os autores da primeira geração da Escola, que herdaram as reflexões e transformações históricas oriundas do Iluminismo, não apresentaram formulações unívocas ou romantizadas nas suas análises acerca dos limites da Racionalidade burguesa: suas reflexões esbarraram em dificuldades e essa constatação abre a possibilidade de se seguir problematizando, na esteira desta primeira geração, questões decisivas da teoria social nos dias de hoje. Em 2023, o encontro de Ilmenau, que foi o acontecimento propulsor da Teoria Crítica, completa 100 anos. A proposição do dossiê “Teoria Crítica 100 anos” pretende ser uma comemoração, um Festschrift ao centenário de uma data bastante emblemática e marcante para o pensamento filosófico do século XX. O núcleo do dossiê é constituído por algumas palestras proferidas no evento de 2021 que foram transformadas em artigos pelos seus apresentadores. Mais do que isso, com a intenção de ser um Festschrift representativo, o dossiê conta com a contribuição de um pesquisador internacional que não participou do evento. Por ser a Teoria Crítica uma corrente filosófica multifacetada, suas reflexões abrangem os campos da filosofia social, filosofia da história, filosofia política, estética, literatura, música, psicanálise e educação junto à teoria social. Atentos a essa diversidade, sua riqueza temática ficará preservada na proposta do dossiê. Além disso, é importante resgatar a atualidade da centenária Teoria Crítica. O dossiê é constituído por uma entrevista, seis artigos e uma tradução. O entrevistado será o professor Rodrigo Duarte, da UFMG, que fará um balanço da Teoria Crítica, sobre sua recepção no Brasil anterior a 1990 e posterior a essa data. Embora a recepção desta escola de pensamento tenha se dado já na década de 1960, por nomes como Cohn, Merquior, Kothe e Konder, a partir dos anos 1990, Rodrigo Duarte se transformou em uma das principais referências para a sua continuidade em solo nacional. Daí essa entrevista ser um reconhecimento de sua contribuição. [...] [1] A expressão “ditadura do diretor” foi o termo empregado por Horkheimer para indicar o tipo de trabalho interdisciplinar que seria desenvolvido a partir de sua gestão à frente do Instituto. (shrink)

Past research has identified a number of asymmetries based on moral judgments. Beliefs about what a person values, whether a person is happy, whether a person has shown weakness of will, and whether a person deserves praise or blame seem to depend critically on whether participants themselves find the agent's behavior to be morally good or bad. To date, however, the origins of these asymmetries remain unknown. The present studies examine whether beliefs about an agent's “true self” explain these observed (...) asymmetries based on moral judgment. Using the identical materials from previous studies in this area, a series of five experiments indicate that people show a general tendency to conclude that deep inside every individual there is a “true self” calling him or her to behave in ways that are morally virtuous. In turn, this belief causes people to hold different intuitions about what the agent values, whether the agent is happy, whether he or she has shown weakness of will, and whether he or she deserves praise or blame. These results not only help to answer important questions about how people attribute various mental states to others; they also contribute to important theoretical debates regarding how moral values may shape our beliefs about phenomena that, on the surface, appear to be decidedly non-moral in nature. (shrink)

Der hier vorgelegte kooperative Kommentar zur 'Kritik der reinen Vernunft' bietet in Originalbeiträgen namhafter Kant-Forscher eine textnahe Erschließung der zentralen Begriffe, Thesen und Argumentationsgänge des Kantischen Hauptwerks. Es ist der erste Kommentar zur 'Kritik', der deren gesamten Text in der Fassung der ersten und zweiten Auflage gleichmäßig und lückenlos berücksichtigt. Davon profitieren vor allem die 'Transzendentale Dialektik' und die 'Methodenlehre', die in früheren Gesamtkommentaren meist nicht hinreichend berücksichtigt worden sind. Die Beiträge wurden nach einheitlichen Richtlinien verfasst, wobei unterschiedliche Herangehensweisen und (...) Interpretationsansätze zur Geltung kommen. Um dem Leser dieses Kommentars die Orientierung zu erleichtern, ist jeder Beitrag in drei bzw. vier Teile untergliedert: Der erste Teil behandelt die Stellung und Funktion des kommentierten Textabschnitts in der 'Kritik';, der zweite Teil gibt einen Überblick über Inhalt und Aufbau des Abschnitts, der dritte Teil enthält den eigentlichen Textkommentar. Wo dies sinnvoll erschien, wurden in einem vierten Teil wichtige Interpretationsfragen angesprochen. Hinweise auf weiterführende Spezialliteratur am Ende eines jeden Beitrags, eine Auswahlbibliographie zu Kant und zur 'Kritik der reinen Vernunft' sowie ein Namen- und ein Sachregister machen den Band zu einem komfortablen Arbeitsmittel für den Benutzer. (shrink)