During the first two decades of the Cold War, a new kind of academic figure became prominent in American public life: the credentialed social scientist or expert in the sciences of administration who was also, to use the parlance of the time, a “man of affairs.” Some were academic high-fliers conscripted into government roles in which their intellectual and organizational talents could be exploited. McGeorge Bundy, Walt Rostow, and Robert McNamara are the archetypes of such persons. An overlapping group of (...) scholars became policymakers and political advisers on issues ranging from social welfare provision to nation-building in emerging postcolonial states. Many of these men—and almost without exception they were men—were also consummate operators within the patronage system that grew up around American universities after World War II. Postwar leaders of the social and administrative sciences such as Talcott Parsons and Herbert Simon were skilled scientific brokers of just this sort: good “committee men,” grant-getters, proponents of interdisciplinary inquiry, and institution-builders. This hard-nosed, suit-wearing, business-like persona was connected to new, technologically refined forms of social science. No longer sage-like social philosophers or hardscrabble, number-crunching empiricists, academic human scientists portrayed themselves as possessors of tools and programs designed for precision social engineering. Antediluvian “social science” was eschewed in favour of mathematical, behavioural, and systems-based approaches to “human relations” such as operations research, behavioral science, game theory, systems theory, and cognitive science. (shrink)

Derogatory terms can be powerful mechanisms of subordination, while re-appropriating these terms can be a strategy to fight back against social injustice. I argue that projects seeking to reclaim slurs have a performative structure that raises particular hazards. Whereas more familiar forms of protest may fail to bring about their intended result, attempts to re-appropriate slurs can fail to be understood as transgressive acts at all. When attempts at reclamation fail, their force is distorted; context and convention lead the hearer (...) to give uptake to the speech act as a traditional deployment of the slur. The force of this traditional use is to validate and re-entrench the very norms the act was intended to subvert. This is the precarious structure of reclamation projects: when successful, reclamation is the subversion of powerful mechanisms of oppression, but when unsuccessful, the act has the ironic force of constituting mechanisms of oppression. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work.This work is in the public domain in (...) the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain (...) in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

v. 1. Assessment methods -- v. 2. Developments and social problems -- v. 3. Extensions and limitations.

Both and agree that there are universals—that qualities are universals. To say that the quality white is a universal is to say, in part, that one and the same thing is connected in some way to both Plato and Socrates and accounts for the truth of the sentences "Plato is white" and "Socrates is white." To put it another way, the term "white" in both sentences refers to the same entity. What arguments are there for such a view? Russell elegantly (...) put forth the classic argument in "On the Relations of Universals to Particulars." To deny universals is to assert that the quality attributed to Socrates is not one and the same with the quality attributed to Plato. The quality "in" each is numerically distinct and, furthermore, no one thing accounts for these distinct qualities being of the same kind. [I mention this latter point since one might, on a version of, hold that there are particular qualities as well as universal qualities. The former account for the whiteness of particular patches; the latter for such particular whitenesses being just that.] One must then hold that such particular qualities are related in some way, since they are the entities in virtue of which we truly assert that both things are white. One must then specify such a relation. The obvious point is that such a relation will either be taken as a universal or a particular instance. If a particular then the original problem recurs when we introduce a third white patch or a pair of black patches. If admitted as a universal then the view finally accepts universals, albeit relational ones. No other alternative can answer the original question—to account for Socrates and Plato having the same color. That is, no alternative acknowledging only individuals—that denies the two patches are connected, in some way, to one and the same entity—can prevent the recurrence of exactly the same kind of question we started out with. Let us consider the case of particulars. One may argue that just as universals account for the sameness of quality, something must account for the difference of two patches which, conceivably, have all their nonrelational qualities in common. This something, the ground of numerical difference, is considered to be a substratum which stands in a unique relation or connection with universals to form or constitute facts and the things we started out with, Plato and Socrates. These ordinary things are thought of as composed of a substratum and universals connected together. Facts about such things may be composed of the substratum and one universal. The facts are about the things since the same substratum is a constituent of both sorts of entities. Such substrata account for the difference of the two patches; for there being two and not one thing. These substrata, in turn, are held to be simply different. At this point one may balk. If substrata are held to be simply different, why bother with them at all? Why not hold that Socrates and Plato are composites, not classes, of universals, and that they are different composites of the same universals? They just simply differ. If substrata can simply differ, why may not composites of universals simply differ? The proponent of substrata must retort that since Plato and Socrates are composite entities they cannot simply differ but must be held to differ in a constituent. Only simple entities can simply differ. Let me call this assertion the axiom of difference. The first point to note is that it is a necessary assumption in the argument to establish the need for substrata in an adequate ontology. We must then inquire why some accept, implicitly or explicitly, such an axiom. (shrink)

|347| Introduction À titre provisoire, commençons par déterminer l’objet de notre enquête, en le prenant tel qu’il nous est donné. Le matérialisme historique intervient dans le contexte gnoséologique du marxisme ; or ce dernier n’apparaît pas comme une théorie scientifique, comme un système de vérités dont le sens résiderait uniquement dans leur exactitude en tant que connaissances, mais comme une théorie de l’agir social, de l’acte historique. Le marxisme est la théorie de la révolution prol...

Certains physiciens modernes ont cru pouvoir tirer, de leurs recherches sur la structure de l’atome, la négation du déterminisme universel. Mais ils confondent, dans leurs déductions, l'indétermination avec le hasard ; et ils acceptent l’existence réelle du hasard. D’ailleurs Max Planck, qui a découvert les quanta, n’accepte pas l'indéterminisme, non plus que le professeur Einstein.

They say of morality, as St. Augustine said of Time, I know what it is when you do not ask me If this theory wexetrue, 9 PRACTICAL ETHICS mankind would be ...