Sociology

Most of us who live in the North and the West consume far too much - too much meat, too much fat, too much sugar, too much salt. We are more likely to put on too much weight than to go hungry. We live in a society that is heading for a crash. We are aware of what is happening and yet we refuse to take it fully into account. Above all we refuse to address the issue that lies at the heart of our problems - namely, the fact that our societies are based on an economy whose only goal is growth for growth's sake.

Serge Latouche argues that we need to rethink from the very foundations the idea that our societies should be based on growth. He offers a radical alternative - a society of 'de-growth'. De-growth is not the same thing as negative growth. We should be talking about 'a-growth', in the sense in which we speak of 'a-theism'. And we do indeed have to abandon a faith or religion - that of the economy, progress and development--and reject the irrational and quasi-idolatrous cult of growth for growth's sake.

While many realize that that the never-ending pursuit of growth is incompatible with a finite planet, we have yet to come to terms with the implications of this - the need to produce less and consume less. But if we do not change course, we are heading for an ecological and human disaster. There is still time to imagine, quite calmly, a system based upon a different logic, and to plan for a 'de-growth society'.


This little book is a pleasure to read. It is critical, contrarian, informative, and provocative. Latouche advances a coherent set of proposals for reversing the treadmill of an ever-more insistent growth dynamic in favour of a more serene existence based on quality of life, solidarity, and respect for the environment.

Bob Jessop, University of Lancaster

For various reasons, among them changes in the global higher education regime and competitive knowledge claims from other disciplines, the field of the history of sociology (HoS) has experienced an increased pressure to justify its own existence during the last decade. Positing that the best approach to justify the existence of a thing is to show its usefulness, the article discusses four types of claims to usefulness made by historians of sociology. The history of sociology can be said to be relevant in (I) shaping and maintaining the discipline's identity; (II) in providing a rich fund of teaching future sociologists; (III) in informing current research and theorizing; and (IV) in reflecting more broadly on the cultural status of sociology in modern societies. The article then assesses the potential and problems of aspiring a historical epistemology of sociology, a proposal made recently especially in German and Anglophone contexts to link the history of science with its philosophy in the sense described as type III. It concludes that selected principles or ideas of historical epistemology can be very fruitfully applied in HoS. However, the project of transferring the whole program of historical epistemology into HoS is bound to fail. Nonetheless, there is plenty of reason to continue conceiving of HoS as an integral part of sociology.

American Humanism is a philosophy that tries to unite the value spheres of the good and the true, thus superseding religion as a then-defunct value sphere. But the strategy of reducing the social differentiation of value spheres by identifying one with the other is also being pursued from the religious side through movements like creationism and Christian Science. The fact that the value orientations represented in the Humanist movement proved to be rather stable implies that the conflict American Humanism has been engaged in throughout the 20th century is a conflict about the relation of the religious value sphere to other value spheres, the most important of which is the “intellectual sphere”. Weber states that “[t]he tension between religion and intellectual knowledge definitely comes to the fore wherever rational, empirical knowledge has consistently worked through to the disenchantment of the world and its transformation into a causal mechanism”.80 This definition, and the opposition towards religion included in it, fits both the Humanist and the sociological positions treated in this paper. This, then, is the reason for the commonalities pointed out before, but it explains also the differences between the two. Humanists can be defined as those members of the intellectual sphere who attempt to show that the rational treatment of the world as a causal mechanism can assume part of the function of the religious value sphere. In Weber’s terms, American Humanism is about an inner-worldly reenchantment of the world. From this perspective, the dynamics of the conflict between Humanism and religion can be stated in a clear fashion: Insofar as the Humanists regard religion as a legitimate contender for their claims to an ethical interpretation of the world, they tend to frame their position in a way that sets itself apart from anything religious. This is the case for the Secular Humanist Declaration. However, when Humanists perceive religion as being in crisis, they tend to formulate their project as one of functional integration of the religious in the value sphere from which they regard the world, thus adopting its functional replacement. This is clearly the case for Dewey’s and Huxley’s work.

Over the past few decades fatherhood and fathering has received an increasing amount of attention from academics, practitioners, stakeholders, and in all forms of media and the public. Fathering types range from house-husbands, primary parent, social father to men
who have limited or no contact with their children. In many societies the views of men’s parenting roles has moved on from the traditional ‘provider/disciplinarian’ to an ideal of ‘involved fatherhood’. In these societies, men are encouraged and expected to be both intimate and involved parents. The importance of paternal relationships on a child’s mental, physical and emotional wellbeing has been thoroughly established.

This document is bibliographical research in progress, useful to the realization the chapter “Wirkungsgeschichte in Italien” (with Marina Calloni) in Habermas global. Wirkungsgeschichte seines Werks, edit by Luca Corchia, Stefan Müller-Doohm, William Outhwaite, Berlin, Suhrkamp, 2019.

It is also an incomplete research.
For this reason, further your references and corrections are welcome:

Luca Corchia
Dipartimento di Scienze Politiche, Università di Pisa,
Via Filippo Serafini 3, 56126 – Pisa (Italy)
luca.corchia@sp.unipi.it

7th July, 2018

La discusión en torno a la legalización del aborto comprende una serie de cuestiones centrales en nuestra época. No es sólo la defensa de la vida de la persona por nacer, sino también que estatus y que protección le brinda el Estado moderno. Si el embrión o el feto no son personas, que son? Puede predicarse que sea solo material biológico? Vida humana en potencia? Que consecuencias tiene esto para la industria biotecnológica y para la sociedad? La decision de la mujer de interrumpir su embarazo es una cuestión privada? O trae consecuencias para todo el tejido social? Algunas de estas cuestiones intento responder en este artículo de divulgación.

Углавном се на старосавезну историју и развој теолошких идеја унутар ње гледа из једне уже богословско-егзегетске перспективе, која често занемарује дубинску по-везаност религијског и социјалног аспекта. Иако Стари Савез представља широк дијапазон теолошких идеја које су се временом модификовале, постоје унутрашње или дубинске структуре које се могу назвати Истине вере, а које су оквиривале и идејно усмеравале теолошка размишљања библијских писаца. Један од основних постулата јахвеизма био је да вера у Бога подразумева адекватан однос према другом човеку. Религијски аспект неодвојив је од социјалног. Човеково унутрашње религијско уверење по природи ствари се одражава на социјалном нивоу. У том смислу, важно је увидети спону између религијског и социјалног код библијских теолога, нарочито пророка, у односу на свет у којем су они живели. Ту се показује велика, може се рећи суштинска, разлика између тада општеважећих религијско-социјалних принципа и пророчких теолошких увида.

This is widely accepted that Network-on-Chip represents a promising solution for forthcoming complex embedded systems. The current SoC Solutions are built from heterogeneous hardware and Software components integrated around a complex communication infrastructure. The crossbar is a vital component of in any NoC router. In this work, we have designed a crossbar interconnect for serial bit data transfer and 128-parallel bit data transfer. We have shown comparision between power and delay for the serial bit and parallel bit data transfer through crossbar switch. The design is implemented in 0.180 micron TSMC technology.The bit rate achived in serial transfer is slow as compared with parallel data transfer. The simulation resuls show that the critical path delay is less for parallel bit data transfer but power dissipation is high.

The aim of the paper is to reconstruct the history of the first critical reflections on rock music, which since the early Sixties has become very popular around the world. From the analysis of the main essays emerges that – for a long time – rock music was considered above all a phenomenon of costume and show business, linked to the expressive and cultural manifestations of a new historical subject: young people. As music, however, rock was considered to lack artistic qualities, both in the musical composition and in the lyrics, especially compared to classical music. It was only in the 1980s that philosophers and social scientists showed an interest in the specific characteristics of the aesthetics of the rock music.

Este libro presenta una biografía política atravesada por las tensiones y por la dramaticidad que supone la lucha por el poder y su consolidación. Pero también, por las contradicciones, memorias y vocabularios que se suscitaron en las últimas décadas del Virreinato del Río de la Plata y que fueron atravesando de diversas maneras la consolidación de las elites revolucionarias. Una biografía que proyectada en la construcción de un orden político actualizará, resignificará y articulará un conjunto de imaginarios, representaciones y vocabularios para fundamentar su intervención en la historia política y para crear nuevas realidades. Una vida política es una travesía, como también es un cuerpo histórico donde anclan y anidan, bajo los designios azarosos de la historia, ideas, prácticas e imaginaciones que esa misma vida, ante determinados sucesos, utiliza, padece y compone. La de Mariano Moreno fue una existencia política y escritural rica, fugaz y apremiante, capaz de dejar vocablos y experiencias que todavía poseen alguna resonancia enigmática en nuestras historias e instituciones.

Introduction

The book you have before you began with a conversation I had with a mate of a mate. ‘You publish books, don’t you?’ my mate’s mate asked me one night. ‘There’s this bloke called Trev. He’s a mate of a mate and I know his partner Pam.’ I hadn’t really thought about publishing a book of poetry until then, and to be honest, I wasn’t really that bothered. Anyway, I told my mate’s mate to give his mate my email address so that he could pass it on to his mate and I never thought anything of it. Until about a fortnight later, when I had these poems sent to me accompanied by an apologetic email explaining that ‘if I wanted to do something with them I could’. You see, the writer of the poems – and obviously the sender of the email – Trevor Paviour wasn’t actually a ‘poet’ as such. He hadn’t had anything published before and he just wrote this stuff down as it came into his head. I read the first few poems and couldn’t believe what I was reading. I asked him for some more and, ever since, I’ve had a steady stream of poetry hitting my inbox every few months.

From Trev’s poems, I thought about gathering those who I feel resonate with what is happening in our current social and political climate. I’d already published Laura Way’s poetry in Tales From the Punkside, so I hoisted her out of my Dropbox folder. The same book had been designed by a good mate of mine – Russ Bestley – who is also lead singer of the Portsmouth-based post-punk band Watch You Drown, and I cajoled him into including some of his lyrics. After that, I put a post out on Facebook, and along came Ashleigh Stewart, Stephen Spencer-Fleet and Frank Rafferty. I was then pushed in the direction of Chris Dibnah and Henry Raby by a good mate of mine, and then met Del Blyben at a festival last year. In fact, it was the same festival where I asked Doghouse (aka Jason Mark Walsh) if he would like to contribute. Laura Taylor and Tom McNair were already on board by that point, too. I’d seen Tim perform his poem in the middle of Stonehenge at the summer solstice in 2016 and immediately wanted to publish it. And Laura Taylor: What better references could you get? I first read her poetry in the ‘gutter’ press: the inimical Class War and wrote to her. Not only was it great to see CW back in print it was great to read Laura’s poetry. So, I got these guys together, and was just about to send the book to the publisher when I bumped into Steve Micalef at a posh academic-type do in London. I bought his book of poetry, The Punk Kings of Dyslexia and couldn’t help but ask him if he wanted to be involved. And so last, but not least, Steve joined this motley crew of wordsmiths and vagabonds.

I hope you will enjoy the contents of this compilation. I’ve read through these poems many times, and each time I read something new. First up, I would like to thank Trev and Pam for being the inspiration in putting this book together. Secondly, I would like to thank all those who have allowed me to publish their work. It is rather humbling to work with those who have contributed; obviously without them you would not be holding this book in your hand. Next, I’d like to thank Sarah Dryden and Sam Dines for the photography that accompanies the text: evocative images that were shot on location in the Western desert of the USA and the Scottish Hebrides. The images specifically speak of home, nostalgia and memory. I would also like to thank Russ Bestley who has put a lot of work into designing this book. He has designed most of the Itchy Monkey Press titles and without him we would not be able to get this stuff out there. Last but not least, thanks to the kids: Eric, Spike and Little Bear (the Hair Bear Bunch).


Mike Dines (Portsmouth, 2018)

In the wonderfully titled The Globalization of Nothing, George Ritzer attempts to bring all the elements of globalization within the purview of a single, all-encompassing theory. The problem, according to Ritzer, is that thinking about globalization has become enmeshed in trying to ...