Explores why Americans are more fearful today than in the past & often most fearful of the wrong things. Scholars & journalists commonly invoke the specter of premillenial tensions, while other ...explanations focus on the news media. It is argued here that the primary culprits for the production of mass fear in the US are those who profit from tapping into moral insecurities & providing false kinds of symbolic substitutes. Advocates of scary scenarios capture public attention through sophisticated marketing techniques that capitalize on the news media need for constant provocative content. Reporters are shown to do an extraordinary job of exposing the scare tactics of many of these organizations. However, once a scare catches on, it is very difficult to stop until it has run its course. Several examples of this process are discussed: the early-1990s political correctness scare, the youth-at-risk scare, the monster mom scare caused by a concern over teen pregnancies, & scares over the menace of black men, illegal drugs, & plane wrecks. Each of these cases is characterized by the use of poignant anecdotes in place of scientific evidence & the use of isolated incidents to stand in for entire social dynamics or trends. Actual statistics demonstrate that these fears were largely overblown, but the alarms were successful because they were rooted in deeper cultural anxieties. Moreover, they succeeded in diverting tens of billions of dollars to mythical hazards like road rage or to programs for more prisons or technology to make air travel safer. It is in this kind of diversion that irrational scares have their most pernicious effect, because those resources might more profitably be used to combat serious dangers that threaten large numbers of people. The text contains an Introduction & 9 Chpts with Notes. D. Ryfe
An argument is made for the usefulness of rationalist theories in social science as a way out of the sterility of empiricism. The work explores how standard modeling approaches have been used to ...model Simmelian formalism, French structuralism, & British new social realism, & finds that those attempts have failed to capture the essential elements of rationalist argumentation. This implies that rationalist theories require their own modeling approaches; how these rationalist theories might be modeled is discussed, in 7 Chpts. (1) Rationalists and Models -- deals with a rationalist heritage, three rationalist schools, possibilism & formal models, & the uses of formal models. (2) The Conflict-Cohesion Hypothesis: Do We Know Whether Simmel Was Right? -- discusses Simmel vs Coser, concepts, & methods. (3) Structuralism and Conventional Models -- highlights mythology, politics, & implications. (4) New Social Realism -- considers Karl Marx, Emile Durkheim, Anthony Giddens, Roy Bhaskar, & the prospects for modeling. (5) The Logic of Formalization -- examines models, theories, & models of theories; rationalist theories; & sets & society. (6) Models for Rationalists: Simmel Revisited -- explores typology & set theory, a deduction program, formalization, & results. (7) Conclusion -- discusses the duality of dualism & dialectics as desideratum. 9 Tables, 5 Figures, 3 Appendixes, 272 References.
What motivates a lifelong scholarly pursuit, and how do one's studies inform life outside the academy? Sociologists, who live in families but also study families, who go to work but also study work, ...who participate in communities but also try to understand communities, have an especiallyintimate relation to their research. Growing up poor, struggling as a woman in a male-dominated profession, participating in protests against the Vietnam War; facts of life influence research agendas, individual understandings of the world, and ultimately the shape of the discipline as a whole.Barry Glassner and Rosanna Hertz asked twenty-two of America's most prominent sociologists to reflect upon how their personal lives influenced their research, and vice versa, how their research has influenced their lives. In this volume, the authors reveal with candor and discernment how worldevents, political commitments and unanticipated constraints influenced the course of their careers. They disclose how race, class, and gender proved to be pivotal elements in the course of their individual lives, and in how they carry out their research. Faced with academic institutions that did nothire or promote persons of their gender, race, sexual orientation, or physical disability, they invented new routes to success within their fields. Faced with disappointments in political organizations to which they were devoted, they found ways to integrate their disillusionment into their researchagendas. While some of the contributors radically changed their political commitments, and others saw more stability, none stood still.An intimate look at biography and craft, these snapshots provide a fascinating glimpse of the sociological life for colleagues, other academics, and aspiring young sociologists. The collection demonstrates how inequalities and injustices can be made into motors for
scholarly research, which in turnhave the power to change individual life courses and entire societies.
Politicians & consumer products manufacturers have learned to tap into the human fear mechanism to achieve their ends. These fear mongers use narrative techniques to overcome errors in reasoning by ...repeating the cause for fear, labeling isolated incidents as trends, & misdirecting the public's attention. These techniques are illustrated in the case of the public's fear of youth violence rising when juvenile crime was falling & in the current fear of terrorism. Other uncommon dangers that the media & politicians have blown into full-fledged fears are fire during surgery & child kidnapping. In a culture of fear, the state's coercive power increases. 3 References. M. Pflum
What motivates a lifelong scholarly pursuit, and how do one's studies inform life outside the academy? Sociologists, who live in families but also study families, who go to work but also study work, ...who participate in communities but also try to understand communities, have an especially intimate relation to their research. Growing up poor, struggling as a woman in a male-dominated profession, participating in protests against the Vietnam War; facts of life influence research agendas, individual understandings of the world, and ultimately the shape of the discipline as a whole. Barry Glassner and Rosanna Hertz asked twenty-two of America's most prominent sociologists to reflect upon how their personal lives influenced their research, and vice versa, how their research has influenced their lives. In this volume, the authors reveal with candor and discernment how world events, political commitments and unanticipated constraints influenced the course of their careers. They disclose how race, class, and gender proved to be pivotal elements in the course of their individual lives, and in how they carry out their research. Faced with academic institutions that did not hire or promote persons of their gender, race, sexual orientation, or physical disability, they invented new routes to success within their fields. Faced with disappointments in political organizations to which they were devoted, they found ways to integrate their disillusionment into their research agendas. While some of the contributors radically changed their political commitments, and others saw more stability, none stood still. An intimate look at biography and craft, these snapshots provide a fascinating glimpse of the sociological life for colleagues, other academics, and aspiring young sociologists. The collection demonstrates how inequalities and injustices can be made into motors for scholarly research, which in turn have the power to change individual life courses and entire societies.
The uses of ignorance Glassner, Barry
The Chronicle of Higher Education,
10/2015, Letnik:
62, Številka:
9
Journal Article, Trade Publication Article
"According to the Christian tradition," the president said, "grace is not earned. Consider these lines from the poet and environmental activist Wendell Berry, in his poem "The Peace of Wild Things": ...When despair for the world grows in me and I wake in the night at the least sound in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be, I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds. .. ...my studying, I've concluded that some of the deepest and toughest learning occurs when we struggle with ways of understanding the world that are alien to us, with concepts and practices that we would rather brush aside.
