This delightful, thought-provoking book tackles head-on the assumption that laughter and humour are necessarily good in themselves. The author proposes a social theory that places humour central to ...social life. Billig argues that all cultures use ridicule as a disciplinary means to uphold norms of conduct and conventions of meaning.
This article examines the way that critical discourse is written. It does so by considering the concept of nominalization. Critical discourse analysts have suggested that nominalization (along with ...passivization) has important ideological functions such as deleting agency and reifying processes. However, the language used by critical analysts, as they explore nominalization, is revealing. They tend to use, and thereby instantiate, the very forms of language whose ideological potentiality they are warning against — such as deleting agency, using passives and turning processes into entities. The concept of 'nominalization' is itself a nominalization; it is typically used in imprecise ways that fail to specify underlying processes. If critical analysts take seriously their own ideological warnings about nominalization and passivization, they need to change the standard ways of writing critical analysis. We need to use simpler, less technical prose that clearly ascribes actions to human agents.
In recent years there has been much interest in collective memory and commemoration. It is often assumed that when nations celebrate a historic day, they put aside the divisions of the present to ...recall the past in a spirit of unity. As Billig and Marinho show, this does not apply to the Portuguese parliament's annual celebration of 25 April 1974, the day when the dictatorship, established by Salazar and continued by Caetano, was finally overthrown. Most speakers at the ceremony say little about the actual events of the day itself; and in their speeches they continue with the partisan politics of the present as combatively as ever.
To understand this, the authors examine in detail how the members of parliament do politics within the ceremony of remembrance; how they engage in remembering and forgetting the great day; how they use the low rhetoric of manipulation and point-scoring, as well as high-minded political rhetoric. The book stresses that the members of the audience contribute to the meaning of the ceremony by their partisan displays of approval and disapproval. Throughout, the authors demonstrate that, to uncover the deeper meanings of political rhetoric, it is necessary to take note of significant absences.
The Politics and Rhetoric of Commemoration illustrates how an in-depth case-study can be invaluable for understanding wider processes. The authors are not content just to uncover unnoticed features of the Portuguese celebration. They use the particular example to provide original insights about the rhetoric of celebrating and the politics of remembering, as well as throwing new light onto the nature of party political discourse.
Today new forms of critical psychology are challenging the cognitive revolution that has dominated psychology for the past three decades. This book explores the historical roots of these new ...psychologies. It demonstrates that their ideas are not quite as new as is often supposed.
It is often assumed that psychological globalization produces tolerant, cosmopolitan outlooks, which deglobalization is now replacing with intolerance and narrow nationalism. This article argues that ...nationalism and cosmopolitanism, rather than being simple opposites, are entangled historically and methodologically, and that the national nature of globalization and the global nature of nationalism need to be recognized. Historically, the period of globalization coincided with the formation of the world of nation-states. Methodologically, economic calculations of globalization assume a world of nation-states. Nationalism is not only global in its reach but national consciousness is entangled with international consciousness. This entanglement may not be apparent if nationalism is equated with its extreme forms, for nationalism has everyday forms in established states. This article shows how studies of cosmopolitanism can themselves take for granted the world of nation-states within their methodologies. There are some brief suggestions about how to study banal nationalism.
This innovative ethnography takes a new approach to the study of Philippine sugar. For much of the late colonial history of the Philippines, sugar was its most lucrative export, the biggest employer, ...and the greatest source of political influence. The so-called "Sugar Barons"--wealthy hacendero planters located mainly in Central Luzon and on the Visayan island of Negros--gained the reputation as kingmakers and became noted for their lavish lifestyles and the quasi-feudal nature of their estates. But Philippine sugar gradually declined into obsolescence; today it is regarded as a "sunset industry" that can barely satisfy domestic demand. While planters continue to think of themselves as wielding considerable power and influence, they are more often seen as vestiges of a bygone era. Michael Billig examines sugar's decline within both the dynamic context of contemporary Philippine society and the global context of the international sugar market. His multi-sited ethnographic analysis focuses mainly on conflicts among the various elite sectors (planters, millers, traders, commercial buyers, politicians) and concludes that the most salient political, economic, and cultural trend in the Philippines today is the decline of rural, agrarian elite power and the rise of urban industrial, commercial, and financial power. His reflections on his relationships with informants in the midst of the politically charged atmosphere that surrounds the sugar industry provide a candid look at the role of the observer who, try as he might to remain impartial, finds himself swept into the vortex of policy debates and power plays.
This article examines how the political manipulation of Covid-19 statistics was opposed in 2020. It does this by studying in detail the language used in a public exchange of letters in the UK. The ...exchange was between the chair of the United Kingdom Statistics Authority (UKSA), a statutory body to prevent statistical malpractice, and the Minister of Health, who had been manipulating Covid statistics. The exchange reflects the greater power of the government minister. Initially, the UKSA chair used diplomatic language, marked by paratactic constructions, unspecified arguments, and impersonal structures that did not threaten the minister's face. The minister ignored these and the UKSA chair had to go beyond diplomatic language by re-specifying his arguments and upgrading his critical terminology. Only by catching the press's attention did the chair succeed in making the minister rectify, at least partially, the manipulated statistics. Implications for understanding today's political values are discussed. (Opposing statistical manipulation, manipulating Covid statistics, diplomatic language, parataxis and hypotaxis)
Aquest article suggereix que aquesta època és la millor i pitjor per a la tasca acadèmica. la millor pel que fa hi ha més publicacions acadèmiques que mai. I la pitjor perquè sobra molt d'aquestes ...publicacions. Treballant en les condicions competitives del capitalisme acadèmic, els acadèmics se senten en la necessitat de continuar publicant, independentment que tinguin alguna cosa a dir. Les pressions de publicar contínuament i promoure la pròpia perspectiva es reflecteixen en la manera en la qual els científics socials estan escrivint. I és que els acadèmics utilitzen un llenguatge tècnic basat en substantius, amb una precisió menor a la del llenguatge ordinari. Els estudiants de postgrau han estat educats en aquesta manera d'escriure com una condició prèvia a iniciar-se en les ciències socials. Així, la naturalesa mateixa del capitalisme acadèmic no només determina les condicions en què els acadèmics treballen, sinó que també afecta la seva manera d'escriure.
This article examines Gustav Jahoda’s late work, focussing on his historical writings which have tended to be somewhat overlooked. In many respects this later work, which needs to be understood as a ...whole, parallels his earlier work into culture. In his later writings, Jahoda wrote about the history of social psychology but his history served a critical purpose: he was arguing that social psychology was essentially historical. If behaviour was primarily determined by culture then culture was itself historical and, in this regard, social psychological relations were, thus, historical. Because social psychologists need to think historically, as well as culturally, Jahoda considered that it was important that they should not be constrained by artificial disciplinary boundaries. Jahoda’s advocacy of non-disciplinary thinking was not confined to social psychologists. Just as social psychologists should think historically, so sometimes historians need to think social psychologically. As such, C.L.R. James’s famous cricketing motto can be adapted to fit Jahoda’s historical approach to social psychology.
This paper re‐examines Kurt Lewin's classic leadership studies, using them as a concrete example to explore his wider legacy to social psychology. Lewin distinguished between advanced “Galileian” ...science, which was based on analysing particular examples, and backward “Aristotelian” science, which used statistical analyses. Close examination of the way Lewin wrote about the leadership studies reveals that he used the sort of binary, value‐laden concepts that he criticised as “Aristotelian”. Such concepts, especially those of “democracy” and “autocracy”, affected the way that he analysed the results and the ways that later social scientists have understood, and misunderstood, the studies. It is argued that Lewin's famous motto—“there is nothing as practical as a good theory”—is too simple to fit the tensions between the leadership studies and his own views of what counts as good theory.
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