4 ms·
As a sociologist, I can't help but notice some glaring absences. Allow me to amend: ...gift-giving (Mauss, 1925): Giving gifts creates an obligation to recipro
by jboynyc 6y ago
As a sociologist, I can't help but notice some glaring absences. Allow me to amend:
...gift-giving (Mauss, 1925): Giving gifts creates an obligation to reciprocate, tying people together in bonds of mutual obligation.
...collective effervescence (Durkheim, 1912): People engaging in repeated ritual action which aligns their focus on a common object (Erving Goffman called this "interaction ritual") and who become attuned to one another have a shared intense experience that generates what Randall Collins calls "emotional energy."
...symbolic violence (Bourdieu, 1970): Interests of different groups in society run counter to one another, but the dominant classes and their elites manage to universalize their interests by inculcating subservient dispositions among the dominated through education and other cultural institutions.
A few more that I don't care to elaborate right now: kinship (Levi-Strauss, 1949), libido/cathexis (Freud, 1899), orgone (Reich, 1940), imagination (Castoriadis, 1975), interdependence (Elias, 1937).
- nurettin 6y agoThis bourdieu fellow seems to be inspired by kafka rather than society as a whole.
- kome 6y agohey fellow sociologist! the one that imho is really missing is "work", from smith to marx till the present day it has been a cornerstone of social science
- de_watcher 6y agoPhilosophers often miss that one.
- 082349872349872 6y agohttps://existentialcomics.com/comic/359 https://existentialcomics.com/comic/359 see also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24551582 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24551582 compare https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humboldtian_model_of_higher_education#Principles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humboldtian_model_of_higher_ed...
- 082349872349872 6y agoWhat do you two sociologists think of the "fear" entry? Related: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24399254 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24399254 and, on the Sparta/1984 nexus: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24069572 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24069572 (Now I'm curious as to what specific fear, whether more phobian or more deimosian, had a temple at Sparta.) Edit: Phobos. http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A2008.01.0091%3Achapter%3D9%3Asection%3D1 http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%...
- jerkstate 6y agoweird how one of the messages we keep hearing is that automation is just around the corner and everyone needs to be paid to not work. with the breakdown of this and many of the others in the list, it seems to me like someone understands this and doesn't want a cohesive society.
- em-bee 6y agoagreed, though there needn't be a conflict. with automation freeing us from mundane labor, we could actually focus on doing meaningful work. work that advances our society globally, that helps to eliminate poverty and lack of education, etc. there is plenty of work to go around that, can't be automated which would allow us to create bonds in our society in a way that no factory work could achieve
- wodenokoto 6y agoI thought the idea was to have quotes that explicitly used the word cement, not just quotes pertaining to what keeps society together.
- 082349872349872 6y agoIt's good that it's a purely syntactic collection. Viewed semantically, the "cement of society" produces a strange image, as if a single event could, once set in a given form, hold society together forever and ever thereafter. I think society is held together by a process, not an event, so what could the "X of society" be in that case? "The covalent (primary) as well as van der Waals and hydrogen bonds (secondary) of society" makes for a rather unwieldy metaphor. If I ever put together a Humanistpunk band, it'll be called "The Cement Trucks of Society"... Bonus clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f8FAJXPBdOg&t=190 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f8FAJXPBdOg&t=190 (TIL feltpunk is a thing.)
- coldtea 6y ago>Viewed semantically, the "cement of society" produces a strange image, as if a single event could, once set in a given form, hold society together forever and ever thereafter. But the collection doesn't concern events, at least the majority of it, but attributes or customs or ideals, etc...
- 082349872349872 6y agoI think that says more about the aptitude of the metaphors in the collection than about whether "cement of society" (where cement normally is poured and ignored) is the best metaphor we can use for what I see: "X of society" where X is an agglutinative process that needs constant renewal (first gained then maintained?) by a society's members. (In my society we often speak of "tisser des liens" to weave society together, but I think felting is a stronger metaphor than weaving or knitting. The artificial structures of the latter two can be unravelled relatively easily by pulling at loose ends, but the random interlacings of the former resist such abuses.) Bonus clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrMwxe2ya5E&t=346 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrMwxe2ya5E&t=346
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- im3w1l 6y agoBy symbolic violence do you mean violence through symbols rather than uhm.. symbols denoting violence like sports?
- 082349872349872 6y agoSearch[1] yielded: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbolic_violence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbolic_violence which I take to be a sociologist's take on the same elephant this boxer describes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJRoTG0hA9c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJRoTG0hA9c Both descriptions are from half a century ago. [1] on that tangent: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24501978 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24501978
- fnord123 6y ago> tying people together Concrete is not known for it's tensile strength. My contribution in image form: https://creativesystemsthinking.files.wordpress.com/2014/10/pyramid-of-capitalist-feudal-system.jpg https://creativesystemsthinking.files.wordpress.com/2014/10/...
- 082349872349872 6y agoThat's a very compressive[1] structure. Failures appear to be rapid: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0gXHqKpg__A&t=25 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0gXHqKpg__A&t=25 Looks like most of the aggregate is also sheared? As regards the first observation: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24574471 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24574471 [1] are there any famous tensile structures beyond Skylon (1951)?
- atomi 6y agoAlso, social contract (Hobbes and Locke)
- animanoir 6y agoAbout symbolic violence, is what Marx says too?
- jboynyc 6y agoNo, it's not. Marx thought workers could come to consciousness about their conditions through work, which Bourdieu did not.