Marcel Mauss — <Emphasis Type="Italic">Durkheimien</Emphasis> oder eigenständiger Klassiker der französischen Soziologie?

Since the mid-1990s, the question of an independent contribution of Marcel Mauss to social theory has been intensly debated in France. This paper shows that Mauss can be seen as a classic of a symbolic, non-structuralist, interactionist and anti-utilitarian sociology if he is more clearly set apart from Durkheim and untangled from the influences of structuralism and structuralist utilitarianism. Mauss’ contribution to French sociology is similar to Mead’s and Simmel’s contributions to American and German sociology respectively: these classical thinkers represent a third paradigm which goes beyond the dichotomy of instrumental rationality and normative action. According to Mauss, particularly the logic of the gift establishes an independent interaction order and the act of giving has to be recognised as an intrinsic symbolic as well as a social fact. Following Mauss, the gift represents and embodies symbolic interaction.     

Jenseits des Tausches

This paper discusses Karl Marx’ theory as a contribution to the sociology of gift, particularly in connection with current approaches to conceptualize giving and receiving ?beyond exchange“ or reciprocity. Therefore, at first the norm of reciprocity is developed both as a structuring pattern of society and a concept of social justice, while focussing on the question of the origins of the obligation of reciprocity. Its roots are traced back genealogically to the social asymmetry produced by the gift as a performative act, which also shows the latent warlike dimension of the gift-relation. With Marx’s critique of alienation, the problematic dimension of reciprocity can be further demonstrated but also – with reference to Marx’s Auszüge aus James Mills Buch ?Élémens d’économie politique“ (1844) – contrasted with the utopia of a radical separation of gift and countergift. Finally, Marx’ contribution to the sociology of gift is summarized and compared to the approaches of Bourdieu, Derrida and Caillé.     

Die Gabe — ein neues Paradigma der Soziologie?

To give, to receive and to reciprocate - that’s the basic formula of gift exchange developed and elaborated in the Essay on Gift published in 1925 by Marcel Mauss. The Mouvement Anti-utilitariste dans les Sciences Sociales, shortly M.A.U.S.S., a group initiated by the French sociologist Alain Caillé and the Swiss anthropologist Gérald Berthoud, continues Mauss’s work in a specific way. The object of this group, hardly known in Germany, is to establish a third paradigm, the paradigm of the gift, which is meant to overcome the dualism between methodological individualism and holism. After contextualizing the M.A.U.S.S. group in the field of contemporary French sociology, the article explores the sociological-historical basis of the group, the gift theorem of Mauss. In the following step the article analyzes the theoretical premises of the M.A.U.S.S. group which are thought to substantiate the paradigm of gift. The basic theoretical approach of the group will be introduced and its position in the field of French sociology specified by an analysis of Caillé’s crtitique of Pierre Bourdieu. In the final part, a couple of critical remarks on the M.A.U.S.S.-group’s methodological and sociological impetus are made.     

EMU Political Leadership vs. Greek Civil Society: How Shall We Live Together?

EMU is a political programme at risk: its reform must reconnect with the original Community ethos as well as institutional and policy changes. Historically this ethos manifested itself in public practices of power as action in concert (‘promise’) and generosity (‘gift’), which Arendt, Mauss and Ricoeur’s political thought helps define. The 2012 Fiscal Compact moved away from such practices. Some Greek civil society organizations have demonstrated more genuine commitment to promise and generosity during the Greek fiscal crisis. This is not unique to Greece. EU parliaments and executives must consult with civil society meaningfully to properly integrate EMU within EU law.     

Religion und Wirtschaft. Mauss, Simiand und das Durkheim’sche Programm

The text points out that, with regard to the sociology of economy, Emile Durkheim’s work encompasses two research programs. The focus of the first program lies in the critique of economic categories as well as the institutions that function according to the market system. The second program, initially developed in The Elementary Forms of Religious Life, argues that there is a relation between religion and economy. While the former perspective is being developed by the Durkheim-follower François Simiand (and Maurice Halbwachs) the latter is enhanced by his student Marcel Mauss. In the course of the 1930s both perspectives converge in the works on the gift and on money. Finally the text formulates the hypothesis that Durkheim’s perspective can be used in order to update Max Weber’s question concerning the relation between the religious ethic and the modern economic world.     

Embedded rubber sandals: trade and gifts across the Sino–Kyrgyz border

How does a group of Uyghur traders from a village in Atush (Xinjiang, China) end up with a stock of unsellable rubber sandals in Kadamjay (Batken, Kyrgyzstan), and why don’t they compete according to market principles? This article explores the social investments of the traders and their families, and reveals their behaviour to be rational, both economically and socially. It illuminates the business and daily life of Uyghur traders in southern Kyrgyzstan, an environment that is increasingly challenging and uncertain. The examination of exchange relations between their households explains why the traders cooperate as they do and also why they do not cooperate more. Economic rationales and social obligations prove to be mutually embedded. This insight expands and deepens a nascent analytical approach that recognizes social motivation for economic activities in Central Asia alongside undeniable economic incentives. This approach has much to gain from being more explicitly reconnected to classical anthropological theories of gift giving.     

Fiesta y sacrificio Explorando el problema de la transgresión en Georges Bataille

This work is aimed at recreating the logical space and the –articulated or articulable– content of the notion of transgression as George Bataille presents it in “The Eroticism” (1957) based on his two major theoretical influences on this issue: the theory of parties developed by Roger Caillois (1939) and the sacrifice model as understood by Marcel Mauss and Henri Hubert (1899). Based on these theoretical sources it is claimed that Bataille's notion of ritual transgression can be understood as a privileged contention tool of the constitutive social tension; as the mechanism allowing to regulate the reinstatement of violence –that sort of violence that had been removed in order for the society to exist–, opening the way for the social ordering to be maintained, renewed, and reproduced.     

Das Leben als Gabe

In the last decade of his life, Talcott Parsons devoted a large part of his scholarly attention to the sociology of religion and to the history and symbolism of Christianity. This part of Parsons’s work has been almost completely neglected — both in the literature on Parsons and in the sociology of religion. In my interpretation, Parsons’s late systems-theoretical “human condition paradigm” is separated from his quasi-structuralist analyses of Jewish and Christian myths. The core of these myths is, according to Parsons, the idea of life as a gift. The article analyses the importance of this idea for (1) a sociological understanding of Christianity, (2) some aspects of contemporary moral theorizing, particularly the question how the Judeo-Christian tradition can be appropriated under the condition of highly developed autonomous individuality, and (3) the question of a latent Protestant bias in Parsons’s theory of social change.     

A history of Turkey’s AKP-Gülen conflict

Although organized independently, both the Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalk?nma Partisi, AKP) and the Gülen Movement (GM) have primarily addressed the same base and acted as mediums of upward mobility for Sunni Anatolian conservatives. Targeted by the old secular establishment, AKP and GM forged a mutually beneficial relationship in 2000s, with the former’s political office reinforcing the latter’s social and bureaucratic power and vice versa. Nevertheless, with the demise of their common enemy, this marriage of convenience gradually turned into a brutal fight, as epitomized in the abortive coup of 15 July. This profile provides a critical history of AKP and GM relations, illustrating how and why the image of Gülenists has changed in AKP’s projection from a faith-based community to a terrorist organization.     

Italy and EU enlargement to the Western Balkans: the Europeanization of national interests?

Abstract

Italy is a vocal supporter of EU enlargement to the Western Balkans. Relying on primary and secondary sources and semi-structured interviews, this article analyses Italy’s position, including the ‘what?’ (the traditional views of the country on EU enlargement), the ‘how?’ (formal processes and actual practices of decision-making) and the ‘why?’ (the main factors influencing its position). The expected economic and security benefits for Rome largely compensate for the perceived costs of EU enlargement towards the region. Nevertheless, Italy’s influence capacity is hampered by lack of resources and a traditional focus on mere diplomatic presence, as it emerges from the recent examples of the Berlin Process, the refugee crisis, and the EUSAIR.     

Der andere „amerikanische“ Max Weber: Hans H. Gerths und C. Wright Mills’ <Emphasis Type="Italic">From Max Weber</Emphasis>, dessen deutsche Rezeption und das Konzept der „public sociology“

The reader From Max Weber, published by Hans H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills in 1946, has a strong international impact. Its ideas influenced Mills?s later work The sociological imagination in which he makes it clear that the “sociological imagination” can best be found in the works of classical social analysts like Max Weber. Michael Burawoy, who uses the term “public sociology”, based on Mills, therefore also calls Weber an early “public sociologist”. In addition to that he describes the volume by Gerth and Mills as the outstanding collection of Weber?s writings in which the authors offer an interpretation different from that of Talcott Parsons. In Germany Gerth?s and Mills?s book on Weber is almost completely unknown, although it is still mentioned in works by German sociologists published shortly after the Second World War. This is one reason why in Germany Burawoy?s concept of “public sociology” is seen in contrast to the views of Weber. First, the article shows the differences in the interpretation of Weber by Gerth and Mills and by Parsons. Than it describes the early German reception of From Max Weber and looks into the reasons why it was not of greater influence. It will be stressed that the importance of this book lies in the fact, that it can be used to legitimize “public sociology”.     

Staatlich gesteuerte Tarifautonomie

The German Tarifautonomie, the state-free collective bargaining system on working conditions, can be considered as an institutionalized arrangement of political exchange between labor market associations and the state. This understanding allows to examine the state’s interests in regard to free collective bargaining as well as the state’s options to achieve his interests and to impact the social partnership activities. The article highlights the intentions, the methods and the effects of various forms of state intervention. As a result, the decade-long institutional change of the German industrial relations system can be seen inter alia as an outcome of the dynamic and flexible relationship between associations and the state. A central feature of this relationship is the finding of a guided autonomy.     

Auf dem Weg zur Postwachstumsgesellschaft – Von der Resonanztheorie zur aleatorischen Demokratie

Current routines in democratic politics seem to foster delayed reactions to long-term ecological issues. The article systematically reconstructs Hartmut Rosa’s reflections on democracy, who combines in his theory of resonance a fundamental critique of late-modernity and its logic of growth with a general plea for a democratic transformation towards a post-growth society, and modifies them at three points. It emphasizes Rosa’s concept of the experience of self-efficacy in politics inspired by resonance-theory. From there on, his reflections are developed towards the idea of aleatoric democracy in two respects. First, the paper shows how practices of aleatoric democracy can fulfill the requirement of positive experiences of self-efficacy in politics. Second, it explains why institutions of aleatoric democracy can be suitable counterweights to the short-termism inherent to the current routine procedures of democratic governance.     

Arenen des demokratischen Experimentalismus. Zur Konvergenz von nordamerikanischem und französischem Pragmatismus

In their works on The public and its problems and Politics of nature John Dewey and Bruno Latour develop theoretical models of a democratic experimentalism. Taking their assumptions as a base, this paper examines the thesis of a convergence of North American and French pragmatism. This thesis is supported not only by further analogies in the works of Dewey and Latour, but also by the pragmatic sociology of justification upheld by Luc Boltanski and Laurent Thévenot, which can be on the one hand integrated into the frame-work of Latour’s theory on democratic experimentalism. On the other hand, comparisons can readily be drawn to the pragmatic theory of social worlds and arenas of Anselm L. Strauss. The theories differ in respect to their expectations as to whether, where and how social arenas are formed, once different social worlds and conventions come into critical conflict with each other and need to be rearranged by experimental processes. However, any remaining disparity in the assumptions regarding such arena figurations of democratic experimentalism could definitely have a stimulating effect on their empirical cartography and analysis.     

¿Hacia una “nueva época” en los estudios de memoria social?

Social memory is currently a central topic at both the rhetoric and the academic level. This has led to a remarkable theoretical and conceptual effervescence in this field. While for some authors such state of affairs suggests a lack of precision and clarity –terminologically as well as conceptually– and even warns us about the imminent ‘fatigue’ of the field, our analytical perspective is consistent with those authors who point to a reconfiguration of the manifestations of memory and the social arenas associated with it. Through an analytical historicization of terminological and conceptual developments in memory studies, this paper outlines a first and second ‘era’ of memory studies, towards the beginning and end of the last century. It also points to the emergence of a third period, a ‘new era’ in memory praxis and theory. As part of broader processes of globalization and transnational flows, as well as hypermobility of individuals and cultural objectification, fuelled by increasing technological capabilities and media literacy, unprecedented mnemonic modes, practices, and spaces develop. This scenario suggests a need for new perspectives, which can dialogue with existing ones, and an expansion of the theoretical and conceptual focus on the transformations and continuities of memory.     

No mood for change: neoliberalism and Turkish fiction

ABSTRACT

This study examines various literary archetypes of social and political agency in popular Turkish fiction since the implementation of neoliberal economic policies (NLPs) in the 1980s. The extent to which NLPs have shaped notions of social and political agency is considered in the light of post-liberalization economic trends, and urban challenges facing Turkey today. It has been said that in Turkish literature, social and political actors must inevitably find self-transcendence either in self-imposed marginalization, or in quietist contemplation. However, we find in at least one case a new literary hero who points towards a more defiantly existential affirmation of freedom. What we suggest is that in A Strangeness in My Mind by Orhan Pamuk, the central character in the novel, Mevlut Karata?, is something of a departure. Mevlut must weather all the difficulties of the individual buffeted by NLPs, yet he endures unbowed if not undamaged. What emerges is a hero of today’s Turkey who has more affinities with Heidegger’s authentic Dasein than more traditional literary figures, who often are either impotent leftists or bourgeois aesthetes.     

Imagining a dialectical African modernity: Achebe's ontological hopes,Sembene's machines,Mda's epistemological redness

In Chinua Achebe's book of essays Hopes and Impediments, he asserts that Nigeria's failure to ‘develop’ and ‘modernise’ like Japan is because of a ‘failure of imagination’. Yet for many Africans, modernity is a tainted ‘gift’ because it was introduced into the African continent along with European colonial capitalism which simultaneously caused an ontological crisis of self. Although many Africans want to ‘catch up’ with the West, how is it possible when Western technological superiority was equated with white racial superiority? Achebe declares that, as Africans ‘begin their journey into the strange, revolutionary world of modernization’, literature should function as guide. Hence, I examine Ousmane Sembene's novel God's Bits of Wood which depicts Africans laying claim to ‘race-less’, ‘language-less’ ‘machines’. But does (Western) technology change culture? Can African culture appropriate technology to form a dialectical African modernity? If so, what role does ‘tradition’ play? In Zakes Mda's The Heart of Redness, we witness the emergence of a traditional modernity made possible by a dialectical epistemology.     

Casuistry,Commentary and Killing Cattle: Transgressing Notional Borders of Belonging

In 2011, ABC Television’s Four Corners broadcast “A Bloody Business”. The program’s confronting subject was the live cattle trade to Indonesia, and in particular, disturbing slaughtering practices. Notable was repeated use of the phrases “Australian cattle”, “Australian livestock” and “Australian animals”. The inference was that these were “our” cattle, some of which suffered shockingly cruel deaths. The implicit nationalism informing the program’s emotional provocation begs the question in what sense were the cattle, an introduced cloven-hooved domesticated animal, Australian? This raises related questions: if cattle are “ours”, why not other exotic flora and fauna, and what of settlers and more recent immigrants too? After briefly discussing this program, the paper considers a range of different engagements with Australian landscapes. Of principal interest are affinities to landscape based on social organisation. Pivotal to this are notions of lifescapes and emotional geographies. These notions form the foundation for following discussion on several disparate entanglements with landscape. The discussion ranges across cattle, pastoralists, Aborigines, water buffalo, other exotic flora and fauna, kangaroo shooters, shearers and immigrant responses to national parks. In doing so, the paper explores the vexed issue of who and what can be included in the embrace of Australian nativeness.     

Remarks on Al-Niffarī's Neglect in Early Sufi Literature

This short article seeks to re-evaluate the unique case of al-Niffarī and the sophisticated framework of his total omission in the great Sufi compendiums of the fourth/tenth and fifth/eleventh centuries. Among the well-known explanations of this omission provided by modern scholarship are al-Niffarī himself neglecting to collect his writings, the obscurity of his shocking sayings, and the historical fact that he was not affiliated with any mystical school or Sufi sheikh of his time. A significant question should be inserted here: if the writings of al-Niffarī were really shocking for his contemporaries, why do we not come across any evidenced attempts to confront him or accuse him of heresy as was the case with other controversial Sufi figures? In order to answer this question, comparing al-Niffarī's case with the cases of other controversial figures from the same phase might be useful and interesting. Besides al-Niffarī's asocial temperament, the ‘silent’ and ‘personal’ tone of his writings had nothing to do with the Sufi reality that followed his death, a new reality that witnessed a rapid process of institutionalising the Sufi spirituality, where the controlling tone became communalised par excellence.