European Professors as Public Intellectuals

Historically, European economists, compared to their American counterpart, were more involved in public discussions of policy. In this paper it is argued that this has likely changed. The chief reasons seem to involve the European imitation of the academic ethos that is more prevalent in America. Features of this academic ethos include a more formalist orientation in graduate programs and an academic incentive system wherein professional journal publication is paramount and public discourse is relatively devalued. I suggest there is an inescapable ideological dilemma in addressing the costs and benefits of professors’ neglect of public discourse. The ideological character of academics compared with our own political sensibilities affect whether we want academics to influence public discourse or not. I use the history of academics as public intellectuals in Sweden to substantiate the change, and I use new data on Swedish social science academics to see whether those who participate in public discourse tend to have certain political and social views.

Public Intellectuals 2.1

Despite renewed interest in public intellectuals, the consensus view is that they are in a state of decline. Furthermore, the Internet is viewed as one of the factors accelerating their decline. This essay takes the contrary position: the growth of online venues has stimulated rather than retarded the quality and diversity of public intellectuals. The criticisms levied against these new forms of publishing seem to mirror the flaws that plague the more general critique of current public intellectuals: hindsight bias and conceptual fuzziness. Rather, the growth of blogs and other forms of online writing have partially reversed a trend that many have lamented what Russell Jacoby labeled “professionalization and academization” in The Last Intellectuals. In particular, the growth of the blogosphere breaks down or at least lowers the barriers erected by a professionalized academy. They also provide a vetting mechanism through which public intellectuals can receive feedback and therefore fulfill their roles more effectively.

关于发挥知识分子作用的几点思考

中国共产党历来重视知识分子问题,注意贯彻落实知识分子政策,充分发挥他们的积极作用.知识分子政策是其作用发挥的前提保证,知识分子的社会定位是其作用发挥的基本保障,党外知识分子的特殊作用是统一战线得以巩固的基础.     

The Liberal Left Opts for Terror

For a century, intellectual debate on political violence has been dominated by efforts to romanticize the extremist and to invest him with the aura of the altruistic “freedom fighter.” It is astonishing that in the post-9/11 era, the terrorist's image continues to remain habitually mystified and ennobled, while terror attacks are justified as self-defense. “Terrorist discourse” is indicative of the universality of the intellectual position of the Left with regard to terror, national discrepancies notwithstanding. The present article evaluates leftist liberals' attitudes towards terrorism in the 20th-century Russian Empire, Europe, the U.S., and especially Israel—one of the epicenters of terrorism today. The article proposes to examine psychological responses to terrorism in conjunction with a range of contemporary reactions to threats, acknowledged or displaced with an assortment of mental constructs and rationalizations.     

Revisiting the national question and rethinking the political trajectory of Africa in the 21st century

Abstract

The national question in postcolonial Africa encapsulates the totality of national and social challenges that needs resolution. These include the burden of building postcolonial nations, reconstructing postcolonial states, promoting economic development, entrenching popular democracy, defending national sovereignty, consolidating political power, and eventually achieving regional integration and pan-African unity, as long term goals. To resolve these issues, founding fathers crafted different national projects as working ideological and political frameworks, aimed at resolving the national question. This article builds on the continuing concern about the national question, to carry out a critical historiographical study of the nature and conflicted agendas of national project(s), while at the same time providing substatiation for their resuscitation during the current age of failing capitalist neo-liberal project. The premise of the article is that the national question remains relevant beyond the 20^th century as it entails dealing with unresolved national and social questions including challenges of converting territorial nationalism into pan-Africanism as well as democratising global asymmetrical power politics in the 21^st century.     

France's last sociologist

Abstract

The publication of Michael Grenfell's Pierre Bourdieu: Agent Provocateur provides an ideal opportunity for a career retrospective of the academic sociologist who, in recent times, has taken most seriously his role as a public intellectual, indeed, one who gradually warmed to the status of ‘universal intellectual’ with increasing postmodernist disapproval. The French context of Bourdieu's development and reception is highlighted.     

Travelling with vehicular ideas: The case of the third Way

In all the various debates around Anthony Giddens's Third Way sequence, few attempts have been made to characterize its logic and impact as a type of discourse, a certain mode of ideas-work. The first dimension of this paper involves deploying Thomas Osborne's categories to depict the Third Way as a ‘vehicular’ idea, with the intellectual style of Giddens himself correlatively framed as that of a new sort of ‘mediator’. In these terms, the essential inclusiveness and indeterminacy of the Third Way series of texts is illustrated, and the issue of what counts as ideas ‘success’ in the vehicular mode is broached. Second, in line with the inherent mobility of vehicular ideas, I identify the keynote shifts in Third Way thinking over time, including the sociological register that it occupies, its pragmatism and its relationship to New Labour politics. In a third phase, the article takes up questions about the role of the critical intellectual today and the practical, though not theoretical, recovery of ‘ideology-critique’ in appraising ideas like the Third Way. The scope and limits of the very notion of ‘vehicularity’ itself are central to this discussion.     

社会结构现代化变迁的引擎——简论邓小平的知识分子理论

本文通过对邓小平知识分子理论的社会学分析 ,运用历史比较方法 ,揭示了它所具有的拉动中国社会结构走向现代化的重要意义。     

中华民族凝聚力与非党知识分子

中华民族凝聚力由以体现的人、物、制度等都与非党知识分子密切联系。非党知识分子作为关系性基础性因素,构成集体向心力乃至中华民族凝聚力的关键钮结。非党知识分子是增强中华民族凝聚力的主体。     

自由之多艰：知识分子独立人格建构的考察

中国知识分子独立人格的建构是一个困难重重但却无法回避的问题,"独立之精神,自由之思想"是独立人格的文化内涵.自古迄今中国知识分子独立人格建构始终走不出"建构--分化--依附--再建构"的怪圈,根本原因在于中国知识分子对政治极强的依附性.欲彻底走出这一文化怪圈,就必须动摇官本位的政治体制基础,使中国知识分子从对政治的依附性中解脱出来,积极参与到高速发展的市场经济中去,而且社会也必须提供一个能够履行知识分子独立人格的天然使命的环境.