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1 – 10 of over 10000Benjamin Taupin and Marc Lenglet
In this article, we make the point that managerial domination as described by pragmatic sociology is an appropriate notion to make sense of complex forms of domination in…
Abstract
In this article, we make the point that managerial domination as described by pragmatic sociology is an appropriate notion to make sense of complex forms of domination in contemporary organizations. Based on Lemieux’s work on ‘grammars’, we complement approaches of complex domination put forward by pragmatic sociologists such as Boltanski and Thévenot. We illustrate these ideas by means of an ethnographic study of the financial intermediation industry. Our analysis sketches out an alternative conceptualization of power in such environments, and by so doing, helps us delineate the features that characterize complex financial domination. We conclude by arguing that this type of domination is the result of specific contradictions inherent to the grammars of financial intermediation.
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In this chapter I attempt to merge Athens’ conception of domination as a complex interactionist concept with Goffman’s notion of demeanor and deference as lynchpins of…
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In this chapter I attempt to merge Athens’ conception of domination as a complex interactionist concept with Goffman’s notion of demeanor and deference as lynchpins of dramaturgical analysis. I ground the merger in an analysis of metaphorical duel between a superordinate and subordinate in the TV show Mad Men. The examination of this metaphorical dual also implies a connection between a radical interactionism as defined by Athens and a radical dramaturgy informed by Athens’ conception of domination. In particular, I propose an examination of civil domination within institutionalized settings in which use of shared pasts and concomitant acts of demeanor and deference enhance the construction of domination between superordinates and subordinates. The fictional representation of a metaphorical duel in the television show Mad Men depicts a struggle for control in which the superordinate demands that a willful subordinate sign a contract which will bind the subordinate to a particular place for an extended period of time. The examination of events leading to signing reveals a complex weave of social acts that combines the force of domination with the artistry of demeanor and deference.
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Dewey, through his contributions to pragmatism (America’s sole original philosophy), has long been considered relative to symbolic interactionism (SI), which emerged from that…
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Dewey, through his contributions to pragmatism (America’s sole original philosophy), has long been considered relative to symbolic interactionism (SI), which emerged from that philosophy. His impact on SI, while falling short of those of Mead and Cooley, has mainly come from (and has been limited to) concepts and insights developed in Human Nature and Conduct: An Introduction to Social Psychology (1922/1957) and his earlier, seminal, article, “The Reflex Arc Concept in Psychology,” published in 1896 during his tenure at the University of Chicago (1894–1904). SI, however, has wrongly ignored Dewey’s political theory, especially his concept of domination. In order to rectify this inattention, I summarize the social and historical contexts that motivated Dewey’s turn toward domination; outline the radical nature of his political theory; illustrate similarities of his political theory with Marx’s; expatiate on his concept of domination, including his argument for social practices to reduce surplus domination; and explicate the theoretical and political implications of taking his political theory seriously.
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This is an interpretive study in the sociology of literature that explores Aeschylus’s trilogy of dramatic plays known as the Oresteia. The plays dramatize a normative argument…
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This is an interpretive study in the sociology of literature that explores Aeschylus’s trilogy of dramatic plays known as the Oresteia. The plays dramatize a normative argument that exemplifies the dialectical struggle between domination and democracy. Social relations are characterized by agon (struggle), domination, and contradictions brought about by learning through suffering. These social realities reflect the primary theoretical claim of radical interactionism (RI) that domination and conflict are profound, pervasive, and perennial. On the interpersonal level, the plays dramatize structure, agency, role-taking, and the Thomas Axiom. As the first drama to interrogate an inchoate polity as an object of the public’s gaze, the Oresteia anticipates the sociological importance of critical consciousness, collective decision-making, political institutions, moral and, ultimately, cultural transformation. Despite a social context of slavery, imperialism, xenophobia, ostracism, misogyny, exclusivity, and constant warfare, the Oresteia foreshadows Western civilization’s ideals of legal-rational domination, citizenship, human rights, persuasion, and justice that have been imperfectly institutionalized to reduce surplus domination. The West still struggles to realize those ideals.
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This chapter reviews three analytical perspectives – ‘structural’, ‘network’ and ‘cultural’ – on the study of power and their implications for theorizing elites. It builds on this…
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This chapter reviews three analytical perspectives – ‘structural’, ‘network’ and ‘cultural’ – on the study of power and their implications for theorizing elites. It builds on this initial theoretical review by developing a critical realist approach to the study of organizational elites out of the structurally based perspective identified in the first section of the chapter. The explanatory potential of this critical realist approach is then illustrated through two case studies of ruling elites embedded in contrasting historical, political and social contexts. The final section of the chapter provides a discussion of the wider implications of these case study analyses for understanding and explaining the ‘new feudalism’ which is emerging in advanced political economies and societies.
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Raghunandan Reddy, Arun Kumar Sharma and Munmun Jha
The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that Bourdieu’s concept of masculine domination offers a comprehensive social theory of gender as compared to Connell’s concept of…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that Bourdieu’s concept of masculine domination offers a comprehensive social theory of gender as compared to Connell’s concept of hegemonic masculinity through examining the proposition of positive hegemonic masculinity.
Design/methodology/approach
This is a conceptual paper that argues that Bourdieu’s concept of masculine domination offers a comprehensive social theory of gender as compared to Connell’s concept of hegemonic masculinity.
Findings
The findings demonstrate that Bourdieu’s concept of masculine domination incorporates both discursive and material structures of the gender system that privileges men/masculine over women/feminine, making it a comprehensive social theory of gender.
Research limitations/implications
The concepts of hegemonic masculinity and masculine domination have not been reviewed in the light of emerging perspectives on hegemony, power and domination. The future research could focus on a review of research methods such as institutional ethnography, in examining masculine domination.
Practical implications
Using masculine domination perspective, organizations could identify specific managerial discourses, aspects of work organization and practices in order to eliminate gender-based discrimination, harassment and unequal access to resources.
Social implications
Public policy interventions aimed at inclusive development could examine women’s condition of continued disadvantageousness, through masculine domination perspective.
Originality/value
The authors seek to provide a comparative view of the concepts of hegemonic masculinity and masculine domination, using the categories of comparison that was not attempted earlier.
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I propose a theoretical framework that specifies dynamic principles involving the generalized and ubiquitous everyday interaction of society and state actors alternately in…
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I propose a theoretical framework that specifies dynamic principles involving the generalized and ubiquitous everyday interaction of society and state actors alternately in upholding and undermining the rules that spell the unequal distribution of power and resources. The framework proposed brings together a historically specific micro-process – contention – with a general macro-principle of permanence and change in the distributive rules – the creation, renegotiation, and occasional destruction of a generally durable yet continuously contested “pact of domination.” Inequality represents simultaneously a central organizing principle of social life and a recurring source of conflict over rights and rules, the latter being the practical rules that govern interaction in specific cases of contention, giving governing agencies the necessary flexibility to act casuistically, giving in here, and throwing its weight there, with new formal rules sometimes following that process, or old ones falling in disuse.
In this scheme, the state is a historically created organizational and coercive agent embodying and enforcing the currently valid pact, mostly through legal/coercive, but also ideological power over its territory of jurisdiction. State forms are specific to each historically constructed pact of domination, so that there is no such thing as a state in general, but a series of historically constructed states, each with its rules of “who should get what” and peculiar ways of maintaining inequality between dominant and dominated.
Introduces a new approach to exploitation, and uses it toreinterpret the economic significance of racism, generally, and theunderclass specifically. The extent of exploitation in…
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Introduces a new approach to exploitation, and uses it to reinterpret the economic significance of racism, generally, and the underclass specifically. The extent of exploitation in labour processes is the product of two factors: whether workers have an “exit option” of ready alternative employment; and how completely labour exchanges specify the labour that will actually be done. The state of these two factors, in turn, depends on the social and historical setting of production. Uses this conception to reinterpret the effect of racism on economic outcomes – this suggests that the increasing number of permanently unemployed people in inner‐city ghettos have an important effect on the racially‐differentiated patterns of exploitation and on the overall level of exploitation in contrast with the perspective that the “underclass” is isolated from the rest of society.
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Human liberation requires an affluent, egalitarian, and democratic society in which man is free from domination by nature's caprice and, in all spheres of life, free from…
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Human liberation requires an affluent, egalitarian, and democratic society in which man is free from domination by nature's caprice and, in all spheres of life, free from domination by other men. The industrial revolution and technological advances of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries held great promise for human liberation. The burden of toil and drudgery and the domination of man by nature's caprice began lifting in Europe and in some of her colonies. Human safety and security came within reach because poverty was being eliminated. Liberation on the material plane was at hand. However, at the closing of the twentieth century, the liberation process has been slowed down, if not thwarted. In most of the third world, not even the burden of toil and drudgery and the domination of man by a capricious nature have been lifted. In the affluent United States, on the other hand, material security and safety is widespread, but it still does not reach the lowest stratum. Domination by nature through human poverty continues in the affluent West even though it could be eliminated. Nevertheless, in the West, domination by nature is no longer an insurmountable physical datum.