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Moral agents have moral choice. This chapter argues that moral choice denies historical inevitability when moral choice is informed by both moral imagination and historical imagination. I explore this by way of one specific historical example which should be used, as the philosopher Bernard Mayo argued, as a moral exemplar. In pursuing my arguments I utilise work by Sir Isaiah Berlin, amongst others. I do though take issue with Berlin, whom I argue has confused not the nature but the role of historical imagination, claiming dominance for it where it cannot dominate. I conclude with historical inevitability being refuted by moral choice, informed by both moral imagination and historical imagination.I argue that the refutation of historical inevitability has implications for Australian businesses in their current dealings with the People’s Republic of China. Australia escaped the Global Financial Crisis because of Chinese purchases of Australian commodities. But Australian business in trading with China is trading with an unjust regime. Hoffman and McNulty (2009) argue that regarding a regime such as China we can ‘learn from our past’. Regarding the past I argue that Australian business executives dealing with China would benefit by studying the historical example of Churchill’s May 1940 decision and should use that as a moral exemplar. Earlier generations of Australian managers contemptuously dismissed Chinese workers. The current generation of Australian managers, who fail to morally acknowledge China’s workers and citizens, risks being equally contemptuous, dismissive and racist.

This chapter argues that Albert Camus's post-World War II novella The Fall narrates a bridge of complicity between medicine and law, implicating both professions in the Nazi formulation of race. Rather than reading the work as a broadly construed allegory of the Holocaust, it situates Camus's text within the framework of the Nuremberg trials and their judgment of perpetrators in professional rather than in wide-ranging moral terms. The essay concludes by examining Camus's use of the subjunctive, which posits juridical force as the act of imagining alternatives to the past, and using these alternative scenarios as a basis for judgment.

This chapter focusses on current debates on ‘locating metal’ and on the demand for more theoretical and methodological rigor in metal studies. As an example of the usage of a non-English language in metal, the author examines the empirical case of the usage of Austrian German and Austrian dialects in metal music since around 1990. Herein, the author will be using the disciplinary methodologies of history and analyse the two Austrian bands Alkbottle and Varulv. According to the theory of ‘sonic knowledge’, the case study is interpreted as an example of ‘locating metal’ that occurred in the Austrian metal scene. The chapter shows that the seemingly contradictory coexistence of both deconstructive irony and essentialist nationalism is characteristic of the usage of Austrian German in metal. To conclude, the author proposes that this paradox is a result of the broad cultural history of Austrian nation building after 1945. The paradox of the usage of Austrian dialects in metal is the metal scene's attempt at coping with the frictions of Austria's twentieth century history.

This chapter argues that the process of imagination is molded by the intersecting notions of space, time, and measurements. It shows that economic spaces are shaped by notions of particular space-time held by historical actors and by imaginations of their past and future fictional spaces. The case study of colonial period South Asia examines how financial accounting and other measurements were co-opted to give form to future “fictional” expectations. South Asian economic spaces are shown to be the locus for control and dominance of future economic relationships, which were visualized in particular ways by the colonial rulers.

A conclusion reached is that economic spaces are not just enclosed spaces within borders where economic activity occurs shaped by the dominant culture and economy of a state. The economic spaces in colonial India were sites of economic conflict and violence, where contesting notions of economic time collided, and where widely contrasting economic futures were imagined. Indian nationalists looked into the past to spur their imagination of a different future for India. In fact, the conflict or violence that was part of the recasting of India’s national economic space was not entirely between racial groups (European colonists and native Indians) or strictly between economic classes (bourgeoisie upper castes and proletariat lower castes). Contrary expectations amongst the nationalists themselves are apparent. The process of imagination reveals the ensemble of cultural, social, and technical practices that actors used to give form to fictional expectations of the future and the spatialisation of economic spaces.

Since Michael Burawoy’s 2004 presidential address to the American Sociological Association, there has been a growing interest among sociologists in “public sociology.” Though controversial in the discipline, public sociology parallels several other “engaged” forms of sociological inquiry, such as service-learning, collaborative research, participatory research, civic engagement, action research, and others. While forms of public sociology are growing among sociologists, there is little linkage with the symbolic interactionist tradition in the discipline. The ethnographic case study presented here attempts to make a link between public sociology and symbolic interactionism. Beginning in 1994 to the present, the author has been involved in the formal and informal recognition efforts of the Pee-Dee Native-American tribe in the author’s home state of South Carolina. The Pee-Dee finally gained state recognition in 2006. The struggle on the part of the tribe to gain state recognition began formally in the early 1970s. The central social issue for the tribe has always revolved around their perceived lack (primarily on the part of the dominant group) in terms of cultural and historical identity. The paradox for the tribe is found in the contradictions between their actual lived historical experience, beginning in colonial times, and the historical interpretation, on the part of earlier historians of the southeast, that the smaller tribes simply “vanished” after 1775. The paradox is also furthered by the stereotypes of what constitutes “real Indians,” which, in many ways, inform the formal recognition requirements by the state. The chapter begins with an exploration of the historical, colonial context, followed with the ethnographic story of my time with the Pee-Dee in the field and our struggle to collaborate on finding a working interpretation of the tribe’s historical and cultural existence as a people. The chapter ends with some thoughts on how a critical symbolic interactionism can promote a successful public sociology project.

A devastating racial logic remains at play in the moment of a “post-civil rights” Black presidency. Barack Obama's ascent has amplified a national mythology of racial progress in the US multiculturalist age. This mythology has fundamentally undermined both the credibility and critical traction of existing scholarly-activist languages of racism, antiracism, white supremacy, and institutionalized racial dominance. Thus, the discourse of national-racial vindication that animates Obama's ascendance can and must be radically opposed with creative historical narrations. These narrations must attempt to explain how and why systems of racial dominance and state-condoned, state-sanctioned racist violence remain central to the shaping of our present tense. The chapter approaches this problematic by examining how the historical social logics of racial chattel slavery cannot be historically compartmentalized and temporally isolated into a discrete “past,” because they are genocidal in their structuring and are thus central to the constitution of our existing social and cultural systems. The apparatus of the North American racial chattel institution must be theorized in its present tense articulations because its logics of power, domination, and violence have never really left us. The essay offers a schematic elaboration of this reconceptualization of racial genocide focusing on how the slavery's abolition in the latter-19th century provides the political, cultural, and legal basis for slavery's “reform” into the apparatuses of policing, criminalization, widespread and state-sanctioned antiblack bodily violence, and ultimately massive imprisonment. This examination allows for an elaboration of how slavery's genocidal social logics permeate the present tense social formation, particularly at the site of massive racial criminalization and imprisonment.

Purpose – This chapter explores the significance of emotional exchanges between historians and their research participants in the production of critical histories of the late twentieth-century British women’s movement. It argues for the importance of exploring the ways in which positive emotions, including feelings of excitement, reverence and commonality, influence the research process and potentially complicate historians’ capacity to produce histories that critically assess popular narratives of the development of the women’s movement.

Methodology/Approach – This chapter draws on qualitative assessments of my own experiences carrying out oral history interviews with women’s movement members to explore the emotional exchanges that take place during the research process. It utilises several historiographical concepts, including being a ‘fan of feminism’, discussions about historical subjectivity and oral history debates about empathy, to reflect on my emotional responses whilst carrying out research.

Findings – This chapter demonstrates that positive emotional exchanges between historians and their research participants influence the production of critical histories of the women’s movement. It highlights how historians’ personal identifications with their areas of study impact on their emotional engagement with research participants, potentially complicating or contravening their wider historical aims.

Originality/Value – Several historians have explored how negative emotional exchanges with research participants influenced their production of critical histories of the women’s movement. By focusing on the influence of positive emotional exchanges, this chapter provides an original contribution to this area of reflexive discussion, as well as wider assessments of historical subjectivity and researcher empathy.