Max Weber as outsider: His nominal influence on German sociology in the twenties

An assessment of the influence which Max Weber's writings had on the growth of German sociology after World War I. The author isolates those themes which were of major importance during the Weimar Republic: the concern with social integration; the shattered faith in reason; and the attempt to create a uniquely “German” sociology. It becomes clear that neither Weber's conception of sociology nor his methodological formulations had much impact on the next generation. These findings can be accounted for in three different ways: (1) that he died too early; (2) that German sociology lacked the necessary institutionalization; or (3) that there was a reorientation in scholarship following World War I, which Weber's opus could not bridge.     

Romancing the future: Scientific imagination in British literature

Scientific Romance in Britain 1890–1950, by Brian Stableford, St Martin's Press: New York, 1985, 372 pages.     

Speaking Habermas to Gramsci: Implications for the Vocational Preparation of Community Educators

Re-working the Gramscian idea of the ‘organic’ intellectual from the cultural-political sphere to Higher Education (HE), suggests the need to develop critical and questioning ‘counter hegemonic’ ideas and behaviour in community education students. Connecting this reworking to the Habermasian theory of communicative action, suggests that these students also need to learn how to be constructive in developing such knowledge. Working towards critical and constructive capacities is particularly relevant for students who learn through acting in practice settings where general principles and purposes acquired in the academy need to be interpreted in response to the unique demands of specific situations. From a Gramscian perspective, enabling students to develop the qualities of organic intellectuals means that lecturers have a duty to teach critical knowledges which the student will be unfamiliar with and unlikely to possess. If teaching is not to become simply didactic, however, there is also a need to acknowledge Habermas’s contention that all knowledge is contingent. This does not mean that knowledge is merely relative, subjective, or essentially interest serving, as some postmodernists would have it. In Habermasian terms, knowledge is developed through a rigorous process of contesting validity claims according to procedures appropriate to discipline areas. In these procedures, contestation occurs to the point where there is general agreement about the best current understanding, until such time as this is overtaken by ideas with a better claim. The danger is that over commitment to contestation in the classroom undermines subject knowledge and ultimately the authority of the educator. Speaking Habermas to Gramsci, and vice versa, helps socially and politically committed educators to construct a space in which didactic and discursive moments purposefully alternate.     

1968的哈贝马斯如何把马克思转变为1951的帕森斯

哈贝马斯理论的社会学本质是通过韦伯把马克思与帕森斯持续不断地融合起来,试图通过“劳动”和“相互作用”,以及后来的“制度”与“生活世界”两个维度来发展出目的理性的制度含义,以及主体间性的含义,并逐渐接受了制度和生活世界这两种范式各自根据两种功能必要条件来发挥作用,以及一般理论架构是社会研究的必要条件,而且能够建立在社会秩序的一般化问题之上,从而在理论范畴上实现了与帕森斯的融合,尽管这种融合以马克思的话语开始,却以帕森斯的话语结束。在此过程中,帕森斯的概念继续存在于哈贝马斯的著作中,但哈贝马斯并没有克服其缺陷,而是复制了它们。     

Weber and Weimar: A response to Factor and Turner

In their critique, Factor and Turner attempt to substitute one commonplace for another by merely supplying long lists of publications that mention Max Weber. While accepting their reproof that I applied the concept of „influence”︁ too narrowly, my response endeavors to map out the directions that further research in this area will need to follow if the controversy is ever to move beyond jejune polemics.