The other invisible hand: Jews and anarchists in London before the First World War

In the decades before the First World War, London worried about anarchist outrages, and particularly, about Jews said to instigate them. Jewish anarchists were rumoured to have been responsible for the ‘ripper’ murders in Whitechapel (1888), an attempt to blow up the Royal Observatory at Greenwich Park (1894) and the Houndsditch murders (1910)/Sidney Street affair (1911). Jews were a visible population in the East End, and editors, MPs, and police authorities offered Jewishness to explain the ‘who’ and ‘why’ of anarchist violence. Jews were also thought to have the capacity to become invisible, ‘outsiders’ who could pass for ‘insiders’. In the radical press, and fictionalised accounts in novels such as Conrad’s The Secret Agent, the image of the Jewish anarchist became that of agent provocateur paid by police to infiltrate and undermine the movement. Jews were said to operate behind-the-scenes, manipulating the economy and political structure. The invisible hand of the market and the invisible hand of anarchism were attached to a Jewish body. About the author: Paul Knepper (Ph.D. Arizona State) is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Sociological Studies, University of Sheffield, and Research Fellow, Centre for Jewish Studies, University of Manchester. Recent publications include ```Jewish Trafficking” and London Jews in the Age of Migration’, Journal of Modern Jewish Studies (2008); ‘British Jews and the Racialisation of Crime in the Age of Empire’ British Journal of Criminology (2007); ‘Michael Polanyi and Jewish Identity’ Philosophy of the Social Sciences (2005); ‘Polanyi, “Jewish Problems”, and Zionism’ Tradition and Discovery (2005).     

Metropolitan migration in the past: Labour markets, commerce, and cultural interaction in Europe, 1600–1914

This article challenges the “imaginary ethnography” of European urban population as monocultural and non-migrating. Pre-1800 European migrations are discussed first, next changing patterns in the 19th century are summarized. In the third section immigration to industrializing cities at the height of nationalism is exemplified by Czech migration to Vienna, Polish migration to the cities of the Ruhr District, and the multicultural and immigrant character of Budapest and of Paris. Immigrant insertion, conflict, migrants, and economic niches, as well as the reaction of host societies and community formation are discussed. In conclusion, older theories of disorganization are contrasted with recent concepts of acculturation and transcultural lives.     

Admissions of racism in discourse on migration in Greece: Beyond the norm against prejudice?

The turn to language in social psychology is closely related to the study of prejudice as racist discourse has been the subject matter of some of the ground‐breaking discourse analytic work. A widely accepted argument was that there seems to be a norm against prejudice informing Western societies: people commonly engage in denials of prejudice when they make negative comments about minorities. Recent work has argued that, due to ideological shifts in the wider societal context or because denying prejudice may not be people's only rhetorical concern, it is possible to find people admitting prejudice. We examine how people in Greece, Greek majority and immigrants, formulate admissions of racism in interviews on migration and citizenship in Greece. Drawing on Ideological Dilemmas and Critical Discursive Social Psychology, we argue that these admissions ironically operate within the norm against prejudice and discuss our findings in relation to the wider socio‐political Greek context.     

The cultural hermeneutic of Russia’s historical experience: the case of Aleksandr Samojlovič Akhiezer

The article presents an overview of A. S. Akhiezer’s reconstruction of Russia’s socio-cultural history as a cultural hermeneutic. The underlying idea is that the way humans make sense of their existence is driven by an algorithm of meaning production informing the organization of their ‘world’, in particular the selection of the means involved in that production. Thus the central axis of Akhiezer’s hermeneutic, methodogically, is symbolization: ‘worlds’, that is, socio-cultural matrices, are made according to and reflect specific modes of symbolization. Akhiezer’s account of the Russian socio-cultural experience is centred on the particular algorithm that he names raskol (schism). His purpose was twofold: to examine the ‘logic’ of raskol, on the one hand, and to investigate, on the other hand, in the manner of a historian, its impact and consequences for Russian society at large, including its effects on institution-building. In this way, the study of raskol goes hand in hand with an investigation of and commentary concerning the uncertain state in Russia of what Akhiezer named the bol’?oe ob??estvo (roughly, the modern differentiated, dynamic institutional order). In effect, his theory is a social ontology with culture at the centre.     

The dynamics of Orthodox and Muslim religiosity in Russia, 1989–2012

In this article I focus on the changing religious consciousness and behaviour of Orthodox Christians in Russia over the period from 1989 to 2012, comparing these where appropriate with the situation among Muslims. In the first part of the article I identify three periods in the development of attitudes to religion between 1989 and 2011: from 1989 to the mid-1990s; from the mid-1990s to the mid-2000s; and from the mid-2000s to 2011. In the second part I survey attitudes to religion among the Russian population from 2011 from a range of perspectives. In the third part I look in more detail at the religious practice of Russians from 2011, using the concept of votserkovlennost’ (‘enchurchedness’) as developed by the sociologist Valentina Chesnokova. My data are derived from public opinion surveys, particularly surveys conducted in 2006, 2011 and 2012.     

Discerning the spirit(s) in the natural world: Toward a typology of “spirit” in the religion and science conversation

Recent developments in Christian theological thinking on the doctrine of the Holy Spirit (pneumatology) have raised questions about the relationship between “spirit” and science. Cursory review of the religion and science literature, however, yields a wide array of uses and understandings of the concept of spirit. Current attempts to assess the relationship of pneumatology to science require an inventory or basic classification scheme of the various notions of spirit that have been in circulation over the past generation. This essay presents a preliminary typology of such uses in order to enable scholars and researchers to chart courses for future research in this area.     

The autonomy of cultural practice: Basis, limit and significance of the possibility of developing ��cultural automatism��

Culture has always led a “problematic existence.” As a result, the diagnosis and treatment of various cultural diseases continue to depend on the embarrassing double identity of culture as both patient and doctor, hence making it difficult for culture to explore its own obscure recesses. The question of whether culture is autonomous and can be itself in its own way should therefore be considered theoretically. Since culture is closely associated with civilization, real culture must be generated from the florescence of a civilization based on a logic of human integrity within a certain historical period of time. In order to illuminate and adhere to this cultural attribute, some “cultural truths” must be made clear by establishing and maintaining public order and good customs from a properly lofty spiritual view. We must prudently and critically inquire after the ideological promise of culture regarding reasonable existence and the evolution of humans, and present an ideal prophecy in line with the human demand for a good life so as to assure culture’s healthy, benign, and sustainable advancement and stable performance of its function of molding graceful, noble, and tasteful means of life.     

Universalism in cultural history and the meaning of the Russian Revolution: on some aspects of cultural theory in the work of Mikhail Lifšic

Mikhail Lif?ic (1905–1983) is one of the most contradictory and to this date poorly understood authors of the Soviet era. He represented an independent Marxist position, but one internally characterized by the tense relationship between Marxism and the philosophy of Hegel. This relationship, concerning historical philosophical questions, is the subject of this essay. In the 1930s, as “historical materialism” was canonized in the USSR, a development that Soviet civilization understood as the “beginning of the end of (universal) history”, Lif?ic drafted a different, skeptical summary of the revolutionary era. However, he remained loyal to both the concept of universal history and the examination of Russian-Soviet cultural history within the framework of this concept. With the help of a text from Lif?ic from the 1930s as well as his later (early 1980s) reflection and remembrance of the ideological debates of the 1930s, this essay will show that Lif?ic’ reconstruction of idealism in Marxism was no accident, but rather a necessary movement in thought. This, in turn, enabled him to give a new account of the historical experience of the October Revolution.     

The Communication of Naïve Theories of the Social World in Parent–Child Conversation

Three studies examined the communication of naïve theories of social groups in conversations between parents and their 4-year-old children (N = 48). Parent–child dyads read and discussed a storybook in which they either explained why past social interactions had occurred (Study 1) or evaluated whether future social interactions should occur (Studies 2 and 3). In all 3 studies, the content of parents’ and children's explanations reflected an intuitive theory of social groups as markers of intrinsic obligations, whereby individuals are obligated to avoid harm to and direct positive actions toward their in-group members. Furthermore, Studies 2 and 3 suggested that when discussing the normative obligations that guide behavior, parents covertly reinforce their children's developing beliefs about social categories. Implications for the development of social cognition are discussed.     

Bringing culture to the nation: Hebraism, Yiddishism, and the dilemmas of Jewish cultural formation in Russia and Ukraine, 1917–1919

Focusing on the pivotal 1917–1919 conjuncture in Russia and Ukraine, this paper analyzes the efforts of the divided Jewish nationalist intelligentsia to disseminate new forms of Jewish culture to a mass audience, the reception of these efforts in the former Tsarist empire’s variegated Jewish population, and the intelligentsia’s parallel exploration of other forms of cultural formation less dependent on popular support. Comparing the cultural programs of Hebraism and Yiddishism, it demonstrates important parallels in their cultural visions and highlights their shared belief in the possibility of implanting a secularist, aestheticist intelligentsia culture in the whole of “the nation.” The paper reconstructs both substantial forms of popular openness to this culture and its sociocultural weaknesses. Finally, it examines experiments made by the intelligentsia with alternative routes to cultural transformation: suppression of popular culture, non-market cultural arrangements, cultural revolution through education, and the uses of the state. The paper seeks a fuller understanding both of the roots of interwar cultural programs in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, and of the Jewish nationalist intelligentsia’s underlying conception of “culture,” its own authority, and the evolving relationship between these conceptions and the realities of East European Jewish social, cultural, and political life from the 1890s onward.     

Sensuality and venality in Bangkok: The dynamics of cross‐cultural mapping of prostitution

The dynamics of cross‐cultural cognitive mapping is examined, from a Schuetzian perspective, on the example of the changing images formed by farangs (white foreigners) of Thai girls engaged in “open‐ended” tourist‐oriented prostitution, a vaguely‐defined, gray area lying between “full‐fledged prostitution” and “straight” sexuality. The newcomer farang, unable to grasp this culture‐specific category, initially tends to refuse to label the girls as “prostitutes,” but, with growing experience, tends to apply that label to them, without, however, thereby resetting the boundaries of his cognitive map. He thus fails to make the transition from strangeness to familiarity with the host culture, as conceived by Schuetz—since he continues to impose the crisp categorizations prevalent in his culture of origin, on a situation which is fuzzily conceived in different categories by the hosts. The case study exemplifies the difficulties of a cross‐cultural definition and identification of prostitution.     

The Action of God in the World—A Synthesis of Process Thought in Science and Theology

A foundational belief of monotheistic religions is that God acts in the world. In this paper, the case is made that divine action has its origins in the molecular world. Within a metaphysical framework of process thought, a hypothesis is constructed in which God's action in the world, God's ‘initial aim’ for all actualities, is divine motivation of chemical becoming.     

The curious incident of wisdom in the thought of Feng Qi (1915–1995): comparative philosophy,historical materialism,and metaphysics

After some introductory remarks on the work of the modern Chinese philosopher Feng Qi, I begin this article by providing some observations concerning the ambiguous notion of ‘wisdom’ in Orientalist representations of non-Western thought and in comparative philosophy, as well as on the peculiar form of subjectivity ascribed to the ‘wise’ subject. I then proceed by offering an account of Feng’s philosophical universalism and historical materialist outlook, outlining the identification of wisdom with metaphysics in his early work and exploring the status and function of wisdom in his mature writings. In doing so, I analyze the tension in Feng’s work between the theoretical rationality and systematicity of ‘metaphysics’ on the one hand and the existential and transformative orientation of ‘wisdom’ on the other.     

“Psytizens”: The Co-construction of the Professional Identity of Psychology Students in the Postmodern World

This work aims to analyze the relations between psychology as social engineering and self-reflective citizenship from a historiogenetic point of view. Such a connection was founded during modernity; hence our proposal is to study its operative continuity in the postmodern world, taking into account the mismatches due to the new global, multicultural, and technological conditions. Based both on the theory of activity and the concept of semiosphere, the interaction and discussions of a group of Spanish students of psychology in a virtual forum were analyzed. They were asked to negotiate and co-construct their double condition of citizens and future psychologists in connection with the controversial exhibition of religious symbols in Spanish schools. Results show that students segregate both conditions. On one hand, they agree and consolidate the neutral image of a professional psychologist being respectful with the multicultural world. On the other hand, they argue about the citizen and religious topics from a personal or ideological point of view, establishing limits to multiculturalism. Neither the interchange of ideas nor the writing-reading features of the virtual artefacts improved the reflexivity on the close dependencies and contradictions of the two identity domains. This great resilience is due to a sociocultural context –the Western World- where psychology has been constituted as a neutral, objective Science World, one of whose socio-historical products - reflective citizenship- has evolved until proclaiming his/her autonomous agency, forgetting any root in the social engineering.     

The perestroika of the family? Gender and occupational differences in family values in modern day Russia

The recent dramatic changes in the political and economic structures of Eastern Europe have focused interest on the position of women in Russia, where a greater openness in discussing inequalities has been accompanied by a more regressive harkening back to traditional gender roles. The study reported in this paper examines gender and occupational differences in general attitude toward the family, disclosure to family members, and child-rearing values. Three hundred sixty-eight students, 179 manual workers, and 160 entrepreneurs completed a structured measure of family orientation and replied to open-ended questions on family taboos and child-rearing practices, while a subsample (N = 475) completed a family disclosure inventory. Multivariate analyses of variance analyses revealed women to be more family oriented than men, while gender and occupation interacted in producing family disclosure rates. HILOGLINEAR analyses found that the topics suitable for family discussion, as well as the child-rearing values promoted by our respondents, were also best predicted by considering the interaction between both gender and occupation. The implications of these findings for the future shape of Russian family relations is discussed.