Social Theory and the Decline of the Public Intellectual

1992 ◽  
Vol 43 (2) ◽  
pp. 289
Author(s):  
Sam Whimster ◽  
Richard Bellamy ◽  
Harry Liebersohn ◽  
Wolfgang Mommsen
Keyword(s):  
Social Theory ◽  
Public Intellectual ◽  
The Public

Social Control of Intellect: Four Features of the Academic–Media Nexus

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael McDevitt
Keyword(s):  
Social Control ◽  
Strategic Management ◽  
Social Theory ◽  
Academic Discourse ◽  
Ideal Type ◽  
Public Intellectual ◽  
The Public ◽  
Field Dynamic ◽  
The Mind

Abstract Intellect in social theory is often presented as an ideal type—the critical, iconoclastic side of the mind—but it must anticipate an audience in mediated contexts, unlike in the Kantian realm of transcendent reason. The terrain in which academia and media meet, consequently, is ripe for exploration into the fate of intellect when transgressive. This article explicates four features of the academic–media nexus that contribute to social control of intellect: instrumental rationalism of faculty, strategic management of university communication, journalistic appropriation of the “public intellectual” role, and surveillance of academic discourse. The article situates the features in a framework to recognize whether they originate primarily in academia or media, and whether the controlling process occurs through internalized norms or calculated practice. While social control is understood as recursive and reinforcing, reflexivity induced in an inter-field dynamic implies the possibility of reconciling intellect with news work.

Milton Friedman (1912-2006)

2007 ◽  
pp. 155-174
Author(s):  
Julio H. Cole
Keyword(s):  
Free Market ◽  
Early Morning ◽  
Public Intellectual ◽  
Free Market Economy ◽  
The Public ◽  
Milton Friedman ◽  
Television Documentary ◽  
Bona Fide ◽  
World Class ◽  
Policy Arena

Milton Friedman, who died in the early morning of November 16, 2006, was a world-famous economist, and an ardent and effective advocate of the free market economy. Much of his celebrity derived from his role as public intellectual, an aspect of his work that was reflected largely in popular books, such as Capitalism and Freedom (1962) and the hugely successful Free to Choose (1980) -both co-authored with his wife, Rose (and the latter based on the television documentary of the same title)- and in the Newsweek opinion columns he wrote for many years. Though he was already well-known by the time he received the Nobel Prize in Economics, in 1976, both his stature as public figure and his effectiveness as policy advocate were greatly enhanced by that award, and this is what has been mostly stressed in the vast outpouring of obituaries and public testimonials prompted by his recent passing. It is important to recall, however, that there was another aspect of his career, one which most professional economists (and probably Friedman himself) would regard as far more important than his incursions in the policy arena. Indeed, even if "Friedman the public intellectual" had never existed, "Friedman the economic scientist" would still be renowned and respected (though perhaps not as a bona fide world-class celebrity), and his memory will live long in the lore of economics It is primarily this other aspect of his life and work that I wish to focus on in this essay.

Realising immigration as a human right: public justification and cosmopolitan solidarity

2021 ◽  
pp. 136843102098713
Author(s):  
David Martínez ◽  
Alexander Elliott
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Social Theory ◽  
Public Justification ◽  
Human Right ◽  
National State ◽  
The Public ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Legal Structures ◽  
The Right ◽  
Normative Justification

According to David Miller, immigration is not a human right. Conversely, Kieran Oberman makes a case for immigration as a human right. We agree with the latter view, but we show that its starting point is mistaken. Indeed, both Miller and Oberman discuss the right to immigration within the liberal paradigm: it is a right or not depending on the correct balance between the interests of the citizens of a given national state and the interests of the immigrants. Instead, we claim that public justification can underpin immigration as a human right. That said, the public justification of the right to immigration has several counterarguments to rebut. Before we deal with that issue, relying on Jürgen Habermas’s social theory, we examine the legal structures that could support the right to immigration in practice. To be sure, this does not provide the normative justification needed, instead it shows the framework that allows the institutional realization of this right. Then, through a combination of civic and cosmopolitan forms of solidarity, the article discusses the formation of a public sphere, which could provide the justification of the right to immigration.

scholarly journals The transformative public of Jane Addams

Journalism ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 146488492095858
Author(s):  
Leena Ripatti-Torniainen
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual History ◽  
Social Ethics ◽  
Public Intellectual ◽  
Political Life ◽  
The Public ◽  
Jane Addams ◽  
Journalism Studies ◽  
Social Divisions ◽  
The Social ◽  
Political Inquiry

This article provides an alternative contribution to journalism studies on a foundational concept by analysing texts of Jane Addams, a public intellectual contemporary with the seminal scholars Walter Lippmann and John Dewey. The author uses methods of intellectual history to construct the concept of the public from Addams’s books: Democracy and Social Ethics and The Newer Ideals of Peace, showing that all three authors, Lippmann, Dewey and Addams, discuss the same topic of individuals’ changed engagement with public political life. Addams departs from Lippmann and Dewey in setting out from the standpoints of exclusion and cosmopolitanism. Her argument regarding the public, as constructed by the author, consists of two premises. First, public engagement is a method of democratic inclusion as well as social and political inquiry for Addams. She sees the extension of relationality across social divisions as a necessary method to understand society and materialise democracy. Second, Addams emphasises cooperative and reflexive involvement especially in the characteristic developments of a time. She considers industrialisation and cosmopolitanism as characteristic developments of her own era. Addams suggests an in-principle cosmopolitan concept of the public that includes marginalised persons and groups. Compared to Lippmann’s and Dewey’s accounts of the public, Jane Addams’s argument is more radical and far more sensitive to the social inequality and plurality of a drastically morphing society.

Book Review: Romila Thapar, The Public Intellectual in India

2017 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
pp. 232-235
Author(s):  
Gaurav J. Pathania
Keyword(s):  
Public Intellectual ◽  
The Public

Abraham Heschel

2021 ◽  
pp. 198-216
Author(s):  
Susannah Heschel
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
Social Justice ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Public Intellectual ◽  
West Side ◽  
Reinhold Niebuhr ◽  
The Public ◽  
Prophetic Voice ◽  
The Public Sphere

The friendship between Abraham Joshua Heschel and Reinhold Niebuhr was both personal and intellectual. Neighbours on the Upper West Side of New York City, they walked together in Riverside park and shared personal concerns in private letters; Niebuhr asked Heschel to deliver the eulogy at his funeral. They were bound by shared religious sensibilities as well, including their love of the Hebrew Bible, the irony they saw in American history and in the writings of the Hebrew prophets, and in their commitment to social justice as a duty to God. Heschel arrived in the public sphere later, as a public intellectual with a prophetic voice, much as Niebuhr had been for many decades prior. Niebuhr’s affirmation of the affinities between his and Heschel’s theological scholarship pays tribute to an extraordinary friendship of Protestant and Jew.

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