DICTIONARY of CRITICAL SOCIAL SCIENCE

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AARP: The American Association of Retired Persons. This organization was founded to help solve the problems of the elderly who were often discarded after a life-time of productive or reproductive labor. It is concerned with social security, medical care, housing, nutrition and well being of elderly people. It is now the biggest union in the USA with over 40 million members. Of late, it has expanded its concerns to include children and women's needs. In so far as it calls for government support of social justice programs, it has become a serious problem for Republicans.

Abortion: The process by which a pregnancy is terminated, usually within three months of conception. This activity has aroused great debate and much direct social action to prevent it. Many people argue that every life is sacred and that to abort a fetus is the same as murder. Many people believe that such activity is a matter of private concern to be decided in terms of the circumstances in which the mother and/or the father find themselves. Some countries provide abortion on demand at very low fees; other countries forbid it entirely. Some see abortion as a major device for birth control while others see it as a way to avoid collective care for unborn children. See birth control/'over' population for more things to consider.

Abuse, Child: The use of force against a child to force it to obey and comply to rules or orders of adults. Often a polite synonym for child rape. It can include psychological acts which distress a child greatly.

Abuse: spousal: The use of force or violent language to intimidate a marriage partner. Usually males abuse females; there are three common sources of spousal abuse; refusal to provide sexual access, failure to provide housekeeping services and refusal to defer to and show respect to the male. Abuse of male partners occurs but is rare. See Macho, Sexism, Gender.

Act: Latin: agere = to do. Early philosophers called the Scholastics used the concept, first act, to refer to the form of a thing while second act was used to refer to what it did. In symbolic interactional theory, Mead used the concept of the act to refer to the basis unit of social meaning. An act is not just behavior but behavior which is used to hang meaning on. The gesture is, for Mead, a physical motion with which one conveys meaning to another person who has learned how to interpret it. See Act, Philosophy of.

Act, Philosophy of: One of the more important issues in all of social philosophy centers around the question, 'To what degree are humans the passive object of history and/or acting subjects which can plan and fulfill their own destiny. The structuralist answer, in its more deterministic claims, is that single human beings are the object [not subject] of social forces. The Interactionist view, in its most reductionist moments, argues that each individual is the object and agent of its own destiny. If a person is rich or poor, it is due to their own merits or failings.

In philosophical terms, an act is only an act when there is insight and the conscious use of material goods to change outcomes. For example, McDonald's claims to sell the same Big Mac in every restaurant in the world and thus defeat both individual action and culture variety. Your assignment, if you care to take it, is to check it out; is Big Mac the same in England, Japan, Nicaragua or Vienna? Do McDonald's clerks do and say things to customers not scripted and rehearsed and sanctioned by supervisors?? If so, not even a corporation as large and as powerful as McDonald's can defeat human action. See alienation, the 'I,' Praxis.

Acton, Lord (1834-1971): Acton's dictum on power is basic to all efforts for social justice: power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely. T.R. Young offers a complementary dictum: poverty tends to corrupt; absolute poverty corrupts absolutely.

Adolescence: An age grade composed of young people between 12 and 17. Every society has age grades. Usually they begin with infants, 1-3; children, 4-11, adults, 12-65, aged, 65+. All societies socialize children until puberty then confer adult status on them in a rite of passage. Industrial societies extend the socialization process to include mastery of reading, writing and calculating thus childhood is extended to age 18 and call the people between 18 and 18, adolescents [small adults]. High tech societies extend childhood even further and postpone adult status until 23, 27, 31, and in the case of psychiatrists, until 40+.

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Figure 2. Peg McCull on TV [from p. 129]

Advertising: A 200 billion dollar industry (1996) in which market demand is created for products in order to realize profit. Products which are essentially similar to others of the same kind are endowed with special symbolic meaning [sexuality, power, magic, or status] in order to increase demand and thus expand a market enough to absorb all that is/can be produced. In capitalism, markets are made small since workers are not paid 100% of the value of the goods they produce--hence cannot buy back 100% of the product. The too, capitalism disemploys ever more people and the market shrinks more. Then too, the quest for profits lowers qualities; advertizing offers the dramaturgical facsimile of quality or necessity to those who buy time and talent on the mass media. Advertising is usually directed at those who have discretionary income; young, single working professionals (since they have relatively more discretionary income) or the housewife (who must make a choice between items produced under standardized conditions). A major problem generated by the advertising world is the preemption of artistic talent and information media for commercial purposes. A secondary problem is the use of sex, violence and sports to generate publics for products otherwise without special merit. See Realization, the problem of.

Adventist [religious groups]: Adventist religious groups assume that the end of the world is near and that a savior will arrive [advent] to save those who believe. They put away things of the flesh and seek spiritual purity in expectation of the second coming of a Christ. The 7th Day Adventists are the best known sect but periodically new sects appear; especially at each millennium [see which] after the death of Christ.

Aesthetics: Greek aisthesis = sensation. In Philosophy, the ideas about beauty in nature and in cultural products. Pre-modern and modern sensibility argue there are absolute standards for determining that which is beautiful, superb and excellent. Postmodernists hold that such definitions are a matter of power and convention. In some cultures, heavy women are considered beautiful; in other cultures, slim women are so considered.

Aesthetic (Socialist): The socialist understanding of all forms of art is not divorced from everyday life nor restricted to an elite in the form of "high culture." In socialist thought, art and society as a totality are reunited. Art is at once an affirmation and a critique of social life. While capitalist art aims to celebrate privatism and consumption, socialist art speaks to questions of solidarity, species being, and liberated nature. It is neither one-sidedly subjective nor one-sidedly objectified. It does not tend to freeze social relations. Rather it emphasizes the processual character of society and nature. It does not "redeem" the bitter imperfection of life by diversion, but transforms, illuminates, and mobilizes people to action.

Affect: Emotional response. Different societies define different emotional states as appropriate to given social situations. Fear, anger, joy, love, delight, rage, tenderness, sorrow, sympathy and such are closely regulated by a society. Failure to feel and express the proper emotional state (affect) is cause for great concern for those charged with socializing youngsters. Capitalist and elitist societies suppress affect since emotion gets in the way of the mass processing of people and thus jeopardizes profit and/or control.

Age: One of the more important systems of stratification and differentiation found in all societies involves the chronological age of members. Human infants are very dependent upon adults for both food, protection and rich interaction. After this first period of dependency, age grades become increasingly reflective of economic and cultural factors. In sociology, age grades are usually offered in five year blocs. These together give a picture of birth rates and death rates. As such they are good indicators of the degree to which social justice is instituted in all other social divisions. Infant mortality rates are especially sensitive to racism, sexism and class privilege.

Age grades: A system of allocating status (and tasks) to a series of age cohorts. Each age cohort is initiated into a particular status at the same ceremony wherein rights and duties are defined. Age grades are destroyed in capitalism as "irrational." It is profitable for the young to work at "adult" jobs for lower pay and the rationality of the market requires anything be sold to anyone with the cash at hand. The same is true of sex differentiation, ethnic differentiation and racial distinctions--much of the liberalism of capitalism is this thin, profit-oriented liberalism restricted to economic advantage rather than a complete, rounded social liberation; still it is progressive in this respect.

Aged, lmmiseration of: The marxist theory of the problems besetting the aged focuses upon the dynamics of capitalism. Older workers are less productive, more assertive and prone to illnesses-all of which affect costs and profit. The aged (arbitrarily defined as 55+) are forcibly retired since capitalist can make more profit on the labor power of the younger, more docile worker. And when the aged have nothing to exchange for profit, they are excluded from the various delivery systems in capitalism: health and medical, food, shelter, clothing, transport, recreation and education. In a popular democracy, such as the U.S., the state, responding to voting, provides goods and services to the pauperized aged but, in a depersonalized rather than social mode. Thus many people who built the roads, bridges, houses and provided essential services at one stage in their life find themselves miserable as they grow older in the wealthiest country in the history of civilization.

Agency, human: The ability of people to change the institutions in which they live. In both pre-modern and modern sensibility, human agency is absent, minimal or viewed as madness and deviancy. In many pre-modern cultures, there are Gods who know and control every act of every living thing, hence very little agency is possible. In modern science, 'laws' are said to regulate all human behavior; sexual, economic, criminal, or political. In postmodern science, human agency has much more room. In Chaos theory, there are moments when agency is possible and times when it is very difficult to change things. Democracy presumes people have both the wit and the ability to change 'social laws' to some other pattern. Radical scholarship tries to enhance that capacity.

Agitation: There are two major purposes of radical politics including research and education; first is to connect good theory with good organization and good politics. To do this, one takes every day events of interest to students, workers, women or minorities and lays them in a structural context together with a plan for remedy. The second is to seek the moment at which progressive politics is possible. Particularly outrageous incidents of gender violence, police brutality, worker insult or university policy provide a wealth of such opportunities to the radical scholar/activist. It takes wisdom, judgment and considerable courage to wait or to act. See also Utopianism.

Agnosticism. This word means, literally, without knowledge. Usually without sure and certain knowledge of the existence of a God. Agnosticism arose in the 18th c. as capitalists and bourgeois philosophers mounted a challenge to the 'divine right' of kings to rule. See also atheism and postmodern theology.

Agrarian society: A vanishing form of social life based upon the labor intensive production of crops by families and small communities. In 1790, twenty farm families produced enough surplus value to support one city family. In the USA, the Amish, Hutterites, some few Mormons and other fragments of Agrarian life survive. Now huge industrial farms using capital intensive production can produce food for thousands. The rural population, driven from the land, gathers as a surplus population in the city and as a reserve army of cheap labor. Without work to pay for food, the surplus population goes hungry while the industrial farm production is shipped abroad to feed the middle classes. In Costa Rica, protein and grain production are up as agribusiness displaces agrarian society while the per capita consumption is down. Most of the beef produced in Costa Rica goes to fast food hamburger chains in the U.S. like Burger King, McDonald's and Arby's.

Agriculture: The process of tending crops and herds for food. There have been several different ways of producing food in human history; hunting and gathering wild plants and animals slowly turned into planting, herding and harvesting crops. When that happened, new social forms developed; people settled down and built more permanent homes and more permanent relationships. The next big event in agriculture was irrigation [or hydraulic agriculture]. It provided enough food to support specialist and a division of labor and skilled crafts appeared. The most recent development in agriculture is called agro-business; it refers to giant corporate farming which uses capital intensive production: huge machines, chemicals, and vast fields to grow and harvest crops. Now, genetic engineering and synthetic foods are under development. Again, social organization is affected: small farms disappear; almost all food is commodified.

Agriculture, hydraulic societies: There have been five great hydraulic societies in human history: the first what in Persia along the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. The second was along the Nile in Egypt; the third along the Ganges in India; the fourth along the Yellow River in China and the fifth in around what is now called Mexico City. Hydraulic agriculture required social differentiation [specialization]; it did not require social stratification as so many historians argue. But both occurred to change forever the ways in which people live. But see the new developments above.

Agrippa: 3rd Century Greek philosopher who laid the basis for a postmodern philosophy of knowledge in five tropes [headings]. 1) There is no sure basis for deciding among different philosophical claims. 2) All data are relative to the beholder. 3) Every proof rests upon assumptions which in turn have to be proved ad infinitum. 4) One cannot trust the hypotheses when the truth value of its premises are unknown. 5) There is a vicious circle in which sense data are used to inform reason which, in turn, is used to establish what is to be taken as data.

Ahistoricism: The term refers to a scientific trick by which a given social form is endowed with the appearance of being part of the eternal and natural order of things. For example, Weber's study of bureaucracy ignores the origins, the changes, the many variations produced by historical conditions. Similarly, Hegel and Simmel's ideas about Ideal Forms tends to destroy the changing, variable historical nature of social realities. All social issues are seen as purely technical questions since the basic form is seen as eternal and unchanging. Ahistorism tends to freeze analysis in the present and to reify the status quo. Bureaucracy, gender, class, racist and other social forms thereby cease to be a human products and begin to be a means of domination (or structural force). (After Goldman).

Alienation: The domination of humans by their own products; material, political, and ideological. The separation of humans from their humanity; the interference with the production of authentic culture; the fragmentation of social bonds and community. Any process which reduces people to their animal nature. Liberal definitions of alienation have to do with feelings; socialist definitions have more to do with relations and positions in a social order. In Marx, a variety of terms are used to capture the flavor and variety implicit in the process of alienation: "Trennung" (divorce or separation), "Spaltung" (division or cleavage), "Absonderung" (separation or withdrawal), "Verderben" (spoiled, corrupt), "sich selbst verlieren" (lost to oneself), "auf sich zuruckziehen" (withdrawn into oneself), "ausserlich machen" (externalized), "alle Gattungsbande zerreissen" (ties with others disintegrated), "die Menschenwelt in eine Welt atomisticher Individuen auflosen" (humanity dissolved into fragmented individuals). Taken together these constructs constitute and create the meaning of the term "alienation" (Entausserung, Entfremung). (From Meszaros).

Alienation (assumptions): A militant humanism makes the following assumptions: (1) that humans may become dominated by their own social and cultural products, (2) that alienation is the chief source of conflict in society, (3) that there is a hierarchy of forms (economic, ideological, political and religious) and 4) that in capitalist societies, alienation is produced by a economic system in which people and cultural products are transformed into a commodity to be sold for private profit. These contrast to the premarxian view that alienation involves separation from God; the hegelian view that alienation involves failure to understand objective reality or the freudian assumption that alienation involves separation between different parts of the psyche. Each view entails a different solution; The first social revolution, the second an effort to return to a state of grace by hard work, faith and/or meditation; the hegelian views calls forth modern, order-oriented science as a solution to alienation, while the freudian approach requires that one come to terms with one's own anxieties and compulsions.

Alienation, psychological: Most American sociologists reduce alienation to psychological states: feelings of loneliness, powerlessness, hopelessness. For socialist sociology, happy and well paid workers can be alienated; they can be fired tomorrow, they can lose their pensions overnight, they can be re-assigned from friends and family, they must be polite and helpful to those defined as 'superior' in the table of organization of the firm in which they work (after C. Wright Mills). And those at the bottom of a stratification system can live for years with perfect peace of mind: women, slaves, wage laborers, migrant workers are able to fashion both culture and solidarity out of the fragments of wealth they receive (after E.P. Thompson).

Algorithm: The term used to mean any arithmetic operation using arabic notations. In Chaos theory, it refers to two or more numerical values, at least one of which is a constant and one of which is a variable. The feedback loop generated by multiplying a constant by a variable produces very complex patterns some of which cannot be predicted. This fact grounds a postmodern philosophy of science in which the quest for precision and order is decentered to be replaced by a quest for knowledge of the changing mix of order and disorder.

Analogy: Greek; ana = according to, logos = reason, ratio. The use of the features of a known thing to explain an unknown thing. Reasoning by analogy is very tricky; usually there are significant differences hidden or set aside by the analogy. Thus a whole society resembles an organism but can also be said to resemble a ship or a machine or an imaginary beast. Each is quite different. Beware of organic analogies when studying the parts of a society, one can justify stratification, elitism, sub-division of labor and any number of other social features which should be the subject of politics more so than poetry.

Analysis: Greek: analyein = to break down into component parts.

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Figure 3 Cobb on Anarchy

Anarchy: Greek: a = without; archos = head, ruler. It has come to be used to condemn all efforts of impose order by a state as hopelessly oppressive. Lenin said that an anarchist is just a bourgeois turned inside out. There is a more benevolent view that social behavior should emerge through free and open interaction among responsible members of a society. Bakunin, Proudhon, Kropotkin are credited with these views on anarchy. In this view that all human interaction should be uncoerced by power relations. Anarchy assumes the possibility of full socialist consciousness in every adult member of a society. Bourgeois versions substitute elites for the state. Anarchy is often used as a pejorative word to refer to those who would dismantle the forms of privilege and hierarchy.

Marx made the case that capitalism in its pure form is anarchy. Capitalists compete fiercely with each other; rules are set only to be broken as opportunity for profit comes along, they try to take markets from each other, they use the state apparatus in one country to exploit capitalists in another country, they neglect essential but low profit lines of production and they have no moral foundation other than profit. But see Capitalism, advantages of. See also corporate crime for forms of co-operation.

Anti-semitism: Activities which harass and oppress Jews. This usually diverts the discontent of workers from the real sources of economic insecurity and puts the blame on 'jewish bankers' or an alleged plot to take over the world. In turn, Irish, Indians, Italians, Polish, Afro-Americans, Catholics, Muslims, Japanese and Hispanics have been harassed and vilified. See also racism, sexism and ethno-centrism for such pre-theoretical answers to real problems created by the stratification of class, power and/or social honor. Such practices divide opposition to powers elite.

Animal functions: Eating, sleeping, dressing, drinking. In general, those activities which keep a person alive physically but not morally. Capitalist society tends to reduce evermore people to animal functions as they become surplus to the productive needs of capitalism.

Anomia: A phrase coined to refer to the psychological feelings produced by Anomie: normlessless. The idea is that a normative order brings security and psychic peace to people. Such a phrase neatly switches attention from the social conditions of alienation to the individual response to that disorder. Those who resist and rebel within racist, sexist, slave or elitist normative structures suffer from 'anomia:' they are said to be ill, maladjusted, sinful, or poorly socialized.

Anomie: Normlessness (lit. without order. a=without; nomy=order). A term used by Durkheim to indicate "the collapse of the normative order." The term implies that conformity to norms is natural and normal; that resistance is pathological. Then too, embedded in the concept is the idea that norms are above and beyond the individuals who are said to organize their behavior in terms of the normative structure. However, there is a marxist position that the normative structure is a product of transacting humans rather than a "superorganic" thing. To imply, as did Durkheim, that the normative structure is a thing apart from the behavior of people actively engaged in producing situated patterns of behavior through judgment, insight, and mutual purpose is a conservative political act. The political character of the act comes from a misleading of students of sociology about the nature of norms, normative structures and norming. Norms are not eternally fixed directives for behavior to which all normal people subscribe and which collapse apart from the understanding of people that the norms are inadequate to deal with the present situation. See alienation.

Anthropocentrism: Greek: anthropos = human being; kentron = center. The practice of treating human species as if it were the center of all values and the measure of all things. Pre-modernists and most modernists take this position uncritically. Postmodernists point out that 99% of the species which have ever lived are now extinct; that one day human beings too will evolve into quite different species or self destruct themselves or their habitat.

Anthropomorphism: Taking human form. The practice of assigning human characteristics to a nonhuman entity: to gods, animal, plant, or material item. For example, one might treat cars and dogs or cats as though they were capable of human thought or feelings. A comparable process is to attribute inanimate status to humans (objectification). Both anthropomorphism and objectification strip people of their humanity.

Apathy: Greek: a + pathos = suffering. Greek and Asian philosophy held apathy to be the most desirable human state. Now it is used to refer to a pervasive disinterest in human life, in the moments of praxis, or in the production of culture. In liberal theory, apathy is a result of ignorance, laziness, or stupidity. The remedy is education, chemotherapy, group therapy or institutionalization. In the marxian view apathy is a product of class inequality, stratified power relations, coercion and massified communication structures. The solution in socialism is common ownership, control and use of the means to produce culture, labor intensive socialization, and systematic attention to criticism/self-criticism,

Apology: The term is often used to demystify bourgeois theory when one says that a 'theory" is an 'apology' [justification] for a system than a fair description of it or an explanation of how it works. Often theories describe that which exists well enough but fails to consider that there are other, better ways to organize social life; these too are 'apologies' even if they are well done.

Apollonian: Both Nietzsche and Margaret Mead used the word to refer to societies which had as a central theme, the quest for order, harmony and moderation. Compare to Dionysian societies.

Apple, and temptation to knowledge: A symbol of forbidden things; Adam is said to have been given 'the fruit of the tree of knowledge,' [an apple; some say orange] and then rebelled against his Father and Creator. While at one level, it is a tale which accounts for rebellion, crime and deviancy in terms of innate evil [on the part of Eve for tempting Adam]; on another level, the tale speaks to the responsibility one takes when one learns about one's own self and society. This book is the fruit of the tree of knowledge given you in anticipation that you will take that responsibility all the days of your life and work for social justice. I give you joy in the work.

Appropriation: The practice of defining some part of the wealth produced by the social power of workers as "profit" and using it for private purposes rather than for the common good. Actually, there is no such thing as profit; production always absorbs energy and is a net drain on the larger social and natural system. Profit and therefore appropriation are possible only by transferring the costs of production to the workers, to the consumers, to the environment and/or to the future generation.

Appropriation (Mechanisms): The means by which the surplus value of labor is appropriated directly and controlled by those who do not produce are varied indeed. These mechanisms include sharecropping, tenancy, tribute, debt peonage, slavery, wage relations and impressment into work crews. Indirect ways to appropriate labor power and its products include taxes, profits, interest, rents, tithes, tolls, and fees. Think about the social relations such mechanisms require, and the kind of political apparatus necessary to enforce them as well as the costs to a society to pay for these mechanisms of appropriate of wealth.

Aquinas, Thomas, St. (1225-1274): Aquinas is credited with the most effective grounding of the God concept through reason. As such he adds reason to faith in support of belief in God and incorporates Aristotlean logic into Christendom. Later on, this legitimation of rationality will help protect fledgling modern science from the inquisition. His five arguments are: 1) the fact of motion in the world implies a first mover, i.e., God. 2) there are efficient causes in the world but the notion of causality implies a first cause, i.e., God. 3) all things are contingent and can, presumably, disappear entirely at the same time. Since we cannot get something from nothing [assuming they did or will disappear], there must be something is non-contingent, absolute, i.e, God. 4) In practice, we assume degrees of truth, beauty, goodness and nobility. Since we have such things in degree, there must be some absolute standard/pattern from which we can make such judgments, i.e., God. 5). all things are goal directed; inanimate objects cannot direct themselves toward a goal [think of an arrow], therefore there must be someone guiding/directing them, i.e., God.

Aquinas is important in the sociology of law as well; he specifies four kinds of law: a) divine law which is eternal, b) natural law which is given to humans via revelation [and now, reason]; natural law has two sub-forms, c) civil law which can be variable to fit the circumstances of differing societies and d) the law of nations which govern all societies. (After WL Reese)

Aquinas was instrumental in uniting the teaching of Aristotle and Christian theology. In so doing, he helped create a modern theology in which order, reason, science and logic were both part and parcel of God as well as a pathway to prove the existence of his God. One must make the jump from reason to faith. Those with more powerful intellects can go farther with less faith in the quest of God. After Aquinas, the god concept became more and more like a remote clock-maker who set the world into motion and made it operate according to universal and rational laws. Thus, by Newton's time, the quest for these laws became a quest for the essence of God. But see Theology, pre-modern and Theology, postmodern.

Archeology: Greek: Arche = that which was in the beginning = ology = reason, order. The study of primitive societies and the material artifacts which survive in order to guess what social life was like before written history was invented.

Archetype: Greek: primal figures, patterns or forms. For Plato, archetypes were the original or true form of a thing of which real things were more or less close copies. Modern phenomenology is dependent upon this assumption. In modern psychology, Jung used the term to refer to basic ways of being human. He set down a whole list which reside in every human being and pre-shape behavior by their strength and interplay. Jung held that different cultures supported different archetypes and thus mental health depended upon adjusting society to permit a diversity of being.

Aristocracy: From the Greek: Aristos = best, cracy = rule. Those who 'owned' the land in feudalism. After conquest by another people, some of the victors remained to claim title to the best land. They also claimed the right to own or to rule the conquered people. The conquerors transformed into an aristocracy after a few generations. Plato called for a political from in which the 'best' ruled...not on the basis of conquest but on merit. For Plato, merit meant those who had the good of the people at heart and had four capacities to use on their behalf: wisdom, courage, temperance and justice. The socialist/marxist view is that these virtue are distributed widely throughout the population and that politics should be democratic in order to draw them out. See government, forms of.

Aristotle (384-322 BCE): A Greek philosopher, student of Plato and, later, tutor to Alexander the Great. Aristotle was a leading architect of what is now modern science. He worked in the philosophy of knowledge and what was then called natural philosophy. To Aristotle's credit, he set as the primary task of science the discovery of the truth value of middle terms upon which depended the truth value of deductions. His view of ethics continues to be profoundly wise; a virtuous life requires that one do the right thing in the right way to the right person at the right time to the right degree. He specified the Golden Mean and gave it a mathematical grounding. Aristotle listed three acceptable forms of government; monarchy, aristocracy [which see] and polity, a sort of constitutional democracy. Three undesirable forms were tyranny, oligarchy and popular democracy. Aristotle set art to work as exploration in what was possible rather than celebration of that which existed; this view continues to inform emancipatory art. Poetry has the task to conceptualize and verbalize universal truths about life and nature while history dealt with actual events. His contributions to the philosophy of law still survives in the concepts of Natural law and positive law [which see].

His system of syllogistic logic [see which] continues to inform, inappropriately, the knowledge process; we know now from Chaos/Complexity theory that the world itself is non-linear and does not sustain logical derivations nor does it exclude contrarieties as does aristotlean logic. (After WL Reese)

Art: Socialist/marxist theory of art is that it should grasp the central contradictions/problems of life; make their sources visible; affirm and politicize workers, students, women and other oppressed minorities. It should be integrated into all aspects of daily life [food, furnishings, clothing, tools, factories, and housing] rather than confined to a museum or gallery to be viewed once in a while. Most capitalist, feudal or bureaucratic socialist art tends to celebrate those in power and defuse political critique.

Artificial Intelligence: A term used to suggest that a machine can be made to think in such a way that it cannot be distinguished from human thought. A.M. Turing gave a proof that a machine could be built that was more complex than the sum of its parts. Today there is much work in artificial intelligence; some chess programs are better than most human chess players.

Artificial Stupidity: A term introduced by T.R. Young in a lecture at the Fielding Institute in 1992 with which to refer to societies which had the technical capacity to develop authentic self knowledge but did not do so for political and economic reasons. Compare to naturally stupid societies which do not have the information technology and so could not be intelligent if they tried. Simple societies could be, however, wise.

Asceticism: Greek: self-denial. Asceticism informs many religious which hold that the pathway to knowledge is denial of the senses and of desires. Weber say asceticism as part of the social psychology of religion which lead to capitalism.

Ascribed status: The standing which is assigned to a person by other people, regardless of the wishes of or the concrete circumstances surrounding the person. Perhaps the most frequently used example of an ascribed status is one's kinship, one's ethnicity and one's sex. In sexist or racist societies, such an assignment is hostile to praxis and community. In socialist societies, ascribed status is routine. As such, it means that one is able to create culture by virtue of the fact that one is part of a collective apart from merit, sex, race or other irrelevant characteristics. See commune.

Ashby's Law of Requisite Variety: a requirement for an ultrastable system is that, in order to maintain match with its environment (and thus obtain order), it is necessary to have at least one option stored in the system for every change in the environment. Ashby says that only variety (change) can destroy (cope with) variety. Capitalism is irrational in that it produces irreversible changes in the environment, degrades the environment and resists change by which to transform the system. (after H. Ross Ashby).

Assimilation: A process by which one culture is destroyed and another culture imposed on a people, usually by force. In the process, the young people of a status group defined as 'low' adopt the values and norms of status groups defined as superior. People do not readily surrender their culture (i.e., their capacity to create a particular form of culture). The recent (1977) television series, Roots documents the brutality involved in the destruction of culture as Blacks were assimilated into American culture as slaves.

Atheism: Greek: a = without; theos = god. Disbelief in gods. The tradition is informed by the work of Anaxagoras, Heraclitus, Feuerbach and Marx. In humanist thought, atheism is the annulment of God and the emergence of theoretical humanism. In Marx, atheism requires one to be authentically concerned with fellowship, community, affirmation, and festivity as human activities rather than as divinely inspired or as divine worship. In capitalism, atheism can be only a dull resentment of religious hypocrisy or an intellectual doubt about supernatural beings. It then is a negative act rather than one affirming human relatedness as in some forms of postmodern theology. See Theology, postmodern, God, death of.

Attitude: A predisposition to act based upon internalized values, roles, rules and/or upon conditioning. Attitudes are useful in that they provide generalized solutions of action but may be obstacles to judgment and self-determination if rigidly embodied. Some theorists seriously challenge the fact of "attitude" holding that all behavior is situationally produced through transactions. This is not likely in a mass society where there is little opportunity for transactions.

Attractor: In nonlinear theory, an attractor is that region in time space to which a system tends to go [seems to be attracted]. There are five generic attractors in Chaos theory, 1) a point attractor so called since simple systems such as a pendulum can be found at a given point at a given time with great precision. 2) a limit attractor so called since a system cannot exceed the upper and lower values for any given measure; think of a thermostat. 3) then nonlinearity sets in; a Torus is a dough-nut shaped region in space within which a system can be found. We can't tell just where inside the dough-nut the system will be found but we know that the boundaries of the dough-nut set the limits for the movement of the system on selected variables; think of the norms controlling braking at a stop light; most people vary around a mean; few come to a full stop; few dash right through. 4) a butterfly attractor is most interesting since, when these appear, the same system without the addition of any new parts, will suddenly move to two [or more] outcome basins of attraction. Instead of one and only one outcome for a given kind of system [say a drop of water or a gender relations], suddenly new patterns emerge. The drop of water may take up two regions in time-space with very uncertain paths between these two points. Or, in some conditions, men and women may form 2, 4, or more marriage forms quite different from traditional relationships. 5) then there is a region of very unpredictable patterns which we call deep chaos. But even in deep chaos, there are regions of order; it is in deep chaos where one finds qualitatively more life forms, forms of crime, forms of religion, politics, economics or forms of marriage emerging. The factors driving the change to new and more complex dynamics are the text of postmodern science.

Attractor, Strange: The concept refers to the behavior of a system. In modern science, systems are supposed to behave with enough precision such that formal, axiomatic and logical theory can be built. Most complex systems do not behave so predictably; they are strange in terms of the expectations of modern scientists but not in terms of natural occurring dynamics.

Augustine, St. (354-430): An African theologian and architect along with St. Aquinas of modern theology. Augustine held that the pathway to true happiness is self-knowledge. The quest becomes one for truth, beauty and goodness; this gives a theologian endorsement for philosophy, psychology and sociology in times when such sciences are seen to be secular and hostile to revealed truth. It also focus attention upon social relations in this world rather than preparation for salvation in a second, spiritual world. He also gave us a Utopia; The City of God which is contrasted with the City of Man [sic]. Each person must make a choice between the two; the City of God is exempt from change and collapse; the City of man is not. In the City of God, Church law is superior to Civil law.

(After WL Reese).

Author: In postmodern discourse, any one who does physical, natural or social science is an 'author.' This usage derives out of the larger notion that all science is a 'text' which is one of many stories which could be generated out of the incredibly complex fabric of natural and social dynamics. See 'writerly.'

Authority: Many societies allocate more social power to some statuses and require those in 'lower' status comply with the orders, commands, wishes or expectations of 'higher' authority.

When social power is vested in an office or person, such person has 'authority.' Weber lists three kinds: traditional [that of a parent or priest], legal-rational [that of a formal organization with rules and people to enforce them] as well as charismatic. As Simmel noted, such "power" is always a social product and lasts only as long as the "subordinates" continue to reify the person/office as an "authority." However, when authority is naively reified, people do give up some of their autonomy and allow others to direct their behavior. Both human agency and personal morality are thereby subverted.

Authoritarianism: A form of government in which one person or a small group controls state power; law, police, military, and other public and semi-public institutions such as school and church. The private sector is usually given over to other authorities who in turn support the government. Patriarchy thrives in authoritarian societies. See Totalitarianism, Fascism, Elitism.

Authoritarian personality: A stabilized pattern of learned behavior exhibited by a person which is characteristically intolerant, rigid and marked by extreme reliance on formal authority. The source of this personality type appears to be found in unequal power systems, beginning with the patriarchal family, in which people become extremely sensitive and responsive to "higher" authority and insensitive, even brutal, to those in the lower echelons. (After David Franks).

Automation: The practice of controlling machines with machines. The transformation from labor intensive production to capital intensive production. Up until 1960, most of the time automation replaced unskilled workers. Now automation threatens to replace lower level white collar workers. IBM, Xerox and other "word processor" are developing machines controlled by computers to process words. Secretaries, teachers, professors, postal workers, and others who use words become surplus to the corporate needs as "artificial intelligence" systems are designed. Automation in capitalist societies increases production and prices while eliminating wage workers. Without work, demand falls and the surplus population grows. Socialism and communism distribute on the basis of need and merit, therefore crisis is not necessary.

Autonomy: Greek: self-regulation. An autonomous person has principles which s/he uses in organizing responses to events in everyday life. An autonomous city or nation made its own laws and directs its own affairs. In marxian theory, autonomy is one of the moments of praxis [see which] which are mediated by other important factors. Kohlberg set the principled individual as more moral than one who based judgments upon utilitarian notions of reward and punishment.

Away(s): Standard ways of avoiding involvement in a given social occasion. Usually such involvement is pointless, exploitative or demeaning and yet people have cause to remain and to feign interest. Examples include day-dreaming, shielded mockery, doodling, spacing-out, and boundary collusion by subsets of persons. [Goffman].

Axiology: Greek; axios = value. Theories of value. See Value, theory of.

Axiom: Greek: axioun = to think worthy. The word refers to unprovable but necessary assumptions in a set of theoretical propositions based on the axioms. Agrippa refused to accept axioms without proof and doubted that all such 'worthy' assumptions could be grounded. Postmodern philosophy of knowledge takes his view.

B

Back stage: A term used by Goffman to make the point that in a dramaturgical society, there is much hidden from the view of those who are caught up in social institutions. In conflict ridden societies, teams rehearse performances back stage and then offer the dramaturgical facsimile of service, quality, or honest agency to those who are in the audience [front stage]. In markets, politics, religion and education, such hidden routines invalidate most of the assumptions of symbolic interaction theory about how symbols are shared and call forth the same responses and feelings in all parties to such interaction.

Bacon, Francis (1561-1626): Bacon was an English philosopher who gave us an appreciation of the new science of systematic empirical study and mathematical analysis which now is centerpoint of the knowledge process in higher education. He also wrote of an ideal society made possible by wise use of science in the New Atlantis. He thought science would banish the 'four idols' which contaminated human understanding; idols of the tribes [gods], idols of the cave [see Plato], idols of the market and idols of theatre [bad theory, see Theory]. He specified the use of operational definitions; gave us basic research designs or 'tables.' He ranked the sciences from logic to metaphysics. His goal was the Great Instauration, installing human beings as master of the natural and social world; as such he was very important to the Enlightenment. (After WL Reese)

Bakunin, Mikhail (1814-1876): A Russian philosopher and leading anarchist. His argument is that privilege depraves both heart and intellect; therefore all hierarchy should be dismantled. The only laws one needs obey is natural law; indeed one must obey them since they are his/her 'true' nature. Bakunin held that neither patriotism, law, religion or morality should keep one back from destroying political and economic privilege. One can accept the first dictum without accepting the others. See Acton, Lord. (After WL Reese)

Balance of Payments: The flow of wealth from one country to another measured by dollars, francs, pounds, yen or shillings. There are lots of ways this occurs including trade, foreign investment, duties on goods, loans and interests on loans by international banks. When a U.S. company builds a factory (invests) in Brazil, it has to spend money in that country, hiring workers and buying raw materials. Once that factory is operating, money flows back to the U.S. in the form of profits. Military operations and foreign "aid" also involve major dollar flows. The difference between the number of dollars that flow into and out of the U.S. is the balance of payments, a major indicator of the international strength and power of the U.S. economy. The U.S. has a balance of payments deficits lately (1977-) since large corporations move their factories to the poor nations where cheap labor, cheap materials, and new markets are found. In order to keep workers from organizing (and thus reduce class struggle), the U.S. uses a huge military apparatus to stop socialist liberation movements and to train, install, and support military dictatorships which then guarantee law and order (labor peace). All this increases deficits in the balance of payments.

Balance of Trade: If you go buy a Volkswagen, you pay for it in dollars at your local dealer. Most of these dollars go back to the German firm that produced the car; dollars flow from the U.S. to Germany. The dollar value of all U.S.-made goods sold abroad (exports) minus the dollar value of all foreign-made goods sold in the U.S. (imports) is the balance of trade. This indicates how effectively U.S. firms are competing with their foreign rivals. When balance of trade is positive for a nation, its factories are busy and the surplus population small. When negative, the surplus population grows, welfare and other costs go up and the state has a fiscal crises. Too many people on welfare and too few workers left to pay the taxes which support welfare and which help pay the costs of production which capitalism transfers to the state.

Banditry, social: A form of pre-theoretical rebellion in which particular nobles or capitalists are the target of violence or theft. The bandit steals from, kidnaps, or murders rich and/or famous persons and shares out the wealth to kin and friends. Banditry tends to disappear as social justice increases. Robin Hood and Pretty Boy Floyd are among the better known bandits. Many viewed Jesse and Frank James as social bandits since they robbed the banks which were thought to be robbing the worker and farmer.

Barbarism: In socialist writing, the term refers to an "advanced" society in which technology is used as an instrument of domination. Such a society is "barbaric" in that the masses are controlled by external rules, rewards, and systems design which are established by managers on behalf of some elite. When people are stripped of social relations (which requires mutual participation in constructing of culture also a collective product), they are but "barbarians."

Base: The means of production of material culture and the relations of production is found in the economic base. The tools, factories, techniques, and lines of commodity production form one part of the base. The other part of the base consists of the way the producers of value relate to each other and to those who do not produce value. In slavery, the relationship is that of slave and master; in feudalism, of Lord and Serf; in capitalism, that of worker and owner; in socialism, that of worker and state; in communism, that of worker to other workers and to the unpaid but important labor force. In capitalism, there is a tendency to improve the means of production and to destroy the relations of production. See also Superstructure.

Base Communities: Nuns, Priests, Preachers and Ministers who orient their ministry to Liberation Theology (c.f.) help peons, peasants, workers and/or minorities to form strong and mutually supportive communities in which worship extends beyond the situated Drama of the Holy to encompass all of daily life. The idea is to create an approximation of the heavenly City/Community here on earth by opposing and dismantling new and old structures of domination.

Baseball: A North American game adapted from the English game, Cricket. A functional analysis would note that baseball tends to reproduce the social dynamics of competitive capitalism limited to rules which make any given game fairly free from bias. One should note that baseball teaches young men the morality of team work within a larger competitive structure. It also provides a forum and a stimulus to elegant physical activity as do sports in general but see Sports, alienated. See also Football and Basketball.

Bastard: A child born out of wedlock in certain social formations. Bastardy arises only in those tribes or states which permit the private holding of land, real estate or other property. Given the idea of private property, the question arises who is to inherit it; at that point the paternity of the child becomes important [maternity is usually known]. Only those born within the marriage form are legally entitled to protection, resources and inheritance. In many societies, any child born to a female who herself is member of a clan, tribe or family is, by such birth, a full member of that group. Children thus are never bastards; the legal system of a political economy creates the category.

Behavior: Old English, behabben, be = about; habban = to hold. The word means 'to take oneself in hand' or to 'comport oneself with dignity' and thus refers to activity informed by conscious reflective will. It has come to mean all activity of all organisms including plants.

Behaviorism: A term in psychology which holds that the proper study of behavior is actual behavior rather than mental tests, opinions, drives, needs, desires or other freudian or mentalist concepts. J. B. Watson and the Russian Pavlov are credited with this form of psychology. The sociology student should note that it eliminates socialization, roles, relationships, norms, interaction and human will from the study of behavior.

Behavior modification: A political technique by which the principles of psychology are used to eliminate behavior that is embarrassing, awkward, or irritating to others. By circumventing the self-system and by eliminating interaction, behavioral mod can enable a small cadre of psychologists to manage the behavior of a mass of consumers, prisoners, students, patients, or others. Since authentic therapy is labor-intensive, behavioral mod is a cheap way for the state to solve its problems of an unruly surplus population of reluctant students, workers and abandoned children.

Belief: A mental act by which a social fact comes into being. The everyday use of the word does not begin to be adequate in pointing to the utter, complete, and naive acceptance of a social fact as really true. Many sociologists and anthropologists treat "beliefs" as something ignorant and superstitious folk have while civilized and educated people are interested in "true facts." The later position, inappropriately, assumes that social facts exist apart from intending, wanting, hoping, believing human beings. One's capacity to believe and to trust is greatly exploited in monopoly capitalism.

Bentham, Jeremy (1748-1832): Bentham is the founder of Utilitarianism which set pleasure [rather than salvation and spiritual purity] as the goal of life. Pleasure for each required the greatest good for the greatest number of persons. There are seven ways to measure pleasure; intensity, duration, certainty, propinquity, fecundity, purity and the number of persons to which it extends. Bentham is used widely to justify accumulation of private wealth and to locate the quest for happiness in the marketplace rather than church, academy, polity or family. (After WL Reese).

Berkeley, George (1685-1753): Berkeley was an Irish philosopher and Bishop who contributed to an early postmodern philosophy of science. He argued, with Locke, that all ideas originate in sense data; we have no direct evidence of such abstract categories as space, time, color, volume or quality. A thing exists only if it is perceived; esse est percipi. He went on to disagree with Locke that one can use reason to get from specific sense data to abstract categories without imagination and faith. Berkeley was interested in showing that God was necessary to ground such concepts. Postmodernists are not. (After WL Reese)

Birth Control: The concept refers both to the technology with which birth rates are increased or decreases as well as to the larger question about the morality of these practices; especially abortion. The only acceptable form of birth control then becomes abstinence from all sexual congress. Sometimes those who advocate birth control advocate a decrease in the number of poor children permitted to be born while urging an increase in the number of rich, white, male children. One can see the sexism, racism and class bias in this view. The socialist position is that concern should be with increasing the quality and quantity of life for all people rather than trying to solve the problems of poverty and ethnocentricism by pushing birth control on unwilling people. See also abortion and 'over' population; see also population theory.

Biological reductionism: The practice of explaining all human behavior in terms of purely biological processes; genes, instincts, hormones, and pre-programmed brain activity. Stratification, sexual dominance, territoriality, acquisition and conflict are said to be basic biological behaviors. Actually we do not know just how much social behavior is grounded firmly in biology nor do we know when and how biology is mediated by sociology. The interactions may be so complex that only loose generalizations are possible. See reductionism.

Blanqui, Louis, (1805-1881). A French socialist who gave Marx and socialism several concepts: class struggle, proletarian revolution, dictatorship of the proletariat and the idea that socialists should form a small, secret group to engineer the overthrow of capitalism.

Blocs, Economic: A coalition of several nation-state pursuing common goals and setting forth common rights and obligations of those who reside within the bloc. There are three competing views of how the global economy works: first there is the idea that there are some 160 sovereign nation-states which compete freely among themselves; then there is the view that there is a Capitalist World Order in which the Group of Seven [see which] is at the top and poor nations ranged in layers below that. But recently, nations have been joining into larger economic systems called blocs. The European Common Market, the North American Free Trade Association are the most developed. Over the new 20 to 50 years, we might well see some 10 or 12 such blocs competing for markets, raw materials and for rights to deep sea or outer space resources.

Bloc Formation: There are several factors which call forth large, multi-national blocs and which pattern their composition. First, in unity, there is strength to compete with the more powerful nations; Japan, Germany and the USA are so much stronger in economic and political terms that African, Asian and Latin American nation-states must co-operate if they are to compete/resist them. Secondly, the rich capitalist nations have a common interest in suppressing liberation movements and guaranteeing the free movement of goods and profits around the world. Then too there are many factors which bind people across national boundaries; language, religion, colonial status and such. Blocs are likely to be the largest, most visible and most active social units in the 21st c.

Boas, George (1891-1980): An American philosopher who helped fashion a postmodern philosophy. He held that 1) humans try to impose order and logic on the world and fails since time subverts the effort to prove basic terms. 2) There are no universals; humans create and impose them and, when they fail, discard them. 3) There are no individuals but individual persons and things are the basic metaphors out of which we build explanations. 4) The idea of a cause is a metaphor built upon myths. Mechanistic, deterministic and teleological causal models are expanded far beyond what is warranted. 5) some abstract terms become 'emblems' which guide the knowledge process: nature, truth, beauty, law, order and cosmos are human inventions treated as ontologically prior to human thought and action. 6) Dividing history into periods [including premodern, modern and postmodern] is to built myths which leave residues in all thought processes. Even those who work in the history of ideas carry a distorting philosophy of history. Note: As long as we accept our own hand in such work, we do not reify history, nature, causality or individual as something beyond our own social and cultural work. (After WL Reese)

Boddhisattva: Sanskrit: boddhi = wisdom, sattva = existence. A boddhisattva is, in Mahayana buddhism, one whose essence is compassion. A guiding symbol on both popular and learned levels, a boddhisattva embodies basic Buddhist values of practical wisdom (prajna) and love (karuna) and has chosen a life-vocation of beneficial action toward all beings in order that their suffering, whether physical or mental, be ended. A boddhisattva can be anyone, layperson or monk, who begins to postpone individual satisfaction in order to work for the welfare of others in the world. Their lives, in turn, are free for similarly attentive contributions in their own situations. After N. Maxson.

Bolsheviks: This word refers to the party of Lenin and later, Stalin. It means, 'majority.' Great expectations were made for the Bolsheviks but the events of the late 1980's saw the heirs of Bolsheviks rejected by the masses it purported to serve. Considerable gains were made under the Bolsheviks but severe problems including inflexibility, corruption, elitism and the cult of the individual discredited them. See also, Menshevik, Vanguard.

Bourgeois democracy: A form of government in which political power is in the hands of those who have the time and money to do political work. This usually means business persons, lawyers, doctors, and the idle rich who have sufficient guaranteed income, sufficient released time to do the basic ground work in choosing candidates and policies. The product of such law makers tends to support capitalism. Scorn and contempt is built into the term by those on the Left.

Bourgeoisie: Old English; burg: old French; burgeis, bourges = dwelling; by extension, those who live in town; craftspersons, merchants, officials and such. Now, that sector of the population of a society which, by one rationale or another, expropriates part of the surplus value produced by the proletariat. It carries strong and often negative emotional content in the writings of the Left.

Bourgeois revolution: A political revolution in which the rights of the individual to pursue private goals and to accumulate property is guaranteed. A series of bourgeois revolutions from the English revolution in 1688 to the American revolution in 1775 replaced feudalism with capitalism.

Bourgeois society: One in which exchange relationships replace social relationships; in which cultural items [sex, drugs, foods, loyalty, sports] become commodities exchanged for profit and in which private profit is the central test of production.

Bridgman, P.W. (1882-1963): Bridgman is noted for his concept of operationalism. All concepts in science are defined by the operations with which one uses in finding the value/measure of a thing. The concept of length or weight or opinion is identical with the operations one uses to measure, weigh or elicit opinions. One can see the grounding of postmodern philosophy of science in this view. Plato and most modern scientists would hold that length, weight or truth are natural categories existing before measurement; measurement can only approximate real values/attributes.

Brothel: A place used for male or female prostitution.

Buddhism: Enlightenment. One of the major forms of world religion most interesting to progressive politics in that it is atheistic, favors communal sharing, works with and on behalf of the poor, condemns warfare and violence, forbids work in dangerous or endangering occupations, is very pragmatic [rather than dogmatic] and, at the same time, monks ar forbidden to accumulate wealth. There is no after-life, no hell, no angry sky god who punishes and rewards, no hierarchy which claims all moral authority. Founded by Gautama Siddhartha 500 years before the birth of Christ, it replaced tribal gods with an encompassing social justice; it replaced birth as a test of status with just behavior; the four-fold path and the eight noble truths; right faith, right resolve, right speech, right living, right effort, right thought and right concentration. Both men and women could become enlightened. See Boddhisattva for the social justice and compassion built into Buddhism. See also Liberation theology.

Buddhism, Hinayana: The early form of buddhism stressed the inevitability of suffering in this world. In order to end suffering, one must put away the 'shells of existence' and unite with the infinite [nirvana]. Compare to Mahayana.

Buddhism, Mahayana: A later and more popular form of buddhism in which a boddhisattva [see which] can help bring social justice and moderate suffering in this world. The b. postpones his/her approach to nirvana in order to share wisdom with others in this life. In M. buddhism, everyone can become a boddhisattva by passing through ten stages; delight, purity, intelligence, leaving behind ignorance and evil passion, grasping essences, producing that which is needed for social justice, saintly innocence, practical knowledge and finally embodiment of love and compassion. This form of buddhism is companion to liberation theology [see which] in Christianity. (After WL Reese)

Buggery: A british term for anal intercourse with male or females. Said to be a sexual perversion. See also Sodomy.

Bureaucratic socialism: A distorted form of socialism in which the state holds title to the means of production. Like capitalism, part of the production is extracted by law or by force but unlike capitalism, that surplus is invested in improving the basic health, housing, food, transport, and military delivery systems. A part of the surplus is also used to provide the ruling elite with class privileges. The USSR was the prototype of bureaucratic socialism.

Bureaucracy: French; bureau = writing desk and, later, drawer. It has come to mean any work requiring the keeping of files; later a form of social organization in which order, rationality and hierarchy are key elements. In more general terms, a way of organizing social life such that an elite can control the behavior of a large mass of people by means of a staff (or cadre). Lenin said that a bureaucracy was first a military [police] apparatus and then a judiciary apparatus; that it corrupts from above and below. It is also an apparatus which locates moral agency in the hands of a few. Marked by formal and uniform application of rules, bureaucracies are supposed to be "rational" instruments by which goals determined by an elite may be achieved. Bureaucratic organization typifies modern industrial corporations, military organizations and a managed society. See McDonaldization.

Buridan's Ass: A dilemma attributed to John Buridan (1295-1356) which involves an ass which starves unable to decide which of two bales of hay to eat. Think of radicals on the Right and Left who fail their quest for social justice by an inability to see the positivities in each other's work.

C

Cadre: A central core of workers who activate and direct the activities of a larger mass. A bureaucratic organization (school, military, hospital, agency, business) has a paid set of workers who process people as isolated individuals or as faceless blocs through the routines of the system. In elitist societies, the expectation is that the cadre and the mass is a permanent relationship since the point of the bureaucracy is to control workers, customers, patients, students or prisoners and thus reproduce class, status honor, or social power. A socialist revolution establishes cadres to organize the poor and the powerless. In the latter instance the cadre is supposed to arrange for those conditions in which cadres become unnecessary. See also Vanguard.

Calvin, John (1509-1564): French theologian who laid the basis for the Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism [Weber]. His argument is 1) God is the absolute cause of everything. 2) God ordains all that happens to people. 3) Humans were pure but fell from grace; even so part of God remains in each person. What remains is not enough for salvation. 4) Therefore Christ is necessary to salvation. 5) There is a two-fold scheme; some are destined to salvation; some to damnation. 6) All men [sic] are equal before God. (After WL Reese)

Assumption 5) above is central to the idea that great wealth is a blessing of God since 2) God ordains all. 6) above, grounds a through-going individualism and rejection of authority other than the Bible.

Campanella, Tomasso (1588-1639): Campanella, following Plato, set forth an Utopia called City of the Sun. In it people held property in common, a class of philosopher/guardians and state program of eugenics. The City of the Sun is infused by the Love of God and rejects evil in personal and social relations. A forerunner of liberation theology. (See WL Reese for more about Campanella)

Camp: A verb meaning to have fun with cultural items rather than to celebrate them or to condemn them. As social conditions change, values which have been considered for a long time as very certain and unquestionable, begin to be considered doubtful, false, or harmful. The strong, silent, decisive cowboy in the cinema now looks strange. Films like "The Midnight Cowboy" camp on the John Wayne genre. "Mary Hartman" camps on the American family while "Archie Bunker" neither celebrates racism nor condemns it but rather plays around with it. The character of "Meathead" camps on the mindless liberal while the character of "Edith" is a gentle affirmation of love and innocence.

Canon/Canon law: Canon means rule; from the Greek, kanon = rule or rod. In Latin it came to mean those writings which are authoritative for a given religion. Canon law is the most authoritative law of the Roman Catholic church. For centuries it served as basis for justice and rulings about crime, property, marriage and contracts. Gregory XIIIth had canon law codified in 1582. Based on Deuteronomy and other books of the old and new testaments, it still informs legal proceedings via secular legal codes which are based on it.

Capital: This term has two very different meanings. (1) Sometimes capital is used to mean manufactured physical objects-machines, equipment, buildings-which are used in the production process, or money available to buy these objects. (2) For Marxists, capital is more than just money or machines. It is a relationship which gives a near-monopoly over money and machinery by a small group of people (capitalists), who are able to hire other people to work for them, in order to make them more money. Capitalism is a social relationship; most people have to work for somebody else in order to survive. In the U.S., about 8% of the people are capitalists and live off of the surplus value of labor while 52% sell their labor power (1977). The rest live on the wages of paid workers, go on welfare or hustle or steal. Capital in the first sense--physical objects--is necessary for production in every economic system. However, capital in the second sense--the ability of the owners of those physical objects to hire others to work for them is unique to one particular system, capitalism (From URPE). Of capital, Marx said that it is '...dead labor that like a vampire only lives by sucking the blood from living labor.'

Capital (Das Kapital) (1867): A three volume set in which Marx went outside the capitalist paradigm to criticize it as an economic system. The basic thesis of the work is that capitalism is a dynamic system which (a) destroys community, (b) converts praxis into alienated labor and (c) contains internal contradictions which tend to produce crises. Basically, capitalism is a system of capital accumulation for private purposes. This feature puts it into conflict with the human interest in production for social purposes. The major internal contradiction is that as capitalism succeeds, it has less use for workers. This means there is no one to exploit since unemployed workers can't buy. "Overproduction" is created thereby even as people are hungry and in need of goods and such a situation programs more conflict into the system. In the good years of capitalism, there was some doubt about the validity of marxian analysis. War, new technology, and Keynesian policies keep the system growing. Recent developments tend to confirm the instability of capitalism as a system of production. For the U.S., loss of markets to Germany, Japan, and socialist liberation movements have produced a crisis centered now in the state sector. The state covers much of the costs of capitalism at present in the U.S. As deficit spending, taxes, and other federal revenue sources are exhausted and as welfare and military costs increase, production overhead must be shifted back to the private sector or political legitimacy is lost. Either the crises is in the state sector or the private sector. Whatever the case, inflation and unemployment increase and more and more sectors of the population grow restive. There are two likely outcomes, fascism or socialism.

Capital, Accumulation of. The transformation of surplus value into machines and technology to produce more goods and services with fewer and fewer workers. All economic systems need to accumulate and improve capital goods; only capitalism tries, as well, to dis-employ more and more people in the process. Marxists, socialists, and communists as well as liberal economists hold that part of surplus value should be set aside for essential but low profit services: child care, health care, teaching, elder care, environment, and such. Capitalists tend to argue that capital accumulation should a) follow demand and b) be invested in the goods and services which yield the highest profit rates.

Capital accumulation crisis: This idea refers to the problem of securing profits as the number of workers needed in capital intensive production declines (and markets for mass produced goods decline). Capitalism must either find new markets overseas or sell the 'surplus' production to the state to give away to those who can't find work. The first solution requires a "warfare state" and the second a "welfare state." Both solutions require high taxes and/or deficit spending and thus contribute to a crisis in political legitimacy.

Capital, constant: This form of capital refers to machines, raw materials, buildings, tools, fuel and other physical objects to which labor [variable capital] is added and from which all wealth comes. It is called constant capital since, unlike variable capital [labor power], its value does not change in the production process beyond the wear and tear of producing wealth.

Capital, Organic Composition of: This concept refers to the ratio of workers to machines. The more machines and fewer workers, the higher the organic composition of capital. Some lines of production are capital intensive (they use very few workers); some are labor intensive (they use few machines). Nursing, teaching, parenting, playing and religious activities are labor intensive. Mining, farming, milling, machining, transporting and accounting are ever more capital intensive. A good and decent society tries to keep a balance between capital and labor such that there is full employment in pro-social lines of production.

Capital, variable: That part of capital used to purchase the labor power of workers. It is called variable capital since labor power produces more than enough value to replace itself and more; surplus value [see which]. Labor power also varies over time; workers get tired, sick, angry or hurt; machines don't; the value workers can produce thus varies much more so than that of machines. The costs of labor can go up or down more rapidly than the cost of capital goods since capital goods come from other capitalists who have more power to control prices than do workers.

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Figure 4. Cobb on Capitalists

Capitalism: A system which separates workers from any property rights in the means by which they produce culture by their labor. The system transforms the social means of subsistence into capital on the one hand and the immediate producers into wage laborers on the other hand. Most of the time, capitalism is defined as the private ownership of the means of production but that definition does not encompass the great harm done to humanity by the system. By claiming all (or most) of the means to produce culture as private property, a small class of owners preempts material culture to their own comfort while denying the vast majority the means to subsistence as well as the means to produce ideological culture when they are not working.

Capitalism, advantages of: There are many aspects of capitalism most congenial to the human project: it is the most productive economic system in history, it is the most flexible, it is the most innovative; it responds to human desire and personal preference, it requires a honest and unflinching knowledge process, it often requires merit while it tends...only tends...to destroy the ancient structures of oppression when it cannot use them.

Capitalism, disadvantages of: Marx argued that there were laws within the everyday workings of capitalism which would create misery and lead to its destruction. These include: 1) the tendency of the rate of profit to fall, 2) the tendency of large firms to buy out or destroy small firms, 3) the tendency to transform all goods and services into commodities, 4) the tendency to transfer [externalize] costs of production to workers, consumers or the environment, 5) the tendency to disemploy workers [surplus labor force] in favor of machines and capital intensive production, 6) the tendency to dominate the political process, 7) the tendency to control the production of ideological culture [art, science, music, literature and religion, 8) the tendency toward economic imperialism, 9) the tendency to abandon low profit but essential lines of production [the Law of Uneven Development], and 10) the tendency toward revolution. Compare to the three capitalist economic laws below.

Capitalism (theory of collapse of): With astonishing insight and genius, Marx laid out the dynamics by which capitalism will bring on its own demise. In brief, Marx said that capitalism brings into being productive forces which it cannot control and which will burst asunder the fetters placed on it by capitalism. Capitalism creates a huge productive apparatus at the same time it creates a surplus population by replacing workers with machines. It generates demand for products at the same time it withholds products in order to get higher prices. It cheapens labor at the same time it requires that one labor in order to purchase goods. It brings together industrial armies which then constitute a threat to property relations. It must create waste even as raw materials come into short supply. It must argue for freedom in the market place while growing more bureaucratic in the factory and office. It must dis-empower its employees even as they become better educated. And it must eliminate other capitalists and thus erode its own power base. All these and more create the objective conditions by which social revolution is more likely. Even without a communist conspiracy or social reformers (do-gooders, bleeding-hearts, and eggheads) capitalism outlives its usefulness. The problems of capitalism lay within the system not outside it.

Capitalism (fiscal costs of): It costs the U.S.A. about $150 billion to keep capitalism as a form of production in 1977. Corporate profits were about $110.3 billion; interest costs were 12.2 billion; excessive salaries of top executives about 10 billion more. Depreciation allowances came to about 87.3 billion in 1976 and part of this transferred to owners since it was not all spent to replace worn-out capital. URPE estimates that all together in some combination of profits, interests, and rents the capitalist class takes a 15% cut of national income even though it does nothing in return. (Managers get paid to manage; brokers and money managers get paid to invest). In addition to these direct fiscal costs, the worker also pays taxes to support a military apparatus to protect the overseas markets of American capitalists and to support the surplus population on welfare; to police the surplus population (who steal a lot when they can't find work and otherwise hustle the worker and each other). All this does not count the social costs of capitalism measured in human misery and despair rather than dollars and profits.

Capitalism, Economics Laws of: There are three 'laws' which capitalist economists say are the heart of all economics: 1) the law of supply and demand, 2) the law of marginal utility, and 3) the law of diminishing returns. These are all valid enough within the logics of capitalism as such but do see Capitalism, tendential laws of.

Capitalism, People's: An economic system in which a large share of the wealth is shared widely in society or is held by a democratic state on behalf of all the people. In this system, democratic freedoms, market dynamics and private property are retained. The state does not represent the interest of the capitalist class but rather the general interest [including future generations]. Social Democracies try to approximate this economic form [England, France, Germany, Sweden, Italy, Australia, Canada and New Zealand]. Many marxists argue that the basic conflicts remain and will re-assert themselves when times get bad [see Kondratieff Cycles].

Capitalism (reproduction of): The capitalist system must be continuously reproduced. This is accomplished by two general means: the reproduction of private/elitist ownership and the management of dissent via ideological hegemony and or outright repression. The ideological process starts in school and college where capitalist ideas are celebrated and socialist ideas are distorted or ignored. The state plays a large role in reproducing capitalism by laws which establish the right to appropriate part of the value of labor by non-workers and by public policy which subsidizes almost all of the "costs" of capitalism. What is required for the continuation of capitalism is a legal system which permits the "free" trade of commodities. By "free" is meant that a necessary social good is withheld unless a seller can make a profit. The state also commits many crimes against rebellious workers and political opposition in the name of law and order. Capitalist corporations commit many crimes which are unpoliced, uncharged, untried, and uncounted in order to increase profits, obtain raw materials, destroy competition or control markets. Many if not most military ventures of the U.S. have no design other than to penetrate and protect markets, provide cheap labor and guarantee access to low cost raw materials to capitalism.

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Figure 5. Capital Accumulation

Feminists point out that women are charged to reproduce the labor power of their working husbands by providing unpaid domestic service and by rearing/socializing the next generation of compliant workers. They also reproduce capital by 'super' exploitation; they are paid 30, 40, 60, or 90 percent of what males get for the same work. Then too, women reproduce the status system while at work via gender based norms and by sexual harassment.

Capitalism (social costs): In addition to a 15% bite out of value of the wealth produced by the working class, capitalism also costs much in the way of human misery. Capitalism withholds the basic necessities of life unless one has something to exchange (so the capitalist can make a profit). Capitalism also systematically degrades work while trying to enlarge the surplus value of labor. And, part of the wealth produced by labor is turned into repressive structures: law, police, prisons, psychiatry and "public relations." But the conversion of culture and of social relationships into commodities cheapens and destroys a society. Capitalist relations reproduced in the family, the school, or in medicine and sports turns human beings themselves into commodities to be bought and sold.

Capitalism (stages of): The periods of capitalist development differ according to the ways in which the value of labor is appropriated by those who own and/or control the means of production. The first stage was mercantile capitalism which emerged on large-scale in Venice and Genoa in the 13th century. It culminated in the English empire in the 19th c. The second stage was industrial capitalism as factory cities replaced independent commodity production at home by artisans. This stage began around 1730 in England with the factory system and remained dominate until the 20th century by which time finance capitalism began to displace industrial capitalism as the major means by which to extract surplus value. At present (1977), capitalism in the U.S. claims about 15% of the GNP and, of that amount, 8% is rent or profit and 7% is interest. Most corporations such as Sears or Wards or Master-Charge now prefer to sell credit [finance capitalism] rather than merchandise [industrial capitalism] since credit has lower capital costs and higher returns.

Capital intensive production: The use of machinery to produce food, shelter, clothing, electronics, automobiles, or other commodities. Workers cost a lot of money; wages, pensions, vacations, health insurance and such; machines don't. Workers get ill, get angry, go on strike, criticize management and quit; machines don't.

Capital Punishment: Execution by the state. There are several crimes which are 'capital' offensives; i.e., they carry the death penalty; murder, kidnapping, treason are the most common. The means used by the state to kill prisoners are many: shooting and hanging are uncommon; cyanide gas, electrocution and injection with a lethal dose of poison are preferred. Read The Chamber by John Grisham for a good look at the process by which people are executed by the state and at the legal efforts to prevent it.

Capitalist World System/Economy: Immanuel Wallerstein laid out several helpful points about the capitalism world which is useful to the beginning student:

1. Capitalism is a world economy with a single global division of labor and a lot of differing cultures. It funnels wealth from the poorer countries to the richer.

2. World economies are unstable; they collapse or turn into empires of the strongest state(s).

3. The present world economy emerged in the 19th century as factory production and international division of labor emerged, mostly in Northern Europe and North America.

4. There are two divisions of labor to consider:

a. Ethno-nations with 1) an owning class which makes investment and controls state power, 2) a middle class which consumes luxury goods and support the owning class, 3) a large working class which produces wealth and 4) an underclass surplus to the labor market.

b. A global division of labor which mirrors the national division: 1) the core industrial countries with military power, 2) the semi-periphery whose fate is tied to the core and 3) the periphery.

5. The state in the core is stable; both industrialists and commercial interests want an open market. The state in the semi-periphery is unstable; the industrialists want a protected market; the merchants want free trade so they can sell luxury items.

6. There are three mechanisms which keep the world system stable: a) military force, b) ideological commitment by employees in the public and private sector whose jobs and life-style depends upon capitalism, c) a split in the large majority of non-owners between those who benefit and those who live at the margins. See New World Order.

Career/Careerist: Latin: Carraria = carriage road; French; race course. Now used to refer to any one who is on the 'fast track' in a job or occupation. A careerist is one who uses a social position for private advantage. Usually by catering to superiors or looking away from other's misdeeds, the careerist succeeds by protecting his/her position. Careerism is a large problem in bureaucratic socialism.

Carrier's Case: A famous legal case in which a carrier stole part of the cargo he was carrying; the merchant sued him. In a classical ruling, a British court ruled that the merchant had legal standing to come before it for redress of grievance; thus the wrong was against the state rather than against the owner of the goods. It was the beginning of a legal system in which a wrong against a capitalist became a wrong against the entire state. The state thus become a partisan on behalf of owners. Workers and customers had no such legal standing until the 20th century. (see caveat emptor).

Cartel: A group of firms or countries that jointly decide on prices and output. By coordinating actions, they can be certain not to compete and do away each other's profits. Cartels have existed for well over a century. The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) is now using a tactic which large and powerful firms (including the oil companies!) have used for generations. There are six companies in a cartel which meet regularly and control the prices of grains and breakfast cereals. Cartels of nations which supply raw materials or coffee, cotton, sugar, or cocoa are a threat to capitalist nations because they fuel inflation and squeeze profits. The U.S. state department spends a lot of its time on behalf of capitalism to control cartels in undeveloped nations. Little effort is made to control U.S. cartels abroad. The business of American foreign policy is business.

Case Law: Those cases in law which serve as basis for making legal judgments. Opposed to statutory law which are those laws passed by a law making body. Usually case law embodies age old norms and sanctions; statutory law embodies the interests of which ever elite is in power at the time.

Caste: A system of social differentiation and stratification in which one set of persons are defined as inferior or superior in some important respect. Life chances and life courses are determined at birth in societies organized by caste. Capitalism tends to replace caste systems with class systems.

Casuistry: Latin, casus = case. The use of biblical law, sayings or cases to judge present questions of ethical behavior. Now used to reject such pathways to ethical behavior; e.g., no casuistry will persuade me that your cruelty is a kindness which can be justified by appeal to the teachings of Christ.

Cause: Latin, causa. The antecedent of an effect. Aristotle identified four categories: efficient, material, final and formal cause. Hume gave it its modern sense: the constant conjunction of events. Kant laid the foundation for a postmodern view of cause when he held that cause was an a priori category used uncritically by those who sought to explain something. Chaos theory replaces the idea of cause with the idea of feedback of which there are three forms, it's all right to jump ahead. See also Algorithm.

Caveat Emptor: Latin: let the buyer beware [of the possibility the goods may be stolen, the components damaged or faulty, the ingredients poisonous, or the prices fixed in conspiracy].

Central [economic] Planning: An economic system in which the state manages the economy through periodic plans, usually 5-year plans. It is used a) to change rapidly to industrial production, b) to improve neglected lines of production, c) to re-employ the surplus labor force, d) re-distribute wealth to housing, hospitals, schools, roads, highways, dams, irrigation systems, electric power plants and other 'infra-structure' needs. While rightly claiming many achievements in many socialist countries, still it has several flaws: 1) too inflexible, b) promotes white collar crime as well as a 'black market,' c) obstructs more democratic forms of production and puts quantity before quality.

Central Executive Committees. Almost all socialist and/or communist parties have central committees which run things between Congresses of the People. Too often, the Congresses are pushed aside and all social power remains in the hands of an elite rather than working toward a democratic communism.

Central Intelligence Agency [C.I.A.]: A very large branch of US government whose operations are mostly secret. It is concerned with espionage, counter-espionage, and in its counter-revolutionary activities, the safe-guarding of capitalism/free market dynamics in third world countries. Like the K.G.B. of the USSR, it has become a law and a government unto itself. It profits off the drug trade to get funds to do things not approved and funded by the US Congress. Nixon and Reagan supported its very illegal operations around the world.

Centralism, Democratic. A fraudulent facsimile of democracy in which a central committee makes all the relevant policy decisions while party members are expected to carry them out in the name of democratic centralism. In USSR, the Central Committee of the Communist Party had effective control of the government; the People's Congresses were little more than rubber stamps. See also Vanguard, Vanguardism.

Certainty: Latin: cernere = do decide. There are three quests for certainty in social science; one is for logical certainty; there are many forms of logic chief among which is syllogistic logic [see which. Logical certainty may have little to do with empirical truth. Second, there is the quest for certainty about present and future states/behaviors of real systems; this is the task of empirical research and statistical inference. Third, there is a quest for psychological certainty; what to believe and how to be confident that what one believes is close to the truth.

Certiorari, writ of: The name of the legal process by which evidence is re-examined by an Appeals Court to make certain that a judgment is supported by that evidence. Most of the time, Appeals Courts look only at technical questions; if new evidence is found, such writs can be made.

Chance: Latin, cadere = to fall. The fall of sticks or stones were thought to be a result of the will of the gods; chance serves as a pathway to knowledge in many religions; one who benefits from gambling is thought to be favored of the gods. In modern science, chance is reduced to the work of unknown and perhaps unknowable variables. Much mischief ensues when causality is attributed to chance; there are better ways to understand unexpected outcomes, accidents and non-linear transformations.

Charisma: The term refers to the extraordinary quality which some people perceive in an individual. This perception, if widely shared, inspires others to follow her/his lead and to organize political, religious or family life in ways impossible to predict from previous conditions. The person so perceived usually embodies some cherished cultural value or promise of an ideal and thus is revolutionary. The term means, "gifted with grace."

Charity: Latin: caritas = dear. Christian love and care for the poor and oppressed (Cor. 1:13). Capitalism creates many problems, one of which is the broken and diseased workers it casts off. Charities are assigned the task of taking care of these workers; The United Way, March of Dimes, Red Cross, as well as Cancer, heart, lung or M.S. drives. Such a process transfers the costs of repairing and reproducing the labor force to a working class already over burdened by a tax structure, a price structure, and a wage structure which supports a capitalist elite in health and comfort. The word is often carries negative emotional content since both giver and receiver lack the compassion and grace embodied in the religious meaning.

Chaos Theory: A body of knowledge about the changing mix of order and disorder in natural and social systems. Modern, newtonian science gives preference to order and stability; chaos theory tends to support the idea that some disorder is essential to all complex, adaptive systems and that change is continuous to the human experience. Chaos theory provides an elegant empirical support for both dialectic theory and for postmodern concern with variety, surprise, contrariety and difference.

In Chaos theory, really existing structures have a fractal and temporary geometry; there is a secession of dynamical states; with each bifurcation, more complex dynamics develop, causality is looser and prediction less possible. One should note that all living creatures and societies require some disorder to survive; innovation, creativity, flexibility and revolution are everyday words we use to make this point. Too much order and systems die; too much disorder and systems cannot be planned or trusted to behave as expected. See Science, Postmodern. See also Nonlinear, Fractal, and do compare with other ideas about Metaphysics.

Charisma: A Greek word meaning full of grace. One who embodies charismatic authority embodies the highest values and hopes of a given culture. Charisma is a social product; one does not have charisma apart from a set of followers who 'believe' in her/him.

Weber lists it as one of three forms of authority; of the three, charisma has the most potential for dramatic social change. Jesus, Mohammed, Hitler, Martin Luther King and the Ayatolla Khomeini were able to arouse great loyalty and make dramatic social changes.

Chiliasm/Chiliastic: Greek: chiliiad = thousand. Chiliasticism is the belief that the world will end in the year 1000, 2000 or some multiple of the 1000th year after the birth of Christ. See Millennium.

Child Savers: A social movement begun around 1850 to keep children in school, out of adult prisons and to prevent them from competing with adult men for jobs as the surplus population grew. A whole series of laws, courts and policing officers were instituted in order to 'save' the children from the criminal justice system. After Tony Platt.

Chivalry hypothesis: The idea that females are treated more kindly than are males by police, district attorneys, judges and parole board. This being the case, so the argument goes, women are less likely to be crime statistics; not because they are so much less criminal but because they are treated with the courtesy said to be part of knightly virtue toward women. Feminists make the point that any relation between gender and favorable treatment in the CJS disappears when marital status is factored in: that police and judges are considerate of women when they are single mothers but not when they are single and compete with men for jobs. Patriarchy requires women parent children; men can be sent to prison since they are not expected to parent. Other feminists point out that the CJS leaves control of women to the men in their lives.

Chomsky, Noam (1928-): An American linguist known for his work on language and grammar. Chomsky holds that there are genetically based structures in human beings which give rise and pre-shape speech acts. He is a very articulate critic of capitalism and the role of the USA in serving the global interests of transnational corporations with both military and ideological weapons. Chomsky works with Z Magazine, Edward Herman, Holly Sklar and many other progressive scholars as well as with the South End Press; Z magazine and South End Press are main-stays of radical, transforming consciousness in the USA.

Christ, Jesus (4 BCE-29 AD): Founder of one of the first world religions which set belief, faith and good works as test for status rather than birth in particular tribes. Christianity has many progressive moments; people are to live with purity of heart, compassion for others, and to form supportive communities; they are to search for peace and justice in this life in order to gain salvation for eternity. One is to 'turn the other cheek' to violence and hate. One is to forgive those who do harm [rather than to pursue vengeance and technical punitive justice]. Christ helped to change the angry, tribal god of the old testament into the universal loving god of the new testament. His teachings ground Liberation theology, which see. Jesus is the Greek translation of the name, Joshua.

Chronophone: One who see time as linear and/or a natural construct apart from the conceptions and interests of human beings. Postmodernists tend to reject such a view. After Derrida.

Church: A formal way of organizing the religious experience in which a small cadre of professional clerics (called priests or ministers) can regulate the life of a mass of people. Membership is proclaimed de facto by birth or residence and everyone is expected to give allegiance. See also Sect for a quite different structure.

Civil inattention: A norm of mass market societies which requires one carefully avoid interaction with others physically present. If the others are part of a social base, then civility would be required; if others are nonpersons, then one can be uncivilly inattentive, i.e., one can stare, push, look through, speak through or talk about others in their presence. Black persons are often the subject of uncivil inattention in the North and the South as are dwarfs, cripples, celebrities, and strangers. This norm, when observed, produces a mass society along with the other social conditions which destroy social relatedness. Sometimes privacy is basic to the adoption of the norm of civil inattention. [Goffman].

Civilization: Spengler distinguished between traditional community and civilization, the later was the highest form of social life. The elements of civilization include a separation of private and public life, the primacy of civil law in public affairs, the right to privacy in business, home and personal relationships as well as respect for difference and variety.

Civil society: A social order in which the rights of egoistic, atomistic individuals are proclaimed. A system (not really a society) in which the bonds between people are those of physical survival, safety, and preservation of private property. This contrasts to community wherein bonds are social.

Civilization: French; civilis = of or belonging to the citizens. Cililizare: the process by which a criminal matter become a public issue. Now it refers to a social life world informed by the Enlightenment and marked by formal social relations, impersonality and rationality. Mills and Coleridge contrasted civilization with culture and imbued the first with positive emotional content and the later with negative content as in savage, primitive, barbarian. After Raymond Williams.

Class: Class is one of five great systems of domination which affect patterns of health, housing, self esteem, religion, education, recreation and politics. It is based upon one's relationship to the means of production and distribution.

For Marxists, a class consists of people who have the same role in the process of production. The two basic classes under capitalism are the capitalist (or ruling) class called the Bourgeoisie: those who own and control all productive processes-and the working class called the Proletariat [see which], who because they lack that control have to sell their labor for wages. Bankers, major corporate stockholders, top managers and absentee landlords belong to the capitalist class. Factory and construction workers, police, secretaries, hospital workers, teachers, and many others belong to the working class. There are also other classes, such as the middle class of self-employed people (farmers, storeowners, poets, brokers, lawyers, doctors).

The Marxist definition of class is different from that used by many sociologists who use terms like middle-class to refer to level of income rather than relationship to the process of production. Many workers do have incomes comparable to middle level functionaries in the U.S. However, since the workers do not own the means of production, their position in terms of wages could change quickly. As factories move overseas, as inflation increases, as taxes increase, the difference in wealth between capitalists and workers becomes more visible. (URPE)

Class Action Suit: A legal procedure in which a number of person harmed by a company or an agency come together to petition a court for remedy. This legal action is very important in controlling corporate crime and/or unconstitutional action by a local governing body. Corporate conservatives try to limit eligibility for class action status; those harmed try to expand it.

Class Collaboration: When elements of the working class or the intelligentsia cooperate with owners or with the state, they are said to 'class collaborate.' Many orthodox communists despise class collaboration. Liberals claim that such reform can turn into qualitatively different and more humane economic systems. Liberals make a good case, however, in any capitalist economy, it is a good idea for workers to remain independent and work for the common good rather than cooperate with capitalists to exploit unorganized workers, third world countries and weaker firms.

Class conflict: In class organized societies, there are several conflicts of interest between workers and owners. first and foremost, some of the surplus value of labor produced by workers is appropriated and claimed by capitalists. Secondly, there is the question of how the labor process is to be organized; capitalists want workers to be excluded from management decisions over how fast workers work, when they work; where they work and who they work with. Third, there is the question of what is to be produced; some workers don't like to produce unsafe toys, foods with dangerous additives, weapons of death, or low quality goods. Indeed, some religions prohibit this kind of labor. However, as long as a lot of workers have access to sufficient material wealth and time to create ideological culture, and as long as the instruments of coercion are in the hands of an elite, the conflict of interests is contained. However, as soon as capitalism faces an accumulation crisis, appropriation of surplus value increases and the capacity of people to create culture is threatened. At this point class conflict transforms into class struggle. Usually the class struggle is over wages and working conditions but success here is short-lived. The marxist position is that the objective of the class struggle is to reclaim ownership of the means of producing culture rather than an increase in wages with which to purchase culture. Some hold that the class struggle is to be seen in absentee rates, turnover rates, wildcat strikes, petty sabotage, shoddy workmanship and grievance rates, quarrels, drug and alcohol use at work. This is more privatized conflict than organized struggle. See class struggle and cultural struggle as well.

Class consciousness: An awareness of one's own class interests, a rejection of the interests of other classes, and a readiness to use political means to realize one's class interests (From C.W. Mills). Most people identify themselves as middle class even if they don't get paid much and even if they can be fired tomorrow with no warning. Many people go to college and learn they are better; more successful than are 'common laborers' and thus try to distance themselves from their brothers and sisters who work at unskilled jobs. Workers, too, look down upon the underclass and thus the 'working class' is fragmented into sectors with little interest in class struggle.

Capitalists too have very different interests but tend to unite in the face of class opposition. Those who produce raw materials have to sell them to industrial capitalists; there is always conflict there. Merchants have to buy from industrialists; there is conflict there as well. Both merchants and industrialists need to borrow money from finance capitalists; so there are more conflicts of interest. Then too, all those in the same line compete with each other. Big business tends to destroy small business as for example, when Walmart comes in and takes customers away from small shops and stores; or when McDonald's comes in and takes customers away from small restaurants.

Class Consciousness, theory of: Marx' theory of class consciousness is that industrialism and the factory system brings thousands of workers together in the same place. Being together, they begin to realize their own social power and see more clearly the conflict between workers and owners. Lenin said that workers are not truly class conscious until they respond to all cases of tyranny, oppression, violence and abuse, no matter [who] is affected.

Class Structure: In advanced capitalism, the three significant strata are the capitalist class (1.5% of the adult population), the working class (73.5%) and the surplus population (25% and growing relative to the working class). Allied with the capitalist class are professionals, middle management, and bureaucrats (18.5%) who though they have only their labor power to sell, still support their employers politically and ideologically since they get higher wages, higher status and often, a share in profits. Separated from the unskilled workers (30%) are the skilled workers (15%) and the technical workers (10%) who are organized on occupational lines rather than class lines. Then there is the reserve army (composed mostly of minorities, women and young people, 15%). The class struggle is to forge class alliance now in order to advance theoretically informed class conflict later. See Underclass.

Class Struggle: A struggle over who controls the labor process; it arises between strata in any exploitative society since each class has different and incompatible differences. The struggle is over a) who owns the means of production; b) the uses to which they are put; c) the labor process itself as well as d) how 'surplus' value is to be divided up. Class conflict on the part of the capitalists involves price fixing, black listing, union busting, bribery, pre-selection of candidates for public office, pollution, dis-investment, and cartels. Class struggle by workers include strikes, sit-ins, general work stoppages, unionization and support of political candidates and sometimes rebellion. Sabotage, theft, falsification of time cards and acts of petty rebellion are also tools sometimes used.. Even consumers sometimes engage in class warfare with boycotts, bans, pickets, shop-lifting and political activity. For the socialist, class struggle does not mean the replacement of one elite by another but rather the end of class relationships. See also the role of the State in class struggle.

Client State: This term refers to the case when the government of a small country works in the interest of another country. The USSR and the USA both subvert the political process of independent countries. Latin American governments get arms, easy credit and military advisers from the USA to help maintain oligarchy/elitism. The C.I.A. has many such politicians directly on its payroll. Noriega, President of Panama, was on its payroll as are Mexican vice-Presidents.

Closed Shop: A factory, mill, mine, office or other place of employment in which all workers are required by terms of a labor contract to belong to and contribute dues to a union which then bargains on behalf of all workers. Such agreements can include requirements that only union members be hired or one which requires that newly hired persons join the union within a specified time.

Code: In semiotics, all communication whether spoken, written, or behavioral is conveyed through a special language form called a code; alternately, a sign system. Words, deeds, events are loaded with special meaning unique to those who use such a code. They must be interpreted within the 'grammar' of the code if inter-subjective understanding is to emerge between sender and received of 'coded' messages. Thus a student has to learn the special 'code' in sociology if they are to share the same symbolic world as their teacher.

Coercion: The use of social, economic, physical or moral power to force a person to do that which s/he does not want to do. One of the major disadvantages of stratification systems is that it gives some persons social and economic power to force those in 'lower' social echelons to provide services to which they are otherwise not entitled. The use of social power by boss to solicit sexual favors or bribes are cases in point. One should note the class bias in coercion: older rich males have money to use to coerce; young minority males in the underclass have only physical power to coerce. Both are to be feared and carefully regulated in pursuit of a praxis society.

Cogito ergo sum: Latin: I think therefore I exist. There are two meanings which Descartes may have had in mind when he set forth this proposition; the first is the well known first break-through in epistemology; I think therefore some one such as I must exist in order to do the thinking. The act of thought implies a thinker. Then too, there is the larger task of Descartes to help map out reliable knowledge; in this task one exists in a significant way by thinking on his/her own rather than accepting as truth what others say. See Descartes.

Cognitive capacities: The capacities of perception, awareness, imagination, reason, judgment, purpose, evaluation, and reevaluation by which people organize their own behavior with insight and understanding. A "praxis" society is one in which cognitive capacities are encouraged. See also, I.Q.

Cohort: A set of persons born within the same 5-year period. One can follow the life cycles of a given cohort and discover the larger patterns shape and pre-shape human behavior. Cohort analysis is a powerful tool in macro-social psychological work.

Collective: In socialist usage, a collective is a tightly knit group of people who produce something of social value for others, try to be self-governing and self-supporting and mutually supportive. Although not related by kinship, a collective has many of the characteristics of an extended family; intimacy, trust, accessibility, responsibility for each other and warmth. This contrasts to standard usage in American sociology in which a collective is defined as a congery of unrelated others act spontaneously in much the same fashion; e.g., a street mob.

Collective Bargaining: The direct negotiation between workers and owners of a company. This bargaining usually centers around three key questions: share in profits, job security and the labor process in the factory, mill or mine. The larger needs of society are usually not of immediate concern in collective bargaining. Often one set of workers do very well while unorganized groups continue to have hard times. See Compromise, the Great.

Collective behavior: In conventional sociology usage, the word refers to mass response to a "problem" in life not adequately handled by existing solutions within the system. Most conservative theorists put down collective behavior as some kind of mass hysteria, lunacy, craze, or mindless imitation. Each instance of collective behavior should be studied on its own terms (after Wenger). Rosa Luxemburg held that people usually do things that make sense to them at the time even if theorists do not understand why.

Comenius, John Amos (1592-1671): A Moravian educator and pastor who held that students should take part in their own education; that subject matters should be connected; that language should be taught through conversation and cooperative work; that universal education was prelude to social reform and social justice. See education, radical.

Cooling out: A term from Goffman which indicates the routines by which unwanted persons are removed from social interaction.

Colony: A poor or weak country which is occupied by the military and/or police forces of a more powerful country. England, France, Germany, Italy and Japan all had colonies until just after WWII. After that time, colonialism was replaced by economic imperialism and client states.

Commodity: The transformation of a good or service from its meaning as a support for social relationships to a meaning of private profit. Food, sex, housing, medicine, transport could be used to create and affirm social relationships (as is the case in a family) or for profit (as is the case in capitalism).

Commodification: The practice of converting use-value into exchange value. This is a very important idea; think about food. It has a use value but its exchange value may be set so high that people starve when there is a lot of food. The same is true for any essential good or service once it has been commodified. Then too, as Marx noted, all that is sacred can be commodified; sex, friendship, child care, even religion itself can be marketed.

Common Law: Those laws set forth by Royal Courts in the three centuries after the Norman Conquest in 1088. The French did not impose French law [derived from Roman Law] on England but they did try to centralize and regularize administration of law. Henry II [ruled: 1154-1189) sent judges around to the shires; slowly a body of law developed now called Common Law, to replace multiplicities of local laws. In England there is a distinction between local law and the law binding on all people...common to all. Civil Law (Roman law] is also common to all people including Britons when occupied by the Romans but the codes are different in many ways. The USA uses law from both British Common Law, Civil [Roman] Law and Christian law in Deuteronomy when questions of crime, punishment and social justice are considered.

Kings/Queens' judges took over local law; at the same time a Royal Court of Appeals was installed in London. These two parts set the structure of US legal system, a set of federal district courts and a Supreme Court of Appeals.

Common-law Marriage: A marriage without a formal wedding. Such marriages are recognized as valid in law when a) two people have been living together for a given period of time; usually six months and b) when they announce themselves as man and wife in public. Such marriages have many legal consequences for property rights, inheritance rights, pension and support rights. Children born to such marriages are often considered bastards, see which.

Commune: In marxist/socialist theory a commune is the most human and humane form of social life. The means of production are owned by the whole community while food, shelter, health care, education and recreation are shared out on the basis of social status rather than on the basis of wages/profits/dividends/rents or other non-social grounds. Governance is by direct participation of all adult members. In the former USSR, communal life was mandatory until 1931. Extensive agricultural and industrial based communes exist in China. In modern U.S., an attempt on the part of young people to form an extended primary group in which middle class values of property and commodity are avoided. Most US communes are parasitic on society (or partly so) in that middle class parents fund their children and communes are exploitative of women. Some communes try to avoid elitist, sexist, or parasitic practices but it is difficult in the larger context of capitalism. The term comes from the medieval towns in France which demanded and practiced local self-government. Such was the beginning of the end of feudalism and the rise of capitalism. In these and in the Paris Commune, Marx saw the promise of communism.

Communication: The process by which people, through the use of symbols, construct a shared frame of meaning, line of understanding, or social-life world. Communication is not merely the use of symbols by which one person influences another as defined in many texts, but rather a most remarkable process by which people can get into each other's heads with amazing accuracy. It is a delightful discovery to find that others understand exactly what you are saying and how you feel. Such is the source of much solidarity.

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Figure 6. Cobb on Communism

Communism: Latin: communis = common, universal, public. Communism is now chiefly understood to be an economic system set forth by Marx and a great many other critics of capitalism. For Marx, communism entailed 'the appropriation of human nature through and for people.' It was a return of people to human, i.e., social being as well as a system which promotes and enhances the natural and dialectical unity of individual and society. It is a non-alienating humane and human society not to be confused with bureaucratic socialism in some Eastern European states. In advanced communism, the means of production is held in common: this means that what is produced, who produces it and how it is produced is a matter of collective discourse and decision; it means as well that any surplus value [profit] is allocated to serve collective rather than private needs. Not to be confused with bureaucratic socialism.

Communism (the idea): A society without the structures of domination which now debase and degrade so many people. Primitive communism is marked by production and distribution for use [rather than for profit] and by a low-tech means of production. Advanced communism has both an energy efficient and effective means of production as well as a system of distribution based mostly on need but also on merit. It uses surplus value in capital intensive production to provide for labor intensive production lines of production; child care, health care, government and policing, as well as retirement. Surplus value is also used for public goods: parks, art forms, roads, bridges, environment, water, sewage and such.

Chinese policy is to set income in a ratio of 4 to 5; four parts based upon need, 1 part of five based upon merit. Compare to advanced monopoly capital in which managers of big corporations in the USA get 500 times as much as the average worker (in Germany the ratio is about 350 to 1; in Japan, about 90 to 1, 1990 figures).

Communism (The Movement): A loose coalition of socialists, marxists, and other radicals bent on the overthrow of any society organized in such a way that the mode of production of culture alienates people from self, from nature and from each other. In capitalist countries, the movement has a bad name for a number of reasons: it puts aside national loyalty in favor of working class unity across state boundaries; it is largely negative in its criticism of a society; its rhetoric is sometimes strident and contrived; it is supported by repressive socialist regimes; and counter-intelligence operations in capitalist societies plant false evidence whereupon members of the movement often discredit each other. See Vanguard/vanguardism.

Communist Manifesto: A document put out in London in 1848 by the Communist League which links theory and revolutionary action by providing a brief overview of the social sources of human misery and suggesting a plan of action to eliminate those sources. It was drafted by Marx and Engels. In brief, the Manifesto reviews the history of oppression, lists the positive and negative aspects of capitalism and concludes with a call for the workers of the world to unite and throw off the economic and political chains which reduce their humanity. Compare to the Declaration of Independence which attributes social evil to a single person (George II) and grounds the reasons for action on supernatural law. These two documents have moved many to revolution since their writing.

Communism, Primitive/Communalism: An economic formation in which all persons share on the basis of kinship and/or social status but one in which there is a very simple technology and division of labor. As Hobbs said, in such societies, life is ugly, brutal, nasty and short.

Community: In a community, all persons have social standing. Standing entails the right and responsibility to produce culture in its manifold forms. A person shares community with another when the person cannot disengage from his social relationship with the other. A good test for (and consequence of) this is if a person can ignore another person's troubles, then those two don't share community. In the West, community is understood in terms of geography. In socialist countries, community is understood in terms of the solidarity of social relations. "Community" is the translation of the german word for community, "Gemeinschaft." To say that an organization or society has community is to say that it is non-alienating, and is somehow in tune with the conditions by which humans create themselves as human beings. See Society.

Community Policing: The practice of locating the police function broadly in society rather than in a special force appointed by and under the control of local elites. In Cuba, the Committees for the Defense of the Republic [CDR's] police an area a few blocks square; participate in hearings on minor crimes and provide support for families of victims and offenders. They also give support to offenders after they complete their sentence. In the USA, neighborhood watches embody the idea. They are effective in reducing crime but challenge racist, sexist and ethnic hegemony of the police force.

Comparable worth: A feminist demand that people who perform the same work with the same training should receive the same wages. The effect is to eliminate sexist, racist and ethnic bias in setting wages and salaries in a capitalist society. Profits can be increased by using ancient systems of social honor to pay lower wages to those in the lower strata.

Competition: The process by which individuals or groups are stimulated to produce more or perform better by contesting against each other. Competition cannot exist except within an overall framework of cooperation in which competition is restricted to some small margin of human endeavor. It is often used to increase the surplus value of labor and, thereby, profit margins. Studies suggest that people produce more and enjoy work more under conditions of friendly cooperation. However, friendly competition adds interest and zest to work. Such friendly competition may be just another form of cooperation. For Marx, competition is the process by which small business is eliminated in capitalism by monopoly corporations. Cuba uses emulation rather than competition to improve art, craft, skill and innovation.

Competitive Sector: That sector of the economic institution characterized by many undercapitalized companies with low wages, poor working conditions, transient labor, small work force, arbitrary discipline, and little opportunity to advance. Consisting of small business supplied by the monopoly sector, this sector involves about 1/3 of the work force and is market share to huge corporations such as Walmart or McDonalds. (after O'Connor).

Compromise, The Great: After a century of class struggle, American workers and owners came to an uneasy labor peace in order to exploit the world markets after the devastation of WWII. Good wages, safe working conditions, health care plans, good pensions, and paid vacations were put in place for most large corporations and many smaller ones. This compromise was ended by a series of decertification [which see] elections and take-backs as the USA lost its semi-monopoly in the world capitalist system to Japan, Germany and the 'NIC's.' The compromise to crumble when President Reagan attacked the Air Controllers' Union in the early 1980's.

Computer Crime: Any violation of the rights of intellectual and financial property owned by a firm. It is very difficult to control the flow of information especially when broadcast over an mass electronic medium such as a computer network since anyone with the right equipment can intercept the electro-magnetic waves which carry the information. Computer hackers are especially adept at breaking into the data banks of universities, banks, insurance companies and public agencies which 1) use computers, 2) use existing phone lines and 3) use simple codes to regulate access to the data. With the right software, a good computer can try millions of combinations of letters and numbers to find the access key. Computer crime is a growth industry; perhaps the most common form is the use of a software program without paying the company who owns its copyright. How many do you have?

Competence: A legal term regarding the ability or right of a person to testify or to claim protection of the law. Children are usually held to be incompetent. In some countries, women are incompetent in legal terms. Strangers, mentally defective, emotionally disturbed and members of some political groups are held to be incompetent in many legal proceedings.

Concentration: A measure of the control firms wield over a market; it tells what fraction of sales are controlled by the largest firms. The more concentrated a market, the more control a few individual firms exert over the level of profits and prices. In the U.S. cigarette market, the top four firms account for 80% of the sales. The same is true in autos, food retail, beer, sugar, cereals, electronics, chemicals, pharmaceutical, steel, and many, many more. Price, as a market control, is replaced with advertising, bribery, credit cards, and long-term contracts. Between them, 200 firms controlled 67% of the U.S. market in 1975.

Condorcet, Jean (1743-1794) Condorcet was a french philosopher who helped turn social science and politics to quantification. He called for a 'social mathematics.' He calculated that a Congress of 300 would be wrong less than once in a billion times if they used the 3/4 vote to pass laws. Condorcet supported the French Revolution and died in prison for that support. (After WL Reese)

Confession: In Common Law [English law], a voluntary statement that one is guilty of violation of a legal specification.

Conflict Theory: A term which includes a wide variety of analyses to the effect that some of the structures in a society are not at all helpful or necessary; class, racist, sexist, or other 'structures of domination' can and should be dismantled. Compare to Functionalism, Consensus theory. Hegel, Marx, Darwin, Weber and others have looked at the sweep of history and have seen systematic efforts to exploit/degrade people on the one side and rising opposition to such forms of domination on the other. 'History is a slaughterbench for the happiness of people.' Hegel.

Conditioning: Denotes the learning process by which some stimulus becomes linked with some behavior in such a way that the stimulus will cause the behavior to occur. People use it to help break bad habits or phobias; corporations use it to control workers or customers; states use it to control students, prisoners, patients or those who resist and rebel. Conditioning defeats cognitive processes and replaces interaction with determinism as the relevant causal model. See Operant Conditioning.

Conflict Situations: Adam Schaff speaks of two different kinds of conflict situations in connection to the question of human freedom. The first involves a choice between different systems of values (in present times a choice between conservative and revolutionary systems of values). Such a choice at once restricts further choices and fulfills a larger freedom. The second situation of conflict is common to all systems of values since a choice of any kind comes into conflict with other values and no moral code can prescribe an answer for every contingency within a system of values. Life is too rich and full of conflicting values, changing conditions, and personal differences to permit of a coherent and predictable moral code. In this sense, every person is "doomed to freedom," i.e., has to face the fact that (s)he must make choices. Such is the beginning of wisdom and the end of innocence.

Conflict methodology: A method of inquiry which serves the human interest in change and renewal. Conflict theory implies conflict methodology to reduce the conflict in favor of those who are oppressed or excluded. That knowledge required to emancipate humans from alienating social forms is often withheld by a class or a bureaucratic elite. Under such circumstance, an partisan stance is required of a social scientist. Participatory research, action research, standpoint methodology and the new 'incorporative' research of M. Wardell and A. Zajicek all take the point of those at the bottom of social hierarchy and try to empower them and democratize the organizations studied. See Consensus Methodology; see Eleventh Thesis.

Conflict theory: There are two varieties, a conservative and a radical view of conflict. The conservative one (after Coser) holds that society is held together by conflict! Conflict is a safety valve which helps solve problems in this school. This approach tends to reduce the hostile contrast between groups: exploitation, oppression, enslavement, depersonalization and such to mere differences of opinion which can be resolved by "men of good will" in reasoned discussion. In marxian theory, conflict arises from a poorly designed social life world and requires social revolution to eliminate the conflict while in Coser's view conflict is viewed to be symptomatic of healthy and open relations between groups.

Conglomerate: Large firms which have bought up businesses making and selling all sorts of unrelated items. Conglomeration allows one company to control a large part of several different markets, which increases its ability to set whatever prices it wants. This is the most active process found in capitalism today. It helps in an accumulation crises, it helps befuddle the government lawyers who sue a company for some crime and it helps lower corporate taxes in a number of ways. (URPE).

Consciousness: Ways of thinking, feeling and acting usually involving some degree of awareness and intentionality. See also Cognitive capacities and/or I.Q.

Consciousness Industry: The organization of information flow in mass society in such that the human interests in praxis and community are defeated while the content of the media is such that capitalist and/or elitist relations are reproduced. The characteristics of the system includes: 1) the repressive use of the media, 2) centrally controlled programming, 3) immobilization of isolated individuals, 4) one transmitter, many receivers, 5) depoliticization of content, 6) passive consumer emphasis, 7) production by specialists, 8) control by capitalists or bureaucrats. These conditions obtain both in the U.S. and in the Soviet Union. The U.S. system is "leakier" and, hence political legitimacy suffers. (after Entzenberger).

Consensus theory: The view that all structures in society are useful and necessary; that most well adjusted persons in society share values and norms; that those who do not are either deviant or subversives in need of sanctioning. Among the structures viewed as 'functionally necessary' are class, gender, occupational and national [modernized nations] divisions.

Consensus methodology: A method of inquiry by which information necessary for prediction, control and reproduction of modern society is assumed. Research goals are set in cooperation with those at the top of social hierarchies in which the research occurs. Such a science tends to reproduce existing social forms irrespective of alienation and coercion. Since consensus methodology claims to be value-free it becomes the amoral research instrument of whomever has the power or the price. To define a scientific procedure as value free is a quick way to turn it into a commodity for sale to the highest bidder. See Conflict M.

Conservatism: An ideology which opposes change from an existing social paradigm. There are many things in any society worthy of conserving; however, sometimes this ideology also insists that any change within the social paradigm be under the direction of an elite. Capitalists do not oppose radical change; indeed capitalists routinely destroy societies and cultures; they do oppose change from the capitalist system. Change within the paradigm is often referred to as "the sociology of development" and is engineered by contract research.

Consistency: One of three attributes of formal theories. The other two are comprehensiveness and completeness. Such theories rely on a form of causality in which 'B' follows 'A' with great precision. Chaos/Complexity research finds that complex dynamical systems produce a varying number of outcome 'basins' or attractors. When there are two or more such basins consistent findings are not observed, comprehensive models are not appropriate and completion of the knowledge process is not possible.

Constitutive Theory: This social psychology blends key insights found in symbolic interactionism, phenomenology, and labelling sociology, along with Marxism and postmodern social thought. The person is a subject in process-- not a passive receptacle of social rules, norms, roles and controls. For example: education both constitutes social relations and is constituted in turn by a subject's use of the educational process. Determining which comes first, individual or society becomes a nonsense goal. Both are in a changing/changeable dialectic process of construction.

Constitutive theory further argues that language/discourse is a problem in that constitutive dialectic since language honors the voice of some and represses the voice of many. Consider psychiatry; in order to be released, psychiatric patients must employ only those speech patterns and those coherent thought sequences consistent with medico-legal wellness. By adopting this discourse, mental health systems users re-legitimize and further concretize the power of medicolegal discourse to linguistically (and therefore socially) regulate their lives. If they resist the discourse, patients are defined as 'mentally ill.'

Consumerism: An attempt to modify the most outrageous excesses of commodity capitalism by guarding the consumer against fraud, shoddy products, poisonous or otherwise dangerous foods, toys, medicines and tools. Led by such admirable people as Ralph Nader, consumerism has two flaws: (1) it is merely a reform of capitalism rather than an end to it and (2) it implicitly assumes that private consumption is the central reason for human existence.

Contradiction: In logic, one of the three laws of thought; it holds that the same thing cannot belong and not belong to the same class of things; cannot be and not be at the same time. The new sciences of Chaos and Complexity refute the claim; an event can belong to two quite different solitons at the same time and, with fractal geometry, can be and not be depending upon scale of observation; think of an atom; at one level of observation it is a solid unitary event; at another it is a very loose assemblage of particles.

In marxian economics, the term is used to point to the problems which capitalism creates as a mode of production. The major issues (or contradictions) of capitalism include: (1) great poverty in the midst of affluence, (2) technical rationality without substantive reason, (3) an emphasis upon ability in an elitist system, (4) capitalism with fewer and fewer capitalists as wealth is concentrated in the hands of fewer and fewer, (5) a tendency to run down when there is still a lot of labor, land, capital, as well as human need. Crime is endemic to capitalism as is resistance and revolution.

Control Theory: A theory put forward by T. Hirschi which claims that crime occurs when social controls are weak. While a strong and pro-social self-system is important as are rewards and sanctions of significant others, still the theory ignores a lot of crime which occurs within well organized, highly controlled social groups; most political crime, most organized crime, almost all corporate crime and a lot of street crime involves strong, certain and direct application of reward and punishment. This theory and others provides ideological support for more control rather than for more social justice as a way to reduce very real crime rates.

Consent: Free, willing and explicit agreement to an action by a legally competent person. A legal term required in a number of circumstances: the making of a contract, a marriage, or in the case of criminal law, sexual activity between an adult and a young person. The age of consent varies; in rural societies it is usually set at age 13 or 14; in industrial societies, it is usually set at age 16 or 18, see Youth, sociology of.

Consideration: In law an act, promise or forbearance by one party to a contract made in order to purchase an act, promise or forbearance from another party. Without a consideration, such promises are not valid in modern law. Promises are, of course, binding in pre-modern law: A promise is a person's bond.

Conspiracy: An agreement between two or more persons to do something which is a crime. The agreement itself is a crime even if the planned offense does not occur. It is a crime even if the offense planned is impossible [i.e., to murder someone already dead]. It is one of the very few crimes for thought or thinking.

Usually conspiracy laws are used against political opposition but of late, they have been used against organized crime.

Constitution: The rules and regulations by which a state is governed. They regulate the relationship between the state and the individual as well as between individuals under the jurisdiction of the state. Modern states have written Constitutions; the most admired of which is that of the USA. The United Kingdom does not have a written Constitution but, instead uses Common Law. Constitutions are very important but social life is so complex that it is impossible to cover every exigency with laws conformable to one. Thus wisdom and judgment must inform every legal and moral case.

Consummation [of a marriage]: A legal term which holds that a marriage is not valid in law unless there is a sexual act; the sexual act is defined as penetration of the vagina by the penis. If one partner refuses to consummate the marriage, it can be annulled. In some patriarchal societies, rape is considered consummation and the male may claim the woman as wife.

Contract: A legally binding agreement. The requirements for a binding contract are: 1) and offer and acceptance, 2) a consideration, 3) informed consent, 4) capacity to fulfill, 5) conformity to law [agreements to commit crimes are not binding], 6) an act on the part of one of two parties involved. Contracts may be oral, written, implied from conduct or implicit in a relationship [as in common-law marriages]. Contracts may be set aside in case of fraud, incompetency [under-age] or other good cause.

Controlled Drugs: Chemicals which are to be used internally and which carry some danger to the person; there are two kinds, 1) prescription drugs the use of which should be monitored by a competent doctor and 2) street drugs [often the same drug]. Drugs have always been used as psychogens; alcohol, marijuana, peyote, hashish, tobacco, opium, cocaine and such. They are prohibited for three main reasons: 1) they interfere societal expectations about roles and role performance [drunken workers, parents, ball players, pilots]. 2) They are used as pathways to the holy in forbidden religions [peyote, marijuana, opium] but see Corruption theory of. And 3) and three they are in fact dangerous to the short term health and long term health of a person [tobacco and alcohol].

Cooperation: The process by which individuals organize each other's consciousness: ways of acting, feeling, and thinking. Cooperation focussed in on the production of the various forms of culture is social power. Neither culture or society or self as a form of culture can be created without cooperation.

Cooperatives: A system on non-profit marketing (within a larger system of capitalism) which aims to provide food and other goods at low cost and within some sort of community. Coöps may solve the problems of those who join them but doesn't help solve the larger contradictions of capitalism--especially that of adequate resources for the surplus population. Then too, coöps must work within a capitalist system and thus, by buying and selling to private corporations, help reproduce capitalist relations. See Market Socialism for a system which attempts to solve these problems.

Co-parenting: The socialization of child(ren) is shared by several adults ... in socialist theory: by men and women equally. Most societies in history vested the parenting process in several persons; usually aunts, older sisters, and female friends of the mother but not always. Sometimes boys are sequestered and the parenting given over to older males alone or in small groups. Whatever the case, young children need as much loving parenting as they can get; ideally, the whole community would help in the parenting process. See also Kibbutz.

Copyright: A right of authors, playwrights, artists, publishers or composers to benefit from a work for a period of time; 28 years is usual. The right is given by the state upon application and review of the claim. Copyright laws are enforceable when an audience is limited or a medium is mechanical. In an electronic age, copyrights are difficult to police since every one with the right equipment can intercept transmissions and copy them without paying a fee to the holder of the copyright; software programs, television boardcasts and music on radio are copied by millions in the USA without payment of required fees. Students and professors often copy protected materials to use in class without payment. Generally property rights to intellectual materials is difficult to enforce.

Core/periphery. A term used by Wallerstein and others to refer to the structure of imperialism; the core countries were European, the colonial countries were called the 'periphery.' These were the colonies of England, France, Germany, Italy and now the USA in Africa, latin America, Asia, and islands in the Pacific.

Core/periphery: At home, this term refers to the division of workers into a relatively secure core group and a much less secure peripheral group. There are two principal contexts for this term: 1. In an entire economy, employees of large corporations may be seen as part of the "core", and those of small business as the "periphery". This is particularly the case in discussing Japan, where major "core" companies, with lifetime employment, rely on a "periphery" of workers/subcontractors with much more precarious conditions of employment. 2. In an individual company, the "core" is composed of those workers carrying out its main function, while the "periphery" consists of those whose work is not part of the company's main business and can be contracted out, such as cleaners, cooks in the factory canteen, and so on.

Corruption, theory of: There are four general rules with which a society maintains a social monopoly on items and behaviors used to reproduce that society:

1) Some supplies and activities are defined as sacred and used to create dramas of the Holy in which persons, roles and institutions are sanctified. Among the supplies are special clothing, psychogenic drugs [beer, wine, marijuana and such], special foods, and special tools. Among the activities are sexual acts, music, gambling, pain/violence as well as eating and drinking. The rule is that these are required; one must do these things; use these things even if unpleasant.

2) The non-social, purely personal use of such items and events is forbidden. Pejorative terms are used to discourage such use; perversion, pathology, addiction, depravity etc.

3) Those psychogens and ecstatic activities used by other cultures to create different dramas of the Holy are also forbidden and defined as deviancy, depravity and degrading.

4). Activities which tend to subvert age, class, gender or other social differentiations/stratifications are also defined as deviant or pathological.

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Figure 7. Cobb on Corporate Crime

Corporate crime: The antisocial activity of corporations to increase profit or reduce costs: adulteration of food, unsafe products, bribery, avoiding taxes, subverting the political process and so on. There is far more corporate crime involving larger amounts of money than petty unorganized crime (burglary, robbery, extortion, embezzlement, and such). The average street crime garners about $150; the average white collar crime over $100,000 and while corporate crime runs into the millions and sometimes hundreds of millions. Corporate crime is seldom policed, reported or punished.

Corporate liberalism: A strategy of management, mass media persuasion, and welfare benefits (subsidized by the state) as a solution to the problems of capitalism: its surplus population, political unrest, consumerism, inflation and unemployment. In foreign affairs, peaceful coexistence with the socialist states and harmony within the capitalist states is desired in order to protect the operations of the multinational corporation. Sometimes identified with eastern finance capitalism (the Yankees) in contrast with southern/western oil/real estate/weapons industry capitalism (the Cowboys).

Corporation: A body chartered by the state and consisting of a formal agreement or contract among people joined in a common purpose to hold property, make contracts and share profits. It has the added virtue that, as a legal entity, it enables the people who own the stock to avoid the responsibility for any harm done to the larger society.

Corporativism: An economic variety of capitalism in which a weak state helps achieve integration of workers, capitalists, farmers and other class fragments into a 'corporate' whole. A bit different from fascism in that the state is not as central to the process. Japan is the current embodiment of corporativism in the capitalist world. Singapore is a high-tech version of corporativism.

Costs (Socially Necessary): The costs of producing the material base of a society. It includes the cost of capital goods (factories, railroads, etc), of reproducing a healthy labor force, of the extraction of raw materials as well as the cost of repairing any damage to the environment upon which all life ultimately depends. The concept is of interest since it enables an analyst to subtract SNC from gross national product and get the surplus value produced. Once we know surplus value, we can see how it is used (misused) and can judge that society. In the U.S., there are many socially unnecessary costs which restrict the use we make of surplus. Among these unnecessary costs are a) profits, b) selling costs, c) legal services, d) surplus employee compensation, e) bribes, political donations and such.(After Baran and Sweezy).

Coup d'Etat: Literally, blow to the head. A french phrase meaning an attempt to take over state power by a small group. Sometimes called a 'palace revolution,' it does not involve the people generally and often replaces one elite with another.

Courage: Latin, cor = heart. One of the four cardinal virtues in Greek social philosophy: the other three were inseparable; wisdom, justice and temperance.

Court: An agency of the state authorized by law to judge matters in dispute; criminal, civil, and family disputes are the most common.

Court Martial: A legally constituted hearing convened within the military to try offenses against the good order of the military. It consists of serving Officers [not enlisted persons] acting as judges [there is no jury] and advised on points of law by a Judge Advocate. Offenses and penalties are listed in the Unified Code of Military Justice, last revised in 1966, since which time, many Constitutional protections have been given accused persons.

Court, Kangaroo: An informal court constituted by those offended who judge degree of guilt and inflict penalties on the spot.

Court of Last Resort: Usually a Governor or a President is the court after which no further appeal is possible.

Counter-memorializing: A postmodern concept which denies the underlying reality of scientific truth including social science; it rejects impersonal and eternal foundations of standards, morals or enquiry. Claims of origins and endings are, likewise, questioned. After Ashley and Walker.

Creationism: The belief that God creates a soul for every new human being. It extends to the claim that God created the whole

universe as well as each form of animal and plant life in a single creative period usually set at seven days. Creationism is opposed to theories of organic evolution [which see] and to abortion. Abortion is a sin since it destroys a living soul precious to the Christian God. There is a prior story that Lucifer took some 30,000 angels with him when he was cast out of Heaven; that Heavenly peace depends upon the return of this number of souls; to abort a fetus is said to delay that event.

Creativity: As a moment of praxis, creativity involves thought and action located in history, i.e., produced uniquely in the situation at hand by insightful humans. In contrast to behavior which is identical to that of other persons at other times (thus producing a social life world in which prediction-and-control are possible), praxis requires behavior quite unpredictable and, at the same time, delightful in its aptness and originality. It is not restricted to poetry, painting, or marginal cultural endeavor but is to be central to work, religion, sports and love. (After Crocker).

Credit: The purchase of commodities to be paid over months and years; credit has a given rate of interest. Credit is very important to capitalism; it creates a mass market, it postpones down-turns in an economic cycle, it may help a country get out of a depression and it is very, very profitable [since there is very little investment of capital or labor]. See Keynesianism.

Crime: From the Sanskrit, Karma, meaning that which a person is responsible in contrast from that over which a person has no choice. In American criminology crime is defined as: 1) a violation of a legal specification, 2) enacted by a competent law making body, 3) involving both culpable intent and 4) overt action which 5) carries a specific penalty. This definition safely confines the policing of behavior to that which is defined as illegal; itself often under control of an elite.

In socialist theory, a crime is that which tends to destroy community or detract from human dignity. In addition to murder and rape, the most serious crimes in socialist theory are: elitist ownership or control of the means to produce human culture, appropriation of the surplus value of labor for and only for private use, objectification of other humans, counter-revolutionary activity. Reductionist Theories of crime demands that the individual change while the socialist theory of crime (q.v.) requires radical social change, intensive socialization to socialist consciousness, primary group (commune, brigade) control and incorruptible policing.

Crime (Forms and Theory of): There are five kinds of crime which are promoted in capitalism as a system. 1 ) Street crime involves theft, burglary, arson, robbery, murder, and kidnapping [see rape separately]. It increases as the surplus population increases and as welfare systems become depersonalized. Marxian theory holds that most street crime is the 'forcible re-unification of production and distribution by the underclass and under-employed. 2) Corporate crime are those acts committed in order to enlarge market share, lower costs or increase profit rates; it involves conspiracy to fix prices, the use of dangerous ingredients, the sale of dangerous toys and medicines, violation of labor laws, pollution, and tax evasion. It increases as profits fall, demand slackens, competition increases or public laws lower profit. 3) The rackets (organized crime) produce and distribute sex, gaming, alcohol, drugs and other supplies traditionally used for solidarity purposes. It commodifies sacred supplies. 4) White collar crime involves betrayal in a position of trust; it increases as the middle class attempts to build a retirement 'portfolio;' maintain an upper middle class lifestyle and/or when employees come to resent working conditions. 5) Political crime is that crime committed by the state or against the state. State crime increases for two reasons: a) to help the capitalist class realize profits at home or overseas and b) as legitimacy is lost and the state moves to repress criticism and oppress critics. Crimes against the state increase when oppression is endemic and when institutional politics do not work. When migration is difficult or when underground structures are heavily policed, direct political action increases.

Crime, female, theories of: Women are found in courts and prisons much less frequently than are men; Hoffman-Bustamante lists five reasons for this: 1) differential role expectations, 2) differential socialization and control tactics, 3) structurally different opportunities to commit different kinds of crime, 4) differential recruitment to deviant careers, 5) Sex differences in defining crime categories. Note these are common to patriarchal gender relations. The crimes women are likely to commit are mostly economic crimes; shop-lifting, writing bad checks, prostitution and embezzlement. Looking at these from a structural point of view, one notes the weak/missing connection to the means of production and distribution experienced by women. See also, Needs, false.

Crimes, male: Most crimes are committed by males; violent crimes are predominantly male since patriarchy requires males to be controlling and dominating; absent social power or economic power, male often use physical power on each other or upon women in order to command compliance. See Macho, machismo.

Crime, social location of: Each kind of crime is found in a different part of society and is policed differently. Street crime is located mostly in the underclass, mostly poor males, white and black; corporate crime is located mostly in the upper class, it mostly involves white males; white collar crime is committed in the professional and managerial classes for the most part while organized crime in organized by white males in the middle or upper classes while employees usually come from the underclass and customers from every social class. Political crime is usually committed by the state or by small groups opposed to the state.

"Crimes without victims": Legally prohibited actions that involve no unwilling, or complaining party: for example, drug addiction, alcoholism, and prostitution. Often injury occurs slowly and is hard to link closely to the acts above. The phrase is often used to promote the privatized use of drugs and sex by decriminalization. This means that anything can be sold as a commodity and is compatible with the principle of free enterprise.

Criminal Injury: Any act involving the use of force against a competent person: rape, assault, poisoning and destruction of property endangering life including traffic offenses. Note that it is not a crime to kill, rape, beat or mutilate non-persons. Parents may beat children; husbands may beat wives; members of one ethnic group may rape, plunder or murder another without penalty of law. War itself is organized injury without criminal status.

Criminal law: A set of laws which define what is and what is not subject to punishment and incarceration. Criminal law is greatly influenced by class, gender, and racism. French radicals have a saying: 'The law in all its majesty forbids equally the rich and the poor from sleeping under bridges.'

Criminalization/de-criminalization: Many acts which are not permitted within a system of norms are defined as sin in pre-modern sensibility. In modern times, they have been defined as crime rather than sin as science displaces religion in the explanation of human behavior. Of late, such behaviors have been re-defined as illness rather than sinful or criminal. Postmodern scholarship treats both the prison and the mental institution as social control tactics which reproduce stratified cultural formations [after Foucault].

Criminal Justice: A state-initiated and state supported effort to rationalize the mechanisms of social control in order to solve the problems of advanced capitalism which include an unruly surplus population, political dissent, monopoly and inflation. Most criminal justice systems are based upon pain and degradation. Utilitarianism teaches, incorrectly, that human beings organize their behavior on pain and pleasure rather than upon norms and morés. In fact, what is defined as painful and pleasurable vary considerably across cultures.

Begun in the Johnson administration, the Criminal Justice program in the USA socializes the costs of solving the problems of capitalism, but not the profits of capitalism. The criminal justice program strengthens the larger system which produces crime in the first place. (After Quinney). See Social Control, Parallel Systems of. Compare with Social Justice as a way to produce a low crime society.

Crisis Theory: Marxian crisis theory has two parts: The first part says crises are generated by the separation of creative processes into two phases, production and consumption. This occurs since, in capitalism, production is not for direct use but rather for exchange/profit. The crisis occurs when production increases at the same time consumption decreases. When there is surplus production and when people are in need without the means to buy these 'surplus' goods, trouble comes. The second part of the theory holds that crisis is a rational mechanism for the reactivation of the economy. There are several ways to solve the crisis involving the "forcible reunification" of production and distribution. This means either customers pay what is demanded or that suppliers sell even when they cannot stay in business on these terms. Such reunification of the two parts of economic activity is achieved also by welfare, war, crime, or other political action. The looting during the 1977 blackout was such a "forcible reunification." Trent Schroyer generalized crisis theory to encompass both capitalism and bureaucratic socialism by emphasizing a third aspect: The separation of formal rationality from human purpose.

Critical theory: An approach to the study of society in which human interests shape and guide the research enterprise from the formation of analytic categories to the quest for accurate, relevant, timely, sensible information. Critical theory has an overt political goal: that of a rational and decent society. By contrast, structural-functional theory asserts itself to be value-free. However, its analytic categories and research focus are controlled by its sponsors. The transfer of the political responsibility for the use of science from the producer to the user simply masks its politics and, at the same time, exculpates the scientists from any responsibility for his product.

Habermas identifies three kinds of knowledge necessary to critical research: positive knowledge, hermeneutic knowledge, and emancipatory knowledge (see which). Critical theory is associated with the Frankfort School (which see).

Criticism/self-criticism: a process by which obstacles to community and praxis are made visible by open self-reflection within a collective and then are eliminated by collective action in a supportive and comradely atmosphere. It can be used to self-correct the policies and practices of a party, of a state, of an agency or an individual. Developed and practiced in Communist countries, it often became a system of elitist control but when well done, it is most helpful to a rational and humane society. We all need a lot of help in being a good and decent person.

Cruel and Unusual Punishment: Prisoners are protected from many practices formerly used in American prisons and/or issued by judges. These include public whipping, hanging, branding, removal of offending organs [hands, tongues and other appendages], drawing and quartering as well as caging in public display. Now if they are to be done, they must be done in semi-private with witnesses to ensure the warders do not go 'too far.'

Custody: A legal term defining who may restrict the physical movement of a person. In family law, legal parents have custody of a child and may forbid the child or commanding the child to do certain things. In criminal law, courts take custody of the accused and, if found guilty, transfer custody to a jail or prison. In military law, soldiers can take custody of opposing soldiers and hold them in ways compatible with the Geneva Convention on War Prisoners.

Custody of a Child: In divorce proceedings, if there is no agreement between parents, courts have legal authority to decide custody. Many children suffer from custody disputes between parents who may use the children to punish each other. In any event, children of broken homes have serious difficulties in knowing who to trust and to whom to defer for guidance, council and command. Courts take custody of children whose health and welfare is held to be endangered in the home. Much harm is done to the child in either case; remaining in the home or sent of a series of foster homes. As Elizabeth Barrett Browning put it, 'Hear the Children, O my Sister, they are weeping in the playtime of others.'

Cult of the Leader: When people invest great authority and power in the person of a single individual, they help form such a cult. Often, leaders surround themselves with people who are paid one way or another by promoting the infallibility of the leader. This happens in politics, religion, business and military systems. The needs and interests of single persons then become more important than the collective needs of a community, congregation or company.

Cult of the self: A marxian phrase used to denote the lonely, mistrustful, solitary philosophy of privatized individuality which develops in capitalism or in other elitist systems such as the military, the bureaucracy or the nobility.

Cultural Conflict: Often there is conflict between different cultural groups over the essentials of life; raw materials, land, water, governance, jobs and social status/honor. Sometimes this conflict is complicated by class conflict as well. Racism explodes into violence when times get bad in capitalist societies; when jobs are scarce, men become angry when women demand affirmative action to eliminate job preference for men. When times are bad, Serbs claim the right to jobs, land and resources from Croats or from Bosnians. Christians become bigoted and refuse the right to Jews or Muslims to live in peace in the same territory...or vice versa. Today, the various private militias are made up of white, lower class men who previously had many privileges [racism, patriarchy, jobs, social honor] but who have lost them through the Civil Rights movement, the women's movement and the flight of capital to third world countries where wages are much, much lower. Such men did not develop a structural analysis to explain their troubles and are thrown back to conspiracy theories [the government/ uppity women/inferior Blacks/Jews or eggheads are the enemy rather than the capitalist class]. They join with other reactionary class fragments to support white racist and sexist agendas and politicians such as Newton Gingrich in Georgia and Pete Wilson in California. [After Mort Wenger].

Cultural diffusion. The spread or dispersion of artifacts, beliefs, or patterns of behavior from one culture aid another. The diffusion of political or ideological culture usually involves coercion and violence.

Cultural lag: The difference between the appearance of a given kind of technology and of the social institutions that arise in response to that technology. (after Ogburn). Cultural lag theory is often used as a reason why people resist and rebel against 'modern' ways of doing work, school, church or play. As such it deflects attention from racism, from class conflict, from gender oppression or from ethnic struggles for independence from colonial masters. Sometimes it is used by liberals to condemn conservative positions which oppose the growth of the state, transnational corporations or intrusion into family or religious matters. See also cultural conflict.

Cultural relativism: The idea that a culture must be evaluated by its own standards, and not by those of another culture. Historically, this is a rather new and "liberal" idea. Conservative societies tend to reject the idea in favor of their own ethnocentric beliefs. It is interesting that some humanist philosophies (Christian, Marxist) also reject the idea of cultural relativism in favor of the view that there are common ingredients in all human experiences, and that it is possible to judge another society to be oppressive or not. Compare with ethnocentrism.

Cultural revolution: In China, an attempt to integrate technicians and managers with the workers in order to eliminate the division of labor into mental vs. physical labor. The thought is that the production of culture requires that unity, hence cultural revolution.

Culture: Latin: colore = to cultivate. The word has come to mean all the art, science, religion, social forms and values which inform/are part of a social life world. It has the meaning of elitist values and standards of art, music and theatre. In socialism, using Mao's types, culture in the sociological sense may be conceived as material, ideological and political products of humans. The active production of culture is the non sine quo of human existence. The view of culture as that which has been produced by humans is a political act since it confuses between material objects and the active labor of people who create culture in the moment of using those material items in creative ways. The view of culture as upper class art, music, science, and recreation is also political in that it tends to degrade other classes and the culture they need to produce in order to become humans. The standard definition of culture is that culture is all those things developed and used by a society but this misses the essential meaning of culture as existing only in the act of people creatively using material items to create a social-life world. (after Lukács).

The concept of culture replaced the concepts of instinct, of gods, an of "blood" to explain why people behave as they do. As such it is fundamental to all humanist philosophies.

Culture (of Resistance): A term coined by Mina Caulfield to indicate those social structures in a colonial society which oppose, neutralize and/or destroy the efforts of colonists to impose a capitalist culture upon occupied lands. Such structures also protect and ow socialist modes of production. Caulfield analyzed life in the West Indies, Africa, Appalachia, South America and other colonized areas. She identified many social structures which resisted economic and cultural oppression. The family structure was central but, in addition to underground political organization, church, "provision grounds," as well as other family-centered structures staffed mostly by women as males left the household to work for the colonist.

Custom: Greek: con = with; suere = to make one's own. Thus a custom is that which has become a habit. In sociology, it is a set of institutionalized responses to everyday contingencies. Montesquieu used the term to refer to the role of folkways in shaping human behavior; thus was macro-social psychology given impetus. Wm. Bagehot spoke of the 'cake of custom' as an obstacle to social progress.

Cybernetics: Greek: cybernetes = steersman. The term was given to the science of control and guidance in the late 1940's by Norbert Weiner in his work on guided missiles; some apply it to the control of societies. A cybernetic system has three basic parts; a monitoring system; a decision making apparatus which gauges the gap between goal and present status and third, an effector apparatus to change course.

Cyberspace: The illusion of time-space created by computer technology. Thus those who join a network dwell in cyber-space rather than in real time-space in really existing groups, facts or events. All of the 'natural' categories of time, space, weight, quality, quantity and such disappear in cyber-space; a whole new philosophy of being/doing is required for such space.

D

Darwin, Charles (1809-1882): An English scientist generally credited with the theory of Evolution [which see] after a trip around the world in the Beagle, a British ship in which Darwin collected evidence for the theory. Darwin published his book on Origins of Species in 1859; the Descent of Man in 1871; they remain sources of great debate since they attribute the appearance of human beings to natural rather than supernatural events. In brief, he took Malthus idea of population checks and went on to argue that competition for food and for sexual partners gave some individuals and species a better chance at survival since there are small or large differences between every individual and every species. Together, they make for a natural selection rather than a divine creativity. A.R. Wallace made the same argument a year earlier and might well have been credited with the theory had not Darwin published his work.

Data (sing. datum): From Latin: that which is given. One collects data and analyses them in order to confirm or reject a hypothesis [which see]. The term thus refers to a set of observations from nature (physical or social) which are independent from the interests and cognitive processes of the scientist. There is no such independence in the Marxian philosophy of science nor in most postmodern philosophies of science (see which).

Days of Grace: A legal term setting the amount of time after default on a debt in which payment must be made or remedy permitted. It varies from 3 days to 3 months.

Death of God: A 19th century claim by Nietzsche and later, Sartre, that belief in God is impossible by a person educated in modern science. Modernists thus dismiss the god concept or identify it with natural and social laws. Postmodern theology holds that god is a social construct and is destroyed when believers cease to believe and to act upon the teachings of that particular god concept. There is a radical American theology [Thomas Altizer, Wm. Hamilton] which, in 1966, proposed a religious sensibility without the god concept.

Death Penalty: Legal execution of persons found guilty of a capital crime. The modern state claims a monopoly over the use of force, life and death. The murder, rape or kidnapping of a person is no longer a crime against the person or the family but rather a crime against the state. There is considerable controversy over the death penalty by the state in the name of the people.

De-centering: A postmodern objective: the result of re-examining truth claims of, say patriarchy, stratification, or truth itself and showing the human hand and human agenda which brought the claim, theory or practice to the fore-front and celebrates it as eternally valid and objectively existent.

Decertification: A process by which the rights of a union to represent a group of workers and to bargain for them is ended. This is done through formal elections usually sponsored by the company and facilitated by the government. Workers have a hard choice; vote to decertify or see the company move the factory to Southern States or to foreign countries. Corruption by union officials do not help the union cause.

Decideability: One of three characteristics of a hypothesis or theory; the other two being completeness and consistency. Decideability depends upon the existence of a method of proof available with a finite number of steps. No method, unlimited steps, no proof, no knowledge. This is why Agrippa held that sure and certain knowledge was impossible. But see prediction, replicability.

Deconstruction: A postmodern method of analysis; its goal is to undo all permanent, objective, determinative 'constructions' of scientists. Deconstruction tears a text apart, shows its unexamined assumptions, reveals its contradictions and its refusal to deal with contradictory materials. Typically a deconstructive critique endeavors to point out the classist, racist, sexist, agist, and other oppressive dimensions of speech. Deconstructionists "unpack" the layered dimensions of speech in order to appreciate the politics and special interests behind words, particularly when that intent invalidates, de-legitimizes, or otherwise, de-values specific individuals or a class of citizens. In affirmative postmodern work, deconstruction is prelude to the construction of new, more participatory social forms. In so doing, one accepts personal responsibility for the constructs rather than attributing such text or theory to God (gods) or nature. (After and beyond Derrida).

Deduction/deductive logic: Latin: de = from; ducere = to lead, to draw out. In logic, a deduction is a conclusion which follows from two or more given assumptions, which if true, make the conclusion true. In social science, a deduction is a conclusion from the logical implications of a theory; thus one deducts hypothesis and collects data in order to confirm or deny the truth of it. But before one gets too locked in on deductive logic, see induction.

Definition: Latin: de + finire = to limit. In formal logic, that which is to be defined is called the definiendum while that which is used to define a term is called the definiens. Lexical definitions follow common usage. Stipulative definitions are new terms made up from old, stable language or mathematics. Definitions can be made by analogy, by example or by noting differences between two things.

But note that all such definition is a poetics and a politics; this dictionary goes beyond lexical definitions to show the poetry and politics which informs each term. Postmodern philosophy of knowledge holds that all concepts and categories of nature and society are convenient tags to put on some slice of an incredibly complex and interconnected reality of interest at the moment. Such tags are helpful but tend to freeze the knowledge process and defeat imagination and change.

Degradation routines: Every social institution has a ritual by which unwanted people are removed: the criminal justice system degrades people in a court-room trial in which they are stripped of social standing; divorce is used to remove people from a marriage; courts martial strip officers of rank; decertification turns a 'doctor' into a non-doctor; disbarment proceedings removes the social identity of 'lawyer' from the self system of those so processed. Schools expel students and some religions ex-communicate people. Degradation routines are the reverse of rites of passage in which people are allocated social identities which then are supposed to organized their behavior in spite of wants, needs, desires, or other psychological imperatives.

de facto: Latin: that is exists as a matter of fact rather than a matter of legal right [see de jure]. Often defacto existence creates de jure rights as in the case of long term residence in a country, in employment or in a marriage form even between same sex persons.

Defect of the lntelligensia: The phrase brings into consideration the question of how those who produce art, science, music, drama, literature, and religion can be pried away (defect) from support of capitalism and/or elitist ideologies and recruited to socialist endeavor. Regis Debray held that acts of terrorism would "debourgeoisify" the intelligentsia by emphasizing how precarious is the capitalist order. Mao insisted on close contact between workers and the intelligentsia while Marx insisted on the unity of physical and mental labor in the individual so that the intelligentsia would not develop as a separate stratum to create ideology by which to bolster capitalism.

Deficit Spending: The government spends a huge amount of money on war, airports, dams, highways, unemployment checks, education, and many other things. When the government spends more than it collects in taxes, this is called "running a deficit." Deficit spending must be financed by borrowing. The U.S. government currently spends more than 10% of its budget on interest payments on the national debt which has resulted from its past deficit spending. Why deficit spending? See Keynsian economics. The national debt is about $540 billion (1976) and growing fast. It is the price a nation pays to keep capitalism going. Our national debt could expand by four or five times before the nation would face bankruptcy.

Definition of the situation: The first step in the construction of social reality is to define (collectively) what kind of social event is going to be produced: a wedding, a party, a funeral, a meeting etc. The definition must be shared, or at least not challenged, by all present. This shared definition is accomplished by symbolic interaction. Social reality has no facticity apart from the collective definition and the collective performing of it. A pattern of observable behavior defined as a class or as a chess move is, in the consequence, a social fact. It is not enough simply to define something as real, compliance to a publicly known set of standards is also required.

Deism: A term introduced by the socians who wanted to distance themselves both from a-theists and from those who believed in a personal God. In Deism, the god concept refers to an original Creator/creating force which set a clock-like universe in motion and no longer intervenes in its workings. Thus both science and reason are pathways to knowledge rather than ecstasy, meditation revelation and inspiration. The later are major pathways to knowledge in pre-modern sociology of knowledge.

de jure: Latin: that which exists as a matter of legal right [compare with de facto]. De facto existence often confers a legal right as in the case of common law marriage or possession and use of property after 5, 7 or more years.

Delinquency: The behavior of young people defined as criminal by a law making body and ruled as such by a judge in court. Generally young people are not held to the same standards of responsibility as are adults. On the other hand, they are required to obey the rules of home and school else be labelled 'delinquent.' See Status crimes. Young people became a special category around 1850 when both laws and social control systems were set up. The changing labor market required children stay in school and learn skills appropriate to industrial capitalism, hence the legal system began to create a new age grade; the adolescent, which see.

Democracy: Latin: demos = the people; kratein = to rule. Rule of the people. Not to be confused with republican forms of governance [which see]. Bernard Barber has set forth the elements of a strong democracy; it includes open discussion, direct voting on significant issues, policy formation in all realms of social life; economics, education, religion and public life.

Democracy is a central principle in socialist thought. However, in socialist theory, the sphere in which the people are to rule is not limited to political life "wherein the masses are permitted to decide which of the ruling class will govern." The socialist position is that people rule in the arenas where decisions count: in economic and in cultural spheres as well. For both Marx and Lenin, parliamentary democracy was a place for talk while decisions which shape the course of history are made in private for elites. The thrust of democratic socialism is to make those decisions in the public sphere with maximum participation. Bureaucratic socialism is thus unmarxist.

Democratic Self-Management: A form of work in which the workers decide upon all the major issues of production and distribution of profits. In both socialist and capitalist societies, some firms are owned and/or operated by workers. They decide upon managerial staff, hiring, work schedule and working conditions on the floor, investment and dividends as well as wages, bonuses and fringe benefits such as vacations, health care and pensions. Compare to Z theory.

Demagogue: One who is able to lead other people by virtue of his/her persuasive powers. Often a negative term applied to people who appeal to greed, patriotism or ethnic superiority, the term is also used by elitists to discredit democracy and those who oppose power, privilege and inequality.

Demography: The science which charts the characteristics of a population in a given region. Age, sex, gender, class, education are considered to be demographic variables.

Demographic transition theory: Under this theory, populations go through three stages: a preindustrial stage, in which both the birth rate and mortality rate are high; an early industrialization stage, in which the birth rate is high and mortality declines [therefore there is a 'population explosion']; and a mature industrialization stage, in which both the birth rate and the mortality rate are low. The theory that sees population change as related to the process of industrialization and its concomitant social changes. But see 'over-population' for a fuller view.

Demonization: The social practice of treating someone or some people as if they were demons, monsters, devils or the source of all bad things which happen. Most capitalists demonized communists; many communists demonize capitalists; most racists demonize minority groups; some minority groups demonize Anglos; some women demonize men while man men blame women for their own troubles. The marxist/socialist position is that the enemy is to be found in alienated social relationships rather than in people as such. It is true enough that there are thoroughly despicable people but most people work within social institutions with social values to which they were socialized as children. If there is evil to be seen, look first at social problems; if one wishes to reduce social problems to a minimum, first work for social justice. See crime, racist, sexism, patriarchy, alienation, profanation.

Deontology: Greek: deon = necessity. The study of ethics and theories of social obligations or duties. See Axiology.

Dependency Theory: A theory of colonial imperialism which informs anti-American sentiment in Latin America and elsewhere. The theory correctly asserts that capitalist imperialism distorts local economics and creates a surplus population but is often an effort to substitute foreign exploitation with that of local capitalists. A country becomes dependent upon the U.S., Germany, England, or Japan by selling cash crops or natural resources and dependent upon the same countries for food and luxury goods. The developed capitalist countries set the terms which benefit multinational corporations and banks and give "aid" subsidized by workers in capitalist countries to repair some of the distortions, especially those of hunger as cotton, coffee, cocoa, tea, beef or other foods are exported to capitalist countries. By 1976, total debt of non OPEC nations to capitalist countries was $180 billion, up 15 fold from 1967. See Capitalist World System/New World Order.

Depoliticization: The process of reducing the range of questions which are to be settled by collective and public discourse. Questions of foreign policy, employment policy, crime, education and science are treated as settled or to be turned over to technicians to manage. Most major news networks treat public issues as if they were spectacles to be watched rather than problems to be solved by the public.

Dependent variable: A social fact said to be caused by some prior, independent factor(s). The notion of a dependent variable, like a magician's wand, takes one's attention from the possibility that causality may be comprised of complex, interactive feedback loops which change continuously within the dynamics of a social system rather than externally determined. Then too, loose systems of causality are pushed aside in search for tight connections between two, three or four variables.

Depressions: A depression is a down turn in the demand for goods; the demand for labor power and the demand for investment capital itself. They are part of the ups (see expansion) and downs of capitalism. Of the five great economic systems in history, capitalism is the only one with such cycles; in other economic systems, hard times are the result of natural calamity, not the every day working of the economy. There are three economic cycles which have been identified: Kondratieff curves which come in 30-50 year cycles, Kutznets curves of 15 year cycles and 2-5 year mini-cycles. In bad times, workers are laid off; laid off, they cannot buy, factories close and the economic process grinds to a halt. Capitalists blame depressions on organized workers, on government interference and upon "unfair" competition by "foreigners" (other capitalists). Workers blame depressions on the government and the government blames the previous administration. Actually capitalism causes depressions since workers do not get paid 100% of the value of goods they produce, they cannot buy all of it back. The 'surplus' piles up, factories shut down and the depression worsens.

Dereification: The process by which social reality is dismantled.

A process by which the naive and trusting acceptance of a given social form is brought into question. The process by which faith is lost, people get discouraged and turn away from existing systems of religion, gender relations, economics or politics. The Mormon experience is a classic case of de-reification; whole groups of people otherwise committed to traditional forms of marriage, economics and religion walked away from them to found a new social life world; first in Missouri, then in Utah. These events tend to support the idea of nonlinearity in social affairs as well as give testimony to the role of human agency within larger historical processes.

Derrida, Jacques: Architect of French deconstructionist philosophy (see Deconstruction). Derrida's contributions to deconstructionism include a number of important postmodern concepts:

1) Reversal of hierarchies - any value position (e.g., man, good, objective) takes on its valuation in relation to some other oppositional value (e.g., woman, evil, subjective). text, however, can be read so as to reveal such power relations and reverse them through 'discoursing' about them. 2) Metaphysics of presence:- related to the reversal of hierarchies is Derrida's 'presence of the absence.' What this means is that in every binary opposition, the value that is dominant/privileged is present. The value that is subordinate, is 'absent.' The oppositional value of 'beauty' is 'ugly.' The value "beauty" is dominant and therefore privileged. We automatically assign positive value to persons identified as beautiful. The oppositional value "ugly" is subordinant and, therefore, repressed.

3) Differance: Differance (with an "a") implies both the activity of differing and of deferring. All hierarchies include words that are different from each other (e.g., male versus female, heterosexual versus homosexual, white versus black). In addition, however, each defers to the other in the sense of implying the opposite term. We cannot understand what it means to be white without understanding what it means to black and vice versa). There is a mutual deferential interdependence.

4) Trace: Hidden within each term of a hierarchy, is the trace of the other. The trace is what maintains the relationship between the two terms. In order to deconstruct the hierarchy, one must identify the trace which maintains the ascendancy of the privileged, dominant term as a presence. This is the activity of making visible the hidden. Revealing the hidden trace (women, minority, gay, poor) makes possible the de-centering, of the dominant term (men, WASP, straight, wealthy). (After Pauline Rosenau)

Descartes, Rene (1596-1650): Descartes is one of the more important architects of modern science. A French philosopher and mathematician, Descartes was both rationalist and empiricist; a difficult combination to sustain in a world marked by non-linear dynamics. Descartes is well known for his formula for the possibility of knowledge as against pure skepticism; he offered as evidence of that possibility the saying, that cogito, ergo sum by which he meant that there was at least one unassailable proposition which can stand against doubt; I think, therefore there must be a thinker who thinks, namely me. Therefore I exist. Descartes wrote extensively on the god concept, the short version is that such a Being exists and is infinite, eternal, immutable and independent of all that He creates. His main contribution to mathematics is analytic geometry which charts the movement of events in time-space in what is called cartesian space. The new science of Chaos uses cartesian space extensively to chart the changing mixture of order and disorder in the behavior of complex and fractal systems. (After WL Reese)

Desire: French: desir = yearning/passion for. In postmodern terminology, desire is always and already communicated in and through language. All speech is saturated with certain longings, aspirations, needs, fears, passions, and beliefs. The French psychoanalyst, Jacques Lacan, argued that desire was at the core of human being. Lacan maintained that desire could never be fully described. We can never completely capture in speech, in words, in sentences, the essence of our very existence without leaving some trace of it behind. When describing why we love someone our words are filled with desire. We find that we do not do 'desire' justice, art, poetry, the laughter of children; that is, the words themselves are inadequate to communicate how we feel. For Lacan, desir was illusive yet polymorphous, elusive yet omnipresent. The dominant language of modern science greatly erodes our capacity to desire; the needs of the capitalist system to realize profit channels desire into owning things. See advertizing, Realization problem.

Deskilling: The subdivision of labor into ever more simple tasks. The idea is that wages can be reduced, production increased and quality improved with this division and sub-division of labor. See Z theory.

Deskilling of America: The practice of moving high paying skilled jobs overseas leaving US workers to take low paying service jobs. Owners can take advantage of both economic and status inequality by moving jobs to countries with a large unemployed labor force.

Destutt de Tracy (1758-1836): The founder of Ideology; the science of what we now call propaganda. de Tracy began his work when Napoleon suppressed the school he was in claiming that it was dangerous to religion. Th. Jefferson translated his works and published them in Philadelphia.

Determinism: The philosophical position that phenomena are best explained in terms of the events that have immediately proceeded them; rigid cause and effect. This idea assumes social significance when it is applied to the behavior of individuals. If a person and the brain are rigidly bound by cause and effect, how can that person be "free" to do what (s)he "wants?" The argument runs that what one wants, and will do are rigidly determined by prior considerations. It is further claimed that one's behavior could be accurately predicted if only enough information were available. The logical conclusion of this idea is that a human is merely a complicated machine. When determinism is applied to the realm of psychology in this manner it is called Behaviorism. B.F. Skinner is the foremost behaviorist in the U.S. Behaviorism is a "dirty word" to many died-in-the-wool humanists and fundamentalist Christians as well as most marxists. The alternative view is that human beings think and act with judgment and insight. In this mode, causally is weak or absent while reflective social interaction produces social facts. See also Chaos theory.

Developing Countries: About 120 nations in the world have systems of production and distribution based upon low-tech base and upon strong social ties. These are said to be under-developed. The phrase means that capitalists can solve three problems by controlling the politics of the country: cheaper labor, cheaper raw materials and expanded markets for manufactured goods.

Such countries then begin to have problems of crime, class inequality, juvenile delinquency and suicide, prostitution, and drug use. They are then said to be 'developing' by capitalist economists.

Development/Under-development: Theories of progress assume that a society becomes developed when it: 1) industrializes, 2) commodifies all goods and services and exchanges them in a market, 3) discards all traditional stratifications in favor of class stratification and 4) replaces social status [kinship, ethnicity, race or gender] with money as a nexus for the exchange of goods and services. Societies which do not accept these changes are said to be underdeveloped. See Modernization theory.

Deviance: Nonconformity with existing/traditional social norms. This nonconformity is often said to be pathological when it challenges power and privilege; it is said to be innovation or creativity when it is approved by the gate-keepers of morality. All societies in a changing environment require sufficient deviance adequate to reduce mismatch between system and environment. A loaded term, deviancy is a negative asset when the environment is stable but can be a positive asset to a society when the environment is irreversibly changing (see Ashby's law), depending of course on the nature of the variation. See Corruption, theory of.

Deviance, primary: A term used by Chas. Lemert to refer to those deviant acts which do not redefine the self nor become a matter of public image. See Labelling Theory.

Deviant: 1) Someone who is noticeably different from the average within some dimensions of social behavior. As it applies to behavior that is generally considered to be beyond the tolerance limits of the community.

Dewey, John (1859-1952): American philosopher/educator who taught at Michigan, Chicago, Minnesota and Columbia. Dewey is known for his work in progressive education; he started an experimental school in Chicago. Dewey argued that education should have no fixed syllabi or standard objectives but fit itself to the different and changing needs of students. Experimentation is encouraged and the future is more important than the past. In his philosophy of knowledge, Dewey argued that research begins in situations which are troubled, ambiguous, and full of conflict. One does not look for order but for solutions congenial to democracy and empowerment. The quest is not for truth so much as for transformation of troubled, conflictual situations. Dewey contributes to both postmodern education and postmodern philosophy of science; both of which are most congenial to emancipatory knowledge processes and praxis.

Dialectic: Greek: dialektos = discourse, debate. In everyday life, dialectics refers to a dynamic tension within a given system: a process by which change occurs on the basis of that tension and resultant conflict. Fichte coined the triadic process in which a dialectic has a 1) thesis, 2) an antithesis, and 3) a synthesis when the dialectic has run its course. A dialectic is said to arise since all (A) implies (Not-A). Schelling applied the dialectic to nature and to history. Marx used a more open and progressive conceptualization taken from Hegel's Negation of the Negation; thus a class system, possessing many 'negations' will produce a political economy which will negate it. [After Kevin Anderson].

In orthodox marxist views, dialectics is raised to science of the general laws of society and knowledge (after Engels). In this formulation, the three forms of the dialectic are: 1) struggle and unity of opposites; 2) the transition of quantity into quality and 3) the negation of a prior negation. An example of the first form of a dialectic would be class struggle in which workers and owners clash and out of which a new, more humane economic system might/will arise. Of the second, an example might be the transformation water into steam with a small quantitative rise in temperature and for the third 'law,' a good example might be when capitalism [a negative] is destroyed by revolution [another negation].

The concept of the dialectic is hostile to the linearity which is at the core of modern science; as such they are much the better explanation of how complex systems worked. The rise of Chaos theory gives dramatic empirical support and much sharper focus to the concept of the dialectic. See Feedback, forms of.

Dialectic materialism: A view espoused by Marx, Engels, and Lenin that revolutionary change comes as a result of the contradictions in the concretely existing modes of production rather than by

supernatural or mystical reasons. The idea of 'telos' or fate is pushed aside as well. Natural stage theory, historical cycles and metaphysical causes are rejected in favor of human action and activity in changing the nature of a society. For Marx, each economic system may have 'tendencies' which can be seen but they should not be taken to be inevitable.

Dictatorship: The rule of one small group over an entire society by force. Often, the word is used as if one person or one small party were the 'dictatorship.' Such a view is decidedly unmarxist; it takes a lot of people to support dictators and reproduce dictatorships. If a lot of people were not direct beneficiary of Nazi, Italian, Spanish, Argentinean or Nicaraguan dictatorships, they would wither on the vine. There can be no leaders without willing followers [Simmel]. Force and ideological hegemony play a part in dictatorships however the objective interests of a lot of people are served by dictatorships. See the Great Man theory of History.

Dictatorship of the proletariat: Control over the production of political and economic policy by a party elite in the name of the workers. Orthodox socialists argue for an intermediate stage in which state control of production replaces capitalist/elitist control. This stands in sharp contrast to the ideas of Rosa Luxemburg who argued for mass democracy from the beginning in setting policy. Centralized control, while unmarxist if permanent, is said to be necessary until the false consciousness of workers is repaired and until the last vestiges of bourgeois mentality are gone. Since the marxist position is that consciousness grows out of concrete social relationships in the production of culture, any such dictatorship must be short-lived and closely constrained else socialist consciousness is aborted. Careerism and sycophancy develops along with self-glorification and the cult of the individual and/or elitism.

Dictionary: A book which defines words; a good dictionary tries to present the more common usages of a word since, in every society, words mean different things to people in different social positions. For example, rape as a concept, is used differently, almost casually by men; women see rape in a very different way. All dictionaries are political in that the definitions given first place are those which make most sense to the writer in a given social-life world. All dictionaries thus reproduce that world by setting the understanding of a thing as fixed and beyond argument. A good dictionary is admittedly political and admits its politics.

Différance: A way to establish an idea or truth claim by its positive and negative references to other texts. The meaning of a text thus recedes in history and/or is circular. See Derrida.

Differential Association: A "theory" of crime which holds than an excess of definitions-to-commit-crime over definitions-to-be-law-abiding produces crime. It cannot be a theory of crime since it is a good theory of all social behavior; Baptists are Baptists if and only if they differentially associate with Baptists; Buddhists do not become Baptists even if they do associate with them. Nor does the theory account for white collar crime. It does emphasize the learned character of antisocial behavior.

Differentiation: A division of labor based upon race, gender, ethnicity, merit or age. Not to be confused with Stratification. There may well be some important advantages to social differentiation by merit, age, interest, ethnicity and/or religion. Such variety tends to increase both skill and productivity; it offers a reservoir of ideas and ways of life that serve well in times of economic, climatic or social change. The division of labor on the basis of race, gender, religion, ethnicity also may carry with it great harm to the overall capacity of a society. It is here that wisdom and judgment as well as kindness and compassion need full range. See Stratification.

Diminishing Returns, Law of: A theory from Malthus which holds that productivity decreases with the addition of more and more workers. If one worker can produce 10 pins a day, 10 workers might produce 100/day but 20 workers will produce only 190 or fewer. This idea was used to diminish the value of workers and to point to the problems of capitalists who hired 'too many' workers. Marx pointed out that improvement in technology rendered this 'law' invalid.

Dinks: Double income; no kids. This acronym refers to people who form loose unions in order to enhance their life style. They do so by sharing household and recreational expenses while refusing to have kids or, if they have them, to support them. See Yuppie, Monk and Swinks...all are popular terms used by young people to refer to those who avoid traditional gender relations and marriage forms.

Dionysian/Dionysus: Dionysus was the Greek god of wine and nature. His name is given to a philosophy of life which set passion, joy and rare good spirits as its center point. Compare to Apollonian social philosophy.

Disaster: Premodern sensibility explained large, unexpected events which adversely affected a society as messages from the spiritual world, Acts of God or Divine Retribution for sin. Modern theory defines a disaster as a natural calamity in which large numbers of persons are injured and/or property destroyed. Postmodern scholarship explains a disaster as some large scale event which destroys people and property and which is undesirable. Events which destroy people and property but which are desired are not defined as disaster; war, environmental pollution, poverty, child abuse or such. These are defined as personal crimes, accidents, or are not noticed [after M. Ephraim].

Discourse: A special kind of interaction in which "validity claims" are checked out. Most of the time, people just talk together about the practical matters at hand. But sometimes that which is taken-for-granted is called into question. Habermas identifies four validity claims about discourse which may result in distorted communication and, thereby need to be examined more closely. In postmodern work all that is written or spoken is seen as discourse; claims of objectivity and impartiality are presumed to be political tactics which remove truth claims [about gender, race, class, or 'reality' from discourse.

Discourse, Lacan's four: Lacan identified four ways of thinking/talking which preshape speech and behavior. The first line shows the flow of speech; the second depicts the way in which the listener experiences his/her own understanding or desire.

Discourse of the Master:

S1 -------> S2

$ <------- a

The authority imposes his/her language/narrative on the other and endeavors to convince the other of this knowledge. The underling, receptive to the message, experiences an incompleteness, a lack of self-valuation in the words/narrative. Despite this, the student reproduces the very knowledge that represses.

Discourse of the University

S2 -------> a

S1 <------- $

The discourse of the university is a more hidden form of the discourse of the master. Some governing elite or prevailing paradigm (e.g., the law, a patriarchal family, medicine) infused with its unique knowledge/truth, constitutes the other. In so doing, however, the other experiences psychic distress in this knowledge. That which is missing, left out, leaves desire unspoken and unspeakable.

Discourse of the Hysteric:

$ -------> S1

a <------- S2

The despairing person, alienated from her/his own knowledge/desire, realizes that their truth is not affirmed. Thus, the repressed subject endeavors to communicate this suffering and angst to the other. The other, however, interprets this suffering through only conventional master codes of crime, mental illness, sin or deviancy. This response only contributes to the psychic despair and longing of the divided subject.

Discourse of the Analyst

a --------> $

S2 <-------- S1

The "revolutionary" subject begins by offering to the other that which is left out (pas tout). The other embodies this existence and forges new master signifiers, new awarenesses,; desires more compatible with the despairing subject. This produces new truths or mythic knowledge. This knowledge, in turn, contributes to and affirms what is left out. Here, knowledge is positional and local. This form of discourse is found in both religious conversions, social movements, rebellions and whole revolutions.

Discourses, Replacement: In the postmodern sociology of knowledge the pivotal question is to identify and validate discourses more fully affirming of social differences and ways of knowing which reflect our society without necessarily invalidating those ways of knowing already in existence. Rather, the humanistic project in creating replacement discourses is to "widen the net" for knowing, experiencing, living, and being human. This project validates the excluded voices of women, racial and sexual minorities, the disabled and disenfranchised, and all of those peoples whose styles of existence, when spoken and embodied, encounter resistance, degradation, and de-legitimacy. See Lacan, Foucault, Constitutive theory, feminist theory, chaos and complexity theory.

Discursive Formations: This is a key concept developed in the writings of Michel Foucault. Foucault was concerned with the manifestation of power communicated through language. Discursive formations in law, sexuality and mental illness exercise power in the lives of people. Foucault encouraged active resistance to all discursive formations, alleging that they produced system-sustaining social control, citizen alienation, and a disciplinary/punitive society. According to Foucault, any systematic constitution of reality possesses tremendous influence in our lives. This influence lives in specialized knowledges which includes no (or little) room for dissention, difference, or alternative knowledge forms. Thus discursive formations as power/knowledge give privilege to certain ways of knowing, certain claims to truth, while ensuring the continued silencing of repressed (oppositional) voices.

Discrimination: The practice of treating a group of people as if they were somehow inferior in some important way; usually race, class, gender, religion or ethnic origin. Sometimes discrimination is confused with prejudice which refers to psychological states rather than actual behavior. The two are often closely connected but it is possible to discriminate against people without conscious prejudice. See Racism, institutional.

Disemployment: Capitalism is the only economic system in which there is a systematic elimination of workers; either by replacement by machines [to increase profits] or during a depression [in order to control costs]. Capitalist economists say that a 5% disemployment rate is necessary in order to keep wages down and profits up. If there were full employment, profits would fall, capitalists would fail and the economy collapse...so they say.

Harrison and Bluestone estimate that over 3 million high paying jobs have moved overseas while more than half of the new jobs pay less than the poverty line. See Fiscal crisis.

Disengagement theory: The view that all connections between persons and social role-sets/statuses are affirmed or withdrawn within social rituals. The more common social processes which disengage a person from a role include: divorce from marriage; defrocking from a ministry; disbarment from the practice of law; decertification from medical practice; dismissal from the military via Court Martial. It is the final rite of passage after which one has lost all rights to embody a social role. Some include funerals as disengagement routines since the person concerned is treated as no longer a member of a social group; some societies hold funerals for living persons to make the point.

Dividends: That portion of expropriated surplus value [profits] given to stockholders in permanent payment for investment. If dividends go to a few, there are many problems around the concentration of wealth. If workers can invest part of wages in stocks, they become owners, once or twice removed. See also rent and interest.

Divine Right (of Kings): The view that all authority is vested in a king who gets that right from God. If so, all rebellion is sinful. Few people seriously argue this now but the larger point remains...if God does exist and does have a plan [Patriarchy, Stratification, etc] or a chosen people than opposition to such inequalities is both evil and wrong. See Liberation theology for a different view.

Division of Labor: When different people do different things in the production process, there is a division of labor. Think of the construction of a house; one person can do everything or can hire different people to do the carpentry, plumbing, wiring, masonry or painting. A society constitutes itself as a human society by the creation of culture. Any division of labor which eliminates or restricts people in the production of material, ideological, and political culture as a complex unity subverts the human condition. For example, capitalism assigns manual labor to the worker, the production of ideological culture to the manager and the production of political culture is controlled by an elite. In advanced capitalism, there is also a geographical division of labor. In the electronics industry, the "brain" inhabits the laboratories around Boston and San Diego while the "hands" are in Taiwan, Korea, Haiti, El Salvador, South Korea, Malaysia, Hong Kong, and Spain. Durkheim held that the division of labor promotes solidarity; Marx held that it destroys solidarity. As a scheme to divide up tasks, the division of labor may be useful; as a scheme to exclude people from human agency and praxis, it is most harmful.

Dogma: A Greek word meaning decree. The word applies to all policies and practices held to be beyond dispute. When one is absolutely sure that s/he is right and all others are wrong for all time, one is said to be dogmatic.

Double bind: The notion of a double bind refers to a condition that occurs during the construction of a social occasion when one party receives inconsistent or contradictory information from the other party(s). The best examples involve actual contradictions, such as when someone says one thing verbally, while indicating the opposite with their body talk. A person who is in a double bind has a difficult time deciding how to act towards the source of the contradictory information.

Dracon/Draconian: Dracon was a Greek king who established a unified legal code in the 7th century, B.C.E., on the peoples he conquered. The legal Code bearing his name did not distinguish between degrees of severity; thus when laws are harsh for small crimes, they are said to be 'draconian.'

Dramaturgy: Greek: draein = to act; to do + ergein = to work. A term introduced by Goffman as key to understand advanced monopoly capitalism and the wide-spread practice of using the devices from the world of make believe in order to stage convincing and profitable impression among unknown others.

Dramaturgical analysis: The use of the concepts and processes found in the world of theatre and cinema to discuss how social reality is constructed. The political question to be raised is whether dramaturgy is simply a helpful approach to teach people about society (Goffman) or an ideology used by people to pursue private goals such as profit, manipulation, and management. The radical perspective is that such an approach arises in a society in which social relationships warrant it.

Dramaturgical society: A society in which the technology of theatre is used to manage the masses via electronics media and with the aid of the sciences of sociology and/or psychology. The world of make-believe enters the world of serious discourse as an alien and dominating force. In politics, a cadre of hired specialists now use dramaturgy to generate a public for a candidate or issue. Such practice converts politics from a cultural item into a commodity to be purchased by the highest bidder. The same is true in sports, medicine, religion and other activities which used to be cultural activities. (After Young and Massey). Dramaturgy could be used to celebrate, illuminate or politicize rather than alienate people from the political and economic questions which affect their lives.

See Radical Theatre.

Durkheim, Emile. (1857-1951) Durkheim made many contributions to the study of society, suicide, the division of labor, solidarity and religion. Raised in a time of troubles in France, Durkheim spent much of his genius justifying order and commitment to order. He said that the god concept was a false reification [collective representation] of the power of groups to shape the behavior of members; of religion as a solution to the problem of solidarity [how to hold people together when they have conflicting interests]; that suicide increases when society falls apart [anomie] and that there were other ways to get solidarity rather than by religion. He spoke of mechanical (religion) solidarity and organic solidarity as different ways to bind people together. Organic solidarity was supposed to emerge out of a complex and functionally interdependent division of labor. The socialist response to Durkheim is to question the ways in which the labor process is to be organized; the degree to which order takes precedence over social justice and alternative ways to get solidarity.

Dyad: Greek: duas = two. In sociology, the smallest unit of observation and interaction. Sociology begins with dyads rather than with single individuals outside of a status-role. Think of the impossibility of studying the mother without the child or the failings of a student without looking at faults of the professor.

Dühring, Eugen (1833-1901): German economist who held that matter is the sole reality; that morality is based upon compassion and sympathy; that pain help define pleasure and that capitalism should be modified not eliminated. Marx and Engels attacked the latter point. (After WL Reese)

Duty: Latin: debere = to owe. Our word debt comes from the same root. Stoicism, as a social philosophy sets duty as the center point of ethical behavior; one is to do one's duty even if it conflicts with notions of good or with cherished values.

E

Early Marx: The early writings of Marx focussed in on the creative role of humans in producing social-life worlds. The concepts of praxis and alienation were central and therefore Marxist writings were decidedly "humanistic." The later Marx is said to focus more on larger structural factors especially on capitalist relations and upon global analysis. There are those 'marxists' who are in each camp and some who are in both. The issue seems to be whether those who look at Marx and see his humanism are too romantic to be useful in the hard task of making the revolution since making it requires understanding and opposition to the structural variables by which domination occurs. Critics of the "structuralists" say that a revolution which does not speak to the point of praxis and democratic self-management is a fraud--the older Marx without the early Marx is pointless. The nature of marxism in some countries was settled before some of the early writings were available and so the structural reading was dominant and often used to justify a dictatorship.

Echelon: An arbitrary defined level or stratum in a table of bureaucratic organization which is held accountable to levels defined as superior to it. Persons in an echelon have roughly equivalent duties, rewards, and responsibilities. The use of echelons is an efficient but scarcely human way to establish control of many by few. It is a formal form of stratification which ignores earlier forms of privilege: racism, sexism, religious bigotry or ethnocentricism...and claims to be modern and progressive. It also claims to be rational but there is room for considerable doubt.

Eclectic/Eclecticism: An eclectic is one who sees validities in a lot of ideas/theories. Contrast to Dogma/dogmatism. There are many who scorn eclectics as weak minded, ignorant, vacillating and/or moral cowards. One should be careful in using either term.

Ecology: The study of the patterned ways in which organisms distribute themselves in time and space with reference to other organisms and to inorganic aspects of the territorially limited environment. Ecology is of interest to socialism in so far as capitalism tends to destroy ecosystems by exploiting raw materials and dumping toxins to protect profits.

Economic determinism: The view that economic events determine, shape or influence all social forms. In marxian terms, the base determines the superstructure. Thus, capitalist relations shape art, science, religion, and other forms of ideological culture. These, in turn, tend to reflect and to reproduce capitalist relations. See Early Marx.

Economic Formations: There have been five economic systems in human history. 1) For most of that history, people lived in bands and tribes and shared out food and labor; this is called primitive communism since the technology and division of labor was very simple. 2) Interspersed in such economies was a certain slavery which used people captured in predatory warfare (which see). Slavery grew to be an industry in itself in the 16th, 17th and 18th century. 3) The conquerors in predatory warfare often extracted tribute from conquered villages; this expanded into feudalism as some of the conquerors remained behind to collect on behalf of the others. Rome and Greece became imperial systems based on warfare. 4) Settled agriculture developed about 10,000 years ago and, about 4,000 years ago, hydraulic societies developed near river systems to irrigate crops. The surplus food permitted a great division of labor and, most say, very complex stratification systems. 5) Industrial Capitalism came along in the 18th century to upset all these economic arrangements. Feudalism, slavery and primitive communism were pushed aside as capitalists replaced kings and workers replaced serfs, peasants, and slaves. There are two other economic systems which have had little success: bureaucratic socialism had some limited success early on but collapsed in its rigidity and inability to improve the means of production. Advanced Communism has yet to be instituted. See also Market Socialism.

Economic forms, Parallel. Wage labor is the only way those who do not own capital can 'reunite production and distribution.' However, there are many parallel economic systems in every 'capitalist' society, indeed most goods and services produced in the USA are available through these other systems. The more important economic systems which parallel and thus moderate capitalism include:

1) The family system continues to be a very active economic system; most goods bought in the marketplace are later re-distributed on the basis of status within kinship systems. Many goods and services are produced and distributed within the family system on the basis of status rather than profit.

2) The social welfare system of the state which re-distribute tax dollars to rich and poor alike.

3) Private charity: Red Cross, Good Will, the Community Chest, Church stores as well as private foundations give away billions to rich and poor alike.

4) Crime is a very large economic system in the USA; some say 8%; some say 25% of the gross national product is in corporate crime, street crime, white collar crime and, of course, organized crime.

5) A 'grey' market in which friends, neighbors and other people exchange labor instead of cash in order to avoid taxation.

Economic Imperialism: The use of state power by multinational corporations to ensure cheap docile labor, access to natural resources and easy entry into the markets of weaker, poorer countries. Japan, Germany and the U.S. are the major capitalist nations involved in the practice while the Soviet Union [1977] engages in a modified version with respect to socialist countries.

Economics, Demand Side: A view that the best way to prevent economic depressions or to get out of them is to make sure capitalists get high enough profits such that they can invest in new factories, outlets and products. Compare to Economics, Supply Side.

Economics, Supply Side: A view that depressions are best handled by increasing wages or decreasing taxes of ordinary citizens in order that they may buy the products and services and thus stimulate the economy. See Economics, Supply Side.

Economism: A term which helps warn against the tendency to turn social revolution into bread and butter issues as trade unions often do. This tendency may leave capitalist relations intact as in American worker movements or minimize the marxian emphasis upon worker self-management, praxis and community as in U.S.S.R. (After Rosa Luxemburg).

Ecriture Feminine: In French postmodern feminist theory, the question is whether it is even possible to cultivate a 'grammar,' a way of knowing and speaking, freed from the misogynous/sexist trappings of masculine culture and male-speak. This is an important enterprise. Establishing such a grammar would open the door to new vistas of meaning, different expressions of truth, alternative ways of knowing and empower women in their daily lives. However, some postmodern feminists have considered whether the question itself might not be cloaked in the logic of masculine thought. After all, developing such a code distances women from men in an sharp, precise way. This is how men understand social phenomena, human relations, and feminine consciousness, according to several postmodern feminists. Thus, on the one hand, a grammar is needed for empowering women; but, on the other hand, the process of producing such a code would further legitimize masculine ways of being/thinking in the lives of women.

Ecstasy: Greek: ex = out; histanai = to stand. In pre-modern knowledge processes, ecstasy was one of the major pathways to truth. One put one's own concerns aside and enters into a state of rapture in which divine truth is revealed. In modern thinking, ecstasy is understood as a form of madness to be treated by psychiatry. Many postmodern religions return to ecstasy as a valid source of insight and enlightenment; especially feminist religions.

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Figure 8. Cobb on Education

Education: Latin: e = from; ducere = draw out; to draw out of young people the knowledge which lays dormant in them. Socrates assumed that people were born with all the knowledge of the gods but that birth was so traumatic that there was a forgetting. The role of the teacher was to draw out that knowledge. Contrast to inculcate which means to 'put in' or socialize. In the USA, the educational system has complex effect; on the one hand, it is one of the most egalitarian and open systems in the world; on the other hand, it still tracks people into class, racial and gender systems of inequality. Capitalism requires an ever-improving knowledge system; this results in great distress from those who ground the knowledge process upon holy books. American education is also torn between efforts to keep costs down and to teach each student effectively. The recent trend is toward larger classes, less equality and more technicized education...but hang in there; there is much to learn and much to teach.

Education, revolutionary: A form of education in which cognitive, emotional and political capacities are developed and critical use of them encouraged in the classroom and out within a framework of community. The line between teacher and pupil is eliminated; cooperation rather than competition marks the progress of the class.

Education, technical: The prevailing form of education in the U.S. is one in which strong and well designed business and industrial systems are the subject of lectures, workshops, and seminars rather than self-systems, social systems or cultural systems. One may look at the catalog of any major "university" to observe the degree to which the technical-rational interest is served at the expense of the hermeneutic or critical interest.

Egalitarian [society]: Equality in social arrangements. A society based on the principle that all are entitled to equal treatment and rights in the society. The point of an egalitarian society is not that everyone is treated exactly alike (as in a massified bureaucratic system), but rather that everyone is accorded full status as a human being to produce culture. There can be very different roles and different rewards in such societies but none are excluded by reason of birth.

Ego: Latin: ego = I. Used in freudian psychology, the ego is seen to be the mediator between the id [unconscious desire for life or for death] and the superego. The id is the source of the pleasure principle [not just genital sex] while the ego embodies the reality principle. The superego develops from society and its demands for sacrifice of self and 'primitive impulses' [the wish for pleasure or for peace; the death wish]. Father is representative of society and its demands thus become a hated object in the unconscious. Mother embodies the pleasure principle and thus is the object of incestuous desire. The aim of freudian psychiatry is to strengthen the ego and improve its capacity to control/channel the impulses of id and to mediate the demands of father/society while transferring desire from mother to more mature sexual relationships.

Eidetic: Plato used the term to refer to the 'essence of a thing.' Husserl used it to refer to the natural categories of thought and perception into which human beings fit sense data. In husserlian phenomenology, one sets aside [brackets] all particular aspects of a thing so that its essence will 'shine forth.' Postmodern phenomenology sets aside both eidos and eidetic reduction as human devices rather than intrinsic 'essences' of a thing.

Einstein, Albert (1879-1955): In three short years, Einstein published four articles which changed the field of physics; his work on light, gravity, and philosophy of science continues to find confirmation. He dropped the notion of absolute time/space and thereby helped solve several problems in physics. The new view is that findings are valid only within a special inertial system. Einstein accepted the god concept as the orderly harmony found in nature; was a pacifist who wrote President Roosevelt urging research which lead to the atomic bomb and nuclear energy; argued for a Jewish nation in Palestine, socialism as well as an international political order dedicated to peace and social justice. Feminists point out that his wife was a mathematician [he had failed math in school] and did the math which supported the theory. Einstein did not list her as co-author and left her for another woman. Einstein was more complex than his theories. (After WL Reese)

Electra Complex, the: The hidden desire, according to Freud, of a girl to replace mother as the wife and lover of father. Named after Electra, a tragic figure in Greek literature who convinced her brother Orestes to kill their mother, Clytemnestra and her lover, Aegistthus who had after they murdered her father, Agamemnon. Freud used a play by Sophocles to generate this pathology said to be peculiar to women and the source of illegitimate children...the girl selects an undesirable boy to father a child which she then, symbolically, offers to her father as proof of her own desirable sexuality...weird, is it not?

Eleventh Thesis: Philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it. This is Marx' comment on the role of depolicitized science, religion and politics. Lenin too said that one best understands social reality when one participates in the building and rebuilding of it.

Elite: French: élire = elect. Early on, the elect/elite referred to those selected by God to manage on His behalf, the affairs of the world. Now it refers to a set of persons who control policy and practices in a stratified system; a group privileged on the basis of wealth, race, gender or position in a bureaucracy/formal organization and thus carries pejorative content with those on the Left. See Stewardship.

Elitism: A set of complex beliefs that the masses are not fit for the creation of political and ideological culture while they are only too well suited for the production of material culture. The elite then claim a large part of the material production as their due for producing ideological and political culture! In the U.S., 50% of the people claim 90% of the wealth produced. Those engaged in the production of ideological culture (sometimes called professionals): doctors, lawyers, sports figures, professors, judges, actors and those engaged in the production of political culture; managers, politicians, wardens, psychiatrists, administrators, public relations and advertising executives claim salaries 8, 20, 40, 100 or 1000 times greater than those who produce material culture (unless the workers are organized and bargain in which case, the margin declines a bit).

Emancipation: A transformation of society such that individuals are liberated to create various forms of human culture; art, science, music, religion, and the process of self-creation as human beings. Not to be confused with political emancipation in which people may vote once in a while and, between times, assign their own social power to the state. The socialist vision is that there is/should be an interactively rich and informationally rich discussion and debate prior to direct votes on social policy questions.

Emancipation of the Senses: The beginning of the radical impulse in Marx was his understanding that human freedom is rooted in the human sensibility: The senses do not just "receive" what is given to them, they transform, interpret, form and discover that which exists or may exist. In a society based on alienated, divided labor people perceive things as they are given by bosses and managers; made by owners and elites; used by the existing society. In a repressive society, new emancipatory forms are forbidden. Breaking out of this prison requires breaking away from alienated society and emancipating the senses of each and every adult person once again to interpret, transform and discover. See Praxis.

Emancipatory science: a system of research and critique by which the human interests in change and renewal toward a rational and decent society are served. Contrast to positivism (empiricism) which describes what is in such a way as to lead the student to believe that what is must be. Contrast also with "objective" science which purports (incorrectly) to be unconnected to human interests. Emancipatory science is always in dialectic conflict with existing social forms and is served by conflict methodology (which see).

Embourgeoisiement: The thesis that workers are gradually becoming middle class in that they earn more and live the middle class life style. Such views often overlook the loss of control over the means of production and confuses between possession of consumer goods and ownership of productive property. One should not select the better paid workers in the 1st world as case in point to prove the thesis while ignoring exploitation and oppression in the 3rd world upon which the comforts and securities of 1st World workers so much depends. See proletarianization, immiseration.

Emergence theory: The assumption that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. Thus, the characteristics of a sugar molecule cannot be understood in terms of a complete knowledge of the attributes of the included atoms taken one at a time. In social terms, self, society, and culture are emergent in that individuals acting alone cannot produce these items. Social power is social in that it emerges from the coordinated labor of many--hence it cannot be the "property" of one except by force or fraud.

Eminent Domain: The right of the state to take property for the general good. The thought is that there is a higher law of property which gives private persons temporary use and benefits of property for a life-time; these rights can be set aside by the claim that land belongs [is in the domain] of the larger community.

Emotion, sociology of: A new branch which attempts to make visible the ways in which positive or negative feeling or thinking is buried in words, social roles, social processes or social groups.

The discipline assumes that most if not all emotional responses are preshaped and given form within a socio-cultural complex; anger, hate, jealousy, love, compassion, indifference and disgust are all, equally encouraged, elicited, forbidden or required in social life.

Contrast to the assumption that emotions are natural responses arising from purely physical or psychological processes.

Empathy: Greek: empeiria = experienced with or skilled at. The term refers to the capacity of one person to know and to respond to the pain or problems of another person.

Empiricism: Greek: empeiria = experienced in; skilled at. In modern science, it is the philosophical position that "real knowledge" is gained through measurement and observation." It takes the view that if something exists or is true, you can measure it. A problem arises when, in empiricism, quantity is made the focus of attention at the expense of quality. Empiricism tends to freeze all of history in present findings. Empiricism also leads one to suppose that social relations are controlled by external and eternal "laws" of nature made visible by statistics. Such a view minimizes the role of judgment, intent, and human activity in producing society. The radical position is that three methodologies are necessary to a rational and decent society. Empiricism (also called positivism) is informed by the human interest in prediction and control. Marxists argue that hermeneutics and emancipatory science are also necessary. But see Knowledge, Sociology of.

Enclosure acts: In Europe, Africa, Asia, Latin America and elsewhere, the land of serfs [which see] and common lands were enclosed by the nobility in order to change to commercial farming [sheep, wheat, sugar, tea, coffee, bananas, cocaine, wine grapes and beef cattle. Serfs and peasants were forced off the land into towns and cities where they had to sell their labor power to whomever would hire them. Some of their children turned to petty crime, prostitution and domestic service. Others migrated to the Americas, Australia or New Zealand; there to take by force the land from hunting and gathering peoples. Enclosures produced new ways of social life and a whole new set of problems never before seen in human history.

Encoding: The process of assigning meaning to a particular sign in a particular sign system (see Semiotics). For example: the phrase "the mentally ill" is a sign-phrase. It can be interpreted (i.e., encoded) in one of several ways. In the language of psychiatric medicine such a person is often understood as in need of treatment, or diseased. In the language of religion, the person is often defined as 'touched by God,' or 'invaded by Satan.' Depending upon the code through which one intends to convey meaning, a particular encoded regard for the sign "the mentally ill" will result.

Endogamy: A marriage norm which restricts marriage partners to those in the same ethnic group. Most forms of intimacy occur within the same class, race, ethnic or religious groupings. The trend is to more open marriage/intimacy norms.

Engels, Friedrich (1820-1895): A wealthy German Industrialist, friend, colleague and co-author of the Manifesto with Marx. Born to manufacturing wealth, Engels first entered the military but resigned next year. He used his wealth to help the working class movement and, over the years, became an economic, historian, philosopher and revolutionary. He gave the Marx family considerable financial help and took responsibility for the natural child of a maid fathered by Marx. After Marx' death, Engels continued the struggle for social justice. He is credited with collaboration on The Holy Family, the German Ideology, Anti-Duhring, and Origin of the Family among other works. (After WL Reese)

Empirical investigation: The method of acquiring primary knowledge by direct sensory observation, experimentation in order to test hypotheses. The method works well with simple dynamics of physical phenomena but has only limited utility with complex systems, especially those founded upon meaning, intention and purpose.

End of Ideology: A thesis that all the political questions of a good society have been worked out and all that remains is to set up the technical means by which to handle social problems. This view (a)tends to freeze society in one historical moment and (b)preempts all future history while (c)eliminating human beings from the production of political culture. The thesis was put forth by a liberal theorist, Daniel Bell. With the collapse of bureaucratic socialism, many in the West believe that all economic history has ended, that all that is left to do is to extend capitalism to other parts of the world and the system is complete. Chaos/Complexity theory teaches us that history never ends; never repeats itself with the precision required by 'modern' science.

Endogamous marriage: Marriage within the same social class or ethnic, tribal, racial, religious, or national group. Such a rule continues existing cleavages in society while, at the same time, it protects ethnic enclaves in a complex society.

Engels, Frederich (1821-1895): Partner, sponsor, and co-author of important articles on political economy, Engels contributed much to "marxian" theory including the criticism of capitalism for turning all values into cash commodities, the view that small business persons are thrown into the proletariat as capitalism progresses, the view that class struggles increase in size and importance and will lead to a revolution abolishing capitalism and bringing a communist society. (After Struik) Some fault Engels for an over-emphasis on economic determinism and 'historical necessity.'

Enlightenment, the: A period in 18th century Europe characterized by a faith in the ability of science to 'enlighten' human beings by discovery of all the Laws of Nature and society. It used a slogan from I. Kant, 'Dare to Know,' and inspired the works of John Locke, Racine, Moliére, Bach and Rembrandt. It remains the center point of modern science knowledge process pushing aside both pre-modern and post-modern knowledge processes [see which]. Hegel and many others assumed that precise knowledge about nature and society was possible; that rational, linear methodology was essential to the discovery of such laws and that such rationality would be found in the state guided by scientists. The god concept was reduced to that of a creative and indifferent watch-maker who used very precise tools to build the cosmos but no longer interfered in it.

The pre-modern critique is that faith, belief, trust, hope and inspiration were foundational to the knowledge process; that a Divine Spirit still watches, judges and intervenes to reward and to punish. The Postmodern critique is that rationality and linearity are greatly over-used; that human beings pick and chose the problems to research, the concepts to sort with, the findings to apply and the truths to turn into public policy. All this and more makes the knowledge process more political than enlightening.

Epoché: A Greek word meaning, to suspend judgment. Pyrrho used the word as a solution to the problem of knowledge; one simply suspend judgment and found ataraxia, pleasure/tranquility. Husserl used it in his modernist phenomenology in order to engage in the process of reducing understanding of a thing to its essence. He called this eidetic reduction. Eidos = essence.

Entelechy: Greek; en = in, inside; telos = actuality, reality + enchein = to have, to hold. The word refers to the idea that inside a thing is the tendency to realize its complete and perfect nature. An axiom of modern, rationalist phenomenology, it assumes that social categories are natural and that there is a tendency for each to change in such a direction as achieve perfection. The idea that there is some natural destiny toward all persons, things and societies tend. See Phenomenology, postmodern.

Equity: Latin; equality. In English law, that part of law which sought substantive justice more so than technical judgments. It began as an appeal to the King for justice; usually advised by a priest, the King was to set aside rational but unfair judgments in favor of a higher form of justice. Equity in US law places the responsibility for higher justice in appeals courts but juries can refuse to follow the judge's instructions in the interest of such justice...not often known or used, but still a point of law in equity.

Equity, maxims of: There are many maxims which inform the quest for social justice; many arise in the long history of the law and its change toward egalitarian applications. Among the more memorable and useful are: 1) Equity will not suffer a wrong without a remedy, 2) Equity follows the law unless there is good reason not to, 3) Equity looks at intent rather than form, 4) Prior equity takes precedent over other equities, 5) S/he who seeks equity must do equity, 6) S/he who seeks equity must come with clean hands, 7) equity does not assist inequity.

Erotic/Eroticism: Greek, eros = love. Today, any art, music or literature which facilitates mutually rewarding and enjoyable sexual relationships. Erotic art is fulfilling to the human project when it is used to affirm sensuality and sexual passion expressed in a mutually rewarding and enjoyable relationship.

See Pornography for contrasting used of art.

Entelechy: The ability of a form to realize itself in perfection [after Aristotle. Used to claim that there is a natural destiny built into each natural and social system toward which the system strives. Compare to the humanist belief that human beings, increasingly, have choices to make about how to organize family, religious, economic and political life; it is not at all pre-decided.

Entrepreneur: One who seizes opportunities as they come along. In capitalism, an entrepreneur is one who invests capital and hires workers to create a new product or service.

Entropy. Disorder, random arrangement, probability, noise, or chaos. There are a lot of ways to refer to entropy depending upon the phenomena studied but the term simply means that nothing has any relationship to anything else. In sociology, a mass society embodies the sense of unrelatedness specified by the term. Social relationships are fragmented, solidarity is low and each is alone or in small groups with his/her own problems of survival.

Epicurianism: A school of social philosophy founded in Athens in the year 306 BCE by Epicurus. The school stressed atomic theory of matter, direct empirical observation as the source of knowledge and trust in one's senses to judge facts. It laid the groundwork for modern philosophies of science and social policy. Souls and minds are seen as swiftly moving atoms; perception is possible by grasping the outline [eidola] of complex bodies. Epicurus taught that there must be a God since we are receiving 'outlines' of the divine all the time especially in dreams. The goal of life, he taught was happiness as much as knowledge; happiness is 'ataraxia' a state of pleasure enjoyed in tranquility. Prudence is a guide for happiness; 'we cannot live in pleasure without living wisely and nobly and righteously.' Epicureanism has come to mean a life of indulgence and often carries negative content by those who do not know the full dimensions of the philosophy.

Epiphenomena: Greek: epi = side, phainomenon = appearance. The idea that some features of a thing observed are accidental or trivial aspects and can safely be ignored. There is an epistemological trick here which allows one to set a category or establish a truth by conveniently ignoring that which does not fit. For example, in Boyle's Law, the actual behavior of billions of gas molecules is set aside for an average value of temperature, pressure and volume. This allows one to derive precise predictions while the actual behavior of such molecules is unpredictable.

In behaviorist psychology, the mind is said to be epiphenomena and thus drives, motives, needs, desires, anxieties, expectations, obligations, duties, norms, values, opinions and other mental factors and processes are set aside in explaining human behavior.

Epistemology: The study of how reliable knowledge is possible. Some say that the world is fully knowable; some say that only an intellect such as that of God can know everything; some say that while much can be known, still there are uncertainties and surprises which are beyond the reach of the most powerful theory or research technology. Chaos theory provides a grounding for the later view. See also Modern, Pre-modern and Postmodern views of the knowledge process.

The marxist position is that human knowledge is actively created by human beings engaged in producing culture. In such a process, humans reify epistemological categories (categories of thought) into ontological categories (categories of really existing things.) Self, social relations, social institutions, and other cultural facts are known (reliably), according to Marx, in the act of creating them as such by intending trusting, insightful humans. This view differs from the position that knowledge about nature and society is completely independent of human consciousness and interaction. This is one of the most interesting and challenging parts of the politics of science.

Epistemological Category: an idea or thought category which has no facticity or realness in and of itself. Chaos/complexity theory teaches us that there is a deep and often very loose connection between all systems at all levels of system dynamics. To mark boundaries between these connected systems is a political act; convenient but distorting of the reality they propose to clarify.

EPM: The Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844. They contain much of the humanist/democratic thrust of Marx' work. They were re-discovered and published only in 1932. By 1932, social and cultural factors worked to establish marxism as merely dogmatic economic and materialist doctrine. EPM created a revolution in marxism which infused it with a humanism and a concern for the individual as an active/potential creator of a decent society. This polemic continues to be the central point at dispute between the "structuralists" and the "praxis" wings of marxism (1977).

Eschatology: Greek, eschatos = last things, logos = study of. Jewish and early Christian theology held that God would send another Savior at the end of a 1000 years [see millennium]. At that time, there would be a last judgment, people would either be saved or condemned to one of the circles of hell. More optimistic views of these last things include a time of peace and social justice for all. The year 2000 will see a lot of speculation on last things and last days.

Estate system: Estate = standing; social honor. A system of stratification in which one group owns the land and other groups must give both labor and harvest to them. The Feudal system had four estates, see which.

Ethics: Greek, ethikos, = custom or usage. In philosophy, it is a study of that which is right and good to do. One can talk about a set of rules with which to guide behavior or about the larger human interests which guide the selection of these rules. Pre-modern philosophies tend to use the Word of God [as interpreted by a priesthood] as the source of ethical behavior. Christians tend to argue that one should do onto others what one would have them do unto her/him self. Modern utilitarians argue that ethical behavior begins with the idea that the greatest good for the greatest number of people sets the stage for determination of ethical behavior. Kant argued that the Moral Imperative was that one should do that which s/he would have as a universal law. Nihilist postmodern thought argues that all ethics serves special interests and cannot be universalized; affirmative postmodern thought tends to accept that are transcendent rules for all human behavior across all societies but these have to be flexible and often accommodating to contradictory lines of behavior. This is the major question for all good and decent people to ask and answer in their own lives.

Ethnic: 1. The word often refers to the social and cultural traits of immigrants (and possibly their descendants) to the U.S. Think "foreign culture." The word is often associated with lower-middle class and upper-lower class persons who are generally Catholic descendants of immigrants from southern and eastern Europe, plus many of Irish descent. For example, those Italian-Americans who are discernibly of Italian descent are an ethnic group. 2. That cultural complex which makes a group unique in history irrespective of biological heritage. Often confused with "race, which see."

Ethnicity: A person's discernable ethnic background. Not necessarily the same as nationality. There have been some 3 to 4000 discernible cultural/ethnic life worlds. Today the political question is how to honor such diversity without the hierarchy or exploitation so often seen. A second political question is whether ethnicity is biologically or culturally determined. Most marxists hold that one's ethnic background is a cultural rather than a biological fact.

Ethnocentrism: The belief that the values, practices, and general social set-up of one's own native culture are superior to all others. Such a view tends to justify exploitation by more militant societies.

Ethnomethodology: Literally, folk methods: the study of the folk methods used to construct social reality. Just as grammar deals with the rules with which language is used to create meaning, ethnomethodology attempts to clarify the rules of social interaction is used to create meaning by interacting people. After Garfinkel. This body of work stands in contrast to those who hold that the regularities found in human behavior arise from genes, instincts, physiology or purely psychological processes.

Ethos: The special character of a society. "To be French means one thing, to be German another and to be American means scarcely anything at all." As a society becomes a mass society, it loses the capacity to create culture and, thereby, loses any special character.

Euclid/euclidean geometry: Euclid (3rd c. BCE) was a Greek mathematician and the founder of euclidean geometry which specified three dimensions and clear boundaries as well as precise mathematical relationships between these aspects of space and the things within it. For three centuries, euclidean algebra was taught as the major pathway to understand the features of real objects or systems. It was thought that all non-euclidean geometries were merely imaginary games. Today, there is considerable evidence that nature does not fit euclidean geometry. Mandelbrot developed his Fractal Geometry of nature and developed a method to quantify fractal forms. String theory in physics suggests there may be as many as 26 dimensions in nature. Postmodern philosophers of science say that such dimensions are a feature of our ways of looking at nature and society.

Evil: Anglo-Saxon; yfel = the opposite and opponent of good. In many religions, evil is an equal force at war with good. In Buddhism, evil comes from desire; the solution to evil is to eliminate desire for wealth, status and power. Martin Luther King located evil in class and racist structures as do most people in liberation theology, which see. The postmodern view is that evil is a human category/label and is a product of social relations.

Evolution, (Organic): A theory and body of facts which support the idea that living organisms evolved from the simple to the complex via competition, a struggle for survival, survival of the fittest and chance changes in genetic patterns some of which made survival more likely. Charles Darwin is credited with the first systematic statement and extensive research to support the theory. There are many skips, jumps, twists and reversals in plant, animal and human evolution which lead some to suppose a God created each species and continues to create new species. A revision of Darwin called 'Punctuated Equilibrium' explains these jumps empirically rather than theologically. More generally, Chaos theory can be used to explain many of such sudden, inexplicable changes; this does not mean that all miracles and mysteries can be explained scientifically; there is always room for doubt, wonder and poetic genius.

Evolution, (Social): Generally, a view that society is changing for the better as a consequence of the struggle for survival in which the best (fittest) social forms survive. There are many well-known generalizations about the direction of evolution among which are; the transition from religious to scientific societies (Comte), the transition of social relations from status to contract (Sir Henry Maine), the transition of human bonds from mechanical to organic solidarity (Durkheim), from traditional to legal-rational authority (Weber), from sacred to secular social life (Becker), from community to society (Tonnies), from the simple to the complex (Spencer) and from trial and error in social evolution to scientific self-control of society (Ward). Most such theories celebrate what ever benefits their sponsors. There is a little evidence that things are getting better and certainly no assurance that things get better all by themselves. See social darwinism.

Exchange Rate: Every country in the world has its own kind of money; in the U.S., it's dollars; in Japan, yen. When companies from different countries trade with each other, they expect to be paid in their own country's currency. Weyerhauser Corporation doesn't particularly want to receive yen for the sale of its logs in Japan. Lumberjacks in Oregon have to be paid in dollars; yen wouldn't do them much good. Thus, international bankers are constantly exchanging one country's money for another's. The rate at which they are traded (1976: $1 = 300 yen) is called the exchange rate. When the number of yen that $1 will buy falls, the dollar is not worth as much as it once was. This means that imports from Japan are now more expensive while exports from the USA are cheaper. The U.S. used to be in a favored position in the exchange process but other capitalist countries forced a new method of exchange. This added to the fiscal crisis in the U.S. since profits fall even as production increases.

Exchange Value: When one sets the value of one good or service in terms of the value of another good or service, one has established the exchange value of both [Leontiev]. Many goods and services are given on the basis of need and/or out of pure delight in the giving rather than in terms of some calculated return one might get. See also use value and do see the postmodern view of how value is set.

Exclusionary rule: A legal term which considers the ways in which evidence against a person was collected. The 4th Amendment to the US Constitution forbids illegal seizures and searches and provides that people are to be secure in their homes from the state.

Existentialism: Founded by Kierkegaard (1813-55), existentialism sees people in a state of profound tension always haunted by a sense of sin and their betrayal of their God. The outlook is pessimistic: at best individuals can come to terms with their God and, failing that, lose God and face le Neant, nothingness. Modern existentialism (after Sartre) connects human anguish to a poorly designed social life world but retains an interest in the intense personal struggle of (wo)man; an element structuralists often neglect in a one-sided concentration on class and political struggle. Like-wise, structuralist charge existentialist with giving too much freedom and personal responsibility for her/his fate.

Exogamy: Greek; exo = out, outside = gamy = mate, mating. A social norm which requires one marry or mate outside one's clan, tribe or sib. See endogamy.

Expansion: Firms only produce in order to make money. In periods of prosperity, when it is easy for them to do just that, the economy expands--firms hire more workers because it's a profitable thing to do; more people in jobs means that more is produced; if all the increased product is sold, more income is generated. Expansion means that output, income, and sales are growing. During periods of extended expansion, the bargaining power of labor rises because jobs are not so scarce. But, as capital intensive production increases, fewer workers are needed and expansion slows down since demand drops. Then too, workers don't get paid 100% of the exchange value since they earn only the value of their labor (which can be very low given an army of surplus workers). The state often intervenes with deficit spending to renew the expansion cycle. As long as capitalism can expand with new products or new markets, it can survive but there are problems: expansion means using up natural resources faster, polluting air and water, fighting other capitalists for markets, squeezing out small business, bribing buyers, getting the state To purchase goods and to stimulate the economy. Taxes increase and the middle classes get angry. See also Depression, keynesian economics and kondratieff curves.

Exploitation: This term not only refers to the process by which the wealth is taken from the people who produce it, but refers to the more general process by which the capacity to produce culture is impaired by claims of private ownership of the means to produce both material wealth and culture. Farm workers who don't get enough food when working for Del Monte is an example of the first. The use of mass media to merchandize commodities instead of public discourse is an example of the latter, more general form of exploitation. (After L. Crocker)

Exploitation, super. Wages below the level for the reproduction of labor power. Each set of workers needs enough to reproduce itself; to get ready to work the next day, week and year. The amount of work needed to do this is called Necessary Labor [see which].

Expropriation: Socialist economic theory holds that most rich people get rich by 'expropriating' the surplus value of the labor of the working class. This means they take the wealth that is produced by one class and use it to support a very nice life style for another class; using force and ideologies to justify it. There are three ways to expropriate: interest, rent and dividends [see which]. Sometimes corporations fix prices or bribe politicians to increase the rate of expropriation [see corporate crime]. Marx argued that the Expropriators must be expropriated. Cubans expropriated the land and factories which were abandoned after the 1959 revolution; Sandinistas expropriated the farms and firms left when the bourgeoisie fled to Brazil and Miami after the 1979 revolution there. Sometimes liberal states expropriate wealth via taxation. Criminals expropriate through force or fraud. White collar criminals steal from the corporation using the knowledge they have to or by taking bribes...there are lots of ways to 'recycle' wealth. Best that the surplus value go directly to common needs and not have all this war and crime.

Extended family: This is a type of family organization, often found in traditional or folk societies, in which several generations and a broad collection of blood and marriage related kin live together in a single dwelling or close collection of dwellings. Compare with nuclear family. In recent times a "family" is often a collectivity of unrelated persons who take brother-sisterhood seriously. The types of family organization has exploded in the past 50 years as capitalism erodes the ability of people to live in extended families and as market considerations force people to migrant to look for jobs and/or safe haven. Commodification and materialism also destroy social relationships in the family since people don't want to share with children, brothers, parents or other kin. See Yuppies, Dinks, Swinks and Monks.

Externalization: The process by which humans attribute their essential properties to a God through worship or attribute their hopes and dreams to another person through charisma. At the same time, the evils (faults) in a social system are denied by projecting them on to a devil, witch or a scapegoat.

F

Fabianism: A socialist movement advocating a slow, peaceful and parliamentary road to socialism. It was founded in England in 1884 and gets its name from the Fabian Society [after a cautious Roman general, Quintus Fabius]. It's most famous members are George Bernard Shaw, Sidney and Beatrice Webb, G.D.H. Cole and H.G. Wells.

The society founded the London School of Economics and helped found the Labour Party. The Labour party looked beyond the immediate wage/work process interests of workers to help institute many of the social justice programs; free education, health care, housing allowances and pensions for all citizens.

Factors in Production: Land, labor and capital goods, sometimes entrepreneurship. In capitalist economics, each factor is entitled to its share; rent for land, wages/salaries for workers, interest and dividends for capital and royalties/fees for entrepreneurs.

Socialists regard labor as the sole creator of wealth; these categories are seen to be inventions to justify expropriation. Capital is thus wealth created by previous workers; land is a gift of nature which does not have Value until worked by labor.

Face rights: The right of a person to enter into the construction of a given social occasion. Sometimes a ticket gives face rights; sometimes a complicated rite of passage is required. In mass societies, face rights are obliterated as impersonal routines are instituted.

Facticity: The degree to which a given social event is real. Facticity of social phenomena (and perhaps physical events also) varies from 0 to 1 ; from sheer phantasy to hard, palpable thingness. The facticity of an event depends upon a number of factors chief among which is the adequacy of the reification process. Social occasions are assembled and dismantled routinely in everyday life and so the facticity of social reality varies.

Faith: Latin fidere = to trust. In premodern sensibility, faith involves a commitment to the god figure. This concept too, is often used to denote a particular set of beliefs, e.g., one is a member of a 'faith.' This second meaning is often used in modern sensibility to dismiss the importance of spiritual and religious sensibility which underlies all symbolic interaction and all group behavior irrespective of other beliefs.

Most hold that reason and faith are incompatible. Modern philosophy of knowledge sets faith aside in favor of reason and logic as a means for determining that which should be believed. Postmodern theologians and social psychologists see faith as one of the many social psychological capacities central to the process by which affirmative social relations and social facts are constituted. Faith, hope, trust, belief and suspension of doubt are social psychological capacities necessary to such social constructions.

Faith, social psychology of: One of the basic social psychological capacities developed in pre-modern knowledge processes and inculcated in early childhood. The capacity to believe, to trust, to cooperate and to have faith in things unseen is basic to all self-fulfilling prophecies by which social realities are constructed.

Fallacies [of thinking]: Latin: fallacy = trick, deceit, fraud. Those who place logic at the center of the truth process also rise logical fallacies to the center of the falsification process: if illogical, then wrong. In both pre-modern and postmodern knowledge processes, inconsistent and illogical truth claims can be valid in so far as 1) faith, hope, belief and trust are involved in the construction of social life (see the 'self-fulfilling prophecy,' and in so far as 2) complex dynamical regimes produced non-linear behavior of natural and social systems (see Chaos Theory). However, there remain many tricks of speech and thought used to deceive and to defraud people, it is worth learning about these:

1)The Fallacy of Amphiboly: the use of words in such a way that more than one interpretation is possible as in: I'll pay you soon. The word, soon, has many interpretations; it could mean later today, next week or next month.

2)The Fallacy of Accent: the practice of shifting the emphasis of a key word to render it trivial during an argument in order to win the argument. I am a good teacher [Dr. Smith is a poor teacher, I am better than he; therefore I am a good teacher]. The meaning of 'good' shifts from an absolute quality referring to all teachers to a particular quality referring to a conveniently low standard of teaching.

3) The Fallacy of Equivocation: selection of a different meaning of the same word in order to confuse an opponent: think of the word, bad and how many different meanings it offers in a argument.

4) The Fallacy of Composition: the practice of attributing the property of a part to the whole as in: She got a bad grade therefore she is a bad student. [Some people who get bad grades may well be poor student but one might be a very good student but might have been ill, might have had to work during the review session or might have been verbally abused by the teacher at some time during the test].

5) The Fallacy of Division: the practice of attributing the property of the whole to that of all its parts: Blue people average higher scores on I.Q. tests than Green people, I am Blue, therefore I am smarter and more deserving than all Green people.

6) The Fallacy of Slanting: the use of positive or negative words to win an argument as in: Men are assertive; women are pushy.

7) The Fallacy of Reification: The practice of treating something variable and complex as if it were one and only one kind of reality: all workers are lazy; all women are passive; all politicians are crooked; all lawyers are dishonest.

8) The Fallacy of Personification: The practice of treating an inanimate thing or animal as if it were a human being as in: Don't Mess with Mother Nature, or; I © My Jaguar.

9) Appeal to Force: The use of force or bribery to persuade as in: Vote the way I say and all my top employees will donate to your campaign fund.

10) Poisoning the Well: The use of a minor fault of flaw of a person to discredit the argument on a different issue as in: Detective Smith is a racist, therefore my client is innocent.

11) Appeal to Pity, Mercy, Compassion as in: He is a war hero, therefore we should elect him Senator.

12) Appeal from Authority (Ipse Dixit): Johnny Cash drinks Folger's coffee, therefore you should drink Folger's.

13) Appeal from Association (Post hoc, ergo Propter hoc): The use of a false cause to justify one's action as in: the children of teen-age mothers get welfare; therefore to prevent teen-age pregnancy, we should deny these children welfare.

14) Stacking the Deck: The practice of putting the answer in the question as in: When will you give up your evil ways? It pre-supposes that one's ways are indeed evil and by definition should be given over.

15) Binary Logic (thinking in 'black and white'): The practice of giving only two alternatives to a complex question which might call for an entirely new option as in: Either you are a communist or you are a loyal American.

16) Argument from Ignorance: The practice of using that which is not known to prove that something else must therefore be true as in: God must exist since no one can prove S/he doesn't exist.

17) Hasty (over) Generalization: The practice of making a conclusion based upon inadequate observation: No one has ever climbed this mountain, therefore no one will ever climb this mountain.

18) Argument from Analogy: The use of the attributes on one thing to explain the working of another thing as in: All life is jungle warfare; eat or be eaten, or; all life is a game; there are winners and losers, or; a factory is a complex machine; workers are merely exchangeable parts.

19) The Fallacy of the Undistributed Middle Term: One changes the first term in a logical argument to make it the middle term and then distributes it incorrectly as in; All dogs are mammals; all cats are mammals, therefore all dogs are cats. It should be all female animals with breast milk are mammals; dog and cat females have breast milk, therefore they are mammals.

20) The Fallacy of the Middle Term: The use of a hidden fourth term to generate a faulty final term as in: The end of all life is to achieve perfection; death is the end of all life, therefore death is the final perfection. Notice the ambiguity of the word, end, it was used in the first term to mean 'objective;' it was changed in the middle term to mean 'termination.' But you knew that.

21) The Fallacy of the Major Term: The practice of use of the first term in such a way which goes beyond its reach as in: All good students get good grades; no bad students get good grades, he got a bad grade therefore he is a bad student. See 4, above.

22) Circular Argument (vicious circle, begging the question; Catch 22, Petitio Principii): He must be guilty since he is in prison [being in prison is used as proof of guilt]. He must be deserving since he has been rewarded with great wealth [being rewarded is used as proof of merit of reward].

23) The Fallacy of the Minor Term: the practice of relating the last term in an argument to the first term in such a way which goes beyond the premise of the major term as in: All fraternity men drink too much; all fraternity men are in college, therefore all college men drink too much.

24) The Fallacy of Denying the Antecedent: The practice of denying the minor term in order to deny the major term as in: when it rains, all streets get wet; it has not rained, therefore the streets are not wet. You know that there are other reasons streets could be wet; the fact that they are wet does not invalidate the assumption in the first [major term].

25) The Fallacy of logical Thought: The practice of using logic to judge behavior of complex systems: all major terms may be valid and all due respect may be given to sound reasoning but still some minor terms might be contrary to the major term. A small change in tax rates may produce a big and unpredictable change in corporate crime; a big change in poverty may produce a small change in crime. In nonlinear dynamics, all rational connections are contingent upon dynamical regime and upon region in an outcome basin so logic and rational thinking loses their ability to serve the knowledge process. (From WL Reese)

False consciousness: The inability to identify and act on one's own human interests. Marx' assumption was that the class controlling the means of production controlled the production of ideas. The ruling class produce ideas which justify its own existence. Being powerless, the subjected class readily embraces this set of false ideas about what is and what must be. Thus, they embrace as true and necessary their own subjugation.

Family: A social form in which several important human services/needs are met; intimacy, discipline, affection, and the reproduction of Labor Power. In a family system of reproducing labor power, one generation provides a new generation with all the food, shelter, clothing, health care, socialization and recreation required to turn them into decent human beings. There are other ways to reproduce labor. Those costs could be charged off to the firms which benefit from the production of labor power but that would severely limit profits. There have been some 3000 to 4000 different family forms in human history; the patriarchal nuclear family is but one.

Family (disorganization): There are several factors in capitalism which tend to disorganize families: (1) the capitalist philosophy of individualism and self-interest, (2) the conversion of social relationships into cash commodity, (3) the need for cheap labor, (4) the use of the family as an instrument to reproduce the labor force, (5) the use of the spouse as an unpaid worker, (6) the use of advertizing to turn children into demanding consumers, (7) the division of labor into paid male work and unpaid women's work, (8) the destruction of the family as a productive unit, (9) the conversion of the family as a productive unit to a unit of consumption, and (10) the inability of parents to socialize children as the state controls the educational process and converts it from moral to technical training. Then too, advanced (semi-) monopoly capitalism moves workers and capital around the world to take advantage of short-term profit opportunity. This tends to destroy the family system as men migrate in search of work and as whole communities are deserted by capitalists when they move jobs to cheap labor states and countries.

Family, extended: A family system in which three or more generations have intensive social rights and obligations. Often two or more generations work and live together. Extended families are disappearing; see Family, disorganization, above.

Family Violence: In radical family theory, family violence has several major sources; patriarchy, bureaucracy and/or capitalism; all of which stratify power. In Patriarchy, men are given the moral right to beat women and children into compliance. In capitalism and or/bureaucratic socialism, those men who have been socialized to patriarchy have no social realm in which to exercise their 'masculinity' other than in the home and/or fights and brawls in bars and sports events. When things go badly at work, males often resort to pretheoretical violence within the family.

Farming, modern: Modern farming is a high-tech, capital intensive system of food production. Free farmers [peasants] are replaced by hired labor...often migrants...while monoculture replaces the biological diverse ecology of small farming. New technologies are replacing these giant farms; hydroponics [plants grown in a greenhouse in a liquid bath]; genetic engineering [genes from other plants and animals put inside the seeds and eggs of another] and synthetic foods [foods made directly out of chemicals in a factory]. All this eliminates the family farm, the small towns which serve them and a way of life in which people grow their own food. See also Enclosure.

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Figure 9. Cobb on Fascism

Fascism: Latin: fascis = bundle. A bundle of rods [signifying unity of the people] was a symbol of authority of Roman magistrates. Now used to refer to a form of government in which state power is used to reproduce elite privilege in class, race, religious or ethnic inequality. It is marked by Nationalism, Authoritarianism, Totalitarianism and Militarism. The fascism state has two main activities: suppression of dissent at home usually by force and propaganda and 2) exploitation of minorities or other countries to ensure loyalty from the masses at home. Usually based in the small business strata and supported by the underclass in its desperation, fascism gathers into its hands the entire state apparatus, the army, the universities, schools, the press and networks, and all workers organizations. Although workers, small business, and the surplus population expect to benefit from state power and thus support fascism, the usual case is that big business thrives by increasing its share of surplus value and inflation runs wild as the state tries to maintain legitimacy either by coercion or by appeals to patriotism and nationalism. Deficit spending has been used extensively in the late 20th century to preserve legitimacy.

Germany and Italy were the first modern states to try fascism. The best modern example is in Brazil (1977). "Out of human dust, fascism unites and arms the scattered masses. It gives the petty bourgeois the illusion of an independent force. It begins to imagine it will really command the state." Trotsky. See also Corporativism.

Fascism, techno-: The use of computers and other electronic devises to monitor the behavior of workers, customers, voters, students and petty criminals. These range from software which count the numbers/time/topics of employees who use the computer to electronic 'dogs' which sniff out all sorts of forbidden chemicals. Soon every automobile will come with a chip with which police can monitor speed, location and fix their location via communications satellites. A growth industry.

Flagrante delicto: Latin: flagrant = obvious, delicto = wrong. Caught in the commission of wrongful behavior. Some persons can be arrested only when caught committing a crime; other than that, a warrant from a judge is necessary; the arresting office must then show probable cause. In sexist societies, men are/were permitted to kill wives and lovers if caught, flagrante delicto.

Fichte, Johann (1762-1814): German theologian/ethicist who followed Kant but made making practical reason superior to theoretical reason. Fichte, not Hegel, first posited the triadic conflict process called the dialectic and named the stages in this theory of change; thesis, antithesis, synthesis. Schilling later applied the dialectic to nature and to history. Fichte's ethical views held that human beings have duties to each other which lead to a world culture in which everyone has rights and freedoms within that ethics. Fichte was dismissed from his position at Jena for his views on freedom and revelation. He ended his career as rector at University of Berlin. (After WL Reese)

Fifth Estate [fifth column]: A social layer which did not fit into the three estates of feudalism; it is composed of journalists, critics and intellectuals who do not celebrate existing social arrangements. In fascism Spain, the term became 'fifth column' and was used as a term of derogation for those who sent reports to other countries about the brutalities of the Franco regime. See also fourth estate, feudalism.

Football: A game in which the object is to move a ball into the space protected by a male solidarity. Football began as a contest between hostile villagers in which the head of a fallen enemy was kicked back and forth between the villages or opposing armies. The Romans brought the game to England some 2000 years ago. By the 16th c., the English had adapted it as a forum in which competing classes and regions inflicted physical damage on one another in controlled situations. A proper match placed goal posts a mile or more apart. Shrove Tuesday was a day in which most villages and parishes had one great game before Lent; countrymen against city dwellers; merchants against gentlemen, guilds against guilds and workers against workers in nearby towns. King Charles forbade the game since it injured too many prospective soldiers.

In the modern game in the USA, it is a star system in which the elegance of physical grace and skill is used as an envelop into which to insert advertisements; as such it helps solve the 'realization problem' of advanced monopoly capitalism.

A freudian analysis would focus upon the center as the symbolic mother; the ball as a phallic symbol and the opposing goal line as the hymen of a forbidden female.

Feminists would note that it reproduces machismo and teaches young men to compete and to dominate other young men.

Fordism: A form of labor process with an extreme sub-division of labor, close control of the work process by supervisors and the pace of work determined by the speed of the Assembly Line. Named after the Ford automobile factory system, itself modelled after the meat packing plants in Chicago. Compare to Z theory, democratic self-management.

Foucault, Michel (1926-1984): French psychologist who stopped working within the existing systems of social control and began to criticize them. He made the point that knowledge is an important form of power which can be used for or against people. Foucault went on to criticize the psychiatry in his book on Madness and Civilization, Medicine in The Birth of the Clinic, and the criminal justice system in his book, Discipline and Punish. These all concerned the use of language/power against those confined/treated by such institutions. He studied the 'games of truth' in his last work and argued that truth-telling was a political virtue.

Fourier, Charles (1772-1837): A socialist who held that human beings had 'appetites' which under capitalism became anti-social but which under socialism would become sources of happiness and assets to society. In his ideal society, the basic unit of social organization was the Phalanstery [see which] in which there would be prosperity, equality and co-operation. A number of utopian communities were set up in Europe and in the USA based on these ideas; they had limited success; it is difficult to be a socialist inside the larger capitalist economy. (After WL Reese)

Fourth Estate: A term applied to the proletariat which did not fit into the three estates of feudalism. Marx thought it to be the carrier of the general interest and the source of progressive revolution. Sometimes applied to journalists but see Fifth Estate.

Fractal/fractal geometry: A structure which occupies only a part of the space/time available to it [after Mandelbrot]. In Euclidean geometry and newtonian physics, structures occupy 1, 2, 3 or 4 dimensions...and exhibit rational, i.e., linear behavior. In Chaos theory, complex natural and social systems have a different structure and behavior. Since nonlinear behavior is compatible to dialectics, the socialist theorist should know of this new concept. Since the same set of variables can produce different sets of fractals [outcomes], most of the assumptions of modern science are reduced in epistemological value; that is, prediction, replication, falsification, and tight correlations are much less helpful in the knowledge process than had been thought.

Feedback: In the new science of Chaos, feedback loops replace the notion of causality. There are three kinds of feedback loops most important to a postmodern philosophy of science; positive feedback which tends to expand the boundaries of a system until it is so open than one can no longer discern boundary [think of the screech on a sound system in which two microphones feed sound back and forth to each other]. The second kind of feedback is negative feedback which tend to eliminate the system [think of pain as a feedback response for every time one makes a racist comment; sooner or later, one stops]. Then there is nonlinear feedback; it is important since structure can be maintained in a changing environment [in social terms, mercy, compassion, love and forgiveness are nonlinear feedback loops which contrast to rational application of sanctions for violation of rules].

Federal Bureau of Investigation [F.B.I.]. The F.B.I. is a federal police force. It deals with crimes of high visibility and those crimes which tend to target the rich and powerful; bank robberies, kidnapping as well as rebellion and revolution. In the 1960's, the F.B.I. ran five 'Cointel' [counter-intelligence] programs; anti-war, anti-socialist, anti-feminist, anti-civil rights and anti-student power movements were targeted, their leaders arrested and illegally harassed. M.L. King was a particular target. Under its first and long-time Director, J. Edgar Hoover, the F.B.I. ran many illegal operations against socialists, feminists, workers and civil rights workers; burglary, wire-tapping, anonymous letters to family and newspapers as well as spotting leaders for 'Red Squads' and 'Swat Teams' of local police who then used violence to 'de-stabilize' progressive politics. Of late, under new directors. it is less racist, sexist and class biassed. Recently it has hired 500 more agents to work on corporate and white collar crime.

Feedback/feedback loops. Complex social and natural systems change through three kinds of feedback loops; 1) positive loops in which the behavior of a system increases in complexity until it reaches full chaos [think of the feedback between two microphones which turn into a high pitched shriek]; 2) a negative feedback loop in which the behavior of a system tends to slow down until it stops [think of an animal species slowly poisoned by DDT]; and 3) nonlinear feedback in which feedback alternates between positive and negative without any clear pattern. It is surprising but, systems with nonlinear feedback can be very stable.

Feminism: A movement and an awareness of the cultural sources of gender inequality. The movement have three major components: separatist feminism; bourgeois feminism; and socialism feminism. These contrast to traditional femininity/gendering patterns in which men use four kinds of power to dominate women: social power, moral power, economic power and, often, physical force. Feminism is opposed to biological interpretations of gender inequality; to most theological justifications as well as structural-functional views which hold that gender division of labor is essential to the functioning of all societies. See each form separately for a more detailed explanation. See also Feminist theory/socialist feminism.

Feminism, Bourgeois: Bourgeois feminists advocate equal opportunity and equal rights for all women. They demand the right to compete fairly for all jobs and professions including the top positions in public and private life. This stands in contrast with traditional gendering patterns in which women are taught to defer to men in all public and most private spheres. It stands in contrast to socialist feminism which argues for the elimination of class and bureaucracy rather than for equal opportunity to compete in what socialist call 'structures of domination.' It also contrasts to separatist feminist who don't want to compete with men but to exclude them from their social life.

Feminism, Separatist: Separatist women want to build separate family systems, separate business, separate sports and recreational as well as separate religious organizations from men. Separatist feminists argue from the data that men are irreconcilably violent, brutal, demanding and dominating. Some separatist feminist reproduce role inequality in personal and public relationships; others advocate a much more democratic set of relationships. Separatist feminists constitute about 2-3 percent of the population [1995].

Feminism, Socialist: Socialist feminist urge the elimination of all forms of inequality; class, race and gender. Embodied best, perhaps by the Angela Davis, a professor of philosophy and an Afro-America, socialist feminists argue that Bourgeois feminists and their call for equal opportunity to compete only changes the gender of the oppressor, not the oppression. They point out that the gender division of labor converts women into unpaid workers who chief role is to reproduce each new generation of workers and to repair the physical and psychological damage done by capitalist relations to men by conditions at work and while dis-employed.

Feminist Theology. See theology, feminist...sorry for your trouble. Saves space this way.

Feminist Methodology: Feminist methodology has several major differences from modern science methodology. Feminist theory emphasizes Standpoint epistemology; a view that each major group in society has its own standpoint from which to understand and act upon social life. This contrasts to the presumption of Objectivity in which modernists assume that the researcher can stand apart from society and history; can make judgments and form theory without any cultural or political bias. Feminist methodology also values story-telling and poetry as sources of insight and understanding while modern science tends to use standardized questions and statistical analysis. Finally, feminist methodology is openly partisan on behalf of egalitarian gender relationships and a much wider status-role for women...and for men too.

Feminist Theory: Feminist social theory argues that traditional gender roles are culturally determined and unnecessarily limiting to women. Instead of seeing the sources of gender inequality in biology or physiology, feminists hold that power inequalities reproduce gender inequalities. Feminists hold that patriarchy is a special, historical family form; that there have been dozens of other family forms in human history and that new family forms are emerging all the time as social, technical and economic conditions change. Most feminists accept gender divisions but do not want these extended to public office, high status jobs, middle class professions or sports. See Bourgeois and socialist feminism.

Femininity, Traditional: Traditional women view their role in life to center around the family; mother, home-maker, supportive wife and care-giver to the handicapped and elderly in the extended family. About 85% of the USA population, these women accept both biblical and 'scientific' statements that these are the natural and indispensable roles special to women. See other feminist thought: bourgeois, separatist and socialist-feminist.

Feral: Means wild...it refers to a child who has grown up with little or no social interaction (an isolate), and in particular, one who was allegedly raised by animals. This last condition is seldom claimed to have occurred, and less often believed. Most, if not all, ferals are simply abandoned and/or grossly neglected children. Such experience tends to confirm the importance of culture as the mediator of behavior. The marxian position is that people create themselves as human beings when they create culture ... and deprived of the right or power to create culture, people become "feral" at any age.

Fetishism: This concept refers to any pathological interest in an object. People who work with a pre-modern religious sensibility invest sacred content into trees, mountains, rivers and stars. In psychology, the word is used to refer to persons who invest erotic content into physical objects rather than in human beings. In marxian thought fetishism refers to the worship of material objects [cars, houses, gold, and other 'collectibles' rather than the social life world in which these have human meaning. Apart from the creation of human culture and mutual aid within a solidarity, the production and possession of material culture is a bizarre pathology nowise different from the sexual worship of shoes or breasts apart from human love and mutual sensuality.

Feudalism: A social system composed of estates; each estate had its own customs, laws and occupations based on rules of heritage. Feudal France had three estates; clergy, nobility and crafts-people, merchants, serfs and servants. Feudal Russia had four; nobility and gentry, clergy, towns-people and serfs/peasants. Feudalism is a stratified system by which the surplus value of labor of workers, servants, serfs and peasants is funneled to an elite called 'the nobility' who in turn supported the clergy and bought from the townspeople. Feudalism grew out of predatory warfare as some victors stayed behind to rule and to extract wealth to send to the Royal Court elsewhere. The third estate [merchants and crafts-persons] is the origin of the capitalist class; this strata led a series of revolutions in the 17th century which replaced feudalism with capitalism as the dominant system for funneling wealth to a few.

Fiscal crises: The capitalist state buys a thin political legitimacy by financing the costs of capitalism out of the state treasury. Care of the surplus population, education and insurance of workers, supply of transport facilities, energy, police, and research all enable an unprofitable system of production to show (and pay) a "profit" when such costs are absorbed by the state. At the same time, the state declines to tax the rich and the corporation to pay for these things. The crises comes when the state generates additional funds by printing money (thus producing inflation), raising taxes on the middle classes (thus immiserating and infuriating those who receive wages and salaries which can be taxed), or by deficit spending (thus adding to inflation and to debt service.) See also Kondratieff cycles.

Folk Society: A small intimate society where the society itself provides "community". The members regard each other as having status by virtue of the fact of being born into the group. Solidarity is based upon Dramas of the Holy in which each is sanctified as part of the group. Most production and distribution is shared although there are often gender, age and ethnic differences in social honor and wealth. Status honor continues as long as one stays within the norms and embodies the values of the society; this contrasts to capitalism where status depends upon exchange for (and only for) profit. Modernist refer to such societies as 'primitive,' 'backward,' undeveloped' or 'savage' societies. They may be low tech societies however solidarity and sharing are not lacking.

Folkway: A customary way of behaving, nonobservance of which is punished by only minor inconvenience; a weak norm. Folkways are hostile to the notion that behavior is genetically based since they are learned and vary widely between cultures.

Football, (ideology of): Football helps reproduce capitalist ideology by the character of the sport. Among the capitalist ideas and relationships found in commodity football are: (1) division of mental and physical labor; a special coaching cadre plans while the players execute, (2) objectification of football players; they are merely human capital to be used and discarded, bought and sold for profit, (3) the extraction of surplus value from fans through the market system and from players through the wage system, (4) militarism in training and in game as well as pregame shows, (5) emphasis in the game on possession, (6) and on destructive competition, (7) as well as upon accumulation (of points) without purpose, (8) as well as on the demand for respect for authority, (9) there is also an labor elite of "stars," and (10) passive consumption for "fans." Football is as close to political fascism as any institution except prisons in America. As in the larger society, racism and sexism divides the productive workers (players) and interferes with collective action.

Football is used by universities to maintain the dramaturgical image of greatness even as more socially valuable educational programs are missing or reduced. In the fiscal crises of capitalism, a university like Oklahoma, Nebraska, or Notre Dame can generate fanatic support even with third-rate academic programs. (After Koch).

Force: Latin: fortis = strong. This term is exemplar of the poetics and politics of definition; it began as a word to refer to human effort, was adopted as metaphor into physics and from physics made it's way into sociology. It is so vague a concept that it can be defined only by reference to some set of actions which push or pull another object or person one way or another.

Force, Structural: A system of social practices which fixes as permanent the unequal chance to satisfy needs. These include: racism, sexism, class position, ethnocentricism, bureaucracy as well as nationalism. One cannot criticize nor change such structures without facing a variety of formal and informal sanctions. Apart from a belief in the legitimacy of such norms due to childhood socialization, structural force is based upon fear of and submission to sanctions as well as the individual's recognition of his/her own powerlessness as well as by lack of realistic alternatives. (After Habermas). The various forms of authority (charismatic, tradition, legal-rational) validate "structural" force.

Foundationalism: A pejorative term applied to the effort to ground some set of principles upon pre-given facts. Postmodernists are generally opposed to foundationalism; affirmative postmodernists accept foundations as long as those who set them accept responsibility for so doing; thus it is possible to 'ground' morality but only as a set of behaviors special to a given social life world constructed by humans for particular, historical purposes.

Francis of Assisi [St. Francis] (1182-1226): Son of a prosperous merchant, Francis disinherited himself from his father; took vows of chastity, poverty and obedience to the teachings of Christ to go among the poor and give them both spiritual and material help. He founded the Franciscan Order of Monks which split up when some monks found they could not follow the rules. The Friars minor observe the rules strictly; as do the Capuchin monks. Friars Conventional hold property in common and use products for the poor.

In his love of nature and animals, Francis is often shown holding a lamb or a bird.

Frankfurt School: The Institute for Social Research founded in 1923 and located in Frankfurt, Germany; it brought back concern with ideology, human intentionality and reflexivity into marxist theory and into sociology. It was marxist, freudian, weberian and neo-hegelian all at once. In World War I, the working class of each country joined the capitalist class to fight other capitalists and workers in other countries. The founders of the Frankfurt Schule thought that ideology was part of the answer and began work on the social sources of fascism and authoritarian personality. They found it in the patriarchal family; in the racism, sexism and fascism of art, cinema, magazines and other mass culture. Then too, orthodox social science tended to adopt the model of objective 'laws' which seemed to be beyond human reach. Radical sociology had been depoliticized by adopting a positivist style after American, French, and British Philosophy of Science. Led by Horkheimer, Adorno, Marcuse, Fromm, Benjamin and others, the marxian interest in alienated consciousness and the creative role of humans in constructing social forms is reasserted. Critical theorists, especially Marcuse, made a criticism of the obstacles to human praxis in both capitalist and "socialist" societies.

Also known as the School of Critical Theory or critical sociology, it recognizes that structural marxism leaves many questions unanswered. Critical theory seeks to remedy this by incorporating theory from freudianism, phenomenology, and existentialism and lately, from feminist and from postmodern scholarship.

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Figure 10. Cobb on Free Enterprize (from p. 98.).

Freedom: A political construct by which individuals under capitalism can escape the obligations of reciprocity in social relationships. In fact, no human being qua human is independent of others in so far as social reality is concerned. For a person to be a social being, (s)he must present and be understood by others as such. It is not freedom which is liberating but rather full rights to participate (and material resources to do so) in the creation of culture which is necessary to the human condition. See Necessity, Repression, necessary, Repression, surplus.

Free enterprise: An economic system wherein capitalists are free to hire or fire, invest or disinvest, produce or not produce. Social relationships are displaced by economic goals; production is based on profit rather than the needs of a society. The term is thus misleading in that it refers to a situation in which the capitalist is free to do anything (s)he wishes to increase profit. The "free world" is one in which capitalists are free to make profits; to move capital and jobs around the world. Modern business tries to reduce both worker and consumer freedom demand by a variety of techniques including advertising, public relations, price fixing, black-listing, bribery of elected officials and such.

Free Love: This is a concept with which to refer to the transfer of human sexuality from the bonds of marriage and of male solidarities to become the private concern of mutually consenting adults. Love, sex and sensuality are not be free as in the liberal sense of market freedom but free from the rules of patriarchy and monogamy. It is supported by most socialists beginning especially with Saint-Simon and Fourier [whom see]. Those advocating free love also condemn discrimination against 'illegitimate' children, advocate abortion and acceptance of consensual co-habitation as a marriage form. Conservatives condemn it as group love or as converting women from the property of one male to common property of all males.

Free will: The idea that people act as will-full individuals and need not accept slavery, patriarchy, or any social form unless they wanted to. Free will often signals a religious argument: if God knows and controls everything, how can mankind said to be free? In a political context, it signals an argument against state control of the market. Whatever the case, people are socialized to a socio-cultural world, are put into social roles and are often are coerced to pattern their behavior in conformity to the norms and values; still they have more freedom than sometimes they think. In a "totalitarian" society free will is minimal. Dialectic theory suggests there is some changing relationship between private intentions and public policies. There always must be some constraints on human behavior (for example, we must use the rules of language if we are to construct social reality) but such constraints can be enabling rather than defeating of the human project. See Praxis for a more balanced view of the dialectics of freedom and necessity; see also Structures of Domination.

French Revolution (1889-99): A violent overthrow of feudalism which started out as a bourgeois revolution based upon calls for reason [rather than faith] and a free market [rather than a system in which merchants paid the nobility for the right to produce and trade]. It developed into a democratic call for equality [Liberty, equality, fraternity was the slogan] but was subverted by Girondists and Jacobins; later Napoleon took state power and channeled french enthusiasm into expansion of empire.

French Student Movement of 1968: A series of anti-establishment protests by french students based at the Sorbonne in Paris. Joined by workers, the French government conceded to their demands and the movement collapsed. It inspired student power movements in the USA and Japan. In the USA, the C.I.A. set up [illegally] a national student organization, funded it and thus controlled student activism for several years.

Froebel, Friedrich (1782-1852): A German educator, Froebel joined with Comenius and Pestalozzi to help ground a modern [really postmodern] philosophy of education. He established the kindergarten in 1837 and taught that students must want to learn and that it was a natural development of the human spirit rather than a chore and a coercive process. (After WL Reese).

From each according to her/his ability; to each according to his/her needs: A phrase attributed to Saint-Simon which Marx took, popularized and set as a basis ethics for socialist society. It means that people should do as much as talent and skill permits; that people should get all that is necessary for a good and decent life. Thus the ratio-nalization of work and wages is set aside in favor of reason and justice.

Function/functionalism: Latin; fungi = to perform. In math, the notation, 'y = f(x)' means that the value of 'y' depends upon the value of 'x.' In so adopting such notation, one adopts the idea of a dependent and independent variable...and directional causality, so beware.

In sociology, the term is used to justify existing structures in the claim that society would not function (survive) without those structures. No great problem until one understands that functional theory supports poverty, inequality, hierarchy, gender differentiation and class divisions. Purists also argue that crime, vice, and pollution are necessary to make the system work. With a bit of imagination, one can see that it is a simple matter to build a different society in which such structures were not necessary to make the system work. Fangs are functional on a lion or a snake but not at all necessary on a lamb or a lizard.

Full Employment: A public policy which tries to find work for any and all who want it. There is a full employment law on the books put there in the Truman Administration. Now-a-days, economists say that 5% unemployment is best; that full employment leads to wage inflation [supply is low; demand is high]. See Disemployment.

Freud, Sigmund: (1856-1939). An Austria, Freud studied psychology under Charcot, a frenchman appalled at the treatment of mentally ill persons. Freud developed the ideas of stages in psycho-sexual development, the unconscious, repression, and the geometry of the mind. The mind has, according to Freud, three parts: the Id [primitive desires], the Ego [personal wants, wishes and urges], and the Superego [the norms and values of society]. The ego mediates between deep desires and external demands on the individual in sort of a calculus of how much one can get away with without being caught and punished [one can see utilitarian theory in this view]. The Father is the source of the Superego and is hated thus for repressing primitive desire. Since the Mother is uncritical and nourishing of primitive desire, she is loved. There are three stages every normal person must pass through: the oral stage in which sucking and biting give pleasure; the anal stage in which urinating and defecating give pleasure [as least to mother], and the genital stage in which desire is transferred to an adult of the opposite sex. When there is a conflict between deep desire and social demands, desire is repressed and embodied in disguised habits [this is called neurosis]. The basic source of trouble is found in how Mom handles movement through the three stages: she can help the child to move through them without trauma or she can reward too much or punish her/him too much in the oral or anal stages. Unable to get through these infantile stages the child becomes fixated at one or the other and thus is condemned to reenact, in compulsive fashion such childish desires [smoking is an oral fixation; a cigarette is a phallic symbol].

The role of Freudian psychology is to make these hidden and forbidden desires visible to the patient so they can be handled in a mature way by the patient. Freudian psychology is thus emancipatory since it frees people from childhood fears and anxieties. However, in 1937, a book entitled Depth Psychology. Advertizing people jumped on it to create ads which take advantage of neurotic compulsions by tying a product to one or more. Thus in a beer ad, beer become 'Dickie Pee-Pee' and gives a false maturity to the drinker. Virginia Slims cigarettes are false resolutions of penis envy on the part of girls. We won't discuss station wagons and their psycho-sexual meaning for incest with mother. Critical theory and the Frankfurt school tried to retrieve the emancipatory aspect of freudian theory. See Marcuse.

Freudian revisionism: The use of the principles of psychology to manage consciousness on behalf of an elite rather than to liberate humans from their inability to communicate with themselves and others honestly and openly. Undistorted communication is a central concern of Freud as was the ability to love and to affirm the "instincts of life." However, his 'vision' was subverted by the use of sociology and psychology to sell commodities on television in a particularly despicable form of freudian revisionism. Sexual insecurities thus are exploited to sell autos or beer rather than to resolved in order to invest sexuality in mature forms of love. See Freud and/or Marcuse.

Friendship: A social form in which affection, mutual support, and association for its own sake is present. Much the same sharing is found in friendships as in families, collectives and authentic neighborhoods. Friendship is a parallel economic form in which goods and services are freely given; as such it helps moderate the excesses of capitalism. See Economic forms; parallel.

Functionalism [structural f.]: A social philosophy cum sociology which holds that each social unit found in a society performs a function necessary to the whole. This includes organized crime, prostitution, police, church and all other units which are a permanent part of a society. It originates with the anthropologists, B. Malinowski and A.R. Radcliffe-Brown; T. Parsons picked upon on it. It is promoted as a way to legitimize the fact that people accept class stratification, patriarchy, poverty, racism and other such social structures. See Conflict Theory, Feminist Theory and Marxist theory for a different reading of social organization.

Functional interchange: A process by which different institutions in a society produce and exchange in such a way as to complete and complement each other to make the whole system work. In the human body, the lungs, heart, stomach and liver do different things and make possible a whole organism. Similarly, the market, the banks, the factories, the state, the church, the police/army, the schools and the family are the major institutions in modern society. Such a complex division of labor is said to be more rational than one in which one institution, say the family performs all these functions. The trouble arises when people claim that class, race, gender and authority hierarchies are 'functionally necessary.' Long teeth, heavy muscles and sharp claws may be functional for a tiger but not for a bird. Functionalism is often used to justify whatever kinds of social forms exist since they are the product of social evolution. See Social Darwinism for a more complete justification of such institutions. See also Durkheim generally credited with the idea.

Functionary: A worker in a bureaucracy who is given a position and narrow range of rules to be applied to all cases which come to hand. They do what they are told to do and are held accountable for competent service. Functionaries are separated from their coworkers and from the larger society by rules which make them accountable to the "top" echelon in the bureau.

G

Galileo, Gallilei (1564-1642): An Italian astronomer and natural philosopher and one of the central architects of modern science. In his Two Chief World Systems, he set forth the idea that the sun was the center of the universe, rather than the earth. Forced to recant and forbidden to teach or talk about his views, Galileo is said to have muttered in the stillness of his room, 'Still it turns' in reference to the rotation of the earth around the sun. Galileo decentered the earth and by extension all theology which holds that the earth and creatures upon it were a special act of creation.

Gambling: Now, playing a game for money when winning depends more on luck than skill. In religious usage, gambling was/is a pathway to the holy; the thought is that gods or spirits affect the outcome of the fall of dice or cards and thus communication favor or disfavor upon the one who throws the dice or holds the cards. Many gambling laws forbid the activity in order to prevent profanation of the divine. See Corruption, theory of. Gambling used to be a very profitable business for organized crime. Now the state runs most legal gambling operates and profits greatly since the payoff is 20% or more. In the later case, it is a form of voluntary but regressive taxation since poor people are much more likely to spend gamble and spend a greater portion of income than do wealthy persons.

Game stage: One of two stages in social development of children set forth by G.H. Mead. In the play stage, children take the role of significant others but are very inventive. In the game stage, understanding and compliance with rules becomes important. Both kinds of activity are prelude to adult social performance.

Gandhi, Mohandas K. (1869-1949). An indian lawyer trained in London who became central to the liberation of India from the British Empire. Gandhi, called Mahatma [great soul], advocated passive resistance to British tyranny and economic exploitation. Carrying on from Thoreau and Tolstoy, Gandhi organized and politicized great numbers of Hindus. After India became autonomous, Gandhi called for acceptance of the untouchables and respect for muslims in India. More militant hindus objected; Gandhi was assassinated in 1949 but continues to be a symbol of peace, forgiveness, equality and social justice. Martin Luther King adopted many of Gandhi's views and tactics in his effort to organize, politicize and resist racism in the USA. (After WL Reese)

Gemeinschaft: A german word translated as "community" and whose central concept is attributed to Tonnies. See Community. It contrasts to mass society wherein social relations are weak or missing. Compare to Gesellschaft.

Gender: Gender refers to the psycho-social division of labor in a society; not to the biological and physiological differences between men and women. Gendering varies dramatically across cultures; biology and physiology vary but little. One uses the words, male/female to refer to biology; one use the words, men/women to refer to the product of social gendering work. Most societies socialize to two and only two genders but some societies provide for three or more. Physiology differences permits the specification of a great many genders. Gendering patterns begin early to develop some skills, beliefs and attitudes in young males and females. By age three, most young people begin to embody a gender division of labor in household, play, school and friendships. In such societies, boys and girls form separate groups before puberty and begin to embody traditional patriarchal role relationships soon after puberty. In more egalitarian societies, childhood is much less differentiated by gender while adult relationships are much less stratified.

Gene: A term introduced in 1910 by W. Johannsen which refers to a hypothetical packet of information thought to govern the inheritance of a single trait in a plant or animal. All such traits are determined in part by genetic material and in part by nutrients and other environmental conditions. Most human traits are set by a great deal of separated genetic material working in sequence as well as environmental conditions working in parallel sequence. Thus the mechanical connection between genes and, say, I.Q. cannot be supported.

Geneology: The practice of looking at history in order to re-claim forms of knowledge and being which have been omitted, excluded, disqualified or local. Geneology dismisses any history which is presented as an accurate and complete account of 'that which happened,' or 'ideas about what constitutes a science.' After Foucault.

Generalized other: Our overall impression of what we believe others will think about and how they will respond to our behavior. On the basis of that understanding, we modify our behavior--sometimes in compliance sometimes in deception depending upon the quality of the relationship. The ability of people to generalize over a wide variety of particular incidents is most remarkable human capacities and the basis of much "self" government. See Looking Glass process.

Genome, the human: The nature and variable structure of the human genome is most important to any theory of human behavior based upon either genes, physiology or psychology. There are 2.9 x 109 base pairs in the human genome. They come in 23 chromosomes. An individual inherits two sets of each. Each individual also inherits the clusterings of base pairs which are uncountable since 300 billion base pairs can produce many quadrillions of clusters. There is basic research ongoing which, one day, might identify significant clusters of base pairs and link them to specific social behaviors. Until that time, all is speculation, ideology and very often coercion to define 'racial' traits or 'innate' ability. See Race, Racism, Ramsey theory.

Gestalt: German; form, shape, figure. A school in psychology founded by Wertheimer and others which held that sense perceptions were not simple impressions which mirrored nature but rather psychological constructs interpreted by human beings within a

a whole/context. Thus an event or an aspect of nature and/or society is not registered unless it is significant to the beholder in terms of some cultural theme or practice. The concept of gender is a case in point; most of us 'see' only two gender; in terms of the physiology and chemistry of actually existing human beings, any number of gender could be perceived/named. Such a view of the knowledge process is one of the many beginnings of postmodern sensibility.

Glossary: The word, gloss, means tongue and by extension, speech or language. One gives a 'gloss of meaning' to unusual words or unusual usages of words. In this case, a glossary is a book which defines/explains terms from several points of view not usually included in standard dictionaries; marxist, socialist, feminist, critical theory has its own meanings for words not honored in capitalist, racist, or sexist societies.

Gnosticism: A religious philosophy marked by its binary categories of good/evil; lightness/darkness;spiritualism/materialism which still pre-structures the knowledge process.

Gobineau, Arthur (1816-1882): Gobineau was a French nobleman, diplomat and philosopher best known for his views on Aryan supremacy. Aryans are said to possess higher capacities to appreciate beauty in art, music and politics. 'Racial' mixtures dilute aryan superiority and is to be avoided. This view became part of the social philosophy of Nazism and lead to the death of millions of people who did not conform to the ideal type of the Aryan. Eugenics devolved out of the same views. (After WL Reese)

Golden Mean: A term from Aristotle and his theory of value [axiology]. Aristotle held that happiness is the goal of human beings and is best achieved by embodying the Golden Mean. The Mean lays between having/doing too much and not enough. That seems vague but Aristotle set a specific mathematical solution to it that informs some ideas even today.

Golden Rule: A guide to ethical behavior from Christ: Do unto others as you would have done unto yourself. It existed in reverse form for ages before Christ: What you do not want done to yourself, do not do to others [Hillel; Confucius]. There is a problem in that, if one wants others to compete, be cruel or engage in war it justifies such behavior even if they don't want it. See also the Kantian Imperative, the Code of Hammurabi and Utilitarianism. See also the marxist concept of Praxis.

Government, forms of: There are several forms of government every student should know: anarchy [no rulers], aristocracy [rule of the best], monarchy [rule of a king], oligarchy [rule of the few], democracy [rule of all adult persons via public discourse], totalitarianism [close control of all aspects of public policy by a dictator or a junta], fascism [close control of economics, politics and the media by state officials], neo-fascism [the use of high technology to control thought and behavior more so than the use of police, prisons, and military]. Socialism comes in several forms; bureaucratic socialism [similar to fascism], democratic socialism [same as democracy but extends beyond politics to economics], communism [worker control of production; distribution on the basis of need and/or merit]. Patriarchy refers to a form of social life organized around a large family, band or clan in which the senior male rules. Matriarchy refers to a set of sisters and their children in which the senior female rules. Seniority is based upon several factors; age, experience, wisdom, strength [for men], number of children and personal style. See each entry separately.

G.N.P. (Gross National-Product): The total dollar value of all the goods and services produced for sale by U.S. firms. GNP is the total output of U.S. firms both at home and abroad. However, it is not a measure of the useful and necessary things people do; the unpaid work that women do in the household is not included in the calculation, while many forms of useless production are. It is a measure of quantity, not quality of life in a state. Since capitalism depends on expansion, growth in GNP is closely watched.

Gesellschaft. A german word meaning business but used to refer to a society in which there is complex division of labor, anonymity, contractual relationships as well as hierarchical bureaucratic relationships. The very opposite of community. The concept is attributed to Tonnies. In society (or civilization), human beings are left to their own devices in survival; in community, goods and services are produced to meet collective needs.

Gilligan, Carol: An American social scientist who noted that the voices of women were excluded by L. Kohlberg in his work on the stages of moral development. Gilligan tells us that, if these voices had been included, moral development would have put people and supportive social relations as prior to the use of abstract principles as the bases for assigning moral standing to those who take such tests.

God: A supernatural being(s) with various powers to intervene in the social and natural world. For most believers today, the god concept has several components: 1) creator of all, 2) a plan for social life, 3) a monitoring/judging role, 4) a capacity to revise or suspend the laws of nature or society. Marx held the god concept was the projection of social power unto fictional beings; Durkheim held that the god concept was 'society assembled' in some drama of the holy, he called this social fact, the super-organic from Spencer. Postmodern theology suggests that the god concept and the sanctification/profanation processes are distinctly human processes which change as social circumstances change. See theism, atheism, Liberation Theology.

God (The Death of): A 19th century claim by Mainländer, Nietzsche and Sartre that belief in God is disappearing; for some, modern science killed off such beliefs since natural explanations account for most of that attributed to Divine Agency. In anthropological terms, the concept of God or gods embraces all that is valued in a given society-especially the common heritage and solidarity which mark an authentic community. In such a community there is a unity above and beyond the narrow self-interests of the individuals who compose the society. When this unity is destroyed by capitalism or by other forms of elitism, over-much emphasis on material possessions, it is said that God is dead. As the technical-rational displaces the social-magical processes of creating culture, much of the mystery and awe at what subjectively acting humans can create is lost and the world becomes more profane and less sacred. One need not counterpoise the supernatural and the natural in this analysis of the death of God since, in it, God is also a human product, a remarkable product but a human one.

Grace: Latin: gratus = beloved, agreeable. The term entered religion and theology from the three graces: fate, providence and fortune. Grace now refers to a special spiritual quality in which a person turns from evil to pro-social behavior. Grace became a center piece in Christian theology; on the one side, it calls forth a shining commitment to the teachings of the Christian God; belief in the Grace of God can convert the most violent and villainous thug or empower the weakest and most vulnerable person. On the other it is used to ground a view that all judgments have already been made by that God and people are either blessed or condemned. Luther took the later view as did Calvin. Grace, in the later sense, is used as an apology and a powerful legitimating idea for great wealth and power among Christians who accept Luther and Calvin's interpretations.

Gramsci, Antonio: (1891-1937). Founder of the Italian Communist Party and author of Prison Notebooks in which he added much to the role of intellectuals in helping or obstructing human emancipation. His concept of 'organic' intellectuals emphasized the connection between social location and political understanding of intellectuals.

Great Man Theory [of history: Thomas Carlyle [1795-1881], argued that all of history is driven by the genius [or madness] of a Hero. For Carlyle, the hope of humankind lay in the hero who offers a solution in which lesser people can find a place. Marxian/socialist theory argues that history is driven by conflict between groups; lord and peasant, master and slave, owner and worker. One has several choices about how history works...see Historiography. See Heroic.

Green Movement, the: An environmental movement in Europe [now in the USA] which embodies several progressive elements including protection of the environment, social justice and democratic participation.

Gregory I, Pope (540-604): Pope Gregory sent the first missionaries to Britain; he is said to have specified the seven deadly sins and encouraged the plainsong chants which bear his name. Gregory is important to the history and sociology of religion in the USA in that his efforts to spread Christianity greatly affected both social norms, law and justice which still shape everyday life in the USA and the English speaking world.

Grotius, Hugo (1583-1645): Dutch author and a founder of International Law. He set forth the concept of the oceans as free to all nations in his work on the law of Booty. He began work on the rules of war and peace. His work on a theory of law still resonates in all sociology of law arguments; Grotius held that human beings were savages with the capacity to reason. To reasoning beings, the need for law is self-evident. This capacity leads to a social contract set forth in writing or in customs. The contract differs in all societies but is binding upon all in that society. Natural law takes precedence over civil law, custom and even divine law.

Group: A set of status-roles (not persons per se) which require intersubjective understanding, cooperation, intimacy and a sense of 'we-ness' in order to achieve a purpose within a social framework. A family or a ball team is a group but a row of workers on an assembly line or a set of slaves or prisoners working at a task is not a group. In colleges, sororities and fraternities are organized as groups while classes are often impersonal and interactively barren.

Group dynamics: Group dynamics are complex and ever-changing but there are some patterns one can see; there are engagement activities [Goffman calls these 'clearance moves'], there is socio-emotional activity to deal with conflicts and there is task-oriented behavior. Central to all group activity is symbolic interaction in which intersubjective understanding emerges. Groups often have status hierarchy which also pre-shape behavior of members. Then there are 'dis-engagement' activities in which people recognize that the claims each has on the other are to be set aside until the next time the 'group' meets. Bales has shown that there are patterns of interaction in which some few persons come to dominate symbolic interaction...at least in the groups he studied.

Group of Seven: There are seven nations which meet regularly to co-ordinate economic and political policy in the global economy. These are: the USA, Great Britain, France, Italy, Germany, Canada and Japan. They use a variety of tools to maintain a false peace in which food and profits flow from the poorest, hungriest countries in the world to the richest. In the global stratification system, these seven are joined by some 20 or so societies with advanced industrial capacity which extract wealth and food from some 120 or so 'under-developed' countries. Then there are a hand-full of socialist countries outside of this stratification system; China, Cuba, Yemen, Vietnam and others.

Groupthink: A put-down term used to ridicule the ability of people to affect ways of thinking, feeling and acting of each other within a group setting. George Orwell [Eric Blair] coined the term to refer to the effects of coercion and authority on independent thought but it is used to scoff at the opinions of ordinary people which differ from that of Right-wing and Left-wing intellectuals.

Guilt: A judgment on the part of others that one has done something legally prohibited or something morally reprehensible. The word carries much negative emotional content which prepares both the accused and the judge for severe punitive action.

Gurus, Management: Influential authors; successful managers or business school academics, whose ideas receive wide acceptance among managers. Some have got things spectacularly wrong: such as praising businessmen whose money-saving, profit-making empires have subsequently collapsed. For a lively and irreverent discussion, see Andrzej Huczynski: Management gurus: What makes them and how to become one, London, Routledge. Huczynski sees a "succession of management fads". A similar view of "waves" of management ideas is expounded by another British author, Mick Marchington, in New Developments in Employee Involvement, published by the British Department of Employment in association with the Manchester School of Management.

H

Hammurabi, Code of: A set of 282 laws dating some 4000 years ago which is similar to the Mosaic Code [see Moses]. The Code was said to be given to King Hammurabi by the god Shamash, for the governing of the people. Many elements of the Code still inform Roman and English law. It is reduced in most criminology books to a statement; An eye for an eye; a tooth for a tooth. The Code is used, incorrectly to justify cruelty to people who have offended one or has been found guilty of a crime. See Golden Rule, Kantian Imperative, Utilitarianism but do think yourself of how to ground ethical conduct in a complex world.

Hand, invisible: An idea, attributed to Adam Smith, that behind the seeming anarchy of capitalist production and distribution there was an 'invisible hand' that brought order and long-term progress to a free market economy. The law of supply and demand was the means by which this 'hand' worked. If owners set the price of goods too high, competitors were free to provide the goods at a lower price. If they set wages too low, workers were free to go to other, higher paying jobs. This 'law' ignores several facts of economic life; if it takes millions to enter a market, then the freedom to compete is seriously reduced. If there is already a surplus labor force, then the freedom to take another job is seriously limited. If six firms produce most beer, breakfast cereals or automobiles, they are free to fix prices and market share; they can have a price war and drive out any small firm which tries to lower prices or increase wages. Price fixing, conspiracies to divide up markets, black-listing and bribery of elected and appointed state officers are thus fingers on an 'invisible' hand but are not mentioned in most books.

Health Maintenance Organizations: HMO's collect a flat fee per year from you. In return they agree to provide whatever medical care you may require free or at nominal charge. By contrast, under the familiar fee-for-service system, the physician and the hospital submit bills for what they did. You or your insurance company must then pay the bills. The selling point of HMO's is their ability to do away with apparently unnecessary treatment. The HMO makes more money the fewer procedures its doctors prescribe--the opposite of the fee-for-service system. Studies consistently show that persons with ordinary health insurance submit to twice as much surgery as comparable persons enrolled in HMO-type plans. There are two major problems with HMOs, (1) since profit is concerned, HMO's may scrimp on service; (2) the system does not deliver health and medical services to those in the surplus population. (URPE).

Hedonism: Greek; hedon = delight, pleasure. Epicureans held pleasure to be central to happiness but it carried spiritual values of prudence and restraint. The term now carries negative emotional content and refers to those who define happiness in terms of wealth and luxurious living. In capitalism, hedonism is grounded by J. Bentham and utilitarianism which see.

Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich (1770-1831): A german philosopher whose work and its criticism advanced self-understanding of human beings. From Hegel, Marx took much; the notion of alienation, the role of labor in creating human consciousness, the idea of a continuing 'negation of the negation' [see which] and other less tangible contributions such as Hegel's great confidence in sweeping analysis and personal insight. To Hegel, Marx gave more. He took an abstract Hegel and brought him into the world of loving, struggling, bone-weary workers growing daily more miserable in capitalist societies and created the theoretical basis for democratic self-government, community and praxis with his critique of Hegel. Hegel is used by some to justify fascism since he held that the state embodied 'objective spirit' [i.e., that what small rationality was possible in human affairs was to be found in the state].

Hegel charted some 272 natural categories which are the grounding of modern phenomenology. See Phenomenology, postmodern for a different view of analytic categories used in the sciences.

Heisenberg, Werner (1901-): Heisenberg is a German physicist who is credited with the uncertainty principle which says that one can know both position and momentum of a particle but not both at the same time. The view is now extended to call into question the entire knowledge process; the thought is that one changes a field by studying it. With the advent of Chaos theory, there is empirical grounding for the wider view but, at the same time, one can know with fair precision just what mixture of order and disorder exist in any given dynamical regime.

Hegelian dialectic: A view offered by Hegel that all "A" implies "Not A;" that "Not-A" tends to negate "A"; and that a new "A" emerges out of the conflict between "A" and "Not-A". Hegel was concerned to show that one approached absolute knowledge by such a process. Marx' critique was that knowledge was a product of creative human beings, not an absolute to be approached through a dialectic. Marx did, however, accept the principle of the dialectic to account for class conflict and social change.

Hegelian Left: A student movement in Germany which extracted the liberal elements of Hegel's work and used it as a base for social philosophy. In particular, they took Hegel's idea of historical trend to self-knowledge to locate progressive politics in education and the knowledge process. Marx was a member but abandoned H. Left it since it lacked class analysis and gave too much credit to ideas and not enough to action; he located the general interest in workers and democracy more so than the state and science.

Hegemony, Ideological: The use of law, religion, art, science, cinema or literature to celebrate and legitimate one way of doing things to the discredit of alternative ways. It is often used in preference to direct force. Marx put it succinctly, 'In every epoch, the ruling ideas have been the ideas of the ruling class.' Law, religion, art and literature has been and is still being used to justify racism, sexism, class privilege, religious bigotry and ethno-centricism.

Heidegger, Martin (1884-1976): Heidegger is a founder of existentialism and important to postmodern theology and morality. He begins with the concept of dasein, a german word meaning 'being there.' Human beings, once hurled, geworfen, into the world [werfen = to throw], the question is how one is to comport oneself. The answer is, for Heidegger, bases upon Sorge, the capacity to care. This capacity leads to authenticity and a genuine understanding of one's own self and the world in which one lives. The quest for authenticity is driven by angst [anxiety]. Angst, in turn, arise from das nichts, the nothingness that besets human beings without authenticity and concern for others. Das nichts is a positive category because it gives us a freedom and a motive for thought, action and poetry. If there were something upon which all could agree, then freedom would be just that much foreclosed. All this together leads each and all together toward ek-sistenz, the things and patterns of being that are. Thought and poetry complement each other; the thinker explains being and essence; the poet identifies the holy and the profane.

Of late, Heidegger has come into criticism for his personal life and his political views but his philosophy remains to push the quest for a good and decent life.

Heresy/heretic: Greek: hairesis = a taking for oneself. In religion, science and philosophy, a heretic is one who doubts that which is given as revealed truth [of God].

Hermeneutics: Greek: hermeneutikos = interpretation. In religion, hermeneutics is the study of the meaning of holy writings. In literary study, it is the search for the 'true' meaning of a text but see postmodern view on the text. In Critical theory, it is the study of how intersubjective understanding is possible and how it emerges through symbolic interaction. Habermas held that a good and decent society requires three forms of knowledge; positive knowledge, hermeneutical and emancipatory knowledge, which see.

Hierarch: Greek, hier = sacred, arch = ruler; a high priest or pope. We get the sociological term, hierarchy for the word to refer to layers in a formal organization. The assumption is that the top layers are better than the bottom as in the practice of calling Deans and Chairs, higher administration when it is the students and teachers which are the heart and soul of a college.

Hermeneutics: The science of inter-subjective understanding. A study of how humans mutually organize each other's consciousness. The study of interpersonal (shared) understandings. An inquiry into how human beings can create social life worlds which are sensible to them and shared by them. Ordinarily we think that we think all by ourselves. Yet we recognize that others understand us and we understand them. Such intersubjective understanding probably means that we work together to create meaning. Symbolic interactional theory, ethnomethodology, phenomenology, and dramaturgical analysis all focus in on how social reality is constructed by intending, insightful, cooperative humans. (Greek: hermeneuein; to interpret).

Heroic: Modern and pre-modern historians focus upon one person and/or one event with which to account for qualitative changes in a historical narration. Postmodernists tend to reject such practice as celebratory, excluding and or self-limiting. Such events as the prophet, the discovery or the incidence, when raised to singular causal efficacy is rejected by postmodern sensibility; Jesus, Columbus, Hitler and other such figures are reduced to one of many possible representatives of a time or point of view.

Highlander: A radical, critical school in Tennessee in which workers, women, Afro-Americans and others meet to learn how to organize and to change the structures of domination which reduce the human spirit and harm the social process. Rosa Parks, the woman who sparked the Montgomery bus boycott in 1954, had just returned from such a gathering. Many union, civil rights and anti-war people have attended and still attend Highlander's programs.

Hinduism: The complex polytheistic native religious system of India. In brief, Hinduism holds that there are cycles and stages of life, each of which is to be mastered in turn. If one fails in a stage, one may be reborn at a previous stage. If one succeeds, one is reborn into a higher, more demanding stage. For each male human being [Hinduism is a male centered religion], there are four stages; householder/worker, a period of retreat, a life of a hermit which leads to renunciation and the highest human stage. Hinduism supports a caste system into which each person is born and must work all the days of his/her life; the highest is the Brahmana, a priestly caste; the Kshatriya, kings and warriors; the Vaisya, person who are merchants and professionals; and the Sudra, farmers and workers. Then too, there is an undercaste of Untouchables who are to do the most degrading work. As in Christianity, there are three pathways to grace, salvation and higher forms of being: 1) the way of Karma = good work; the way of Jnana, meditation and knowledge; and the way of bhakti, devotion and faith. Buddhism, which see, arose out of Hinduism as a way to accept the spiritual qualities but reject the caste system.

Historical Materialism: The use of the mode of production to explain all existing relationships and all changes in these relationships. According to this view, all analysis of state policy, ideology (including religion, political ideas philosophy, art, and science), the military, and all other social institutions must be firmly based in the state of, and contradictions in, the mode of production of the society in which they occur. Qualitative changes in these social institutions must similarly be explained by changes in the mode of production, or contradictions between various elements of the superstructure and the mode of production. (After Al Syzmanski) With this concept, Marx wanted to reject abstract idealism as a force which shaped human affairs. Any system of explanation must, according to Marx, be concerned with concretely existing factors and be sensitive to the special history of each process which produces human activity. One cannot explain human events in terms of God, chance, destiny, history, fate, or probability. One must explain a society, a car, an individual, an act by the process and means which produces it and only that process. Historical materialism does not reject the role of ideas in the productive process as often assumed. For Marx, human labor involved conscious shaping of nature after an idea. It is this ability to purpose and to act on that purpose which distinguishes "The worse architect from the best of bees."

Historicism: A pejorative term used to reject the belief that there is pattern in history and that the future is determined by the past. The term was introduced by Mannheim and adopted by Troelsch to place more responsibility on humans and to open up the future to alternative, well considered futures. See Pre-history.

Historicity: The particular combination of concretely existing social factors, the interactive effect of which produces a unique event. Since humans create meaning through intention, the causality of an event thus can have a variable pattern. That varying pattern is what we call "history." This contrasts to Ahistoricism in which one seeks unchanging, universal laws with which to explain events. See also stage theory.

Historiography: One's approach to history and to its study is said to be a historiography. There are several theories about how to understand the sweep and patterns in history. There is marxist thought and dialectical materialism as a theory of history; there is the Great Man theory; there is a theological view accepted by most people on earth in which a God or gods exist; have a plan for social life and make changes now and again for good reason. There is technological determinism which says that great inventions create turning points in history; fire, the wheel, the alphabet, irrigated farming, metal working, the steam engine, automobiles, radio, television and now, computers are given great emphasis in explaining the twists and turns in history.

The marxist perspective is that "man makes history and that history has no independent causal power ... thus "historical necessity" and "History decides" are mystifications nowise different from attributing such reified and deified powers to gods, nature, the "absolute" or such. "History does nothing, it fights no battles, owns no riches, and does not use men for its purposes; it is nothing but the activity of men pursuing his ends." Real people do set conditions in concert with other real people which do limit the freedom of choice of other people. If the price of bread or milk is set by an agreement by suppliers and distributors or if only one version of history is permitted, then there are "historical" conditions which "determine" behavior but this does not mean that history determines human affairs as some (including some marxists) would have it. The better view is that there are degrees of freedom for human agency within differing historical contexts.

History: Greek: historia = information, inquiry. That which deals with the unique, the private, the nonrecurring. To be contrasted with modernistic theory, that which deals with the external, the universal, the unchanging patterns of nature and society. In Chaos theory, these distinctions are lost since real systems display a mix of order and disorder; of pattern and variation, of change and renewal.

Hobbes, Thomas (1588-1697)/Hobbesian problem of order, the: Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) held that there was a war of each against all; that self-interest was a universal law of social psychology and that in the natural state, life was solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short, a phrase which directs attention to the question of the source of social organization. Some say instinct (for gregariousness), some say power, some say consensus on values (produced by socialization), some say contract (among freely negotiating parties), some say it is God's will. Hobbes argued for a 'civil order;' one in which the best solution to the problem of order is a social contract which puts all power in a Monarch [or a Leviathan]. The marxist position is that social order in feudal and capitalist societies or in elitist societies generally, is produced by coercion and control. On the other hand, social order should emerge from social justice. Chaos theory suggests that order is not the central goal of a wise government but rather some mix of certainty and uncertainty best fits suits natural and social dynamics.

Homosexuality: Love of same sex persons; used to refer to males who engage in sexual behavior with other males. Homosexuality is forbidden in many societies and institutionalized in others. In recent times, homosexuality has been converted from a criminal act requiring punishment to a pathological act requiring treatment. In very recent times, it has been de-criminalized and de-medicalized. There is a Gay Movement which advocates and demands recognition of homosexuality and homosexual partners. Many companies and states now specify that living partners are eligible for benefits when before benefits were restricted to married couples of opposite sex. See also lesbian(ism).

Hope: One of several social psychological capacities developed in pre-modern knowledge processes which ground the construction of all distinctly social realities. Faith, belief, trust and cooperation being other such capacities. Modern science holds that, since these cannot be measured, they have no ontological existence and thus are not the subject matter of investigation in modernist social psychology.

Hostile contrast: A phrase used to refer to the conflict between classes and elites/masses when one group enforces an exploitative set of rules on another.

Humanism: An ideology in which human dignity and the collective good is emphasized. Humanism usually uses science and logic to address problems rather than supernatural or mystical approaches. Freedom of the intellect, of criticism and of association are highly valued as well. As such humanism often opposes institutions which are coercive and/or exploitative. Sometimes humanists are criticized by marxists as lacking a sociology, i.e., as not understanding the roots of oppression in the class struggle.

Humanism, Abstract: The view that men and women are the measure of all things; that people should be the master of their own destiny and engineer their own social life world through free and open political discussion. It was to this abstract humanism (of Feuerbach) which Marx objected. In Marx, human nature is a product of social conditions: it is historically determined by concretely existing social relationships rather than existing in a pure form distorted by historical conditions.

Humanism, Socialist: The starting point of socialist/marxist humanism is a militant struggle against "those conditions in which mankind is abased, enslaved, abandoned or rendered contemptible." This militancy goes beyond mere rhetoric to action for two reasons: (1) in struggle one transforms reality and thus satisfies the marxian requirement that humanism must be real and (2) satisfies the marxian requirement that " man [sic] makes history," i.e., that the only hope of emancipation comes from the people themselves. This point emphasizes the value of autonomy in marxian humanism. Socialist humanism also is integral in the sense that it seeks the human fulfillment of the whole of mankind rather than the isolated individual or a single class although Marx does invest hope in class struggle as the engine of progressive humanism. The goal of any marxist humanism worthy of the name is to affirm the dignity and to support the promise of human beings. (After Schaff). See Postmodern theology.

Human Nature: In Marx, the mode of producing culture determines the being of people. "Production (in capitalism) does not merely produce man as a commodity, it produces him as a mentally and physically dehumanized being." The larger point is that human beings, unlike animals, have the rare gift and ability to create themselves in their full humanity if they act upon this radical anthropology. Marx's vision of human nature was that it became human in the process of creating culture (in the labor process). Here culture implies an ongoing process of intending humans joined in creating a rational mode of production. Just as language implies joined activity, the creation of all culture is collective activity. Art, science, medicine, knowledge, self and society are collective productions which comprise the nature of those who produce them.

Human Rights: A set of rights which include: freedom of worship, of assembly, of association, of speech, travel and migration as well as democratic self government. The United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights includes these elements but also stresses cultural diversity and respect for national borders. Many critics argue that there are Human Obligations which parallel these rights. Other claim the idea of human rights go against human nature [see Hobbes] and/or that in any case, they are hopelessly utopian without great change in social institutions.

Hume, David (1711-1776): Hume was a very important architect of modernist philosophy of knowledge which locates the knowledge process in human senses and human thought--in contrast to those which argue that the source of ideas and knowledge is through prayer, meditation, inspiration or divine revelation. Hume's ideas on causality are distinctly postmodern; he holds that we learn to connect two events in time and space in causal terms. His view on self identity too, is postmodern; one's sense of self depends upon memory but memory falters, changes, fails and creates new self images. This is in contrast to the pre-modern view that self is part of God and lives on before and after life in this world. It is different from modern notions of self which assumes that the social self is developed in infancy; unfolds naturally; can be known by various tests and shapes one's behavior coherently and independently of others or of the larger social context.

Huss, John (1369-1415): Huss was an architect of that Protestant Ethic which Max Weber would use to ground the Spirit of Capitalism. Huss taught that there was a 'predestinate;' those who were pre-chosen by God to replace the angels in heaven who fled with Lucifer. This view did not sit well with those in the Catholic church selling salvation to kings and merchants. Huss was burned at stake for discrediting the sale of these indulgences.

Husserl, Edmund (1859-1938): Husserl is noted for his work on modernist phenomenology. He developed a method for identifying the basic concepts with which people worked...it is called eidetic reduction. The process of discovering the eidos [essence] begin with a bracketing of all its non-essential elements. Space, form, weight, and time for example have an essence apart from what occupies the space; what takes the form; what gives the weight or what happens in the time. The process of finding essence is called the epoché. Noesis is the process of intending to do, say, feel, make something; noema is the object intended; phenomena is the thing, act or thought from the point of view of an outside party trying to understand internal psychological workings. Postmodern phenomenology takes the view that space, form, time and such exist only in the particular case; there is no pre-existing ontology which answers to the concept. Without something having a form, there is no form. The concept of the cube is all abstract idealism with no concrete reality since, in nature, there is no perfect cube. (After WL Reese)

Hutterites: A religious community living in the Dakotas and Canadian Prairie Provinces. Inspired by their religion, Hutterites continue an agrarian way of life. They share land and work; they limit the size of the community to a 1000; they save money and buy land to help set up new communities. There is little crime, no poverty, no divorce, no drug abuse and little gender violence. They have one of the highest birth rates and lowest infant mortality rates any where in the USA. They reject most 'modern' ideas.

Hyper-reality: A concept coined by the French postmodernist, Jean Baudrillard. Baudrillard argues that objects (commodities) have more control over us then we do of them. The term used to make the claim that whatever reality exists has been replaced by image, illusion or 'simulacrum.' This occurs in late monopoly capitalism [Jameson] and is made possible by mass electronic media [Baudrillard] harnessed to the profit needs of commodity capitalism or the managerial needs of the capitalist state [Marcuse]. In a consumer-driven society, we buy things for the signs and statements they make rather than for their utility. The hyper-real is a copy of a copy of a copy ad infinitum such that no original can be found. Thus LB Johnson tries to present himself as a fictionalized FD Roosevelt or a Ronald Reagan tries to act like a president rather than an actor portraying a president.

Hyper-space: This term refers to the difficulty of locating firm and indisputable boundaries on both social groups, nations, peoples, races, genders, universities or even physical objects [see fractal]. The allied concept of cyber-space eliminates the concept of geographical space altogether.

Hypothesis: Greek; Hypo = below; tithenai = to put; place. That which lays underneath and grounds natural and social dynamics. For Plato, a hypothesis was the third rung in his ladder of truth. In modern science, it has come to refer to a tentative statement which predicts a fairly stable relationship between two or more variables. The choice and investigation of an hypothesis always derives from human interests in prediction and control of the physical world and not a detached quest for scientific truth. There are two kinds of hypotheses for which one searches: 1) H1 = a positive statement of that which one expects to find in a data set; 2) H0; a negative statement about that which one expects to find in a data set. See Null Hypothesis.

Hypotheses non fingo. Hypotheses do not make themselves. A quote from Newton to the effect that natural laws exist; we only discover them. This assumption grounds all modern science and informs the method of successive approximation. The postmodern view is that nature and society are so complex and human imagination so creative that any number of 'valid' hypotheses are possible...all with varying truth value of varying duration.

I

"I" (The): According to Mead, there are three levels of human behavior: (1) the level of impulse, (2) the level of socio-cultural conditioning (learned behavior) and (3) the level of reflexive intelligence. For Mead, the "me" embodies the second level and represents the social self in which one internalizes and acts on the expectations of others. The "I" in Mead's model of the self embodies the capacity for critical thought and of creative activity. Contemporary sociology, in its conservative orientation, emphasizes the "Me" and tends to equate the "I" with selfish impulse and thus reduces Mead to an apologist for the Status quo. (After Valerie Malhotra-Bentz)

Idea/Idealism: Greek: eidos = vision, thought, form, shape. For Plato, an idea came from the essential structure/nature/form of a thing. One can see Husserlian phenomenology in the this usage. Leibniz used the term idealism to contrast with materialism. Idealism now refers to an emphasis upon the role of ideas, gods, reason or human will in the history of the world. Premodern thought usually took a view that there is a split between a) the ideal world and b) the rough approximation of it in "real" life, In everyday usage, idealism is a sustained effort to practice one's principles in problematic situations. The marxian critique of idealism is that it is too often a romantic gesture more than an informed analysis; if one wants substantive progress toward social justice, one must change concretely existing social relationships: racism, sexism, class privilege and the many forms of ethnic and religious domination.

Identity, social: The socially determined answer to the question, "Who am i?" One's social identity and self system is comprized of all of the roles (and associated social identities) which a person occupies and enacts in the course of a given stage in life. In mass societies, roles are so brief, superficial, and manipulative that an identity does not emerge as a stable, discernible pattern. Without social identity, behavior is often unstable, antisocial, and/or self indulgent. In Logic, identity denotes the absolute equality of one thing and another.

Identification: The process by which a young person internalizes a social identity into one's self system. One "identifies" when one models one's behavior after another person. Identification always involves at least two parties; one who presents and identity and one who honors that presentation. In folk societies, identification is a complex rite and preempts the self system for life. In mass society, it may involve only a ticket or a badge. In the latter case, identity is like a paper plate to be used and discarded.

Ideology: A generalized blueprint by which a given social life world is created. That which given meaning and purpose to life. Art, music, poetry, prose, science, myths, jokes, and song. Religion is an especially important part of an ideology. Sometimes ideology becomes reified into dogma and comes to be more than a general guide to the construction of social reality but rather a superorganic thing beyond the control of humans.

As a term, it is used to put down any social philosophy with which one disagrees. The term began as 'the study of ideas' by Destutt de Tracy (1775-1836) in opposition to the ideological hegemony of Napoleon. All social life requires a set of fairly comprehensive [but not necessarily compatible] ideas as the beginning point for the 'self-fulfilling prophecy' in the construction of a social life world. The only interesting questions are: which set of ideas, how are they to be transmitted to young people and how much criticism is to be allowed? Marx held 1) ideology varies with the kind of political economy at hand, 2) it varies with position with class, race, gender and ethnicity, 3) it is necessary for solidarity purposes, and 4) it can be progressive or oppressive depending on which ideas are valued most highly.

Ideological Hegemony: The attempt on the part of all ruling classes to universalize their own beliefs, values, morality, and opinions as part of the "natural order of things." Control of schools, law, churches, the media, as well as the political process aids in consolidating hegemony. (Gramsci)

Idol: Greek: eidos = form, shape. In his foundational book about the new body of knowledge [de Novum Organum], Sir Francis Bacon took the view that science would chase four idols from the knowledge process; idols of the marketplace [foria]; idols of the cave [specus]; idols of the theatre [theatri] and idols of the tribe [tribus]. Postmodern critique holds that all research findings and theories are both a poetics and a politics. The interesting question then becomes, which 'idols' are we to use or create in scientific investigation.

Idiographic: Occurring uniquely from an unpredictable set of preconditions. Human behavior lends itself to idiographic processes while physical objects behave nomothetically. (see nomothetic). Can you imagine a situation in which (a, b, c, d, e,) sometimes produces (f); sometimes produces (z), and sometimes does nothing? Think about five children at play or five scientists in a meeting. See Nomothetic.

Imagination, sociological: A term coined by C.W. Mills to refer to the insights and empowerments produced by the study of social relations and social groups. With such an imagination, one can begin to understand how the larger structures in society shape and pre-shape our own thoughts, feelings, and behavior; racism, class position, ethnicity and religious affiliations all exist prior to the birth of any given person. Socialization and social role expectations often lead us to do things which, alone, we might not do. The social sources of both helpful and harmful behavior yield to the sociological imagination.

Immiseration: A process by which poverty and misery are produced by the ordinary operation of a social system. Marx held that the working class would be immiserated by the ordinary workings of capitalist since it tended to disemploy workers and to concentrate wealth and political power in the hands of a few; then too, capitalism tends to cycles of boom and bust which periodically immiserates both workers and owners. Many say that capitalism tends to eliminate the lower and upper classes and points to the great improvement of workers in Europe and N. America [see Embourgeoisement thesis. However, when one looks at the whole world instead of the more prosperous nations, there is support for the thesis. Compare to the view that poverty and misery arise from biology, psychology or faulty socialization by mothers.

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Figure 11. Flood Times on Imperialism

Imperialism/Empire: A set of nations, countries, peoples all controlled by a central nation which benefits from empire. Imperialism includes: 1) expansion of production and distribution outside national borders, 2) central control of money supply and finance, 3) export of finished goods to client nations, 3) division of labor; manual labor in the colonies, intellectual labor in the core country, 4) restriction of human/civil rights in the periphery. Often direct military control is used until a 'friendly' government can be installed. Both capitalist countries, monarchies, dictatorships and Soviet socialism established empires.

Imperialism: Marxist-Leninist theory of: Marx and later Lenin argued that the capitalist class must demand that the state help them obtain overseas markets and a dependable supply of cheap raw materials in those countries which have them. Overseas markets are necessary since the workers at home do not get paid 100% of the value of the goods they produce; therefore they cannot buy it all back; in order to 'realize profits,' markets in other countries are necessary. Since capitalists in other countries want the same thing, the capitalist state has to go to war and or bribe government officers in the target country. Cheap supply of raw materials are also necessary to keep production going and to keep profits up. The USA is the chief architect of capitalist imperialism today with over 286 military bases and the C.I.A. to provide 'friendly' countries for some 500 US Corporations which buy and sell around the world. The Group of Seven rich capitalist countries cooperate to manage this capitalist world order.

Imperialism (Economic): A whole network of methods of control (economic, political, military, cultural) which the dominant groups in one country use to subjugate and exploit people in other countries. The power of U.S., Japanese, and West European governments and corporations in numerous areas of the world has been and still is the major cause of underdevelopment. Most of the time, imperialism by the U.S. is called "aid" or economic development. Imperialism does aid many in dominated countries; usually large land owners, cooperative politicians; and small business temporarily. But as capital intensive production replaces labor intensive production, a surplus population grows, community lost, prices increase, crime increases and the whole process moves toward fascism to bring law and order. Imperialism has three major sources in Marx; The search for markets to realize surplus value; the export of surplus capital to other countries where interest and profits are higher; and the search for cheaper labor as workers in the advanced nations make gains in wages and working conditions. (After Marx).

Impression management: A term introduced by Goffman which points to the efforts of individuals in a mass society to create dramaturgical images acceptable to bosses, fans, students, professors or others who have social or economic power. The concept directly challenges assumptions in symbolic interaction about the shared-ness of symbols and the effort of people to work together for intersubjective understanding. See Dramaturgy.

Inconsistency: Modern science holds that a 'good' theory is complete, consistent and comprehensive. If inconsistent findings or inconsistent reasoning occurs, those in the modern science holds the knowledge process is corrupted somehow. Research in Chaos/Complexity reports the existence of inconsistency; denies the possibility of completion and argues for local and temporary outcome basins in any dynamical field.

Induction: Latin: in + ducere = to lead in. A knowledge process by which one goes from observed data/facts to propositions and theories rather than from theories to hypothesis; this latter is called deduction. Empiricism relies on induction. Rationality relies on deduction. There continues to be a tension between the two in all scientific endeavor. Theories can never grasp the incredible complexity and ever changing outcomes in natural and social reality but are convenient maps; facts by themselves give one no sense of the larger sweep of history nor the probable futures one faces in trying to survive, thrive and control one's own destiny. Pierce argued for abduction, a continuous going back and forth between data and theory.

Inplode/implosion: The tendency of phenomenon in postmodern times to turn inward thus destroying themselves and/or the assumptions which ground them. Thus, meaning implodes when special micro-languages are used in medicine, computer science or religious sects. After Baudrillard.

Incest: Forbidden sexual behavior within close degrees of kinship. Incest usually involves sexual relations between fathers, uncles and brothers with daughters, nieces and sisters over age 16 [under that age, sexual activity is generally defined as child abuse]. Step-fathers are more likely to be involved; mothers and aunts, far less likely. Incest rules forbids such sexuality for three reasons: 1) it subverts the parental, socialization process by putting the child in an adult status before he or she has been given such social status in a rite of passage [see which], 2) the adult misuses the social power inherent in the parental status for personal purpose; 3) it distorts all authority relations within a family. There is, as a consequence of shame and guilt, long term psychological damage to those involved.

Index Crimes: Crime used by the F.B.I. to measure how crime rates increase or decrease. They include all Part I crimes: murder, negligent manslaughter, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, larceny and auto theft. They do not include all those killed or robbed by corporate crime, political crime or white collar crime; these later are called accidents or profits.

Individual: A unit of social existence whose boundaries are restricted to a single person. Social roles and social discourse suggest that the single individual is fiction. If mind, self, and society are aspects of the same thing, then we are bound to others to the extent we are social. Usually patterns of information flow mark the boundaries of the social entity. If people talk freely among themselves, then they comprise a group rather than a set of individuals. See the 'I,' Individual, theory of, Individualism.

Individual, Theory of: The marxian theory of the individual (sometimes called the Philosophy of Man (Woman)) has three fundamental assumptions: (a) that the individual is a part of nature and not apart from it, (b) that the individual exists as a function of social relations and (c) the individual is a product of self-creation-of his or her own labor within social relations.

Individualism: A social philosophy which sets the single person as the measure and repository of all judgment, wisdom, sin, folly and morality. Adam Smith, Jeremy Bentham, John Stuart Mill and Herbert Spencer provided the arguments for individualism. It is part of the Protestant ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism since it justifies private interests above collective/public interests. It is progressive in that it opposed monarchy, church hierarchy, deadening collectivism and suppression of human rights. See Praxis for a more balanced social philosophy.

Individualism (Possessive): There are several assumptions which are used to justify the private accumulation of wealth among which are: (1) to be human means to be free from dependence on the will of others. (2) The individual is free from any relations into which (s)he does not voluntarily enter with a view of pursuing his/her own interests. (3) The individual is essentially the proprietor of his/her own person and capacities, for which (s)he owes nothing to society. (4) In a market society, one can sell one's capacities in exchange for fair remuneration. While each assumption could be criticized on a number of counts, the main points of rebuttal are in order:

1 . To be human involves the capacity to create culture.

2. Culture, by its nature cannot be produced apart from social relations.

3. A person learns to produce culture as a consequence of a labor intensive process called socialization. One cannot socialize one oneself.

4. In a market economy, one may sell one's labor power only if some of the value of one's labor is appropriated as profit by one who purchases it.

Individual (and Socialism): According to Schaff, what matters most in socialism is the principle that the welfare of the human individual is the supreme good. "Socialism is by definition a system in which every individual is entitled to genuine, full development." Enmeshed in society, the real, concrete individual is the concern of revolution and is the maker of history. According to Schaff and the humanist marxism he embodies, social revolution is the protest of real humans against their isolation from community and it is this which makes marxism sensible. Without concern for the fate of the individual, all struggle loses its point. This view opposes the focus on class, class conflict and class struggle apart from the goal of relieving alienation and ensuring the possibility of praxis. An emphasis on the single individual has problems: it may encourage possessive individualism, it may deflect attention from social relationships and it may endanger social revolution to the extent that privatized individuals find comfort and benefits from stratified societies. "Man is an animal which can develop into an individual only in society." (Marx)

Inference: Latin: in + ferre = to carry something in. In aristotlean logic, the thought process by which one goes to a conclusion from two or more premises/assumptions. See Quantification theory for the use of statistics to infer the truth value of a hypothesis.

Inflation: the increase in the cost of a good or service without comparable increase in value (see monopoly). Capitalists like to blame workers (high wages) and government spending (for welfare and warfare) for inflation. Actually any factor which increases demand drives up prices while anything which keeps prices up adds to inflation. The entry into the market by unproductive consumers (welfare clients, owners, lawyers, advertising people, criminals, middlemen, etc.) with large amounts of money drives up prices while monopolies, subsidies, fair trade laws and such keep them up.

Information: Generally, the exchange of partly ordered structure between two systems. Anything which reduces mismatch between two systems (system and environment). In contrast, that which is completely known to both systems has no new content and thus is not, technically, information. Information must have some disorder (unknown data) as well as a set of rules by which to decode the new content. If there is too much disorder or if the signal cannot be decoded, there is no information. All social systems require accurate, timely, decidable, relevant information about new and strange ways to do things if they are to be self-correcting and self-healing. Propaganda on the one side and secrecy are both obstacles to the ready flow of information are inimical to democracy.

Infrastructure: The material base of a society; its method of producing goods and services. Roads, bridges, dams, power stations, sewage and water purification systems as well as all those lines leading into and out from offices, homes and factories. Capitalism systems externalized the costs of production by transferring the costs of the infra-structure to the state which, in turn, uses taxes on workers to pay for these essential tools.

Inquisition: Latin: in + quirere = to investigate. The word usually refers to an agency of the Catholic Church, still operating, which looks into charges of heresy of individuals and suitability of books and ideas. In the late middle ages, thousands of people were burned, tortured, mutilated and imprisoned. The Spanish Inquisition was the very worse and lasted four hundred years [until 1834]. Giordano Bruno was burned at stake and Galileo forced to recant his view that the earth was not the center of the universe. The agency is now called the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith and publishes a list of prohibited books, movies and theories.

Instinct: A form of behavior programmed by genetic codes. Many people believe that some (or all) human behavior is preprogrammed as a result of countless generations of evolution during which maladaptive behavior was eliminated in the struggle for survival. Most research suggests that culture and socialization can supplant and override any such predispositions to act. War, male dominance, stratification, mothering, and many other behavior patterns are often said to be instinctual. The concept of culture is used to emphasize the learned nature of these behaviors. See McDougall.

Institutes, The: The elements of Roman Law codified in the reign of Justinian [see whom]. They set forth 'the law of Nature [God's law], the people and the state. They say who is a citizen, who is and is not free, how family law and which children are under control of parents [children, grand- and great-grand children]. It regulates marriage [only sexually mature people; only competent people; only those not related by within three degrees of kin; monogamy and property rights]. It also regulates thus permits and requires wills, fiduciary obligations, rights of passage and right of way, usufruct [usury which see], weights and measures, inheritance, gifts, real estate sales, rights of slaves and animals, hiring and wage labor, partnerships, contracts, mandates, delicts [wrong-doing], contempt, security for claims until adjudicated, types and qualifications for pleas, interdicts [what can be forbidden or required], penalties and powers of judges. One can see that such topics are central to any legal system.

Institutional racism: Those accepted practices which permit certain racially identified population categories to be excluded from the production of culture, usually political culture, and relegated to menial work. Since institutional racism involves rules, policies, precedents, it often occurs that people who are not racists continue the exclusion of people from access to housing, medicine, law, politics and education by following ordinary procedures and recruiting from within kinship, friendship and ethnic affiliations.

Institutional sexism: Practices in everyday life which presume women are less capable than are men. In law, religion, moral development theory as in business, women are treated as if they did not have full adult standing. In the classroom, men are called before women; women are touched more frequently; diminitives are used to refer to women [Jeannie instead of Jean; Susie instead of Susan; Elizabeth becomes Betsy] while men are called by their adult names [James instead of Jimmy; Robert instead of Bobby]. Then too professors often respond to a comment made by a male while passing over comments made by women.

Institution: A division within the larger social order which carries out a series of related tasks. An institution is composed of roles, actors, rules, objectives and communication facilities. A given concrete instance of an institution is called an establishment. All institutions together should provide the resources (goods and services) by which a society can survive and persons realize their human potential. Examples include: education, religion, government, economic and family. Unless institutions are coordinated with each other, there is a danger of imbalance occurring. The military is particularly dangerous in this regard since it has the force by which to assert its demands.

Instrumental rationality: A system of organizing capital and labor to achieve a specific end with maximized efficiency. The political question is to what ends is rational employed? (See substantive rationality).

Insurgent Sociologist: [Now, Critical Sociology] A journal published by the Socialist sociology collective at the University of Oregon in 1971. The journal is dedicated to the liberation of sociology from bourgeois ideological hegemony; to the transformation of capitalism and to the building of socialism.

Intentionality: Latin; in = intendere = to stretch out; to give. In philosophy of science, intentionality refers to objects which really exist prior and apart from human thought. Husserl [whom see] used the concept to ground his phenomenology.

In social psychology, intentionality is a mental act by which one participates in the organization of one's own behavior. While the behavior of physical objects is "caused" i.e., they react to outside influence, it is a special capacity of humans that they can act with judgment and insight and, thereby, act differently from what is "normal" or predictable. See Praxis; Act, philosophy of.

Interest: The price paid for the loan of money. Interest comes from surplus value [which see]. Sometimes interest is a fair return on investment. Sometimes it comes from super exploitation [which see]. One should be careful here; Biblical law provided for usury; a fair charge for the wear and tear of equipment lent to someone, and for a small payment for the loan of money. However interest rates of 10, 20, 50 and 100 percent per year were defined as violation of God's law. In addition, debts were forgiven entirely every seven years [that's where we get the word, sabbatical]. In capitalist societies, interest rates are supposed to be set by the free market. There are two practices which ignore free market ideology; first banks get together and fix interests rates. Second, the state sets interest rates up or down in order to stimulate or discourage consumption and investment [see corporate crime for the first; keynesian economics for the second]. See also rents and dividends; Usury.

Internal Colonialism: A theory of poverty in which (1) one ethnic group dominates another in a given country; (2) there is territorial separation of subordinate ethnic groups into "homelands," "reservations," or "Native reserves," (3) a special government created by the dominant group to rule the subordinate group. The laws to be applied differ from those of the dominate group but are fashioned by them and (4) the systematic appropriation of the surplus value of the labor of the subordinate group by the dominate. As Walls points out, the concept is applied in the U.S. where it doesn't fit too well. Walls insists that poverty in Appalachia and other areas is due to the normal workings of capitalism while the term is safer to use than that of class conflict and socialism as a cause and solution to poverty. (After Walls).

Internalization: The incorporation of social norms into the self or the personality, so that violations of norms will produce a sense of guilt. To the extent this happens, the notion that self and society are twinborn makes sense.

International, First: (1864-1876). An organization founded in London to co-ordinate the working class movement around the world. The organizing committee included G. Odger, W.R. Cremer and Karl Marx. It had modest success, always limited by nationalism, conservative religion, racism and gender privilege.

International Court of Justice: A court at The Hague consisting of 15 judges elected for 9 year terms which has the power to determine disputes relating to International Law. All members of the United Nations are automatically members of the court and subject to their rulings. However nations may reject its jurisdiction in selected cases; then too, the Court may issue advisory rather than binding rulings. Many liberals on Right and Left reject both the Court and International law as intrusions into private matters.

Internationalism: The term refers to worker solidarity which reaches beyond national borders. One of the factors which divide workers and get them engaged in destructive competition for jobs is nationalism. This is called alienation of patriotism. In the Manifesto it is clear that the proletariat have no homeland. Internationalism is an inseparable part of communism. The auto, textile or computer industry in the U.S. can move to south Korea, India or Mexico and play those workers off against those in this country. By paying low wages in one country (S. Korea: $.22 per hour, Hong Kong: $.57 per hour; U.S.: $2.99 per hour), wages can be depressed and the "surplus" value extracted from workers increased. The workers of the world must unite to prevent this competition. Given historically existing antagonisms, this is indeed difficult.

International Law: A body of laws negotiated and signed by some set of nations. Such laws reduce the sovereignty of nations such that powerful nations often ignore them in pursuit of national interests. International law deals with such matters as the formation of new nations, acquisition of more territory from other nations, human rights, warfare, the law of the sea and of space, as well as treaties, treatment of aliens and refugees and disputes between countries. The League of Nations and later, the United Nations were formed to deal with such problems and emerging issues.

International law, private: Most states have a set of laws about how their citizens should behave or do business overseas; this is not binding on other or all nations but is binding in courts within the jurisdiction of the courts of the nation concerned.

International Monetary Fund: The financial agency used by rich countries to force debtor nations to institute state policy in order to return both principle and interest to the banks which loan money to them. Higher taxes, fewer programs of social justice, and greater share of the gross national income in poor nations ensue as a result of the work of the IMF. The USA is a dominant power in the governing of the IMF. It is one of three power tools used to force poor countries to bend to the USA and the Group of Seven which the IMF serves. The other two are the C.I.A. and the US Military; usually Military Advisor Groups which provide weapons and training to armies serving local, friendly elites.

International, Socialist. There have been four. The first was organized by Marx and the International Workingmen's Association; it met in 1864. The Second was organized in 1889 but collapsed when German, English and French workers opted for national interests rather than international class struggle. The Third International, called Comintern, was organized by Stalin and died when he died. The Fourth was organized in opposition to Stalin by Trotsky in 1938 as an alternative to Stalinism. It continues but without mass, transnational support. Ernst Mandel is its best known leader.

Interpellation: The process by which one enters into and is understood through a special language system [la langue]. All persons, in order to convey intended meaning, situate themselves and/or are inserted within the language system in use. For example: in order for a jailhouse lawyer to represent a fellow inmate's case during a trial, the jailhouse lawyer must situate him/herself into and be inserted within the language of law. Indeed, within the stated illustration, this is understood to be "good" lawyering. The interpellated subject, then, is, knowingly or not, an agent for the continued legitimacy of the language in operation.

Interrogatory: A term in civil law which involves a formal written question submitted by one party in a dispute to another and required by a judge to be answered. It is a powerful legal weapon but must be directly relevant to the case at hand.

Intertextual: Infinitely complex interconnections between stories about nature, society or history which do not permit of clear and identifiable beginnings, boundaries, endings or binary oppositions.

Absolute intertextuality presumes everything is connected. After Bauman.

Invisible Hand, the: A concept from Adam Smith which held that there was a stabilizing and equalizing tendency built into capitalism and the free market. Smith used it to argue for individual freedom and a market based ethics since, he argued, in the long run, all wrong decisions will fail; the market is a self-correcting system. This view assumes that competition will provide the most goods at the lowest prices for the greatest number of people if the state or cartels do not intrude into the market system. It assumes that no one person or firm alone can control prices, wages, interest, the stock market or any other factor. It always takes the long view, however, as J. M. Keynes said, people do not live in the long term, they live and die in the short term.

Intimacy: A form of social relatedness in which the boundaries between self and other are not clear and definite. In intimate relationships, one can tell another person secret things and can trust people not to use the information against one. Intimate persons share freely and give each other emotional support when needed. In stratified relationships, intimacy can work against a person as a great many women have discovered when they depend too much on males for economic support and emotional comfort.

Intuition: Latin: in + tueri = to look at. It is used to refer to the idea that one can come to the truth of a thing by reflection and meditation. Socrates held that one was part of the spirit world before one was born and thus 'knew' everything. The shock of birth suppressed the memories of ultimate truth but, in quiet moments, these can come back in revelations. More likely, such intuitions are the result of the human brain organizing a lot of diverse data and putting them together in a new and insightful pattern. Remarkable thing, your brain, if you let it work.

I.Q.: Intelligence Quotient. The ability to learn, remember, sort out and apply information to problems given on a pencil and paper test. There is a lot of controversy about I.Q.; the main one is whether I.Q. is shaped more by genetics or more by environment. If genetics, then one can claim some superiority of those who score highest on such tests. Racism and sexism are both justified by pointing to I.Q. scores. But if such tests are biassed in favor of things white men are likely to do or know about, then that argument loses force. More to the point, there are any number of unscaled information flow systems in the human body; I.Q. tests measure only cognitive abilities. Muscle memory, blood chemistry, hormones and enzymes as well as various tissues all gather data; store it, retrieve it and apply it to survival problems not easily encoded in paper tests. Then too, human beings live in a symbolic social life world which may be very stupid or very intelligent apart from the ability of the person. The US Navy is said to be a system designed by geniuses to be run by morons; the point is the intelligence is not just something located in the brain case of individuals: to sit this ability as the final test of human merit is a political act rather than a scientific one.

Irrationality: a mode of thinking in which a complete knowledge of all prior events and their interactions are inadequate to account for the final product. Behavior cannot be predicted since imagination and ingenuity create completely unique and unpredictable behavior. The human interest in change and renewal is served by irrational thinking while the human interest in prediction and control is served by rational thinking. (after Habermas).

Irreversibility: A situation which a system is able to survive by transferring order from its environment. Since society depends upon its population base for order, all societies must see to the health of the population upon which they depend. The same is true of the physical base upon which both depend.

Irreversible socio-dynamics Theory: A set of principles which indicate how a social system may maintain itself as an stable "irreversible" entity: irreversible in spite of the Second Law of Thermodynamics which says that every system tends to disorder. The major points of the Theory is that the system must be organized to maintain its own boundaries, seek quality variety, use it to adapt to new conditions, and maintain the integrity of the environment from which it draws its order. Since a human population is the most important environment of a Social system, human societies must first look to the well-being of The people. Chaos/Complexity theory expands this body of knowledge to include the importance of non-linear feedback in producing self-similar structures.

Issue: A conflict situation in which there is no accepted solution for dealing with an exigency. Often two (or more) publics take differing positions on how to reduce mismatch between system and environment; wisdom and judgment are required to resolve issues. A problem, on the other hand, is a situation in which there is consensus on how to deal with the mismatch; only technical reason is necessary to solve a problem. Problems have solutions; issues require a political process in order for a solution be generated.

J

Jacobins: A left-wing group in the French evolution. Jacobins embodied a radical democracy and absolute equality. The Jacobins had the misfortune of attacking the wrong enemy; the last remnants of the feudal system and the clergy more so than the new enemy; commercial capitalism. Robbespièrre lead it; Diderot gave it its slogan: Justice will come only when the last king is strung up with the guts of the last priest. They held power in France from May, 1793 to July 1794; during the time of the terror in which many opponents of the revolution were guillotined. Composed of small business, core militant workers as well as elements of the Lumpen-proletariat, the Jacobins were ruthless in destroying their opposition. So named after St. Jacques convent where they met.

Japanization: The introduction into countries other than Japan of industrial relations systems and methods of production generally considered to be typical of Japanese-owned companies. Supporters claim that Japanese management techniques make for greater productivity and less conflictual industrial relations. Critics say that such methods intensify work; in effect, "working smarter" also means working harder for the same pay; and that it reduces workers' control over how they do their jobs. Japanese companies themselves use different methods in different countries. For example, a Japanese company may have a company union in Japan, a tame union chosen in a "beauty contest" in Britain, and a non-union plant in the United States. Japanese companies outside Japan also omit some of the more desirable features of employment by a large corporation in Japan, most notably "lifetime employment". See also: kaizen, lean production, quality circles (QC), team working, total quality management (TQM). For a good general introduction to the debate, see Global Japanization? The transnational transformation of the labour process, edited by Tony Eiger and Chris Smith, London and New York, Routiedge.

Jesuits: A militant Catholic organization of monks founded by Ignatius Loyola in 1534. They consider themselves to be special troops dedicated any task that serves 'the greater glory of God.' Jesuits worked against the Protestant Reformation after Luther and against the Enlightenment after Newton. They became the most militant pro-Catholic establishment in Europe and European colonies; doing so, they earned a reputation for cruelty and unprincipled politics. In recent times, many Jesuits have moved to a more tempered position and work for social justice in the many colleges and universities they have established around the world.

Jim Crow: A series of laws by which Blacks were denied social, political and economic status in the South (and North) after the Civil War of 1860-65 in the United States.

John. A term of contempt in prison for anyone who does not enter to a criminal subculture. A (potential) customer for commodity sex. Anyone who is square in some respects but is willing to reproduce exploitative relations in dealing with others.

John Birch Society: A right-wing group founded by Robert Welch, a candy manufacturer, named after an American soldier killed in the Communist advance in China in 1945. Welch accused Roosevelt, Truman and Eisenhower as being communist agents since they supported state intervention in the economy and state ownership of the Post Office, highways and social services. It declined in the late 60's but has new members in recent times.

Jouissance: A notion of profound significance in French postmodern theory. As developed by Jacques Lacan, jouissance (delight, hope, bliss) refers to that enjoyment which is beyond; that excess or fulfillment which is beyond. Its application to postmodern theory signals how, through discourse, we try and fail to convey our needs, hopes, despairs, longings, aspirations; in short, our desire. However, words and phrases (whether spoken or written) are incomplete. They do not ensure us of our jouissance. We struggle to ensure that our desire finds embodiment in discourse, through intersubjective communication and through the language of our behavior and life cycles. We seek and search; sometimes in pro-social ways; sometimes in purely private ways; sometimes in ways which exploit and oppress others. See Desire, Discourse, four.

Judge: One who has the legal right to decide on guilt, innocence or the applicability of law.

Judgment: A ruling by a judge which can be enforced by the power of the state. These include fines, imprisonments, garnishments, divorces, committals to asylums, custody of children, commands to stay away or to do a specific act. Judges have a lot of social power which, in democratic societies, flows from the people to the state then to the judge. In elitist societies, legal power loses its social character and becomes an alien force to be resisted.

Judaism: The religion of the Jewish people and the foundation of both Islam and Christianity. It began, the story goes, as a compact between God and Abraham and the chosen people. The terms of the compact [covenant] are lain out in Deuteronomy [one should take time to read it since it informs a lot of modern law and legal theory today]. The first five books of the 'old' testament [Torah] comprise the heart of Judaism; they are supplemented by the Talmud,

which contains oral laws dating from the 5th century BCE.

Junta: A ruling committee (often military) which controls all policy a totalitarian or fascist state.

Jurisdiction: 1) The legal right of a court to hear a case in law and to make a judgment. 2) Territory covered by a state or court.

Jus: Latin: ius = right, law. There are four kinds of law those in the sociology of law should study closely; jus civile or civil law; jus divinum = divine or eternal law; jus gentium = the law of nations or international law; and jus naturale, natural law. One must be careful here, Natural law usually means the same thing as jus divinum while natural law means those regularities in nature [and maybe society] which can be teased out by the scientific method. Jus civile and jus gentium are clearly made by humans; there is considerable argument between premodern thinkers and modern thinkers about the reach, if any, of Natural law. Postmodernist tend to see all such laws as human work.

Justice: Latin: ius = right; law: That which is right and proper in terms of a given set of principles or traditions. One must distinguish between justice stemming from the technical, rational application of a set of formally established rules, laws, or standards on the one side and that justice which comes from social status, mercy, compassion, love and reason which transcend technical rationality. Often technical justice is used to defeat efforts to obtain more substantive justice in housing, jobs, health care, education and social standing.

Justice, Distributive: Those judgments which attempt to restore and repair the damage done by a criminal act. The idea is that justice and the general good is better served if a criminal is made to restore the original conditions of, if impossible, make some restitution to the victim. In the case of wrongful death, the person responsible might have to provide for the family of the person who died. Roman law is much more oriented toward distributive justice than is Common [English] Law. Compare to Retributive Law, below.

Justice, Retributive: Those judgements which effect revenge upon the convicted criminal; an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, or a life for a life. In retributive systems of justice, the idea is that pain and punishment have healing qualities for both the victim and the perpetrator. The victim [of family of] gains a satisfaction from knowing that the perpetrator has experienced the same pain, shame or loss as has s/he; the perpetrator is said to benefit since s/he learns to avoid such behavior in the future.

Justice, Technical. A ruling or justification of an act from a set of established laws, rules, norms or values. The problem is that the rules, norms and laws are often biased in favor of one group or another so that when justice done, it may be irrational in terms of human rights or humane reason.

Justice, Substantive. A form of ideological culture in which some set of principles are used to ground the judgment of right and wrong, guilt or innocence, reward or punishment in a society. A society cannot be called a 'just' society until such principles honor and sustain dignity and productivity for every human being.

Justify/justification: To show a lawful reason why an act may be done. Here law means both a universally valid principle as well as the tight logical rationality used to derive a judgment. The question arises about the larger justice of the 'lawful reason.'

Just-in-time production: Just-in-time (JIT) production entails having the parts delivered as they are needed, avoiding costs for buying, storing and protecting from theft. Debate often centers on how far this can go, and it often pointed out that Toyota, the company which had gone furthest along the road of JIT, has now reintroduced warehouses because of the traffic jams around the factory caused by trucks making just-in-time deliveries. An advantage of JIT for workers is that it gives remarkable scope for a quick and effective strike. If the gearbox assembly plant goes on strike at a multinational like Ford, it can stop production across Europe in a couple of days.

Justinian: Emperor of Constantinople in 537 who 'took on the cares of the people that they might live without care.' Working through a committee he appointed, Justinian had Roman Law codified and simplified. His Institutes [three great books] is the basis of Civil Law in modern Europe and the USA. Civil law is extended to all citizens [civis] and replaces common law and church law. The idea that one is a citizen and thus has legal rights is fundamental to contemporary law. Before, one had to be born into a tribe in order to qualify for both justice and protection of the law. Roman citizenship gave such protections to all conquered lands and thus began the process of universalizing both criminal and social justice. The Institutes [legal elements] of Justinian began with the sentence: Justice is an unswerving and perpetual determination to acknowledge the rights of all men [sic]. They are the basis for legal proceedings in every colony of old Rome and modern Italy.

Juvenile: Latin: young person; one will less than full adult status. In law, persons 14 to 17 who are tried in a special court. The court is instructed to work toward distributive, restorative justice rather than punitive, retributive justice. See Youth, Sociology of, and Age Grades. Juveniles are subject to juvenile law which include status offenses [see which] not binding on adults.

Juvenile Delinquency: Any act involving a person 14 to 17 years of age which violates a legal specification. Juveniles are processed by the juvenile justice system rather than the criminal justice system; distributive justice informs this system while retributive justice informs the criminal justice system in the USA and other countries which adopt legal systems from England and northern Europe. Juveniles commit about 1/3 of all serious crime [1995]; there is much opinion to treat young persons as adults and subject them to pain and punishment.

Juvenile Justice System: A complex and growing institution which handles the crimes and delicts of young persons. There are few Constitutional protections on the other hand the system is informed more by restitutive justice and restorative therapy than punishment and incarceration. The system emerged to do two things essential to capitalism; keep children in school in order to have a more highly trained labor force and, 2) to prevent children from competing with adult men for scarce jobs. See Status crimes. After Tony Platt.

K

Kant, Immanual (1724-1804): One of the more important contributors to the philosophy of science and a basic source for postmodern sensibility, Kant worked and wrote at the U. of Konigsburg. Kant arose at five; studied two hours; gave two hours of lecture and returned to study until 1 p.m. He then worked on his next lectures and ended the day by light reading...every day for his entire life. He is best known for his work on analytic v. synthesis reasoning; a priori/a posteriori reasoning [before/after looking at data]. The philosophy student and those in the philosophy of science and phenomenology must study him closely. In his Critique of Pure Reason, he made the postmodern point that all knowledge is a combination of how nature appears and the nature of the observer. His Imperative for Ethical behavior and his formula for Perpetual Peace bears serious consideration. Compare to the Golden Rule and to Utilitarianism. Modernist phenomenology owes to Kant, the idea that there are some 12 'natural categories' which pre-date human thought. Postmodern phenomenologists would disagree. (See WL Reese)

Kaizen: Japanese: continual improvement. A philosophy which encourages workers constantly to look for "better" ways of doing the job. This may involve, for instance, re-arranging the workplace so that tools and parts are more readily accessible; it may equally involve ways of doing the job more quickly or with fewer workers, and therefore contribute to the intensification of work. Quality circles (see which) may form part of the kaizen process.

Kantian Imperative: A grounding for human behavior absent Gods or Natural Laws for so doing: Act as if the maxim of thy act were to become by thy will, a universal law of Nature. Add to this imperative, his book on Perpetual Peace in which Kant called for a human political form in which each person were a full participant and for a 'universal union of states' and 'a permanent congress of nations.' One would do well to read and reflect on this admirable scholar.

Katyn: A small village in USSR where 8,000 Polish Army Officers were murdered by the Soviet Army in 1940.

Kerala: A small state in India controlled by communists since 1957. The first and most successful communist government elected in a free and open election. It held was rejected by voters in 1959 and returned to power in 1967. It has one of the highest literacy rates, lowest death rates, lowest crime rates and the highest employment rates in India. [After M. Zarariah].

Keynes, John Maynard (1883-1946): British economist who wrote a book in 1937, General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, which has become the key text for saving capitalism from its cycles of boom and bust. He also did work on probability which continues to be used in mathematics. See below and see Kondratieff curves.

Keynesian economics: The ups and downs of capitalism can be eliminated or at least moderated in the short term by the fiscal policy of the capitalist state. When times are bad, the state stimulates demand with grants, low interest rates, subsidies, money supply, tax incentives or by buying the 'surplus' production and giving it away to needy people. When times get better, the state is supposed to increase taxes to pay for all the things it did during a depression. President Roosevelt first used keynesian economics in the great depression of 1930; President Nixon said, 'We are all keynesians.' President Reagan used the fiscal policy of the state to buy political legitimacy and left a huge national debt for the current generation to pay off. About 9 of 10 dollars used by the state to stimulate growth go to the rich. Named for John Maynard Keynes, British Economist who made the case in a book written in 1930; General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money.

Keynesian economics will work best if and only if the credit is used wisely and is paid back by taxes when times are good. Depressions will be less serious and shorter but, again, the long term tendency of capitalism is to destroy itself by disemployment, concentration of wealth and subversion of the political process. Keynesian economics can postpone or moderate these tendencies but not eliminate them. In the USA, state credit is used but, since President Reagan, the taxes have not been collected to pay back the debt.

Kibbutz: Agricultural communes in Israel in which workers share in planning of work, parenting, health care, education and recreation. It takes the slogan: From each according to ability; to each according to need. Kibbutzim were founded by Jewish socialists from Europe after the founding of the Israeli state in 1949. One of the more successful in Israel is Maagan Michael on the Coast of the Mediterrean; it produces fish, fruits, drip irrigation technology and some market vegetables. Housing is assigned free on the basis of seniority and need. It has its own collective nursery but children go home at night; it has a senior center where elderly folk may work for wages or not. It provides free health care, free education up to high school and pays for college tuition. Young men and women live in separate houses after age 16 and generally run their own lives. People may eat in the cafeteria free or they may buy their own food and prepare it at home. There is a theatre which shows movies, plays and concerts. It is one of 300; not all of which are as successful since they exist in a larger capitalist economy.

King, Martin Luther: A very effective Afro-American Civil Rights leader, M.L. King helped organize boycotts, sit-ins, and marches on behalf of black Americans. King was assassinated in Memphis in 1968; he had become much more a threat to the powers elite since he was there to support black workers in Memphis and had begun to oppose the war in Vietnam. King referred to the welfare system as an 'evil system' which corrupts people and called for more sweeping reforms. The F.B.I. engaged in secret and illegal efforts to discredit King. There is now a national holiday and a great many public honors given him.

Kondratieff Cycles: Capitalism tends to exhibit regular cycles of boom and bust; there are three kinds. Long cycles with 30 to 50 year waves are called K. cycles after the Russian economist who identified them in 1910. There have been several going back to 1740 then 1790, 1840, 1873, 1890, 1930 and now, perhaps the USA is on the downturn of such a wave. They come about since capitalism does not share out profits enough for all the wealth produced to be bought in the marketplace. Workers do not get paid 100% of the value they produce; owners cannot use all the remainder. A surplus accumulates, workers are laid off, factories close and the whole system tends to slow down.

Then after companies go bankrupt, products wear out, and prices fall, new demand is generated and there is an upswing. There are several 'solutions' to these cycles chief among which are keynesian economics, wars, crime, welfare, and the inflow of foreign capital; all renew demand and supply. Unemployment is said to prevent inflation and these economic cycles. There is much debate whether they really exist; in recent work, Brian Berry reports K. cycles are non-linear so they may well exist although not in the regular, predictable form required by modern science.

Koran: Arabic: Qur'an from qara'a = to read. The Holy book of Islam. The book contains the teachings of Mohammed and date from about 622 A.D. They are organized into 'suras' or chapters. Together they provide the ceremonial, civil and criminal laws of all of Islam. They teach faith, virtue, compassion, social justice and battle for the faith. They contain condemnations of Jews, the delights of Heaven and the punishments to be expected in Hell. Some 800 millions or more muslims take them very seriously and, as a result, result in a very low crime society with mechanisms for redistribution of wealth to the poor, widows and children.

Knowledge: Greek: gignoskein = to decide upon, determine or decree. Now it means sure and certain understanding of how nature and society works. There are many pathways to knowledge; in premodern times, one meditated or used psychogens to connect with the infinite. Inspiration and revelation are also part of pre-modern knowledge processes. In modern science, there are two major pathways; rational, logical deduction from formal theories on the one side and statistical inference from data sets collected by observation and/or questionnaires. Plato contrasted opinion [doxa] with episteme [authentic knowledge]. The highest form of knowledge, according to Plato, is sophia, a knowledge of first principles from which all truth can be deducted. These, presumably, came from the gods. Postmodern views are that all knowledge sets are constructed within and for a given social life world. Each culture uses different concepts to slice up the extraordinary complexity of nature to serve its own purposes; each society creates social knowledge in the act of constructing the various social roles and relationships which comprise social institutions and social-life worlds.

Knowledge, democratization of: Socialist theory requires a system of production and distribution of knowledge involving those who are the subject of knowledge and the user of knowledge. Thus the sub-division of knowledge into experts and clients who pay experts for their knowledge is replaced by a system which makes all knowledge free to all persons based upon need and interests. Computer based internets which charge a modest user fee could serve to democratize medical, political, religious, sexual and economic knowledge.

Knowledge, Sociology of/Processes of: There have been three major pathways to human knowledge; the first is pre-modern and goes back to the earliest human beings. The second is modern science and is crystallized by the success of Newton to find very precise patterns of behavior in physics. The third epoch is the postmodern and began in earnest in the 1960's. The first knowledge process gives the human knowledge process the capacities to believe, to trust, to have faith and to trust their own inspiration as a pathway to knowledge. The second emphasizes measurement, prediction and observation as a way to ground truth claims. It has given us a much better agriculture, communications, transportation, health technologies as well as many other gifts. The third pathway uses history, cross-cultural comparisons, class or cultural interests to understand how truth claims are made and adopted. The view of the present author is that all three are essential to the human project.

Kropotkin, Peter Alekseievich, Prince ( 1842-1921): Kropotkin was a Russian Army office, naturalist and politician best known for his seminal work on anarchy. Imprisoned for his efforts to aid farmers and workers, K. escaped to Western Europe to write Mutual Aid [Gegenseitige Hilfe in Menschenwelt], a book very much against the neo-darwinian idea that conflict and competition is the key to survival in nature and society. K. also opposed big government. Left alone, K. said, humans were naturally cooperative and could get along fine without a state to run things. He put forward a communal form of anarchy in which he combined the absolute freedom of the individual with common ownership of the means of survival. He thought that, out of this social form, independent production units would form to respond to basic human needs.

Kuhn, Thomas (1922-): American philosopher on the sociology of science. In his 1962 book, On the Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Kuhn showed the politics which infuse officially accepted theories and world-views. Science is a social product produced by a community of scientists. This community determines what shall be accepted as scientific orthodoxy and what shall be called 'unscientific.' Kuhn made the point that world-views in a discipline, called a paradigm, is validated and taught as 'the truth' until further research creates an intellectual revolution and new paradigms emerge to be treated as scientific orthodoxy. In a recent interview in Scientific American, Kuhn said that he thought that it is possible to come to a final, comprehensive paradigm which would end the dialectics of knowledge. Postmodern sensibility holds that nature and society are so complex that any number of paradigms are possible, indeed, they dwell side by side in most disciplines. A final, encompassing paradigm is not possible; all such paradigms have limited, human usefulness; this include premodern world-views based upon trust, faith, hope, compassion and belief.

Kutznets Cycles. These cycles in capitalism are said to come along about every 15 years; there is considerable controversy about them. See Kondratieff curves for a general explanation of such cycles.

L

Labelling Theory: A term introduced by Howard Becker to denote the feedback effects of formal control systems which polices, judges, incarcerates and supervises people. There is a complex feedback loop in which criminalized social identities become part of the self system as one is processed through those social control systems. Labelling theory cannot be a theory of crime since labelling and the gradual incorporation of social identity into self system occurs in a wide variety of socialization processes; doctors, lawyers, Catholics and Japanese all result from labelling processes. The theory is useful to counter theories which locate criminal behavior in and only in the psychology of it all.

Labor: The concept of labor is very important to marxist/socialist theory. It refers to the process by which people create themselves as social entities by "appropriation of nature." Labor, thus, is not merely working but rather forming social relationships in which and in which material culture is produced to the end of creating collective life. "In labor, (wo)man as a species-being creates all his/her human characteristics." Marx. Some theorists (e.g. Markovic) prefer to use the concept "praxis" for unalienated labor and the term "work" as a neutral term for productive activity. "Toil" is a more pejorative term for alienated labor.

Labor, alienated: Labor is alienated when it occurs within exploitative relationships: slavery, feudality, colonialism or capitalism. The solution to alienation in this framework is social change rather than psychological counselling.

Labor, contradictions in. Marx was quick to note that capitalism made the production of wealth relatively independent of labor power but still insists on using labor time as a measure for the giant social forces thus liberated. Capitalism sets the price of commodities in terms of the wages of those who produce them; thus a dollar, mark or yen is a call upon a given amount of labor power of a given worker. Yet industrial capitalism tends to disemploy people and thus reduce their ability to offer the labor power essential to get money. This at once creates inflation and at the same time makes it difficult for those made surplus by capitalism to have such bills with which to exchange for necessary goods and services: food, shelter, education, health care, communications and transport. The State steps in to reconcile this contradiction and is made enemy to both worker and capitalist.

Labor discipline: A policy in which workers are "disciplined" such that the cost of their labor is competitive with the cheaper labor of workers in other countries. Opposition to unions and high wages, safe working conditions and other benefits in America stems from the need to compete with workers in S. Korea who are paid 23 cents per hour and less. Capitalists operating out of military dictatorships capture markets from American industry and, thus, force American capitalists to discipline their workers.

Labor, estranged: When labor is sold as a commodity, one's labor is no longer an affirmation of one's own essential being but the property of someone else. The worker feels free only when not working and work ceases to be an end but a means to an end. Its alien character is revealed in the fact that work is shunned like the plague if possible. As a result, the worker feels alive only in the exercise of his/her animal functions-eating, drinking and procreating. (EPM)

Labor, International Division of: A global economic system in which most countries produce raw materials, food and provide cheap manual labor while rich, industrialized countries produce high profit goods to sell abroad. Globalization of the economy began in the middle ages with trade of clothing, ornaments and small goods in exchange for spices, slaves, sugar, coffee and precious metals. Now, in the modern global economy, rich and powerful countries sell cars, armaments, movies, knowledge and luxury goods to non-industrial countries in exchange for raw materials, tourist facilities [including prostitution], foods, blood and transplant organs, and an uncertain partnership.

Labor power: The capacity to produce wealth from raw materials as well as the capacity to use the material wealth thus produced and to produce ideological culture: science, law, religion, art, music, drama and all forms of family, intimacy, and friendship not to mention police, prisons, warfare, patriarchy or genocide. Marx said, 'Take the land and tools away from producers and all they have left is labor power.' In capitalism, most people have to sell labor power to survive...however there are several parallel economic systems which work within capitalism to provide goods and services [see Economic forms, parallel].

Labor power, re-production of: All humans beings have fundamental needs, material and spiritual; all societies have a set of common needs, an infra-structure as well as culture [art, science, music, drama, religion and recreation. Together these constitute the minimal requirements for the re-production of labor power. Any wealth produced above and beyond the satisfaction of these needs constitutes Surplus Value [which see]. See false needs, profits.

Labor market, segmented: The USA has a labor market with three main parts: the primary or monopoly sector employs about 1/3 of the workers in the USA, provides good wages and benefits as well as decent working conditions. The secondary sector is composed of those who work for small firms which compete with each other for the trade of big business; wages are much lower, far less job security, few prospects for advancement and few benefits; about 40% of the workers work for these firms. The State sector is a good place to work although wages are a bit lower, job security is higher and often other benefits as well. (After Gordon, Edwards, Reich and O'Connor).

Labor Power, surplus: the extra labor power used to produce more wealth than is required for the reproduction of labor power. The standard of living varies widely and the amount of wealth allocated to the families of workers varies greatly but there is an irreducible minimum standard of living below which family life and community life dies out. See Exploitation, super.

Labor intensive production. A system of production in which the capacities of human beings is used to produce. Indispensable in creating ideological and political culture.

Labor theory of value: A theory which says the value of an item is set by the labor-time required to produce that item. This implied for Marx and socialists that workers should receive the value added to nature by their labor; that the appropriate of some of that added value by capitalists is exploitation. Marx took the concept from classical economics; neo-classic economics used the concept of marginal utility and diminishing returns [which see] to set the source of value thus moving it from the workers who produce it to the consumers who buy goods and services.

Lacan, Jacques (1901-1981): The architect of postmodern psychoanalytic semiotics, He combined Freud, Saussure, Levi-Strauss and Kojeve. Lacan maintained that the unconscious was structured much like a language, thus it was essential to identify the inner workings of that discourse located within the unconscious. The unconscious was the repository of knowledge, power, agency, and desire. In brief, however, Lacan argued that the speaking subject was not in control of what s/he said; rather, the structure of language pre-shaped thought and desire. This is what Lacan meant when he claimed the subject was divided ($) or decentered. For Lacan. the subject could not be so purposive, in control, self-aware, because the discourse of the unconscious was the crucial arbiter of all experience, knowing, and living. This was a direct assault on the rational, logocentrism implied in Descartes' maxim "I think therefore I am." See Desire.

Laissez-faire: French: let it be, let it alone. A slogan of those who believe there are economic laws which regulate industry, trade and banking which, if let completely alone, will drive the economy to better and better forms. First as a reaction to control of commerce and trade by kings and guilds, it later became used against state welfare and, of course, the central planning of socialist states. See Physiocrats, Social darwinism, Utilitarianism.

Lange, Oskar (1904-65): A Polish economist in the Left Wing of the Socialist Party who moved first to England then to the USA and Professor of Economics at U/Chicago. Returned to Warsaw and worked on market socialism in order to retain those advantages while working out ways to share out surplus value to benefit direct producers and serve community needs. Lange made the case that market socialism fit within marxist theory and practice.

Language: Latin: lingua = tongue. In the sociology of knowledge, there is a question of the relationship of words to things. Most people assume words are verbal mirrors of that which 'really' exists. Herder held that words were imitations of nature. Humboldt held that each language was a human invention containing a separate world view. de Saussure also held that words were a result of creative human activity. Franz Boaz found held that each language has a special grammatical structure. Sapir held that language is poetic, metaphoric in nature and help people grasp some part of the realties around them. Carnap began the practice of inventing artificial languages using rules of logic; most computer languages follow his lead. Chomsky argues that humans have an innate or deep structures which pre-shape the use of words. Wittgenstein expanded language theory to treat it as having a great many purposes [language games] which vary from picturing natural facts to doing philosophy. There are 'family' resemblances to such games but each 'game' has to be understood on it own terms. Postmodern views usually hold that all languages are both a poetics and a politics; this includes scientific and sociological concepts, works, vocabularies. It also includes this dictionary. There is much to learn before the role of language in shaping and pre-shaping human behavior and human societies is fully known.

Language as productive labor: Most theories of exploitation and oppression focus upon the ways material wealth is funneled from those who produce it to those who 'own' it. Critical theory and postmodern critique views language as a productive process in which both society and ideology are created. Such a view leads one to analyze 'language games' in science, religion, politics and economics for their role in exploitation or emancipation. The new industries of advertizing, management science, computer languages and 'cyber-space' created by those who control information and the rules of meaning gave rise to postmodern terms as the 'text,' 'simulacrum,' 'voices,' 'stories,' 'narratif' and such.

Language, sexist/racist: The everyday use of terms which degrade women and other minorities. Sexist language makes it appear that men are the only interesting part of the human species and that only they make history. Racist language makes it appear that one group is genetically superior to another group. Socialist feminist protocols offer non-sexist terms to be used in writing and speech; 'person' for 'man,' 'woman' for 'lady' or 'girl.'

Large-scale organization: A formal organization controlled by a managerial cadre whose tasks (and rewards) are pointed toward the continuation of the L.S.O. Superimposed over the class system is another system of stratification in which L.S.0's are the dominant stratum of social organization and the mass base the inferior stratum. This view suggests that orthodox class analysis is not enough to gauge the extent of human oppression and the target for social revolution: one must go beyond the stratification of owners and workers to that of organizations, nations, and blocs of nations in order to see the full picture.

Law: Old English, lag = to lay down. 1) Any body of rules made by an authoritative body and enforced by a state. 2) a particular rule passed by a duly authorized body. 3) Tight connections between cause and effect which can be stated in precise mathematical terms; Newton's law of gravity is accurate to one part in 10 to the 27th power. Celsus defined law, 1) above, [ius] as 'ars boni et aequi,' the art of promoting that which is good and equitable. The idea of statutory law replaced both tribal norms, holy books and commands of kings sometime around the 5th century, B.C.E. Both Cicero and Julian wrote that the law must be made with the consent of those governed by it; Cicero claimed that no one was above the law; not kings nor rich nor powerful people. Both Greek law and Roman law provided for due process as did the Mosaic Code.

As a result, we now think of law as a statute enacted by a competent law-making body forbidding/requiring a certain act and carrying a penalty for violation. The socialist critique of law in this sense is that such legislation usually embodies the interests and aims of those in power. Reproduction of class, racist or sexist inequality requires the use of the monopoly of force claimed by the state; most existing law helps do this; 'The Law in all its majesty forbids equally the rich and the poor from sleeping under a bridge.'

Law, Natural: A set of commandments given by one's God which supersedes laws made by human beings. For those in the Judeo-Christian-Islamic tradition, the laws set forth in Deuteronomy comprise the core of natural law; each religion also has a set of interpretations and explanations which accompany the laws in the Old Testament. See Aquinas.

Law, natural: When spelled with a lower case 'n,' natural law refers to those laws detected by scientists which describe regular and recurring patterns in physics, chemistry, physiology, biology, psychology and sociology as well as economics. The new sciences of Chaos and Complexity teach us that 1) close connections between variables loosen as bifurcations increase in a dynamical regime and 2) that feedback loops displace the notion of causality.

Law, Sociology of: The systematic study of the social origins of law, the social context in which law operates, and the social results of a given legal system. Law is a form of social control which arose in Persia, Rome, Britain and France by which the behavior of the population was regulated by an elite; customs were set aside in favor of new rules about property, family, religion, work and politics. There is reason to believe that formal law is found only in conflict situations.

Law, Bourgeois: Capitalist law provides for the private ownership of the means to produce essential goods and services. Bourgeois law allows a fictitious entity, a corporation, to take blame for the crimes committed by the owners/stock holders. It also gives the state the legal authority to enforce the rights of owners, landlords and banks over the rights of workers, people who rent homes and people who borrow money. Before capitalist law came into effect in the famous Carrier's Case [See which], if someone did something that a capitalist didn't like, the capitalist would have to turn to civil law or to church law.

Law, Formal: With settled agriculture, new social forms arose including empires. In Persia, the laws of diverse peoples were encoded into a formal set of state laws called the Code of Hammurabi. As new empires formed, new legal codes were developed. The most important are: Roman law [Justinian Code] which grounds the legal system in much of Europe and in its colonies in S. America; Napoleonic law which grounds the present legal system in France and french colonies; the Constitution of the USA which grounds law here and in a number of newly independent nations around the world. All provide for capitalism but also provide for equality before the law and for free elections which moderate the worse excesses of capitalism.

Law, Socialist: Socialist law guarantees equality before the law; eliminates the right of private persons to own the means of production of essential goods and services, guarantees access to health care, education, housing, jobs, and provides for retirement with dignity.

Law, religious: For most of human history, law came from the various holy books of a people. Deuteronomy gave hundreds of laws, some of which protected the poor and the stranger. It served as the legal base for Jews, Christians and Muslims [the first five books of the Torah are shared by all three religions].

League of the Just: A secret socialist society in Belgium, Britain and France active in the 1840's. Marx and Engels joined its Brussels branch in 1847, reorganized and renamed it as the Communist League. Meeting in London that year, Marx and Engels were asked to draft the Communist Manifesto.

Lean production: Production with as few people employed as possible, and by seeking to reduce inventory by just-in-time methods (q.v.). There is a widespread view that lean production has gone as far as possible, but this has been denied by Prof. Masayoshi Ikeda in a recent paper (delivered in Berlin), in which he says that the Japanese car and electronics industries "have just set their feet on the starting line in the competition of the lean production system in its true meaning". He instanced an exhaust factory in which one man was doing the work of eight. In the USA, the term is related to 'down-sizing,' the reduction of the workforce by 20% or more. Sears, ATT, GM, and many other firms around the country have thrown millions of blue collar and white collar workers on the labor market. These then compete aggressively with employed workers. Wages and fringe benefits drop as does job security, safe working conditions and other labor gains in the past century.

Left: A noun and adjective which denotes those who hold liberal or radical political views. It was coined in 1789 after King Louis XVIII convened the Estates General to try to stop workers rebellions. The Third Estate [mostly business men] were put on the left of the King, the Second Estate [the nobility] on the right. The idea was to identify those who opposed the King with that which was sinister [Latin: left]. Today the term refers to those who advocate reforms in politics, economics and religion.

Left-wing Marxism: That wing of marxism which emphasizes human intersubjectivity, dialectic change, alienation, and historicism. It is criticized as being too idealistic (rather than materialism), too subjective (rather than concerned with objective relations in capitalist societies) and, in the rejection of the "right-wing," an obstacle to the development of marxist science. Left-wing marxism raises important questions about the role of philosophy, about method and about the necessity of cultural and ideological revolution as part of the total social revolution.

Legal aid: A program in which poor persons are provided legal services paid for by public funds. In criminal cases, attorneys are provided; in civil cases, advice and assistance is provided. Usually the court will decide eligibility for such legal aid but the US Congress provides for legal aid clinics in rural and poor areas; these have been dismantled and or underfunded by recent conservative interests. The rationale for such aid comes from the US Constitution which provides for equal protection under the law, due process and other rights.

Legal fiction: An assumption in law that something which does not exist or is false may be taken to be true by judge and jury if both parties agree to it. It is widely used in divorce cases and sometimes in criminal cases. There is too, the legal fiction that a corporation is a 'real person;' thus stockholders and officials are not responsible for corporate crime even though they select the corporate officers who then engineer the crime. Both directly benefit from the profits from the many crimes committed by this legal fiction; the corporation is fined but never imprisoned however many people are dead or however great the theft. See corporate crime.

Legal-Rational Authority: In Max Weber, legal-rational authority refers to the authority of people who occupy offices in a bureaucracy. The authority is in the office not the person [a boss, a police officer or a professor]. It is said to be rational since goals are achieved by enforcement of rules. A variety of personal wants, desires and goals are pushed aside in favor of the goals of the formal organization. Habermas denies that legal-rational authority is rational since it may not be oriented to human values. This failure sooner or later creates a legitimacy crises since a belief in legality for its own sake creates a world without meaning. In principle, a formal rule is hostile to praxis and to historicity since the law exists prior to and apart from the situation in which human action is called forth. In everyday practice, law is interpreted and, thus, regains some historicity. In addition laws are often disobeyed with impunity and/or rescinded. See McDonaldization.

Legitimation Crises: As the economic crises of capitalism grow (inflation, unemployment, obsolescence, loss of markets), the administrative branch of government expands into the realm of things usually handled by public discourse. The role of history and of traditions shrinks and, in reaction, public opinion politicizes settled items like the right to tax, the right to welfare, the right of the state to govern.

Lenin, Vladimir llyich (1870-1924): A Russian revolutionary who guided the first great socialist revolution, founded the Russian Communist party and the Comintern [3rd International]. Lenin made many contributions to socialist theory. Perhaps the two more important of which is his principles of organization to make the revolution and his strategy to prevent counter revolution after taking state power. Syzmanski has summarized Leninism as an organizational vanguard to make the revolution: (1) recruitment of energetic, hard working respected and militant people into the vanguard party, (2) commitment and enthusiastic execution of party policy, (3) a thorough knowledge of existing social conditions in which the party must work and the internal situation at all levels of the party, (4) coordination of all activities of all members, (5) full democracy within the party, (6) flexibility in strategy and tactics in advancing the revolution, (7) the proper mix of openness and secrecy and (8) an appreciation of the role of leadership. Marxists-leninists parties are to be disciplined, dedicated and determined. After the seizure of state power, the major role of the socialist state is suppression of the former ruling strata, control over demoralized workers, over the petite bourgeois, the peasantry and the lumpenproletariat. Lenin's theory of imperialism and the conditions of colonial exploitation makes leninism widely accepted in third-world liberation movements today (1977).

Lesbian/lesbianism: Sexual activity between women. From the Island, Lesbos, upon which resided women who felt no great need for male company and intimacy. Sappho was a strong woman and poetess who lived on Lesbos and gave the name to any woman who refused to be dominated, sexually or otherwise, by males.

Levi-Strauss, Claude (1908-) French anthropologist who held that social structures are objective entities which exist independently of human consciousness. As such, human behavior is pre-shaped and the individual human subject fades into an effect of structural dynamics. Human beings engage in activities designed to hide the difference between the actual reality and their ideal image of it. Myths hold together the image and the ideal. Marriage and kinship systems function as 'languages' which permit the exchange of information. As women marry outside a kin grouping, they take with them much latent information which can be used if necessary to cope with changes. All structures can be seen as 'grammars' in this view and all can be studied as such. (After WL Reese)

Lewin, Kurt (1890-1947): German psychologist who came to the USA to teach social psychology at U/Iowa and elsewhere. Lewin is one of the architects of postmodern social psychology. He argued that the totality of a 'life-space' shaped human behavior. Compare this to theories of behavior which focus upon instincts, early childhood trauma or personality. He argued that the single case was a better pathway to knowledge than were statistics from large research projects. His work on democratic interaction is very important; in studying authoritarian and democratic youth groups, boy scouts in this case, Lewin reported that democratic is more dis-orderly at first but more productive in the end than are authoritarian forms. He is also noted for his work on attitude change through informationally rich and interactionally rich group dynamics; in a classic experiment, he showed that women who talked openly and freely were more likely to adopt dietary practices helpful to the food shortage in WWII.

Lex domicilii: The law of the land in which an offense occurs; in international law, lex domicilii holds unless there are diplomatic or other reason to put it aside. American soldiers who are stationed in Japan and Germany are not subject to lex domicilii, they may not be tried for rape, theft, murder or assault in local courts; they may be Court Martialled, see which.

Lex loci contractus: According to international law, contract law is governed by the place where the contract is made; but contracts made in Mexico which are illegal in the USA can be set aside. Contracts made in Mexico which have no counterpart in the USA can be enforced via international law.

Lex talionis: The law of the club and fist [claw]; more broadly, the law of conflict and war which gives the right to define the law and conditions of life to the victor. This legal code still holds in warfare; victors are seldom punished for the many crimes they do; nor are they usually required to return property and or land taken in warfare. This is changing as American Indians turn to the courts for return of lands taken by the US Army in violation of treaties. There is some effort to do the same for lands and property taken in warfare in other places.

England has been returning goods taken in colonial warfare.

Liberal: Latin: free person. Liberal is now one of the most confusing words in social discourse; it was used in English to refer to those who had skills and trades which made them independent and gave them some status. The underlying meaning of 'free' gradually worked into politics to refer to liberty from all forms of oppression including state oppression. Now it is often used against workers and customers by corporate liberals who advocate a market unrestricted by law. It is used against women and minorities by those who believe in stratified social relations and demand freedom from state intervention on behalf of social justice. Shakespeare warned against 'liberall villaine' as 'vile encounters.' Such liberalism is set against all that is defined as sacred; child pornography, incest, rape and other forms of exploitation. Watch carefully the context before you take the meaning. After R. Williams.

Liberalism: There are two uses of the term, very different; first it refers to an ideology which supports progressive and humane change within the rules set for a given social paradigm. They stand for freedom of association, speech, religion and residence. They use the state to moderate the worse inequalities/injustices in capitalism. These Liberals often defeat their purposes of a humane and just society by following the rules by which a stratified and exploitative society is created. A second usage refers to those who want absolute freedom in the marketplace; the unrestricted right to own, use, abuse or sell; the right to turn anything into a commodity if there is a demand; the right to move capital and jobs anywhere in the world where profits are higher or costs lower. See Laissez-faire.

Liebknecht, Karl (1826-1919): A German lawyer who helped found the Social-Democratic Party in Germany; the Socialist Youth International, and proclaimed the first German Socialist Republic in 1918. Along with Rosa Luxemburg, he inspired a whole generation of Germans to overthrow German capitalism; along with Rosa, he was murdered by a police death squad, the Freicorps. A bridge in Berlin bears his name adjacent to Karl Marx Platz (1995).

Liebniz, Gottfried (1746-1716): German philosopher who took a degree in law at Altdorf. Liebniz invented a machine which could extract square roots and argued with Newton who invented calculus first. His philosophy included the concept of the monad, a basic unit of reality which now seems strange. He argued that if God existed, He would create the best possible of all worlds...a very conservative view.

Lifetime employment: Major Japanese firms take care of the worker from the time s/he finishes school until the time s/he dies. A misnomer, since workers actually retire in major Japanese companies at age 60, it could more accurately be called "long-term" or "continual" employment. Commentators have pointed out that the situation is not entirely rosy: lifetime employment has only ever applied to male employees of large companies, never to women or to employees of smaller firms. On occasions, lifetime employment could also mean lifetime punishment, when a worker was never sacked but never promoted, so that a fifty-five-year-old postboy remains as an example to encourage the others. Lifetime employment is now under attack in a more difficult economic environment, and some Japanese companies are pursuing practices such as "loaning" employees to subsidiaries on worse pay and conditions than in the parent company.

Linear/Linearity: This concept refers