Papers by Neil McLaughlin
The American Sociologist, 2001
A reading of David Riesman's classic The Lonely Crowd is presented that emphasizes its links with... more A reading of David Riesman's classic The Lonely Crowd is presented that emphasizes its links with the critical theory of German psychoanalyst and social critic Erich Fromm. The intellectual and personal relationship between Riesman and Fromm brings into focus Riesman's adaptation of the insights of European critical theory as well as the strengths of American social science and social criticism. Riesman's relatively neglected theoretical approach has much to offer a sociology concerned with retaining its links to public debate and empirical evidence.
Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences, 1998
over the past few years, we offer a response to calls for “saving sociology ” from the Burawoy ap... more over the past few years, we offer a response to calls for “saving sociology ” from the Burawoy approach as well as an analytic critique of the former ASA president’s “For Public Sociology” address. While being sympathetic to the basic idea of public sociologies, we argue that the “reflexive ” and “critical ” categories of sociology, as Burawoy has conceptualized them, are too ambiguous and value-laden to allow for empirical investigation of the different major orienta-tions of sociological research and the ways the discipline can address non-academic audiences. Debates about the future of sociology should be undertaken with empirical evidence, and we need a theoretical approach that can allow us to compare both disciplines and nations as well as taking into account the institutional context of the universities in which we operate. Research into the conditions under which professional, critical, policy, and public sociologies could work together for the larger disciplinary and societ...
Canadian Journal of Sociology, 2009
This special issue of CJS illustrates the international spread of an empassioned debate among soc... more This special issue of CJS illustrates the international spread of an empassioned debate among sociologists about the future direction of their discipline ignited by Michael Burawoy’s call to elevate the presence and status of public sociology. Burawoy’s program entails a greater engagement by sociologists with civil society (non-governmental organizations, communities, movements) in the development of their research agenda, and the production of research outputs that are more accessible, relevant, and useful to non-academic audiences. Burawoy and his supporters see the emphasis on public sociology as a way to revitalize the discipline, in particular, to solve several inter-related problems that it faces, at least in the U.S: a lack of internal coherence, declining public legitimacy, public misapprehension of what sociologists do, and minimal influence on policy-making (Burawoy 2004a, Turner 2006, Boyns and Fletcher 2005). Skeptics and critics within the discipline, conversely, argue...
The American Sociologist, 2005
After reviewing the debate about public sociologies in the American Sociological Association over... more After reviewing the debate about public sociologies in the American Sociological Association over the past few years, we offer a response to calls for "saving sociology" from the Burawoy approach as well as an analytic critique of the former ASA president's "For Public Sociology" address. While being sympathetic to the basic idea of public sociologies, we argue that the "reflexive" and "critical" categories of sociology, as Burawoy has conceptualized them, are too ambiguous and value-laden to allow for empirical investigation of the different major orientations of sociological research and the ways the discipline can address non-academic audiences. Debates about the future of sociology should be undertaken with empirical evidence, and we need a theoretical approach that can allow us to compare both disciplines and nations as well as taking into account the institutional context of the universities in which we operate. Research into the conditions under which professional, critical, policy, and public sociologies could work together for the larger disciplinary and societal good is called for instead of overheated rhetoric both for and against public sociologies. The emergence of "public sociologies" as a conference theme, an intellectual movement and vision for the discipline is one of the most exciting, productive, and important events in the recent history of sociology. The American Sociological Association conference "Public Sociologies" in 2004 organized in San Francisco was interesting, extremely well attended, and has injected renewed energy into the discipline. We have been discussing the issue in Canada, as well 1 appropriately so, since Burawoy's (2005b) original notion of "provincializing American sociology" suggests a truly global vision for sociology. Certainly the exciting international presence at the annual meetings in San Francisco bodes well for the future. This movement towards public sociologies, however, is not uncontroversial. In addition to numerous dialogues and debates about the trend, there has also emerged Neil McLaughlin teaches sociological theory at McMaster University and publishes in the sociology of culture, intellectuals, and knowledge. In addition to studying both Canadian intellectual life and sociology, he is working on The Concept of the Global Public Intellectual and the issue of marginality and the social origins of creativity. Lisa Kowalchuk has done research on Salvadorean social movements around land reform and public service privitization. She is an assistant professor in the Sociology and Anthropology department at the University of Guelph (Ontario). Her latest article, "The Discourse of Demobilization: Shifts in Activist Priorities and the Framing of Political Opportunities in a Peasant Land Struggle," appears in The Sociological Quarterly 46(2) 2005. Kerry Turcotte is a doctoral candidate in sociology at McMaster University. Her current work involves the analysis of blame-laying by public intellectuals. Her broader research agenda includes what she calls "sustainable" forms of interpersonal violence, the sociology of knowledge and creativity, and sociological theory.
Sociology, 2007
As American Sociological Association (ASA) president in 2004, Michael Burawoy argued `for public ... more As American Sociological Association (ASA) president in 2004, Michael Burawoy argued `for public sociology', sparking impassioned debate focused almost exclusively on the normative issues raised by his prescription for a more public sociology. Nearly absent from the literature is an analytical critique of his underlying model of the structure of sociological practice. The model is flawed in three ways: (1) the core concepts are ambiguous; (2) the model provides little leverage for understanding the institutional context of sociology as a discipline; and (3) comparative understanding of sociologies in different countries or between public engagement in distinct academic disciplines is not facilitated. In this article, we propose a synthetic means of relating academics, disciplines, audiences and institutional environments that forms the basis for movement toward an empirical agenda on public academics more generally.
Sociologia, 2008
Ente di afferenza: () Copyright c by Società editrice il Mulino, Bologna. Tutti i diritti sono ri... more Ente di afferenza: () Copyright c by Società editrice il Mulino, Bologna. Tutti i diritti sono riservati. Per altre informazioni si veda https://www.rivisteweb.it Licenza d'uso L'articoloè messo a disposizione dell'utente in licenza per uso esclusivamente privato e personale, senza scopo di lucro e senza fini direttamente o indirettamente commerciali. Salvo quanto espressamente previsto dalla licenza d'uso Rivisteweb,è fatto divieto di riprodurre, trasmettere, distribuire o altrimenti utilizzare l'articolo, per qualsiasi scopo o fine. Tutti i diritti sono riservati.
Russell Jacoby is one of the most influential intellectuals who came out of the New Left engageme... more Russell Jacoby is one of the most influential intellectuals who came out of the New Left engagement with critical theory in America. Yet little has been written on Jacoby’s career and writings as a whole and scholars, critical theorists and psychoanalysts have not confronted what I will argue here is a major contradiction in his thought between the early Frankfurt School influenced Jacoby and the public intellectual Jacoby of his later years.
The Unhappy Divorce of Sociology and Psychoanalysis, 2014
Although sociology and psychoanalysis have a troubled history and relationship, Erich Fromm’s the... more Although sociology and psychoanalysis have a troubled history and relationship, Erich Fromm’s theory of social character is a good entry point for reconciling and reviving dialogue between the two traditions. Ironically Fromm—who can be characterized as a “forgotten intellectual”—had a conflicted relationship with empirical sociology, the Freudian tradition and the Frankfurt School within which his theory of character was forged (McLaughlin, 1998). To many sociologists, he was perceived as a second-rate thinker within two discredited traditions, Marxism and psychoanalysis. And Fromm was also discredited among some psychoanalytic theorists, particularly those holding to mid-twentieth century “drive” orthodoxies as well as language-oriented Lacanians who thought his work undermined core Freudian insights into the unconscious and human emotions.
Canadian Journal of Sociology / Cahiers canadiens de sociologie, 2002
Contemporary Sociology, 1998
Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences, 2007
Were they not authenticated, the amazing coincidences and fantastic twists in the life story of T... more Were they not authenticated, the amazing coincidences and fantastic twists in the life story of Timothy Leary (1990-1996) could be mistaken for the plot of a Dickens or a Tom Wolfe novel. Consider this bare outline: The son of an alcoholic dentist father and a doting and pious Irish Catholic mother, young Timothy spends much of a troubled childhood worrying about when and in what condition his father will return home from his alcoholic binges. Then, abandoned by his father, the boy shows academic promise and gains appointment to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. There, heavy drinking and a refusal to inform on upperclassmen lead to his being formally "silenced": a terrible punishment in which no one is permitted to speak with him outside of classes, or even to sit next to him in the mess hall. After resigning from West Point, Leary discovers and begins to excel in academic psychology, first as an undergraduate at Alabama, then as a Master's student under Lee Cronbach at Washington State University, and finally as a PhD candidate at Berkeley. His research culminates in The Interpersonal Diagnosis of Personality, a system of psychodiagnosis along Sullivanian principles that quickly becomes part of the standard reading list for clinical psychology students, and leads to an appointment at Harvard. There, he and his colleague Richard Alpert (later to rename himself Baba Ram Dass) discover the psychedelic effects of magic mushrooms and their synthetic equivalent psilocybin, and gain notoriety by promoting the drugs' usefulness in educational, religious, and criminological settings. Dismissed from Harvard for abandoning his classes, Leary becomes a counterculture hero and famously urges young America to "Tune in, turn on and drop out." He establishes a commune in Millbrook, New York, which is harassed by the zealous young prosecutor G. Gordon Liddy, later to become famous himself as a Watergate burglar. Caught in a Texas drug bust, Leary is imprisoned in California but breaks out with help from the radical Weather Underground group and flees to Algeria, where he comes under the protection of the infamous Black Panther, Eldridge Cleaver. Rearrested a few years later and incarcerated in Folsom Prison, he is befriended by the prisoner in the adjoining cell, who happens to be the notorious murderer Charles Manson. After collaborating with the authorities, Leary is released and goes on a joint lecture tour with Liddy, himself recently released from prison following his Watergate conviction. Leary remains off and on in the spotlight for rest of his life, and following his death, friends send his ashes into space orbit. I approached Robert Greenfield's extensive fleshing out of this outline with a degree of personal as well as professional interest because, although I never really knew Tim Leary, I did meet him. As a new graduate student at Harvard in 1962, my first supervisor was his colleague and friend Richard Alpert. Alpert was fired along with Leary in the spring of 1963, but the 6 months when I worked for him were long enough for me to get some sense of both men. Although their psychedelically inspired projects seemed grandiose and were coming under increasingly harsh criticism from other Harvard faculty members for their lack of rigor, they had at least a superficial appeal as possible ways to break away from a narrow behavioristic psychology. Alpert was personally congenial and kind to me and Leary, from a distance, seemed a very appealing figure. With his flashing smile and a hearing aid that lent him an attractive air of vulnerability, his eloquent encomiums to the inevitable "psychobiological
Sociological Theory, 1996
The recent worldwide resurgence of militant nationalism, fundamentalist intolerance, and right-wi... more The recent worldwide resurgence of militant nationalism, fundamentalist intolerance, and right-wing authoritarianism has again put the issues of violence and xenophobia at the center of social science research and theory. German psychoanalyst and sociolo gist Erich Fromm 's workprovides a useful theoretical microfoundationfor contemporary work on nationalism, the politics of identity, and the roots of war and violence. Fromm's analysis of Nazism in Escape from Freedom (1941), in particular, outlines a compelling theory of irrationality, and his later writings on nationalism provide an existential psychoanalysis that can he useful for contemporary social theory and sociology of emotions. Escape from Freedom synthesizes Marxist, Freudian, Weberian, and existen tialist insights to offer an original theoretical explanation of Nazism that combines both macrostructural and micropsychological levels of analysis. After forty-five years of research into the social origins offascism and with recent theorizing in the sociology ofnationalism and emotions, Escape from Freedom, its analysis ofNazism, and Fromm's larger theoretical perspective are worth reconsidering. The recent worldwide resurgence of militant nationalism, fundamentalist intolerance, and right-wing authoritarianism has again put violence and xenophobia at the center of social science research and theory (Calhoun 1994). Attempts to understand these diverse social phenomena must be grounded, of course, in concrete analysis of the history, politics, and social structure of specific nations. Sociologists increasingly recognize the need to analyze the emotional dynamics of irrationality, destructiveness, vengeance, and rage. Yet we do not have an adequate sociologically informed theory of emotions. The work of German psychoanalyst and sociologist Erich Fromm provides a useful theoretical microfoundation for contemporary work on nationalism, the politics of identity, and the roots of war and violence. Yet Fromm has long been unfashionable among social theorists even though his concern with Nazism, extreme nationalism, and authoritarianism has never been more relevant. From the early 1930s through the early 1960s, Fromm was a major social theorist associated with the Frankfurt School for Social Research, neo-Freu dian psychoanalysis, critical sociology, and early New Left politics. By the late 1960s and early 1970s, however, Fromm's reputation had dramatically declined, and he was widely dismissed by radical intellectuals as the Norman Vincent Peale of the left, as Herbert Marcuse once polemicized (Marcuse 1955). Fromm's work was allegedly marred by what * Numerous scholars read and made suggestions on earlier versions of this paper. I would particularly like to thank
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Papers by Neil McLaughlin