bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Transcendental Arguments: Strategies
Authors: Stern Robert
Published: November 2023

In this chapter, I will draw on the results of the preceding two, and consider how far the kinds of scepticism highlighted in Chapter I (epistemic scepticism, reliabilist justificatory scepticism, and normativist justificatory scepticism) require to be met by the types of transcendental argument we have distinguished (truth-directed, belief directed, experience-directed. and concept-directed), given the conclusion of Chapter 2, that truth-directed transcendental arguments face insuperable difficulties. Thus, if it turns out that a particular form of scepticism can only be met using a transcendental argument of the truth-directed type. then we would have to conclude that transcendental arguments cannot be of any use in overcoming scepticism of that form; and if it turns out that this is true of all of the forms of scepticism we have specified, then (since the 1ist seems exhaustive), we would have to conclude that transcendental arguments cannot be used to counter scepticism at all. If. on the other hand. it turns out that one or other of the forms of scepticism specified can be met by one or other of the weaker kinds of transcendental argument which do not face the difficulties raised by Stroud, then a workable role for transcendental arguments against scepticism wil1 have been found. The aim of this chapter is therefore to examine in a general way how various forms of scepticism and various types of transcendental argument “line up\ to see if there are any anti sceptical strategies that use these arguments in a way that does not leave them open to the standard objections, by allowing them to be used in one of the more modest (non-truth-directed) forms.
Searle’s Arguments against Cognitive Science
Authors: Block Ned
Published: November 2023

Searle’s strategy is one of avoiding quibbles about specific programs by imagining that cognitive science of the distant future can come up with the program of an actual person who speaks and understands Chinese, and that this program can be implemented in a machine. Unlike many critics of the computer model, Searle is willing to grant that perhaps this can be done so as to focus on his claim that even if this can be done, the machine will not have intentional states.
Nixin’ Goes to China
Authors: Hauser Larry
Published: November 2023

Searle always describes the Chinese Room as targeting ‘Strong AI’: what this phrase is invoked to mean, however, varies. At the outset of his original presentation, Searle says, ‘My discussion here will be directed at the claims I have defined as those of strong AI, specifically the claim that the appropriately programmed computer literally has cognitive states and that the programs thereby explain human cognition’ (Searle 1980a: 417). ‘Strong AI’, here, seems to denote the conjunction of the metaphysical claim, ‘the appropriately programmed computer literally has cognitive states’, and the methodological one ‘that the programs thereby explain human cognition’.
Wittgenstein’s Anticipation of the Chinese Room
Authors: Proudfoot Diane
Published: November 2023

Wittgenstein denied (what would now be described as) the thesis that cognition consists in symbol-manipulation-the supposition underlying ‘Strong AI’. There are striking parallels between his remarks and Searle’s Chinese Room Argument.
Do Virtual Actions Avoid the Chinese Room?
Authors: Taylor John G
Published: November 2023

Imagine a set of very hard-working and obedient ‘slaves’ locked inside a room. They carry out faithfully a set of rules that they have been furnished with by their captors to respond, by typing certain symbols on a set of keyboards, whenever other similar symbols are observed at their terminal displays. The symbols they see are Chinese, and the outputs are recognizably good answers, in good Chinese, as assessed by the native Chinese speakers inputting them to the slaves. Yet the slaves have no inkling that they are producing intelligent answers in Chinese to Chinese questions. All they are doing, so they think, is performing automatic responses to meaningless strings of symbols so as to keep themselves alive and unpunished by their captors.
Alien Encounters
Authors: Warwick Kevin
Published: November 2023

A species-related viewpoint in how humans think generally about the world, whether through philosophy, science, or the arts is difficult to avoid. The human perspective is based on who we are, how we got to be so, and how we exist at present. As an example, for a parent it might be difficult to imagine that your own child could do any terrible wrong to any other person or thing. Indeed, even what is conceived as being right or wrong is very much a view dependent on a standpoint within an individual culture. Wars are fought over problems when both sides concerned are certain that they are completely right and their foe is completely wrong.
Introduction
Authors: Bradley Keith , Taylor Simon
Published: November 2023

The need to manage employees as an asset, not a cost, is becoming a prominent theme of management thinking. In many industries the basis of competition is shifting away from economies of scale, towards flexibility and rapid response to changing market requirements. These capabilities may be enhanced by technology, but they rest fundamentally on the efforts of employees who commit their best energies to corporate endeavours. Recognizing the value of increasing workers’ involvement, companies have experimented with a variety of programmes, such as profit-related pay, employee share ownership, and quality circles, over the last two decades. Many of these initiatives have been consciously modelled on the practices of Japanese companies. Japan has no monopoly on effective human resource management, however, nor is enlightened thinking in the West restricted to high-tech industries and advanced manufacturing environments. The John Lewis Partnership, an employee-owned British retail chain, exemplifies a human resource strategy that could well be applied in other sectors. As this book will show, the distinctive John Lewis Partnership approach has been associated with considerable commercial success, as well as unusual stability in the workforce, in an industry where turnover is typically very high.
Strategy, Competitiveness, and the Way Ahead
Authors: Bradley Keith , Taylor Simon
Published: November 2023

The requirements for competitive success in the retail sector are changing, with important consequences for company decision-makers. Recent interviews with leading managers in both food and non-food companies suggest that their strategic thinking is currently a mixture of old and new. Sites, technology, and merchandising are still considered important. For the future, however, these excutives suspect that the recruitment, training, and motivation of people will be increasingly critical to success. Advantage will lie in human resources, a development quite new in the retail sector. By competitiveness in retailing, we mean the ability to sell goods or services at prices and in quantities that permit the firm to make sufficient profit to continue activities over a sustained period. While the time horizon (a sustained period) cannot be precisely defined, one thing is clear: no firm can be sure of future success merely because its current position is strong.
A Business History of the John Lewis Partnership
Authors: Bradley Keith , Taylor Simon
Published: November 2023

Three features make the John Lewis Partnership interesting from the perspective of management and organizational behaviour: 1. It has been owned by its employees through a trust since 1929. 2. Its employees, or partners, receive all of the firm’s profits, after retentions, in the form of a partnership bonus. 3. The firm is organized around a constitution that specifies a particular form of employee participation, including the power (in well-defined circumstances) to remove the incumbent chairman. Although much of the traditional literature suggests that employee ownership and profit-sharing are not compatible with commercial viability, the John Lewis Partnership has survived and grown throughout this century and has a strong reputation amongst customers and competitors. Its experience suggests that some degree of power can be shared with employees without jeopardizing commercial decision-making.
Theories of Business Performance and the John Lewis Partnership
Authors: Bradley Keith , Taylor Simon
Published: November 2023

Since the 1930s, economists have developed a theory of the firm that focuses on the interactions between ownership and control. This chapter examines the implications of that theory for the performance of the John Lewis Partnership as a business. The theory of the firm has developed considerably in the last fifteen years, building on the optimization axioms of neo-classical economics, but introducing a much broader range of relationships within the firm. In effect, the theory now peers inside the black box of the organization, offering a more interesting framework for the investigation of firm behaviour. The dominant predictions of the orthodox models depend on two key issues: who has effective control of the firm, and how is their behaviour constrained?
’attā pōrartā bě‘ozkā yam(Psalm 74: 13a)
Authors: Greenfield Jonas c.
Published: November 2023

James Barr, in an article that is interesting for its philological acumen and its interpretative thrust has successfully removed the muzzle from the Sea. The Sea has not remained free of attempts at not only muzzling it, but also of splitting it, drying it out, and destroying it by any means available. Those of us brought up on the biblical tradition have it in our bones that the Sea was parted, be it the Red Sea or the humbler Reed Sea. The qeri at yam suf at the Exodus (Exod. 14) is an archetypal miracle of mythic proportions in the Jewish tradition. It serves among the later prophets as a model for God’s returning the Jews from their Babylonian captivity, and indeed from other captivities too. The theme was popular and the phrase qaseh kiqrVat Yam Suf ‘as difficult as the Splitting of the Sea’ is well known. This popularity is reflected in the Dura-Europos synagogue.
Could Isaiah understand the Ha’arets Newspaper?
Authors: Ullendorff Edward
Published: November 2023

It seems to me that the present subject is particularly appropriate for a paper in honour of my friend James Barr, for he was one of the first Old Testament scholars to have insisted, by example as well as precept, on the importance of an appreciation of the thesaurus totius Hebraitatis.
When did Terah die (Genesis II: 32)?
Authors: Emerton J A
Published: November 2023

Gen. 11: 31-2, which is usually thought to belong to the Priestly Source, tells how Terah left Ur of the Chaldees with his son Abram, Abram’s wife Sarai, and Lot, the son of Abram’s deceased brother Haran. Their intention was to go to the land of Canaan, but they stopped in the city named Haran, and there Terah died at the age of 205. According to Gen. 11: 26 (also P) Abram was born when his father was 70, and according to 12: 4b (P) Abram left Haran at the age of 75. It is thus implied that Abram left his father in Haran when Terah was 145, and that Terah continued to live there without Abram until his death 60 years later.
Arm of the Lord: Biblical Myth, Rabbinic Midrash, and the Mystery of History
Authors: Fishbane Michael
Published: November 2023

The matter of myth and the Bible has long been a puzzle and a paradox—a puzzle due to the many confusing or self-serving definitions of myth; and a paradox as well, due to the occurence of mythic themes in ancient Israel long after this culture’s apparent break with a mythic world-view. With his characteristic concision James Barr outlined his opinions on the matter several decades ago, in a valuable contribution on ‘The Meaning of “Mythology” in Relation to the Old Testament’. He there bypassed generalizing definitions of the term and, for purposes of cultural comparison, proposed that instances of myth in the Hebrew Bible be regarded as something like what we find in the ancient Near East.
The Prophets (I): Moses to Huldah
Authors: Sawyer John F A
Published: November 2023

From a thematic survey of prophecy we move on to examine the prophets themselves. Generalizations are valuable, but biblical tradition has preserved stories about named prophets, together with a few unnamed ‘men of God’, sufficiently different from one another to be examined as individuals. In some instances, place and date of birth, parentage, and other biographical details are given. In others almost nothing is known of them apart from a name and what they are reported to have said. Our task is to collect what material there is on each one of them, set it against what we know of social, political, and religious conditions in ancient Israel, and hopefully reconstruct a convincing and consistent story of each individual’s prophetic achievements. We shall not be concerned exclusively with what the prophets actually did or suffered, however, or with what they actually said. We must also take seriously how tradition represents them, fact or fiction; and we cannot always distinguish the one from the other since it is in that form that they have influenced believing communities, Jewish, Christian, and Muslim, long after their actual achievements and original audiences had been forgotten.
The Prophets(II): Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel
Authors: Sawyer John F A
Published: November 2023

Our task in this section is a rather different one. In addition to a survey of the scanty biographical material recorded in the biblical and apocryphal stories about the prophets, we have literary questions to tackle concerning the date and authorship of the books that bear their names. The author of the book of Isaiah, for example, and his portrayal of the prophet will have to be discussed as well as what we know of the original eighth-century BC figure.
The Making of the Book
Authors: O’Daly Gerard
Published: November 2023

In the meantime, Rome was overwhelmed by an invasion of the Goths under their king Alaric and by the force of a great disaster. The worshippers of the many false gods, whom we call by the well-established name of ‘pagans’, attempting to attribute Rome’s troubles to the Christian religion, began more sharply and bitterly than usual to blaspheme the true God. (Retractations 2. 43. 1)’ Alaric had been in Italy since 401, and Romans had long been nervous about the Goths.
The Theme of the Two Cities
Authors: O’Daly Gerard
Published: November 2023

The theme of the two cities is implicit in Scripture. In the apocalyptic Book of Revelation the new Jerusalem symbolizes the city of God:and I will write on him the name of my God, and the name of the city of my God, the new, which comes down from my God out of heaven. (Rev. 3: 12) And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. (Rev. 21: 2)
Creation, the Fall, and the Regime of the Passions: Books 11-14
Authors: O’Daly Gerard
Published: November 2023

Theend of Book 10 marks the conclusion of what Augustine often refers to as the part of the work devoted to refutation (‘we have replied to the enemies of this holy city in the previous ten books’, rr. r). According to his plan, he can now, in Books rr-14, proceed to discuss the origin of the two cities.1 In fact, the continuity between this new section of the work and what went before is greater than Augustine’s scheme suggests.
Christ and the Law
Authors: Ziesler J A
Published: November 2023

We have several times been brought up against the problem of the Law, which is both something from whose sway Christians are delivered, and also something that remains ‘holy and just and good’ (Rom. 7: 12, cf. v. 4). As a Jew, Paul read the Old Testament and could hardly ignore the Law’s central place in the life of Israel, yet his theological scheme of things appears to leave it almost no place. His concern was far from arising only from theoretical factors. The confrontation at Antioch (see on Justification in Chap. 6) exposes practical problems, and the issue of the relation of the church to Israel (see Chap. 4) was made concrete in the problem of relating Christians to the neighbouring synagogue. Yet Paul’s attempts to deal with the problem were grounded in theology, and we now try to draw together what he says about it.
The Pioneers
Authors: Badawi M M
Published: November 2023

Of the literary forms which were borrowed from the West, the novel proved to be, despite the great technical difficulties it presented, or perhaps because of them, at once the most alluring and the most important in modern Arabic literature. Although initially regarded as morally suspect, to the extent that as late as the second decade of the twentieth century in Egypt a lawyer who was also a writer might prefer not to admit his authorship of a novel lest this should jeopardize his career in the legal profession, the novel, conceived as a pure work of the imagination with no explicit didactic end in view, is now considered a highly serious and respectable art, and successful novels and novelists are awarded the highest State prizes. In 1952 we find the distinguished Lebanese critic Mārūn ‘Abbūd writing in Ruwwād al-Nahqa al-Hadītha (Pioneers of the Modern Arabic Renaissance) that, whereas in the past to be a poet used to be the greatest ambition of a literary man, nowadays the highest thing he aspires to is to be counted among novelists. Few writers today receive the universal respect accorded the great Egyptian novelist Najib Mahfuz throughout the Arab world. It is no accident that he is the first Arab author to be awarded the Nobel Prize for literature (in 1988).
Early Developments
Authors: Badawi M M
Published: November 2023

The birth of modern Arabic drama is well documented both in the Lebanon and in Egypt. Unlike other literary forms in modern Arabic literature, drama did not develop gradually under the impact of the West, but was consciously and deliberately imported from it wholesale by Mārūn al-Naqqāsh in Beirut in 1847 and Ya’qub Sannu’ in Cairo in 1870. This is not surprising since in spite of a growing number of highly speculative attempts to prove the opposite, classical Arabic literature did not know drama in the sense of an established art form which provides an imitation of an action on a stage through dialogue in verse or prose by human actors. This, of course, docs not mean that the medieval Arabic literary tradition was devoid of all dramatic elements both on the level of highbrow culture and of popular entertainment, elements which, as we shall see in the course of this chapter, went some way in determining how the imported form was initially conceived and in affecting its subsequent development, whether in structure, theme, or language.
Perspective on Bedouin Poetry: A Cultural Document for the Ages
Authors: Bailey Clinton
Published: November 2023

If the art of the bedouin poet is ‘the manipulation of the long familiar’, he has much to manipulate. An illiterate bedouin who sets out to compose a poem unwittingly calls upon a cultural heritage thousands of years old—not a forgotten heritage that has survived in the fabric of the present as a barely perceptible thread; but one that lives much as it always has, with the same surroundings, artefacts, technology, economics, and social and political conditions.
Introduction
Authors: Prevost Robert
Published: November 2023

IT is recognized generally that traditional deductive arguments for the existence of God are fallacious or at best inconclusive. However, the recognition of this inadequacy does not constitute an admission that religious belief is thereby unjustified. A number of philosophers, while admitting of no compelling deductive argument for God’s existence, consider religious belief to be justified on the basis of its power to explain some phenomenon or phenomena. Theism, on this account, is an explanatory theory, or hypothesis, whose acceptability is measured by its explanatory power.
Necessity And Explanation
Authors: Prevost Robert
Published: November 2023

I have examined the integrative capacity of the concept of God as a person. A further feature of the concept of God which contributes to its integrative power is the idea that God is a necessary being. Theists frequently describe God in terms of necessity, but they have conflicting views on just what God’s necessity amounts to. The sense of necessity which I think is important for the integrative explanatory power of theism is logical necessity. Thus, when I say that God is a necessary being, I mean to say that God exists by logical necessity. That is to say, any logically possible world includes God.
Butler on Conscience and Virtue
Authors: Hebblethwaite Brian
Published: November 2023

‘Butler exalts conscience, but appears ignorant that a man’s conscience may tell him to do the vilest things.’ So writes Elizabeth Anscombe in a much discussed paper on ’Modern Moral Philosophy’. This scathing observation about Butler’s ethical theory is intended to support a case for locating authority in morals in the divine law over against us rather than in some principle of our own human nature. It is part of Anscombe’s argument for holding that without a religious foundation morality loses its obligatory claim and, indeed, should be replaced by sociology. Sociologists, the implication is, are well aware how fallible the psychologically and socially reinforced human mechanism of conscience is. It is a dangerous illusion to exalt conscience. From a religious perspective, it is to put something human and fallible in the place of the divine law. From a non-religious perspective, it is to risk exalting prejudice or some ideo-logically blinkered judgement or reaction.
Gregory's Life
Authors: Heine Ronald E
Published: November 2023

Gregory of Nyssa was born between 335 and 340, and died sometime after 394. He was born into a wealthy, large, and important Christian family in Cappadocia. His older brother Basil and his older sister Macrina were significant leaders in Cappadocian Christianity. His grandmother Macrina had been taught by the famous Gregory Thaumaturgus, bishop of Pontus. The latter had been a student of Origen in Caesarea in Palestine. Gregory seems to have been educated primarily by his brother Basil. In a letter to the rhetorician Libanius, he states that Basil had been Libanius' student, and that he had, in turn, been Basil's student (Ep. 10).
The Form of the Treatise
Authors: Heine Ronald E
Published: November 2023

These six topics can all be found in the introductions to commentaries on the Psalms, and particularly in those of Origen. Origen’s commentaries on the Psalms are the earliest of which significant traces have been preserved.
Prolegomena
Authors: James Frank A
Published: November 2023

Much ink has been spilt on the question of the intellectual origins of the sixteenth-century Protestant reformation. Most of the scholarly effort discharged in this quest has concentrated on Martin Luther and the influence of late medieval scholasticism. On a smaller scale, scholars have also inquired into the intellectual origins of the other main branch of the sixteenth-century reformation, the Reformed branch—more popularly but inaccurately designated Calvinism. When seeking the intellectual origins of the Reformed Church, scholars have primarily concentrated on Calvin and to a lesser extent Zwingli. However, it has been increasingly recognized that Reformed theology does not derive exclusively or even primarily from John Calvin, but rather from a coterie of theologians who were associated with Swiss reform, including besides Calvin, Heinrich Bullinger, Peter Martyr Vermigli, and Wolfgang Musculus. Calvin may appear to tower over other theologians, but the intervening centuries have a way of distorting the reality. Unlike the theology of the Lutheran Church, where the initia Lutheri and the initia Reformationis are intimately interconnected, the theology of the Reformed branch belongs to the second wave of reform.
Medieval Intensification: Thomas Aquinas and Gregory of Rimini
Authors: James Frank A
Published: November 2023

In our quest for the intellectual origins of Vermigli’s doctrine of gemina praedestinatio, we must examine the intellectual context of the University of Padua where his theological development began. At Padua there were only two possible candidates for formative theological influence on Vermigli’s doctrine of gemina praedestinatio—Gregory of Rimini and Thomas Aquinas. These are the two theologians specifically cited by Simler as having held particular interest for the young Vermigli.
Summation and Historiographical Implications
Authors: James Frank A
Published: November 2023

More than twenty-five years ago, Philip McNair described Peter Martyr Vermigli as having sprung ‘ready-made out of the Alps one September day in 1542 like Minerva from the head of Jupiter’. The extraordinary welcome that Vermigli received from the Zurich and Strasbourg divines provides ample justification for McNair’s assessment. Bucer’s description of Vermigli as being ‘quite learned’, ‘well skilled’, and a ‘serious’ scholar of ‘keen intelligence’ suggests that, upon his arrival in Strasbourg, Vermigli was already a theologian of considerable maturity. Bucer’s words were followed with swift action. One month later, he arranged for Vermigli to succeed the late Wolfgang Capito at the Strasbourg Academy. The enthusiasm and speed with which Vermigli was welcomed into the higher echelons of Reformed Protestantism is striking, especially when he had been so recently a prominent theologian in the Roman Catholic Church. This study has explored the intellectual forces which came to bear upon Vermigli and which warranted his being portrayed as ‘ready-made’. In particular, we have concentrated on the question of the intellectual origins of Vermigli’s doctrine of gemina praedestinatio.
Talking at Trypho: Christian Apologetic as Anti-Judaism 1n Justin’sDialogue with Trypho the Jew
Authors: Rajak Tessa
Published: November 2023

It is not easy to define a work which evokes at its opening the honeyed charm of the first pages of Plato’sRepublic, on which it is loosely modelled, or perhaps of a Ciceronian dialogue; but which, by its sixteenth chapter, is hurling a fully-formed charge of deicide at Trypho, the author’s partner in the dialogue, and at his people, the Jews. Justin opens thus:As I was walking about one morning in the porticoes of the covered colonnade, a certain man, who was together with some others, met me, and said ‘hail philosopher’. And, saying this, he turned round, and came with me.
The Constantinian Circle and theOration to the Saints
Authors: Edwards Mark
Published: November 2023

The editors have chosen to end this volume with theOration to the Saints ascribed to Constantine, because the reign of that emperor (306-37 CE) produced a decisive change in the situation of the Christian apologist and the character of his audience, whether real or nominal. It could no longer be pretended that the first aim of the writer was to defend the legal status or the morals of Christians; it was now his expressed intention to convert the pagan world, though it could hardly be supposed that this con version depended chiefly on his literary success. Constantine declared himself a Christian in 312, denouncing the persecutors and expressing a private wish that Christianity would become the common faith of all his subjects. His successors maintained his policy with more zeal, and by 400 it was pagans who were obliged to be discreet in the exercise of their religion. If we can speak of apologetic writings after Constantine, we can only mean that such writings offer an intellectual defence of Christianity, not that they were written to obtain relief from jeopardy or distress.
Towards Joint Central Regulation in Britain
Authors: Fulcher James
Published: November 2023

The increasing organization of the labour market and the development of the state combined to generate pressures for the central regulation of industrial relations. As industrial conflict led to an ever wider organization of both sides of industry, mutual regulation through collective agreement moved upwards from local through industrial towards, possibly, national level. On the other hand, conflicts became larger in scale and more disruptive, putting pressure on governments to maintain order and protect essential services through a more regulated system of industrial relations.
How Sects Evolve: Issues and Inferences
Authors: Wilson Bryan R
Published: November 2023

Sociologists, by the principled assumptions of their discipline, are disposed to seek general laws to explain the forms and processes of social phenomena. The value of such endeavour—for enlarging our understanding, producing analytical insights, and, as a hopeful prospect, for generating predictive propositions—cannot be gainsaid. The stimulus to comparative method on which such generalizations should rest, must in itself be salutary in producing improved explanations of social phenomena otherwise explained in only narrow reference to specific data and without awareness of the probability of the occurrence of particular patterns and sequences. Yet, this search for general propositions has its dangers: it can lead to over-hasty conclusions and to formulations that carry all the apparent authority of general laws when in fact they are merely accounts of particular cases that have been unwarrantably generalized to all associated phenomena and dignified in abstract terminology.
Jehovah’s Witnesses in a Catholic Country: A Survey of Nine Belgian Congregations
Authors: Wilson Bryan R
Published: November 2023

Since the Second World War, three sectarian movements have achieved considerable growth in continental Europe. of these, Jehovah’s Witnesses have received perhaps most attention from scholars, and it has become apparent that this movement has acquired a following even in countries in which Protestantism has never been particularly successful. In Belgium, a country with a population that is about 85 to 90 per cent Catholic, the Witnesses today number about 20,000 people. of this number about 14 per cent have been recruited from among immigrants to Belgium, the majority of these converts being Italians. Our enquiry sought to identify Witnesses in conventional sociological terms, and paid particular attention to the participation in the movement of immigrants. This chapter is divided into a short section on the history of the Witnesses in Belgium; an indication of research procedures; a subdivided presentation of the principal findings from analysis of questionnaires; and concluding comments on the recruitment, involvement, and social integration of Jehovah’s Witnesses.
Becoming a Sectarian: Motivation and Commitment
Authors: Wilson Bryan R
Published: November 2023

During the period of their emergence and growth, sects are generally discussed in terms of opprobrium, perhaps because most of those who have written about them have been people not only of other theological persuasions, but often people with vested professional interests in sustaining their own theology against that of others, or, occasionally, they have been men of decidedly rationalistic temper, eager to condemn all religion by reference to what they take to be the latest and most patent religious outrage to common sense. By the time a sect becomes a historical phenomenon it is likely that those still interested in it will discuss it with a measure of detached objectivity: for contemporary sects, only sociologists are likely to espouse the same canons of ethical neutrality and objectivity that are, perhaps so much more easily, endorsed by historians in their treatment of things past.
Factors in the Failure of New Religious Movements
Authors: Wilson Bryan R
Published: November 2023

The application of the concepts of failure and success to religion is a problematic exercise. Since religion is a matter of faith, its goals might be expressed in transcendental or metaphysical terms. Such goals are regularly represented as supramundane. What, it might be asked, does it profit a religious movement if it ‘shall gain the whole world and lose [its] own soul’? The attainment of Nirvana by all the world's Theravada Buddhists, and hence the extinction of Buddhism, could be seen as success. Just as the Christian Church exists for men in this world, so does Buddhism, its doctrines and organization. In Buddhism, as in Christianity, ultimate success comes when the world passes away. Christian religion is for man under the relative natural law, in the period between the fall and the resurrection: it is a social phenomenon with transcendent goals.
The Politics of Explanation and Justification
Authors: Waddington P A J
Published: November 2023

The inner-city riots of the early 1980s produced a sea change in public-order policing. Once the missiles began to fly, the traditional bobby was replaced by the riot police, clad in protective clothing and protected by shields. In reserve there were now stocks of CS agent and plastic baton rounds. These developments in riot control tactics and technology are condemned by their critics as not only failing to address the ‘real problems’ but also obstructing the solution of these problems. Some police officers, local residents whose property has been destroyed by arson, and not a few observers of the riots might have thought that the missiles that have been thrown, and the arson, rape, and murder committed, were the ‘real problem’. Not so, say the critics:1 the ‘real problems’ are the social conditions that cause riots to occur in the first instance. These are left untouched by riot control technology.2
Introduction
Authors: Halsey A H
Published: November 2023

THE British senior common room today presents a spectacle more interesting than joyful. My purpose in this book is to trace some major trends in the behaviour and opinion of university and polytechnic staff—what Harold Perkin aptly dubbed ‘the key profession’ (Perkin 1969)—and to examine the fortunes of the institutions of higher education from the exuberant innocence of the Robbins expansion plan through the anxious disillusion of the 1970s to the renewed expansionist declarations of the Secretaries of State for Education (Mr Baker and Mr Macgregor) in the late 1980s and the competitive resolve of the new Secretary of State, Kenneth Clarke, and his Labour shadow Jack Straw, to put education at the top of the political agenda in the 1990s.
A Successful Academic Career
Authors: Halsey A H
Published: November 2023

WE saw in Chapters 3 and 6 that career patterns for academics are entwined in an evolving hierarchy of institutions, with Oxford and Cambridge exerting a disproportionate influence at both the point of entry and as the preferred occupational destination. The ancient colleges are both prominent feeder institutions and also the refuge of an alternative to the chair at another university or a similar high position in a polytechnic. Thus the professorship in Britain is not unequivocally the zenith of an academic career, and there are in any case other high positions in institutions of higher education. The vice-chancellors, polytechnic directors, and heads of colleges often have relatively highly distinguished academic backgrounds. Nevertheless the chair is conventionally, and for the majority, the highest object of vocational ambition. We can therefore enquire into the conditions for success. What enables men and women to negotiate successful passage to this high point of an academic career?
Women And Men
Authors: Halsey A H
Published: November 2023

THE participation of women in higher education is patchy, passionate, and peculiar because we are living through a period in which vigorous reforms are taking place with a view to establishing fair or equal chances in what remains, despite many slights and denials, one of the most attractive careers for women in paid employment in modern society. In one sense the establishment of an equal position for women in teaching is relatively easy in that such posts are culturally assimilable to the traditional ‘caring’ role of women in the domestic economy. Leonora Davidoff and Catherine Hall have written a beautifully detailed portrait of the role of the bourgeois wife in keeping her husband ‘on stage’ in a business career from behind the screen in the family home (Davidoff and Hall 1987). Historically, an educational career was one of the obvious paths out of domesticity into professional life for Victorian women. Marriage was, of course, the culturally favoured career. The nurse and the governess were relatively respectable alternative positions in society, while actresses, courtesans, and prostitutes were ancient but more or less scandalous, ‘deviant’ cultural figures.
Theology in a (Social) Scientific Culture
Authors: Martin David
Published: November 2023

Let us suppose that sociology is indeed part of what is called scientific culture. As we shall see there are some complexities in making that supposition, certainly as regards the strictly scientific nature of some kinds of sociological work. But for the moment we need only hold that there is a long tradition of controlled thinking about social phenomena which aims at un covering what elements coexist with what other elements and what pre-conditions lead to what consequences.
Nature: Human, Social, Divine
Authors: Martin David
Published: November 2023

Nobody should expect that any particular, discrete sector of human enquiry will stumble upon the stealthy marks of an elusive Deity and finally track Him to his lair. God is not a variety of Abominable Snowman, whose existence has been long hinted at in myth and story, but whose footsteps we now urgently follow, almost expecting to see Him face to face. Not even by peering backward to the Big Bang and the first crucial moments of the universe do we expect to go one stage further and descry the lineaments of the Creator.
The Sociological Mode and the Theological Vocabulary
Authors: Martin David
Published: November 2023

What is theology? It is an attempt to make intellectual sense of a way of life. This does not mean that theology tries to provide the inner rationale for the life-style of a stockbroker or a computer technician, or attempts to explain why we should be in a society whose way of life generates brokers and technicians. Those two tasks belong respectively to descriptive and to analytic sociology. It means rather that human existence characteristically engenders ways of living and feeling which try to make comprehensive sense of the human environment and situation. Theology is one of the intellectual disciplines which articulates that comprehensive sense.
Lawfulness in Sociology: A Response to Mary Hesse
Authors: Martin David
Published: November 2023

In what follows I want to draw out, elucidate, and map the mental pathways of social science, and to do so through an encounter with just one characteristic problem. The larger aim of that encounter is to enquire what kind of lawfulness may be expected to reside in the subject-matter of social science, or alternatively to enquire what kinds of lawfulness that subject matter properly permits us to impose. Clearly the social scientist engages in a specific form of questioning of social materials, putting them under pressure to elicit a yield or a return. What is the nature of that return and is it ‘lawful’?
Solidarity and Schism
Authors: Lockwood David
Published: November 2023

This book presents a critical comparison and evaluation of the assumptions underlying explanations of social order and conflict which are to be found in the work of Durkheim and Marx, and of their most important followers. Its major theme is that, although the two bodies of theory rest on fundamentally opposed ideas of social structure and social action, both have to draw on auxiliary hypotheses which are to a high degree complementary - the residual categories of the one theory proving to be those that are analytically central to the other. This is most evident when Durkheimian theory seeks to account for social disorder, and Marxist theory for its absence. This challenging argument is developed in detail, by reference to a wide range of empirical research, and points the way to new ways of thinking about how societies alternate between the poles of solidarity and schism.
Anomic Declassification
Authors: Lockwood David
Published: November 2023

The major problem presented by Durkheim’s account of declassification is that of determining the kind of disorder it entails. It is clear that once the social classification is disturbed its regulatory influence cannot immediately be re-established. ‘The moral reeducation of individuals must be recommenced, but they cannot be readjusted instanteously to their new circumstances,’ and ‘time is required for the public conscience to reclassify men and things’. The state of declassification is some sort of interregnum: one classification has broken down, but a new one will be, has to be, institutionalized. The crucial question then concerns the form of disorder during this interregnum.
Revolutionary Polarization
Authors: Lockwood David
Published: November 2023

That polarization of the moral community of the church which for Durkheim had to be the utter negation of a society has always been of central importance for Marxist theory and practice, and there is a clear sense in which the ideological class division of society into ‘two great hostile camps’ represents the antithesis of solidarity as consensus on ultimate values and beliefs. In a state of revolutionary class conflict, inter-class antagonism is inversely related to intra-class solidarity, and both attain their extreme limits when they partake of ‘religious’ phenomena in Durkheimian terms; that is, when classes are coextensive with churches and when their mutual relationship is one of schism. Parsons makes the point nicely when he writes that ‘Marx saw only two antagonistic systems of mechanical solidarity, one for each of the two principal classes in his capitalistic system’.
Contradiction and Anti-System
Authors: Lockwood David
Published: November 2023

For Durkheim and normative functionalism generally, the status system is of strategic importance, since it is the social mechanism by which the ends or interests of individuals and groups are hierarchically integrated by reference to ultimate values and beliefs. For Durkheim at least the social classification includes not only moral standards defining the differential worth of social functions but also legal norms such as those of property and contract which regulate and legitimate the ‘distribution of men and things’. Status is therefore directly implicated in the power structure of a society and is not simply a purely normative, ideational representation of it. Only in a superficial sense can status be equated with a hierarchy of honour or prestige based on values about which there is more or less consensus.
Material and Moral Impoverishment
Authors: Lockwood David
Published: November 2023

To begin with the ‘economic’ theory, the most basic question about the material impoverishment of the working class concerns the concept of action that links this condition with working-class revolt. As De Man puts it, ‘Of what use is it to prove that economic crises have assumed other forms than those foreseen by Marx? What matters to us is whether there really is, as Marx believed, a necessary connection between economic crises and the social revolution. ‘1 Impoverishment is, of course, only one aspect of this connection. The other is the way in which recurrent crises that plunge the proletariat into poverty also provide the conditions of the self-education of the class.
The Problem Of Class Action
Authors: Lockwood David
Published: November 2023

The first major conclusion to be drawn from the foregoing discussion of the three versions of the Marxist theory of ideology is that they all, albeit in different ways, lead to explanations of working-class passivity which are of a far too general scope. In some form or other, ideological factors are attributed such a pervasive influence in the prevention of proletarian revolution that the whole discourse totters on the brink of circularity.
The Adoption of RENEW
Authors: Hornsby-Smith Michael P , Fulton John , Norris Margaret
Published: November 2023

In the previous chapter we proposed a model of spiritualities in terms of two dimensions: organizational structure and cultural type. In this and the following chapter we will be concerned chiefly with the first of these dimensions: the nature of the organizational frame work in the research diocese within which the decision to adopt the RENEW programme was taken and implemented. Our concern is a sociological one. We aim to describe the process by which the decision was taken to adopt RENEW and the mechanisms and strategies employed by the religious leaders and initiators in the diocese to persuade the mass of priests and lay people in all the parishes in the diocese to accept their recommendation and to mobilize them, with more or less enthusiasm or reluctance, to participate in the three year undertaking; to identify the dominant ideologies implicit in the RENEW programme and expressed by its advocates and the diocesan leadership in order to legitimate its promotion; and to offer a sociological interpretation of the processes involved.
The Politics of Spirituality
Authors: Hornsby-Smith Michael P , Fulton John , Norris Margaret
Published: November 2023

This study of the process by which RENEW came to be adopted, implemented, and followed up in the Diocese of Downlands arose as a piece of opportunistic research. We, as Roman Catholic sociologists in the diocese, felt that it was such an important pastoral initiative in Britain that it ought to be the subject of serious investigation. It would consume a very large proportion of the diocesan resources, staff, and both clerical and lay energies over a period of several years, and we seemed to be best placed to undertake such a study.
Economic Convergence: A Tale of Six Cities
Authors: Marsh Catherine , Vogler Carolyn
Published: November 2023

This chapter draws mainly on sources of data outside the Social Change and Economic Life Initiative (SCELI), in order to provide a profile of the history of the occupational structure in the six labour markets. In the first half, a thumbnail sketch is given of the employment traditions in the six areas from their first industrialization up to 1971, showing how the areas industrialized in very different periods and in very different ways. The second half presents the more recent industrial histories of these locations, drawing on data from the Census of Employment in 1971 and 1981, as well as information about unemployment compiled by local Department of Employment Jobcentres.
School History and School Effectiveness in Scotland
Authors: Mcpherson Andrew , Willms J Douglas
Published: November 2023

Sociology and social policy have commonly framed the problem of school effectiveness as follows: can public education be provided in ways that mitigate social disadvantages which themselves have educational causes and consequences (Halsey, Floud, and Anderson 1961; Karabel and Halsey 1977; Halsey, Heath, and Ridge 1980)? Our chapter discusses two contrasting approaches to this question and applies them to secondary schooling in twentieth-century Scotland.
Women’s Studies: Theory or Practice?
Authors: Oakley Ann
Published: November 2023

This chapter begins with a brief case-study which signals several of its key themes, most importantly the rupture between personal and socially organized experience out of which the impetus to feminism (both in and outside sociology) is born (D. E. Smith 1979). The reasons for including the case-study are twofold. First, the subject-matter of women’s studies draws attention to fundamental flaws in conventional ways of building, and presenting, knowledge about the world, and suggests alternative ways of proceeding. Secondly, this volume itself has a dual purpose, being intended both as a contribution to discourse around the theme of relations between academia and social policy, and as a personal tribute to A. H. Halsey, whose own work has been very much occupied with this question.