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RACHEL CHAN
A new crime has been discovered - that is committed by those who may be studying criminology itself. Paraphrasing Richard Sennett and Saskia Sassen in the Guardian, this crime is that of committing sociology. Dr. Andrej Holm, scholar of the gentrification of communities living near the Berlin Wall post-crumbling, has been detained for the deviousness of having "similar" phrases as to those used in correspondence by terrorist organisations.
He is further indicted by the fact that he is an academic who has access to a public library. Now witch-burners alike should of course, bear in mind the all-universal truth that any academic who has access to a library is inherently a dangerous mind.
Perhaps people have an irrational fear of the discipline whose modern variant arose from the French Revolution itself. Chronologically throughout history, sociologists have been hounded with suspicion with the allegation that they are dangerous people whose only raison d'etre is to change society. Therefore concepts which radicalise opinions about the given social system are treated with disdain. Sociologists, then, are its heretics. It is blasphemy; the existing social order is a sacred thing not to be tampered with.
History is written, and very likely re-written by its victors. The repressive state apparatuses may be employed to condition the general populace to comply with its motives through dominance of the intellectual sphere. Through state hegemony, the political, economic, and intellectual spheres (emphasis) are manned through so many puppet strings placed within the modes of communication. Education, for example, condones the ideology of those in power. Alternative, or rather, deviant paradigms of thought are demonised, branded as pagans, or in today's value-loaded terminology, terrorists.
What exactly are the allegations heaped upon Dr. Holm? That he is claimed to have close contacts with three other individuals who have been charged for similar reasons but still remain free. He is also claimed to have been active in a "resistance mounted by the extreme left-wing scene against the World Economic Summit of 2007 in Heiligendamm". This almost smacks of the conspiracy employed in the arrest of Kian Tajbakhsh, another urban sociologist who is Iranian. For conducting studies on urban policy in his native country after his return from tenure in the US, Tajbakhsh was convicted and thrown into the nefarious Evin Prison for "being a spy for the US". Not startlingly, this coincided with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's ban on intellectuals having contact with foreign acquiantances. Says Pakistani journalist and author Ahmed Rashid, a friend of Tajbakhsh, "if you live in Iran nowadays, intellectuals are the new terrorists."
The circumstances of Dr. Holm's detention are every bit as comfy as Guantanamo's. He and others will be locked in solitary confinement 23 hours a day with his mail checked. Contact with lawyers are only to be administered through separation panes. It would seem as though Dr. Holm were the Unabomber himself. If this were to be true then certainly he has laid rest to the age-old argument that the pen is mightier than the sword, or in the 21st century, bombs.
Interesting work...but...
aren't there also some sociologists who spend their time formulating theories that suppport the status quo or that give solutions that aren't really radical (and, sometimes, maybe even reactionary?).
I suppose the reason why in Iran "intellectuals are the new terrorist" might have to do with religion.
"My heart sings for you both. Imagine it singing. la la la la."- Hannah Kay
"if you keep calling average working people idiots i am sure they will be more apt to listen to what you have to say. "-bcbm
"Sometimes false consciousness can be more destructive than apathy, just like how sometimes, doing nothing is actually better than doing the wrong thing."- Robocommie
"The ruling class would tremble, and the revolution would be all but assured." -Explosive Situation, on the Revleft Merry Prankster bus
The bourgeois tendencies of Sociology was partly what sparked the Paris 68 revolt.
"The sun shines. To hell with everything else!" - Stephen Fry
"As the world of the spectacle extends its reign it approaches the climax of its offensive, provoking new resistances everywhere. These resistances are very little known precisely because the reigning spectacle is designed to present an omnipresent hypnotic image of unanimous submission. But they do exist and are spreading.", The Bad Days Will End.
"(The) working class exists and struggles in all countries, and has the same enemies in all countries – the police, the army, the unions, nationalism, and the fake ‘socialism’ of the bourgeois left. It shows that the conditions for a worldwide revolution are ripening everywhere today. It shows that workers and revolutionaries are not passive spectators of inter-imperialist conflicts: they have a camp to choose, the camp of the proletarian struggle against all the factions of the bourgeoisie and all imperialisms." -ICC, Nation or Class?
How so?
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By the way, i really enjoyed reading this piece.
Margaret Thatcher might have declared that there’s no such thing as a society, but sociology isn’t necessarily an anathema to conservative and reactionary forces. Structural functionalism, postmodernism and even Frankfurt school critical theory are schools of social theory and sociology that can be seen to support the status quo. Not always overtly mind you.
I can't remember the specific quote (for I lent my book [obsolete communism - Daniel Cohn-Bendit] out).
It was part of the rejection of the university.
"The sun shines. To hell with everything else!" - Stephen Fry
"As the world of the spectacle extends its reign it approaches the climax of its offensive, provoking new resistances everywhere. These resistances are very little known precisely because the reigning spectacle is designed to present an omnipresent hypnotic image of unanimous submission. But they do exist and are spreading.", The Bad Days Will End.
"(The) working class exists and struggles in all countries, and has the same enemies in all countries – the police, the army, the unions, nationalism, and the fake ‘socialism’ of the bourgeois left. It shows that the conditions for a worldwide revolution are ripening everywhere today. It shows that workers and revolutionaries are not passive spectators of inter-imperialist conflicts: they have a camp to choose, the camp of the proletarian struggle against all the factions of the bourgeoisie and all imperialisms." -ICC, Nation or Class?
Ok, that makes sense; I thought for a second you were trying to say capitalist ideology was an impetus for May 68….
Margaret Thatcher notoriously hated sociology. Apart from its perceived lack of rigor (Thatcher was a trained chemist), she argued that it fomented dissatisfaction out of a malign desire to subvert.
Outside of the American Functionalist school, it would be difficult to find a sociologist who would describe themselves as 'conservative'. Most consider themselves as engaged in a critical quest to understand society in order to change it for the better.
As one prominent British sociologist puts it:But that was written by Anthony Giddens, one of the main thinkers behind 'The Third Way' and New Labour, so his view of what is subversive is severely open to question.
"Events have their own logic, even when human beings do not." - Rosa Luxemburg
"There are decades when nothing happens; and there are weeks when decades happen." - Lenin
Well, the American functionalists know all about the difference between manifest and latent functions…I don’t think what someone wishes to label themselves is the most important factor in deciding their social function - i.e. whether or not they preform a conservative or progressive function within society.
True. My point was that the self-perceived radicalism of sociologists was suspect on that basis.
"Events have their own logic, even when human beings do not." - Rosa Luxemburg
"There are decades when nothing happens; and there are weeks when decades happen." - Lenin
