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A Small Unassuming Man Walked Up To Me, Shook My Hand And Told Me, “I Really Enjoyed Your Paper”, David R. Dickens Jr.

Bios Sociologicus: The Erving Goffman Archives

Dr. David Dickens, Professor of Sociology at the University of Nevada Las Vegas, wrote this memoir at the invitation of Dmitri Shalin and gave his approval for posting the present version in the Erving Goffman Archives.

What Does Smart Growth Mean For Housing?, Karen A. Danielsen, Robert E. Lang, William Fulton

Public Policy and Leadership Faculty Research

Barely noticed amid the returns from the 1998 midterm elections was a quiet revolution that goes to the heart of how and where Americans live. While most news accounts focused on the high-profile candidate elections, voters across the nation-in Democratic and Republican areas alike-approved more than 160 state and local ballot measures intended to preserve open space and limit urban sprawl.

The coalition forming around the idea of limiting sprawl includes environmentalists, farmers, big-city mayors, and some developers. But perhaps most important, the so-called "smart growth" movement also includes many suburban voters who are fed up with growth. For example, …

Critical Theory And The Pragmatist Challenge, Dmitri N. Shalin

Sociology Faculty Research

Habermas's theory breaks with the Continental tradition that has denigrated pragmatism as an Anglo-Saxon philosophy subservient to technocratic capitalism. While Habermas deftly uses pragmatist insights into communicative rationality and democratic ethos, he shows little sensitivity to other facets of pragmatism. This article argues that incorporating the pragmatist perspective on experience and indeterminacy brings a corrective to the emancipatory agenda championed by critical theorists. The pragmatist alternative to the theory of communicative action is presented, with the discussion centering around the following themes: disembodied reason versus embodied reasonableness, determinate being versus indeterminate reality, discursive truth versus pragmatic certainty, rational consensus versus …

G. H. Mead, Socialism, And The Progressive Agenda, Dmitri N. Shalin

Sociology Faculty Research

Mead is known today primarily for his original philosophy and social psychology. Much less familiar to us is Mead the reformer, a man who sought to balance political engagement with academic detachment and who established himself as an astute critic of contemporary American society. This paper examines Mead's political beliefs and his theory of the reform process. Drawing on little known sources and archival materials, it demonstrates that Mead shared socialism's humanitarian ends and that, following the dominant progressive ideology of his time, he sought to accomplish these ends by constitutional means. An argument is made that Mead's ideological commitments …

Capitalism, Corporate Liberalism And Social Policy: The Origins Of The Social Security Act Of 1935, Barbara G. Brents

Sociology Faculty Research

This paper looks at the involvement and influence of capitalists on the Social Security Act of 1935. Instead of positing direct corporate control, the research shows how social security was formulated within a corporate liberal ideological framework which defined problems and their solutions in terms of putting the maintenance of capitalism above the needs of individual workers. This framework set the limits of the, social insurance debates long before the act itself was written. The thesis is that the Social Security Act came about as a result of an interplay between the environment and an ideology advanced by corporate leaders …

Marxist Paradigm And Academic Freedom, Dmitri N. Shalin

Sociology Faculty Research

The Russian October Revolution dealt a devastating blow to Marxism from which Marxist sociology did not begin to recover until recently. Stalin's "contributions" to Marxist theory and practice had a particularly adverse effect on the fate of Marxism in the West. Whatever hopes were generated by the de-Stalinization campaign in the Soviet Union proved short-lived. By the time Soviet tanks entered Prague and Soviet authorities resumed show trials, few intellectuals in the capitalist West could speak of Soviet Marxism without acute resentment or at least tacit embarrassment.

In Mills's words, ". . . marxism-leninism has become an official rhetoric with …