Abstracts
1998/33-34 Replika Monologue: In the Palm of God Replika presents the monologue of a middle rank-positioned woman in a small city who was born during the war, and laid off in the `90s, a short time before her retirement was due. The monologue is revealing about how social factors interfere with our lives: in this case, how the dismissal caused grave psychic and somatic symptoms. The story also offers a glimpse of an East-Central European crisis in depth. Colonization of the Social Sciences in Eastern Europe By drafting the professional trajectories of some Hungarian composers in the 19th and 20th century, in the first essay Miklós Hadas outlines the perspectives of Eastern European social sciences, differentiating between four models of modernizing national arts and sciences on the semi-peripheries. Referreing to Béla Bartók's oeuvre as a model-case, Hadas asserts that a scholar can be capable of contributing to the construction of a paradigm of universal validity starting out from `differentia specifica' of his indigenous topic.The subsequent essays are organized around a provocative article written by two Hungarian sociologists, György Csepeli and Antal Örkény, and an American political scientist, Kim Lane Scheppele who claim that social science research in Eastern Europe is basically done from Western (mainly American) funds and under the leadership of Western scholars who employ Eastern counterparts as apprentices or informants whatever their reputation is in their home country. The essay uses strong metaphors (AIDS viruses, contamination, colonization) to intice a much needed debate on the status of social sciences in Eastern Europe. |
Three
responses follow the article. Rudolf Andorka completely disagrees
with Csepeli and his co-authors and argues that there are significant improvements
in the conditions for pursuing social scientific research in post-socialist
societies and cites abundant examples of successful cooperation between
Western and Eastern European sociologists. Zuzana Kusá mostly
agrees with the arguments presented in the essay and makes corroborative
remarks based on her own experience and institutional perspective. She
points out that Slovak sociologists have ceased to exist as an intellectual
community; and discusses how macropolitical interests can still interfere
in sociological research.
Alaina Lemon
and David Altshuler criticize the opening article for its generalizations
and inaccuracies. They argue that the main thesis - on the exploitation
of Eastern social scientists by their Western colleagues as mere data-collectors
- is inadequate to describe the practice of ethnographic fieldwork. Lemon
and Altshuler emphasize the reciprocal theoretical influence: numerous
fields in “Western “ social sciences and humanities are indebted to the
work of Eastern European scholars. At the end, the authors of the first
essay respond to their critics, and acknowledge some of the generalizations
they made for the sake of the argument and clarify their points with more
detailed examples.
The two following essays describe the shifts in American lesbian and gay identitity politics. Diana Fuss defines identity politics as a historical and cultural construct, and although she claims that identity politics have an encouraging effect on lesbian and gay community formation, she also challenges the presumptions that constitute the concepts of identity and politics. The second American author, Lisa Duggan analyzes the new potentials of American queer theories and politics. Providing space for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered and sometimes heterosexual people, queer thinking transgresses gendered and sexual borders, and creates flexible identities and provisional coalitions. In the last
essay, Henning Bech explores the disappearance of the social and cultural
conditions that have historically constituted the framework for modern
homosexuality, and offers a Northern European example for the disappearance
of the “modern homosexual" as a result of these changes. Bech introduces
the term homo-genisation to describe the new social and cultural context
of postmodern society.
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