Durkheim and the Unthought: Some Dilemmas of Modernity

Ramp, William

doi:10.2307/3341512

Cited by 5 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 32 publications

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“…111 This concern was rooted in a desire to eliminate any inequitable advantage, however, including inherited property. 112 Beckert reminds us that analyses of inheritance tax law demand consideration of Durkheim. Interestingly, Cotterrell notes that Durkheim's analysis of the relationship between people and property is likely to be`odd' to lawyers, who view property as`a variable set of legal relationships between persons with respect to things'.…”

Section: Starting the Discussion: Updating Early Twentieth Century Umentioning

confidence: 99%

Inheritance in Socio‐Political Context: The Case for Reviving the Sociological Discourse of Inheritance Tax Law

Mumford

2007

Journal of Law and Society

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The anti‐‘death tax’ movement is the starting point for contemporary discussions of inheritance taxation. The political rhetoric surrounding calls for its repeal typically is met with analyses of the extent to which inheritance tax avoidance benefits the wealthy, and arguments that inheritance taxation is fair and ‘targeted’. This article suggests that engagement by tax lawyers with sociological theories of economic inheritance has the potential to revive this discourse. A renewed approach to inheritance taxation is of immediate concern to supporters of inheritance taxation in the United Kingdom, who face considerable obstacles posed by the increasing use of United States anti‐inheritance tax movement political rhetoric by politicians. Durkheim's consideration of the conjugal family and, more recently, Beckert's sociology of inheritance are submitted as analyses that, amongst others, have particular potential. Such engagement also has the potential to revive the interest of sociologists in inheritance taxation, memorably described by MacNamee and Miller as a ‘sociological lacuna.’

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Section: Starting the Discussion: Updating Early Twentieth Century Umentioning

confidence: 99%

Inheritance in Socio‐Political Context: The Case for Reviving the Sociological Discourse of Inheritance Tax Law

Mumford

2007

Journal of Law and Society

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“…It is incumbent, then, upon those who wish to recuperate the classical tradition to also confront its problematic engendering. This raises the question posed by Foucault (1973) and discussed by Ramp (2001) in the context of Durkheim's work, which is the relation between the ‘thought’ and the ‘unthought’ in sociological theory. To what extent is the ‘thought body’ that constitutes the object of the new sociology of the body the thought male body that rests upon a ‘gendered unthought’?…”

Section: Conclusion: Thinking the Gendered Unthought5mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Sexual difference for both was bodily and pre‐social, and feminine corporeality was not the source or location of sociality that it was for men. To rehabilitate classical theories of embodiment as generic , rather than as literally and metaphorically masculine, is to ignore the extent to which a sex/gender matrix functioned as the ‘unthought’ (see Ramp, 2001) upon which they rested. When we take theories such as Durkheim's and Simmel's apart, we find deeply differentiated bodies with different ontological relationships to the social.…”

Section: Conclusion: Thinking the Gendered Unthought5mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…There is no dearth of commentary on Durkheim's exclusion of women from the purview of 'the social' in modernity (Gane, 1993;Jay, 1981;Kandal, 1988; © The Editorial Board of The Sociological Review 2003 Lehmann, 1994;Marshall, 1994;Marshall, 2002;Pedersen, 2001;Ramp, 2001;Shope, 1994;Sydie, 1987;Sydie, 1994;Wityak and Wallace, 1981;Witz, 2000;Witz and Marshall, 2002). Beginning with the Division of Labour in Society, where he posits an increasing differentiation between women and men as integral to the development of societies, Durkheim never develops a generic conception of human individuals, embodied or otherwise.…”

Section: Durkheim: Homo Duplex and Femina Simplexmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Woman lives in the most profound identity of being and being-a-woman, in the absoluteness of immanently defined sexuality, the characteristic essence of which does not require the relationship to the other sex. (Simmel, 1984b: 107) Simmel (1984a) is eventually prompted to 'think the gendered unthought' (Ramp, 2001) precisely because he is unable to think women into the social (Witz, 2001). We see him struggling with the question of whether a 'female culture' is possible, given that objective culture is so indelibly shaped by a male principle.…”

Section: Simmel's Masculine Ontology Of the Socialmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The Quality of Manhood: Masculinity and Embodiment in the Sociological Tradition

Witz

Marshall

2003

The Sociological Review

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This paper argues for the need to revisit classical sociological texts with a view to excavating the masculinity that inheres in these texts and saturates the concept of the social. Primarily through an examination of Durkheim and Simmel, it explores the strategies whereby masculine individuals could be released from corporeality and granted the sort of embodiment that allowed them to transcend their particularity and become social agents. It is argued that male embodiment is deeply sedimented in the sociological imaginary as the very condition of social action and the constituent of social agency. Thinking through the conceptual lenses of corporeality, embodiment and agency exposes some of the ways in which the analytical scaffolding of 'the social' rests on a deeply gendered ontological foundation. While the sociological tradition may indeed have continued salience for contemporary sociologies of the body, a relatively unreflexive recuperation of these texts is problematic. This paper challenges those who seek to rehabilitate the classics in the service of an embodied sociology to produce a much fuller accounting of the truncated corporeal terrain upon which classical sociology developed, and one which explicitly recognizes its gender.'The quality of a social scientist's work is dependent on the quality of his manhood' (Gouldner, 1971) 'The erection is the jester in the wings of the civilizing process' (Morgan, 1993)

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