Rationalization and culture

Sica, Alan

doi:10.1017/ccol9780521561495.004

Cited by 15 publications

(8 citation statements)

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“…This is emphasized by Sica (2000) in his observation that Western individuals, increasingly forced to practice and exhibit rationality in order to make a living and fulfil the strictly regulated functions that their jobs entail, are increasingly infantile in their spare time. He argues that 'they rush to those few remaining human or animal intimates available to them' and proceed to reward themselves 'with a range of "after-hours" childish amusements which intelligent adults from earlier times would likely consider imbecilic and demeaning' (Sica, 2000, p. 57).…”

Section: Bureaucracy As Expression Of Formal Rationalitymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Thankfully, as Alan Sica (2000) points out, a world entirely dominated by formal rationality is the stuff of science fiction. So, it is here that we introduce one of the key arguments, one of the key themes running through the book: there are countless culture creators in the twenty-first century who seek to evade the totalizing logic of profit and whose modus operandi can never be entirely contained by formal rationality.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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A Sociology of Culture, Taste and Value

Stewart¹

2013

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Section: Bureaucracy As Expression Of Formal Rationalitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Sociology of Culture, Taste and Value

Stewart¹

2013

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“…It is worth saying here that Weber—himself one of the great tragic theorists of modernity 39 —was hardly convinced of the superiority of the situation in which, “as in the bureaucratic state with its rational laws, the judge is a kind of legal paragraph‐machine, into which one throws the documents on a case together with some more or less valid reasons for it,” over one “where judgments are made on each individual case according to the judge's sense of fairness,” that is, “what is popularly called ‘kadi justice’” (1994:147–148), even if he thought the latter an impediment to the development of modern capitalism (see also Sica 2000:55). Neither could the historical nor can the contemporary Lebanese shari'a court judge just make up the rules on an ad hoc basis.…”

Section: Law and Virtuementioning

confidence: 99%

“… 39. Witness, for instance, the invocation of Goethe's Faust in the famously gloomy conclusion to The Protestant Ethic (Sica 2000:56–58).…”

Section: Notesmentioning

confidence: 99%

The judge as tragic hero: Judicial ethics in Lebanon's shari'a courts

Clarke¹

2012

American Ethnologist

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In this article, I present ethnography of judicial practice in Lebanon's shari'a courts and find a tension between the identity of the judges presiding as Islamic religious specialists and their identity as legal professionals. Just applying the rules of the law is incompatible with true religious vocation, which demands personal engagement with the morally needy. But to ignore legal strictures is to be dismissed as a mere sermonizer. I find this case illustrative of a deeper tension between the use of rules and the disciplining of virtuous selves and argue for a new anthropology of rules to set alongside the new anthropology of ethics. [bureaucracy, ethics, Islam, law, Lebanon, rules, shari'a court]

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“…Tenbruck, 1989; Hennis, 1988: esp. chs 1, 4 and 5; Sica, 2000; Scaff, 2000). Rationalization (basically, reordering in a more thought-out way), is a general long-term tendency across many fields of society and culture.…”

Section: Themes In Cultural Historymentioning

confidence: 99%

Sociological theory and Jungian psychology

Walker¹

2012

History of the Human Sciences

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[[disenchantmentCarl JungpsychoanalysissociologyMax Weber ] In this article I seek to relate the psychology of Carl Jung to sociological theory, specifically Weber. I first present an outline of Jungian psychology. I then seek to relate this as psychology to Weber’s interpretivism. I point to basic methodological compatibilities within a Kantian frame, from which emerge central concerns with the factors limiting rationality. These generate the conceptual frameworks for parallel enquiries into the development and fate of rationality in cultural history. Religion is a major theme here: contrasts of eastern and western religion; the rise of prophetic religion and the disenchantment of modernity. Weber’s categories ‘ascetic’ and ‘mystic’ seem applicable to his own and Jung’s approaches and indeed temperaments, while a shared ironic view of rationality leads to similar visions of the disenchanted modern world. I conclude that Jung is sociologically coherent, but in an entirely different sense from Freud: rather than a constellation of family, socialization, ideology, social continuity, there is an analysis of cultural history against a background of adult normal psychology. I conclude that sociology should acknowledge Jung, but not in terms of over-arching theory. Rather Jungian insights might be used to orient new enquiries, and for reflexive analysis of sociology’s methodological debates.

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Rationalization and culture

Cited by 15 publications

References 0 publications

A Sociology of Culture, Taste and Value

A Sociology of Culture, Taste and Value

The judge as tragic hero: Judicial ethics in Lebanon's shari'a courts

Sociological theory and Jungian psychology

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