Call for papers

The sociological imagination after 1989: How fundamental are the conceptual shifts?

Research Committee 35 ‘Conceptual and Terminological Analysis’
Session

First ISA Forum of Sociology
Sociological Research and Public Debate
Barcelona, Spain
September 5-8, 2008
 

Several substantial debates surveying the meaning and impact of 1989, cumulatively, suggest substantial shifts in the foundations and parameters of the sociological imagination that ‘enables its possessor to understand the larger historical scene in terms of its meaning for the inner life and the external career of a variety of individuals’ (C.W. Mills). Moreover, the social and cultural changes associated with 1989 might lead one to speculate that we are passing through a (new) ‘Sattelzeit’ (R.W. Kosselleck). To be sure, Kosselleck and collaborators identified the Sattelzeit (‘période charnière’) linking the ‘before’ and ‘after’ of 1789 only in retrospect, nearly two centuries later. However, the coming 20th anniversary of 1989 would seem a good moment to enquire, which conceptual shifts are occurring and how far-reaching these might be.

Some candidates for further examination are the following debates (other ideas and debates are equally welcome):

  1. 1989 has been interpreted in many ways, but one interpretation that stuck is the ‘rectifying revolution’ (Habermas). It articulated the expectation of overcoming Yalta and returning to Europe, while also captured the prospective Europeanisation of CEE. Yet, the term also ‘domesticated’ the revolutions. Whereas in the 1970s many confidently anticipated the coming legitimation crisis of late capitalism, by the 1990s all concurred that, to the contrary, socialism had experienced its final legitimation crisis, giving way to democratic capitalism. What are the consequences for the sociological imagination?
  2. The ‘End of History’ was borrowed by Fukuyama from Hegel to designate the ultimate victory of capitalist liberal democracy in the ‘realm of ideas’. Perry Anderson summed up: ‘What the end of history means, above all, is the end of socialism’. Arigghi, Hopkins and Wallerstein wrote that in “1989, not only Leninism, but national liberation movements, social-democratic, and all the other heirs of post-1789 revolutionary ‘liberalism’ collapsed ideologically”. Western (Post-)Marxists, who had not supported the USSR, seemingly concur with Fukuyama. What is the meaning of this?
  3. The ‘Third Way’ aided leftist electoral recovery (cf. Etzioni, Giddens). By 1989 social democrats had begun to look like the natural opposition party. Some of the concepts adapted from sociology are: embedded market, ensuring state, controlled inequality, critique of social inheritance, citizenship as co-production and managed diversity. What does this tell us about the interrelation between sociology and leftist politics after 1989?
  4. ‘Varieties of Capitalism’ represents a family of economic systems with common features, distinct from socialism (Kornai; Hall/Soskice). The current discourse suggests that after the end of socialism only varieties of capitalism remain?

Session organiser

Chris Armbruster
Executive Director
Research Network 1989
chris.armbruster@eui.eu  

For further information:
http://www.cee-socialscience.net/1989/groups/g9.html  

last modified: 2007-10-10