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"Misztal, Barbara A"
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Public Intellectuals and Think Tanks: A Free Market in Ideas?
The paper critically evaluates the thesis of the interchangeability between the think-tank public intellectual and the academic public intellectual. It suggests that this thesis, while endorsing the rise of the think-tank public intellectual, pronounces the salience of the intellectual-social critic and undermines the authority of academic public intellectuals. It is argued that the think-tank expert doubling as the public intellectuals could limit the political relevance of the academic public intellectual and that the think-tank expert's monopolization of the public forum could present a threat to the quality of public debates. While recognizing that there are many contradictions inherent in the role of intellectual and that there are now numerous factors that hinder the abilities of academics to act as public intellectuals, the paper emphasizes public academic intellectuals' contribution to the dynamics of public opinion and the quality of democratic standards. In today's context, with the omnipresent of media, the new conditions of knowledge production, the neo-liberal ethos and the social prominence of think-tank experts, the sources of the academic public intellectual authority are in a continuous need for reinvestment.
Journal Article
Political Forgiveness’ Transformative Potentials
The aim of this paper is to contribute to the theoretical and empirical understandings of the role that political forgiveness plays in the post-conflict and post-authoritarian societies. The paper provides a discussion of the complexities of the concept of political forgiveness, and offers empirical examples that demonstrate the different capacities and potentials that political forgiveness has as a mode of social reconciliation and repair the past injustice. It argues that today, with the accumulation of experience in the practice of transitional justice, and the growing importance of human rights regime, considering of forgiveness through the accountability’s lens is very timely and important. After the discussion of the contribution of forgiveness to societal reconstruction in the post-conflict and post-authoritarian societies, the paper focuses on the role of forgiveness as an essential part of justice and solidarity. By scrutinising forgiveness’ links with reconciliation and justice, the paper offers a comprehensive way to assess the nature of preconditions and the role of forgiveness in addressing the past injustice and overcoming divisions in post-conflict societies. Its discussion of empirical findings on the role that forgiveness opens up a debate about risks and costs involved in a policy of forgiveness in newly democratised countries.
Journal Article
Informality
For most of the twentieth century, modernity has been characterised by the formalisation of social relations as face to face interactions are replaced by impersonal bureaucracy and finance. As we enter the new millennium, however, it becomes increasingly clear that it is only by stepping outside these formal structures that trust and co-operation can be created and social change achieved. In a brilliant theoretical tour de force, illustrated with sustained case studies of changing societies in the former eastern Europe and of changing forms of interaction within so-called virtual communities, Barbara Misztal, argues that only the society that achieves an appropriate balance between the informality and formality of interaction will find itself in a position to move forward to further democratisation and an improved quality of life.
eBook
The Ambiguity of Everyday Experience: Between Normality and Boredom
This paper asserts that the growing expansion of the micro realm of social activity calls for the exploration of everyday experience, seen as ranging from the most extraordinary to the most ordinary. The paper focuses on two constitutive features of the ordinary type of experience, namely, normality and boredom. It conceptualizes normality as an outcome of people’s potential to construct meaning of their ordinary experiences and boredom as a state signaling our inability to realize this desire. Both types of ordinary experience are in the core of everyday life and thus their consequences can be detrimental to the quality of social life. This paper’s discussion of normality and boredom includes both sociological and literary works where these two phenomena find their rich expression.
Journal Article
Normality and Trust in Goffman's Theory of Interaction Order
The article asserts that Goffman's concept of normality comes close to the notion of trust as a protective mechanism that prevents chaos and disorder by providing us with feelings of safety, certainty, and familiarity. Arguing that to account for the tendency of social order to be seen as normal we need to conceptualize trust as the routine background of everyday interaction, the article analyzes Goffman's concepts of normal appearances, stigma, and frames as devices for endowing social order with predictability, reliability, and legibility. For Goffman, normality is a collective achievement, which is possible because of the orderliness of interactional activities, which is-in turn-predicated \"on a large base of shared cognitive presuppositions, if not normative ones, and self-sustained restraints\" (Goffman 1983, American Sociological Review 48:1-53, p. 5 cited here).
Journal Article
Theories of social remembering
\"brilliant...an impressive tour de force\" Network *Why does collective memory matter?*How is social memory generated, maintained and reproduced?*How do we explain changes in the content and role of collective memory?.
eBook
Memory and Democracy
This article reconstructs and evaluates prevalent assumptions in the literature about links between collective memory and democracy. There are widespread assertions that memory is important for democratic community to achieve its potential, avoid dangers of past crimes, and secure its continuation. These assertions assume collective memory as a condition for freedom, justice, and the stability of democratic order. This article considers these assumptions with equally popular counterpropositions, arguing that memory presents a threat to democratic community because it can undermine cohesion, increase the costs of cooperation, and cause moral damage to civil society by conflating political and ethnic or cultural boundaries. The relationship between memory and democracy is discussed, along with the intermediate notions of identity, trauma, and ritual. The article concludes that what matters for democracy’s health is not social remembering per se but the way in which the past is called up and made present.
Journal Article
A Nobel Trinity: Jane Addams, Emily Greene Balch and Alva Myrdal
The aim of the paper is to present unusual achievements of three women sociologists who won the Nobel Peace Prize. Its goal is also to contribute to a long standing discussion of the role sociologists as public intellectuals. By focusing on Addams, Balch and Myrdal's scholarly and public life, the paper demonstrates what social scientists can offer in the role of public intellectuals and debates what are the source of intellectuals' public standing. The paper concludes by arguing that these three intellectuals' successful achievement of their goals was possible because of their professional credential and because of their courage to take on risky actions for purposes to institutionalise social or cultural change.
Journal Article