Programme full

Wednesday 15 April 2015 11:00 - 12:30
PAPER SESSION 2
Schreiner's reputation seemed assured; and as late as the 1970s, her Women and Labour appeared on some
Sociology reading lists. However, few sociologists subsequently would have placed Schreiner's work within the
discipline's canon, ironically displaced by contemporary feminist writings. But more recently, canon revision has
recognised a broader range of ideas and positions, with Schreiner's work benefitting from this. Her intellectual and
interpersonal relationships with Herbert Spencer, John Hobson, Leonard Hobhouse and W.E.B. Du Bois are outlined,
and these network links distinguished from her associational and figurational connections, closely bound into her
absolute pacifism, with Hobson, Isabella Ford, Frederick Pethick-Lawrence, Bertrand Russell, Norman Angell and
Jane Adams. Schreiner did not aspire to be 'a sociologist', with her priorities political ones concerning 'race' and
racism and war and peace; but the boundaries were fluid; and the power and reach of her analysis, its international
significance and close connections with key sociological concerns, ensures her work remains of great relevance.
From Literature to Sociology: The Shock of Celine's Literary Style and Viola Klein's Attempt to Understand It
Lyon, E.S.
(London South Bank University)
This presents a discussion of the first doctoral thesis written by Viola Klein whilst in Prague and before her escape to
Britain in 1938. Her second thesis, published as The Feminine Character: History of an Ideology (1946), written under
the supervision of Karl Mannheim at the LSE, is known in the history of sociology as a contribution to critiques of
patriarchal constructions of knowledge. But her first thesis, on the literary style of the French novelist Louis-Ferdinand
Celine, is in many ways equally interesting. It throws light both on why she later approached Mannheim to become
supervisor of her second thesis, and on her own intellectual journey from literature to sociology during the conflict
ridden 1930s, a decade which towards the end of it saw Celine turn to virulent anti-Semitism. Lepenies, in his work on
the history of sociology Between Literature and Science: The Rise of Sociology (1988), points to the lack of attention
to the role of fiction as a source of influence in the development of sociology and sociologists. Through a discussion
of Klein's thesis arguments about society, literary culture and language, this paper aims to fill a gap in the history of
Viola Klein, Karl Mannheim, and the turbulent political context of sociology during the first half of the 20th century.
(Relevant publication: Lyon (2007) 'Viola Klein: Forgotten Emigre Intellectual, Public Sociologist and Advocate of
Women', Sociology 41(5): 829-842.)
Re-evaluating Lucien Goldmann: Sociologist of Cultural Production and Marxist Theorist
Fowler, B.
(University of Glasgow)
This paper will explore the genetic structuralism of the Rumanian-French thinker, Goldmann (1913-1970), who is in
danger of being dropped from our collective memory. It focuses particularly on two areas of his thought - first, his
conception of a "tragic vision" in the work of Kant, Pascal and Racine and secondly, his considerations of late
capitalism. His Immanuel Kant (1971[1945] and The Hidden God (1964 [1956] are argued to offer enduringly
illuminating analyses, and ones which are supported by other sociological studies of absolutism (eg Elias's The Court
Society (2006 [1939], Bourdieu's Sur L'Etat (2012) ). In this light that it will be noted that Bourdieu himself had a
paradoxical relation to Goldmann: openly rejecting him but returning recurrently to his themes.
The paper concludes by addressing Goldmann's wider conception of the Pascalian gamble (cf MacIntyre (1971),
Davidson (2014)). Goldmann's own wager is on the practical feasibility of a future that combines the human rights of
the Enlightenment tradition and the egalitarian solidarity of the socialist tradition. Yet, even while reaffirming this
wager, Goldmann considered post-WWII capitalism to have become tragically re-stabilised, so as to have lost its inner
tendencies to crisis and the emergence of oppositional antagonists. This view is questioned, especially in the light of
successive post-1970 recessions and the shift to the "spectacular" (Piketty 2014) deepening of inequality.
G.D.H. Cole: Sociology, Politics, Empowerment and 'How to be Socially Good'
Masquelier, C., Dawson, M.
(University of Surrey)
This paper considers the sociology of the early 20th Century British theorist G.D.H. Cole (1889-1959). Although
primarily thought of now – when thought of at all – as a political theorist, Cole's work contained a clear sociological
perspective. This was expressed most clearly in his texts on social theory, the class structure and various obstinately
political writings. Emerging from a distinctively sociological reading of Rousseau's general will and a qualified critique
of scientific Marxism, Cole's main focus was on the forms of association social beings engage in, the loyalties these
engendered, and the forms of emancipatory practices they can be expected to yield. Keen to circumvent the aporias
of mere negation and unwilling to find comfort in the belief in capitalism's self-destruction, he opposed the perversion
of an innate impulse towards sociality with an alternative set of socio-political institutions thought to remedy the social
109 BSA Annual Conference 2015
Glasgow Caledonian University