Archive for the ‘Sociologist’ Category

June 23rd, 2011 Author Types, Sociologist No Comments »

Peter L. Berger

There is a continuum of values between the churches and the general community. What distinguishes the handling of these values in the churches is mainly the heavier dosage of religious vocabulary involved.
Peter L. Berger

We also have a cultural phenomenon: the emergence of a global culture, or of cultural globalization.
Peter L. Berger

But we don’t have an example of a democratic society existing in a socialist economy – which is the only real alternative to capitalism in the modern world.
Peter L. Berger

Even if one is interested only in one’s own society, which is one’s prerogative, one can understand that society much better by comparing it with others.
Peter L. Berger

It has been true in Western societies and it seems to be true elsewhere that you do not find democratic systems apart from capitalism, or apart from a market economy, if you prefer that term.
Peter L. Berger

Let me say again that the relationship is asymmetrical: there’s no democracy without a market economy, but you can have a market economy without democracy.
Peter L. Berger

One can’t understand the Christian Right and similar movements unless one sees them as reactive – they’re reacting to what they call secular humanism.
Peter L. Berger

Even in a society as tightly controlled as Singapore’s, the market creates certain forces which perhaps in the long run may lead to democracy.
Peter L. Berger

I think what I and most other sociologists of religion wrote in the 1960s about secularization was a mistake. Our underlying argument was that secularization and modernity go hand in hand. With more modernization comes more secularization.
Peter L. Berger

When certain branches of the economy become obsolete, as in the case of the steel industry, not only do jobs disappear, which is obviously a terrible social hardship, but certain cultures also disappear.
Peter L. Berger

Some people seem to gravitate from one fundamentalism to another, from some kind of secular fundamentalism into a religious fundamentalism or the other way around, which is not very helpful.
Peter L. Berger

Our institute’s agenda is relatively simple. We study the relationship between social-economic change and culture. By culture we mean beliefs, values and lifestyles. We cover a broad range of issues, and we work very internationally.
Peter L. Berger

So I think one can say on empirical grounds – not because of some philosophical principle – that you can’t have democracy unless you have a market economy.
Peter L. Berger

May 13th, 2011 Author Types, Authors, Sociologist, U No Comments »

Ulrich Beck

Nonetheless, we continue to be obsessed with finding or inventing a European nation which, as in the nation state, guarantees homogeneity and thus an appropriate form of democracy and centralized government.
Ulrich Beck

Relinquishing apparent national sovereignty does not have to entail a loss of national sovereignty, but can actually be a benefit.
Ulrich Beck

That was the first major social sciences conference at which social scientists from all cultures wanted to reach a consensus on whether we can continue to pursue a national course in the social sciences or whether we need a cosmopolitan path that also connects us in a new way.
Ulrich Beck

Western countries in particular can today no longer be separated from Muslim societies, because they have them within themselves. They are themselves internally globalized.
Ulrich Beck

You could say that we are living in an internally globalized country.
Ulrich Beck

And it also became clear that these conditions of inequality and historical injustice have given rise to a feeling of hate in the world – a deeply felt hate that cannot easily be overcome with a few good words.
Ulrich Beck

Neither science, nor the politics in power, nor the mass media, nor business, nor the law nor even the military are in a position to define or control risks rationally.
Ulrich Beck

But it then very soon became clear that the response of a war against terrorism, initially conceived of in a metaphorical sense, began to be taken increasingly seriously and came to entail waging a real war.
Ulrich Beck

Europe itself is an embodiment of this diversity.
Ulrich Beck

Global conditions are far too complex to be able to imagine that they could ever be really controlled by one power.
Ulrich Beck

I forced myself to think what is the new concept and it became clear to me that it was risk, not only in technology and ecology, but in life and employment, too.
Ulrich Beck

The basic assumption of the secular society is that modernity overcomes religion.
Ulrich Beck

When they come to Europe, they are confronted by still closed borders. Thus, the concept of open borders is a very selective concept, one that is not taken seriously at all in the experience of non-Europeans.
Ulrich Beck

You cannot make peace with terrorists. The normal dividing lines between war and peace do not apply.
Ulrich Beck

All theory of modernity in sociology suggests that the more modernity there is, the less religion. In my theory we can realize that this is wrong: atheism is only one belief system among many.
Ulrich Beck

Initially, the horrific images of September 11th triggered an enormous wave of solidarity.
Ulrich Beck

May 5th, 2011 Author Types, Authors, D, Sociologist No Comments »

Daniel Bell

The impulse of the journalist is to be novel, yet to relate his curiosities to the urgencies of the moment; the philosopher seeks what he conceives to be true, regardless of the moment.
Daniel Bell

When theology erodes and organization crumbles, when the institutional framework of religion begins to break up, the search for a direct experience which people can feel to be religious facilitates the rise of cults.
Daniel Bell

But in action, one defies one’s character.
Daniel Bell

The intellectual takes as a starting point his self and relates the world to his own sensibilities; the scientist accepts an existing field of knowledge and seeks to map out the unexplored terrain.
Daniel Bell

Europe, in legend, has always been the home of subtle philosophical discussion; America was the land of grubby pragmatism.
Daniel Bell

I am too weary to listen, too angry to hear.
Daniel Bell

Technology, like art, is a soaring exercise of the human imagination.
Daniel Bell

May 1st, 2011 Author Types, Authors, J, Sociologist No Comments »

Jean Baudrillard

Perhaps the world’s second worst crime is boredom. The first is being a bore.
Jean Baudrillard

Santa Barbara is a paradise; Disneyland is a paradise; the U.S. is a paradise. Paradise is just paradise. Mournful, monotonous, and superficial though it may be, it is paradise. There is no other.
Jean Baudrillard

Television knows no night. It is perpetual day. TV embodies our fear of the dark, of night, of the other side of things.
Jean Baudrillard

At male strip shows, it is still the women that we watch, the audience of women and their eager faces. They are more obscene than if they were dancing naked themselves.
Jean Baudrillard

Cowardice and courage are never without a measure of affectation. Nor is love. Feelings are never true. They play with their mirrors.
Jean Baudrillard

Deep down, no one really believes they have a right to live. But this death sentence generally stays tucked away, hidden beneath the difficulty of living. If that difficulty is removed from time to time, death is suddenly there, unintelligibly.
Jean Baudrillard

To love someone is to isolate him from the world, wipe out every trace of him, dispossess him of his shadow, drag him into a murderous future. It is to circle around the other like a dead star and absorb him into a black light.
Jean Baudrillard

What is a society without a heroic dimension?
Jean Baudrillard

You are born modern, you do not become so.
Jean Baudrillard

Americans may have no identity, but they do have wonderful teeth.
Jean Baudrillard

Driving is a spectacular form of amnesia. Everything is to be discovered, everything to be obliterated.
Jean Baudrillard

Governing today means giving acceptable signs of credibility. It is like advertising and it is the same effect that is achieved – commitment to a scenario.
Jean Baudrillard

I hesitate to deposit money in a bank. I am afraid I shall never dare to take it out again. When you go to confession and entrust your sins to the safe-keeping of the priest, do you ever come back for them?
Jean Baudrillard

We shall never resolve the enigma of the relation between the negative foundations of greatness and that greatness itself.
Jean Baudrillard

If you say, I love you, then you have already fallen in love with language, which is already a form of break up and infidelity.
Jean Baudrillard

Like dreams, statistics are a form of wish fulfillment.
Jean Baudrillard

Never resist a sentence you like, in which language takes its own pleasure and in which, after having abused it for so long, you are stupefied by its innocence.
Jean Baudrillard