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In contemporary societies, there is a strong push toward seeing education as an instrument for the delivery of particular societal agendas. On such a view, the only questions that remain are how effective education is at delivering such agendas and how its effectiveness can be increased. While this might be a desirable way forward for those who believe that a consensus about the agenda for education can easily be achieved, it is at odds with the idea that a democratic society is characterized by a fundamental plurality of visions about what schools are supposed to be for. Yet the democratic critique of educational instrumentalism cannot be confined to giving each and every vision its own school, as this would simply multiply educational instrumentalism rather than oppose it. A true democratic response thus needs to take education's own interest seriously as well, which, as Gert Biesta argues in this paper, amounts to a defense of the school as institution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article introduces the special issue on ‘Elites and Power after Financialization’. It is presented in three parts. The first sets out the original Weberian problematic that directed the work of Michels and Mills, in the 1910s and 1950s respectively. It then discusses how this framework was appropriated and then cast aside as our understanding of capitalism changed. The second section makes the case for a reset of elite studies around the current capitalist conjuncture of financialization. It is explained how this unifying theme allows for a diverse set of approaches for answering old and new questions about elites and power. The third part identifies four key themes or sites of investigation that emerge within the nine papers offered here. These are: new state-capital relations, innovative forms of value extraction, new elite insecurities and resources in liquid times and the role of elite intermediaries and experts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This essay examines the 1939 decision by Time, Inc., publisher of LIFE magazine, to reject Schlegelkeller, an eyewitness account of early pre-Holocaust violence by German artist Karl Schwesig. While scholars have suggested a number of reasons why the American press minimized or failed to report the Nazi decimation of Jews and other marginalized groups, we borrow from two influential works by sociologist C. Wright Mills to suggest that an intricate intersection of social statuses, along with ideological perspectives, institutional norms, and personal temperament, may explain why LIFE rejected Schlegelkeller. We discuss the implications of this decision in light of both the magazine's internal metrics and the response of the American news media to prewar violence in Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Society: Chinese Journal of Sociology / Shehui is the property of Society: Chinese Journal of Sociology and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This exploratory paper discusses the undemocratic agenda setting of elites in Britain and how it has changed politics within a form of capitalism where much is left undisclosed in terms of mechanism and methods. It argues for a more radical exploratory strategy using C. Wright Mills' understanding that what is left undisclosed is crucially important to elite existence and power, while recognising the limits on democratic accountability when debate, decision and action in complex capitalist societies can be frustrated or hijacked by small groups. Have British business elites, through their relation with political elites, used their power to constrain democratic citizenship? Our hypothesis is that the power of business elites is most likely conjuncturally specific and geographically bounded with distinct national differences. In the United Kingdom, the outcomes are often contingent and unstable as business elites try to manage democracy; moreover, the composition and organisation of business elites have changed through successive conjunctures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article drew from prominent Kenyan novelist-writer, Ngúgí wa Thiong'o's personal history on the World Wars and their legacies in Africa and on the affairs of Africans, with a focus on East Africa, and especially his country of Kenya. Ngúgí, whose birth in 1938 and childhood years were on the cusp of the World War II (WWII), reveals that the likes of his father who dodged conscription into Britain's Carrier Corps in the first War, and the conscription of his two elder brothers—one of whom died in service while the other returned home alive—for military service in WWII constitute significant and relevance issues for careful exploration on the subject matter of both World Wars and their legacies on the African continent. So are the various actors whose advent as actors in the affairs of Africans and others in East Africa is directly linked to World Wars I and II. Those would include the likes of Carey Francis, who came on in 1940 as the principal of the exclusive all-boys Alliance High where a generation of Kenyans that included Ngúgí received British-style public school education, Evelyn Baring, the then colonial governor-general of Kenya who superintended the imposition of the State of Emergency in Kenya, in the period 1952–1959, and even Idi Amin, a rank and file African enlistee in the King's African Rifles (KAR) in the aftermath of the World War II. Amin and his ilk were deeply involved in the highly repressive British-led campaign during the State of Emergency in Kenya that led to the death of many of their fellow Africans. It is also noteworthy that as a soldier and subsequently, Amin became a central actor in the politics of post-independence Uganda sequel to his overthrow of Milton Obote's government in a 1971 military coup d'état. The spiraling violence that Amin's advent enhanced in Uganda's body politic remains a recurrent feature of governance in that East African state. The analytical reconstruct that emerged in the article is illuminated with elements of C. Wright Mills' age-old and all-time relevant original theory-rich methodological construct, "the sociological imagination" as the theoretical framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the last two decades, there has been a surge of interdisciplinary interest in the writings of the radical twentieth-century sociologist C. Wright Mills, and one of the central issues in this wave of scholarship has been the Mills' relationship to feminism and the place of sex and gender in his social theory. Contemporary scholars assert that Mills was largely ignorant about feminism or even hostile to it and that his social theory basically ignores issues of sex and gender. As this essay shows, the existing consensus is fundamentally mistaken. Mills' social theory of sex and gender and his emerging critique of patriarchy were heavily influenced by the 'silent feminists,' Shira Tarrant's name for the leading women social scientists and philosophers of the 1930s and 40s. Though an analysis of Mills' Character and Social Structure and White Collar, I show that Mills' anti-essentialist conception of gender was inspired by the work of anthropologist Margaret Mead, sociologist Viola Klein, and psychoanalyst Karen Horney. Likewise, through an analysis of Mills' review of Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex, I show that not only is his critique of Beauvoir rooted in his readings of the silent feminists but also that Beauvoir's influence on Mills' thought can be traced through his most popular works, The Power Elite and The Sociological Imagination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During his short-lived but highly productive career, C Wright Mills put forth a vision for how sociology should be done. Two central directives can be gleaned from this vision: to tackle macro social theory issues by doing large-scope research; to achieve scholastic independence by doing non-administrative research. One might ask if Mills is sending scholars on a mission impossible. Analysing these two concepts in terms of both their merits and applicability, the present article indeed identifies a conflict between them, highlighted by what emerges as Mills’ own failure to realize this vision. After deeming these directives worthy goals, the article seeks to determine whether technological advances in the social sciences have the potential to allow both directives to be fulfilled at once. What is shown is that while the technology is ripe to enable autonomous big studies, its implementation by institutional and individual agents severely impedes the vision’s realization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The dominant theory of elite power, grounded in Weberian bureaucracy, has analyzed elites in terms of stable positions at the top of enduring institutions. Today, many conditions that spawned these stable ‘command posts’ no longer prevail, and elite power thus warrants rethinking. This article advances an argument about contemporary ‘influence elites’. The way they are organized and the modus operandi they employ to wield influence enable them to evade public accountability, a hallmark of a democratic society. Three cases are presented, first to investigate changes in how elites operate and, second, to examine varying configurations in which the new elites are organized. The cases demonstrate that influence elites intermesh hierarchies and networks, serve as connectors, and coordinate influence from multiple, moving perches, inside and outside official structures. Their flexible and multi-positioned organizing modes call for reconsidering elite theory and grappling with the implications of these elites for democratic society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Critical analyses of the writings of political philosopher R.A. Turner have gained renewed attention. Turner's advocacy of participatory democracy paralleled that of American sociologist C. Wright Mills, whose own theories have experienced a revival among academics and activists as an alternative to the rise of neoliberal economic policies. Despite the international isolation of apartheid-era South Africa, it experienced social changes in the 1960s and 1970s paralleling those in North America and Western Europe. Mills' call for scholars and activists to forge a New Left rooted in sociological imagination was realised in the American civil rights and anti-war movements of the 1960s. Similarly, Rick Turner's own philosophy of radical politics, elucidated inThe Eye of the Needle, found shape within the anti-apartheid resistance in 1970s South Africa. Turner went further than Mills in his practice of public sociology, fusing theory and praxis through his participation in the anti-apartheid struggle. Since Turner's death, the promise of participatory democracy appears to have foundered upon the shoals of neoliberalism and the global ‘race to the bottom’. The challenge for scholars and organisers will be how to best forge a renewed programme of popular conscientisation and community self-management which can realise Turner's vision. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following recent critiques of ‘the social’ in international theory, this text revisits a contribution the author made to ‘the social turn’ in 1994. While C. Wright Mills’ The Sociological Imagination appears to survive the recent critiques, the passage of time has nonetheless revealed a quite different weakness in the author’s use of it: namely, its neglect of ‘the international’ as an object of theory. This neglect, which is indeed common to almost all ‘social theory’, is now being corrected in the growing literature on ‘uneven and combined development’. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

C. Wright Mills repeatedly assumed two main roles throughout his life: those of designer and craftsman. Indeed, design and craftsmanship influenced, substantively and stylistically, most everything he did. Mills's implementation of these two qualities extended to a number of areas including writing books and building houses, but also to motorcycle mechanics, photography, and carpentry. After consideration of Mills's biography and philosophy in the context of design, style, and craftsmanship, two talks that he delivered in Aspen and Toronto, in 1958 and 1959 respectively, are examined. In both cases he addressed his remarks, specifically, to engineers, city planners, artists, and architects. Mills's handwritten notes and various excerpts as well as published sources are consulted to show that Mills-through his biographical exemplification as designer and craftsman, as well as through his writings on power and the cultural apparatus-has had a decisive influence on the sociological study of design and designers; indeed, on designers themselves and on our understanding of design culture. But more than that, I contend that just as sociology and sociologists have wholly embraced Mills's notion of the sociological imagination, so too must they fully espouse and embody his ideals and practices on design and craftsmanship. It is in this way that the discipline and its practitioners can strive for the standard of excellence that Mills set for himself and for his work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]