On Change and Human Nature in Alexis de Tocqueville's "The Old Regime and the Revolution" - A Commentary

Abstract: The current study addresses two issues. Firstly, it tries to identify the causalities and conditionalities illustrated by Tocqueville’s analysis of the French Revolution, by comparing the French and English societies. Secondly, it purports to describe the specific forms of subjectivity under the Old Regime, during the French Revolution and in post-revolutionary France, laying the foundations for what sociology would later conceptualize as methodological individualism. Tocqueville tries to capture the logic of social systems during periods of societal production and reproduction by closely looking at the inner world of the social actors, be they individuals or groups, this act of production manifests itself in. Discovering concepts of social psychology and the sociology of emotions within his discourse makes a lecture of Tocqueville’s work even more relevant.

Key words: empiricism, apriorism, technocracy, despotism, centralization, hate, resentment

'Democracy in America "( Alexis de Tocqueville). A postmodern reading

Abstract: Based on the current forms of knowledge we can outline the features of modernity in nuce existing in the American society from the early nineteenth century. Kinetics on the outside, in relation to the nature, to which corresponds a defined internal kinetics of social mobility and political democracy, the birth of a subject capable of supporting the kinetic movement, subject who is acting on a project basis, motivated by the need for equality and freedom, in a constant effort of profane and innovation and that is constantly threatened by anomie and despotism; these are the topics of this analysis dedicated to the American modernity and prefigured to be of the Western society as a whole.

Key words: subject, truth, anxiety, despotism, kinetics , equality, freedom, democracy;

History and Sociology: A Genealogical Perspective

Abstract: What could we possibly learn from a 70 year old correspondence from the years of the Second World War, when the course of subsequent history is already known? The sociologist is interested in seeing how an event unfolds, how it generates other actions, what the actors are driven by, what their strategies are and how they interact. The aim of the present essay is to identify those sociological concepts, that could lead us to explanations of the geopolitical, regarding the way Germany built up its hegemony, by starting from a genealogical perspective, that is, by identifying the logics of a situation and by understanding the reasoning behind individual decision while taking into consideration the analysis of the discourse.

We take into account how enforcing a drastic peace treaty on Germany has lead to high surveillance costs that could not be sustained by the victors because of their path dependence, which ultimately led to the fact of the ‘good’ being sacrificed for the sake of the ‘comfortable’. We understand how military successes represent the test of truth for an ideology and provide the Nazi leaders with their legitimacy, inciting a group phantasm. We discern, in the relations between Germany, Soviet Russia and the French-English duo, all the elements of a triad and, implicitly, all elements of power that are generated by a game based on imposing and accepting uncertainties. All of the above bare evidence to the fact that sociological notions and concepts can produce revelations when taken into new domains, such as geopolitics and war.

An exercise of 'genealogy' – reactivating minor knowledge

Abstract:

In fact, we do not endeavor to disqualify any form of knowledge. We do not desire to repeat the discourse of self-sufficiency – critical with others – claiming that only this type of thinking knowledge is valid. Our intention consists in attracting attention onto the singular fact, onto the radical contingency we constantly meet in our daily lives.  Consequently, we suggest the sociologist's training be oriented towards the capacity to identify a problem starting from a single fact, in other words, we request heeding minor knowledge. The large majority of graduates in sociology work with this kind of reality. Secondly, we try to prove that any kind of knowledge, including this minor knowledge, is part of  a war and that it cannot raise above it. Put differently, that truth is relative to power and power relations. No one can maintain that the individual is saved if we regard him as an atom, as a statistical number. Usually, sociologists competent in problems of validation procedures obstinately avoid defining the significance an individual has within a sample. Within minor knowledge the possibility of hiding the fact that power endeavors to produce both the individual and the truth it needs, does not exist. In the case we are presenting, this minor knowledge found in travel diaries has generated some of the social representations  onto which major political and historical decisions were founded. Thirdly, we want to state that we are witnessing the sociologist's dissimulation precisely because he is hiding a refuse and an abandonment.

The Suburb or about the Logic of ‘neither, nor’

According to Deleuze and Guattari, the frontier is a place of liberty. Should one open any book on town planning history, this is one of the main striking ideas. The governing body of medieval Braşov allowed for illicit transactions to take place outside the town walls, while at the same time, in Bucharest, those who wanted to make illegal business simply had to move beyond the city entrance barriers! There, on the outskirts of the city, the chances to flee from the control of the administration were high, opportunities built up and freedom reigned. 

Built in the proximity of neighbourhoods made of collective buildings, the new suburbs of the post-revolutionary age have been perpetuating this archetype. For quite a long time after 1990, the notion of ‘city perimeter’ ceased to exist. In fact, the instauration within society of a new functioning mechanism based on private property, cumulated with the widespread social phenomenon of property retrocessions blew the principles of town planning into pieces. Why? Because town planning came to be associated with a communist-type social organization. The desecration that occurred after 1990 affected many spheres of social life: its management, forecasting and planning attributes, work discipline, its social control functions. Simultaneously, a disinhibitory phenomenon occurred, which engulfed both public and private sphere (family), ultimately invading the intimate sphere, which penetrated and settled, through the media, into the public space.

"Letters from Russia. Russia in 1839" (Marquis de Custine); A Postmodern Analysis

Abstract: 

How does a despotic state function? Which is the relationship between the sovereignty's power and the individual?  How do the individual's desires integrate in a despotic society's social body? What is the role of violence within the state or the civil society? To what extent does a social fact become a cultural fact? Are all of these facts connected to the tzarist empire's XIX century expansion? These are the questions upon which the current analysis was based.

"The Bear, the State and Society" - a sociological perspective on a problematic from the sphere of nature preservation

Authors:
Ştefan Ungurean ( Faculty of Sociology and Communication, Transilvania University Braşov),
George Predoiu ( Faculty of Silviculture and Forest Engineering, Transilvania University Braşov),

Cristian Bălăcescu ( Faculty of Economic Sciences - Institute for Enterprise Administration, Transilvania University Braşov).

"LIFE - Enhancing the Conditions Regarding Large Carnivores Preservation - Transfer of the Best Practices " (Bulgaria, Greece, Italy and Romania) is a project consisting of two pursuits. The first one, focused on quality (thematic coding, nVivo processing) the implication of the state's institutions in the preservation of bear populations. The second one, focused on quantity (SPSS processing) is concerned with  the way the members of 'affected'  communities relate to the bear. Discourses of truth assert that institutions don't speak 'a single language', the network - mixture of sovereignties and disciplinary powers (Foucault) - allowing the bear to escape control, given the fact that it doesn't dispose of a specific space, he becomes more and more visible, meeting man, considered to be 'sacred', but also a profit source. Mirror of the self, we perceive them as beings which have to be protected as long as they don't enter our space, but also of the civilization, built upon the Enlightenment's definition of modernity, man 'answers' -  the animal ("the other absolute") 'reacts'. The replacing option "who suffers - who doesn't suffer" (Derrida), the empathy, base of the reconciliation of man and nature, doesn't seem, for the time being, possible. The proposed suggestion, having its own problems: to address the problem of bear preservation in terms of a theory of public goods (Olson) by starting from Sloterdijk's concepts of 'park' and 'taming' (heideggerian applications).

(Conference of the Department of Sociology and Social Work - Bucharest University - May 2011)

Sociology and Literature; A Postmodern Analysis of the "Rascoala” Novel

Abstract: The present study tries to sociologically explain the Romanian society from the beginning of the XXth century, starting from the reality of a “literary text” – Liviu Rebreanu’s novel, “Rascoala”. Moreover, the study is thought to be a demonstration of the way in which literature can serve not only the Illuminist ideal of soul creation, but also the understanding of the world.