How can historians of small spaces and cities focus on local events and issues and at the same time carry on conversations with peers in a disciplinar... [more]
Building on recent works that question a simplistic, White narrative of the history of academic oral history, this article focuses on the labors of Bl... [more]
While Freud's theory of the Oedipus complex is concerned with psyche-sexual development, it concomitantly presents a novel historical-political imagination. This article compares the post-Oedipal self with the selves envisioned by Nietzsche and Marx, sug
Recent research into the life and work of Bronislaw Malinowski, one of the most important figures in British social anthropology in the 20th century, has concentrated upon his early life up to and including the years he spent in the Trobriand Islands unde
This article examines some of the phenomenological features in Lev Vygotsky's mature psychological theory, especially in Thinking and Speech and The Current Crisis in Psychology. It traces the complex literary and philosophical influences in 1920s Moscow
This article concerns the emergence of psychological constructs of personal power and control in the United States during the 1960s and 1970s and the ways in which they contributed to contemporary political explanations of social unrest. While social scie
Winch's 'Understanding a Primitive Society' addressed the question of how to interpret apparently irrational alien beliefs and practices. Criticizing Evans-Pritchard's study of Zande witchcraft, Winch argued that across cultures there are divergent co
Drawing heavily on Wittgenstein, Winch's The Idea of a Social Science advanced a forceful and still valuable critique of positivist/empiricist conceptions of social science. In its more self-confident assertions concerning the nature of philosophy and so
This article argues that two significant implications of Wittgenstein's writings for social thought are (1) that people are constitutively social beings and (2) that the social context of an individual life is nexuses of practice. Part one concretizes th
This paper explores the thought of Hegel, Saussure and Derrida regarding the nature of the linguistic sign. It argues that Derrida is right to maintain that Hegel is an influence on Saussure. However, Derrida misrepresents both Hegel and Saussure by inter
This article explores Peter Winch's account of the relationship between language and reality. It defends Winch against some common misunderstandings of his views but identifies two problematic areas. The first concerns the internal coherence of his accou
I: Winch's emphasis on philosophy's concern with language and on rule-following; II: Winch's misgivings about limits of analogy between rules and language; III: Rhees' comparison of the unity of discourse with conversation, and claim that language mak
The received understanding of Winch's critique of social science is that he propounded a radically relativist, anti-explanatory and a-critical conception of the legitimate task of 'social studies'. This conception is presumed to be predicated upon an e
This article assembles reasons for holding that the propaedeutic rationale for much of the discourse produced by 'ethogenic science' is inadequate. One reason is that the interactional principles that are the pretext for assembling the situational vigne
The mental and the social are 'two sides of the same coin'. In other words,'social relations are internal relations'. In showing how this was the point of Wittgenstein's discussion of the practice of 'following a rule', Peter Winch has made an impo
The recent turn to discursive psychology has prompted an increasing interest in the work of Michel Foucault, particularly with relation to debates on the possibility and nature of 'discourse analysis'. This variant of discourse analysis has generally em
This article takes up Peter Winch's remarks concerning 'the fragility of the conditions under which ethical conceptions can be active in social life'. It explores Winch's discussion of political concepts and his account of the nature of politics. Ther