finding something is not the same thing as approving of it. eli anderson finds that blacks accuse other blacks of some horrendous things. does that mean eli anderson agrees? please! it isn't that he celebrates them. there is a place where he celebrates the enlightenment liberalism that undergirds their tendency to, for example, believe strongly that abortion is wrong, that it is murder but concede that this is _their_ belief. even the most activist among them, save a few, refrain from agreeing that they should foist their beliefs on everyone else.
bellah et al. critique their respondents strongly for the above. wolfe doesn't. to call it celebrating goes a bit overboard.
>This is pretty much what
>I find when I look at the chapter on the family in the chief
>communitarian, Amitai Etzioni's THE SPIRIT OF COMMUNITY: RIGHTS,
>RESPONSIBILITIES AND THE COMMUNITARIAN AGENDA.
first, it wasn't an accidental sample. what he set out to do was criticize Habits of the Heart for their criticisms of intense individualism among the profesional managerial strata (happy carrol?) therefore, he went to the same four cities and plucked a sample of, iirc, 50 ppl. he then interviewed them. it's called a case study and there is nothing per se wrong with doing a case study. methods are tools and they work best if you choose those tools that work in conjunction with your theoretical framework AND your methodological framework.
both authors had a theoretical reason for analyzing the white middle STRATA. it is similar to what ehrenreich did in _The Hearts of Men_: to examine US ideology where it is likely to be most trenchant, where is flourishes, where is broadcast and takes root most firmly. i.e, it's not accidental, but purposeful
case studies, as michael burawoy has argued, can be used to make generalizations, however.
of cours, as socialists, we need to do better. but they are not. furthermore, as a sociologist it's not really my job to run about writing books that conform to my ideological desires. it is rather, to look and see and be open to the possibility that i might have it wrong!
sorry if i jumped on you chris. i spend a lot of time bitching at people on conlib lists for spouting off about how, for example recently, keynes is a fabian socialist. this they heard somewhere. it is then argued that keynes was like a democratic socialist who was after slow change. whatever. but the point is to discredit whatever i say as commie pinko red, to make anyone who even slightly seems that way out to be one as well. when i see people here do that by saying, well alan wolfe hangs out with the communitarians or he says things that seem communitarian therefore he's antifeminst and homophobic????
when i see "us" do the same thing, i get more pissed than i do elsewhere. the views there are excusable. the tactics are possibly understandable. but they are neither in our case.
lots to critique in wolfe, etzioni, bellah et al., but what i saw early on wasn't exactly critique.
>Of course, neither of these writers is Dr. Dobson, or a real religious
>right type. Etzioni makes a few perfunctory feints in a liberal
>direction, but his is essentially an apology for a neoliberal family
>policy. Several of the more admiring quotes are from people overtly to
>the right of the position he lets you think he takes. People like
>Barbara Dafoe Whitehead, Mary Anne Glenton, Judith Wallerstein. He
>denies that he wants to abolish divorce, but then says he thinks it
>needs to be more difficult, that social policy should place obstacles in
>its way.
>
>In effect Etzioni describes many of the negative effects of the
>instability of the family and its generally counterdevelopmental effect
>on many of the children who grow up in the complex and frequently
>reconstituted families that are now more or less the norm. But does he
>propose a strong program of universal social welfare measures that would
>extend support to all children? Even more important, does he recognize
>that marriage is an institution whose instability is inevitable given
>fundamental political-economic changes that are integral to contemporary
>capitalism?
>
>Of course not. He does say fleetingly that it would be nice for
>corporations to provide paid child-care leave, and that family
>allowances would be a good thing. These are his feints to the left.
>However, he goes on for pages on the moral duty of individuals, as
>individuals, to be personally responsible, exercise care in family life,
>etc. (Rhetorical hint of the Clinton welfare reform here.). He takes an
>effectively pro-corporate stance without owning up to it, because the
>only way not to do this would be to propose real social welfare
>alternatives.
>
>Wolfe, in a different way, takes a similarly tired liberal privatistic
>approach to what are really social issues. He, and Etzioni in a more
>upbeat, pseudo-inspirational way, really seem to be the Tony Blairs of
>American social policy.
>
>As socialists, we need to do better. For example, both Etzioni and Wolfe
>strongly oppose day-care, saying that existing day-care is of dubious
>quality. Often enough they are right, of course, but they go on to
>insist that children always belong at home. This is a gross example of
>political defects they share. And their stance has consequences that
>contradict their supposedly tender concern for children. For example,
>their kind of thinking gives aid and comfort to the anti-poor right,
>who, under forced-work programs, must leave their children in really
>questionable day care.
>
>Christopher Rhoades Dÿkema
>
>
>LeoCasey at aol.com wrote:
>
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