“Leadership as a social problem”: A conversational engagement with the ideas of Alvin Gouldner

Leadership ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 461-479
Author(s):  
Bert Spector
Keyword(s):  
Social Problem ◽  
Democratic Action ◽  
Democratic Societies ◽  
Elected Leaders ◽  
Critical Leadership ◽  
Leadership Discourse

Sociologist Alvin W. Gouldner’s (1950) book of original and previously published chapters collected under the title Studies in Leadership: Leadership and Democratic Action opens with the proclamation: “Leadership as a Social Problem.” Although Gouldner’s work is rarely cited in contemporary critical leadership discourse, he and his coauthors make an important contribution to an analysis of the potentially counter-democratic role of leaders. By using an unusual methodology—an imagined conversational engagement between this article’s author and Gouldner (who has been dead for 40 years)—the article offers an historical appraisal of the contribution of Studies in Leadership to critical leadership; a contribution that is especially relevant when elected leaders are undermining the institutions and norms that together maintain democratic societies.

Social Issues and Problem-based Learning in Sociology

2016 ◽  
Vol 44 (3) ◽  
pp. 212-220 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daina S. Eglitis ◽  
Fran L. Buntman ◽  
Dameon V. Alexander
Keyword(s):  
Problem Solving ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Social Problem ◽  
Social Issues ◽  
Problem Based Learning ◽  
Student Experiences ◽  
Research Skills ◽  
Key Characteristics ◽  
Sample Case

This article discusses the use of problem-based learning (PBL) in the undergraduate sociology classroom. PBL shifts students from the role of passive listeners and learners to active knowledge builders and communicators through the use of concise and engaging social problem cases. PBL creates opportunities for building substantive area knowledge, research skills, and problem-solving capacities and fosters student enjoyment. This teaching note describes the key characteristics of PBL, discusses practical approaches to its use in a variety of sociology courses, and offers sample case studies. We evaluate student experiences with PBL and consider its broader applicability.

Putting Faith into Action

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ruth Braunstein
Keyword(s):  
Religious Liberty ◽  
Religious Practices ◽  
Religious Values ◽  
Active Citizenship ◽  
Proper Role ◽  
Public Role ◽  
Religious Others ◽  
Democratic Societies

Chapter 4 demonstrates that Interfaith and the Patriots developed different ways of enacting active citizenship in the course of their work together, and specifically their efforts to put their faith in action. Although both groups asserted that there was a public role for religion in diverse and pluralistic democratic societies, they differed in their understandings of how this should work in practice. Interfaith’s efforts to put their faith in action were driven primarily by concerns about religious inclusion, while the Patriots were driven primarily by concerns about religious liberty. Participants in the groups thus emphasized subtly different religious values, developed different ways of engaging with religious others, and engaged in different kinds of religious (and civil religious) practices. The chapter concludes by tracing the groups’ choices about how to put their faith in action to differences in their democratic imaginaries—their ways of understanding how democracy works and the proper role of active citizens in it.

Jacques Rancière

In the Street ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 121-150
Author(s):  
Çiğdem Çidam
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Democratic Theory ◽  
Democratic Politics ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
Theory Of Education ◽  
Democratic Action ◽  
Action Taking ◽  
As If

This chapter demonstrates that Rancière’s journey to democratic theory started in the aftermath of May 1968 with his efforts to overcome the problematic transformation of political theory into “a theory of education.” For Rancière, unpredictability is integral to democratic politics. Thus, in an anti-Rousseauian move, he emphasizes the theatrical aspect of democratic action: taking on a role other than who they are, acting as if they are a part in a given social order in which they have no part, political actors stage their equality, disrupting the existing distribution of the sensible. Rancière’s focus on the moments of disruption, however, opens him to the charge of reducing democratic politics to immediate acts of negation. Insofar as he erases the role of intermediating practices in the stagings of equality, Rancière imposes on his accounts a kind of purity that his own work, with its emphasis on broken, polemical voices, cautions against.

Secularism and Ethno-religious Nationalist Hegemony in Malaysia

2020 ◽  
pp. 213-249
Author(s):  
Ahmad Fauzi Abdul Hamid ◽  
Zairil Khir Johari
Keyword(s):  
Good Governance ◽  
Consociational Democracy ◽  
New Politics ◽  
Democratic Action ◽  
Political Narrative ◽  
Colonial Experience ◽  
Plural Society ◽  
Universal Values ◽  
Set Up

Chapter 8 investigates the efforts of parties to navigate their way within the dominant discourse of hegemonic ethnoreligious nationalism in Malaysia. It discusses the way politics has addressed the question of identity—a corollary of the nation’s colonial experience and segmented socio-economic set-up. The post-Independence practice of consociational democracy served to cement ethnic-oriented politics, which blended with religious boundaries of Malaysia’s plural society. Since the late 1990s, however, emerging ‘new politics’ characterised by middle class–based civil activism has gradually shifted the political narrative away from issues of identity to universal values such as social justice, good governance and human rights. In this light, the chapter discusses the role of the Democratic Action Party (DAP), Malaysia’s largest opposition party in Parliament.

Drunk in Society

Drunk Japan ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 142-174
Author(s):  
Mark D. West
Keyword(s):  
Alcohol Consumption ◽  
Alcohol Use ◽  
Social Problem ◽  
Family Law ◽  
Drunk Driving ◽  
Employment Law ◽  
Legal Contexts ◽  
Insight Into ◽  
The Way

This chapter focuses on the role of intoxication in society. After examining the way courts discuss alcohol use as a social problem, it turns to three legal contexts: employment law, family law, and torts. First, it examines cases of disciplinary dismissals, in which civil servants whose employment is terminated after drunk-driving convictions sue their former employers. Second, it explores divorce cases in which alcohol consumption and intoxication are raised as factors that contributed to the demise of the marriage. Third, it turns to cases in which people claim they were defamed by statements related to alcohol consumption. In each case, courts issue opinions that either offer little insight into their thoughts on intoxication (despite a penchant for editorializing in other types of cases) or apply uneven, but individualized, justice.

scholarly journals Recovery High School Attendance Effects on Student Delinquency and Substance Use: the Moderating Role of Social Problem Solving Styles

2020 ◽  
Vol 21 (8) ◽  
pp. 1104-1113
Author(s):  
Emily E. Tanner-Smith ◽  
Lindsey M. Nichols ◽  
Christopher M. Loan ◽  
Andrew J. Finch ◽  
D. Paul Moberg
Keyword(s):  
High School ◽  
Substance Use ◽  
Problem Solving ◽  
Social Problem ◽  
School Attendance ◽  
Social Problem Solving ◽  
Recovery High School ◽  
High School Attendance ◽  
Moderating Role

Political Theory and Political Economy

2009 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen L. Elkin
Keyword(s):  
Economic Growth ◽  
Political Economy ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Political Life ◽  
The Political ◽  
Distribution Of Wealth ◽  
Contemporary World ◽  
The Core ◽  
Democratic Societies

This article describes the connection between political theory and political economy. It argues that political theorists need to take account of political economy in theorizing about the contemporary world because capitalism is the most powerful force at work in shaping the modern sociopolitical world. It also explains that economic questions concerning economic growth, the distribution of wealth and income, and role of markets are at the core of the political life in democratic societies.

Gendered Massacres: Examining the Effects of Cultural and Structural Gender Inequality on the Incidence of Mass Public Shootings

2020 ◽  
Vol 35 (6) ◽  
pp. 885-905
Author(s):  
Margaret Schmuhl ◽  
Joel A. Capellan
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Research ◽  
Gender Inequality ◽  
Social Problem ◽  
Empirical Studies ◽  
Cultural Factors ◽  
Future Research ◽  
The Past ◽  
Mass Public ◽  
Gender Hierarchy

With nearly 97% of incidents within the past 40 years committed by men, mass public shootings are a gendered social problem. Yet, empirical research on this phenomenon largely neglects gender hierarchy and cultural factors as predictors, in favor of individual- and event-level characteristics. Despite calls from scholars to place masculinity and threats to patriarchal hegemony at the center of analyses, no empirical studies to our knowledge have examined the role of gender inequality in mass public shootings. The findings indicate that gender inequality, structural and ideological, are important predictors of mass public shootings and that future research should continue to investigate such violence from a gendered lens.

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