R J Holton
Biographic Data
| ID | 189462 |
|---|---|
| NAME | R J Holton |
| GIVEN NAMES | R J |
| FAMILY NAME | Holton |
| SIGNATURE | HOLTON R J |
| AFFILIATIONS | Flinders University |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-1392-5638 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 58 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 265 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 58 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1974 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2021 |
| H-INDEX | 8 |
Where are the people? What are they doing? Why are they doing it?'(Mindell) Situating artificial intelligence within a socio-technical framework
This article explores the sociology of artificial intelligence (AI), focusing on interactions between social actors and technological processes. The aim is to locate social actors in the key elements of Bell's framework for understanding AI, featuring big data, algorithms, machine learning, sensors and rationale/logic. We dispute notions of human autonomy and machine autonomy, seeking alternatives to both anthropocentric and technological determi…
Jarring Witnesses: Modern Fiction and the Representation of History
Jarring Witnesses begins by surveying the problem of point of view as a formal, cognitive and cultural determinant in narrative historiography, particularly in the way certain dominant forms of 'legitimate' history have necessitated the suppresson of the voices of 'jarring witnesses'. The theory is explored in relation to Pierre Bourdieu's theories of doxa and heterodoxy, Bakhtin's concept of heteroglossia, and postmodernism. With this theoretica…
Technology, innovation, employment and power: Does robotics and artificial intelligence really mean social transformation
How far do recent innovations in robotics and artificial intelligence herald an unprecedented economic and social transformation? This article provides a critical evaluation of this question, challenging the relentless technological determinism of much debate, and reframing the issues involved within a political-economic and sociological approach. This focuses on the economic, political and historical dynamics of technological innovation, and its…
Documents of Life Revisited: Narrative and biographical methodology for a 21st century critical humanismLIZ STANLEY (Ed.)
Globalization and the Nation State
Globalization is much discussed but little understood. This study opens up new ways of seeing the global world around us. Drawing on contemporary and historical evidence, insights are offered into a range of subjects from the multi-national corporation and the future of the nation state, to the revival of ethnicity and the development of global culture. Globalization poses profound social challenges, but it is far from sweeping all before it. Thi…
Max Weber on Economy and Society (Routledge Revivals)
First published in 1989, this re-issue concerns itself with the relevance of Max Weber's sociology for the understanding of modern times. The book outlines key tenets of Weber's sociology and points to the valuable legacy of Weber's thought in contemporary intellectual debate, particularly with regard to secularization and rationalization of global cultures, the crisis of Marxism, the rise of the New Right and the emergence of post-modernism. Thi…
Cosmopolitanisms
Power: A Note on Talcott Parsons and the Brown University Conversations
Professor Holton offers his impressions of the recently discovered transcriptions of the seminar Parsons participated in at Brown University on March 10, 1973
Making Globalisation
This book offers a clear and concise account of the key debates in the globalization literature, serving as an accessible introduction to students new to the topic. It deals even-handedly with all the various dimensions of globalization - political, economic, social and cultural - and particularly draws attention to the role of people in processes of globalization. The book's historical dimension and its multicultural focus ensure that globalizat…
The inclusion of the non-European world in international society, 1870s-1920s: Evidence From Global Networks
This article is envisaged as a contribution to the historical sociology of globalization. In it I investigate the idea that from the 1870s peoples beyond Europe were increasingly included into international society. The discussion explores theoretical issues around intercultural engagement, arguing against those who see inclusion in terms of simple co-option into Western modernity, and in favour of a more subtle co-production of modern processes …
Network discourses: Proliferation, Critique and Synthesis
Books reviewed in this article: R. Appelbaum, W. L. Felstiner, and V. Gessner (eds), Rules and networks: the legal culture of global business transactions D. Barney, The network society A. Barry, Political machines: governing a technological society G. Thompson, Between hierarchies and markets: the logic of network forms of organization
Personal orientations towards Australian national identity among British-born residents
An area of long-standing interest in sociological studies of nationalityand ethnicity has been the implications of widespread cross-bordermovements of peoples for cultural identity. One important stream ofresearch has been concerned with peoples who have moved to a newcountry that is culturally different from their homeland. Yet, far lessattention has typically been given to those who shift to a country that isculturally alike. The study examines…
Max Weber and the Interpretative Tradition
Cosmopolitanism or cosmopolitanisms? The Universal Races Congress of 1911
Recent discussions of cosmopolitanism have moved beyond the moral philosophy of Western liberal-democratic universalism towards a newer sociology emphasizing plurality and embracing the world beyond Europe. The new cosmopolitanisms have also come to be seen in terms of a dialectic between general orientations toward humanity and the particular temporal and spatial contexts within which they emerge. After disentangling various meanings of the term…
Jack Kerouac's Duluoz Legend: The Mythic Form of an Autobiographical Fiction (review)
James T. Jones. Jack Kerouac's Duluoz Legend: The Mythic Form of an Autobiographical Fiction. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 1999. 278 pp. ISBN 0-8093-2263-3, $34.95
Social exchange, reciprocity and amoral familism: Aspects of Italian chain migration to Australia
This paper examines new evidence on Italian chain migration to Australia. General theories stressing social and cultural differences between Northern and Southern Italians are challenged. The argument is in two parts. The first involves a critique of the idea of Southern Italian amoral familism, based on evidence of convergence between Northern and Southern patterns of chain migration and settlement. This finding is corrosive both of Banfield's w…
Globalization's Cultural Consequences
Globalization has been associated with a range of cultural consequences. These can be analyzed in terms of three major theses, namely, homogenization, polarization, and hybridization. The homogenization thesis proclaims that global culture is becoming standardized around a Western or American pattern. While some evidence supports this view, the presence of cultural alternatives and resistance to Western norms suggests that polarization provides a…
Talcott Parsons
Talcott Parsons (1902–1979) is regarded by some as the leading American sociologist of the twentieth century, by others as a theorist whose work is deeply flawed. What few scholars dispute is that Parsons took up the challenge of tackling the central questions posed by nineteenth-century sociology, while at the same time responding to contemporary intellectual and political issues. From the earlier period he took up the problem of social order, s…
Globalization, Refugee Crisis and the Work of International Non-Government Organisations
The author suggests that increasing economic rationalism in the post-Cold War era has engendered a retreat from public moral responsibility along with the hardening of attitudes to refugees. While deconstructing the international refugee system, he focuses on the roles played by non-government organisations within it, arguing that the existence of NGOs does exert a moral influence on nation-states with respect to treatment of refugees. The author…
Bourdieu and Common Sense
roots go back to the Greek terms koinos nous (common mind-the mental equipment we all, presumably, bear), koine aisthesis (common perceptual sense, on which I will elaborate below), and koine ennoia (common notions, beliefs or ideas). The Latin term sensus communis uneasily combines all these senses, a fact that accounts perhaps for some of the continuing vagueness of its definitions (Bugter 83-84). In one form or another, the phrase has never go…
Rational choice theory in sociology
James Coleman attempted to reconcile rational choice theory with the classical sociological concerns: the relationship between the individual and society, and the historical and normative status of rationality. He identifies limits to the rational choice model, and suggests some promising but ultimately unconvincing ways around them. His project does, however, offer an important critique of Weber's theory of bureaucracy, which is of value in anal…
Debate and Pseudo-Debate in Class Analysis: Some Unpromising Aspects of Goldthorpe and Marshall's Defence
A propos de la difficulte theorique inherente a une construction des categories de classes sociales en dehors de toute agregation avec les professions ou tout autre characteristique d'emploi. D'un cote les classes sociales sont sur-identifiees par une mesure en terme de profession qui se fait au depend de dimensions plus larges du pouvoir economique et de l'action sociale et a pour effet de reduire la classe sociale a un agregat statistique. Mais…
Interfaces in Economic and Social Analysis
Economy and Society
Schumpeter: A Biography.Richard Swedberg
Globalization's Cultural Consequences
Globalization has been associated with a range of cultural consequences. These can be analyzed in terms of three major theses, namely, homogenization, polarization, and hybridization. The homogenization thesis proclaims that global culture is becoming standardized around a Western or American pattern. While some evidence supports this view, the presence of cultural alternatives and resistance to Western norms suggests that polarization provides a…
Max Weber on Economy and Society (Routledge Revivals)
First published in 1989, this re-issue concerns itself with the relevance of Max Weber's sociology for the understanding of modern times. The book outlines key tenets of Weber's sociology and points to the valuable legacy of Weber's thought in contemporary intellectual debate, particularly with regard to secularization and rationalization of global cultures, the crisis of Marxism, the rise of the New Right and the emergence of post-modernism. Thi…
The Idea of Crisis in Modern Society
Le contexte culturel de la crise. Pour une sociologie de la crise : T. Parsons et J. Habermas
The crowd in history: Some problems of theory and method 1
(1978). The crowd in history: Some problems of theory and method. Social History: Vol. 3, No. 2, pp. 219-233
Technology, innovation, employment and power: Does robotics and artificial intelligence really mean social transformation
How far do recent innovations in robotics and artificial intelligence herald an unprecedented economic and social transformation? This article provides a critical evaluation of this question, challenging the relentless technological determinism of much debate, and reframing the issues involved within a political-economic and sociological approach. This focuses on the economic, political and historical dynamics of technological innovation, and its…
Personal orientations towards Australian national identity among British-born residents
An area of long-standing interest in sociological studies of nationalityand ethnicity has been the implications of widespread cross-bordermovements of peoples for cultural identity. One important stream ofresearch has been concerned with peoples who have moved to a newcountry that is culturally different from their homeland. Yet, far lessattention has typically been given to those who shift to a country that isculturally alike. The study examines…
Max Weber, 'Rational Capitalism,' and Renaissance Italy: A Critique of Cohen
Contrary to Cohen, Max Weber did not believe that the initial development of modern rational capitalism occurred only after the Reformation. In the case of Renaissance Italy, however, recent empirical studies confirm Weber's view that the scale of modern rational capitalist development was still limited and that economic traditonalism prevailed. Although some thechnical advances were evident (e.g., in accounting), their significance has been exag…
Europe and the Rise of Capitalism
Cosmopolitanism or cosmopolitanisms? The Universal Races Congress of 1911
Recent discussions of cosmopolitanism have moved beyond the moral philosophy of Western liberal-democratic universalism towards a newer sociology emphasizing plurality and embracing the world beyond Europe. The new cosmopolitanisms have also come to be seen in terms of a dialectic between general orientations toward humanity and the particular temporal and spatial contexts within which they emerge. After disentangling various meanings of the term…
Social exchange, reciprocity and amoral familism: Aspects of Italian chain migration to Australia
This paper examines new evidence on Italian chain migration to Australia. General theories stressing social and cultural differences between Northern and Southern Italians are challenged. The argument is in two parts. The first involves a critique of the idea of Southern Italian amoral familism, based on evidence of convergence between Northern and Southern patterns of chain migration and settlement. This finding is corrosive both of Banfield's w…
Debate and Pseudo-Debate in Class Analysis: Some Unpromising Aspects of Goldthorpe and Marshall's Defence
A propos de la difficulte theorique inherente a une construction des categories de classes sociales en dehors de toute agregation avec les professions ou tout autre characteristique d'emploi. D'un cote les classes sociales sont sur-identifiees par une mesure en terme de profession qui se fait au depend de dimensions plus larges du pouvoir economique et de l'action sociale et a pour effet de reduire la classe sociale a un agregat statistique. Mais…
The Transition from Feudalism to Capitalism
Network discourses: Proliferation, Critique and Synthesis
Books reviewed in this article: R. Appelbaum, W. L. Felstiner, and V. Gessner (eds), Rules and networks: the legal culture of global business transactions D. Barney, The network society A. Barry, Political machines: governing a technological society G. Thompson, Between hierarchies and markets: the logic of network forms of organization
Where are the people? What are they doing? Why are they doing it?'(Mindell) Situating artificial intelligence within a socio-technical framework
This article explores the sociology of artificial intelligence (AI), focusing on interactions between social actors and technological processes. The aim is to locate social actors in the key elements of Bell's framework for understanding AI, featuring big data, algorithms, machine learning, sensors and rationale/logic. We dispute notions of human autonomy and machine autonomy, seeking alternatives to both anthropocentric and technological determi…
Cities and the transitions to capitalism and socialism
Daily Herald V. Daily Citizen, 1912–15: The Struggle for a Labour Daily in Relation to “the Labour Unrest”
The myth or reality of widespread social unrest in Britain in the period immediately before the First World War has attracted increasing attention among historians in recent years. Debate has centred upon two main themes, namely the character and impact of contemporary labour unrest, and the situation and prospects of the Liberal Party. Was British labour fundamentally disaffected from existing forms of industrial relations and from Parliamentary…
Bourdieu and Common Sense
roots go back to the Greek terms koinos nous (common mind-the mental equipment we all, presumably, bear), koine aisthesis (common perceptual sense, on which I will elaborate below), and koine ennoia (common notions, beliefs or ideas). The Latin term sensus communis uneasily combines all these senses, a fact that accounts perhaps for some of the continuing vagueness of its definitions (Bugter 83-84). In one form or another, the phrase has never go…
Cities, Capitalism and Civilization
The inclusion of the non-European world in international society, 1870s-1920s: Evidence From Global Networks
This article is envisaged as a contribution to the historical sociology of globalization. In it I investigate the idea that from the 1870s peoples beyond Europe were increasingly included into international society. The discussion explores theoretical issues around intercultural engagement, arguing against those who see inclusion in terms of simple co-option into Western modernity, and in favour of a more subtle co-production of modern processes …
Talcott Parsons and the Integration of Economic and Sociological Theory
Parsons'theory of economy and society has reemerged as an important reference point in the development of social theory. This paper focuses on Parsons'contribution to a possible theoretical rapproachment between economic and social theory. The issue addressed is the indifference of economists to the project for theoretical reunification announced in the Marshall Lectures. The author argues that Parsons'understanding of economic theory was serious…
Syndicalist Theories of the State
Daily Herald V. Daily Citizen, 1912–15: The Struggle for a Labour Daily in Relation to “the Labour Unrest”
The myth or reality of widespread social unrest in Britain in the period immediately before the First World War has attracted increasing attention among historians in recent years. Debate has centred upon two main themes, namely the character and impact of contemporary labour unrest, and the situation and prospects of the Liberal Party. Was British labour fundamentally disaffected from existing forms of industrial relations and from Parliamentary…
Stevedores and Dockers. A Study of Trade Unionism in the Port of London, 1870-1914
The First Shop Stewards' Movement
Liverpool Dockers and Seamen, 1870-1890
The Rebellious Century, 1830-1930
The crowd in history: Some problems of theory and method 1
(1978). The crowd in history: Some problems of theory and method. Social History: Vol. 3, No. 2, pp. 219-233
Syndicalist Theories of the State
Max Weber, 'Rational Capitalism,' and Renaissance Italy: A Critique of Cohen
Contrary to Cohen, Max Weber did not believe that the initial development of modern rational capitalism occurred only after the Reformation. In the case of Renaissance Italy, however, recent empirical studies confirm Weber's view that the scale of modern rational capitalist development was still limited and that economic traditonalism prevailed. Although some thechnical advances were evident (e.g., in accounting), their significance has been exag…
Cities and the transitions to capitalism and socialism
The Post-Feudal Polity and the Emergence of the Nation-State
Europe around the year 1400 displayed no inexorable tendency towards the stable consolidation of a capitalist system (as defined here). This is reflected in the internal vulnerability of European society to periodic ‘Malthusian’ subsistence crises resulting in demographic collapse. It may also be seen in the lack of any striking technological breakthrough in the medieval period to relieve such pressures. In the light of these problems it is diffi…
Economic Theory and the Emergence of Market Society
The interest of economic theorists in problems of dynamic historical change has fluctuated considerably since Adam Smith published the Wealth of Nations in 1776. The pioneers of ‘political economy’ like Smith, Ricardo, Malthus and J.S. Mill clearly demonstrated a strong concern for the nature and causes of economic change, and the ‘rise and fall’ of economic systems. This concern is also to be found in the German school of ‘historical economies’,…
Endogenous and Exogenous Aspects of the European Transition to Capitalism
There are many analytical insights to be gained from an endogenous approach to the problem of European transition to capitalism, focusing upon the internal structures and cultural practices of the various emergent nation-states of post-feudal Europe. The endogenous nation-state framework, inherited from nineteenth-century evolutionary thought, is nonetheless inadequate as a means of investigating the European or international character and contex…
Landed Society
One of the principal variables affecting the emergence of post-feudal state forms and policies was quite clearly the activities and attitudes of landowners. Where landowners, or powerful sections of the landowning classes, sought to obstruct the development of fiscally secure centralised states, as in Spain and France, this undoubtedly produced obstacles to the development of capitalism. In England and Prussia on the other hand, the support for, …
Conclusion
The transition to capitalism remains a problem of continuing scholarly fascination. Debates as to the nature of capitalism and the reasons for its historical emergence endure precisely because they address the concern of so many sociologists, historians and others to find an order in the ‘past’, so as to give meaning for the ‘present’ and hope for the ‘future’. However this may be, the terms in which such ventures as the transition debate are cur…
The Place of Feudalism in the Transition to Capitalism
The Marxist-derived notion of transition from feudalism to capitalism represents one of the most widely used and convenient organising frameworks for the analysis of the emergence of modern Western society. Its convenience may be attributed as much to its vagueness as an ‘umbrella’ concept under which many different conceptual schema may subsist, as much as for its reliance on clear-cut concepts. ‘Capitalism’, for example, has come to be loosely …
The Concepts of Capitalism and Feudalism
The concept of ‘capitalism’ emerged in the mid nineteenth century as one of a number of key concepts designed to characterise the changing nature of Western European society. In company with such concepts as ‘industrial society’ as used by Saint Simon and Spencer, ‘contract’ as deployed by Maine, and ‘gesellschaft’ as elaborated by Tönnies, the term ‘capitalism’ possessed two important features. First, all such notions entailed a sense of qualita…
Max Weber and the Transition to Modern Capitalism
Whereas the Protestant Ethic essays are mainly concerned with the nature and origins of the modern capitalist spirit, Weber’s concept of modern capitalism comprises a far wider set of components. In his General Economic History , six features are listed. These are rational capital accounting, free markets, rational technology, ‘that is one reduced to calculation to the largest possible degree, which implies mechanisation’, calculable law, free wa…
Marxism and the Transition from Feudalism to Capitalism
The contribution of Marx and writers in the Marxist tradition represents one of the most influential attempts to understand the nature and origins of the modern Western world. The distinctiveness of the legacy of Marx — who collaborated especially closely with Engels in his historical studies — centres on the understanding of the dynamics of modern Western society in terms of the capitalist mode of production. The central organising frame for exp…
Max Weber, the Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism
It is fortunate that many recent interpretations of Max Weber's contribution to the analysis of modern Western capitalist development have moved beyond certain well-worn tracks of the past. There are, for example, few who would now present Weber's sociology as profoundly antipathetical to Marxism in all its aspects. On the contrary, much of Weber's conceptualisation of capitalism and of his analysis of capitalist development may be shown to be co…
The Transition from Feudalism to Capitalism
The Transition from Feudalism to Capitalism
The Transition from Feudalism to Capitalism
Urbanist Theory
The Brenner Debate: Agrarian Class Structure and Economic Development in Pre-Industrial Europe
The Idea of Crisis in Modern Society
Le contexte culturel de la crise. Pour une sociologie de la crise : T. Parsons et J. Habermas
Political science (40 works) · Sociology (37 works) · Law (31 works) · Economics (27 works) · Politics (24 works) · Capitalism (17 works) · Philosophy (15 works) · Epistemology (14 works) · Political Economy and Marxism (14 works) · Social science (14 works)