D N Shalin
Biographic Data
| ID | 23602 |
|---|---|
| NAME | D N Shalin |
| GIVEN NAMES | D N |
| FAMILY NAME | Shalin |
| SIGNATURE | SHALIN D N |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Nevada, Las Vegas |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-2793-9531 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 45 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 247 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 45 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1978 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 9 |
Goffman, Chicago sociology, and the classical canon
The present study starts with the premise that corpus classicus is a font of ideas irreducible to a neat formula and marked by the ambivalence toward reigning theories. The founder's disciples and adherents often lose this perspective, fighting to suppress alternative readings and undermining the theoretical synthesis attempted by a classic thinker. To flesh out this thesis, the paper examines the place of Erving Goffman in Chicago sociology and …
Erving Goffman: The Social Science Maverick. Assessing the Interdisciplinary Impact of the Most Cited American Sociologist
Erving Goffman has a reputation as an intellectual maverick who did not fit neatly into any disciplinary mold. His failure to adhere to professional conventions and occasionally off-putting demeanor are mentioned as an aside that has little to do with his oversize influence on the science of society. This paper advances a thesis that Goffman’s status as the most cited American sociologist and widespread influence across social science is related …
Progressivism, Old and New: The Spiritual Moorings of Progressive Reforms
With the tide of progressive reforms facing strong headwinds today, this essay offers a retrospective look at the progressive movement in the U.S.A. and reflects on the lessons to be learned from its triumphs and failures. The case is made that major advances in the progressive agenda came at historical junctions precipitated by dramatic events. The stretch between 1900 and 1920 saw the first wave of social reforms following the late nineteenth c…
Goffman's Biography and the Interaction Order
Chekhov, intelligentsia, and the ethics of small deeds: A biocritical essay
This is an inquiry into Anton Chekhov’s embodied existence and the interfaces between his biography and intellectual pursuits. Chekhov’s art serves here as a clue to his affective life and performative contradictions rather than as a self-contained aesthetic output. I argue that Chekhov’s life offers a window onto Russian society and the intelligentsia, a peculiar intellectual stratum to which Chekhov belonged and which he sought to reshape. I st…
Norbert Elias, George Herbert Mead, and the Promise of Embodied Sociology
Toward a Pragmatist Sociology: John Dewey and the Legacy of C. Wright Mills
Lebendige Zeichen. Anmerkungen zur pragmatistischen Hermeneutik
Dmitri Shalin entwirft in seinem Beitrag eine pragmatistische Alternative zur klassischen Hermeneutik. Während sich Letztere auf diskursive Produkte konzentriert und Bedeutung als Ergebnis der Differenz zwischen sprachlichen Zeichen begreift, rekonstruiert die pragmatistische Hermeneutik Bedeutung als zirkuläre Verschränkung von Symbolen, Ikonen und Indizes und betrachtet sinnhafte Ereignisse als verkörperte semiotische Prozesse. Um den Nexus von…
Communication, democracy, and intelligentsia
In the early 1990s, a group of Russian and American scholars teamed up to investigate the impact of Gorbachev’s reform on Soviet society, focusing especially on the role the intelligentsia played in fomenting glasnost and perestroika. Results of this collaborative study were published in a volume Russian Culture at the Crossroads: Paradoxes of Postcommunist Consciousness (Shalin, 1996a). The contributors worked on the assumption that perestroika …
Russian intelligentsia in the age of counterperestroika
KEYWORDS: Russian cultureintelligentsiaperestroikacollaborationismpersonal risksemigrationVladimir PutinUkraineCrimea
Extended Mind and Embodied Social Psychology: Historical Perspectives
Extended Mind and Embodied Social Psychology: Contemporary Perspectives
George Herbert Mead as a Macro-Sociologist: The Promise Unfulfilled
Making the Sociological Canon: The Battle Over George Herbert Mead’s Legacy
Goffman on Mental Illness: Asylums and 'The Insanity of Place' Revisited
This case study is designed to demonstrate that sociological imagination can feed on personal experience, that research practice interpolates our biographical circumstances, and that a systematic inquiry into the interplay between our professional and everyday life offers a fruitful avenue for sociological analysis. The discussion focuses on Erving Goffman's treatment of mental illness. The argument is made that the evolution of Goffman's constru…
Interfacing Biography, Theory and History: The Case of Erving Goffman
This study aims to show that much of Erving Goffman's writing is crypto-biographical and that key turns in his intellectual career reflected his life's trajectory and attempts at self-renewal. The case is made that Goffman's theoretical corpus reflects his personal experience as a son of Russian-Jewish immigrants who struggled to raise himself from the obscurity of Canadian Manitoba to international stardom. The concluding section describes the E…
George Herbert Mead
This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction The Biographical Context The Intellectual Sources The Theoretical Corpus The Intellectual Legacy Conclusion Bibliography
Immigration Phobia and the Security Dilemma: Russia, Europe, and the United States
Hermeneutics and Prejudice: Heidegger and Gadamer in their Historical Setting
This is an inquiry into the paradoxes of ontological and phenomenological hermeneutics whose founders called for radical self-reflection but failed to recognize the intellectual debt their theories owed to the historical tradition within which they were articulated. My thesis is that (a) Heidegger’s and Gadamer’s early views fed off the affective-political currents of the Weimar and Hitler Germany, that (b) both authors systematically misinterpre…
Russian Jews on Three Continents: Identity, Integration, and Conflict
Madness and the mad in Russian culture
George Herbert Mead and Creationism
Signing in the Flesh: Notes on Pragmatist Hermeneutics
This article offers an alternative to classical hermeneutics, which focuses on discursive products and grasps meaning as the play of difference between linguistic signs. Pragmatist hermeneutics reconstructs meaning through an indefinite triangulation, which brings symbols, icons, and indices to bear on each other and considers a meaningful occasion as an embodied semiotic process. To illuminate the word-body-action nexus, the discussion identifie…
George Herbert Mead and Human Conduct
Liberalism, affect control, and emotionally intelligent democracy
If ancient Greece is the birthplace of democracy and Athens its earliest incarnation, which deity in the illustrious pantheon of Greek Gods and Goddesses qualifies as its benefactor? No major figure inhabiting Olympus comes to mind, but once you consider the secondtier deities, you find a plausible candidate in Peitho, the Goddess embodying ‘the spirit of agreement, bargain, contract, consensus, exchange, and negotiation in a free polis,’ which, …
Pragmatism and Social Interactionism
It is argued that from the start interactionist sociologists were concerned with the problem of social order and sought new ways of conceptualizing social structure. Special emphasis is placed on the interactionists' predilection for a logic of inquiry sensitive to the objective indeterminacy of the situation. An argument is made that the failure of interactionist sociologists to address head-on the issues of power and inequality reflects not so …
Critical Theory and the Pragmatist Challenge
Habermas's theory breaks with the Continental tradition that has denigrated pragmatism as an Aglo-Saxon philosophy subservient to technocratic capitalism. While Habermas deftly uses pragmatist insights into communicative rationality and democratic ethos, he shows little sensitivity to other facets of pragmatism. This article argues that incorporating the pragmatist perspective on experience and indeterminacy brings a corrective to the emancipator…
Modernity, Postmodernism, and Pragmatist Inquiry: An Introduction
Postmodernism has been around for decades now, but it was not until the 1980s that social scientists in the United States started paying this intellectual current serious attention. Reasons for such a tardy and decidedly half-hearted reception are several. Postmodernists do not look kindly at the social sciences, accusing the latter of aiding the extant powers and furthering domination in society. They also question the philosophical foundations …
The Development of Soviet Sociology, 1956-1976
On June 19, 1958, a group of prominent Soviet philosophers, economists, and historians met in the Institute of Philosophy, USSR Academy of Sciences, and established the Soviet Sociological Association (SSA). As Soviet sociologists prepare to celebrate the 20th anniversary of their first professional organization, we have an opportunity to review the progress of Soviet sociology as an academic discipline and examine its prospects for future develo…
Interfacing Biography, Theory and History: The Case of Erving Goffman
This study aims to show that much of Erving Goffman's writing is crypto-biographical and that key turns in his intellectual career reflected his life's trajectory and attempts at self-renewal. The case is made that Goffman's theoretical corpus reflects his personal experience as a son of Russian-Jewish immigrants who struggled to raise himself from the obscurity of Canadian Manitoba to international stardom. The concluding section describes the E…
The Romantic Antecedents of Meadian Social Psychology
Mead's life-long interest in Romanticism is the least studied aspect of his work. As summarized in Movements of Thought in the Nineteenth Century, Meadian explorations in romantic philosophy and sociology provide a valuable insight into his substantive contributions. The present paper seeks to amplify this insight and explores its relevance to the interactionist tradition in sociology. Special attention is given to the Meadian claim that the mode…
Making the Sociological Canon: The Battle Over George Herbert Mead’s Legacy
Signing in the Flesh: Notes on Pragmatist Hermeneutics
This article offers an alternative to classical hermeneutics, which focuses on discursive products and grasps meaning as the play of difference between linguistic signs. Pragmatist hermeneutics reconstructs meaning through an indefinite triangulation, which brings symbols, icons, and indices to bear on each other and considers a meaningful occasion as an embodied semiotic process. To illuminate the word-body-action nexus, the discussion identifie…
G. H. Mead, Socialism, and the Progressive Agenda
Mead is known today primarily for his original philosophy and social psychology. Much less familiar to us is Mead the reformer, a man who sought to balance political engagement with academic detachment and who established himself as an astute critic of contemporary American society. This paper examines Mead's political beliefs and his theory of the reform process. Drawing on little-known sources and archival materials, it demonstrates that Mead s…
Liberalism, affect control, and emotionally intelligent democracy
If ancient Greece is the birthplace of democracy and Athens its earliest incarnation, which deity in the illustrious pantheon of Greek Gods and Goddesses qualifies as its benefactor? No major figure inhabiting Olympus comes to mind, but once you consider the secondtier deities, you find a plausible candidate in Peitho, the Goddess embodying ‘the spirit of agreement, bargain, contract, consensus, exchange, and negotiation in a free polis,’ which, …
Goffman on Mental Illness: Asylums and 'The Insanity of Place' Revisited
This case study is designed to demonstrate that sociological imagination can feed on personal experience, that research practice interpolates our biographical circumstances, and that a systematic inquiry into the interplay between our professional and everyday life offers a fruitful avenue for sociological analysis. The discussion focuses on Erving Goffman's treatment of mental illness. The argument is made that the evolution of Goffman's constru…
Socialism, Democracy and Reform: A Letter and an Article by George H. Mead
This article is intended to serve two purposes by presenting a selection from George Herbert Mead's correspondence with Henry Northrup Castle and his little-known series of five articles on the issues of war and democracy. This presentation should renew an interest in Mead's political writings and reform activities. It should also draw the attention of sociologists to the substantial body of unexplored, unpublished writings, which will hopefully …
Extended Mind and Embodied Social Psychology: Historical Perspectives
Extended Mind and Embodied Social Psychology: Contemporary Perspectives
Hermeneutics and Prejudice: Heidegger and Gadamer in their Historical Setting
This is an inquiry into the paradoxes of ontological and phenomenological hermeneutics whose founders called for radical self-reflection but failed to recognize the intellectual debt their theories owed to the historical tradition within which they were articulated. My thesis is that (a) Heidegger’s and Gadamer’s early views fed off the affective-political currents of the Weimar and Hitler Germany, that (b) both authors systematically misinterpre…
Mead, Behaviorism and Indeterminacy
Schleiermacher once said that every interpretation is the best. I would add, provided the interpreter understands that his is an interpretation, not the final statement of whatever it is that one seeks to interpret. Collins' wide-ranging and provocative essay (to which I can not do full justice here) on Mead generally avoids imposing on us the definitive reading of Mead. The author correctly points out that "we have a legitimate choice between th…
Russia's Economy of Favours: Blat, Networking and Informal Exchange
Blat: the unknown phenomenon 2. Understanding blat 3. The Soviet order: a view from within 4. The use of personal networks 5.Blat as a form of exchange: between gift and commodity 6. Networking in the post-Soviet period Appendix Bibliography Index
Soviet Dissident Artists: Interviews after Perestroika
Goffman's Biography and the Interaction Order
Communication, democracy, and intelligentsia
In the early 1990s, a group of Russian and American scholars teamed up to investigate the impact of Gorbachev’s reform on Soviet society, focusing especially on the role the intelligentsia played in fomenting glasnost and perestroika. Results of this collaborative study were published in a volume Russian Culture at the Crossroads: Paradoxes of Postcommunist Consciousness (Shalin, 1996a). The contributors worked on the assumption that perestroika …
Restructuring Networks in Post-Socialism: Legacies, Linkages, and Localities
This book is about change in Central and Eastern Europe, and how we think about social and economic change, more generally. In contrast to the dominant 'transition framework' that examines organizational forms in Eastern Europe according to the degree to which they conform to, or depart from, the blueprints of already existing capitalisms, this book examines the innovative character, born of necessity, in which actors in the post-socialist settin…
Soviet Civilization and Its Emotional Discontents
This study is based on the premise that Soviet civilization represented a concerted effort to harness emotions to an ideological cause, to reshape human affect according to the Communist Party's political agenda. Even though these efforts largely failed, they left deep scars on the Russian psyche. The emotional culture that evolved during some 75 years of Soviet rule continues to persist after the coercive institutions supporting it have broken d…
Introduction: Habermas, Pragmatism, Interactionism
The editor of Symbolic Interaction asked me to organize a special journal issue around the themes of our panel. I accepted the offer and, in turn, invited Jurgen Habermas to respond to our critiques. He took up the challenge, and we hope to publish his rejoinder in one of the following issues.\nAll authors who contributed to this collection welcome the growing interest in American pragmatism and interactionist sociology among European scholars. T…
The Heidegger Controversy: A Critical Reader.Richard Wolin
The Development of Soviet Sociology, 1956-1976
On June 19, 1958, a group of prominent Soviet philosophers, economists, and historians met in the Institute of Philosophy, USSR Academy of Sciences, and established the Soviet Sociological Association (SSA). As Soviet sociologists prepare to celebrate the 20th anniversary of their first professional organization, we have an opportunity to review the progress of Soviet sociology as an academic discipline and examine its prospects for future develo…
Between the Ethos of Science and the Ethos of Ideology
This paper attempts to explain the continuous friction between Marxist sociology and Marxist ideology in terms of the premises of the theory of scientific communism, which accords to proletarian ideology the status of scientific truth. The successive stages of the evolution of Soviet sociology are related to the parallel development of views on the scientific ethos. The notion of the “ethos of ideology” is introduced and applied to the analysis o…
Behavioral and Post-Behavioral Methodologies in Communist Studies
Slightly over a decade ago, Frederic Fleron edited a volume of critical essays and research breaking with the established tradition in communist studies. Two years later, another book on the behavioral revolution in communist studies appeared in print, edited by Roger Kanet. These two publications signified a turning point when scattered dissent grew into an open revolt against traditional modes of inquiry practiced by students of communism.\nTen…
The Romantic Antecedents of Meadian Social Psychology
Mead's life-long interest in Romanticism is the least studied aspect of his work. As summarized in Movements of Thought in the Nineteenth Century, Meadian explorations in romantic philosophy and sociology provide a valuable insight into his substantive contributions. The present paper seeks to amplify this insight and explores its relevance to the interactionist tradition in sociology. Special attention is given to the Meadian claim that the mode…
G.H. Mead. A Contemporary Re‐examination of His Thought, by Hans Joas Translated by Raymond Meyer
Pragmatism and Social Interactionism
It is argued that from the start interactionist sociologists were concerned with the problem of social order and sought new ways of conceptualizing social structure. Special emphasis is placed on the interactionists' predilection for a logic of inquiry sensitive to the objective indeterminacy of the situation. An argument is made that the failure of interactionist sociologists to address head-on the issues of power and inequality reflects not so …
Socialism, Democracy and Reform: A Letter and an Article by George H. Mead
This article is intended to serve two purposes by presenting a selection from George Herbert Mead's correspondence with Henry Northrup Castle and his little-known series of five articles on the issues of war and democracy. This presentation should renew an interest in Mead's political writings and reform activities. It should also draw the attention of sociologists to the substantial body of unexplored, unpublished writings, which will hopefully …
G. H. Mead, Socialism, and the Progressive Agenda
Mead is known today primarily for his original philosophy and social psychology. Much less familiar to us is Mead the reformer, a man who sought to balance political engagement with academic detachment and who established himself as an astute critic of contemporary American society. This paper examines Mead's political beliefs and his theory of the reform process. Drawing on little-known sources and archival materials, it demonstrates that Mead s…
The Cunning of Reason
Mead, Behaviorism and Indeterminacy
Schleiermacher once said that every interpretation is the best. I would add, provided the interpreter understands that his is an interpretation, not the final statement of whatever it is that one seeks to interpret. Collins' wide-ranging and provocative essay (to which I can not do full justice here) on Mead generally avoids imposing on us the definitive reading of Mead. The author correctly points out that "we have a legitimate choice between th…
Sociology for the Glasnost Era: Institutional and Substantive Changes in Recent Soviet Sociology
Gorbachev's ascent to power created a new climate for sociological research in the Soviet Union. For the first time, Soviet sociologists find themselves in a position where they not only can pursue critical inquiry but also significantly affect the nation's political agenda. The present situation is not without its dangers, however, as it confronts social scientists with the need to balance scholarship and advocacy, scientific inquiry and politic…
Introduction: Habermas, Pragmatism, Interactionism
The editor of Symbolic Interaction asked me to organize a special journal issue around the themes of our panel. I accepted the offer and, in turn, invited Jurgen Habermas to respond to our critiques. He took up the challenge, and we hope to publish his rejoinder in one of the following issues.\nAll authors who contributed to this collection welcome the growing interest in American pragmatism and interactionist sociology among European scholars. T…
The Heidegger Controversy: A Critical Reader.Richard Wolin
Critical Theory and the Pragmatist Challenge
Habermas's theory breaks with the Continental tradition that has denigrated pragmatism as an Aglo-Saxon philosophy subservient to technocratic capitalism. While Habermas deftly uses pragmatist insights into communicative rationality and democratic ethos, he shows little sensitivity to other facets of pragmatism. This article argues that incorporating the pragmatist perspective on experience and indeterminacy brings a corrective to the emancipator…
Constructing Capitalism: The Reemergence of Civil Society and Liberal Economy in the Post-Communist World
Modernity, Postmodernism, and Pragmatist Inquiry: An Introduction
Postmodernism has been around for decades now, but it was not until the 1980s that social scientists in the United States started paying this intellectual current serious attention. Reasons for such a tardy and decidedly half-hearted reception are several. Postmodernists do not look kindly at the social sciences, accusing the latter of aiding the extant powers and furthering domination in society. They also question the philosophical foundations …
Soviet Civilization and Its Emotional Discontents
This study is based on the premise that Soviet civilization represented a concerted effort to harness emotions to an ideological cause, to reshape human affect according to the Communist Party's political agenda. Even though these efforts largely failed, they left deep scars on the Russian psyche. The emotional culture that evolved during some 75 years of Soviet rule continues to persist after the coercive institutions supporting it have broken d…
Soviet Dissident Artists: Interviews after Perestroika
Restructuring Networks in Post-Socialism: Legacies, Linkages, and Localities
This book is about change in Central and Eastern Europe, and how we think about social and economic change, more generally. In contrast to the dominant 'transition framework' that examines organizational forms in Eastern Europe according to the degree to which they conform to, or depart from, the blueprints of already existing capitalisms, this book examines the innovative character, born of necessity, in which actors in the post-socialist settin…
Russia's Economy of Favours: Blat, Networking and Informal Exchange
Blat: the unknown phenomenon 2. Understanding blat 3. The Soviet order: a view from within 4. The use of personal networks 5.Blat as a form of exchange: between gift and commodity 6. Networking in the post-Soviet period Appendix Bibliography Index
Liberalism, affect control, and emotionally intelligent democracy
If ancient Greece is the birthplace of democracy and Athens its earliest incarnation, which deity in the illustrious pantheon of Greek Gods and Goddesses qualifies as its benefactor? No major figure inhabiting Olympus comes to mind, but once you consider the secondtier deities, you find a plausible candidate in Peitho, the Goddess embodying ‘the spirit of agreement, bargain, contract, consensus, exchange, and negotiation in a free polis,’ which, …
George Herbert Mead and Human Conduct
Signing in the Flesh: Notes on Pragmatist Hermeneutics
This article offers an alternative to classical hermeneutics, which focuses on discursive products and grasps meaning as the play of difference between linguistic signs. Pragmatist hermeneutics reconstructs meaning through an indefinite triangulation, which brings symbols, icons, and indices to bear on each other and considers a meaningful occasion as an embodied semiotic process. To illuminate the word-body-action nexus, the discussion identifie…
Madness and the mad in Russian culture
George Herbert Mead and Creationism
Sociology (35 works) · Philosophy (26 works) · Epistemology (23 works) · Law (20 works) · Political science (20 works) · Politics (16 works) · Contemporary Sociological Theory and Practice (15 works) · Philosophy (13 works) · Psychology (13 works) · Art history (12 works)