Neil Mclaughlin
Biographic Data
| ID | 76499 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Neil Mclaughlin |
| GIVEN NAMES | Neil |
| FAMILY NAME | Mclaughlin |
| SIGNATURE | MCLAUGHLIN N |
| AFFILIATIONS | McMaster University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-1856-2250 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 63 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 230 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 63 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1992 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 9 |
Answering populist attacks on psychosocial ideas: Why Fromm matters more than Marcuse
The reactionary American intellectual Christopher Rufo has made German critical theorist Herbert Marcuse the centre of his campaign to purge the American academy of radical ideas and movements. Marcuse’s ideas have significant influence in contemporary psychosocial scholarship, so attacks on his work may have negative consequences for psychosocial scholars. Rufo’s critique of the influence of Marcuse’s ideas is mostly exaggerated but it contains …
Why Fromm now? Envisioning a saner society
Erich Fromm has long been a forgotten intellectual despite his status as a major critical theorist and sociologist in the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s but his work is being returned to with new enthusiasm because of events in the world, developments within sociology and new interest in psychosocial analysis dealing with emotions. This paper theorizes Fromm's return to scholarly influence now, offering analysis of both his reputational fate in light of …
The Great Canadian Paradox: Jordan Peterson, Right-Wing Canadian Internet Personalities, and the End of Canadian Exceptionalism
Tiny Publics and Democratic Politics
Erich Fromm and Global Public Sociology
Erich Fromm’s contribution to public sociology around the world has largely been forgotten as Burawoy highlighted C. Wright Mills, David Riesman, WEB Du Bois and Jane Adams as canonical figures. This book puts the story of Fromm’s sociological training with Alfred Weber, key role in the critical sociology of the early Frankfurt School, influence on C. Wright Mills, David Riesman and early sociological Marxism back on our historical awareness. The…
Erich Fromm and Global Public Sociology
Erich Fromm was one of the most influential and creative public intellectuals of the twentieth century. He was a mentor to David Riesman and an inspiration for the New Left. As the rise of global right-wing populism and Trumpism creates new interest in the kind of psycho-social writing and popular sociology that Fromm pioneered in the 1930s, this timely book tells the story of the rise, fall and contemporary revival of Fromm’s theories. Drawing f…
Jordan Peterson, Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life
A Troubling Presence: Indigeneity in English‐Language Canadian Sociology
Over the past decade Canadian sociology has engaged in spirited debates on the sociology of sociological research, but it has barely begun to address its relation to Indigenous theorizing, scholarship, and politics. How does the discipline deal with the settler colonial history and current realities of Indigenous social lives, and where is the place in our field for Indigenous voices and perspectives? Drawing on Coulthard's politics of recognitio…
Temporal Variation of Earthworm Impacts on Soil Organic Carbon under Different Tillage Systems
Previous research has shown the varied effect of earthworms on soil carbon dynamics. We carried out a 180-day incubation experiment with earthworms and maize residue additions under conventional tillage (CT) and no tillage (NT) system conditions to quantify the earthworm effect in the black soil of northeastern China. Earthworms did not affect soil CO 2 emissions, while residue addition significantly increased such emissions. The effects of earth…
The coming triumph of the psychosocial perspective: Lessons from the rise, fall and revival of Erich Fromm
This article presents the story of the rise, fall and revival of Erich Fromm, arguably the most important psychosocial thinker of the 20th century. Fromm was a major intellectual figure in the 1940s, 1940s and 1950s in a period of time when psychosocial work was growing in influence. Work that continues in that tradition is outlined and the implications this story holds for the psychosocial school of thought is spelled out through given events in…
Why Sociology Does Not Need to Be Saved: Analytic Reflections on Public Sociologies
This chapter outlines the basic critique of public sociologies developed by mainstream and radical sociologists, with a particular focus on the perspective developed in the "save sociology" website. It discusses the problem with the use of the notion of reflexivity in Michael Burawoy's model, the ambiguities of what he means by "critical sociology", and the need to develop a model that will work for both comparative researches on various national…
Arendt Contra Sociology
Canadian Sociology for Sale? Academic Branding in the ‘Neo-Liberal Age’
When Worlds Collide: Sociology, Disciplinary Nightmares, and Fromm's Revision of Freud
After decades of neglect, sociology is experiencing a revival of interest in psychoanalytic insights, and Erich Fromm's work is uniquely valuable for encouraging dialogue between the two fields. A recipient of a PhD in sociology as a young man in the 1920s, Fromm was a prominent psychoanalytic theorist and clinician, as well as a social researcher and public intellectual in the 1930s, up to his death in 1980. After a historical account of the rel…
Movements, Sects and Letting Go of Symbolic Interactionism
A response to Helmes-Hayes and Milne's article, 'The Institutionalization of Symbolic Interactionism in Canadian Sociology
Professors and politics: Noam Chomsky's contested reputation in the United States and Canada
F romm, E rich (1900–80)
Despite being a largely forgotten intellectual, Erich Fromm has contributed much to the fields of nationalism, authoritarianism, and prejudice. This entry draws attention to Fromm's most influential critical theory relevant to current developments in the “new racism” scholarship. Though underestimating discursive racism, Fromm's interest in sub‐ and unconscious driving forces and class‐based origins of prejudice complements current interests in p…
Fromm, Erich (1900–80)
Fromm, Erich (1900–1980)
Best known as a Freudian revisionist, public intellectual, and social critic, German‐born scholar Erich Fromm also made important and lasting contributions to sociology. Fromm was trained in sociology at Heidelberg University, receiving his PhD in 1922 under the direction of Alfred Weber, Max Weber's younger brother (Burston, 1991). Fromm then underwent psychoanalytic training and began a therapeutic practice in Berlin and later in Frankfurt. In …
Erich Fromm's Critical Theory: Prophetic, Scholarly or Revolutionary
Erich Fromm’s Critical Theory: Prophetic, Scholarly or Revolutionary
Critical Nexus or Pluralist Discipline? Institutional Ambivalence and the Future of Canadian Sociology
While some scholars believe in a transdisciplinary future for the social sciences and humanities, we argue that sociology would do well to maintain its disciplinary borders, while celebrating the plurality of its intellectual, social, and political content. Although a pluralist position can threaten disciplinary coherence and increase fragmentation, we argue the counterbalance ought to be convergence around shared institutional norms of knowledge…
Escapes from Freedom
Escapes from Freedom: Political Extremism, Conspiracy Theories, and the Sociology of Emotions
Although sociology and psychoanalysis have a troubled history and relationship, Erich Fromm’s theory of social character is a good entry point for reconciling and reviving dialogue between the two traditions. Ironically Fromm—who can be characterized as a “forgotten intellectual”—had a conflicted relationship with empirical sociology, the Freudian tradition and the Frankfurt School within which his theory of character was forged (McLaughlin, 1998…
The sociology, biography, and politics of alienation
Daniel Burston is an intellectual historian who, perhaps more than anyone, has tried to keep the radical humanism-existentialist tradition alive. Burston's writings on Erich Fromm and R. D. Laing o
Canada's Impossible Science: Historical and Institutional Origins of the Coming Crisis in Anglo-Canadian Sociology
Optimal Marginality: Innovation and Orthodoxy in Fromm's Revision of Psychoanalysis
The sociological study of intellectual innovation has long been polarized between romantic notions of the creative marginal intellectual and competing accounts stressing the benefits of national, organizational and network centrality in the production of knowledge. I offer the concept of "optimal marginality" as an attempt to move beyond this longstanding but increasingly stale debate. The relationship between a certain type of marginality and in…
Why sociology does not need to be saved: Analytic reflections on public sociologies
Nazism, Nationalism, and the Sociology of Emotions: Escape from Freedom Revisited
The recent worldwide resurgence of militant nationalism, fundamentalist intolerance, and right-wing authoritarianism has again put the issues of violence and xenophobia at the center of social science research and theory. German psychoanalyst and sociologist Erich Fromm's work provides a useful theoretical microfoundation for contemporary work on nationalism, the politics of identity, and the roots of war and violence. Fromm's analysis of Nazism …
Critical Nexus or Pluralist Discipline? Institutional Ambivalence and the Future of Canadian Sociology
While some scholars believe in a transdisciplinary future for the social sciences and humanities, we argue that sociology would do well to maintain its disciplinary borders, while celebrating the plurality of its intellectual, social, and political content. Although a pluralist position can threaten disciplinary coherence and increase fragmentation, we argue the counterbalance ought to be convergence around shared institutional norms of knowledge…
Origin Myths in the Social Sciences: Fromm, the Frankfurt School and the Emergence of Critical Theory
Neil McLaughlin, Origin Myths in the Social Sciences: Fromm, the Frankfurt School and the Emergence of Critical Theory, The Canadian Journal of Sociology / Cahiers canadiens de sociologie, Vol. 24, No. 1 (Winter, 1999), pp. 109-139
A Canadian rejoinder: Sociology north and south of the border
Mapping the Social Space of Opinion: Public Sociology and the Op-Ed in Canada
This special issue of CJS illustrates the international spread of an empassioned debate among sociologists about the future direction of their discipline ignited by Michael Burawoy's call to elevate the presence and status of public sociology. Burawoy's program entails a greater engagement by sociologists with civil society (non-governmental organizations, communities, movements) in the development of their research agenda, and the production of …
Public Sociology in Canada: Debates, Research and Historical Context
In 'For Public Sociology' and other essays, Michael Burawoy acknowledges that the national sociologies of countries other than the US (e.g. Brazil, Norway, South Africa) differ substantially from the US case. The balance and dynamics among the four types of sociology, the timing and phases of the historical development of the discipline and the challenges that face the discipline, are some of the many ways sociology differs from country to countr…
The Trouble with Burawoy: An Analytic, Synthetic Alternative
As American Sociological Association (ASA) president in 2004, Michael Burawoy argued 'for public sociology', sparking impassioned debate focused almost exclusively on the normative issues raised by his prescription for a more public sociology. Nearly absent from the literature is an analytical critique of his underlying model of the structure of sociological practice. The model is flawed in three ways: (1) the core concepts are ambiguous; (2) the…
Critical theory meets America: Riesman, Fromm, and the lonely crowd
The coming triumph of the psychosocial perspective: Lessons from the rise, fall and revival of Erich Fromm
This article presents the story of the rise, fall and revival of Erich Fromm, arguably the most important psychosocial thinker of the 20th century. Fromm was a major intellectual figure in the 1940s, 1940s and 1950s in a period of time when psychosocial work was growing in influence. Work that continues in that tradition is outlined and the implications this story holds for the psychosocial school of thought is spelled out through given events in…
Whither the Future of Canadian Sociology? Thoughts on Moving Forward
Whither the Future of Canadian Sociology?Thoughts on Moving Forward1 Neil McLaughlin There is no crystal ball or scientific formula to allow us to conclusively predict how things will turn out for the discipline of sociology in English Canada over the next several decades. We will just have to discuss the issues, hopefully with evidence and professional civility, while waiting to see how things turn out in our lifetimes. The debate that has been …
Philosophy and Revolution: From Kant to Marx
A Troubling Presence: Indigeneity in English‐Language Canadian Sociology
Over the past decade Canadian sociology has engaged in spirited debates on the sociology of sociological research, but it has barely begun to address its relation to Indigenous theorizing, scholarship, and politics. How does the discipline deal with the settler colonial history and current realities of Indigenous social lives, and where is the place in our field for Indigenous voices and perspectives? Drawing on Coulthard's politics of recognitio…
Erich Fromm and Global Public Sociology
Erich Fromm was one of the most influential and creative public intellectuals of the twentieth century. He was a mentor to David Riesman and an inspiration for the New Left. As the rise of global right-wing populism and Trumpism creates new interest in the kind of psycho-social writing and popular sociology that Fromm pioneered in the 1930s, this timely book tells the story of the rise, fall and contemporary revival of Fromm’s theories. Drawing f…
Canadian Sociology for Sale? Academic Branding in the ‘Neo-Liberal Age’
Contexts of Cultural Diffusion: A Case Study of “Public Intellectual” Debates in English Canada
La controverse sur le “déclin” et le “décès” de l'intellectuel publique est venue au Canada en réponse à l'ouvrage The Last Intellectuals de Russell Jacoby en 1987. Cette recherche examine la diffusion des débats sur les intellectuels publiques au Canada dans une étude de cas détaillé de toutes les mentions du terme “intellectuel publique” dans 25 journaux anglophones de 1987 à 2005. Dans une analyse profonde des dynamiques de l'attribution de l'…
When Worlds Collide: Sociology, Disciplinary Nightmares, and Fromm's Revision of Freud
After decades of neglect, sociology is experiencing a revival of interest in psychoanalytic insights, and Erich Fromm's work is uniquely valuable for encouraging dialogue between the two fields. A recipient of a PhD in sociology as a young man in the 1920s, Fromm was a prominent psychoanalytic theorist and clinician, as well as a social researcher and public intellectual in the 1930s, up to his death in 1980. After a historical account of the rel…
The International Circulation of Attacks and the Reputational Consequences of Local Context: George Soros's Difficult Reputation in Russia, Post-Soviet Lithuania and the United States
This article examines philanthropist George Soros's reputation in the United States, Russia and post-Soviet Lithuania from the 1990s to 2005-6. A billionaire currency speculator and left-wing philanthropist, Soros has a 'difficult reputation'. Attacks from American right-wingers and post-Soviet authoritarians circulated internationally, but his reputation was not constituted globally as extreme globalization theorists might predict. We draw on Bo…
Why Fromm now? Envisioning a saner society
Erich Fromm has long been a forgotten intellectual despite his status as a major critical theorist and sociologist in the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s but his work is being returned to with new enthusiasm because of events in the world, developments within sociology and new interest in psychosocial analysis dealing with emotions. This paper theorizes Fromm's return to scholarly influence now, offering analysis of both his reputational fate in light of …
Jordan Peterson, Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life
Arendt Contra Sociology
Movements, Sects and Letting Go of Symbolic Interactionism
A response to Helmes-Hayes and Milne's article, 'The Institutionalization of Symbolic Interactionism in Canadian Sociology
Erich Fromm's Critical Theory: Prophetic, Scholarly or Revolutionary
Books in review
Nazism, Nationalism, and the Sociology of Emotions: Escape from Freedom Revisited
The recent worldwide resurgence of militant nationalism, fundamentalist intolerance, and right-wing authoritarianism has again put the issues of violence and xenophobia at the center of social science research and theory. German psychoanalyst and sociologist Erich Fromm's work provides a useful theoretical microfoundation for contemporary work on nationalism, the politics of identity, and the roots of war and violence. Fromm's analysis of Nazism …
French Intellectual Nobility: Institutional and Symbolic Transformations in the Post-Sartean Era
Why do schools of thought fail? Neo-Freudianism as a case study in the sociology of knowledge
Un sumario detallado de la producción social de conocimiento requiere comprender por qué algunas escuelas de pensamiento fracasan, mientras otras triunfan. El presente artículo ofrece desde la sociología del conocimiento un análisis del colapso del neo-freudianismo tanto como escuela separada de psicoanálisis como influyente corriente intelectual. Mientras la literatura existente sobre el tema señala los conflictos personales entre Karen Horney, …
Origin Myths in the Social Sciences: Fromm, the Frankfurt School and the Emergence of Critical Theory
Neil McLaughlin, Origin Myths in the Social Sciences: Fromm, the Frankfurt School and the Emergence of Critical Theory, The Canadian Journal of Sociology / Cahiers canadiens de sociologie, Vol. 24, No. 1 (Winter, 1999), pp. 109-139
The sociology of philosophies: A global theory of intellectual change
Revision from the Margins: Fromm's Contributions to Psychoanalysis
Fromm's important contributions to the modern development of psychoanalytic thought are often ignored and frequently misunderstood. An early proponent of revisions of psychoanalytic theory and therapy similar to recent trends in object relations, self-psychology and interpersonal psychoanalysis, Fromm was a visionary for a Freudian theory built upon orthodoxies of the past but going beyond them. It is argued here that Fromm's unique role in helpi…
Critical theory meets America: Riesman, Fromm, and the lonely crowd
Optimal Marginality: Innovation and Orthodoxy in Fromm's Revision of Psychoanalysis
The sociological study of intellectual innovation has long been polarized between romantic notions of the creative marginal intellectual and competing accounts stressing the benefits of national, organizational and network centrality in the production of knowledge. I offer the concept of "optimal marginality" as an attempt to move beyond this longstanding but increasingly stale debate. The relationship between a certain type of marginality and in…
Cultural Theory: An Introduction
About this Book. Preface -- What is Culture? What is Cultural Theory? 1. Culture in Classical Social Theory. 2. Culture and Social Integration in the Work of Talcott Parsons. 3. Culture as Ideology in Western Marxism. 4. Culture as Action in Symbolic Interactionism, Phenomenology, and Ethnomethodology. 5. The Durkheimians: Ritual, Classification, and the Sacred. 6. Structuralism and the Semiotic Analysis of Culture. 7. The Poststructural Turn. 8.…
Erich Fromm and critical criminology: Beyond the punitive society
A Canadian rejoinder: Sociology north and south of the border
Philosophy and Revolution: From Kant to Marx
Levinas, The Frankfurt School and Psychoanalysis (review)
Reviewed by: Levinas, The Frankfurt School and Psychoanalysis Neil McLaughlin C. Fred Alford , Levinas, The Frankfurt School and Psychoanalysis. Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, 2002. 186 pp. The study of emotions is all the rage in the social sciences and humanities these days, so it was exciting to find C. Fred Alford's newest book Levinas, The Frankfurt School and Psychoanalysis in my mail-box. Alford, a political theorist a…
Levinas, the Frankfurt School and Psychoanalysis
Why sociology does not need to be saved: Analytic reflections on public sociologies
Canada's Impossible Science: Historical and Institutional Origins of the Coming Crisis in Anglo-Canadian Sociology
Culture (review)
Culture
A history of sociology in Britain: Science, literature, and society
Whither the Future of Canadian Sociology? Thoughts on Moving Forward
Whither the Future of Canadian Sociology?Thoughts on Moving Forward1 Neil McLaughlin There is no crystal ball or scientific formula to allow us to conclusively predict how things will turn out for the discipline of sociology in English Canada over the next several decades. We will just have to discuss the issues, hopefully with evidence and professional civility, while waiting to see how things turn out in our lifetimes. The debate that has been …
Escape from Evidence? Popper, Social Science, and Psychoanalytic Social Theory
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Fromm, Erich(1900–80)
Although best known as a Freudian revisionist, global public intellectual, and social critic, German‐born scholar Erich Fromm made important and lasting contributions to twentieth‐century sociology. Fromm was trained in sociology at Heidelberg University, receiving his PhD in 1922 under the direction of Alfred Weber, Max Weber's younger brother (Burston 1991). Fromm then joined the psychoanalytic profession, training and entering into therapeutic…
The Trouble with Burawoy: An Analytic, Synthetic Alternative
As American Sociological Association (ASA) president in 2004, Michael Burawoy argued 'for public sociology', sparking impassioned debate focused almost exclusively on the normative issues raised by his prescription for a more public sociology. Nearly absent from the literature is an analytical critique of his underlying model of the structure of sociological practice. The model is flawed in three ways: (1) the core concepts are ambiguous; (2) the…
The Canada Research Chairs Program and Social Science Reward Structures
Les auteurs analysent les comptes rendus des publications et des citations des Chaires de recherche du Canada en sociologie, en science politique et en économie au cours des cinq années pendant lesquelles le programme s'est poursuivi. Ils les comparent à des échantillons aléatoires de comptes rendus de publications et de citations qui ne sont pas le fruit des Chaires de recherche du Canada dans leur discipline respective pour tester leur qualité …
Sociology (57 works) · Political science (36 works) · Contemporary Sociological Theory and Practice (34 works) · Law (30 works) · Philosophy (29 works) · Social science (29 works) · Epistemology (26 works) · Psychology (25 works) · Psychoanalysis (22 works) · Politics (19 works)