Date: Tue, 8 Sep 1998 17:29:54 -0400 (EDT)
From: George Free <aw570-AT-freenet.toronto.on.ca>
Subject: Re: Bourdieu: realist, materialist...?


On Tue, 8 Sep 1998, Carsten Sestoft wrote:

> 
> I hope that my examples may have demonstrated 1) that there *is* a problem
> of the international circulation of ideas, 2) that this problem is much
> less simple than I said yesterday. A sociogenetic understanding of ideas
> demands an awareness of specific national traditions (like the case of
> history in Germany), of the history of disciplines and their relation to
> other disciplines, of conflicting intellectual traditions (like the
> Frankfurt School or the Historical Epistemology af Bachelard) within
> disciplines, of reception histories, and so on. There is much to learn and
> study, and it is most fascinating.
> 
	I agree entirely. Also a lot depends on the relationship of the
'receiver' or the 'importer' of the ideas to their national intellectual
field. To continue with the 'French Theory' in the USA example, a lot of
the reception of Foucault etc.  depended on the fact that the importers
were using it to attack what they sought to vilify as the 'positivist' or
otherwise mainstream, establishment theories.
	In my own studies, I became aware how much the American
interpretations of Karl Mannheim were determined by the position of the
interpreters. For scholars like Wolff, Mannheim was the 'anti-positivist'
sociologist, who could be promoted in opposition to the mainstream
structural-functionalists. This led to an interpretation of Mannheim that
was totally one-sided, emphasizing his link to the hermeneutic tradition
of German scholarship and ignoring his rather radical break with this
tradition.
	You can see the same thing with the reception of all the other 
so-called "European theorists." It would interesting to do a study of the 
history of interpretations and show how changes in the understanding of 
the sociological tradition reflects changes in the social positions of 
the interpreters and the field to which they belong.
	Its a sad fact of our intellectual situation that all of this goes
on unconsciously. 

George
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