Our world is complex—it is composed of many interacting parts—and this complexity poses a serious difficulty for theorists of social reform. On the one hand, we cannot merely work out ways of ameliorating immediate problems of injustice, because the solutions we generate may interact to set back the achievement of overall long-term justice. On the other, we cannot supplement such problem solving with theorizing about how to make progress towards a long-term goal of ideal justice, because the very interactions (...) that render problem solving unsatisfactory raise insurmountable epistemic difficulties for this latter approach. To accommodate complexity, we must therefore give up on ideal theory, and instead supplement problem solving with a new sort of theorizing that aims to work out how to make our institutional arrangements more progressive: more conducive to further improvements in general, though not necessarily to the achievement of any antecedently specified goal. More concretely, we must identify ways of improving our capacity to flexibly experiment with many promising solutions to problems as they arise, to select for those solutions that prove successful while eliminating those that do not, and to learn from both our successes and our inevitable failures. (shrink)

ArgumentThis paper contrasts the research strategies of two women reformers, Florence Kelley and Ellen Swallow Richards, which entailed different strategies of social reform. In the early 1890s, social activist Florence Kelley used the social survey as a weapon for legal reform of the working conditions of women and children in Chicago’s sweatshop system. Kelley’s case shows that her surveys were most effective as “grounded” knowledge, rooted in a local community with which she was well acquainted. Her (...) class='Hi'>social survey, re-enacted by lawmakers and the press, provided the evidence that moved her target audience to legal action. Chemist and propagator of the Home Economics Movement Ellen Richards situated the social problem, and hence its solution, not in exploitative working conditions, but in the inefficient and wasteful usage of available resources by the poor. Laboratory work, she argued, would enable the development of optimal standards, and educational programs should bring these standards to the household by means of models and exhibits. With this aim, she constructed public spaces that she ran as food laboratories and sanitary experiments. Kelley and Richards thus crossed the doorsteps of the household in very different ways. While Florence Kelley entered the household to change the living and working conditions of the poor by changing the law, Richards flipped the household inside out by bringing women into hybrid public laboratory spaces to change their behavior by experiment and instruction. (shrink)

Here I set the stage for developing a Kantian account of punishment attuned to social and economic injustice and to the need for prison reform. I argue that we cannot appreciate Kant's own discussion of punishment unless we read it in light of the theory of justice of which it is a part and the fundamental commitments of that theory to freedom, autonomy and equality. As important, we cannot properly evaluate Kant's advocacy of the law of retribution unless we (...) recognize his theory of justice as an ideal theory. Once we understand both Kant's larger account of justice and its relationship to his less basic commitments, we discover grounds to accept that larger theory, but reject components like the law of retribution with their basis in empirical conclusions we may not share with Kant. We also open the way to develop an account of punishment responsive to social circumstances. (shrink)

The ArgumentIn most historical accounts, eugenic doctrines and Christian beliefs are assumed to be adversaries. Such a perspective is too narrow, however, for while many prominent eugenicists were indeed religious skeptics, others sought to reconcile eugenics with Christianity. Various American Protestant social reformers tried to synthesize new biological theories with older biblical ideas about the meaning of a good inheritance. Such syntheses played an important role in disseminating eugenic doctrines into America's deeply Protestant heartland.

Proponents of care ethics tend to reject the ideals of historical republicanism and the enlightenment because they do not take into account the centrality of the roles played by carers or caregivers in society. Furthermore this is irremediable because of enlightenment’s prizing of reason over and above emotions and of independence over relationships. In this paper I argue that such a wholesale rejection is misguided because it is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of the ideals of enlightenment and republicanism which (...) did value both the emotions and relationships. I focus on the example of one feminist republican writer of the eighteenth century, Sophie de Grouchy, and argue that her response to Adam Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments, the Letters on Sympathy provide a model for a feminist republican social reform. I discuss de Grouchy’s arguments on the relationship between sympathy and morality, and on the kind of social and political reforms which are needed in order to ensure that sympathy can operate freely as a regulator of human interactions. I also show how her claim that sympathy originates in the first human relationships, namely between a child and the woman who feeds them means that in this republican account, mothering is identified as central to the well-functioning of human society. (shrink)

James Mylne (1757-1839) taught moral philosophy and political economy in Glasgow from 1797 to the mid-1830s. Rational Piety and Social Reform in Glasgow offers readers Mylne's biography, a summary of his lectures on moral philosophy and political economy, several interpretative essays, and a collation of his introductory lecture.

The article represents analysis of the development of British Classics during the last two decades based on the compilation Greek and Roman Classics in the British Struggle for Social Reform and the main theoretical texts of reception studies. Reception studies proposed a new methodology, which is able to overcome the limits of isolated disciplines in studies of classics. Today there are three positions on the question of terminological and methodological perspectives in this research direction: a conservative humanism of C. (...) Martindale, a democratic pluralism of L. Hardwick and an open culturocentricism of S. Goldhill. The contradictions of the stated positions provide a wide range of questions. How to make a proper link from theory to practical research? How to keep methodological flexibility without falling into relativism? Which particular discipline has to take the central place in the whole reception studies corpus? (shrink)

History in this age needs to record and analyze the events in the light of modern concept of contemporary world. When the historians narrate the brutal condition of Indo-Pak history, they never forget the work and services of Shaykh Ahmad Sirhindi to transform the society according to the current values. For his services, he is hailed as Mujaddid Alf-I-Thani. The Muslim society had degenerated when Mujaddid Alf-I-Thani appeared on the horizon. A number of Hindu customs and practices had become the (...) part of their creed. The commandments of Shariat and Sunnah were being floated. Moreover, the Mughal emperor Akbar had adopted controversial policies detrimental to the very existence of Muslim society. Mujaddid Alf -Thani made strenuous and constant efforts to turn the tide. When Mujadded-Alf-Thani started his social reform movement, he found that the Muslim society was embracing un-Islamic practices such as widespread belief in Karamat had developed under the influence of Hindu thinking. Moreover, the Islamic teachings had been vitiated by adopting customs and practices of other religions such as inter marriages between Hindus and Muslims and ban on cow slaughter etc. Shaykh Ahmad Sirhindi never entered into any political conflict directly. He endeavored to restore pure doctrine to Islamic thought and to compel the Muslims to follow Shariat and Sunnah in letter and spirit. He was a social reformer, great Alim, Sufi and Mujaddid. He initiated a process of social change, inspired by Islamic Ideal, in an age, which was becoming secular. This research paper is an attempt to mention the role of Shaykh Ahmad Sirhindi for saving the society from un-Islamic values and customs in the sub-continent and its impact on society. By utilizing the historical method, this paper aims at analyzing the effect of social reforms of Shaykh Ahmed Sirhindi on Muslim society. (shrink)

Jean-Baptiste Lamarck is well known as a pre-Darwinian proponent of evolution. But much of what has been written on Lamarck, on his ‘Lamarckian’ belief in the inheritance of acquired characters, and on his conception of the role of the will in biological development mischaracterizes his views. Indeed, surprisingly little in-depth analysis has been published regarding his views on human physiology and development. Further, although since Robert M. Young’s signal 1969 essay on Malthus and the evolutionists, Darwin scholars have sought to (...) place Darwin’s work in its social and political context, this has yet to be done adequately for Lamarck. Here I address this gap. I argue that the will was of particular importance to Lamarck’s social commentary and his hopes for the transformation of the French people and nation. Further, I argue that if we are to really grasp Lamarck’s ideas and intentions we need to contextualize his works in relation to prevailing debates in France about the physiology of mind and morals and the future of the nation. (shrink)

Sociocultural transformations brought about by indigenous leaders in Amazonia have been described as prophetic, millenaristic, or messianic and contrasted with modern reformism. This article addresses new ways of describing processes of change negotiated among indigenous actors. Although these processes are mostly absent from colonial or later sources, they should not remain foreign to ethnology, as the three empirical cases analyzed in this essay show. Methodologically, the essay asks why the regulatory image of Rousseau's small community, meeting face to face to (...) express the general will, has never had the same impact in the anthropological imagination as that of the “noble savage.” Thematically, these case studies raise the question of how peace is made and suggest that, while peacemaking demands “magic,” the invocation of extrahuman powers, the social forms and values on which peace is based are contained as objective possibilities in the present. Making peace actual requires creative choices. (shrink)

In this paper we compare Kierkegaard’s and Marx’s views on social reform. Then we argue that Kierkegaard’s own reasoning is consistent with the expression of neighbor-love through collective action, i.e. social reform. However, Kierkegaard’s approach to social reform would be vastly different than Marx’s. We end by reviewing several questions that Kierkegaardian social reformers would ask themselves. Our hope is that this exploration will provide helpful insights into how those who genuinely love their neighbors ought to (...) seek the common good through collective action. (shrink)

This article argues for a transregional historical approach to explain the career of political secularism, i.e. the ideas and practices that inform the modern state’s relationship to and administration of religion, in the 20th century. More specifically, it asks in how far we can understand secularism in South and Southeast Asia between the end of the First World War and decolonisation after 1945 as a result of transregional patterns that evolved within and beyond these regions. The argument is based on (...) three brief case studies on Atatürk’s Turkey as a contested source of inspiration for state secularity and religious reform, regional women’s networks to foster secularism and social change in the 1930s, and secularism as a strategy of postcolonial state-building and territorial integration. Conceptually, the article suggests to use global intellectual history as a means to combine research on connectivity with historical comparison. (shrink)

This article focuses on social reformer Caroline Bartlett Crane and her association with club women for municipal reform during the Progressive Era. Using archival material, the author examines the actual process of Progressive social reform in which Crane used social networks, sociology, and Social Gospel ideals to achieve positive social change. The author also addresses recent critiques of Progressive women reformers regarding their motivations, accomplishments, and their ultimate legacy in Progressive Era social change.

Both dowry and domestic violence are manifestations of the socially subordinate position of women in India, in particular of women in relation to and within the institution of marriage. Studies reveal how the socio economic changes ushered in by modernisation have interacted with traditional norms to sustain these practices and through them, the subordination of women. The women’s movement began addressing these social problems through law, and has through the years continued to critique the law for its failure to (...) deliver. The critiques and debates arising from this concern have periodically generated recommendations for law reform, higher sentencing, widening the net of criminalisation, creation of special women’s police stations and courts in addition to strategies for raising gender awareness amongst the judiciary and the police. This article attempts to suggest that the shortcomings of the decades of women’s engagement with the law is not merely because of flaws and gender bias within the law, but more importantly, because of the expectations from the law and the centrality placed on its role in social transformation. (shrink)

From the mid-nineteenth century to the Gilded Age, Catharine Beecher and other American social reformers combined natural theology and evangelism to instruct their audiences how to lead healthy, virtuous, and happy lives. Worried about the consequences of urbanization, industrialization, unstable sexual and gender roles, and immigration, these “Christian physiologists” provided prescriptive scientific advice for hygiene and personal conduct based on the traditional norms of white, middle-class, Protestant domesticity. According to Beecher and her counterparts, the biosocial reproduction of ideal American (...) households promised to reverse the degeneration of men and women across the country and to ensure the long-term vitality of their children. Using evidence from Beecher, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and other nineteenth-century writers, I investigate the methods and aims of Christian physiology along with its relationships to natural theology, Darwinian feminism, and other reform movements. I also analyze how Beecher and her successors employed concepts including the machine, the tissue, the cell, and the germ to justify their conclusions about the optimal structure and functions of American society. Overall, I demonstrate how these actors leveraged the body and the family as mechanisms to produce healthy parents, children, and communities for an ailing nation. (shrink)

Swedenborg's Principles of Usefulness presents a possibly unsuspected historical undercurrent that further evidences Emanuel Swedenborg's pervasive influence on a whole host of historical figures-from poets and artists to philosophers and statesmen-whose contributions to the evolution of self and society have resonated throughout time and into the present. Besides having an impact on individual thinkers, Swedenborg's ideas worked their way into the various social reform traditions that vitalized the American landscape during the nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. His concept of usefulness, (...) best demonstrated in the competing worldviews of the nation's liberal and conservative traditions, involved a commitment made by Swedenborgians, New Church members, and others to energize the nation and its people by envisaging the possibility of a much-desired Universal Human. (shrink)

Confucius lived in a society he found morally wanting. The rituals were distorted, the government was corrupt, and the rulers lacked a Heavenly mandate. Our limited historical knowledge makes it difficult today to imagine Confucius' situation in all its rich context and detail; however, we may be able to imagine something like it, at least something like it in certain ways. We can probably imagine living in a state led by officials of questionable integrity, and many of us may feel (...) that we in fact do live in a society that suffers some kind of serious moral deficiency.What should a person do when she finds herself in a morally compromised society? Should she try to avoid moral contamination by withdrawing into .. (shrink)

In The Poverty of Historicism, Karl Popper attacked a number of anti?naturalistic doctrines while advocating a program of piecemeal social reform. However, recent work in social science, and especially in the evaluation of social programs and social reforms, has exposed difficulties that have led many scientists to fall back on one or other of these same anti?naturalistic positions. It is suggested that Popper's strategy for dealing with anti?naturalism is no longer efficacious, although the difficulties in contemporary (...) social science do not warrant the abandonment of naturalism. (shrink)

남명의 敬⋅義철학은 사회의 변화를 이끌어 가는데 가장 먼저 실행되어야 할 것이 무엇인지 제시해 주고 있다. 이러한 점들은 유학에서 지향하는 자신에서부터 출발하여 세계를 바라보는 관점과 상통한다. 사회의 현실을 제대로 직시하는 것 또한 스스로를 먼저 바로 보는 것에서 출발하기 때문이다. 개인의 수양은 곧 사회 전체의 수양, 사회의 개혁으로 이루어질 수 있다는 맥락이 전제되는 것은, 유학에서 말하는 ‘修身’에서 출발해 ‘平天下’로 가는 길, ‘修己’이후에 ‘安人’이 되고, ‘克己’이후에 ‘復禮’가 된다는 사실에서 알 수 있다. 개인과 사회를 분별하지 않고, 개개인의 모습이 모여 사회가 이루어지고, 개인이 바로 설 (...) 수 있을 때 사회도 바로 설 수 있음을 제시한 것이다. 이러한 유학의 사회체계의 원리는 상호적, 또는 층차적 분화와 통합의 원리로 이해할 수 있다. 사회를 개인 혹은 국가와 대립시키지 않으며, 같이 이루어나가는 도덕 공동체로 인식하는 것이다. 따라서 남명에 있어서 敬⋅義철학이 가지는 실천성은 그것이 적용되는 사회의 실천성으로 이해될 수 있을 것이다. 이러한 실천성이 남명의 敬⋅義철학에서 '行義'의 개념으로 나타난다. ‘行義’는 후에 그의 문도들이 국가적 위기에 보인 행동으로 입증된다. 이 점에서 그는 퇴계나 율곡과는 다른 또 하나의 조선조 성리학의 모습을 보여주는 것이다. 이러한 점은 行義의 사회적 구현이라는 측면에서 이해될 수 있다. 어느 성리학자나 실천성을 강조하지 않은 것은 아니지만, 남명은 특히 현실의 당면 문제에 구체적 대책을 제시하지 못하는 관념적, 내면 지향적 사유가 갖는 기만성을 경고한다. 결과적으로 남명의 敬義를 바탕으로 한 도덕적 수양과 단련은 사회 ․ 역사적 장과 상관없는 진공상태에서 평가될 수 있는 것이 아니라, 경세적 공효 내지는 사회적 실천의 맥락에서만 평가될 수 있다고 보는 것임을 알 수 있다. 이것은 남명의 敬義의 실천이 지금보다 더 나은 사회를 구현하고자 하는 지극히 현실적인 ‘사회 개혁론’의 출발점에 서 있다고 평가할 수 있을 것이다. (shrink)

Romanian interwar geopolitics emerged mostly through a radicalization and instrumentalization of sociology, seen as a militant science serving the nation-state. Geography re-defined itself as both geohistory and geopolitics and tried to articulate German Geopolitik and French géographie politique in order to create a science of national and global spaces compatible with this new sociology. Geopolitics became, at the end of the 1930s and during WWII, a major discourse in national politics and gathered a group of scholars, public administrators, and military (...) elites, who aimed to quickly and massively transform the nation and the state. Two important local scholars, the sociologist-demographer Anton Golopenţia and the geographer-turned-sociologist Ion Conea, were central in constituting geopolitics as an important political language and an instrument of state reform inside a radical biopolitical project. (shrink)