Edited by

Stephen Palmer

Between Identity and Practice

Series Editors Dr Robert Fisher

Dr Daniel Riha

Advisory Board

Dr Alejandro Cervantes-Carson Dr Peter Mario Kreuter

Professor Margaret Chatterjee Martin McGoldrick

Dr Wayne Cristaudo Revd Stephen Morris

Mira Crouch Professor John Parry

Dr Phil Fitzsimmons Paul Reynolds

Professor Asa Kasher Professor Peter Twohig

Owen Kelly Professor S Ram Vemuri

Revd Dr Kenneth Wilson, O.B.E

A Critical Issues research and publications project.

http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/critical-issues/

The Transformations Hub

‘Intellectuals, Knowledge, Power’

2011

Between Identity and Practice:

Contemporary Perspectives on the Intellectual

Edited by

Stephen Palmer

Inter-Disciplinary Press

Oxford, United Kingdom

© Inter-Disciplinary Press 2011

http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/publishing/id-press/

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First published in the United Kingdom in eBook format in 2011. First Edition.

Table of Contents

Introduction vii Stephen Palmer

Chapter 1 Mary McCarthy: The Responsibility of One Intellectual 1

Jessica Apuzzo Chapter 2 Intellectual Work: The Psychological Process of Cue-Taking 11

Shane Gunderson Chapter 3 The Role of Doctoral Students in the Creation of Knowledge: 23

A Case Study of the Social Sciences PhD in a UK Research-Intensive University Frederico Matos

Chapter 4 The Condition of the Intellectual Elite in Communist Romania: 33

An Historical Perspective Gabriel Asandului and Teodora Ghiviriga

Chapter 5 ‘Terrorology’: Who Analyses and Comments on the Terrorist 43

Threat? Thomas Riegler

Chapter 6 C. Wright Mills and the Ethics of Intellectual Craftsmanship 55

Stephen Palmer

Introduction

Stephen Palmer

This volume contains a selection of the chapters presented at the Second Global

Conference – Intellectuals: Ideas, Knowledge, Power held in Budapest from 8th

-

10th

May, 2009. As might be expected – and as befitting an event held under the

Inter-Disciplinary.Net aegis - the Conference featured contributions from a wide

range of disciplinary perspectives, historical, sociological, philosophical and

literary, among others. Moreover, as those attending included participants

travelling from all points of the compass, the chapters presented featured a distinct

diversity of experiences of and reflections upon the intellectual both as cultural

identity and as cultural practice.

The volume here presented features only a small number of the chapters given

at the Conference, totalling six in all. For this reason, the editors thought it hardly

necessary, or appropriate, to divide the text into themed sections. However, we do

hope that though necessarily limited the contributions here collected, for all that,

will be no less representative of either the range of topics taken for serious,

extended analysis, or of the approaches employed therein.

The first of the chapters of the current volume, as its subtitle makes clear, is

what may be considered a literary-historical exploration of ‘the responsibility of

one intellectual’. In her chapter, Jessica Apuzzo recounts the writer Mary

McCarthy’s trips to Vietnam on behalf of The New York Review of Books in 1967

and 1968. McCarthy had long opposed the war in Indo-China but had struggled to

find an effective means through which that opposition could be channelled and

articulated. As Apuzzo details, with reference both to the writer’s published texts

and to her private chapters and correspondence, McCarthy’s Vietnamese

experiences enabled her to put her intellectual commitment into oppositional

practice, but also led her to question just how effective her customary writerly

mode and perspective might be in that unfamiliar context.

If Apuzzo treats of one kind of intellectual identity – to wit, one which centres

on a set of problems around moral commitment – in the following chapter,

‘Intellectual Work: The Psychological Process of Cue-Taking’, Shane Gunderson

moves on to address issues arising from contemporary intellectual practice.

Mobilising conceptual and methodological resources drawn from political

sociology and psychology, Gunderson seeks to trace the functioning of intellectual

influence in a range of contemporary contexts, including social movements hoping

to influence agendas in Western societies, the Iranian blogosphere, and the

religious dissident movement in Lithuania.

Frederico Matos shifts the ground once more in his chapter on ‘The Role of

Doctoral Students in the Creation of Knowledge: A Case Study of the Social

Sciences PhD in a UK Research-Intensive University’. For Matos, since Sir Gareth

Roberts’ Set for Success report and that of the Joint Skills Statement by the

Introduction

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viii

Research Councils, there has been a shift in the aims, focus and structure of UK

doctoral programmes. This has led to a de-valuation of new style PhDs based on

the ‘research training’ paradigm, compared to PhDs completed in accordance with

the older model in which the so-called ‘skills agenda’ played little part. Using

material drawn from extensive interviews with doctoral supervisors, de Matos

argues that the current onus upon skills outcomes has resulted in a potentially

damaging systemic institutional chariness of innovative, challenging but ultimately

non-conformist doctoral work.

Gabriel Asandui and Teodora Ghiviriga in their chapter explore a crucial

moment in the cultural politics of the 20th

century intellectual: the varied,

sometimes heroic, sometimes compromised relationship between intellectual elites

and the former communist regimes – in this case, Romania. As the authors relate,

the coming to power of the communists during the parliamentary elections of

November 1944 brought wholesale and dramatic changes in Romanian society and

also, of course, among the tier of elite intellectuals. The initial phase of the

communist regime was characterised by a massive purge of the intellectual élite.

The number of the intellectuals in the Party during this period was extremely low.

Gradually, however, the regime was to open the party to the intellectual elite as

well; and in the process, many representatives of this social category were to

compromise with the new power. As Asandui and Ghiviriga explain, in the post-

war period up to the events of 1989 the relationship between intellectuals and

power was marked by a series of apparent and partial advances on the part of the

former, and repeated bouts of repression across both social and cultural fronts

conducted by the latter. The authors conclude that the intellectual elite’s failure to

bring about the creation of a reforming group, or to subordinate its interests to the

interests of the majority or of an active human rights movement was largely due to

its instinct for self-preservation in the face of an ultimately ruthless party machine.

In his study of ‘terrorology’, Thomas Riegler focuses upon the personnel and

institutions that compose a significant (and significantly influential) actor in the

‘terrorism industry’: the think-tanks and the ‘experts’ who staff them. According to

Riegler, the study of terrorism grew out of the polarised politics of the Cold War

during the 1970s, when the West routinely charged the Soviet Union (as it was

later, immediately post-1989, to do in the case of Iraq) with the sponsorship of

terrorism. In this context, a number of academics and journalists allied in various,

usually covert, ways with the security-intelligence apparatus of, particularly, those

‘special’ (or should that now be ‘essential’?) partners, the United States and the

United Kingdom, were active in the production of influential books and conference

speeches arguing for an aggressive approach to the ‘threat’ posed by terrorists to

Western security and values. In Millsian terms (for more on which, see below)

such ‘experts’ had seemingly abnegated their ‘responsibility’ to remain

independent, both intellectually and morally, of dominant ideologies. Riegler goes

on to trace the development of this ‘intelligence-security-complex’ throughout the

Stephen Palmer

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ix

1980s up to the 9/11 attacks. In the process, he identifies a host of interconnections

between the various actors and agencies involved in maintaining what is,

essentially, a unified view of terrorism as primarily a threat to national security,

and as such, one that must be met with force. That view, according to Riegler, is

one which appears to have achieved the hegemony of ‘common sense’ pushing out

other, less belligerent ideas to the margins of dissent.

Concluding this brief prospectus of intellectual practice and identity in the 20th

and 21st centuries (and bringing us back to the question of ‘responsibility’) Stephen

Palmer offers up an evaluation of C. Wright Mills’ model of intellectual activism

developed in response to what Mills saw as the abrogation of responsibility on the

part of professional intellectuals in the United States. For Mills, the onslaught of

mass culture had left even dissenting intellectuals pessimistic about the chances of

breaking ‘the crust of apathy’ that threatened to seal off any possibility for the

development of an alternative politics or public realm. The wholesale expansion of

higher education and the rapid development of unsettling, unfamiliar cultural

technologies provoked such intellectuals to fear an exponential growth in mass

stupidity, prompting the widespread belief that the world was sleepwalking

towards a cultural calamity, as well as political disaster. As Palmer makes clear,

over a series of works written during and after the Second World War, Mills

elaborated a conception of intellectual work in which personal moral commitment

was not incidental but central to the development and efficacy of that work itself.

This culminated in the publication of The Sociological Imagination (1959) which

saw Mills argue for a vision of social science – and most importantly, of the social

scientist – as central to the understanding of the most pressing public and political

issues of our time. And, as Palmer tells us, it was this vision which was to go on to

have great influence upon the burgeoning student movement of the following

decade - and, it might be said, upon contemporary social movement activists.

All in all, the chapters here collected, though small in number, go some way to

highlight the key issues involved in the study of the intellectual – the relationship

between politics and knowledge, the question of how (or if) impersonal ideas and

personal beliefs interact in the public realm. Most of all, however, they bring to our

attention the fact that the intellectual can be understood as a species of identity

situated somewhere at the open border of politics, society and culture, but that this

is an identity which perhaps is co-incident with a practice of self-identification.

Perhaps in the end the most significant work of the intellectual is the creation of

the intellectual itself.

Mary McCarthy: The Responsibility of One Intellectual

Jessica Apuzzo

Abstract During her long career, the writer Mary McCarthy frequently shared her views regarding the responsibility of intellectuals; these are especially evident in her books on the Vietnam War, Vietnam (1967) and Hanoi (1968). McCarthy was opposed to America’s involvement in Vietnam, and had struggled since the early months of 1965 - when President Johnson increased the bombing there - to act against it. Her private correspondence, especially with Dwight Macdonald and Hannah Arendt, took on an increasingly desperate pitch as more American troops were sent to Vietnam. McCarthy thought up schemes like refusing to pay her taxes, pleading to the Pope, sending influential Americans to Vietnam to ‘live under the bombs’ and writing sternly worded telegrams to senators and congressmen, but none of these plans developed into something satisfactory or effective. McCarthy’s opportunity to practice her brand of intellectual activism came when Bob Silvers, editor of The New York Review of Books, invited her to travel to Vietnam on behalf of the magazine. McCarthy’s private correspondence and published writings about the Vietnam War contain compelling and informative revelations – and self-reflections – on the responsibility of intellectuals during wartime. McCarthy (1912-1989) wrote novels, short stories, travel and art books, memoirs, and criticism. Key Words: Critical detachment, intellectual responsibility, Mary McCarthy, the 1960s, the New York Intellectuals, The New York Review of Books, the Vietnam War, war correspondents.

*****

During the U.S. war in Indochina, the writer Mary McCarthy made two trips to Vietnam as a correspondent for The New York Review of Books (NYRB). Her anti-war position was well known by her friends and colleagues, and for years she had been seeking a way to act effectively against the U.S. involvement in Vietnam, with schemes ranging from refusing to pay her taxes to writing letters to people in President Lyndon Johnson’s administration. McCarthy’s feelings of responsibility to act against the war advanced in lockstep with the number of American troops there, especially after February 1965, when the United States engaged in Operation Rolling Thunder, a sustained bombing of the North. Her first trip was to South Vietnam on February 2nd, 1967, and she stayed until the end of the month; the second trip was to the North from March 12 through April 2, 1968. After McCarthy’s articles ran in the NYRB, Harcourt published them as two pamphlets, titled Vietnam and Hanoi.

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2

Both trips came on the heels of critical wartime developments. In January 1967, Johnson ordered Operation Cedar Falls, a devastating bombing sweep through suspected NLF enclaves in the Iron Triangle.1 January 1968 marked the beginning of the Tet Offensive, in which the NLF made a surprise attack on both American and ARVN2 troops in over a dozen Southern cities and provincial capitals. Prior to the Tet Offensive, most of the fighting had been contained in the countryside. Its sudden, unexpected spread shattered the Johnson administration’s assertion that the war was under control, deepened the American public’s distrust of Johnson, and inspired fervent antiwar protests in the United States.

To some critics, McCarthy seemed an unlikely choice for a war correspondent. In 1963, she published her bestselling novel, The Group, which made her wealthy, gave her a household name, and led to her christening as America’s ‘First Lady of Letters.’3 Much of the attention McCarthy received for this book was due to its frank discussions of sex, masturbation, birth control and lesbianism. After The Group, McCarthy did not publish a single piece of reviewable writing until Vietnam. Her earnings from The Group were one of the key elements that permitted McCarthy to go to Vietnam in the first place; but thanks to the book’s popularity, critics recognized McCarthy as a bourgeois ‘lady novelist,’ a woman who they believed had no business or qualifications to write about the war. The idea of the author of The Group playing war correspondent was shocking.

To her closest friends and colleagues, however, it seemed more out of character for her to have written a bestselling novel than it was for her to travel to a war zone and publicize her antiwar position. She had been active in left-wing politics for over thirty years. Her introduction to politics began during her editorship at The Partisan Review in the late 1930s, when she became known as one of the New York Intellectuals and a supporter of Trotsky. After World War II, McCarthy seriously considered living in an anarchist utopia, and in the 1950s she spoke out against Joseph McCarthy and threats upon intellectual freedom. In a 1962 interview, McCarthy described her political position as ‘dissident,’ and labeled herself a ‘libertarian socialist,’ which she defined as a ‘decentralized socialism’ whereby mass culture and capitalism were substituted with social equality.4 In this same interview, McCarthy explained that she preferred writing in her own voice to writing fiction. She explained, ‘I felt…now I can talk freely!’ and concluded, ‘Maybe I should have been an historian.’5

McCarthy came of age politically in New York City in the 1930s when she became an editor at the Partisan Review, a magazine founded in 1934 as a literary arm of the Communist Party’s John Reed Clubs for writers. Though McCarthy equaled, if not exceeded, her PR colleagues in intelligence and shared their fondness for debate, she seemed an unlikely choice to include on the masthead, at least when compared to the other Partisan Reviewers. McCarthy was criticised by her more ‘serious’ New York Intellectual friends for conflating the personal and political. Whereas her colleagues thought critique was the highest form of political

Jessica Apuzzo

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3

activism, she thought acting was more effective. Her approach was distinctly at odds with that of her colleagues at PR, who were infamous for their aloofness, and the fact that they rarely put their intellectual theories about politics into action. In fact, she once criticised them because they had

no moral core, [Edmund] Wilson – or any of those people around Partisan Review. It never occurred to them that there should be a connection between what they read and wrote and their own lives, how they were living and what they believed in.6

McCarthy tried consciously to unify her beliefs with her everyday actions.

Morality, practicality and individuality were a holy trinity for her. These three elements were always present in her approach to the world, including her political and intellectual stances. McCarthy responded to political issues sincerely and with hope that she could make a difference.

Therefore, one should read the Vietnam and Hanoi pamphlets with McCarthy’s idea of an ‘activist-intellectual’ in mind. She did not want to be perceived as a novelist or a journalist writing about the war; she hoped her reputation as ‘Mary McCarthy, critic and intellectual’ would inspire trust in her readers and spur them to act against the war. She wanted her readers to believe her because of who she was. Years after her trips, she explained her decision to write about her experiences: ‘To hear from a novelist about a trip he has taken through a debated area is like getting a long letter from someone you know well.’7 To her mind, at least in theory, The Group gave her a wider audience for these pamphlets.

McCarthy’s connections to her political beliefs are at the root of her feeling of responsibility to act against Vietnam, and she was determined to make the journey there no matter how easy or difficult it was. Though she ‘long[ed] for an action’8 and was determined ‘to say something or to write something,’9 McCarthy did not know what to do. As time passed and the Vietnam situation did not improve, she grew desperate. She thought up schemes, like refusing to pay her taxes; inspiring a mass movement of the middle class (‘The middle class was the storm center of verbal protest, yet its sons were receiving draft deferment. It was capable of sacrifice.’10); pleading to the Pope; writing letters to Johnson’s coterie; and sending a group of famous people to Vietnam to live ‘under the bombs.’11 In all of these schemes, success hinged on persuading the powerful or privileged. Meanwhile, she dismissed the New Left practice of signing petitions and attending demonstrations as ‘a waste of time.’12 Years after her trip, she described her obsession with Vietnam and her early antiwar approach:

Vietnam had ensconced itself on my pillow. I thought about it just before going to sleep, during intervals of the night, and instantly on waking in the morning, spinning out strategies for

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opposition that grew baroque and fanciful as I became drowsy. Imaginary dialogues with Johnson’s apologists, telegrams to senators and congressmen, Portia-like audiences with McNamara, urging him to make his doubts public. Some of this carried over into waking life. Telegrams were drafted and sent; I incessantly argued with anybody I met who was remotely near sources of power.13

Being close to a source of power, however, did not automatically assure action.

Although McCarthy never convinced a group of friends to go live under the bombs, nor did she get her tax-refusal scheme off the ground, she did get a chance to act when the editor of the New York Review of Books, Bob Silvers, asked her in March 1966 to go to Vietnam and report her findings in the magazine. The NYRB was a periodical known to have one of the most radical editorial opinions regarding the war, and its contributors had established leftist intellectual reputations. Although McCarthy was the first person Silvers asked to go - confirming that her opposition to the war was known and respected, at least by her peer group - she reluctantly refused, citing anxiety that her involvement might jeopardise her husband’s government job. At Christmas in 1966, Silvers approached McCarthy a second time to see if she had changed her mind, and McCarthy agreed to take Silvers up on his offer. As she explained it: ‘What had changed was that three quarters of a year had passed and U.S. policy was still the same.’14

McCarthy departed for Vietnam with confidence and hope that she would be able to spur a mass movement against the war among private citizens and influential people in the public eye. She was armed with a pen, a notebook and her critical ‘cold eye.’ The longer she spent in Vietnam, however, the harder it became to hold the shield of detachment that McCarthy so valued and that had been an essential part of her reputation. In a little more than a week, her spirits descended into the doldrums, and she revealed to James West, her husband, in a letter that she was ‘generally depressed and discouraged, on the point of throwing in the sponge.’15 By the next day, she had grown even more pessimistic, confessing: ‘I am no hero. The contrary. I quail before everything. Morally, I mean. Physically I don’t seem to. Today I am in low spirits again.’16 She added,

I hope this will result in something worthwhile. But out here I’ve begun to wonder. In the face of this massive American ‘presence,’ what can any one person say? Even a better informed and more acute observer than I. Nicola [Chiaromonte] is right: I am not a journalist.17

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In her earlier antiwar schemes, McCarthy underestimated the power of the American war machine; when she got to Vietnam she realised how powerless she was against it.

Though it was true that she was not a journalist, when confronted by American firepower, what could any person do, better informed or not, that would have altered the course of the destruction in Vietnam? In spite of her feelings of doubt while she was there, by the time she wrote the articles that would be published in Vietnam, McCarthy was able to summon her exceptional powers of observation and writing talent to produce damning arguments against the war. She is self-assured and haughty throughout, and never presents herself as objective; rather, she is forthright about her antiwar feelings and her disappointment with the American government. As she declares in the first sentence of the book: ‘When I went to Vietnam early last February I was looking for material damaging to the American interest and…I found it.’18

Vietnam is made up of four sections, and the pamphlet’s final section, ‘Solutions,’ is the most powerful in this series of articles, and easily the most controversial. McCarthy had the chance to develop her arguments for this article, as it was published later than the others. In ‘Solutions’ she asserts that the role of the critic – like herself – is not to plot the logistics of withdrawing hundreds of thousands of ‘American boys’ from Vietnam, but to support the young American men who are burning their draft cards, point out the error of Johnson’s thinking, demand an unconditional halt to the bombing, refuse to identify with the U.S. government, and tap into the ‘inner voice of conscience, which nobody but a few draft resisters can hear.’19 Though she realises that the power of intellectuals is limited, she is emphatic in her belief that it is the role of the intellectual

to persuade, not to provide against all contingencies [because] what we can do, perhaps better than the next man, is to smell a rat. That is what has occurred with the war in Vietnam and our problem is to make others smell it, too.20

The question is how to do the persuading.

McCarthy advocates turning a politics of display - participating in protests and demonstrations, for example - into a politics of disruption. For her, the only truly responsible opponents of the war are draft resisters actively seeking to stop the war machine. She writes:

Obviously no single plan of action can stop the war in Vietnam, and maybe a hundred plans concerted could not stop it. But if it can be stopped, it will be thought initiatives taken by persons…and not cooked up ‘solutions’ handed to somebody else to act on, like inter-office memoranda. The ‘hard thinking’ about

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this war needs to begin at home, with the critic asking himself what he can do against it, modestly or grandly, with friends or alone.21

In a way, McCarthy attempted to lead by example. In travelling to Vietnam,

writing about it, and publicising her views, she followed a course of action that she believed would be most effective, taking the initiative that she insisted was necessary to incite change.

McCarthy believed that her talent as a fiction writer would lend credibility and freshness to her reporting, exposing a side of the war that has not yet been offered to the public, while still guaranteeing a ‘solid and objective account. So that the reader can imagine being there himself.’ She wrote in a letter to her husband that,

This is the object of all reporting, to try to show the truth, and some fictional talent helps in the business of ‘making it new.’ How this can be useful in stopping the war is problematic. But I think that showing the truth, if one can, is useful in itself and sometimes in ways unimaginable at the time of writing.22

She anticipated having a receptive audience due to the popularity of The Group,

and she wanted to take advantage of that to reach ‘the ordinary American.’ She hoped to prove to her readers that the U.S. government and the media have been lying when they say they only bomb military targets; in fact, hospitals, schools and other civilian locales are being targeted. She admitted that she may have been flattering herself with the notion that her reputation would make her reports more believable than those of other journalists, but she explained her motivation to act:

Unless I take some new action, I will have shot my bolt with Vietnam. Not being a political authority, I have to use what authority I have, which is that of an observer and narrator. In my opinion, manifestos and demonstrations and marches have become almost counter-productive. Hence I can see nothing else to do but accept the invitation to go to Hanoi and involve myself in events, with the hope that I will live to tell about them. 23

In the fall of 1967 McCarthy requested authorisation from the North

Vietnamese to travel to Hanoi; she was determined to see the conditions there, and was discouraged when she received no reply for over three months. With an increase in bombing at Christmas and the tremendous shock of the Tet Offensive in January 1968, McCarthy feared that she would be told it was too dangerous to travel to the North and her request would be denied. This possibility distressed her; after all, she once wrote that she considered going to Hanoi ‘a public duty.’24 She

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was surprised, therefore, and much relieved when she received an invitation from the Peace Commission of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam to go there in early March. In 1968, Hanoi was published, and contains five articles that originally appeared in the NYRB.

Like ‘Solutions’ in Vietnam, the final article in this book, ‘First Principles,’ is the most powerful, in part because McCarthy spends the last twelve pages of this article criticising herself, and discusses her feeling of responsibility to act. She admits that her mission was flawed because she harboured

[s]ome vague assurance of superiority, not personal but generic…the confidence of an American who knows himself to be fair-minded, able to see both sides, disinterested, objective, etc., as compared to the single-minded people he is about to visit.25

Of course, it is clear that McCarthy does not attempt, let alone deliver, a fair-

minded accounting of both sides, since her criticism of the United States is so vehement, and it seems that her feeling of superiority was applied both to North Vietnamese and to American people. In spite of the fact that her sympathies lay more with the Vietnamese than with the Americans, she says she ‘counted on the public to believe [her],’ and, incongruously, goes on to say that even she should not be trusted:

[My] detachment and novelistic powers of observation were not only inappropriate but also a sort of alibi….opposition to the war was not a sufficient credential to permit me to circulate here as a pure recording sensibility noting down impressions, which, however, I was doing and could not help doing, short of jumping out of my skin. It came down to this: if I was an unsuspicious source, worthy of belief, so far as a wide American public was concerned, this meant I was a suspicious character to all who mistrusted that public’s standards and morality - including myself.26

McCarthy believed that if she exploited her right to freedom of expression, she

would be able to awaken sympathy in Americans who were misinformed about the North Vietnamese. She came to realise, however, that everything on which she had prided herself, indeed, what she had regarded as her ‘credentials’ for travelling to North Vietnam in the first place - her education, her worldliness, her social status - meant nothing there. She admits in ‘First Principles’ that,

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[t]he illusion of being effective, the sole justification of my presence there, began to waver in North Vietnam the more I called upon it to defend me against the charge of complicity with American ruling circles….My objectivity was making me uncomfortable….In short, I was not pleased with myself, or with what I somewhat showily represented.27

For a writer who had based her career on exploiting the privilege of critical

detachment, the significance of McCarthy’s confession here cannot be overstated. In fact, her time in Vietnam altered the course of her career.

This period in McCarthy’s life needs to be studied if we are to understand the full scope of her career. All of the personal, political, moral, literary and intellectual experiences that McCarthy collected over the years, which she had been mulling over or had stored in her subconscious, came to a boil during this time. She seized an opportunity to act in a way she believed would make a difference. Her idiosyncratic efforts to narrow the gap between intellectual theory and activist practice reveal a thoughtful and compassionate - though sometimes flawed and naïve - mind at work. Pham Van Dong, the North Vietnamese Prime Minister, is one person who recognised the risk McCarthy took in writing about Vietnam, and clearly admired her for her efforts. After reading McCarthy’s account of her visit to the South, he told her ‘Vous avez beaucoup de coeur, madame.’28 This elegant and tender statement could be regarded as the perfect summation of McCarthy’s experience in and writing about Vietnam.

Notes 1 The NLF, or the National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam, was the Viet Cong organization which included both Communists and non-Communists dedicated to overthrowing the government of the South, improving overall living conditions for all Vietnamese, and establishing harmonious relations between the northern and southern parts of the country. The Iron Triangle was an area 22 miles northeast of Saigon. See M. Young, The Vietnam Wars, New York, Harper Perennial, 1991, pp. 70-74 & 174-175. 2 ARVN was the Army of Vietnam, based in the South. See Ibid., p. xiii. 3 N. Mailer, The New York Review of Books, Vol. 1, No. 4, October 17, 1963. http://www.nybooks.com/articles/13659, Accessed April 25, 2008. Mailer’s review of The Group. 4 E. Niebuhr, ‘The Art of Fiction XXVII: Mary McCarthy – An Interview,’ Paris Review, Vol. 27, Winter-Spring 1962, pp. 20-21. 5 Ibid., pp. 35-36. 6 C. Brightman, ‘Mary, Still Contrary’, The Nation, May 19, 1984, p. 614. Edmund Wilson was McCarthy’s second husband.

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7 M. McCarthy, ‘How it Went,’ The Seventeenth Degree, New York, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1974, p. 27. 8 Ibid., p. 26. 9 McCarthy to Arendt, May 18, 1965, quoted in C. Brightman (ed), Between Friends: The Correspondence of Hannah Arendt and Mary McCarthy 1949-1975, New York, Harcourt Brace, 1995, p. 183. 10 McCarthy, op. cit., 1974, p. 11. 11 Ibid., p. 46. 12 Ibid., p. 11. 13 Ibid., p. 10. 14 Ibid., p 14. 15 Mary McCarthy to James West, February 17, 1967, Box 246, Folder 1, McCarthy Papers. 16 Mary McCarthy to James West, February 18, 1967, Ibid. 17 Mary McCarthy to James West, February 26, 1967, Ibid. 18 M. McCarthy, Vietnam, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, New York, 1967, p. 3. 19 Ibid., p. 100. 20 M. McCarthy, Hanoi, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, New York, 1968, pp. xxiv-xxv. After ‘Solutions’ was published in the NYRB, in November 1967, Diana Trilling – McCarthy’s long-time rival and a fellow NYRB writer – wrote a letter to the magazine criticising McCarthy’s position. McCarthy responded to Trilling’s letter in print, enlarging on her position in ‘Solutions.’ This quotation is taken from that response. Trilling’s piece and McCarthy’s reply were both printed in the January 18, 1968, issue of the NYRB. McCarthy included this exchange at the beginning of Hanoi, she explained, as ‘a preparatory exercise,’ Ibid., p. viii. 21 Ibid., p. 106. 22 Mary McCarthy to Jim West, March 10, 1968, Box 246, Folder 2, McCarthy Papers. 23 Mary McCarthy to Jim West, March 10, 1968, Box 246, Folder 2, McCarthy Papers. 24 McCarthy, op. cit., 1974, p. 56. 25 Ibid., p. 123. 26 Ibid., pp. 124-125. 27 Ibid., p. 127. McCarthy’s use of the word ‘objectivity’ is slightly inaccurate. She had the license to write whatever she pleased, and she did not abstain from sharing her views. 28 McCarthy, op. cit., 1968, p. 129. ‘You have a lot of heart, madame.’

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Bibliography

Archival Collections M. McCarthy Papers, Vassar College Library, Archives and Special Collections, Poughkeepsie, New York. Published Material Brightman, C., ‘Mary, Still Contrary’. The Nation. May 19, 1984. —, Writing Dangerously: Mary McCarthy and Her World. Harcourt Brace & Company, New York, 1992. — (ed), Between Friends: The Correspondence of Hannah Arendt and Mary McCarthy 1949-1975. Harcourt Brace & Company, New York, 1995. Mailer, N., ‘The Mary McCarthy Case’. The New York Review of Books. Vol. 1 No. 4, October 17, 1963. http://www.nybooks.com/articles/13659. Accessed April 25, 2008. McCarthy, M., The Group. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, New York, 1963. —, Vietnam. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, New York, 1967. —, Hanoi. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, New York, 1968. —, The Seventeenth Degree. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, New York, 1974. Niebuhr, E., ‘The Art of Fiction XXVII: Mary McCarthy – An Interview’. Paris Review. Vol. 27, Winter-Spring 1962, pp. 58-94. Young, M., The Vietnam Wars 1945-1990. Harper Perennial, New York, 1991. Jessica Apuzzo graduated in 2008 with a Master’s degree in Women’s History from Sarah Lawrence College. She works as an associate at Glenn Horowitz Bookseller, a rare book and manuscript dealer in New York City.

Intellectual Work: The Psychological Process of Cue-Taking

Shane Gunderson

Abstract Public intellectuals are transmitters and that is their intellectual work. The author’s aim is to show how goal attainment in all intellectual work is to create cues leading to mind change and in some cases, a public outcry. The scalar public is influenced by the vector of influence which radiates from public and popular intellectuals. Understanding the theory of political momentum helps one understand bandwagon behaviour that is initiated by an intellectual’s vector of influence. This cue-taking process in momentum theory is relevant to public intellectual work because the myth of inevitability influences the public to climb aboard a rising movement or ideology. At the base of the definitions of intellectualism is the concept of public pronouncements on matters relevant to publics. The author says celebrities are the prevalent popular intellectual of our time because they are usually part of a network and they devise proposed solutions to problems through diplomacy. Examples from Andrew F. Cooper’s book, Celebrity Diplomacy, are presented to show how access to decision makers adds speed to social change for movements. Using Charles Tilly’s scorecard and Rob Benford’s and David Snow’s theories on social movements, the author offers a criterion for defining intellectual work using the following terms: diagnostic and prognostic framing, commitment and worthiness cues, and strategic fitting. Application of these concepts is applied to internet blogs in Iran and the Lithuanian Dissident Movement. Key Words: Rob Benford, celebrities, collective behaviour, diplomacy, framing, intellectuals, momentum, popular intellectuals, social movements, sociology.

***** 1. Intro

What is a public intellectual and how is a public intellectual distinguished from other intellectuals and knowledge producers? How one becomes a popular intellectual in contrast to a public intellectual can be determined by analysing core framing tasks which act as predictors of opinion mobilisation and the prevailing conditions in which intellectuals foment public outcries leading to social change. The International Review of Social History issued a ‘Call For Articles’ in 2003 for the International Review of Social History Supplement 2004: Framing Protest: Popular Intellectuals and Social Movements in Asia, Africa, and Latin America (Nineteenth-Twentieth Centuries). The announcement reads:

These framing specialists are particularly active in developing, borrowing, adapting, and reworking interpretive frames that promote collective action and that define collective interests and

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identities, rights and claims. We refer to these specialists as ‘popular intellectuals’. They should be viewed as firmly embedded in social networks - e.g., ties with their communities, (fellow) activists, adversaries, peer and rival intellectuals, and the state-which influence their cultural work and its social effects.1

The act of ‘framing’ is part of both types of intellectual’s discursive repertoire,

and I argue that these activities include an essential ingredient that combines ideological work with political initiative in the form of cues. Political scientists study the psychology of momentum, which includes the phenomenon of cue-taking. Intellectual work has always been about ideas and social movements, but social movement activists are not always considered public intellectuals. Should we call them ‘public’ or ‘popular’ intellectuals? If we look at the cues they produce for ‘publics,’ then we can see how they differ from other knowledge producers. Perhaps James Hitchcock best explains the prevailing conditions for intellectuals to foment public outcries leading to social change. Hitchcock discusses the dynamics of popular intellectuals. He says, ‘Ideas and movements are either in the ascendancy or in the decline; they cannot remain stationary.’2 Hitchcock characterises the public as referees and describes the conflict as one between the minority and majority views. He says a minority view becomes respectable by stages.

But isn’t this just politics? One might question why intellectuals should follow the same strategies as politicians for building momentum. Popularity of ideas is like popularity of politicians. Public intellectuals are transmitters and that is their intellectual work. My aim in this research is to show how goal attainment in all intellectual work is to create cues leading to mind change and in some cases, a public outcry.

Implicit in our questioning of the intent of popular intellectuals should be the notion of how the popular intellectual must select which frame is receptive to the public in order to create the ascendant momentum leading to a public outcry.3

First, I will describe what I call the ‘scalar public’.

2. The Scalar Public as a Mass The scalar public is influenced by the vector of influence which radiates from

intellectuals. Understanding the theory of political momentum helps one understand bandwagon behaviour that is initiated by an intellectual’s vector of influence.

Cue-takers are individuals who wish to streamline the process of deciding which candidate to support. Rather than sift through the resumes of all the contenders before making a choice, they simply back the candidate who is the current favourite among fellow partisans.4

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Hitchcock sees opinion formation in a similar way by discussing the myth of inevitability. He describes the latter in the following way: ‘The new movement’s impetus has maximum force to the degree that it convinces the larger society that it has already won its victory and that continuing opposition is futile and foolish.’5 This cue-taking process in momentum theory is relevant to public intellectual work because the myth of inevitability influences the public to climb aboard a rising movement or ideology.

Larry M. Bartels, a political scientist who studies momentum, describes two versions of cue-taking:

We have seen that prospective voters in presidential nominating campaigns often face considerable uncertainty. In view of this uncertainty, it would not be surprising to find that the prospective voters seek information relevant to evaluating the candidates. Such information is often readily available in the political environment in the form of endorsements of particular candidates by ‘cue-givers.

Bartels claims that uncertain prospective voters make rational calculations

based on the previous decisions of other voters. The second version, Bartels says, reflects a contagion, in which casual campaign observers are swept up in the atmosphere of success surrounding a winning candidate which they irrationally confuse success with quality.6

In other words, the public waits to see which way the wind is blowing before deciding their course.

3. Public Intellectuals’ Vector of Influence

In a forum put together by Basic Books in New York City, authors gathered to discuss the future of public intellectuals; a transcript of that discussion subsequently appeared in The Nation magazine, on February 12th, 2001. Herbert Gans, Professor of Sociology at Columbia University and author of numerous works, including Popular Culture and High Culture, The War Against the Poor and The Levittowners, said:

The public intellectuals that exist now may not be as famous, but in fact there are lots of them. And I think at least on my campus, public intellectuals are becoming celebrities. Some of them throw stones and get themselves in trouble for a few minutes and then it passes. But I think that really is happening, and if celebrities can exist, their numbers will increase.7

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Gans believes that public intellectuals come in two types: first there are the generalists or pundits; and the second type consists of the disciplinary intellectuals. He places public sociologists, public economists, and public humanists into this latter category. Gans says that academic public intellectuals are good writers and accomplished media performers who get publicity which brings prestige to the institutions they work for. Another forum regarding intellectuals presents more categories for intellectuals.

The Congressional-Executive Commission on China held a roundtable, entitled ‘Public Intellectuals in China,’ in 2005. Perry Link, Professor of Chinese Language and Literature at Princeton University, claimed there that public intellectuals:

are fewer than before, and fall into several kinds of fairly disparate spheres, which I will call 1) internet essayists, 2) journalists, 3) muckraking novelists, 4) special cause activists, and 5) lawyers.8

Professor Link sees public intellectuals as activists for social change. The way I

see it, collective actors in social movements enlist public intellectuals to gain momentum for their cause. By grouping journalists and activists together in the public intellectual group, we are missing important differences. Intellectual work in social movements is best understood by the bifurcation of activists and journalists to advance a more functional assessment of collective actors’ approaches to placing the conditions of their grievance in front of the public

4. The Vector of Influence of the Popular Intellectual

To define the persons we call ‘popular intellectuals’, Michiel Baud and Rosanne Rutten offer the following characteristics:

• They are acknowledged as producers of meaning and as

representatives of collective interests by a popular group or local society. However, their legitimacy and authority is never uncontested and all the time new ‘intellectuals’ and intellectual leaders emerge who may challenge their legitimacy, or who may express new or previously silenced interests of specific populations (for example women, peasants, younger generations, indigenous groups).

• They possess the explicit ambition to transform society and to

put into practice their recipes for change. They are, in this sense, ‘engaged intellectuals’ who combine reflexive activity with cultural and political activism.

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• They include members of the popular classes and persons who gained their knowledge outside of the realm of formal education, as well as formally-educated members of the upper and middle classes who may have started out as ‘traditional intellectuals’, but redefined their position and political mission.9

These popular intellectuals Baud and Rutten describe as collective actors in

social movements. I argue that popular intellectuals enlist public intellectuals as well as journalists to gain momentum for their cause. Intellectual work in social movements is best understood by the utilisation of both rhetorical theory and sociological models of framing to understand how social movements gain momentum as ‘popular intellectuals’ and facilitate and combine ideological work with political initiative. Structuring a new decision making model for collective action in a more strategic fashion, through sequential actions, will increase the possibility of social change.

5. Increasing the Velocity of Momentum Using Collective Action Frames as Cues

Benford and Snow also describe ‘Core Framing Tasks.’ They refer to these as ‘diagnostic framing’ (problem identification and attributions) and ‘prognostic framing’. Benford and Snow define diagnostic framing as that which enables us ‘to identify the source(s) of causality, blame, and/or culpable agents.’10 The second core framing task that Benford and Snow identify is known as ‘prognostic framing.’ This ‘involves the articulation of a proposed solution to the problem, or at least a plan of attack, and the strategies for carrying out the plan.’11

Since both types of intellectuals are framing specialists, I argue that public intellectuals and popular intellectuals differ in how they foment a public outcry. Public intellectuals primarily use diagnostic framing or, using my term, diagnostic cues. A popular intellectual uses both prognostic and diagnostic framing or cues. The prognostic dimension is more action oriented. A public intellectual does not usually get involved with social movement strategy so they do not need to bring back an elixir to the movement. Charles Tilly, a sociologist who studied social movements, adopted a standard scorecard for challenges in a social movement according to the following formula: strength = worthiness × unity × numbers × commitment.

If any of these values falls to zero, strength likewise falls to zero; the challenge loses credibility. High values on one element, however, make up for low values on another. As the (1991) French hunger strikes illustrate, a small number of activists who display their worthiness, unity, and commitment by means of simultaneous risk or sacrifice often have as large an impact as a large number of people who sign a petition, wear a badge, or march through the streets on a sunny afternoon. Relevant codes run something like this:

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Worthiness: sobriety, propriety of dress, incorporation of priests and other dignitaries, endorsement of moral authorities, evidence of previous undeserved suffering

Unity: uniforms, marching or dancing in unison, chanting of slogans, singing, cheering, linking of arms, wearing or bearing of common symbols, direct affirmation of a common program or identity

Numbers: filling of public space, presentation of petitions, representations of multiple units (e.g., neighbourhood associations), direct claims of numerical support by means of polls, membership inscriptions, and financial contributions

Commitment: persistence in costly or risky activity, declarations of readiness to persevere, resistance to attack.12

Both types of intellectuals use what Tilly calls ‘Commitment’ and this involves ‘persistence in costly or risky activity, declarations of readiness to persevere, resistance to attack’.13 I will now provide modern day examples of this aspect of intellectual work.

6. The Process of ‘Commitment Cues’ and ‘Strategic Fitting’ on the Internet Blogs

‘Commitment cues’ is a term for intellectual carried out by both public and popular intellectuals. This concept, coupled with strategic fitting, encompasses situations in which there is ‘intentional cross-cultural promotion, with the transmitter actively engaged in tailoring and fitting the objects or practices of diffusion to the host culture.’14 Trans-national beliefs are influenced by intellectuals on the internet.

Blogs are popular in Iran, especially among Iranian youth. Dr. Liora Hendelman-Baavur, a Research Fellow at the Center for Iranian Studies wrote an article for Middle East Review of International Affairs, ‘Promises and Perils of Weblogistan: Online Personal Journals and the Islamic Republic of Iran.’ She uses Technorati.com reports of internet statistics in October 2005:

there are estimated to be about 700,000 Iranian blogs (out of an estimated total of 100 million worldwide), of which about 40,000-110,000 are active, mostly written in Persian, the official language of Iran. Estimates for 2006 rank Iran ninth in the world for the number of weblogs, and Persian is among the top ten languages in terms of posting volume.15

Using Charles Tilly’s scorecard to evaluate social movements, I argue that

these bloggers are public intellectuals that use commitment cues: ‘Commitment: persistence in costly or risky activity, declarations of readiness to persevere, resistance to attack.’16 Determining who the public vs. popular intellectuals are in

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these situations is challenging. Now, I will provide another example of intellectual work.

7. The Process of ‘Worthiness Cues’ in the Lithuanian Resistance Movement

One of the most prominent outside players that helped the Lithuanian dissidents was the Vatican organisation. Popular intellectuals used one of the most well known public intellectuals as a strategy. The Vatican radio station broadcast underground articles internationally so that the world could hear the unjust persecution of dissidents. The election of the Polish Pope, John Paul II, was a sign of hope for the churches of communist countries. Pope John Paul addressed the world speaking Lithuanian in his investiture homily. He said, ‘My sincere greetings to my Lithuanian brothers. Be happy and faithful to Christ.’17 According to David Kowalewski, a researcher who studied social movements in Lithuania in the 70s:

At an impromptu reception afterwards, he (The Pope) told Lithuanian visitors, ‘Half my heart is in Lithuania.’ In response to these positive gestures, on November 13, 1978, five Lithuanian priests formed the Catholic Committee for the Defence of the Rights of Believers, claiming that the new pontiff from Eastern Europe could understand the plight of Catholics under Soviet rule better than Western prelates.18

Pope John Paul organised impressive commemorations of the Lithuanian

Church in Rome: the 500th anniversary of the death of St. Casimir in 1984 and the 600th anniversary of the Baptism of Lithuania in 1987. Using Charles Tilly’s scorecard to evaluate social movements, I argue that Lithuanian dissidents acting as popular intellectuals featured a variety of relevant characteristics: ‘Worthiness: sobriety, propriety of dress, incorporation of priests and other dignitaries, endorsement of moral authorities, evidence of previous undeserved suffering.’19 In other words, the dissidents deployed the Pope and other priests to make public pronouncements to foment an outcry as a strategy.

8. Celebrities’ Strength of Cues Increases Speed in Momentum

My research on popular intellectuals brings me to the notion of celebrities as the prevalent popular intellectuals of our time because they are usually part of a network and they devise a proposed solution to the problem through diplomacy. In Andrew F. Cooper’s book, Celebrity Diplomacy, we learn a historical and present day strategy for social movements. He says:

Celebrities have had a long association with the modern world of diplomacy. Benjamin Franklin - often considered the first

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American celebrity - assiduously worked the French Court of Louis XVI. The quixotic reputation of Lawrence of Arabia remains indelibly connected to the Paris Peace Conference of 1919. The selection of Bono and Bill and Melinda Gates as Time magazine’s 2005 persons of the year serves as just the most visible measure of how new types of celebrities are performing an expanded range of activities and are being recognized on the international stage.20

Today, celebrities are deployed to handle diplomacy. I believe they add speed

to momentum because they gain access to decision makers quickly. Cooper says:

To the question ‘Who are the diplomats now?’ the possible current response is both everybody (NGOS, firms, citizen groups, and so on) and an increasingly narrow group of individuals (usually located in the central apparatus of government, via the White House, Prime Minister’s Office, etc.). Both trends open up huge opportunities for celebrities. If diplomacy is ‘everybody’ and ‘everything,’ celebrities would appear to have a huge head start.21

Cooper explains that some of these activities are for charitable causes. Cooper

says many of the celebrities are working through non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Cooper says Richard Gere, Angelina Jolie, and Bono are involved with NGOs. Bono moved to establish his own organisation, DATA. These popular intellectuals (my term) are compared with public intellectuals by Cooper.

Cooper shares his views on the extreme individualistic traits of French society and Brigitte Bardot.

Through one lens, the famous film star of the 1950s was simply another benign activist pursuing an extended campaign on behalf of animal rights. Among her many other initiatives was a 30 year war against the seal hunt off the shores of Canada and Greenland.22

Where she became problematic according to Cooper is when she took her stance on the ‘Islamisation’ of France.

Convicted in 1997 and 2000 of inciting racial violence, and with an incendiary book (Un Cri dans le silence) to her name, Bardot crossed the line of always acceptable behaviour for an individual to be acknowledged as a celebrity diplomat.23

Another intellectual and celebrity that Cooper mentions is Bernard Kouchner, who established Medecins sans Frontieres (MSF) in reaction to the 1960s Biafra crisis. Cooper says Kouchner served as minister for social affairs with special

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responsibility for humanitarian aid and as a junior health minister as the chief UN administrator for Kosovo from 1999 to 2001.24

At the base of the definitions of intellectualism is the concept of public pronouncements on matters relevant to publics. In conclusion, my key points are that the cue-taking process in momentum theory is relevant to public intellectual work because the myth of inevitability influences the public to climb aboard a rising movement or ideology. And by analysing core framing tasks and Charles Tilly’s scorecard variables as predictors of opinion mobilization we can learn how intellectuals foment public outcries leading to social change.

Notes

1 ‘Call for Articles: Framing Protest: Popular Intellectuals and Social Movements in Asia, Africa, and Latin America (Nineteenth-Twentieth Centuries)’, 21-02-2003 H-Net Online Humanities and Social Sciences. 2 J. Hitchcock, ‘The Dynamics of Popular Intellectual Change’, The American Scholar, 2001, p. 522. 3 S. Gunderson, ‘Social Movement, Spectacle, and Momentum’, Resistance Studies Magazine, Aug. 2008, p. 25. 4 P. Kenney & T. Rice, ‘The Psychology of Political Momentum’, Political Research Quarterly, 47(4), 1994, p. 925. 5 Hitchcock, p. 524. 6 L. Bartels, Presidential Primaries and the Dynamics of Public Choice, University Press, Princeton, NJ, 1988, p. 135. 7 ‘THE FUTURE of the PUBLIC INTELLECTUAL.’ The Nation, 12 Feb. 2001, p. 25. 8 ‘Public Intellectuals in China Mar. 2005, 14 Apr. 2009, Roundtable before the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, One Hundred Ninth Congress, http://www.cecc.gov/pages/roundtables/031005/index.php, p. 5. 9 M. Baud & R. Rutten, ‘Popular Intellectuals and Social Movements: Framing Protest in Asia, Africa, and Latin America’, Cambridge U.P., 2004, pp. 8-9. 10 R. Benford & D. Snow, ‘Framing Processes and Social Movements: An Overview and Assessment’, Annual Review of Sociology, Vol. 26, 2000, p. 616. 11 Ibid. 12 C. Tilly, ‘From Interactions to Outcomes in Social Movements’, How Social Movements Matter, M. Giugni, D. Mcadam & C. Tilly (eds), University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 1999, p. 261. 13 Ibid. 14 Benford & Snow, op. cit., p. 627 15 Hendelman-Baavur, ‘Promises and Perils of Weblogistan: Online Personal Journals and the Islamic Republic of Iran’, Middle East Review of International Affairs, Vol. 11, No. 2, June 2007, p. 83.

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16 Giugni, op. cit., p. 261 17 D. Kowalewski, ‘Lithuanian Protest for Human Rights in the 1970s: Characteristics and Consequences’, LITUANUS, Vol. 25.2, 1979, p. 8. 18 Ibid. 19 Giugni, op. cit., p. 261. 20 A. Cooper, Celebrity Diplomacy, Paradigm Publishers, 2007, p. 1. 21 Ibid., p. 11. 22 Ibid., p. 98. 23 Ibid. 24 Ibid.

Bibliography Bartels, L., Presidential Primaries and the Dynamics of Public Choice. Princeton, NJ, University Press, 1988. Baud, M. & Rutten, R., ‘Popular Intellectuals and Social Movements: Framing Protest in Asia, Africa, and Latin America’. International Review of Social History (IRSH). Cambridge, U.P., Supplement 2004. Benford, R. & Snow, D., ‘Framing Processes and Social Movements: An Overview and Assessment’. Annual Review of Sociology. Vol. 26, 2000, pp. 611-639. ‘Call For Articles Framing Protest: Popular Intellectuals and Social Movements in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, Nineteenth-Twentieth Centuries’. 2003-02-21 H-Net Online Humanities and Social Sciences. Cooper, A., Celebrity Diplomacy. Paradigm Publishers, 2007. Gunderson, S., ‘Social Movement, Spectacle, and Momentum’. Resistance Studies Magazine. Aug. 2008, pp. 23-34. Hitchcock, J., ‘The Dynamics of Popular Intellectual Change’. The American Scholar. 2001, pp. 522-35. Kenney, P. & Rice, T., ‘The Psychology of Political Momentum’. Political Research Quarterly. Vol. 47(4), 1994, pp. 923-938. Kowalewski, D., ‘Lithuanian Protest for Human Rights in the 1970s: Characteristics and Consequences’, LITUANUS. 1979.

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Public Intellectuals in China. Mar. 2005. 14 Apr. 2009. Roundtable before the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, One Hundred Ninth Congress. http://www.cecc.gov/pages/roundtables/031005/index.php. Tilly, C., ‘From Interactions to Outcomes in Social Movements’. How Social Movements Matter. Giugni, M., Mcadam, D. and Tilly, C. (eds), University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 1999. Professor Gunderson serves as the Director of Client Services at the Broward County Public Defender's Office in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida where he has worked for 20 years. He holds a Master of Public Administration and is currently pursuing a doctoral degree at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton, Florida. He is also an Adjunct Professor at Miami Dade College where he teaches political science courses and communication courses.

The Role of Doctoral Students in the Creation of Knowledge: A Case Study of the Social Sciences PhD in a UK Research-

Intensive University

Frederico Matos Abstract Since the publication of Sir Gareth Roberts’ Set for Success report and that of the Joint Skills Statement by the Research Councils there has been a shift in the aims, focus and structure of UK doctoral programmes. PhDs should now be completed in a period of up to 4 years otherwise academic departments risk funding cuts. This case study is based on in-depth interviews with supervisors in Social Sciences departments in a UK research-intensive university. The new ‘research training’ paradigm changes the nature of the PhD. New PhDs are seen as a lesser piece of work than PhDs produced by current supervisors. The main reasons for the perceived difference between old and new theses are the research councils’ imposed deadline and the need to spend time on various training courses, often seen as distracting students from what should be their main focus: the thesis. The conclusions of this study are that in order to comply with new doctoral degrees rules departments and supervisors are increasingly aware of how lengthy and challenging certain topics can be and tend to accept new students who suggest more ‘feasible’ theses. Supervisors have shown an ability to work within what Hockney calls ‘the art of the possible’. The chapter introduces the concepts of intrinsic value and extrinsic value of the PhD in order to contribute to the understanding of recent changes. Key Words: Doctoral studies, extrinsic value, intrinsic value, knowledge creation, PhD, Roberts Report, research councils.

***** 1. Context

In recent times it seems that ‘stratospherically intelligent semi-crazies’ have been made less welcome in academia as speculative and risky projects have been shunned and the safe and compliant recruited, the ‘moderately intelligent dullards’.1

This quote illustrates the feelings of many academics concerning the state of

British academia. Evans,2 Conrad3 and Furedi4 amongst others have expressed their concern over the pressures that universities are subjected to by being dependent on state funds. Funding is increasingly dependent on deliverables such as public implications and the benefits of such and such a research project. Less

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consideration is being given to projects which do not seem to deliver quantifiable outputs that can easily be seen as of immediate benefit to wider society. The Social Sciences and the Humanities have suffered considerably from this policy and received a considerable blow in the last Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) in 2008. The RAE is the Higher Education Council for England’s (HEFCE) tool for assessing departments’ research quality outputs and is used to allocate research funding to universities. In the latest exercise, the STEM subjects (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) saw their overall funding increased whereas the Social Sciences, the Arts and the Humanities saw a decline in the funding they will receive in relation to their funding allocation in the previous RAE in 2001. HEFCE stated they were ‘protecting the position of science subjects’.5

The reduced funding to certain subjects is just one in a string of decisions that illuminate an economistic approach to knowledge production and to academia. The pursuit of knowledge for its own sake appears to be increasingly shunned by policies that privilege a market-oriented approach with a distinctively utilitarian and pragmatic flavour. Universities are now seen (and forced to be) one of many ‘partners’ in a market economy. Their value is calculated by taking into account links with businesses, numbers of students, numbers of articles published, funding gained and other such quantifiable outputs. Their programmes have to specify learning outcomes, assessment is stringently regulated and a managerial ethos prevails in academia. Once the reserve of a selected few, the PhD has also become a focus of this regulation-centred approach. No university degree has been left to its own devices and so a variety of new impositions and rules clutter the PhD path. The Roberts Report has become the bible for all things doctoral.6 The initial aim of this report was to analyse science doctoral programmes and the skills of PhD graduates. It concluded that there was a mismatch between the skills gained by doctoral graduates and those employers were looking for. Roberts proposed a transferable skills drive for doctoral programmes. This report had a considerable political impact in universities. Arising from its conclusions, funding, commonly known as ‘Roberts Money’, was allocated to universities for the development and delivery of transferable skills programmes. Concomitantly UK research councils, the main PhD funders in the UK, set new rules for doctoral programmes. In an efficiency-obsessed drive, they imposed a 3 to 4 year PhD deadline by which departments have to abide. The consequences for non-compliance with this rule may be the withdrawal of scholarships for future PhD applicants to departments which fail to observe that rule.

These events have had a considerable impact on PhD programmes and on the experiences of both students and supervisors. The aim of this chapter is to assess whether these policies have had an impact on the quality and depth of the doctoral research now being undertaken by students. In addition, it looks at what kind of knowledge can be expected to be created within this new framework. In order to

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achieve this, in-depth interviews were conducted with PhD supervisors in the Social Sciences in a research-intensive university in the UK. Supervisors interviewed belonged to a variety of departments which describe themselves as social sciences departments. An effort was made to include supervisors with different supervisory experiences, ranging from recently appointed academics to those close to retirement.

2. The Changing PhD Programme

The main changes affecting degree experience and doctoral research outcome have been the imposition of a tighter regulation on completion rates and timeline as well as the introduction of skills training requirements. In this section we will look at these changes and their impact on the PhD.

It is unreasonable to impose the same standards on somebody who has done it in three years or somebody who has done it in six years. (PhD supervisor)

I think four years is a good thing. As long as we understand that that means that what you expect after four years is four years good work. (PhD supervisor)

A. Timeline and Completion Rates

Departments are very concerned with their completion rates and the impact punitive action from research councils may have if adherence to rates is not achieved. As such, the demands over PhD outcomes have changed. To plan and complete a piece of research in 3-4 years necessitates a new approach to doctoral research. ‘A good intellectual project is always a time consuming thing’, commented one PhD supervisor, and it should be this way that research is planned: first the research then the timeline. However, if the timeline is prioritised over the research, it is as if the process is inverted and students and supervisors have then to think about outcomes before they have started the research itself: ‘we are asking people to actually have the end of the narrative and then they fill it in with case studies’ (PhD supervisor). The inversion of the research process may have an impact on knowledge production and achievement.

B. Training Requirements

It is quite important to get on with your thesis and then pick up skills as and when you need them, rather than spend a year focusing on training. (PhD supervisor)

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They do have training needs. Sometimes it feels a bit artificial, when you have to fill in the funding form. And you think – shit! Got to say something here. And actually they don’t have any. But you think – I had better put down a qualitative software package, but you know they are not really going to use that. Sometimes it feels very artificial, and you feel you are jumping through hoops. (PhD supervisor)

Following the publication of the Roberts Report a whole range of transferable

skills training has been introduced. Students are expected to attend various training events and some universities even demand that students do a certain number of transferable skills training credits in order to proceed to the following year. Even though it is valuable that students are being trained in a variety of skills what has happened is that this has resulted in a tick-box approach to training rather than one more holistic in kind, where students and supervisors reflect on the long term needs of personal and professional development rather than on the very short term.

C. The PhD: Intrinsic or Extrinsic Value?

We are living under the power of rationality and production.7

The quote above expresses Marcuse’s awareness and critique of contemporary

society. He blames it for not giving space to, nor valuing the role of, ‘high culture’. Modern society is characterised by mass culture and the absence of liberty. Intellectuals, or in Julien Benda’s words, the ‘clerks’, have betrayed their function to ‘defend the eternal and disinterested values of reason’ and now favour ‘a celebration of practical interests’.8 In academia the change of focus from the ‘disinterested values of reason’ to ‘practical interests’ has had an impact at various levels. From the ‘widening participation’ mantra to the structuring of assessment the university has had to change, and adapt, to an audit society that revels in individuals’ and institutions’ compliance. Doctoral programmes have also had to change and adapt, as we have seen in the previous section of this chapter. In the current section, however, we will consider how the new prevailing ethos impacts on the doctoral research experience and on the final thesis as viewed and perceived by the supervisors.

I would like to introduce here two concepts to guide us in the analysis of the voices of the supervisors: those of the intrinsic value and the extrinsic value of the PhD. Intrinsic value may be understood as indicating the value the PhD has ‘in itself’, whereas by extrinsic value is meant that which values the PhD ‘for the sake of something else.’9 The traditional view of the PhD is one as that which prioritises the creation of new knowledge; and universities include knowledge creation as a main element of their doctoral programmes (for example, the University of

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Cambridge, London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), University College London (UCL)). It is also a preparation for an academic career in the sense that doctoral programmes should prepare students to do research and to make it public - theorise a problem, review the literature, collect data, analyse, and write up the thesis. These elements, whether conjointly or separately, pertain to the view that the PhD has an intrinsic value. The university thus shows a commitment to the creation of knowledge and academic and research training.

However, another view, increasingly evident in the literature and in doctoral practice,10 is that the PhD should be mainly a preparation for a career, whether or not in academia. This change of perspective has foregrounded a new priority: skills. These skills are described by the Joint Statement on Skills,11 and universities now provide a wide array of training for doctoral students in so-called transferable skills. The Government and the Roberts Report consider that the PhD should be increasingly oriented towards the needs of the market.12 I would like to point out an important element that differentiates both valuations of the doctorate. I mentioned above that the view of the doctorate as a preparation for an academic career reflected the value of the PhD as intrinsic. Now we may say that a different view of the PhD, as preparation for a career, involves a change of perspective and an overall change of focus, one which places greater weight upon the achievement of extrinsic outcomes.

At this stage a clarification is needed in order to understand the differences between the two valuations. In a framework where the PhD is part of the preparation for an academic career - and here being ‘part of’ is of elemental importance - the fundamentals of the doctoral experience are the creation of new knowledge as well as learning the ropes of the academic job. The second view, where the onus is on the marketization of the doctoral degree, provides the grounds for a doctorate which has measurable outcomes, vide transferable skills prominence. In a sense, this view conceives of the PhD in terms of extrinsic value: it is no longer the creation of knowledge that is the primary factor but a more pragmatic approach to the degree where employability is of the highest importance.

The literature on doctoral degrees is crowded with comparisons between two types of PhDs, and this reflects two views of the doctorate: the old and the new PhD. That literature broadly expresses the opinion that as academia has changed it has lost some of its historical value and function. Hence, the old PhDs belong to an era of high intellectual achievement whereas the new era is one of lower expectations and standards. One of the most current typologies is the classification of PhD as process and PhD as product.13 The former values the educational and research value of doctoral studies per se whereas the latter focus on deliverables. I do not find this distinction completely satisfactory for it conveys a simplistic approach to the PhD programme. Both suggested paths, one valuing the intrinsic the other the extrinsic, affect both the PhD process as well as the product. An additional classification of the PhD is as an apprenticeship, and this is seen usually

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as pertaining to the old model of doctoral practice. Again, here I do not think this is a wholly satisfactory description of the doctoral experience since it offers up an idealised view rather than something that can be seen in practice. Traditionally, and especially in the Social Sciences and the Humanities, the student has been left to their own devices, so I do not see much space for the student – the apprentice – to model themselves on their supervisor – as master. Perhaps it provides a more accurate description of the PhD model in the sciences but it fails to describe doctoral research as it has been historically experienced in the Social Sciences.

In this section I will be looking at how the creation of new knowledge, a fundamental characteristic of doctoral programmes, is now being perceived in the case study. The factual changes mentioned in section B of the chapter have had an impact on the changes referred to below. In imposing tighter deadlines, by including various hurdles in the programme, by imposing research and skills training, PhD programmes have had to re-assess their conception of doctoral research and achievement. Students have now less time to focus solely on their research: skills training often takes up a considerable amount of time, especially in the first year of the doctoral programme.

D. Topic and Scope

One untoward effect of the outside pressures for speedy completion of the doctorate was said to be the tendency for departments to play safe by avoiding, where possible, the applicants with an unorthodox approach or an unconventional topic. Such applicants tended to be seen as high-risk, in that they could prove unduly demanding on supervisors’ time and were liable to find it difficult to bring their research to a rapid and satisfactory conclusion.14

This quote reflects quite clearly the views of most supervisors interviewed. In

order to comply with completion rates supervisors are avoiding demanding topics or topics deemed too original.

We can’t talk about the intellectual stuff because we need to do these pragmatic, practical things. Because the deadlines are much more severe now, and our department has to meet these deadlines. (PhD supervisor).

Moreover, the supervisor’s role is increasingly one of imposition and control

rather than of guidance. As one supervisor clearly put it, he is looking for people that ‘do what you say, follow your advice - that is one thing I want from doctoral students.’

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Little space is now allowed for creativity and widening knowledge. Specialisation and the narrowing of ambition for doctoral research have taken place. Intellectual production at PhD level is to deliver ‘some originality’ and to act as a certificate of research ability. However, as McAlpine et al. have shown, [footnote] PhD programmes are not delivering on that either. Or as one supervisor put it: ‘It is an idea. The thesis is one idea. More than that it is too many.’

4. Conclusions: PhD as Original Contribution to Knowledge

Doctoral degrees are shifting from a focus on valuing the intrinsic value of the PhD to valuing its extrinsic value. The creation of new knowledge is being undermined by compliance with regulations. If the value of a degree is no longer what the degree entails but rather what that degree should be seen to represent, then universities are emptying the traditional and historical purpose of the PhD. This being the case, what can we expect from academia for the future? What kind of ‘intellectuals’ do we want?

There does not appear to be a clear answer to this. However, government policies and funding, and the interview evidence I have gathered appear to show that we are heading for a university that prepares ‘efficient’ researchers. An efficient researcher is timely, narrowly focussed, and pragmatic in their approach to problematising issues. It is unlikely, contrary to what some supervisors stated in their interviews, that the big research will come after the PhD. With increasing administrative and publishing demands put on academics the time is limited for ground-breaking work. Moreover, if the students are not expected and trained to produce ambitious and novel projects, how can it be expected that when they become academics they will embrace greater research ambitions?

Since these practices are quite new to the traditional Social Sciences doctoral model we have yet fully to see what the results will be. What we can be certain of is that applying the sciences doctoral model to the Social Sciences and the Humanities is not welcome news, for the research processes in the different disciplines are quite different. Perhaps, after the antithesis we are experiencing, a synthesis will come that re-values the intrinsic value of the PhD.

Notes

1 A. Mroz, ‘Where do the Curious People Go?’, Times Higher Education, No. 1887, 12-18 March 2009, p. 5. 2 M. Evans, Killing Thinking: The Death of the Universities, Continuum, London and New York, 2004. 3 C. Russell, Academic Freedom, Routledge, London and New York, 1993. 4 F. Furedi, Where Have All the Intellectuals Gone? Confronting 21st Century Philistinism, Continuum, London and New York, 2004.

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5 HEFCE, ‘Recurrent Grants for 2009-2010’, 2009, Accessed 06/01/2010, http://www.hefce.ac.uk/pubs/hefce/2009/09_08/09_08.doc. 6 H.M. Treasury, Set For Success: The Supply of People with Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematical Skill, The Report of Sir Gareth Roberts’ Review, 2002. 7 H. Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, Sphere Books, London, 1964, p. 168. 8 P. Engel, ‘Speaking Up for the Clerks’, 2006, Accessed 06/01/2010, http://www.unige.ch/lettres/philo/enseignants/pe/Engel%202006%20Speaking%20up%20for%20the%20clerks%20-%20draft.pdf, p. 3. 9 Cf. Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy, http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/value-intrinsic-extrinsic/ 10 C. Park, Redefining the Doctorate, The Higher Education Academy, York, 2007. 11 Research Councils UK, Joint Statement of the Skills Training Requirements for Research Students, 2001. 12 Realise your Potential (Science White Paper), May 1993. 13 K. Young et al., The Management of Doctoral Studies in the Social Sciences, Policy Studies Institute, London, 1987. 14 A. Becher, M. Henkel & M. Kogan, Graduate Education in Britain, Jessica Kingsley Publishers, London, 1994, p. 97.

Bibliography

Becher, A., Henkel, M. and Kogan, M., ‘Graduate Education in Britain’. Higher Education Policy Series. Vol. 17, Jessica Kingsley Publishers, London, 1994.

Benda, J., La Trahison des Clercs. Grasset, 1927. Engel, P., ‘Speaking Up for the Clerks’. 2006, Accessed 06/01/2010, http://www.unige.ch/lettres/philo/enseignants/pe/Engel%202006%20Speaking%20up%20for%20the%20clerks%20-%20draft.pdf. Evans, M., Killing Thinking: The Death of the Universities. Continuum, London and New York, 2004. Furedi, F., Where Have All the Intellectuals Gone? Confronting 21st Century Philistinism. Continuum, London and New York, 2004. HEFCE, ‘Recurrent Grants for 2009-2010’. 2009, Accessed 06/01/2010, http://www.hefce.ac.uk/pubs/hefce/2009/09_08/09_08.doc.

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H.M. Treasury, Set For Success: The Supply of People with Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematical Skill. The Report of Sir Gareth Roberts’ Review, 2002.

Marcuse, H., One Dimensional Man. Sphere Books, London, 1964.

McAlpine, L. et al, ‘Doctoral Student Experience in Education: Activities and Difficulties Influencing Identity Development’. International Journal for Researcher Development. Vol. 1, No. 1, 2009, pp. 97-110. Mroz, A., ‘Where do the Curious People Go?’ Times Higher Education. No. 1887, 12-18 March 2009, p. 5. Park, C., Redefining the Doctorate. The Higher Education Academy, York, 2007. Research Councils UK, Joint Statement of the Skills Training Requirements for Research Students. 2001.

Russell, C., Academic Freedom. Routledge, London and New York, 1993.

Young, K., Fogarty, M.P. and McRae, S., The Management of Doctoral Studies in the Social Sciences. Policy Studies Institute, London, 1987. Frederico Matos has been a Research Associate for the University of Cambridge for over 3 years and is a Sociology PhD student at University College London (UCL). Prior to this he was a Research Officer at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). His research interests focus on the sociology of academia, social constructs of knowledge, academic careers, and epistemology.

The Condition of the Intellectual Elite in Communist Romania: An Historical Perspective

Gabriel Asandului & Teodora Ghiviriga

Abstract The emergence of the lay intellectual in the 17th century was to bring a significant contribution to the shaping of the modern world. The same phenomenon can be traced in Romania. The accession of the communists to political power by fraud during the parliamentary elections of November 1946 brought dramatic changes in Romanian society and among the Romanian intellectuals. The initial years of the communist regime (1944-1948) were characterised by massive purging targeted mainly at the intellectual élite. However, the number of the intellectuals within the Communist Party was extremely low during all these years. Gradually, the leaders of the Communist Party were to open the party to the intellectual élite as well. Many representatives of this social category were to compromise with the new power. That is why we are trying to identify the reasons that prompted these intellectuals to ‘fraternise’ with a regime that behaved as an ‘enemy’ of this group. Key Words: Communist Romania, culture, intellectual elite.

***** 1. Introduction

The intellectuals and their role in society and politics continues to be a topic of great academic interest, with social scientists examining the way in which this group seeks to obtain power or autonomy, and attempts to secure its role in promoting revolution and the transformation of society. However, any scientific approach related to intellectuals is hindered by the great number of definitions related to this social category.

There are several definitions of the intellectual, although none of these can be said to be precisely satisfactory. A broad definition of the intellectual sees them as ‘people who have graduated a form of higher education and earn their living rather through mental than manual labour.’1 According to the view of the Romanian Communist Party (R.P.C.), the intellectuals were people with a degree in higher education; however, this definition is much too general and generates many terminological disputes. That is why, in our approach, we shall content ourselves with analysing the status of the scientific and cultural elite in communist Romania (teachers, philosophers, writers and artists).

The intellectuals’ drama began after August 23rd 1944, shortly after the resistance of King Michael I to Romania’s occupation by the Soviet troops resulted in the formation of the country’s first communist government, headed by Dr. Petru Groza, on March 4th 1945. The R.P.C. quickly became aware that it needed an

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intellectual elite that could provide the legitimacy it needed, as the Party was without an acknowledged tradition and identity. This need for legitimacy could not be achieved as long as many Romanian intellectuals originated in the ‘bourgeois and landowners’ elite’ or at least in the privileged strata of society. Moreover, many intellectuals had integrated into the elite of the former society through their own merits, while many of them belonged to schools of thought that promoted cultural pluralism. For reasons such as these, they did not regard complacently ‘the ideological barriers’ that communism had set everywhere, and did not agree to militarise Romanian culture.2 The new order imposed by the Romanian communists represented a limitation on the options of Romanian intellectuals, who saw themselves as now forced to choose between obedience to the new power or dissolution through absolute silence.

The first institutions targeted by the R.P.C. in the process of reorganising the new ideological order and of cutting off society from the values of the previous one, were the School, the Academy and the Church. The Romanian universities of Bucureşti, Cluj and Iaşi were subject to an extensive process of administrative purification. The targets were mainly the teaching staff who had been in favour of the legionary movement, as well as those who had been involved in anti-Bolshevik propaganda. Therefore, commencing from the beginning of the year 1945, purification committees for academic staff were formed. The members of these purification committees often tried to take advantage of their position to settle personal enmities. Thus, many professors were dismissed, such as Constantin C. Giurescu, Gheorghe Brătianu, Petre P. Panaitescu, Lucian Blaga, Tudor Vianu, George Călinescu and others.3 On the other hand, there were many members of the academic staff who adapted promptly to the new conditions, yielding to the regime and giving up their beliefs. Some of them tried to save their tenures or even their own lives by giving their support to the new regime.4

Thus, in this early period of communist rule, the new regime strove to gain a monopoly control over culture. Therefore, the leaders of the party decided that the teaching and academic staff should keep on being paid by the state and should be forbidden to do private tutoring, which may have reduced their dependency on the state by securing a certain financial independence.

2. Cultural Revolution

A moment of great importance was the issuing of the new Education Act of August 1948, by which an appropriate legal framework for the intense politicising of this domain was created. Through this act, foreign schools and schools run by religious denominations were dissolved. Teaching religion in schools was also abolished, and the use of certain teaching aids that had not been approved by the state was forbidden. The new act introduced into the Romanian education system exclusive text-books inspired by similar ones in the Soviet Union. The education system was subject to an intense process of change according to the Soviet model.

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The principles that from this moment on would lie at the heart of the selection process for higher education were the ‘file’ and ‘politically healthy origin.’5 Through special regulation, starting with the same year, 1948, 30% of places in universities and higher education institutions were to be allocated to the offspring of peasants and workers. This would lead to a change in the social structure of the students, as the number of students coming from very poor social strata would increase alongside a decrease in the number of students coming from the bourgeois milieu.6 This social mobility manifesting in all areas of social life, as well as academic life, would lead to the emergence of a new intellectual stratum coming from these less favoured social categories, which thus gained a foot up on the social ladder.

The education system was subject to an extensive process of change in the sense that the role of humanities was diminished in favour of technical disciplines. In order to reduce the deficit resulting from the purification process, one of the solutions adopted was that of retaining those professors who were not troublesome; while another solution was that of attracting to universities high-school teachers and specialists working in the productive branches.7

The removal of the restrictions imposed by Charles’ and Antonescu’s regimes after August 23rd 1944 would contribute to a revival of modern Romanian literature. Authors such as Lucian Blaga, Tudor Arghezi and George Bacovia were published and their work received wide recognition.8

The cultural revival of 1944-1947 was not regarded sympathetically by the R.C.P., which actually strove to diminish the liberties acquired. Thus, the premises for the development of a plural literature would be gradually eliminated by the communists.

The wave of purification and re-organisation would affect the professional institutions of writers, journalists and artists. On September 24th 1944 The Romanian Writers’ Society was reorganised. The would-be leaders were writers whose position was favourable to the new regime. The new leadership aimed at putting into practice a set of ideals and concepts inspired by the communist soviet regime, which were designed to define the new literature: purification, union–style organisation, the centrality of intellectual workers, fighting on the social front, and acting as people’s leader. All these topics were to become compulsory for those writers who recognised themselves as part of the intellectual proletariat.9

This, however, was not the general attitude of most of the writers. Few of them actually joined the R.C.P. before August 23rd 1944. Along with certain avant-garde authors such as Geo Bogza, Ştefan Roll, Saşa Pană, Ben Corlaciu, the group of intellectuals around Lucreţiu Pătrăşcanu also joined the communists, the group consisting of Lena Constante, Hary Brauner, Miron Radu Paraschivescuşi, and Marcel Breslaşu. Lucreţiu Pătrăşcanu’s removal from among the leaders of the R.C.P. resulted in an estrangement of these literati from the Communist Party.

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There were also writers whose fame was exclusively due to their political involvement with the communist party. Many of them were theoreticians of the new wave of socialist realism in literature, such as Mihai Novicov, Ion Vitner, Nicolae Mărgeanu, Victor Tulbure, Mihai Beniuc and others. There were also important representatives of the Romanian literature who, in exchange for certain material benefits, agreed to comply with the narrow dogmatic literary precepts, such as Mihail Sadoveanu, Eugen Jebeleanu, and Dan Deşliu.

There were, on the other hand, many others – writers, philosophers and artists – who had the courage to reject any form of collaboration with the R.C.P., preserving their right to freedom of thought, in spite of having been threatened with prison, work-camps, or with exile. This latter group included Vladimir Streinu, Petre Pandrea, Romulus Dianu, Sergiu Dan, Mircea Vulcănescu, Ion Petrovici, Nichifor Crainic, Radu Gyr, Edgar Papu, Ştefan Augustin Doinaş, amongst others.10

In their attempt to control the entire cultural environment, the communists reorganized the Romanian Academy on June 9th 1948. The members in ordinary of this institution were to be appointed through Presidential decree. This allowed many mediocre intellectuals who were attached to the new regime to become colleagues with distinguished men of culture such as Mihail Sadoveanu or Camil Petrescu. The most intense campaign occurred in the field of linguistics, with the orthographic reform as its most important element. The spelling of the Romanian language was to conform to new rules, imposed by the communists in an attempt to downplay its Romance origins while augmenting its Slavic components.11

At the same time, the leaders of the R.C.P. were to conclude the process of listing the papers that were banned, the number of which reached over 8,000. This list was completed with the works of the authors who left the country in various ways and of those who were deemed undesirable by the regime. Among the personalities who found their works on this ‘black list’ were Nicolae Iorga, Titu Maiorescu, Tudor Arghezi, and Lucian Blaga.

This period of restrictions was followed by one of slight alleviation following the ’new course’ initiated in Moscow between 1953 and 1958, after Stalin’s death; during this period, an increasing number of intellectuals joined the party, as well as the cultural management institutions. At the same time, the selective republishing of certain pre-war authors, whose works had previously been banned, was initiated

The period following the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (C.P. of S.U.) is a landmark in the beginning of the process of reducing Stalin’s influence, but it also emphasised its flaws. The leaders of the Romanian Workers’ Party reluctantly accepted the changes directed from the centre (Moscow) towards the periphery (the states in the communist camp). For this reason, the main preoccupation of the communist leaders was to reduce the effects of the ‘new wave’ in order to retain their decision-making power.

The political relaxation at an international level did not result in a complete liberalisation of Romanian culture and writers’ emancipation from the party’s

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influence, or in a removal of all restrictions. There certainly were concrete benefits, of which the most important for literary and artistic environment was increased opportunities for expression for writers, due to the appearance of new periodicals. A revision of the curricula for humanities and social sciences could also be counted among the benefits of the intellectuals of this period. A number of authors that had been banned were gradually reintegrated into literary life, such as Octavian Goga, George Bacovia, Tudor Arghezi and Liviu Rebreanu.

There were, however, intellectuals such as the philosopher Lucian Blaga, the poets Ion Barbu and Vasile Voiculescu, and the painter Ion Ţuculescu who refused to collaborate with the communist regime and did not deny their convictions. They were to be rehabilitated only as late as the 60s.12

Against this background of relative relaxation, those who contested the communist regime did not fail to appear. Interestingly, they were to be influenced by the intellectuals who were closer to the new regime. On a number of occasions, various writers criticised the cult of personality that had begun to emerge around and penetrate Romanian cultural life. One of these was Mihai Beniuc, who declared his opposition to the personality cult of Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej.

Criticism against the regime was, however, isolated as Romanian intellectuals did not have the capacity to organise themselves and openly fight communism. They preferred to avoid open confrontation instead resorting to smuggling criticism under the guise of Aesopic allusions and oblique diction.13 Therefore, the year 1956 will remain in history as a great disappointment of post-war culture, a moment when the monolithic unity of the totalitarian party could have been dislocated.

Following the short spell of liberty opened up in 1956, the leaders of the party moved on to the rigorous enforcement of party unity and discipline. To this end, Gheorghiu-Dej initiated a campaign of removing from the R.W.P. those who were deemed to be undesirable from his point of view. This process was initially aimed at the former underground communist fighters who were charged with ‘anarchist and revisionist views’ and with having tried to break the unity of the party by initiating interest groups. The plenary meeting of the Central Committee of the R.W.P. of 1958 was followed by waves of ‘purification’ that extended to the level of the entire society. Many professors, students, researchers, and members of the creative unions were discovered not to have ‘healthy social origins’ or to have shown a ‘hostile attitude’ towards the regime. Others were deemed to have a low ideological level, or not to conform to the communist code of conduct.14

At the beginning of the 1960s the communist authorities initiated a campaign to gain popular solidarity in order to ensure the regime’s stability. This open attitude of the regime was aimed at reducing pressure in the country, an increase in the living standard, a reassertion of national identity and a sovereign policy in international relations. The reconciliation between the party and the people was to end in the pardoning and release of all political prisoners. In less than two and a

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half years, between January 1st 1962 and July 24th 1964, more than 15,000 political prisoners would be released from the communist political prisons and work camps.

This political liberalisation would result in a relaxation in the conditions for cultural creation. The artists and intellectuals were again among the members of the party and of the cultural bureaucracy, which was undergoing a decentralisation process. After 1962, the Writers’ Union was allowed to award prizes, which implied the party was yielding its right to set literary standards independent of its members’ choice. The publishing system was reorganised and decentralised, thus increasing members’ opportunities for being published and decreasing the party’s direct control over intellectual production. Pre-war works previously banned were re-published, and some of Lucian Blaga’s works regained public attention. The elections of the Romanian Academy were also less heavily controlled, while some of the former research institutes were re-opened and the formerly forbidden periodicals started new issues.15

In 1962, the leaders of the R.W.P. raised again the question of attracting intellectuals to the party. Initially, it was hoped that only certain top representatives of the Romanian intelligentsia would join, including: Mihai Ralea, Horia Hulubei, Gheoghe Ionescu-Siseşti, Gheorghe Ţiţeica, Eugen Bădărău, Tudor Arghezi, George Călinescu, and Ion Jalea. But in order to avoid creating the impression that the party was wooing them, the party leaders decided that the above-mentioned should be merely ‘advised’ to apply to join. Their applications should then be made public in order to prompt other intellectuals to follow suit. The party indeed needed the presence of top intellectuals among its members, but wished to leave the impression that it was they who needed the party and not the other way round.

3. Intellectuals in Ceauşescu’s Period

Gheorghe Gheorghiu Dej’s death and Ceauşescu’s ascent to power in 1965 seemed to herald greater freedom. Thus, the process of re-publishing those works that had been previously banned continued. The last intellectuals who had been detained for political reasons were released.

This process of liberalisation could not, however, be on par with the intellectuals’ increasing demands for cultural freedom. Thus, at the Writers’ Conference of 1968, the young writers sought to obtain top positions in the hierarchy of the institution, demanding total abolition of censorship, decentralised and totally re-organised institutions of literary creation, as well as democratic access to publication.16

The intellectuals’ demands were not, however, approved by the party’s leaders. By 1968, Ceauşescu had realized that cultural creation had gained too much independence from the party’s directives. Thus, the party began limiting intellectuals’ freedom. In 1970, the awarding of the literary prizes resulted in open conflict between the Writers’ Union and the party leaders and showed that the

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latter intended to reaffirm the privilege to award such prizes and to set the standards needed to gain the prizes.17

The July 1971 papers initiated an attack against the autonomy of culture, denouncing the liberalisation of 1965, recreating a list of books and authors that were banned, and emphasised once more the necessary socio-political function of intellectual creation. This ‘mini-cultural revolution’ was not totally unexpected; it actually signalled the moment when the discursive ambiguity which had previously characterised Ceauşescu’s relation with the intellectuals was yielded.

In the following period, the independence of cultural institutions was severely affected. The Writers’ Union, The Romanian Academy, academic domains such as sociology, psychology and history, as well as a number of periodicals were to experience again the ‘influence’ of the party. The Communist Party restored its control over the publishing system and set rules that altered the admission criteria to the elective intellectuals’ institutions. The number of places in the faculties teaching humanities decreased annually, while the positions in research institutes were not taken. The party’s leaders also interfered with the activity of the Academy. The forced acceptance of Elena Ceauşescu as a member in 1974 reduced the credibility of this prestigious institution. No elections for new members were held at the academy until 1977.

These facts emphasise that the attitude of the party regarding the management of culture and the treatment of the intellectuals altered in the 1970s. It moved from a form of incipient reform to one of ideological control. The party’s leaders propagated various ideological forms – an ethic of arduous labour, the principles of ‘socialist ethics and equity’, and ideas about progress. The role of the intellectuals in the humanities was to be that of spreading these concepts through their novels, research, and philosophical thought. For those who found this mission intolerable, the envisaged means of professional achievement began to dwindle.

The ’80s were a period of centralisation and strict control of the party leaders which could not, however, totally control society. In an environment of extreme scarcity in all areas, the competition for material and symbolic resources grew. The leaders’ manner of control granted a certain implicit value to creators of culture, while at the same time undermining their ability to be independent producers.18

The communist period was extremely controversial for the intellectual milieu in Romania due to a certain inconsistency in the management of the relation between power and the intellectuals. The communist regime generally started from the premise that the intellectuals could not constitute a class in itself and therefore could not be a ruling class. This is the main cause that prompted the proletarian leaders of the Communist Party to regard the intellectuals with open hostility.

The Romanian intellectuals, even those that were counted as opposing the party, served the R.C.P. by reproducing the nationalistic ideology that the party had incorporated in its regime. The Romanian intellectual milieu did not manage to create alliances with other groups positioned lower in the social hierarchy –

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alliances that might have facilitated a social change as they did in Poland between 1968 and 1980. Also, the Romanian intellectuals failed to coalesce in a united force that could call forth a reformation of the system. Their energies were spent in the dispute among the various factions aspiring to ‘a larger slice’ of the resources offered by the centre.

The causes that prevented the creation of a reforming group, of an intellectual elite ready to subordinate its interests to the interests of the majority or to those of an active human rights movement were various. The country’s situation did not allow the intellectuals to manifest themselves against the regime without the risk of self-destruction. The few attempts were ruthlessly suppressed by the Securitate, such as the Goma movement supporting the 1977 Chart. The cultural press only accepted disguised manifestations.19

The intellectual elite in communist Romania, however, managed to survive and assert itself more vigorously after the events of 1989. Those works by opposing intellectuals that had lain hidden inside drawers were published, disclosing a world where the party was ubiquitous, controlling everything, including the life of the intellectual elite.

Notes

1 M. Botez, Intelectualii din Europa de est, Fundaţia Culturală Română, Bucureşti, 1993, pp. 17-18. 2 Ibid., p. 25. 3 V. Georgescu, Politică şi istorie: Cazul comuniştilor români (1944-1947), Humanitas, Bucureşti, 2001, p. 11. 4 A. Cosmovici, ‘Viaţa universitară în comunism: O perspectivă psihosociologică’, Viaţa cotidiană în comunism, Polirom, Iaşi, 2004, p. 49. 5 A. Cioroianu, Pe umerii lui Marx. O introducere în istoria comunismului românesc, Curtea Veche, Bucureşti, 2007, p. 289. 6 M. Anton, ‘Progresişti versus‚ reacţionari, Subordonarea intelectualilor, 1944-1955’, Intelectualii români în arhivele comunismului, Nemira, Bucureşti, 2006, p. 23. 7 A. Cosmovici, op. cit., p. 50. 8 U.A. Gabanyi, Literatură şi politică în România după 1945, Fundaţia Culturală Română, Bucureşti, 2001, p. 12. 9 A. Selejan, 2005, pp. 48ff. 10 U.A. Gabanyi, op. cit., p. 23. 11 Ibid., pp. 28-29. 12 U.A. Gabanyi, 2001, p. 51. 13 V. Tismăneanu, Arheologia terorii, Allfa, Bucureşti, 1996, p. 100.

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14 D. Cătănuş, Regimul comunist din România şi problema intelectualităţii. 1956-1965’, in Intelectualii români în arhivele comunismului, Nemira, Bucureşti 2006, p. 66. 15 V. Georgescu, op. cit., pp. 34-35. 16 U. A. Gabanyi, op. cit., pp. 150ff. 17 Ibid., p. 177. 18 K. Verdery, op. cit., p. 107. 19 Ibid., p. 310.

Bibliography Anton, M., ‘Progresişti versus reacţionari: Subordonarea intelectualilor, 1944-1955’. Intelectualii români în arhivele comunismului. Nemira, Bucureşti, 2006. Botez, M., Intelectualii din Europa de est. Fundaţia Culturală Română, Bucureşti, 1993. Cătănuş, D., ‘Regimul comunist din România şi problema intelectualităţii, 1956-1965’. Intelectualii români în arhivele comunismului. Nemira, Bucureşti. 2006. Cosmovici, A., ‘Viaţa universitară în comunism. O perspectivă psihosociologică’ Viaţa cotidiană în comunism. Polirom, Iaşi, 2004. Cioroianu, A., Pe umerii lui Marx. O introducere în istoria comunismului românesc. Curtea Veche, Bucureşti, 2007. Gabanyi, A., Literatură şi politică în România după 1945. Fundaţia Culturală Română, Bucureşti, 2001. Georgescu, V., Politică şi istorie. Cazul comuniştilor români (1944-1947). Humanitas, Bucureşti, 2001. Selejan, A., Trădarea intelectualilor. Cartea Românească, Bucureşti, 2005. Tismăneanu, V., Arheologia terorii. Allfa, Bucureşti, 1996. Verdery, K., Compromis şi rezistenţă. Cultura română sub Ceauşescu. Humanitas, Bucureşti, 1994.

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Gabriel Asandului is a PhD at the Technical University Gheorghe Asachi in Iasi. While interested in contemporary history, currently his research and writing is devoted to Jewish history and to the issues of Communist Romania. Teodora Ghiviriga is a PhD at the Alexandru Ioan Cuza University in Iasi. She is interested in Lexicography and English terms in business.

‘Terrorology’: Who Analyses and Comments on the Terrorist Threat?

Thomas Riegler

Abstract This contribution focuses on the role of intellectuals in structuring the discussion of terrorism – by focusing solely on the Anglo-American discourse. Terrorism experts, who are embedded in certain think tanks, play an important role in shaping the public’s perception of political violence as commentators, columnists, and ‘independent’ analysts. What is not critically reflected in the media is the fact that many of these experts and institutions are closely linked to the security industry and the intelligence apparatus. Thus their analysis is often predominantly politically and ideologically biased. This point is substantiated by a comparison of the legitimisation of the Reagan administration’s counterterrorism strategy in the 1980s and George W. Bush’s ‘War on Terror’.

Key Words: Terrorism experts, think tanks, public relations, Cold War, War on Terror, neoconservatives.

***** 1. The ‘Terrorism Industry’

So called ‘terrorism experts’ are gaining more and more importance when it comes to the definition, analysis, and framing of political violence. They identify, classify, and comment on the terrorist threat; they present options for prevention and counterstrategies. As ‘talking heads’, participants in discussion forums or columnists, these experts exhibit profound influence on the public’s perception of terrorism, a role that is rarely discussed or critically reflected.

Terrorism experts are embedded in certain academic networks or think tanks. According to a 2009 survey by ‘Foreign Policy’ there are currently some 5.500 think tanks worldwide in nearly 170 countries. In the United States there is an especially well-funded and overlapping system of think tanks. Many of them are also into terrorism and counterterrorism research like the American Enterprise Institute, the Rand Corporation, or the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.1

The think tanks form a ‘closed’ discourse system: The insiders favourably discuss the publications of each other and take part in conferences and hearings sponsored by the government or the private sector. Critic Alexander George called it ‘terrorology’, while Edward S. Herman and Gerry O’Sullivan used the expression ‘terrorism industry’ to describe the systematic aspects of this ‘intelligence-security-complex’ – because of its close links to political parties and the security or defence apparatus.

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Terrorism experts share a sort of esprit de corps as Christopher Dobson and Ronald Payne, two British journalists, made it clear: ‘Those of us who examine terrorism and explain its ways are in the front line of the battle against it.’2 This part consists of writing open ed columns, appearing live on television as commentator, or participating in public forums. This output is picked up by the media, often without further research, and reproduced unfiltered. Since terrorism researchers are part of independent and respected networks and organizations, their expertise is vested in respectability.

The fact that many of these facilities share a close relationship with the security apparatus in order to get access to classified material does not make them questionable, but upgrades them as a source for the media. In doing so the products of the ‘terrorism industry’ find their way into public discourse, structure and channel it: In the end these ‘message multipliers’ repeat the same ideas on terrorism so often until they become common sense.

2. Terrorism Experts and the Cold War

The study of terrorism emerged in the early 1970s, after Western nations became confronted with ‘international terrorism’, mainly in the form hijacking of planes or other hostage situations.

Starting with the 1979 Jerusalem conference of the ‘Yonathan Institute to Fight Terrorism’ this research played an important part in the ideological ‘battle’ of the Cold War. The Israeli think thank, who organised the conference, had been founded in the same year by Benjamin Netanyahu, then Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, to commemorate his brother ‘Yoni’, who had been killed in the 1976 Entebbe rescue operation. The three day event was attended by 400 journalists and illustrious guests like George Bush Senior, Senator Henry Jackson, and leading neoconservatives like Norman Podhoretz, Midge Decter, George Will, and Richard Pipes as well as leading terrorism experts like Jack Crozier, Claire Sterling, and Ray Cline. Prime Minister Menachem Begin held the opening speech and accused the Soviet union of sponsoring terrorism, which was also the conclusion of the conference.3 This issue was then promoted and contextualized by many terrorism researchers: Fitting the political imperative of the Reagan administration’s confrontational policies, Moscow was described as the centre of terrorist activity worldwide, with every major group sponsored and forming a subversive proxy force to undermine Western democracies.4

Most influential in the promotion of this threat was ‘The Terror Network’ (1981) by Claire Sterling, an American correspondent living in Italy, who was said to have had excellent relationships to the intelligence services. Her main thesis was that Moscow was sponsoring and had infiltrated every major leftwing group, including the Palestinian factions, and turned them against Western targets.5 A CIA research team later found out that ‘The Terror Network’ mostly consisted of black information that had been circulated by the intelligence service itself. But

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Reagan administration officials nevertheless used the book to send their message, while the ‘terrorism industry’ produced literature, articles, and commentaries to prove the Soviet connection.6

In July 1984 the ‘Yonathan Institute to Fight Terror’ held yet another high profile conference, this time in Washington. Under the motto ‘Terrorism: How the West can Win’ liberal journalists like Ted Koppel, Daniel Schorr, and Bob Woodward were assembled as well as US Foreign Secretary George Shultz, the US Ambassador to the United Nations, Jeane Kirkpatrick, and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. The conference had two aims: It condemned the Soviet Union’s sponsorship of terrorism and it presented direct military retaliation as the most effective and working counterterrorism policy.7

Two years later this policy was put to the test: After a bombing directed against US servicemen in West-Berlin in 1986, the Air Force bombarded Tripoli and Benghazi after Libyan involvement in the case seemed confirmed. The military strikes came after a long period of bureaucratic turf wars between the State Department and the Pentagon over the course of US counterterrorism. Although the air strikes did not diminish Libya’s involvement with terrorist groups, it was certainly a success for those pressure groups that had campaigned for a more forceful approach in the past. By that time ‘terrorism’ had acquired an extraordinary status in American public opinion – which according to its critics had defected scrutiny of US foreign policy and had mobilised support for Reagan’s interventionist policies.

3. The Justification of the Invasion of Iraq

In the follow-up to the invasion of Iraq terrorism experts played an important role in piling up the ‘evidence’ against Saddam Hussein, since the rationality of the war was that the Iraqi dictator was sponsoring terrorism and could provide terrorists with weapons of mass destruction. Many leading exponents of the Bush administration believed that Iraq had a long record of anti-American terrorism, most notably the first bombing of the World Trade Centre in 1993. According to Laurie Mylroie from the American Enterprise Institute, a leading neoconservative think tank, the leader of the responsible terrorist cell had been an Iraqi intelligence agent. She also claimed that Iraq had been behind almost all anti-American terrorist acts of the 1990s – even the embassy bombings of 1998 were both the ‘work of Bin Laden and Iraq’.8 Thus many neoconservatives had embraced Mylroie’s book: Richard Perle, then powerful member of the Pentagon’s Defense Policy Board, praised it as ‘outstanding and wholly convincing’, while Paul Wolfowitz, who became Deputy Defence Secretary under George W. Bush, according to Mylroie provided ‘crucial support’.9

In the 1980s neoconservatives like Perle and Wolfowitz had shaped the confrontational policy against the Soviet Union. In the 1990s they had sharply criticized George Bush Senior for not toppling Saddam Hussein after the Gulf War

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(1991). They had also raised the alarm about ‘rogue nations’ threatening the United States with weapons of mass destruction, making the case for a proactive and unilateral display of American power. Following the terrorist attacks of 9/11 the neoconservatives perceived the threat of Al Qaeda through the same Cold War ‘prism’ – as a state sponsored phenomenon, just as they had blamed ‘international terrorism’ on the ‘evil empire’. Time and again direct military retaliation against the sponsors was presented as the most favourable policy option.

When the counterterrorism advisor Richard Clarke had reviewed the Al Qaeda threat against the US shortly before 9/11 he recalled Paul Wolfowitz saying in reference to Mylroie’s argument: ‘You give bin Laden too much credit. He could not do all these things like the 1993 attack on New York, not without a state sponsor. Just because FBI and CIA have failed to find the linkages does not mean they don’t exist.’10

The neoconservatives and their long held concepts on the necessity of regime change in Iraq and their emphasis on shaping a unipolar ‘American century’ were a key element in designing the post 9/11 policy. Especially their view on terrorism as a form of covert warfare by ‘rogue regimes’ struck resonance with ‘jacksonian’ republicans like Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who share the neoconservative vision of pursuing American hegemony without paying attention to multilateralism or international treaty obligations. In 1997 both groups – jacksonians and neoconservatives – had aligned themselves in the ‘Project for the New American Century’ (PANAC) and pressed vehemently for regime change in Iraq. Following the Republican victory in 2000 this alliance filled the most important cabinet posts of the Bush administration.11

In this way the terrorist attacks of 2001 provided them with a golden opportunity to put their ideas into action. After regime change in Iraq was accomplished, Laurie Mylroie told ‘Newsweek’: ‘I take satisfaction that we went to war with Iraq and got rid of Saddam Hussein. The rest is details.’ Since no evidence for an Iraqi involvement in the 9/11 plot has ever been found, Peter Bergen asked polemically: ‘Did one woman’s obsession take America to war?’12

4. British Terrorism Think Tanks

When it comes to European terrorism researchers Australian born Brian Crozier can be considered a front runner. As a journalist he reported about the national liberation struggles in Indochina, Algeria, Cyprus, and Congo. In 1966 he became executive of the overseas activities of Forum World Features (FWF), an American news agency which handed out weekly dossiers to media organisations around the world. In fact the FWF was a front company for the CIA to distribute ‘black’ propaganda.13

With the assistance of Professor Leonard Schapiro, Sir Richard Thompson, and a line of renowned British experts the ‘Institute for the Study of Conflict’ (ISC) emerged out of the FWF in 1970. Funded by the conservative billionaire and CIA

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associate Richard Mellon Scaife the ISC was the first private think tank that focused on terrorism. Other major themes were ‘the study of subversion against the background of Soviet expansion, and the defence of the threatened societies.’ 14

ISC figurehead Crozier perceived the West under threat – not only in the light of territorial gains made by the Soviet Union, but also from within. In open rejection of détente he drew in ‘Strategy of Survival’ (1978), an alarming panorama of an on-going ‘Third World War’ orchestrated by the Soviets for ‘world domination’, which had to be countered offensively – by ‘rolling back’ the Communist sphere of influence. Since the ‘free world’ was facing an existential threat, Crozier pleaded for a ‘strategy of survival’, which included the ban of ‘political’ strikes, rigid repression of ‘Marxists’ in the educational system and in the media, as well as the use of surveillance systems. The ISC contributed by drafting a counterinsurgency manual, which was used in training programs of the National Defence College. Internationally the think tank collaborated closely with the apartheid regime in South Africa and Rhodesia. Its output was also influential in regard to British counterterrorism operations in Northern Ireland.15

Another influential figure was Major General Richard Clutterbuck (1917-1998), a theoretician on counterinsurgency. After retiring from the army he took up an academic career at the University of Exeter in 1972 and joined the BBC General Advisory Council. He wrote several books on the subject of terrorism, including ‘Living with Terrorism’ (1975) and ‘The Media and Political Violence’ (1981). In the latter book he analysed political violence as ‘violence in industrial disputes, violence in political demonstrations, and terrorism’ at a time when Margaret Thatcher’s government branded the striking miners as the ‘enemy within’.16

Clutterbuck was eventually hired by Control Risks, a shadowy firm set up in 1975 by the SAS man Julian Radcliffe to provide kidnapping and ransom insurance. Right from the start Control Risks had extensive ties to the police and security services and the political right. Clutterbuck was hired by the firm as a counterterrorism advisor and set up the Control Risks Information Service specialising in advising and briefing businesses operating in insecure environments. During one occasion in the 1980s Clutterbuck personally spied on animal rights activists: Posing as an academic interested in conflict, he interviewed the Animal Liberation Front founder Ronnie Lee and passed the material back to Control Risks: ‘The company then sold this ‘intelligence’ to a consortium of British pharmaceutical companies targeted by animal rights activists.’17

Control Risks continued to prosper: The firm is now one of the largest providers of armed security in post-war Iraq. By the end of 2005 at least three civilian employees lost their lives during active service in the country. Both Control Risks and Clutterbuck also shared ties to another major player in the British ‘terrorism industry’: Until his death in 1998 Clutterbuck was a member of the Advisory Council at the Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence (CSTPV).

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Founded in 1994 by Professor Paul Wilkinson this think tank is an independent research centre within the School of International Relations at St Andrews University. It maintains databases, collects and analyses documents of militant and terrorist groups, and engages in the systematic evaluation of responses to terrorism.18 The CSTPV is financed partly through private donations, and Control Risks is amongst its benefactors: The company regularly donates its archives to be used at the CSTPV for research purposes.

The critical description of an event hosted by the CSTPV by Kevin Toolis demonstrates again the linkage between terrorism research, the intelligence services, and the security industry:

Delegates will pay £412 for the day to hear Wilkinson and, inevitably, an ex-SAS man, Major General Arthur Denaro, speak on the dangers to the world of terrorism. In the conference programme would-be delegates are further enticed by the promise that a ‚senior Whitehall adviser’ - a man from MI6 - will appear. Unsurprisingly, the sponsors Olive Security (bodyguards/security) and Global Risk Strategies (kidnap/ransom and corporate risk assessment) seek to profit from post-11 September paranoia.19

A former CSTPV expert, Dr. Rohan Gunaratna, has since become known as the

‘celebrity analyst’ of terrorism.20 Born in 1961 in Sri Lanka, he completed his doctorate at St. Andrews University and was appointed research fellow at the CSTPV. In 2003 Gunaratna moved on to Singapore to establish terrorism research at the Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies at Nanyang Technological University.21

It was his 2002 book ‘Inside Al Qaeda’ that established Gunaratna as a leading authority on Islamist terrorism. Especially on the subject of Al Qaeda’s role in Southeast Asia it was packed with leaked classified information, supplied mostly by Indonesian intelligence services. According to journalist Peter Cronau, various agencies gave Gunaratna ‘access to alleged terrorists in custody, transcripts of intercepts, interrogation notes, as well as briefings by their intelligence agents.’ He criticised Gunaratna for not pondering the intent of those ‘whose views he repeats’.22 Similarly the ‘Observer’s’ Martin Bright called Gunaratna in 2003 ‘the least reliable of the experts on bin Laden, who is often used by British authorities as an expert witness in the prosecution of Islamist terror suspects because they can rely on him to be apocalyptic.’23

The last reference hints on Gunaratna’s ability as a commentator to meet the media’s ‘appetite’ for catchy quotes: He frequently appears on the Cable News Network, the BBC, and Australian Broadcasting Corp Radio, where he analyses

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the terrorist threat, often making the case for tougher anti-terrorism laws and the usage of extralegal approaches to fight the threat.

But many of the highly public claims made by Gunaratna have been subject to increasing scrutiny. In response to this growing controversy the British publisher of ‘Inside Al-Qaeda’ took the extraordinary step of issuing a ‘Publisher’s note’ informing the reader to treat the book’s references to organisations as having had contact with Al Qaeda as ‘nothing more than a suggestion’.24

In an interview with Channel News Asia Gunaratna reacted to his critics: ‘Although I have wanted to be totally independent sometimes this type of interaction with governments I’ve had may create the perception otherwise, especially given that governments are trying to stamp out terrorism.’ Questioned if he has been ‘used by governments to push their agenda’ Gunaratna responded candidly: ‘Yes, that is entirely possible. […] I am only human after all.’ But he did see his academic credibility affected: ‘Terrorists are the worst human rights violators and I will pay the price for any criticism of my work.’25

Beyond this very public role Gunaratna also personifies the business relationship between counterterrorism experts and private corporations. For example as a consultant Gunaratna working together with the CSTPV, Rand and Jane’s Intelligence Review, developed a computerised ‘U.S. Risk model’ for Risk Management Solutions (RMS), a Californian based firm, which advises primarily clients in the insurance and oil business.26 RMS itself is linked to the Carlyle Group, one of the world’s biggest arms and defence corporations. One of its clients – Marsh USA Inc. – is the company that employed Paul Bremer, before he became US administrator in post-war Iraq.27

5. Conclusion

Despite all legitimate criticism it is important to state that most terrorism research has contributed to foster our knowledge about political violence. On the other hand the existence of a sort of ‘terrorism industry’ or ‘terrorology’ can not be denied. The examples the public legitimisation of both Ronald Reagan’s and George W. Bush’s War on Terror has shown an evident role of think tanks and terrorism experts in this process. They effectively used the same arguments and ideas to justify a military dominated strategy relying on pre-emption and the closure of terror ‘havens’. Their specific interpretation of terrorism as a state sponsored phenomenon provided the advocates of a forceful counterterrorism-policy with the necessary substantiation.

The mentioned British terrorism think tanks and experts demonstrated the network character of the ‘terrorism industry’, which comprises of other constitutes: think tanks, government officials and bodies, and private security firms interlocked with intelligence, military and foreign policy agencies. This relationship allows the terrorism experts to draw upon privileged information, which enhances their significance as contributors in the media – even if there are to be doubts about the

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accuracy of the material as intelligence reports are often sketchy and contradictory.28

According to these selected experts terrorism is primarily a threat to national security. Focused on fighting the symptoms, they are not interested in analysing the causes of political violence or its implications. In regard to conclusions and solution proposals the presented options are primarily military or safety related in nature, which again prepares the ground for the introduction of harsher laws and government intrusion of privacy in the name of combating terrorism. At the same time alternative views that emphasize moderation or are simply less belligerent in nature, are often marginalized and excluded from the discourse. Therefore it is necessary to critically reflect on the hegemony some of these embedded analysts and institutions enjoy in the study, analysis, and interpretation of the terrorist threat.

Notes 1 J. McGann, ‘The Think Tank Index’, Foreign Policy, January/February 2009. 2 C. Dobson & R. Payne, The Carlos Complex: A Study in Terror, Coronet Books, London 1977, p. 283. 3 E.S. Herman & F. Brodhead, The Rise and Fall of the Bulgarian Connection, Sheridan Square Publications, New York 1986, pp. 66-70. 4 I. Molloy, Rolling Back Revolution: The Emergence of Low Intensity Conflict, Pluto, London 2001, p. 80 5 N. Chomsky & E. Herman, Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media, Vintage, London, 1994, p. 145. 6 B. Woodward, Veil: The Secret Wars of the CIA 1981-1987, Simon & Schuster, New York 1987, pp. 124-129. 7 B. Netanyahu, ‘Terrorism: How the West can Win’, Time, Vol. 14, 1986, pp. 28-38. 8 M. Isikoff & D. Corn, Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War, Crown, New York, 2006, pp. 74-79. 9 P. Bergen, ‘Did One Woman’s Obsession Take America to War?’ The Guardian, 5 July 2004. 10 R. Clarke, Against All Enemies: Inside America’s War on Terror, Free Press, New York 2004, pp. 231-232, 11 N. Lemann, ‘The Next World Order’, The New Yorker, 1 April 2002. 12 Bergen, loc. cit. 13 S. Weissman, ‘The CIA Makes the News’, Dirty Work: The CIA in Western Europe, Zed Press, London 1978, pp. 205-206. 14 D. Rees, ‘Student of Subversion – Brian Crozier’, The National Review, 31 December 1985. 15 Weissman, op. cit., pp. 208-209.

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16 R. Clutterbuck, The Media and Political Violence, Second Edition, Macmillan Press, London, 1986. 17 K. Toolis, ‘Rise of the Terrorist Professors’, The New Statesman, 14 June 2004. 18 Mission Statement, Viewed on 15 January 2009, http://www.standrews.ac.uk/~ wwwir/research/cstpv/about/mission.php. 19 Toolis, loc. cit. 20 G. Hughes, ‘By-Product of Terrorism: The Celebrity Analyst’, The Age, 20 July 2003. 21 T. Shorrock, ‘Expert Draws Attention to Business of Counter-Terrorism’, Inter Press Service, Viewed on 16 April 2009, http://www.ipsnewsasia.net/bridges fromasia/node/48. 22 P. Cronau, ‘The Legitimisation of Terror Fears: Research or Psy Ops?’, Pacific Journalism Review, Vol. 9, 2003, p. 204. 23 M. Bright, ‘On the Trail of Osama bin Laden’, The Observer, 11 May 2003. 24 Cronau, op. cit., p. 203. 25 ‘Rohan Gunaratna’s Response to the Expose of Gary Hughes’, Channel News, 21 July 2003, Viewed on 16 April 2009, http://www.sangam.org/ANALYSIS/Sa chi_9_12_03.htm. 26 G. Hughes, ‘Analyse This’, The Age, 20 July 2003. 27 Shorrock, loc. cit. 28 J. Crace, ‘Just How Expert are the Expert Witnesses?’, The Guardian, 13 May 2008.

Bibliography Bergen, P., ‘Did One Woman’s Obsession Take America to War?’ The Guardian. 5 July 2004. Bright, M., ‘On the Trail of Osama bin Laden’. The Observer. 11 May 2003. Chomsky, N. & Herman, E., Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media. Vintage, London 1994. Clarke, R., Against All Enemies: Inside America’s War on Terror. Free Press, New York 2004. Clutterbuck, R., The Media and Political Violence. Macmillan Press, London, 1986. Crace, J., ‘Just How Expert are the Expert Witnesses?’. The Guardian. 13 May 2008.

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Cronau, P., ‘The Legitimisation of Terror Fears: Research or Psy Ops?’. Pacific Journalism Review. Vol. 9, 2003, pp. 201-207. Crozier, B., Strategy of Survival. Temple Smith, London, 1978. Dobson, C. & Payne, R., The Carlos Complex: A Study in Terror. Coronet Books, London, 1977. Herman, E. & Brodhead, F., The Rise and Fall of the Bulgarian Connection. Sheridan Square Publications, New York, 1986. Hughes, G., ‘By-Product of Terrorism: The Celebrity Analyst’. The Age. 20 July 2003. Hughes, G., ‘Analyse This’. The Age. 20 July 2003. Isikoff, M. & Corn, D., Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War. Crown, New York, 2006. Lemann, N., ‘The Next World Order’. The New Yorker. 1 April 2002. McGann, J., ‘The Think Tank Index’. Foreign Policy. January/February 2009. Molloy, L., Rolling Back Revolution: The Emergence of Low Intensity Conflict. Pluto, London, 2001. Netanyahu, B., ‘Terrorism: How the West can Win’. Time. Vol. 14, 1986, pp. 28-38. Rees, D., ‘Student of Subversion: Brian Crozier’. The National Review. 31 December 1985. Shorrock, T., ‘Expert Draws Attention to Business of Counter-Terrorism’. Inter Press Service. Viewed on 16 April 2009, http://www.ipsnewsasia.net/bridges fromasia/node/48. Toolis, K., ‘Rise of the Terrorist Professors’. The New Statesman. 14 June 2004. Weissman, S., ‘The CIA Makes the News’. Dirty Work: The CIA in Western Europe. Zed Press, London, 1978.

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Woodward, B., Veil: The Secret Wars of the CIA 1981-1987. Simon & Schuster, New York, 1987. ‘Rohan Gunaratna’s Response to the Expose of Gary Hughes’. Channel News. 21 July 2003, Viewed on 16 April 2009, http://www.sangam.org/ANALYSIS/ Sachi_9_12_03.htm. Mission Statement. Viewed on 15 January 2009, http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/~ wwwir/research/cstpv/about/mission.php. Thomas Riegler is an historian based in Vienna. He has published on a wide range of topics including terrorism, counterinsurgency and the depiction of political violence in Hollywood movies.

C. Wright Mills and the Ethics of Intellectual Craftsmanship

Stephen Palmer Abstract Consideration of the work of the American sociologist C. Wright Mills helps us to bring into focus one of the abiding questions in the discussion of the intellectual: how far is the elaboration of a publicly relevant knowledge practice dependent upon the simultaneous elaboration of a specific moral identity? Mills’ inspired ‘60s student radicals, such as the founders of SDS, but that inspiration originated as much in his personal example as it did in the ideas developed in his work. Mills himself had insisted that work and life were inseparable. Central to his critique of American academia and knowledge practitioners, especially in the social sciences, was the conviction that intellectuals had abandoned their responsibility to place public issues at the heart of their practice. Co-opted as they were into the existing power matrix, American intellectuals had placed their expertise and professionalism at the service of hegemonic interests. How the production of knowledge might be related to a broader context of values in post-war society and politics in the United States was no longer their concern. As I show in this chapter, such an abnegation of responsibility led Mills to offer up a version of the intellectual which fore-grounded the importance not only of personal conviction and belief at the core of that identity, but also to formulate a conception of intellectual work which embraced the ethics of ‘craftsmanship’. In this, he followed in the footsteps of such figures as GDH Cole and William Morris. For Mills, re-visioning knowledge practice as intellectual craftsmanship opened up the possibility for the ‘fusion of intellectual and personal life’, which would in turn make possible the healing of the breach between life and work, public issues and private troubles that led to the de-moralising of intellectual life in the post war United States.

Key Words: C. Wright Mills, post-war society, WWII, Conviction, Cold War.

*****

1. Introduction As the Cold War took hold in the immediate aftermath of the Second World

War, many intellectuals in the West were faced with adapting to the new reality of a seeming mass conformity. If the 1930s had been marked by an apparent surfeit of causes – or at least, a surplus of reasons to subscribe to the cause – the ‘50s seemed without causes altogether. The revolution had proven to be the God that failed, becoming mired in the moral and intellectual bankruptcy of Stalinism. Moreover, as George Cotkin has described, intellectuals – especially American intellectuals of a leftist persuasion – had become convinced of the noxious effects of mass culture

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on the general populace.1 The exploited classes seemed now indifferent to their historical fate, and apathy the predominant response to all matters political. For those who contributed to such volumes as Conviction (1958) there was felt an urgent need to ‘break the crust of apathy’,2 to short-circuit the effects of mass culture and the machinery of apathetic consent. However, with the passing of politics into the hands of the technician and the apparatchik, there appeared perhaps only limited options for this to occur, as increasingly, to quote a memorable phrase, politics appeared an exercise in ‘manufacturing consent.’ Moreover, formerly dissenting intellectuals trusted less and less in their capacity to build a truly democratic public: mass culture threatened the Triumph of the Middlebrow. The wholesale expansion of higher education and the rapid development of unsettling unfamiliar cultural technologies provoked such intellectuals to fear an exponential growth in mass stupidity, prompting the widespread belief that the world was sleepwalking towards a cultural calamity, as well as political disaster.3 Sound familiar?

2. The ‘Solitary Horseman’

Onto this stage entered C. Wright Mills, the ‘solitary horseman,’ as satirised by his fellow sociologist Edward Shils, who drew an acid sketch of Mills in Encounter in a review of The Sociological Imagination. Shils caricatured Mills as ‘this solitary horseman, who is in part a scholar, and in part a rough-tongued brawler,’ and as a ‘learned cowpuncher’ who had left Waco, Texas to traverse the vast hinterlands of the United States astride his horse perusing ‘some novels of Kafka, Trotsky’s History of the Russian Revolution, and some essays of Max Weber along the way.’4

Such a personal (and condescending) attack was, from one perspective, entirely appropriate, as Mills had spent a number of years and books seeking to connect up private troubles and public issues, cajoling his fellow social scientists particularly that they should make more than scholarship their business. The trouble with US intellectuals was that they had spent the last decade or so withdrawing from the field of engaged politics, and had allowed their agendas to be set for them by Big Capital and Governmental priorities. Such intellectuals – or technicians – had embraced a kind of organised irresponsibility.

Of course, it is the true that it has ever been thus. As a category of social actor – or perhaps more appropriately, of social agency – the intellectual has always failed to live up to itself. The moment the intellectual becomes involved in organisations he or she faces the dangers of co-optation – or at least, the danger of being charged with such. However, perhaps what was different in the immediate post-war period was that technological developments taking place over recent decades had made possible a full-scale, integrated cultural-political subjugation of all groups in society. Moreover, what had been offered since the later 19th century as the foundation for alternative, oppositional conceptions of society – that is, various

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shades of Marxist thought and organisation – had been discredited with the victory of Stalinism.

3. The Ideal of Craftsmanship

So, Mills may have had some justification for a sense of foreboding at the imminent ‘death of genuine lively things.’5 Throughout a series of books written in the later ‘40s and ‘50s he sounded an alarum at what he saw as the loss of ‘mind’ on the part of those who were best placed to cultivate it as a powerful agent in public life and politics; but Mills also sought to identify the likely candidate for the role of enlightened social actor. In the New Men of Power (1948) he weighed up the chances of labour leaders taking up this the mantle that the intellectuals seemed to have so carelessly shrugged off. On the whole Mills found them wanting – they were far too unlikely (and unwilling) to take up such a demanding role. As he entered the ‘50s, however, Mills began to consider another alternative to the irresponsibility of the academically bound intellectuals now cluttering up the campuses and research institutes of America. In White Collar (1951) he offered up a vision of craftsmanship as an ideal against which he unfavourably judged the modern experience of work. The triumph of capital had led to an unfettered economism, a preoccupation with ‘income, power, status’ on the part of the working class6 (now expanded to include white collar workers) and by its leaders, as documented in The New Men of Power. The political opposition – and the intellectuals who looked to play their role in it – were left with no effective ‘counter symbols’ to the prevailing materialism, and thus found itself bereft of counter-hegemonic resources.

Mills proposed the ideal of craftsmanship as just such a ‘counter-symbol’. This was invoked as an ‘idealized model of work gratification’ that stood over against the existing alienated experience of work and working relationships, a model which, however, was an ‘anachronism’ that could not be realised in ‘modern work-worlds.’ Drawn from G.D.H. Cole and, thereby, from William Morris, the ideal of craftsmanship was as a unity of work and leisure, of work and culture, which made possible the transcendence of the fundamental division of livelihood and living that characterised the contemporary work experience. The crafts worker and his or her work exist in a reciprocal relationship:

The craftsman’s work is thus a means of developing his skill, as well as developing himself as a man. It is not that self-development is an ulterior goal, but that such development is the cumulative result obtained by devotion to and practice of his skills. As he gives it the quality of his own mind and skill, he is also further developing his own nature; in this simple sense, he lives in and through his work, which confesses and reveals him to the world.7

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Thus with his idea of craftsmanship Mills sought to reclaim an ethical and existential dimension for intellectual activity. The fear was that contemporary intellectuals had become alienated from the processes and ends of their production; and even if in some cases that alienation had become the focus of their sense of self as intellectuals, what was required was a renewed sense of work itself as personal creativity.

4. Craftsmanship and Imagination

In White Collar, as we have seen, craftsmanship remains an ideal that has no possibility of realisation in the post-war work landscape. The inexorable rise of bureaucratisation and mass culture, with its supposedly consumerist emphasis upon indulging rather than educating desire, left Mills, along with most dissenting and non-conformist intellectuals, pessimistic about the chances for a revival of a craft ethos. However, with the publication of The Sociological Imagination in 1959 Mills seemed to countenance the possibility of the realisation of that ideal. There he re-emphasised the importance of social science (or, a version of social science) in the modern world, and hence the importance of social scientists as contemporary social actors. The social sciences, he wrote, were ‘becoming the common denominator of our cultural period.’8 The coincidence within them of the ‘political and intellectual crises of our time’ made ‘serious work in either sphere…also work in the other.’9 Thus, the practitioners of social science could hardly help but be engaged with the public issues of their time, by dint of the work they carried out in their only nominally private lives. Social science seemed to bear the promise of fully meaningful work in the craft sense. The conditions of the modern division of labour, and the compartmentalisation of social life, might militate against the general achievement of the craft ideal, but it was possible for certain types of mind to bring work and life together into a fruitful unity. And what marked those ‘minds’ off from others was their possession of a ‘sociological imagination’, understood as the capacity ‘to grasp history and biography and the relations between the two within society.’10

The Sociological Imagination was addressed specifically to the constituency of social scientists in the United States. As such, it was concerned with the parameters and foundations (conceptual, methodological and ideological) of the discipline. Unlike such a figure as E.P. Thompson, in many ways his natural counterpart in Britain, a precursor for the New Left and trenchant critic of the Old, Mills was not concerned in his text with the traditions, experiences, or consciousness of ‘the people’, an entity which he thought had been perhaps fatally damaged by the onset of mass culture. Rather, in an appendix to his text he addressed an appeal to the ‘intellectual craftsman,’ the politicised social scientist of the future. In so doing he sought to exemplify the intellectual procedure of active self-creation, the intellectual crafts worker creating him- or herself as a distinctive subjectivity, the

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scholar and the person becoming inseparable. ‘Scholarship’, Mills told his fictive future audience,

is a choice of how to live as well as a choice of career, whether he knows it or not, the intellectual workman forms his own self as he works toward the perfection of his craft; to realise his own potentialities, and any opportunities that come his way, he constructs a character which has at its core the qualities of the good workman.11

As Richard Sennett reminds us, Mills had elsewhere treated of the matter of

‘character’, which could be thought of as constituting the ‘capacity to engage the larger world’, and as ‘the relational side of personality.’12 In The Sociological Imagination this idea seems to undergo a process of localisation, whereby it is the intellectual specifically who exhibits most fully the capacity for characterisation, who, indeed, is professionally and personally bound (the two now being parts of the same whole) to realise that potential to the full, or else be rated as failing in his or her essential responsibility.

5. The Great Tradition

Intellectual craftsmanship provided the grounds for bridging the gap threatening to grow ever wider between thought and action, private troubles and public issues. In this way socio-political agency, for Mills, became identified with personal creativity. The exercise of craftsmanship was equated to work which did not result in the alienation of the subject by making the former a private property, but which constituted its active creation through the concrete expression of his or her private experience in public activity. In short, craftsmanship entailed the biographical ‘ownership’ of public intellectual work. And for Mills, in the Cold War context of a widespread abnegation of responsibility induced by an assimilative scientism, being one’s own person was a vital public act. To live the life of – and as – an intellectual was morally and politically (the two again being now inseparable) crucial: ‘[i]n such a world as ours, to provide social science is, first of all, to practice the politics of truth.’13 The social science intellectual had, in Mills, in both his life and his work, taken on a moral and existential identity, one, indeed, for whom the most important work was now the elaboration of that identity.

There is in Mills’ elevation of the social scientist to the status of privileged social and political agent more than a trace of Karl Mannheim’s construction of the relatively autonomous synthesising intellectual of the 1930s. Like the latter, Mills was dismissive of what he was to call the ‘labour metaphysic,’ which raised the supposed revolutionary agency of labour to an unassailable political first principle.14 Instead, with Mannheim, he looked to the traditions of social science

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and the consciousness of social scientists as offering a possible way out of the contemporary crisis. Indeed, a year after The Sociological Imagination appeared Mills edited a volume of readings from the classic tradition of social science, Images of Man (1960), which with its emphasis upon the importance of keeping that tradition alive, and extending it, seemed calculated to cement his avowed faith in the craft ethos. For the affirmation of the social science tradition was simultaneously an affirmation of tradition per se and thus intended to bring about the recognition amongst social science intellectuals that their professional obligations had an unavoidable moral and historical dimension. Mills’ traditionalism, moreover, had perhaps something in common with the ‘Great Tradition’ promoted by F.R. Leavis, T.S. Eliot and others in pre-war literary studies. In both cases, of course, what becomes the key issue in the practice of intellectuals is the preservation of the practice of predecessors, which act bestows upon the inheritors of that tradition a seamless authority that they themselves are obliged to pass down to their successors. The emphasis upon tradition keeps the eyes of the intellectual fixed upon the practice of his or her craft, with that practice acquiring a public relevance in and of itself.

However, the importance of Mannheim to Mills’ construction of the intellectual should not be overplayed. It is true that Mills re-activated Mannheim’s notion of ‘sociology as a form of consciousness’ which enabled the understanding of social life in its totality.15 And Mills undoubtedly saw the promise of the social sciences as being that which Mannheim saw in the sociology of knowledge - that is, the possibility of reciprocal knowledge of the individual and the world, self knowledge being simultaneously knowledge of the world. However, Mills was highly resistant to the idea of planning as the required mode of intellectual agency in relation to social and political problems. For Mills, working some twenty years after Mannheim’s Man and Society in an Age of Reconstruction (1940) too many intellectuals, as ‘experts’, ‘technicians’, or ‘policy scientists’, had been co-opted into the service of power in the intervening period, and this was precisely the reason why an alternative model of what it meant to be an intellectual was now needed. For planning led only to the delivery of power – now of a decontaminated, technocratic-scientific kind - into the hands of those who already held it, and to the correlated evacuation of responsibility and moral agency on the part of intellectuals.

6. Soul and Culture

The intellectual craftsman as envisaged by Mills was rooted in the supposed organic unity of history and biography, objective and subjective realms. The very designation ‘craftsman’ represented an attempt by Mills to give an enlivened experiential and moral texture to scholarly activity, to re-connect the disengaged social science professional with the honourable tradition of the dissenting, ‘interfering’ intellectual. Perhaps, then, it is to the earlier Mannheim, the

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Mannheim active in the cultural revolt and vanguardism of the Sunday Circle that met in this city of Budapest during the years of the First World War, the critical-moral rather than the methodological Mannheim – perhaps it is to this incarnation that Mills’ social science intellectual can be more readily related. At that time, Mannheim had presented a vision of cultural renewal in which the intellectual played a key role. In a lecture of 1917, later published as Soul and Culture, he spelt out an overview of the Sunday Circle’s central concerns and orientation, and in so doing sought to articulate a generational consciousness and foment an awareness among his audience of a shared ethical purpose. Like Mills, Mannheim exhibited a modified pessimism as to the possibility of the accomplishment of a new cultural dispensation, even as he declared the task of his generation to be to prepare ‘the way for the new culture by making the old one comprehensible.’16 Importantly for us, the method by which this was to occur was the appropriation of existing cultural objects by the soul of the generational intellectual. Objective culture had turned into an ‘independent leviathan’ which threatened to grow ‘beyond our grasp,’ and thus it was necessary to enter into a transformative relationship with it in which objective and subjective cultures become mutually dependent. Cultural regeneration was not a matter of producing more and more perfect objects, but of bringing culture to life. The appropriation of cultural objects, whether in the form of concrete material culture, or existing traditions, ideas and philosophical systems, is simultaneously an extension of the subject. As with Mills’ crafts worker, one’s cultural practice is simultaneously an act of self-elaboration, an enlargement of the ‘soul’ whereby subject and object achieve a synthesis as part of the total process of life, which act becoming the principal work and responsibility of the intellectual.17

7. Mills as Exemplary Intellectual

Mills died in 1962, aged only 46. Though he had been relatively prolific in the previous two decades, producing a number of texts which became classics of the social science tradition that he had himself sought to keep alive, it might be thought that he left a substantial amount of work undone. However, with the coming of the ‘60s Mills – especially the Mills of The Power Elite (1956) – wielded a powerful influence over the rising student movement. When Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) met for its inaugural meeting in 1961 its published agenda opened with an epigraph from Mills), and The Power Elite was regarded by many of its members as ‘Bible.’18 Mills’ influence, tellingly, was as much personal as intellectual – that is, it was a matter of his personal example, as one who refused to genuflect to power and was willing to venture beyond the cordon of professionalism in practicing the politics of truth. Thus, upon joining SDS, according to James Miller, one had to know Mills, ‘to know not just the major texts and key concepts, but the personal anecdotes, the rhetorical style, the sweep of the man’s political vision.’19

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This, however, opened up a possible problem. It was hardly surprising, given the fact of Mills’ insistence upon the indivisibility of the personal-moral and the impersonal-intellectual, that it would be his own personality, perceived as unsullied by compromise, that held sway over the young students of SDS, and others. Movements need inspirations, figures who lead by personal example and commitment. However, this in itself can lead to a kind of celebrification of the public intellectual – a process with which we are perhaps all too familiar - an emphasis upon charisma (perhaps never far removed from character) as a determining factor in pubic life and politics. Mills’ construction of the intellectual can be seen as an attempt to counteract the passive bureaucratism into which he saw social scientists in particular as having fallen, in favour of a conception of craftsmanship in which the intellectual becomes something more like the creative artist, elaborating an inspirational identity (or ‘soul’) through his or her cultural praxis. This went hand-in-hand, in Mills praxis, at least, with a resolute suspicion of all collective organisations, which caused misgivings even in SDS circles (Miller, 1988: 90).20 To take responsibility, in existentialist vein, for what is made of one could provide the spur for the re-assertion of the personal in politics, otherwise sorely lacking. But the question remained of how that personal emphasis and focus could find expression in the broader context of a political or social movement without either compromising the individual’s moral commitment, or disrupting that organisation, or both.

As a way out of this organisational impasse – in potential, at least - Mills ended up calling for what amounted to an international of intellectuals, a loose aggregate of individuals in touch with one another across borders, who maintained, above all, their cherished independence.21 Such a fluid, de-centred collective perhaps would embody something of Auden’s defensive vision of ‘the Just,’ as described in his poem ‘September 1st, 1939’:

Defenceless under the night Our world in stupor lies; Yet, dotted everywhere, Ironic points of light Flash out wherever the Just Exchange their messages.22

The comparison with Auden is apt, as Mills’ vision of the intellectual and

intellectual agency sprang from the same experience of defeat and from the same perceived need to ‘[s]how an affirming flame’ in the face of the gathering forces of conformity. Moreover, with his emphasis upon the social and political efficacy of the imagination, Mills may be said to have embraced an ethos more common among artists, for whom the work is all because it contains the world, and thus it is that in which we can have faith when everything else is falling about our ears. But

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perhaps the ultimate significance of the international of intellectuals may be found in its very porous and nebulous character, because in the end it is a ‘body’ which we can all join whenever we practise the kind of craft, the partisan professionalism (Eyerman and Jamison, 1991: 8)23 advocated by C. Wright Mills.

Notes 1 G. Cotkin, ‘The Tragic Predicament: Post-War American Intellectuals, Acceptance and Mass Culture’, Intellectuals and Politics: from the Dreyfus Affair to Salman Rushdie, Routledge, London, 1997, pp. 248-270. 2 N. Mackenzie, ‘After the Stalemate State’, Conviction, N. Mackenzie (ed), McGibbon and Kee, London, 1958, pp. 7-22. 3 Cotkin, op. cit., p. 251. 4 E. Shils, ‘Imaginary Sociology’, Encounter, Vol. XIV, 1960, pp. 77-78. 5 C.W. Mills, Power, Politics and People, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1963, p. 299. 6 C.W. Mills, White Collar, Oxford University Press, New York, 1951, p. 230. 7 Ibid., p. 222. 8 C.W. Mills, The Sociological Imagination, Oxford University Press, New York, 1959, p. 13. 9 Ibid., p. 173. 10 Ibid., p. 6. 11 Ibid., p. 196. 12 R. Sennett, Respect: The Formation of Character in an Age of Inequality, Penguin Books, London, 2003, pp. 52-53. 13 Mills, The Sociological Imagination, p. 178 14 Mills, Power, Politics and People, p. 256. 15 J. Eldridge, C. Wright Mills, Ellis Horwood, Chichester, 1983, p. 103. 16 Mannheim cited in Ibid., p. 170. 17 It should be pointed out that Mannheim was at the time of writing Soul and Culture under the influence of the Lebensphilosophie of Georg Simmel, with whom he had studied in Berlin (see G. Simmel, On Individuality and Social Forms, D.N. Levine (ed), Chicago University Press, Chicago, 1971). 18 J. Miller, Democracy is in the Streets, Simon Schuster, New York, 1988, p. 79. 19 Ibid., p. 79. 20 Ibid., p. 90. 21 Mills, Power, Politics and People, p. 235. 22 W.H. Auden, ‘September 1, 1939’, Poetry of the Thirties, R. Skelton (ed), Penguin Books, Harmondsworth, 1964, p. 280. 23 Eyerman and Jamison, 1991: 8

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Bibliography

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Simmel, G., On Individuality and Social Forms. Levine, D.N. (ed), Chicago University Press, Chicago, 1971. Stephen Palmer, Sir George Monoux College, London, United Kingdom.