Intellectuals and Public Life

by Fink, Leon; Leonard, Stephen T.; Reid, Donald M.

• ISBN13: 9780801482991
• ISBN10: 0801482992
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1996-04-01
• Publisher: Cornell Univ Pr

Summary

Combining history with social theory, this book offers a bold reassessment of the role of radical intellectuals in public life. It explores the potential impact of intellectuals working for social and political change and is important for everyone concerned with such contemporary issues as the future of higher education, the transformation of the public intellectual in Western and non-Western societies, the collapse of socialism, and the paralysis of liberalism.
Illuminating many facets of the relationship between the life of the mind and the life of action, these interdisciplinary essays consider diverse aspects of the role of intellectuals in revolutionary movements, state-centered reforms, and colonial and postcolonial settings. After discussions of how the intellectual as a social type has acquired its politically charged character, chapters are devoted to radical thinkers in England, Germany, Russia, and France. The place of intellectuals in the United States is explored in essays on Progressive liberalism, labor reform, women's rights, and the work of W. E. B. Du Bois. The book concludes with essays on the significance of liberation theology and the ideology of the Chinese student protest movement of 1989.

Table of Contents

Preface
Introduction: A Genealogy of the Politicized Intellectual	p. 1
Habermas, Foucault, and the Legacy of Enlightenment Intellectuals	p. 29
"Bred as a Mechanic": Plebeian Intellectuals and Popular Politics in Early Nineteenth-Century England	p. 53
Intellectuals and the German Labor Movement	p. 74
Were the Russian Intelligenty Organic Intellectuals?	p. 97
Regis Debray: Republican in a Democratic Age	p. 121
Social Scientists and the State: Constructing the Knowledge Base for Public Policy, 1880-1920	p. 145
Expert Advice: Progressive Intellectuals and the Unraveling of Labor Reform, 1912-1915	p. 182
Making Women's History: Activist Historians of Women's Rights, 1880-1940	p. 214
The Political Uses of Alienation: W. E. B. Du Bois on Politics, Race, and Culture, 1903-1940	p. 236
The Preferential Option for the Poor: Liberation Theology and the End of Political Innocence	p. 259
Elites and Democracy: The Ideology of Intellectuals and the Chinese Student Protest Movement of 1989	p. 285
Contributors	p. 319
Index	p. 321
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