From: "George F. Lord" To: PSN-Seminars@csf.colorado.edu Date: Thu, 19 Feb 1998 14:40:24 EST Subject: Re: Social change and poetry If I could add to the need of poetry (or Aesthetics) in social change, I believe it is in Habermas that he argues that for a critical theory to be liberating it must be (1) scientific, allow us to examine the world in as objective a fashion as possible, (2) moral, allow us to ask questions about what is right and wrong, and (3) Aesthetic (or poetic), allowing us to imagine how it might be. I have just printed out and begun to read the essays and look forward to the discussion. I feel in reading Gary's response below that I still want to know why social change without poetry is in serious trouble. That is, I think many of us would agree with the statement, but what is it about the academic enterprise or what might we draw from our sociological understanding of knowledge to support this contention? And perhaps more importantly how do we change this in our everyday lives, perhaps we try to implement the 37 moral imperatives?? George Date: Thu, 19 Feb 1998 10:59:12 -0700 (MST) From: Martha Gimenez To: Gary Marx on Aspiring Sociologists Subject: Social change and poetry (FWD) Gary is having some email problems and asked me to forward this message. Martha ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Thu, 19 Feb 1998 09:04:43 -0800 (PST) From: gary marx To: psn-seminars@csf.colorado.edu Martha Gimenez asks, why is "social change without poetry" in serious trouble? (mandate 2). There I meant that our efforts to generate systematic, empirically accurate, logical and sophisticated data on which to base social change will be further enhanced if they have aesthetic, emotional, spiritual, and evocative qualities. Beauty, humor, playfulness, symbols and even ambiguity (in limited contexts) and an element of mystery can enhance the process and the product, and can reach the reader in a way that the lifeless prose and numbers that dominate much of the profession never can. Of course this should not be in lieu of sloppy or fuzzy thinking. There is a wonderful quote somewhere from Whitehead about the limitations of clarity in settings that may be too complex for our models. Social researchers can benefit from drawing upon the humanities' side of their split personality. We can be more than passionless engineers with a sterile mode of communication. Perhaps buried within the remark is the notion that our work should, where possible, be artful as well as technical. George Lord Department of Sociology University of Michigan - Flint e-mail lord_g@flint.crob.umich.edu voice (810) 762-3340 fax (810) 762-3687