Link to jeanne's Birdie Calendar Received Knowledge and <i>Idees dans L'air</i>

Dear Habermas Logo and Link to Site Index A Jeanne Site

Pass? or Prepared? Rudiger Appel's Figurine and Link to his site.

Alpabetical Listing by Topics
Of Pass? or Prepared?s

California State University, Dominguez Hills
University of Wisconsin, Parkside
Latest update: October 9, 2000
E-Mail jeanne
E-Mail Susan

Received Knowledge and Idees dans L'air

This Pass or Prepared? is based on developing theoretical perspectives for idees dans l'air, things we "all know." We have generalized understandings, "idees dans l'air," of Durkheim's sacred and profane, of "fragmentation" as it is generally applied to "postmodernism," and of "consensus" as it applies to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In this self-test quiz we are asking you to question what we call "received knowledge" that comes to us, often out of awareness and with little critical reflection.

Answer the following questions:

Click on any of the question numbers to see how jeanne tried to answer the question plausibly.

  1. Read the following quote from Farganis' discussion of Durkheim in Readings in Social Theory, p. 61.
    "From [Durkheim's] study of the religions of Australian aborignal tribes he concluded that the one thing all religions have in common is a division between the sacred---the realm of the extraordinary, and/or the divine---and the profane---the realm of the everyday, the commonplace, the ordinary. Durkheim claimed that the distinction between the sacred and profane is one that is socially constructed and not one that inheres in the object so designated. Thus tribal people attribute sacred meaning to a bird or an animal, designate it as their totem, and build up rituals surrounding it, and the symbol in turn becomes a source of unity."
    Based on this paragraph from Farganis' discussion of Durkheim, would you say Farganis is comfortable with postmodern and critical interpretations of social theory? On what details would you base your response?

  2. What is the popularized notion of 'fragmentation" associated with postmodernism?

  3. In the October 2000 Israeli-Palestinian crisis, how is "consensus" being handled? Whose consensus?

Copright: Jeanne Curran and Susan R. Takata, June 2000. "Fair Use" encouraged.

Academic Dishonesty and Low Self-Control: An Empirical Test of General Theory of Crime

This is a title from the Table of Contents in Deviaant Behavior, Volume 19, Issue 3.