The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Politics (6 page)

(1918–90)
French Marxist philosopher who rose to intellectual prominence in the 1960s. Associated with the school of ‘structural Marxism’, which emphasizes ‘scientific’ rather than humanist elements of Marx's thought, and develops a multilayered structuralist account of historical determinism.
While claiming with Marx that society is determined by productive forces within the economy ‘in the last instance’, Althusser conceived of economic determination itself in terms of a complex of interrelated structures exercising various economic, political, and ideological forces within the social body. Within each of these levels of social reality, transformation is effected by specific processes of ‘contradiction’ between the relevant productive forces and production relations. But the coexistence and inseparability of these processes within the social whole means that there can be no single dominant dialectical force propelling social development—rather, social formation is ‘overdetermined’ by an intricate dynamic resulting from the interaction of heterogeneous ‘practices’. Furthermore, as a result of the relative autonomy of individual structures and the possibility of their uneven development, a plurality of institutional and social forms is compatible with the notion of economic determinism.
Althusser was an important figure in the extension of Marxist arguments to related fields of philosophy and the social sciences. In particular, he pioneered an epistemological theory according to which knowledge is conceived as a practice of conceptual production rather than the discovery of an external order. Althusser's selective reading of Marx and his attempt to marry Marxist materialism with causal pluralism have been controversial yet highly influential contributions to neo-Marxist debate.
SW 

 
Back
  -  
 
New Search

Benefiting other persons or interestbearers. The common contrast with selfishness reveals some variations in the understanding of altruism, which may refer to a disposition, to an intention, or to behaviour. Hence an altruistic person might intend to benefit others, but fail to do so when executing that intention. Altruism is sometimes understood as giving more consideration to others than oneself and sometimes as giving equal consideration to oneself and others. Since there are commonly more ‘others’ than the decision-maker, the distinction usually lacks practical importance, but it may be significant in two-person cases. In discussions informed by
game theory
, a contrast is drawn between reciprocal altruism and universal altruism. Reciprocal altruists display that behaviour towards those from whom they have received it, or from whom they expect to receive it. Universal altruism, often seen as the central ethical prescription of Christianity, is unconditional. In sociobiological applications, it can be shown that the survival chances of individuals and groups depend not only on the incidence of selfishness and altruism, but also on the type of altruism in question.
AR 

 
Back
  -  
 
New Search

Term denoting, in a very broad way, the public benefits accruing from the condition of a place, such as aesthetic beauty, clean air and water, or good street lighting. The function of the concept of amenity is therefore to embrace those factors in a decision about environmental development which are excluded from, and sometimes in contradiction to, considerations of commercial productivity.
In UK politics, the ‘amenity clause’—a requirement that public bodies pay due regard to the interests of amenity—was first mentioned in legislation concerned with hydroelectric power in Scotland in 1943. It became a general duty of all public bodies with respect to the countryside in 1968, though the requirement necessarily weakened during the acts of privatization during the 1980s, being replaced by a number of regulative and ‘watchdog’ bodies.
The ‘amenity movement’ refers to private organizations defending the interests of amenity, especially pressure groups concerned with particular towns or areas. The number of these grew rapidly in the 1970s. See also
public good
.
LA 

 
Back
  -  
 
New Search

Often used to refer solely to the United States of America, the term has far richer connotations. The most positive of these centre upon concepts of liberation, purity, novelty, and separation. A minority of early Spanish writers viewed orderly pre-Columban polities as signs of the uniformity and wholeness of natural creation. However, displacement of indigenous peoples, and the creation of independent republics across most of the continent following wars of liberation between 1775 and 1830, made America synonymous, throughout the nineteenth century, with the ideal of republican government within open frontiers. For tens of millions of Europeans, chafing at urban industrialism and autocratic rule, free migration and expanding American agriculture permitted some realization of this ideal, most of all in Canada, the United States, and the southern states of Latin America. But the ideal of liberation was always denied by widespread slavery and coerced labour affecting many millions of Africans and native Americans. Like the ideal of liberty, that of purity, wilderness, or naturalness also came under stress in the twentieth century as urbanization and unprecedentedly energy-intensive and consumerist patterns of industrialization took hold while frontiers closed. Finally, American claims to novelty and separation from a corrupt Old World wore thin. Already, in 1893, Oscar Wilde could jibe that ‘the youth of America is their oldest tradition’.
CJ 

 
Back
  -  
 
New Search

See
Enlightenment, American
.

 
Back
  -  
 
New Search