The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society

Health professionals for a new century: transforming education to strengthen health systems in an interdependent world

The demarcation of science from other intellectual activities-long an analytic problem for philosophers and sociologists-is here examined as a practical problem for scientists. Construction of a boundary between science and varieties of non-science is useful for scientists' pursuit of professional goals: acquisition of intellectual authority and career opportunities; denial of these resources to "pseudoscientists"; and protection of the autonomy of scientific research from political interference. "Boundary-work" describes an ideological style found in scientists' attempts to create a public image for science by contrasting it favorably to non-scientific intellectual or technical activities. Alternative sets of characteristics available for ideological attribution to science reflect ambivalences or strains within the institution: science can be made to look empirical or theoretical, pure or applied. However, selection of one or another description depends on which characteristics best achieve the demarcation in a way that justifies scientists' claims to authority or resources. Thus, "science" is no single thing: its boundaries are drawn and redrawn inflexible, historically changing and sometimes ambiguous ways.

Boundary-Work and the Demarcation of Science from Non-Science: Strains and Interests in Professional Ideologies of Scientists

Early versions of this paper were presented at the "Conference on Institutional Change," held at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford, CA, May 15-16, 1987; and at a conference, "Critical Perspectives on Organizational Theories," sponsored by the International Sociological Association and held at the Conference Center De Narwal, Wassenaar, The Netherlands, July 19-21, 1987. Thanks are due to the conference organizers: Paul J. DiMaggio and Walter W. Powell, Stanford Conference; and to Marshall W. Meyer and Ad Teulings, Wassenaar Conference. I also wish to acknowledge the helpful comments received on earlier versions of this paper from Ronald L. Jepperson, John W. Meyer, and Walter W. Powell.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/2392880.pdf

The Adolescence of Institutional Theory.

The four Visegrad states — Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia (until 1993 Czechoslovakia) and Hungary — form a compact area between Germany and Austria in the west and the states of the former USSR in the east. They are bounded by the Baltic in the north and the Danube river in the south. They are cut by the Sudeten and Carpathian mountain ranges, which divide Poland off from the other states. Poland is an extension of the North European plain and like the latter is drained by rivers that flow from south to north west — the Oder, the Vlatava and the Elbe, the Vistula and the Bug. The Danube is the great exception, flowing from its source eastward, turning through two 90-degree turns to end up in the Black Sea, forming the barrier and often the political frontier between central Europe and the Balkans. Hungary to the east of the Danube is also an open plain. The region is historically and culturally part of western Europe, but its eastern Marches now represents a vital strategic zone between Germany and the core of the European Union to the west and the Russian zone to the east.

Economy and Society

A Sovereign ProfessionThe Rise of Medical Authority and the Shaping of the Medical System * The Social Origins of Professional Sovereignty * Medicine in a Democratic Culture, 17601850 * The Expansion of the Market * The Consolidation of Professional Authority, 18501930 * The Reconstitution of the Hospital * The Boundaries of Public Health * Escape from the Corporation, 19001930 The Struggle For Medical CareDoctors, the State, and the Coming of the Corporation * The Mirage of Reform * The Triumph of Accommodation * The Liberal Years * End of a Mandate * The Coming of the Corporation

The social transformation of American medicine

The Social Transformation of American Medicine

Privatization is a fuzzy concept that evokes sharp political reactions. It covers a great range of ideas and policies, varying from the eminently reasonable to the wildly impractical. Yet however varied and at times unclear in its meaning, privatization has unambiguous political origins and objectives. It emerges from the countermovement against the growth of government in the West and represents the most serious conservative effort of our time to formulate a positive alternative. Privatization proposals do not aim merely to return services to their original location in the private sphere. Some proposals seek to create new kinds of market relations and promise results comparable or superior to conventional public programs. Hence it is a mistake to define and dismiss the movement as simply a replay of traditional opposition to state intervention and expenditure. The current wave of privatization initiatives opens a new chapter in the conflict over the public-private balance. This Article attempts to clarify the meaning of privatization as an idea, as theory and rhetoric, and as a political practice. In the process I hope to explain why I generally oppose privatization, even though I favor some specific proposals that privatization covers. But apart from this political judgment, I take privatization seriously as a policy movement and as a process that show every sign of reconstituting major institutional domains of contemporary society.

/pdf/the-meaning-of-privatization-29shnq32vj.pdf

The Meaning of Privatization

A history of the political roots of the information age, by one of this country's most distinguished intellectuals, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Social Transformation of American Medicine. America's leading role in today's information revolution may seem simply to reflect its position as the world's dominant economy and most powerful state. But by the early nineteenth century, when the United States was neither a world power nor a primary center of scientific discovery, it was already a leader in communications-in postal service and newspaper publishing, then in development of the telegraph and telephone networks, later in the whole repertoire of mass communications. In this wide-ranging social history of American media, from the first printing press to the early days of radio, Paul Starr shows that the creation of modern communications was as much the result of political choices as of technological invention. His original historical analysis reveals how the decisions that led to a state-run post office and private monopolies on the telegraph and telephone systems affected a developing society. He illuminates contemporary controversies over freedom of information by exploring such crucial formative issues as freedom of the press, intellectual property, privacy, public access to information, and the shaping of specific technologies and institutions. America's critical choices in these areas, Starr argues, affect the long-run path of development in a society and have had wide social, economic, and even military ramifications. The Creation of the Media not only tells the history of the media in a new way; it puts America and its global influence into a new perspective.

The Creation of the Media: Political Origins of Modern Communications

This study undertaken for the National Committee for Research on the 1980 Census is one in a series of volumes concerned with analyses of the results of the 1980 U.S. census. The present volume differs from others in the series in that it focuses not on the data itself but on the governmental system of data collection and analysis. The focus here is on the social and political significance of decisions concerning data collection measurement interpretation and presentation. Part 1 on the politics of economic measurement contains chapters on the different views of economic statistics held by governmental political and academic professionals; the politics of income measurement; and the development of national income accounting. Part 2 is on the politics of population measurement; chapters are included on the 1980 census in historical perspective politics and the measurement of ethnicity and the social and political context of population forecasting. Part 3 focuses on the relationship between the functions of statistics and the characteristics of democratic politics. Part 4 deals with the connections between statistics and various levels of U.S. government. Part 5 contains chapters on technological developments and their consequences and on the rise of the statistical services industry.

Paul Starr

Papers

The social transformation of American medicine

The Social Transformation of American Medicine

The Meaning of Privatization

The Creation of the Media: Political Origins of Modern Communications

The politics of numbers.