102

Marx, Gurdjieff, and

Mannheim:

Contested Utopistics of Self and Society in a World-History Context

1

M.H. (Behrooz) Tamdgidi

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––This presentation is more an exercise in

theorizing history (in this case the dialecticsof world-history and utopistic praxis) thanin historiography, though I am not sure ifthe two can really be separated and dual-ized as such. My concern here is with con-tested identities (in a world-historycontext) of not just who we are, but who wecan and should be. What attracted me tothis panel topic was in fact the ways inwhich it could accommodate comparativeand cross-disciplinary discourses of selfand world on one hand and theory andpractice on the other. Above all, however,from the standpoint of my applied socio-logical interest in comparative utopistics, it

allowed me to problematize and historicizethe taken-for-granted notion of “contesta-tion” itself, questioning whether identities

have

to be

contested, even if they have un-doubtedly been so, throughout millennia.

In what follows I will try to share withyou in outline the argument advanced inmy dissertation research titled “Mysticismand Utopia: Towards the Sociology of Self-Knowledge and Human Architecture”(Tamdgidi 2002). Therein, I have exploredthe utopistic theories of Karl Marx, G. I.Gurdjieff, and Karl Mannheim as contestedefforts towards the good life in self and so-ciety within a world-historical framework.I argue that the three approaches—repre-senting western utopian, eastern mystical,and academic movements—are fragment-ed microcosms of an otherwise singularcreative human search for the good life.Their mutual alienations, I argue, are root-ed in fragmented philosophical, religious,and scientific ideologies which haveemerged in conjunction with the broad his-torical transitions of ancient civilizations toclassical political, medieval cultural, andmodern economic empires. Human archi-tecture and the sociology of self-knowledgeare then introduced as creative conceptual,curricular, and pedagogical efforts beyondthe contested terrains of fragmented uto-pistics in favor of a just global society.

“Utopistics” is a term recently coinedby Immanuel Wallerstein denoting “the se-rious assessment of historical alternatives,the exercise of our judgment as to the sub-stantive rationality of alternative possiblehistorical systems. It is the sober, rational,and realistic evaluation of human socialsystems, the constraints on what they canbe, and the zones open to human creativity.Not the face of the perfect (and inevitable)future, but the face of an alternative, credi-bly better, and historically possible (but farfrom certain) future. It is thus an exercise si-multaneously in science, politics, and mo-rality” (1998a 1-2). I use the concept withcertain important qualifications, however.

1.An earlier version of this paper was pre-sented to a gathering of sociology faculty atUMass Boston in March 2003. I’d like to take thismoment to thank them all for their support. Thepresent paper is a revised version presented tothe “Contested Identities in a World-HistoryContext” panel of the World History AssociationConference, held June 26-29, 2003, at GeorgiaState University, Atlanta, Georgia. I would liketo thank Fakhri Haghani, the organizer andchair of the panel for making it possible for meto share this brief summary of my dissertationresearch with a broader audience.

Notice

: Copyright of

Human Architecture: Journal of the Sociology of Self-Knowledge

is the property of Ahead Publishing House(imprint: Okcir Press) and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright

holder’s express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use.

H

UMAN

A

RCHITECTURE

: J

OURNAL

OF

THE

S

OCIOLOGY

OF

S

ELF

-K

NOWLEDGE

Vol. II, No. 1, Spring 2003.ISSN: 1540-5699. © Copyright by Ahead Publishing House (imprint: Okcir Press). All Rights Reserved.

HUMAN ARCHITECTURE

Journal of the Sociology of Self-

A Publication of the Omar Khayyam Center for Integrative Research in Utopia, Mysticism, and Science (Utopystics)

103

First, utopistics in my view must simulta-neously deal with macro and micro pro-cesses, with broad structural concerns aswell as everyday interactive issues. Second,it must eschew ethnocentrism and activelyembrace comparative approaches acrosscultural traditions. Third, it must involveboth rigorous assessment and actual appli-cation. Utopistics, in my view, is the com-parative applied sociology (orhistoriography—reflective and creative) ofthe good life—of realistic seeking of opti-mally better selves, persons, communities,and worlds. The utopistic approach to ap-plying sociology moves beyond either themainstream or merely oppositional/anti-systemic modes of resolving concrete ev-eryday problems; it seeks positive self andsocial change by the example of its alterna-tive methodological, theoretical, practical,and inspirational innovations and solu-tions.

My purpose here is to use Marx, Gurd-jieff, and Mannheim as representativedoors for entering the stratified buildingrooms of theories we have inherited frommodern or traditional, western or eastern,spacetimes, critically assessing their useful-ness in helping us effectively move beyondour inner and broader social contestationsand alienations in favor of the good life. Iwill conclude with my translation of anoth-er representative example from the mysti-cal poetry of Rumi with a brief note on hispoetic utopistics in a world-historical con-text—one in which the audience is simulta-neously one’s own selves, the face-to-face“others,” and all future (and in remem-brance all past) human generations.

I

I begin my reflections on Marx’s theo-ries of social stratification and revolutionwith the perceived stereotyped assump-tions some carry, in the context of a deeplymaterialistic culture, that upper classes are

happy when underclasses are not. In otherwords, the implicit value-judgments of ourstratification theories, including those ofoppositional ideologies as advanced byMarx, is that somehow being upper-classequates with happiness and being lower-class does not—hence, the struggle to over-throw one type of class privilege (privateproperty) in favor of another type of classprivilege (collective property as owned bythe victorious proletariat), in the hope thatthe latter will eventually lead to the disap-pearance of class distinctions in general inthe course of a transition under the dicta-torship of the proletariat. The underlyingassumption of such a stratification theoryof liberation, therefore, is that we need tochange the form of property ownership(from individual and private to social andpublic) in order to rid society of the ills ofclass division. What is problematized, inother words, is not the “possessive” atti-tude towards things, material or otherwise,in the first place. When a Native Americansays, for instance, “Earth does not belong tous, we belong to earth,” he or she is not con-trasting private with public property, butquestioning the very possessive attitude ofhumanity towards things, individual orcollective—in this case towards the wholeof nature and earth. Conversely, however,Marx’s “Workers of the World, Unite! Youhave nothing to lose but your chains, butyou have a world to win!” still carries themessage that the goal is to possess theworld albeit collectively, NOT to becomefree from possessiveness itself—as Frommor Adorno would suggest, liberating our-selves from the “have” attitude towardsthings in favor of the “being” attitude,away from the fetishism of things, from be-ing habituated and attached to things, frombeing dominated and controlled by things.Marx may have espoused a challenge to thebourgeois form of materialism and proper-ty ownership, but his proletarian material-ism, apart from the latter’s philosophicalcontent, still shared with the bourgeoisie

104

the notion that human happiness involvesprimarily material wants, and that humanliberation ultimately originates from andmust be guided by a concern for materialinterests and objectives. Marxism, after all,was a western artifact.

Marx’s mature theory of stratificationand revolution is based on an assumed du-alized and stratified primacy of nature overhumankind, of economy and politics overculture, of matter over mind, of material-ism over idealism. The dualistic frameworkof these oppositions are strongly present inthe mature Marx (a distinction betweenmature and young Marx is necessary ofcourse, for the young Marx, influenced byHegel, believed that the solution lies in nei-ther materialism nor idealism, but in a hu-manism which sees humanity as part ofnature, endowed with its powers). If mindwas seen as a part of matter without anypredetermination attached to the latter as-pect, then we may have found education,literature, or poetry to have been at least assignificant a weapon to wage the war forthe good life as the weapon of the arms. Themost troubling aspect of Marx’s theory ofstratification and de-stratification (throughthe agency of a revolutionary proletariat)was its self-fulfilling prophetic logic whichplayed into the hands of a materialisticbourgeoisie which equated material pos-sessions (albeit in collective ownership)with the human liberative agenda. That hu-man liberation inherently is about libera-tion

from

unconscious attachment to things,ideas, feelings, sensations, relations, andprocesses, that human liberation is aboutthe power of the mind over matter, of intel-ligence and rational self-knowledge anddetermination over purely “material” in-terests to possess things, was regrettably re-pressed in the transition from the young tothe old Marx.

Through a critical revisitation of howMarx constructed his theory of social strat-ification and revolution, I have tried toshow how inherently inconsistent his theo-

retical framework was in all its three politi-cal, economic, and philosophicalcomponents. I have argued that the thesisof the dictatorship of the proletariat is in-herently a contradiction in terms, since thepropertyless class that assumes political su-premacy inherently metamorphises into acollectively property owning class whosecharacteristics cannot be, as even predicat-ed by the theoretical framework of Marx’sown historical materialism, the same as thepre-revolutionary class. Note here that I amnot arguing for the historical contingencyof a misguided or degenerated proletariatin Soviet Union, China, or elsewhere, but Iam saying that the very theory of a prole-tarian dictatorship is inherently a contra-diction in terms and thereby flawed. Theproletariat that assumes, in part or even asan ideally international whole, political su-premacy and collective ownership of thesocial means of production cannot by defi-nition remain a propertyless, hence a prole-tarian class.

On the economic front, I have also ar-gued that the very formulaic representationof Marx’s theory of the falling general rateof profit in capitalism is a demonstration ofthe fact that the transition from capitalismto socialism or communism can never be apurely economic act and thus objectivelyinevitable, but cultural and political self-awareness and organization of all classes,including the revolutionary class, areequally (if not more) important factors thatcan determine whether or not a transitionwill take place at all. Culture is not a super-structure flying overhead, but actually apotentially determining material produc-tive force. The mechanistic “laws of motionof society” theorization of the inevitabilityof transition built into Marx’s stratificationand revolution theories, in other words, isinherently flawed for it relegates such apossibility to the a priori and predeter-mined forces of an objectively developingeconomic agency.

The dualism of economy/politics vs.

105

culture, I further argue, was rooted in an-other fatal inconsistency in Marx’s philo-sophical arsenal, which has escaped thegnawing teeth of even the most critical ofpost- or ex-Marxists, i.e., the dualism of ide-alism vs. materialism. What I find quiteperplexing in my autopsy of Marx, is that atthe very same time Marx and Engels werepreoccupied with rescuing human socialimagination from mechanistics of formalAristotelian logic espousing either/or ar-gumentations—favoring instead a dialecti-cal logic of identity of opposites—theyincreasingly fell trapped in the argumentthat dialectical method must itself be

either

idealist

or

materialist. The primacy of mat-ter over mind can only thrive in the onto-logical environment of dualized matter/mind conceptions, since otherwise, if mindis seen as a part of matter, as a materialforce of specific nature and vibration itself,then the predetermined and universal pri-macy of one over the other would become atautological argument.

I have much respect for Marx, and inmany ways, as he advised through Engels,to be fateful to him is not to be a Marxist,i.e., not to be habituated to his thought andmethods as levers for construction of truth.My critique of Marx is a self-critique inmore personal terms as pursued in moredetailed in my dissertation. Time does notallow me to dwell more on this personalside or on my critical revisitation of Marx’stheory of history, but what I like to conveyhere is the proposition that Marx’s sociolo-gy of stratification based on which he con-structed the edifice of his applied sociologyof revolution, was itself dualistic and strat-ified. The very “building” or “three sto-reys” metaphor used by Marx to constructhis “guiding thread” and revolutionaryparadigm in terms of economic base andpolitico-legal and ideological superstruc-tures was an inherently dualized architec-tural construct. In such a metaphor, whatexists on one floor, say in the foundation,cannot be at the very same time present in

other floors. Culture and knowledge can-not be economic and political forces, econo-my cannot be a cultural artifact, and radicalrevolution cannot be based on purely cul-tural, educational, or artistic strategies. Inthe dissertation I have exhaustively decon-structed this stratified architectural meta-phor in Marx, still a common schema usedsubconsciously in even non-Marxist socialscientific discourses, in the hope of a radicalremodelling of our subconscious visual ar-tifacts in favor of more humanistic architec-tural pursuits to bring about creative socialchange simultaneously in personal andworld-historical spacetimes.

My self-critique of Marx’s theory is notof course to be interpreted as a reversionback to mainstream sociological theoriesand practice, not historically as a reversionback to the outdated modes of capitalist or-ganization of the workforce, but as an effortto search for alternative methodologicaland theoretical tools needed in favor of thegood life. The defeat of Marxist theory, asMarx himself would have proclaimed in hispolitical writings, is not a defeat of revolu-tion, but the defeat of our own shortcom-ings and hesitations in pursuing it. In thiscase, the obstacles were hesitations to seeoneself and one’s own theories as being im-plicated in the social reality we try tochange for the better, an approach whichwas inherently missing from Marx’s objec-tivist, nineteenth century classical scientif-ic, paradigm of social change. Marx’s erawas one in which social science was stillemerging from the midst of philosophicalargumentations. Being trained in philoso-phy himself, Marx had a deep-seated pro-pensity to approach his science ofrevolution from a philosophical point ofview, involving pre-conceived ideologicalargumentations—of course packaged andlegitimated in a framework conducive toproletarian interests and revolutionaryprojects. Despite Marx’s considerable con-tributions to social science, at its roots hisparadigm was a philosophically inspired

106

western utopian project. Paradoxically, however, Marx’s drive

to seek an “objective” and scientific frame-work to pursue utopistics was made at theexpense of the individual self-reflexivenessthat has traditionally been, somewhat, thepreoccupation of philosophical tradition,albeit in abstract forms. Society for Marxwas about interpersonal relations, whilethe intrapersonal reality was seen at best asan automatic product of the outer social re-ality and conflicts. Social stratification wasperceived as that between assumed “indi-viduals,” whereby each person could easilybe boxed into this or that class, group, orparty, if not sitting between the chairs ofmajor social classes—as in the case of thepetty-bourgeoisie. Marx’s view of societywas atomistic and Newtonian, not relativistand quantal, not based on relationality ofselves that cross skin boundaries of visiblebodies. In his theory of stratification, it wasnot possible as a matter of rule for the sameperson to belong to multiple class group-ings. It was no wonder then that revolu-tionary change was sought primarily inouter interpersonal relations only, and notsimultaneously in the intrapersonal class,gender, race, and ethnic stratifications ofour selfhoods and psychologies. Such a the-orization, of course, was predisposed to al-low the possibility and necessity of socialchange through violence, for economic, po-litical, or ideological powers could be moreor less easily boxed into separate personswho could raise and use arms against oneanother. That the person could be simulta-neously a member of dominated and dom-inating classes, oppressor and oppressed,discriminating and discriminated, etc.,would have required much more than wag-ing a ruthless struggle against the so-called“other.” It would have involved seriouspreoccupations with self-reflectiveness andchange within—would have involved seri-ous needs to theorize not only a sociology,but a self-reflective social psychology ofrevolution. It is certainly true that later the-

orists, especially the Critical Theorists ofthe Frankfurt School filled significant gapsin Marxist theorizing about the self and so-cial psychology of revolution; however, it isimportant to still note the difference be-tween the sociologies and social pyscholo-gies of

others

’ selves on one hand, and thesciences of

self

-knowledge and

self

-changefound elsewhere such as in the eastern cul-tural traditions.

To borrow and revise Marx’s elevenththesis on Feuerbach, “Marxists interpretedand/or changed the

world

in various ways;the point, however, is to

begin with oneself

.”

II

Gurdjieff, a strange Caucasian mysticof the late nineteenth and early twentiethcentury, who has been acknowledged by Ja-cob Needleman, a specialist in religionstudies, to be one of the founding sources ofthe so-called New Religious Movements ofthe past century, had a lot to say, and theo-rize, about the inner fragmentation of thehuman psyche. He was an Ashokh (or Ash-ikh/Ashegh, meaning lover, as Persian orAzeri speakers know them in the region),but extraordinarily trained with traditionalsciences of human psyche, skills of hypnot-ic conditioning, and also the arts of mysti-cal dance and music. It is sad that weacademics sometimes allow “disciplined”vocabularies and labeling practices to ex-clude many non-academics from enteringour theoretical and curricular rooms. Ofthese limiting and fragmenting architectur-al practices in our educational landscapes Iwill say more later. Here I would like to de-scribe how wrapped in all sorts of deliber-ately constructed mystical sayings,Gurdjieff’s theory of the self advocatesviewing human individuality not as an as-sumption, but as a destination of the jour-ney of human life course. Calling humans“three-brained beings,” he proposes a viewof the person as an ensemble of hundreds if

107

not thousand of selves, clustered aroundthree main centers of gravity which he la-bels as physical, intellectual, and emotionalcenters. The fragmentation of these centersvia all sorts of buffers, or what modern psy-chology would label as “defense mecha-nisms,” coincides with the fragmentationof human consciousness into its so-calledinstinctive (or unconscious), waking con-scious, and subconscious realms, relativelyseparate and independent functioning ofwhich allows the possibility and propensi-ty of the organism to become habituated,addicted, and attached to things, to live inillusion, to live in sleep in waking life, to bea machine in human guise, to be a prisonerof an illusively free life.

Using the allegory of a carriage drivenby a horse in which the box symbolizes thebody, driver the mind, the horse the emo-tions, and the passenger the master selfsupposedly in charge of the whole system,Gurdjieff argues that the human organismis often fragmented into a box broken downneeding lots of greasing and repairs, thedriver mind being almost always sleepyand drunk, the emotional horse wild andout of control with its constant desires forfood and sex, and the master passenger lit-erally absent from the scene altogether. Theshafts connecting the physical box with theemotional horse, the reins connecting theemotional horse to the driver mind, and thebrake lever connecting the driver mind tothe physical box, symbolize for Gurdjieffthree qualitatively different modes of com-munication among the three centers of theorganism—but these too are broken downand imbalanced, making the person power-less to know and change her or his physical,intellectual, or emotional habits. The organ-ism has been originally designed for super-natural journeys, but is alas broken downtraversing wasteful terrestrial byroads. Theinterstellar transport system that is the hu-man organism is actually so fragmentedand absent of singular, individual will, thatit confuses any passerby outside or passing

self inside for being its “true self,” lettingher or him in as a temporary master passen-ger, to be soon replaced by another tempo-rary will. In this contemporary so-called“man” in quotation marks, the self that setsthe clock at night to get up early in themorning is almost always not the self thatactually gets up in the morning, but onewho decides to shut the alarm and go backto sleep again. No one knows who or whatone really is.

Human alienation for Gurdjieff has apractical and specific meaning, the separa-tion and the alienation of our multiple self-hoods from one another, such that theliberation of the organism must necessarilyinvolve conscious labor and intentionalsuffering of self-knowledge and transfor-mation by a deliberately evoked andtrained, fourth, observing self which is theseat of the future permanent and unified“I.” Only such a unified organism in whichthe three centers actually communicate andblend with one another really has the rightto say “I am” and “I do.” The ordinary hu-man organism does not “do,” things aresimply done to her or him. In ordinary ev-eryday life, we all are each “We”s. Multi-plicities of selves are not merely maladiesof extreme pathological conditions, but afact of everyday life for each and every oneof us, its architecture varying across bodyorganisms depending on their make-upand degree of efforts made in self-knowl-edge and change. Gurdjieff’s enneagram of21 human personalities, overly misusedand popularized today, is actually con-structed to take account of the varied formsof architecture of the inner landscape ofselves. The sociologist George HerbertMead, of course, agreed that in a sense“multiple personalities” are normal. Butthe difference here is that for Gurdjieff thereis no presumption that the internalizedselfhoods automatically converge in adult-hood to form a unified individual self-iden-tity. For Gurdjieff, actually the oppositehappens as a rule, since the very process of

108

individuation requires the person’s ownvolition to pursue the task of alchemicalself-knowledge and change. We of courseall know those so-called “mood swings”we encounter in our every day lives, moodswhich Gurdjieff would literally associatewith multiple selfhoods manifesting them-selves according to the blind necessities ofeveryday time and space. In this sense, ofcourse, Gurdjieff’s eastern mysticism pre-dicts much of modern sociologies of sym-bolic interaction including those of Blumerand Mead, predates Goffman’s dramatur-gical theory of social life as a theater, and inmany ways predicts (and I would ventureto claim surpasses in all practicality of itshealing strategies) much of Freudian theo-ries of the subconscious and modern psy-chology. Sadly, our eurocentric prismsoften prevent us from acknowledging inour cherished academic disciplines the pio-neering work of non-westerns.

Gurdjieff’s mysticism, as I have under-stood it, and aside from its otherwise seri-ous problems and contradictions which Ihave also exhaustively identified in my dis-sertation, has an important message for ourapplied and clinical theories of self and so-cial change. This importance is as muchabout the inner nature of stratification ofour assumed and supposed “individuali-ties” into multiple selfhoods, as it is aboutundermining the very textbook definitionswe have about society, and thereby sociolo-gy as the study of society. Any sociologytextbook today defines society as a systemof relationships or interactions among indi-viduals, or groups of individuals. Thiswould be like the early classical scientificview of nature as a system of bodies, ofmolecules, or at best of atoms. But furtherinsight, as we know, led us to a differentview of matter and of nature, as a system ofsubatomic elements and currents, whichestablished a drastically different view ofthe universe while subsuming the earlieratomistic view into itself. Likewise, by re-laxing our a prior and ahistorical assump-

tions of our unified and singularindividualities in favor of recognizing ourinner multiplicities, we may be able to forma new definition of society not as a systemof individual interactions, but as a systemof interactions of multiple selves, productsof our contradictory, fragmented, alienated,and stratified socializations, which onceformed confront one another as fragment-ed selfhoods. As Mead has argued, once aself arises from the context of our socializa-tions, it takes a life of its own. There is noreason why the “individual” must be ourassumed unit of analysis and point of de-parture for defining society and social in-teraction.

If we adopt an alternative definitionalframework for society, and thereby of soci-ology as the study of it, many “social” phe-nomena that appear as inexplicable becomerather easily understood. Our severely de-pressive mood changes, the loving motherswho suddenly drawn their children inbathtubs, the friendly but unexpectedly ho-micidal neighbors, the quiet kids who sud-denly bomb their classrooms and schools,are not exceptions to our supposedly singu-lar individualities, but extreme examples ofour common lot as clusters of multiple andfragmented selfhoods, caught in the illu-sive shell of our alleged individualitieswith the aid of equally illusive ideologies ofindividualism, but in reality living the lifeof fragmented selfhoods easily manipulat-able by all kinds of advertising, televisionsitcoms, mass media news, and glamourand fashion industries, not to speak of af-flictions with all sorts of habituations tofood, money, fame, sex, power, wealth,drugs, alcohol, and nicotine substances.Despite its ideological rhetoric, capitalismdoes not individuate persons, but frag-ments them into landscapes of fragmentedand alienated selfhoods, within and with-out. Colonialisms do not have to alwaystake place at the macro level of nation-states and civilizations. Imperialism haslong discovered, as Michel Foucault has

109

aptly reminded us, of the micro and intrap-ersonal industries of control and inner colo-nialism. “Divide and Rule” is not onlyuseful in classical or neo-, or even post-co-lonial geometries of nation-states. It alsoworks in the micro geometries of dividedand controlled selfhoods. How can we besingularly willful and indivisible “individ-uals” but not be able even to drop our cof-fee drinking habits!?

It is the tragic story of modern humanorganism to be caught in a world-wide col-onized web of multiple selfhoods, intra, in-ter, and extrapersonal, with respect tooneself, to others, and to our natural andbuilt environments. Gurdjieff’s theory, al-beit its shortcomings and misuses sufferedat the hands of its inventive guru, and de-spite its mystical religious wrappingsand—as in most mystical teachings—de-pendent and hypnotic modalities of teach-er-student relationships, gives us analternative, eastern, approach to utopistics.Where Gurdjieff fails is the separation andthe stratification he introduces between thisinner realm of human life and that takingplace inter- and extrapersonally in relation-ship to others and the environment. The in-terplay of the inner and broader, micro andmacro, social stratifications of the humanlife is thereby ignored in his mystical para-digm. As in most religions, for Gurdjieff thesuffering in the broader social life is a giv-en, a fact and fate to be reckoned with as aninevitability against which the human soulis to be tested, purified, and forged towardshuman inner salvation, in this world and inthe thereafter. As Marx focused on thebroader sociality and lost sight of the innersociality of human organism, Gurdjieff los-es sight of the broader sociality and the roleit plays in the origination and perpetuationof human inner fragmentations and alien-ations. The self and the world are therebythemselves separated from one another intheir respective western and eastern doc-trines, each failing to notice and thereby torectify one or another side of the totality of

human social reality which needs to be crit-icized in theory and revolutionized in prac-tice.

III

Western utopistics is concerned withhow to possess and control the world, be-ing caught in cycles of strivings for privateand/or collective possession of its resourc-es, cultural artifacts, and instruments ofpower. Eastern utopistics, however, in itsmystical varieties in particular, problema-tizes that very possessive attitude towardsworldly objects, positing that attachmentsto the world are not only the root causes ofall suffering, but also the impediments toseeking and exercising knowledges thatcan alone facilitate human spiritual perfec-tion. Karl Mannheim, to whom I turn now,would perhaps argue that each of the aboveprovides only a one-sided perspective onhow to pursue the good life, their rationalkernels becoming more fruitful when syn-thesized integratively into optimally ratio-nal formulations about the utopistics of selfand society. But, how can the utopistics ofself and broader social world be forged intoa singular theoretical framework?

In my study of Mannheim, I have triedto revisit not only the contributions of Man-nheim’s sociology of knowledge, but alsothe self-defeating elements of his argu-ments, in the hope of rescuing the essenceof his invaluable insights regarding generalconceptions of ideology and “collective un-conscious” as the fundamental problem ofour age. The “social origins of knowledge”thesis built into Mannheim’s perspective,which was rooted in Marx’s theory of mate-rial determination of consciousness, canonly thrive in a conceptual and theoreticalenvironment where knowledge is divorcedand separated from social existence. If wesay social existence determines our con-sciousness, as stated the thesis of Man-nheim’s sociology of knowledge, this

110

would turn tautological if we consider ourknowledge, our ideas, our culture, to be apart and parcel of that social existence. Thedualism of society and knowledge, there-fore, in contrast to a part/whole dialecticalconception of them, allows a primacy to beattached with one rather than another as-pect of the dichotomy. Hence, we have a so-ciological perspective whereby we alwaysseek to find the “social origins,” not recog-nizing that our own ideas, views, and cul-tural artifacts may as well be the origins ofold or new and alternative social arrange-ments. Although Berger and Luckmann’snotion of “social construction of reality”has become a commonsense sociologicalperspective nowadays, even then we shrugfrom creative sociological theorizing andpractice of alternative and utopistic socialarrangements, big or small, under the pre-text of engagement in “scientific” study offacts and figures about the reality of our so-cial stratifications.

Despite the above shortcomings, how-ever, Mannheim made a great contributionto the sociological theory of ideology, by in-troducing his what he called “general con-ception of ideology,” i.e., the notion that inour socio-political discourses we becomeincreasingly aware that not only our adver-saries, but even ourselves are unconscious-ly biased and thereby ideological.Mannheim advanced the notion that theproblem of collective unconscious is thegreatest challenge and obstacle in the pathof scientific social knowledge and transfor-mation. Thereby, by encouraging sociolo-gists and social scientists alike to turn theirgaze as well inward, he introduced a signif-icant self-reflexive element into utopistictheorizing and practice. Nevertheless, be-cause of his all-universal materialist theo-retical environment inherited from Marx,his generally “objectivist” social scientificframework, and also his eschewing of theindividual as a unit of analysis (given hissociological training and bias) Mannheimin effect disarmed the intellectual from be-

ing personally self-reflective and thus self-transformative. His borrowed “detachedintellectuals” theorization was to be sure aself-defeating argument within a paradigmof “social origins of knowledge;” but I haveargued that it did not have to be self-defeat-ing in a more dialectical environment inwhich knowledge is as much the origin ofself and social reality as it is its product.Theories of social stratification, if pursuedfor their own sake, run the risk of becomingself-fulfilling prophecies when applied toeveryday social problems and solutionstrategies. Sociologists as intellectuals, intheir teaching and research, no matter howdedicated, may become embroiled so muchin interpreting, albeit critically, the strati-fied class, gender, race, and ethnic nature ofcapitalist society, that they inadvertentlybecome a perpetuator of them and the be-lief that there is something to be gained bypursuing upward mobilities in either of itsbourgeois or proletarian varieties. It willperhaps take some effort in the sociologiesnot just of knowledge but of

self-knowledge

,on the part of the academics themselves,faculty or student, to realize that stratifica-tions of our inner and broader social livesare two sides of the same coin tossedaround by the Wall Street and Microsoftmanagers of the postmodern informationsociety.

Social stratification is not simply aboutthe amount of possessions or savings inbank accounts. It is not a state of things, buta relational process taking place withoutand within. It is about the nature and qual-ity of our experiences as human beings. So-cial and self stratifications cannot existapart from one another. To break the chainof our macro social structural slaveries, wecannot jump over our own knees, so tospeak, but need to understand and practi-cally change the micro structural slaveriesshaping our everyday inner lives and psy-ches, here and now.

111

IV

The contested theoretical identities ofMarx, Gurdjieff, and Mannheim in searchof the good life, eastern or western, are notisolated efforts in world-historical context.On the contrary, as fragmented voices find-ing their way into our contemporary imag-inations they encapsulate the three broadworld-historical movements of westernutopianism, eastern mysticism, and the ac-ademia. Using a nonreductive dialecticalconception of world-history in contrast tothe conceptions espoused respectively byMarx, Gurdjieff, and Mannheim, I havetried to construct an alternative view ofworld-history as a grand human architec-tural project of building inner and globalhuman harmony. World-history is viewedas a long-term and large-scale process ofsplitting of the intra- and inter/extraper-sonal realms of human life into a habituat-ed eastern vs. western civilizationaldualism whose transcendence has been,and will necessarily be, dependent uponconscious and intentional creative humaneffort. World-history is conceptualized as aprocess of nomadization, ruralization, ur-banization, and subsequent rise and disin-tegration (partly as a result of the firstmajor, Indo-European, nomadic invasionsof the south) of ancient civilizations, fol-lowed by a long era of imperial reintegra-tions of the world through increasinglysynchronous periods of classical politicaldomination, medieval cultural conversion,and ultimately modern economic exploita-tion for which the second major (centralAsian and north European) nomadic inva-sions paved the way. The modern world-system is a result not only of the ascen-dance of an economic form of imperial inte-gration of the world, but of the invention ofa new phenomenon in world-history whichmay best be characterized as “collective im-perialism.” Postmodernity and globaliza-tion today are expressions of the deepening

structural crisis of the modern world-sys-tem of collective imperialism.

Pointing out that world-history has ex-perienced not one, but two major renais-sances—during 600-400 BC and A.D. 1300-1500—each of which followed a long anddevastating process of nomadic invasionsof the south marking respectively the fall ofancient civilizations and the rise of moderneconomic imperialism, I have argued thatthe settled-nomadic dialectic in fact lies atthe root not only of the north-south, butalso of the east-west, nomenclature inworld-historical discourse. The by andlarge failing eastern and western renais-sances signified conscious and intentionalhuman efforts at integrating the fragment-ed philosophical, religious, and scientificdimensions of human creativity whichemerged after the fall of ancient civiliza-tions and reinforced by classical, medieval,and modern empires. This fragmentationhas essentially involved and perpetuated adualistic spatiotemporal distanciation ofthe intra- and inter/extrapersonal dimen-sion of social knowledge and transforma-tion, manifested in the lop-sidedemergence of oppositional utopian, mysti-cal, and academic traditions in humanistutopistics. The structural crisis of the mod-ern world-system involves both the self-de-structive tendency of collectiveimperialism

and

the potentially self-trans-forming power vested in human creativepowers to invent new humanist renais-sances on a global scale capable of criticallyreintegrating the lopsided utopian, mysti-cal, and academic fragments of humanistutopistics in search of alternative self andbroader social systemicities in the midst ofthe existing order, here and now. In theworld-historical dialectics of eastern mysti-cal and western utopian traditions, aca-demia has played a determining role—forbetter or worse. The failed renaissances ofthe past also signify failed academic effortsat defragmenting the philosophical, reli-gious, and scientific disciplinarities. A frag-

112

mented and “disciplined” academia, still inthe grips of matter/mind, self/society, andtheory/practice dualisms will continue tofail in fulfilling its mission of reintegratingthe essentially creative powers of human-kind in favor of the good life.

One may view Marx’s western utopia-nism, Gurdjieff’s eastern mysticism, andMannheim’s academic sociology of knowl-edge as mutually alienated and lop-sidedphilosophical, religious, and scientific frag-ments of humanist utopistics in moderntimes. The projection of human creativepowers onto “objective laws (or origins) ofmotion of nature or history,” “supernatu-ral” agencies, or select elites of remarkableintellectuals or party cadres, represents thedegree to which the very world-historicalagencies for human de-alienation havethemselves grown alienated from one an-other. The failing conscious and intentionalshocks of the two major eastern and west-ern humanist renaissances of the 4th-6thcenturies BC and of 13th-15th AD in bring-ing about a lasting dialectical synthesis ofthe three polarized and failing fragments ofutopistic endeavor, I argue, has given risein the modern period to the “antisystemic”mode of seeking social change which by itsvery nature of spatiotemporally distanciat-ing the actual means from the promisedends of social change has also proven to bean exercise in failure.

The way out of this world-historicalimpasse, I argue, is inventing new human-ist renaissances involving far-reaching andintegrative alternative-”civilizational” dia-logues across utopian, mystical, and aca-demic fragments of humanist utopistics.The answer lies in conscious and intention-al reclaiming and reconstitution of human-ist utopistics—informed by a view ofhuman society as a singular spatiotemporalensemble of diverse intra-, inter-, and ex-trapersonal self relations, and exercised byexample in the midst of life in the context ofcreative, self-de-alienating, self-harmoniz-ing, and globally self-expanding move-

ments beginning from the personal hereand now. Only through dialectical tran-scendence of philosophically perpetuatedreligious vs. scientific teleologies of world-historical change in favor of a consciousand intentional humanist teleology arisingfrom the creative powers of human beingsthemselves can substantively rational andreal advances be made towards building in-ner and global harmony. “Human architec-ture” is the art of imaginative design andconstruction of alternative spatiotemporaldialecticities between the personal self-identities here and now and long-term,large-scale, world-historical change.

In my dissertation I have tried to dem-onstrate that all philosophical, theoretical,and practical dualisms—which emanatefrom dichotomizations of reality into mat-ter and mind, and result in alienating selfand social knowledges and praxes—can beeffectively transcended through their re-ar-ticulation as diverse manifestations of part-whole dialectics. Developing and applyingan architectural approach to sociology, I ad-vocate the abandoning of “house storeys”and similar metaphors still subconsciouslyfragmenting psychosociological and histor-ical analyses. The habituated commonsense definition of society as “multiple”ethno-national and/or civilizational sys-tems of relations among “individuals”—based on ahistorical presumptions of hu-man “individuality”—is rejected in favor ofits definition as a singular world-historicalensemble of intra-, inter-, and extraperson-al self relations. It is argued that human lifecan be harmonious only when it is a world-system of self-determining individualities.Towards this end, the sociology of self-knowledge is proposed as an alternative re-search and pedagogical landscape forbuilding de-alienated and self-determininghuman realities.

The proposed sociology of self-knowl-edge and human architecture—twin fieldsof inquiry involving research on and prac-tice of spatiotemporal dialectics between

113

here-and-now personal self-identities andworld-historical social structures—are ex-ercises in applied sociology beginning inthe social spacetimes of our classrooms.They are meant to introduce students to ap-plied sociology not simply in theory, but inthe practice of their globally self-reflectiveresearch as part of their curricular assign-ments. I use audiovisual media and partic-ularly feature films to evoke not just theintellectual, but also the emotional and sen-sual selves of students in their learning ex-perience. I have found a reverse micro tomacro, present to past, ordering of socio-logical theories to be an invaluable strategyin exposing students to rather abstract the-oretical discussions. Seeing no dualism be-tween teaching and research, I approachteaching itself as a most important exercisein applied sociological research. For me,practicing what C. Wright Mills called thesociological imagination is not simply amotto but is an actual practical guide to bepursued by students first in the laboratoryof their global self-research assignmentsthroughout the semester. Examples of stu-dents’ works chronicled in the journal

Hu-man Architecture: Journal of the Sociology ofSelf-Knowledge

attest to the plausible valueof such a pedagogical strategy in teachingapplied sociology across diverse course of-ferings.

I have argued, more exhaustively in thedissertation and more briefly in the forego-ing, that the root cause of practical failuresin ending our self and social stratificationsis to be sought in the habituated structuresof our theoretical frameworks, world-his-torically inherited in terms of various dual-isms of mind/matter, self/society, theory/practice, and east/west. Recognizing thesignificance of challenges posed by the sub-conscious as a mediating region betweenmind and matter, redefining society and so-ciology in terms of interaction of selvesrather than of presumed “individuals,”adopting both micro/macro and integra-tive (not just selective or even eclectic) ap-

proach to various classical orcontemporary social theories, and beingopen to comparative cultural diversity inour theorizing efforts, I argue, would pro-vide a much more fruitful theoretical envi-ronment for the advancement of utopistics.To dehabituate from the alienating self andsocial structures preventing us fromachieving social justice, we need to findways to dehabituate ourselves from dualis-tic theoretical practices. We do not standapart from the contested theoretical identi-ties of the good life we have inherited fromthe past in world-history context; to recog-nize this and to move beyond contestationin favor of open and detached dialogueswould be a prerequisite for bringing abouteffective change in favor of the good life,without and within.

V

One crowd in religion ponder their way,One crowd in science supposedly stay,I fear one morning town crier shouts,“The way’s neither! O gone astray!”

—Omar Khayyam

If anything, Khayyam’s quatrain abovespeaks to the heart of our contested identi-ties in a world-history context. Our contest-ed identities habitually framed inphilosophy, religion, and science, have of-ten sidelined art and artistic endeavorsfrom assuming hegemonic standpoints inthe formulation of our theories of and strat-egies for change. Why not stop at this pointof interpreting our selves and world in pre-determined frameworks and start creatingnew ones in the here and nows of our innerand interpersonal lives? Really, whatmakes us not see Omar Khayyam (or Rumi,similarly), for instance, as social psycholo-gists, sociologists, historians, and appliedsocial theorists? Why can’t our sociologiesand historiographies be poetic, and ex-pressed in diverse art forms? Why do we

114

not see Rumi, who is more globally popularthan ever today, as an applied sociologist,social psychiatrist, and inner and worldhistorian, in his own right? Why should so-ciology and historiography not be at thesame time utopistic in substance, and artis-tic in form?

The Song of the Reed which opens Ru-mi’s book of spiritual couplets is anothervoice crying humankind’s alienated andcontested identities in search of loving rein-tegration and fulfillment in world-historycontext. This song with which I would liketo conclude my presentation is actually athree-fold song, woven delicately with oneanother as in a Persian carpet destined for amystical flight towards the good spirituallife. The meaning, the feeling, and the sen-sations are the three equally significant andvital elements of the poem, aimed at evok-ing, awakening, blending, and “cooking”our souls towards the experiencing of innerand global unity that can only be a precon-dition for experiencing the cosmic self-knowledge sought after in the mystical tra-dition. The three-foldness of the Song of theReed is of the essence for the eastern civili-zational utopistics of which it is a part. Tobridge it with the thoughts, feelings andsensibilities of a western audience engagedin western utopistics of varied kinds—i.e.,searching in their own western ways for thegood life around the globe and outsidethemselves—requires not one, not two, buta triple translation of its context, content,and form elements.

Western free-verse translations of Ru-mi’s Song of the Reed miss the whole pointof his applied social psychology and psy-chiatry when they omit its tropologicalrhyme from its truncated and overrationa-lised substantive meaning. The song is di-rected not just to one, but to all the threephysical, intellectual, and emotional cen-ters of the human organisms comprisinghis audience. The meaning of the poem interms of the alienation of humankind andthe need for efforts to give up worldly ha-

bituations in favor of the good spiritual lifeis of course one of the layers of the poem di-rected at the intellectual center of our or-ganism, to what comprises our wakingconsciousness. The reed metaphor, on theother hand, and all the subtle and complextropological symbolisms associated withthe metaphor is directed at our emotionalcenter, speaking to it in terms of the lan-guage of visualizations, which is the prima-ry language of communication with oursubconscious mind. Finally, the coupletform and rhythm of reed’s song as ex-pressed in the poem is a crucial third layerof the poem, directed at our sensibilities ofhearing, sight, and movements, aspects ofthe physical center of our organism. Thethree-fold nature of the poem in the origi-nal is, in short, of paradigmatic relevance tothe very thesis of the poem, which is theneed of human beings to free themselvesfrom habituations and addictions of theearth in favor of the good spiritual life. It isthe fragmented and independent function-ing of the three centers in the human organ-ism, and the alienated multiple selfhoodsresulting from it, that makes possible theperpetuation of habituated and addictivebehaviors in the human organism. Rumi’sseeking a “torn-torn, longing” heart ismeant to evoke our emotional sensibilitiesto join the whirling dance of his spiritualjourney. His references to the distinctionbetween soul and body, the limits of our earand tongue and eye sensibilities, are meantto evoke our physical selfhoods to tune into his reed’s song. His evoking our curiosi-ties about his secret is meant to evoke ourhigher intellectual selves to embark on thejourney of cosmic self-knowledge andchange.

Rumi’s Song of the Reed is not simplypreaching to us, but through the actual un-folding of his poem’s threefold architectureis participating in helping us transform ouridentities towards freedom from enslave-ments to worldly objects. He is speakingnot only to our conscious but to our uncon-

115

scious and subconscious minds, i.e., to thethree-fold minds of our intellectual, physi-cal, and emotional selves simultaneously,seeking to tear apart the veils and buffersthat separate the three centers from one an-other and all of them from lessons of world-history, preventing us from realizing the ut-ter sleepiness, imprisonment, mechanical-ness, and enslavement of our ordinary livesas alienated selves. The “secret” alluded toin the poem, i.e., the separation of body andsoul, the inner alienation of human physi-cal, intellectual, and emotional selves, is thefundamental and paradigmatic essence ofthe poem, a secret that is paradoxically be-ing given to us on the humble platter ofspiritual food by Rumi without our eyesand ears being able to “get the clue,” so tospeak. The voice of Rumi is another con-testing identity in world-history contextwhose aim is to do away with contestationsaltogether in favor of the good life throughthe unitary experiencing of human and cos-mic love.

Imagine a ceremony in the presence ofRumi, where one hears the soothing cries ofreeds in the background. Rumi suddenlyinterrupts them and sings his own reed’ssong:

Listen to how

this

reed is wailingAbout separa-tions it’s complaining:“From reedbed since parted was IMen, women,have cried my cry“Only a heart, torn-torn, longingCan hear mytales of belonging“Whosoever lost his essenceFor reuniting seekslessons“In the midst of all I criedFor the sad and happyboth sighed“But they heard only what

they

knewSoughtnot after the secrets

I

blew“My secret’s not far from this, my cryBut, eyeor ear catch not the light if don’t try“Body and soul each other do not veilBut thereis no one to hear

his soul’s

tale”What arises from the reed is fireWhoever lost it,is lost entireWhat set the reed on fire is love, loveWhat ragesin reed is nothing but love, love

Reed comes of use when lovers departIt’s wail-ing scales tear love’s veilings apartLike reed both poison and cure, who saw?Likereed comrade and devote, who saw?Reed tells of the bleeding heart’s talesTells ofwhat mad lovers’ love entailsWith the truth, only seeker’s intimateAs thetongue knows only ear’s estimateDays, nights, lost count in my sorrowPastmerged in my sorrow with tomorrowIf the day is gone, say: “So what! go, go!Butremain, O you pure, O my sorrow”This water‘s dispensable—not for the fishHun-gry finds days long without a dishCooked soul‘s unknowable if you’re rawThenthere is no use to tire the jawBreak the chain, . .. be free, ... O boy!How longwill you remain that gold’s toy?!Say you have oceans, but how can you pourAlloceans in a single day’s jar, more & more?!The greedy’s eye-jar will never fill upNo pearl,if oyster’s mouth doesn’t give upWhoever tore his robe in love’s affairTore free ofgreed, flaw, and false careJoy upon you! O sorrowful sweet love!O thehealer! healer of ills! love! love!O healer of the vain, of our shameO Galen inname, Platonic in fame!Earth’s whirling in heaven’s for

love

, loveHills’whirling round the earth’s for

love

, love

Love’s

the soul in hill! It’s

love

in the hillThatbrought hill down and Moses the chill!If coupled my lips with friends’ on and onI’lltell tales, like reed, long, longUncoupled, though, these lips will cease wailsLose tongue, though remain untold talesWhen the rose is dead, garden long goneNocanary can recite her song longThe lover is veiled, beloved’s the allVeil musttear to hear beloved’s callIf you do stay away from love, hear, hear!Like awingless bird you’ll die, fear, fear!How can I stay awake and see the roadIf lover’slight shine not on my abode?Love always seeks ways to spread the lightWhy, then, does your mirror reflect a night?Your mirror takes no tales, if need to know,‘Cause your rust keeps away all lights’ glow.

S

UGGESTED

B

IBLIOGRAPHY

116

Adorno, Theodor W. 1967. “The Sociology ofKnowledge and Its Consciousness.” In

Prisms

, London: Spearman.Adorno, Theodor W. 1973.

Negative Dialectics

.New York: Seabury Press.

Bailey, Leon. 1994.

Critical Theory and the Sociol-ogy of Knowledge: A Comparative Study inthe Theory of Ideology

. New York: PeterLang.

Baker, George and Walter Driscoll. 1992. “Gurd-jieff in America: An Overview.” In

Amer-ica's Alternative Religions

. SUNY Press,Albany.

Berger, Peter and Thomas Luckmann. [1966]1967.

The Social Construction of Reality: ATreatise in the Sociology of Knowledge

. Gar-den City, NY: Doubleday & Company,Inc.

Bourdieu, Pierre, and Loic J. Wacquant. 1992.

An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology.

Chi-cago: The University of Chicago Press.

Bourdieu, Pierre. 1998.

Practical Reason: On theTheory of Action.

Stanford: Stanford UnivPress.

Bourne, Russell, series editor. 1966.

Great Ages ofMan: A History of the World's Cultures

.New York: Time Incorporated.

Brook, Peter. (director). 1978. Feature Film:“Meetings with Remarkable Men.” NewYork: Remar Productions, Inc.

Buford, Thomas O. 1995.

In Search of a Calling:The College's Role in Shaping Identity

.Macon, Georgia: Mercer UniversityPress.

Cohen, G. A. 1978.

Marx's Theory of History: ADefense

. Princeton, New Jersey: PrincetonUniversity Press.

Collins, Randall. 1998.

The Sociology of Philoso-phies: A Global Theory of IntellectualChange

. Cambridge, Massachusetts: TheBelknap Press of Harvard UniversityPress.

Coser, Lewis. 1968. “Knowledge, Sociology of.”Pp. 428-435 in

The International Encyclope-dia of the Social Sciences

. New York: TheMacmillan Company and The Free Press.

Curtis, James E. and John Petras, eds. 1970.

TheSociology of Knowledge: A Reader

. NewYork and Washington: Praeger Publish-ers.

Deikman, Arthur J. 1982.

The Observing Self:Mysticism and Psychotherapy

. Boston: Bea-con Press.

Deikman, Arthur J. 1990.

The Wrong Way Home:Uncovering the Patterns of Cult Behavior inAmerican Society

. Boston: Beacon Press.Driscoll, J. Walter and the Gurdjieff Foundation

of California. 1985.

Gurdjieff: An Anno-

tated Bibliography, with an introductoryessay by Michel De Salzmann

. New York:Garland Press.

Driscoll, J. Walter. 1999.

Gurdjieff: a ReadingGuide,

Los Altos, California: GurdjieffElectronic Publishing.

(purchasable athttp://www.gurdjieff.org/G.htm)

Engels, Frederick. [1888] 1970. “Ludwig Feuer-bach and the End of Classical GermanPhilosophy.” Pp. 335-376 in

Karl Marx andFrederick Engels: Selected Works

. Moscow:Progress Publishers.

Engels, F. 1976.

Dialectics of Nature

. Moscow:Progress Publishers.

Finch, Henry Leroy. 1996. “Gurdjieff and theModern World.” Pp. 8-29 in

Gurdjieff:Essays and Reflections on the Man and hisTeaching

, edited by Jacob Needleman andGeorge Baker. New York: Continuum.

Foucault, Michel. 1972.

The Archeology of Knowl-edge and the Discourse on Language

. NY:Pantheon Books.

Foucault, Michel. 1995.

Discipline and Punish

.Translated by Alan Sheridan. NY: Vin-tage/Random House.

Foucault, Michel. 1973.

Madness and Civilization:A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason

.Translated by R. Howard. NY: Vintage/Random House.

Fromm, Erich. [1956] 2000. The Art of Loving.NY: HarperCollins.

Fromm, Erich. [1976] 1996. To Have or To Be.NY: Continuum.

Garaudy, Roger. [1964] 1967.

KarlMarx: The Evolution of His Thought

. NewYork: International Publishers.

Gulbenkian Commission. 1996.

Open the SocialSciences: Report of the Gulbenkian Commis-sion on the Restructuring of the Social Sci-ences

. Stanford: Stanford UniversityPress.

Gurdjieff, G. I. [1933] 1973.

Herald of ComingGood: First Appeal to ContemporaryHumanity.

New York: Samuel Weiser Inc.Gurdjieff, G. I. 1950.

All and Everything: Beelze-bub's Tales to His Grandson

. First Edition.New York: Harcourt, Brace and Com-pany.

Gurdjieff, G. I. 1973.

Views from the Real World:Early Talks of G.I. Gurdjieff

. New York:Arkana/Penguin Books.

Gurdjieff, G. I. [1963] 1985.

Meetings withRemarkable Men

. New York and London:Viking Arkana.

Gurdjieff, G. I. [1981] 1991.

Life is Real OnlyThen, When “I AM.”

New York and Lon-don: Viking Arkana/Triangel Editions,Inc.

117

Gurdjieff, G. I. 1992.

All and Everything: Beelze-bub's Tales to His Grandson

. Second Edi-tion. New York and London: VikingArkana/Triangle Editions, Inc.

Habermas, Jurgen. 1973.

Theory and Practice

.Boston: Beacon Press.

Harvey, David. 1990.

The Condition of Postmoder-nity

. MA: Basil Blackwell.Harvey, David. 1996.

Justice, Nature & the Geog-raphy of Difference

. Oxford: BlackwellPublishers Ltd.

Harvey, David. 2000.

Spaces of Hope

. Berkeley:University of California Press.

Harvey, David. 2001.

Spaces of Capital

. London:Routledge.

Haschak, Paul G. 1994.

Utopian/Dystopian Litera-ture: A Bibliography of Literary Criticism

.Metuchen, N.J., & London: The Scare-crow Press, Inc.

Hegel, G. W. F. 1975.

Hegel's Logic

. Translated byWilliam Wallace with foreword by J. N.Findlay. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Hegel, G. W. F. 1969.

Hegel's Science of Logic

.Translated by A. V. Miller. London:Humanity Books.

Hoffman, John. 1976.

Marxism and the Theory ofPraxis

. New York: International Publish-ers.

Hopkins, Terence K., Immanuel Wallerstein,and Associates. 1982.

World-Systems Anal-ysis: Theory and Methodology

. BeverlyHills: Sage Publication, Inc.

Horkheimer, Max. 1947.

Eclipse of Reason

. NY:Seabury Press.

Horkheimer, Max. 1974.

Critical Theory: Selected

Essays. NY: Seabury Press.Horkheimer, Max. 1990. “A New Concept of

Ideology?” Pp. 140-157 in

The Sociology ofKnowledge Dispute

, edited by Volker Mejaand Nico Stehr. London and New York:Routhledge.

Horkheimer, Max and Theodor W. Adorno.1972.

Dialectic of Enlightenment

. NY:Seabury Press.

Horton, Robin and Ruth Finnegan, eds. 1973.

Modes of Thought: Essays on Thinking inWestern and Non-Western Societies

. Lon-don: Faber & Faber.

Kateb, George. [1963] 1972.

Utopia and Its Ene-mies

. Schocken Books.Kateb, George. 1968. “Utopias and Utopia-

nism.” Pp. 267-70 in

The InternationalEncyclopedia of the Social Sciences

, editedby David L. Sills, vol. 16. New York: TheMacmillan Company and The Free Press.

Kateb, George. [1967] 1972. “Utopias and Utopi-anism.” Pp. 212-215 in

The Encyclopedia ofPhilosophy

, vol. 8. New York: Macmillan

Publishing Co., Inc. & The Free Press.Kettler, David and Volker Meja. 1993. “Intro-

duction.” In

From Karl Mannheim

, editedby Wolff. Kurt H. New Brunswick: Trans-action Publishers.

Kettler, David and Volker Meja. 1995.

Karl Man-nheim and the Crisis of Liberalism: TheSecret of These New Times

. New Brunswickand London: Transaction Publishers.

Kettler, David, Volker Meja and Nico Stehr.1984.

Karl Mannheim

. New York: Tavis-tock Publications.

Kuhn, Thomas S. 1962.

The Structure of ScientificRevolutions

. Chicago: The University ofChicago Press.

Kumar, Krishan. 1991.

Utopianism

. Minneapolis:Univeristy of Minnesota Press.

Lefebvre, Henri. 1991.

The Production of Space

.Translated by Donald Nicholson Smith.Oxford: Blackwell.

Lenin. V. I. [1913] 1968. “The Three Sources andThree Component Parts of Marxism.” Pp.62-67 in

Marx, Engels, Marxism

. Moscow:Progress.

Lenin, V. I. 1977.

Philosophical Note-books

. In

Collected Works

, vol. 38. Moscow:Progress Publishers.

Lenin, V. I. 1977.

Selected Works

. Mos-cow: Progress Publishers.

Levin, Jerome David. 1992.

Theories of the Self

.Washington: Hemisphere PublishingCorporation.

Lukacs, Georg. [1923] 1971.

History and ClassConsciousness: Studies in Marxist Dialec-tics

. Translated by Rodney Livingstone.Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press.

McCarthy, E. Doyle. 1996.

Knowledge As Culture:The New Sociology of Knowledge

. NewYork: Routledge.

McLellan, David. 1977.

Karl Marx: His Life andThought

. New York: Harper ColophonBooks.

McLellan, David. 1979.

Marxism after Marx: AnIntroduction

. New York: Harper & RowPublishers.

McMurtry, John. 1978.

The Structure of Marx'sWorld-View. Princeton: Princeton Univer-sity Press.

Mannheim, Karl. 1990. “Competition as a Cul-tural Phenomenon.” In The Sociology ofKnowledge Dispute, edited by Volker Mejaand Nico Stehr. London and New York:Routhledge.

Mannheim, Karl. 1936. Ideology and Utopia.Translated by Louis Wirth and EdwardShils. New York: Harcourt Brace andCompany, Harvest Books.

118

Mannheim, Karl. [1940] 1981. Man and Society inan Age of Reconstruction. London: Rout-ledge Kegan & Paul.

Manuel, F. E. and F. P. Manuel. 1979. UtopianThought in the Western World. New Jersey:Humanities.

Marcuse, Herbert. 1990. “Sociological Methodand the Problem of Truth.” Pp. 129- 139in The Sociology of Knowledge Dispute,edited by Volker Meja and Nico Stehr.London and New York: Routhledge.

Marcuse, Herbert. 1954. Reason and Revolution:Hegel and the Rise of Social Theory. NY: Bea-con Press.

Marcuse, Herbert. 1955. Eros and Civilization: APhilosophical Inquiry into Freud. Boston:Beacon Press.

Marcuse, Herbert. 1958. One-Dimensional Man.Boston: Beacon Press.

Marcuse, Herbert. 1958. Soviet Marxism: A Criti-cal Analysis. NY: Vintage Books.

Markovic, Mihailo. 1974. From Affluence toPraxis. Boston: Beacon Press.

Marx, Karl. 1967a. Capital. Vol. 1. New York:International Publishers. Ninth 1979printing.

Marx, Karl. [1859] 1970. A Contributionto the Critique of the Political Economy.Edited with and Introduction by MauriceDobb. New York: International Publish-ers.

Marx, Karl. [1859] 1970. “Preface.” Pp.19-23 in A Contribution to the Critique ofthe Political Economy. Edited with andIntroduction by Maurice Dobb. NewYork: International Publishers.

Marx, Karl. 1970. “Letter to F. Mehring,” datedJuly 1893, 1858, pp. 495-497 in Karl Marxand Frederick Engels. Selected Works, vol.3. Moscow: Progress Publishers.

Marx, Karl. 1973. Grundrisse: Founda-tions of the Critique of Political Economy.New York: Vintage Books.

Marx, Karl. 1975. “Letter to Engels,” dated Jan-uary 14, 1858, pp. 93 in Karl Marx andFrederick Engels. Selected Correspondence.Moscow: Progress Publishers. Thirdrevised edition.

Marx, Karl and Frederick Engels. Vol. 1:1969,Vol. 2:1969, Vol. 3:1970. Selected Works.Moscow: Progress Publishers.

Marx Karl and Frederick Engels. 1975. SelectedCorrespondence. Moscow: Progress Pub-lishers. Third revised edition.

Marx, Karl and Friedrich Engels. 1978. TheMarx-Engels Reader, edited by Robert C.Tucker. 2nd edition. New York: W. W.Norton & Company.

Marx, Karl and Frederick Engels. 1975-. Col-lected Works. New York: InternationalPublishers.

Marx, K., Frederick Engels, and V. I.Lenin. 1978a. On Dialectical Materialism.Moscow: Progress Publishers.

Marx, K., Frederick Engels, and V. I. Lenin.1978b. On Communist Society. Moscow:Progress Publishers. Third revised edi-tion.

Mead, George Herbert. 1934. Mind, Self and Soci-ety. Chicago, Illinois: University of Chi-cago Press.

Mead, George Herbert. 1938. The Philosophy ofthe Act. Chicago: University of ChicagoPress.

Mead, George Herbert. [1959] 1981. The Philoso-phy of the Present. Chicago: University ofChicago Press.

Meja, Volker and Nico Stehr, eds. 1990. The Soci-ology of Knowledge Dispute. London andNew York: Routhledge.

Meja, Volker and David Kettler. 1993. “Intro-duction.” In From Karl Mannheim, by KurtH. Wolff, New Brunswick: TransactionPublishers.

Merton, Robert K. [1949] 1957. Social Theory andSocial Structure. Glencoe, Ill.: The FreePress.

Mills, C. Wright. 1940. “Methodological Conse-quences of the Sociology of Knowledge.”American Journal of Sociology 46:316-330.

Mills, C. Wright. 1953. Character and Social Struc-ture: The Psychology of Social Institutions.New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.

Mills, C. Wright. 1959. The Sociological Imagina-tion. New York: Oxford University Press.

Moore, James. 1991. Gurdjieff: The Anatomy of aMyth. Rockport, Massachausetts: Elment.

More, Sir Thomas [1516] 1965. Utopia. NewYork: Penguin Books.

Mukherjee, Ramkrishna. 1978. What Will It Be?:Explorations in Inductive Sociology.Durham, North Carolina: Carolina Aca-demic Press.

Mumford, Lewis. 1941. The Story of Utopias.New York: Peter Smith.

Needleman, Jacob. 1993. “G. I. Gurdjieff andHis School.” Pp. 359-379 in Modern Eso-teric Spirituality (part of the series WorldSpirituality: An Encyclopedic History of theReligious Quest) edited by Antoine Faivreand Jacob Needleman. London: SCMPress Ltd.

Needleman, Jacob. 1996. “Introduction.” Pp. ix-xii in Gurdjieff: Essays and Reflections onthe Man and his Teaching, edited by JacobNeedleman and George Baker. New

119

York: Continuum.Negley, Glen. [1977] 1978. Utopian Literature: A

Bibliography with a Supplementary Listingof Works Influential in Utopian Thought.University Press of Kansas.

Nicoll, Maurice. 1985. Psychological Commentar-ies on the Teaching of Gurdjieff & Ouspensky.Volume One. Boston & London: Shamb-hala.

Ouspensky, P.D. 1949. In Search of the Miracu-lous: Fragments of an Unknown Teaching.New York: Harcourt Brace JovanovichPublishers.

Pilcher, Jane. 1994. “Mannheim's Sociology ofGenerations: An Undervalued Legacy.”British Journal of Sociology 3:481-495.

Popper, Karl, R. 1963. The Open Society and ItsEnemies. 2 vols. New York: Harper Torch-books.

Popper, Karl, R. 1970. “The Sociology of Knowl-edge.” Pp. 282-306 in The Sociology ofKnowledge: A Reader, edited by James E.Curtis and John Petras. New York andWashington: Praeger Publishers.(Reprinted from The Open Society and ItsEnemies. 2 vol. NJ: Princeton UniversityPress. 1963).

Remmling, Gunter W. 1975. The Sociology of KarlMannheim: With a Bibliographical Guide tothe Sociology of Knowledge, Ideological anal-ysis, and Social Planning. London: Rout-ledge & Kegan Paul.

Rosdolsky, Roman.1977. The Making ofMarx's ‘Capital.’London: Pluto Press.

Rumi (Molana Jalaleddin). Masnavi-e Ma’navi(Spiritual Couplets).

Scheler, Max. 1978. Problems of a Sociology ofKnowledge. Translated by Manfred S.Frings, edited and with an introductionby Kenneth W. Stikkers. London: Rout-ledge & Kegan Paul.

Shannon, Thomas Richard. 1989. An Introduc-tion to the World-System Perspective. Boul-der, San Francisco, & London: WestviewPress.

Shun, Kwong-loi. 1995. “Chinese Philosophy.”Pp. 130-132 in The Oxford Companion toPhilosophy, edited by Ted Honderich.Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Shils, Edward. 1968. “Mannheim, Karl.” Pp.557-562 in The International Encyclopedia ofthe Social Sciences, edited by David L.Sills, vol. 16. New York: The MacmillanCompany and The Free Press.

Shils, Edward. 1995. “Karl Mannheim.” TheAmerican Scholar 64, 2, Spring: 221-235.

Singer, Peter. 1995. “Hegel, George WilhelmFriedrich.” Pp. 339-343. in The OxfordCompanion to Philosophy, edited by Ted

Honderich. Oxford: Oxford UniversityPress.

Snodgrass, Mary Ellen. 1995. Encyclopedia ofUtopian Literature. Santa Barbara, Califor-nia: ABC-CLIO.

Soja, Edward. 1993. “History: Geography:Modernity.” Pp. 135-150 in The CulturalStudies: A Reader, edited by Simon Dur-ing. New York and London: Routledge.

Speeth, Kathleen Riordan. 1989. The GurdjieffWork. NY: Jeremy P. Tarcher/Perigee.

Stark, Werner. 1958. The Sociology of Knowledge:An Essay in Aid of A Deeper Understandingof the History of Ideas. Glencoe, Ill.: TheFree Press.

Stark, Werner. [1967] 1972. “Sociology ofKnowledge.” Pp. 475-478 in The Encyclo-pedia of Philosophy, vol. 7. New York: Mac-millan Publishing Co., Inc. & The FreePress.

Tamdgidi, Mohammad H., ed. 1997. ‘I’ in theWorld-System: Stories From An Odd Sociol-ogy Class, (Selected Student Writings, Soc.280Z: Sociology of Knowledge: Mysticism,Utopia, Science). Limited Edition. Bing-hamton: Crumbling Façades Press.

Tamdgidi, Mohammd H. 1999. “Ideology andUtopia in Mannheim: Towards the Soci-ology of Self Knowledge,” Presented atthe History of Sociology RefereedRoundtable Session of the AmericanSociological Association, 94th AnnualMeeting, August 6-10 1999, Chicago.Reprinted in Human Architecture:Journal of the Sociology of Self-Knowl-edge, Fall, 2002, 120-139.

TTamdgidi, Mohammad-Hossein. 2002. “Mysti-cism and Utopia: Towards the Sociologyof Self-Knowledge and Human Archite-cure (A Study in Marx, Gurdjieff, andMannheim).” Ph.D. Dissertation, Bing-hamton University (SUNY).

Tamdgidi, Mohammad H. 2001. “Open theAntisystemic Movements: The Book, theConcept, and the Reality” Review, XXIV,2:301-338.

Taylor. C.C.W. 1995. “Socrates.” Pp. 836-837 inThe Oxford Companion to Philosophy,edited by Ted Honderich. Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press.

Thayer, H.S. [1967] 1972. “Pragmatism.” Pp.430-436 in The Encyclopedia of Philosophy,vol. 6. New York: Macmillan PublishingCo., Inc. & The Free Press.

Tillich, Paul. 1990. “On Ideology and Utopia.”Pp. 107-112 in The Sociology of KnowledgeDispute, edited by Volker Meja and NicoStehr. London and New York: Routh-ledge.

120

Tucker, Robert, C., ed. 1978. The Marx-EngelsReader. 2nd edition. New York: W. W.Norton & Company.

Turner, Bryan S. 1995. “Karl Mannheim's Ideol-ogy and Utopia.” Political StudiesXLIII:718-727.

Turner, Bryan S. 1998. “Preface to thenew edition.” In Ideology and Utopia. Lon-don: Routhledge.

Vazques, Adolf S. 1977. The Philosophy of Praxis.Prometheus Books.

Vigadski, Vitalis. 1974. The Story of aGreat Discovery: How Karl Marx Wrote“Capital.” Abacus Press.

Wallerstein, Immanuel. l974. The Modern World-System, I: Capitalist Agriculture and theOrigins of the European World-Economy inthe Sixteenth Century. New York & Lon-don: Academic Press.

Wallerstein, Immanuel. l979. The CapitalistWorld-Economy. Cambridge: CambridgeUniv. Press.

Wallerstein, Immanuel. l989. “Culture as theIdeological Battleground of the ModernWorld-System,” Journal of Social Studies,XXI, l:5-22.

Wallerstein, Immanuel. 1990. “Braudel on Capi-talism, or Everything Upside Down.” InModern Age - Modern Hitorian. Edited byFerenc Glatz, Budapest.

Wallerstein, Immanuel. 1991a. Unthinking SocialScience: The Limits of Nineteenth CenturyParadigms. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Wallerstein, Immanuel. 1991b. Geopolitics andGeoculture: Essays on the Changing World-System. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ.Press.

Wallerstein, Immanuel. 1996. Historical Capital-ism with Capitalist Civilization. Londonand New York: Verso.

Wallerstein, Immanuel. 1998a. Utopistics: Or,Historical Choices of the Twenty-First Cen-tury. New York: The New Press.

Wallerstein, Immanuel, ed. 1998b. Mentoring,Methods, and Movements: Colloquium inHonor of Terence K. Hopkins by His FormerStudents. Binghamton: Fernand BraudelCenter (co-publisher: Ahead DesktopPublishing House).

Wallerstein, Immanuel. 1999. The End of theWorld As We Know It: Social Science for theTwenty-First Century. Minneapolis: Uni-versity of Minnesota Press.

Wallerstein, Immanuel. 2000. “Where ShouldSociologists Be Heading?” ContemporarySociology 29, 2:306-308.

Weber, Alfred. 1927. Ideen zur Staats- und Kultur-soziologie. Karlsruhe.

Weber, Max. [1930] 1958. The Protestant Ethic andthe Spirit of Capitalism. Translated by Tal-cott Parsons, New York: Charles Scrib-ner's Sons.

White, Hayden, V. [1967] 1972. “Feuerbach,Ludwig Andreas.” Pp. 190-2 in The Ency-clopedia of Philosophy, vol. 3. New York:Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc. & TheFree Press.

Williams, Raymond. 1958. Culture and Society:1780-1950. Harmonsworth: Penguin.

Williams, Robin M., Jr. 1966. “Some furtherComments on Chronic Controversies.”American Journal of Sociology LXXI,May:717-21.

Wilson Organ, Troy. 1975. Western Approaches toEastern Philosophy. Athens, Ohio: OhioUniversity Press.

Wolff, Kurt H. 1983. “A Preliminary Inquiryinto the Sociology of Knowledge fromthe Standpoint of the Study of Man.” InBeyond the Sociology of Knowledge: AnIntroduction and a Development. New York:University Press of America.

Wolff. Kurt H. [1971] 1993. From Karl Mannheim.New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers.

Young, T. R. 1972. New Sources of Self. New York:Pergamon Press Inc.

Young, T. R. 1990. The Drama of Social Life: Essaysin Post-Modern Social Psychology. NewBrunswick: Transaction Publishers.

Young-Eisendrath, Polly and James A. Hall.1987. The Book of the Self. New York andLondon: New York University Press.

Zurcher, Louis A., Jr. 1977. The Mutable Self: ASelf-Concept for Social Change. BeverlyHills: Sage Publications.