Sectarian Forms (1979)

[jondwhite]

I thought this might be interesting.

Quote:

1) They often have a theological character, based on the content of the belief systems of sects rather than on the social structure.
2) Their roots lie in an 'essentialist' tradition of static hierarchical classifications of dynamic phenomena.

http://averypublicsociologist.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/sectarianism-and-far-left.html

[ALB]

Quote:

Their roots lie in an 'essentialist' tradition of static hierarchical classifications of dynamic phenomena.

The rest of it reads like a spoof too.

[jondwhite]

Haven't read the PDF yet but doesn't 'essentialist' in this context mean when groups claiming they are the true definition of anything essentially semantic?

[ALB]

Maybe, but there's more (from the blogger not the PhD):

Quote:

The argument proceeds to the exposition of grid and group, both as a 'polythetic' system of classification and as one based on a matrix rather than a hierarchy. This provides us with a potentially dynamic classificatory approach. (…) Utopianism is discussed in the framework of the relationship posited by grid and group, between spatial and temporal aspects of the cosmology and the social structure.

What is "polythetic" and what's cosmology got to do with?

[alanjjohnstone]

When it begins with an analysis of Plato and Aristotle regards the Left…i simply skimmed the rest 

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