Word: notional
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Suddenly it has become respectable -in fact desirable-to display an ethnic background. It offers an escape from current insecurity and uncertainty, a return to something fixed and firm. It is also part of the contemporary retreat from the notion of the American melting pot. The phenomenon poses-as it does in the case of blacks, Chicanos and Jews-the question of whether the proliferation of a lot of selfabsorbed, self-contained communities is any improvement over the concept of a common citizenry. Along with the release of pride and energy, the ethnic movement has given rise to a certain...
There are signs aplenty that the ethic is being challenged, and not just by welfare recipients. In offices and factories, many Americans appear to reject the notion that "labor is good in itself." More and more executives retire while still in their 50s, dropping out of jobs in favor of a life of ease. People who work often take every opportunity to escape. In auto plants, for example, absenteeism has doubled since the early 1960s, to 5% of the work force; on Mondays and Fridays it commonly climbs to 15%. In nearly every industry, employees are increasingly refusing overtime work...
Such changes mark the boundaries between periods of intellectual history. Yet Foucault insists that the episteme is not merely the latest effort to keep alive the notion of the Zeitgeist, "the spirit of the time" Foucault claims only that "the relations that I have described are valid in order to define a particular configuration: they are not signs to describe the face of a culture in its totality." A change in epistemes occurs at different times for different thinkers and disciplians, and is partially independent of the shifts in social and political history which have often been used to mark...
...task is the most radical aspect of the new, post-Marxian history, and it has two major consequences. It displaces the idea of the present subject who can transcend the limitations of time by organizing and "understanding" history, and thus recover the past intact. It also breaks down the notion of continuous history based on the flow of cause and effect, on social or cultural analogy, or, ultimately, on the necessary unfolding of an ideal pattern...
...arbiter of the nation's morals. Justice Potter Stewart said that he could not define hard-core pornography, "but I know it when I see it." This makes good sense but not necessarily good law. If the Supreme Court does not act, lesser bodies will. One debatable notion is to let local communities cope with the problem, and proponents of local option argue that this might actually be a more liberal solution than trying to devise a single national standard that might have to accommodate the most conservative communities. On the other hand, if local governments begin to make...