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This article is a history of liquidity presented as interaction between metaphors and theoretical concepts in social contexts. While taking note of Zygmunt Bauman’s metaphor “liquid modernity,” the study instead surveys the wider conceptual field. The text turns around mercantile liquidity (liquidity as clarification) and liquidity in modern economics (characteristic of all assets), as well as older metaphors, notably the famous phrase of the Communist Manifesto, “all that is solid melts into air” (Alles Ständische und Stehende verdampft), which is revealed to have resonance in texts by poets, notably Heinrich Heine. The main result is the historical consistency of the field, where liquidity is a promise of knowledge and clarity.

What’s in the Dish? Comments on Franklin’s In Vitro Anthropos Hannah Landecker

Conceptual Clarity for Conception Frameworks: Comments on Franklin’s In Vitro Anthropos Charis Thompson

Reply Sarah Franklin

This article examines the conceptual structure of the Social City Program as it has been formulated in legislation and applied in practice. It raises serious questions as to the actual impact of the program as formulated, and suggests that conceptual clarity may help both to expose its flaws and to propose alternate positive potentials. The program has a complex intellectual underlay, and clarity in the concepts used can avoid some potential dangers in its implementation. More specifically, integration is not the opposite of exclusion, and inclusion is not the same as reducing poverty. Spatial clustering can either support or weaken solidarity. Enclaves and ghettos are not the same thing, although both reflect a clustering of population groups. Finally, emphasizing "social capital" can be a way of highlighting the strength of the oppressed or blaming them for their own oppression-and these distinctions are loaded with consequences for policy.

I am very pleased and honoured to have this opportunity to speak at a gathering of the Muslim delegates in London. For the sake of brevity and clarity, I shall limit my comments in general to the Muslim community in this country, though much of what I say may equally be applied to the Muslims in general. Furthermore, since the Maimonides Foundation is an interfaith organisation and does not comment on political issues, I shall steer clear of politics.

In this article, I argue that individuals could be entitled to rights, outside those that are communally conferred, as part of the primary requirement of being ‘persons’ in the African communitarian set-up if the terms ‘person’ and ‘personhood’ are understood differently from the way they are currently deployed in the communitarian discourse. The distinction between these two terms is the basis of my thesis where clarity on their meanings could be helpful in establishing the possibility of ascribing rights outside those that are communally conferred. I argue that ontologically, a ‘person’ is prior to ‘personhood’ (understood in the normative sense) which is considered to find its fuller expression in a community and by virtue of this, I think that he or she is entitled to some rights outside those that are defined and conferred by the community. This is my point of departure in this article.

This article attempts to record and examine the way that Catholic and Protestant thinkers reacted to Durkheim's work. The bulk, but by no means all, of their reflections relate to religion, especially after the publication of Les formes élémentaires. Surprisingly, there were some who praised Durkheim for his clarity and imagination. The specific aspects of his work dealt with here are: the nature of religion, its definition, the role of the social and individual, the nature of God, effervescent gatherings. In relation to these, and other topics, the writings of Catholics such as Besse, Bureau, Deploige, Lemonnyer, and Protestants, Boegner, Bois, Richard, Paul Sabatier, are considered. One conclusion is that, surprisingly or otherwise, the substantial criticisms of Durkheim are similar to both Catholics and Protestants. Another is that this kind of material is a necessary prelude to the study of the later development of the sociology of religion in France.