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64-451: Ernest André Gellner FRAI (9 December 1925 – 5 November 1995) was a British - Czech philosopher and social anthropologist described by The Daily Telegraph , when he died, as one of the world's most vigorous intellectuals, and by The Independent as a "one-man crusader for critical rationalism ". His first book, Words and Things (1959), prompted a leader in The Times and

128-722: A city he later spent years longing for. In 1939, when Gellner was 13, the rise of Adolf Hitler in Germany persuaded his family to leave Czechoslovakia and move to St Albans , just north of London , where Gellner attended St Albans Boys Modern School, now Verulam School (Hertfordshire). At the age of 17, he won a scholarship to Balliol College, Oxford , as a result of what he called "Portuguese colonial policy", which involved keeping "the natives peaceful by getting able ones from below into Balliol." At Balliol, he studied Philosophy, Politics and Economics (PPE) and specialised in philosophy. He interrupted his studies after one year to serve with

192-578: A fairly influential professor at LSE. He evolved, he had an idea of a great chain of being where the lowest form of life was the drunk, Polish, anti-Semitic peasant and the next stage was the Polish gentry, a bit better, or the Staedtl, better still. And then he came to England, first to University College under Dawes Hicks , who was quite rational (not all that rational—he still had some anti-Semitic prejudices, it seems) and finally ended up at LSE with Hobhouse, who

256-565: A friendship with the Moroccan-French sociologist Paul Pascon , whose work he admired. In 1983, Gellner published Nations and Nationalism . For Gellner, " nationalism is primarily a political principle that holds that the political and the national unit should be congruent". Gellner argues that nationalism appeared and became a sociological necessity only in the modern world. In previous times ("the agro-literate" stage of history), rulers had little incentive to impose cultural homogeneity on

320-518: A lawyer, an urban intellectual German-speaking Austrian Jewish couple from Bohemia (which, since 1918, was part of the newly established Czechoslovakia ). Julius Gellner was his uncle. He was brought up in Prague , attending a Czech language primary school before entering the English-language grammar school. This was Franz Kafka 's tricultural Prague: antisemitic but "stunningly beautiful",

384-483: A letter to The Times . A response from Ryle and a lengthy correspondence ensued. In the 1950s, Gellner discovered his great love of social anthropology . Chris Hann, director of the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology , writes that following the hard-nosed empiricism of Bronisław Malinowski , Gellner made major contributions to the subject over the next 40 years, ranging from "conceptual critiques in

448-830: A month-long correspondence on its letters page over his attack on linguistic philosophy . As the Professor of Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method at the London School of Economics for 22 years, the William Wyse Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Cambridge for eight years, and head of the new Centre for the Study of Nationalism in Prague , Gellner fought all his life—in his writing, teaching and political activism—against what he saw as closed systems of thought, particularly communism , psychoanalysis , relativism and

512-665: A more authoritarian way when feeling threatened. According to a study by Brandt and Henry, there is a direct correlation between the rates of gender inequality and the levels of authoritarian ideas in the male and female populations. It was found that in countries with less gender equality where individualism was encouraged and men occupied the dominant societal roles, women were more likely to support traits such as obedience which would allow them to survive in an authoritarian environment and less likely to encourage ideas such as independence and imagination. In countries with higher levels of gender equality, men held less authoritarian views. It

576-441: A need to wield power and be tough, which arise from the anxieties produced by the perceived lapses of people who do not abide by the conventions and social norms of society (destructiveness and cynicism); a general tendency to focus upon people who violate the value system , and to act oppressively against them (authoritarian aggression); anti-intellectualism , a general opposition to the subjective and imaginative tendencies of

640-607: A period of over 150 years, providing a unique historical record of the discipline and of the Institute itself. Much unpublished textual and visual material entrusted to the RAI over the years is held in the manuscript collection, which is being conserved and catalogued on a continuing basis. Access to the RAI Collection is free to all RAI Fellows, Members, Student Associates and all undergraduate students by prior appointment. Others may visit

704-523: A product of evolution, with the individual as its basic unit, the subtext being that society would improve over time as it evolved, a teleological view that Gellner firmly opposed. Ginsberg... was totally unoriginal and lacked any sharpness. He simply reproduced the kind of evolutionary rationalistic vision which had already been formulated by Hobhouse and which incidentally was a kind of extrapolation of his own personal life: starting in Poland and ending up as

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768-401: A psychological exploration of modern politics, Erich Fromm described authoritarianism as a defence mechanism . In The Authoritarian Personality (1950), Theodor W. Adorno , Else Frenkel-Brunswik , Daniel Levinson , and Nevitt Sanford proposed a personality type that involved the "potentially fascistic individual". The historical background that influenced the theoretical development of

832-423: A psychological need for domination , and who harshly threaten their child to compel obedience to conventional behaviors. Moreover, such domineering parents also are preoccupied with social status , a concern they communicate by having the child follow rigid, external rules. In consequence of such domination, the child suffers emotionally from the suppression of his or her feelings of aggression and resentment towards

896-460: A score range of 20 to 180 points. Morning Consult found that 25.6% of American adults qualify as "high RWA" (scoring between 111 and 180 points), while 13.4% of American adults qualify as "low RWA" (scoring 20 to 63 points). In a 2009 book, Marc J. Hetherington and Jonathan D. Weiler identified evangelical Protestants as the most authoritarian of voting blocs in the United States. Furthermore,

960-515: A territorial level, there is competition for the overlapping catchment areas (such as Alsace-Lorraine ). To maintain its grip on resources and its survival and progress, the state and culture must for these reasons be congruent. Nationalism, therefore, is a necessity. Fellow of the Royal Anthropological Institute The Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland ( RAI )

1024-700: A thesis on Organisation and the Role of a Berber Zawiya and became Professor of Philosophy , Logic and Scientific Method just one year later. Thought and Change was published in 1965, and in State and Society in Soviet Thought (1988), he examined whether Marxist regimes could be liberalised. He was elected to the British Academy in 1974. He moved to Cambridge in 1984 to head the Department of Anthropology , holding

1088-465: A tradition of scholarship with services to anthropologists, including students. The RAI promotes the public understanding of anthropology, as well as the contribution anthropology can make to public affairs and social issues. It includes within its constituency not only academic anthropologists, but also those with a general interest in the subject, and those trained in anthropology who work in other fields. The institute's fellows are lineal successors to

1152-484: A whole', embracing social anthropology , archaeology , biological anthropology and the study of material culture . A Special (fifth) issue was inaugurated in 2006. The Special Issue appears annually, is guest-edited or single-authored, and addresses different themes in anthropology from year to year. Anthropology Today is a bimonthly publication aiming to provide a forum for the application of anthropological analysis to public and topical issues, while reflecting

1216-514: Is a crucial variable in activating an authoritarian disposition. They suggest this helps to explain higher rates of authoritarianism in developing countries, after social or economic crises, as well as security crises like September 11th . The authors believe that some people, who tend to be more pessimistic and experience higher levels of stress and must rely more on instinct than cognition for decision-making, while those who under normal circumstances are more optimistic and at-ease, will also respond in

1280-496: Is a long-established anthropological organisation, and Learned Society , with a global membership. Its remit includes all the component fields of anthropology , such as biological anthropology , evolutionary anthropology , social anthropology , cultural anthropology , visual anthropology and medical anthropology , as well as sub-specialisms within these, and interests shared with neighbouring disciplines such as human genetics , archaeology and linguistics . It seeks to combine

1344-529: Is called the Right-wing authoritarianism (RWA) and the second is called the social dominance orientation (SDO). Bob Altemeyer used the right-wing authoritarianism (RWA) scale, to identify, measure, and quantify the personality traits of authoritarian people. The political personality type identified with the RWA scale indicates the existence of three psychological tendencies and attitudinal clusters characteristic of

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1408-708: Is free to individual users; institutional users (except those in developing countries) pay an annual subscription. Major European and other languages of scholarship are covered, and new material is added on a continuing basis. The Indian Antiquary was published under the authority of the Council of the Royal Anthropological Institute from 1925 to 1932. The RAI has a unique reference and research collection comprising photos, films, archives and manuscripts. The photographic library consists of over 75,000 historic prints, negatives, lantern-slides and other images,

1472-523: Is theorized that this occurs due to the stigma attached to individuals who question the cultural norms set by the dominant individuals and establishments in an authoritarian society as a way to prevent the psychological stress caused by the active ostracizing of the stigmatized individuals. C.G. Sibley and J. Duckitt reported that more recent research has produced two more effective scales of measurement for predicting prejudice and other characteristics associated with authoritarian personalities. The first scale

1536-453: The 1st Czechoslovak Armoured Brigade , which took part in the Siege of Dunkirk (1944–45) , and then returned to Prague to attend university there for half a term. During this period, Prague lost its strong hold over him: foreseeing the communist takeover , he decided to return to England. One of his recollections of the city in 1945 was a communist poster saying: "Everyone with a clean shield into

1600-550: The American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society . With the publication in 1959 of Words and Things , his first book, Gellner achieved fame and even notoriety among his fellow philosophers, as well as outside the discipline, for his fierce attack on "linguistic philosophy", as he preferred to call ordinary language philosophy , then the dominant approach at Oxbridge (although

1664-683: The Five Factor Model of the human personality. The research of Jost, Glaser, Arie W. Kruglanski , and Sulloway (2003) indicates that authoritarianism and right-wing authoritarianism are ideological constructs for social cognition , by which political conservatives view people who are the Other who is not the Self. That the authoritarian personality and the conservative personality share two, core traits: (i) resistance to change (social, political. economic), and (ii) justification for social inequality among

1728-519: The John Locke prize and taking first class honours in 1947. The same year, he began his academic career at the University of Edinburgh as an assistant to Professor John Macmurray in the Department of Moral Philosophy. He moved to the London School of Economics in 1949, joining the sociology department under Morris Ginsberg . Ginsberg admired philosophy and believed that philosophy and sociology were very close to each other. He employed me because I

1792-469: The Party ", ostensibly meaning that those whose records were good during the occupation were welcome. In reality, Gellner said, it meant exactly the opposite: If your shield is absolutely filthy we'll scrub it for you; you are safe with us; we like you the better because the filthier your record the more we have a hold on you. So all the bastards, all the distinctive authoritarian personalities , rapidly went into

1856-517: The William Wyse chair and becoming a fellow of King's College, Cambridge , which provided him with a relaxed atmosphere where he enjoyed drinking beer and playing chess with the students. Described by the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography as "brilliant, forceful, irreverent, mischievous, sometimes perverse, with a biting wit and love of irony", he was famously popular with his students,

1920-403: The 2004 American National Election Studies survey: These questions were designed to force a choice, not unlike in politics, when voters are forced to choose between competing values. Some respondents chose both responses to some of the questions, and the four questions are averaged together, with a score of 1 meaning they answered all four questions with a more authoritarian response and 0 with

1984-610: The Center for the Study of Nationalism, a program funded by George Soros , the American billionaire philanthropist , to study the rise of nationalism in the post-communist countries of eastern and central Europe . On 5 November 1995, after returning from a conference in Budapest , he had a heart attack and died at his flat in Prague, one month short of his 70th birthday. Gellner was a member of both

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2048-677: The Collection on payment of an access fee. The RAI has a close association with the British Museum 's Anthropology Library, which incorporates the former RAI Library given to the Museum in 1976. The Library is located within the Centre for Anthropology at the British Museum , and is effectively Britain's national anthropological library. All may use the Library on site; RAI Fellows may borrow books acquired by

2112-564: The Party, and it rapidly acquired this kind of character. So what was coming was totally clear to me, and it cured me of the emotional hold which Prague had previously had over me. I could foresee that a Stalinoid dictatorship was due: it came in '48. The precise date I couldn't foresee, but that it was due to come was absolutely obvious for various reasons.... I wanted no part of it and got out as quickly as I could and forgot about it. He returned to Balliol College in 1945 to finish his degree, winning

2176-537: The RAI runs lectures, workshops and other special events on topical issues. Its International Festivals of Ethnographic Film, run every two years in partnership with UK universities and other hosts, are a recognised part of the international ethnographic film calendar. Competitions for the Film Prizes attract entries from film-makers throughout the world. Individuals seeking full Fellowship status are usually required to be proposed by current Fellows who personally know

2240-425: The RAI. The Huxley Memorial Medal and Lecture was established in 1900 in memory of Thomas Henry Huxley to identify and acknowledge the work of scientists, British or foreign, distinguished in any field of anthropological research. The highest honour awarded by the Royal Anthropological Institute, it is awarded annually by ballot of the council. The recipient delivers a lecture that is usually published. The Medal

2304-611: The analysis of kinship to frameworks for understanding political order outside the state in tribal Morocco ( Saints of the Atlas , 1969); from sympathetic exposition of the works of Soviet Marxist anthropologists to elegant syntheses of the Durkheimian and Weberian traditions in western social theory; and from grand elaboration of 'the structure of human history' to path-breaking analyses of ethnicity and nationalism ( Thought and Change , 1964; Nations and Nationalism , 1983)". He also developed

2368-464: The atmosphere was like then. This was the Revelation. It wasn't doubted. But it was quite obvious to me it was wrong. It was obvious to me the moment I came across it, although initially, if your entire environment, and all the bright people in it, hold something to be true, you assume you must be wrong, not understanding it properly, and they must be right. And so I explored it further and finally came to

2432-599: The authoritarian personality included the rise of fascism in the 1930s, World War II (1939–1945), and The Holocaust , which indicated that the fascistic individual was psychologically susceptible to the ideology of antisemitism and to the emotional appeal of anti-democratic politics. Known as the Berkeley studies, the researches of Adorno and Frenkel-Brunswik, and of Levinson and Sanford concentrated upon prejudice , which they studied within psychoanalytic and psychosocial frameworks of Freudian and Frommian theories. The book

2496-508: The authoritarian personality: (i) Submission to legitimate authorities; (ii) Aggression towards minority groups whom authorities identified as targets for sanctioned political violence; and (iii) Adherence to cultural values and political beliefs endorsed by the authorities. As measured with the NEO-PI-R Openness scale, the research indicates a negative correlation (r = 0.57) between the personality trait of " openness to experience ", of

2560-466: The breadth of interests within the discipline of anthropology . It is committed to promoting debate at the interface between anthropology and areas of applied knowledge such as education, medicine and development; as well as that between anthropology and other academic disciplines. Anthropological Index Online was launched in 1997. The Index is an online bibliographic service for researchers, teachers and students of anthropology worldwide. Access

2624-418: The conclusion that I did understand it right, and it was rubbish, which indeed it is. Words and Things is fiercely critical of the work of Ludwig Wittgenstein , J. L. Austin , Gilbert Ryle , Antony Flew , P. F. Strawson and many others. Ryle refused to have the book reviewed in the philosophical journal Mind (which he edited), and Bertrand Russell (who had written an approving foreword) protested in

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2688-414: The custom of the community. Communities are ultimate. He didn't put it this way, but that was what it amounted to. And this doesn't make sense in a world in which communities are not stable and are not clearly isolated from each other. Nevertheless, Wittgenstein managed to sell this idea, and it was enthusiastically adopted as an unquestionable revelation. It is very hard nowadays for people to understand what

2752-490: The dictatorship of the free market . Among other issues in social thought, modernisation theory and nationalism were two of his central themes, his multicultural perspective allowing him to work within the subject-matter of three separate civilisations : Western , Islamic , and Russian . He is considered one of the leading theoreticians on the issue of nationalism . Gellner was born in Paris to Anna, née Fantl, and Rudolf,

2816-476: The domineering parents, whom the child reverently idealizes, but does not criticize. Such personalities may also be related to studies in preschool children of personality and political views as reported by scientists in 2006 which concluded that some children described as being "somewhat dominating" were later found, as adults, to be "relatively liberal", and those described as "relatively over-controlled" were later found, as adults, to be "relatively conservative"; in

2880-537: The earliest dating from the 1860s. The photo library illustrates the great diversity and vitality of the world's cultures as well as the history of photographic image-making itself. The RAI is actively involved in developing ethnographic film and video, as a mode of anthropological enquiry and as an educational resource. It has an extensive collection of videos, copies of which are available for sale for educational and academic purposes. Films can be studied and previewed onsite. The archive and manuscript collection spans

2944-493: The former Confederate states (i.e. "the South") showed higher levels of authoritarianism than the rest. Rural populations tend to be more authoritarian than urban ones. People who preferred simple problems to complex ones, had less formal education, and those scoring lower in political knowledge also tended to score higher in authoritarianism. The authoritarianism levels of these demographics were assessed with four items that appeared in

3008-787: The founding fellows of the Ethnological Society of London , who in February 1843 formed a breakaway group of the Aborigines' Protection Society , which had been founded in 1837. The new society was to be 'a centre and depository for the collection and systematisation of all observations made on human races'. Between 1863 and 1870 there were two organisations, the Ethnological Society and the Anthropological Society . The Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland (1871)

3072-406: The members of society. Conservatives have a psychological need to manage existential uncertainty and threats with situational motives (striving for dominance in social hierarchies) and with dispositional motives (self-esteem and the management of fear). The research on ideology, politics, and racist prejudice, by John Duckitt and Chris Sibley, identified two types of authoritarian worldview: (i) that

3136-484: The mind (anti-intraception); and an exaggerated concern with sexual promiscuity, especially when concerning women. The f-scale fell into disrepute as being unreliable after about 10 years. Other criticisms of the sociologic theory presented in The Authoritarian Personality are the validity of the psychoanalytic interpretation of personality and bias that authoritarianism exists only in the right wing of

3200-421: The philosophers themselves denied that they were part of any unified school). He first encountered the strong ideological hold of linguistic philosophy while at Balliol: [A]t that time the orthodoxy best described as linguistic philosophy, inspired by Wittgenstein, was crystallizing and seemed to me totally and utterly misguided. Wittgenstein's basic idea was that there is no general solution to issues other than

3264-503: The political spectrum. In human psychological development, the formation of the authoritarian personality occurs within the first years of a child's life, strongly influenced and shaped by the parents' personalities and the organizational structure of the child's family; thus, parent-child relations that are "hierarchical, authoritarian, [and] exploitative" can result in a child developing an authoritarian personality. Authoritarian-personality characteristics are fostered by parents who have

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3328-545: The potential member. Fellowship in the institute is primarily for persons who have professional or academic achievement in the field of the study of humankind or the social sciences. Fellows are elected by the RAI Council, and are entitled to use the honorific post-nominal letters FRAI. The RAI has approximately 1800 Fellows and Members The President of the RAI were generally elected for a two-year period: Authoritarian personality In his 1941 book Fear of Freedom ,

3392-617: The results of a survey measuring the levels of authoritarianism in adults in America and seven other Western countries. The study used Bob Altemeyer's right-wing authoritarianism scale, but they omitted the following two statements from Altemeyer's scale: (1) "The established authorities generally turn out to be right about things, while the radicals and protestors are usually just "loud mouths" showing off their ignorance"; and (2) "Women should have to promise to obey their husbands when they get married." Morning Consult's scale thus had just 20 items, with

3456-597: The right-wing authoritarianism scale and the social-dominance orientation scale can accurately measure authoritarian personalities, the scales usually are not correlated. Hetherington and Weiler describe the authoritarian personality as one that has a greater need for order, and less willingness to tolerate ambiguity as well as a tendency to rely on established authorities to provide that order. They acknowledge that while everyone seeks to bring some semblance of order to their world, non-authoritarian personalities are more likely to use concepts like fairness and equality, instead of

3520-441: The ruled. But in modern society, work becomes technical; one must operate a machine, and to do so, one must learn. There is a need for impersonal, context-free communication and a high degree of cultural standardisation. Furthermore, industrial society is underlined by the fact that there is perpetual growth: employment types vary and new skills must be learned. Thus, generic employment training precedes specialised job training. On

3584-423: The social world is dangerous, which leads to right-wing authoritarianism; and (ii) that the world is a ruthlessly competitive jungle, which leads to social dominance orientation. In a meta-analysis of the research, Sibley and Duckitt explained that the social-dominance orientation scale helps to measure the generalization of prejudice and other authoritarian attitudes that can exist within social groups. Although both

3648-494: The time-honored texts, conventions or leaders that are more common among authoritarian personalities. They also note that almost everyone becomes more authoritarian when they feel threat, anxiety or fatigue, as the emotional, reactive parts of the brain crowd out cognitive abilities. They also assert that scholars do not know whether to consider authoritarianism a personality trait, an attitude or an ideology. In 2021, Morning Consult (an American data intelligence company) published

3712-506: The words of the researchers, Preschool children who 20 years later were relatively liberal were characterized as: developing close relationships, self-reliant, energetic, somewhat dominating, relatively under-controlled, and resilient. Preschool children subsequently relatively conservative at age 23 were described as: feeling easily victimized, easily offended, indecisive, fearful, rigid, inhibited, and relatively over-controlled and vulnerable. Hetherington and Weiler argue that perceived threat

3776-637: Was a philosopher. Even though he was technically a professor of sociology, he wouldn't employ his own students, so I benefited from this, and he assumed that anybody in philosophy would be an evolutionary Hobhousean like himself. It took him some time to discover that I wasn't. Leonard Trelawny Hobhouse had preceded Ginsberg as Martin White Professor of Sociology at the LSE. Hobhouse's Mind in Evolution (1901) had proposed that society should be regarded as an organism,

3840-440: Was described as a landmark work in social science that generated significant criticism of certain methods and results but also confirmation of many of the findings in independent studies. Following its publication was an extensive debate on the merits of the work, with many of the themes of this debate persisting in authoritarianism research today. The authoritarian person also presents a cynical and disdainful view of humanity, and

3904-503: Was founded in 1923 by the Council of the Institute in memory of its late President, William Halse Rivers , originally for 'anthropological work in the field'. However, in the 1960s the rules were amended to reflect anthropological work in a broader sense. The Medal shall be awarded for a recent body of work published over a period of five years which makes, as a whole, a significant contribution to social, physical or cultural anthropology or archaeology. Recipients include: From time to time,

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3968-561: Was so rational that rationality came out of his ears. And so Ginsberg extrapolated this, and on his view the whole of humanity moved to ever greater rationality, from drunk Polish peasant to T.L. Hobhouse and a Hampstead garden. Gellner's critique of linguistic philosophy in Words and Things (1959) focused on J. L. Austin and the later work of Ludwig Wittgenstein , criticising them for failing to question their own methods. The book brought Gellner critical acclaim. He obtained his Ph.D. in 1961 with

4032-540: Was the result of a merger between these two rival bodies. Permission to add the word Royal was granted in 1907. In 2020 the institute was awarded a Charter by the Privy Council. The Institute publishes three journals: Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute , formerly Man , is a quarterly journal with articles on all aspects of anthropology, as well as correspondence and a section of book reviews. The Journal provides an important forum for ' anthropology as

4096-448: Was willing to spend many extra hours a day tutoring them, and was regarded as a superb public speaker and gifted teacher. His Plough, Sword and Book (1988) investigated the philosophy of history , and Conditions of Liberty (1994) sought to explain the collapse of socialism with an analogy he called "modular man". In 1993, he returned to Prague, now rid of communism, and to the new Central European University , where he became head of

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