Modern antisemitism and the emergence of sociology: an introduction

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Acknowledgements

The four papers published here were developed from presentations at a conference that took place at Manchester University in November 2008 (see www.arts.manchester.ac.uk/subjectareas/religionstheology/anti). I would like to thank the School of Arts, Histories and Cultures, the Centre for Jewish Studies and the Department of Religions and Theologies at Manchester University, and the BSA Social Theory Study Group for financing the conference, and all the participants who made it such a pleasant and inspiring event. Thanks also to Vic Seidler, with whom I first discussed this project during my fellowship at Goldsmiths, University of London, as well as Robert Fine, Detlev Claussen, Christine Achinger and Moishe Postone.

Notes

¹Edouard Drumont, in a 1886 text that dealt with reactions to his La France juive, quoted in Pierre Birnbaum, Jewish Destinies: Citizenship, State, and Community in Modern France (New York: Hill and Wang 2000), 106.

²This is in stark contrast to the pathetic prattle we get from present-day antisemitic ideologues, who are usually third-rate apparatchiks, often without much of an actual apparat, and who usually operate at a level that hardly deserves to be called ‘thought’.

³Walter Boehlich (ed.), Der Berliner Antisemitismusstreit (Frankfurt-on-Main: Insel 1965).

⁴The influence of the Berlin Antisemitism Dispute on the young Max Weber has been pointed out in Gary A. Abraham, Max Weber and the Jewish Question: A Study of the Social Outlook of His Sociology (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press 1992), but the connection has since remained unexplored.

⁶Stephen P. Turner, ‘Sociology and fascism in the interwar period: the myth and its frame’, in Stephen P. Turner and Dirk Käsler (eds), Sociology Responds to Fascism (London and New York: Routledge 1992), 9.

⁵Stephen P. Turner, ‘Sociology and fascism in the interwar period: the myth and its frame’, in Stephen P. Turner and Dirk Käsler (eds), Sociology Responds to Fascism (London and New York: Routledge 1992), 6, 7.

⁷Nira Yuval-Davis, Gender and Nation (London: Sage 1997), 31.

⁸This pattern of thought bears comparison with Marx's argument half a century earlier: Christian society can emancipate the Jews because they merely play its melody, if a bit louder and on a stronger beat.

⁹Ironically, in 1919, Jászi and Ágoston had to leave the country after having participated in the revolution.