Personal Influence is not only a landmark study within the sociological literature on networks, influence, and decision making. It is also an allegory of Jewish-ethnic identity in mid-twentieth-century America and a side-ways commentary on modern Jewish involvement in communications. The book participates in a utopian imagination of society in which Jews and Gentiles alike would be centrally involved in the flow of communications. It turns from Gentile-style status toward Jewish-style connectivity as the basis of social power; defends socially grounded conceptions of mental life against Gentile individualism; insists in its notion of the two-step flow on the rabbinic principle that a text without a commentary is meaningless; and performs some amazing intellectual-moral-historical footwork with the most inconspicuous of all its central terms, '' people.'' In all these things, it can be read as a '' Jewish'' text in some sense.
%0 Journal Article
%1 peters_part_2006
%A Peters, John D.
%D 2006
%J Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences
%K classic-work-treatment externalist intellectual judaism religion sociology united-states
%P 97--114
%R 10.1177/0002716206292425
%T The Part Played by Gentiles in the Flow of Mass Communication: On the Ethnic Utopia of Personal Influence
%V 608
%X Personal Influence is not only a landmark study within the sociological literature on networks, influence, and decision making. It is also an allegory of Jewish-ethnic identity in mid-twentieth-century America and a side-ways commentary on modern Jewish involvement in communications. The book participates in a utopian imagination of society in which Jews and Gentiles alike would be centrally involved in the flow of communications. It turns from Gentile-style status toward Jewish-style connectivity as the basis of social power; defends socially grounded conceptions of mental life against Gentile individualism; insists in its notion of the two-step flow on the rabbinic principle that a text without a commentary is meaningless; and performs some amazing intellectual-moral-historical footwork with the most inconspicuous of all its central terms, '' people.'' In all these things, it can be read as a '' Jewish'' text in some sense.
@article{peters_part_2006,
abstract = {Personal Influence is not only a landmark study within the sociological literature on networks, influence, and decision making. It is also an allegory of Jewish-ethnic identity in mid-twentieth-century America and a side-ways commentary on modern Jewish involvement in communications. The book participates in a utopian imagination of society in which Jews and Gentiles alike would be centrally involved in the flow of communications. It turns from Gentile-style status toward Jewish-style connectivity as the basis of social power; defends socially grounded conceptions of mental life against Gentile individualism; insists in its notion of the two-step flow on the rabbinic principle that a text without a commentary is meaningless; and performs some amazing intellectual-moral-historical footwork with the most inconspicuous of all its central terms, '' people.'' In all these things, it can be read as a '' Jewish'' text in some sense.},
added-at = {2019-08-29T01:56:31.000+0200},
author = {Peters, John D.},
biburl = {https://www.bibsonomy.org/bibtex/2d7c00434784acdf096ae5a3d34ff9098/jpooley},
doi = {10.1177/0002716206292425},
interhash = {d36693f1f49eeef3f23c1a5de5508084},
intrahash = {d7c00434784acdf096ae5a3d34ff9098},
journal = {Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences},
keywords = {classic-work-treatment externalist intellectual judaism religion sociology united-states},
pages = {97--114},
timestamp = {2019-08-29T01:56:31.000+0200},
title = {The {{Part Played}} by {{Gentiles}} in the {{Flow}} of {{Mass Communication}}: {{On}} the {{Ethnic Utopia}} of {{Personal Influence}}},
volume = 608,
year = 2006
}