Books and Book Chapters

This section of my web site discusses the books and book chapters that I have written or co-authored with colleagues.  It also contains links to the web sites of the publishers.

Welsh, J. F. (2008).  After Multiculturalism: The Politics of Race and the Dialectics of Liberty. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. 

After Multiculturalism is my study of individualist and libertarian thought on race and multiculturalism. The primary impetus for this book is my concern that multicultural thought is simply not going to help repair relations among racial and ethnic groups in our society, nor is it likely to help overcome the domination of some racial and ethnic groups by others. I argue that multicultural thought is tribalist, collectivist, statist, and determinist. It needs to be challenged by more libertarian and individualist ideas about race and racism. Toward that end, the book reviews and analyzes the thought of Ayn Rand, Murray Rothbard, contemporary libertarian theorists, individualist anarchists, and Max Stirner on race and individual liberty.  Using a dialectical framework, I critique the role of the state in the enforcement of racial categories and argue that, at minimum, the overcoming of racism requires a diminution of the role of the state in society and fundamental changes in culture and social interactions in everyday life. Libertarian, individualist, and egoist concepts are central to this interest. After Multiculturalism is available from Lexington Books at www.lexingtonbooks.com.

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Welsh, J. F.  (2007).   The Unchained Dialectic: Theory and Research in an era of Educational Reform.  In W. Ross & R. Gibson (Eds.), Neoliberalism and Educational Reform, (pp. 217 - 235). Cresskill, N.J.:  Hampton Press. 

Analyses of research on higher education typically contrast “positivist” and “cultural” conceptions of research orientations in higher education. They offer varied laments about the disciplinary status of research on colleges and universities.  My chapter in Neoliberalism and Education Reform provides an alternative typification of higher education research using Habermas’ categories of scientific interest as a way of understanding important distinctions among methodological approaches.  The chapter examines “immanent critique” as the core of critical, dialectical, and emancipatory approaches to social research.  Hegel’s concept of the “Absolute Idea” is also discussed as a basis for understanding the epistemological, and ontological foundations of a dialectical form of inquiry into knowledge and society.

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Welsh, J. F.  (2006).  Rethinking Particularity:  Individualist Perspectives on Race and Multiculturalism in Higher Education.  In W. Ross & V. Pang (Eds.), Race, Ethnicity and Education: Race and Racism in the Schools, (pp. 87 – 111).  Westport, CT:  Praeger. 

My chapter in this comprehensive study on race, racism, and education provided an alternative way of thinking about the nature of race and racism. Typically, social and educational research focus on collectivities in their analysis of racism and progressive responses to it. Hence, multiculturalism is the most significant approach to challenging racism today. However, multiculturalism has two significant problems. First, it only reinforces existing conceptions about race and racisms. Second, it relies uncritically on the state and political power to rectify racial inequities, even in the face of data that strongly indicates that the state is the most powerful progenitor of racism in our society today. In response, this chapter argues that we need to move beyond collectivist and statist thought patterns as we think about challenging racism. The chapter reviewed individualist and libertarian ideas about race and racism and offered a challenge to the particularity of multicultural thought that is both universal and individual in its conception of a society and individual experience that is free of racial domination.

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Welsh, J. F. (2005).  Dramaturgy and Political Mystification: Political Life in the United States. In Dennis Brissett & Charles Edgley (Eds.), Life as Theater: A Dramaturgical Sourcebook, Second Edition, (499 - 410). New Brunswick, N. J.:  Transaction Publishers.

I was very honored to have a chapter included in this classic collection of studies on dramaturgical sociology. My chapter examined the uses of dramaturgy by the U.S. government to maintain appearances of participation, accountability, and rationality in the face of evidence to the contrary. I pursued a radical libertarian critique of the state by focusing on how ideology is used as a tool of social control. Dramaturgy is the means by which ideology is imposed on society and individuals. The argument is basically that the U.S. government needs to maintain impressions of participation, accountability, and rationality or else the contradiction between the image of the benevolent state and its harsh reality will become apparent and encourage opposition. Thus, increasing social disorganization and contributing to the management crises of advanced state capitalism. The chapter concludes with an assessment of the possibilities of an authentic politics in the U.S. and suggests that political dramaturgy must be re-oriented toward a critique of the contradiction between the benevolent appearances and the more negative functions of government in society and in the lives of persons.

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Welsh, J. F.  (2005).  Institutional Strategy  and Information Support:  The Role of Data Warehousing in Higher Education.  In L. Lloyd (Ed.), Best Technology Practices in Higher Education, (pp. 133 – 144).  Medford, NJ:  Information Today.

This chapter was co-authored with Jeff Guan and Bill Nunez, two of my former colleagues. During the time I worked in administration and taught courses in higher education, I wrote many book chapters and journal articles on facets of higher education administration. One of the areas I studied concerned the uses of information in governance and administration. Some of my friends noticed the divergence in my career between my work on social theory and my writing on higher education. That divergence is there, but notice that even in my administrative work I was interested in how organizations could function better. In this case, we were concerned with how information, specifically data warehouses, could be organized to support decision making and enable colleges and universities to better pursue their strategic objectives.

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Welsh, J. F.  (2004).  Privatization and Enforcement:  The Security State Transforms Higher Education.   In D. Gabbard & W. Ross. (Eds.),  Education and the Rise of the Security State (pp. 191 – 206).  Westport, CT:  Praeger.

I was probably the only writer in this four volume set who did not really develop an argument in favor of defending public schools. In fact, I think we need to explore abolishing public schools and developing alternative ways to educate people. The general thrust of the essays in this very interesting collection is a lament about how the schools have become an appendage to the U.S. government's social control efforts. Many of the essays took the position that the schools have no business being agents of social control and that they need to return to their historical function of focusing on students and their learning, with improved salaries for teachers, of course. My essay looked at how federal legislation since 9/11 was transforming colleges and universities into different types of social institutions. I argued that aspects of the Patriot Act elevated the role of higher education in the enforcement of the strategic objectives of the federal government. Moreover, finance policy has changed so that private sources are being increasingly organized to serve the state. That is, costs to individuals and families are increasing, but the benefits are oriented more toward the state or the pubic. Ironically, this process is called "privatization." In the post-9/11 environment, privatization is driven by the state, not by the market, not by the choices of individuals. Manipulating meanings and rhetoric is an important way that the government extends its systems of control.

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Welsh, J. F.  (2003).  Managing Customer Expectations within Information Technology Settings:  In Search of Key Drivers.  European Conference on Knowledge Management and Information Technology, Oxford University, Oxford, United Kingdom.

This chapter was co-authored with Sukhen Dey and it was originally a paper that we presented at the Fourth European Confernce on Knowledge Management in the United Kingdom. Again, this is one of my publications that is not really tied to my interests in libertarianism or social theory, but was related to my work in higher education administration. The proceedings from this conference were eventually published in a book form. I am therefore including a description of it here. This chapter reports on an information management system that Dr. Dey and I developed for colleges and universities. It involves a very comprehensive system of satisfaction surveys. The data from these surveys are fed into an information system that enables clients to tap into results on their desktop computers. It provides many benefits to institutions of higher learning, especially information about what varied constituencies think about their experiences.

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Welsh, J. F.  (2002).  Continuous Quality Measurement in Higher Education.  In G. Harindranath, W. G. Wojtkowski, J. Zupanicic, W. Wojtkowski, S. Wrycza, J. Sillince, & D. Rosenberg (Eds.), New Perspectives on Information Systems Development (pp. 599 – 610).   New York:  Kluwer/Plenum Press.

This chapter was also co-authored with Dr. Dey. It describes the IT architecture and organizational uses of the quality measurement system for higher education that we developed.

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Welsh, J. F.  (1994).  The Role of Governing Boards in college and University Mergers.  In J. Martin and J. Samels. (Eds.) Merging Colleges for Mutual Growth (pp. 42 – 58).  Baltimore:  The Johns Hopkins University Press. 

From 1987 to 1998 I worked for the governing board for public higher education in the state of Kansas. I was asked to contribute a chapter to this volume about the role of boards and lay trustees in the mergers of colleges and universities since I had some experience with the merger of Kansas State University and the former Kansas College of Technology which occurred early in the 1990s. In my chapter I developed an argument that boards and lay trustees could be very helpful to institutional mergers if they focused on the macro-level goals of mergers and expected accountability from the faculty, student, and administrative groups that were involved in the merger process. I argued that there is a merger timetable, or a process that mergers typically go through, that has discernible benchmarks. The benchmarks include recognizing the need for a merger, identifying a viable merger partner, developing a strategic plan for a merger, and implementing and assessing the plan. Successful mergers are dependent upon the acknowledgement of the benchmarks in the merger timetable.

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Welsh, J. F.  (1990).  Dramaturgical Analysis and Societal Critique.  In T. R. Young, The Drama of Social Life:  Essays in Postmodern Social Psychology (pp. 91 – 113).  New Brunswick, N. J.:  Transaction Publishers.

The Drama of Social Life: Essays in Postmodern Social Psychology was a collaborative project involving T.R. Young, Garth Massey, and me. In the introduction, Young credits me with working collaboratively with him on the entire book. I directly wrote two of the chapters in it. This chapter analyzes dramaturgical sociology from the standpoint of the three forms of scientific interests articulated by the German sociologist Jurgen Habermas: the scientistic, interpretive, and critical. The chapter argues that the critical dimensions of dramaturgical analysis were not well-developed. The chapter outlines how the critical trajectory of dramaturgical sociology can be developed using the method of immanent critique which counterposes what a social formation says about itself with what it is or what it is becoming. By opposing false appearances with the essence of a social formation, dramaturgy is a vechicle for understanding and critiquing the role of fraud in politics, society, and culture.

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Welsh, J. F.  (1990).  Self-Estrangement in Dramaturgical Society.  In T. R. Young, The Drama of Social Life:  Essays in Postmodern Social Psychology (pp. 169 - 188).  New Brunswick, N. J.:  Transaction Publishers.

This chapter continues the line of reasoning that seeks to develop the critical interests in dramaturgical sociology by assessing the structure of self and social role in alienated social environments. The chapter discusses the notion of role distance, in which the individual denies the meaning or implications of the role that s/he is performing in everyday life. Since role distance entails the estrangement of the inner life of the individual from her or his external role performance, it is a form of alienation and an expropriation of the person's behavior by the external social formation. Role distance is also a form of rebellion against external requirements for the performance of social roles. Ultimately, however, persons have a need to connect their external role performance with internal meaning. Thus, effective rebellion requires a rejection or negation of the external, alienated role requirements. Self-estrangement or role distance is only a moment in the process of the liberation of the individual from oppressive social environments.

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Welsh, J. F. (1984).  Critical Dimensions in Dramaturgical Analysis.  Livermore, Colorado:  The Institute for Advanced Studies in Sociology.

In the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s, I worked on research and curricular materials that focused on how the false appearances of democracy, accountability and justice in American society functioned as a form of ideological social control by masking forms of alienation, domination, and exploitation. T. R. Young and I explored the critical aspects of dramaturgical sociology in many topics, including socialization and the self, communications, politics, and social change. One of the initial results of our collaboration was the publication of Critical Dimensions in Dramaturgical Analysis which appeared as part of the Transforming Sociology Series by the Institute for Advanced Studies in Sociology. Many of the chapters in this publication were later revised and refined. The newer materials eventually made their way as chapters in other books or as articles in academic journals.

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Welsh, J. F.  (1983).  Practicing Sociology:  A Collection of Projects.  Boston:  Ginn Publishers.

This book was a sourcebook and collection of projects for students in introductory sociology classes. I designed this book to be used in conjunction with a traditional sociology textbook. My sense at the time was that sociology textbooks failed to enable students to adequately connect the macro-level concepts they articulated with the everyday lives of students. This book used small scale forms of inquiry to help make the important concepts of sociology more concrete for beginning students, most of whom will only have one experience with the discipline of sociology.