although the authors are mostly concerned with and explain the extent to which the technology of modelling 3D avatars and embodied systems works on pleasure and arousal.
Ana TOMINC
Department of Linguistics and English Language, Lancaster University
Taja Kramberger, Drago Braco Rotar Misliti družbo, ki (se) sama ne misli [Thinking society that does not think (itself)] Sophia, Ljubljana 2010, pp. 244, 19,80 EUR (ISBN 978-961-6768-25)
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Thinking society that does not think (itself) is a collection of essays written by two Slovene social scientists, writers and intellectuals that can be associated with the tradition of the French historiography. The majority have been published before and have now been revised. For just one of them, this is a premi re. As much as this book provides critique of the society that does not think (itself), at the same time it already contains concrete traces of those social mechanisms which it constantly critically addresses. The authors' open exposal of the processes of censorship that the essays in this collection seem to have undergone, points to their conviction that "writing and action are the same". In this, they follow Foucault's idea of an intellectual, for whom there was on one hand no
"real, neutral and pale discourse with guarantees of l'Académie" and on the other hand "courage at searching for things" (p.197-8). Like Kramberger and Rotar, Foucault consequently pursued and reflected upon these two inseparable sides of an engaged intellectual. The authors' resistance against the social injustice, particularly the injustice inherent in neoliberal dogmatism, and against academic inability for a reflexive and autonomous science - "imperative parts of one's discipline" (p.xvi) - does not exist just in their texts, but it is also reflected in their daily action. The ways in which this collection of essays also exhibits resistance against various forms of social control that some of these texts have been subjected upon are thus not silenced and hidden into the personal experience of the authors. Rather, they make an effort to express and recognize such censorship, start confronting it, and not just reconcile with it and then 'shut up': exposing the relations between an author's original text and its final printed version uncovers the force of powerful intermediaries that can act as censors.
In many ways, registering such an unauthorised intrusion is already sufficient: this is the first step to a possibility of thinking about it, an activity doomed not to be easy: "it is something like cleaning Augias' stables when there is acute lack of water and 'helping hands', (p.xv) as authors explain in the introductory chapter.
Censorship is a mechanism of social control as old as societies themselves. It can be manifest in many dif-
ferent ways, such as silence people's thoughts and prevent their activities. This collection of essays notes traces of two different forms of control: firstly, there is a control on the level of one's language which can be noticed when writers are advised not to use certain words, syntactic structures, and styles in a piece of text because they may not conform to the standard, in our case literary Slovene. And secondly, there is control of circulation of knowledge in the academic field.
The Slovene literary language is not a natural phenomenon, independent of various centres of power and historical developments, agents, ideologies and interests: it is the legacy of the 19th century prescriptiv-ist language policy. Based on one of the many dialects, this particular variety of language was constructed to become the standard and was given the powerful status of a language that was to unify the nation. Acquiring the Slovene literary standard thus means identifying oneself with a particular group of people - the Slovenes -, but it also means raising one's linguistic capital. Major linguistic corrections of texts may have been necessary in the initial stages of the nation's unification because the Slovene literary language was not yet established as the language of the public communication for the linguistically diverse users of Slovene. Today, of course, the situation seems to be different: the access to this language through media and schooling is improved and the status of the language ce-
mented. Hence, the role of linguistic proof-readers should equally be transformed from a rather prescriptive to what may be called 'advisory' function. This means suggesting improvements and focusing on stylistic inconsistencies in an agreement with an author, rather than taking the liberty to make unauthorised changes, as seems to be the case with "The tiresome itineraries of the Spanish Civil War" (Chapter 3, p.71), where Kram-berger discusses lieux de mémoires of the Slovene Spanish combatants.
Related is the still persistent purist ideology according to which 'foreign' words should not be encouraged in Slovene. Proof-readers, and above them, the editors censor the original author's texts by 'cleaning' them up.	1703
Little do they know about the subject the terminology of which they so ig-norantly police, or about the reason for which a particular term is employed. Thus, it is not surprising that the Halbwachs' Slovene translation of Memoire collective results in 'Kolektivni spomin' (souvenir) rather than 'Kolektivna memorija' (memoire). One of the authors, who is also the translator of the work, distances himself from the translation and its accuracy. In all of his work, including this collection of essays, Rotar employs the original distinction (Chapter 1: 'History that serves, is a servant history'. About epistemic imperative of the distinction between memoire and souvenir & memory and history'). This has an intention to stress the interconnectivity between memory and souvenir: "Memory is a crossroad of
various souvenirs" (p. 3), whereas collective memory requires a selective collection of souvenirs about the same event that has been retained by a number of people. Here, the process of control is not only visible in terms of whether or not one's use of the literary language conforms to the prescribed norms and ideologies, but it goes further: it censors the terminology of a particular scientific field without any reasonable justification. As a consequence, not only is the translator made responsible for a translation that he never produced, but the field of memory studies remains weakened by this terminological fiasco.
The second kind of censorship has little to do with language. Rather, 1704	it functions on the level of fields (in
Bourdieu's terminology) which incorporate positions of control: in the academic field, for example, ideas and new knowledge tend to be shared in conferences, but also in academic written production. Instead of "a constant dynamic and public dialogue" (p. 135) between different directions of academic thought, certain strands of knowledge tend to be suppressed if they prove to be 'dangerous' for the established mainstream episte-mologies. Preventing the circulation of texts that do not conform to the methodologies, theories and opinions of the majority - or that even criticise them - is a symptom of a science that does not seem to be interested in thinking (itself). But as such, it cannot be science: reflexivity, so explain the authors (Chapters 2 and 5, but also throughout other chapters),
is its sine qua non. It requires fair debate and public disagreement rather than coward backstabbing, especially based on ad personam as it is often the case. Hence, Kramberger's 'European taxonomies, social cohesion and history' (chapter 4, p.121) do not appear in the publication for which the text was initially intended, despite her refreshingly critical stance towards the issue. In critiquing the popular newspeak 'multi/inter-culturalism' she contextualises it in terms of the neoliberal doctrine which utilises the term on the level of a discourse that does not, unfortunately, reflect the reality: multiculturalism is a representation of today's society in terms of its illusionary interaction of various social groups. However, as Kramberger states, in the society which is increasingly unequal and where exclusion of too many social groups remains a reality, a 'multi' meeting of the various 'cultures' cannot take place on equal terms. In the global world, the local has no possibility for a fair interaction with the rich global. The latter creates the world according to its own needs and desires, regardless of the miseries that it leaves to those beneath.
While a more demanding reader still needs to wait to see, if the texts in this book reflect the original intentions of the authors (who will no doubt express their disapproval at the earliest occasion if this is not the case), it is quite clear that this is a collection for which every academic environment hopes. In times such as these, where academia increasingly subordinates itself to the interests
of the capital, a critique of a society such as this one should not appear without being noticed. Thinking society that does not think (itself) is not, as the publisher promotes the book, an easy reading, but it definitely an intellectually stimulating one. It can engage readers in a variety of topics without underestimating their abilities for reflexive thinking. What such a collection may mean for the Slovene academia may not be such a difficult question to answer: those who will bother to read at least some of the essays might be able to understand why, in the society that does not think (itself), not many are likely to publicly agree with Kramberger and Rotar, and even less to publicly disagree. In a society that does not think, neither itself nor others, authors conclude, little space is left for active public engagement of an intellectual.
Vjollca KRASNIQI Faculty of Social Work, University of Ljubljana
Darja Zavirsek, Birgit Rommelspacher, Silvia Staub-Bernasconi (eds.) Ethical Dilemmas in Social Work: International Perspective Faculty of Social Work, Ljubljana 2010, pp. 212, 0.00 EUR (ISBN 978-961-6569-32-3)
The edited volume Ethical Dilemmas in Social Work: International Perspective, engages with ethics in
the context of social work: as an academic discipline and as a profession. It reflects on ethical issues and dilemmas pertaining to social work as they occur under profound social, political, and cultural transformations under the process of globalisation that shape social life through market driven strategies. Indeed, as Zygmunt Bauman (2007), has pointed out, life is becoming more precarious and uncertain. It is, of course, nothing new to say that growing disparities between the rich and poor, widening of the North and South divide; trends of re-traditionalisation of societies and cultures: emerging of strong religious sentiments and cultural conflicts; reconfiguration of state authority, and ever-present neo-liberal ideolo-	1705
gies, are accompanied with corresponding anxieties that encompass social, political, and economic life in its fullest. Thus this book is set against such a background of increasing pre-carities and challenges they set forth for social work.
The book Ethical Dilemmas in Social Work: International Perspective consists of three parts. The first chapter discusses ethical conflicts and their philosophical implications. Second chapter, analyses challenges to ethical discourses, and the third chapter engages with perspectives of ethics in teaching, practice and research. The book brings together an intellectually stimulating group of social work academics who reflect on wide range of issues stemming from: human rights, moral philosophy, theories of justice, and issues of