I just finished a writing up a 500-word entry for a forthcoming Encyclopedia of Economic Sociology, edited by Jens Beckert and Milan Zafiroski. (I was only about a year late. You’d think the blogging would have made 500-word chunks easy to churn out.) While reading the boilerplate in the contributor’s agreement, I came across the following clause:
bq. 2 (a) … The Contributor further warrants that the Contribution contains nothing obscene, libellous, blasphemous, in breach of copyright or otherwise unlawful …
All well and good, except that my allocated entry is “Sacred.” As you will all remember from your social theory class, Durkheim‘s view is that religion is a collective representation of the social structure. “Society awakens in us the feeling of the divine.” This is not likely to get a nihil obstat from many religions.
{ 11 comments }
Ophelia Benson 12.18.03 at 1:53 am
Good grief (she said non-blasphemously), what business does such an agreement have forbidding blasphemy anyway for chrissake?! Blasphemous? Is that a normal stipulation?? How extremely bizarre.
But the important point is –
“You’d think the blogging would have made 500-word chunks easy to churn out.”
Ohhhhhhhhhh no I wouldn’t. Not in a million years. Many a time and oft have I noticed and marveled how very, very, very much easier it is to churn out a post than it is to write something more as it were official.
DJW 12.18.03 at 2:01 am
I’d assume that clause is there in case there is some antiquited, moronic law about blasphemy somewhere.
Ophelia Benson 12.18.03 at 2:50 am
Oh yeah – that law.
But seriously – it’s not enforced on books is it? I’m pretty sure I’ve read some irreligious books that were published in the UK. Yup – pretty sure. There’s that thing William Empson says at the beginning of Milton on God (is that what it’s called?) for example. Or Amis and Larkin every time they opened their mouths. Or – thousands of people. Come on, you’re making fun, they don’t enforce it.
I was thinking it might have been some brilliant post-fatwa idea.
John Isbell 12.18.03 at 3:39 am
Interesting to juxtapose Empson and irreligion. He was thrown out of Magdalene for, I guess lax morals when they found condoms in a suitcase of his. He later taught Shakespeare from memory in China.
Guy Andrew Hall 12.18.03 at 5:44 am
It is just such an ugly word. It’s use always conjures vivid images of witch hunts and torture. In my own narrowminded manner, I equate it’s use to that segment of society unable to get past their own preconceived notions of morality and decency with the resultant “Us vs. Them Heathens” mentality.
djw 12.18.03 at 6:45 am
I’m sure there’s no meaningful chance it’ll be enforced anytime soon, especially in this sort of capacity. But it wouldn’t be the first time a standard legal contract contained language to protect one party from a wildly implausible form of plausibility.
dsquared 12.18.03 at 9:33 am
While “Society awakens in us the feeling of the divine” is indeed pretty irreligious, it seems to me that it’s more likely to be heretical rather than blasphemous. Blasphemy refers to the direct giving of offence to God rather than to general ill-will against religions. In general in the UK you have to depict Jesus Christ in a scenario involving buggery to even rouse the god-squad to have a pop. Otoh, it’s an offence without much in the way of specific definition, so be careful out there.
Backword Dave 12.18.03 at 10:44 am
Won’t they just accept ‘mostly harmless’?
Tom T. 12.18.03 at 1:22 pm
In the US, this clause would likely be unenforceable, because courts will almost always refuse to reach an issue that requires them to interpret religious law (i.e., to decide what is blasphemous and what is not). No idea how other countries handle it.
NB: This is not legal advice and should not be relied upon by any reader.
Ophelia Benson 12.18.03 at 3:04 pm
Offense to God, right, that’s why I thought of Empson; he says when he taught Milton in China, his students said to him (approximately): ‘We knew your god was horrible but we had no idea he was as horrible as that.’
Maria 12.18.03 at 3:50 pm
But the important point is –
“You’d think the blogging would have made 500-word chunks easy to churn out.”
Ohhhhhhhhhh no I wouldn’t. Not in a million years. Many a time and oft have I noticed and marveled how very, very, very much easier it is to churn out a post than it is to write something more as it were official.
Too right Ophelia. In fact, I was just saying to a colleague who’s also suffering from ‘end of term-itis’ that blogging only seems attractive when it is work displacement. If I was a woman of independent means, I probably wouldn’t blog, but would stay at home watching dvds all day. To which Claire replied; “You should probably request a lap top from the IT department so you can watch dvds in work.”
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