bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The ‘Individual’ in the Writings of Émile Durkheim
Authors: Giddens Anthony
Published: July 2009

During his life-time, Durkheim's methodological writings were notoriously subject to controversy, and his ‘sociologism’ was widely condemned. These early critiques, often totally misinformed as to the real character of Durkheim's views, have long since ceded place to critical interpretations of Durkheim's writings which are founded upon a more adequate understanding of the themes and the dilemmas inherent in his sociology. Nonetheless, it is arguable that we still await a treatment which fully explores the strengths and weaknesses of Durkheim's method. One main reason for this is that most secondary interpreters of Durkheim have failed to connect his analytical discussion (and rejection) of individualism as a methodological approach to social theory with his developmental conception of the emergence of individualism as a morality brought into being by the growth of the differentiated division of labour. It is commonly accepted-and, indeed, he himself stressed this very strongly-that Durkheim's methodological ideas must be evaluated in relation to their concrete implementation in his more empirical works. But this is generally taken to mean showing how successfully or otherwise he ‘applied’ his methodological views in his other studies. The point I wish to make in this paper is that there is a reciprocal relationship between Durkheim's substantive discussion of the development of individualism and his abstract formulations of sociological method. Durkheim is often regarded as being fervently “anti-individualist”. But in fact his works contain a vigorous defence of individualism—understood in a specific way. In other words, Durkheim's writings represent an attempt to detach “liberal individualism”, regarded as a conception of the characteristics of the modern social order, from “methodological individualism”.
L'incohérente endogamie des sociétés peul: une analyse comparative
Authors: Dupire Marguerite
Published: July 2009

L'organisation sociale des sociétés peul, sociétés distribuées dans toute l'Afrique occidentale, offre au sociologue á la fois un difficile problème théorique et les moyens de le résoudre.

Un difficile probléme de théorie, d'abord, dans la mesure oú ces sociétés manifestent paradoxalement trois traits peu compatibles entre eux: l'endogamie accusée du patrilignage y contredit d'une part une nomenclature de parenté de type iroquois (confusion des freres, sceurs et cousin(e)s paralleles) et d'autre part les types de comportement observes entre parents. La fréquence des manages avec la fille de Poncle paternel et les parentes agnatiques va de pair avec une préférence matrimoniale secondaire pour la cousine croisée matrilatérale. Cette endogamie agnatique des Peul n'a pas la meme coherence institutionnelle que celle des Arabes, ou du moins de certaines sociétés arabes. Chez ces derniéres, le mariage préférentiel avec la fille de l'oncle paternel se refléte dans la nomenclature de parenté, le cousin a un droit sur sa cousine et Ton rencontre parfois un modéle conscient traduisant la réalité des faits: dans une famille composée de deux fréres, le premier se marie é l'intérieur — mariage endogame — et le second á l'extérieur — mariage exogame — (I), l'endogamie systématique étant théoriquement impossible. Rien de tel chez les Peul oú il n'existe ni trace de cette endogamie dans la nomenclature, ni droit, ni modele conscient.
Dissent and Consent under State Socialism
Authors: Lane David
Published: July 2009

Professor Bauman's article is certainly a welcome contribution to the analysis of state socialist societies. He succeeds in breaking away from the myopic Kremlinological study of individuals and he also conducts his argument on a comparative sociological plane transcending the Sovietologist's ideographic viewpoint. However, he may be criticised at many points: it is very doubtful whether the state under capitalism is as ‘autonomous’ an institution as Bauman suggests; distinctions should be made between the socialist states of Eastern Europe, for what may be true of Poland and Rumania may not be true of the Soviet Union; international relations, particularly those between the U.S.S.R. and Eastern Europe and between East and West, have important effects on the political culture and significantly restrict the possibilities for social change; the diachronic development of the societies under consideration needs to be given more prominence, for what may have been the case in Soviet Russia in 1920 or in Poland in 1948 may not be so for either society in 1971. Here, I shall have to leave on one side such general criticisms to concentrate on a number of specific points in Bauman's argument relating to stratification in Eastern Europe which seem to me to be debatable.
Le système d'enseignement de I'Algérie coloniale
Authors: Colonna Fanny
Published: July 2009

Comment les sociétés traditionnelles deviennent-elles des sociétés modernes ? La situation coloniale constitue un terrain exceptionnel pour l'étude des conditions de ce passage. L'imposition de la violence — effective et (ou) symbolique — y présente un caractère radical qu'il est difficile de trouver ailleurs. Quand l'évolution d'une société est déterminée de l'interieur, elle se fait en général par glissements lents, complexes, par ajustements successifs qui noient le facteur décisif dans la masse des facteurs secondaires dont l'analyse le dis-tingue malaisément. Le phénomène colonial, au contraire, intrusion brutale d'une agression étrangère dans un système intégré, souvent intégriste, de groupes sociaux traditionnels, qu'il accule à la mutation, se présente à cet égard comme une sorte d'expérimentation.
A Note on Landlessness, Literacy and Agrarian Communism in India
Authors: Zagoria Donald S.
Published: July 2009

One of the most controversial and complex questions which has aroused a good deal of scholarly interest in recent years has to do with the conditions necessary to transform the peasantry, or a significant portion of the peasantry, into a revolutionary force (I). In this article, I want only to discuss one of the most crucial, but neglected, variables—the revolution of communications which is breaking down the cultural isolation of the village.
Fin de la sociologie dialectique? Essai d'appréciation de I'École de Francfort
Authors: Fleischmann Eugène
Published: July 2009

Les Sociologues, en proie aujourd'hui á leurs propres difficultés, ne semblent pas s'inquiéter beaucoup des controverses qui divisent la sociologie allemande; ils ne paraissent pas ressentir un sentiment detua res agitur, comme on pourrait leéitimement s'y attendre. Pourtant le bouleversement irréversible provoqué outre-Rhin par les evenements de 1968 nous paraît symptomatiqué et digne du plus grand intérét. Premiérement, le hegelo-marxisme allemand est dans une impasse; on a le sentiment que la dialectique a tourne contre elle ses propres armes, réduisant ses disciples au silence — ou, pis encore, les condamnant a un discours dépourvu de contenu. En second lieu, la sociologie allemande depend plus que jamais de ses fondements sociologiques, et il apparaít que les considerations theoriques ne Pemportent pas toujours sur les implications politiques. Nous nous retrouvons par conséquent relativement éloignés de la fameuse »objectivité des sciences sociales« que préconisait Max Weber au nom d'un impossible ascétisme intellectuel. En dernier lieu, les courants d'idées qui animent la jeunesse européenne — en matière de politique et de societe — provoquent des prises de position qui plongent les sociologues allemands dans un embarras si profond que nous sommes conduits á en rechercher les raisons. II va de soi que tous ces problemes existent également en France, en Amérique, et dans la plupart des pays europeens, et qu'à travers ces réflexions nous n'entendons pas »jeter la pierre«, loin de là. Reconnaissant la haute qualité philosophique et scientifique de leurs travaux, nous nous proposons, etant leur contemporain, de discuter la situation d'une maniére aussi »hermeneutique« que possible.
Strings and Kingdoms: The activities of a political mediator in Southern Italy
Authors: Littlewood Paul
Published: July 2009

Weingrod, writing of Sardinia, distinguishes between ‘patronage’ in the social anthropological sense of “patron-client relationships” —”how persons of unequal authority, yet linked through ties of interest and friendship, manipulate their relationships in order to attain their ends”; and ‘patronage’ in the political scientist's sense of “party-directed patronage”—”the ways in which party politicians distribute public jobsor special favours in exchange for electoral support”. Weingrod goes on to argue that the former conception is no longer relevant to an analysis of modern Sardinian political behaviour: with the narrowing of the gap between village, city and state, and the evolution of national parties at the local level, the conception of party-directed patronage is more appropriate.
Don divin, don terrestre: I'économie de la confrérie mouride
Authors: O'Brien Donal Cruise
Published: July 2009

Les saints de la confrérie mouride sont habituellement décrits, par les observateurs extérieurs, comme une aristocratie d'élus auxquels l'exploitation économique d'environ un demi-million de disciples, paysans pauvres, procure d'importants privilèges matériels.
The Rational Model of Man
Authors: Heath Anthony
Published: July 2009

Sociologists, like economists, have never been very good at verifying the ‘models of man’ that they use. Both ‘economic man’ and the sociologists' ‘oversocialised concept’ of man rarely received much critical attention from their proponents, and now ‘rational man’ seems to have received as little practical investigation as his predecessors. He is therefore, I suspect, likely to follow them into disrepute. Indeed, he is already under some attack. Some investigators have claimed that many, extremely important, decisions are made onmoralnot rational grounds. Even in such a dramatic and serious matter as kidney transplantation, when the kidney is to be taken from a living donor and given to a close relative, most would-be donors “make an instantaneous split-second choice without deliberation”. They do not weigh up the pros and cons and decide accordingly but rather follow the moral imperative to donate.
Dreadful Enclosures: Detoxifying an Urban Myth
Authors: Walter E. V.
Published: July 2009

Urban ethnographers can explore spaces forgotten or given up for lost, replacing illusions with maps of social reality. The city is filled with milieux that remain scarcely known to the inhabitants of other spaces. Paradoxically, as the rationalization of urban life continues, boundaries enclose some lives more tightly, isolating and making them more vulnerable. By re-discovering the lives of people in those spaces, by replacing stereotypes about them with descriptions that convey their vitality, dignity and humanity, ethnographers may restore some lost relationships in urban milieux, and in a modest way reduce the isolation.
Observations of how book-worms are changing into red-tape-worms
Authors: Andreski Stanislav
Published: July 2009

Britain can avoid the fate of a cold Haiti only if it succeeds in retaining (or rather regaining) its place in the forefront of inventiveness and technical and organizational skills. We must remember (what every business man knows) that even a small initial lag in relation to the competitors can set a snowballing process which can end in total bankruptcy. Faced with the need to make a great effort and tighten the belts, the country can remain a liberal democracy only if it has a capable and public-spirited elite imbued with the ethics of work. To supply this elite—to maintain the standards where they are high and to raise them where they are low—ought to be the main task of the universities. This means that—apart from the moral education of teaching the young to work conscientiously—everything should be subordinated to the function of advancing and disseminating knowledge. Although this is plain common sense, one can hardly find a reference to it in the pronouncements of the educationalists, sociologists, journalists and politicians who seem to view the universities as agencies whose main functions are to help the handicapped, transfer the largest possible number of sons and daughters of useful workers into parasitic bureaucracy, or to conceal unemployment. Some of the academics on the other hand regard them chiefly as dining clubs, many of the students as discotheques, while some of the administrators treat them as if their purpose was to open a field for an endless proliferation of paper shufflers.
Ethnicity and Anthropology in the Soviet Union
Authors: Gellner Ernest
Published: July 2009

InThePastDecade, a minor revolution has taken place within Soviet Anthropology. ‘Ethnography’ is one of the recognised disciplines in the Soviet academic world, and corresponds roughly to what in the West is called social anthropology. This revolution has as yet been barely noticed by outside observers (1). Its leader is Yulian Bromley, a very Russian scholar with a very English surname, Director of the Institute of Ethnography of the Soviet Academy of Sciences. The revolution consists of making ethnography into the studies of ethnos-es, or, in current Western academic jargon, into the study of ethnicity—in other words the study of the phenomena of national feeling, identity, and interaction. History is about chaps, geography is about maps, and ethnography is about ethnoses. What else ? The revolution is supported by arguments weightier than mere verbal suggestiveness; but by way of persuasive consideration, etymology is also invoked.
States, Ancient and Modern
Authors: Mann Michael
Published: July 2009

ThisPaperhas a fairly clear overall argument: that the relationship between State and Society in large-scale societies changed dramatically with the advent of industrial capitalism. Prior to that development, the State and the state bureaucracy played a substantially autonomous rolevis-à-visthe class structure of civil society. After that its autonomy has been negligible: indeed, for most analytic purposes the State can be reduced to class structure. Such an argument is by no means original. For example, its outlines were commonplace among eighteenth and nineteenth-century theorists. In this paper I draw somewhat on Karl Marx and Herbert Spencer. For one particular argument I am indebted to the contemporary sinologist Owen Lattimore. The idea of such a dramatic shift in the history of society is nowadays extremely unfashionable, however. Today theorists usually present essentially the same view of state-society relations throughout human history. Most Marxists reduce the state to being contingent upon the ‘determining’ categories of ‘mode of production’ and ‘class struggle’. Functionalists present a theory of structural differentiation which occurs so early in human evolution that in all recorded history the relationship between, and relative autonomy of, economy and polity are essentially unchanging. Weberians, in arguing for the autonomy of each element of ‘the structure of social action’, also give a picture of the mutual independence of state and economy throughout history. In all three cases, the caution and specificity of the theory of the ‘founding fathers’—Marx, Spencer and Weber—is thrown to the wind.
Status Seekers in India: A sociological study of the neo-Buddhist movement
Authors: Bopegamage A.
Published: July 2009

In every stratified society there are groups of people, mainly from the lower strata, who aspire to rise in social status. In order to realize their aspirations they adopt various means: some change their occupation for one carrying more prestige; some give their children a good education and try to place them in positions superior to their own; some emulate the behaviour and style of life of those whose higher status they aspire to reach; some try to gain admittance to the social circles mostly frequented by high-status people; some change their residence and some surround themselves with status symbols hoping that they will influence the ‘raters’ appraising them. For this process which goes on among various low-caste groups in India, Srinivas, an Indian sociologist, coined a separate term, ‘sanskritization’. With the opening of the doors by many under-developed societies for the introduction of modern technology and industrialization, status seeking has become one of the preoccupations of millions of people.
Cognitive processes and collective representations
Authors: Harris Paul , Heelas Paul
Published: July 2009

Anthropologists typically adopt the assumption of psychic unity: man universally exhibits the same fundamental cognitive processes. Hence, any apparent heterogeneity in collective representations may not be explained by psychological postulates. On the basis of recent cross-cultural studies of cognitive processes, we move beyond this standard anthropological assumption, arguing that there is cultural variability in the mode of thinking which is elaborated in specific conceptual domains. We shall also reject, however, the traditional alternatives to the assumption of psychic unity: the hypothesis that there is a pervasive mode of primitive thought or that in the course of history the intellect has marched through general stages of thinking.
The Notion of Civility in Contemporary Society
Authors: Coser Lewis A.
Published: July 2009

Ever since the Enlightenment, most intellectuals on the liberal and radical end of the ideological spectrum have tended to stand for a morality and politics of authenticity, sincerity, and naturalness; while their conservative opponents defended the need for decorum, civility, and restraints. These differences were, of course, largely rooted in differing basic conceptions about the nature of the human animal. Traditionally, the conservatives had a pessimistic view of human nature and hence believed that it had to be curbed; they pitted their views against the progressive belief in the basic goodness of human-kind that emerged in the eighteenth century. When Rousseau proclaimed inÉmile: ‘Coming from the hands of the author of all things, everything is good; in the hands of man, everything degenerates’, Bonald, the great critic of Enlightenment thought, answered: ‘We are bad by nature, good through society. The savage is not a man, he is not even a childish man, he is only a degenerate man’.
Blessed Bread, ‘First Neighbours’ and Asymmetric Exchange in the Basque Country
Authors: Ott Sandra
Published: July 2009

The ritual giving of blessed bread is a phenomenon that has been reported to take a variety of forms in time and space in western Europe. While recognizing these variations and the problem they ultimately present to social anthropologists, I shall examine only one particular form of the ritual in this paper; for, until we have understood the sociological and ideological basis of the practice in one community, we cannot begin to treat the more challenging problem of how to account for variations and transformations in the ritual that have occurred in several different European societies. The purpose of this paper is to show how one form of the blessed bread ritual was coherently and systematically linked with particular institutions and ritual obligations in the French Basque commune of Sainte-Engrâce.
Ideology and Organisation in Puritanism
Authors: Zaret David
Published: July 2009

Puritanism has been a fertile field for sociological inquiry. Studies of puritan thought have established its secular implications for economic and political life, for science, medicine and modernity. Indeed, puritanism occupies a place in the development of sociological analysis similar to that of the French Revolution in historiography. As much can be learned from studies of puritanism about sociology as about society. One lesson concerns the problem of historical scholarship in sociological analysis: too often sociologists rely not only on secondary historical accounts, but on outdated accounts and assumptions long abandoned by professional historians. Another lesson is that sociologists do not always follow their own advice. Sociological studies of puritanism devote far less attention to contextual factors than might otherwise be expected from practitioners of a discipline stressing the existential conditioning of ideas. Interpretations of a secular ethos in puritanism are used to explain why puritanism appealed to certain groups or promoted certain patterns of worldly behavior. Unfortunately, puritanism like the Bible can be ‘read’ plausibly in a number of ways to support different interpretations. Interpretations of the content of puritan thought thus must include an analysis of the organizational and social context in which Calvinist beliefs were developed and disseminated by clerics. Interpretation can be checked by contextual analysis; but such analysis requires precisely that critical style of historical scholarship so often absent in sociological analysis.
Esquisse d'une comparaison des systèmes de perpétuation des groupes domestiques dans les sociétés paysannes européennes
Authors: Augustins Georges
Published: July 2009

Face aux problèmes d'organisation sociale posés par les sociétés paysannes européennes, passées ou contemporaines, l'ethnologue demeure assez désemparé: les grandes théories ethnologiques, filiation et alliance (élaborées pour des sociétés qui avaient tout un corps de règies d'affiliation à des groupes de parenté ou de sélection du conjoint) sont ici d'un usage incertain. Les sociologues, quant à eux, offrent, depuis les travaux de Redfield (Redfield 1956), une analyse des principes d'organisation communautaire ou, à travers les travaux de Mendras (Mendras 1976), des principes de médiation entre société paysanne et société globale; elles laissent cependant en dehors de leurchamp les questions relatives à l'organisation des groupes domestiques et à leur perpétuation. En Europe, il semble bien que les principes explicites qui organisent la vie sociale en distribuant les individus dans des groupes solidaires aient peu à peu cédé le pas devant d'autres principes, d'ailleurs greffés sur les précédents ou issus d'eux, qui définissent les droits sur les biens et la manière dont ils se transmettent. Ce sont ces derniers principes, dérivant inévitablement d'une certaine conception de la parenté et de l'alliance, qui ont donné lieu à l'élaboration d'une véritable « théorie indigène » de l'organisation sociale, le droit privé. Cette évolution ne conduit évidemment pas à délaisser les grandes théories de l'alliance et de la filiation mais à chercher de quelle manière leurs acquis permettent d'éclaircir les principes d'organisation sociale implicates qui s'expriment à travers ou par delà le droit. Rien que pour la France seule, on découvre la présence d'au moins deux traditions juridiques distinctes et souvent imbriquées: la tradition romaine et la tradition franque.
Frazer's magic wand of anthropology interpreting ‘The Golden Bough’
Authors: Wood Geoffrey
Published: July 2009

‘Whodoes not know Turner's picture of the Golden Bough ?’ asks Sir James Frazer at the beginning of his journey into the underworld of primitive magic and superstition called The Golden Bough. And indeed who does not know Frazer's work itself, if not in the full twelve volumes edition, then in the continually reprinted abridged version, or if not by academic reference then as a popular classic entrenched in modern culture?. This paper re-examines this text according to the presence of two discrepant readings of it. The investigation of this discrepancy makes use of the idea of ‘intertextuality’ according to which meanings of a text are located within the discursive traditions to which the text responds and within which it participates actively in the production of meanings. Superficially, The Golden Bough is easily perceived to occupy a place within a web of discourses: folklore, the history of religion, classical studies, social anthropology, as well as literary criticism and even literature itself. We are concerned here with social anthropology and literature/literary criticism, in terms of their uses and treatments of the work; also, significantly with the object discourse of the work.
Leopold von Wiese and the ambivalence of functionalist sociology
Authors: Liebersohn Harry
Published: July 2009

‘Spencer is dead’, wrote Talcott Parsons at the beginning of The Structureof Social Action, ‘but who killed him and how ? This is the problem’. In this study, which was both the foundation of Parsons’ structural-functionalism and a major reinterpretation of the history of modern social science, Spencer stood for a vanquished schoolof social thought. He represented positivism at the suicidal extreme where its naive individualism fell apart, paradoxically passing over into its antithesis, a biological determinism precluding individual initiative. His thought had died at the intersection of individual and society.Beyond this point, Parsons discovered the rise of a new social theory in Marshall, Pareto, Durkheim and Weber. From these four thinkers, working independently of one another, Parsons tried to put together the pieces of a system, succeeding where Spencer had decisively failed, reconciling personal agency and social order.
Sémantique et rhétorique dans la hiérarchie hindoue des « buts de I'homme »
Authors: Malamoud Charles
Published: July 2009

«Si je savais quelque chose qui me fût utile, et qui fût préjudiciable à ma famille, je la rejetterais de mon esprit. Si je savais quelque chose utile à mafamille, et qui ne le fût pas à ma patrie, je chercherais à l'oublier. Si je savais quelque chose ulile à ma patrie et qui fût préjudiciable à l'Europe, ou bien qui fût utile à l'Europe et préjudiciable au Genre humain, je le regarderais comme un crime ».
La nourriture des hommes Essai sur le néolithique
Authors: Baechler Jean
Published: July 2009

Lespréhistoriens ont récemment fait faire des progrès décisifs à leur discipline, loin de son statut originel d'enquêtes par des amateurs et des érudits locaux et dans un sens de plus en plus rigoureux et compréhensif. De son côté la sociologie, telle du moins que lesArchives européennes de sociologiela conçoivent, se donne pour champ d'études l'aventure entiere des hommes. Après avoir intégré à nos analyses et à nos réflexions la matière couverte traditionnellement par l'histoire et l'ethnographie, le moment paraît venu de parachever l'effort en nous intéressant aussi aux sociétés préhistoriques. Pour une première tentative, il est bon de s'attaquer d'emblée au problème fondamental, celui de la mutation néolithique. De sa solution dépend la vision même que nous pouvons avoir des destinées historiques et sociales, sinon du genreHomoen général, du moins de l'espèceHomo sapiens sapiensapparue, on ne sait ni comment, ni même où, encore moins pourquoi, il y à trente-cinq a quarante mille ans. D'autre part, la question a bénéficié, ces dernières quinze années, d'une masse considérable de travaux, qui permettent de la poser sur des fondements plus solides et qui réclament peut-être une conceptualisation nouvelle. Comme il arrive toujours quand un champ scientifique est parcouru à vive allure, les athlètes manquent de recul et en perçoivent mal les lignes de force. Sans prétendre se substituer aux praticiens, il est permis de mettre leurs efforts à profit pour tenter de renverser la problématique en la «sociologisant».
Who are the Mennonites ?
Authors: Urry James
Published: July 2009

Who do you think the Mennonites are ? What do you think their future will be ? These were the questions I most commonly encountered among older ‘Russian’ Mennonites in Canada. The ethnographer who enters the field expecting to ask questions is a little disconcerted to be quizzed by informants. It is worse, however, when one is expected to pronounce upon their history or to make prophetic statements concerning their future! Yet the questions were asked in all sincerity; suddenly I was placed in the role of the expert and expected to issue a final judgement on Mennonite identity. I soon learnt to be very cautious of providing answers, particularly to the first question. The question obviously involved a search for a Mennonite identity and it was clear that this had a long and troubled history. For a hundred years ‘Russian’ Mennonites have been searching for an identity acceptable both to themselves and to the wider world. This paper will attempt to explain how and why Mennonites have sought different identities at different periods in their history.
The reconstitution of the family in the kibbutz
Authors: Ben-Rafael Eliezer , Weitman Sasha
Published: July 2009

Since the mid-1960s, and with growing intensity in the 1970s, there has been an increasing sense throughout the Western world that the institution of the nuclear family has entered a state of crisis. By ‘crisis’ we mean that increasing numbers of people in and out of families have been questioning the legitimacy of this institution, its necessity, and the soundness of the claims it makes on most of us.
Ethnic myths and ethnic revivals
Authors: Smith Anthony D.
Published: July 2009

In this paper I want to explore the role of myths of descent and renewal in nourishing a sense of ethnic identity and mobilising ethnic communities for political action. Much of the recent literature on the upsurge in ethnic sentiment, by focussing on the postwar West and concentrating on immediate economic, social and political factors, fails to grasp the deep historical and sociological roots of modern nations and the persistence of ethnic ties and symbols around which nationalists could create their nations. There is a long history of formation and dissolution ofethnie, reaching back to the first recorded cases in ancient Summer, Egypt and Crete, which forms the backdrop to the modern drama of nationalism and the specifically modern revival of ethnicity. Not only are the postwar ethnic autonomy movements simply a recent variation of a wider ethnic and national revival going back to the late eighteenth century in Europe; this latter revival is but the latest of a series of such resurgences, some of them purely local and others widely diffused. In pre-Roman antiquity, just as in the early European Middle Ages, and in the Far East and Africa more recently, that ancient and widespread social formation, theethnie, has occupied a variable but important position in the hierarchy of human allegiance and has, on occasion, served as a focus for political movements and organisations. Whether we think of the kingdoms of Hittites, Hurrians and Elamites in the second millennium B.C., or the early medievalregnaof Franks, Normans and Visigoths, we cannot escape from the fact that these states rested, to a large degree, on a sense of identity and solidarity deriving from elements of their shared culture and their social and political interactions with significant outsiders.
Some third thoughts on Max Müller and solar mythology
Authors: Carroll Michael P.
Published: July 2009

Who now reads Max Müller ? Almost nobody, I suspect. If the readers of this article know Müller's name at all, they likely encountered it in some review of the various (and now discredited) theories of myth and religion that were popular in the nineteenth century, and such reviews hardly encourage anyone to seek out Müller's original work. Typically, these reviews present only a very brief and very general summary of Müller's ‘solar mythology’, and then go on to disparage Müller's work, often in a fairly extreme language. Thus, Munz (1973: 75) calls Müller ‘the most flamboyant of all nineteenth century philologists’, Puhvel (cited in Larson, 1974: 4) calls Müller's theory of myth a ’Victorian gingerbread’, and Thompson (1946:371) even suggests that ‘any modern reader who examines it [Müller's theory] begins todoubt his own sanity’.
Aux origines de la modernité, castes et féodalités: Europe, Inde, Japon
Authors: Baechler Jean
Published: July 2009

On peut soutenir que les sciences sociales en général et la sociologie en particulier sont nées, à partir du XVIIIe siècle, pour essayer de comprendre et d'expliquer les nouveautés qui émergeaient dans les sociétés européennes, et que l'on se plaît à nommer la modernité. Comme l'occurrence était unique et qu'il est impossible d'expliquer la singularité, on a spontanément produit un pôle de comparaison en parlant de « sociétés traditionnelles » contrastées avec les «sociétés modernes». L'événement a montré qu'il était imprudent d'utiliser une catégorie aussi vague que celle de societes traditionnelles, où l'on mettait pêle-mêle sociétés tribales, cités antiques, empires historiques et anciens régimes européens. Malgré une débauche d'efforts, le mystère des origines de la modernité reste presque entier, qu'on la définisse en termes de révolution industrielle, d'âge scientifique, de poussée démocratique, de laïcisation…
Modernisation de la caste et indianisation de la démocratie: le cas des Lingayat
Authors: Assayag Jackie
Published: July 2009

À travers les âges, l'unité de l'lnde — « India is one » disait Dumont — a été symbolisée par une continuité culturelle enchâssée dans une structure sociale fondamentalement religieuse, comme l'exprimait Srinivas: « The concept of the unity of India is essentially a religious one », mais l'on peut ajouter que la structure de cette tradition a contribué à la projection d'une image unifiée de la civilisation qui a atteint le point de son plus haut développement à la fin de la période Gupta. Non qu'il n'y ait pas eu de changements, mais, vers la fin de cette période, la plupart des traités systématiques dans les champs de la réligion, de la littérature, de l'art, de la science et de philosophie ou de l'éthique s'étaient cristallisés dans ce qu'on a pu recemment appeler la « Grande Tradition ». Les périodes qui suivirent revinrent à une particularisation graduelle des institutions et des valeurs à l'intérieur de la tradition culturelle hindoue et aboutirent, dans certains cas, à des phénoménes de segmentarisation de cette « Grande Tradition ». Le centre de l'effervescence culturelle émigra du nord au sud de l'lnde et se régionalisa, donnant lieu a des mouvements hétérodoxes de reformulation et de reinterpretation des croyances socio-religieuses et des structures rituelles fondamentales de l'hindouisme. Sous la poussée des divers mouvements debhakti, des saints-philosophes commeŚankara, Rāmānuja, Madhyarapprochérent la « Grande Tradition » du peuple, tout en modifiant son enseignement et en orientant leurs efforts vers un mouvement plus libéral vis-à-vis desŚūdraou des basses castes; comme l'exprimait Stein: « In the eleventh century […] doctrinal issues come to be related quite directly to the place ofSūdrain the sect » (Stein 1968, p. 83).
Remarques sur l'évolution de la pensée stratégique (1945–1968) Ascension et déclin de l'analyse stratégique
Authors: Aron Raymond
Published: July 2009

Nul ne saurait prétendre qu'il a pris connaissance de toute la litterature publiée aux États-Unis depuis 1945 sur les problèmes stratégiques, encore moins de la littérature mondiale qui, presque toujours dépendante de la littérature américaine, n'en présente pas moins, dans plusieurs pays, une certaine originalité (1). En lisant la littérature américaine, je me suis toujours préoccupé du contenu, des analyses et des conclusions, jamais de Phistoire proprement dite, c'est-à-dire de l'origine de chaque idée, de l'ordre dans lequel les théories ou doctrines ont été élaborées, de l'influence exercée par tel des analystes sur ses collégues ou sur les hommes d'État.
Konvention als System Zur Theorie der Modernisierung
Authors: Bühl Walter L.
Published: July 2009

Die Theorie des sozialen Wandels, Desiderat und Prüfstein der Soziologie von Anbeginn, scheint — nach der seit ein paar Jahren rapide zunehmenden Zahl an Publikationen zum Problem der Modernisierung zu urteilen — endlich in Fluß gekommen zu sein. Die den Gelehrtenstreit blockierenden Antinomien der struktural-funktionalen Systemtheorie, wie die vom Wandel im System oder Wandel des Systems, beginnen sich zu lösen. Diese Lösung aber scheint in dem Versuch zu liegen, jene beiden Darstellungsweisen des Wandels (als eines variablen Beziehungsgefüges innerhalb konstanter Systemeinheiten oder als eines variablen Beziehungsgefüges variabler Systemeinheiten) auf eine dritte, sozusagen auf ihr kleinstes gemeinsames Vielfaches: auf die Entelechie konstanter Beziehungsgefüge konstanter Grundeinheiten, zu reduzieren. Der Prozeß der Modernisierung wird so, die unerkannten ontologischen Implikationen der beiden ersten Darstellungsweisen (1) noch multiplizierend, als ein Wandel vom (unterentwickelten) System zum (voll entfalteten) SYSTEM dargestellt.
The Particular Theory of Exchange
Authors: Davis John
Published: July 2009

For the past half-century economic anthropologists have been trying to come to terms with the obvious, recognised, indisputable fact that non-industrial economies “feel different” from industrial ones. How to express and communicate that difference? Some people thought they could do it sociologically, preserving as much as possible offormal economic theory, explaining deviation by invoking social influence on universalrationality, allowing the possibility that their evidence and insights might contributeto the proper development of a body of theory acknowledged imperfect and unstable (i). Others thought they could do it economically: they invoked distinct principles of integration and gave them an analytical status equal to rationality (2). For the most part different people took these rather different paths; they were academics and quickly engaged in controversy, tied labels to their opponents (formalist to the first, substantivist to the second) and held no truck with them. Firth alone tried to avoid entrenchment and was prepared to make propositions in both modes (3).
From Madness to Mental Illness: Medical men as moral entrepreneurs
Authors: Scull Andrew T.
Published: July 2009

This paper seeks to provide a sociological account of one aspect of a highly significant redefinition of the moral boundaries of English society: a redefinition which saw the transformation of insanity from a vague, culturally defined phenomenon afflicting an unknown, but probably small, portion of the total population into a condition which could only be authoritatively diagnosed, certified, and dealt with by a group of legally recognized experts and which was now seen as one of the major forms of deviance in English society. Where in the eighteenth century only the most violent and destructive amongst those now labelled insane would have been segregated and confined apart from the rest of the community, by the mid-nineteenth century, with the achievement of lunacy ‘reform’, the asylum was endorsed as the sole officially approved response to the problems posed by all forms of mental illness. In what follows, I want to focus attention rather closely on one centrally important feature of this whole process—and that is just how that segment of the medical profession which we now call psychiatry captured control over insanity; or, to put it another way, how those known in the early nineteenth century as mad-doctors first acquired a monopolistic power to define and treat lunatics. I shall begin, though, with some general remarks on the sociological importance of the issues I shall be raising here.
Explaining Mental Illness
Authors: Morgan David
Published: July 2009

Definitions of insanity and the treatment of those identified as mentally ill have been more obviously subject to changes in social values and ideas of individual responsibility than any other category of clinically recognised illness. These changes have exercised a significant influence upon the relationship of psychological to physical medicine and, inter alia, the status of psychiatry as a scientific and authoritative source of medical treatment and social labelling. The present trend towards the integration and expansion of psychiatry within general and community medicine has resulted in the increasing involvement of psychiatry in the problems of social life. A wide spectrum of deviant and socially disturbing behaviour, previously considered largely as legal or moral problems, is now seen and treated as a symptom of illness and explained in medical terms.
Village et forêt dans l'idéologie de l'Inde brâhmanique
Authors: Malamoud Charles
Published: July 2009

Lesacrifice royal de l'aśvamedha (I), tel que les textes védiques nous le font connaître, comporte l'étrange cérémonie que voici: le cheval que l'on s'apprête à immoler est attaché, comme il est de règie pour les sacrifices sanglants, à un poteau sacrificiel (yūpa); mais il n'est pas, en l'occurrence, la seule victime. De part et d'autre du poteau central, d'autres poteaux sont dressés, auxquels sont attachés d'autres animaux, destinés aussi à être immolés. La liste de ces victimes annexes est variable; mais toujours il doit s'agir d'animaux «villageois» (grāmya). Or à ces victimes «villageoises », effectivement mises a mort, s'ajoutent des quasi-victimes, qui se distinguent des victimes réelles par trois traits: ce sont des animaux « forestiers » (āranya); on les maintient dans les intervalles (āroka) entre les poteaux; enfin de compte, on ne les immole pas, mais on les relâche, et un des textes donne cette explication: c'est pour qu'ils ne subissent point de violence (ahimsāyai). La liste des quasi-victimes, variable, elle aussi, comprend nécessairement l'homme (2).
Corporatism
Authors: Winkler J. T.
Published: July 2009

This paper has two purposes: to define the concept of corporatism and to predict that a corporatist economic system is the most likely development for the United Kingdom over the next five to ten years. While the prediction logically presumes a concept of corporatism, the two parts of the paper are separable; the reasonableness of the definition and the accuracy of the prediction are distinct issues.
Des principes aux programmes politiques
Authors: Baechler Jean
Published: July 2009

Quelle place l'acteur politique doit-il accorder aux idées pour agir bien en politique? On peut exclure, comme contre nature, deux positions extrêmes. L'absence de principes et de programme peut définir le cynisme en politique. Il mène logiquement à la tyrannie, où ce sont les passions du tyran qui fixent les objectifs de ce qu'il devient impossible de considérer comme une action politique. À l'autre extrême, l'acteur commence par concevoir, dans le silence de son cabinet ou des bibliothèques publiques, le plan d'une cité idéale, avant de chercher à la réaliser par l'exercice du pouvoir politique, soit qu'il s'en soit emparé par une révolution, soit qu'il ait pu devenir conseiller d'un prince. La fin logique de l'utopie est l'idéocratie, qui n'est qu'une forme plus hypocrite de tyrannie, où les passions du tyran semblent s'effacer devant le bonheur futur du peuple.
L'institution militaire et le pouvoir soviétiques après Brezhnev
Authors: Bok Georges Tan Eng
Published: July 2009

Les luttes d'influence, qui ont précédé puis accompagné la disparition de Leonid Brezhnev, ont remis en cause l'équilibre assez délicat mis en place par celui-ci entre l'appareil du PCUS (Parti communiste de l'Union soviétique), l'armée soviétique, et le kgb (Komitet gosudarstvennoye bezopasnosti, Comité pour la sécurité d'État). Le grand perdant semble en être l'armée car, actuellement, les militaires comptent un seul représentant au Politburo en qualityé de membre suppléant : le ministre de la Défense nationale. En revanche, depuis la tenue du 27e Congrès du pcus en février 1986, les services de sécurité disposent de deux sièges auprès de cette instance : Geydar Aliyev, premier vice-président du Conseil des Ministres de l'URSS et général lieutenant du kgb ; Viktor Chebrikov, président, avec le grade de général d'armée, du kgb. De plus, Eduard Shevardnadze, ministre des Affaires étrangères et autre membre titulaire du Politburo, est général de troisième rang du mvd (Ministerstvo vnutennikh del, ministère des Affaires internes).
On queueing
Authors: Czwartosz Zbigniew
Published: July 2009

A year ago Dr. Jacek Kurczewski asked me to take part in a symposium which he organized with the Polish Sociological Association, on the sociology of everyday life. The subject of my session was to be the sociology of the queue. As a psychologist I could, of course, interpret the phenomenon of the queue in terms of the interdependence of individual interests and social justice. Theses of social psychology, based on empirical grounds, provided some explanations of the mechanisms of behaviour in a queue. These explanations, however, led to trivial conclusions, though expressed in scientific terms. Therefore I decided to choose phenomenological analysis to deal with queue behaviour. This paper is a widened and more analytical version of my speech at the PSA seminar.
Anthropologists and their informants: marginality reconsidered
Authors: Shokeid Moshe
Published: July 2009

There has of late been an increasing tendency to challenge the authority of ethnographic texts by criticizing the anthropologist's enterprise during the various stages of his performance—both the collection of data in the field, and the interpretation and presentation of his field notes at home. A better understanding of the process of gathering ethnographic data, and the characteristics of the participants in fieldwork may remove some of its mystique, and contribute to the credibility of the anthropological endeavor. It is often assumed that the anthropologist and in particular his informants are ‘marginal men’ in their respective societies. I intend to examine the applicability of this definition as regards both partners in the implementation of fieldwork, and suggest an alternative characterization.
Democracy and Literacy: the role of culture in political life
Authors: Creppell Ingrid
Published: July 2009

In the history of democracy, various criteria have been used to determine the size and nature of the electorate. We can, in a general way, divide these criteria into two types which we might label ascribed versus achieved characteristics of the person. Suffrage qualifications based upon age, sex, race and religion would fall under the first category; qualifications determined by education, military and criminal status, and property fall under the second. The distinction draws attention to the implicit notion that some characteristics are acquired by individual choice (‘achieved’) while others are given from the outside simply by nature of an automatic inclusion within certain groups (‘ascribed’). Such a categorization is certainly open to challenge from many angles. The point however is that it provides us with one way to begin understanding the changes which democracy has undergone. Of the ascribed qualities only age remains a legitimate basis for denying suffrage. Variations in suffrage rights based on achieved qualities still exist though there is less reliance on any of these as well. Overall, the development path seems to have run from the use of both types to the use of achieved criteria to using only age as a prerequisite. What are the driving forces of this transformation?
Bouddha en exil: La Grande Transformation des réfugiés tibétains dans le sud de l'Inde (Mundgod-Karnataka)
Authors: Assayag Jackie
Published: July 2009

Depuis des années, qu'anthropologue, nous travaillons sur la société hindoue dans l'État du Karnataka, leurs silhouettes nous étaient devenues peu à peu familières. Combien de fois, au petit matin ou à la nuit tombante, avons-nous rencontré leurs ombres déformées, courbées par l'énorme charge qu'ils transportent à pas lents et mesurés jusqu'aux rues commerçantes de la ville de Dharwar. Là, ils installent quotidiennement leurs étals précaires pour proposer aux Indiens des lainages : pull-overs, châles, bonnets, gants. Ils sont spécialisés dans la vente de vêtements qui sont autant de témoignages de leur terre d'origine, comme s'ils étaient encore porteurs d'une mémoire climatique presque totalement étrangère à leur environnement actuel.