bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
La définition libérale de la liberté
Authors: Aron Raymond
Published: July 2009

Le vocabulaire de Tocqueville n'est pas sans équivoque et les deux mots qu'il emploie le plus volontiers ne sont ni rigoureusement définis ni toujours pris dans la même acception. Cependant la pensée demeure, me semble-t-il, aisément saisissable.
Election Simulation
Authors: Rosenthal Howard
Published: July 2009

Like any political institution, the national election can change with external technological innovation. Certainly, election campaign habits have responded to transport and communication developments. The electronic computer, the political statistics available through public opinion survey archives and election statistics, and the existing social science theory now constitute the technological basis for computer simulation and a possible further alteration of the electoral institution.
Armed Forces in Western Europe: Uniformity and Diversity
Authors: Janowitz Morris
Published: July 2009

The professional armed forces of Western European nation-states developed out of feudal forms through a process of “institutional differentiation”. By “institutional differentiation” is meant the bureaucratic transformation by which the armed forces emerged as a distinct organization fashioned by its own system of recruitment and training, by the accumulation of significant amounts of its own resources, and operating in terms of its specialized format and calculus.
Some Cultural Aspects of the Military Profession
Authors: Kjellberg Francesco
Published: July 2009

It is the purpose of this paper to consider some of the features of the military officer-corps which make for its uniqueness compared to other professional groups. In spite of the lack in Norway of any militaristic tradition, the corps appears in many ways distinct from the main body of society. To a greater extent than within other occupations, there seems to be a tendency toward uniformity among the military officers on the basis of particular ideals and values. This characteristic has often been related to the supposed social composition of the group. There has been a widely shared assumption that military officers have been recruited from a rather limited milieu, and particularly, that the group has been highly self-recruited. As far as the Norwegian Army officers are concerned, the data about their social background do not support this view. It seems relevant, therefore, to relate the singularity of the group to its educational aspects. Before entering on the main theme of this paper, however, some comment on the social composition might be appropriate.
Intellectual and Class Alienation: Oxford idealist diagnoses and prescriptions
Authors: Richter Melvin
Published: July 2009

Few terms have had more complex fortunes than “alienation” and “intellectuals”; few at this time are more modish and less clear. It would be instructive to devote an entire paper to tracing their histories and plotting all their variations in present usage; it would be no less enlightening to determine just why these two concepts are so often coupled. Perhaps the single most important reason is to be found in the numerous attempts to classify and explain the great modern revolutions, particularly those of France and Russia. These have been frequently characterized as qualitatively different from all those that preceded them. Inspired by, or producing in their course, total ideologies, these revolutions have produced a new style of politics. Its origins and patterns of development have received increasingly close scrutiny. Among the most consistently favored hypotheses has been that linking revolution to intellectuals. This theory need not be phrased as did Burke and Taine, who seem to have believed that the world would be spared great political convulsions, if only there were no radical intellectuals, subverting by their impractical speculations, the bases of society and politics. Tocqueville, whose views are occasionally confounded with those of Burke and Taine, did assert that thorough-going revolutions cannot occur without the existence of a general theory about the nature of the good society, a theory that cannot be realized except by changing completely, and possibly violently, the status of persons and property under the existing order (1).
The Legitimacy of Solomon Some structural aspects of Old Testament history
Authors: Leach Edmund
Published: July 2009

I must start with a personal disavowal. This essay employs an explicitly Lévi-Straussian procedure but it is not intended as a guide to wider aspects of Lévi-Strauss thought. Although I feel reasonably safe with Lévi-Strauss's concept of structure, I am quite out of my depth when it comes to the related but subtler notion of esprit. Lévi-Strauss's esprit appears in sundry guises. In 1952, originally in English, he/it was a personalized “human mind”, an uninvited guest who took his place around the conference table among a group of American linguists and anthropologists (1); in the earlier chapters of La pensée sauvage he is perhaps the bricoleur—handiman—who is busy contriving culture from the junk of history and anything else that comes to hand (2); at the conclusion of Le cru et le cuit (3), in more abstract and more serious vein, esprit seems to be a kind of limiting characteristic of the human brain mechanism and appears as part of an extremely involved interchange relationship in which it (esprit) is the causal force producing myths of which its own structure is a precipitate. Elsewhere again (4) esprit seems to correspond to that very mysterious something which is a mediator between “praxis et pratiques” and which is described as « le schème conceptuel par l'opération duquel une matière et une forme, dépourvues l'une et l'autre d'existence indépendante, s'accomplissent comme structures, c'est-à-dire comme êtres à la fois empiriques et intelligibles ».
La mort inversée Le changement des attitudes devant la mort dans les sociétés occidentales
Authors: Ariès Philippe
Published: July 2009

Cette étude pourrait s'appeler : la crise contemporaine de la mort, si ce titre n'avait déjà été donné par Edgar Morin à l'un des chapitres de son livre, L'homme et la mort devant l'histoire (1). Ce sont bien les mêmes mots, et la même chose aussi : ≪ affrontement panique dans un climat d'angoisse, de névrose, de nihilisme ≫, qui prend ≪ figure de véritable crise de l'individualité devant la mort ≫, et sans doute, nous le verrons in fine, de l'individualité tout court.
Rationality and the Structural Analysis of Myth
Authors: Torrance John
Published: July 2009

These comments are intended not as criticism of Steven Lukes' conclusions, with which I mainly agree, but to raise some questions about their further implications and suggest some answers to these questions (1).

The questions arise when we stand back and look at the entire set of positions on the matter of rationality represented by Lukes' five paradigms and his own argument. They fall easily into two groups, composed of the first four and the last two, counting Lukes' position as the sixth. The first group consists of the views of practising anthropologists primarily concerned with understanding and explaining certain quite specific sorts of peculiar beliefs. In approaching their task they make various assumptions about rationality, about the relation of modern scientific thought to primitive magico-religious thought, and about the type of attitude towards these alien forms of mentality which is appropriate to the scientific endeavour. The second group contains the views of philosophers reflecting on the methods and theories of anthropologists, emphasising the philosophical character of the problems they take up out of this reading, and which they treat with the techniques of linguistic or logical analysis. They are less interested in the specific peculiarities of certain primitive beliefs than with the formal criteria by which any different sets of beliefs can be logically classified and compared. And they are less concerned with understanding and explanation than with the assumptions made about the philosophical status of, and typical relations between, different sets and sorts of beliefs when understanding and explanation are seen as problematic. Thus the second group concentrates more exclusively on a higher-order inquiry than that with which the first group was centrally concerned (despite the fact that Lukes has successfully isolated this level of inquiry out of the less focussed methodological reflections of the anthropologists). The question can therefore be raised, how far the positions on rationality are detachable from the various explanatory methods and theories which are associated with them in the first group, and what implications for understanding and explanation, if any, follow from the positions on rationality adopted by the second group.
Pacte de sang, classes d'âge et castes en Afrique noire
Authors: Paulme Denise
Published: July 2009

De nombreuses sociétés africaines connaissent et pratiquent la fraternité par le sang telle que la mentionne déjà Hérodote parlant des Scythes (1). Souvent, l'auteur qui décrit la conclusion du pacte relate une expérience personnelle : après avoir mêlé son sang à celui d'un chef indigène et prononcé une formule imprécatoire, parfois léché la blessure de son partenaire ou partagé avec lui un mets arrosé de leurs sangs respectifs, le voyageur était assuré d'une entière protection sur l'étendue du territoire que contrôlait son frère de sang. La facilité avec laquelle un total étranger se voyait offrir un lien en apparence aussi étroit a surpris plus d'un. Contre son gré et quelque répugnance que lui inspirât la cérémonie, Stanley dut s'y soumettre à plusieurs reprises pour pouvoir continuer sa route.
Émile Durkheim and the Institutionalization of Sociology in the French University System
Authors: Clark Terry N.
Published: July 2009

Between 1870 and 1914, a great deal of creative sociological research was completed in France. But this activity did not follow any sort of regular, coherent process of development; there were several quite separate lines of investigation which generally corresponded to distinct social groupings. And while the term “school” may imply too rigid a demarcation, there were at this time a number of what we may term “clusters” of researchers.
Die politische Spaltung der westdeutschen Arbeiterschaft
Authors: Blankenburg Erhard
Published: July 2009

Es ist unnötig, das Wahlverhalten von Arbeitern, die sozialdemokratisch wäahlen, ausführlich zu erklaren. Ihre Parteinahme erscheint uns «normal», da wir im allgemeinen davon ausgehen können, daß die politischen Fronten in der Wählerschaft die soziale Schichtung widerspiegeln. Wie aber erklärt sich, daß die SPD in der Bundesrepublik nur 60 Prozent der Arbeiterstimmen erhält, daß ein Drittel aller Arbeiter mit großer Konstanz ihre Stimme der CDU geben?
The sociological explanation of ‘religious’ beliefs
Authors: Runciman W. G.
Published: July 2009

The aim of this paper is methodological, not substantive. In the first section I shall discuss the familiar problem of how ‘religious’ beliefs can, if at all, be usefully distinguished from beliefs of other kinds (1). In the second, I shall try to suggest what constitutes an adequate sociological explanation of beliefs in general. In the third, I shall illustrate my argument by a direct comparison between Max Weber and fimile Durkheim (2).
Notes on media research as myth analysis
Authors: Brodbeck Arthur J.
Published: July 2009

1. The influence of the media has frequently been handled, particularly from a sociological perspective, with the concept of ‘myth’ in mind. The concept, however, has been invoked in a pejorative sense. The target of the word becomes whatever the speaker does not consider ‘his reality’. TV, for instance, is taken as ‘a myth world’ which is sharply divorced from the real world.
The Scientific Ethos : A deviant viewpoint
Authors: Barnes S. B. , Dolby R. G. A.
Published: July 2009

The study of science and scientists has attracted sociologists, to any significant extent, only in the last quarter of a century. The earliest papers of any importance in the field are probably those of Robert Merton, written in the late 1930's and early 1940's; Merton's ideas have been extremely influential with all subsequent contributors and it is probably no exaggeration to state that the literature of the subject has been overwhelmingly concerned with the development and extension of Merton's original insights. Certainly in America the work of Barber, Storer, Marcson, Hagstrom, Kornhauser and Shils would seem to justify this contention. In Britain, the sociology of science is not studied as much, but the work of Cotgrove, although by no means ‘following’ Merton, freely acknowledges his influence.
Planification et réforme de structures en Amérique latine
Authors: Furtado Celso
Published: July 2009

La vulnérabilité externe, reflet des fluctuations des prix des produits primaires d'exportation sur les marchés internationaux, a amené de nombreux gouvernements latino-américains à prendre des responsabilités croissantes sur le plan économique, même avant la crise de 1929. En effet, à mesure qu'ils ont pris conscience de la situation de dépendance qui était la leur dans l'economie mondiale, les pays latino-américains ont cherché, de différentes manières, à lutter contre les effets négatifs de ce phénoméne. D'un côté, ils ont essayé de soumettre à une forme quelconque de contrôle leurs rapports é'conomiques et financiers avec l'extérieur; de l'autre ils se sont efforcés d'accroitre l'intégration interne de leurs économies, en limitant leur dépendance ð l'égard du système traditionnel de la division internationale du travail. Le premier type de politique visait surtout ð contrôler les flux financiers, de manière ô limiter les conséquences internes des déséquilibres extérieurs. Le second cherchait à fixer dans chaque pays les ressources qui y faisaient leur apparition et à orienter les investissements vers le marché intérieur. La même politique a presque toujours eu plus d'un objectif ou, en en recherchant un, en a atteint un autre, raison pour laquelle il est plus facile de l'identifier en fonction de l'instrument principal qu'elle a utilisé, généralement de type cambiaire, fiscal ou commercial. Mais dans tous les cas elles ont entrîané un accroissement de l'action de l'État et sont le point de départ des essais de programmation sectorielle.
Notes sur la notion de théorie dans les sciences sociales
Authors: Boudon Raymond
Published: July 2009

La notion de « théorie » a probablement une signification plus incertaine dans les sciences sociales et particulièrement en sociologie que dans d'autres disciplines. Dans un passage deSocial Theory and Social Structure, R.K. Merton (1) soulignait, dès le début des années 1950, que le mot théorie était employé par les sociologues dans sept acceptions différentes dont une seulement est recevable. Ce sont: (I) Méthodologie; (2) Idées directrices; (3) Analyse des concepts; (4) Interprétations sociologiquespost factum; (5) Généralisations empiriques; (6) Théorie; (7) Dérivation et codification.
Max Weber et le judaïsme antique
Authors: Raphaël Freddy
Published: July 2009

C'est en automne 1916 que Max Weber se plongea dans l'étude du judaïsme antique et qu'il relut avec beaucoup d'attention l'Ancien Testament et les Prophètes, qu'il avait déjà analysés au cours de la rédaction deWirtschaft und Gesellschaft. Son épouse, Marianne Weber, rapporte qu'il se voua à cette tâhe avec beaucoup d'ardeur et qu'il était absorbé par ses recherches: « Max ist jetzt beinahe, “dürr” — dabei aber sehr fleissig und im ganzen frisch » (« Max est presque ‘à sec’ maintenant — mais il ne cesse de travailler et, dans l'ensemble, il est en bonne forme »). En 1917 et 1919, il publia dans sesArchivles premiers résultats de son étude sur le judaïsme antique. Weber se proposait d'analyser encore les Psaumes, le Livre de Job et le judaïsme talmudique, mais la mort l'empêcha de mener son œuvre à bien. Auparavant il avait déjà etudie le judaïsme antique dans plusieurs passages deAgrarverhältnisse im Altertumet dans le premier tome de sesAufsätze zur Religionssoziologie. II reprit ce thème dans les conférences qu'il prononça durant le semestre d'hiver 1919–1920. On découvrit dans ses notes les fragments d'une étude sur les Pharisiens qui avait été rédigée en 1917. Marianne Weber l'inclut dansDas Antike Judentumqu'elle publia comme troisième volume deGesammelte Aufsätze zur Religionssoziologie.
De la fragilité des systèmes politiques
Authors: Baechler Jean
Published: July 2009

Quiconque s'est occupé du problème des révolutions n'a pas manqué de se heurter à celui, combien irritant, de la définition. Le mot de révolution s'est chargé, au cours des siècles, de tant de résonances puisées à la réalité ou aux aspirations, que le même mot peut recouvrir des champs scientifiques — sans parler des champs idéologiques — les plus divers (1). II semble, pourtant, qu'on ne puisse pas éviter d'inclure dans son acception une référence au pouvoir et 'entendrai done par révolution toute prise illègale du pouvoir. La définition retenue est suffisamment large pour designer des faits aussi variés qu'une révolution de palais, un coup d'État militaire latinoaméricain ou les révolutions anglaise et francaise. Je maintiens qu'une définition aussi large est nécessaire, si l'on veut éviter le risque de manquer des phénomènes essentiels à la compréhension des sociétés. La littérature sociologique sur les révolutions — combien pauvre et limitée — manifeste le mépris le plus définitif pour les coups d'État militaires. Ce qui ne laisse pas de m'étonner. Car de quel droit décidet-on du degré d'intérêt scientifique d'un probléme? Si un coup d'État peut être de peu d'enseignement, leur retour périodique est, par contre, l'indicateur le plus important de l'état d'une sociét. De plus, une définition plus étroite que la mienne repose sur une décision arbitraire, qu'une autre décision tout aussi arbitraire peut venir contredire.
Prolegomena to the Interpretation of Durkheim
Authors: Lukes Steven
Published: July 2009

Durkheim's manner of thought and his style of expression have certain peculiar features the recognition of which can only clarify the interpretation of his ideas. First, there are certain concepts crucial to the understanding of his thought which need to be elucidated, either because they are ambiguous or because they are unfamiliar to a modern reader. Second, underlying these concepts, there are a number of sharp dichotomies, or “binary oppositions”, on which his thought rests, which need to be made explicit and related to one another. Third, there are a number of characteristic, and often bad, arguments, which likewise need to be brought to the surface and identified. And finally, Durkheim's style often tends to caricature his thought. He often expressed his ideas in an extreme or figurative manner, which distorted their meaning and concealed their significance: hence the relation between his style and his thought must be considered. It is to these matters that this article is devoted.
Coalition Formation and Colonialism in Western Sicily
Authors: Schneider Peter T.
Published: July 2009

Recently an evolutionary and international perspective has been applied to the study of nonindustrial areas which rejects the popular idea that all such places are, or once were, ‘traditional’ and will ‘modernize’ in much the same way that the West was once traditional and has modernized. This change in perspective requires that the nation-state give way to the more local region as a primary unit of analysis, so that we can examine the varied relationships between regional and international centers of marketing and control, as well as between the region and nation-state of which it is a part. It further suggests that no single model of economic and political development can be applied to different cases at different points in history. The process ofdevelopment in XVIIth century Britain differed in important ways from contemporary attempts which occur in the context of a world-wide economy dominated by established industrialpowers (1).
On the Social Origins of Agrarian Fascism in Italy
Authors: Snowden Frank M.
Published: July 2009

Before turning directly to fascism, we should recall certain facts that form the background to all that follows. In 1919, Italy, a country of about 35 million people, should be characterized neither as industrialized nor as underdeveloped, but as slowly and very unevenly industrializing. Still predominantly agricultural, the Italian peninsula can be divided into three distinct areas with markedly different social structures, each undergoing in very contrasting ways the twin transformations of the rise of industry and of intensive commercialized farming. The North was the most developed of the three areas, with the peninsula's most modern industrial enterprises heavily concentrated in the Milan-Genoa-Turin triangle, while commercial farming was centered in the fertile valley of the Po River. It is important to note, however, that even the North was still in a state of transition and that in the northern countryside more traditional systems of land tenure and cultivation still existed alongside some of the most mechanized farms in Europe. The other two areas of Italy—Center and South—were alike in being traditional societies less affected by modernization, though the Center of the peninsula and the South were very different social systems (1).
Race in Latin America: the concept of ‘raza’
Authors: Pitt-Rivers Julian
Published: July 2009

It is well known that the attitudes of the Latin Americans towardsraceare not the same as those of the inhabitants of Europe and the United States. This observation led scholars as distinguished as Gilberto Freire and Arnold Toynbee to put forward the view that there is no ‘race prejudice’ in Latin America, a view that has been criticised by more recent writers. In Latin America distinctions of ‘race’ are indeed made, but not on the basis of the same premisses as in North America and, thoughrazaandraceare the same word, they do not bear the same connotations in Spanish-speaking as in Englishspeaking countries—outside scientific circles, perhaps. ‘Race’ is a system of classifying individuals and, as such, part of each culture, and therefore liable to vary from one to another. But what science has done with the word is another matter.
Buddhist Brahmans
Authors: Greenwold Stephen Michael
Published: July 2009

Nepal, though the only Hindu Kingdom in the world, nonetheless is a nation in which numerous Buddhist communities co-exist in tranquility with their Hindu neighbours. The Newars, the numerically dominant ethnic community of the Kathmandu Valley, and a people justly famed for their remarkable artistic achievements in sculpture, painting and architecture, offer a microcosm of this peaceful coexistence as internally they are composed of Hindu and Buddhist sections. The existence of these two separate yet interrelated religious traditions is of extreme interest as it is one of the few remaining examples of the situation found in India from the inception of Buddhism through its demise. In recent years there has been much speculation based upon textual analysis concerning the nature of the relationship between Hinduism and Buddhism. Nepal, particularly the Kathmandu Valley, is an area in which a study of the actual dynamics of the mutual interactions of Hinduism and Buddhism may be made. Moreover, an examination of Newar religious organization permits investigation of how an actual Buddhist community has come to terms with the Hindu caste structure. Once again, this is a subject on which there has been a great deal of speculation. While passages in various Buddhist texts can be found which attack the Brahmanical view of how society should be organized, nevertheless little is known about how, in fact, Buddhists related to their Hindu neighbours. Lastly, the Newars who have replaced the usual Buddhist monastic structure with a married clergy offer an opportunity of examining the precise nature of the relationship between Buddhism and asceticism.
Kingship and Caste
Authors: Greenwold Stephen Michael
Published: July 2009

One of the major areas of dispute among social scientists working with South Asian material has been over what criteria enable one to isolate and define those characteristics attaching to the phenomenon of caste by which it can be described and analysed. Some scholars posit a set of fundamental attributes pertaining to caste which are so constituted as to limit caste solely to a Hindu context, while other scholars postulate a series of primary principles which permit comparative undertakings. One of the most vigorous and sophisticated proponents advocating the limiting of caste to the Hindu social system is Dumont. Dumont denies the validity of applying the term caste to non-Hindu social systems because for him the essential structural principle underlying caste is the polar opposition of purity and impurity. Hierarchy arises because of and is structured by this polarity. In turn, the requisite condition permitting the development of pure hierarchy is that ritual status and secular power must be conceived as completely separate domains and that status be made superior to power, the priest taking precedence over the ruler (Dumont 1972, p. 114). Caste exists only where this necessary disjunction between status and power is present and, furthermore, this disjunction is only found within the Hindu social system.
The Mother's Brother as Patron
Authors: La Fontaine Jean S.
Published: July 2009

In this paper I am concerned with the lack of consistency in the criteria embodied in the concepts used to identify social relations. There are two main elements: what we can call the indigenous ideology and the observer's characterisation. In the former case we are dealing with role definition, more or less formalised in different cases and with cultural norms which define the scope of a relationship; in the latter, regularities of observed behaviour and their politico-economic significance are the basis for classification. Examples of concepts based on the former are relations of kinship; of the latter, pairs of terms like leader and follower, patron and client. It is to the last of these that this paper is devoted, for it is precisely in those areas where the ideas of the actors are given least weight in our analysis that our ethnocentric perceptions cause analytical confusion.
Matrons and Mistresses: women and boundaries in two Middle Eastern tribal societies
Authors: Tapper Nancy
Published: July 2009

This paper examines some variables which may explain differences in the position of women, particularly in Middle Eastern tribal societies. By position of women, I mean women's status and roles vis-à-vis men. I am primarily concerned with differences in the dominant or male models concerning women, and the behaviours associated with them, however at a number of points in the paper, for illumination, I refer to women's models of women—that is, muted or counterpart models which are alternative, and sometimes contradictory, to the men's models (E. Ardener 1972; 1975; S. Ardener 1975: xi–xii). But my main argument is in a different direction: I suggest that certain features of social organization and structure determine these dominant models concerning women. Among the more obvious explanations of this kind would be those in terms of economic factors, such as the types of social production (whether a given social group is predominantly pastoral nomad, settled agricultural, or urban commercial-industrial, etc.) or the sexual division of labour within the group. But in my view certain more subtle factors than these are also of explanatory importance. The problem arises from the study of two particular tribal societies, the Shahsevan of north-western Iran and the Durrani of north-central Afghanistan; the women's position in these two societies differs in three significant spheres, yet the economic factors suggested above cannot explain these differences, for the two societies are economically similar, and women are excluded to a similar degree from control of economic and political resources.
Religious Diffusion and Modernization: a preliminary reflection on the spread of Islam in Indonesia and its impact on social change
Authors: Kahane Reuven
Published: July 2009

The transformative capacity of most religions to initiate modern, capitalistic societies has been extensively investigated (Bellah 1957 and 1965; Eisenstadt 1968; Geertz i960 and 1968; Gellner 1969; Levenson 1968; Rodinson 1974; Sardar 1977; Soedjatmoko 1965; Turner 1974; Weber 1958a, 1958band 1964). However, most scholars have not been able to come to definite conclusions regarding the capacity of religions to legitimate modern development. This is because it is assumed that every ‘big’ religion contains the potential to legitimate different, even contradictory, patterns of social change. Thus, perhaps it would be useful, when studying a given religion, to analyze the conditions under which a certain pattern of social change is utilized, as well as the interests such a pattern serves.
The kidnapping and murder of Aldo Moro
Authors: Moss David
Published: July 2009

Deaths of sovereigns or political leaders are generally accompanied by dramatic representation and celebration of the political order over which they have presided. The circumstances of death, funeral rites and destination of the corpse (cremation, burial or public display) proclaim the value and necessity of the ideas embodied in the ruler's office. However practically deficient or scandalous any particular ruler's interpretation of that office, the activities which surround his death reaffirm the invulnerability of the transcendent order to any local or temporary individual failings. Sometimes, however, the circumstances of a sovereign's death can be appropriated by his opponents not merely to decree that death but to destroy the ideological underpinnings of the political system itself: the trials and executions of Charles i and Louis xvi were not simply the punishment of individuals for specific crimes but rather symbolic destructions of monarchy itself staged by Cromwell and the conventionnels (Walzer 1974). Such occasions have been rare. A radical political opposition can expect at most to intervene in the timing of the ruler's death, by assassination, but draw no benefit from this, since it is likely to be even more effective than peaceful death in stimulating public affirmation of the existing order.
The axial age: the emergence of transcendental visions and the rise of clerics
Authors: Eisenstadt Shmuel N.
Published: July 2009

Inthe first millennium before the Christian era a revolution took place in the realm of ideas and their institutional base which had irreversible effects on several major civilizations and on human history in general. The revolution or series of revolutions, which are related to Karl Jaspers' ‘Axial Age’, have to do with the emergence, conceptualization and institutionalization of a basic tension between the transcendental and mundane orders. This revolutionary process took place in several major civilizations including Ancient Israel, Ancient Greece, early Christianity, Zoroastrian Iran, early Imperial China and in the Hindu and Buddhist civilizations. Although beyond the axial age proper, it also took place in Islam.
Modern patron-client relations and historical clientelism. Some clues from ancient Republican Rome
Authors: Roniger Luis
Published: July 2009

Much has been written in the last two decades on clientelism and patron-client relations. From a concept of relatively marginal concern in the social sciences, clientelism has gained analytical clarity and has been applied with greater precision to political and social relationships found in many contemporary societies.
Institutional and transformational migration and the politics of community: Greek internal migrants and their Migrants' Association in Athens
Authors: Kenna Margaret E.
Published: July 2009

This paper is about migration from a small Cycladic island (1) to Athens, the capital city of Greece, and chiefly concerns those male migrants for whom migration entails a change from agricultural labour to work in the building trade. The first part of the paper briefly sets the depopulating island of Nisos in the context of Greek rural depopulation, migration within and from Greece, and the growth of Athens. Migration from Nisos from 1840 to 1940 fitted into traditional expectations about an island-man's wage-earning activities at a certain stage in his life and is therefore interpreted here as supporting established island institutions. Migration since World War II and the Greek civil war (1945–49) is interpreted as transforming island life and even threatening the continued existence of a viable community. The second part of the paper gives an account of the involvement of Nisiot migrants in the building trade as workmen, subcontractors and property-owners, and discusses the tensions which have arisen between members of old-established migrant families and more recent migrants enriched by the building boom.
Lamb auctions on the borders
Authors: Gray John N.
Published: July 2009

Weber could very well have been referring to the England- Scotland borderlands when he characterized the basic relation which ‘transcends the boundaries of neighborhood, kinship, group or tribe’ (Economy and Society, I: 637) as taking one of two forms—war or trade. He also said of the market, as a particular form of the trading relation: ‘It is […] only this physical assemblage which allows the full emergence of the market's most distinctive feature, viz. dickering’ (Economy and Society, I: 635). The lamb auctions which are the focus of this paper do involve a physical assemblage of individuals from different sides of the border who dicker over the value of lambs. But as implied by Weber, this is not just a simple trading relation. It is a meaningful exchange of value in which sheep embody for the Scots a distinctive world and in which the haggling over the price of sheep is about the distancing of this world from the over-whelming social, economic and political power of England. In sum, auctions in the Scottish borders occur at and are partly constitutive of social boundaries.
The paradoxes of Jaruzelski's Poland
Authors: Walicki Andrzej
Published: July 2009

Many people in the West see Jaruzelski's Poland as a particularly oppressive totalitarian regime; from this perspective the main problem of contemporary Poland is, obviously, the lack of freedom and the constant violation of human rights by the Polish Communist rulers. This is the view which the radical opposition in Poland's emigre press wants us to adopt. In fact, however, only the younger generation in Poland can express such views in good faith; the older generation which has experienced Stalinism and knows what totalitarianism is like cannot really maintain that Jaruzelski's government is worse in this respect than previous Communist governments in Poland.
Sociology and history: M. S. Archer's Social Origins of Educational Systems
Authors: Anderson Robert D.
Published: July 2009

One of the more ambitious intellectual projects of recent years is the body of work by Margaret S. Archer which centres on her Social Origins of Educational Systems, published in 1979. Archer's thesis is that modern educational systems are of two basic kinds, centralized and decentralized, and that their character and functioning are conditioned by the social and political conflicts of their formative phases. The underlying contrast is between France and England: this was Archer's starting-point, and in 1971 she published Social Conflict and Educational Change in England and France 1789–1848 in collaboration with Michalina Vaughan. Social Origins of Educational Systems extended this in time, bringing the story down to the present day, and in national coverage, adding Russia and Denmark to the countries examined. A shorter ‘University edition’—reduced to 234 pages from over 800—has now been published which is again restricted to England and France.
Polish-Jewish relations during the war An interpretation
Authors: Gross Jan T.
Published: July 2009

For the last two hundred years, with the exception of a brief interval between the two World Wars, Poland has been either partitioned, or occupied, or governed by proxy. Squeezed between Russia and Germany Poles took nourishment and continuity as a historical nation from remembrance of things past whenever their sovereignty as a political nation was curtailed or abolished. Lately these efforts were inspired by a conviction that even if present day institutions could not be changed, a half-way victory over totalitarianism's attempts to destroy social solidarity would still be won if the community's history were rescued from the regime's ambition to determine not only the country's future but also its past. Thus, the wonderful intuition—that totalitarianism must destroy all context of social reality independent of its own dictate and acquire a copyright not only on what is but also on what had been—came to the Poles not because they read Orwell's 1984, but because for well over one hundred years they nurtured the idea of the Polish nation against all the odds of nineteenth century geopolitics. Once before, when they had lost their national sovereignty, the Poles had locked in on their past spiritually and it worked: Poland was resurrected. But since the Second World War, despite the dogged persistence of the Poles to reclaim their past, to go beyond, revise, and correct the government-approved version of their history manifested during every mass upheaval in the Polish People's Republic, there was never a temptation to reopen the subject of wartime Polish-Jewish relations.
Popular sovereignty, State autonomy, and private property
Authors: Przeworski Adam , Wallerstein Michael
Published: July 2009

The legitimacyof modern democratic institutions rests on the ideal of popular sovereignty. The purpose of this paper is to examine the contemporary status of this ideal.

Since space limitations do not permit discussion that would place the concept of popular sovereignty in its historical and intellectual context, we simply postulate a definition. People, by whom we mean individuals acting on the bases of their current preferences, are collectively sovereign if the alternatives open to them as a collectivity are constrained only by conditions independent of anyone's will. Specifically, people are sovereign to the extent that they can alter the existing institutions, including the state and property, and if they can allocate available resources to all feasible uses.
Islam, minority status and citizenship: Muslim experience in India
Authors: Krishna Gopal
Published: July 2009

Indian muslims have been a large and an active constituent of Indian politics and society for a very long time. Throughout the twentieth century their political endeavours have been directed towards achieving communal autonomy in a plural society. The aspiration to autonomy has been sufficiently strong to unite an otherwise extremely heterogeneous population, divided by language, class, caste and sect. Muslim politics were never monolithic but the dominant tendency was wedded to the cause of autonomy, which entailed a substantial struggle to determine the character and the scope of the state's jurisdiction.
Le traditionalisme par excès de modernité
Authors: Favret Jeanne
Published: July 2009

En principe, il n'y a pas de frontières entre la science politique, la sociologie et l'anthropologie; en réalité, les recherches sur le terrain utilisant simultanément les trois disciplines sont rares. En principe, les groupes sociaux n'ont pas d'existence substantielle; en réalité, les chercheurs finissent toujours par oublier qu'ils n'ont d'existence que relationnelle. L'étude de la politique locale dans l'Algérie rurale est un excellent exercice pour désapprendre ces manies universitaires: les conserver condamnerait à manquer l'essentiel.
Insiders/Outsiders : Basque Nationalism
Authors: Heiberg Marianne
Published: July 2009

The material which I will try to analyse is largely historical and relates to the initial period of Basque nationalism at the turn of the last century. Moreover, the historical material will be presented only cursorily since the main emphasis of the paper is theoretical. It is believed that the Basque nationalism of today is incomprehensible if there is no theoretical understanding of the factors which led to its emergence in the 1890s. Furthermore, this paper does not purport to prove its conclusions. It is rather a tentative exploration of one theoretical line which may or may not be eventually useful. The paper is divided into three sections. The first section presents the historical material. The second will give an analysis of the specific character of Basque nationalism. By modifying the theory of Ernest Gellner and illustrating with the Basque material, the third part will attempt to put nationalism into a general theoretical framework.
Durkheim, Booth and Yule: the non-diffusion of an intellectual innovation
Authors: Selvin Hanan C.
Published: July 2009

Except perhaps for a few diehards, no sociologist today would think of conducting a large-scale empirical investigation of numerical data without a firm grasp of statistical methods—or at least a graduate assistant who has such a grasp. The old polemics about statistics in social research have died away and are now lost to view under a blizzard of statistical findings in journal articles and books. Asked to date the period when statistical analysis really ‘took over’ in social research, most sociologists would probably put the date around i960, when large computers and efficient programs became widely available. But the date of widespread adoption is perhaps not as significant as the date on which the leaders in the field became convinced of the desirability of using powerful statistical methods in the analysis of standardized data.
Les frustrations de l'égalité Contribution aux recherches sur la relativité des aspirations et la perception des inégalités
Authors: Bénéton Philippe
Published: July 2009

À Buchenwald, pendant la guerre, David Rousset et quelques autres détenus se trouvent un jour devant la chambre duBlockältester(doyen de bloc):

C'est une pièce misérable, étroite comme certains réduits de la zone à Paris. Un lit, une table, deux chaises, un poêle, quelques photos de femmes sur les cloisons, une carte du front russe. Ce coin sordide est un paradis. Nous sommes là, quelquesuns, à regarder, et quelle envie dans les yeux! C'est le signe de toutes les puissances, de tous les privilèges. Le rire me prend: qui jamais aurait pu imaginer que nous en serions à lorgner ce gîte de paria comme la réalisation de rêves impossibles, la satisfaction de véhéments désirs? (1).
Suicide in Singapore
Authors: Hassan Riaz
Published: July 2009

Singapore, lying less than one hundred miles north of the equator and at the extremity of the Malay Peninsula, is one of the smallest countries in Asia. It is also one of Asia's most urbanized, industrialized and materially prosperous countries. It has a stable, one-party-dominant government and its population of 2.3 million, the majority of whom are Chinese, with sizeable numbers of Indians and Malays, has access to a comprehensive network of social services.
Exchange relations between lords and peasants
Authors: Meadwell Hudson
Published: July 2009

The purposes of this article are, first, to present a theoretical discussion of peasant revolts that develops an exchange model of relations between lords and peasants and second, to use this discussion as a framework for a review of some of the work on peasant activity in eighteenth-century France. The argument, therefore, begins from social exchange; it does not privilege structures at the theoretical origin. Any analysis should specify three features of exchange: what is exchanged and the terms of trade, the potential kinds of coordinated activity present in the exchange (the relationship between hierarchy and reciprocity), and the meaning of the exchange relationship to its participants. These three features are interconnected so that, for example, specifying the kind of collective action is also to specify terms of trade and meaning.
The possibility of rational politics
Authors: Elster Jon
Published: July 2009

We know, more or less, what rationality means when applied to individual choices and decisions. It is less clear what it could mean when applied to policy choices. In this article I discuss three questions. First, can one assign a meaning to the idea of rational political choice? Secondly, assuming that this assignment is feasible, what is the scope for rational political decisions? Thirdly, if this scope turns out to be limited (as it will), could there be an alternative guide to political action?
The Bantu languages : an appraisal
Authors: Knappert Jan
Published: July 2009

The fact that the Bantu languages are related was first mentioned in a short publication by Martin Heinrich Lichtenstein (Berlin) in 1811. Very few Bantu languages were known at that time: only Kongo (Kikongo) as it was spoken at the mouth of the Zaire river, and some languages of southern Africa, on which a few notes were published in theNarrative of an Expeditionby Captain J. K. Tucker in 1818, but which were written originally by William Marsden (probably in 1808) and possibly published separately.
L'urss et son Autre
Authors: Mendras Marie
Published: July 2009

L'union soviétique a vécu son immersion dans la vie internationale d'une façon bien particulière. Elle a fait place sans difficulté, dans son idéologie et sa stratégie internationale, au phénomène de mondialisation de la politique depuis la deuxième guerre. Elle en a même tiré les plus grands bénéfices puisqu'elle a créé un camp socialiste de pays alliés-soumis et étendu son influence au-delà de l'Europe. La Russie a réussi à devenir une puissance mondiale, et même l'une des deux plus grandes puissances, plus facilement qu'elle ne s'était imposée comme puissance européenne sous les tsars.
Identité et changement : Les Falachas entre l'assimilation en Éthiopie et l'intégration en Israël
Authors: Friedmann Daniel , Santamaria Ulysses
Published: July 2009

La question de l'intégration des immigrants se pose en général par rapport à leur devenir, comme mobilité ascendante ou descendante dans les translations possibles des positions sociales dans la société d'accueil, compte tenu de leur propre capital culturel et social et des inégalités culturelles existantes dans cette société d'accueil, ainsi que de la conjoncture politique, économique et sociale qui y a cours. L'immigration récente des Falachas (juifs d'Éthiopie) en Israël a ceci de paradoxal qu'elle a, au départ, suscité un questionnement portant au moins autant sur le passé de cette population que sur son futur destin social, à partir d'hypothèses souvent invérifiables ou, plutôt, indécidables, quant aux contradictions possibles qu'elles impliquent en ce qui concerne l'identité des juifs d'Éthiopie, et dont l'objet est cette zone en amont même du passé, et qu'il conviendrait d'appeler la mythologie de l'origine des Falachas.
« Que cent chants rivalisent, qu'une musique éclose »: Étude sur le traditionalisme d'État en Chine
Authors: Trébinjac Sabine
Published: July 2009

Les affaires musicales ont été, en Chine ancienne, plus qu'une simple expression artistique destinée à amuser. Liée aux rites, la Musique présidait au bon fonctionnement du gouvernement et engageait la personne impériale.
Labour market deprivation, welfare and collectivism
Authors: Gallie Duncan , Vogler Carolyn
Published: July 2009

Changes in labour market conditions over the last ten years have led to renewed speculation about the future of collectivist attitudes. In Britain, the most striking change has been the sharp rise in the level of unemployment which doubled between 1979 and 1981. However, many commentators have also suggested that profound changes are occurring in the character of employment, in particular through the rise of more precarious types of work. On one estimate, fully a third of British employees could now be considered part of the ‘flexible’ workforce (Hakim 1987). Overall, there has been an increase in the level of insecurity and a marked accentuation of financial inequality.