This study intends to reread Max Weber's Protestant Ethic with the following question in mind: where is the Catholic ethic with respect to “the spirit of capitalism”? The few short comments that Weber makes on this topic nevertheless suggest an interesting notion which he had developed in earlier texts, i.e., the “religious ethic of brotherhood”. I intend to show here that this notion could be further illuminated by the findings of the anthropology of gift giving since Marcel Mauss. This would enable us to understand how the problem of grace, so central to the debate between Protestants and Catholics, is linked to the history of the transformations in the gift giving practices; we will also discover that this problem was at the origin of the schism. While such a hypothesis leads to a different reading of Weber, it is confirmed by a work of the historian B. Clavero which brings out the complex links that existed in 16th century Catholic Spain between the order of business and that of charity. Besides the antagonism that has marked the two Christian traditions in the West, what seems to be at issue is the way in which economic practices weight on the social bond. These questions invite us to rethink the connections between them.

Everyone invokes secularism in India. So the spectrum of secularism is very large. However, it is rather the spectral ideas of “majority” (hindus) and “minorities” (Muslims, Christians) conceived in demographic (rather than political) terms which characterizes the discussion of this question. The insistence of Hindu nationalists on emphasizing that they are the majority tend to blur the difference between Hindu identity and Indian identity, coextensive with the territory of India. This concept, moreover, serves them in their legitimating of the democratic system insofar as the arithmetical rule is a first principle of this political regime. In the name of a secularism founded on the idea of the greater number (and also the supposed ideal of immemorial Hindu tolerance) India must be governed in accordance with demographic fact defined in religious terms. One of the paradoxical consequence of this “majoritarianism” is the development of “majority minority complex” of the Hindus and the increasing hate and violence (against Muslims and Christians). Today, the Hindu nationalism programme effectively dominates public debate. Its partisans has succeeded in discriminating between “friends” and “foes”, those inside and those outside, those whom one holds dear and those whom one pillories on the basis of a real or imaginary menace weighing upon autochthony, culture, religion and race, and the national (state) sovereignty.

Each of the main sectors of society—the state, the market and the voluntary non-profit sector—is characterized by a distinctive accountability regime, focusing on a different subject of accountability (actions, results and intentions, respectively) and a different mechanism of accountability (hierarchy, competition and cooperative networking, respectively). Those different regimes can complement one another, enhancing the democratic accountability of the system overall. They can also undercut one another, if their differences are not respected. Bringing the Third Sector under a market-style accountability regime, through “public-private partnerships” based on competitive tendering, undermines the distinctive contribution that the Third Sector might make.

This paper asks whether it is possible to study “elite” professional migrants in Europe with the same concepts and theories being used to explain the incorporation and/or integration of “ethnic” (i.e., non European) migrants in Europe; that is, in terms of their social mobility and social power in their new host countries. While globalisation may in theory make it easier for these professional migrants to transfer their “social capital” to other national contexts, observations of the personal and professional trajectories of European professional migrants in Brussels—particularly their difficulties establishing a true social power in a foreign national—suggests that theorists often overstate their arguments about “global cities” and the decline of the nation-state, at least as far as Europe is concerned. The paper links these empirical concerns with theoretical issues arising from the work of Bourdieu, Mann, Coleman, Castells and Portes, aiming to build a bridge between current work in ethnic and migration studies and core current issues in social theory.

This article discusses some contemporary transformations of citizenship across Western states, with a special emphasis on Europe. It is argued that citizenship is subject to countervailing “de-” and “re-ethnicization” pressures, the first pushing toward incorporating immigrants, the second toward retaining ties with emigrants abroad. While grounded in the dual nature of the modern state as a territorial and ethnic unit, and reinforced by contemporary globalizing and transnationalizing processes, de- and re-ethnicization are identifiable projects of the political left and right, respectively. Which trend prevails is then a simple function of who has the political majority.

The study of transitional justice—trials, purges and reparations after regime transitions—is emerging as a vital field of scholarship. Virtually all writings on the topic, however, are limited in two ways. First, they tend to focus on the twentieth century. Second, they usually limit themselves to transitions to democracy. In this article I transcend these limitations by considering transitional justice in the restoration of the Bourbon monarchy with an analytical framework for the study of transitional justice. I discuss the 1814 and 1815 restorations, with main emphasis on the political constraints on transitional justice that followed from the fact that these were negotiated transitions. I consider public and private retribution, before turning to the issues of restitution and compensation.