Ipropose in this paper to develop a theme from an earlier article I wrote on Michels: namely, that Zur Soziologie des Parteiwesens is to be understood as the work of someone who had passed over from revolutionary Marxism into the camp of elite theory; more precisely, it is a work which takes as its starting point a problem posed within a revolutionary tradition and proceeds to answer it from within a quite different theoretical framework. We could say that it offers a Right-wing answer to a Left-wing question. It is in this conjunction that lie both the strengths and weaknesses of the work (1). One failing of much of the critical literature on Zur soziologie des Parteiwesens is that it treats the conceptual and other inadequacies in its argument as a series of isolated errors, of separate points to be challenged, rather than as arising systematically out of the particular intellectual conjunction I have indicated (2). I propose, however, to go further in this paper than simply present a historical analysis of the intellectual development of an individual thinker. I want to ask the question: How far can the inadequacies of Michels' argument be overcome from within the framework of elite theory itself, and how far can they only be overcome by breaking with some of the central assumptions of that perspective? In other words, I want to broaden out the enquiry to consider what are the limitations of an elite-theoretical approach to the study of parties and elites, particularly parties of the Left.

Being an ‘antiglobalizationist’ comes easy as a political label but as a theoretical endeavor, it is more difficult. Globalization encompasses a bundle of meanings. The paper disentangles some of the multiple implications of globalization and its purported enemies through the Big Mac-Roquefort opposition; it examines the taste differential of the two products, their symbolism and their stakes in the construction of ethnic, cultural and class identities. The simplistic opposition between globalization and its enemies is reinterpreted in the context of commercialization, Americanization, democratization, high-and massculture and-consumption, only to be cast in the age-old tensions of modernity.

In contrast to neoliberal rhetoric, the commercialisation of knowledge has proved to be an intricate endeavour that implies unexpected effects. Taking Monsanto’s transgenic canola and its propertisation regime as an example, we will shed some light on the counterintuitive phenomenon that strong intellectual property rights are in heavy contrast to the liberal utopia of full commodification, i.e. universal competition and ideal type market relationships. We will find that Monsanto, in order to avoid Napsterisation, has established and still maintains a rather repressive commercialisation regime that maximises property control by strongly reducing the exchangeability of seed and crops. It can therefore be interpreted as a new form of landlord dominion which contradicts the modernist idea of concordance between market liberalisation and individual emancipation.

For over seventy years the sociology of professions has revolved around empirical generalizations drawn from four modern exemplars of nineteenth century Britain and United States: law and medicine, science and engineering. We identify qualities constitutive of professionalism in an occupation during the ancien regime, on the Continent, and in a field unrelated to the four just noted: seventeenth century French painting and sculpture. These constitutive qualities point to the significance of a distinctively structural and institutional approach to the sociology of professions.

This paper theorizes the nature of neoliberal social policy, making three substantial contributions. First, processes of “economization” are identified as a central characteristic of neoliberalism: economization constitutes a “bridge” between Foucauldian and (neo-)Marxist accounts of neoliberalism – two perspectives that are in many respects hardly reconcilable – because extending the economic logic to non-economic areas (neoliberalism as a governmental rationality) also potentially increases the profit-making opportunities in previously uncommodified domains (neoliberalism as a capitalist project). Second, the paper links economization processes not only to projects of austerity and welfare retrenchment but also to the more generous “social investment” agenda. Third, the paper highlights the central paradox of neoliberal social policy, whereby higher degrees of economization are associated with more generous social policy: more “social” versions of neoliberalism are those that ironically downplay the social logic, transforming social policies into economic investments. The paper also discusses the problems related to economization in terms of de-democratization.

The Relationship between the market and the forum, between exchange and persuasion, between the public realm of the citizen and the private realm of the consumer, has been a central preoccupation of social thought since the days of Aristotle. For most of the post-war period, however, and in most western countries, the tensions inherent in that relationship appeared to have been resolved. Then came the ‘stagflation’ of the 1970s, the rise of the New Right, the associated rebirth of economic liberalism and a variety of more or less successful attempts to clip the wings of the post-war welfare state. Classic questions, which the post-war generation imagined it had answered, returned to the agenda—among them the questions of what citizenship means in a market economy, and of how the promise of citizenship is to be realised in complex modern societies. These questions are of significance to all advanced societies, of course; as the most cursory reading of Vaclav Havel's essays shows, they resonate with particular force in eastern Europe. Perhaps because she has been the chief European testing ground for New Right theory, however, they have also begun to resonate with unusual power in Britain; and it is plausible to imagine that the British case may be more relevant to the rest of the western world than are the various East European cases. Hence, this essay. It begins by looking at the British debate and the factors which have given rise to it, and then tries to clarify some of the issues it poses.

This study was conducted through interviews with a sample of researchers from French laboratories. It has brought to light two main themes which are interlinked: (i) all laboratories which reach a certain level of development are laboured by a diversification of their teams which tends to compartmentalise them; (2) this compartmentalisation is offset. The laboratory is thus the level at which one finds and manages the problem of unity posed by the compartmentalisation of teams which are open to the whole scientific field.

The nature of networks depends mainly on two variables: the weight of instrumentation and the degree of unification of problematics or thematics. Weakly integrated networks are found in those disciplines which use technologies which are easily disseminated because of their low cost, as well as those disciplines which have low degrees of theoretical unification. Nuclear physics and astrophysics are examples of the most integrated networks. A division of labour has recently developed in molecular genetics which has become de localised between different laboratory teams. We can describe these networks as paradoxical.

La guerre, on le sait bien, c'est la politique continuée par d'autres moyens. Mais ils ne sont violents que pour une part: ceux destinés à frapper l'ennemi, et ses alliés supposés de l'intérieur. Pour une autre, ils visent à rassembler les énergies d'une nation divisée, et se trouvent ainsi répondre à l'objectif central de toute réforme sociale. De ce point de vue, la première guerre mondiale constitue un tournant: elle a permis une accélération inespérée des changements sur tous les terrains stratégiques définis par les réformateurs depuis le début du siècle, qu'il s'agisse de la rationalisation du travail industriel ou des rapports entre patronat et syndicats, de la planification économique, du travail social ou de l'urbanisme.

This article examines the debate on the developmental impact of foreign direct investment (FDI). While the most frequent finding within sociology is that FDI is harmful or at least less beneficial than domestic investment, most who study the transition from socialism or make economic policy in the region consider FDI to be a major motor of development. This paper examines the impact of FDI with a novel methodology. Rather than employing the standard analytic strategy that uses state-level macroeconomic data in a crossnational comparison, this article direcdy compares the performance of foreign owned firms to domestically owned firms. In the analysis six hypotheses derived from this debate on the role of FDI are tested with logistic regression on two large random sample surveys of Hungarian firms The findings support the position that foreign direct investment is beneficial for the recipient country. In addition, they support the idea that foreign owned firms are more beneficial than domestically owned firms.

LikeProphecies, revolutions restart time, and the distance between l'An I and l'An X is greater than any other decade in history. After that, or a little bit more, things seem to slow down, not because less happens but because less happens for the first time. The ‘infinite grandeur of beginnings’ fades, a certain possibility disappears from things. Attempts may be made to prolong the excitements of setting out. Pillars are erected in squares, purification movements launched in schools, guerilla styles imitated in offices. But all this soon becomes parody, the sort of thing V.S. Naipaul memorializes, as the ordinariness of life reasserts itself. This is where the New States are now, and their study as well, and it is an awkward point for both.

One of the most widely cited of recent writings on the borderland of philosophy and anthropology is Peter Winch's ‘Understanding a Primitive Society’ (referred to hereafter as UPS)(I). The main reason for the breadth of its appeal would seem to be a blend of general principle and particular application all too seldom found in the writings of philosophers of social science. Thus, on the one hand, Winch develops further some of the general principles of cross-cultural understanding which he first enunciated in his Idea of a Social Science (referred to hereafter as ISS) (2). And, on the other hand, he attempts to show us, in considerable detail, how these principles can be applied to the solution of a particularly vexing anthropological problem: that of interpreting ‘primitive’ mystical thought.

This paper studies the rise of professors of economics and business studies in the second half of the 20th century in Switzerland. It focuses on three types of power resources: positions in the university hierarchy, scientific reputation and extra-academic positions in the economic and political spheres. Based on a biographical database of N = 487 professors, it examines how these resources developed from 1957 to 2000. We find that professors of economic sciences were increasingly and simultaneously successful on all three studied dimensions – especially when compared to disciplines such as law, social sciences or humanities. This evolution seems to challenge the notorious trade-off between scientific and society poles of the academic field: professors of economics and business increased their scientific reputation while becoming more powerful in worldly positions. However, zooming in on their individual endowment with capital, we see that the same professors rarely hold simultaneously a significant amount of scientific and institutional capital.

Retroactive justice against perpetrators in post-totalitarian, as distinct of post-authoritarian, democracies is constrained by the absence of human resources for the rule of law and the weakness of civil society. The limited application of lustration and other sanctions in postcommunist countries is understood in the context of politics of transition, political actors, motivations, constraints and beliefs. With special attention to the Czech Republic, the ineffectiveness of lustration is exemplified by the damage inflicted on post-communist societies by the nomenklatura and the former secret police.

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.

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).

Research on authoritarian legitimation suggests that rulers seek support through ideological, personalistic, performance-based, and procedural strategies. Typically, however, this work only considers the dynamics of legitimation between rulers and civilians. In contrast, this paper suggests that meso-level actors play a critical role in shaping legitimation from both above and below. Through an historical analysis of the French episcopate’s support for the Vichy regime from 1940 to 1942, I identify four practices that bolstered Vichy’s attempts to accrue legitimacy and simultaneously identify the consequences of these practices for the Church’s relationship with Jews. Public endorsements by the religious authorities for Marshal Pétain, their cooperation with the Vichy administration, the expression of shared values, and common rhetoric all contributed to the regime’s legitimation process while leading to a concomitant decline in the hierarchy’s ties to the rabbinate. These results suggest that attention to meso-level actors brings into relief important dynamics about how legitimation processes unfold in authoritarian settings while simultaneously contributing to research on the Holocaust in France.