Définir d'emblée la sociologie de la science n'est pas choseaisée. Y parviendrait-on même que l'exploit formel aurait peu d'intérêt, dépourvue que serait la définition des référents empiriques qui lui donneraient un sens. Contentons-nous done d'affirmer ici que la sociologie de la science, si multiples que soient ses acceptions et ses tendances, est une incontestable réalité intellectuelle qui s'efforce souvent avec succès de conquérir une dignité scientifique. Quatre remarques s'imposent d'emblée:

1) Comme la sociologie du travail et plus encore la sociologie militaire, la sociologie de la science s'est développée bien après que les activités sociales qu'elle veut étudier, e'est-à-dire la recherche et l'enseignement scientifiques, fussent devenues (a) des activités numériquement importantes, (b) consommant des ressources considérables, (c) dont les résultats ont une certaine importance pour chacun des États-nations concernés.

In “Laundering ‘money’: on the need for conceptual clarity within the sociology of money”, (Archives Européennes de Sociologie, XLVI, 3 (2005), pp. 387–411, Nigel Dodd tells us that recent work has added further complications to an existing “conceptual muddle” in the sociology of money, and advances a claim to have made matters clearer (Dodd 2005a). The “muddle” is identified in the work of Cohen (2004), Hart (2000), Zelizer (1994, 2000), and in my own book The Nature of Money (Ingham 2004). In the same year, Dodd advanced the same critique – at times verbatim, in Economy and Society (Dodd 2005b), where, subsequently, I responded to what I take to be the misunderstanding and misrepresentation of my work (Ingham 2006). Here, I will briefly reiterate these objections, focusing mainly on the uncertainty, ambiguity, and consequent incoherence, of Dodd's attempt to identify the specific nature of money. On the one hand, he asserts that “any attempt to build a coherent theoretical conception of money is bound to fail” (p. 387). But, on the other, Dodd also argues that that “greater conceptual clarity can be brought to bear” by making a distinction between the monetary medium and money's denomination (p. 406). Leaving aside for a moment the fact that such a distinction has been commonplace in monetary theory at least since Plato and Aristotle (see Schumpeter 1994 [1954]), Dodd appears to be unsure, on rather curious intellectual grounds, about the usefulness of his claim to have provided conceptual clarity.

Surveying three generations of comparative sociologists, separated by abrupt discontinuities, the study reaches the conclusion that the original promise of comparative sociology set in motion a century ago remains largely unfulfilled. It will then be argued that the work of the third generation of comparative sociologists on civilizational analysis and multiple modernities can redeem the promise of comparative sociology by rectifying the neglect of developmental patterns in other civilizations and recovering the fundamental relevance of the periphery. The third generation is thus seeking to undo the erasure of the historical experience of a very sizeable portion of humankind from the foundation of social theory. This argument is illustrated by selective reference to the concept of the nation-state, and comparisons of civilizational processes and developmental patterns that stem from different religions and traditions and generate varieties of nationalism, alternative modernities and patterns of secularization.

TheMouride brotherhood has by now become the subject of an abundant literature, sociological and other, since its foundation in the 1880s (notably Paul Marty 1913, L. Nekkach 1952, V. Monteil 1962, Shaikh Tidiane Sy 1969, J. Copans et al. 1972, F. Dumont 1975, Donal Cruise O'Brien 1971, 1975) (1). Looking over this literature today, one is impressed by the remarkable resilience and versatility of this holy organization: charismatic community and vehicle of a variant of ‘sacred nationalism’ (1886-), instrument of a massive land settlement (1912-), and of electoral brokerage in national party politics (1951–1966). This is only to mention some of the principal functions which the observers have discerned over the years, leaving aside the theological-didactic mission which the brotherhood's members (both leaders and followers) tend above all to emphasize. Yet for this writer, on the basis of field research in 1966–67, the Mouride success story seemed to be near its close (Marty more than half a century before had reached a similar verdict): but now, after renewed fieldwork in 1975 (2), it would appear that the brotherhood (with a new, younger and more vigorous leader) has made a new and unforeseen departure which invalidates recent premonitions of its imminent demise. Writing in 1970, I had been careful in concluding a book on the subject to cover every apparently foreseeable future trend but had not foreseen the major subsequent development, that the brotherhood would emerge as a (curious and perhaps slightly ambivalent) form of peasants' trade union. Experience showed that the great holy men (shuyukh, marabouts, saints) could be successful estate managers, political brokers, even capitalists, but union bosses!—that last can be explained now, but to me at least the causes have become obvious only after the event.

In the Preface to the second edition of Les régies de la methode sociologique (1901) Émile Durkheim defined sociology as “the science of institutions, of their genesis and functioning” (R XXII). In the same text, however, he stated:

In the present state of the discipline, we really do not even know what are the major social institutions, such as the state or the family, the right of property, or contract, punishment and responsibility. We ignore almost entirely the causes on which they depend, the functions they fulfil, the laws of their evolution; we barely begin to perceive some light on a few of these points (R xv).

This essay relates the normative discussion about social justice in political philosophy to empirical results from social policy analysis, thus linking two lines of discussions that have hitherto run mostly separately. The argument will be developed by answering four questions. The normative question: what regulative ideas of social justice does the debate about justice in political philosophy supply? The action-theoretical question: what criteria for judgement and political preferences can be found for a justice-oriented politics? The empirical question: how can the ‘three worlds of welfare capitalism’ be judged in the light of these hierarchically ordered criteria of justice? And finally the institutional question: which logic should underpin a reform of the welfare state, if this reform is to be both socially just and at the same time realistically achievable.

An enormous amount of scholarly attention has been devoted to the phenomenon of patron-client relations both in the form of conceptual elaboration and to the application of the patronage model to a wide variety of empirical situations. However despite the prodigious amount written on the relationship its analytical status remains equivocal: no one, for example, has been able to say with any degree of precision what patron-clientage is, and especially where patron-clientage ends and the reciprocity which pervades all social relations begins. But a certain lack of clarity has not deterred social scientists from resorting to the patron-client model and few studies of social and political change in the Third World manage to get by entirely without it.

This article draws on participant observation and casematerial on significant situations and individuals, who live in a small neighbourhood of central Naples. I shall call this neighbourhood ‘the quartiere’, after local custom. The issues discussed here can reasonably be said to have wider significance, because the old centre is basically sociologically homogeneous. This large part of the city is not, however, socially undifferentiated, as many observers seem to have assumed. In agreement with this pattern, both bourgeois and, in large majority, popolino live in the quartiere, often residing in the same building. Given the graduality of socio-economic positions among local people, I have deliberately decided to use very general terms, such as ‘popolino’ and ‘bourgeois’, in describing my informants.

Contrary to a number of his contemporaries, Montesquieu did not consider that an inescapable antagonism existed between the republican government, based on the virtue of citizens and their dedication to the public good, and commercial activity, which was aimed at material interests. Well aware of the recurrent historical phenomenon of commercial republics, Montesquieu detected various mechanisms by which the commercial spirit could in fact encourage the formation of the psychological mindframe and behaviour necessary for republics. These included, in particular, a respect for rules, a distrust of emotions, a taste for individual independence acquired through work, and allegiance to a noncapricious government.

Only a few years ago it was generally assumed that the future of the newly emergent states would be determined largely by the activities of their Westernized intellectuals, their socialistically inclined bureaucrats, their nationalist ruling parties, and possibly their menacing communist parties. It occurred to few students of the underdeveloped regions that the military might become the critical group in shaping the course of nation-building. Now that the military has become the key decision-making element in at least eight of the Afro-Asian countries, we are confronted with the awkward fact that there has been almost no scholarly research on the role of the military in the political development of the new states.

En principe, les modèles simulés peuvent être considérés comme une extension des modèles mathématiques. Étant donné un ensemble T de propositions verbales, associer à cet ensemble — qu'on peut, si on le désire, appeler théorie — un modèle M, c'est, grosso modo, donner aux propositions de T, si elles ne l'ont pas déjà, une forme telle qu'il soit possible d'en déduire, par un calcul (1), de nouvelles propositions. M peut être obtenu à partir de T de différentes manières, mais essentiellement par trois procédures qu'on peut s'accorder à nommer spécification, simplification et réduction. On appellera spécification l'opération qui consiste à redéfinir une notion ou relation de T de manière à rendre un calcul possible. Ainsi, on sait qu'il est d'usage en économétrie d'assimiler dans les équations de l'offre le prix anticipé au prix de l'année précédente: sans discuter le bien-fondé d'une telle assimilation, il est visible que son principal intérêt réside en ce que, de cette manière, les équations de l'offre et de la demande définissent un système clos, dont on peut prévoir le comportement, si on connaît les conditions initiales et si on peut estimer les paramètres des équations (2). L'opération de simplification consiste à ignorer certaines propositions de manière à rendre un calcul possible. Ainsi, nombre de modèles épidémiologiques appliqués aux phénomènes sociaux ignorent délibérément, comme on le verra dans un exemple analysé plus bas, la distance physique ou sociale entre les individus. L'opération de réduction consiste enfin à associer un modèle non à une théorie, mais seulement à certaines de ses conséquences. Ainsi, de considérations théoriques complexes, dérivées de Durkheim et Mannheim, on peut tirer la proposition que le caractère ordonné de la biographie professionnelle doit être associé à un degré de participation sociale plus élevé: le modèle de l'analyse de variance qu'applique alors Wilensky (3) ne concerne évidemment que cette conséquence et non l'ensemble de propositions dont elle découle, de sorte que, dans ce cas, le modèle permet d'éprouver, non pas T, mais une conséquence de T qui peut aussi bien appartenir à une autre théorie T'.

Despite ongoing debates on the continued legal significance of citizenship in a globalized world, international comparative tests of the salience of citizenship under the law have yet to be undertaken. This article combines data from US and German courts with interviews of judges from both countries to 1) estimate the punishment consequences of lacking state membership; 2) compare the sentencing gap across international contexts, and; 3) identify and explicate the mechanisms linking citizenship to punishment considerations. Findings show noncitizens receive increased punishment in US and German courts net of legal factors, but this effect is less pronounced in Germany. The interviews suggest that a variety of intervening mechanisms explain these results. Prominent among these is that judges in both countries resent the fact that noncitizens compound their immigrant status with criminal transgressions. However, German judges place greater emphasis on consistency and proportionality at sentencing, thus guarding against overly harsh and disparate punishments.

Much literature has been written on why men rebel. However, the whole of human history can be characterized as a reason for why men rebel; the last four thousand years have presented us with one sorry set of oppression and exploitation after another. Basically, normal life for human beings has consisted of small groups of people taking advantage of larger groups of people. The real puzzle is why the larger groups of people don't rebel against the smaller groups of people more often. Perhaps the most important question is not why men rebel, but how they rebel. How does an individual gain the confidence or courage to take the tremendous risks involved in a rebellion? How does a rebellion sustain itself against the powers of the established regime?

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).

Almost a decade after the wave of transformations from authoritarian to democratic regimes started in Latin America, Eastern European countries, one after another, entered the path leading towards democracy. The end of 1989 and the first part of 1990 saw unheard of numbers of free elections in ten Latin American and all East European countries (with the exception of Poland, where freedom of the first election was limited). Moreover, all the newly elected rulers won office on a promise to liberalise their economies. However, many commentators and scholars fear the impact on populations of painful structural reform policies and predict that new democracies in both regions either will not stay democratic for long or will not carry out a full package of economic reforms. They predict that half-hearted efforts at stabilisation will be followed by overwhelming political resistance which will provoke a reversal of economic policies. Each failure will reduce the credibility of successive reform attempts, the ultimate consequence being not merely economic disarray but an almost total loss of faith in democratic political institutions.

‘Why belgium?’ is the question that American and Belgian colleagues and friends have asked me recurrently since I began doing research in that society in 1959. Ever since then, Belgium has been one of the consistent sites of my sociological inquiry, reflection and analysis. (Zäire, Belgium's former colony in Central Africa, became another such site, beginning in 1962). With a mixture of real interest, conventional politeness, perplexity and, on the part of Belgians, a tinge of traditional irony, those who have followed my fieldwork have often wondered out loud what I was discovering and learning in that small society that could possibly preoccupy me for so many years. Through some of my publications on the sociology of Belgian medical science and research or, more accurately, on ‘Belgium through the windows of its medical laboratories’, I have implicitly responded to this question (1). And I have periodically speculated on it more privately in my fieldnotes, and in letters to friends. But I have never dealt with it in an explicit, public way. This article constitutes my first formal attempt to do so.

How is a sovereign prerogative brought to market? We know much about how states shape markets and vice versa, but less about the dynamics when states not only set market rules, but are also the sole producer of the good. This article takes up the case of citizenship by investment—“golden passport” programs that offer citizenship in recognition of an investment in a country—to unpack the challenges that appear when states commodify sovereign prerogatives. In these cases, the state holds multiple roles that generate conflicts of interest and a concern for credibility. To address these concerns, states may adopt two strategies: institute a division of labor in issuing the product, and outsource elements of supervision to third-party actors. Empirically, the analysis shows how migration service providers retooled murky discretionary grants of citizenship in peripheral countries into formal citizenship by investment schemes. The conclusion addresses how these strategies apply in markets for other sovereign prerogatives, particularly government debt, and discusses the implications for citizenship and neoliberalism.