Lesnotions de frustration relative (relative deprivation) et de groupe de référence constituent a elles deux un ensemble conceptuel dont le succès est dû sans doute à ce qu'il permet, à l'aide de propositions de bon sens, de rendre compte d'observations paradoxales. Comme le note Runciman, les deux notions sont issues d'un truisme familier: à savoir que «les attitudes, aspirations et frustrations, dependent largement du cadre de référence dans lequel elles sont conçues » (“ that people's attitudes, aspirations and grievances largely depend on the frame of reference within which they are conceived”) (I). L'observation montre en effet qu'il est dans la plupart des cas impossible de comprendre pourquoi un individu A éprouve par exemple de l'envie à l'égard de B mais non de C si on ne connaît pas le « cadre de référence » (“ the frame of reference”) de A: comment expliquer que A envie la 504 de son voisin de droite mais non la Jaguar de sonvoisin de gauche, si on ne sait pas que A peut espérer se hausser au niveau de son voisin de droite mais non a celui de son voisin de gauche ? Utilisons l'excellente définition que propose Runciman de la notion de frustration relative: éfinition stricte est difficile. Mais on peut grossièrement dire que A est relativement frustré de x si (I) il n'a pas x, (II) il voit une personne ou plusieurs autres personnes, incluant eventuellement lui-même dans le passé ou dansl'avenir, comme ayant x (quece soit, ou doive ou non être en fait le cas), (III) il désire x, et (iv) perçoit comme plausible l'éventualité d'en disposer. Dire qu'il possède x peut naturellement vouloir dire qu'il est exempt ou indemne de y »(2).

Le retour désabusé à la statique sociale, dont le structuralisme n'est qu'une variante, s'explique sans doute en grande partie par le refus de l'évolutionnisme des vastes constructions sociologiques du siècle dernier. En raison de la simplification outrée qu'il imposa à l'intelligence des processus sociaux, de l'exclusion dont il frappa tout autre modèle de changement, et de sa prétention non fondée à l'universalité, le paradigme évolutionniste fut à l'origine d'une réaction contre l'analyse dynamique, qui marqua profondément le développement ultérieur de la sociologie. Cette conversion fut d'autant plus radicale qu'une fois le schéma linéaire écarté, on se découvrait impuissant à comprendre la complexité des phénomènes sociaux dans leur temporalité, a réduire leur désordre apparent, et à mettre au jour les modéles du changement qui les sous-tendent. On renonça à penser dans le temps pour imaginer dans l'espace, on chercha partout l'invariant dans le mouvant, on préféra l'être au devenir (1). En dépit de l'intérêt croissant que suscite l'étude du changement, les effets de cette réaction se font sentir aujourd'hui encore comme en témoignent les résultats incertains des recherches conduites dans ce dernier domaine (2).

In the developing areas of the world new class-relations emerge, as one after another country adopts democratic institutions and initiates industrial growth. In the ‘developing areas’ of Europe a comparable process took place since the French Revolution and during much of the nineteenth century. This essay seeks to enhance our understanding of the modern problem by a re-examination of the European experience with special reference to the relation of social stratification and the political community in the nation-state (i).

The article analyzes the emergence of moral concern for animals in late eighteenth and early nineteenth-century England. This concern was fuelled by a developing aristocratic discourse on civility that was accompanied by a drastic increase in the factual visibility of violence inflicted on animals in the growing cities. In opposition to interpretations based on the concepts of discipline and distinction, the article elaborates the way in which the emergence of moral concern for animals was class-structured without being class-interested.

The comparative sociological study of the countries of the Middle Eastern culture area for the nineteenth century can scarcely be said to have begun. But such studies can do much to help us come to a more precise estimate of the functions which particular institutions might fill, and the weight they could be required to bear in different parts of the Middle East during the critical period of the onset of modernization. It is the purpose of this article to begin to make some of the kinds of distinctions which set off different parts of the Middle East one from another, using the case of late nineteenth century Morocco. It is hoped that the analysis which follows will stimulate the same kind of critical examination of the institutions of other segments of the Middle East culture area. Even if it does not accomplish this objective, such an exercise may be useful if in studying the Moroccan modifications of some of these basic institutions, it can shed light on why Morocco was significantly different and therefore perhaps on the nature of these institutions themselves.

In 1992–1994 the Russian people met with a drop in their standard of living and suffered from a rapid deterioration of public services. Yet their dissatisfaction did not manifest itself in collective protest actions. Their patience can be explained as a consequence of their desire for order, their pessimism, their capacity to adapt to difficult situations and, above all, by their evaluation of virtual outcomes. Convinced that protests would not lead to any positive results, the Russian people preferred to rely on patience rather than action. A rejoinder, by Marie Mendras, traces this discussion back to its Western antecedents.

Montesquieu popularized the notion of Oriental Despotism as the type of government pertaining to a lawless society based on the equality of subjects in fear and powerlessness. It typified Europe's Other in the age of absolutism. This essay does not examine the idea of total despotic power directly but rather the assumption of the absence of law and its guarantee of a sphere of civil autonomy and agency which will anachronistically be called “civil society”. While substantiating the emergence of a public sphere around coffeehouses, the growth of guilds on the basis of customary law and the development of educational and philanthropic endowments on the basis of the law of waqf, we also take the opportunity to compare the civic and educational institutions of the Ottoman and Safavid empires in the 17th and early 18th centuries.

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 on moral not 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.

Au moment de leur accession à l'indépendance et au statut d'État légal, les pays africains se sont tous inspirés du modèle occidental d'État-nation unitaire et centralisateur, dans un contexte de profondes divisions sociales donnant libre cours aux particularismes sociaux de toutes sortes, particularismes ethniques, régionaux, religieux, linguistiques, culturels, économiques, démographiques, etc. Posant des obstacles à l'unification nationale, ces profondes divisions du corps social ont fait apparaître des tensions, des conflits, des affrontements et des luttes d'intérêts particularistes qui ont eu, et continuent d'avoir des répercussions sur les conditions d'organisation du nouvel État, sur les modes d'exercice du pouvoir et sur le processus général de développement de la société dans son ensemble.

The theories of the Austrian-American philosopher and social scientist Alfred Schutz have been summarized and introduced sufficiently by various of his students. The purpose of the present paper is not to provide the reader with yet another comprehensive summary of his phenomenology and social theories but will try to formulate what Schutz has contributed to one of the most crucial issues in the methodology of the social sciences, namely the problem of an adequate social theory. Without underestimating the many fruitful insights of his phenomenological philosophy and the contributions he made to social theory in general, it was in the field of methodology that, according to this author's opinion, Schutz contributed most to the social sciences.

Most expressions and symbols associated with the mafia—indeed, the term mafia itself—are made up of an almost surrealist cocktail of bogus and genuine sources, mythical and prosaic characters, fiction and reality. Already in 1876, Franchetti was puzzling over ‘the tendency to turn a mafioso into a legendary type, a feeling natural enough indeed in a professor of literature, but much harder to explain in wealthy landowners…’ (p. 34).

This paper argues that the class-based analyses that seek to make sense of the recent transformation of Turkish modernity rest on a pre-given duality between the state and the bourgeoisie. This not only jettisons the relational and temporal context in which classes define and articulate their interests, thereby leading to determinist explanations of various sorts, but also obscures the historical distinctiveness and mutual re-transformation of two different modes of socio-spatial organization, modernity and capitalism, in Turkey. Based on a novel historical materialist method known as Political Marxism, I suggest that re-conceptualizing class as property-relations sheds new light on the historical-comparative specificity of Turkish modernity, which, in turn, leads to a radical re-interpretation of Turkey’s recent transformation.

starting from the french law of bequest enacted by the code civil and from its interpretation by tocqueville, the paper studies this law as a social device designed to solve two different issues. the first one is concerned with legitimacy and is studied through the debates within the conseil d'état, whereas the second is concerned with the social mechanisms leading to action and it is studied through the debates among economists and lawyers during the 19th century. more generally, the paper suggests that similar social devices are useful to understanding transfers of resources related to death, such as life insurance and organ donorship.

The paper argues that Claude Lévi-Strauss’ thought was influenced by Marcel Mauss’ works in a much deeper way than has been remarked in the literature. Far from being restricted to Lévi-Strauss’ seminal 1949 work on The Elementary Structures of Kinship Mauss’ constitutive impact can already be found in Lévi-Strauss’ early ethnographic studies (starting in the mid-1930s). Moreover, it can be shown that decisive theses and arguments of Lévi-Strauss’ later thought – ranging from the anthropology of kinship to classification theory and the specifics of the “savage mind” – are clearly prefigured in these early texts. In the end, the arguments presented here do not only call into question the well-known and widespread portrayal of Lévi-Strauss as a solitary scientist and “born structuralist” but also show how the specific interpretation of Mauss by Lévi-Strauss directed and restricted the further reception of Mauss’ works.

What can a good’s durability tell us about its market organization? This paper argues that the socially expected durability of goods is one of their most important features. It illuminates temporal and material aspects of market organization and social change across different markets. While recent literature in the sociology of markets tends to emphasize financial goods, intangible assets, and the service economy, markets for material durable and nondurable consumer goods are still surprisingly pervasive in everyday life and in the household economy, as well as in modern economies’ basic infrastructure. Based on a comparison of the extreme cases of durable housing and fresh fish markets, we come to the general finding that the higher a good’s expected durability, the smaller the share of its new production will be and the larger its aftermarkets. Furthermore, it will be more tightly linked to credit and insurance markets, and its market will be more volatile in the short-term, but more inert in the long-term. Beyond this static distinction, we show how socio-technical mechanisms can “durabilize” or “dedurabilize” goods and hence change their market form. By comparing markets along the durability dimension, this paper contributes to a comparative sociology of market organization that goes beyond single-market studies, while at the same time opening up space for a more dynamic understanding of social change and market segmentation over time.