The paper considers the impact of the current economic crisis on post-socialist welfare capitalist states through an examination of two most different cases: neo-liberal Estonia and neo-corporatist Slovenia. The crisis prompted the most sustained political contestation with respect to each model in two decades. Considering national public sphere discussions within a broader European context, the paper shows how transnational advocates of austerity reinforced Estonia’s neoliberal model but emboldened critics of the Slovenian model to roll back the state. While public sphere debates within small, peripheral states must be understood within transnational contexts, in both cases we can observe more continuity than change in the collective ideas underlying each model.

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.

In 1892 the Verein für Sozialpolitik (Association for Social Policy) published six studies of agricultural workers in Germany (1). Five of the six authors were Karl Kaerger, H. Losch, Kuno Frankenstein, Friedrich Grossman, and Otto Auhagen. The sixth author was Max Weber. He was only 28 years old. But his study of agricultural workers touched on many themes that he developed in his more mature scholarship, and on some of the dilemmas that he faced in his later political writings and political activities.

Power in sociological studies of memory is commonly understood as a function of political interests that are successfully framed as an inclusive and convincing story about selected elements of the past. By showing how negotiations of memory are driven by dynamics of symbolic exchange and by distinguishing techniques of narration emerging from this process, I develop a theoretical model that helps to better understand the locus of symbolic power in mnemonic agency. I consider the case of the plans surrounding a European history museum to show how persistent notions of cultural unity can be drafted in democratic societies.

The study begins with a critical examination of two opposing, theories of nationalism. Next, the relationship between the State and nationalism in the form of the nation state is seen as a process of social formation during which a compromise is established between public and private elites, and the people: loyalty is exchanged for the right to participate in social rights. In the third part, the author considers the future of a number of Southern states in relation to the fundamentals of nation formation.

Car driving has received little attention from sociologists. Existing analyses highlight the irrationality of drivers, victims of an ‘illusion of control’, a ‘bias of optimism’ or influenced by social and cultural factors. Using qualitative and quantitative information, this article suggests a new perspective, in which driving is regarded as a ‘social activity’ (in the Weberian sense) and it is presumed that drivers operate on a cognitive rationality.

Total institutions are by definition totalitarian, but not necessarily authoritarian. Voluntary total institutions consist of members who have chosen to enter, but what opportunities do they have to leave? This article addresses opportunities for exit and voice in Catholic monasteries within the Cistercian Order of Strict Observance. Monasteries have institutionalized important democratic processes regarding membership and leadership. Members are involved in decision-making through community bodies and discussions, but in many practical concerns, superiors may wrest control by neglecting to ask the community for alternative opinions. The superior’s decision-making style therefore crucially affects the range of democratic decision-making in individual monastic communities. Complete exits are common during the initial entry process. The cost of leaving is higher for full members, and the internal exit option to other monastic communities in the Order is therefore of great importance. It means that monastic communities cease to operate as monopolies.

Nous appellerons qualification, en un sens très large, la reconnaissance par l'employeur ou la revendication par le salarié de toutes les qualités de son travail qui importent pour la production: qu'il s'agisse du zèle avec lequel il l'accomplit (son effort, son attention, l'absence d'erreurs ou de fautes), de la compétence et de l'expérience qu'il mobilise et même du potentiel qu'il pourra montrer (sa capacité d'initiative et d'apprentissage). En ce sens — que nos développements justifieront, nous l'espérons — la qualification a toujours été négociée, ne serait-ce que par la signature d'accords de classification. Si développement il y a, il a été très progressif: l'accord interprofessionnel sur la formation continue date de 1970 (faut-il rappeler que l'intérêt de certaines entreprises pour la formation est bien antérieur ?), la préoccupation pour l'amélioration des conditions de travail s'est affirmée au début des années 70 et a abouti à un accord interprofessionnel en 1975. L'usage à des fins de conversion des institutions de formation s'est progressivement développé. La loi de 1971 sur la formation professionnelle et les accords qui l'ont prolongée ont confirmé le rôle des comités d'entreprise dans l'examen des plans de formation professionnelle. Et il est inutile de rappeler la part qui a été faite aux partenaires sociaux dans la définition des formations initiales.

A theoretical model is presented that aims to explain the generative mechanisms of educational stratification. The rational educational choice of the Ego is supposed to be influenced by the choices of others. The model explores various forms of direct and indirect interdependent choices between actors. In order to demonstrate the empirical consequences, use is made of an artificial society built upon a “multi agents” computational approach. The dynamic of this virtual society is proved to fit well with empirical French and Italian data from an absolute point of view (distribution of diplomas) as well as a relative one (educational opportunities).

The founders of sociology—Auguste Comte, Herbert Spencer and Karl Marx—intended to create, each in his own fashion, a universal science of society. Nevertheless, they were above all concerned to explain how the 19th century industrial societies had come into existence, to analyse the ramifying effects of industrialism, to elucidate the connections between economic, political and intellectual changes, and to predict the future development of Western societies. Even in their systematic attempts to classify the types of human society, they inclined towards a simple and radical distinction between the modern Western societies and all others; and gave to the former a privileged position as objects of study. This classification was adopted, with modifications, by many later sociologists, and it plays an important part in the work of Tönnies, Durkheim and others, up to the recent writers who differentiate between ‘modern’ and ‘traditional’ societies, or ‘urban’ and ‘folk’ societies.

InThePastDecade, a minor revolution has taken place within Soviet Anthropology. ‘Ethnography’ is one of the recognised disciplines in the Soviet academic world, and corresponds roughly to what in the West is called social anthropology. This revolution has as yet been barely noticed by outside observers (1). Its leader is Yulian Bromley, a very Russian scholar with a very English surname, Director of the Institute of Ethnography of the Soviet Academy of Sciences. The revolution consists of making ethnography into the studies of ethnos-es, or, in current Western academic jargon, into the study of ethnicity—in other words the study of the phenomena of national feeling, identity, and interaction. History is about chaps, geography is about maps, and ethnography is about ethnoses. What else ? The revolution is supported by arguments weightier than mere verbal suggestiveness; but by way of persuasive consideration, etymology is also invoked.

In role theory—especially of the structural-functional variety attention has predominantly been paid to the question of how conformity is achieved, while the complementary question of how the individual can avoid being completely absorbed by his roles, how he can maintain some measure of personal autonomy, has been rather neglected. Attempts to bring in this neglected aspect have recently made use of the concept of role distance.

This analysis concentrates on die different privatization methods which have been applied in Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic and East Germany. It is argued that the different privatization methods had a considerable impact upon the unequal distribution of ownership and control in former state-owned enterprises. The reproduction rate of the former nomenclature is relatively high in all four countries regardless of the privatization method. In post-socialist countries a particular type of capitalism is evolving which can be characterized by its specific ideology and the governance structure of the privatized firms. The outcome of shock therapy which has been applied in some post-socialist countries has been paradoxical: it did not destroy the power basis of the nomenclature, but radier stabilized it. In most firms there is no clear-cut separation of ownership and control (manager capitalism), but rather a balance of power between managers (nomendature) and the new owners.

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.

Que l'on considère le champ sociologique et l'on découvre une pluralité de conceptualisations générales. Faut-il ne voir dans cette diversité que la confusion temporaire d'une science en formation ou convient-il de l'interpréter comme une donnée inhérente aux sciences de l'homme? Mais à vouloir répondre directement à cette interrogation, on risque de tenir pour acquis ce qui reste problématique. Rien ne nous assure, en effet, que ces langages instituent des points de vue authentiquement distincts et on ne peut écarter, a priori, la possibilité qu'au terme d'une recherche sur les vocabulaires et leur ordre sous-jacent, on ne découvre l'unité de leur visée du réel. II nous semble done nécessaire, avant d'aborder certains aspects d'une épistémologie des sciences de la culture, de vérifier la spécificité et d'éprouver l'utility de divers schémas conceptuels (i).

Even though Elias himself does not focus on an explicit theory on violence in The Civilizing Process, due to his research question on pacific social processes, violence is not generally theoretically excluded. Against this backdrop, and contrary to criticisms regarding a general loss as well as a biological rather than a sociological explanation of violence, and besides theories that explain meso and macro-level violence within Elias’s framework, this article considers interpersonal micro-level violence as an intrinsic part of the civilizing process. Especially by supplementing Elias’s assumptions of drive control and self-constraint with recent neuroscientific findings, it is possible to conceptualize interpersonal micro-level violence as situational exceedance of a subjective threshold of pain. Here, despite a normative civilized frame of behavior, aggression, as a (neuro)biologically-based reactive drive, is no longer controlled by socially learned self-constraint, leading to violence as a subjectively perceived rewarding behavior and socially performed action.

À travers les âges, l'unité de l'lnde — « India is one » disait Dumont — a été symbolisée par une continuité culturelle enchâssée dans une structure sociale fondamentalement religieuse, comme l'exprimait Srinivas: « The concept of the unity of India is essentially a religious one », mais l'on peut ajouter que la structure de cette tradition a contribué à la projection d'une image unifiée de la civilisation qui a atteint le point de son plus haut développement à la fin de la période Gupta. Non qu'il n'y ait pas eu de changements, mais, vers la fin de cette période, la plupart des traités systématiques dans les champs de la réligion, de la littérature, de l'art, de la science et de philosophie ou de l'éthique s'étaient cristallisés dans ce qu'on a pu recemment appeler la « Grande Tradition ». Les périodes qui suivirent revinrent à une particularisation graduelle des institutions et des valeurs à l'intérieur de la tradition culturelle hindoue et aboutirent, dans certains cas, à des phénoménes de segmentarisation de cette « Grande Tradition ». Le centre de l'effervescence culturelle émigra du nord au sud de l'lnde et se régionalisa, donnant lieu a des mouvements hétérodoxes de reformulation et de reinterpretation des croyances socio-religieuses et des structures rituelles fondamentales de l'hindouisme. Sous la poussée des divers mouvements de bhakti, des saints-philosophes comme Śankara, Rāmānuja, Madhya rapprochérent la « Grande Tradition » du peuple, tout en modifiant son enseignement et en orientant leurs efforts vers un mouvement plus libéral vis-à-vis des Śūdra ou des basses castes; comme l'exprimait Stein: « In the eleventh century […] doctrinal issues come to be related quite directly to the place of Sūdrain the sect » (Stein 1968, p. 83).