These three statements distil the dilemma of the armed forces in Britain—a dilemma compounded of obscure and conflicting goals, a pervasive anxiety as to the nature and viability of military professionalism and internal conflicts and misunderstandings which themselves symbolise a deeper alienation from contemporary British society.

Bourdieu was the founder of a structuralist paradigm which is now often applied by some sociologists and strongly criticised by others. We are interested here in the intermediate attempts made by Lahire and Corcuff. Without omitting to notice some dead ends, they understood the interest of the “singular” habitus concept. After following their approach, we propose a “fictional” definition of this habitus in order to make this paradigm operational in areas where its heuristic capacity is low (like the new social movements).

Comment les sociétés traditionnelles deviennent-elles des sociétés modernes ? La situation coloniale constitue un terrain exceptionnel pour l'étude des conditions de ce passage. L'imposition de la violence — effective et (ou) symbolique — y présente un caractère radical qu'il est difficile de trouver ailleurs. Quand l'évolution d'une société est déterminée de l'interieur, elle se fait en général par glissements lents, complexes, par ajustements successifs qui noient le facteur décisif dans la masse des facteurs secondaires dont l'analyse le dis-tingue malaisément. Le phénomène colonial, au contraire, intrusion brutale d'une agression étrangère dans un système intégré, souvent intégriste, de groupes sociaux traditionnels, qu'il accule à la mutation, se présente à cet égard comme une sorte d'expérimentation.

Based on ethnographic material, this article explores how three groups of apprentices negotiate masculinities in the specific setting of a male-dominated vocational school in Switzerland dedicated to the building trades. We use an intersectional and relational perspective to highlight how the institutional setting of the school—mirroring wider social hierarchies—influences these young men’s identity work. The apprentices use three discursive dichotomies: manual vs. mental work; proud heterosexuality vs. homosexuality; and adulthood vs. childhood. However, the three different groups employ the dichotomies differently depending on their position in the school’s internal hierarchies, based on their educational path, the trade they are learning and the corresponding prestige. The article sheds light on the micro-processes through which existing hierarchies are internalised within an institution. It further discusses how the school’s internal differentiations and the staff’s discourses and behaviours contribute to the (re)production of specific classed masculinities, critically assessing the role of the Swiss educational system in the reproduction of social inequalities.

This article analyses the political struggles in and around the Warsaw taxi market. Drawing on Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of social fields and incorporating Albert Hirschman’s metaphor of political action as voice, I capture the position-taking of members of the taxi field, highlighting the different levels of involvement in the struggles. By distinguishing between different forms of voice—murmuring, jeering, whispering, hissing, grunting, and shouting—I show that the struggles that shape the Warsaw taxi market take the form of struggles over classifications and struggles over opportunities for exchange. I describe how market institutions are established and contested within the political field; enforced and contested within the bureaucratic field; and interpreted and contested within the juridical field. I thus contribute a field theory that investigates the links between fields and especially between economic fields and the state. This article draws on fieldwork conducted in Warsaw between November 2012 and June 2013.

The pragmatist theory of history, action, and sociality can be understood as the result of a specific interpretation of Darwin’s theory of evolution, which has nothing in common with teleological, reductionist, or social Darwinist evolutionary models. This historical claim will be developed in three steps. First, I will show why Darwin’s theory was so attractive to the classical pragmatists and how their conception of history was affected by their reading of Darwin. Second, I will illustrate how the pragmatist understanding of individual action was influenced by contemporary discussions in evolutionary theory, physiology, and psychology. Third, I will discuss pragmatism’s “cultural naturalism” (John Dewey), according to which a new, autonomous level of sociocultural change emerges as a result of the process of biological evolution. The reconstruction of pragmatist evolutionary thought not only aims to achieve a better historical understanding of pragmatism but also implies a systematic and theoretical claim. As will be argued in the last section of this paper, the timeliness and continuing relevance of pragmatism is largely due to the fact that it took shape in a transdisciplinary context and remained an “empirically responsible” theory (Erkki Kilpinen). Currently, various innovative developments within psychology, the cognitive sciences, neurophysiology, and ethology are connected with the core insights of pragmatism, thereby supporting the argument that pragmatism is still evolving.

The article is focused on one specific aspect of organized crime during the period of social transformation of Bulgarian society. It views the capacity of organized crime to offer additional power resources and encouragement for the political elite, whose power and domination have been threatened by the changes. The analysis is based on the thesis that to sustain and to strengthen their power and domination the elites have applied the strategy of increased secrecy and informality of power sources and of the means of their exertion via the establishment and control of criminal structures. The applied research methods include participant observation, in-depth interviews and document analysis.

Dans les sociétés industrielles, il existe une distinction analytique entre la loi d'efficacité, qui est celle du système économique, et la perpétuation, souvent inconsciente, des traditions et des valeurs. La manière dont chaque unité culturelle choisit et utilise les objets produits par le système économique, adapte les rythmes imposés par les nécessités proprement organisationnelles en fonction des rythmes du passé, la manière dont elle interprète les rôles de la société traditionnelle, la manière dont elle continue (ou cesse) de célébrer les fêtes familiales et collectives définissent aujourd'hui les spécificités des divers groupes culturels. L'étude anthropologique doit en effet moins décrire et analyser les objets, les manières, les rythmes collectifs ou les modes de la vie quotidienne que montrer comment des objets, des manières, des rythmes collectifs ou des modes de vie liés à la nature même de la société industrielle sont interprétés et réinterprétés en fonction de la logique propre à chaque systeme culturel. La société industrielle implique certains modèles de comportements qui se trouvent en contact avec ceux de la culture traditionnelle. Entre les modèles de l'une et de l'autre se font les emprunts et les interprétations réciproques par lesquels les anthropologues rendent raison de l'acculturation.

Studies of xenophobia have focused either on socio-economic context that accentuates xenophobic attitudes or on perceptions of immigrants, namely symbolic and realistic threats as well as on social distance from immigrants. This study examines closely the relationship among various components of xenophobia and their contribution in the formation of particular xenophobic groups. The analysis identified four different xenophobic groups, i.e. a) The distant xenophobic group, b) The core xenophobic group, c) The subtle xenophobic group and d) The ambivalent xenophobic group. The groups’ profiles are synthesized through negative, neutral and positive properties of overall attitudes towards immigrants, perceived threats, political xenophobia, social distance, authoritarian attitudes and individual social characteristics. The survey results demonstrate that a multidimensional conceptualization of xenophobia is needed both at the level of objective social condition and of individual and collective perceptions.

One widespread image of Japanese internal migration is to be found in a well-known ballad Kita kuni no haru, ‘The northern country spring’, one of the biggest hits of Japanese popular music in the 1970s. The ballad is about a man reflecting on his furusato, the rural hometown from which he migrated to the city.

A critical examination of economic models soon leads to the examination of concepts, which are the bricks of which the models are built. Such an examination reveals that the bias in our view of economic and social reality enters before the model building begins, at the level where concepts are formed. The formulation of any concept, as I have tried to argue in my chapter on “The Use and Abuse of Models in Development Planning” (I), presupposes two procedures: aggregation of one set of items and isolation of this set from other sets. When we speak of a ‘tree’ we aggregate birches, beeches, elms, firs, larches, etc., into one category and, at the same time, differentiate them from bushes, shrubs, flowers, ferns, etc.

In the history of democracy, various criteria have been used to determine the size and nature of the electorate. We can, in a general way, divide these criteria into two types which we might label ascribed versus achieved characteristics of the person. Suffrage qualifications based upon age, sex, race and religion would fall under the first category; qualifications determined by education, military and criminal status, and property fall under the second. The distinction draws attention to the implicit notion that some characteristics are acquired by individual choice (‘achieved’) while others are given from the outside simply by nature of an automatic inclusion within certain groups (‘ascribed’). Such a categorization is certainly open to challenge from many angles. The point however is that it provides us with one way to begin understanding the changes which democracy has undergone. Of the ascribed qualities only age remains a legitimate basis for denying suffrage. Variations in suffrage rights based on achieved qualities still exist though there is less reliance on any of these as well. Overall, the development path seems to have run from the use of both types to the use of achieved criteria to using only age as a prerequisite. What are the driving forces of this transformation?

why do actors participate in the democratic process? the sociological theory of democracy offers five modes of democratic action and democratic order: economic theory of democracy: strategic action and democracy as efficient market order. normativistic theory: emotional bounded action and solidarity with the great community. communitaristic theory: action as strong valuation and democracy as moral order. deliberative theory: communicative action and democracy as order of formal procedures. constitutional theory: reflexive or creative action and active trust in negotiated democratic orders.

The problem facing most of the Third World today is no longer how to launch development, but rather how to sustain it. Consider the colossal disappointments, after 150 years of independence, of Brazil, Mexico, Uruguay, Colombia, Venezuela, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Peru — and the debacle of Argentina. Recall the historic leadership which set Egypt, Thailand, and Turkey on their drives to modernization fully a century ago: now, nearly stagnant. Contrast the economic promise inherited from the colonial period and the determination and unbounded elan inspired by independence with today's languor in India, Kenya, and Malaysia, the listlessness of Zimbabwe, Indonesia, The Philippines, and North Africa: indeed, the failures of Ghana and Nigeria. The issue is no longer how to assure political stability — but even with stability, how to foster steady development whose gains will accrue and whose momentum can be sustained.