There has of late been an increasing tendency to challenge the authority of ethnographic texts by criticizing the anthropologist's enterprise during the various stages of his performance—both the collection of data in the field, and the interpretation and presentation of his field notes at home. A better understanding of the process of gathering ethnographic data, and the characteristics of the participants in fieldwork may remove some of its mystique, and contribute to the credibility of the anthropological endeavor. It is often assumed that the anthropologist and in particular his informants are ‘marginal men’ in their respective societies. I intend to examine the applicability of this definition as regards both partners in the implementation of fieldwork, and suggest an alternative characterization.

Wirkönnen heute in vielen Entwicklungsländern eine paradoxe Situation beobachten (i). Wir finden dort große ökonomische Ungleichheiten vor, Ungleichheiten, die größer sind als bei uns. In einer solchen Situation sollte man erwarten, daß sich politische Organisationen auf einer Klassenbasis, d.h. auf horizontaler Ebene herausbilden. Statt dessen treffen wir aber häufig vertikale Beziehungen an, die verschiedene Klassen durchschneiden. In einem Parteiensystem stehen sich dann z.B. nicht zwei Parteien gegenüber, die verschiedene ökonomische Interessen vertreten, sondern beide Parteien weisen eine ähnliche Mitglieder- und Wählerstruktur auf. Wir können diese Parteisysteme besser verstehen, wenn wir die zugrundeliegenden Klientelstrukturen aufdecken.

Many people in the West see Jaruzelski's Poland as a particularly oppressive totalitarian regime; from this perspective the main problem of contemporary Poland is, obviously, the lack of freedom and the constant violation of human rights by the Polish Communist rulers. This is the view which the radical opposition in Poland's emigre press wants us to adopt. In fact, however, only the younger generation in Poland can express such views in good faith; the older generation which has experienced Stalinism and knows what totalitarianism is like cannot really maintain that Jaruzelski's government is worse in this respect than previous Communist governments in Poland.

The paper explores governmental perceptions and reactions to “social questions” in British colonial Africa, c. 1880-1950. By comparing three different political entities, Egypt, South Africa and Uganda, we find that authorities across cases have been acutely aware of potentially destabilising social change. Some social problems actually resulted from colonial projects themselves, giving rise to rather contradictory interpretations and policies. However, the intensity of political reactions to social questions varied widely, ranging from a largely passive approach in Egypt to the introduction of modern welfare in South Africa. We argue that perceptions and responses to social dislocation had a long-term impact on patterns of state formation and social policy development.

Les formes et l'importance quantitative du célibat ont considérablement varié suivant les époques, avec de fortes spécificités nationales et régionales. Une des plus importantes variations s'inscrit dans la constitution du « marriage pattern » occidental mis en évidence par J. Hajnal (1965). L'auteur a montré, et sa thése est devenue classique, que le modèle occidental moderne (à partir de la fin du Moyen-Âge) avec mariage tardif, familles conjugales restreintes et taux de célibataires élevé, représentait une exception géographique et une nouveauté historique : à aucune autre époque ni dans aucune autre région du monde le taux de célibataires n'avait été aussi important. André Burguière (1972) a proposé une interprétation originale de cette transition démographique. La mettant en relation avec l'essor de « l'esprit du capitalisme » analysé par Max Weber, il montre comment le nouveau comportement conjugal participe à un ascétisme généralisé exalté par l'Église et lié à un esprit d'entreprise : « la préoccupation du couple n'est plus simplement de fabriquer une famille, mais de savoir la gérer, de préserver et d'améliorer son statut social, devenu sa principale finalité » (p. 1138). Dès l'origine de son développement, le célibat serait ainsi lié aux principes de la modernité.

C'est en automne 1916 que Max Weber se plongea dans l'étude du judaïsme antique et qu'il relut avec beaucoup d'attention l'Ancien Testament et les Prophètes, qu'il avait déjà analysés au cours de la rédaction de Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft. Son épouse, Marianne Weber, rapporte qu'il se voua à cette tâhe avec beaucoup d'ardeur et qu'il était absorbé par ses recherches: « Max ist jetzt beinahe, “dürr” — dabei aber sehr fleissig und im ganzen frisch » (« Max est presque ‘à sec’ maintenant — mais il ne cesse de travailler et, dans l'ensemble, il est en bonne forme »). En 1917 et 1919, il publia dans ses Archiv les premiers résultats de son étude sur le judaïsme antique. Weber se proposait d'analyser encore les Psaumes, le Livre de Job et le judaïsme talmudique, mais la mort l'empêcha de mener son œuvre à bien. Auparavant il avait déjà etudie le judaïsme antique dans plusieurs passages de Agrarverhältnisse im Altertum et dans le premier tome de ses Aufsätze zur Religionssoziologie. II reprit ce thème dans les conférences qu'il prononça durant le semestre d'hiver 1919–1920. On découvrit dans ses notes les fragments d'une étude sur les Pharisiens qui avait été rédigée en 1917. Marianne Weber l'inclut dans Das Antike Judentum qu'elle publia comme troisième volume de Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Religionssoziologie.

This paper uses theories of small states (e.g. Katzenstein) and nationalism (e.g. Gellner) to explain why Denmark and Ireland responded to the 2008 financial crisis in different ways. In Denmark, a coordinated market economy with considerable corporatism and state intervention, the private sector shouldered much of the financial burden for rescuing the banking sector. In Ireland, a liberal market economy without much corporatism or state intervention, the state shouldered the burden. The difference stems in large part from the fact that Denmark had comparatively thick institutions and a strong sense of nationalism whereas Ireland did not. Lessons for the theories of small states and nationalism are explored.

Social cohesion is frequently mentioned in political discourse. However this concept remains vague and ill-defined. We intend to propose a typology of social cohesion patterns and examine under which conditions this concept might be used. Firstly, we sketch a brief history of its introduction in the political debate. Then we sort out three different meanings of this concept, in order to analyze which representations it is associated with.

Informed by nearly six years of teaching experiences in high poverty schools of New York and Amsterdam, this ethnographic comparison examines the following question: Even though they often say they “know better”, why do so many teens from low income neighborhoods behave in aggressively disruptive ways that contribute to the further destruction of their own schools? This article suggests that the long dominant oppositional black culture approach to such questions related to life in distressed urban schools promotes overly mentalist and therefore superficial analyses. A more fully incarnated, collectively impassioned, relational, and processual way of thinking about the gradual socialization and immediate coping processes behind the further devastating of physically violent schools is offered. Interrogating the state and process that students in both settings referred to with terms like “coming hard”, this article brings to life the temporarily seductive yet ultimately maladaptive embodied stress responses of two male students effectively forced to sever visceral connections to themselves. Probing deep into how hardening was both habituated and situated on opposite shores of the Atlantic Ocean can help us advance our grip on—and perhaps even our attempts to deal with—the ways in which teenagers’ feelings of empathy and abilities to “think straight” are crowded out during the moments that matter most in and around our worst schools.

Singapore, lying less than one hundred miles north of the equator and at the extremity of the Malay Peninsula, is one of the smallest countries in Asia. It is also one of Asia's most urbanized, industrialized and materially prosperous countries. It has a stable, one-party-dominant government and its population of 2.3 million, the majority of whom are Chinese, with sizeable numbers of Indians and Malays, has access to a comprehensive network of social services.

Radcliffe-Brown used to define social anthropology as ‘comparative sociology’, yet the school of thought that he engendered has not been much prone to comparison. Indeed, in their revulsion from the ‘comparative method’ of their evolutionist predecessors anthropologists of that tendency have largely avoided formal comparison and left to the “non-comparative” sociologists the duty of comparing. The definition nevertheless still has a certain validity if one recognises that an implied comparison lies behind every ethnographic description and that the anthropologist's comparative range–that is, the range of phenomena regarded as belonging to the class under consideration and therefore relevant to a potential comparison–is wider than the sociologist's, since it includes “other cultures” (i) and traditionally primitive ones, while sociology commonly, if not always, confines itself to civilised society and operates within the framework of the values of its national culture. Social anthropology's claim to be comparative rests upon its awareness of cultural differences and its recognition of their importance in determining the forms which social institutions can take.

One of the major factors of change in rural India since Independence has been the programme of community development inaugurated in 1952 by the Government. Stemming from experimental schemes in pre-Independence times, the programme has been carried to a majority of the nation's villages. Its main aims are to raise the standards of living of the rural populace, and to aid in the establishment of democratic local government and in the stimulation of felt needs which villagers will themselves plan to meet.

This article argues that the transition between early-modern and modern organization of empires—especially the administrative outlooks and institutional logics used to govern them—revolved around how moral conflict was viewed within imperial organizations themselves and by metropolitan audiences. Early modern imperial organizations were deeply patrimonial, and hence relied on a style of embedded moral reasoning that distanced and segmented their affairs from the metropole. By contrast, modern empires order what they govern in hierarchies that are nominally objective and whose criteria seem universal. Using a case study of the British Empire’s crisis and transformation at the turn of the 19th century, I argue that modern imperial administration emerged because networks of moral justification, which provided the scaffolding for patrimonial early-modern empire, eroded in the face of “disinterested” metropolitan scrutiny. This scrutiny created an audience for bitter political and moral conflicts among imperial administrators, who then used disembedded moral claims to mobilize support.

The article examines the controversy triggered by the “Victory Tour” of Russia’s high-profile biker organization, the Night Wolves, to mark the 70th anniversary of the Soviet Union’s defeat of Nazi Germany. The tour provoked important questions about the relationship between European borders and the politics of World War II commemoration. The article argues that the international public discourse around the Night Wolves illuminates how state borders are being transformed both as hard, territorialized borders and as “soft,” symbolic boundaries. The analysis compares how print and online media in Russia, Poland, and Germany framed the Night Wolves’ tour across Europe. It emphasizes the construction of borders as a narrative project and maps the symbolic boundary-drawing strategies mobilized by various actors. It shows how cross-border commemorative tours can serve as a tool of transnational memory politics that shapes the very meaning and salience of state borders and regional divisions.

While references are often made to Weber's economic sociology, it is not commonly known that Weber himself only applied the term economic sociology (Wirtscftssoziologie) to one of his writings, namely to Chapter 2 in Part 1 of Economy and Society, “Sociological Categories of Economic Action”. This text, as I show, has basically been ignored in the huge secondary literature that exists on Weber's work as well as by economic sociologists. It represents, however, a very important contribution to Weber's work in economic sociology; indeed, it can be said to constitute Weber's manifesto in economic sociology. “Sociological Categories of Economic Action” is presented and discussed, and an effort is made to make this difficult text accessible as well as to show that it contains some extremely interesting material in economic sociology.