‘Spencer is dead’, wrote Talcott Parsons at the beginning of The Structureof Social Action, ‘but who killed him and how ? This is the problem’. In this study, which was both the foundation of Parsons’ structural-functionalism and a major reinterpretation of the history of modern social science, Spencer stood for a vanquished schoolof social thought. He represented positivism at the suicidal extreme where its naive individualism fell apart, paradoxically passing over into its antithesis, a biological determinism precluding individual initiative. His thought had died at the intersection of individual and society.Beyond this point, Parsons discovered the rise of a new social theory in Marshall, Pareto, Durkheim and Weber. From these four thinkers, working independently of one another, Parsons tried to put together the pieces of a system, succeeding where Spencer had decisively failed, reconciling personal agency and social order.

The analysis of the 2004 ISSP survey, limited to nine of the countries participating in this programme of representative opinion polls, shows that the way people consider the duties of a citizen are divided into four types, depending on whether the emphasis is placed on norms or on others, and whether the morality governing normative judgements about the “good” citizen is conventional or post-conventional. These different axiological directions are linked with attitudes towards participative democracy. The duty of civility, which can be associated with democratic public ethics, is approved quite widely. But a much more active participation, closed in some regards to a deliberative democracy, seems to require post-conventional morality, especially when it is founded on liberal or reasonable pluralism.

Je prends l'expression «les origines» en un sens technique qui les distingue de la « genèse ». Étudier la genèse d'un phénomène c'est en dégager et décrire les premières esquisses et le suivre jusqu'à son plein épanouissement. J'entends par « origines » la réalisation des conditions de possibilité de ce même phénomène. Il est loisible d'intervertir les termes ou d'en trouver de plus idoines, il est constant qu'ils désignent deux démarches intellectuelles radicalement différentes. La première est familière aux historiens qui, en cherchant « les origines de… » — l'Égypte pharaonique, Rome, l'Empire chinois, du système incaïque, etc—, s'attachent en fait à ce que j'appelle la genèse, à repérer les indices les plus reculés et les plus menus pouvant jeter quelques lumières sur les premiers temps, quitte à les intégrer dans une explication toujours courte et jamais satisfaisante, car elle se résume pour l'essentiel soit à des diffusions et à des emprunts, soit à un évolutionnisme peu élaboré. L'analyse des origines est un genre peu pratiqué, pour ne pas dire qu'il reste à inventer.

Histories and critiques of anthropology usually deal mainly with what anthropologists say, including what they say they do. However, like their informants, anthropologists are accustomed to saying one thing and doing another. The emphasis in this paper is on the nature of anthropological data and methods, and thus on what anthropologists really do. The argument is that what anthropologists do is often productive and sensible, but that it has very little relationship to what many anthropologists say they should be doing. Indeed those anthropologists who take such theoretical directives seriously labour under a considerable, self-inflicted handicap.

The purpose of this article is to argue that sociologists, anthropologists, and historians have no need to invoke the, or a, concept of rationality in order either to report or to explain the beliefs of the individuals or groups whom they study. I do not dispute that they may invoke it, or that a range of other purposes can be served thereby. But I do dispute that they must.

This article takes issue with the common view that the early Turkish Republic (1920-1940) followed a “special” route to modernity characterized by “state capitalism.” It argues that such a view, rooted in the Sonderweg paradigm, obscures the historical-comparative specificity of Turkish state formation, leading to problematic conclusions about the character of Turkish modernization. Based on insights derived from Karl Polanyi’s notion of “economistic fallacy” and Political Marxism’s conception of capitalism, I offer a new interpretation of the early Republican project in Turkey, which, in turn, provides a deeper understanding of the social content, tempo and multi-linearity of world historical development.

In an essay on the Nambikuara of the Mato Grosso, Lévi-Strauss revives in an interesting fashion the problem of the Social Contract. Among the Nambikuara are found the most primitive forms of social and political structure. In the words of Lévi-Strauss: “No social structure is weaker and more fragile than the Nambikuara band” (I). The Nambikuara abandon their semi-permanent dwellings at the end of the rainy season in April or early May and divide into bands which are formed on the basis of free choice. The nucleus of the band is a leader who directs the movements and the hunting, fishing, and food-gathering activities of the group for the duration of its nomadic life during the dry season. The leader, however, disposes of no coercive power: he must derive his authority from the continual active consent of those subject to it. The price of leadership is the welfare of the group. If the band is badly managed and food is scarce the individual members of the group may leave to join other, more prosperous bands. Thus bands are always in the process of organizing and growing, or fragmenting and disappearing, with the vicissitudes of leadership. In return for his services the chief enjoys the privilege of having two or more wives, a prerogative shared only with the shamans. As Lévi-Strauss describes the situation of the leader, he appears to be a man forever hustling to provide his subjects with food and entertainment. He is in effect always running for office.

This article shows how voluntary social work in late 19th/early 20th century Copenhagen emerged as the result of several creative re-interpretations of the cultural schemas of revivalist Protestantism as urban revivalists faced the social question. Informed by pragmatist cultural sociology, the concept of “collective soteriology” is introduced as a way of analyzing the Protestant reinterpretations in terms of doctrine, ideals of community, and recipes for action. It is shown how Lutheran revivalist ideas at the same time encouraged, constrained, and shaped the voluntary social action undertaken. The paper aims to uncover a sociologically neglected European tradition of civic action, to contribute to the sociology of Protestantism’s influence on civil society, and to develop a theoretical framework for analyzing the role of ideas in non-contentious collective action.

The liberalisation of religious practice after the fall of the Soviet regime and the support by the Russian state to the Russian Orthodox Church have contributed to the enormous growth of the church economy. Controversies within and without the Church interrogate commercial and gifting practices. The relationship between the expansion of church commerce and the operation of moral boundaries, underlined by critical stances, has been determined by culture and history, with the post-Soviet transformation having played a key role in shaping popular notions of selflessness and profit-seeking. Moreover, as people participate in the church economy they mobilise perceptions of the differential moral valence of gift and commerce in order to communicate concerning the power of the Church, its controversial image, Russia’s social stratification, and to deploy ethics of equity and honesty.

[Lt ] Plus la construction typifiée est anonyme, plus elle est détachée de l'unicité de l'individu en cause et moins les aspects de sa personnalité et du modèle de son comportement entrent dans la typification en tant que pertinents pour le but qu'on se propose, raison pour laquelle le type a été construit [Gt ]

Alfred Schutz

Attempts have been made to bring economics and sociology together, in particular when they are concerned with the modelling of decision-making and human rationality. However, an enduring epistemological obstacle remains: that of the classical distinction between raison d'être and raison de connaître. This paper examines some of the conceptual and practical problems raised by the nomological aim of econometrics.

Rappelons trés brièvement les faits. Le 18 novembre 1978, au moment de quitter dans deux avions la piste de Port Kaituma en Guyana, un Representant americain, Leo Ryan, est tue par balles, avec quatre personnes qui l'accompagnaient; six autres sont blessees. Les meurtriers sont des membres d'une commune agricole installee en 1973 á quelque distance, en pleine jungle, par un Révérend James Jones et appelée Jonéstown. Ryan y etait venu pour se faire uné idee personnelle sur les rumeurs qui couraient aux États-Unis, tendant á présenter la commune comme un camp de concentration, oú les membres étaient retenus de force pour y subir les pires traitements. Des parents avaient eu recours a lui, certains l'accompagnaient en Guyana, pour essayer de ramener les leurs au foyer. La visite-inspection s'était passée correctement, sauf au moment du départ, ou Ryan avait failli être égorgé par un disciple! II remmenait une quinzaine de personnes décidées á rentrer aux fitats-Unis. L'attentat se produisit vers 16 h. Le même jour á 17 h, á Jonestown meme, Jones réunit toute la communauté et lui déclara que le moment etait venu de mourir tous ensemble dans un «suicide revolutionnaire». II fit préparer, par le médecin du camp, un breuvageoú se mêlaient une sorte de limonade, du cyanure, des tranquillisants et des analgésiques. On fait la queue pour en boire, les mamans en administrent a leurs bebes, on met environ cinq minutes pour mourir.