This article analyzes the creation of value in (semi-)peripheral fields, using interview (N=94) and ethnographic data of creatives, models and cultural intermediaries in Polish and Dutch fashion. Drawing on field theory and center-periphery theories we show that these peripheral fields have a distinct structure—peripheral worlds—marked by the dependence on foreign centers for goods, standards and consecration, in which actors employ field-specific peripheral strategies for pursuing value and success. Workers in the (semi-)periphery develop peripheral selves, marked by a “double consciousness”, simultaneously seeing themselves from a local perspective and through the eyes of “central” others. We theorize “peripheralness” as a dimension of social inequality, a continuum ranging from “most central” to “most peripheral”, that spring from transnational interdependencies; and offer building blocks for a theory of the periphery that connects structural conditions and personal experiences. This theory explains, among others, why peripheries are not the reverse of centers, why centers also need peripheries (though not as much as peripheries need centers), and why peripheral and semi-peripheral actors don’t leave for cultural hubs to “make it there”.

The relatively rare defences of politicians, responding to commonplace denounciations, form a neglected genre of political theorizing. Max Weber's famous ‘Politik als Beruf’ (1919) serves here as a point of departure for the analysis of the examples of Louis Barthou, F.C. Oliver, J.D.B. Miller and Jean-Paul Sartre. The rehabilitation signifies a conceptual change through rhetorical redescription, as suggested by Quentin Skinner.

The professional armed forces of Western European nation-states developed out of feudal forms through a process of “institutional differentiation”. By “institutional differentiation” is meant the bureaucratic transformation by which the armed forces emerged as a distinct organization fashioned by its own system of recruitment and training, by the accumulation of significant amounts of its own resources, and operating in terms of its specialized format and calculus.

It is only recently that social scientists have rediscovered the importance of setting their research in historical perspective. Twenty years ago, Alvin Gouldner remarked that ‘Many modern social scientists scarcely manage to conceive of their work as having nineteenth century roots, and most of us live in an intellectual world whose historical boundaries usually stop at the Enlightenment’ (I). Today such an attitude has ceased to be the rule. Historical grounding is needed, not only for social theory in general, but also for key concepts that appear with increasing frequency in contemporary sociological work. Anomie is one of them.

“Last week it became apparent that the Soviet Union had determined to strike back with a diplomatic campaign of remarkably broad dimensions. Moscow's motivation appeared to be one of countering Peking's rising influence and increasing its own wherever possible” (Harrison Salisbury, The New York Times, Sept. 12, 1971).

David Laitin has explained the occurrence of Basque and Georgian nationalist violence as the outcome of language revival in a bilingual setting and a specific locale. Based on game theory, he has suggested that violence, as a rational nationalist strategy, will increasingly be used if specific thresholds levels in language choice for education are met. A critical reappraisal of his approach is made in which the conceptual and methodological limits to the empirical testing are highlighted. Subsequently, an extensive dataset of Basque municipalities in the Autonomous Community of the Basque Country is used to statistically verify Laitin’s model by multivariate analysis. In some areas of the Basque Country Laitin’s model seems to fit while in others not. With the help of both quantitative and qualitative data, alternative explanations for Basque ethnic violence are explored.

If proverbs are sociologically significant the one quoted encapsulates the theme of this paper: the extreme fluidity and uncertainty of post-Independence Greek Cypriot politics; the tension between individual strategies and collective action in Greek culture; secrecy, and the use of violence for political purposes (what Aristotle had called stasis). In this paper I want to examine the patterns of covert politics in Cyprus by tracing the evolution of the cultural phenomenon of omadhes (small secret groups of armed men activated for political purposes), and examining their relationship to political parties. Although there has been some literature on omadhes (Loizos, 1975; Markides 1977) I shall offer a different interpretation to Loizos who sees them merely as ‘action sets’ by showing that they became something more substantial and were strongly influenced by the overall political framework within which they operated; I shall also take a different line to Markides who treats them as an expression of discontent.

The university is a social institution which, like any other institution, has aims or functions for its members, for other social groups and for society as a whole; it has also a structure of roles, denned, sanctioned and provided with facilities for their performance. The normative conception of the institution—in this case the ‘idea of a university’—may or may not faithfully reproduce an objective description of statistical norms of behaviour. Under conditions of institutional change the two norms do not coincide. In this essay I will consider the British university from these two points of view (i. e. the ‘idea’ of a university and the ‘facts’) in an attempt to understand the discrepancy (i. e. the processes of change which lie behind the differences between wish and reality).

In this essay two sociological perspectives are used to examine aspects of the mass media. One is derived from Marx's theory of capitalism and the forces and relations of production that determine its structure and development. According to this perspective, the mass media are part of a capitalist society and the content of the media is analysed in terms of class interest and class conflict. The second perspective is derived from Tocqueville's theory of democratic society. In Democracy in America Tocqueville uses two ideal types—of aristocratic and democratic society—to analyse American society and to compare it with European society.

The original attempt to interpret the post-independence tribal unrest was first published in the European Journal of Sociology in 1962 (1). Its evidence was drawn primarily from the first half decade of Moroccan independence. It sought to explain certain oddities of Moroccan political life of the period.

The relation between religion and modernization in Southeast Asia is a theme of such a complex nature that a discussion of any of its various aspects would necessitate a preliminary methodological and conceptual clarification. Such a clarification is further necessitated by the fact that modernization as a historical and contemporary phenomenon has been treated by scholars from different disciplines using concepts as political modernization, economic modernization, technological modernization, military modernization, educational modernization, administrative modernization, and so forth. It becomes almost the general practice to employ the concept modernization in a diffused and ambiguous manner. The ambiguity and diffuseness of the concept lies in the fact that no distinction or differentiation is accomplished between the numerous phenomena.

Most research on attitudes towards immigrants and immigration problematically conflates the documented and the undocumented. Previous studies also largely ignore the autonomous role of population density. Based on data drawn from two nationally representative surveys, this paper focuses on contemporary American attitudes towards undocumented immigration and immigrants. Contra the dominant view, we find that education and income have no effect. More important, population density, measured at the county level, significantly predicts favorable attitudes, controlling for factors often erroneously conflated with density: race, income, education, political affiliation, age, gender, and interaction with immigrants. In fact, interaction tends to decrease favorable attitudes. We explain these findings by proposing a novel account of cosmopolitanism, using favorable attitudes towards undocumented immigrants and immigration as an empirical indicator. Those who live in places with higher density are more used to see and be seen in everyday life by countless people with whom they share the same spaces without necessarily interacting with them. As a result, they are more likely to consider all them, including undocumented immigrants, in a superficial yet egalitarian way as generalized others to be ignored. It is this tolerance based on general indifference that is the basis of cosmopolitanism.

The image of the Ayatollah Khomeini is inextricably bound up with the popular conception of Islam today. This view of Islam as a religion of fanaticism and violence ignores the existence of a powerful mystical strand in the form of Sufism in which a philosophy of love is central. Between 1980 and 1981, as part of my doctoral research, I spent six months in the northern Lebanese city of Tripoli, living with the pupils of a Sufi sheik. This group had millenarian beliefs which acted, not as a means of violent insurrection, but rather as a means of reconciling the contradictory and often violent forces to which they were subjected.

Neben dem Kommunistischen Manifest gehört die kleine Schrift von Friedrich Engels Die Entwicklung des Sozialismus von der Utopie zur Wissenschaft (1) wohl zu den bekanntesten und am weitest verbreiteten Dokumenten des Marxismus. Diese kleine Schrift stellt eine Zusammenfassung von drei Kapiteln aus Herrn E. Dührings Umwälzung der Wissenschaft aus dem Jahre 1878 dar. Engels hat diese Zusammenfassung für eine Übersetzung ins Französische vorgenommen. Sie erschien in Frankreich zuerst in der Revue socialiste und sodann im Jahre 1880 als selbständige Broschüre mit dem Titel Socialisme utopique et socialisme scientifique. Erst im März 1883 erschien die Broschüre in Deutschland.

The 1988 constitution has led to the introduction of ethno-legal categories grounded on the dual premises of exceptionality and territorial administration. This article offers an explanation of why mobilizations based on ethnicity have not petered out despite the evident disengagement of the state, suggesting that it is important to distinguish between two ways of envisioning the articulation of singularity with territory: while the state considers that differences between populations pre-exist prior to territorial delimitation, local populations are convinced that the intention to proceed with demarcation suffices in itself to demonstrate their specificity. Moreover, from their perspective, a territorial claim is important as a way of accessing other rights that they consider equally essential. Our second section examines not only recent declarations of identity but also the observed switching between ethno-legal categories, building on a comparison with religious conversion as a meandering, complex, sometimes paradoxical process. Ethnicity, like religious affiliation, can thus be seen as a language developed at the national level but reappropriated by various populations in the service of local issues and usages. A final section examines particularism, whether quilombola, traditional or Indian, as the currently dominant norm and form of expression for social protest, while reflecting on the role of outside actors as “institutional hosts” [Houtzager 2004]. It should be noted, moreover, that such standardization of the forms of political involvement no more precludes the replication of the social hierarchies between outsiders and natives, than it prevents social protest from being co-opted by the authorities.