Lorsqu' on entreprend l'étude de la période historique où prend racine la révolution technique et scientifique qui est à la base de notre civilisation, on découvre vite que l'histoire de cette profonde transformation ne peut être réduite ni à la description de techniques envisagées une à une, ni à l'analyse de découvertes particulières, et bien moins encore — contrairement à ce que certains semblent souhaiter actuellement — à une histoire de la dialectique interne de chaque secteur de la connaissance scientifique. S'interroger sur les raisons qui commandent le passage d'une théorie à une autre, à l'intérieur d'une discipline particulière, est assurément une question d'une importance fondamentale et, sur ce terrain, les historiens de la science sont parvenus à des résultats considérables, même pour la période qui nous intéresse ici. Pourtant, l'historien ne pourra guère — ne fût-ce que pour élucider réellement ces «raisons» — éluder des questions également décisives qui portent sur la situation culturelle dans laquelle durent travailler les hommes de science. Nous entendons par là les définitions et les caractérisations différentes, et parfois divergentes, de la «science»; la place occupée par la connaissance scientifique, non seulement dans le monde de la culture et dans les encyclopédies du savoir, mais aussi dans la conscience de milieux et de groupes sociaux déterminés; les diverses finalités et les buts qui furent à tour de role attribués a la science et à la technique, au sein de civilisations et d'époques diffeérentes; la manière dont furent conçus les rapports entre théories et opérations pratiques; la considération qui fut accordée à ces dernières, tantôt reléguées aux marges de la culture et considérées comme indignes d'un homme libre, tantôt placées au centre de cette même culture comme source, non seulement d'effets admirables, mais aussi d'une connaissance plus approfondie du monde réel.

The publication of John Rawls' A Theory of Justice in 1972 inaugurated a new era in Anglo-American political theory by providing a sophisticated and complex paradigm of liberal political diagnosis of and prescription for contemporary society; it resulted in a flood of detailed analyses and discussions of Rawls' proposals in the large and in the small, and also brought forth (in the form of Robert Nozick's Anarchy, State and Utopia) a counterblast from the libertarian Right which was of commensurate scope and vigour. In the present decade, however, the challenge to Rawlsian liberalism has taken on a new guise—one which it is the purpose of this paper to explore.

Amongst the many religious groups to be found in the United States, one is remarkable and very little known : the Black Hebrews. This group shares structural characteristics common to many minorities, but is also distinguished by a dual identity derived from the experience of slavery and the cultural mix specific to the New World.

Born in 1902, Karl R. Popper spent the first 33 years of his life in the city of Vienna, at that time the hot-house of Central- European culture and thought. He died in England. September 17, 1994. Unlike the empirical inductionists of the Vienna Circle, he preferred deductivist theorizing and the metaphysical realism (or objectivism) of the Boltzmann-Einstein School. Though he pleaded explicidy for a special method of ‘Verstehen’ in sociology, the reception of his methodology still takes place mainly with reference to the growth of knowledge in the natural sciences as reconstructed in The Logic of Scientific Discovery' (1959), neglecting his idea of ‘situational analysis’. Unlike the empirical inductionists of the Vienna Circle, he preferred deductivist theorizing and the metaphysical realism (or objectivism) of the Boltzmann- Einstein School.

In recent years, a growing literature has claimed that there is a strong and consistent association between the presence of historic missionary societies outside Europe and positive long-term socio-economic outcomes. Yet, most of these studies fail to specify whether this finding is the result of missionary investment in human capital or of local actors stepping up their educational efforts in reaction to missionary activities. This article uses the example of Protestant missionary activity in Ottoman Turkey to separate these two mechanisms. The Ottoman state and the Armenian population responded to missionary incursions by modernizing and expanding their educational efforts. However, after the foundation of the Republic and of modern Turkey, most of the missionary schools were closed and the Armenian population was dramatically reduced. Using the blockage of direct effects, this study confirms the role that indirect effects or emulation has played in Ottoman Turkey. Results show that places with historically heightened competition between missionary schools and native educational institutions are more likely to have a higher income, as measured by night-time light density.

In 1963, a young French sociologist, Pierre Bourdieu, together with two assistants—Luc Boltanski and Jean-Claude Chamboredon—conducted the first sociological study of the credit practices of a major French bank, entitled “The Bank and Its Customers”. This article discusses the context, the findings and the legacy of this study. First, the article sketches the landscape of the emerging mass credit market in France in the early 1960s. Then, the paper summarizes and analyses the report itself. We also demonstrate how bank-customer interactions and credit continued to be a subject of interest for Bourdieu throughout his subsequent career. Finally, the paper seeks to contribute to comparative research on the varieties of national configurations of private indebtedness in relation to the level of development of the welfare state.