This paper looks at why the Franciscan order took part in the diffusion of optics, more than other medieval organisation, both religious and secular. First, clues of this social asymmetry are given. Then, an explanation is put forward: 1. An initial asymmetry existed, in the fact that Grosseteste's optics was known in the Franciscan studium of Oxford; 2. Since that date, optics spread among the order through a network effect; 3. The homophilia that presided over the conventual libraries' purchasing policy finally explains why other similarly structured contemporary organizations, similarly structured, took less of an interest in optics. In spite of an obvious topical connection, this explanation differs deeply from the analysis that has been applied to the Puritans' and Jesuits' scientific activity in XVIIth and XVIIIth century classical Europe. It does not appeal to the heavy hypothesis of ethos.

This essay deals with the findings of an ethnographic study carried out in two urban neighborhoods in Germany. Although the German residents felt bound by the norms of ethnic equality, they used negative classifications to stigmatize upwardly mobile members of the Turkish community. In doing so, they undermined these equality norms without explicitly calling them into question. This paradox can be explained by a latently active, primordial belief in kinship, which is ultimately rooted in a symbolic order of ethnic inequality.

The ‘Dutch model’ has become a catchphrase for progressive European politicians pondering the possibilities of a ‘third way’ between Anglo-American deregulation of labour markets and the bloated stagnation of European dirigiste economies. Foreign politicians, central bankers and union leaders alike praise the combination of fiscal conservatism, wage moderation, consensual welfare reform, job creation and the maintainance of overall social security. They highlight the extraordinary proportion of Dutch people, male and female, in part-time jobs; the sustained policy of wage moderation by the trade unions; the success in holding the course for EMU and the absence of social unrest. Best of all, they observe, the Netherlands is the only EU member state to have more than halved its unemployment rate during the past decade, from 13-plus per cent in 1983 to just over 5 per cent in 1998. Its annual growth rate in jobs of 1.6 per cent is four times the European average, and as good as the American ‘job machine’, but without the US' sharp increase in earning inequality and life-chances.

The state of research on legal compliance in socio-legal studies is limited and partially outdated. Like theories on coercion, recognition, or legitimacy, notions around compliance with the law appear plausible in themselves. However, each of them hold only part of the explanation and yet they cannot be reconciled due to theoretical incompatibilities. Legal sociologists therefore speak of a theory gap regarding legal compliance. The following article takes on this research desideratum and attempts to formulate an alternative concept of legal compliance based on an entirely new terminology without, however, completely renouncing the previous findings of legal sociology. Relying on the above-mentioned theory gap alongside the introduction of this new terminology, I argue that it is possible to analyze legal compliance while heuristically integrating all previous theoretical concepts of its. As a starting point, the article draws on Bourdieu’s fragmentary sociology of law and, by extending it, proposes a larger practice and field-theory-based interpretation of compliance.

La mise en relation de deux ou plusieurs faits, ou séries de faits, ne constitue pas en soi une explication. Celle-ci ne prend naissance que quand la relation est elle-même définie de sorte que les termes soient réduits à l'unité d'un processus. Cette unité n'est jamais que celle d'un mode d'action. Mais elle peut être de deux types. L'histoire constitue des ensembles concrets, situés dans le temps et dans l'espace, des totalités singulières d'autant plus « solides » qu'elles lient plus directement des conduites ouvertes, collectives et organisées. L'unité provient ici du fait, admirablement analysé par Weber, qu'aucune conduite n'est — sauf cas exceptionnels — liée exclusivement à son objet. C'est parce qu'il n'existe pas de conduites purement économiques, politiques ou religieuses qu'une description organised est possible, conduisant l'histoire bien au-delà de son niveau événementiel et de son illusion de départ de reconstituer le passé, wie es geschehen ist, selon le mot de Ranke.

Britain can avoid the fate of a cold Haiti only if it succeeds in retaining (or rather regaining) its place in the forefront of inventiveness and technical and organizational skills. We must remember (what every business man knows) that even a small initial lag in relation to the competitors can set a snowballing process which can end in total bankruptcy. Faced with the need to make a great effort and tighten the belts, the country can remain a liberal democracy only if it has a capable and public-spirited elite imbued with the ethics of work. To supply this elite—to maintain the standards where they are high and to raise them where they are low—ought to be the main task of the universities. This means that—apart from the moral education of teaching the young to work conscientiously—everything should be subordinated to the function of advancing and disseminating knowledge. Although this is plain common sense, one can hardly find a reference to it in the pronouncements of the educationalists, sociologists, journalists and politicians who seem to view the universities as agencies whose main functions are to help the handicapped, transfer the largest possible number of sons and daughters of useful workers into parasitic bureaucracy, or to conceal unemployment. Some of the academics on the other hand regard them chiefly as dining clubs, many of the students as discotheques, while some of the administrators treat them as if their purpose was to open a field for an endless proliferation of paper shufflers.

L'importance du formalisme en sociologie est souvent contestée. Le réquisitoire le plus brutal est celui de Sorokin (i); il est assez connu pour qu'il ne soit pas necessaire d'en rappeler les attendus; pour le résumer brièvement, la formalisation serait soit purement sténographique, soit inutile, soit absurde. Le premier chef d'accusation, s'il est parfois Justifié, ignore l'importance que peut revetir pour le développement d'une théorie ou d'une hypothèse la parcimonie de l'explication et le caractère identifiable des variables utilises; en ce sens, certaines études, bien que ne conduisant à aucune déduction qui ne soit du ressort du raisonnement syllogistique, présentent des systèmes suffisamment clairs et cohérents pour qu'on puisse éventuellement y appliquer un langage plus puissant.

The transformative capacity of most religions to initiate modern, capitalistic societies has been extensively investigated (Bellah 1957 and 1965; Eisenstadt 1968; Geertz i960 and 1968; Gellner 1969; Levenson 1968; Rodinson 1974; Sardar 1977; Soedjatmoko 1965; Turner 1974; Weber 1958a, 1958b and 1964). However, most scholars have not been able to come to definite conclusions regarding the capacity of religions to legitimate modern development. This is because it is assumed that every ‘big’ religion contains the potential to legitimate different, even contradictory, patterns of social change. Thus, perhaps it would be useful, when studying a given religion, to analyze the conditions under which a certain pattern of social change is utilized, as well as the interests such a pattern serves.

I would like József Böröcz, to speak of continuity in the East European transition—a continuity that links the post-communist status quo with the communist status quo ante. The message of this note is, however, different if not contrary to Böröcz's main proposition epitomized by his illuminating concept of the ‘winking-oppressive’ variant of state socialism.