The conservative role of the textbook in reproducing the dominant ideas of a disciplinary field is well known. The factors driving that content have remained almost entirely unexamined. Reviewing the universe of textbooks aimed at the American market between 1998 and 2004, we explore the persistence of the identification in American sociology textbooks of a paradigm in which structural functionalism, conflict theory, and symbolic interactionism are used to frame the theoretical core of the discipline. We examine how over time the textbook market produces both supply and demand pressures to reproduce content that is at odds with the mainstream of the profession. We draw upon in-depth interviews with recent textbook authors and their editors.

There is a notorious typology of ‘conceptions of nationhood’, which opposes ‘ethnocultural’ conceptions to political or ‘civic’ conceptions of nationhood. Analytically, the typology is unsatisfactory, as are its normative and explanatory applications. A more multidimensional analysis of elements of national identity is proposed, which clarifies some possible meanings of ‘ethnic’, ‘cultural’ and ‘political’ in this context. These considerations are then applied to the case of German national identity.

Die Normgebundenheit des sozialen Verhaltens ist eine einfache, ja triviale Alltagserfahrung : wir geraten ständig an Kreuzungen, die mit grünen und roten Signalen versehen sind, — in soziale Situationen, die offenbar bereits von anderen entdeckt, fixiert, vorgeformt sind. Es steht uns nicht frei, diese Vorgeformtheit, diese Besetzung von Situationen mit positiv und negativ bewerteten Alternativlösungen ohne weiteres zu ignorieren. Wenn wir uns um die grünen und roten Lichter nicht scheren, wird unser Verhalten dennoch von anderen als eine Antwort auf diese Signale interpretiert, — auch wenn es gar nicht in unserer Absicht lag, uns eine Frage stellen zu lassen. So können wir in einer ersten Annäherung sagen : die Normgebundenheit sozialen Verhaltens bedeutet, daΒ soziale Situationen mit bestimmten Alternativen belastet sind, die auf irgendwelchen Verabredungen zu beruhen scheinen; Verabredungen, von denen man nicht recht weiΒ, wer sie eigentlich getroffen hat; Verabredungen, die wir nicht aus der Welt schaffen, wenn wir sie von Fall zu Fall nicht akzeptieren. Sie sind irgendwie so auf Dauerhaftigkeit angelegt, daΒ sie vom Einzelnen nicht beliebig auΒer Kraft gesetzt werden können.

It is something of a commonplace in the history of sociological theory that during the classical period of the development of the subject, when Weber and Durkheim and others were formulating the stock of ideas upon which subsequent theory has so largely drawn, no significant contribution was forthcoming from Britain. Parsons' The Structure of Social Action was probably the most influential single source of this view, and it is one which was subsequently popularized by Hughes, Annan and others. It is now sufficiently well established to have been taken as the explanandum in several recent essays. Where the explanation has been looked for in intellectual terms, this has generally involved some variation on the theme of the ‘curious strength of positivism’ in British thought. The gist of this claim is that the intellectual climate in Britain was (and is) marked by a tradition of empiricism in philosophy and individualism in social thought which was unreceptive to the abstract theory and the social-structural concepts which are integral to classical sociology. The significance of the British empirical tradition in philosophy has been particularly insisted upon. This makes it all the more important to point out that it was precisely during this period that what is generally referred to as Idealism was the dominant philosophy in Britain, a philosophy characterized by its thoroughgoing rejection of nominalism and empiricism in favour of the metaphysical tradition derived mainly from Kant and Hegel, a philosophy, I shall argue, which was potentially a fruitful basis for the development of sociological theory.

Les sociologues ne s'accordent pas sur la definition du terme de classe, soit qu'ils ne l'emploient pas tous pour dèsigner la même réalité soit qu'ils aient une vision autre de la réalité à laquelle il s'applique. Du moins admettent-ils tous que le concept de classe est légitime et que des groupes sociaux méritent d'être appelés classes. La légitimité même de concepts comme ceux de « classe politique » ou de « classe dirigeante » ou d' « élite » est mise en question par une fraction des sociologues. La classe dirigeante ou ruling class existe-t-elle ou n'est-elle qu'un mythe? La power elite ou élite de puissance est-elle créée par l'imagination morose du sociologue ou domine-t-elle effectivement la société américaine?

La plupart des sociologues américains n'aiment guère le concept de classe dirigeante, le fait même d'une classe dirigeante semblant contradictoire avec l'idéologie « le gouvernement du peuple par le peuple pour le peuple ». Les sociologues marxistes l'aiment moins encore, puisque, selon l'idéologie soviétique, les « monopolistes » règnent aux États-Unis et les « prolétaires » en Union soviétique. L'existence d'une classe dirigeante est incompatible avec l'antithèse du régime bourgeois (où les monopolistes gouvernent) et du régime socialiste (où le prolétariat est au pouvoir): s'il y a une réalité sociale qui répond au concept de classe dirigeante, il en résulte qu'aux États-Unis ce ne sont pas les monopolistes et qu'en Union soviétique ce ne sont pas les prolétaries qui exercent les fonctions supérieures de l'administration et de l'État.

The article is a systematic synopsis of significant aspects of the modern semantics of contingency on the basis of its historical genesis. His thesis is that hermeneutic, phenomenological, post-structuralist, system theoretical, pragmatist and anthropological concepts of the modern age can be joined to a “post-modern” “métarécit”: in opposition to “post-modern” selfinterpretations, modernity as a culture of contingency is the “métarécit” of “post-modern” modernity.

Norbert Elias went to Ghana as Professor of Sociology for two years. Nevertheless he continued to refer to its inhabitants, despite their rural development, as naturvolk which the civilising process had not touched. That process apparently took off in Europe at the time of the Renaissance and never reached the Third World. The Ghanaians had different kinds of super-ego which did not restrain their behaviour in the same way as Europeans. The lack of restraint is shown in blood sacrifice and in their art, which gives a more direct expression of feeling. Elias' observations were necessarily superficial as he did not carry out fieldwork or learn any languages. He employed them simply to bolster the themes he had developed in a European context rather than using them to modify those themes.

This paper examines the relationship between religion, ethnicity and politics in Cyprus during the Turkocratia (1571–1878), the period of Ottoman rule. Its major thesis is that in the pre-industrial framework of Ottoman rule in Cyprus neither religion nor ethnicity were major sources of conflict in a society composed of two ethnic groups (Greeks and Turks) and following two monotheistic faiths(Christianity and Islam) in marked contrast to the recent history of Cyprus. In broad outline it closely parallels Gellner's thesis (1983) that nationalism is a by-product of industrialization, extensive education literacy and geographical and social mobility, and it seeks to show that the major cleavages in Cyprus were mainly intraethnic rather than interethnic.

There is talk today of a ‘new generation’ of human rights. An idea which was associated in the first instance with civil and political liberties (‘first generation’ rights), and which was used after the Second World War to express popular aspirations to economic and social well-being (‘second generation’ rights), is now being invoked as a vehicle for claims about the importance of the environment, peace, and economic development, particularly in the Third World. No one doubts that these are worthy aims. But instead of merely saying that Third World countries need to develop their economies, instead of saying simply that peace is essential in a nuclear world, and that we must maintain and respect the eco-systems on which human life depends, the proclamation is being made that these are human rights —things to which people are entitled in the same way that they are entitled to democratic freedom or the right not to be tortured.

This article investigates discourses on inheritance law and legal development in France, Germany, and the United States since the revolutions of the late eighteenth century. I argue that in each of the three countries a different set of normative and functional issues relating to the bequest of property has dominated and expressed itself in nationally specific discursive fields. The respective “repertoires of evaluation“ were formed in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries and show a surprisingly stable pattern that can be recognized even in today's debates on the issue. This I refer to as the longue durée of inheritance law. The distinct discursive fields exercise a dominant influence over the perception of problems associated with the transfer of property mortis causa and the strategies deemed feasible to solve them. Moreover, I argue that the different cultural frames matter for the institutional development of inheritance law. My aim is to contribute to institutional theory through investigation of a socially and economically important realm of legal regulation that has received little attention in recent sociological scholarship. The analysis is carried out within a multidimensional theoretical framework that acknowledges the influence of culture and ideas, but also considers changing socioeconomic conditions, as well as actor interests.

Practices within markets are widely regulated and sometimes contested on the basis of moral judgments. Moral entrepreneurs challenge markets and market practices while firms and industry actors defend them, leading to moral struggles opposing different orders of worth. Based on an historical case study, this paper develops a theoretical framework to study moral struggles in markets as social and political processes around commensurability. It identifies three core arenas in which moral struggles play out: ideas, where the morality of specific practices itself is contested and actors ground their moral claims in different institutional orders for legitimation; the economy, where the market viability of changing moral standards is at stake; and politics, where commensuration reflects political power struggles. Through a socio-historical analysis of the fight against battery cages in Swiss egg production in the 1970s and 1980s, the study fleshes out how this moral struggle played out along these dimensions, focusing on the competing discourses, strategies, and tactics of the main moral entrepreneurs and industry associations.

Face aux problèmes d'organisation sociale posés par les sociétés paysannes européennes, passées ou contemporaines, l'ethnologue demeure assez désemparé: les grandes théories ethnologiques, filiation et alliance (élaborées pour des sociétés qui avaient tout un corps de règies d'affiliation à des groupes de parenté ou de sélection du conjoint) sont ici d'un usage incertain. Les sociologues, quant à eux, offrent, depuis les travaux de Redfield (Redfield 1956), une analyse des principes d'organisation communautaire ou, à travers les travaux de Mendras (Mendras 1976), des principes de médiation entre société paysanne et société globale; elles laissent cependant en dehors de leurchamp les questions relatives à l'organisation des groupes domestiques et à leur perpétuation. En Europe, il semble bien que les principes explicites qui organisent la vie sociale en distribuant les individus dans des groupes solidaires aient peu à peu cédé le pas devant d'autres principes, d'ailleurs greffés sur les précédents ou issus d'eux, qui définissent les droits sur les biens et la manière dont ils se transmettent. Ce sont ces derniers principes, dérivant inévitablement d'une certaine conception de la parenté et de l'alliance, qui ont donné lieu à l'élaboration d'une véritable « théorie indigène » de l'organisation sociale, le droit privé. Cette évolution ne conduit évidemment pas à délaisser les grandes théories de l'alliance et de la filiation mais à chercher de quelle manière leurs acquis permettent d'éclaircir les principes d'organisation sociale implicates qui s'expriment à travers ou par delà le droit. Rien que pour la France seule, on découvre la présence d'au moins deux traditions juridiques distinctes et souvent imbriquées: la tradition romaine et la tradition franque.

Since the beginning of the 19th century the Balkans has been a synonym for aggressive nationalism and unbridled violence; the two phenomena traditionally understood to be the key obstacles for its social development. This paper contests such views by arguing that it was the absence of protracted warfare and coherent nationalist doctrines that distinguishes the history of South Eastern Europe from the rest of the continent. Drawing critically on bellicose historical sociology and modernist theories of nationalism - with a spotlight on the work of Charles Tilly and Ernest Gellner. Drawing critically on bellicose historical sociology and modernists theories of nationalism the paper makes a case that it was not the abundance of nationalism and organised violence but rather their historical scarcity that proved decisive for the slow pace of social development in the Balkans.

Sociologists and laymen have often seemed to differ over the nature of democracy. Public opinion generally gives prominence to the freedom of citizens to elect representatives, and until recently political scientists devoted most of their attention to the instituted rules which safeguard these rights and make them effective. The sociologist's concentration upon elites and social processes must often haye seemed, to both layman and political scientist, to blur the distinctions between democracy and totalitarian or aristocratic forms of government. This difference in emphasis sometimes reflects the gap between wish and reality; sometimes, however, it is due to the sociologist's excessive neglect of formal institutions. In this omission, the sociologist is frequently suffering from the undue influence of certain ideas in the sociological tradition, which, when first stated, were salutary correctives of older misconceptions. Thus Max Weber and Joseph Schumpeter stressed, as the distinctive and most valuable feature of democracy, the formation of the political elite in a competitive struggle for the votes of a mainly passive electorate (I). On account of its heritage of ideas, sociology has yet to create the single theory which will give due weight to the autonomy of legally-constituted elites as well as to the influence of the various other social groups involved in the democratic process.

Cette étude pourrait s'appeler : la crise contemporaine de la mort, si ce titre n'avait déjà été donné par Edgar Morin à l'un des chapitres de son livre, L'homme et la mort devant l'histoire (1). Ce sont bien les mêmes mots, et la même chose aussi : ≪ affrontement panique dans un climat d'angoisse, de névrose, de nihilisme ≫, qui prend ≪ figure de véritable crise de l'individualité devant la mort ≫, et sans doute, nous le verrons in fine, de l'individualité tout court.

Sociologists have traditionally tended to overstate the role of norms in explaining human behavior. Economists, on the other hand, have tended to downplay the role of norms. Increasingly, rational choice theorists have begun to explore the interaction between normative and instrumentally rational motivations. There are at least two major points at issue in these discussions. First, how does one conceptualize norms, especially in relation to rational action? Second, how does one go about studying the variation in the reliance on norms? Jon Elster's paper offers a controversial answer to the first question. Ralph Turner's paper offers some guidance for answering the second (1). Building on both Elster and Turner, I shall bring a somewhat different perspective to bear on both these issues.

This paper aims to show how insurance mechanisms that historically propelled a conception of fairness based on solidarity and a collective approach shifted along the 20th century towards an idealistic adjustment to individual risk. Insurance originally assumed that, while individual hazards remained unknown, risk could be measured and managed on the aggregate. An examination of the proceedings of the American Casualty Actuarial Society (CAS) during the 20th century demonstrates the slow crystallization of another conception of fairness, that aims at a scientific adjustment of insurance premiums to actual “individual risks.” I argue that this conception of fairness deconstructs the one based on solidarity. Big data technologies have further radicalized this shift. By aiming at predictive individual risk scores rather than average costs estimated on the aggregate, the algorithms contribute to replacing fairness as solidarity by the correctness of a computation.

Achieving consensus on a definition of “democracy” has proven elusive. Institutions that have been taken to be essential to democracy have changed radically since the word “democrat” began to be widely used toward the end of the eighteenth century. Democratic ideas and democratic practice engender conflict that transforms institutions rather than just reproduces them. Its transformative character rests on a half-dozen key attributes of democracy: it is an actor’s concept, as well as an analyst’s; it can arouse strong feelings; it combines not always compatible ideas; it empowers dissent; it involves a dynamic mixture of inclusion and exclusion; and the democratic histories of national states have been intertwined with global domination. Two processes combine to generate much social dynamism. First, democracy’s stirring inclusionary claims have been contradicted by a complex structure of exclusions, including distinctions in rights of full participation among citizens, distinctions in rights between citizens and non-citizens, and distinctions in resources among legally equal citizens. And second, democratic practice has been fertile soil for the development of social movements. Taken together, democracy is an invitation for movements to try to shift the boundaries of inclusion and exclusion, and in so doing to expand or constrict democracy itself.

Recent political developments in Iran, Turkey, Egypt and Algeria, among others, suggest the possible emergence of an indigenous Islamic path of democratic formation. However, the conventional western interpretations, of religion, and in particular of Islam, leave little room for the recognition of the actual, complex development of such Islamic countries. Defining Islam and modernity as two more or less incompatible phenomena fails to recognize the potentialities of developing modern democratic Islamic societies with their cultural elements and particularities. Many Muslim countries themselves fail to see or are unwilling to recognize their own civil societies and their dynamic potentialities and to accept, in Locke's term, ‘the sovereignty of civil society’. Although the notion of a traditional civil society in the Islamic countries is controversial, I contend that neither individualism nor democratic institutions have been or are necessary for a civil society to exist. The basis of a civil society is the existence of influential civil groups and their institutions that can, through established mechanisms counterbalance state power. Analyzing civil society in Muslim countries requires that we recognize Islam not only as a religion, but also as a political theory and the major source of a legitimization of political power.