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The paper addresses the problem of aggregating individual choices between three discrete alternatives, and discusses how the likelihood of cyclical aggregate preferences under majority rule depends on social integration in large populations. It is argued that the so-called impartial culture condition gives rather limited information as to the likelihood of the paradox occurring, and an alternative model is outlined. Social structure is introduced, by imposing correlation between the first and second choices. The resulting structure may significantly reduce the likelihood of a cyclical outcome. A measure of similarity between rankings is introduced, and this measure serves as a vehicle for discussing the effects of social integration on the distribution of the population across the six possible rankings of alternatives. It is concluded that integration significantly reduces the likelihood of a cyclical outcome. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The field of sociology can be described as a triangle, the apexes of which are represented by the structure of social organisation (Spencer's theory of the division of labour), the structure of cultural codes (Saussure's theory of language and semiology) and social action (Weber's methodological individualism). This becomes a three-dimensional discursive space when underneath it we place, as the fourth apex, nature. Consequently we have a triangular pyramid standing on its head (nature): its four plans are represented by the field of sociology (the structure of social organisation, the structure of cultural codes, action), structuralist social anthropology (the structure of social organisation, the structure of cultural codes, nature), cultural anthropology (the structure of cultural codes, action, nature) and historical materialism (the structure of social organisation, action, nature). This turned-over tetrahedron is described in the paper as the discursive space of sociology, a space that has taken shape with the attempts at a theoretical synthesis of sociology during the 1980s (Alexander, Bourdieu, Collins, Giddens, Habermas). As in the case of the discursive conditions for all forms of knowledge, the discursive space of sociology is a rhetorical closure which determines who are classical writers and how these classical writers are to be read and understood. At the same time it serves as the basis for the positivity of sociological knowledge. It is suggested that this space will emerge to reorganise the uncertainty produced by the collapse of the Parsonian orthodoxy which was primarily concerned to examine society from the perspective of the structure of social organisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper starts with an analysis of the three main principles of the social order of 'real socialism': etatistic homogenization, basic dichotomy between the ruling group and all the direct producers as a whole, and politically-defined-from-above income differences among different sectors of employees. The structural crisis of this order is described as gradual undermining of these principles brought about especially by the growth of the second economy. In the last section the dilemmas of the recently started system transformation are described in terms of symbolic support but lack of short-term interests of the most numerous social groups in the market reform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]