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Robert Fine was among the most original social theorists in Britain of the past 30 years, and the aim of this paper is to offer a first systematic assessment of his intellectual contribution. There are sound intellectual reasons to explore Fine's scholarship. He maintained a problematic relation with mainstream sociology and, against the reduction of sociology to questions of method, culture, or class, he argued that sociologists must continue to ask difficult normative questions as part of the social world they ought to explain. And there are also pressing political concerns that justify a reconsideration of his writings. Global politics is currently marked by a populist wave that decries the very ideas and values that were central to Fine's social theory: the need to uphold the rule of law at home and abroad, the politics of cosmopolitan solidarity, and the significance of antisemitism and its relationships with different forms of authoritarian politics. My main argument is that there is a dialectics of universality that drives forward Fine's intellectual project. By this, I mean that a universalistic idea of humanity—an all‐inclusive conception of all human beings—is the most important normative intuition of modern times. This idea of humanity moves forward in history through a dual process of emancipation and domination: successful forms of social, legal, and political inclusion help make visible previous dynamics of exclusion but may also create or recreate discriminatory practices. Building on the work of French historian Michael Löwy on heterodox Jewish thinkers, I explain the three main tenets of Fine's work: (a) his reconstruction of critical social theory; (b) the notion of cosmopolitan solidarity; and (c) the significance and main features of modern antisemitism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper seeks to present a world regional approach to the analysis of modernity and in doing so it also aims to make a contribution to comparative sociology and social theory. It is argued that world regions are the most suitable entry-point for comparing different socio-political constellations of our time, preferable to continents, civilizations and nation-states. However, a world regional foundation on its own is insufficient, due to the internal plurality and historically changing forms of world regions, and therefore needs to be accompanied by a concept that provides some degree of coherence within world regions and a tool for comparison with other world regions. The notion of modernity offers this level of generality while at the same time allowing for variety in its historical forms. Six main formations of modernity are identified, of which the European model was the first one and often a cultural reference for many other parts of the world. The thesis is that in the present day the most important developments are in the Asian and Latin American varieties, which unlike Europe are witnessing major historical transformation. Decisive in all of this is the question of democratization in the shaping of social imaginaries. Beginning with the problem of how to define the specificity of Europe, the paper provides an exploratory analysis of some of the salient considerations around a number of world regions, their formations of modernity, and the extent of major historical transformations in their present constitution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through a critique of Margaret Archer's theory of reflexivity, this paper explores the theoretical contribution of a Bourdieusian sociology of the subject for understanding social change. Archer's theory of reflexivity holds that conscious 'internal conversations' are the motor of society, central both to human subjectivity and to the 'reflexive imperative' of late modernity. This is established through critiques of Bourdieu, who is held to erase creativity and meaningful personal investments from subjectivity, and late modernity is depicted as a time when a 'situational logic of opportunity' renders embodied dispositions and the reproduction of symbolic advantages obsolete. Maintaining Archer's focus on'ultimate concerns' in a context of social change, this paper argues that her theory of reflexivity is established through a narrow misreading and rejection of Bourdieu's work, which ultimately creates problems for her own approach. Archer's rejection of any pre-reflexive dimensions to subjectivity and social action leaves her unable to sociologically explain the genesis of 'ultimate concerns',and creates an empirically dubious narrative of the consequences of social change.Through a focus on Archer's concept of 'fractured reflexivity', the paper explores the theoretical necessity of habitus and illusio for understanding the social changes that Archer is grappling with.In late modernity, reflexivity is valorized just as the conditions for its successful operation are increasingly foreclosed, creating 'fractured reflexivity' emblematic of the complex contemporary interaction between habitus, illusio, and accelerating social change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A new stream of sociological and demographic theory emphasizes individualization as the key process in late modernity. As maintained by Hakim (), women also have increasingly become agents of their own biographies, less influenced by the social class and the family. In this study, I intend to contribute to this debate by analysing how, in Italy and Britain, women's movements between employment and housework are linked to their husband's education and class, and how this link has changed across cohorts. Using discrete‐time event‐history modelling on the BHPS and ILFI, my findings show that in both countries, if the woman's educational and labour‐market profile is controlled for, the husband's occupation and education have lost importance. Yet, although based more on 'her' than 'his' profile, divisions along 'classic' lines are still evident and not context‐free, and they assume different forms in the two countries with distinctive institutional and cultural settings. In 'liberal' Britain, women's labour‐market participation responds more to motherhood and class than to education, while in 'familistic' Italy education seems more important, which suggests the existence of returns over and above strictly human capital/economic ones. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]