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The article discusses the significance of the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement, also known as the Occupy movement, of the early 21st century. The author examines several aspects of the OWS movement including its relationship to international mobilization efforts following the 2008 financial crisis, the response to the OWS movement by police authorities and mass media, and the notion that the OWS movement was the first social movement to focus solely on the financial structure of the economy. The article also discusses the OWS movement's ability to promote itself yet simultaneously limit itself from access to potential supporters. The author also discusses observations concerning the OWS movement made by sociologist Todd Gitlin.

The work of Ulrich Beck has been important in bringing sociological attention to the ways issues of risk are embedded in contemporary globalization, in developing a theory of 'reflexive modernization', and in calling for social science to transcend 'methodological nationalism'. In recent studies, he and his colleagues help to correct for the Western bias of many accounts of cosmopolitanism and reflexive modernization, and seek to distinguish normative goals from empirical analysis. In this paper I argue that further clarification of this latter distinction is needed but hard to reach within a framework that still embeds the normative account in the idea that empirical change has a clear direction. Similar issues beset the presentation of diverse patterns in recent history as all variants of 'second modernity'. Lastly, I note that ironically, given the declared 'methodological cosmopolitanism' of the authors, the empirical studies here all focus on national cases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article comments on Michael Burawoy's article "For Public Sociology," in volume 56, issue number 2, of the "British Journal of Sociology." The author has some criticism with Burawoy's call for public sociology but only over conceptual categories and matters of tactics. He is in accord with the broad purposes. Burawoy's call for more public sociology is important and timely. Some differences in approach are urged but like all sociologists seeking at once the ever-greater intellectual vitality for the field and a richer public life informed by sociology, the author is in his debt.