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Guy Oakes, in one of his introductions to his translations of Max Weber, points out that it is surprising that Weber wrote so many epistemological essays, given his principled preference for substantive work. The use of the historical individual and the ideal type specifies the principles of selection of the problem to be investigated, always with reference to the value relevance of a historian and his age. Thus, the historical individual and the ideal type are constructed by the investigator to create a relatively standard criterion for selecting the facts that in total are infinitely richer than the historical individual or the type itself. Their use can only reveal aspects of empirical reality from the standpoint of a value-relevant problem, but they can never reveal the total reality itself.

In a recently published personal reminiscence of Robert E. Park that also contains a subtle critique of his place among the master-thinkers of the sociological discipline, Edward Shils asserts that Park's work would have had a longer life if he had been able to draw on Max Weber's certain writings. and if he had studied and pondered writings of other such thinkers. Of course, Park was not unaware of Weber's verstehende sociology--he referred to it in one of his writings in the 1930s--nor was he ignorant of the contributions of other social thinkers. In the social sciences in general and sociology in particular, research is all too often associated with the transmogrification of knowledge into numbers and the reification of the latter into the simulacra of theory. Park's career as an academician was confounded by this disciplinary hubris. At the turn of the nineteenth century, as sociology emerged from its immersion in German romantic philosophy, its academicians still clung to its baptism in American Protestant thought, seeking to infuse the latter with the trappings of positive science. In any event, a transvalued and secularizing sociology would have to come to terms with the existence of evil in the world.

What is the purpose of the modern nation-state and what drives its main functions? This analysis attempts to provide an answer by examining the correlates of state spending on military and public health in the Middle East and North Africa. I draw on theories of states and power, identifying the dual nature of modern nation-states, and argue that spending on military and social policy is shaped largely by domestic institutional arrangements. Theories from comparative politics, sociology, and political economy are operationalized. I consider hypotheses derived from each using pooled cross-sectional time series analysis with macroeconomic data and sociopolitical indicators. Analysis shows that democratic institutions generate spending in both areas, while governing capacity is associated with decreases in military and increases in public health spending. The regression also suggests the unrest of 2011 generated increases in military spending. Overall, these findings provide support for the notion that institutional arrangements largely determine state spending priorities and provide other insights relevant to the theories being tested. This paper extends our understanding of state behaviors vis-à-vis state spending in the context of social unrest. In light of these findings, I theorize that state behavior is molded by the triangular relationship between state, economy, and civil society, and I discuss the need to consider military expenditures in institutional analyses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sponsored by the Research Committee of the History of Sociology, International Sociological Association, a symposium on the lives and works of sociologists Gunnar Myrdal and Alva Myrdal was presented at the meeting of the World Congress of Sociology in Montreal, in July 1998. Sven Eliæson, professor at Stockholm University, arranged and chaired the session. The papers examined the scientific, epistemological, methodological and policy influencing effects and implications of the Myrdals' many writings while exploring the impact of their academic careers and numerous ventures into public service on their own and their children's domestic lives. Long associated with the ideology and praxes of social democracy in Sweden, the Myrdals also contributed to an understanding of the race problem in the U.S., provided a reconceptualization of economic development in post-colonial Asia, examined the place of values in social science, and offered a critical revaluation of the character of and possible solutions to such public problems as housing, population decline, family formations and long-term poverty.

In recent decades, the world has seen many internal violent conflicts that dramatically affect the social, economic, and political conditions of human geographies at multiple spatial scales, from the national level to the scale of individual cities and communities. Geography, as a multidimensional discipline, should be in a unique position to contribute to understanding of such conflicts and of post-conflict geographies and their futures in terms of reconstruction and rebuilding. However, in the geography literature, there is little attention given to post-conflict human geographies and their related subjects. At present, there are many emerging post-conflict geographies, which would greatly benefit from theoretical and practical knowledge to guide their future. This paper aims to contribute to building a foundation for developing knowledge on reconstruction of post-conflict and ongoing conflict human geographies. Based on the existing multidisciplinary bodies of knowledge on post-conflict reconstruction, this paper develops a new conceptual framework for post-conflict reconstruction and for ongoing conflict reconstruction as a more adequate way to understand and plan reconstruction in the face of ongoing conflict and offers new insights for the reconstruction agenda. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper identifies some deficiencies in the theory of value as found in traditional economics, specifically the fallacy of absolute value and its spurious resolution that treats prices as a priori parameters rather than as variables to be explained. One is a fallacy of omission, the other of commission, which together comprise the epistemological paradox of the modern neoclassical theory of value. This paper advances a different, sociological approach to economic value or market prices as a possible corrective to this paradox. Such an approach has origins in sociological economics or economic sociology, the main premise of which is that social influences in the economy affect the formation of value or price. This paper therefore explores the seldom examined social underpinnings of price formation and of market processes generally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper traces the development of my theoretical and methodological approach to political sociology by referring to important intellectual influences and recounting the considerations that led me to choose particular research subjects. The term “intruder” emphasizes my discomfort with the separation of sociology and political science into distinct professions, as I ended up choosing political science as my academic profession but have always felt intellectually more at home in sociology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Guenther Roth's study places Max Weber in an intricate network of ties among members of his lineage. This paper presents core findings of Roth's analysis of Weber's family relations, discusses the validity of Roth's core theses and some of the implications of his analysis for Weber as a person and scholar, and addresses how Roth's book may influence future approaches to Weber's sociology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents information on Everett Cherrington Hughes. It is informed that of late there has been a revival of interest in Hughe's work both in the U.S. and abroad. In 1994, Lewis Coser published an edited collection of Hughes's writings and, in 1996, Jean-Michel Chapoulie, translated several of Hughes's essays into French and published them in an edited volume along with his own sensitive and detailed introductory essay. In the history of Chicago sociology Hughes is a key "transitional" figure trained by Robert Park and other "heroic" figures of the classical school who acted as a mentor and role model for many members of the second Chicago School. He was not the only figure to play this kind of "bridging" role; others such as Herbert Blumer, Anselm Strauss, and Louis Wirth acted in a similar capacity. Of the this group, Blumer and Hughes are probably best known and, of the two, Blumer's star has risen highest and shines brightest-- not just in the interactionist firmament but in the discipline at large, as well.

The article presents information on democracy and child welfare. In order to study compassion sociologically, one has to look at its collective manifestations, at the organized activity that express a moral sentiment though action. Compassion is not simply an abstract feeling; it is practical humanitarianism. Many people have argued that moral sentiments like compassion are distinctively modern and have social origins. But this does not mean, at least in this paper that they are simply a ruse of the ruling class. Rather it means that moral sentiments emerged in a specific historical and social context: the rise and consolidation of capitalism. The market allows people to enter, independently of their will, into universal moral relationships. The market expands the horizons of people's moral responsibility, which were formerly limited by exclusivist bonds of memberships in corporate groups. Humanitarianism thus emerges from market relationships. Ideally, in market society everyone is a potential partner and this potential universality expands our horizons of humanity from exclusive bonds to universal ones. Moral obligations are not solely internal restraints, nor are they simply self-conscious deceptions in order to attain some goal; they are, at least in part, the reflection of an expanded sphere of action. It is true that a major part of the reform of manner did involve the transition from hierarchical control to the internalization of mores. But it was for this very reason that the process of moral reform had to involve the reformation of the manners of all parts of society.

The article discusses sociologist Joseph Dorfman's interpretation of the life and works of economist and social scientist Thorstein Veblen. Dorfman actually got very little right in his portrayal of Veblen. Dorfman's "Thorstein Veblen and His America" is not, strictly speaking, a biography. Rather it is a chronicle of intellectual productivity interspersed, often arbitrarily, with biographical data. This failure would appear to be rooted in the Dorfman's own personal circumstance. The essential preconception on which Dorfman hangs his interpretation of Veblen, of course, is Veblen's alleged sense of marginality, which Dorfman pretends to explain with a priori assumptions about the nature of the Scandinavian immigrant experience in the Upper Midwest. Key to Veblen's purported cultural angst, in Dorfman's scheme, is language; that is, Veblen's presumed late acquisition and thus imperfect command of English in an English-dominant society. Despite Dorfman's professed admiration of Veblen, the mental image he conjures of the man remains a twisted composite of negative qualifiers: odd, queer, aloof, contemptuous, supercilious, indolent, moody, maladjusted, insincere, cynical, mischievous, rustic, unkempt. Acknowledged qualities of patience, generosity, sensitivity, wit, humor and intellect fail to stem Dorfman's incessant repetition of offensive traits, which he invariably proffers on the basis of unsubstantiated informant testimony.

As the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the American Catholic Sociological Review approached, the leadership of the Association for the Sociology of Religion decided to dedicate the last issue of Volume Fifty of Sociological Analysis to analyzing the various scholarly concerns involved in the change from the American Catholic Sociological Society into the Association for the Sociology of Religion. The special issue contained not only four major articles but also seven notes by former presidents that dealt with the sociological aspects of this transformation. With the exception of an article by Peter Kivisto, all of the analyses, explicitly or implicitly, endorsed the organizational move and its intellectual implications. The paper is an effort to provide some balance to the historical record as portrayed in the special issue and to make a contribution to a renewed attempt to construct a Catholic sociology as well as an association of Catholic sociologists. While the concerns that are found within the anniversary issue deserve a full-length treatment, what can be realistically offered here are only a short historical background and a few reactions to the arguments of its contributors.

The Inquisition was a unique institution, specifically Western European in origin and character. Nothing quite like it is found in the history of other world civilizations. Its origin and subsequent history as a specialized and differentiated religious-juridical institution depended upon a peculiar combination of changes both at the level of the civilizational structures of Western Europe, as well as more local events and processes within the sociocultural settings of the various European nations. This paper will focus on the origins of the Inquisition, rather than its historical vicissitudes in various countries from the thirteenth through the eighteenth centuries. Institutions derive their original contours from the rationales and ideas available in the civilizational environment. Once any institution has been established, it gains a permanent place among the "tools" available to a society and it can subsequently be put to new uses and adapted to new circumstances. It is therefore of particular interest to capture the institution at its point of original historical gestation and examine the reasons which initially bring it into existence. In particular, the present essay focuses upon the origins of the Inquisition viewed within the setting of and at the level of Western European civilizational rationales, structures of consciousness, and their related institutional orders.

The article presents information on the work of sociologist George Simmel in relation to American sociology. The history of sociology is in need of a new historical narrative, a story that reflects and reinforces the contemporary transition in sociological thought from a celebration of scientific autonomy to a demonstration of social relevance. Whether they are accomplished through critical analysis of sociological discourse, historical analysis of sociology's changing publics, or pragmatic proposals for change, sociology's aspirations to professional and intellectual self-sufficiency have been pronounced a failure. This article reexamines the American Simmel reception in light of the conception of sociology as a conversation on America rather than a conversation sociologists have with themselves. It views sociologists as creative figures, like poets and novelists who help to shape America's future by molding how people think about it. To recognize this feature of the American reception of Simmel's work is not to deny that there were, intellectual reasons for an interest in Simmel. One can and must examine the historical and contemporary interest in Simmel from both points of view. Indeed, it is probably an error to consider theoretical reason and practical life as polar terms. A pragmatic and phenomenologically informed study of social theory, its production and reception, would the links between lifeworld and social thought.

The elucidation of explanatory relationships between individuated life experience and articulated thought is perhaps the least precise of all scholarly endeavors. It is the most susceptible to the subjective loadings of the explicator and the most likely to be exploited for non-scholarly ends. Scholarship on Thorstein Veblen is rife with examples. David Riesman, who relied uncritically on Dorfman for the biographical elements that informed his infelicitous foray into psychohistory, carried the search for a psychological explanation of Thorstein Veblen's irreverent assault on the mores and mechanisms of power and wealth to its height. Even while protesting that "it does not help determine the truth of a doctrine to penetrate into its personal and psychological sources in its originator," Riesman proceeds with great determination to do precisely that; to reduce Thorstein Veblen to emotionally crippling origins on the margins of Yankee society, which, despite genuflexions to Veblen's intellectual stature, in effect seeks to neutralize his most penetrating criticisms of the prevailing societal order.

Max Weber is criticized in the following ways like adopting a theory without observing its incompatibility with his other assumptions, not understanding the full import of what he thought he had adopted, and adopting a theory that is fundamentally flawed. The distinctive conceptual tool that Weber develops in order to identify, characterize, and explain historical individuals is the ideal type. Weber repeatedly refers to the respects in which ideal typical concepts approximate or depart from reality, and to the operation of comparing the ideal type with reality. Weber's commitment to the neo-Kantian theory of concepts and its absolute duality of concept and reality, however, such operations appear to be impossible in principle. Reality as such, independent of its conceptualization, is unintelligible.

The project to (re)construct a global sociology is one where there is no agreed paradigm or even a shared understanding of the main issues that would be needed to secure a new robust and credible paradigm. What I seek to do here is to simply clarify the terms of the debate so as to establish whether we might pursue the quest for an alternative paradigm with some conviction. I first consider the 'strong case' for a global sociology based on the assumptions of globalisation theory which, overall, seems to suffer from economism in my view. Next I present a postcolonial perspective which posits a fundamental division between the global South and the North, an enterprise I find to be marked by a certain culturalism. I then present elements for an alternative approach towards a new paradigm based on an understanding of complexity, uneven development and the politics of scale. A brief Latin American excursus at the end seeks to provide some texture to the overall argument that a new global sociology could develop through a critical Southern lens and a focus on cultural political economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents information on the articles that have been published in the current issue of the journal "International Journal of Politics, Culture and Society." In their articles, Edward K. Zajicek and James B. Heisler examines the problematic effects of distributing state assets to newly emerging indigenous classes and foreigners; Bronislaw Oyrzanowski and Magda Paleczny Zapp note that the imposition of free market shock therapy amounts to no less than the substitution of one economic ideology for another. Franco Ferrarotti, an editor and frequent contributor to the above mentioned journal, presents an essay that continues his career long interest in photography in its relation to society and social theory. Contributing to our occasional commentaries on sociology in the U.S., Nobuko Gerth offers a corrective to distortions and misinterpretations of the relationship between Hans H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills. It is informed that the publication of Stanford M. Lyman's Militarism, Imperialism, and Racial Accommodation: An Analysis and Interpretation of the Early Writings of Robert E. Park provides the opportunity for reassessing Park's sociology and Lyman's reading of it.

Using a sociology of knowledge framing, this essay highlights how and why the sociological imagination presented by leading European and American scholars showcased in this special issue offers a relatively hopeful assessment of recent transformations. It then questions the extent to which the same optimism prevails for scholars – and citizens – of the poorer, less advanced countries of the world. It not only suggests that many of the fundamental sociological transformations associated with the contemporary era – ranging from globalization of economy, the rise of internet technology, the decline of the nation state, and the rise of more cosmopolitan identities – are unevenly distributed around the world. It also argues that their political, social, and economic impact will vary, depending on history and developmental context. The essay further suggests that precisely because of the statist and protectionist legacies of late development, many of the same transformations that bring positive gains in the advanced capitalist world, signal troubles ahead for the developing world and its future. The essay draws to a close with a more focused examination of the dark side of recent transformations, evident in such problems as unchecked violence and regional or ethnic fragmentation across major swathes of the global south. Such developments, the essay concludes, should sustain the call for a more “pluralist” sociological imagination for the new millennium, one that can take into account differences within and between various countries around the globe, while also advancing our normative understanding of what it would take to make “global society” possible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The effort to write a history of the sociology of religion requires a delineation of the field. In turn, this requires a discrimination among the key ideas determining that field, including the notions of "religion," "sociology," the "sacred," and a host of others. This is a prerequisite for sorting the various contributors and contributions to this field as well as determining the value of any such history to the future advance of the study of human consciousness and conduct, including "religion." Cipriani's book is reviewed. and its strengths and weaknesses assayed, in light of these concerns. Several lacunae in the book are identified, such as the absence of any treatment of non-Western writers and its failure to substantially engage the work of women, including Jane Ellen Harrison's pioneering sociology of religion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article the author presents information about the Department of Social Relations and System Theory at Harvard. The idea of going to Harvard was given to the author by the professor W.W. Howells, not so much because he knew anything about the Department of Social Relations, but because he had introduced his students to the professor Clyde Kluckhohn when he came to Madison to lecture. Kluckhohn had been a 1928 graduate of the University of Wisconsin and was now regarded as a major figure in the field. The point was not to hear Kluckhohn's lecture, but to be introduced to him. Kluckhohn's visit had more than one purpose. He was recruiting applicants for the Department of Social Relations and Howells served as a link in the recruitment network. Kluckhohn's office was located in the newly created Russian Research Center. Many anthropologists, including Kluckhohn, had seen service in wartime intelligence activities and it was on the strength of these services that he was made director of the Center.

From a certain point of view one can see why Fritz Ringer's "Max Weber's Methodology': the Unification of the Cultural and Social Sciences," would be an attractive book. It appears to be comprehensive. It appears to explain a large number of obscure and difficult texts in short sentences and in terms of relatively simple ideas even diagrams with arrows. Yet it is not too simple. There is plenty of technical language, and there arc references to specialized texts in a number of disciplines in German and English, both on Weber and on issues in the philosophy of science and social science, including a good deal on some thinkers who are seldom discussed in the usual literature on the social sciences. The historical problem of Weber's relation to neo-Kantianism is implicitly raised by Ringer himself as a result of his own lengthy treatment of the topic in the first chapter, and his extensive discussion, in the second, on Weber's adaptation of Rickert.

Two years after Max Weber's death, his wife published a collection of his essays on the philosophy of the social sciences under the title "Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Wissenschaftslehre." In these studies, Weber developed his views on what in the parlance of the time, were termed the logical and methodological issues of the social sciences: the demarcation between the natural sciences and the social sciences; the status of the concepts of culture and history; the theory of action and agency; the relationship between explanation and interpretation; and the complex of questions posed by tile fact that the subject matter, problems, and theoretical interests of the social sciences are in some sense defined by values. Weber unified the two perspectives by developing a theory of explanation as interpretation. In his reconstruction of Weber's methodology, the objective of cultural and socially science is causal explanation. However, the product of such an explanation is not a generalization or law-like statement but a singular causal analysis. Causal explanation in the social sciences does not link effects to their empirically necessary or sufficient conditions, but determines why a specific constellation of acts and artifacts has the properties it exhibits instead of others, why a certain historical path or outcome was what it was, and not something else.

The debates about the significance and portents of the "postmodern" for the social sciences have made scant progress in clarifying the relationship between the postmodern as a designation of an epistemology (or perhaps a set of antiepistomologies or, alternatively, a science or programmatic critique of science viewed as the hegemonic ideology of the Enlightenment) and the postmodern as an analytical attempt to understand the social, economic, political, and cultural condition of the contemporary world. Katherine Gibson and Sophie Watson highlight the embeddedness of this "problematique" in the actual work of both devotees and critics of postmodernism in their introductory comments to a symposium on postmodern treatments of urban spaces. Onto the field of encounter between postmodern theory and the empirical analysis of the postmodern condition steps Stanford Lyman, offering what he sees as both complementary and alternative rules of the game to render this engagement both more enlightening and more productive for the discipline of sociology. In the collection titled "Postmodernism and a Sociology of the Absurd," Lyman advances both argument and documentation that the theoretical orientations and methodological innovations developed in the contributions found in two earlier works by him and Marvin B. Scott, "A Sociology of the Absurd and the Drama of Social Reality," both anticipated the main theoretical contributions of postmodernist social science.

The article presents two essays related to sociology. Individual within an organizational hierarchy possesses informal and formal connections and ties with others in other organizational hierarchies. The informal connections have their origins in extra-institutional relationships based on such considerations as kinship, membership in fraternal or sororal organizations, old school ties based on graduation from the same educational institution or graduating class, common war-time experiences, common ethnic, migrant, community of origin or religious affiliations, or, relationships established at earlier career stages in offices of other organizations and industries which may be re-invoked at later career stages. The specific characteristic of inter-institutional cliques is that their members' loyalties arise outside the framework of organizational and institutional participation. As networks, inter-institutional cliques have no formal definition of membership but rather share a subliminal recognition of like-mindedness based either on personal attraction or recognition of common personal interest. Such networks have no precise definition of the limits of membership, but rather there are star members and peripheral members who have interlocking memberships in other networks surrounding other star members: star members are those who control resources, jobs and other forms of opportunity for clique members.

This essay analyzes the relationship between an assumed increased sensitivity to physical pain and the emergence of liberal society, with its distinctive features of capitalism and democracy. Sociological research in the problem of pain has mainly been informed by Mark Zborowski's book "People in Pain," a study in the social and cultural aspects of the experience. He found that ethnic groups offered its members patterns of attitudes and reactions to pain that were peculiar to the respective group. With the onset of civil society the nature and sentiment - of people's relationship to pain changed. This involved a revolution in sensibility. It contained a new aversion to pain, to be avoided at all cost. Path was considered evil and happiness the absence of pain. Humanitazian efforts in every field of reform during the last two centuries were mostly concerned with the abolition of pain. The sociological literature on the transformation of social behavior is suggestive and provides large scale interpretations regarding the emergence of bourgeois virtues such as revulsion against pain.

Fascism is a defining phenomenon of the twentieth century. The term comes from the Fascisti, an Italian political organization founded in 1919 which, under Benito Mussolini, prime minister of Italy came to dominate that country. But the Fascisti drew their name from the ancient Roman custom of minor officers called lictors who bore the fasces, bundles of wood that symbolized submission to lawful authority; lictors cleared the way for magistrates in the public forum. Fascism came to mean a certain kind of political authoritarianism, specifically that which coordinates the state, industry, finance, labor, and commerce under strong nationalistic policies. Fascism, dressing modem science and technology in medieval garb, offered an anti-modernist revival of corporative coordination complete with traditional elitist values, an antidote for the corruption and fragmentation that is, it was argued, part and parcel of modern democracy.

It is informed that much has been written about C. Wright Mills' influence on American sociology and the discipline of sociology generally as well as his role as an opinion leader and spokesman for a wider public of intellectuals. His major works are available in several languages, including Japanese. The relationship between Hans H. Gerth and Mills, which spanned almost twenty-two years, dates back to the autumn of 1940 and Gerth's appointment as an assistant professor in the Department of Sociology-- then called the Department of Sociology and Anthropology-- at the University of Wisconsin. Mills was born in Waco, Texas, of Irish and English parentage. He came from a middle class family, and his father was an insurance salesman. Mills did not leave Texas until he began graduate work at the University of Wisconsin. When Hans H. Gerth began his career as an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison at the age of 32, C. Wright Mills, eight years younger, was a Ph.D. candidate assigned to Howard Becker. Becker had received his Ph.D. in sociology at the University of Chicago in 1930. Gerth and Mills seem to have been drawn to one another from the beginning. Because of his boorishness, Mills was not very popular in the department and readily attached himself to Gerth, who needed friends in his new environment and was quite impressed by Mills' intellectual curiosity and his ability to learn.

It is opined that photography gives time to see, to "read." It may rightly be objected that photography is static. Yet dynamism is implicit in it. In contrast to videotape, cinema and television, photography lets itself be looked at, granting the time needed for reading. In common parlance, "informing" means passing on news, delivering messages, clarifying specific data and situations when needed. Yet in the act of informing there is something else. At the very moment it informs, information may form, deform and transform. It cannot be reduced to a simple addition: it is an exchange which calls in question the addressee and the sender, it removes, moves and arouses, obliges a re-shuffling of the global situation. For this reason every act of information has a basically problematic aspect which escapes common awareness, but which it is important to recall and analyze. To inform means initially to leave the silence and open up to the other, the person who is different, and to hold out one's hand. This is an operation as needful as it is dangerous, simply because human relations, because they are human, are unforeseeable, and so are necessarily dramatic.

It is informed that one of the persisting paradoxes confronting sociology, a discipline that seeks to explain the organization and dynamics of societal processes, is that of explaining its own development and changes as part of those societal processes. When one thinks of those persons whose writings and professional activities helped to set the compass of American sociology's early development, few-- if any -- were as enigmatic, influential or interesting as Robert Park. It will come as a surprise to those who are familiar with Robert Park's works on race relations that he published essays on colonial Africa during the pre-Chicago phase of his career. Starting in October 1904, Park wrote an article for The World Today magazine publicizing the mistreatment of blacks in the Congo. Afterwards in November and December 1906 and January 1907, Park published essays in Everybody's magazine excoriating King Leopold II of Belgium. To appreciate the broader significance of the Congo essays, it is necessary to understand the circumstances under which they were written and the effects of those experiences for the subsequent direction of Park's work. Park's Congo essays were written while he was employed as a publicist by the Congo Reform Association (CRA), an organization affiliated with Protestant missionaries. Though he worked for the CRA for only a few years, that job had some major repercussions on his intellectual career. It caused him to become disillusioned with social reform. Park was especially upset when he learned that the Protestant missionaries in the Congo, the major source of his information about the atrocities, had sent him exaggerated reports.

In recent years one has witnessed a widespread renewal of interest in the work of Robert E. Park, as sociologists and historians alike have sought to reassess his place in the history of the discipline, his role in shaping the form and content of the Chicago School, and the matter of whether or not his work is of enduring relevance to the discipline as it positions itself for the twenty-first century. This interest in Park's work is somewhat surprising as Park's political and economic views have often been the subject of sustained criticism. Herman and Julia Schwendinger, in their diatribe leveled against American sociology in its formative years, depict Park as a "technocratic urban ethnographer" content to serve the interests of the ruling class. Another reason for the surprise at Park's resurgence has to do with the way his sociology has often been assessed, the general thrust of which concludes that the discipline has in fundamental ways transcended the brand of sociology associated with the Chicago School.

Albert Salomon's work as a writer and teacher was characterized by a remarkable intellectual diversity and historical scope. His writings in intellectual history include essays on Erasmus, Fontenelle, Adam Smith, Goethe, DeTocqueville, Burckhardt, Max Weber and the Durkheim School, to mention just a few. The range of Salomon's work was not the result of mere idle curiosity, or even the desire for personal understanding and enlightenment, although this latter motive was certainly present. It was an integral part of his conception of history and culture. His view of history is not announced with any one philosophical flourish or general idea, but is found throughout his work, hidden in the interstices, as it were, of his many writings. The contemporary era is one of continued revolutionary crises and upheavals in which human existences are repeatedly displaced. Salomon's view can best be seen as a brand of "humanism." This humanism is not at all irreconcilable with his religious sensibility or with his sense of sociology as a calling which will help train students "to know the limitations of social research and to be aware of what is beyond the pale of social institutions: ontology and theology." In particular, Salomon saw humanism as "an attitude of transition, not of perfection," one which therefore appears in diverse forms during points of acute social and cultural transformation.

Psychology, insofar as its reasoning is original, is concerned with the other, with the living, speaking individual. Psychological reasoning derives from human predicaments and do not reflect for the sake of reflection, but for the sake of truth. But insofar as people are not themselves entirely' authentic, and insofar as they encounter all sorts of obstructions, distortions and inhibitions, which make them ill and render them incapacitated for life, perspectives on human curability and on the links between theoretical knowledge and insightful practice are the distinctive issues on which the fertility of this or that psychology hinge. The question of human understanding's scope and radicalism, i.e., whether thinking indeed grasps the individual at the root, is left to extreme stakes: where the illness is critical change in oneself that endangers the healthy. Behaviorism is primarily concerned with objectivity, with concrete thinking. Thus, it bends, in a Copernican turn, toward a different method of observation, the observation of the other. The observer must not project himself into the observed object.

The article provides useful insights into the making of contemporary French sociology. In the early Fifties most European sociologists had a purely philosophical background. No wonder they would come to the United States to learn methodology, especially research techniques, sampling methods, field work, and so on. In France, contrary to what had happened in Italy and Germany, the factual, positivist tradition of social research had been kept alive always by the Durkheimian school. Field work and empirical sociology in general were far from being unknown. The two then young sociologists of the post war generation, namely Main Touraine and Michel Crozier, had been conducting empirical research with interesting results as early as 1950. Their mentor was Georges Friedmann, a remarkable organizer and stimulator of social research, who played a role in post war French sociology. What is most striking in French sociology, in comparison to empirical American sociology, is the former's constant attention to the dimension of history. This was already apparent in the pioneering study by André Siegfried, the famous Tableau, in which the data concerning electoral behavioral patterns are broken down in their historical specificity and correlated with the social and economic structures of a group of communities.

The article discusses the author's philosophical and logical approach to Guy Oakes' published book about Max Weber and Heinrich Rickert in relation to cultural sciences. According to the article, the author questions the influences of Weber on Rickert since it is evident that the former was exposed to neo-Kantianism in various ways before Rickert made his contributions. In addition, he also mentions the influences of Emil Lask, asserting that Oakes made much of the latter's implication for Weber. Furthermore, it is stated that Oakes asserted his case for Rickert's connection with Weber on limited grounds such as its influence, logical and validity.

The article discusses the series of sociology in various countries in relation to Robert E. Park's essay on practical politics. According to the author, Park's essay centers on the fanatical patriotism, strategic belief and tactical strength of the Third Reich's armed forces. In addition, it is said that he did not only analyze the democratization of officer corps but also locates exactly the social psychology that inspires the military organization in Germany. Furthermore, the author asserts that it is more likely that Parks had the heavier significance in the outgrowth of war.

The article discusses the perspectives of various critics regarding Max Weber's perspective on neo-Kantianism. Georg Lukács reflected in his book that Weber oozes irrationalism in his methodology and added that Weberian sociology is limited in its task since it exemplifies more on irrationality. In addition, Herbert Marcuse argued about Weber's principles on his definition of formal rationality as oppose to its substantial state and attacked the latter's ideals to show that his sociology is not rational. Furthermore, Járgen Habermas stated that Weber has an agreement with neo-Kantians and added that his policy backed efforts to legitimate the Nazis.

The drabness and routineness of the ordinary outside world of the working and lower-middle classes contrasts sharply with the excitement, opportunities for expressiveness and possibilities for exotic experiences in a lounge, a live music bar. Closeted in the lounge the individual is separated from the mundane world and brought into a real world of make-believe wherein each may become what he or she wishes. The lounge is like a cocoon simultaneously enveloping the entire range of the individual's sensory, motor, tactile and auditory experiences. In particular it is the total musical ambiance that serves as a spectacular agency for evoking the spirit of an enchanted land. In addition, status enhancement is provided by extravagant tipping, valet parking, and association with lounge owners. The cardinal rule of etiquette of a lounge is the prevention of intrusions that might break the fantasy of lounge life, meaning no conflict, no disagreeableness, only lovingness, sweetness, happiness, personableness.

As regards the first problem, in "Der Gegenstand der Erkenntnis," Heinrich Rickert's main work on the theory of knowledge, he makes a distinction between methodology and epistemology that is based on the difference between constitutive and methodological forms. Constitutive forms are the most general categories that are necessary to define a given material as objective reality, or an object of experience or knowledge in general. Methodological forms are more specialized and limited. They are required for the analysis of reality as the data of a specific kind of scientific knowledge. Causality, for example, is a constitutive form, because a material cannot be represented as objective reality or conceived of as a possible object of knowledge unless it falls under this category. Nomological regularity or the concept of a law of nature, on the other hand, is a methodological form. Although it is required for the analysis of reality by natural science, it is not necessarily essential to any other kind of scientific knowledge. Constitutive and methodological forms are distinguished by reference to both generality and logical priority.

In recent years, Jörgen Habermas has moved towards the construction of a systematic theory that combines the analysis of communicative action, social evolution, and the historical rationalization of society. In this way, the telos of critical understanding built into linguistic communication can be used as the basis for an attempt to solidify a concept of reason by means of formal pragmatics as well as to make the concept of communicative rationality applicable to institutionalized loci of interaction. Communicative action becomes a more basic principle of association. In his view, it provides the general medium for the reproduction of all life-worlds and, as linguistically mediated communication between actors, is the ultimate form of social interaction itself which underpins their varying contents and establishes at their core a species specific nature.

Although important historical scholarship existed in the social sciences in the 1950s, most notably that of Reinhard Bendix, the one clear point of departure for the new history that would arise in the 1960s and 1970s is C. Wright Mills's The Sociological Imagination, itself a work containing no historical analysis. A virulent critic of post-World War II trends in social science, Mills argued that all valid social science perspectives of mankind needed to be based on history. He made his case by dividing social science in the postwar era into two groups, "Grand Theory" and "Abstracted Empiricism," and by showing that both ignored history. Although he certainly exaggerated the foibles of his colleagues, C. Wright Mills remains one of the most articulate critics of modem professional sociology. He clearly realized that social theorists as well as empirical researchers distrusted and could find no place for history in their brands of social science.