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This editorial discusses the sociological perspective of innovation, starting with a critical overview of the situation of sociology in current innovation studies. An outline of several key challenges to understanding innovation in society is followed by an interpretation of the characteristics of a sociology of innovation based on the core assumptions of the discipline. The editorial concludes with a summary of the papers of the special issue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses various reports published within the issue including one by Marie-France Garcia-Parpet that investigates how social closure materializes in the competition between business enterprises without resort to open conflict, and another one by Daniel Maman that examines the new Israeli corporate law.

This paper has been structured in three areas. In the first one, the author shows the relevance that words and conversations among individuals have on social research, both terms being very important to the well-known sociologist and writer Franco Ferrarotti. In the second part, the author explains the necessary qualitative methodology to be used when analysing a main topic. In the third one, the author analyses the reality of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) from the gender perspective to detect if they are or not a reflection of that Spanish reality regarding sex discrimination. Finally, this paper states the challenge the Spanish society needs to face to outweigh sex inequality without excluding the NGOs or any other form of association. This paper calls for the involvement of society, which along with the state and market, has an important task to accomplish. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper highlights the juridical Genetic Modified Organisms statu artis and its legal definition in Italy, Europe and in the rest of the world in order to compare different cultural approaches to needs, interests, fears and precautions against a not scientifically certain innovation. It also stresses the legislative processes towards an extended participation that unifies economic interests, political goals, customer satisfaction, collective safety, and human construction for a sustainable future, a new form of governance. The paper ends with a sociological and comparative analysis of needs, fears, interests and responsibilities related to GMO in Italy and Europe, with the aim of defining some possible evolutions of ruling uncertainty today.

Relying on a review of recent literature (and, sometimes, older publications), this paper attempts to highlight issues relating to the ‘spatial turn’ in religious studies. It outlines a series of developments in the study of religions related to issues in space, location and territory that have been enhanced by the intellectual framework of globalism and the empirical context of globalization. The challenges of such a geographic focus on religions are epistemological, theoretical and methodological. An examination of new and not-so-new issues in geographic approaches to religion shows how topical the perspective is, and how necessary it is to think the geography of religion beyond the boundaries of geography. In what ways do these new regimes of territoriality, these new concepts of religious space, and these new methods to understand the changes of material and cultural expressions of religion, whether wide-scale or local, partake on a paradigmatic shift? And how promising is it? [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this paper I present and summarize the theoretical proposals of four leading scholars of the so-called ‘relational sociology’. First of all I try to contextualize its emergence and developments in the increasingly globalized scientific system. From this particular (and international) point of view, relational sociology seems to develop through a peculiar scientific path opened and charted by well-identified actors and competitors, their invisible colleges, their global connections, cleavages, and coalitions. Whatever the structuring of this field, it accomplishes the criticism of classical individualistic and collectivistic sociological theories, a task strongly facilitated by the development of new methods and techniques of empirical research, and by the increasingly powerful computing capabilities. After this brief historical reconstruction, and following very strictly the contributions of the four scholars, I try to synthetize their theoretical designs, focusing the analysis on two scientific issues of great significance for the future of relational sociology: the specific ontology of ‘social relations’ and the methodologies used to observe it adequately. Finally, I wonder if we are facing a new sociological paradigm, already well structured and internationally established, or rather a ‘relational turn’ that probably will develop into a new ‘sociological field’ internally very differentiated and articulated. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This essay's aim is to explore the potential for relieving suffering with which clinical sociology can provide social actors. The author carries out a theoretical reflection of culture's function in human societies. Culture is an instrument for social actors, to give a meaning to what is happening at each moment. If culture does not grant an effective interpretation of reality, phenomena of disease can arise. This can happen for many different reasons, such as incoherent cultural representations or conflicts between different cultural issues. The paper outlines the kinds of cultural disease that can occur, as well as the possible causes of each. It also sets a link between cultural disease and the contemporary, general lack of cognitive references, due to historical changes - such as globalization - that have been happening too fast to be fully accepted by all. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There have been comparative discussions about Thorstein Veblen and Max Weber before, but not quite from the most appropriate viewpoint. The present paper treats them as theorists of action, in social and economic analysis, and this perspective yields some interesting new findings. Both theorists are to be taken as participants in the great Methodenstreit in economics, 100 years ago, and it is Veblen who suggests a more radical solution to this dispute, he suggests its final abolishment. The main difference between Veblen and Weber is in their respective appreciations of the role of psychology in social analysis. Weber does not think it important, but in so thinking he misses the viewpoint of evolutionary psychology that Veblen endorses. Accordingly, both of these classical thinkers are to be considered as theorists of action, but so that it is Veblen who proffers a more general theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses methodological and theoretical issues that arise in contemporary analyses of cultural consumption. First, I review measures of cultural consumption that receive attention in the literature and I put forward several others that broaden the definition and measurement of this concept. I propose the inclusion of a variety of consumption realms and consumption publics, and advocate the use of integrated and flexible measures. I discuss the comparability of consumption indicators in the context of cross-national, crosscultural, and longitudinal research, and submit that it is important to have standardized measures for the sake of their reliability and validity, but also that it is important to have case-specific measures in order to prevent blurred cultural distinctions. Second, I suggest that consumer culture research further develop a series of theoretical questions that stand at the core of the field, particularly those that acknowledge the significant social consequences of cultural consumption: the transition from production to consumption; cultural consumption and the social matrix; cultural consumption as a generative concept; multiple consumer identities; and cultural consumption and cultural policy. The shared emphasis of these theoretical questions is on locating the position of individuals on multidimensional hierarchies of consumption, thus facilitating conceptualization of lifestyle tribes, status groups, or taste communities as generators of values, attitudes, and behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The sociological intervention into the everlasting quarrel between poetry and philosophy that this paper attempts might be considered as illegitimate from the point of view of certain sciences, who may have the feeling that their disciplinary boundaries have been violated. Furthermore, because this intervention is interested in the social circumstances of the emergence of the quarrel and is not based on an analysis of its current status, it may well be accused of falling outside the field of sociological competence altogether. Sociology aspired for recognition as a "modern science" that came into existence as a response to the need for self-understanding and an appropriate cognitive approach on the part of modernity. However, with its actual rejection of the distinction between high scientific and low popular language, its actual state of fragmentation or as a postmodernist might put it, its drive for liberation from the claustrophobic embrace of fixed systems of belief, its often manifested `bad' taste for eclectic theoretical mixtures and approaches and its abandonment of the divine pretension for truth-attainment implicit in the function characteristic of science as a social system.

It is repeatedly presented that politics is undergoing a crisis. If by crisis, what is being referred to is not the risk of politics' death but rather its transformation, then it must be accepted that modern politics is being subjected to an intense process of change and profound mutations. This is so because the social conditions upon which political action is carried out have changed. In this article then, the author identifies one prominent social modification that directly affects politics since it is the basic precondition for political praxis. This modification is the new meaning that public space has acquired. The problem consists precisely of the fact that the public sphere is subjected to a strong erosion process, and that the public and private planes have begun to mix in a way that is truly worrisome. In this order of things, the configuration of the new public space is giving itself a rationality that does not proceed primarily from politics, but from mass media. In effect, a large part of the political game depends on the public visibility that media communication makes possible.

The article offers information on the existential sociology which reveals a shared need of a new sociological branch, of a more humane sociology. It mentions the goals of the basic ideas of the sociological utopia which includes building a sociology which would take into real consideration the person, not only social structures and concerning the sociological profession.

After addressing the post-modern argument that defining religion is impossible, bad or both, the case is made that functional definitions of religion are generally not definitions but assertions about the consequences of religion substantively defined. A substantive definition of religion is proposed. The relationship between ordinary and sociological language is discussed. A review of recent debates in the sociology of religion makes the point that our arguments rarely concern the definition of religion; they are much more often about the practical identification and measurement of the features of the social phenomenon which we want to study and those problems are not peculiar to the sociology of religion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Normative and more generally axiological feelings are one of the most important social phenomena and one of the least mastered scientifically. They can be satisfactorily explained if we start from an intuition contained in Max Weber's notion of 'axiological rationality'. This notion can be interpreted as indicating that cognitive rationality can be applied, not only to descriptive, but to prescriptive questions; not only to representational, but to axiological questions. Although the cognitive theory of axiological feelings presented in this article has never been explicitly proposed before, it has been implicitly used by several classical and modern sociologists. Several examples show that it can provide a convincing explanation of empirical data. The cognitive theory of axiological feelings shows that these feelings can be context-bound and yet be rational. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Globalisation is affecting global space in various ways. One of its most dramatic effects is the creation of large spaces of exclusion. But also the privileged spaces ought to pay the cost of adjustment: they have to create a special image of themselves which differentiates them from other places, and in order to achieve a distinct image they have to reinvent themselves. They thus become (hyperreal) ‘imagined localities’ which more and more lose the connection to the ‘lifeworld’ of people. Along with other processes of social disembedding, this creates, on the level of the individual, a sometimes backward-oriented, sometimes utopian-transcendent longing for reembedding. This is also reflected in the (metaphorical) imaginations of people about their social (group) contexts. We may find both reflexive and ‘deflexive’ ways of social imagination as the examples, which are analysed here, show. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article provides information about movement, globalization and supranational institutions at the First European Social Forum. The author uses data from a survey carried out during the first European Social Forum, held in Florence, Italy in November 2002. It is noted that the new global movement is redesigning political boundaries through participation, claiming spaces for democracy and universal rights of citizenship. In fact, there is an important connection between participation, democracy and citizenship, which are all concepts enriched with new meanings by the action of the global movements.

Simmel and Kandinsky perspectives, in the light of parallel history, intend to be the starting point of an analysis of creativity and complexity. Social aesthetics cannot be observed alone, in this sense the term seems to be double bound; the social probably cannot operate in a significant way without the aesthetic and vice versa. Aesthetics is a sociological experience as well; therefore, aesthetics seems to be in precarious position because of its own position as a result of the information culture at large. Social change takes the artist towards a more complex life, and left without objective truth, but not without informal form, keeping its sociological form of expression and function. In this way, Simmel's theoretical premises and the complex representation of art in Kandinsky, seems to represent a sort of example to begin with, an historical double-exposure or cross-fertilization. Don't be afraid of Life Alyosha , in, The Brothers Karamazov , Fyodor Dostoyevsky [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Green movement in the USSR/Russia has existed for more than forty years. During this period, seven groups have been shaped and consolidated within the movement (the conservationists, the alternativists, the traditionalists, the civil initiatives, the ecopoliticians, the ecopatriots, and the ecotechnocrats). The aim of this article is to consider the value shift each group underwent during the decade 1992–2001 within the context of the broader changes in the Russian society. The article emphasizes key influences conditioning the transformations of values. These include changing of local and national contexts caused by the overall process of society's westernization and globalization, as well as by the changes in each group's positions vis-a-vis the state, market economy, science and local population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The term “ecological democracy”, is used here to indicate an alternative democratic model, critical towards laissez-faire, but not anti-liberal. The foundations of this model are in the common capital of the knowledge of social sciences. The paradox of collective action, the existence of entitlements to resources before market trading and of externalities. Ecological democracy is utilized as metaphor to analyze two politically relevant problems of contemporary society: the uncertain legitimacy of the international institutions and the lack of institutionalization of the social movements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focuses on the issue of moral philosophy and economic sociology. Views of philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre on morality; Works on morality. Discusses morality in social science, Karl Polyani's writings on the social context of economic change, Marxist socialism, human cooperation, social relations, self-interest, moral responsibility, market order, public ownership, redistributive taxation, social welfare, Max Weber's ethic of responsibility, and the connections between MacIntyre's and Polyani's thoughts on morality.