Search

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.

In France, more and more employees, whether they are employed by state-owned or private enterprises, readily admit they suffer from stress. Although subjected to both deep and difficult transformations, post office counter clerks do not use the word. A three-year research study with counter clerks of La Poste, led by clinical sociologists from the viewpoint of clinical sociology, invites us to question the notion of stress. To begin, the paper takes the opportunity to clarify the use that a clinical sociologist makes of this English notion usually connected with individual psychology. It then shows in which circumstances the counter clerks, including those who work in offices considered 'calm', are in fact confronted with working conditions that qualify as stressful. Finally, through clinical cases, the paper contests the North American view of stress by showing that it is essentially founded on an individual understanding of this pathology and that it abusively overlooks the collective dimension of work in its account of a real suffering. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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.

Ideas originating from the pioneering work of Thorstein Veblen provide the theoretical backbone of this paper. His work emerged and acquired a position of prominence more or less at the same time with the publication of seminal contributions by Schumpeter, Knight and Hayek in the field of entrepreneurial studies. However, Veblen failed to influence the evolution of ideas in the emerging field of study. In fact, this is the first systematic attempt in deploying the conceptual 'tools' developed by Veblen in entrepreneurship research. More specifically, this paper sets out to provide an alternative conceptualisation of the entrepreneur that does not simply relax but breaks away from the restrictive assumptions that constrained the development of the field in economics. In doing so, particular emphasis is placed upon the interface between agency and context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While natural sciences such as physics hold causality for granted as one of the most fundamental principles to make adequate theories of the real world, social sciences, first of all, sociology have not this advantage. Of course, humans are subjected to causality insofar as they are physical entities too, but moreover they are endowed with free will that essentially complicates their behavior and social activity. Unlike causality, logistics should take the same place in social sciences. Conscious beings behave rationally and act logistically as well as they possess some physical experience (including causality) and socially structured knowledge. Thus, free will is restricted not only by causality and other physical laws but also logistics. This paper argues for a logistical approach to the society and models the state as a power hierarchy (mathematical ideal). The state can exist, function, and be stable over time only as a hierarchy. Then sovereignty emerges as a logistical phenomenon whose ‘dynamical magnitude’ is naturally decomposed by the societal strata of the society and the mankind as a whole. Further, any state-based legal system (SLS) can be analyzed in structuralism tradition by means of logical-algebraic modeling. When the states as a set of the self-sufficient (logistically complete) sovereign hierarchies confront in the international law field (ILF) it leads inevitably to incompleteness of the ILF. In sum, the logistical theorem on war can be elicited. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper addresses the use, and potential misuse, of the ‘institution’ as a key concept in sociology. The concept of the ‘institution’ is interrogated using ‘family’ as an example and new institutional economics (NIE) as a crucible. The sociological understanding of family as an ‘institution’ is challenged by the distinction between ‘institutions’ and ‘organisations’ in NIE. The blurring of generic non-sociological terms with critical sociological concepts causes confusion between institutions and organisations. This is highly problematic for understanding social change in increasingly complex systems. I conclude that the contextual embedding of sociological concepts remains important to the appropriate use of the term ‘institution’ in the social sciences. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

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]

We develop a secondary analysis of the data by the Italian National Statistical Institute (ISTAT) by means of two surveys on large samples of PhD graduates who obtained their doctoral degrees from Italian universities in 2004 and 2006 (the first survey) and in 2008 and 2010 (the second survey). We focused on doctorate holders in the political and social sciences. After a descriptive social make-up of the four cohorts, we carried out an analysis to verify the mid-term occupational outcomes of these graduates during a period of academic reforms and economic crisis in Italy. Our analysis underlines relevant differences between the two cohorts of PhD holders that graduated before the economic crisis and the two cohorts that graduated after. The latter have higher chances of obtaining fixed-term contracts and get low salaries; PhDs who graduated in 2008 and 2010 more frequently experience risk of self-employed or non-academic researchers at all. The economic crisis fragmented the terms of contracts, in particular, increasing fixed-term contracts and unemployment and furthermore, polarizing salaries (very high salary or very low salary). Further studies are necessary to understand whether this new condition is a constraint or an opportunity for PhDs in the political and social sciences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

In this paper, some terms interdependent among themselves on the basis of an analytical strategy that tries to underline the utility of a sociological reasoning on the public space, in an extremely actual cultural and political prospective, are put one next to the other. There is a synthetical and theoretical excursus of the public space in order to verify the relevance of the concept, not only in the social sciences domain, but also for the important political implications that accompany its evolution. Political and cultural data of extraordinary historical relevance are inserted, reflecting transformations of the norms and rules in the public European space. Some data on the tiring formation of a civic identity of the young generations and of their cautiousness in contributing to the building of a public space, but above all in reproducing the definition of this space that had been given by preceding generations, are recovered. This last element is relevant because it introduces, even if cautiously, a dimension of prevision, a dimension that represents endemic data of sociological analysis, conceived also as an instrument best apt at designing the near future's society in Europe, but not only in Europe.

This issue sees the start of a new column of no more than 10 pages in length aimed at generating debate among our readers. How many of us have an idea that is not yet ready for publication as a fully fledged scientific article per se, but that we would relish the opportunity to present and discuss? La Revue aims to provide such a forum. Once sown, who knows who will bring the seeds of an idea to fruition? In any case, we welcome your contribution on themes likely to spark discussion. As usual we remind you that papers relating to political events will not be considered for publication. Please send your articles of no more than 10,000 characters to the following address: Mino Vianello, Via Brennero 36, 00141 Rome, Italy. [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 article discusses the symbiotic relationship between futures studies and sociological theory. The essential challenges of social sciences, and particularly of sociology, are closely related to changes and transformations that are happening at the moment: positions and definitions about crisis in the scene of a dynamic and changing world, the necessity of interdisciplinarity in social sciences to incorporate philosophy and dynamic psychology in order to redefine notions like subject, collective practice, individuality, intersubjectivity and identity and the notion of time and future by the dominion of the linear vision that has loaded and surrounded social sciences also constitute a challenge. Such transformations and changes come to be the initial point of this paper with the purpose of presenting a reflection of the future of social sciences and sociology. They must rethink themselves (especially sociology) as far as their epistemological basis, their form of theoretical construction and their way to come near to reality; but also, to review themselves thematically' as a premise for their reconstruction.

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 presents a theoretical framework for the analysis of the Israeli Palestinian peace process. The ongoing peace process between Israel and the Palestinians is the most crucial political development in the area since 1967. Despite the tremendous impact of the 1967 War, during the seventies, Israeli sociologists and political scientists failed to conceptualize and analyze the crucial role and meaning of the event. This paper is an initial attempt to begin a debate on the theoretical tools needed to analyze the ongoing peace process within an historical perspective of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It further suggests that present Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations are the result of two crucial historical events that occurred in the eighties e the Lebanon War and the Intifada. These events influenced both gains and losses for Israel and also reshaped Palestinian internal politics. The historical argument suggests that a proper approach to the analysis of the peace process must take into account the dynamics that led to the conflict before the eighties, including the British colonial period, the status of the Palestinian citizens of Israel, and the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip after 1967.

Scholars have only recently started to take an interest in the return of highly qualified migrants to their country of origin, especially when it comes to Arab countries. This research, conducted between 2014 and 2016, provides evidence on the Lebanese case, a country where most social scientists have been trained abroad. This article uses a multi-level approach and compares careers paths of social scientists trained in Lebanon and abroad, working in Lebanese public and private universities. If a foreign diploma appears as a significant factor of career differentiation, the analysis undertaken in this article nuances this finding. It reveals to what extent the characteristics of the academic field in origin countries such as Lebanon shape the career paths of academics. Public and, to a lesser extent private universities have become ideological state apparels which are used by the ruling elites to ensure their reproduction, through the revaluation of social capital. However, this reproduction is not made without social actors and their involvement. Lebanese academics develop strategies to accumulate the relevant symbolic capital in order to be recruited or promoted. The activation of the relevant political and sectarian networks is, therefore, one of the key strategies which social scientists mobilise as a first or last resort to acquire university positions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This special issue contains four chapters that are part of the results produced within the IGU Commission on Global Change and Human Mobility by a wide network of researchers from a hundred-odd countries on every continent. International collaboration in the social sciences is part of a tradition that began 50 years ago on the initiative of UNESCO. Cross-national co-operation projects are a basic prerequisite for the global spread of knowledge and innovation. Human mobility – an element of synergy and overlap between migration and tourism – is a key research theme for social scientists worldwide. People flows are both the cause and consequence of the flow of capital, goods, and culture. The complexity of the phenomenon and the lack of data to adequately illustrate it require the ‘innovative’ use of traditional statistical indicators. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

The article sets out the classic Paretian theory of income distribution. As it does so, it seeks to highlight the constant elements in the human faculties represented, at aggregate level, by the invariability and persistence of the asymmetric income curve, and the variable elements connected with the same curve and manifest in upward and downward mobility - what Pareto calls 'circulation'. The two theorems arising from Pareto's discovery constitute a specific theory of development which has been confirmed from two points of view: in the positive sense of development when - as in the West - the second theorem has been applied (also independently of Pareto) with the connected theory of the entrepreneur and innovation in democratic regimes; but also in the negative sense of underdevelopment, with the destruction of wealth and the consequent general impoverishment, when expropriation policies have been implemented in despotic regimes, or excessive taxation in others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although occupation for a long time played a central role in sociological research on inequality, today it is only one topic among others. In spite of this development, this article asks whether sociology has abandoned the topic of occupation too soon. Based on a theory of functional differentiation supplemented with some arguments concerning the sociological concepts of stratification and individualization, this article presents a new possibility of analysing the problem of social inequality focusing on the forms occupation and organization in modern society. [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]

The article examines the concept of "false consciousness," which was argued by communist revolutionary Georg Lukacs. The author argues that the early 20th-century concept needs to be reconsidered in present times within a democratic political theory. He believes that the issue of speaking about other people's interest is central to democracy and identity politics. It is also argued that any political movement must make truth claims. He believes that capitalism, in some respects, can suppress democracy. According to the author, a strong democracy, based on its truth claims, can speak truth to powerful economic institutions.

The theme of this part of the Review differs from the current mainstream of urban sociology, which is largely preoccupied with questions of political economy, around the buzzword of 'global cities' and/or of urban inequality, and focused on the present. Here the perspective is historical, and with a particular, if by no means exclusive, attention to changes of culture and symbolism. The approach is multidisciplinary, with major contributions by art, architectural, and cultural historians, as well as by social scientists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The remit of the apparatus of professional ethics in the field of psychotherapy can be appropriately expanded so as to make the profession more socially responsible and thereby contribute to the 'protection of the public' that is said to be the main purpose of statutory regulation. Using ideas culled from the sociology of the professions, political theory and ethical discourse, it is proposed that ethical psychotherapy cannot take place if its overall social framework is itself profoundly unethical. Inclusivity and diversity are reframed as ethical professional practices. Questions of wealth, gender, sexuality and ethnicity are not only 'social' or 'political' - they are also part of a morally imaginative expansion of what we mean by professional ethics. Attention is paid to the dangers of self-righteousness and moral tyranny. [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.

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]

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 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]

Presents the foreword to the July 2005 issue of the journal, "International Review of Sociology-- Revue Internationale de Sociologie."

This article addresses Thorstein Veblen's consistency in teaching theoretical economics. It presents material from the Dorfman Collection at Columbia University and covers courses taught at Chicago, Stanford, and Missouri between 1898 and 1918. The subject focuses on students' notes from Veblen's classes on Economic Factors in Civilization. The courses articulated a peculiarly Veblenian point of view as attested by Allyn Young, executive officer of economics at Stanford.

This article examines the impact of public communication in radicalizing opinion on any public discourse. The entry of television (TV) to the public sphere as a source of political news, and the political parties' need to adjust their messages to the needs of the TV format, produce changes in political discourse and in politics itself. The consequences do not seem to be merely formal. In fact, the appearance of a new political rhetoric has been observed and great, long-lasting alarm has been created among the most democratically sensitive scientists, politicians, and citizens. In addition, the techniques of political marketing orchestrate the changes and simplify even more, the same political message and therefore the same way of doing politics. The old political rhetoric of slow tempos, long explanations, and heavy ideological content, is substituted by this new rhetoric which adjust itself to the format of the media, and whose substance is the negativeness of the message, surprise, thematization, and personalization.

The development of human capacities for a long time seemed esoteric and too subjective to be considered on a worldwide scale. But human development become institutionalized as a statistical measurement and a taken-for-granted category of thought. It is the purpose of this article to dwell on the preceding issue as well as the impact of worldviews and social structure on the emergence, form, and institutionalization of international development statistics. The difficulty in exploring the role of social structure in shaping international socioeconomic categories due to scarcity or unavailability of data is mitigated by the emergence of the Human Development Index in 1990. However, the appearance of the index resulted from and contributed to strains in the field of development. These strains prompted people outside the multilateral bureaucracy to take an interest in the creators of the index.

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.

The article focuses on Amazonia and the nature of problems. The construction and consistency of the scientific theories, especially those developed in the exact sciences, are anchored in methods that facilitate the quantification and the mensuration of the properties of natural phenomena, by means of calculations systematized in physical mathematical models. The search of unit and of simplicity starting from generalizations continues to be a universal principle of these sciences. On the other hand, the foundations of the human sciences, including philosophy, that have as sceneries, in order, the studies of the formation and dynamics of societies, and the research about the knowledge essence, are anchored in categories, articulated to each other through dialectic conceptions. The borders between those two knowledge fields are still rigid, polemics and not well delineated. The central problem between the natural sciences and the human sciences is that their intrinsic methodological procedures, hide, simultaneously, the physical reality of the second and the social reality of the first.

The article analyses the challenges and opportunities for sociocybernetics with increasing globalization and social development. The rapid consolidation of a new global economy and its impact upon social organization, political structures, and world cultures constitute one of the major issues in the social sciences today. Economic and social changes are well underway, led by the expansion of world markets, concentration of international financing, and a more powerful presence of transnational corporations. Global capitalism is generating, however, severe conditions of income inequality, new environmental risks, social conflicts, and challenges to world development. According to the author the social and political consequences of a single, powerful, and unregulated world market will be marked by increasing insecurity, poverty, and economic injustice. This article examines the major trends and characteristics of the globalization process and its impact on general conditions of social development. Special attention is given to the increasing concern about the consequences of globalization and patterns of uneven development in third world countries.

The article examines the outlook for a futures-oriented sociology. The present age of late-modernity has been described as a phase of transition in which fundamental qualitative changes are taking place, thereby affecting the fundamental nature of societies. These changes appear in social, economic, and political as well as cultural fields and practices. They become visible in a great variety of phenomena, such as globalization, networking and computerization, the spread of information, the rapid development of new technologies, the shift of corporations and economies towards transnationality, and the growth of ecological awareness. The present phase of transition is characterized by specific qualitative features. For instance, instead of emphasizing generalizations, standardization, homogeneity and similarities, which are typical of modernity, late-modernity puts an emphasis on such characteristics as ad hoc uniqueness, originality, flexibility, pluralism, differences, individual creativity and temporality.

The article discusses the logical exchange between futures studies and social sciences. Although social science manuals may state that the goal of social sciences is both to explain social phenomena and forecast the future, the two processes are rarely symmetrical. While there is an abundance of material on the explanation aspect, there tends to be far less on forecasting as such. Indeed, the social sciences have only just started to address the issue of looking forward and making forecasts. Admittedly, controversy on questions of methodology highlights the importance of not weakening the epistemological foundations with operations that are, by nature, complex and risky, and it is surely no coincidence that analytical forecasting has almost invariably been conducted outside the academic world. Futures studies, for example, was first developed in the industrial and military field after World War II, when post-war reconstruction programmes had per force to be based on systematic studies of future trends, which, in turn, required developing specific techniques to forecast possible and alternative futures.

The article focuses on uncertainties relating to globalization, and dangers associated with international money. Those who write of globalization in terms of the erosion of nation-state sovereignty over money are concerned with the regulation of money--hitherto the task of nation-state government and with the possibility that, in the case of international monetary networks, no equivalent form of regulation exists, leaving us all exposed to the vagaries of `free markets'. In a monetary context, weak inductive knowledge entails rationally assessing information in order to make transacting decisions: for example, regarding future prices, the rate of unemployment, and even the political outlook. For this reason, the response of transactors to, say, rising inflation cannot be accurately predicted without reference to their expectations or aspirations regarding the level or stability of inflation. The kind of uncertainty associated with international money in some of the more alarmist accounts of globalization are of a systemic kind, held to be integral to the way in which international markets operate.

The article presents information relating to sociology with focus on an analysis of the work of William Petty and his followers, and the socio-economic phenomena. The statistical tradition in the field of analysis of socio-economic phenomena has its origins in the work of Petty and his followers of 300 or so years ago. These scholars sought to provide a broad-based and congruous framework aimed at analyzing such phenomena in their entirety. Petty, who introduced Political Arithmetic, and his followers, attempted to define not only the most important variables in the macroeconomic framework, but also to create a valid perspective for interpreting population growth and employment levels in a systematic and orderly way, and thereby interpret the distribution of professions throughout the population and the mechanisms for containing unemployment. To this end, they created a comprehensive "theory regarding the forces of production of' income." As a result, the methodological process for the analysis of socio-economic phenomena favored by both classical authors and marginalists was not that inspired by Petty, and his theory was accordingly shelved.

The article focuses on uncertainties relating to social conditions or sociology. Human beings have always known uncertainties and doubts, but have always lived with a large amount of certainties and a stable idea of truth. Turbulence and transitoriness that seem to characterize both Western and Eastern societies, beyond the many differences existing between the two of them, represent more and more a condition of the present scenario and a prominent feature of many aspects of personal and collective life. Uncertainty partially reveals the ambiguous relation man has with his environment and with nature itself. Probably this is the price to be paid for modernity. The predominance of `elective action' over `prescriptive action' tends to create a modern way of social integration that is not without structural tensions and high conflictivity in the multitude of social categories, sectors and groups, because of the enormous variety of social actors, that are so heterogeneous in their purposes, values and attitudes. The pluralism of values and rules, which correspond to various institutional spheres, are phenomena that can be observed in differing degrees of intensity in most modern societies. In addition the emergence of `subnationalities' in many countries and, in general. the rise of forms of local nationalism generates another problem.