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The emergence of performance studies in the last three decades has been accompanied by an increasing dissatisfaction with the functional interpretation of ritual, and in this context Émile Durkheim's work on ritual and religion has been the target of much criticism. The paper argues that a closer consideration of Durkheim's interpretation of commemorative rites could be incorporated effectively into performance theory, as one of its neglected sources. The paper reviews current analytic approaches to ritual theory, and then analyses Durkheim's argument with regards to two themes: the social organization of time and memory, and the reenactment of the past as a source of aesthetic life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In an age of apparently endemic globalization and globality, any form of sociological theorizing centred on an understanding of the term 'society' which took the latter as being always located within the boundaries of a particular nation-state, would be indictable as being iniprisoned within the confines of a naïve and analytically unsatisfactory 'methodological nationalism'. A superficial assessment of Durkheim's work might lead one to believe that of all the thinkers of the classical period of sociology, Durkheim is the most methodologically nationalist, and thus the most unpromising resource for analyses of globalization processes in the present day. However, this paper shows that such a view is a serious oversimplification of a multi-stranded oeuvre which contains within it intriguing elements that point towards a Durkheimian account of globalization processes and conditions of globality. While there are indeed methodologically nationalist strains in Durkheim's work, these are more than counter-balanced by certain other, more globally oriented, concerns. First, there are tendencies towards the development of a 'cosmopolitan' political theory, a stance which has been fairly well remarked upon by other authors. Second, at a more explicitly 'sociological' level, there are also certain orientations towards an account of the genesis and nature of social and cultural globality. This account is scattered throughout various locations in Durkheim's writings, most notably The Elementary Forms of Religious Life, and the paper reconstructs what it takes to be Durkheim's embryonic project in 'global sociology' to be found there and in sonic of his other works. Attention is drawn to the apparent debt Durkheim owed to Fustel de Coulanges in this regard. This paper concludes with the argument that Durkheim's endeavours to understand conditions of globality and planet-wide connectivity should be given serious attention in contemporary re-assessments of the capacities of classical sociologists to deal with globe-spanning processes and institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Existing accounts of American sociology’s founding years during the early twentieth century assume that the discipline was ‘metrocentric.’ They assume that it was only interested in processes occurring within the United States; that American sociologists fell prey to state-centrist thought; and that, therefore, contextualizing America sociology’s emergence necessitates understanding relations, events, and processes within the confines of US territorial boundaries. By contrast, this paper shows the imperial and hence global aspects of early American sociological thought. Early American sociologists were interested in imperialism and, therefore, in cross-societal, transnational, and global processes and relations. Implicitly or explicitly they approached imperialism as a process by which social groups, not least ‘races,’ interacted and conflicted. They also saw it as a route towards new global forms. Early American sociology thus articulated a sociological imagination that looked beyond American society and to the wider world. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A consensus holds that the structure of Capital I is problematic. In particular, the section 'So-called Primitive Accumulation' discusses the origins of capitalism but appears at the end of the volume rather than at the beginning. Even more anomalous, the forecast of the revolutionary overthrow of the capitalist class is in the penultimate chapter. The final chapter, 'The Modern Theory of Colonization', is regarded by commentators as enigmatic, if they refer to it at all. This article, on the other hand, shows that Marx considered the structure of Capital over a number of years and that his discussion of Wakefield's theory of colonization is part of an account of the continuing centrifugal regeneration of capitalist relations beyond the sites of mature capitalism. The article addresses the failure of commentators from Mehring to Harvey to appreciate the logic of Capital's chapter structure. The contemporary resonance of Marx's account of capitalist development at the periphery of the global capitalist system is indicated by considering primitive accumulation in two distinct phases of China's history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents a systematic reconstruction of Georg Simmel's sociology of religion. Following the development of his sociology of religion, it successively analyses religion as a form of interaction, as a symbolic form and as a personal form. The main argument is that all of Simmel's writings are metaphysical and that religion is only one form among others that gathers the fragments of existence into a unified totality. Religiosity is the central category of Simmel's writings on religion. It 'detranscendentalizes' religion and locates its conditions of possibility within the aspirations of wholeness of the soul. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The theory of the end of history suggests that radical social and political change has reached its dialectical conclusion in the globalization of neo-liberal capitalism and that reformism is now key to the modification of problematic social relations. Given that the critique of global economy remains more or less absent from the reformists' account, it is unlikely that this strategy will ever produce social justice. In the first section of the article I use Donald Rumsfeld's theory of knowledge and non-knowledge to show how contemporary reformism misrecognizes the essential relationship between economy and social and political inequality. This discussion leads to the conclusion that the problem with the contemporary politics of reformism resides in their realism and consequent lack of imagination and raises the question of the revolutionary potential of a politics of idiocy. Finally the notion of Socratic ignorance is employed to think about a new form of political hope to oppose the contemporary hegemony of the politics of reformism that shield neo-liberalism from revolutionary critique. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is incorrect to view globalization as a disorganizing influence on national society. National society as an outcome of modern industrialism is a substructure of the nation state. Japan's history proves Gellner's thesis that the concept of nation was formed at the stage of industrialization. If we interpret Parsons's concept of the societal community as emphasizing the increasing importance of the integrative function during the age of globalization, it would seems to suggest that, in agreement with MacIver, community is not disorganized by globalization. Although an East Asian Union, corresponding to the European Union, is not possible at the present stage, the importance of Japan's dual relation with the West, on the one hand, and with the East, on the other, is on the increase. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay pursues three topics emanating from the economic sociology of Talcott Parsons. The first section summarizes the essentials of this sociology, tracing its development from his early works on capitalism through the publication of Economy and Society in 1956. Special attention is given to the transition from a focus on causal 'factors' to a focus on the economy and society as social systems. The second section summarizes and analyzes a chapter on class, markets and the economy, written in 1978-9, a short time before his death, and intended for a never-published book on the American societal community. Continuities and discontinuities between his earlier work and his final ideas on the subject are noted. In addition, a number of my own criticisms, also written in 1979, are elaborated. The third section identifies some threads of Parsonian theory - found both in his economic sociology and in his more general writings - that have relevance for the economics and politics of a globalized world. In particular, both the applicability and limitations of Parsons's ideas on the dimension of solidarity in the international system are addressed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]