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This paper presents a re-reading of the Foucauldian analysis of professional accounting firms given by Grey in his 'Career as a Project of the Self...' (Sociology, 28,2). It argues that Grey's paper provides an exemplar of the 'desocialising' tendencies observed in some Foucauldian analysis and attempts to illustrate this desocialisation through placing Grey's data in an Eliasian rather than a Foucauldian framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper gives an overview of developments in the area of role theory which took place in West Germany between 1958 and 1980. We differentiate three periods. The first is characterized by a discussion of Dahrendorfs Homo Sociologicus, of which we highlight only the essentials. This discussion took place in the early `60s. For the second period, in the late '60s - early 70s, the role theory discussion went into a different phase as a result of the so-called `positivism debate' in German sociology. The various points of view explored in this discussion seem to have converged since the mid '70s; the contours of an integrated role theory are becoming apparent. The paper closes with an overview of both positive and negative sides of the developments outlined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is premised on the view that it is premature to write about the end of modernity. Moreover it is argued that, for all the flaws of early Enlightenment philosophy, what Jurgen Habermas has termed the 'project of modernity' should be seen as incomplete, rather than abandoned. Drawing more generally on Habermas' theories, five metatheoretical theses are outlined and elaborated. These, it is suggested, might set the parameters for a fin-de-siècle sociology, geared above all to the rationalisation of the lifeworld, which is both credible and critical in orientation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]