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This paper explores the practical implications of Wallerstein's call for the substitution of an existing culture of sociology by a culture of social science for the future of the sociological project in South Africa. South African sociology is examined in terms of Therborn's three spaces of identity in which sociology is located: a space of discipline, a space of everyday practice and a space of imagination and investigation. The paper argues that sociology in South Africa is responding creatively to the challenges of our society. In order to maintain this response we need to strengthen our discipline through institutional and intellectual engagement. In conclusion it is argued that sociology is distinctive through its sociological imagination, its emphasis on unmasking deceptions and illusions and its commitment to improving the world we live in. Analytical knowledge, technical know-how and the well-being of human beings are the heart and soul of sociology. Our contribution is best made not as social scientists but first and foremost as sociologists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The road is a working environment that puts truckers physically and personally at high risk. This study looks at the main sources of risk faced by long distance truck drivers in KwaZulu Natal: accidents, predation (robbery and hijacking) and HIV/ AIDS. These risks are related to each other and must be explained at least in part by social, economic and cultural conditions, contexts and interactions which can be both relational and structural. The purpose of this paper is to assess the lessons exposure to HIV/AIDS as well as other risks might have for expectations regarding trucker responses and exposure to the pandemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The consequences of South Africa's incorporation into the world system are examined in terms of the effects of this process on expressions of cultural heterogeneity, as demonstrated in two case studies. In the first, the effects of South Africa's initial peripheral incorporation, and subsequent movement into the semi-periphery in the world-economy on indigenous belief systems - with reference to the emergence of the African Indigenous Churches - are examined. The second case study concerns the effects of world-culture on recent language practices in Christian congregations of six denominations. The predominance of English in these congregations is linked to the operation of global institutions, as demonstrated in the rest of the African region, and to the cultural norms affecting world-political institutions. The theory that global norms create cultural and structural isomorphism receives particular attention. Cultural aspects of the world system are often discounted or ignored. This paper seeks to correct this. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper advances an argument for the understanding of mediated social behaviour that is, behaviour that seems to be somehow connected to the reception of media- images. The argument proceeds in two stages. Firstly, it is argued that contemporary culture is characterized by a tendency to weaken the distinction between images and reality. This may be termed an `aestheticist' tendency, and the kind of `reality it gives rise to, hyperreality,' Secondly Freud's early theory of the mind is utilized to show that, in the absence of the `secondary process' (thought and language), image-mediated behaviour can be understood in a manner analogous to what he described as `hallucinatory wish-fulfilment at the level of the `primary process of the unconscious `Postmodem' society could therefore be characterized as one of culturally mediated hallucinatory wish-fulfillment's, which nevertheless have real, and sometimes destructive, social effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]