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This paper discusses the conception of a joint intercultural students' research program of one German and two Kyrgyzstani teachers and students from the Otto-von-Guericke University of Magdeburg (Germany) and the American University of Central Asia (Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan). The paper conceptualizes such a research training program and gives reference to qualitative methods teaching in the two corresponding universities. What follows is a description of the chosen research topic: "The 'Intersections' of Gender, Family, and Society in Kyrgyzstan" and the course program. With different academic cultures concerning research ethics in the Anglo-Saxon and continental European contexts, a challenge for such a program will be addressed. A short review of the research results of the different students' teams is provided, and the paper is finalized with a self-reflection upon such a joint intercultural undertaking.

This article introduces a collection of papers comprising the special issue, "Competing interests: Parents, Schools and Nation States." Drawing on the seven papers in the collection, and situating them in recent developments in the sociological field, the article discusses globally shifting relations between families, schools and the state across a range of nations in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries (Australia, Germany, India, Norway, Singapore, Sweden, USA). The article proposes that the school is a crucial site for relations between family and state, and argues that a significant focus of the material and occupational investment of contemporary parents is the formal education of their children, re-shaping not only the relationship between parents and schools but also the nature of parenthood itself. In the contemporary context of global neoliberal education reform, parents are analysed both as local actors in schools and as subjects of national and international policy regimes.

This article analyses the central themes running through the collection of papers in this special issue of Childhood, which were all given as papers at the XVI Durban World Congress of Sociology, 23-29 July 2006. These themes encompass the ways in which global processes of social change combining modernity with tradition have become important for both the perception of childhood and for children's real lives. They also include the ways in which those processes intertwined with social inequalities of gender, generation and socioeconomic status among children and between children and other age groups. The article goes on to provide an outline of the ways in which more general theoretical concerns in the sociology of childhood globally are related to local situations, to a variety of practical settings, to the conceptual concerns in different sociological fields and other social science disciplines in South Africa, Ethiopia, Taiwan, Germany, Sweden, and Italy.

Purpose: This paper aims at a better understanding of expert roles in transdisciplinary projects. Thus, the main purpose is the analysis of the roles of experts in transdisciplinary projects. Design/methodology/approach: The analysis of the ETH-UNS case studies from the point of view of the psychology of expertise and the sociology of professions is based on findings and considerations from the psychology of expertise and the sociology of professions--as both lines of research are concerned with experts and the use of expertise. This paper focuses on projects in the framework of the so-called transdisciplinary case study approach that has been developed at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich in the 1990s. Findings: It is claimed that, firstly, system experts provide important information on the local human-environmental system and have to be regarded as serious experts, that is knowledge specialists with a certain responsibility for information. Secondly, decision-making experts run into problems integrating other professionals into transdisciplinary projects and should, therefore, professionalize themselves. Practical implications: The paper encourages the use of residents, etc. as system experts in transdisciplinary projects. Originality/value: The roles of experts in transdisciplinary project are clarified. (Contains 1 figure and 2 tables.)

Quantitative metrics in research assessment are proliferating all over the world. The demand has led to an increase in bibliometric practitioners and service providers. Their professional roles and competencies have not yet been subject to systematic study. This paper focuses on one important service provider in evaluative bibliometrics--academic librarians--and analyzes their professional competencies from a sociology of professions perspective. To this end, expert interviews with 25 British and German information professionals and several documents have been analyzed qualitatively. Academic librarians compete with other occupations for professional jurisdiction in quantitative research assessment. The main currency in this competition is their expert knowledge. Our results show that academic librarians rely strongly on the know-how gained in their academic Library and Information Science (LIS) training and develop a specific jurisdictional claim towards research assessment, consisting primarily in training, informing and empowering users to proficiently manage the task of evaluating scientific quality themselves. Based on these findings, and informed by the theoretical framework of Andrew Abbott, our conceptual proposal is to adapt formal training in bibliometrics to the various specific professional approaches prevalent in the jurisdictional competition surrounding quantitative research assessment.

The paper approaches the issue of school choice in an indirect manner by investigating the effectiveness of public, private government-dependent and private independent schools in 19 Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development countries selected from the PISA 2000 survey for this purpose. In a multilevel approach we estimate these sector effects, controlling for sociological characteristics of students and parents, school composition, teaching and learning conditions of schools and students', and principals' perception of the climate of their schools. The main explanation of the gross differences in mathematical achievement is the better social composition of private schools, both government-dependent and independent, which is a clear consequence of school choice. But our analysis also reveals that private independent schools are less effective than public schools with the same students, parents, and social composition, while private dependent schools are more effective than comparable public schools. The explanation of these remaining net differences in mathematical achievement seems to be the better school climate of private dependent schools. The comparison concludes that these net differences in mathematical achievement between public and private school sectors are equal across nations, despite the historical and legal variations in their educational systems and school choice approaches. (Contains 4 tables and 36 notes.)

Residents of care homes across the globe are affected by the spread of SARS-CoV-2 as they have been identified as a high-risk group and because they experienced strict social isolation regulations during the first wave of the pandemic. Social isolation of older people with poor physical and mental health is strongly associated with mental health problems and decreased life expectancy. Other research has shown that older people managed to adapt to the changes brought about by the pandemic and have linked this to the concept of resilience. The aim of this research project was to investigate how this applied to residents in care home settings during the first phases of the contact ban in Germany from sociology, developmental psychology and environmental gerontology perspectives, and to gain in-depth understanding of residents' experiences. This paper draws on structured interview data collected from residents in two care homes during early June 2020 in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. The findings show that their experiences were shaped by three factors: care home settings and the approach of staff to handling the contact ban; biographical sense of resilience; and a hierarchy of life issues. The findings highlight the importance of locally specific response mechanisms in care homes, agency and belonging of residents despite health-related limitations and the importance of a critical (gendered) lens on understanding their experiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examines Max Weber's "Ancient Judaism" and relates this work to his other writings, to its background in contemporary German scholarship, and to his approach to historical sociology. (Author/AM)

This paper considers Habermas' model of a post‐secular political order in the light of the debate on male circumcision that arose in Germany after a court ruled that male circumcision was an unjustifiable act of bodily harm. Central to this model is the idea that religious reasons can only become effective in central legal institutions when they are translated into secular reasons. My paper demonstrates that there are two distinguishable readings of this proviso. On the one hand, there is a broad reading according to which it is only necessary to reach a conclusion that is in line with the democratic principle stating that all citizens can be regarded as co‐legislators even if non‐generalizable value orientations might then shape the interpretation of fundamental rights (in the case of circumcision, the right to bodily integrity). On the other hand, a truly secular (narrow) reading would avoid the inclusion of non‐generalizable value orientations. The debate on circumcision demonstrates that these two interpretations lead to different and conflicting modes of justification. The broad reading allows for a justification of male circumcision, whereas the narrow reading makes such a justification unlikely. In addition, the filtering function of the proviso is weakened in a broad reading. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ageing well has been associated with the responsibility to age actively, successfully, or healthily in public and research discourses. This connection of individual responsibility with ageing has been criticised in Social Gerontology for neglecting the access to social, economic, and health resources. This paper investigates (individual) responsibility, informal support, and public initiatives in discourses on older immigrants in Germany. The research framework employs a sociology of knowledge approach to discourse, which guided the discourse analysis of German policy reports, guidelines and handbooks on ageing and migration from 2000 to 2019 (43 documents in total). The results reveal that besides public initiatives concerning long-term care, health promotion, and social services, informal solutions through social networks are frequently emphasised in the data. The focus, thereby, is on long-term care, which is presented as a responsibility of the extended family. Thus, resources are situated in the family, social networks, and ethnic group, which should be opened and connected with public services; however, the focus is shifting from older immigrants towards local municipalities. This study provides a discourse perspective on the construction of resources and challenges for older immigrants concerning health, care, and social services and offers an assessment of the cultural and integrating/excluding qualities in active ageing discourses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The endangerment of honeybees and pollination in agriculture is related to social causes and entails social consequences. The paper reflects the bee issue in terms of symbolism, discourses and practices, different perspectives and positions, and social dynamics. It then presents two case studies that apply qualitative methods to assess developments that are harmful or favourable to bees and new trends in beekeeping. The first case study addresses the booming development of urban beekeeping. This part of the paper also discusses the alternatives that organic beekeeping has to offer. The second case study investigates beekeeping for the purpose of pollination in orchards. It points to possibilities of cooperation between growers and beekeepers but also marks the main problems, which are related to insecticide use and the development of the pollination market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper addresses the impact of higher education reforms on academic teaching and the concrete implications of the new academic teaching requirements for the professional practice of professors. It explores how labour market requirements change the university from the point of view of professors and how they deal with these changes. The paper draws on 64 interviews with professors from Germany, which were conducted as part of a qualitative study on the consequences of performance evaluation procedures at German universities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This short article pleads for research rather than rumor regarding Parsons' alleged role regarding the admittance to United States of an ex-Soviet citizen in 1948 or 1949. Some evidence on background issues that could be found among the Parsons papers at Harvard University Archives is being presented verbatim. I argue that the point is to refrain from fabrications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the creation of an intellectual biography of the U.S. sociologist Talcott Parsons. The researcher discusses Parsons' doctoral dissertation dealing with capitalism that was analyzed by sociologist Max Weber, and how Parsons' work delivered sociology from social Darwinism at the turn of the twentieth century. The author supports Parsons' work on the basis that he was a thinker and academician who did not use inconsistent analysis. The author utilized Parsons' archives at Harvard University, such as Parsons' paper "The Problem of Controlled Institutional Change."

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to reconstruct economic reasoning on entrepreneurship from the perspective of its institutional content, thus underlining the aspects of power relations and leadership, which are related with the organisational and technological dimensions of innovation and coordination as entrepreneurial functions. Design/methodology/approach - In reconstructing the theory of entrepreneurship in a range from classical political economy to current efforts in economic sociology, the paper focuses on an appreciation of Schumpeterian entrepreneurship as a concept that is influenced both by Austrian marginalism and the German historical school. Findings - The paper finds that the research perspective of economic sociology as a means for exploring the institutional foundations of entrepreneurship is of utmost relevance for further efforts in theorising the role of entrepreneurship in economic development. Practical implications - The paper promotes policy implications, which underline that policies for the support of entrepreneurship need to account for the differentiation of entrepreneurial functions and their actual carriers, reconsidering the economic manifestations of their institutional embeddedness. Originality/value - The paper establishes innovation and coordination as ideal types of entrepreneurial functions, perceiving them as fundamental concepts in economic reasoning on entrepreneurship in the process of economic development [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes a characteristic syndrome of modern literature identified as "anxiety of influence" by literary critics and as "mania for originality" by art historians. Based on a sociological reformulation of the syndrome as it relates to the structure of acknowledged influence, the paper develops and tests several hypotheses. Data are based on a survey of West German writers and are analyzed by using clustering techniques and correspondence analysis. First, the analysis demonstrates the fragmented and non-hierarchical structure of acknowledged literaty influence. Second, the different types of influence (absence distinctiveness, and clusterability) correspond to different professional and literary characteristics of writers. Results highlight one of the contradictions between the cultural code and the professional structure of modem an: at the level of ideology, greatness and genius are equated with the absence of influence and artistic uniqueness. The analysis shows, however, that the denial/absence of acknowledged influence is found among writers who are excluded from the professional networks where reputations are made in the world of literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Population aging is an inevitable global demographic process. Most of the literature on the consequences of demographic change focuses on the economic and societal challenges that we will face as people live longer and have fewer children. In this paper, we (a) briefly describe key trends and projections of the magnitude and speed of population aging; (b) discuss the economic, social, and environmental consequences of population aging; and (c) investigate some of the opportunities that aging societies create. We use Germany as a case study. However, the general insights that we obtain can be generalized to other developed countries. We argue that there may be positive unintended side effects of population aging that can be leveraged to address pressing environmental problems and issues of gender inequality and intergenerational ties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article re-reads Marx's account of the commodity as a socio-natural entity. In doing so, it re-evaluates the status of the political (as opposed to questions of political economy) in Marx's analysis and also reads his argument in light of Actor-Network-Theory's call for the thingness of things to be taken seriously. The paper argues that there is a complex duality to the commodity as it is always comprised of both use-value and exchange-value and hence as both 'natural' and 'social'. It is pointed out that the usual translation of words with the root 'gesellschaft-' as 'social' is unhelpful and that a better term would be 'societal', as this enables Marx, and us, to re-approach the very distinction between the natural, the societal and the social. Marx's notion of 'value as equivalence' is then outlined and it is argued that this crucial stage in his account is often passed over. Value as equivalence is not a mere social production but relies upon the expression of the use-value of one thing in another. This leads to the third move which is an outline of the importance of value-form and social form. It is argued that it is this formation of a commodity (comprising both the natural and the social) which is the key both to understanding it as a specific historical entity as well as offering a powerful, non-reductive, account of the natural, social, material and historical character of things. Overall, the article attempts to develop a novel conception of natural-social commodities which does not premise either side of this dyad and so might help social theorists to talk of real things whilst avoiding charges of essentialism and reductionism as well as possible Latourian critiques of over-generalization., (© London School of Economics and Political Science 2012.)

Social sciences have discussed the governance of complex systems for a long time. The following paper tackles the issue by means of experimental sociology, in order to investigate the performance of different modes of governance empirically. The simulation framework developed is based on Esser's model of sociological explanation as well as on Kroneberg's model of frame selection. The performance of governance has been measured by means of three macro and two micro indicators. Surprisingly, central control mostly performs better than decentralised coordination. However, results not only depend on the mode of governance, but there is also a relation between performance and the composition of actor populations, which has yet not been investigated sufficiently. Practitioner Summary:Practitioners can gain insights into the functioning of complex systems and learn how to better manage them. Additionally, they are provided with indicators to measure the performance of complex systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept of generation within sociology has until recently been a marginal area of interest. However, various demographic, cultural and intellectual developments have re-awakened an interest in generations that started with the classic essay by Karl Mannheim. To date, the sociological literature has generally conceptualized generations as nationally bounded entities. In this paper we suggest that the sociology of generations should develop the concept of global generations. This conceptual enhancement is important because the growth of global communications technology has enabled traumatic events, in an unparalleled way, to be experienced globally. The late nineteenth and early twentieth century was the era of international generations, united through print media, and the mid-twentieth century saw the emergence of transnational generations, facilitated by new broadcast communications. However, the latter part of the twentieth century is the period of global generations, defined by electronic communications technology, which is characterized, uniquely, by increasing interactivity. The 1960s generation was the first global generation, the emergence of which had world-wide consequences; today with major developments in new electronic communications, there is even more potential for the emergence of global generations that can communicate across national boundaries and through time. If in the past historical traumas combined with available opportunities to create national generations, now globally experienced traumas, facilitated by new media technologies, have the potential for creating global generational consciousness. The media have become increasingly implicated in the formation of generational movements. Because we are talking about generations in the making rather than an historical generation, this article is necessarily speculative; it aims to provoke discussion and establish a new research agenda for work on generations.

New modes of scientific knowledge production and decision-making have been gaining societal importance. This is because science and politics became more open towards external expectations in the last decades. Features of this development are reflected by the way society is handling nanotechnology. In Germany, many stakeholder dialogues took place. According to social science concepts, they might influence relevant processes in economy or science. This assumption will be dealt with by the present paper, with the German NanoKommission being used as an example. By means of a sociology-ofknowledge approach, the conditions which gave the commission its influential position and the significance of its decisions will be analysed. The argumentation relies on documents from the German debate on nanotechnology and interviews conducted with important speakers. It becomes clear that the society refers to previous experience to give stakeholder dialogues their meaning. The paper will outline the normative and functional implications of these kinds of participatory settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Max-Planck-Institut für Gesellschaftsforschung Discussion Papers is the property of Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper considers some of possible implications of emigrants' visits back home. Alfred Schütz's seminal paper "The Homecomer" provides a theoretical framework for analysis of autobiographical narrative interviews with young Polish people living in Germany. An attempt is made to explore why and how - typical for the emigration processes - a more critical and objective image of country of origin and a growing feeling of strangeness at home deepens emigrants' capacity for reflection on their life and identity. Consequently, most of them painfully realise that they will never fully assimilate with the country of immigration and they no longer find themselves comfortable in their country of origin. This has crucial implications for their biography. The collected empirical data show that some of emigrants plan to immediately return to Poland in order to save their emotional relationship with those back home. Others find their homeland poorer and less prospective in comparison to Germany. This legitimate their residence abroad. And finally, the negative homecoming experience can perform a very important function in the narrators' common-sense argumentation, i.e., this should reduce psychological and biographical costs of their emigration career. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By comparing the US environmental justice movement with recent European developments, this paper suggests an environmental justice framework which is based on the idea of environmental justice as a heterogeneous process rather than an analytical or normative category. Using major debates on environmental justice particularly in the UK and Germany as a touchstone, eight dimensions of environmental justice are carved out and integrated into a processual model. It is discussed how environmental justice as a process may become robust enough to integrate and react to changing natural and social conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An increase in interest for German scientific psychology followed the rise of liberalism in late nineteenth-century Spain. This paper deals with Spanish scholars' endeavors to participate in German psychology: It outlines the intellectual and institutional background of Spanish preoccupation with German philosophy and psychology, and deals with the personal experience and testimony of two Spanish philosophers, Eloy Luis André and Juan Vicente Viqueira López, who traveled to Leipzig, Berlin, and Göttingen between 1909 and 1914 to gain firsthand experience in the nascent science of psychology in Germany at that time. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper examines one of the major metalinguistic debates in post-war Germany: the debate about the influence of English on German, an issue which was raised in the 1990s in the German media and has dominated media discussions on language ever since. The analysis demonstrates that the debate is deeply embedded in current socio-political discourses as well as in long-term discursive traditions concerning, on the one hand, the socio-political changes following German reunification in 1989/90, which involved a revision of the concepts of nation and nationalism, and, on the other, the genesis of the concept of nation, which is closely bound up with the history of the educated bourgeoisie and the process of standardisation as well as linguistic purism. It is argued that the debate on Anglicisms, as is the case in many other metalinguistic debates, cannot be regarded in isolation from the socio-political environment and the context of historical usage within which it is embedded. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Visions of the Sociological Tradition Donald N. Levine presents a view of the German sociological tradition that emphasizes its origins in philosophical idealism. This paper discusses the implications of this view for understanding the formation of sociology in Germany. The author suggests that Levine's account can be supplemented and strengthened by reconstructing the German tradition both as an effort to proceed without foundational philosophical systems and as an outgrowth of social economics and the historical school of political economy. Most importantly, Levine shares the call for sociology as the site of dialogue with that reconstructed German tradition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article offers a re-contextualization of the Positivism Dispute between the Frankfurt School and advocates of empirical sociology in the German sociological profession between 1954 and 1970. Investigating the reasons why the German Sociological Association convened in Tübingen in October 1961, it assigns a more peripheral role to Karl Popper and this now famous seminar. Focusing instead on the debate among German sociologists from the mid-1950s which prompted the convention of the seminar and the invitation for Popper to speak, the article maintains that philosophy of history was the central concern of the Positivism Dispute. In this debate, members of the Frankfurt School emphasized contingency in history and society, while sociologists such as René König, Helmut Schelsky, Ralf Dahrendorf, and Arnold Gehlen advocated sociology as the empirical study of ‘given’ social facts. By doing so the article questions the narrative of the Positivism Dispute advanced by Karl Popper and some of his followers, as well as interpretations which have focused on debates during the aftermath of the Tübingen seminar in the 1960s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT The conflicts between protecting the environment and pursuing conventional political objectives concerned with rising GNP, employment, etc. are increasingly influencing decision-making processes and scientific debate. For sociology this results in a new area of research that focuses on the consequences and impacts of environmental concerns. One basic aspect of an Environmental Sociology is concerned with the re-ordering of societal alliances. In order to do so, the article introduces some elements of a cognitive network approach. Environmentalism, advanced by collective actors such as environmental organizations, promotes alternative models to productionist politics. By doing so, these actors are challenging the alliance between labour and capital. In an empirical study of the debate on nuclear energy the paper focuses on the challenge that environmentalism has posed to the consensus between labour and capital in Sweden and Germany. The results show striking differences between both countries. Moreover, the analysis arrives at the conclusion that environmentalism may not only challenge the consensus between labour and capital but may also lead to a new cleavage within the labour movement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past few years, the skepticism against the stance of value neutrality and the reception of the Frankfurt School in the wake of renewed attention to Marxism in a Critical Sociology has once again focused attention on the problem of the integration of theory and praxis in sociology. Bearing in mind social philosopher Karl Marx's famous statement, philosophers have only interpreted the world in different ways, but the point is to change it, members of the Frankfurt School recognized the problem and perhaps difficulty, of praxis in sociology from the very beginning. This paper is primarily an attempt to present a critique of current approaches to field work and especially of participant observation. This particular focus is important for two reasons. First, ethnographic work has become of paramount importance given the sophisticated manipulation of people's lives today. The intricate organization of the work place, the divisive and paralyzing structure especially of the urban setting. The second reason for such an extended critique is that it would guide people to politically and methodologically adequate approaches to field work.

For almost any social phenomenon there exist a great many different theories seeking to explain the respective social facts. This holds also for the field of political participation which is the subject of this paper. In order to explain why people participate more or less in a conventional or unconventional way, not only hypotheses of sociology and political science might be applied. Economics, too, claims to offer valid explanations. In this situation there arises the problem of which theories are superior. In order to contribute to answering this question, some hypotheses on political participation are stated, based upon utility theory. This 'economic model' of (conventional and unconventional) political participation is empirically confronted with two sociological theories of political participation. A theoretical analysis indicates that the economic model implies conditions for the validity of the two sociological theories, Furthermore, a secondary analysis with data from Western Germany showed that the economic model was, in spite of measurement problems, superior to the sociological theories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main object of this paper is to separate several strands in the relationship between the works of Marx and Max Weber. Max Weber has rightly been regarded as Marx's most profound intellectual critic. But there has been much confusion in subsequent literature over the nature and validity of Weber's critique of Marx. This perhaps stems, in part at least, from a failure to distinguish a number of different, although interrelated, themes in Weber's writings. Weber wrote not simply as a critic of Marx, but also in response to the writings and political involvements of the prominent Marxists of his day. Three partially separable aspects of Weber's views thus may be isolated: (a) His attitude towards Marxism in the shape of the main Marxist political agency in Germany, the Social Democratic Party. (b) His views upon the academic contributions of Marxist authors to history and sociology. (c) His views upon what he considered to be Man's own original ideas. These three aspects of Weber's thought may in turn be distinguished from the analytic problem of how far Weber's own understanding of Marx's theory of historical materialism was in fact a valid one. Some of Marx's posthumously published writings, unavailable to Weber, allow us to form a clear judgement on this question. The historical changes in the social and political structure of Germany from the middle to the latter part of the nineteenth century form an essential background to the whole of the paper: Weber's attitudes toward Marx and Marxism cannot be understood out of this context. Weber's work was written not solely in response to a wraith-like "ghost of Marx", but also in response to a force--Marxism--which played a vital political and intellectual role in Imperial Germany. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In sum, it is appropriate for contemporary sociologists and other social scientists to pause and reflect not only on their debt to Max Weber but on the uses and misuses to which they have put his thought. Weber may well have brought the last universal mind to social science. Because he contributed so much, we—every one of us—"celebrate him every working day in every scholarly way." He gives us both stability and novelty in concept and purpose. He is always contemporary because he is always relevant. This symposium points up some of the many ways in which Weber today is relevant. The dialogue, more by chance than by design, indicates that perhaps the historical and the existential pragmatic sociologies are not as far apart as they might, on the face of it, seem to be. After all, as George H. Mead has most recently shown again, the present is very much the emergent of a past. Presents and their pasts were the intellectual problems with which Weber was ultimately concerned. It may be that here we will finally find the meeting of East and Midwest. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article provides information on various journals related to economics and sociology. The "Economic Journal" contains papers by economist R.L. Wedgwood that discusses the statistics of railway costs. He analyses the recent returns of traffic and receipts, and contends that a more scientific statistical system should be introduced. Economist H.W. Macrosty submits proposals for an economic survey of Great Britain and physician Jacques Dumas discusses the present state of the land system in France. The "International Journal of Ethics" shares the views of economists. Professor J.S. Mackensie gives his opinion that late Edward Cuird has built up a solid treasure-house of wisdom that will outlast many erections in breadth of knowledge, balance and judgment, maturity of insight and power of luminous expression. Professor F. Tidily figures out the late Friedrich Paulsen, as child of a hardy, frugal, clear-headed and warm-hearted seafaring race who gave philosophical expression to the ideals of a stock from which so many intellectual leaders of the old fatherland had sprung, and upon the integrity of which the future glory of Germany depends.

Copyright of Ictimaiyat is the property of Ictimaiyat and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

An increasing number of municipalities are striving for energy autonomy. This study determines in which municipalities and at what additional cost energy autonomy is feasible for a case study of Germany. An existing municipal energy system optimization model is extended to include the industrial, commercial and personal transport sectors. Multiple regression methods are benchmarked in order to identify the model best suited for the transfer of individual optimization results to a large proportion of German municipalities. The resulting levelized cost of energy (LCOE) from the optimization of representative case study municipalities are transferred using energy-relevant indicators. The study demonstrates that energy autonomy is technically feasible in 6,314 (56%) municipalities. Thereby, the LCOEs increase in the autonomous case on average by 0.41 €/kWh compared to the minimum cost scenario. Apart from energy demand, base-load-capable bioenergy and deep geothermal energy have the greatest influence on the LCOEs. Overall, it appears that municipal energy autonomy is not economically viable under current framework conditions. This study represents a starting point for defining possible scenarios in studies of future national energy system or transmission grid expansion planning, which for the first time consider completely energy autonomous municipalities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper aims to analyze the potentiality of Schutzian phenomenology to account for the problem of social order. Firstly, we expose the existence of an interpretive scheme of Parsonian roots in contemporary social theory that introduces the dualistic dilemma subjective action versus social order in the analysis of Schutz's perspective. According to this interpretive scheme, Schutz fails to master the problem of social order. Secondly, and in clear opposition to those interpretations, we show three main contributions which have put forward the argument that it is possible to find in Schutz's work a theory of social order: Harold Garfin-kel's early writings, the recent Austrian School of Economics' reception of Schutz and the present-day interpretation in German sociology. In the context of these discussions, our reflections have explored the pragmatic dimension of the order of the life-world based on a phenomenonological constitutive analysis which provides a basis for a comprehensive theory of social order of Schutzian roots. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the strategies to build legitimacy for the European Energy Exchange in Leipzig (short: EEX) which became the central trading place for electricity in Germany in 2002. Following Suchman's differentiation in the three phases of gaining, maintaining and repairing legitimacy, it focuses on the phase of gaining legitimacy. The arguments in this article are predominately based on neo-institutional sociology. They are part of a larger project on the forms, functions and consequences of price building at the EEX. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents abstracts of papers related to sociology published in this issue, including, "Coming to Stay? Relevance and Determinants of New Immigrants' Settlement Intention in Germany," by Claudia Diehl and Peter Preisendörfer, "Bread and Circuses. Production and allocation of club goods as collective action in German professional soccer league," and "Have Children lost their value for the Germans? Developments between 1979 and 2005 in West and East Germany."

The article reports on the Moral and Social Action Interdisciplinary Colloquium meeting, an international multidisciplinary network of scholars working within the fields of the philosophy, psychology and sociology of moral development, moral education and moral thought, held at the Universität Konstanz in Germany. The theme of the conference was the moral and religious challenges facing education. The lecture, delivered by Reinhard Hesse of the Pedagogical University of Freiburg in Switzerland, discussed how global changes impact on ethical reasoning and how, in an age of nuclear arsenals, ethics and science are welded together.

The present paper deals with two production models: 'the industrial districts of Third Italy' and the 'branch cluster of Baden Wuerttemberg'. Both have been well discussed within the scientific community. The elementary knowledge resulting from the comparison of both models is as follows: the morally communized 'distretti industriali' are much more susceptible to the economical concepts of neo-liberalism than the model of socially and institutionally embedded branch clusters. Because of its dependency on fragile moral inventories the social substance of the industrial districts erodes more and more whereas the social substance of the branch cluster remains stable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]