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In contrast to nearby countries, Jordan achieved a unique situation in mitigating the covid-19 outbreak. The privileged situation lasted for a few months. After that situation, Jordan became one of the worst countries all over the world. Drawing on a conceptual framework derived from Blau’s theory: exchange and power in social life, this paper reevaluates the dynamics of combating covid-19 in Jordan as an exchange process between government and people. Jordan’s government employed maximum power to control people’s movements and gatherings. However, it failed to meet people’s expectations of keeping their lives safe and fulfilling their basic needs. The government tried to legitimize the situation by providing fake information. It has lost the trust of society which supported the efforts of the government. It could not maintain its control of people’s gatherings and movements, resulting in a rise in the number of cases. Transparency, trust, awareness, and society’s efforts are crucial in fighting pandemics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses a sample of Utahans to estimate the percentage of the state belonging to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (the LDS, or Mormon Church). We find that the Mormon share of Utah's population is lower than is commonly believed. This finding has relevance for certain theories in the sociology of religion that make inferences about church growth and vitality based on the religious demography of Utah. We show how the process of secularization, changes in Mormon fertility, and shifts in migration into Utah combine to alter the religious landscape of the state. We close with a discussion of the implications of our findings for the sociology of religion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This section deals with the papers needed for the special issue of the journal Critical Sociology concerning the influence of foundation on culture, society and politics. The subject is vast and under-investigated and the book includes a plea for more researchers to devote themselves to the aspect of the society. While exposés of conservative foundations funding conservative individuals are common, very little has been written about the effect of mainstream foundations funding almost all progressive, liberal and even radical movements and publications. Similarly, the corporate influence on universities has been thoroughly studied, but not the foundations that fund and create programs and curricula. There are some possible topics for the special issue. First is the evaluation of the effect of foundation funding of scholarly organizations, university programs and departments and individual research. Second is the implications of foundation support for information sources of many types: reference works, epochal books and liberal journals. Third is the role played by foundations in financing non-governmental organizations, travel and conferences in relation to the globalization of protest movements and human rights networking. Each paper must outline the theoretical framework, primary focus of the study and methods to be used.

This paper investigates the poetry of Qu Xuanying, a literatus who remained in the city of Beiping (now Beijing) following its occupation by the Japanese in 1937. Through historical allusions in his poetry, Qu communicated with friends about the ethical dilemmas that he faced under occupation, and reflected upon the choices that literati in earlier eras had made when facing dynastic transitions and foreign conquest. Qu's 'esoteric writing' during the occupation contained a complex set of historical allusions which referenced various points in the Chinese past. Since Qu served in the collaborationist north China regime, he has often been perceived as a 'traitor' or a 'collaborator'. Through this in-depth analysis of his literary works, however, this paper seeks to reveal the special exegetical strategies adopted by literati such as Qu under occupation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that, for both sociological and epistemic reasons, the ethics of war needs the social sciences and, accordingly, sets an alternative to the two prevailing approaches in the literature in the ethics of war field, i.e. the just war tradition model and the ethics of war theory. Given what we learn from the factual description of war and its interpretation in the social sciences, and given what their epistemic premises are, both models - and more particularly the second one - fail to address important normative issues that arise in the course of warfare. Based on the discussion of two case studies - states' policy in the face of hostage-taking and the rule of proportionality - I argue it is important to move beyond the divide between a state-centric approach (the just war tradition) and an individualistic one (the ethics of war theory): it is indispensable to take into consideration other social spheres where norms emerge and find, between those spheres, some 'overlapping normative ground'. I argue, both sociologically and normatively, that norms rely upon interlocking sets of expectations. I also argue that these social expectations need to be thoroughly examined in order to ascertain the plausibility of norms in warfare. As a conclusion, for reasons that are both sociological and normative, I stress the political importance, within a liberal and knowledge-oriented society, of the access to facts that always need to be interpreted when making normative claims. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rape represents one form of sexual violence and may be defined as "forced sexual violation." The following paper builds upon that definition to differentiate among three distinct types of rapes to create an analytic typology that specifies the conditions under which these are more likely to occur. By drawing upon Black's theoretical approach of "pure sociology" and by examining the cross-cultural literature, the paper presents the different social fields or "social geometries" associated with variations in predatory, moralistic, and ritualistic rape. The paper also explains the social conditions most likely to ensure a relative absence of rape. The paper thus offers an innovative strategy for re-thinking the sociological nature of rape, including implications for new approaches to measure and evaluate the likelihood of rape occurring. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What can variously be understood as "comparative sociology" take different contours and raise further issues and questions in different sociological traditions which in turn are shaped by different theoretical paradigms. The paper outlines conceptual and theoretical framework for a discussion about the current status of comparative sociology. Comparative sociology is perceived as an organization of research through constant comparisons at the different levels and stages of research. The paper presents outcomes of the field research that is developed on the basis of distinction between two modalities of comparative sociology: comparative sociology as an inquiry and comparative sociology as a teaching discipline. One basic and two subordinate alternative hypotheses are tested in the course of comparative analysis of the seven cases. Discussion of these cases results in formulation of specific questions for further research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper applies a comparative approach to analyze several dimensions of ‘Global Sociology’ from a normative stance based on a critical review of related discourses in sociological communities. The author reveals three major problems in intra-disciplinary, inter-disciplinary and extra-academic dimensions, manifested not only in ‘factual’ (objective) characteristics but also in ‘ideological’ visions typical of academic communities and connected with a negative stance towards global neoliberalism and its various agents: first, rigid vertical stratification of the international academic field, primarily, in terms of academic publishing and working conditions; second, negative tendencies in the status positions of sociology compared to other sciences, especially economics; and third, little cooperation with policy-makers and corporate practitioners combined with an orientation to supporting various discriminated groups against dominating powers associated with neoliberalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines recent developments in the construction of insect cyborgs by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), a branch of the U.S. Department of Defense, as part of its Hybrid Insect Microelectromechanical Systems (HI-MEMS) project. It takes a sociological approach in order to account for the processes involved in the creation of insect cyborgs, arguing that such creatures should be seen as the outcome of social, as well as technological, conditions. The paper critically reflects on the ethical implications of the HI-MEMS project and discusses the philosophical repercussions of treating insects as if they are machines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is stimulated by the need to develop an ecclesiological method that is capable of describing and analysing the diverse self-understandings that characterize global Pentecostalism (or any Christian Church). It begins by observing the limitations of idealist approaches to ecclesiology, and instead proposes a concrete ecclesiological method, Concrete ecclesiology will include the narrative of particular Churches and movements, describe the explicit and implicit self-understanding that accompanies this narrative, and assess ecclesial transitions. Since the Church is a human and divine community, analysis will incorporate theological categories and the human sciences. Consequently, the paper considers how the ecclesiologist might appropriate the multifaceted discipline of sociology. The goal is an ecclesiology that is not reduced only to ideal categories, but that is capable of analysing the complex reality of indigenous Pentecostal Churches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper undertakes a critical reading of Max Weber's The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism in order to demonstrate how the moral impulses of allegory and social fiction insinuate themselves within the narrative strains of an ethnographic research that often imagines itself as simply reporting "the social facts." This place of the allegorical within the social sciences, particularly sociology, is read in symptomatic fashion. However, rather than decrying or denying the appearance of such moral fictions, this paper advocates working with and from the insights - both conscious and not - that the appearances of the allegorical generates, in order to construct a more rigorous and critical form of social scientific knowledge that is attentive to the workings of social power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the first part of this paper the pioneering achievements of Thomas Kuhn in natural sciences and of Florian Znaniecki in social sciences are examined and compared. Attention is focused on the fundamental impact that the ideological positions adopted by each has exerted upon our understanding of the way their respective disciplines develop and affect the study of natural and cultural phenomena as distinct aspects of reality. The paper traces elements of the commonality of their visions, as well as the way both authors have emphasized tile distinct and unique characteristics of their particular fields of knowledge. In the second part, Znaniecki's humanistic sociology is applied as a theoretical framework to the study of linguistic pluralism in two multi-ethnic societies Australia and Belarus. Rather than making a direct comparison of the two linguistic contexts, the aim of the paper is to use that framework to gain insights into these diverse multilingual configurations from the perspective of those actively involved in them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper situates contemporary evaluations of the 'success' of Spain's Mondragon cooperative complex within a tradition of debate about the politics of economic transformation. It traces the long-standing suspicion of worker cooperatives among political and social analysts on the left, revisiting both the revolutionary and gradualist socialist critiques of cooperativism. Taking the set of problems identified by Beatrice and Sidney Webb as leading to the inevitable failure of producer cooperatives, the paper examines Mondragon for evidence of 'degeneration.' The ethical decisions made by Mondragon cooperators with respect to product, pay, profit, innovation, management, disputes and membership are discussed with a particular focus on the management of surplus production, appropriation and distribution. The paper calls for more sophisticated analyses of the economics of surplus distribution and the centrality of ethical debate to the construction of diverse economies and non-capitalist economic subjects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports the results of a one-year service-learning project that excited students about sociology, and created useful analytic tools fir a modest-income African American community. In the course of deepening our understanding of one neighborhood including collecting extant demographic data, conducting surveys and interviews, site visits, and simply "hanging out," - it becomes possible to demonstrate how using formal demography and community ethnography together provide better understandings of the processes of social stratification, segregation, arid gentrification than would be possible using only one of the methodological orientations. The paper begins with an introduction theoretical and didactic challenges, proceeds in describing Lynwood Park demographically using insights derived from qualitative evidence, and then describes our eclectic means of investigating the community. The second half of the paper situates Lynwood Park demographically and ethnographically in terms of the larger Atlanta community, and then in increasingly smaller and more socially meaningful units. once we focus the demographic lens as much as possible, we must again rely on qualitative information to probe the multiple meanings of Lynwood Park. The paper closes with recommendations about how the people of Lynwood Park can use the data, and suggests how these technique can he implemented theoretically and practically in sociology as a whole. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper not only describes a confusing network of terms (including "political society", "commonwealth", and "community"), thus defining a problem of interpretation, but also partially solves the problem. One result is that Locke turns out to differ in at least one important way from those theorists of social contract supposedly belonging to the same tradition, especially Hobbes, Rousseau, and Rawls. The Two Treatises lacks any social contract, that is, a contract constituting society in the inclusive sense usually given "society" in discussions of "social contract". Locke's concept of "political society" deserves a closer look, since it has largely been overlooked until now. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The problem of secularism is amply raised by Burton Mack in his paper; it is clear that the term secular is problematic. However, in this response I would like to take a cultural turn. Using the social theory developed by Burton Mack in other writings, I will argue that the secular criticism of the Bible can be understood as a new mythol-ogy (as all criticism of the Bible are) that is a part of a growing secular wave within the United States found in a variety of cultural corners and particularly among the younger demographics. As such secular criticism--and secular movements like it--constitute one response to a particular set of social interests at this particular juncture in time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the prevalence of phenomenological perspectives in most modern scientific fields addressing religion and spirituality, including psychology of religion, ontological inquiries retain an important position in certain fields, such as modern sociology (e.g., Weber, Giddens' concept of ‘ontological security’). Ontological and phenomenological approaches, alongside certain principles that function as interpretative tools in the social sciences (e.g., reductionism, teleology, supervenience), can be synthesised to construct a pluralistic methodology for understanding anew the dynamics between the ‘psychological’ and the ‘spiritual’. This paper attempts to articulate an ‘evolutional’ approach to the spiritual as an ‘emergent’ property arising from multiple factors beyond the psychological and the metaphysical (such as social and cultural constructs). This holistic understanding of the spiritual will be then applied to Jung's notion of the ‘Self’ to understand further its spiritual and/or ontological potential. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ways in which children use objects is central to many theories of development, yet we lack systematic descriptions of the various ways in which objects are used across childhood. In this paper, I first describe the different forms of object use (i.e., exploration, construction, play, tool use and tool making) for males and females in childhood, then establish time budgets for each type of object use. Second, I make functional inferences about each form of object use and the social contexts in which each is embedded. I suggest that putative functions of object play, specifically, may be related to children's discovery of novel uses for objects, as well as peer group centrality in abundant niches. These dynamics produce a connected social network in which object play and group structure might interact to spread novel ideas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract For more than two decades sociological debates over religion and secularization have been characterized by a confrontation between (often American) critics and (mostly European) defenders of secularization theories. At the same time, there was a remarkable rise in public debates about the role of secularism in political regimes and in national as well as civilizational frameworks. Against this backdrop this paper presents the conceptual framework of 'multiple secularities' with a view to refocusing sociological research on religion and secularity. We will demonstrate that it can stimulate new ways of theorizing the relationship of religion and secularity in a variety of modern environments. Arguing for a reformulation of this relationship within the framework of cultural sociology, we conceptualize 'secularity' in terms of the cultural meanings underlying the differentiation between religion and non-religious spheres. Building on Max Weber we distinguish four basic ideal-types of secularity that are related to specific reference problems and associated with specific guiding ideas. Finally, we illustrate the use of the concept with regard to selected case-studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Children tend to be missing from the literature on human rights. Sociology can help to fill the gap by providing evidence about the importance and benefits of recognising children's human rights, the dangers of not doing so, and joint rights-promoting work by adults and children. However, sociology has paid relatively little attention to human rights, and to the related topics of the Holocaust, human nature, real bodies, universal principles and moral imperatives. This paper examines splits in sociology around a central absence, which could partly explain these omissions. Then it considers how inter-disciplinary approaches and critical realism can help to theorise and validate 'the inherent dignity and...the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family'. The youngest children's rights illuminate meanings in all human rights, which depend less on the rational person approach than on recognising human nature, vulnerability and solidarity interacting with social structures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article uses the recent work of sociologist Margaret M. Poloma to argue that developments in the sociology of Pentecostalism have the potential to revitalize a classical Pentecostal movement that can be otherwise understood as languishing. In particular, the social scientific study of benevolent service in various segments of the Pentecostal movement provides the springboard for the argument. After locating the interdisciplinary work of Poloma and her colleagues on godly love within the broader context of social science research in the last half century, this paper will explore its implications for the future and renewal of especially the classical Pentecostal movement, for Pentecostal theology and self-understanding, and for scholarship on Pentecostalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract This article reflects upon the implications for sociology of the steady accumulation of evidence in the sciences of animal behavior pointing to the existence of culture among nonhuman animals. With a particular focus on primatology, it explores how these developments challenge the notions of 'culture' that continue to inform the study of human social life. The article argues that this growing challenge to the assumption of human uniqueness that has historically provided the core rationale for sociology cannot be ignored. The paper thus contributes to the overdue work of articulating a constructive response by tracing the issues involved in the encounter between these knowledges. Theoretical currents from science studies and actor-network theory are drawn upon in order to propose a reflexive and symmetrical realignment of this encounter, with significant implications for our understandings of human and animal being and subjectivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While China has recently taken an amazing economic leap, completely transforming and liberalising its economic system, the absolute domination of the Communist party, operating in an extremely organised and centralised system and without free general elections, is the opposite of the models advocated by Western nations and remains a stumbling block for a number of Westerners. This governance from the top seems to exclude forms of expression and practices at the grassroots, but can this first reading explain the practical reality of Chinese politics? This paper looks into the links between the economic regeneration and the political transformations of two cities in Zhejiang. Studying the incredible advances of these two cities over 30 years reveals that their development was based not only on economic factors but also on a broad continuous movement of political and local reorganisation from the bottom up, promoting a new social and political dynamism, first locally then provincewide: a huge and profound change developed in a very specific way. Is this a premonitory model or announcement of the specifically Chinese methods of incorporating economic and political changes coming from the grassroots, which still affect certain sectors of the social and political spheres of Chinese society? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For a long time, sociological analysis of professional work has differentiated professionalism as a special means of organizing work and controlling workers and in contrast to the hierarchical, bureaucratic and managerial controls of industrial and commercial organizations. But professional work is changing and being changed as increasingly professionals (such as doctors, nurses, teachers, social workers) now work in employing organizations; lawyers and accountants in large professional service firms (PSFs) and sometimes in international and commercial organizations; pharmacists in national (retailing) companies; and engineers, journalists, performing artists, the armed forces and police find occupational control of their work and discretionary decision-making increasingly difficult to sustain. This paper begins with a section on defining the field and clarifying concepts. This is followed by a second section on the concept of professionalism, its history and current developments. The third section discusses convergences between Anglo-American and Continental European systems of professions and the general, wider applicability of particular explanatory theories and analytical concepts in the field. Section four examines internationalizing processes affecting professions. Markets for professional services are increasingly international and professional regulation is now a matter for international professional federations as well as national and regional states. The final section provides summary and considers consequences for aspects of professionalism as an occupational value in the global world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses various papers published within the issue including one on sociology as an academic discipline, one on role of catechists in Catholic Church development and expansion in Africa, and another on the complexicity and vulnerability of mission work.

This paper presents sociology as a practice in humanity, whose members have a social responsibility to engage in work contributing to social progress and reform. In lieu of viewing sociology as praxis, sociologists frequently adhere to the hegemony of a conventional pedagogy, an "objective" scientific orientation, and an institutional view of scholarship that confines further positive impact on students and communities. The ramifications are myriad, including a divisive milieu within the discipline. Identified and explored is a missing link: a discipline-oriented model synthesizing intellectualism, teaching, and activism. An intervening model external to sociology, accentuating dissent, is presented from case studies of linguist and social critic Noam Chomsky and historian Howard Zinn, reflecting the potential and importance of sociology to contribute meaningfully in our society. Wedding theory and praxis, the case studies reexamine current sociological ideology and punctuate social responsibility among practitioners through institutional transformation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Burgess-Jackson (1998) argues that the duties we have to our companion animals are similar to the duties we have to our children. Specifically, he argues that a person who takes custody of either a nonhuman animal or a child elevates the moral status of the child or animal, endowing each with rights neither had before. These rights obligate that person to provide for the well being of the creature—animal or child—in question. This paper offers two arguments against this position. First, a creature's rights rest solely on the creature's intrinsic properties. Thus, the person taking custody of a creature does not endow the creature with new rights. Rather, the custodian assumes the responsibilities associated with ensuring that the creature's rights are protected and preserved. Second, our children possess intrinsic properties and, hence, rights—most important, the right to life—that our pets lack. This difference undermines the analogy on which Burgess-Jackson's argument depends. Our pets are not like our children, as Burgess-Jackson claims. Instead, they are more akin to our slaves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on equality. Bernard Williams asserted in his paper titled "The Idea of Equality" that distribution based on needs is a key in the theory of equality and claimed that the proper ground of delivering health care is health need. But Robert Nozick argued that if such claim is true then the proper ground of the distribution of barbering care is barbering need.

Most Americans are aware that joy was expressed in the Arab world over the suffering inflicted on Americans with the September 11th attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. Less known is that such Schadenfreude was expressed by many Chinese citizens as well. This paper analyzes a sample of texts from postings on the Beijing University bulletin board system. Following a discursive approach to the social psychological study of emotion, we consider discourse as the means whereby power relations are asserted and maintained. These power relations comprise a domain within which actions and emotional displays are occasioned and understood. Based on the texts analyzed here, Schadenfreude can be understood as a discursive display by an observer of an event. This event must be recognized in terms of a "discursive history" within which a bully (here, the United States) has repeatedly violated the "rights" of bullied parties. In accordance with this discursive history, the event is seen as a reversal-in-tradition whereby rights presumed by the bully are violated. Finally, the observer must disidentify with the bully. As a discursive display, Schadenfreude not only comprises the overt performance of the observer's taken-for-granted understanding of the bully-as-bully, but also displaces any potential alternative discourse such as expressions of sympathy other observers may have for any target of such an event. This approach complements the social constructionist perspective within the literature on the sociology of emotions, but departs fundamentally from this literature's essentialist (or psycho-physiological) perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What kinds of principles of justice should a cosmopolitan support? In recent years some have argued that a cosmopolitan should endorse a Global Difference Principle. It has also been suggested that a cosmopolitan should support a Principle of Global Equality of Opportunity. In this paper I examine how compelling these two suggestions are. I argue against a Global Difference Principle, but for an alternative Needs-Based Minimum Floor Principle (where these are not co-extensive, as I explain). Though I support a negative version of the Global Equality of Opportunity Principle, I argue that a more positive version of the ideal remains elusive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents the author's comments on Michael Burawoy's article examining the critical turn to a public sociology. There is much that is attractive about Burawoy's examination of the critical turn to a public sociology. I find plausible his account of the academic nature of 1970s radical sociology especially that mobilized notions such as Althusser's theoretical practice. I also was cheered to read the account of the positive developments currently in train in the U.S. and especially with how social movements have got inside American sociology and are changing it from within. And I was with his advocacy of sociology developing new forms of engaging with and responding to multiple publics and modes of participation, to bring the public and sociology into intimate juxtaposition. But from the other side of the pond Burawoy's argument seems at the same time rather strange. The paper is unambiguously written from within American sociology. Sociologists from nowhere else could treat their sociology as nationally bounded and unrelated to global processes that in all other fields are transforming the social world. This means first that the stories of other sociologies are necessarily different from that of the U.S., but second that much about the story of any sociology cannot be understood without situating it within wider globalizing processes that sociology everywhere struggles to engage with.

Traditionally cognitive scientists have had little to say about religion (and even less to say about new religious movements (NRMs)) partly because religion is arguably a social phenomenon (Bainbridge et al. 1994) and partly because of the pervasive scientific bias of relegating religion to the heap of the irrational, the illogical, and 'a fading vestige of the prescientific times' (Lewis 2003). While sociologists of religion have been studying NRMs, their analysis has been limited to the macro-level. Recent trends in sociology and economics focused on the so called rational choice theories (Iannaccone 1998) and in cognitive sciences of religion (Barrett 2000; Boyer 2001) offer the hope of moving in the direction of a more complete explanation of emergence of new religious movements by providing both macro and micro level analyses. I believe that a closer interaction between these two developments is possible, indeed necessary, for the development of a scientific theory of NRMs that weds the macro and the micro levels. I illustrate the benefits of this approach by focusing on a hitherto ignored phenomenon, the emergence of charismatic leaders who inspire new religious movements. The primary aim of this paper is to identify the contextual factors (both social and cognitive) that cause self-interested utility maximizing agents to take actions that result in new religious movements (NRM). Our secondary aim is to identify factors that cause other self interested utility maximizing agents to align themselves with NRM founders and become the believers. I illustrate how various tools of cognitive science including computer modeling can help in this regard. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the relationships of social structure and personality during a period of radical social change attendant on the early stages of the transformation of Ukraine from socialism to nascent capitalism. It does so by analyzing data secured from face-to-face interviews with a representative sample of urban Ukrainian men and women in 1992-93, together with a follow-up survey three to three and a half years later of all those respondents who at the time of the initial survey either were employed or were seeking paid employment. We found that the over-time correlations – the stabilities – of two underlying dimensions of personality – self-directedness of orientation and a sense of well-being or distress – were startlingly low, by comparison not only to the United States at a time of much greater social stability, but also to Poland at the same time as the Ukrainian study, albeit at a later stage of transition. The stability of a third fundamental dimension of personality – intellectual flexibility – was higher than those of self-directedness of orientation and distress, but considerably lower than past research had led us to expect. Still, despite massive changes in social and economic conditions and great instability of personality, the relationships of social structure with personality were remarkably consistent over time and, with the partial exception of those with the sense of wellbeing or distress, were quite similar to those of both socialist and advanced capitalist societies during times of apparent social stability. Our analyses suggest that consistency in the relationships between social structure and personality despite great change both in social structure and in personality results from the continued stability of proximate conditions of life that link position in the larger social structure to individual personality, and the continued strength of those linkages. Notable among these proximate conditions, for those people who were employed at the times of both the baseline and follow-up surveys, is the substantive complexity of their work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There are two competing orientations prevalent among social science disciplines. If one of these advocate universality, the other prefers indigeneity. But a careful analysis of even such concepts as citizenship widely believed to be of universal validity unfold, that (a) its substance varies across different polities; (b) this difference exists not only between the First, Second and Third Worlds but also among the polities within them. It has been demonstrated that the variations can be traced to the historical background, social structure and cultural patterns between polities. This has been attempted in this paper through a general comparative analysis of the three worlds and a systematic comparison of India, a multinational state and the West European countries, the cradle of nation-states. Through this comparative analysis some of the established notions in western political sociology have been interrogated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Modern market-driven mass media systems may present collective actors with communication opportunities, but these come laced with formidable costs and constraints. This paper argues that despite these barriers, collective actors, working intentionally and strategically, can develop effective media campaigns to communicate with mass audiences – audiences they cannot reach directly. To utilize these narrow opportunities, however, a collective actor needs both adequate communications infrastructure and a communication strategy well integrated into its overall organizing strategy. The 1997 Teamsters strike against United Parcel Service (U.P.S.) provides an illustrative case. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most national myths of origin begin with some transcendent or sacrificial story of violent revolution, warfare or liberation. This is also true of many origin myths of ethnic, tribal or other forms of social identity. This makes it appear that some act of violence is the cause of their coming into being. This paper argues that this is an artefact of the temporal 'peculiarity' of violence. Violent events, it is argued, are essentially unpredictable even when statistically probable. This means that violence is only 'visible' after the fact, and rarely before and that plausible causal models can rarely be constructed in advance. Violence is always seen in retrospect, then, and where it has caused significant death and destruction, it requires that we begin to make sense of what caused it. Unlike other planned or and emotionally charged social interactions (such as eating, sexuality, ritual) acts of violence interrupt (disrupt, breach, rupture, break, etc.) and terminate parts or all of previous social relations. Since the cause of violence can only be assigned retrospectively, this means that we must (re-)construct the past in a way that allows us to make sense of it. Where some violent event is followed by the eventual emergence of a new identity, the new identity is often explained as having 'originated' in violence. This implies that violence caused the new social identity in some way, and that it functions as a political instrument. But violence can only create a void, and is chaotic. After violence, we require the (re-)telling of the past in a new way. This makes violence appear at the beginning of narratives of origin, but does not imply that violence caused these identities. Since large scale violence leads cultural loss and to large scale social (re)construction, narratives of identity tend to begin at these moments in time. This account of violence seeks, therefore, to undermine the notion that violence is an efficient or final cause of social forms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As well as being a prolific contributor to the discipline of sociology, Irving Louis Horowitz has consistently attracted controversy. His earlier associations with C. Wright Mills and the New Left contrast with his present day affinities with neo-conservative thought. This paper attempts to appraise Horowitz's career by focusing on his primary interest, political sociology. In this way it is intended that, despite the apparently significant changes that have marked his work, certain continuous threads might be identified. In order to understand the evolution of Horowitz's thought, reference is made to the changing political and intellectual context of the last four decades. The result is a sympathetic though ultimately critical analysis of Horowitz's work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The analysis of burial data from two or more archaeological cultures is a common strategy in cross-cultural studies. Because burial data can be quantified (e.g., by number of burial goods, labor investment in man-hours, etc.), they lend themselves to statistical analysis. We must keep in mind, however, that such remains are those of ritual activity, and the statistical analysis performed here must be based on the reasonable assumption that each society is marked by sets of sumptuary rules. In the absence of an explicit theoretical consideration of this issue, anyone who looks at burial data cross-culturally therefore runs the risk of comparing "apples and oranges." This paper offers a suggestion as to how this problem can be overcome and how meaningful cross-cultural comparisons of burial data can be carried out. Using burial data from the Lower Xiajiadian (ca. 2100-1600 BC) and Upper Xiajiadian (ca. 1100-600 BC) Culture periods, I attempt to compare the level and type of social complexity attained by different Bronze Age societies in northeast China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]