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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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

Sociology is inherently reflexive. It deals with actors who themselves are constantly engaged in sociological reasoning. Concepts from academic sociology are thus prone to enter and affect the very dynamics they describe. The sociology of quantification is particularly attuned to such paradoxical effects of "reactivity," that is, measurements and categories altering observed realities. The article builds on these insights but extends them by adding one more iteration of reflexivity. Examining administrative integration departments in Germany that have implemented statistical indicators for measuring immigrant incorporation, it attends to a case where bureaucrats are themselves anticipating "reactivity" of the measurements they use. Integration officers fear that integration indicators may inadvertently reify and stigmatize the statistical category of first‐ to third‐generation immigrants, or "persons with a migration background." Consequently, they engage in various counterstrategies to offset such effects. Most notably, they launch a counter‐campaign against negative connotations of migration background that their own measurements are reinforcing as they frame migration background as an asset for society. The article argues that this is an example of second‐order reactivity, a phenomenon as yet neglected in the literature: Officers alter reality in reaction to an anticipated reactivity of their own integration statistics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents information on the condition of sociology in the Federal Republic of Germany. The seventeenth Congress of the German Sociologists, organized by the German Society for Sociology, was held in Kassel from October 31 to November 2, 1974. The interest it attracted was enormous: about 800 participants had been expected. It is probable that all the others were laymen interested in sociology. These proportions were in themselves in a certain respect typical of the present state of sociology in the Federal Republic of Germany, as is also the fact that this congress was not related to one particular scientific topic, as is usually the case, but was intended to arrive at a provisional balance-sheet of sociology in Germany in the mid-seventies. Naturally, this over-all view had itself to be divided into sectors corresponding to specific topics, so that two days were first devoted to the comparison of theories in sociology. This was followed by an exhaustive discussion of methods, in which all possible analytical procedures and related problems were gone into. Listed in this way and considered as a whole, this certainly presents an impressive picture of sociological activities in the Federal Republic and it is to be stressed that the papers presented to the congress included some notable pieces of work.

This article describes the dominant patterns of social mobility and analyzes the factors which determine educational and occupational attainment of people in the farm sector and after leaving the farm sector. The analysis is based on empirical data of the West German sample census (Mikrozensus-Zusatzbefragung April 1971) of 456,310 persons, 80,000 with farm background. Among the points investigated are the assumptions that farm background is a handicap in the process of status attainment in the non-farm sector and that the occupational status of farmers' sons in the non-farm sector is determined more by their own educational achievement than by other factors in their social background. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the party system sociology in Germany on the 1990s. It was stressed that German party sociology has discovered a great deal about party enrollment, membership structure, party participation, pragmatic decisions and the ideological research in general. Likewise, in the theoretical level, some middle-range theories on the functional place of parties in contemporary democracies have been developed. However, speculations are raised regarding the future of the German party state such as the notion that the German democracy thrives only in times of economic surplus. Nevertheless, it was noted in all probabilities, the inherited party system will remain stable in the country.