1. COMPARATIVE VERSUS EVOLUTIONARY APPROACHES TO EUROPEAN SOCIETY.
- Author
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Hamm, Bernd
- Subjects
- *
COMPARATIVE sociology , *SOCIETIES , *DIFFERENTIATION (Sociology) , *SOCIAL change - Abstract
This comment is stimulated by Max Haller's contribution The Challenge for Comparative Sociology in the Transformation of Europe which appeared in the 1990 issue of International Sociology, and takes it as a starting point and as a challenge for some basic reflections on how to approach the emerging European society. This article gives a short abstract of Haller's argument and appreciates its merits and examines some of his propositions. This will allow the author to formulate a significantly different position. The last paragraph draws some conclusions. Although he does not make this point extremely explicit, the intention behind Haller's paper is, in the author's perception, to demonstrate that Europe is an optimal constellation for making international and intercultural comparisons. Thus, the problems he has to solve are what to compare with what, why, and how. But it is clear that in his view Europe forms an entity, with nations as sub-units. The paper's argument starts with crisis phenomena in Europe and continues to describe Europe's striking internal differentiation. The unity and diversity of Europe are seen as optimal preconditions for comparative research, where unity means external delimitation and internal interlinkage, and diversity means internal differentiation.
- Published
- 1991
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