Search

This paper examines the innovative and insightful analysis of intellectuals and social theorist as reflexive historical sociologists via the 'life-works' method developed by Arpad Szakolczai. Szakolczai debt to Voegelin is noted and some questions are raised about the type of social analysis he seeks to find in Voegelin's work. It is suggested that Voegelin can be understood as a thinker who puts in question some aspects of traditional sociological analysis. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The global arms trade should be understood not as a market but as a network, one that shares some important properties with networked forms of organization studied by sociologists. I make this argument and then employ quantitative methods developed for social network analysis in an effort to describe the evolving structure of the arms trade network since the end of World War II. That structure has changed significantly over the past fifty years. It became less dense in the early years of the cold war as newly independent states joined the society of states, but had yet to develop many arms-transfer ties. But from the early 1970s, the network got denser as arms-transfer relations developed among a roughly constant number of actors. At the same time, the supplier structure of the arms trade has become progressively less centralized, even though the United States remains the most central arms supplier. This decentralization is evident from the patterns of arms-transfer relationships in the network, not from aggregate amounts of weapons transferred by the United States and other suppliers, which paint a quite different picture (one of greater U.S. predominance). Mapping the positions of arms suppliers in two-dimensional space sheds some more light on structural changes within the network. Aside from Russia, which maintains several arms-transfer relationships established during the cold war, the leading arms suppliers share an expanding set of common clients. Many analysts of the arms trade have commented on the increasing competition among arms suppliers in the post-cold war era, and the evolving structure of the arms trade seems conducive to further marketization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information on the significance of critical theory in the conception of the autonomous human subject. It revisits philosopher and sociologist Jurgen Habermas' early engagements with the "foreign material" presented by psychoanalysis. The conceptual language of psychoanalysis was rejected by Habermas in favor of a moral and communicative competence approach.

The article offers information on the national identity focused on collective schemata related to nation on various countries in the U.S. It mentions that the nationalism research is focused on elite ideologies and institutional processes. It presents information on popular nationalist attitudes that captured the attention of comparative sociologists.

The article analyzes ideas that qualify as Weberian or belonging to political economist and sociologist Max Weber. It provides an overview of the numerous problematics that Weber tackled. It discusses the focus of Weber's work on the investigation of developmental dynamics and understanding their consequences for the conduct of life in different socio-historical contexts. It provides an overview of some of the conceptual distinctions introduced by Weber.

The state is a central concept in the study of politics but has had an unstable career in political science. This essay examines the contributions by political scientists, historians, sociologists, and anthropologists to the study of state formation. The goal is to take stock of recent findings that address questions of concern to political science. Despite the impressive growth of the literature on state formation in the last decade, few efforts have been made to compare the findings across sub-disciplinary or geographical boundaries. In the concluding section, I will discuss how the literature transcends earlier criticisms of the concept of the state and will make an appeal for political scientists to take the state seriously. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines subsequent data sets to update sociologist Peter Hall's evaluation of the levels of social capital in Great Britain and offer additional analysis. The decline between 1990 and 1995 paralleled U.S. figures and that the levels of social trust appeared to plateau between 1995 and 1999, according to EVS data.

In recent years, researchers have increasingly turned their attention to the proliferation of small arms and light weapons. Small arms are difficult to track and are not the stuff of military parades, but they are immensely destructive. In addition to what is already circulating, a substantial percentage of what is newly produced enters the black market and is destined for conflict zones across the globe. I argue that the illicit trade in small arms shares some important properties with networked forms of organization studied by sociologists. I then employ quantitative methods developed for the study of social networks in an effort to show the basic structure of illegal small arms transfers worldwide. The analysis draws from my Illicit Arms Transfers Database (IATD) still in development, so the results make use of the most rudimentary. information being collected. They are suggestive, however, and the analytical approach promises to shed considerable light on a corner of the international arms trade that is of great interest to the research and activist communities, and of great consequence to those in war-torn regions of the world. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]