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The paper aims at analyzing the relation between ethics and sociology, wondering the chance to get beyond the actual divisionism (and the impossibility to reduce prescriptive assertions -- ethical field -- to descriptive assertions -- sociological field). From the very beginning the social science had to do with moral facts and the first sociologists (Simmel, Durkheim and Weber) treated the moral phenomena such as relevant to the comprehension of the social and collective agency. Despite of a first fruitful dialogue between ethics and sociology, in the present debates both of them seem to be recognized as irreconcilable and autonomous sciences. Pierpaolo Donati's Relational Sociology demonstrates how to save the original and authentic relation between sociology and ethics: the former has indeed the purpose to describe the intersection between individual and social sphere by the emergent form of the "social relation". It is necessary to treat together the value dimension of social relation (the L of "latency" in the relational reformulation of AGIL scheme) and the intrinsic normative social agency of individuals (the I of "integration"). For heuristic reasons the reflexivity issue in the relational paradigm implies that we must consider sociology as the "moral conscience" of modernity (Donati). In his last studies the reflexivity is considered the connotation of inner social relation in the morphogenetic society: sociology may, then, represent the way to get access to the reflexive-relational capability of modern individuals-in-society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The paper deals with the issue of reflexivity in the different spheres of society as they are affected by the processes of globalization. The Author presents a relational theory of reflexivity by which he can show that each sub-system of society is more or less differentiating itself according to a (prevailing) code or register of reflexivity. Global contextualism changes the way people manage the distinction between the particular and the universal (i.e. their perceived 'different identities') according to a plurality of reflexive processes. A differentiating universalism emerges within the different spheres of society. Four main societal sub-systems are analyzed: the market, the political system, the associational (or third sector) system, and the system of families and informal primary networks. In principle, within these spheres many different codes of reflexivity can be detected. But each societal subsystem supports, or vice versa hinders, only a few of them, or better a peculiar combination between them, and usually one dominating the others. The four types of reflexivity detected by M.S. Archer can be correlated to the different spheres/sub-systems of society in order to see how the latter change their operations and overall configuration. In the end, it is shown that the thesis of "reflexive modernity" is a reductive and an undifferentiated way to look at what happens in our globalizing society. The differentiation of reflexivity does not represent a further stage of modernity (postmodernity), but it generates an after-modern society. This claim will be particularly discussed with reference to the associational sphere, in which a new (after-modern) civil society is emerging. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The permanence of religion, or the return of the sacred, is today a common consideration in every research about advanced modem societies. In the first place, this paper will consider the limits of the weberian theory, which is at the base of every model of secularization and, as such, is now less significant for interpreting the present religious transformations. Secondly, it will discuss the concept of post- secular age, recalling Durkheim's theory of "transfer of the sacred". The term post-secular here does not imply that secularization processes are finished. On the contrary, these processes are such that they highlighted relevant cultural phenomena capable to connect world and experience, history and knowledge of religions, precisely on the very ground of disenchantment and secularization. Finally the author shows an example of classification of fields in which we find new religious needs that, paraphrasing classical theology, could be defined as "preambula fidei" of the post-secular time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper is focused on the connections between secularization and modernity, and calls into question an almost unanimously accepted and largely undisputed thesis, according to which it would be possible to explain one term (secularization) through the other (modernity). Drawing from medieval history and philosophy, the author challenges the validity of such a connection between secularization and modernity. While the term "secularization" is a modem coinage and has unfolded its effects only in the modern era, the circumstances that made the process of secularization possible took shape in the Middle Ages. The epicentre of the modern earthquake is located in the Middle Ages. More precisely, the author underscores the secularizing role of the Medieval Church and proves the counter-intuitive thesis that the defence of secularization was not promoted by the Empire, nor was the defence of the sacred championed by the Church. Things went exactly the other way around. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the most salient works in which the sociologist Werner Sombart saw the dimension of globality as a social element, constitutive of modernity and its future. The aim is to understand the role of globality, as an idea and a phenomenon, in the constitution in all aspects of society (economic, political, cultural, anthropological). The Works to which the article refers show a global society, one that goes from the time of Sombart to the present day, as the author had already envisioned in all their potentialities and criticalities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents abstracts from the articles published in the September to December 2011 issue of the journal Memoria e Ricerca, focusing on the history and historiography of World War I.

Copyright of Sociologia del Diritto is the property of FrancoAngeli srl 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.)

After reviewing Peirce's replacement of introspection by the inner conversation, the role of extended reflexivity is reviewed in Beck, Giddens and Lash and compared with Bourdieu's view about its limited nature, and with recent attempts to defend a "reflexive habitus". Conversely, this article argues that reflexivity mediates between the objective structural and cultural contexts confronting agents, who activate their properties as constraints and enablements as they pursue reflexively defined "projects" based on their concerns. The increased scope, range and changing mode with which reflexivity is practised are linked to premodernity, modernity and trans-modernity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The moment of interpretive understanding in Max Weber's Sociology of Religion has been interpreted taking into consideration the asceticism/mysticism dichotomy, and its combination with intra and ultra mundane levels. This essay states the need to take a different point of view. The moment of Verstehen is directed to the reconstruction of individualization processes and their assumptions and historic and politic implications. In the attempt to reconstruct the types of individual that have inaugurated or inhibited western modernity, Weber singles out elements conveyed by Weltreligionen, that structure different constellations of personality, more or less oriented towards change. In this picture, the extremely social and political human individual, at the origin of Modernity expresses anti-authority and individualistic characteristics as the ability to emerge from the constrictions of being member of a group. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]