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The endangerment of honeybees and pollination in agriculture is related to social causes and entails social consequences. The paper reflects the bee issue in terms of symbolism, discourses and practices, different perspectives and positions, and social dynamics. It then presents two case studies that apply qualitative methods to assess developments that are harmful or favourable to bees and new trends in beekeeping. The first case study addresses the booming development of urban beekeeping. This part of the paper also discusses the alternatives that organic beekeeping has to offer. The second case study investigates beekeeping for the purpose of pollination in orchards. It points to possibilities of cooperation between growers and beekeepers but also marks the main problems, which are related to insecticide use and the development of the pollination market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social sciences have discussed the governance of complex systems for a long time. The following paper tackles the issue by means of experimental sociology, in order to investigate the performance of different modes of governance empirically. The simulation framework developed is based on Esser's model of sociological explanation as well as on Kroneberg's model of frame selection. The performance of governance has been measured by means of three macro and two micro indicators. Surprisingly, central control mostly performs better than decentralised coordination. However, results not only depend on the mode of governance, but there is also a relation between performance and the composition of actor populations, which has yet not been investigated sufficiently. Practitioner Summary:Practitioners can gain insights into the functioning of complex systems and learn how to better manage them. Additionally, they are provided with indicators to measure the performance of complex systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By comparing the US environmental justice movement with recent European developments, this paper suggests an environmental justice framework which is based on the idea of environmental justice as a heterogeneous process rather than an analytical or normative category. Using major debates on environmental justice particularly in the UK and Germany as a touchstone, eight dimensions of environmental justice are carved out and integrated into a processual model. It is discussed how environmental justice as a process may become robust enough to integrate and react to changing natural and social conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Visions of the Sociological Tradition Donald N. Levine presents a view of the German sociological tradition that emphasizes its origins in philosophical idealism. This paper discusses the implications of this view for understanding the formation of sociology in Germany. The author suggests that Levine's account can be supplemented and strengthened by reconstructing the German tradition both as an effort to proceed without foundational philosophical systems and as an outgrowth of social economics and the historical school of political economy. Most importantly, Levine shares the call for sociology as the site of dialogue with that reconstructed German tradition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article offers a re-contextualization of the Positivism Dispute between the Frankfurt School and advocates of empirical sociology in the German sociological profession between 1954 and 1970. Investigating the reasons why the German Sociological Association convened in Tübingen in October 1961, it assigns a more peripheral role to Karl Popper and this now famous seminar. Focusing instead on the debate among German sociologists from the mid-1950s which prompted the convention of the seminar and the invitation for Popper to speak, the article maintains that philosophy of history was the central concern of the Positivism Dispute. In this debate, members of the Frankfurt School emphasized contingency in history and society, while sociologists such as René König, Helmut Schelsky, Ralf Dahrendorf, and Arnold Gehlen advocated sociology as the empirical study of ‘given’ social facts. By doing so the article questions the narrative of the Positivism Dispute advanced by Karl Popper and some of his followers, as well as interpretations which have focused on debates during the aftermath of the Tübingen seminar in the 1960s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT The conflicts between protecting the environment and pursuing conventional political objectives concerned with rising GNP, employment, etc. are increasingly influencing decision-making processes and scientific debate. For sociology this results in a new area of research that focuses on the consequences and impacts of environmental concerns. One basic aspect of an Environmental Sociology is concerned with the re-ordering of societal alliances. In order to do so, the article introduces some elements of a cognitive network approach. Environmentalism, advanced by collective actors such as environmental organizations, promotes alternative models to productionist politics. By doing so, these actors are challenging the alliance between labour and capital. In an empirical study of the debate on nuclear energy the paper focuses on the challenge that environmentalism has posed to the consensus between labour and capital in Sweden and Germany. The results show striking differences between both countries. Moreover, the analysis arrives at the conclusion that environmentalism may not only challenge the consensus between labour and capital but may also lead to a new cleavage within the labour movement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In sum, it is appropriate for contemporary sociologists and other social scientists to pause and reflect not only on their debt to Max Weber but on the uses and misuses to which they have put his thought. Weber may well have brought the last universal mind to social science. Because he contributed so much, we—every one of us—"celebrate him every working day in every scholarly way." He gives us both stability and novelty in concept and purpose. He is always contemporary because he is always relevant. This symposium points up some of the many ways in which Weber today is relevant. The dialogue, more by chance than by design, indicates that perhaps the historical and the existential pragmatic sociologies are not as far apart as they might, on the face of it, seem to be. After all, as George H. Mead has most recently shown again, the present is very much the emergent of a past. Presents and their pasts were the intellectual problems with which Weber was ultimately concerned. It may be that here we will finally find the meeting of East and Midwest. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reports on the Moral and Social Action Interdisciplinary Colloquium meeting, an international multidisciplinary network of scholars working within the fields of the philosophy, psychology and sociology of moral development, moral education and moral thought, held at the Universität Konstanz in Germany. The theme of the conference was the moral and religious challenges facing education. The lecture, delivered by Reinhard Hesse of the Pedagogical University of Freiburg in Switzerland, discussed how global changes impact on ethical reasoning and how, in an age of nuclear arsenals, ethics and science are welded together.

The social amplification of risk framework highlights the role which the news media play in risk communication by interacting with other agents in amplifying risk. However, the precise ways in which the media and other social agents actually amplify risks in public debates are unclear. In this article we draw on insights from the sociology of news to examine whether and to what extent social agents and news media amplify an emerging health risk. We use the debate about theEscherichia colioutbreak in Germany in 2011 to examine three issues: the amount of risk reporting by news media and social agents in their function as news sources; their evaluation of risk; and how they contribute to the escalation of risk, also known as ripple effects. In this article we draw on data from a content analysis of press releases from public health authorities and affected stakeholders and of news items in leading German news media. We found that the affected stakeholders were amplifying the risk to the greatest extent. We also found that there was a shift over time in the use of dominant frames. At the start of the debate the risk was framed as a public health issue and linked to medical-scientific progress. As the debate developed, more attention was given to political and economic consequences of the outbreak and the original health risk event was layered by other risk-related events. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The development of post-war German social sciences is marked by a series of disputes about the nature and implications of positivist methodology. Two of these are selected for consideration here; the ‘positivist dispute’ in German sociology associated with Adorno and Popper, and the more diffuse assault on positivism in the legal sciences. In both cases, self-avowed positivists were in fact hard to find but the debates were important polemical disputes about the past—notably the Weimar Republic and the Third Reich—and the future of the young Federal Republic. It is suggested below that these disputes should be seen in this context and that the polemical claim in both disputes that certain methodological standpoints mandated specific moral and political commitments is more questionable. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Bodemann addresses the problem of how classical German sociology in the early twentieth century dealt with the question of the Other, as well as with the questions of ethno-national solidarities and race. In contemporary debates the Jews constituted a central trope. Bodemann focuses in particular on Werner Sombart, one of the three central figures in sociology at the time, but he also looks at the early meetings of the German Sociological Society and writings by Georg Simmel, Max Weber and Ferdinand Tonnies. Despite the fact that, even in 1910, Germany was a multi-ethnic state replete with discussions of race and the role of the Jews in society—and in sharp contrast to early American sociology—German sociology (with the principal and important exception of Sombart, and some minor reflections by Weber, Simmel and Tonnies) took little interest in the social positioning of Jews and the disputes on antisemitism, and even the classics were concerned with these issues mostly in relation to contemporary race theories. This lack of interest, Bodemann argues, left sociology theoretically unprepared for the nationalist frenzy that was about to be unleashed with the outbreak of the First World War, or for the intensifying antisemitism and the rise of fascism that followed it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the methodological and philosophical developments in the field of sociology that resulted from the discipline's study of suicide or self-destruction. The article describes the rise of Rationalism, empiricism, and positivism in relation to the sociological study of the rise of suicide in the modern world, exploring how the irrationality of suicide affected sociologists who believed in the progressive and positivist power of the social sciences. Subjects under discussion include the sociologist Emile Durkheim, the physician Henry Morselli and his book "Suicide: An Essay on Comparative Moral Statistics," and the concept of anomie.

The article discusses the influence of 19th century German sociologist Ferdinand Tönnies on Western European positivism. The articles describes how Tönnies reinterpreted the sociological tradition of philosophers such as August Comte, Herbert Spencer, and John Stuart Mill, consequentially producing an original creative synthesis in the field of positivism and sociology. Subjects under discussion include the concepts of Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft, the economic aspects of Tönnies' philosophy, and the disciplines of rationalism and historicism.

This article covers the development of relations between the German Democratic Republic (GDR) and Australia through the full course of the GDR's existence, but with an emphasis on events leading to mutual diplomatic recognition in December 1972. It argues that as minor powers within their respective Cold War blocs the GDR and Australia had very limited room for manoeuvre, yet within those limitations both sides adopted a good deal of pragmatism in cultivating political, cultural, sporting and above all trade relations. Although the conservative Australian government which was voted out of office in early December 1972 consistently resisted pressure to recognize the GDR, the new Labor government under Gough Whitlam was able to build on the pragmatic foundations for an expanded relationship laid in preceding years. Nonetheless, Whitlam moved rapidly and with a boldness which indicated a clear new direction in Australian foreign policy under his leadership. Diplomatic recognition did not, however, necessarily bring with it improved relations in other spheres, indeed the possibilities for improved trade remained largely unfulfilled through to the GDR's demise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The development of pedagogical science in eighteenth-century Germany unfolded in close connection with the emergence of the modern bourgeoisie and its emancipation from a still absolutist society. While social and political structures in Britain and France were changed by revolutions, the relative weakness of the German bourgeoisie led to the adoption of a reformist strategy to effect social modernization. In this context, pedagogics, education, schools and schooling became a vital means of political and economic transformation towards a modern, bourgeois-capitalist society. Therein the emergence of modern pedagogical thought and the development of the bourgeoisie were mutual preconditions: several initially quite disparate strands of thought coalesced to form a new pedagogical thinking in Germany during the later Enlightenment. The essay reconstructs how new thinking emerged by charting the integration of two bodies of knowledge into this renewal and refounding of pedagogics: the transformation of elements of rhetoric into building blocks of modern pedagogical thought, on the one hand, and of gender anthropology as its foundation, on the other. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The article presents a study on social history about the problematic aspects in historiography on the Wilhelmine era in Germany. It investigates the social pedagogy and social discipline or biopolitics in social welfare activities and institutions, practices and the governance of the state, and the genocidal implications in Europe as a whole. It highlights the development in social and cultural theory in the light of Michel Foucault's writing in proposing the interpretation that emphasizes the centrality and plurality of political ideology in the twentieth century.

Currently, several theoretical concepts emphasise the importance of socially embedded collaboration for innovation driven regional development. For instance, the notions of innovative milieu and social capital both focus on this factor of economic success. This raises the question of whether they should be regarded as redundant or complementary, the latter case allowing their purposive combination. This article supports the second view and discusses significant distinctions between the two notions, apart from consistencies. The example of the German 'technology region' of Aachen, which has been undergoing substantial industrial restructuring based on regional collaboration, serves to underpin the theoretical arguments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Theodor Geiger grew up in Germany and emigrated to Denmark in 1933, threatened by the Nazi regime. He worked at the University of Copenhagen 1933-38 and was the first Professor of Sociology at the University of Aarhus 1938-52. He spent 3 years in exile in Sweden. Geiger is an important figure in German and Scandinavian sociology and also known in English-speaking countries. He was a prolific teacher and writer. Throughout his life as a sociologist Geiger combined theoretical with empirical interest. If he rejected all speculation without a factual basis, he showed an equally strong disdain for empiricism without a theoretical foundation (Mayntz 1969). His works cover a broad spectrum of subjects, still of professional interest, such as: the foundation and fundamental concepts of sociology, the education of working-class people, industrial organization, class structure, stratification and mobility, social origin and functions of the intelligentsia, the sociology of law, critics of ideology and the nature of modern mass-society and democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]