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Intellectual strategies change in response to broader socio-political transformations of the world and the development of new means of communication. In today's complex and fragmented intellectual landscape, public intellectuals perform various functions and conceive different strategies. As traditional public intellectuals are finding it much harder to argue with authority, thought leaders, or new for-profit thinkers linked to ideologically driven think tanks, are getting new visibility. Yet another group, the 'new intellectuals', who in contrast to traditional public intellectuals housed at the university are detached from its institutional structures, contributes to the non-academic culture of criticism of neo-liberalism. As these three groups are not engaged in meaningful conversations, a work on the restoration of the severed links between wonder at the world and the imagination to think beyond the present is neglected. In the hope that all three groups of today's intellectuals, despite their different values and styles, can still place curiosity at the core of their strategies, this paper argues that primarily it should be a task of the traditional public intellectual to awaken people's awareness of a common future. It concludes that to re-empower the traditional public intellectual, there is a need to prevent modern universities from becoming places with little room for curiosity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper argues that if imagination is paramount for sociology's status and if literary intuition is a source of such imagination, we should rethink the value of literary insight for social analyses. It reviews the changing relationship between literature and sociology and shows how sociology can draw from literature as a starting point for understanding the social world and a way of invigorating sociological imagination. By framing the digital age as a current moment of change that has reconfigured the relation between sociology and literature, it illuminates the impact of challenges faced by both sociology and literature. It argues for the validity of literature for sociological use in the digital future and calls for more reflection on the utility and scope of the linkage. It asserts the literary inspired way of doing sociology, which takes advantage of the chance provided by the e-revolution, is one of ways forward for sociology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to contribute to the theoretical and empirical understandings of the role that political forgiveness plays in the post-conflict and post-authoritarian societies. The paper provides a discussion of the complexities of the concept of political forgiveness, and offers empirical examples that demonstrate the different capacities and potentials that political forgiveness has as a mode of social reconciliation and repair the past injustice. It argues that today, with the accumulation of experience in the practice of transitional justice, and the growing importance of human rights regime, considering of forgiveness through the accountability's lens is very timely and important. After the discussion of the contribution of forgiveness to societal reconstruction in the post-conflict and post-authoritarian societies, the paper focuses on the role of forgiveness as an essential part of justice and solidarity. By scrutinising forgiveness' links with reconciliation and justice, the paper offers a comprehensive way to assess the nature of preconditions and the role of forgiveness in addressing the past injustice and overcoming divisions in post-conflict societies. Its discussion of empirical findings on the role that forgiveness opens up a debate about risks and costs involved in a policy of forgiveness in newly democratised countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this article is to bring to social theorists’ attention the growing visibility of the notion of dignity within human rights legislation, bioethics and public discourse generally, as well as to evaluate this term’s potential to enhance our capacities to respond to old and new challenges. The article starts with a short presentation of the career of the concept and discussion of the various impasses and conceptual tensions connected with the notion of human dignity. It is followed by an exploration of how the idea of human dignity has become one of the main achievements of modern times. The question of how respect for human dignity has turned out to be the fundamental feature of democratic society is addressed with help from both Waldron’s perspective on human dignity as the ground of human rights and Habermas’s approach that stresses the moral content of human rights. The final part of the article examines the value of the notion of dignity for social theorizing by looking at ways the employment of the concept may contribute to sociological thought and enquiry. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The paper critically evaluates the thesis of the interchangeability between the think-tank public intellectual and the academic public intellectual. It suggests that this thesis, while endorsing the rise of the think-tank public intellectual, pronounces the salience of the intellectual-social critic and undermines the authority of academic public intellectuals. It is argued that the think-tank expert doubling as the public intellectuals could limit the political relevance of the academic public intellectual and that the think-tank expert's monopolization of the public forum could present a threat to the quality of public debates. While recognizing that there are many contradictions inherent in the role of intellectual and that there are now numerous factors that hinder the abilities of academics to act as public intellectuals, the paper emphasizes public academic intellectuals' contribution to the dynamics of public opinion and the quality of democratic standards. In today's context, with the omnipresent of media, the new conditions of knowledge production, the neo-liberal ethos and the social prominence of think-tank experts, the sources of the academic public intellectual authority are in a continuous need for reinvestment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper offers a conceptual analysis of the relationship between trust and vulnerability. It argues that sorting out the meaning of both terms and developing further our understanding how they are connected are one of the important tasks of the social science. Trust is usually defined as confidence that partners will not exploit each others' vulnerability. While stressing that vulnerability cannot be conceived as a single continuum, the paper views vulnerability as irreducibly plural and rooted in the human condition of dependence on others, in the unpredictability of action and in the irreversibility of human experiences. There are three trust-related mechanisms that lower these types of vulnerability, yet trust is not only a remedy for vulnerability, but trust itself is vulnerable to the universal condition of our humanity. The first type of vulnerability can be reduced by responsibility; the second type by promising; and the third by forgiveness. The paper's conceptual discussion bridges theories of trust based on rational choice and those based on normative routines and stresses the interdependence between trust and vulnerability: trust is a remedy for vulnerability, but trust itself is vulnerable to the universal condition of our humanity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that attempts to conceptualize the memory boom in amnesic societies have resulted in a clash between two theoretical stands: the approach which stresses the significance of remembering and the perspective which insists on the value of forgetting. It asserts that neither the value of memory nor the value of forgetting can be taken for granted and argues that any search for possible resolutions to the dialectical relationship between remembering and forgetting should be taken in the interest of cultivating a relationship with the past that enhances societal well-being in the present. Such reasoning leads us to judge the value of cosmopolitan memory in terms of its capacity to shape post-nationalist solidaristic political communities. The acceptance of the need to judge the act of putting the past in the service of the present requires us to question the contrasting projects of cosmopolitan citizenship: one claiming that remembering is vital for sustaining plurality and diversity of a global citizenship, and the other that stresses the importance of forgetting for the emergence of the politics of a global citizenship. After presenting contrasting views on the importance of memory for the development of cosmopolitan citizenship, the article searches for an approach to memory which is better suited to projects that aim to ensure post-nationalistic solidarity and human rights while protecting cultural rights, minority rights and personal identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of the paper is to present unusual achievements of three women sociologists who won the Nobel Peace Prize. Its goal is also to contribute to a long standing discussion of the role sociologists as public intellectuals. By focusing on Addams, Balch and Myrdal’s scholarly and public life, the paper demonstrates what social scientists can offer in the role of public intellectuals and debates what are the source of intellectuals’ public standing. The paper concludes by arguing that these three intellectuals’ successful achievement of their goals was possible because of their professional credential and because of their courage to take on risky actions for purposes to institutionalise social or cultural change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reconstructs and evaluates prevalent assumptions in the literature about links between collective memory and democracy. There are widespread assertions that memory is important for democratic community to achieve its potential, avoid dangers of past crimes, and secure its continuation. These assertions assume collective memory as a condition for freedom, justice, and the stability of democratic order This article considers these assumptions with equally popular counterpropositions, arguing that memory presents a threat to democratic community because it can undermine cohesion, increase the costs of cooperation, and cause moral damage to civil society by conflating political and ethnic or cultural boundaries. The relationship between memory and democracy is discussed, along with the intermediate notions of identity, trauma, and ritual. The article concludes that what matters for democracy's health is not social remembering per se but the way in which the past is called up and made present. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that today's search for identity, in the context of the rise of a new spirituality and the decline of authoritative memories, facilitates the forging of a new connection between soul and memory and enhances the importance of traumatic memories. Consequently, we witness the sacralization of memory which in unsettled times, when memories tend to become fixed and frozen, can undermine intergroup cooperation. The article asserts that an ethical burden, prompted by viewing memory as the surrogate of the soul and the overrating of the importance of the politics of identity, can result in the displacement of public concerns with private ones. It stresses a need to rethink what kind of memory is compatible with a just, pluralist and cohesive democratic system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper argues that although Durkheim did not explicitly employ the notion of collective memory, his approach offers a very insightful understanding of the need for historical continuity. Durkheim's belief that every society displays and requires a sense of continuity with the past and that the past confers identity on individuals and groups allows us to see collective memory as one of the elementary forms of social life. The paper presents Durkheim's discussion of commemorative rituals in early societies, where he directly addresses the notion of social memory, which is seen as perpetuated by religious rites and as a means of ensuring shared morality and social cohesion. His conceptualization of the role of law and memory in sustaining organic solidarity is also considered. In conclusion it is discussed whether Durkheim's understanding of social memory provides us with relevant means to interpret social processes of remembering in today's societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines changes in memory narratives in modern societies and the implications of new types of media for the production of memories in the global culture. The article also analyses the contribution of television to the construction of memory narratives -- as sources of social identity, and the new media-generated `instant identities'. It is argued that the decline of the nation state, and the development of new means of communication, is changing our sense of reality - where the traditional role of the media is shifting to become a provider of `instant identities'. The article suggests that both technological change and the issue of institutional trust are essential to our understanding of how the media make narratives of memory and identity into dominant and meaningful representations of reality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Investigates the impact of globalization on the society in Australia. Visibility of women on public life; Expansion of social and economic citizenship; Emergence of social participation in governance.

The article asserts that Goffman's concept of normality comes close to the notion of trust as a protective mechanism that prevents chaos and disorder by providing us with feelings of safety, certainty, and familiarity. Arguing that to account for the tendency of social order to be seen as normal we need to conceptualize trust as the routine background of everyday interaction, the article analyzes Goffman's concepts of normal appearances, stigma, and frames as devices for endowing social order with predictability, reliability, and legibility. For Goffman, normality is a collective achievement, which is possible because of the orderliness of interactional activities, which is—in turn—predicated “on a large base of shared cognitive presuppositions, if not normative ones, and self-sustained restraints” (Goffman 1983, American Sociological Review 48:1–53, p. 5 cited here). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Change in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union presents a whole new set of sociological problems, requiring a revision of old theories of large-scale institutional change. My aim in this paper is to delineate patterns and gaps to be found in sociological theories dealing with change in Soviet-type societies. After a short review of the explanatory claims of totalitarian, modernisation, civil society and institutional perspectives, I propose an analysis of such change in terms of the strategic conduct of the main agents (the state-party and society) within its institutional context. The collapse of communism is seen as a result of the evolution of the system caused by the lack of institutional arrangements which could set limits to the party-state's arbitrary rule, and -- by the same token -- could create conditions for economic efficiency and encourage the emergence of interests other than those directly serving the centre. This can be seen as a spiral process of change in which the system was long losing its internal consistency and gradually exhausting itself. This process consisted of two mutually reinforcing trends: first, changes in the relationship between political centre and society, resulting in the declining ability of the party-state to act effectively as the agent of society; secondly, the growing heterogeneity and internationalisation of society, leading to the growing incompatibility of central planning with the informational and motivational requirements of a modern economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with the sociological theories that developed in Poland during the height of societal expectations for better life and a brighter future. However, the decade of 1970-80 already contained seeds of crisis. The mainstream sociological theories that are analysed here neglected many of the alarming features of the socialist society already to be seen. Instead, the proponents of those theories actively supported the political enterprise of the existing power elite. As a result, those major sociological theories have little explanatory utility, since they are not an adequate tool of cognition for the actual existing socialist society. The non-mainstream approaches, on the other hand, although being far more critical, did not bear features of sociological theory either. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the image of barriers to development and change of socialist society, as seen by Polish sociologists. The question of planning and directing social development is of crucial meaning for socialist ideology. Therefore revealing how the ideal type of socialist society confronts both the reality of social pressures and of political restraints illuminates the state of the theory of socialist society. Three types of theories are examined here: general (Marxist) social theory; social structure theory and theory of social systems. The reasons for which the issue of socialist development does not hold independent epistemological status are then analysed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses various reports published within the issue, including one on the opposition between the political left and right, another on the extent to which neutrality and engagement permeates the professional practice of social scientists who aim to make a public impact, and a report on dividing lines between public intellectuals.