An Alternative Sociological Perspective on Economic Value: Price Formation as a Social Process

This paper identifies some deficiencies in the theory of value as found in traditional economics, specifically the fallacy of absolute value and its spurious resolution that treats prices as a priori parameters rather than as variables to be explained. One is a fallacy of omission, the other of commission, which together comprise the epistemological paradox of the modern neoclassical theory of value. This paper advances a different, sociological approach to economic value or market prices as a possible corrective to this paradox. Such an approach has origins in sociological economics or economic sociology, the main premise of which is that social influences in the economy affect the formation of value or price. This paper therefore explores the seldom examined social underpinnings of price formation and of market processes generally.     

Islands and Undesirables: Introduction to the Special Issue on Irregular Migration in Southern European Islands

This introduction presents the challenges to studying irregular migration in the southern European islands. After presenting the debates surrounding the category of irregular migration and recent developments in irregular migration to southern European islands, we argue that the situation of islands needs to be contextualized within the broader scheme of Euro-Mediterranean irregular migration. We then propose considering islands as remarkable “places of condensation” in the Euro-Mediterranean migratory setting. The article introduces two themes that will be developed throughout the special issue: (1) analyzing and challenging narratives of islandness and (2) policing and bordering the islands.     

Consumerism as a Civilizing Process: Israel and Judaism in the Second Age of Modernity

Modern post-emancipatory Jews have long been associated with cosmopolitanism, mostly as a bad thing. They've been anathematized as rootless cosmopolitans so often that cosmopolitan, used as a noun, is in some circles an anti-Semitic code word. During the heroic moments of Zionism, as with other liberation movements, this cosmopolitan strand of Judaism was de-emphasized in favor of conceptions that emphasized separateness and self-consciousness. There exists a side of Jewish identity that Zionism consciously suppressed, namely its urban, pleasure-loving, shopping-oriented cosmopolitanism. This exists also in social theory: Consumerism and modernism are joined at the hip because consumption is an indispensable part of the civilizing process. The process of consumption, of expressing our identity through tastes and possessions, changes the entire field of interaction. It makes possible new kinds of social identity. And it makes possible new forms of social integration, based on individuation and sympathy.