Opportunitätsstrukturen und Lebenschancen

The article discusses the development, meaning and theoretical context of both Robert Merton’s concept of “opportunity structure” and the concept of “life-chances” that he took up from Max Weber. In order to analyze crucial social conflicts, I argue that both concepts should follow along the lines of conflict theory. While they converge in terms of meaning, we need different theoretical strategies to make their analytical and explanatory power explicit. First, a reinterpretation of the concept of opportunity structure shows that social actors might reduce others’ access to options while realizing their own aims; second, life-chances should be put again in a Weberian perspective for two reasons. On the one hand Weber already conceptualizes them in the context of social struggles, on the other hand he shows that the mechanism of social closure helps to understand how people exclude others from life-chances by monopolizing resources.     

Normes,débat et délibération dans la démocratie parlementaire : Max Weber et Jürgen Habermas

ABSTRACT

This article analyzes the significance of the norm in the conceptions of Max Weber, sociologist and author of the classical work Economy and Society, and of Jürgen Habermas, philosopher and sociologist of the Frankfurt School. Both authors have in fact dedicated specific studies to the sociology of right and have conferred a central function on the norms in order to guarantee a correct functioning of parliamentary democracy. For Weber and Habermas, the norm exists in a constitutive tension between facticity and normativity, i.e. between its factual influence on society and its theoretical legitimacy. Weber distinguishes between the juridicial and the sociological meaning of the norm, which is respectively related to its normative value and to its effects on society. For Habermas, the norm is adhered to, but it also has to be legitimized, and this can only be reached as a consequence of a democratic debate that produces consensus. In the political sphere, Weber and Habermas stress the importance of an interaction between legality and political discussion, democratic procedures and their process of institutionalization, thus emphasizing the necessity of guaranteeing a political debate subject to rules. Nevertheless, their ideas of democracy partially differ. Weber conceives of a democracy based on a majority, whereas Habermas stresses the necessity of reaching an agreement. This article analyzes the different models of democracy articulated by Weber and Habermas, their significance, and the possibility of integration between them.     

Glaubwürdigkeit als religiöses Vermögen

On the basis of quantitative data from household surveys in three Bosnian-Herzegovinian cities, I construct a revised model of the religious field according to Weber’s, Yinger’s and especially Bourdieu’s theories of religion, in order to analyze various religious organizations sociotopologically according to the criteria of credibility (Glaubwürdigkeit) and complexity (Organisiertheit). The purpose of the model is to determine religious power structures within a given regional context—especially in post-conflict situations, transitional states, and under conditions of precarious governance in general—taxonomically, and to provide grounds for in-depth qualitative research.     

Der andere „amerikanische“ Max Weber: Hans H. Gerths und C. Wright Mills’ <Emphasis Type="Italic">From Max Weber</Emphasis>, dessen deutsche Rezeption und das Konzept der „public sociology“

The reader From Max Weber, published by Hans H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills in 1946, has a strong international impact. Its ideas influenced Mills?s later work The sociological imagination in which he makes it clear that the “sociological imagination” can best be found in the works of classical social analysts like Max Weber. Michael Burawoy, who uses the term “public sociology”, based on Mills, therefore also calls Weber an early “public sociologist”. In addition to that he describes the volume by Gerth and Mills as the outstanding collection of Weber?s writings in which the authors offer an interpretation different from that of Talcott Parsons. In Germany Gerth?s and Mills?s book on Weber is almost completely unknown, although it is still mentioned in works by German sociologists published shortly after the Second World War. This is one reason why in Germany Burawoy?s concept of “public sociology” is seen in contrast to the views of Weber. First, the article shows the differences in the interpretation of Weber by Gerth and Mills and by Parsons. Than it describes the early German reception of From Max Weber and looks into the reasons why it was not of greater influence. It will be stressed that the importance of this book lies in the fact, that it can be used to legitimize “public sociology”.     

“遏制战略之父”乔治·凯南的中国观

乔治·凯南是美国冷战初期"遏制战略"的缔造者和苏联问题专家,曾对美国外交决策产生重要影响,特别是在他担任国务院政策规划室主任期间。但是,由于对中国社会和历史缺乏全面而深入的了解,凯南眼中的中国虽然历史悠久、文化灿烂,却是一个"自大排外""自私冷酷"又"不讲原则"的古老民族。这种负面的中国印象直接影响了乔治·凯南对中美苏三国关系的定位以及冷战时期美国外交政策。乔治·凯南的文化教育背景、好友小约翰·戴维斯的影响及其信奉的现实主义政治理论是影响他的中国观的主要因素。     

Religion und Wirtschaft. Mauss, Simiand und das Durkheim’sche Programm

The text points out that, with regard to the sociology of economy, Emile Durkheim’s work encompasses two research programs. The focus of the first program lies in the critique of economic categories as well as the institutions that function according to the market system. The second program, initially developed in The Elementary Forms of Religious Life, argues that there is a relation between religion and economy. While the former perspective is being developed by the Durkheim-follower François Simiand (and Maurice Halbwachs) the latter is enhanced by his student Marcel Mauss. In the course of the 1930s both perspectives converge in the works on the gift and on money. Finally the text formulates the hypothesis that Durkheim’s perspective can be used in order to update Max Weber’s question concerning the relation between the religious ethic and the modern economic world.     

韩国国会政治中诱发肢体冲突现象的因素初探

肢体冲突是议会内处于劣势的少数党为表达抗议、进行自我防御的一种议事途径和手段。其最终目的是要通过议事妨害、拖延,达到阻止争议法案顺利通过的目的。研究表明,多数党的＂规则强权＂与少数党的＂自我保护、自我救济＂之间的对抗是引发肢体冲突的根本原因;而少数党以肢体冲突作为首选斗争方式,则根源于韩国国会制度中威权主义权力的运行惯例,以及议事规则中缺乏对少数党权利保障而形成的多数党与少数党严重的政治不平衡局面;从深层结构看,肢体冲突还与国会内部、政党内部的社会资本状况不足有着内在的联系。     

Propheten der Finanzmärkte

Financial markets are marked by considerable uncertainty. Actors in financial markets are nevertheless constantly forced to make decisions. This article pursues the question of how they cope with this problem of decision-making. Based on a critical discussion of the concept of ?expectations of expectations“, Max Weber’s concept of charisma is introduced to gain a better understanding of the influence of ?stock market prophets“ on investment decisions and to explain such influence as a social process.     

Arenen des demokratischen Experimentalismus. Zur Konvergenz von nordamerikanischem und französischem Pragmatismus

In their works on The public and its problems and Politics of nature John Dewey and Bruno Latour develop theoretical models of a democratic experimentalism. Taking their assumptions as a base, this paper examines the thesis of a convergence of North American and French pragmatism. This thesis is supported not only by further analogies in the works of Dewey and Latour, but also by the pragmatic sociology of justification upheld by Luc Boltanski and Laurent Thévenot, which can be on the one hand integrated into the frame-work of Latour’s theory on democratic experimentalism. On the other hand, comparisons can readily be drawn to the pragmatic theory of social worlds and arenas of Anselm L. Strauss. The theories differ in respect to their expectations as to whether, where and how social arenas are formed, once different social worlds and conventions come into critical conflict with each other and need to be rearranged by experimental processes. However, any remaining disparity in the assumptions regarding such arena figurations of democratic experimentalism could definitely have a stimulating effect on their empirical cartography and analysis.     

International Relations Scholars in Germany: Young,Internationalised, and Non-Paradigmatic

This article describes the German International Relations (IR) community and their research and writing preferences based on data from the 2014 Teaching, Research, and International Policy (TRIP) faculty survey. Germany has a relatively young IR community with a relatively large share of women, however, this changes once scholars reach tenured professorships. We found that German IR scholars are, on average, more oriented towards IR theory and the study of international organisation(s) than other national IR communities. The overall picture is one of paradigmatic as well as theoretical pluralism and a rejection of ontological warfare, despite there being more IR scholars in Germany than anywhere else in the world self-identifying as social constructivists. Their methodological orientations are overwhelmingly qualitative – again above average as compared to other IR communities in the world. At the same time, German respondents identified methodology and epistemology as two of the main factors causing division among IR scholars today. Moreover, German IR scholars are almost completely internationalised with a strong leaning toward the Anglo-American core of the discipline. Various ‘beauty contests’ reveal a still vividly accurate image of IR as an ‘American social science’.     

Community-Kirchen im Wandel

The first section of this article describes a hiatus dominating present-day research on immigrants’ religious associations: On the one hand, the theoretical debates among sociologists of religion are more or less based on the analysis of Western Christianity. On the other hand, empirical researchers focus predominantly on the associations of Muslim and Asian immigrants. On this basis, the author presents a heuristic model that adds the distinction between immigration society and immigrants’ community to the classical sect-church typology. Following this line of thought, the article highlights the concept of community-churches, referring to Max Weber’s ideal type of the ?church“ as well as Friedrich Heckmann’s idea of the ?community“. Starting with the 1950s, the development of Christian immigrants’ associations appears to be dominated by groups close to the community-church type. Since the mid-1990s, these associations are developing in different directions: First, new types of religious institutions are developing among the immigrants. Second, the religious groups are linking themselves more and more to the immigration society.     

Proliferation of neopatrimonial domination in Turkey

ABSTRACT

Literature on Turkey’s post-2011 authoritarian turn – especially after the eruption of the 2013 nationwide Gezi Protests – adopts modern concepts such as ‘dictatorship’, ‘authoritarianism’, ‘totalitarianism’, ‘one-party government’, ‘party-state fusion’, and even ‘fascism’ mainly in order to pin down the nature of the Justice and Development Party (AKP, Turkish acronym) or depict the current character of Turkey’s regime. Through engaging the pre-modern concept of neopatrimonialism, which is derived from Max Weber’s concept of patrimonialism, this paper argues that Turkey’s encounter with authoritarianism is deeply associated with the proliferation of neopatrimonial domination, into which the legacy of patronage politics, fracture of security power, and the metastasis of crony capitalism have been conflated. This article argues that neopatrimonial features have always, to a degree, marked state-society relations in Turkey. Furthermore, this article suggests neopatrimonial characteristics started to dominate Turkey’s modern legal structure under the AKP, which led to a state crisis culminating in the 2016 attempted coup. However, despite the fact that neopatrimonialism cannot be argued as a pathological deviation from modern-legal domination, this paper concludes that tension exists between the crony capitalism-based economic model of neopatrimonalism and Turkey’s decades-long market-based capitalism.     

El papel de la unasur ante los conflictos internacionales: dos estudios de caso

The Union of South American Nations, unasur, has, since its beginnings, stood out as an effective player in international conflict resolution and mediation. In order to achieve said resolution and mediation, this multilateral organization has appealed to different political configurations which allow for a channeling of conflicts which do not conform to institutional patterns and traditional resolutions. Despite its preference for alternate forms of resolution, presidential summits have worked as its main resource in the search for innovative solutions that are respectful of South American countries’ democratic and constitutional order. This article specifically analyzes two cases of profound institutional problems: the failed coup d’état in Ecuador (which occurred on the 30^th of September 2010) and the overthrow of Paraguayan president Fernando Lugo in June 2012. After studying these two extreme cases, and their political reverberations, a comprehensive view is laid out regarding unasur’s successes and failures as a player in international conflict resolutions.     

Intersektionalit?t als Beitrag zu einer gesellschaftstheoretisch informierten Ungleichheitsforschung

The following article argues that an in depth analysis of different living conditions requires a theoretical and empirical perspective which does not only take into account class but also other categories of social inequality such as gender, race and body. Departing from the idea that these categories are mutually intertwined, the article suggests an intersectional multi-layered approach which allows to examine reciprocal effects between class, gender, race and body on three different levels: the level of social structures, the level of identity construction and the level of symbolic representation. Considering the theoretical relationship between the analysis of class and social inequality, the article also intends to understand and explain how these different levels of analysis are interrelated, how the linkage between social categories and levels of social reality have to be methodologically reflected and how they can be made accessible in and through empirical research.     

Die Wiederherstellung des Marktsubjekts

The UK is generally considered a laboratory for styles of governance influenced by New Public Management: outsourcing, internal markets, targets, auditing. The shifts in governance style, and the new instruments that have accompanied them, were once synonymous with “Thatcherism” but have since been adopted and refined by New Labour. Early critical social scientific analyses deployed the Gramscian notion of hegemony to analyse this shift. This was followed by Foucault inspired analyses of “governmentality”. The latter focused more explicitly on the micro-level of conduct. This article follows that lead, but seeks to address the central puzzles thrown up by this experiment through Max Weber’s conception of a “bureaucratic revolution” and Karl Polanyi’s analysis of the constitution of a “market subject” via a “double movement”: a simultaneous loosening and tightening of control. The Weber-Polanyi approach allows us, we argue, to make the link more explicit between micro-level changes in the “conduct of life” (Lebensführung) and the meso-level instruments designed to bring about such a re-orientation of conduct. The article makes the case with reference to empirical material from a number of public services, notably education and health. Overall, the decisive factor is not a weakening of the state, but a change in its capacities and instruments.     

Crown and parliament in Prussia 1848–1866∗

Summary

Max Weber and the Problem of Parliamentarism in Germany at the End of the First World War

At the end of the First World War Weber was concerned with the problem of the establishment of a new political system in Germany. For a short time he took part in the activities of the newly formed German Democratic Party, and he collaborated in the drawing up of the first constitutional proposal. His theoretical contribution is mainly to be found in his essay, ‘Deutschlands künftige Staatsform’.

First of all, Weber insisted on the importance of parliamentary institutions, because they promote the selection of qualified political leaders and they keep the bureaucracy under control. He also supported the theory of the separation of powers which ensures reciprocal controls on every side. He defended the right of enquiry and respect for minorities. He proposed a bicameral system, each chamber with different powers, and attached much importance to the role of the State President.

In the first constitutional project, Weber's views were taken very much into account, but their influence on the final drafting of the Weimar Constitution was much more limited.     

军队从政坛的退出与韩国社会转型:基于自然政府的视角

文章利用诺斯等人发展起来的基于自然政府的精英主义理论框架,重点讨论了对军队的政治控制与韩国从有限准入向开放准入社会转型之间的关系。分析表明,从20世纪60年代初开始,一批围绕朴正熙和全斗焕的军事精英通过建立一个包括军队官员、政党政治家、高级政府官员和资本家阶层在内的统治联盟,从整体上控制国家和社会,从而重建了韩国的有限准入社会秩序。然而这个相对稳定的社会秩序不是一成不变的,随着经济的快速发展和相应的社会结构的变化,社会反对势力尤其是中产阶级和工人阶层不断成长,军人执政联盟最终自掘坟墓,被迫于20世纪80年代末从政坛退出并将其归还给市民社会。沿着这一主题,文章分析了韩国对军队的政治控制过程及竞争性政治和经济市场的出现,指出两种市场的建立标志着韩国社会转型的完成。     

Dangerous othering in Meg Vandermerwe’s Zebra crossing: Ubuntu – ideals and realities of the 2010 FIFA World Cup

This article explores the process of ‘othering’ in Meg Vandermerwe’s 2013 novel Zebra crossing. Othering is defined as a discursive practice in which one social group defines another in an inferior way. The novel is narrated by Zimbabwean-born albino, Chipo, who crosses the border into South Africa shortly before the start of the 2010 FIFA World Cup. Far from finding the better life she had hoped for there, Chipo is instead met with prejudice and disdain from locals. Through her portrayal of Chipo’s life as an illegal immigrant in Cape Town, Vandermerwe shows that while apartheid is over, social division and inter-group conflict are not. All the while juxtaposing this reality against the backdrop of the World Cup and the ubuntu ideals it championed but failed to deliver, Vandermerwe exposes how wide the gap is between theory and practice, ideology and lived reality. Highlighting the power of discursive practices like othering to produce real and violent consequences, Vandermerwe warns that if we do not truly embrace the values of forgiveness, compassion and acceptance, we face a dark future in which a cycle of conflict and injustice is repeated instead of being broken.     

Dualistic Identity, Memory-encoded Norms, and State Emotion: A Social Constructivist Account of Chinese Foreign Relations

By tracing the origin and evolution of Chinese nationalism, this paper finds that the dialectical relationship between the Chinese “self” and the foreign “other” has provided the cultural-institutional context for the construction of its national identity. The positional change of the Chinese actor in the self-other interaction—resulting from the institutional shift from the tianxia order to the Westphalian system—and the consequent national humiliation have been embedded in the Chinese collective memory and given rise to the consensual norms ingrained in the national identity. Viewed through the lens of political sociology and identity politics, China’s tenacious struggle for national rejuvenation can be construed as a social practice guided by these memory-encoded social norms. Due to the protracted and ambivalent nature of the state’s purposive action in attaining great-power status on the international stage, the confidence of the resurgent state is compromised by an acute sense of frustration. This identity predicament has engendered a peculiar Chinese state emotion, which has profoundly influenced the in-group members’ evaluation and perception of out-group entities and their behavior in the antagonistic intergroup relations.