BEYOND POLITICS AND POSITIONS: A CALL FOR COLLABORATION BETWEEN FAMILY COURT AND DOMESTIC VIOLENCE PROFESSIONALS

The domestic violence advocacy and family court communities have each grown dramatically over the last three decades. Although these professional communities share many values in common, they often find themselves at odds with one another on a host of issues. This article examines the practical, political, definitional, and ideological differences between the two communities and calls for them to join forces and collaborate on behalf of children and families.     

Peter Berger and the Comedic Drama of Political,Economic and Social Life

Peter L. Berger’s work offers his readers a window into the human drama in all its dimension: political, economic and social. He invites his readers to think intensely, endlessly, and shamelessly about the doings of man. Through a comparative analysis of Invitation to Sociology this paper discusses Berger’s contributions to the sciences of man in terms of methodological individualism, the theory of unintended consequences, spontaneous sociability, institutional analysis, and freedom. In so doing, I hope to show that Berger’s work demonstrates the intellectual power of spontaneous order analysis and the link between the humanistic project in sociology and our understanding of the human condition in general and the freedom of the individual in society in particular.     

Contesting Europe: Strategies and Legacies in Polish Political Competition

This essay explores positions on European integration in the campaigns of a number of mainstream Polish political parties in recent elections. It shows how contestations of the European Union have, to some extent, been driven by strategic considerations related to inter-party competition. In Poland's fluid party landscape, political actors have sometimes relied on Euroscepticism to create seemingly clear lines of division between themselves and their political competitors. Yet these Eurosceptic views interact with, and are therefore also constrained by, certain legacies: ideas on the relationship between Europe and Poland that are already part of the cultural context.