Seventy-five to eighty per cent of the ruling elites of the three main European nations (France, Great Britain and Germany) are drawn from the middle classes, and their social recruitment has hardly changed over the last 2j years. According to the author, Bourdieu's theory of class habitus and the role of cultural capital is thus strongly confirmed, refuting the common argument that the world of elites is opening up.

This article examines the well known practice in pre-colonial Africa of the pawning of humans. This practice, also found in Asia, should be distinguished from slavery, despite its similar characteristics. The author enumerates relevant principles and establishes concrete boundaries. A number of misunderstandings are thus elucidated and the concept is clearly explained.

Up until what point should liberal democracies allow free entry and free settlement for foreigners? Aside from the case of refugees and family reunion, there are two possible arguments for free access: the extension of individual liberty, and as a means of ensuring global redistribution. These arguments are insufficient and, in a counter-utopian reasoning, the author invokes the need for stability and the defence of national interests, which justify the use of 'differentiated' filters for immigrants.

Common fears about immigration have little basis, such as the fear of being displaced by alien labour or invaded by fundamentalist mobs. Others have some basis, such as those concerning illegal behaviour or the magnitude of inflows, at least in some countries. However the profile of our European democracies may, unless certain policies are pursued, be doomed to change for the worse, not because of these commonly feared dangers but in consequence of the increasing number of workers who do not enjoy basic political, civil and social rights.

Born in 1902, Karl R. Popper spent the first 33 years of his life in the city of Vienna, at that time the hot-house of Central- European culture and thought. He died in England. September 17, 1994. Unlike the empirical inductionists of the Vienna Circle, he preferred deductivist theorizing and the metaphysical realism (or objectivism) of the Boltzmann-Einstein School. Though he pleaded explicidy for a special method of ‘Verstehen’ in sociology, the reception of his methodology still takes place mainly with reference to the growth of knowledge in the natural sciences as reconstructed in The Logic of Scientific Discovery' (1959), neglecting his idea of ‘situational analysis’. Unlike the empirical inductionists of the Vienna Circle, he preferred deductivist theorizing and the metaphysical realism (or objectivism) of the Boltzmann- Einstein School.