There is a notorious typology of ‘conceptions of nationhood’, which opposes ‘ethnocultural’ conceptions to political or ‘civic’ conceptions of nationhood. Analytically, the typology is unsatisfactory, as are its normative and explanatory applications. A more multidimensional analysis of elements of national identity is proposed, which clarifies some possible meanings of ‘ethnic’, ‘cultural’ and ‘political’ in this context. These considerations are then applied to the case of German national identity.

After World War II, Israel and Germany adopted curiously similar policies of ethnic immigration, accepting as immigrants only putative co-ethnics. The objective of this article is to account for the main variation between the two cases, the resilience of Jewish immigration in Israel, and the demise of ethnic-German immigration in Germany. The very fact of divergent outcomes casts doubt on conventional accounts of ethnic immigration, which see the latter as deriving from an ethnic (as against civic) definition of nationhood. We point instead to the possibility of ‘liberal’ and ‘restrictive’ contention surrounding ethnic immigration, and argue that for historical and geopolitical reasons the political space for such contention has been more constricted in Israel than in Germany.

This paper offers a critical analysis of ‘groupism’ and suggests alternative ways of conceptualizing ethnicity without invoking the imagery of bounded groups. Alternative conceptual strategies focus on practical categories, cultural idioms, cognitive schemas, discursive frames, organizational routines, institutional forms, political projects, and contingent events. The conceptual critique has implications for the ways in which researchers, journalists, policymakers and NGOs address ‘ethnic conflict’ and ‘ethnic violence’. The paper concludes with an analysis of an empirical case from Eastern Europe.

Child poverty rates exceed those of elderly people in almost all Western nations. Moreover, it can be expected that the presently young generation (and yet unborn) will (far) less benefit from the welfare state than the elderly generation does and will continue to do. These inequalities between age groups and intergenerational inequities are, to a large extent, the result of the increasing numerical weight of elderly voters among the electorate to which political parties and governments respond. Giving voting rights to minor children, albeit vicariously exercised by parents, is one, repeatedly proposed approach to strengthening pro-family politics against the threat of gerontocratic politics (recently: Ringen 1997; van Parijs 1999). In the paper the pros and cons of this proposal are analyzed from two very different perspectives: (1) consequentialist arguments, i.e. those related to the desired/feared effects of enfranchising children on welfare state policy, intergenerational relations etc.; (2) deontological arguments, i.e. reasons whether or not an extension of voting rights ought to materialize.

The article purports to describe and explain the emergence and development of postmodernism as a multi-faceted cultural movement. Data on numbers of publications are presented to show the expansion of postmodernism and shifts in relative attention to various topics. The explanation focuses on processes in three interconnected cultural fields—the artistic, the intellectual and the academic—, which were influenced by wider social transformations.

For much of his life Weber favored the rational activity of the ascetic in contrast to the irrational passivity of the mystic. However, Weber developed a growing interest in mysticism both in the East and the West. Johannes Tauler and his teacher Meister Eckhart offered Weber glimpses of the western mystic's beliefs. Perhaps in Weber's last years, religion and mysticism moved from being merely intellectual interests to something more significant and personal.

This article explores the Durkheimian engagement with the sacred as intricately enmeshed in a personal search for meaning in intellectual labor. By situating the intellectual work of Durkheim, Mauss, Hubert and Hertz in their personal quests for the sacred, we uncover two kinds of Durkheimian thought on the sacred and two ‘species’ of Durkheimian intellectual. Weber's categories of religious experience, the mystic and the ascetic, frame this rethinking of the meaning of Durkheimian theory.

This essay relates the normative discussion about social justice in political philosophy to empirical results from social policy analysis, thus linking two lines of discussions that have hitherto run mostly separately. The argument will be developed by answering four questions. The normative question: what regulative ideas of social justice does the debate about justice in political philosophy supply? The action-theoretical question: what criteria for judgement and political preferences can be found for a justice-oriented politics? The empirical question: how can the ‘three worlds of welfare capitalism’ be judged in the light of these hierarchically ordered criteria of justice? And finally the institutional question: which logic should underpin a reform of the welfare state, if this reform is to be both socially just and at the same time realistically achievable.

The study purports to show how a bias, known as methodological nationalism, has weighed down research and investigation on migration until recently. Relying on the contribution of work on transnational communities, the authors propose a programmatic conclusion.

The historical and contemporary development of certain informal and formal articulations of Muslim social and political identities and forms of association in Muslim-majority and Arab societies has facilitated the emergence of a public sphere and limited the coercive power of state authority. This article suggests how a greater focus on religious ideas and forms of association can enhance the concept of the public sphere so that it better accounts for developments in these societies and in European societies themselves.

The author discusses the discourse-theory of the so-called ‘Cambridge School’ (Quentin Skinner, John Pocock), which is favorably compared to alternative approaches in the field of the intellectual history of political thought. Some conceptual problems of this kind of discoursetheory are discussed and some remedies proposed, resulting in the formulation of a general model, which could be applied to contemporary debates, exemplified by a short analysis of the discursive situation of modern liberalism.

Sociologists have shown little interest in friendship. The rather fragmentary empirical work which does exist on friendship in modern society paradoxically tends to confirm the impression that the subject is of marginal importance; for friendship emerges from much research as a relationship which provides emotional support and small services but little else. Admittedly, there is also evidence indicating links with more classical sociological themes—such as access to jobs. But this evidence is often seen as representing ‘exceptional’ circumstances. Thus, among an immigrant group, friendship ties may be seen as particular to the culture from which immigrants come; among an elite group, the importance of friendship ties may be seen as peculiar to that elite circle. We can talk of a genuine ‘paradigm’ of modern society as being based on relatively impersonal relations. The paper maintains that if friendship is approached differently, it emerges as of more central and ‘structural’ interest. What is required is a shift on both theoretical and methodological levels. Sociology needs to shift its theoretical perspective and recognize that people articulate their values, enact their strategies, develop their language in face-to-face groups, not as isolated individuals. In terms of empirical research, what is needed are methods capable of tracing these groupings. This is difficult at present because most sociological methods rely heavily on data collected on individuals and their attributes.

Eve's polemic on the relatively insignificant contribution of sociological studies of friendship to the central concerns of the discipline has some force. However, he weakens his case in three main ways. Firstly, his over-reliance on Giddens to demonstrate the contrast in the importance of personalistic relations between ‘traditional’ and ‘late-modern’ societies. See for example Allan Silver. Secondly, Eve's contention that there is an over-reliance on dyadic relationships in the study of friendship is becoming outdated, as demonstrated in the major ESRC project ‘Rethinking Friendship’. Thirdly, Eve underestimates the importance of analyses of friendship in contemporary sociological studies of stratification and power. For example, the so-called velvet revolution of 1989 in Eastern Europe were fuelled by the friend-based organisation of radically dissident intellectuals.

In a series of articles, A. Pizzorno has critically reviewed rational choice theory and developed an alternative to it. In certain academic environments, his work has become a clear referent of the sociological reaction against that paradigm. In this paper, we review and offer a critique of Pizzorno's contribution. Firstly, we reconstruct what we think to be the theoretical core of his position, as based on three main concepts: multiple identity, individuals as ‘strings of selves’ and ‘circles of recognition’ as mechanisms reducing identitary uncertainty. Secondly, we criticise this core as lacking philosophical rigour and as being underdeveloped. Thirdly, we analyse Pizzorno's theory as an alternative to the rational choice paradigm. Here we argue that social scientists – and Pizzorno is no exception – often make a double mistake when they oppose methodological individualism and rational choice models.

Both of these books can be highly recommended, but for different reasons. Christopher Hann's edited collection will help to raise the profile of the social anthropological approach in post-communist studies, and our awareness of attitudes ‘on the ground’, especially in rural communities. The methodologies of the Emigh and Szelényi collection will be more familiar to most readers, but the book contains valuable new data and some welcome problematising of concepts such as poverty and underclass.

Two ambitious books providing a socio-economic overview are analysed: Le nouvel esprit du capitalisme by Luc Boltanski and Ève Chiapello, and Le nouvel ordre économique mondial by Élie Cohen. Based on scientifically solid documentation, these works contain an ideological element and do not shy away from prophecy. As such, they form part of an approach that is not quite scientific and that, nevertheless, rightly has a place in sociology.

The relatively rare defences of politicians, responding to commonplace denounciations, form a neglected genre of political theorizing. Max Weber's famous ‘Politik als Beruf’ (1919) serves here as a point of departure for the analysis of the examples of Louis Barthou, F.C. Oliver, J.D.B. Miller and Jean-Paul Sartre. The rehabilitation signifies a conceptual change through rhetorical redescription, as suggested by Quentin Skinner.