A theoretical model is presented that aims to explain the generative mechanisms of educational stratification. The rational educational choice of the Ego is supposed to be influenced by the choices of others. The model explores various forms of direct and indirect interdependent choices between actors. In order to demonstrate the empirical consequences, use is made of an artificial society built upon a “multi agents” computational approach. The dynamic of this virtual society is proved to fit well with empirical French and Italian data from an absolute point of view (distribution of diplomas) as well as a relative one (educational opportunities).

Several anthropologists have recently linked diagnoses of the diffuse impact of the Christian religion on the history of their discipline to programmatic calls for a consolidation of the “anthropology of Christianity”. This review article suggests that complaints of long-term neglect of Christianity in the anthropological literature are exaggerated. The contributions of recent decades have reflected general epistemological trends and continued the Anglophone discipline's traditional bias towards the study of missionary encounters and syncretism in the colonies. Mainstream Christianity in its Eurasian homelands remains understudied, especially the many eastern variants, and this distortion vitiates some of the new theoretical agendas. Finally the article questions the utility of delimiting Christianity as a distinct subfield and suggests instead combining a problemfocused approach with a wider comparative range.

This paper considers the meaning conveyed by the term “dignity” in human rights discourse. It considers various ambiguities associated with the term (e.g. Does it describe the content or the ground of certain rights?) as well as alternative accounts of the kind of meaning that “dignity” has (descriptive or evaluative, technical or ordinary language). The second part of the paper argues that the distinctive contribution that “dignity” makes to human rights discourse is associated, paradoxically, with the idea of rank: once associated with hierarchical differentiations of rank and status, “dignity” now conveys the idea that all human persons belong to the same rank and that, that rank is a very high one indeed, in many ways as high as what were formerly regarded as ranks of nobility.

This article suggests that religion is better understood as a form of rule rather than as a domain of human life naturally distinct from politics and government. Through an examination of an association of Catholic priests active during the 1950s and 1960s, the article suggests that reconceiving religion in terms of authority and rule advances our understanding of the nature of religious power and that of religious discourse and institutions in particular.

There has been much discussion recently of “global civil society”. This concept evidently draws on the more familiar civil society concept as related to national societies. What are the consequences of extending the concept in this way? Is global civil society simply civil society writ large, an extension to the international plane of basically the same kinds of institutions and practices as are found in national societies? Or do we need new tools of description and analysis? This article considers various theories of global civil society, and the extent to which they map onto traditional concepts of civil society. It concludes that global civil society may express the same mixture of strengths and weaknesses as the parent concept of civil society, but with additional features of its own that may – somewhat surprisingly – make it more robust than the earlier concept from which it derives.

What makes testimony trustworthy? Based on fieldwork at a Holocaust museum, we argue that testimonies are trustworthy that because they make implicit and explicit truth claims. We argue that confidence is formed by interdependent institutions that vouch for these claims, as well as institutions that produce other cultural objects with comparable meaning, such as museums and films. These claims of truth exist in the testimony act in itself, as well as in explicit claims of truth made by the testifiers. Holocaust testimonies make explicit truth claims through assertions of institutionally legitimated information, personal experiences, and societal remembrance. After considering the creation of trust in testimony, we discuss how it can be generalized to the courtroom.

In “Laundering ‘money’: on the need for conceptual clarity within the sociology of money”, (Archives Européennes de Sociologie, XLVI, 3 (2005), pp. 387–411, Nigel Dodd tells us that recent work has added further complications to an existing “conceptual muddle” in the sociology of money, and advances a claim to have made matters clearer (Dodd 2005a). The “muddle” is identified in the work of Cohen (2004), Hart (2000), Zelizer (1994, 2000), and in my own book The Nature of Money (Ingham 2004). In the same year, Dodd advanced the same critique – at times verbatim, in Economy and Society (Dodd 2005b), where, subsequently, I responded to what I take to be the misunderstanding and misrepresentation of my work (Ingham 2006). Here, I will briefly reiterate these objections, focusing mainly on the uncertainty, ambiguity, and consequent incoherence, of Dodd's attempt to identify the specific nature of money. On the one hand, he asserts that “any attempt to build a coherent theoretical conception of money is bound to fail” (p. 387). But, on the other, Dodd also argues that that “greater conceptual clarity can be brought to bear” by making a distinction between the monetary medium and money's denomination (p. 406). Leaving aside for a moment the fact that such a distinction has been commonplace in monetary theory at least since Plato and Aristotle (see Schumpeter 1994 [1954]), Dodd appears to be unsure, on rather curious intellectual grounds, about the usefulness of his claim to have provided conceptual clarity.

This article investigates discourses on inheritance law and legal development in France, Germany, and the United States since the revolutions of the late eighteenth century. I argue that in each of the three countries a different set of normative and functional issues relating to the bequest of property has dominated and expressed itself in nationally specific discursive fields. The respective “repertoires of evaluation“ were formed in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries and show a surprisingly stable pattern that can be recognized even in today's debates on the issue. This I refer to as the longue durée of inheritance law. The distinct discursive fields exercise a dominant influence over the perception of problems associated with the transfer of property mortis causa and the strategies deemed feasible to solve them. Moreover, I argue that the different cultural frames matter for the institutional development of inheritance law. My aim is to contribute to institutional theory through investigation of a socially and economically important realm of legal regulation that has received little attention in recent sociological scholarship. The analysis is carried out within a multidimensional theoretical framework that acknowledges the influence of culture and ideas, but also considers changing socioeconomic conditions, as well as actor interests.

For over seventy years the sociology of professions has revolved around empirical generalizations drawn from four modern exemplars of nineteenth century Britain and United States: law and medicine, science and engineering. We identify qualities constitutive of professionalism in an occupation during the ancien regime, on the Continent, and in a field unrelated to the four just noted: seventeenth century French painting and sculpture. These constitutive qualities point to the significance of a distinctively structural and institutional approach to the sociology of professions.

In “Laundering ‘Money’: On the Need for Conceptual Clarity within the Sociology of Money”, I explored the conceptual ramifications of recent developments in the sociology of money. These developments corresponded to what appear to be two countervailing trends in the world of money: homogenisation and diversification. The second trend, particularly, raises important conceptual questions about how money should be defined, and I sought to address these through an analysis of the work of prominent monetary scholars such as Cohen, Hart, Ingham and Zelizer. My central aim was to bring greater clarity to a field – the sociology of money – lacking a commonly agreed definition of its core object of study, namely money. The article was motivated by an underlying sense that these scholars were talking past each other. One significant reason seemed to be that two terms that should be central to a meaningful engagement among leading sociologists of money – money and currency – were being used in different and incompatible ways. This was the “conceptual confusion” I referred to: not a confusion specific to any individual monetary scholar, but rather a confusion bound to arise from any comparison of their work. I aimed to propose a conceptual framework wherein their different analyses could be more usefully compared (2). Of these scholars, both Hart (3) and Zelizer have constructively responded to my proposals without, of course, agreeing with them all.

This essay analyzes the writings of the prominent sociologist S. N. Eisenstadt on Israeli society, since the late 1940s until today, in comparison with his explorations into General Sociological themes. SNE was the founder of contemporary Sociology of Israel, and for decades stood as a dominant figure in Israeli Sociology. The essay explores how he started with a rigid functionalist approach and passed to search for more flexible paradigms, and how from an entirely uncritical acceptance of the hegemonic-ideological description and analysis of the Israeli society and Zionism, he had moved toward a limited critique of them, absorbing partially the approaches of Critical Sociology.

This paper's purpose is to exam Turner's (2006a) thesis that Britain neither produced its own public intellectuals nor a distinctive sociology. It aims to outline difficulties with the logic of Turner's argument rather than to discuss any particular public intellectual in Britain. The paper argues that Turner's claim about the comparative insignificance of public intellectuals in Britain reinforces the myth of British exceptionalism and overlooks the significance of the contribution to the public sphere by intellectuals from other disciplines than sociology. It discusses Turner's assumption that intellectual innovation requires massive disruptive and violent change and suggests that such an assertion is not necessarily supported by studies of the conditions of the production of knowledge. Finally, the paper argues that Turner's anguish at the absence of public intellectuals among sociologists in Britain is symptomatic of New Left thinking that models the idea of the intellectual on Gramsci. In conclusion, the paper asserts that Turner's idea of the intellectual fails to note the tension at the heart of the role of public intellectual–the tension between specialist and non-specialist functions.

In the course of cultural evolution, both attitudes and beliefs are continuously modified by heritable variation and competitive selection. For Raymond Boudon, this process is exactly the same in the two cases, since in both axiological and practical reasoning consensus depends on a shared acknowledgement that the agreed conclusions are the products of “strong” reasons. His argument is, however, open to objection on psychological and sociological as well as philosophical grounds, and is vulnerable to the traditional rhetorical device known as paradiastole.

Today confronting Pareto versus Weber is commonplace. For the majority of contemporary researchers, validating one of the two theoritical constructs means ipso facto rejecting the other. The present paper attempts to prove the lack of scientific ground. The Weberian and Parsonian approaches operate at two different levels. They should be put to work jointly in a sequential manner, Pareto first, Weber thereafter.

This essay looks at Turkish-EU relations with a specific focus on identity narratives from the Turkish point of view. It outlines Turkey's official national narrative in its Ottoman, Turkic, and Islamic supra-national contexts and compares it with the supranational framework of EU member states' national narratives. According to the official Turkish historiography, Turkey is not part of a European family of nations. Turkey's non-European post-imperial identity is found to be comparable to that of Britain.