Capitalism,Protestantism and the Private Family: Comparisons among Early Modern England,France, and the American Colonies*

The study of western family change lies disintegrated, divided into two largely independent intellectual communities–family history and theoretical family sociology. An integration of the two fields is proposed. The results of family historical research from three national cases, England, France, and the North American Colonies, are used to evaluate critically the family theories of Parsons, Seccombe, Zaretsky, and Horkheimer. The pattern of family organization regarded as modern, including the differentiation of the family from other social institutions, the emergence of companionate marriage, and the consolidation of authority over the family in the role of the father, characterize the family systems of England and the Colonies better than that of France. A theory of modern family organization is proposed that identifies the emergence of a culturally dominant middle class and the institutionalization of Protestantism as facilitating conditions for the development of this private family system.     

Social Solidarity, Democracy and Global Capitalism*

Dans cette étude, nous examinons les hypothèses des partisans de la «mondialisation>> et proposons des solutions totalement opposées. Dans la première partie, nous réfutons les arguments suivants au sujet de la «mondialisation>>: la souveraineté nationale s'érode dans tous les pays; la part de propriété transnationale est plus importante que par le passé; la «mondialisation>> constitue la conséquence inévitable du changement technologique; et la libéralisation de l'économie à l'échelle mondiale renforce la démocratic Dans la deuxième partie, nous examinons les solutions de rechange démocratiques que peuvent offrir les anciens et les nouveaux mouvements sociaux. L'utilisation de fonds d'investissement gérés par le public et engagés selon les besoins des collectivités est considérée comme une solution de rechange à l'orientation axée sur le marché mondial des entreprises transnationales.
This paper critically examines the assumptions of the advocates of "globalization" and develops an alternative that is the polar opposite. The first half of the paper challenges the following assumptions about "globalization": that national sovereignty is eroding for all countries; that the level of transnational ownership is higher now than in the past; that "globalization" has been the inevitable result of technological change; that democracy is strengthened by global economic liberalization. The second half of the paper examines the prospects for the creation of democratic alternatives to globalization in old and new social movements. Socially controlled investment funds that have "location commitment" to communities are seen as an alternative to the globalization vision of transnational corporations.     

Sidestepping Capitalism: on the Ottoman Road to Elsewhere*

Abstract Mapping productivist logic derived from the history of capitalism onto the rest of the world blocks the view of alternative systems, and their internal logic. Theories of the capitalist state can capture neither the nature of the non-capitalist states nor those states’ social and economic relations. Our alternative formulation of the Ottoman state disassociates class, property, and distribution from the sphere of production and associates them with the state. Thereby, Ottoman history sheds its petrified cloak and the Ottoman state comes to life; motion, change and class conflict are things Ottoman once again.     

The Microfoundations of Corporatist Intervention: Dairying's Collective Action Problems in Canada and England during the 1930s Depression*

Dans cet article, nous démontrons l'utilité d'une approche microfondamentale dans la compréhension de phénomènes sociaux de plus grande ampleur. Grâce à l'analyse des questions de recours collectifs, qui se sont posées aux différents acteurs, au Canada et en Angleterre, nous établissons un lien informel entre la macrovariable de « structure de l'industrie » et les formes divergentes de réglementation corporatiste instaurées dans les années 1930. Après avoir expliqué les caracteéristiques centrales de l'approche microfondamentale et souligné les aspects importants de la théorie des jeux et du concept de choix rationnel, nous examinons les témoignages élaborés, présentés dans le cadre de commissions et de comités du gouvernement. Ces données comparatives et historiques fournissent les bases qui permettent de comprendre la manière dont les différentes structures de l'industrie ont causé des problèmes de réglementation uniques pour les gouvernements canadien et britannique. This paper argues for the utility of a microfoundational approach to understanding larger social phenomena. Through an analysis of the collective action problems experienced by the various actors in both Canada and England, I wish to establish a causal link between the macro‐level variable “industry structure” and the divergent forms of corporatist regulation instituted in the 1930s. After clarifying the central features of my microfoundational approach and highlighting important aspects of game theory and rational choice explanations, I review the extensive sets of testimonies given before governmental commissions and committees. These comparative and historical data provide the foundations for understanding how distinct industry structures produced unique sets of regulatory problems for the Canadian and British governments.     

Politics after National Development: Explaining the Populist Rise under Late Capitalism

Ten years after the global financial crisis, the world is living through times of great political uncertainty and turbulence. While the current historical juncture has presented renewed opportunities for progressive articulations against marketisation and the individualisation of risk (i.e. neoliberalism), more prominently it has awoken the ghosts of nationalism and various reactionary forms of populism. This article’s contribution is in contextualising this novel momentum within late capitalism. We argue that the combination of techno-logistical transformations in production and pro-market policy sets that facilitated the globalisation of capital, and which dealt a death blow to national development strategies, was met by elites with intensified efforts to dislocate politics from society through processes of ‘depoliticisation’ that in turn allowed for further marketising efforts. However, this dislocation has dovetailed with a formidable social crisis characterised by unprecedented levels of inequality and vulnerability amid immense wealth, calling into question the elite consensus around neoliberalism. While the leaders of the current political reawakening often distinguish themselves against post-political forms of neoliberal governance, they remain confronted by powerful interests and significant structural constraints as they promote solutions for global problems within the anachronistic confines of the nation-state.     

Bachelorhood and Late Marriage: An Interactionist Interpretation*

This paper summarizes an exploratory investigation of the interactional careers of forty bachelors (men who had reached the age of 35 without marrying), twenty of whom later married. Depth interviewing was used to collect life history data establishing major career lines of specific heterosexual dyads as well as developments in preceding and paralleling universes of interaction. The findings support the contention that continuing social pressures rather than personal abnormalities of individual bachelors ultimately determine marital careers in that bachelorhood and late marriage are interactional products stemming from differential socialization and situational contingencies.     

Fight Club,or the Cultural Contradictions of Late Capitalism

Most critical engagement with the film Fight Club tends to emphasize its relevance for the study of contemporary representations of gender and masculinity. These readings tend to primarily highlight the “reactionary” aspects of the film, which are seen as a response to structural sources of feminization experienced by men as they are embedded in the consumerist machine of the service‐oriented economy. In this paper I argue that these takes on Fight Club, while enlightening and indeed capturing a key aspect, miss what I think is its most essential contribution: its attempt to craft a transcendental “counter‐myth” capable with dealing with the cultural and societal contradictions of post‐industrial capitalism in the context of the transition to a service oriented economy. I draw on the work of Daniel Bell in order to offer a neo‐Weberian reading of Fight Club which makes sense of various aspects of the film which are rendered meaningless by the gender‐focused reading. I argue that Fight Club can be seen as an attempt to deal with the evacuation and exhaustion of the original form of value‐rationality from the realm of production in service work — grounded in the older ethic of ascetic Protestantism — as well as the failure of ideological interpellation in the consumer society — grounded in a domesticated version of the experience‐based counter‐Bourgeois ethic associated with aesthetic modernism — to provide an adequate substitute for it. I conclude that Fight Club can therefore be interpreted as an inchoate attempt to produce some version of a class consciousness and cognitive mapping in the late‐capitalist situation.     

States,regimes, and decisions: why Jews were expelled from Medieval England and France

This article explores the relation between the expulsion of Jews from medieval England and France and state building, geo-politics, regime styles, and taxation in these countries. Jews were evicted as a result of attempts by kings to manage royal insecurity, refashion relations between state and society, and build more durable systems of taxation within the territories they claimed as theirs. As they engaged in state building and extended their ties, often conflictual, to key societal and political actors, Jews became financially less important but more visible as outsiders, becoming a liability for the crown. Similar mechanisms were at work despite important differences distinguishing England’s growing regime of rights and representation and France’s emergent absolutist patrimonialism.     

Theory in Ethno-Logic*

Because thought processes underlie all human action and can distinguish one culture from another, the social sciences must face the problem of determining how people think. Reasoning can be viewed as abstract and not connected to any particular human activity, as it is in philosophical logic, or it can be seen as a process in a particular linguistic, social and cultural setting, as it is in ethno-logic. Recently anthropologists, developmental psychologists and other scholars working under the general rubric of cognitive science have studied issues in ethno-logic but these studies are flawed because the researchers accepted philosophical logic as the norm under which they judged the actions of their subjects. Good theory in ethno-logic can only come from study which describes thought processes from the natives point of view. One such theory states that conclusions are logically established on the semantic structure of the argument. This theory accounts for both universal and culture specific aspects of reasoning, is testable, opens new areas of research and provides researchers with a firmly grounded method for using meaning to account for behavior.     

The Genesis of American Capitalism: an Historical Inquiry into State Theory

Abstract We usually think that we know what 'the state' is, even when we embark on a theoretical quest for it. Somehow, the state is closely associated with Government - including bureaucracy and army. Or we sometimes think of it differently, in terms of city-state or nation-state. I had the first notion in mind when I started to research the socioeconomic context of the making of the U.S. constitution. But the historical research forced me to face the vagueness of the concept, and to recognize that it is not only useless, but actually harmful in our understanding of modern societies. This paper is made-up of three parts: the historical narrative of U.S. constitution-making is sandwiched between, first, a deconstruction of the concept of state and, third, an attempt at establishing a new concept of state. I discard along the way the dichotomies of state/civil society and base/superstructure. And I argue for a close integration of theory and history in social analysis.     

Alienation and Deviance: Strain Theory Reconsidered*

This paper proposes a way in which the concepts of alienation and anomie may be related in a single dimension of social experience and offers a refinement and expansion of traditional strain theories of deviance causation. It is argued that both alienated and anomic social actors seek a common goal–a sense of effective interaction with their environment; an experience of personal competence. Anomic persons are those who perceive the demands of primary roles as confusing and beyond their abilities and who respond by seeking to maximize certainty, security, and stability in social interaction. By contrast, alienated individuals are those who experience primary role requirements as simple but stifling and restrictive, bereft of meaningful challenges. These latter persons seek greater freedom and opportunities for creativity and self-expression. The ways in which deviance may emerge as these alienated persons adapt to the perceived discrepancy between their abilities and responsibilit ies are outlined and illustrated following the adaptive modes suggested by Merton for anomic persons.     

The Corporate Family: Theory and Treatment*

The authors define characteristics of a corporate family style of functioning. An emphasis is placed on the need for sensitivity to the value structure of the family. Crisis is seen coming from a disruption in the support system of one or more members of the family. A treatment strategy with a case illustration is introduced based on strengthening the family using natural coping mechanisms in the community. The objective of treatment is to reinforce the family without necessarily challenging their values or style of functioning.     

Translating Nations: Actor-Network Theory in/and Canada*

Dans l'examen des problématiques de l«identité nationale» au Canada, la sociologie critique est de plus en plus tournée vers l'analyse discursive, aboutissant à des conclusions nuancées et complexes. Or, une telle approche risque d'escamoter d'autres analyses, tout aussi utiles, qui attribuent à la technologie un rôle central dans le processus de «nation-building» au Canada. Cet article explore la sociologie de la traduction, aussi appelée théorie d'acteur-réseau, et suggère que l'emprunt d'une telle approche se prêterait à une analyse plus complète des «questions nationales» du Canada et du Québec - analyse qui intégrerait les catégories du social et de la technique. Canadian critical sociology draws increasingly from discourse analysis to work out questions of national identity in Canada, yielding complex and nuanced results, but not sufficiently engaging with other work privileging technology as a central question in Canadian nation-building. This paper explores the sociology of translation, also known as actor-network theory, and suggests that such an approach might usefully be taken up in order to provide a more complete analysis of the “national questions” of Canada and Québec that integrates both social and technological categories.     

The Value of Play: Constructions of Play in Government Policy in England*

This article reports one aspect of the findings from an assessment of the impact of national policies on children’s opportunities for play in England, which was commissioned and funded by the Children’s Play Council, London. Systematic analysis of policy documents and interviews with participants from local authorities and the voluntary sector revealed that the (Labour) Government does not promote a consistent conceptualisation of play in England. While some policy documents emphasise play’s instrumental value and potential contributions to the priorities of government departments, others refer to its intrinsic value. In both cases, however, such constructions of play form a discourse that controls where and how children may play. This inconsistency has led to gaps in the mechanisms for delivery of extensive, sustainable and equitable play opportunities across the country.     

Climate Scholarship Needs Du Bois: Climate Crisis through the Lens of Racial and Colonial Capitalism*

A large literature is proliferating on capitalism's role in driving climate breakdown. In this literature, capitalism is seen as the endless pursuit of growth, under which nature and its finite resources are exploited for profit. The climate crisis is the result of these processes. However, capitalism alone cannot explain the racial inequities produced by climate disruption, nor can it account for the disproportionately large contributions of Global North countries toward this crisis. In this article, I develop a Du Boisian approach to the climate crisis, showing how his conception of racial and colonial capitalism can develop our understanding of the causes, dimensions, and effects of the climate crisis. I explain how a Du Boisian approach furthers our understanding of racial and global inequalities in the development and impacts of global warming and in the production of fossil fuels, as well as how racism can shape climate inaction. Finally, I name some limitations of Du Bois' theory and elaborate on how a contemporary, decolonizing approach to the climate crisis might address these.     

Socio-Economic Heterogeneity in New England Metropolitan Residential Areas*

Au sein de certaines agglomérations urbaines de la Nouvelle-Angleterre, l'auteur compare les caractéristiques socioeconomiques de la population de la ville par rapport à celle de la banlleue. Chaque ensemble urbain choisi est défini selon les critères établish pour le recensement des agglomérations importantes, dites metropolitan , et les unités de recensement sont perçues comme formant des communautés pour fins de résidence ou de voisinage. Les statistiques officielles publicées constituent les données soumises ä l'analyse. Des comparaisons entre les populations des villes et de leurs banlieues aux Etats-Unis ont amené les autéurs de recherches antérieures à souligner le caractère différent des populations de la périphérie et du centre, distinction selon laquelle les habitants des banlieues seraient de classe moyenne et ceux de la ville seraient de classe ouvrière. L'image créëe vient, en partie, de la prépondérance des recherches faltes dans les agglomérations les plus considérables. La prësente étude, qui porte sur de petites et de moyennes agglomérations, montre des ressemblances aussi bien que des différences entre la population vivant en ville et celle vivant en banlieue.