This article revises received wisdom about the Durkheimian school of sociology and its relationship to Marxism by analyzing the work of Célestin Bouglé, one of the most influential and least examined sociologists of the Durkheimian tradition. Like other better-known Durkheimians of his generation such as Marcel Mauss and Maurice Halbwachs, Bouglé engaged Durkheimian sociology with Marxian and other German traditions of social thought. In the process he also paid an important debt to the French socialists that Marx and so many (...) French Marxists have denigrated as ‘utopian’, especially Saint-Simon, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and Charles Fourier. In fact, the concerns of Bouglé’s political sociology and Durkheimian sociology more generally are indissociable from the politics of Third Republic France. (shrink)

This paper compares Tocqueville's concept of democracy to the social and political evolution of Brazil. It draws attention to the different points of departure which marked the establishment of American and Brazilian societies, through the works of authors such as Laura de Mello e Souza, Gilberto Freyre, Florestan Fernandes, Celso Furtado, and Sérgio Buarque de Holanda. It notes that, despite conditions being more favourable for the formation of a democratic society in the United States than in Brazil, subsequent to the (...) founding periods a certain coming together occurred in the process of formation of the two societies. The 'similarity of differences' between American and Brazilian societies becomes clear as soon as one brings together the roles played by the three constituent ethnic groups of these societies, which, by their simple existence, link difference to inequality. (shrink)

The article studies the influence of the ideological heritage of the Prussian war theorist Carl von Clausewitz on the works, worldview, and political views of the French researcher Raymond Aron. For a long time, in France the value and relevance of Clausewitz’s theory of war was acknowledged only in the light of specialized military issues. Aron was one of the first in the country to recognize the value and methodological potential of Clausewitz’s political philosophy of war for the understanding of (...) the preparation and usage of military force, maintenance of national and international security, and Aron made efforts to popularize the Prussian theorist’s doctrine. The analysis of Aron’s works, in which he appeals to Clausewitz and the theory of war, has revealed the evolution that occurred in attitude towards the ideological heritage of the Prussian philosopher. Clausewitz’s works, which were primarily a source of citation for Aron at first, turned into the methodological framework for a philosophical conceptualization of war and international relations, in particular in the nuclear era. Based on the results of a thorough study of Clausewitz’s works and a deep reflection on his legacy, Aron in his later years wrote a two-volume work about him, seeing the Prussian thinker primarily as a political philosopher of war. An important reason for the interest of the French scholar was the personality and biography of Clausewitz himself: his character, relations with authorities, political position, acceptance by contemporaries, and the fate of his doctrine. In this regard, Aron’s understanding of Clausewitz is emotionally loaded, and the book about him significantly differs from Aron’s other works by the author’s personal attitude. The comprehension of Clausewitz and his ideological heritage encouraged Aron’s self-reflection and change of self-identification, a better understanding of the military culture of Germany and France. The article concludes on the importance of further conceptualization and development of the scientific legacy of Clausewitz and Aron. (shrink)

More than a century after Max Weber’s Vocation Lectures, the idea of charisma is still commonly associated with a leader’s personal qualities. This personalistic and—as I argue—simplistic understanding of the Weberian theory of charisma was perpetuated, especially in leadership studies, during the twentieth century by political scientists, social psychologists, and sociologists. Generally overlooked is the fact that the Weberian notion of charisma comprises diverse and fundamental metapersonal meanings that transcend individual qualities and revolve, among other things, around a specific combination (...) of public positions, temporal contexts, and collective expectations. After framing the ambivalence of the concept of charisma within more fundamental and fertile ambivalences of Max Weber’s epistemological approach, this article demonstrates that metapersonal understandings of charisma actually prevailed in Weber’s writings prior to his late—and pedagogical— Vocation Lectures and series of newspaper articles. In the final part, I deduce from Weber’s writings a repertoire of metapersonal forms of charisma in politics, and I conclude that, when contemporary political leaders seek to activate such charismatic processes in order to pursue essentially charismatic forms of legitimation, important implications can arise regarding the unstable balance among liberal democracies, populisms, and authoritarianisms. (shrink)

The paper provides both a description of conspiracy beliefs and an insight into their cultural significance. On one side, it highlights their specific formal features, on the other, and this constitutes its peculiarity in the recent literature on the topic, it considers them within the broader genre of general conceptual beliefs, whose main characteristics are weak methodology and logical structure, strong affective and dispositional constraints, epistemic closure and mauvaise foi, and whose main function is practical and self-representative (not epistemic). The (...) paper also claims that political theory and social sciences had some influence in legitimizing certain ideas and stereotypes that are exacerbated in conspiracy beliefs, while other te(le)ological conceptions, such as finalism and providence, may be an important source of ideas that turn out to be widely spread in contemporary criticism towards those same beliefs. (shrink)

In the present article we analyze the relationships between K-waves and major technological breakthroughs in history and offer forecasts about features of the sixth Kondratieff wave. We use for our analysis the basic ideas of long cycles' theory and related theories (theories of the leading sector, technological styles etc.) as well as the ideas of our own theory of production principles and production revolutions. The latest of production revolution is the Cybernetic Revolution that, from our point of view, started in (...) the 1950s. We assume that in the 2030s and 2040s the sixth K-wave will merge with the final phase of the Cybernetic Revolution (which we call a phase of self-regulating systems). This period will be characterized by the breakthrough inmedical technologies which will be capable to combine many other technologies into a single system of MANBRIC-technologies (medico-additive-nano-bio-roboto-info-cognitive technologies). The article also presents a forecast of the process of global ageing and argueswhy the technological breakthrough will occur in health care sector and connected spheres. (shrink)