This article critically engages a recent essay Jeffrey Alexander has published on ‘societalization’, whose conceptualization it finds problematic; first, because in contrast to the impression conveyed by the essay, the term itself is anything but new (as shown in a summary of six theories of societalization which precede Alexander’s by decades, in two cases, by more than a century), and, second, because the way Alexander employs the term is highly aporetic, while also being emblematic of much deeper problems that afflict (...) the whole discipline. Following a reconstruction of the term’s morphology and the transmutations it underwent during its gradual incorporation into the English language, the article identifies an undertheorized concept of society as the root cause behind the difficulties into which Alexander maneuvers himself. It concludes with a brief sketch of an alternative that can contribute to overcoming these difficulties. (shrink)

In this article, I examine the specifics of a workspace in one of the Christian Orthodox organizations in Russia. The sisterhood which I analyze represents the interlacement of religious and economic discourses in the workplace. I discuss the “commodification” of piety which is seen as a professional competency in the labour relations among Orthodox Christians. It is true about the sisterhood, where being “inchurched” is one of the main filters for potential employees. I examine the “politics of labour” in the (...) sisterhood through the analysis of its heterogeneous spatial composition and point at the differences between its spaces in their work tempo, prestige, and working conditions. Alongside economic goals, the sisterhood is aimed at missionary and educational work; however, commercial relations are often described using religious terminology. I discuss the conflict between religious and economic aims of work. Particular attention is given to the analysis of techniques that help to maintain discipline in the sisterhood. It is achieved through rational organization of labour, observability of the workplace, hierarchy in employer-employee relationships, and the disciplining of body and emotions. The analysis is based on the materials of participant observation and field materials collected during my four months as a staff member of the sisterhood. (shrink)

Liberal political thought is underwritten by an enduring fear of civil and state violence. It is assumed within liberal thought that self?interest characterises relations between individuals in civil society, resulting in violence. In absolutist doctrines, such as Hobbes?, the pacification of private persons depended on the Sovereign's command of a monopoly of violence. Liberals, by contrast, sought to claim that the state itself must be pacified, its capacity for cruelty (e.g., torture) removed, its capacity for violence (e.g., war) reduced and (...) controlled. A core tension within liberal thought thus arises between containing civil violence by empowering the state and containing state violence by constraining the state. One result of this tension is the highly selective conception of ?pacification? within liberalism, which, historically, has accommodated indifference to endemic violence, both within civil society, and beyond civil society ? as in (past) arguments licensing imperialism and in (present) arguments for disciplining ?rogue? states. (shrink)

This paper looks beyond the mostly technical and business issues that currently inform the design of knowledge-based systems (e.g., expert systems) to point out that there is also a social and organisational (a socio-organisational) dimension to the issues affecting the design decisions of expert systems and other information technologies. It argues that whilst technical and business issues are considered before the design of Expert Systems, that socio-organisational issues determine the acceptance and long-run utility of the technology after it has been (...) implemented. It shows how four issues within the organisation can affect the design or the after-effects of the design and implementation of the technology. It also shows how the four issues can be considered within the structured phases of expert system development. (shrink)

Gender greatly impacts access to opportunities, potential, and success in corporate leadership roles. We begin with a general presentation of why such discussion is necessary for basic considerations of justice and fairness in gender equality and how the issues we raise must impact any ethical perspective on gender in the corporate workplace. We continue with a breakdown of the central categories affecting the success of women in corporate leadership roles. The first of these includes gender-influenced behavioral factors, such as the (...) requirements and expectations of gendered verbal and nonverbal communication styles as well as appearance. We move on to address the impact of family on corporate leadership opportunities and success, discussing the asymmetrical evaluation of an individual’s potential, authority, and competence based on gender stereotypes of familial obligations and expectations. Finally, we address how gender impacts access to networking and sponsorship opportunities and the long-term effects of systematic limitations on women’s inclusion in the upper echelons of corporate leadership. We conclude with a summary of the questions and issues raised by our discussion and direct individuals to consider how different ethical systems and moral requirements might influence their interpretations of gender and leadership in the corporate workplace. (shrink)

For a variety of reasons, learning should be studied as a cultural phenomenon. The task of the first part of this article is to clear up the terminological questions about various ideal types of learning cultures, and how ideal type analysis may be used to study value and knowledge transfer and knowledge acquirement in various types of organisations. The important task of the second part is to analyse how implementation of environmental management systems, like BS-7750, contribute to a certain learning (...) practice. Moreover the task is to evaluate and discuss supplementing or alternative modes of learning to just formalisation of knowledge transfer. (shrink)

What follows is a dialogue, in the Platonic sense, concerning the justifications for "business ethics" as a vehicle for asking questions about the values of modern business organisations. The protagonists are the authors, Gordon Pearson – a pragmatist and sceptic where business ethics is concerned – and Martin Parker – a sociologist and idealist who wishes to be able to ask ethical questions of business. By the end of the dialogue we come to no agreement on the necessity or justification (...) for business ethics, but on the way discuss the uses of philosophy, the meanings of integrity and trust, McDonald''s, a hypothetical torture manufacturer and various other matters. (shrink)

This paper argues that the concept of reliability provides a useful framework for analyzing defects in organizational design and for prescribing changes that will facilitate ethical decision making. Reliability becomes an ethical concern when the individual or organizational interest diverges from the collective interest. Redundancy and requisite variety provide two design tools which can enable organizations to act reliably in the collective interest. The paper then discusses potential disadvantages to the use of a reliability framework as well as possible problems (...) of implementation. It concludes by examining avenues for future research. (shrink)

The development of civilization implies an evolution of complex trust mechanisms which integrate the social system and form bonds which allow individuals to interact, even if they are strangers. Key elements of trust are predictability of consequences and an evaluation of consequences in terms of self-interest or values. Values, ethics, and norms enhance predictability. The terrorist introduces an unpredictable event which has negative consequences, thus destroying trust. However, terrorist-like situations occur in day-to-day activities. Technology itself makes the world more interdependent (...) and less predictable. Furthermore, technological accidents and disasters, which are also unpredictable and negative, may prompt individuals to perceive technology as if it were a terrorist. (shrink)

Max Weber is a dominating presence in western sociology, but his legacy remains a matter of considerable controversy. His influence is felt in the philosophy of social science, in theories of class, status and power, and of course in the various substantive areas where he had a lasting impact. However this article argues that his comparative studies of religion form the core of both substantive and theoretical interests. Firstly the interpretation of his oeuvre is skewed towards by excessive attention to (...) the Protestant Ethic thesis, which was in fact only two essays that explored an issue that was already well known in German academic circles. Secondly Weber’s contribution to the study of Axial Age religions has only recently received adequate attention. The Axial Age religions emerging between 800 and 200 BCE created the foundations of the world religions through the idea of transcendence and developed a critical view of the everyday empirical world. Thus I argue that more attention should be given to his view of the interface between politics and religion. Weber pessimistically concluded that the world is dominated by ‘unbrotherliness’ and that the ethic of brotherly love in the major religions had come to nothing. (shrink)

This article argues against the view put forward by Margaret Archer that there is an irreconcilable divide between realist social theory and structuration theory. Instead, it argues for the systematic articulation of the two theories at both the ontological and the methodological levels. Each has developed a range of insightful and commensurable conceptualizations either missing or underdeveloped in the other. Archer's contention that structuration theory rejects the notion of `analytical dualism' central to the realist approach is shown to be mistaken; (...) Giddens's rejection of `dualism' refers to a different conceptualization of the term. Similarly, Archer's critique of structuration's notion of a `duality' involving structure and agency is rejected by showing that Archer's own morphogenetic approach itself relies upon such a notion. A final section distinguishes between six key problematics of social analysis. It is clear that, for a large number of possible questions within the majority of these problematics, it is a combination of both ontologies that would facilitate the most adequate substantive account. (shrink)

Elizabeth Anderson argues for civic as against distributive egalitarianism. I agree with civic egalitarianism understood as a public ideal, and welcome her interest in the sociological conditions under which it may best flourish. But I argue that she is mistaken in opposing what she calls 'hierarchies of esteem' and proposing that where the egalitarian ideal has insufficient hold on civil society it should be implemented by an efficient bureaucracy. We should learn a different lesson from Max Weber. What the ideal (...) of equality needs is not more bureaucracy but more influential advocacy—and that requires healthy 'hierarchies of esteem'. (shrink)

This essay provides an intellectual history for the cultural turn that transformed the human sciences in the mid-20th century and led to the creation of cultural sociology in the late 20th century. It does so by conceptualizing and contextualizing the limitations of the binary primitive/modernity. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, leading thinkers – among them Marx, Weber, Durkheim, and Freud – confined thinking and feeling styles like ritual, symbolism, totem, and devotional practice to a primitivism that would be (...) transformed by the rationality and universalism of modernity. While the barbarisms of the 20th century cast doubt on such predictions, only an intellectual revolution could provide the foundations for an alternative social theory. The cultural turn in philosophy, aesthetics, and anthropology erased the division between primitive and modern; in sociology, the classical writings of Durkheim were recentered around his later, religious sociology. These intellectual currents fed into a cultural sociology that challenged the sociology of culture, creating radically new research programs in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. (shrink)

Reinhard Bendix made a major contribution to the early reception and interpretation of Max Weber's work. His classic study, Max Weber: An Intellectual Portrait (1960), developed a remarkably consistent interpretation of Weber as a comparative historical sociologist. Bendix also emulated and subtly reinterpreted in his own work key aspects of Weber's comparative method and research strategies. By searching for a middle course between `Scylla and Charybdis', between the abstractions of theoretical concepts and the richness of empirical evidence, Bendix sought to (...) reinterpret and renew the vital centre of Weber's comparative enterprise as a study of western uniqueness. In so doing, he decisively challenged Talcott Parsons's alternative methodological reading of Weber's work. Yet, curiously Bendix's status as a Weber interpreter and comparative historian profoundly influenced by Weber's legacy has often been neglected or misinterpreted. This article re-examines Bendix's classic reading of Weber's corpus, and the way in which he sought to keep alive in his substantive work the promise and spirit of Weber's comparative historical sociology. (shrink)

An examination of the practice of self-examination in Scottish Presbyterianism shows the value of following the later Foucault in the examination of religion as a social practice. His attention to the influence of pastoral power on governmentality is shown to have been embedded in a Roman Catholic heritage leading to a stress on the confessional. By contrast, an examination of one aspect of Protestant pastoral power indicates the genealogy of practices of self-help. An historical examination of both the structure of (...) the Scottish church and the diaries of believers indicates the emphasis placed in this tradition on accountability. It also points to the need to reassess Foucault's treatment of Seneca, whose place in the Christian tradition, as exemplified by the Scottish experience, was more important than Foucault allows. (shrink)

Philosophical questions are not like empirical problems, which can be answered by observation or experiment or entitlements from them. Nor are they like mathematical problems which can be settled by deductive methods, like problems in chess or any other rule-governed game or procedure. But questions about the ends of life, about good and evil, about freedom and necessity, about objectivity and relativity, cannot be decided by looking into even the most sophisticated dictionary or the use of empirical or mathematical reasoning. (...) Not to know where to look for the answer is the surest symptom of a philosophical problem.Isaiah BerlinCritics of recent philosophical analyses of nationalism suggest that nationalism is a unique social phenomenon that cannot, and need not, be theorized. Are there, indeed, some special features constitutive of nationalism that might defy theorization? Those answering this question in the affirmative point to the plurality and specificity of national experiences, as well as to the emotional and eclectic nature of nationalist discourse. (shrink)

In Culture and Agency, I distinguished between the ‘Cultural System', namely all items logged into the universal cultural archive, and ‘Socio-Cultural' interaction, na...

This article provides a critique of the controlling legal paradigm in Australia from related scientific and quality management perspectives. It shows key legal requirements are prescientific and hinder attainment of community health and sustainable development goals. It discusses regional arrangements which appear necessary to achieve national aims and the potential of a duty of care regulatory approach, in which dispute resolution is conceptualised as community service, like health or education provision.

As long as critique trails in the wake of progress, a more radical game-changing interest in its reconstruction remains blocked. This article will contrast the reforming approach adopted by Peter Wagner with Theodor Adorno’s attempt to reconstruct the normative foundations of historical progress. The intention here is to use the radicalism of Adorno’s critical recovery of this ideal in order to clarify and strengthen the social democratic utopianism that underlies Wagner’s reconstruction of progress. The final section of the article extends (...) the significance of this modelling of the dialectics between critique and progress, using it to guide a brief evaluation of some attempts to reclaim critique from its histories of complicity in repressive, Eurocentric versions of historical progress. (shrink)

The criticism is often made of sociology, especially in the US, that it is mired in ethnocentrism, provincialism, needlessly scientistic methods, and a depoliticized quest for the status of a ‘true science’. Though a strong case can be made for such an accusation, it is also true that certain exemplars have succeeded in transcending these crippling shortcomings of practice and imagination. One such scholar is examined in this article with an eye toward not only the scope of the work attempted, (...) but the rhetorical posture that made his notable success possible. It seems to be the case that certain gifted members of the ‘Sixties generation’, through cross-disciplinary education and with cosmopolitan intentions, managed to create a new type of sociology in the US during the 1980s and 1990s which had not existed before. This article explores one such case. (shrink)

Max Weber is noted for his analysis of the `specific and peculiar rationalism' of western culture. However, his diagnosis of a life disenchanted by reason draws attention to his lesser known formulations of the problem of theodicy - the problem of reconciling pain and misfortune with moral expectations of the world. Weber suggests that cultural responses to this problem change with the increasingly secular rationalization of life. The present paper traces this development from the cultural representation of pain as the (...) embodiment of moral strife in the early modern novel to contemporary images of pain and suffering in medicine, the mass media and film. The comparison suggests that late modernity is confronted by an `inverse' problem of theodicy, in which representations of pain and suffering are disassociated from ethical and political contexts and the quest for meaning within a human frame. (shrink)