Transnational social spaces denote the circular flow of persons, goods, information and symbols across countries that have been triggered in the course of international labor migration and refugee flows. The question is how such transnational phenomena can be described, catagorued and explained. What are the implications for the adaptation of international migrants and their descendants in the economic, political and cultural realms in the countries of setdement? First, this discussion clarifies basic concepts, such as transnational social space and the main resources involved, such as various forms of social capital, the norm of reciprocity, solidarity, information and control. Second, the analysis outlines some causal macro-factors that may have opened up opportunities for migrants to build transnational spaces to a greater extent than before World War Two. Third, a few forays into the empirical realm serve to sketch the lineaments of the German-Turkish transnational social spaces: the emergence of Turkish niche businesses in Germany and transnational businesses spanning both countries; efforts of some Kurdish organizations to establish a homeland called ‘Kurdistan’; and collective identity among secondgeneration German-Turks in the religions realm, involving Islamic thought and organizations, but also secular forms of everyday culture. The article concludes with a discussion of factors that may limit the future growth of transnational social spaces.

The paper addresses the issue of the nature and determinants of variations between countries in the severity of the implications of unemployment for psychological well-being. It focuses on ten countries in the European Union over the period 1983 to 1994. It establishes that there are consistent differences between countries over time. It then examines a number of potential explanations, in particular relating to the level of unemployment, the social composition of unemployment, the strength of the work ethic in the society and the characteristics of welfare institutions. It concludes that such differences cannot be accounted for in terms of the level of unemployment or its composition in terms of age and sex. They are also unrelated to measures of employment commitment. Rather the severity of the impact of unemployment has to be understood in terms of the interaction between the characteristics of the welfare regime and the composition of the unemployed with respect to household position.

After the transition from an authoritarian to a democratic regime, one commonly observes trials of the agents of the former regime and efforts to compensate its victims. In our century, waves of transitional justice have occured in German-occupied countries after 1941, in South- Eastern Europe in the 1970s, in Latin-American countries in the 1980s, and in post-Communist countries after 1989. The article proposes a framework for the behavioral study of these phenomena. The dependent variables are political decisions to pursue retroactive justice after the transition. Independent variables include the constraints of the actors, their motivations and beliefs, as well as the mechanisms by which individual policy preferences are aggregated into binding collective decisions.

As a religious sect that anchored its salvation pledge in an exclusive promise of spiritual empowerment, the early Christian movement called its converts to virtuoso standards of religiosity. Following their baptismal regeneration, believers were obligated to remain ‘sealed’ in purity thereafter, in expectation of pending eschatological deliverance. Signs of moral slippage would thus constitute a negation of those sectarian claims, threatening thereby the continued viability of the movement. Operating in an environment of persecution, and shaken by the protracted non-event of cosmic redemption, growing numbers of believers found the exacting purity requirements impossible to uphold. An optimal organizational resolution of that crisis would require the restoration of wavering saints to spiritual status, to be achieved through remedial adjustments in penitential practice. Drawing upon Weber's model of the sect-church dynamic, this study offers a sociological hermeneutic of The Shepherd ofHermas.

Castes continue to operate in contemporary India, while the caste system itself, as a theoretical understanding of a mode of social organisation, no longer has any validity in the context of a modern State. However, an analysis of ritual relations which can still be observed in part, as intermediary data between the representations and the hazards of human relations, highlights the ‘Brahmin’ and ‘god’ figures as pointers to what constitutes a system in the Hindu conception of social order. This enables us to identify the main orientations of current transformations.

In this analysis of elements which break the continuity of natural spaces (gullies, forests, rivers, hills) or constructed spaces (bridges, paths, crossroads, borders, milestones) we see that they are primarily considered as crossover places between different worlds. Places where spirits and ‘experts in exstasy’ circulate. Among these are the Calusari, esoteric groups whose practices recall those of shamanism. The analysis of their rituals reveals the importance for traditional societies of the notion of ‘limits’.

Democracy, even if it is a system of self-government, rests on institutional commitments. An institutional commitment is a manipulation through rules of one's set of alternatives. I analyze the nature of institutional commitments in general and the role they play in a democracy. After drawing a distinction between committing to a rule and being committed by what a role establishes, three conclusions emerge: a) that representation is a functional commitment, b) that constitutions are commitments to rules, and c) that judicial review is not a commitment, but makes credible the commitments embodied in representation and constitutions.

This article presents a model of the triangular relationship between minority, majority, and the minority's reference state which is a feature of many ethnic relations. The presence of a reference state can overcome a potential commitment problem between minority and majority if it is perceived to be both militarily strong and moderately irredentist. Empirical material from Croatia, Transylvania, Estonia and Crimea suggests the plausibility of the model. Russia's role as a reference state is particularly interesting.

This analysis concentrates on die different privatization methods which have been applied in Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic and East Germany. It is argued that the different privatization methods had a considerable impact upon the unequal distribution of ownership and control in former state-owned enterprises. The reproduction rate of the former nomenclature is relatively high in all four countries regardless of the privatization method. In post-socialist countries a particular type of capitalism is evolving which can be characterized by its specific ideology and the governance structure of the privatized firms. The outcome of shock therapy which has been applied in some post-socialist countries has been paradoxical: it did not destroy the power basis of the nomenclature, but radier stabilized it. In most firms there is no clear-cut separation of ownership and control (manager capitalism), but rather a balance of power between managers (nomendature) and the new owners.

While references are often made to Weber's economic sociology, it is not commonly known that Weber himself only applied the term economic sociology (Wirtscftssoziologie) to one of his writings, namely to Chapter 2 in Part 1 of Economy and Society, “Sociological Categories of Economic Action”. This text, as I show, has basically been ignored in the huge secondary literature that exists on Weber's work as well as by economic sociologists. It represents, however, a very important contribution to Weber's work in economic sociology; indeed, it can be said to constitute Weber's manifesto in economic sociology. “Sociological Categories of Economic Action” is presented and discussed, and an effort is made to make this difficult text accessible as well as to show that it contains some extremely interesting material in economic sociology.

This paper develops an analysis of the ways in which the issues of ‘unemployment’, ‘social order’ and ‘crime’ appeared to be dealt with, within the dominant culture of English society in the mid-1990s.

Revisnng the famous debate between Perry Anderson, Tom Nairn and Edward Thompson in the 1960s, the paper argues for an understanding of the specificity of the English ‘social formation’ and, in particular, the sensibilities of the dominant middle class of that country. Inspired in part by field work in the English suburb in which the authors currently reside, the paper applies this approach to the analysis of the deep anxieties that are routinely exhibited in such areas in the mid-1990s over crime—anxieties which are then separately examined along six discrete dimensions: a) the safety of self, b) the safety of home and employment position, c) personal status and the symbolic world, d) the loss of virtue, e) the fears for England, and f) the crisis of the inheritance. The paper concludes by arguing for an interpretation of the widespread fear of crime as a complex social metaphor, with a specific social/national provenance, invisible to the mass of contemporary empirical social scientists in England whose work is parasitical upon such fears.

Migration, the role of the stranger and travelling are all creativity-enhancing although for different reasons. The migrant model verifies Koestler's hypothesis that new ideas often arise out of combinations of separate frames of thinking. Simmel's theory of the stranger emphasizes the increased objectivity of limited commitments. Rudwick's recently suggested model of liminal experience might help us explain why the seemingly purposeless activity of travelling might also stimulate creativity.