The efforts of rural communities around the world to survive in the face of economic and demographic decline dramatise the bio-cultural processes on which human regeneration routinely depends. This paper explores the very conspicuous symbolic aspects of regeneration in a village in Catalonia, Spain, and traces the long term physical and material processes that underlie them. Scrutiny of two different festivals reveals a passionate concern to renegotiate deeply fractured generational relationships. Having exported its fertility to the towns and cities, the community is now working to incorporate newcomers and devise new livelihoods. Public rituals have done much to sustain these efforts at regeneration, but how they may resist the “sterile growth” of Mieres as a village of mostly empty second homes is a provocative new issue.

Non-democratic regimes vary in the degree to which domestic groups threaten their rule and the extent to which they need the cooperation of these groups. To both neutralize threats to their rule and solicit cooperation, some dictators coopt potential domestic opposition by providing rents and policy concessions within nominally-democratic institutions, such as legislatures and political parties. These institutions, designed as instruments of cooptation, facilitate cooperation between the regime and outside groups which promotes economic growth.

This article tries to assess the cognitive merits of various research programmes in the treatment of military issues. It contends that, on such topics more than on others, method influences conceptualization and theory construction. Having noted the infrequent showings of some programmes in the military field, it goes on to demonstrate, based on the literature produced over a century, that the blames laid at positivism's door are especially justified in it. The Weberian/Simmelian tradition has shown more promise. A brief synthetic formulation of its achievements suggests that it alone accords with Clausewitzian thought, and shows sufficient flexibility to account for recent changes which baffle other programmes, or to open avenues of collaboration with promising new approaches (notably, nonlinear dynamics).

One of the most notable political developments of the last thirty years has been increasing public and governmental demand for the quantification of social phenomena, yet sociologists generally have paid little attention to the spread of quantification or the significance of new regimes of measurement. Our article addresses this oversight by analyzing quantification – the production and communication of numbers – as a general sociological phenomenon. Drawing on scholarship across the social sciences in Europe and North America as well as humanistic inquiry, we articulate five sociological dimensions of quantification and call for an ethics of numbers.

The analysis of the 2004 ISSP survey, limited to nine of the countries participating in this programme of representative opinion polls, shows that the way people consider the duties of a citizen are divided into four types, depending on whether the emphasis is placed on norms or on others, and whether the morality governing normative judgements about the “good” citizen is conventional or post-conventional. These different axiological directions are linked with attitudes towards participative democracy. The duty of civility, which can be associated with democratic public ethics, is approved quite widely. But a much more active participation, closed in some regards to a deliberative democracy, seems to require post-conventional morality, especially when it is founded on liberal or reasonable pluralism.

Objectives. The article examines the opinions of Europeans concerning genetically modified (GM) foods. It first deals with the socio-cultural variables that favour acceptance of such products. It then analyses the minority of respondents who exhibit greater openness towards GM foods. Methods. Mokken Scale Analysis (MSA) is applied to 2002 Eurobarometer 58.0 data to construct an index of acceptance of GM foods. Results. The acceptance of GM foods is associated positively with trust in biotechnologies and negatively with concerns about the environment. The minority consisting of respondents in favour of GM foods possesses specific characteristics. Unlike the rest of the respondents, these principally consider the opportunity to spend less, the absence of fats, and the taste of foods. Conclusions. The analysis confirms that high education level does not favour acceptance of GM foods.

Starting with Hans Joas’ theory of creative action and Alberto Melucci's theory of collective identity (with slight modifications), the paper specify the conditions for a useful application of newer theories of social movements. Using this (neo-) pragmatist perspective, and drawing on the example of the development of civic opposition in Poland, it endeavours to question and expand the explanatory potential of the theories of relative deprivation, political opportunity structures, network analysis and framing analysis.

Although recognized for innovations in economics and economic sociology, Emil Lederer’s impressive contributions to political sociology have been almost completely ignored. Lederer wrote extensively on questions of practical and theoretical relevance for a sociological analysis of the state and war, especially in response to and anticipation of the World Wars of the last century. This article considers the elements of his political-sociological work in the context of the circumstances under which they developed and concludes with an attempt to construct an outline of the basic tenets of a sociology of the state and war derived from Lederer’s writings. This analysis highlights Lederer’s sensitivity to a dynamic understanding of the total social configuration and its impact on the individual psyche as central to explicating the characteristics of particular political-sociological phenomena.

David Laitin has explained the occurrence of Basque and Georgian nationalist violence as the outcome of language revival in a bilingual setting and a specific locale. Based on game theory, he has suggested that violence, as a rational nationalist strategy, will increasingly be used if specific thresholds levels in language choice for education are met. A critical reappraisal of his approach is made in which the conceptual and methodological limits to the empirical testing are highlighted. Subsequently, an extensive dataset of Basque municipalities in the Autonomous Community of the Basque Country is used to statistically verify Laitin’s model by multivariate analysis. In some areas of the Basque Country Laitin’s model seems to fit while in others not. With the help of both quantitative and qualitative data, alternative explanations for Basque ethnic violence are explored.

The ongoing wave of radical religious protest confirms the need for an alternative to the rationalist approach that has come to dominate social movement research. At this moment, it seems promising to take another look at Weber’s sociology of religion: it offers a theory which (1) proposes an unfamiliar account of the relation between personal identity and political activism, (2) builds on this to explain the functioning of a specific type of social movements organization, and (3) thereby identifies mechanisms causing a dynamic of protest that cannot be reduced to a “rational” adaptation to an opportunity structure. These concepts can also elucidate the working of movements that are not explicitly religious in character.

The main characteristics of public space are accessibility and usability for all citizens. Current developments primarily observed in cities, however, point to the fact that the distinction between public and private is becoming blurred. Instead urban spaces of hybrid character are emerging. Spaces with public functions like train stations, parks or pedestrian areas change character; semi-private spaces like malls or plazas expand. In order to obtain a realistic assessment of these developments the paper offers a critical appraisal of recent privatization trends followed by a brief systematization. After a discussion of feasible reasons for the loss of public space, the paper considers potential implications for the future of citizenship.

In many European democracies, religion was an important political cleavage throughout the twentieth century. But in Denmark and Sweden, religious differences have not been translated into political competition. Instead, class conflict has dominated. This article attempts to explain why. Our argument is that in the first decades of the twentieth century, the issue that mattered most for the politicization of religion elsewhere in Europe – the role of churches in the provision of poor relief and education – was already settled. The main reason was that in the nineteenth century, the secular state had captured the organizational infrastructure that churches used to provide these services.

Le comité de Rédaction de la revue a souhaité marquer le centenaire de Claude Lévi-Strauss par deux contributions qui, chacune à sa manière, témoignent de l’importance d’un maître dont, depuis un demi-siècle la pensée a influencé le devenir de toutes les sciences sociales.