Social Science Research publishes papers devoted to quantitative social science research and methodology. ... The journal features articles that illustrate the use of quantitative methods to empirically test social science theory.
While most approaches consider globalisation as either being driven by purely economic interests, or as simply a modern version of empire building through warfare, this paper will argue that just as important a role is played by secularised religious concepts. Attention will be devoted to the idea of the 'chosen people', and the type of 'holy wars' which such people were waging, in order to conquer their own land, or to gain mastery over the world. The paper will shortly review five such main historical instances, preparing the scene for modernity: the case of the Hebrews, the rise of Arabic Islam, the Crusades, the Elizabethan Empire, and the case of the United States. In each of the five cases, emphasis will be on the manner in which a strongly anti-imperial ideology eventually creates, through the justification of a holy war, an empire building momentum on its own. The conclusion of the paper will reassess the extent to which the historical context presented helps to better understand the contemporary setting.To define social phenomena one has to refer to practices and attitudes of actors. It is not clear how this can be attained with the concept "society". In fact this concept is used in an ambivalent way. Either "society" is understood as the entirety of all social phenomena (as a rule within a pre-defined territory) or it has to be identified as one specific field or a combination of fields. Because of the uncertainty of its concrete meaning its main function is to legitimize the generalizing interpretation of empirical findings (or sometimes of more diffuse impressions) beyond the range of their aquisition. So, in order to call an example, changes of attitudes concerning special issues are interpreted as changes of "the society" . In my paper I concentrate on two aspects. First, in the context of theory no consistent use of the concept has been established and it refers to heterogenious theoretical problems. Even more problematic is its role in "Zeitdiagnosen", where empirical analysis as well as explanations of social processes are superseded by reference to this fictitous entity.
In this paper I try to identify some theoretical notions which could be relevant to think about the process of construction of the European Union. In the first part of the paper I stablish several thesis about the relationship between the globalization process and the crisis of the Nation-State: type of this crisis, its facets, globalization as the constitution of an inter-states relationship, conditions for a relative State power revival. The second part is constituted by a set of thesis about the European Union construction process: Europe as a unifying logic, as a new network of out-centered societies, as a new structure of social relationships.Many of the discontents of 'globalisation' result from the sudden change it inflicts on social norms and economic values. Since these tend to be shaped by people's (and organisations') local environments, widened geographical exposure - through the lifting of regulatory or technological barriers, and cross-border division of labour - can seriously undermine them. These agents may find their relative social position, the financial worth of their activities, the conventions shaping their behaviour, and their interpretations and expectations of events changed or challenged by the new exchange relationships they enter. Globalisation achieves, across space, a similar re-evaluation of action (and revelation of unacknowledged conditions for action) to that produced across time by political and scientific 'revolutions'. Adaptability to shifting reference points has been much theorised at macroscopic level, in debates over 'flexibility' of national economies and 'modernity' of national polities. The micro- foundations, in individual or organisational capacity to adopt (or remain immune from) reference-point shifts, require more study. This paper revives a once influential characterisation of differences in adaptability to reference change - Riesman's tradition-, inner- and other- direction - to account for apparent group and national differences in enthusiasm for (and success in) the present globalisation. In so doing, it aims to clarify concepts of external referencing and norms, considering whether the narrowness of norms and strength of social ties, associated with highly localised communities, are really as incompatible with international political and economic integration as globalisation's critics suggest.The main aim of this paper is to reconstruct and evaluate the most prevalent assumptions in the literature about links between collective memory and democracy. It will outline widespread assertions that memory is important for democratic community for three reasons: to achieve its potential, to avoid dangers of the past crimes, and to secure its continuation. These assume that collective memory is the condition of freedom, justice and the stability of democratic order. The paper will confront these assumptions with equally popular counter-propositions arguing that memory presents a threat to democratic community as it can undermine cohesion, increase the costs of cooperation and cause moral damage to civil society by conflating political and ethnic or cultural boundaries. The confusion revealed about and complexity of the relationship between memory and democracy will be firstly explained as stemming from difficulties in addressing such systematically ambiguous terms as democracy and collective memory. These difficulties are further magnified when we view democracy as being more than as a technique for changing the government without violence and when we define collective memory as being more than only passive recollection of the past. Secondly, the controversy is explained by the complexity of the intermediate notions of identity, trauma and ritual that link memory with freedom, justice and the stability of democratic order. In conclusion, it will be argued that what matters for democracy's health is not social remembering per se but the way in which the past is called up and made present.Now that our society gets a more multi-ethnic character, it is an interesting question which social processes and mechanisms facilitate the reproduction of the old mono-ethnic culture and structure and which facilitate the emergence of a new multi-ethnic one. Or, to put it in Margaret Archer's (1995) terms, we have to look for mechanisms that facilitate social morphostasis (or social reproduction) and social morphogenesis (or social change), especially those mechanisms operating in schools as social institutions in which the seed for societal reproduction and transformation germinates. In order to do so, it is argued that we have to redefine the concept of socialisation. In stead of defining socialisation, in a traditional sociological way, as the process of transmision, in wich only reproduction of the existing mono-ethnic culture and structure(s) can be conceptualised, we should redefine it, in a Simmelian way, as the multiple processes of the development of social relationships and social groups. This way, we can take into account the possibilities of cultural and structural renewal in the daily actions and practices of the actors involved, as well as the structural and cultural conditions under which actors exercise their agency. So we can take a look at whether and how new forms of multi-ethnic social relationships and concommittant structural and cultural schemes are formed, which mechanisms facilitate these processes and which counteract them.Late modernity is characterized, inter allia, by a significant shift of the relationship between the post-industrial Educational Policy and the employment and social policies. In Europe, the new economic trends (growth development, market economy, globalisation, sustainability, etc.), the domination of new technologies, as well as the construction of the so-called "Knowledge Society", along with the shrinking of the Welfare State in conjunction with the gradual loss of social meaning as to the role of the State, and the - not so rare - dissociation of public education from its social dynamic have redefined the role and the basic components of all the grades of traditional educational systems, including Higher Education. Already since the beginning of the 90s, the apperceptions about Higher Education appear to change and rekindle anew the issue about the economic and social role of Higher Education and its interaction with "Society at Large". In such an context, the limitation of vocational rights and the disengagement or exclusion from the process of carving the educational policy of most social (but not necessarily economic) partners seem to lead § to the fragmentation of interest groups participation and § to the limitation of redistribution, especially at the highest level of the educational system. Education is considered to be an inalienable social good only in its rudimentary form. "Moving" upwards, this is no longer a matter-of-course. Higher education, in much the same way as labour, often tends to become a stake The proposed study focuses on the stake of the new partnership between European Higher Education and "Society at Large". Main topics of the study are: § The contextual parameters of the (under construction) European Higher Education Area (EHEA) and the role of the Knowledge Society and Economy. § The interaction between New Economy- Growth Development and Higher Education Area (facts, trends and dilemmas concerning the influence of such an interaction to the social dimensions of Higher Education). § Conceptual and definitional issues regarding the conception of higher education as a public good. § The politics of the counter-arguments and the role of specific policy coalitions, economically- oriented ideologies, transnational and international agreements (such as GATS) to the construction of a political discourse against the conception of higher education as a public good. § A critical reconstuction of the Life-Long Education and the role of human resource development in the construction of the EHEA. In fact the whole study raises and attempts to answer questions such as: § What is the position and the role of an educational policy that wishes to contribute to the moulding of the EHEA, as understood already from the Declaration of the Sorbonne and as the focal point of the Declaration of Bologna and Prague? § How will any new rationality of the University policy handle its relationship with the operational and regulatory dimensions of the field of European Higher Education i. so as to remain relatively autonomous from the new macro-economic aims (in order to avoid "fatal" over-determination), ii. without however overlooking the new rationality of the changes at the core of macro-economic policy (shifting from Keynsianism to Monetarism) and the way in which these define the nature and quality of the changes in the relationship