Showing papers by "Bryan S. Turner published in 1993"

Citizenship and social theory

Abstract: Contemporary Problems in the Theory of Citizenship - Bryan S Turner Citizenship in the Modern West - Barry Hindess Citizenship, Class Inequality and Resentment - J M Barbalet Citizenship in a Liberal Society - Peter Saunders Cultural Foundations of Modern Citizenship - Stephen Kalberg Psychology and Citizenship - John Shotter Identity and Belonging The Fragile Ethical Vision of Civil Society - Adam B Seligman Outline of the Theory of Human Rights - Bryan S Turner

Outline of a Theory of Human Rights

Abstract: Although the study of citizenship has been an important development in contemporary sociology, the nature of rights has been largely ignored. The analysis of human rights presents a problem for sociology, in which cultural relativism and the fact-value distinction have largely destroyed the classical tradition of the natural-law basis for rights discourse. This critique of the idea of universal rights was prominent in the work of Marx, Durkheim and Weber. However, recent developments in the organisation of nation states, the globalisation of political issues, the transformation of family life, and changes in medical technology in relation to human reproduction have brought the question of human rights to the forefront of social and political debate. The paper argues that a sociology of rights is important, because there are obvious limitations to the idea of citizenship, which is based on membership of a nation state. Existing conceptualisations of citizenship require the supplement of rights theory. It i...

Talcott Parsons, universalism and the educational revolution: democracy versus professionalism

Abstract: Le concept d'universalite dans la theorie sociologique de Talcott Parsons et son application au mode de developpement de la societe americaine et de l'ideologie americaine. Role de cette notion dans la definition du sociologue de la modernite (changement social et processus de modernisation) et de la participation sociale, qui trouvent selon lui leurs fondements dans l'idee puritaine du salut universel et qui ont joue un role particulier dans la constitution des societes occidentales.

Population variability in a domestic stored product pest, the parthenogenetic psocid liposcelis bostrychophila: implications for control

Abstract: The small (Imrn long), wingless, psocid, Liposcelis bostrychophila (Badonnel) (Psocoptera, Liposcelidae), is found throughout the world and is frequently a pest of farinaceous food stores. Since the early 1940's, when this insect was recorded for the first time in southern England, it has spread to virtually all parts of the UK where it is now a major cause of consumer complaints in some areas of the food industry. L. bostrychophilo is parthenogenetic and, for its size, relatively long lived. It displays considerable adaptability to deal with local or temporary situations. Adults have a wide temperature tolerance, a very catholic diet and an ability to go for long periods without food. In good conditions they maxirnise reproductive output whilst in poor conditions their egg output reduces or stops whilst their longevity increases. These two alternatives are readily switchable in fluctuating conditions. In addition they show some tolerance to pyrethroid insecticides. Parthenogenesis is essentially a clonal mode of reproduction and yet there is a considerable degree of variability in the biologies of individuals of the same clonal line. Advantageous traits, resulting from random mutations, will be readily incorporated into the genotype of a parthenogenetic species and so spread rapidly, at least on a local scale. At the individual level allozyme variations can be seen within and between populations from different localities in the UK. These are being used to attempt to identify particular features of this liposcelid's biology. The problems of controlling L. bostrychophila are discussed in the light of this population variation.

Postmodernism and Islam. Predicament and Promise. By Akbar S. Ahmed. Routledge: London, 1992. Pp. x, 294.

Abstract: Akbar Ahmed's important and wide-ranging discussion of the place of Islam within the debate over postmodernism has to be understood against the background of the complex analysis of the cultural roots of modernity. In speculating about the origins of the modern (western) world, social philosophers from David Hume onwards have been impressed by the cultural impact of the Abrahamic religions in shaping modern social reality. However, the intellectual problem, which was also an ideological one, has been to decide which of these world religions has been most significant in determining the contours of modernity. It is well known within the sociology of religion, following Max Weber's two famous essays of 1905 in the Archivfur Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik on the Protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism, that the ascetic Protestant sects were regarded as fundamental in the push towards rational modernity. The inner-worldly asceticism of Calvinistic Protestantism transformed western culture towards an antimagical, disciplined life-world. The Protestant ethic thesis has remained a controversial argument for nearly nine decades. The alternatives to this Weberian thesis suggested that it was Greek culture (according to Nietzsche) or Jewish prophetic religion (according to Sombart) which had provided the roots of modernist rationality, but this debate has remained fundamentally unresolved.