The four Visegrad states — Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia (until 1993 Czechoslovakia) and Hungary — form a compact area between Germany and Austria in the west and the states of the former USSR in the east. They are bounded by the Baltic in the north and the Danube river in the south. They are cut by the Sudeten and Carpathian mountain ranges, which divide Poland off from the other states. Poland is an extension of the North European plain and like the latter is drained by rivers that flow from south to north west — the Oder, the Vlatava and the Elbe, the Vistula and the Bug. The Danube is the great exception, flowing from its source eastward, turning through two 90-degree turns to end up in the Black Sea, forming the barrier and often the political frontier between central Europe and the Balkans. Hungary to the east of the Danube is also an open plain. The region is historically and culturally part of western Europe, but its eastern Marches now represents a vital strategic zone between Germany and the core of the European Union to the west and the Russian zone to the east.

Economy and Society

Preface Introduction: Traditions of Nationhood in France and Germany I. The Institution of Citizenship 1. Citizenship as Social Closure 2. The French Revolution and the Invention of National Citizenship 3. State, State-System, and Citizenship in Germany II. Defining The Citizenry: The Bounds of Belonging 4. Citizenship and Naturalization in France and Germany 5. Migrants into Citizens: The Crystallization of Jus Soli in Late-Nineteenth-Century France 6. The Citizenry as Community of Descent: The Nationalization of Citizenship in Wilhelmine Germany 7. \"Etre Francais, Cela se Merite\": Immigration and the Politics of Citizenship in France in the 1980s 8. Continuities in the German Politics of Citizenship Conclusion Notes Bibliography Index

Citizenship and Nationhood in France and Germany.

After virtue, a study in moral theory

Time-diary data from representative samples ofAmerican adults show thatthenumber ofoverall hours ofdomestic labor (excluding child care andshopping) has continued to decline steadily and predictably since 1965. This finding is mainly due todramatic declines among women (both in and out of thepaidlabor market), whohave cuttheir housework hours almostin halfsince the 1960s: abouthalfofwomen's 12-hour-per­ week decline can beaccountedfor bycompositional shifts - such asincreased labor force participation, later marriage, andfewer children. In contrast, men's housework time has almost doubled during thisperiod (to thepointwhere menwere responsible for a third ofhousework in the 1990s), and only about15% of theirfive-hour-per­ week increase can be attributed to compositional factors. Parallel results on gender differences in housework were obtained from theNational Survey of Families and Households estimate data, even though these producefigures 50%higher thandiary data. Regression results examiningfactors related to wives' andhusbands' housework hours showmore support for the time-availability and relative-resource models of household production thanfor thegender perspective, although there issome support for thelatter perspective aswell.

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Is Anyone Doing the Housework? Trends in the Gender Division of Household Labor

This article reviews more than 200 scholarly articles and books on household labor published between 1989 and 1999. As a maturing area of study, this body of research has been concerned with understanding and documenting how housework is embedded in complex and shifting social processes relating to the well-being of families, the construction of gender, and the reproduction of society. Major theoretical, methodological, and empirical contributions to the study of household labor are summarized, and suggestions for further research are offered. In summary, women have reduced and men have increased slightly their hourly contributions to housework. Although men's relative contributions have increased, women still do at least twice as much routine housework as men. Consistent predictors of sharing include both women's and men's employment, earnings, gender ideology, and life-course issues. More balanced divisions of housework are associated with women perceiving fairness, experiencing less depression, and enjoying higher marital satisfaction.

Research on household labor : Modeling and measuring the social embeddedness of routine family work

Focuses on the transition from socialism to capitalism in Eastern Europe since the 1980s, where capitalism was made without a capitalist class. This text reflects on the sociological characteristics of the Communist system and offers a theory of post-Communist societies. 1989 is seen as a successful revolution led by the former technocratic fraction of the old Communist ruling estate against the bureaucracy. In order to secure its victory, however, the technocracy had to make substantial concessions to the former dissident intelligentsia. The irony of the post-Communist way to capitalism is that these most unlikely actors see "building capitalism" as their historic task.

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Making capitalism without capitalists : class formation and elite struggles in post-communist Central Europe

I do not know what is like elsewhere, but in Poland sociologists look at social policy writers with a bit of superiority, as the former deal mainly with ‘pure’ science, and social policy analysts represent rather mundane, practical perspectives. And indeed, after reading Making Capitalism Without Capitalists, written by three sociologists based in the USA, I have become much more aware of how close to practice I am as a policy analyst, even if I am interested primarily in social policy strategies and not so much in their implementation. The main purpose of the book is to set a new research agenda for a neo-classical sociology, an agenda concerned with the origins and character of capitalist systems emerging in post-communist Central Europe. In my opinion the authors have succeeded in this. The book is very helpful in explaining how capitalism is developing on the basis of ‘real’ socialism, what actors are building postcommunist capitalism, how social structures are being shaped and the origins and ideology of the new power-elite. From this point of view the most important achievement of the authors seems to be a refutation of a ‘political capitalism’ thesis; in the countries of Central Europe (i.e. Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland) there is little evidence that the nomenclatura (i.e. members of the power-elite under socialism) was successful in acquiring private property. In this respect Central Europe differs substantially from Russia and other East European countries, where conversion of political power into private wealth is evident. Readers interested in theoretical problems of shaping a new socio-economic system and in capturing the dynamics of transformation from a ‘real’ socialism into a market-oriented economy will certainly enrich their knowledge about how these processes are unfolding in the countries of Central Europe. They will learn how capitalism is being created from above and in which ways the formation of private property and class relations affect the nature of capitalism that is being built in the region. All these theoretical issues are obviously of great interest for social policy analysts, but while reading this book I constantly wondered what were the practical implications of ‘capitalism from above’ for dealing with old and newly emerging social problems. The authors admit that they are not fully prepared to answer this question yet. In my opinion, theoretical considerations on ‘making capitalism without capitalists’ are not very helpful in pointing to solutions to the socio-political dilemmas of the transformation process. The book, however, also makes several casual remarks of direct importance for social policy analysts. First of all, the authors identify winners and losers of the transformation. According to them, the main winners are highly educated middle-aged men; major losers are less educated people in their fifties, employed in highly subsidized sectors of the socialist economy. The authors also stress the significance of cultural capital as the most important form of capital in post-communist societies. The Polish experiences also confirm the authors’ belief that the development of the ‘right’ institutions is not sufficient to generate ‘appropriate’ behaviour, and it is certainly not enough to change post-communist mentality. Summing up, it seems to me that the book might be especially interesting to readers from ‘mature’ capitalist countries, providing them with a multifaceted picture of an emerging post-communist capitalist system. One has to remember, however, that the post-communist system in Central Europe is constantly changing, and that the nature of the system will certainly be different in the years to come. The authors are perfectly aware of the ‘transitory’ character of the present conditions, but BOOK REVIEWS

Making Capitalism Without Capitalists: The New Ruling Elites in Eastern Europe

This investigation places recent research about changes in wives' and husbands' domestic labor in the context of well-known reporting differences between different kinds of housework surveys. An analysis of the “reporting gap” between direct-question reports of housework hours from the National Survey of Families and Households (1988) and time-diary reports from Americans' Use of Time, 1985, shows that both husbands and wives overreport their housework contributions. Furthermore, gender attitudes, total housework, class, education, income, family size, and employment status together significantly affect the overreport, although the variables operate in different ways for wives and husbands. It is concluded that changing and uneven social perceptions of the appropriate domestic roles of women and men have resulted in reporting biases that do not necessarily correspond to actual changes in housework behavior. These findings cast doubt on claims that contemporary husbands are doing more housework than their ...

WIVES' AND HUSBANDS' HOUSEWORK REPORTING Gender, Class, and Social Desirability

Chapter 1. Media Commentary and the Space of Opinion Chapter 2. A History of Opinion in the U.S. Media Chapter 3. Media and Opinion Formation: Toward a New Theory of Deliberative Politics Chapter 4. Who Speaks in the Space of Opinion? Chapter 5. Formats and Norms in the U.S. Space of Opinion Chapter 6. Rhetorics in the Space of Contemporary U.S. Opinion Chapter 7. The Enron Scandal Chapter 8. The War on Terror Chapter 9. The Future of Opinion

The Space of Opinion: Media Intellectuals and the Public Sphere

Combining insights from narrative analysis in sociology and trope theory in anthropology, this article develops a theory of tropes that emphasizes their historical production and political effects. Tropes function politically to enable some narratives, identities and resolutions while foreclosing others. As a powerful tool for socio-historical analysis, a consideration of tropes is crucial for deconstructing the taken-for-granted predicates and the `dangerous' consequences of political narratives. To illustrate the argument, the trope of `the Sixties' is analyzed as a case study.

Eleanor Townsley

Papers

Making capitalism without capitalists : class formation and elite struggles in post-communist Central Europe

Making Capitalism Without Capitalists: The New Ruling Elites in Eastern Europe

WIVES' AND HUSBANDS' HOUSEWORK REPORTING Gender, Class, and Social Desirability

The Space of Opinion: Media Intellectuals and the Public Sphere

`The Sixties' Trope: