While neorealism and world-system theory both claim to be “structural” theories of international relations, they embody very different understandings of system structure and structural explanation. Neorealists conceptualize system structures in individualist terms as constraining the choices of preexisting state agents, whereas world-system theorists conceptualize system structures in structuralist terms as generating state agents themselves. These differences stem from what are, in some respects, fundamentally opposed solutions to the “agent-structure” or “micromacro” problem. This opposition, however, itself reflects a deeper failure of each theory to recognize the mutually constitutive nature of human agents and system structures—a failure which leads to deep-seated inadequacies in their respective explanations of state action. An alternative solution to the agent-structure problem, adapted from “structuration theory” in sociology, can overcome these inadequacies by avoiding both the reduction of system structures to state actors in neorealism and their reification in world-system theory. Structuration theory requires a philosophical basis in scientific realism, arguably the “new orthodoxy” in the philosophy of natural science, but as yet largely unrecognized by political scientists. The scientific realist/structuration approach generates an agenda for “structural-historical” research into the properties and dispositions of both state actors and the system structures in which they are embedded.

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The agent-structure problem in international relations theory

▪  State repression includes harassment, surveillance/spying, bans, arrests, torture, and mass killing by government agents and/or affiliates within their territorial jurisdiction. Over the past 40 years, the systematic study of state repression has grown considerably. The development of this work, however, has been uneven. Though unified in their focus on the problem of order (i.e., trying to ascertain how political authorities wield coercive power amid potential and actual domestic challengers), different scholars tend to emphasize distinct aspects of the topic. Consequently, a great deal of progress has been made in specific areas but others have lagged behind. In this review, I attempt to identify the dominant traditions in the repression literature, the core empirical findings, and some persisting puzzles.

State Repression and Political Order

The study of identity forms a critical cornerstone within modern sociological thought. Introduced by the works of Cooley and Mead, identity studies have evolved and grown central to current sociological discourse. Microsociological perspectives dominated work published through the 1970s. Sociologists focused primarily on the formation of the “me,” exploring the ways in which interpersonal interactions mold an individual's sense of self. Recent literature constitutes an antithesis to such concerns. Many works refocus attention from the individual to the collective; others prioritize discourse over the systematic scrutiny of behavior; some researchers approach identity as a source of mobilization rather than a product of it; and the analysis of virtual identities now competes with research on identities established in the copresent world. This essay explores all such agenda as raised in key works published since 1980. I close with a look toward the future, suggesting trajectories aimed at synthesizing tradi...

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IDENTITY CONSTRUCTION: New Issues, New Directions

Over the past few decades serious reservations have been expressed about the explanatory power of sociological theory and research In this important book, leading social theorist Peter Hedstrom outlines the foundations of an analytically oriented sociology that seeks to address this criticism Building on his earlier influential contributions to contemporary debates, Professor Hedstrom argues for a systematic development of sociological theory so that it has the explanatory power and precision to inform sociological research and understanding He discusses various mechanisms of action and interaction and shows how strong links can be forged between the micro and the macro, and between theory and empirical research Combining approaches to theory and methodology and using extensive examples to illustrate how they might be applied, this clear, concise and original book will appeal to a broad range of social scientists

Dissecting the Social: On the Principles of Analytical Sociology

Environmental justice has been a central concern in a range of disciplines, and both the concept and its coverage have expanded substantially in the past two decades. I examine this development in three key ways. First, I explore how early work on environmental justice pushed beyond many boundaries: it challenged the very notion of ‘environment’, examined the construction of injustice beyond inequity, and illustrated the potential of pluralistic conceptions of social justice. More recently, there has been a spatial expansion of the use of the term, horizontally into a broader range of issues, vertically into examinations of the global nature of environmental injustices, and conceptually to the human relationship with the non-human world. Further, I argue that recent extensions of the environmental justice frame move the discourse into a new realm – where environment and nature are understood to create the conditions for social justice.

Theorising environmental justice: the expanding sphere of a discourse

The Spectacular State explores the production of national identity in post-Soviet Uzbekistan. The main protagonists are the cultural elites involved in the elaboration of new state-sponsored mass-spectacle national holidays: Navro’z (Zoroastrian New Year) and Independence Day. The overall argument is that despite their aspirations to reinvigorate national identity, mass spectacle creators in Uzbekistan have reproduced much of the Soviet cultural production. National identity has been one of the most fraught questions in Central Asia, where nationality was a contradictory and complicated product of the Soviet rule. Although the category of nationality was initiated, produced, and imposed by the Soviet state in the 1920s, it eventually became a source of power and authority for local elites, including cultural producers. The collapse of the Soviet Union opened up possibilities for revising and reversing many understandings manufactured by the socialist regime. Yet, upon her arrival in Tashkent to conduct her research on the renegotiation of national identity in 1995, Laura Adams discovered that instead of embracing newly-found freedom to recover a more authentic history, most Uzbek intellectuals, especially cultural producers working with the state, avoided probing too far in this direction. Rather than entirely discarding the Soviet colonial legacies, they revised their history selectively. Whereas the ideological content of their cultural production shifted from socialism to nationalism, many of the previous cultural ‘‘forms’’ have remained. Similarly, the Uzbek government continued to employ cultural elites to implement the task of reinforcing its nation-building program, thus following the Soviet model of cultural production. The book consists of four chapters. The first chapter delineates the broad themes of national identity building, and the remaining chapters explore mass spectacle creation by distinguishing between three elements: form (Chapter Two), content (Chapter Three), and the mode of production (Chapter Four). The study is based on content analysis of two Olympic Games-style national holidays, interviews with cultural producers, and participation observation of festivals and behind-the-scenes preparation meetings. Although Adams provides a few references to viewers and their attitude toward the public holiday performances, her book does not offer an extended engagement with reception and consumption of these holidays. The comprehensive and multi-layered overview of the process of revising national identity in Uzbekistan is one of the book’s major accomplishments. For Adams, the production of national identity is not a selfevident and seamless production forced by the state but instead a dynamic, complex, and dialogical process of negotiation between various parties (intellectual factions, state officials, mass spectacle producers, etc.). Her account reveals the messy and often contradictory nature of national identity production and thus moves away from the tendency to reify the state and its policies. The book makes a significant contribution to studies of nationalism by suggesting that the production of national identity in Uzbekistan was centrally constituted by the consideration of the ‘‘international audience.’’ Although public holidays, studied by Adams, aimed at fostering national identification, the forms in which these celebrations are performed (including national dances and music) indicate the aspiration of cultural producers to be part of the international community. This kind of national production self-consciously oriented toward the international viewer has been the legacy of the Soviet nationalities policy where all cultural producers had to produce art ‘‘socialist in content, national in form.’’ Notwithstanding the difference in generations or genres,

http://csx.sagepub.com/content/41/5/639.full.pdf

Pesticide Drift and the Pursuit of Environmental Justice

In recent years, the study of class has shaped and been shaped by the flurry of "post-structuralist", "post-Marxist" and "state-centred" approaches that have emerged in historical and sociological scholarship. Yet class analysis has sustained itself as a powerful, refined working tool in helping scholars to understand the complexities of social and historical processes. This volume of original essays provides a cross-section of the body of social theory and empirical research being produced by scholars employing class analysis. The contributors address continuing debates over the relationship between structure and agency, the centrality of class realism and the dynamics of class formation, class culture and class consciousness.

Bringing Class Back In: Contemporary And Historical Perspectives

Violence and Repression in Latin America: A Quantitative and Historical Analysis.

In a New Yorker cartoon two men and two women stand, drinks in hand, gazing out over the darkening city from the balcony of their highrise apartment. They have the view all to themselves as one man remarks to the other, "We love the view. It helps to remind us we're part of a larger community." We see this as funny, or not, because we know that far below them people are going hungry, bag ladies are sorting their day's treasures, somebody is being mugged; there are traffic jams, drug deals, frayed nerves, and people speaking a score of different languages. We wonder, rightly, whether there is such a thing anymore as community in America. If there is, we want to know where it is and how to find it.

Is democracy possible

In the late 1800s an unprecedented coalition of American farmers rose to challenge the course of national politics. Aspiring to a society in which justice and equality were the norm, the farmers galvanized thousands of voters, causing two dominant political parties to reshape their agendas. Yet by 1900, the movement was virtually dead. Scott G. McNall analyzes why America's largest mass-democratic movement failed. He focuses his inquiry on Kansas, the center of the agrarian rebellion that led to the creation of the Farmer's Alliance and, later, to the founding of the People's party. Integrating new historical accounts with original analyses of census data, Alliance membership records, and speech transcripts, McNall restores these Kansas voices, revealing their struggle against an entrenched class system, indifferent political parties, and economic hardship. McNall rejects the traditional view that blames the failure of the Alliance on a turn to mass-based electoral politics, but rather sees the move into national politics by the Farmer's Alliance as part of a rational strategy to better wage their fight for economic justice. The Kansas populists failed, he argues, because of their inability to embrace a broad, working-class base, to provide an effective alternative vision, and ultimately to create a distinct class organization. Debates about how classes come into being, or how democracy is to be realized, cannot be settled in the abstract. McNall's recreation of this heroic struggle is a model in the analysis of class formation. At the same time, "The Road to Rebellion" is dynamic social history, which holds vital lessons for structuring and realizing alternative political agendas today.

Scott G. McNall

Papers

Pesticide Drift and the Pursuit of Environmental Justice

Bringing Class Back In: Contemporary And Historical Perspectives

Violence and Repression in Latin America: A Quantitative and Historical Analysis.

Is democracy possible

The Road to Rebellion: Class Formation and Kansas Populism, 1865-1900