Showing papers in "Theory and Society in 2002"

What buildings do

Abstract: Buildings stabilize social life. They give structure to social institutions, durability to social networks, persistence to behavior patterns. What we build solidifies society against time and its incessant forces for change. Simmel mentions that the "significance of space for social formations lies in its capacity of fixing their contents."3 Brick and mortar resist intervention and permutation, as they accomplish a measure of stasis. And yet, buildings stabilize imperfectly. Some fall into ruin,4 others are destroyed naturally or by human hand, and most are unendingly renovated into something they were not originally.5 Buildings don't just sit there imposing themselves. They are forever objects of (re)interpretation, narration and representation and meanings or stories are sometimes more pliable than the walls and floors they depict. We deconstruct buildings materially and semiotically, all the time.

Four models of the public sphere in modern democracies

Abstract: Cet article definit quatre traditions de theories democratiques : liberale representative, liberale participative, discursive et constructionniste. Afin de degager les types de sphere publique privilegies par chacune de ces traditions, l'article en souligne les criteres normatifs qui permettent de savoir, pour chacune d'entre elles, qui prend la parole, selon quel processus, quel est le style de discours privilegie et quelle relation est recherchee entre le discours et la prise de decision

The state of social capital: Bringing back in power, politics, and history

Abstract: Cet article developpe une perspective historique des determinants du capital social aux Etats-Unis, en s'appuyant sur les travaux de Robert Putnam et de Michael Woolcock. En particulier, il reintroduit l'Etat, le pouvoir, la politique et l'ideologie dans la formation historique du capital social

Pragmatism and the untenable dualism of means and ends: Why rational choice theory does not deserve paradigmatic privilege

Abstract: Selon l'A., on ne peut operer une critique adequate de la theorie du choix rationnel que si l'on remet en cause le modele d'acteur qui lui est attache (modele qualifie de portfolio). L'A. puise son argumentation dans la tradition philosophique pragmatiste americaine, et plus particulierement chez John Dewey, pour montrer le caractere intenable du dualisme de la fin et des moyens

From the specter of Mao to the spirit of the law: Labor insurgency in China

Abstract: Dans cet article, l'A. se penche sur les conditions dramatiques du marche du travail chinois, et pose les caracteristiques de l'entree de l'economie de marche et la mutation ineluctable du regime socialiste qui tente de maintenir l'ordre par l'Etat de droit de l'economie, appliquant ses regles au depend des travailleurs

Gay but not queer: Toward a post-queer study of sexuality

Abstract: Le but de l'A est de proposer une etude de la sexualite en general, et de l'homosexualite en particulier, qui reconnaisse les limites du post-structuralisme et accorde un role central aux institutions et a la socialisation dans l'organisation de la sexualite Pour ce faire, il met en evidence deux tensions presentes dans la theorie queer, censee representer une version post-moderne de la critique sexuelle : le deconstructionnisme radical et la subversion radicale Selon l'A, ces deux approches sous-estiment la persistance de la dimension institutionnelle de la sexualite

Globalization and Transnational Diffusion between Social Movements: Reconceptualizing the Dissemination of the Gandhian Repertoire and the 'Coming Out' Routine.

Abstract: Cet article se penche sur les modalites de diffusion transnationale des mouvements sociaux en contexte de mondialisation. Il reinterroge le diffusionnisme essentialiste qui pose la mondialisation comme un processus institutionnel isomorphique sans s'interroger sur le caractere contingent et reciproque de ses modes de dissemination entre l'Occident et le reste du monde. Dans le but d'esquisser des alternatives a ce modele d'explication d'origine eurocentriste, il applique son approche a deux modes de diffusion appartenant a deux contextes differents : le transfert du repertoire Gandhien au Mouvement des droits civiques americain, et la rencontre des mouvements homosexuels a travers le monde

The political rationality of new regionalism: Toward a genealogy of the region

Abstract: Un nouveau regionalisme international s'exprime a travers une formulation triadique des blocs politico-economiques dominants, a savoir, l'Europe, l'Asie-Pacifique et l'Amerique du Nord. Cette approche temoignerait d'une perte de la pertinence du niveau national pour rendre compte des espaces politico-economiques et serait l'expression la plus adequate des processus de mondialisation. Les AA. invitent au contraire a voir dans les regions supranationales une expression des politiques internationales des etats-nations

Dangerous liaisons between military intelligence and Middle Eastern studies in Israel

Abstract: Il est avere qu'en Israel, les universitaires specialises dans le Moyen-Orient collaborent avec les services de renseignements de l'armee Le but de cet article est de chercher a connaitre les circonstances dans lesquelles cette collaboration a ete amenee a se developper et avec quelles consequences en ce qui concerne les relations des intellectuels avec le pouvoir

Material designs: Engineering cultures and engineering states - Ireland 1650-1900

Abstract: Materiality has proved one of the most difficult "objects" for social science to theorize. In the early British social science movement, represented most clearly by the National Association for the Promotion of Social Science (1857),1 materiality was a broad explanatory category, encompassing all aspects of both the natural and built environment. Informed by a seventeenthand eighteenth-century discourse that linked material conditions to moral and intellectual standards, many members of the early social science movement viewed material "improvement" as an important "agent" for advancing "civilization."2 In Marxist theory, however, the material increasingly became confined to and made coterminous with "the economic," a concept made so abstract that it became more a matter of theoretical "relations" than actual practices and conditions.3 Culture, by definition, was not material. In the 1930s, Marcel Mauss sought to advance a research agenda that would view the body as a form of material culture, but the post-war period brought instead increasingly abstract models of "systems" and "action." Culture, in this context, was fundamentally psychological and, therefore, immaterial (descriptively rather than normatively). The abstractions of structural functionalism (now called the "old institutionalism") were countered by American micro sociology, especially the symbolic interactionist school. In this context, however, theorization of the material was muted by an overarching concern with issues of "meaning," culture being symbolic rather than material. While these literatures were in many respects fundamentally at odds, all implicitly agreed that "material culture" was a contradiction in terms. In more recent years, numerous "turns" linguistic, discursive, interpretive, cognitive, historical, social, and cultural have largely left the categorical distinction intact: the cultural and material are mutually exclusive.

Material practices of domination: Christian humanism, the built environment, and techniques of Western power

Abstract: While all human communities must engage the natural world for survival, the degree and kind of legitimate intervention into the landscape has varied enormously historically and culturally even just in the western tradition. Materialist traditions of analysis have suggested that social organization is deeply embedded in patterns of extracting and using natural resources, making what is done with land fundamentally important to social life. Cultural traditions of social explanation have made it clear that even material relations are cultural forms.

The judge, the cop, and the queen of carnival: Ethnography, storytelling, and the (contested) meanings of protest

Abstract: Santiagaso, est le nom de la revolte qui a eu lieu au nord-est de l'Argentine a Santiago del Estero le 16 decembre 1993, et pendant laquelle des milliers de manifestants (pour la plupart des employes reclamant leurs salaires impayes) ont saccage et brule la maison du gouverneur, le tribunal et une douzaine de maisons des notables. Base sur des interviews et des conversations informelles, effectues entre 1999 et 2000 a Santiago del Estero, l'article decrit l'impact de cet evenement a partir des recits des journalistes, fonctionnaires d'Etat et participants a la revolte

Battling over political and cultural power during the Chinese Cultural Revolution

Abstract: Cet article retrace un aspect du conflit qui a oppose les elites intellectuelles aux elites du parti communiste chinois durant la Revolution culturelle. Il se penche en particulier sur les conflits entre factions dans deux ecoles d'elite de Beijing : l'universite de Tsinghua, et l'etablissement d'enseignement secondaire qui y est rattache

Individuality and the intellectuals: An imaginary conversation between W. E. B. Du Bois and Emile Durkheim

Abstract: Cet article imagine une conversation telle qu'elle aurait pu eventuellement se produire entre W.E.B. Du Bois et Emile Durkheim s'ils s'etaient rencontres. Le texte s'appuie sur un article publie par Durkheim en 1899 L'individualisme et les intellectuels, et est introduit par des thematiques tirees de leurs ouvrages respectifs : The Souls of Black Folks et Les formes elementaires de la vie religieuse. Les questions du racisme subi par les Noirs americains et de l'anti-semitisme francais lors de l'Affaire Dreyfus constituent l'axe central de l'article

Proceduralism reconceived: Political conflict resolution under conditions of moral pluralism

Abstract: L'A. plaide pour une regulation sociale des conflits normatifs autour d'un socle minimum commun qui lui semble devoir etre une forme de proceduralisme allege. L'A. estime que cette forme de regulation, base de la democratie, permet notamment de faire cohabiter les minorites religieuses les plus diverses, a l'exception de celles dont les vues fondamentalistes les rendent retives aux compromis. L'A. applique son analyse en grande partie a l'integration des immigres non-europeens dans les societes europeennes

The dubious place of virtue: Reflections on the impeachment of William Jefferson Clinton and the death of the political event in America

Abstract: Looking back at past events that one has lived only through the media is sobering: the importance we assigned to these "media events" as they occurred seems to fade; we are obliged to question our initial assumptions, and reframe the terms of our analysis. As the impeachment of President Clinton unfolded in the media, we struggled to make sense of the events, as citizens and sociologists. The writing of this article occurred, therefore, in superimposed layers and continuously updated and corrected versions. But since everything was representation on the manipulated stage of the media, did the events actually mean anything to anybody beside the participants? Did they actually have a public, and how large was it? Did they actually exist beyond the short time in which "the presses," broadly conceived, stopped for them?' These questions constantly eroded the analytic boundaries that we had set for ourselves, making the task more and more elusive.

The end of socialism and the reinvention of the self: A study of the East German psychotherapeutic community in transition

Abstract: Dans cet article, l'A. se penche sur les conditions sociologiques de la pratique psychologique et psychotherapeutique de l'ancienne Allemagne de l'Est a la chute du mur de Berlin. L'A. revient sur arrangements institutionnels des services psychologiques, la legitimite de certaines theories et pratiques et insiste sur l'identite et la pratique professionnelle des psychotherapeutes

The political economy of tariffs in late nineteenth-century Europe: Reconsidering Republican France

Abstract: This article examines an important period in work on comparative political economy and economic sociology the late nineteenth century in Europe. It takes up a classic problem in these fields domestic political responses to changes in exposure to international trade. Narrowly constructed models of pressure group politics have dominated approaches to this problem. I argue here that these approaches pay insufficient attention to the fiscal sociology of states and regimes. I develop these arguments, first of all, by examining central features of trade and domestic politics in France, secondly, by putting this examination in a broader comparative context, and finally, by drawing out some of the theoretical implications.

The opposite of totality: Levinas and the Frankfurt School

Abstract: Dans cet article, l'A. entreprend une comparaison des demarches philosophiques d'E. Levinas et de l'Ecole de Francfort, et plus particulierement de T. Adorno, pour se pencher sur les implications de ces differences de systemes de pensee au niveau de l'apport realise dans la construction de la theorie sociale

When urban policy becomes labor policy: State structures, local initiatives, and union representation at the turn of the century

Abstract: Dans cet article, l'A conteste les visions negatives de la mondialisation sur l'organisation et le droit du travail par l'affaiblissement du role de l'Etat. A partir d'une etude locale a San Fransisco, l'A degage plusieurs modalites d'actions et de flexibilite de defense des travailleurs

The integration of difference in French Indochina during World War II: Organizations and ideology concerning youth

Abstract: Cet article examine le paradoxe de la coexistence, durant la Seconde guerre mondiale, du regime raciste et antisemite de Vichy et d'une politique d'integration multiraciale dans les colonies francaises d'Indochine. En particulier, la propagande coloniale a destination de la jeunesse Indochinoise est examinee dans ses multiples aspects