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Showing papers in "Theory and Society in 2009"


Journal ArticleDOI
Jens Beckert1
TL;DR: In this article, the authors develop a proposal for the theoretical vantage point of the sociology of markets, focusing on the problem of the social order of markets and argue that these problems can only be resolved based on stable reciprocal expectations on the part of market actors, which have their basis in socio-structural, institutional and cultural embedding of markets.
Abstract: In this article I develop a proposal for the theoretical vantage point of the sociology of markets, focusing on the problem of the social order of markets. The initial premise is that markets are highly demanding arenas of social interaction, which can only operate if three inevitable coordination problems are resolved. I define these coordination problems as the value problem, the problem of competition and the cooperation problem. I argue that these problems can only be resolved based on stable reciprocal expectations on the part of market actors, which have their basis in the socio-structural, institutional and cultural embedding of markets. The sociology of markets aims to investigate how market action is structured by these macrostructures and to examine their dynamic processes of change. While the focus of economic sociology has been primarily on the stability of markets and the reproduction of firms, the conceptualization developed here brings change and profit motives more forcefully into the analysis. It also differs from the focus of the new economic sociology on the supply side of markets, by emphasizing the role of demand for the order of markets, especially in the discussion of the problems of valuation and cooperation. Markets are the central institutions of capitalist economies. The development of modern capitalism can be viewed as a process of the expansion of markets as mechanisms for the production and allocation of goods and services. This applies not just to labor markets, which only emerged on a significant scale with industriali- zation, but also to the organization of the production and distribution of consumer and investment goods, services, and commodities. The increasing separation of the economy from the household and its organization through market exchange allowed for a scope in the development in the division of labor and production of wealth that would otherwise have been unattainable.

306 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Trust is defined as acceptance of dependency in the absence of information about the other's reliability in order to create an outcome that is otherwise unavailable as discussed by the authors, and it is understood in terms of acceptance of dependence in the presence of uncertainty.
Abstract: Trust is understood in terms of a) acceptance of dependency in b) the absence of information about the other’s reliability in order to c) create an outcome otherwise unavailable. The first of these is the cost of trust; the second, the situation of uncertainty it faces and may overcome; the third, its purchase. This account permits: distinction between trust and similar relations with which it is frequently confused; discovery of the basis of trust in the emotional apprehension of confidence; and demonstration of the relationship between trust and both social capital and rationality, with counter-intuitive results.

213 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, the authors argue that existing accounts of institutional change, which are rooted in structuralism, produce excess complexity and render the most important sources and results of change invisible.
Abstract: This article joins the debate over institutional change with two propositions. First, all institutions are syncretic, that is, they are composed of an indeterminate number of features, which are decomposable and recombinable in unpredictable ways. Second, action within institutions is always potentially creative, that is, actors draw on a wide variety of cultural and institutional resources to create novel combinations. We call this approach to institutions creative syncretism. This article is in three parts. The first shows how existing accounts of institutional change, which are rooted in structuralism, produce excess complexity and render the most important sources and results of change invisible. We argue that in order to ground the theory of creative syncretism we need a more phenomenological approach, which explains how people live institutional rules. We find that grounding in John Dewey’s pragmatist theory of habit. The second part of the article explains Dewey and shows how the theory of habit can ground an experiential account of institutional rules. The third part presents a field guide to creative syncretism. It uses an experiential approach to provide novel insights on three problems that have occupied institutionalist research: periodization in American political development, convergence among advanced capitalist democracies, and institutional change in developing countries.

131 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The authors analyzed the origins, nature, and possible impacts of the crisis through comparing two such institutions: the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Trade Organization (WTO), and showed that historical differences in the two institutions' systems of rules have placed the IMF in a more vulnerable position than the WTO, which provides clues to the future contours of global economic governance.
Abstract: The current crisis of neoliberalism is calling into question the relevance of key international institutions. We analyze the origins, nature, and possible impacts of the crisis through comparing two such institutions: the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Trade Organization (WTO). Both originated in the post-World War II U.S.-led hegemonic order and were transformed as part of the transition to global neoliberalism. We show that while the IMF and the WTO have been part of the same hegemonic project, their distinct institutional features have put them on significantly different trajectories. Historical differences in the two institutions’ systems of rules have placed the IMF in a more vulnerable position than the WTO, which provides clues to the future contours of global economic governance.

121 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors make a distinction between two ideal types of markets that are mutually exclusive, status and standard, and propose a theoretical analysis of knowledge and valuation in markets.
Abstract: The purpose of this theoretical article is to contribute to the analysis of knowledge and valuation in markets. In every market actors must know how to value its products. The analytical point of departure is the distinction between two ideal types of markets that are mutually exclusive, status and standard. In a status market, valuation is a function of the status rank orders or identities of the actors on both sides of the market, which is more entrenched than the value of what is traded in the market. In a market characterized by a standard, the situation is reversed; the scale of value is more entrenched than the rankings of actors in the market. In a status market actors need to know about the other actors involved as there is no scale of value for evaluating the items traded in the market independently of its buyers and sellers. In a standard market it is more important to know how to meet the standard in relation to which all items traded are valued. The article includes empirical examples and four testable hypotheses.

110 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, a hegemonic account of mobilization, which incorporates tools from theories of everyday life and identity-formation, as well as from state-centered approaches, is offered as a way to grasp the complexity of Islamism.
Abstract: The Islamist movement in Turkey bases its mobilization strategy on transforming everyday practices. Public challenges against the state do not form a central part of its repertoire. New Social Movement theory provides some tools for analyzing such an unconventional strategic choice. However, as Islamist mobilization also seeks to reshape the state in the long run, New Social Movement theory (with its focus on culture and society and its relative neglect of the state) needs to be complemented by more institutional analyses. A hegemonic account of mobilization, which incorporates tools from theories of everyday life and identity-formation, as well as from state-centered approaches, is offered as a way to grasp the complexity of Islamism.

99 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: This article argued that postnationalists rely on categories that are confused and untenable, being that national variables are cited as evidence of transnational developments, and they challenged this devaluation of citizenship and the nation-state on empirical, conceptual, and normative grounds.
Abstract: Over the last decade and a half, in a literature otherwise obsessed with citizenship in all its forms, a broad array of scholars has downplayed, criticized, and at times trivialized national citizenship. The assault on citizenship has had both an expansionary and a contractionary thrust. It is expansionary in that the language of citizenship is no longer linked with nationality, but rather protest politics. An earlier generation of social scientists would have described these actions as lobbying; they have now become “citizenship practice.” It is contractionary in that what one might have thought to be the core of citizenship; nationality, the possession of a nation-state’s passport is viewed as less and less relevant to citizenship. Scholars have dislodged both the substance of citizenship, what it is, and the location of citizenship, where it “happens,” from the nation-state and national citizenship. The article challenges this devaluation of citizenship and the nation-state on empirical, conceptual, and normative grounds. Empirically, scholars, whom I link together under the umbrella term “postnationalists,” have based their anti-statist arguments on evidence that, when subjected to further inspection, wholly fails to support the arguments advanced. Conceptually, postnationalists rely on categories that are confused and untenable, being that national variables are cited as evidence of transnational developments. Normatively, postnationalists have lost the emancipatory thrust that once gave concerns with citizenship real-world purchase.

95 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, two types of creative economic action, improvisation and situational adaptation, are proposed: improvisation characterizes situations where ends (goals) and means are unclear at the beginning of a transaction process and get articulated as a consequence of emotional embeddedness experienced during a process.
Abstract: How do emotions influence economic action? Current literature recognizes the importance of emotions for economy because they either help individuals perform economic roles through emotion management or enhancement of emotional intelligence, or because they aid rationality through their influence on preference formation. All these strands of research investigate the link between emotions and economy from an atomistic/individualistic perspective. I argue for a different approach, one that adopts a relational perspective, focuses on emotional embeddedness and examines how emotions matter in economic interactions. Emotional embeddedness research starts with a premise that emotions result from and are influenced by interactions between economic actors during the economic process where emotional currents and their visceral and physical manifestations come to the fore. This increases the uncertainty in economic transactions and complicates the given means-ends logic of rational economic decision making, yielding economic action principles different from utility maximization. I propose two types of such creative economic action in this paper: improvisation and situational adaptation. Improvisation characterizes situations where ends (goals) and means are unclear at the beginning of a transaction process and get articulated as a consequence of emotional embeddedness experienced during a process. Situational adaptation characterizes situations in which means or ends of action change because of interaction-induced emotions that prompt actors to choose new means/ends. The article concludes with a call for empirical research that explicates further the influence of emotions not merely for rational economic action but also creative economic interactions.

91 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Based on ethnographic data, the authors examines how a Chinese life insurance market is emerging in the presence of incompatible shared values and ideas acting as cultural barriers, and how these cultural barriers shape the formation of the market.
Abstract: This article brings together two different conceptions of culture—a shared meaning system on one hand and a repertoire of strategies on the other—to understand the emergence of a market. Based on ethnographic data, it examines how a Chinese life insurance market is emerging in the presence of incompatible shared values and ideas acting as cultural barriers, and how these cultural barriers shape the formation of the market. The findings reveal a burgeoning Chinese life insurance market despite local cultural logics incompatible with the profit-oriented institutional logic of life insurance. This Chinese market, however, has developed along a different trajectory from what might be expected. It first emerged as a money management, rather than a risk management, market. I argue that the very cultural barriers that compose the local resistance to a new economic practice also necessitate the mobilization of the cultural tool-kit to circumvent this resistance. These dual processes, shared ideas composing the resistance and the cultural tool-kit circumventing the resistance, shape the trajectory and characteristics of an emergent market. I propose a theoretical model specifying the mechanisms through which the two forms of culture interplay to influence the development of the life insurance. I apply this model to extend Zelizer’s (1979) insights and discuss how culture matters in forging a new market in the global diffusion of capitalism.

58 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors connect the cultural significance of messenger practices to the emplacement of those practices inside the urban environment, and argue that bike messengers cannot be understood outside an analysis of space.
Abstract: Over the last 30 years, social theorists have increasingly emphasized the importance of space. However, in empirical research, the dialectical relationship between social interaction and the physical environment is still a largely neglected issue. Using the theory of structuration, I provide a concrete example of why and how space matters in the cultural analysis of an urban social world. I argue that bike messengers—individuals who deliver time-sensitive materials in downtown cores of major cities—cannot be understood outside an analysis of space. Specifically, I connect the cultural significance of messenger practices to the emplacement of those practices inside the urban environment. Bike messengers work in the downtown cores of major metropolitan areas. Their services are most useful in older cities whose business districts, developed long before the primacy of automobiles, are prone to traffic congestion and are continually hampered by insufficient parking. Outside of these areas, bicycle couriers are largely unknown, and their existence is considered quaint, if anything. Yet, inside these major urban centers, the bike messengers' presence is considered an intriguing or even disturbing cultural phenomenon. As one newspaper article explained, "They live the life you may have dreamed of but never had the courage or foolish disregard to try" (Cheney 1993:A1). They are "toned, tattooed daredevils who cut through exhaust and traffic all day long delivering just about anything that will fit in their shoulder bags" (Sanders 2003:2). They are also "law-flouting, obscenity-spewing, bath-needing, wild-riding, pedestrian-smashing madmen" (Levy 1989:E4) who are "maniacal and dangerous" (Lee 2001:14), and, thus, "richly deserve our wholehearted contempt and an attache case or umbrella plunged into their spokes" (Rosenthal 1987:50). In one of the early statements of what would become the Chicago School of urban research, Park (1923) notes, "The small community often tolerates eccentricity. The city, on the contrary, rewards it. Neither the criminal, the defective, nor the genius

58 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
Mabel Berezin1
TL;DR: In this article, a colleague casually mentioned the volatility of the "fear index" as a measure of financial instability and my initial reaction was that my colleague was being overly optimistic.
Abstract: In fall of 2008, global economic depression seemed a viable future possibility. As the U.S. stock market went into in free fall and major financial institutions collapsed on an almost daily basis, a colleague casually mentioned the volatility of the "fear index" as a measure of financial instability. My initial reaction was that my colleague

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Zelizer's work may be read as an attack on the central Polanyian thesis: that the market system threatens social life by the undue prominence it lends the economy in the organization of modern society as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: Zelizer’s work may be read as an attack on the central Polanyian thesis: that the market system threatens social life by the undue prominence it lends the economy in the organization of modern society. The recent publication of Viviana Zelizer’s The Purchase of Intimacy (2005a) is therefore an excellent opportunity to review the general trend of her work Zelizer 1979, 1985, 1994, and contrast her leading ideas to the central thesis that gives Polanyi’s work its particular flavor: the danger encapsulated in the use of modern money and the functioning of the market system.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The authors empirically examined internal conflicts (or "infighting"), a ubiquitous phenomenon in political organizing, to propose a "resinous culture framework" that holds promise for redirection, revealing that activists use infighting as a vehicle to engage in otherwise abstract definitional debates that provide concrete answers to questions such as who are we and what do we want.
Abstract: Sociological studies of culture have made significant progress on conceptual clarification of the concept, while remaining comparatively quiescent on questions of measurement. This study empirically examines internal conflicts (or “infighting”), a ubiquitous phenomenon in political organizing, to propose a “resinous culture framework” that holds promise for redirection. The data comprise 674 newspaper articles and more than 100 archival documents that compare internal dissent across two previously unstudied lesbian and gay Marches on Washington. Analyses reveal that activists use infighting as a vehicle to engage in otherwise abstract definitional debates that provide concrete answers to questions such as who are we and what do we want. The mechanism that enables infighting to concretize these cultural concerns is its coupling with fairly mundane and routine organizational tasks. This mechanism affords one way to release the culture concept, understood here as collective self-definitions, from being “an amorphous, indescribable mist which swirls around society members,” as it was once provocatively described.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors integrate the phenomenon of the Central and Eastern European intelligentsia into the application of the theory of cultural capital of Pierre Bourdieu to the analysis of societies of that region.
Abstract: This article aims at integrating the phenomenon of the Central and Eastern European intelligentsia into the application of the theory of cultural capital of Pierre Bourdieu to the analysis of societies of that region. This is done by critically reevaluating the model of evolution of the post-communist countries of Central Europe proposed by Gil Eyal, Ivan Szelenyi, and Eleanor Townsley, in their “Making Capitalism without Capitalists.” The present article argues for supplementing their approach with an analytical distinction between the concepts of intellectuals (as masters of the critical discourse culture) and the intelligentsia, which in countries like Poland have an important component of post-gentry culture. The identity and images of the intelligentsia are analyzed as important though highly contested aspects of cultural capital in Poland. Wide implications of discursive battles on the status of intelligentsia in contemporary Poland are exemplified in the case of the debates over the so-called Rywin Affair in Poland and the role played in that affair by the major Polish intellectual Adam Michnik. The political discourse related to the affair and to the status of Michnik are studied in context of the structure of the Polish political scene and related to the academic debates on the intelligentsia, whether it is a “really existing” and significant social group or merely a marginal one and “outdated discourse.”

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors compare trans-border national membership politics in South Korea during the Cold War and Post-Cold War eras, by comparing the membership status of colonial-era ethnic Korean migrants in Japan and northeast China and their descendants.
Abstract: The burgeoning literature on transborder membership, largely focused on the thickening relationship between emigration states in the South and the postwar labor migrant populations and their descendants in North America or Western Europe, has not paid due attention to the long-term macroregional transformations that shape transborder national membership politics or to the bureaucratic practices of the state that undergird transborder claims-making. By comparing contentious transborder national membership politics in South Korea during the Cold War and Post-Cold War eras, this article seeks to overcome these limitations. In both periods, the membership status of colonial-era ethnic Korean migrants in Japan and northeast China and their descendants was the focus of contestation. The distinctiveness of the case—involving both a sustained period of colonial rule and a period of belated and divided nation-state building interwoven with the Cold War—highlights the crucial importance of three factors: (1) the dynamically evolving macro-regional context, which has shaped transborder national membership politics in the region in distinctive ways; (2) the essentially political, performative, and constitutive nature of transborder nation-building; and (3) the role of state registration and documentation practices in shaping the contours of transborder national membership politics in the long run. By incorporating Korea—and East Asia more broadly—into the comparative study of transborder nation-building, this article also lays the groundwork for future cross-regional comparative historical studies.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: This paper explore the debates on decolonization that take place in the UN General Assembly from 1946-1960 that lead to the 1960 Declaration from a transnational feminist perspective to answer this question.
Abstract: The emergence of legal decolonization in the mid-twentieth century, as evidenced by the 1960 United Nations Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples, is often understood through the lens of race and the disruption of racial hierarchy. If we take seriously the transnational feminist contention that the colonial racial order was also gendered, however, how might this perspective shift our understanding of decolonization? In this article, I explore the debates on decolonization that take place in the UN General Assembly from 1946–1960 that lead to the 1960 Declaration from a transnational feminist perspective to answer this question. Specifically, I use comparative historical and discourse methods of analysis to explore how colonialists and anti-colonialists negotiate the onset of legal decolonization, focusing especially on how colonialist hierarchies of race, culture, and gender are addressed in these debates. I argue that, on the one hand, colonialists rely on a paternalist masculinity to legitimate their rule (i.e., our dependencies require our rule the way a child requires a father). In response, anti-colonialists reply with a resistance masculinity (i.e., “colonialism is emasculating;” “decolonization is necessary for a return of masculine dignity”). I argue that decolonization in the United Nations transpires via contentions among differentially racialized masculinities. Ultimately, a transnational feminist perspective that centers the intersection of race and gender offers a richer analysis than a perspective that examines race alone.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors explore the culturally embedded intertwining of emotion and rationality through the notion of modal configuration, and apply this framework to the topic of partner selection, showing that emotion and rationality were intertwined in both periods but that what differs between them is precisely the emotion-rationality modality.
Abstract: The dichotomy between emotion and rationality has been one of the most enduring of sociological theory. This article attempts to bypass this dichotomy by examining how emotion and rationality are conjoined in the practice of the choice of a mate. We posit the fundamental role of culture in determining the nature of this intertwinement. We explore the culturally embedded intertwining of emotion and rationality through the notion of modal configuration. Modal configuration includes five key features: reflexivity, techniques, modal emphasis, modal overlap, and modal sequencing. We apply this framework to the topic of partner selection. Comparing primary and secondary sources on pre-modern partner selection and on internet dating, we show that emotion and rationality were intertwined in both periods but that what differs between them is precisely the emotion-rationality modality.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors explain why the power of neoliberal business over the Mexican state increased during the last three decades of the twentieth century, and identify three sources of increased neoliberal business power that occurred in conjunction with neoliberal reforms.
Abstract: This study explains why the power of neoliberal business over the Mexican state increased during the last three decades of the twentieth century. It identifies three sources of increased neoliberal business power that occurred in conjunction with neoliberal reforms: (1) active mobilization by neoliberal business, (2) increased access to the state by neoliberal business, and (3) increased economic power of neoliberal business. It thereby contributes additional evidence that counters the view of Mexico’s state neoliberalizers as acting autonomously from business. It further outlines two conditions that were instrumental in bringing about the increased power of neoliberal business: the onset of economic crisis in the 1970s, and a shift in foreign capital preferences in Mexico. The analysis demonstrates how Mexico’s sources and conditions of business power differed from those in advanced industrial societies, and outlines why the Mexican case may be a good starting point for devising a historically-contingent theory of business power in the semiperiphery.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, the authors analyze how China's increasing engagement in the global market induced significant institution-building in China's tobacco industry and enabled a power shift from local authorities to the central authority in controlling this market.
Abstract: This article analyzes how China’s increasing engagement in the global market induced significant institution-building in China’s tobacco industry and enabled a power shift from the local authorities to the central authority in controlling this market. During this process of “getting onto the international track,” the central government reorganized the industrial tobacco system and broke up the “monopolies” set up by local governments in order to enhance the competitive capacities of China’s tobacco industry in the global market. Given such a concrete institutional change in China’s tobacco industry, I propose the theory of “global-market building as state building” to explain the interactions among the global market, the nation-states, and the domestic market-building projects. I suggest that nation-states strategically seek to engage themselves in the global market and that, under certain circumstances by taking advantage of their global market engagement, the nation-states can enhance their abilities to govern the domestic market.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The authors explored how Anglo-American financial firms since the 1980s have operated and acted in an increasingly deregulated, risky, and uncertain arena, with a particular focus on "temporality" and "emotion-rules", where variations in emotion-rules correspond with organizational definitions of uncertainty.
Abstract: This article explores how Anglo-American financial firms since the 1980s have operated and acted in an increasingly deregulated, risky, and uncertain arena. I look at these firms and their actions with a particular focus on “temporality” and requisite “emotion-rules,” where variations in emotion-rules correspond with organizational definitions of uncertainty. Firms impose specific emotion-rules, depending on national policies, official duties, and interpretations of each risk. In finance, caveat emptor (i.e., buyer or lender distrust) is an emotion-rule set in screening policies and data collection for credit risks and risks of fraud by personnel, and it gives rise to actual emotions. I argue that three time-orientations are significant in creating emotion-rules. If a past, present, or a long-term future is deployed to construct a future, that creates and frames an institution’s attempts to manage uncertainty. Looking exclusively at Anglo-American corporate finance policies and strategies (often deemed the international “one best way”), six modes of certainty constructions are presented. Each is assessed against the dispositions and emotional strategies required in highly-skilled careers, in specific organizational settings. The relative influence of individual perspectives, institutional rules and general typologies of social action is assessed and found to comprise one past view, three present views, and one future-oriented perspective towards the future. Implications are outlined for emotion-rules relevant to financial careers and office.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: This article revisited four themes in Keynes' oeuvre that are especially worthy of revisiting: the importance of economic inequality, the potentially fragile underpinnings of international economic order, the inherent dysfunctions of the international monetary economy, and, perhaps most important, Keynes' philosophy and its relationship to economic inquiry.
Abstract: As President Nixon once observed, “we are all Keynesians.” And we do indeed live in a macroeconomic world, essentially, as defined and elucidated by Keynes. But Keynes himself is underrepresented in both political science and in mainstream economics. This is a costly intellectual error. Keynes’ prodigious writings, as well as his actions, offer a treasure trove of inspiration, analysis, and insight. This article considers four themes in Keynes’ oeuvre that are especially worthy of revisiting: the importance of economic inequality, the potentially fragile underpinnings of international economic order, the inherent dysfunctions of the international monetary economy, and, perhaps most important, Keynes’ philosophy and its relationship to economic inquiry.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, the authors examine the apparent deverticalization of firms in the world economy and their adoption of relational contracting and modularization, necessitated by rapid product change, cheap and rapid transport, and new technologies.
Abstract: I examine the apparent deverticalization of firms in the world economy and their adoption of relational contracting and modularization, necessitated by rapid product change, cheap and rapid transport, and new technologies. I argue that relational contracting is superseded by modularization when possible in the interest of more control over suppliers, and modularization in turn leads to consolidation, when possible, through buying up suppliers or making them captives. The result is increased concentration of economic power in the world economy, and examples of this are presented.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, it is argued that many previous efforts to unravel the paradox are inadequate because they ignore both the strategic dimensions of culture and the cultural dimensions of instrumental reason using life-history data on the former East Germany.
Abstract: Two decades ago, East European state socialism met with a paradoxical fate Between 1989 and 1991, communist party hegemony was abolished, leaving the very idea of socialism permanently discredited—or so it seemed Yet in the decade that followed, “socialistic” principles and practices would retain—or perhaps acquire—a surprising degree of popular appeal Was this a cultural legacy of systematic indoctrination? A strategic response to material insecurities? Perhaps a combination of both? In this article, it is argued that many previous efforts to unravel the paradox are inadequate because they ignore both the “strategic” dimensions of culture and the cultural dimensions of instrumental reason Using life-history data on the former East Germany, it is shown that apparently discredited ideologies can acquire renewed salience in the wake of regime change if they (1) remain culturally available as strategies of action that (2) provided material opportunities or symbolic privileges in the past, and (3) promise to ameliorate new problems engendered by alternative strategies

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, the authors used the case of Laos to suggest a geographical analysis of revolutions that provides overlooked insights into the origins, processes, and outcomes of revolutions in small, vulnerable states.
Abstract: Extant theoretical insights—mostly derived from studies of prominent revolutions in large countries—are less useful when applied to the unfolding of revolutions in small states. To understand why revolutions happened in the latter, a framework is needed that takes into account geography. For small states, geography is more than dotted lines on maps. It is the source of intervention and vulnerability. Deeply mired in history and memory, states’ geographies shape their distinctive identities and have great impacts on national political trajectories, including revolutions. Thus, to provide understanding of revolutions in these countries, no analysis could be complete without taking into account their places, understood in physical, ideational, and historical terms, within their regions and the world. The case of Laos is used to suggest a geographical analysis of revolutions that provides overlooked insights into the origins, processes, and outcomes of revolutions in small, vulnerable states.