Transnational social spaces denote the circular flow of persons, goods, information and symbols across countries that have been triggered in the course of international labor migration and refugee flows. The question is how such transnational phenomena can be described, catagorued and explained. What are the implications for the adaptation of international migrants and their descendants in the economic, political and cultural realms in the countries of setdement? First, this discussion clarifies basic concepts, such as transnational social space and the main resources involved, such as various forms of social capital, the norm of reciprocity, solidarity, information and control. Second, the analysis outlines some causal macro-factors that may have opened up opportunities for migrants to build transnational spaces to a greater extent than before World War Two. Third, a few forays into the empirical realm serve to sketch the lineaments of the German-Turkish transnational social spaces: the emergence of Turkish niche businesses in Germany and transnational businesses spanning both countries; efforts of some Kurdish organizations to establish a homeland called ‘Kurdistan’; and collective identity among secondgeneration German-Turks in the religions realm, involving Islamic thought and organizations, but also secular forms of everyday culture. The article concludes with a discussion of factors that may limit the future growth of transnational social spaces.

The paper addresses the issue of the nature and determinants of variations between countries in the severity of the implications of unemployment for psychological well-being. It focuses on ten countries in the European Union over the period 1983 to 1994. It establishes that there are consistent differences between countries over time. It then examines a number of potential explanations, in particular relating to the level of unemployment, the social composition of unemployment, the strength of the work ethic in the society and the characteristics of welfare institutions. It concludes that such differences cannot be accounted for in terms of the level of unemployment or its composition in terms of age and sex. They are also unrelated to measures of employment commitment. Rather the severity of the impact of unemployment has to be understood in terms of the interaction between the characteristics of the welfare regime and the composition of the unemployed with respect to household position.

Castes continue to operate in contemporary India, while the caste system itself, as a theoretical understanding of a mode of social organisation, no longer has any validity in the context of a modern State. However, an analysis of ritual relations which can still be observed in part, as intermediary data between the representations and the hazards of human relations, highlights the ‘Brahmin’ and ‘god’ figures as pointers to what constitutes a system in the Hindu conception of social order. This enables us to identify the main orientations of current transformations.

In this analysis of elements which break the continuity of natural spaces (gullies, forests, rivers, hills) or constructed spaces (bridges, paths, crossroads, borders, milestones) we see that they are primarily considered as crossover places between different worlds. Places where spirits and ‘experts in exstasy’ circulate. Among these are the Calusari, esoteric groups whose practices recall those of shamanism. The analysis of their rituals reveals the importance for traditional societies of the notion of ‘limits’.

This analysis concentrates on die different privatization methods which have been applied in Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic and East Germany. It is argued that the different privatization methods had a considerable impact upon the unequal distribution of ownership and control in former state-owned enterprises. The reproduction rate of the former nomenclature is relatively high in all four countries regardless of the privatization method. In post-socialist countries a particular type of capitalism is evolving which can be characterized by its specific ideology and the governance structure of the privatized firms. The outcome of shock therapy which has been applied in some post-socialist countries has been paradoxical: it did not destroy the power basis of the nomenclature, but radier stabilized it. In most firms there is no clear-cut separation of ownership and control (manager capitalism), but rather a balance of power between managers (nomendature) and the new owners.

While references are often made to Weber's economic sociology, it is not commonly known that Weber himself only applied the term economic sociology (Wirtscftssoziologie) to one of his writings, namely to Chapter 2 in Part 1 of Economy and Society, “Sociological Categories of Economic Action”. This text, as I show, has basically been ignored in the huge secondary literature that exists on Weber's work as well as by economic sociologists. It represents, however, a very important contribution to Weber's work in economic sociology; indeed, it can be said to constitute Weber's manifesto in economic sociology. “Sociological Categories of Economic Action” is presented and discussed, and an effort is made to make this difficult text accessible as well as to show that it contains some extremely interesting material in economic sociology.