Ernest Gellner's theory of nationalism is founded on a simplistic and deceptive materialistic reasoning, masking the tension between functionalist postulates and historicist inclinations. Various methods are used to resolve this tension. Initially, idealism is introduced into the body of the analysis. When this becomes too visible, the nature of the materialism displayed is discretely modified. Relational materialism — a dynamic articulation between relations to the means of production and relations between classes — gives way to substantialist materialism — based on a mechanical opposition between the means of production and ethno-linnguistic attributes. The use of a consistent vocabulary obscures the elision between the two: ‘structure’ and ‘culture’ are alternatively defined in relational or in substantialist terms. Gellner then returns to relational considerations which make his explanation all the more unclear.

The article explores the implications of Nietzsche's view of human history and psychology for a sociology formulated in Nietzschean terms, and argues that although the ‘will to power’ cannot explain all that Nietzsche claims for it, his sociology of sociology does pass his own test of validity. It is suggested in conclusion that on the relation of sociology to the rank ordering of values, Nietzsche is consistent where Weber is not, and vice versa.

This article examines the debate on the developmental impact of foreign direct investment (FDI). While the most frequent finding within sociology is that FDI is harmful or at least less beneficial than domestic investment, most who study the transition from socialism or make economic policy in the region consider FDI to be a major motor of development. This paper examines the impact of FDI with a novel methodology. Rather than employing the standard analytic strategy that uses state-level macroeconomic data in a crossnational comparison, this article direcdy compares the performance of foreign owned firms to domestically owned firms. In the analysis six hypotheses derived from this debate on the role of FDI are tested with logistic regression on two large random sample surveys of Hungarian firms The findings support the position that foreign direct investment is beneficial for the recipient country. In addition, they support the idea that foreign owned firms are more beneficial than domestically owned firms.

This paper criticizes the economic perspective that property rights determine economic outcomes, by examining sharecropping, because this form of property right can be associated with remarkably different economic outcomes. In particular, drawing on evidence from fifteenth-century Tuscany, it is argued that landlords' and tenants' class capacities explain sharecropping's variability. The results show that Tuscan sharecropping was efficient and contractual, because the difference in landlords' and tenants' class capacity was relatively small.

The article examines the different uses made of the concept of social class by researchers of the Chicago School between the turn of the century and the 1940s. The concept of social class is found in Small and Cooley, rarely referred to by Park, and not found at all in the urban sociology work he inspired in the 1920s (Shaw and McKay, etc.) However it reappears in the work on race relations at the end of the 1930s (Frazier, Hughes). Substitutes were introduced in the 1920s to explain internal differentiation within American cities. The spread of new methods of documentation favoured its reappearance in social-political and scientific contexts at the end of the 1930s. This example suggests that an order of phenomena which aims to explain a concept like social class—which is both a scientific and a lay person's concept—can only be ignored for a short time by a program of empirical research. The conclusion stresses the heterogeneity of factors which take into account the transmission and non-transmission of this type of idea from one generation of sociological researchers to another.

Empirical life course research is based on prospective or retrospective longitudinal micro data and nationally representative samples of birth cohorts or larger populations. This field of research has developed since the 1970s as one of the major social science instruments of studying the dynamics of both individual lives and societies. The paper reviews critically the contributions of life course studies by comparing the initial expectations with practices and results during the last twenty years.

Social change is currently occurring in three directions: political democratisation, economic globalisation, and the spread of postmodern culture. The consequent problems cannot be treated by any of the three known methods of macrosocial regulation: the state, the market, the community. ‘Civil society’ has been assigned the role of synthetic and pluralistic rationalisation.

This paper proposes a liaison —‘middle-range realism’—between two long standing explanatory strategies in sociology— ‘middle-range theory’ and ‘realist social theory’. Each offers what the other lacks. Middle-range theory carries an acute sense of the function of theory within empirical inquiry but has left undeveloped any notion of its appropriate explanatory form. Realist social theory has propositional precision but has been unable, in the most part, to descend from a critical domain to the empirical plane. Middlerange realism thus offers a research strategy of the appropriate form and scope to lead and to federate empirical inquiry. Examples are provided of how middle-range realism can be applied to improve research using two different strategies (survey methods and evaluation research) in two contrasting substantive areas (voting behaviour and offender rehabilitation).

Based on the ‘Minorities at risk’ data set, which codes the status and conflicts of 268 politically active groups in 148 different countries, this paper finds: 1) the greater the language difference between the language of the minority and that of the dominant group, the lower the probability of minority rebellion against the state; 2) language grievances held by the minority are weakly but negatively related to rebellion; 3) language grievances are strongly associated with increased levels of political protest, suggesting that the remedy for these grievances is more likely to be sought in the political realm rather than in guerrilla action; 4) language grievances when compounded by religious grievances (which are a reasonable predictor of rebellion) strongly and significantly reduce the magnitude of rebellion. The mechanisms supporting these results are elucidated in a formalized official language game. The equilibrium path of this game is illustrated in case studies of India and Sri Lanka.

The concept of Beruf, variously translated as ‘calling’ or ‘vocation’, refers to the pracdce of systematic self-control in pursuing constant goals or purposes, which Weber, in The Protestant Etbic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1905), found in both Calvinist religious practice and capitalistic entrepreneurship and labour. But the term is not confined to these applications; it is also central in Science as a Vocation (1917) and Politics as a Vocation (1919). The general significance of the idea of Berufis that it accounts for the mechanisms required to realize in action the quality of rationality, another of Weber's characteristic terms. The connection between rational activity and calling is constant in Weber's discussion. In his early statement of the argument, however, practices of Beruf achieve rationality through the suppression of emotion. In his later discussion, Beruf is achieved through and expresses passion and emotions.

The paper seeks to assess the consequences of cultural diversity for European polity-building by focusing on the language issue. What does the European Babel mean for the project of transnational political integration ? To what extent has the shaping of the European language regime become a declared goal on the agenda of the EU ? In contrast with precedent patterns of nation-state formation, the present situation in Europe offers only few reasons to believe that some cultural standardization could be achieved by putting major political restrictions on multilingualism. Deliberate attempts at setting the institutional foundations of a culturally integrated European public sphere may end up producing unintended outcomes and lead to anti- European mobilizations striving for the protection of cultural difference. Hence, a political community of Europeans will not be based on a unitary and homogeneous public sphere, but rather reflect a complex mosaic of different cultural identities with cross-cutting political loyalties. In this context, cultural and linguistic diversity will be institutionalized, institutionalized, but to varying degrees and with different implications at different political levels.

The discourse of civil society has continued to thrive, despite reservations expressed by thinkers from both East and West. Assuming it is here to stay for the time being, at least, which aspects of the concept still need most scrutiny ? What ate the outstanding problems and themes for further reflection ? How best can we make the concept serviceable ? This essay surveys some of the recent literature with an eye to these questions.