The advent of food-producing economies – agricultural and pastoral – is indeed an important step in the evolution of human societies. A number of explanatory models have been devised to explain and make sense of the processes involved in these transformations. The explanatory model offered by J. Cauvin in his last book is anchored on the “cultural reason”, a revolution of symbols that presided over the formations of the earliest villages communities and the onset of agricultural economies in the Levant. Alain Testart disagrees, launching an interesting debate and providing a rebuttal of the very logic – or lack thereof – underlying J. Cauvin's suggestions. In this paper, we outline the evolutionary models involved in this debate. Through two complementary case studies featuring prehistoric artworks, we offer a parsimonious non-deterministic co-evolutionary model that integrates all the major factors involved in the neolithisation processes.

The debate about knowledge-production in sociology has pitted “internalist” accounts, which pay close attention to the places, practices, and tools of knowledge, against “externalist” accounts of institutions and fields. Using psychoanalysis as a case, this paper develops an approach that integrates these traditions by comparing the differentiation of places, tools and practices of knowledge production. The paper shows that, in a context in which other areas of practice increasingly differentiate research, diagnosis and treatment in spaces, tools, and professional roles, psychoanalysis invokes that differentiation rhetorically but refuses to differentiate its practice. Psychoanalysts insist on a specific setting – the couch and the psychoanalytic relationship – as central to all aspects of their knowledge-production but they do not adapt this space to pursue any of these purposes in their own right. This analysis explains some of the problems psychoanalysis has with its environment and the specific form divisions take within psychoanalysis. As an unusual case of non-differentiation, psychoanalysis highlights the role differentiation plays in other areas of knowledge-production.

The recent publication of the entirety of Max Weber’s methodological writings in an English translation by Bruun and Whimster offers an opportunity to reassess the question how far he himself consistently adhered to his own precepts about Wertfreiheit and the construction and deployment of ideal types. It is argued that Weber himself saw the problem not as a logical but as a purely psychological one, and that he could therefore justify the apparent contradictions between his precepts and his practice as either deliberate exercises in something other than Wissenschaft or, in his wissenschaftlich writings, as lapses capable in principle of correction. In conclusion, it is briefly suggested that Weber would regard the major advances made in the human behavioural sciences since his lifetime as generally consistent with his own methodology.

The paper argues that Claude Lévi-Strauss’ thought was influenced by Marcel Mauss’ works in a much deeper way than has been remarked in the literature. Far from being restricted to Lévi-Strauss’ seminal 1949 work on The Elementary Structures of Kinship Mauss’ constitutive impact can already be found in Lévi-Strauss’ early ethnographic studies (starting in the mid-1930s). Moreover, it can be shown that decisive theses and arguments of Lévi-Strauss’ later thought – ranging from the anthropology of kinship to classification theory and the specifics of the “savage mind” – are clearly prefigured in these early texts. In the end, the arguments presented here do not only call into question the well-known and widespread portrayal of Lévi-Strauss as a solitary scientist and “born structuralist” but also show how the specific interpretation of Mauss by Lévi-Strauss directed and restricted the further reception of Mauss’ works.

Between 1940 and 1944, sociologist Talcott Parsons and political scientist Eric Voegelin engaged in a vigorous correspondence, discussing the origins of totalitarianism and modern anti-Semitism, the legacy of Max Weber, patterns of secularization set in motion by the Protestant Reformation, the methodology and goals of social science, and more. This article introduces and explicates the surprisingly amicable and intellectually rich exchange between these two seemingly different thinkers. Although the letters hold obvious historical interest, their variegated topics are also closely thematically related, revealing an inner logic that we interpret as a theoretical search for “critical naïveté”. This logic, we argue, is relevant to contemporary discussions about the social, political, and scientific legacies of world-transcendent spiritual traditions.

This article contributes to the broader scientific debate on how the state generates and modifies life chances of individuals and social groups by highlighting a specific way of institutional (re-)production of social inequalities: it explores the nature and impact of immigrant-specific state intervention. Building on the concept of “modes of incorporation” by Portes and colleagues, a theoretical section explicates how specific contexts of reception by the host government may impact on integration outcomes. An empirical study applies this model to Germany – an example of moderate socio-economic immigrant selection, but extensive legal stratification. I demonstrate substantial effects of differential government reception and legal status on socio-economic outcomes among adult immigrants and their children. A concluding section outlines how the model presented here could help advance comparative studies of immigrant incorporation.

One of the most popular indicators is the Impact Factor. This paper examines the coming into being of this highly influential figure. It is the offspring of Eugene Garfield’s experimentation with the huge amounts of data available at his Institute for Scientific Information and the result of a number of attempts to find appropriate measurements for the success (“impact”) of articles and journals. The completely inductive procedure was initially adjusted by examining the data thoughtfully and by consulting with experts from different scientific disciplines. Later, its calculation modes were imposed on other disciplines without further consideration. The paper demonstrates in detail the inopportune consequences of this, in particular for sociology. Neither the definition of disciplines, nor the selection of journals for the Web of Science/Social Science Citation Index follows any comprehensible rationale. The procedures for calculating the impact factor are inappropriate. Despite its obvious unsuitability, the impact factor is used by editors of sociological journals for marketing and impression management purposes. Fetishism!