A particularity about the literature on the meaning of work is that the concept of meaning is discussed extensively and deeply, while the concept of work is hardly debated at all. Tackling this shortcoming, we start out by taking up contradictions in the social science debate on definitions of the concept of work. Four such contradictions stand out: (1) Subjective vs. objective definitions; (2) a single vs. several work concepts; (3) certain activities in themselves vs. any activity within specific social relations are to be regarded as work; and (4) empirical vs. ontological basis of the concept. In investigating them, we take help from what are often said to be the three most important classics of social science: How have Émile Durkheim, Max Weber and Karl Marx handled the concept of work? Specifically, can we get inspiration from them to take stands concerning the contradictions? The answers to these questions lead us to suggest this definition: Work is any activity performed in internal social relations that structure the sphere of necessity. Finally, we discuss the three suggested explicit conceptualisations of ‘work’ that we have found in the meaningful work literature.

This chapter distils a massive reservoir of discourses of heresy against Abu Hanifa to document the capaciousness of the proto-Sunni traditionalist effort to marginalise him and his followers. It identifies the multifarious nature of criticisms against him: proto-Sunni traditionalists assailing him on account of his jurisprudence, expertise in hadith, theology, and piety. This chapter closes with a discussion of the social regulation of heresy and orthodoxy in the eighth to tenth centuries.

“Surveillance capitalism” is a term coined by Shoshana Zuboff to draw attention to the fact that data collection has become so important for the functioning of the economy that the current stage of capitalism should be named for it. “Instrumentarian power” is a kind of power that deploys technology to obtain ever more knowledge about individuals to make their behavior predictable and thus monetizable. “Social physics” is a term used by computer scientist Alex Pentland to describe the potential of quantitative social science to put Big Data to beneficial use. The primary goal of this chapter is to discuss what it takes to secure the Enlightenment for digital lifeworlds. Since this chapter is the last in a row of chapters concerned with rights, we also discuss (and reject) the position that rights, especially human rights, are enough to articulate a promising normative vision for society. This discussion draws on insights from Horkheimer and Adorno’s Dialectic of Enlightenment, which has synergies with Zuboff’s work. Contrary to a neoliberal understanding, a strong view of democracy, as discussed in Chapter 3, is also required for a promising normative vision for society. So is a plausible theory of distributive justice, as discussed in Chapter 9.

The methodological risks of defining religion a priori are discussed. The alternative is to study ideas, groups, and institutions that are defined, perceived or contested as religious. In any given case, the dimension of religion that is at stake is identified (specifically, one or all of the three Bs: belief, belonging or behaving) along with which specific interactions between the three are at play for both political and religious communities. The interaction between the two sets of three Bs, religious and political, can explain the politicization of religion and vice versa in specific contexts. From these findings, three trends emerge that cut across all the cases and would be worth further exploration: the loss of local autonomy of religious communities, the securitization of religion and the blurring of the national and international political division. In closing, the respective limits of variable-centered investigations and postcolonial studies are discussed.

This article provides a comprehensive overview of the key figures of the Collège de sociologie. It also offers a critical discussion of the Collège’s understanding of the Durkheimian project, as well as the innovations that the group developed out of Durkheim’s theory of the social.

Simonetta Falasca-Zamponi is Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She is the author, among other publications, of Fascist Spectacle: The Aesthetics of Power in Mussolini’s Italy (1997) and Rethinking the Political: The Sacred, Aesthetic Politics, and the Collège de Sociologie (2011).

This chapter focuses on the historical development of ethnomethodology, presenting Harold Garfinkel’s career-spanning efforts to develop a theory of the constitutive interactional practices in social systems of interaction. Specifically, it examines five stages in that developmental process: 1939–1942 in North Carolina; 1942–1946 in the Army Air Force; 1946-1952 at Harvard; 1952–1953 at Princeton; and finally his long career at UCLA, extending from 1954 to 2011.

Anne Rawls is Professor of Sociology at Bentley University. Her research interests focus broadly on social theory, with emphases on ethnomethodology, communication studies, democracy, and race relations. In addition to publishing extensively on Garfinkel and ethnomethodology, she has also published on Durkheim and DuBois. She recently coauthored Tacit Racism with Waverly Duck.

In this chapter, we review recent research from a variety of disciplines to outline the role that collective rituals and religious beliefs play in fostering and maintaining cooperation. We consider ritual and religion as interactive but separate social technologies. First, with rituals we discuss their importance to social learning processes, examine their ability to bond groups through synchrony and shared emotion, and address their role as costly, persuasive signals of commitment. Second, we explore "religion" in the form of beliefs about supernatural agents and look at how such beliefs can contribute to – or hinder – cooperation. We evaluate long-standing claims that religion is a harmful social virus and contrasting recent theories that argue belief in "Big Gods" and "supernatural punishment" are crucial to enabling the cooperation necessary for large-scale societies.

In this chapter on strain theory, the influence of positivism continues to be present; however, the focus changes from the level of the community to the broader influence of society and culture on regulation, socialisation and consequences of behaviour. Strain theory proposes that individuals are not solely responsible for their deviant and criminal behaviours; rather their actions are normal responses or adaptations to pressures generated by society’s structure and culture. This chapter will discuss the trajectory of ‘strain’ theory from Emile Durkheim’s concept of ‘anomie’ through to Robert Merton’s ‘structural strain theory’ and Robert Agnew’s ‘general strain theory’. A number of deviant and criminal behaviours will also be discussed to consider how ‘strain’ theories address the interplay between social structures, cultural context and individual responses. First though, Durkheim’s most significant contribution to the discipline of sociology, ‘social facts,’ will be explored. This represented a new approach to understanding the social world, informing Durkheim’s seminal work on anomie and the collective consciousness and later influencing the development of strain theory.

This chapter focuses on Aron’s interpretation of Montesquieu and Tocqueville and his influential self-description as their ‘belated descendant’ in his book Main Currents of Sociological Thought. It argues, firstly, that in this book Aron’s invention of a ‘French school of political sociology’ represented by these liberal forbears was part of wider efforts among sociologists to rewrite their discipline’s history at a time when it was becoming unprecedentedly popularised and institutionalised. It shows that the decline of Durkheimian hegemony at this juncture had opened up a consensus gap between French sociologists, some of whom - including Aron - responded by rewriting the discipline’s past to legitimate their competing visions of its future. The chapter also shows how Aron read Montesquieu and Tocqueville through the lens of his earlier philosophical writings in an attempt to revise the epistemological basis of his political thought. Ironically, this project was substantially indebted to previous readings of Montesquieu and Tocqueville by some of the same Durkheimian colleagues against whom Aron defined himself and the ‘French school of political sociology’ in Main Currents.

Applies the arguments on restraint and actionism to the domains of international political economy and global public health. It explores the dynamic of racial and gendered biases found in discourses surrounding the 2008–2009 Global Financial Crisis and the 2010s European Debt Crisis. It also analyzes the transnational epistemic community of eugenics in the early twentieth century.