David M. Anderson (Center for Democracy and Technology, USA)
E-mail: danderson@cdt.org
Elections Should Involve the Entire Community
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My paper will uncover and criticize a widely shared assumption about candidate campaigns in the United States, namely that communication in a candidate campaign should be primarily in the direction of candidates to voters. Instead, I will argue that communication in a campaign should be from candidates to citizens and from citizens to candidates. In a word, I will argue that campaigns should be relationships between candidates and citizens. Moreover, I will argue that this approach naturally lends itself to engaging the entire community in elections. I will also show how this approach to campaigns is now possible due to innovative uses of the Internet, especially by those brought about by the Dean campaign for president. Yet I will argue that much room for development still exists. My argument grows out of my work at Youth04 , a civic engagement effort that is empowering 18-25 year olds in the 2004 election. The core ideas of this paper come from my short book, Youth04: Young Voters, the Internet, and Political Power (W.W. Norton, 2004), which is being provided free of charge for classes that use We the People, by Benjamin Ginsberg, Theodore Lowi, and Margaret Weir.
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Susan M. Andersen (New York University, USA)
E-mail: sma1@nyu.edu
Social Identities Develop Through Building Relationships and Fostering Bonds
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Recent evidence suggests that it is the personal relationships between individuals, whether parallel (e.g., with colleagues) or hierarchical (e.g., with authorities), that foster superordinate social identification with broader groups, institutions, and communities. Such relationships are formed when people feel fairly treated by representatives of the group in question and when their prior relational identities (relationships from the past) foster in them a willingness to give others the benefit of the doubt, i.e., to see them as trustworthy. These factors interact to create the "glue" that connects individuals to one another (or does not) and that enables attachment to communities to develop (or not). This is relevant to societies in transition and to the formulation and implementation of public policies to that end. Those social policies that enable constituents of all backgrounds to interact with one another on equal footing and that foster people treating one another with respect and dignity (as friend not foe) across boundaries of difference, facilitate a sense of inclusion and engagement, and an identification with the broader community. When this does not happen, social policies can be compromised as constituents are turned against one another, against the policies, or against the larger system.
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Wayne Baker (University of Michigan, USA)
E-mail: wayneb@umich.edu
Effects of 9/11 on Identity, Trust, and Stress Among Arab Americans and Other Americans in the Detroit Region
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With new data from the Detroit Area Study (DAS) and Detroit Arab American Study (DAAS), we consider the long-term effects of 9/11 and its aftermath on identity, trust, confidence in institutions, stress, and perceived safety and security among residents of the Detroit three-county region. The DAS is a representative sample (n=508) sample of the general population; the DAAS is a representative over sample (n=1005) of the diverse community of Arab Americans living in the same region. We analyze four sets of factors: (1) experiences since September 11th, such as harassment, support, perceptions of safety and security, reactions to the "war on terrorism," and reactions to the ongoing conflict in the Middle East; (2) respondent characteristics, including socioeconomic variables, ethnicity, national origin, generation, cohort of immigration, religious affiliation and practices, language use, and residential characteristics; (3) the increasing prevalence of transnational ties, such as exposure to international sources of news, entertainment, and information, international social and business networks, and post-September 11th restrictions; and (4) the connection to sources of local social capital, such as employment and business ownership, social networks, organizational memberships, and political participation.
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Yin-Wah Chu (The University of Hong Kong, China
E-mail: ywchu@hkusua.hku.hk
Interest, Identity, and Institution: The Shifting Positions of the Capitalists in the Democratization of Hong Kong and Taiwan
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This paper will revisit a long-standing issue in the social sciences concerning the political stance(s) of the capitalist class by examining the recent experiences of Taiwan and Hong Kong. It will argue that observations generated from studies of modern Europe and late developing countries can only provide a starting point. In particular, although the lateness and state-sponsored nature of capitalist development have dwarfed the political prowess and inclination of the capitalists in the two societies, this is not the complete story. In the first place, the capitalist classes in these two societies have provided vital support to the process of democratization at critical junctures. In the second place, the process of political change is fluid, such that democratization involves political struggles, transitions, possible reversals, and consolidations. Not only have the capitalist classes adopted shifting positions over time, they have also built rather distinct institutions to link up to the state. It is therefore necessary to examine the structural and cultural factors that have come into play in shaping their shifting stances as well as the institutions thus built.
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Richard M. Coughlin (University of New Mexico, USA)
E-mail: coughlin@unm.edu
Intergenerational Equity: What Are We Doing To Our Children and Grandchildren? What Should We Be Doing?
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Developments in the postwar welfare state have increasingly tilted heavily in favor of spending for the elderly as a result of powerful demographic forces, including the aging of the baby boom generation, declining fertility rates, and longer average life spans. But demographic pressures have been critically shaped by politics and macroeconomic forces. Promises made to provide generous old-age pension and health care benefits have not, as a rule, been backed by requirements for higher taxes or prudent plans to pay for what at presentappear to be massive unfunded liabilities. This situation, if left to proceed along its current path, will impose an onerous, perhaps unmanageable, burden on future generations. This paper focuses mainly on the United States although the situation sketched out above is endemic to virtually all advanced industrial societies. The discussion in the paper is oriented around the question of equity as defined in communitarian terms with comparisons and contrasts with other paradigms.
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Reza Dibadj (University of San Francisco, USA)
E-mail: rrd0@netzero.net
The Firm, Norms, and Public Law
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Numerous economists have developed increasingly sophisticated theories of the firm. Unfortunately, empirical evidence suggests that the prescriptions advanced by these theorists make for weak public policy. Traditional economic theories of the firm rely on an overly contractual model, steeped in unrealistic neoclassical assumptions. Reconceptualizing the firm lies in realizing the central role that behavioral biases and norms play in organizational behavior. Corporations propagate both "internal" norms-the collective heuristics of organizational members, and "external" norms-an attempt to influence the broader citizenry via advertising, political lobbying, and the like. Public law must serve as a remedy to counteract these norms. Where firms suffer welfare-minimizing "internal" norms that enrich a few executives to the detriment of employees, shareholders, and the general public, then government has a role to play-via securities regulation, antitrust, and anti-discrimination laws, to name a few. Additionally, where corporations are trying to mold public taste via imposition of "external" norms, government must pay careful attention to areas such as consumer protection and campaign finance reform. Public choice and anti-paternalist objections miss the mark. In the wake of corporate scandals and increasing income disparity, revamped regulation of organizations may be necessary to facilitating the ongoing vitality of capitalism.
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Erzsebet Fazekas (Columbia University, USA)
E-mail: ef305@columbia.edu
Trust In/For Civil Society in Central and Eastern Europe
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In 2000 six US private grant-making foundations established a public charity, the Trust for Civil Society in Central and Eastern Europe to support nonprofit sectoral development in seven Central and Eastern European countries. Yet the $75 million endowment it entails signals not an upsurge in foreign aid to these countries, but rather marks the exit of many US private foundations that have been active in democracy and civil society assistance in the region since 1989. What were the logic and the ideology of institution building behind these aid programs? What did donors and recipients mean by civil society development? Where did the incentive to frame the key objectives of civil society development as building nonprofit sectoral capacity come from? To answer these questions, this paper will analyze data from the Foundation Grants Index on US grants given to nonprofits in Hungary between 1989 and 2002. This data will be supplemented by findings of a qualitative study with Hungarian grantees and a content analysis of US donor documents.
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Wolf Heydebrand (New York University, USA)
E-mail: wolf.heydebrand@nyu.edu
Economic Globalization and the Logic of Process in American and European Law
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The triadic constellation of structural forces represented by law, state and economy has been a topic of growing interest since the1850s. My working hypothesis is that American and European legal change can be systematically related to transnational economic expansion, de-nationalization, and the uneven distribution of power within and among nation states, especially since the 1990s. The Weberian distinction between formal and substantive legal rationality is augmented by the notion of negotiated process rationality and its various manifestations in continental civil law and American common law. The tensions emerging within the logic of process are due to the quest for an expanded scope of discretion in decision making, based on the possibility of using both formal rules and informal negotiation simultaneously. Lawyers seek to enhance discretion on behalf of powerful private clients. Judges, too, want to increase their discretion, but are often constrained by the politically substantive guidelines emanating from the legislative and executive branches. This instrumentalization of law for purposes of socio-political control tends to threaten the protection of substantive and procedural rights. Various schools of jurisprudence reflect the underlying ideological interests at work. How can the "rule of law" be maintained or re-established under these new conditions?
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M. Curtis Hoffman (Grand Valley State University, USA)
E-mail: hoffmanm@gvsu.edu
Private Powers and Public Domains: A Progressive Era Retrospective
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During the Progressive Era, American social thinkers grappled with the apparent shortcomings of laissez-faire economics. Drawing on a wide range of influences, including religion, the German Historical school, and business management trends, they believed that a properly empowered public administration could tame capitalism and avoid class warfare. This paper reviews of the thoughts of selected scholars and activists of the era regarding the relationship between the private and public domains. An excavation of their ideas, especially those lost to our modern paradigms, can inform and inspire the current efforts to tackle this same question.
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Guillermina Jasso (New York University, USA)
E-mail: gj1@nyu.edu
Identity, Social Distance, and Palestinian Support for the Roadmap
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This paper examines the effects of identity and social distance on Palestinian support for the roadmap peace initiative. Data are drawn from a survey carried out in the West Bank and Gaza in June 2003 with a probability sample of 1,318 adults.
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Pablo Lavado Padilla (Pacific University Research Center, Peru-Sudamerica)
E-mail: ciup313@asistentes.up.edu.pe
Self-Sustained Kitchen Communities Efficacy in Peru
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The accumulation of social capital in kitchen communities have created and strengthened a local social protection network in civil society in Peru. However, the stagnation of levels of poverty in the 90s, the clientelar utilization by government and the lack of monitoring and evaluation of the activities have stopped the target of kitchen communities: food security.
The study evaluates the efficacy of investment made from PRONAA (food program) in favor of self-sustained kitchen communities. We estimated the level of unconvery (96%) and filtration (74%) of the program. Additionally, we find that the gap between the investment made and what is regulated by law is 53%. In that sense, members of kitchen communities must do voluntary work (especially by women) and to sell some rations and, as a consequence, they have deficits and no opportunity to reinvest in order to improve their capital. What is the exit if kitchen communities are to poor? Elimination of levels of uncovery and filtration, regulated by a monitoring and evaluation system, implementation of cross subsidies by PRONAA and a program in social management for women members of the kitchens seem to be a beginning in order to insert them to the market.
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Michael A. Lewis and Eri Noguchi (CUNY - Stonybrook & Columbia University, USA)
E-mail: mlewis@notes.cc.sunysb.edu, en16@columbia.edu
Class-Based Inequities in Civic Participation: Some Possible Reasons, Some Possible Solutions
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Civic participation rates in the United States vary among different socioeconomic groups. For instance, voter turnout tends to be greater among the rich than the poor, even though overall electoral participation rates are low across the board when compared to other industrialized democratic societies. Similarly, while the rates of voluntarism and philanthropy tend to occur at higher levels in the United States than in other nations, they tend to be lower among lower income groups than higher income groups. Across virtually every category of civic participation, regardless of the overall levels, there are marked differences among the rich and the poor. This paper will first review the evidence that currently exists regarding the reasons for these inequities, focusing on socio-economic factors such as educational attainment, income, and the interplay of work (labor force participation) and leisure. Also discussed are some of the consequences of this inequity, especially vis a vis the capacity of different social classes to influence the public officials who represent them and the policies that govern their lives. As for possible solutions, income-based policies such as those that have been used or proposed to combat poverty and economic inequality will be given special consideration.
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JoEllen Lind (Valparaiso University, USA)
E-mail: joellenlind@att.net
Localism, Distributive Justice, and Attempts to Privatize Education
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In San Antonio Independent School Dist. v. Rodriguez, 411 U.S. 1 (1973), the United States Supreme Court established that education is not a fundamental right under the US Constitution. One reason for this conclusion was the Court's focus on the value of local control over public schools, which it asserted was a key feature of the history of public education. Fearing that federal intrusion in matters of school finance would erode localism, the Court left controversies over the distribution of educational resources to the states. However, the practical consequence of Rodriguez was that poor, mostly minority children were confined to geographic localities, such as the inner city, which had been constructed by race and class discrimination. The declining performance of these public school systems has prompted the phenomenon of privatizing education through school vouchers and charter schools. This paper explores the tension between the values of localism, distributive justice, and privatization in the context of education. It concludes that, in a democratic society, education is a public good that ought to be protected by the federal government when political communities on a smaller scale are unable to remedy past injustices of race and class.
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Paul-Brian McInerney (Columbia University, USA)
E-mail: pm263@columbia.edu
Reclaiming Nonprofitness: Resistance and Co-Optation to Mixed-Form Partnerships Among Nonprofit Technology Assistance Providers
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Procyon is a pseudonymous nonprofit technology assistance provider (NTAP) that has grown over the last three years to dominate a small and nascent field. In the process, Procyon has become increasingly vulnerable to attacks from critics inside the field. This paper discusses the forms these criticisms take (such as statements, counterclaims, competition, and technological platform choices). In it, I explain how NTAPs attempt to (re)define what it means to be a nonprofit and exert some form of collective support to counter the growth and expansion of the Procyon Model, which threatens to subsume their livelihoods as well as their ways of providing technology assistance. These actors respond to Procyon's success by challenging its status as a nonprofit on ideological, not legal, grounds. Actors in institutional fields invoke the logic and rules associated with the field to represent themselves and defend their claims. However, institutional fields are not static. The rules of the nonprofit game have changed over time. Are these early actors re-creating nostalgic views of nonprofitness? Or are they attempting to preserve a space in the field by forcing Procyon to stake a claim in one institution or another?
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Michael Minch (Utah Valley State College, USA)
E-mail: minchmi@uvsc.edu
Why Sustainability Needs Democracy and Civil Society
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In this paper I argue that if a sustainable future is possible it will need to be built upon not merely personal environmentalism or even state-driven environmentalism; but rather, upon institutions of radical democracy and civil society. I argue that the democracy of the future will need to give voice to future generations and to the natural world. Further, I argue that a Global Parliamentary Assembly will be necessary in order for the democracy that sustainability will need to develop. Such a Global Parliamentary Assembly will give voice to those organizations of international civil society which already advocate for the earth and future generations. I argue that sustainable economics and ecology must be built upon sustainable politics. In short, that green economics depends upon green politics. Lastly, I use one example from civil society to demonstrate the ways that one institution is, and can be in greater ways, a part of building a sustainable future. The example I use is the recent environmental work being done by Christian organizations, as these groups revisit their theology and create programs that promote sustainability.
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Ann Morning (New York University, USA)
E-mail: amorning@princeton.edu
The Career of Social Constructionism: Sociology of Knowledge and the Nature of Race
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Ever since Ashley Montagu published "Man's Most Dangerous Myth: The Fallacy of Race" in the midst of World War II and the Holocaust, the academic argument that race is socially constructed has been seen as one that has major implications both for everyday practice and for public policy. In particular, many expect that racism would be deprived of its fundamental grounding if the public came to understand that racial groups were not the product of biology but of social artifice. But how successful has the theory of racial construction been at gaining a following outside the ivory tower? This paper reports the result of a study of academic scientists, scientific textbooks, and college students that aims to investigate the production, transmission, and reception of constructionist perspectives on race. It demonstrates that contrary to the scientific-versus-lay gap in racial conceptualization that is frequently depicted in social scientific literature, constructionism has made few inroads not because of the public's resistance to its reasoning, but because the academy has failed to come to a consensus on the true nature of race.
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Nicos Mouzelis (London School of Economics, UK)
E-mail: mouzelis@hol.gr
Bridges Between Modern and Postmodern Theorizing
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In this paper an attempt will be made to reduce the polarization between modern and postmodern theorizing by proposing some basic distinctions which can bridge the differences referring to three basic problems:
A]. The ONTOLOGICAL PROBLEM about the "real" or "constructed" nature of social reality. Here, I propose the distinction between first and second order social constructions as a means of overcoming social constructionisms' relativisms.
B]. The EPISTEMOLOGICAL PROBLEM of the possibility of "objective" social knowledge. Here I propose a distinction between broad and narrow definitions of objectivity in the social sciences.
C]. The METHODOLOGICAL PROBLEM of the possibility of a holistic approach to the study of social phenomena. In this context I proposed a distinction between holistic conceptual frameworks and holistic / universalistic theories in the social sciences.
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Victor Nee (Cornell University, USA)
Yang Cao (University of North Carolina - Charlotte, USA)
E-mail: vgn1@cornell.edu
Market Transition and the Firm: Institutional Change and Income Inequality in China
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This paper examines how the rise of a market economy in urban China redefines the rules governing economic activities and affects on earnings inequality. We identify three causal mechanisms linked to institutional change that are transforming the firm's employment practices: the emergence of a private enterprise economy with higher marginal productivity relative to state-owned enterprises, competition by firms for skilled and semi-skilled labor following the demise of state monopoly on labor allocation, and increased emphasis on merit based reward systems in firms. Analyses of survey data from urban China show how these three causal mechanisms stemming from the transition to a market economy contribute to new patterns of earning differentiation that increase income returns to human capital and private sector entrepreneurship.
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Amelie Quesnel-Vallee (McGill University, Canada)
E-mail: amelieqv@soc.duke.edu
Life Course Stratification and Adult Health in the U.S.: The Contribution of Health Insurance to Socioeconomic Inequities in Health
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Using prospective cohort data from the 1979 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, this study will determine the extent to which health insurance contributes to socioeconomic differentials in adult health.
While previous research has shown that nonelderly privately insured individuals enjoy better health outcomes than their uninsured counterparts, the same relationship does not hold for those publicly insured through programs such as Medicaid. Because it is unclear whether this finding reflects a true causal relationship or is in fact due to selection bias on socioeconomic status (SES) and health, previous estimates of the contribution of health insurance to inequities in health may have been biased.
This study attempts to disentangle these competing hypotheses by using fixed effects models with sibling clusters to corroborate - or refute - the results of a conventional OLS regression. By controlling for unobserved factors shared by siblings such as parental genetic influences, sibling models estimate health insurance effects that are less affected by selection bias.
Findings suggest that the negative relationship between public health insurance and health is not causal, but rather due to prior health and SES. Conversely, health insurance coverage per se (though not the source of coverage) significantly contributes to socioeconomic differentials in health.
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Walter Reese-Schaefer (Goettingen University, Germany)
E-mail: reeseschaefer@hotmail.com
The Future of Civic Activities in Germany. Main Results of a Parliamentary Commission's Report
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The paper is based on the final Report of the German Bundestag Enquate Commission on this subject, published in 2003. Member of the Commission were 11 Member of Parliament and 11 social scientists. The commission's definition of the term "civica" is very broad and not limited to social and political activities. It includes recreational activities, sports, and social life - places where people take responsibility for others, learn to be community-spirited or to become active as a member of a community. The commission comes to the conclusion that the political system should offer recognition in the form of public notice and protection in the form of insurance against risks and accidents. Further, the commission sees a role for politics in the encouragement of "empowerment" and participation, and it makes an appeal to private business to develop various forms of corporate citizenship. My paper will conclude with the discussion of two unsolved problems. First, the debate on this subject in Germany is still overly state oriented. The report's recommendations for action in particular show this. Second, the broader definition of. "civic" used by the commission is state of the art (vide Robert Putnam), but it avoid the normative problem of differentiating between civic and uncivic (i.e. fundamentalist, extremist etc.) activities.
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Nathalia Rogers (Dowling College, USA)
E-mail: rogersn@dowling.edu
Communal Ideals and Civic Practice in a North American Community: A Case Study of "Vision Huntington"
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My paper will touch on the perennial debate on the dynamics of civil society's networks within changing communities. In the recent decade a number of books on this issue have been published by various authors. Although almost all of the authors acknowledge the fact that communal ideals and civil society practices often diverge, many also express hopes, based on the most recent factual evidence, that the factors of race (Etzioni), class (Putnam) or culture (Fukuyama) do not necessarily lead to the ultimate fragmentation of the communal social fabric, given that there are at least some members of the community who care about achieving community goals. I will focus on a case study of "Vision Huntington", a neighborhood organization that emerged in one of the communities on the North Shore of Long Island. A civic organization that was established by well-to-do members of the community who cared about their neighbors and neighborhood, "Vision Huntington" grew across the dividing lines of race, class and culture, to involve different members of the community in the process of joint work to define community goals and to implement these goals to the benefit of community residents from different social groups.
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Tom Russ (College of Southern Maryland, USA)
E-mail: truss@csmd.edu
Sustainability as a Communitarian Value
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The growing awareness of the incompatibility of the modern consumer culture and the systemic limits of our environment ha s increased concern with sustainability. Sustainability refers generally to some form of intergenerational equity but is often defined in practice as a balance between the values of political economy and environmental quality. The idea of a balance between these values describes what has been most often an adversarial relationship.
In fact, to be successful a sustainability society must embrace both economic and environmental security. To do this sustainability must become the umbrella under the marketplace functions rather than some additional step in a process, a mere buzzword. The environmental community must make room under the umbrella for the marketplace of products and services as well as ideas. Sustainability must embrace concepts of social justice and liberty under the auspices of environmental quality and a healthy economy. To be adopted by modern societies sustainability must emerge as a value akin to justice, liberty, personal property, etc. In this guise, sustainability may also make an important contribution to communitarian values as well.
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Sean Safford (MIT, USA)
E-mail: ssafford@mit.edu
The State as Community Builder: Lessons from High-Tech Economic Development in the Rustbelt
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Over the course of the 1980s and 90s, state and local governments in the United States and Great Britain implemented a range of policies aimed at generating high-technology driven economic development. A central theme in these efforts has been developing a sense of community among previously disjointed and unwieldy groups of organizations. This paper will consolidate what can be learned from the experiences of 'rust belt' communities in both the US and the UK in attempting to accomplish this goal. Can state action help to 'create' a sense of community? Can such communities be sustained in the face of changing competitive and technological circumstances? And, finally, what lessons can be taken from these experiences that might be of use in other contexts which have the goal of building and shaping communities?
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Mai-Brith Schartau (Sodertorn University College, Sweden)
E-mail: mai-brith.schartau@sh.se
New Forms of Local Democracy
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The crisis of the welfare state has on economic and ideological grounds provided space for the civil society. This is supposed to lead to a renewal of the work but it is also seen as a way of strengthen and developing new forms of democracy by making the citizens participate in a more active manner. Sweden and Germany are classified as different kinds of welfare states. The civil society has had different roles in Sweden and the Eastern and Western parts of Germany. During the last years these countries have faced similar problems regarding challenges of the welfare state and a decreasing political engagement among the citizens. It is then interesting in a bottom-up perspective to see if there are any similarities in the development of the civil society. The main question is why people as clients, citizens, members and employees are engaging themselves in different kinds of third sector organizations. The democratic aspects are compared with other reasons. A second question is what kind of expectations that had motivated the citizens to participate and if theses have been fulfilled. A third one is if it is mainly strong citizens who through the civil society are further strengthen their positions on behalf of the weaker ones.
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Charles W. Smith (Queens College and Graduate Center, CUNY, USA)
E-mail: charles_smith@qc.edu
Markets as Definitional Mechanisms: A Robust Alternative Sociological Paradigm
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Drawing on historic and ethnographic material, this paper contends that price-setting markets often function primarily as definitional not allocation mechanisms. As such they are more properly and usefully conceived in sociological rather than purely economic terms. A component of this claim is that auction markets are not manifestations of a single analytic model as maintained by neo-classical economic theory. They are rather a family of similar, but different, practices that have evolved in responses to different circumstances. In support of these claims, the paper reviews a range of price-setting market behaviors, giving particular attention to two emerging, highly influential auction markets: the equity option market, which is part of the larger financial derivative market, and the word/phrase internet search engine market. The paper examines not only how these markets define, grade, lump, divide, assign ownership, give temporal dimension and value assets, but also how they alter the ways in which these activities are accomplished. It similarly examines ways in which the characterization and rights of market participants are subject to change. The paper concludes by exploring implications of a sociologically grounded market paradigm that privilege the definitional function of markets.
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Pernilla Rosell Steuer (Sodertorn University College, Sweden)
E-mail: pernilla.rosell.steuer@sh.se
The Concept of Democracy as a Rhetorical Practice
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Different societies have different practices and values, which influence the way central cultural concepts are defined and constructed in public and private domains of language. This paper focuses on the relationship between language and the civil society, concentrating on the concept of democracy as a rhetorical practice. By investigating the argumentative organization of written and spoken language around the concept of democracy in Sweden compared to the Eastern and Western parts of Germany, the paper aims to study the extent to which rhetoric is employed to support or repress alternative new forms of local democracy in everyday language.
In the context of third sector organizations, citizens assume different roles and participate as speaker and listener, reader and writer. The expectations of these "actors" regarding the concept of democracy as well as their motives for engaging themselves influence the way democracy is reflected, but also constituted, through language use. An important rhetorical device in the practice of talking around democracy is the use of metaphor, which will be studied with the recent political and social development in Sweden and Germany as a background. Furthermore, the gender aspect will receive special attention as an important factor in the process of language socialization within new forms of local democracy.
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Alex Viskovatoff (University of Pittsburgh, USA)
E-mail: viskov@pitt.edu
Situating the SASE Research Program in the History of Social Thought
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One can detect two main precursors to the SASE project, one relating to its empirical side, the other to its normative side. Antecedents of the first, consisting of research programs such as economic sociology and the "varieties of capitalism" literature, can be found in Weber and Durkheim. The latter two derive in turn from the German historical school of economics. Communitarianism, the normative side, derives primarily from Hegel. Since Hegel was a main influence on the historical school, one can say that both the empirical and the normative components of the SASE program derive ultimately from Hegel.
I claim that the SASE program can only establish itself as the main alternative to liberalism and neoclassicism if it is as aware of itself as part of a longstanding tradition as the latter two are. A project to reconnect the SASE program with its precursors can now be undertaken, since recent philosophical scholarship has rehabilitated Hegel from erroneous attacks launched on him by Popper and others as a principal "father" of totalitarianism. This paper will compare Hegel's social thought to communitarianism, arguing that the former is better placed to challenge liberalism, since Hegel deliberately incorporated the insights of liberalism into his system.
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Ann Vogel (University of Cambridge, England)
E-mail: av275@cam.ac.uk
A Hunch of Adam Ferguson in Economic Sociology
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This paper addresses the brief appearances of the Scottish Enlightenment thinker Adam Ferguson in the literature of economic sociology. Unlike Adam Smith, with whom he has been often quoted together, his value to economic sociology and other sub-disciplines has never been explained. In this essay I discuss this phenomenon and suggest that this lack of specification of Ferguson's work may be partially linked to the remaining hesitation in theoretical economic sociology to take on seriously the non-profit sector and problems of civil society. I will briefly discuss as to its consequences.
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Barbara Wejnert (Cornell University, USA)
E-mail: bw15@cornell.edu
From Subordination to Equality? Democratic Growth, Market-based Economy and Women's Well-being: 1970-2000
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Contrary to the common assumption that growth of democracy inevitably improves citizens' quality of life across the world and increases life opportunities, these analyses show that the improvement of well-being is conditioned by citizens' gender, an overall country's level of economic development, and a country's regional location. Although, world scale analyses attest that women and society-in-general benefit from growth of democracy, the regional analyses indicate that women benefit only in the most economically-developed, established democracies. In transitional democracies of underdeveloped countries, societal well-being improves with growth of democracy, but the level of women's well-being measured by indicators of women's education, participation in labor force and health, declines and only over time, women's well-being improves. These findings suggest that prior research arguing for positive impact of democratic growth and market-based economy on people's well-being is bias representing predominantly situation in well-established democracies of the Western world while lacking specific consideration for less-developed countries.
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Dennis H. Wrong (New York University, USA)
E-mail: dhwrong@voicenet.com
Art and Its Power of Transcendence
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Social theory strives to advance universal propositions but often overgeneralizes from the historical period in which it was advanced as sociologists of knowledge have argued. Representational art reproduces concrete particulars but its lasting contributions carry a transhistorical even universal significance. A Hemingway story about abortion illustrates the latter as Milan Kundera contends in criticizing other interpreters, who overstate the influence of the story of literary classics. The influence of earlier on later works has been called "intertextuality" by T. S. Eliot. One can identify it in painting and cinema as well. Yet some works of art are valued for capturing the full particularity of their subjects, for example, Joyce, Proust, and Alice Munto. Yet they still succeed in intimating the universal in the particular. The same is true of the best social theory. Robert McIver and Talcott Parsons rightly argued that human action required taking into account the full particularity of the actor's viewpoint.
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Mark Young (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Germany)
E-mail: Markyoung@aol.com
Civil Society: Modern Aristotelian Polis?
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Even in his own day, Aristotle had difficulty identifying a real-life example of his ideal political community. Can we do any better today?
I would propose looking for the current "home" of the neo-Aristotelian polis not in any contemporary political arrangement but rather within elements of modern "civil society". Although the perfect actualization of the neo-Aristotelian ideal is as elusive now as it was in Aristotle's own day, elements of it can certainly be found in practice. Indeed, it is only in very recent years that modern technology has for the first time enabled human beings to connect with one another in a way which truly furthers each of their eudaimonia in the neo-Aristotelian sense.
In the Western world, the idea of "civil society" has always been a central tenet of any reasoned attempt to organize communal life. I identify four different historical paradigms for this ancient term, arising at different points in succession in the history of Western philosophy. Unfortunately, none of these work particularly well today: modern life requires a concept of civil society which goes beyond the political, the ecclesiastical, the economic and the nostalgically voluntary. If community is to provide the key to the Good Life in the 21st century, it must incorporate all of these and more.
Instead, I propose a more contemporary fifth model of civil society, one built directly on the neo-Aristotelian principles of autonomy, capabilities and flourishing. Under this definition, civil society is seen as any sort of directly linked community of shared values. It is a coming together of individuals seeking political stability in their search for the Good Life as they unabashedly stand for intersubjectively defensible values, but also allowing for the diversity and tolerance both within the community and in relation to others on which the long-term health of any modern Aristotelian polis depends.
Some particularly timely examples can illustrate just how these principles can be put into practice in modern life. Provocatively, while globally linked communities such as Al Qaeda may seem at first glance to fit the bill, this modern polis clearly cannot live up to the normative standards of our neo-Aristotelian paradigm. Communities based on shared sexual identity, such as the Gay Liberation movement, fare somewhat better, but must ultimately discover that this facet of human identity is not enough to truly bind citizens into a flourishing community. The most appealing current example, Amnesty International, is one that is truly based on shared values, and that has found ways to use the global links of modern community to put those values into action, if only in anecdotal and sketchy ways.
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