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This article provides an introduction to the 20th Anniversary Special Issue of the Journal of Classical Sociology. It begins with some brief observations on the key developments that have shaped the disciplinary core of sociology over the past decades. It goes on to reflect on the role of classical sociology in Europe and beyond, drawing attention to its continuing presence in British and Anglo-American intellectual circles. Far from existing in a bubble of academic ivory towers, the paradigms emerging from disputes in the social sciences in general and in sociology in particular are profoundly shaped by wider historical trends – notably those influenced by different forms of collective action, as illustrated in the impact of social movements on the university sector in the late 1960s. In light of recent calls for 'the decolonization of academia', we ask to what extent sociology can, and should, strive to go beyond the hegemony of the 'Western' canon. Having given a succinct overview of the 20-year history of JCS, we elucidate the different formats of the material published in the journal, stressing the importance of editorial flexibility. On a more substantive note, we point out that the thematic scope of the work published in JCS has been wide-ranging and inclusive – not only because of its editors' broad conception of 'classics' and 'classicality', but also because of the interdisciplinary spirit permeating the journal. This commitment, as we explain, manifests itself in the wide range of thinkers and topics discussed – from a multiplicity of perspectives – in the journal. We also grapple with noteworthy challenges posed by the academic publishing industry in the early 21st century, including the difficulties arising from peer-review processes. Finally, we express our gratitude to those who have contributed to this 20th Anniversary Special Issue and emphasize the journal's commitment to defending the legacy of classical sociology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding the family experience of health and illness within the family's social and cultural context helps health professionals understand a family's stories. The purpose of this article is to present salient characteristics of the Western European family to extend understanding about family structure and values in relation to caring and intergenerational solidarity. The goal is to provide nurses and other health professionals with culturally competent knowledge that can inform practice with families. Evidence suggests that a family model, characterized by strong-family type societies consisting of coresidence, solidarity, and intergenerational relationships, stalwartly continues in Mediterranean countries. However, due to the recent economic crisis in Spain and other European countries, there is a trend toward the withdrawal of state responsibility toward the family, and an increasing weight on families' responsibility, particularly for women, toward the care of their old and chronically ill relative. Therefore, there is a need to make health and social systems more effective, sustainable, and focused on family care. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the social sciences, neo-liberalism, and salvaging the public university in Europe and the U.S. It states that the initiative to reduce educational costs and increase bureaucratization do not serve any other purpose that increasing the influence of the administration of universities. It mentions that the predicaments of higher education could be addressed by re-discovering people's role in the society and re-conceptualizing the disciplinary boundaries of academic fields.

This article summarizes Walter Isard’s important contributions to environmental economics and ecological economics. The former is the traditional field that incorporates some limited aspects of the environment into neoclassical economic theory, while the latter is a more comprehensive integration of economic and ecological principles in a set of eclectic frameworks. Walter’s contributions include pioneering research, primarily in a spatial context, and the mentoring of prominent researchers in these fields during the period of 1965–75. We examine these contributions in the context of the state of the art of knowledge in these fields at the time and today. We also discuss Walter’s influence in Europe in these areas. We conclude with a discussion of some promising new directions, with an emphasis on regional science dimensions. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

If it is to become a more widely used resource at the present time, when the demand is growing for explanations of the predicament of modern western society in the wake of the events of 11 September 2001 and various similar subsequent events around the globe, classical sociology might pay more attention than it usually does to a particular set of early modern developments. These developments, it is argued here, actually created the form of the social that became large-scale modern western society. This new form of the social was and remains distinct from those older forms that were seen to flow from the natural sociality of human beings. Between the middle of the 16th century and the end of the 17th the new form of the social emerged in different parts of Europe, contingently but not entirely accidentally, as a separate domain of relatively safe and free human interaction. It was a consequence - in part intended, in part unintended - of different bids to secure civil peace in times of extreme inter-communal, inter-confessional violence. These bids included, to name just three measures: the development of new forms of public law, especially in Germany; the development of the absolutist state, especially in France; and the separation of private religious conscience from public legal conscience, especially in England. As they were all, in one way or another, steps towards stemming, stopping, and/or preventing the flow of blood caused by religious hatreds, they are here called early modern limiting measures, and the social at the centre of the article is sometimes called the limited social or limited society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 'European social model' is a phrase often heard in European discourse. This article describes the remarkable shift in meaning that the term has experienced in the last two decades. While it was first invented to symbolise Delors's vision of a social-democratic Europe, it was then increasingly used to legitimise a predominately neoliberal integration process, before becoming a justification for the cutting back of existing welfare systems. The popularity of the European social model, however, still stems from the fact that it articulates an alternative to US-style free-market capitalism. The concept is therefore also used by left forces in order to formulate their vision of an alternative Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Whiteness studies are trans-disciplinary, but here the focus is principally on sociology and social history. Firstly, I identify elucidate and synthesize the major ways in which whiteness in this literature has hitherto been problematized, to provide a sociological view of the multidisciplinary work so far. Five interpretations are identified; whiteness as absence, as content, as a set of norms, as resources and as a contingent hierarchy. Secondly, I make some proposals regarding the whiteness problematic's degree of pertinence to European settings, with a brief discussion of the Irish case. Finally, I argue that whiteness is useful if conceptualized in a way that sets it within the parameters of studies of racism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article evaluates the allocation of ministerial portfolios according to ideological disposition within the Major government of 1992–1997. By examining the ideological attitudes of Conservative parliamentarians towards three ideological variables – economic policy, European policy and social, sexual and moral policy – it will analyse the ideological balance of the government vis-à-vis the Parliamentary Conservative Party (PCP); the ideological disposition of those departing and entering government; and the ideological profile of the ministers appointed to the ‘key’ ministerial positions. The article will demonstrate the following: first, the Thatcherite ‘right’ were underrepresented at ministerial level, whilst the Tory ‘left’ secured a level of ministerial representation disproportionate to their numerical strength within the PCP; second, this was despite the fact that the process of ministerial appointments and departures gradually enhanced the representation of the Thatcherite ‘right’ of the PCP at the expense of the Tory ‘left’; and finally, the ‘perception’ amongst the Thatcherite ‘right’ was that they were being marginalised in terms of the key ministries of state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article aims to explore the utility of Europeanisation as a concept to grasp the interactions between national and European levels. The article illustrates how the EU impacts on the national level of policy, polity and the politics of Member States and assesses how the role of nation states within the European political system has changed as a result. First, the existing definitions of Europeanisation are critically assessed, contextualised and delimited. Initially developed for communitised policy areas in the first pillar, Europeanisation is defined as an interactive, ongoing and mutually constitutive process of ‘Europeanising’ and ‘Europeanised’ countries, linking national and European levels. Defining Europeanisation as ‘domestic change’, the article then discusses mechanisms, objects and forms, as well as the criteria and conditions of change. The article subsequently seeks to clarify the validity of the Europeanisation concept in capturing the increasing interwovenness of national and European spheres in intergovernmental policy fields situated in the second pillar of the EU, that is, foreign and security policy. Inherent methodological challenges, mainly due to the deficient delimitation of Europeanisation and the intergovernmental character of this policy field are discussed as well as the particularities of its applicability in this unique policy area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The meaning and understanding of the concept of region has been changing along with the ways in which human geographers understand and describe the world. The social turn in science has focused research on the intensity of interpersonal relations of a region’s inhabitants, on the dialectical process of the regional constraints to social relations and the influence of the social relations on creation of the region. When observing and experiencing the process of transition in central Europe, one is ‘impressed’ how historically related social blueprints of regions deeply influence contemporary events.

Against the backdrop of a perceived 'crisis' within the field of Anglo-American regional science, in this paper we offer a brief overview of the early engagement of regional science with the regional concept, while placing its theoretical formulations within the wider sociohistorical context of the Cold War period and the rise of positivist social science. With regard to the development of regional science as a field of enquiry with its own theoretical and empirical postulates, attention focuses on what David Harvey has referred to as a "utopianism of spatial form", defined by the idea that spatial constructs can serve to control social processes in positive ways, thus using space to evade historical change. In building bridges from the Isardian promise of the past of regional science to its multiple futures, we suggest that the field today may break out of its current 'isolated state' by entering into creative dialogue with the metaphors animating three research streams: (1) an 'analytical turn' in Marxist economic geography; (2) a Marshallian 'New Regionalism'; and (3) a 'cultural turn' perceived to be occuring within the field of radical political economy. Each stream, addressed here as a successive and broader departure from the more orthodox "utopianism of spatial form" in spatial and regional science, is briefly surveyed in turn. Drawing on the metaphor of borders and borderlands, we conclude by arguing that rather than view each research strand as an 'improvement' on its predecessor they should be viewed as the grounds for a potentially rich cross-fertilization between spatial science and various fields of nonorthodox economics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, the sociology of religion has been consumed by a debate over secularization that pits advocates of a new, rational-choice paradigm (the so-called religious economies model) against defenders of classical secularization theory. According to the old paradigm, the Western world has become increasingly secular since the Middle Ages; according to the new paradigm, it has become increasingly religious. I put these two images of religious development to the test through a detailed examination of religious life in Western Europe before and after the Reformation. I conclude that the changes in social structure and religious experience that occurred during this period were considerably more complex than either the old or new paradigms suggest and, indeed, that the two paradigms are neither so opposed nor so irreconcilable as many of their defenders contend. It is possible, indeed probable, that Western society has become more secular without becoming less religious. I discuss the limitations of the two competing paradigms and sketch the outlines of a more adequate theory of religious change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents a reply to a commentary made on the article "Immigration to Spain: Implications for a Unified European Union Immigration Policy." Geographies of reference define how we view and analyze political problems. The importance of terminology is highlighted by the commentary and what implications demography itself will have on a unified European Union (EU) immigration policy. If we use immigrant to refer to individuals entering the EU, then EU citizens are no longer immigrants but citizens changing geographic location within the territory adhering to the EU. EU citizens are no longer immigrants whose movement across borders within the EU can be "controlled" by Spanish immigration policy. Nevertheless, everyone who is not a Spanish citizen is still a foreigner in Spain. Perhaps after reading too much Euro-literature, I had come to believe quite unreflectively that Spain is a unit of Europe and that Europeans or EU citizens in Spain are no longer immigrants. This idea is a reflection of a distinction that is not clearly delineated in speech but is in policy practice between immigrants originating within the EU and those originating from beyond the EU. Further distinctions in Spanish policy circles are made between economic immigrants from impoverished countries and immigrants from wealthier non-EU countries. The classification of EU citizens as foreign national and immigrant is ambiguous. In the Spanish census, EU citizens are included as foreign nationals.

The article presents information on early American sociology and the Polish peasant. "The Polish Peasant in Europe and America (1918-20)," by W.I. Thomas and Florian Znaniecki, is something of a forgotten classic in sociology. The book has been kept alive in recent decades primarily by social historians (Handlin. 1951: Cravens. 1978; Persons. 1958; Zarelsky, 1984; Eider, 1981) American sociologists did not fully appreciate its theoretical importance when it appeared nor have they since. The main importance of the book was in founding the discipline of sociology, in the epistemological sense of clarifying the unique intellectual space into which this discipline alone could see and explore (Foucault, 1973: 344-348; Husserl. 1970a). The attitude-value scheme is at a level of secondary importance. This scheme was mortgaged to the very scientism from which the authors were trying to escape. The inconclusiveness of their epistemological break, however, is not a fatal flaw for the scheme, and its similarity to contemporary European theory suggests its continued usefulness. By laying claim to the epistemological turf that defines sociology.

Completion of the European Community's single internal market by 31 December 1992 is intended to secure the free movement of goods, services, capital and labour within the Community. This article examines the 1992 project with special reference to harmonisation and variation among the twelve members of the EC, `Social Europe' and the Social Charter, `Citizens' Europe', and the wider European context following the collapse of state socialism in Eastern Europe. It is argued that the interaction between the neo-liberalism of the single market, other EC policies, and the various historic practices of the twelve will generate highly complex outcomes for the Community as a whole and for individual members. Novel social and political forms -- some of them hard even to conceptualise -- may be expected. The same may be said of Eastern Europe. Throughout the continent sociologists will have an indispensible part to play in making the provenance and character of the various outcomes understandable to all concerned. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This chapter and the next two must be considered as complementing each other. Together, they present a picture of the social sciences communications structure of the world, give an indication of out disciplines in the Third World, and identify present trends and suggest future prospects. The current chapter describes--"constructs" is a more meaningful term--the communications system of the First World. Emphasis within this construction has been put upon the United States. The latter emerges at the apex of First World social science, as the centre even for Europe, and as the world's social science superpower. The interaction patterns of the Second and Third World have been reserved for the following chapters, and the latter features the revolt of social science against what is perceived there as being First World domination. The overwhelming American dominance in the early post-war period will be seen to have already deteriorated in several First World countries. For these reasons, the future of social science promises to be both less American and less consensual. The post-war extension of the Soviet brand of the disciplines is a subject of the following chapter, as well as the Sino-Soviet break, and the renewed Chinese interest in our subjects starting in 1977.

This article presents a reply to Bernd Hamm's critique of the transformation of Europe as a challenge to comparative sociology. The main thrust of Bernd Hamm's critique is that the article on the transformation of Europe is pursuing a comparative approach resulting only in the empirical description of similarities and differences between nations. Such an approach, accepting nations as the most important and meaningful entities for comparison, tends to confine research to a static and correlational logic. He asserts that it is characterized by a retrospective and conservative bias, not allowing for a true consideration of patterns of interlinkages between the units of observation nor the dynamics of change. While such an approach, according to Hamm, might have some merits, a truly fruitful comparative research within the context of Europe necessitates a significant different position, an evolutionary approach focusing on the changes going on in Europe. Here, the processes of building European institutions are particularly at issue; only by focusing on them can we contribute to the understanding of Europe as it becomes one society, and to learn lessons from such understanding. There are some specific arguments in Hamm's critique on which the author would like to comment briefly. The first concerns arguments about crisis phenomena in Europe in the first part of the paper. A second, quite important, issue raised by Hamm concerns the question whether nation-states are still the most meaningful units of observation in comparative research.

The social sciences are Western products and aspects of the socio-cultural dependency of the Third World. They are ethnocentric in terms of research areas and membership of research groups. Within those groups there are sharp national boundaries reflected in publications such as the American dominated International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences. Both Marxism and Popperian naturalism regard this as unproblematical. The Third World can choose from the range of expert knowledge (not science) which the Western social sciences provide and develop their own social science groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dramatic changes have occured in the every day life of Eastern Europe, in the world of sports as well as in politics: the breakdown of state top sports, the public attention to doping, the uncovering of deficiencies in "mass sports", the emigration of a professional sport elite...But when analyzing beneath the surface of the events, things are not so simple. Some very different and contradicting theses are possible.1. The change of systems: The Western world has won the cold war of sports, and a commercial sport system is being established with capitalist sponsorship, media market, sale and migration of professionals, etc.2. A delayed modernization: The Eastern countries are "underdeveloped" and now trying to catch up (in vain?) in the same way as Western sport did before them: Sport for all. An evolutionist interpretation.Both interpretations - dominating the public discourses today - ignore the fact that "the Western sports" is not monolithic either, but is also changing fundamentally since the 1960/70s:- Top sport is changing from the production of individual results towards a media circus, the putting on stage of a - often fascinating - show sport.- A commercial market of body culture is expanding, threatening the traditional system of club sports.- New alternative movement cultures have arisen, redefining - repractizing - the popular (in Nordic language: folkelig) grassroot aspect of sports.3. Therefore a third interpretation is obvious: Are the events happening in the East (and the West), rather a revolution of body culture? A fundamental change creating something structurally new that has never been seen before? In this perspective - and maybe only in this one - the Eastern European peoples have the chance of non-synchronicity. We learn today, that popular games in Georgia and Kazakhstan have not disappeared as they did in Denmark and West-Germany. The peoples of Eastern Europe and Soviet Asia can use an experience - of resistance, of change, of underground alternatives in sports - which they have, whilst the Western countries have not.Or have we, too? New problems are rising at the horizon of sports sociology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information on the changes of the editorship of the journal "International Sociology" in Europe. It is stated that the number of submissions has almost doubled, coming from the diverse research committees of the International Sociological Association worldwide. It is emphasized that the changes in the journal are a reflection of the work of remarkable army of committed reviewers, authors and dedicated associate editors and editorial board. The journal is gathering suggestions for the celebration of its 25 years in service in 2010.

This article presents information regarding the International Committee for Sociology of Sport (ICSS). Combining all these objectives will not be a simple matter, as sport sociology, similar to sociology as a whole, is at different stages of development in the various countries. It has to be seen against the background of different traditions and is subject to disparate scientific standards. Being oriented towards different objectives and ideologies its functions and tasks may vary from country to country. All this has to be minored in an international journal which should strive to reflect the diversity of scientific trends which have emerged in the respective countries. The standards prevalent in North America or western Europe for example cannot be the sole criteria when assessing whether or not an article is to be included. It should also be taken into account whether the article in question is characteristic of and significant for the sociology of sport in the respective country. The editors will endeavor to attain the objectives of the periodical by providing articles on new scientific investigations and surveys on selected topics highlighting the situation of research in the various countries.