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The International Sociological Association’s Research Committee “Logic and Methodology” (RC33), under the direction of President Nina Baur, has begun to concentrate on sociological methodology developments in world regions other than Europe and North America. This is the first “Regional Report” to be jointly published by the BMS and this issue’s RC33 Newsletter. This paper attempts to briefly outline the status of historical and comparative sociology in Japan by a retrospective study focusing on methodological aspects. It reveals that methodology has been and will be the philosopher’s stone in a series of disputes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is a study on dignity and the politics of dignity in postcolonial Egypt, and focuses on the historicity and socioeconomic background of two events: the 1956 Suez Canal Crisis during the rise of post-independence nationalism and the 2011 Egyptian Revolution during the Arab Spring. This study reviews the importance of the concept of dignity in philosophy and the social sciences, specifically pertaining to the development and postcolonial need for dignity and recognition, which the author terms ‘dignition.’ The central question here is how the conception of dignity has evolved between the two events and what the implications are for the consequent understanding of dignity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aims to track and examine the social construction of state-voluntary sector relationships in the mixed economy of welfare in Korea. Against the prevailing perception that welfare contributions of Korean voluntary organizations began with the emergence of civil society in the democratization period of the late 1980s, it is claimed that the Korean welfare system has always contained amixture of welfare providers, in which the state and the voluntary sector have played different parts at different historical junctures, even if the power balance between the two sectors has been challenged and changed over time. The main analytical tools are based on the historical institutionalist approach with an emphasis on both how the state controlled and regulated the voluntary sector through institutional adaptations, and how the voluntary sector marshalled its collective action in response to state intervention. It is concluded that the historiography of the Korean welfare system can be rewritten by varying but subsequent phases of social control, which are socially constructed by the different combinations of political and economic power between the state and the voluntary sector: legitimization, mobilization, cooptation and accommodation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that the theoretical perspective on the rise and decline of states developed by Abd al-Rahmān Ibn Khaldūm (723-808 AH/1332-1406 AD) should not be confined to historical interest but is of relevance for the study of various aspects of the history of Muslim societies. The reasons for the relative neglect or marginalization of Ibn Khaldūn as a source of theory to be applied to definite historical empirical situations is partly due to the predominance of Eurocentrism in the social sciences. The manner in which Eurocentrism has defined Khaldunian studies is discussed, but the main focus of this article is the possibilities of a Khaldunian historical sociology of Muslim societies that is founded on a non-Eurocentric approach to his work. The article specifies what is meant by non-Eurocentric readings and applications of Ibn Khaldūn's theory. Several illustrations of these applications are provided. The serious consideration of Ibn Khaldūn's status as a founder or precursor of sociology would require such theoretical applications. Ibn Khaldūn's work should no longer be regarded as a mere source of historical data or an outdated perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]