Modernization and Development: the Role of Regional Elites and Noncorporate Groups in the European Mediterranean

1972 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 328-350 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Schneider ◽  
Jane Schneider ◽  
Edward Hansen
Keyword(s):  
Land Use ◽  
Social Change ◽  
Social Stratification ◽  
Field Work ◽  
Social Structures ◽  
Skilled Workers ◽  
Political Activities ◽  
Western Sicily ◽  
Culture Centered

This paper is about social change in underdeveloped areas. It is based on field work in the European Mediterranean between 1965 and 1967. Hansen worked in the wine and champagne district of Villafranca del Panadés, roughly 30 miles from Barcelona, in Catalonia. The Schneiders were in the wheat and pastoral latifundium zone of Western Sicily. The two regions exhibit quite different patterns of land use and tenure, social stratification and settlement. We were struck, however, by two characteristics which they shared. First, we found a plethora of noncorporate social structures (for the most part coalitions) which organized fundamental economic and political activities of a quite modern sort. In rural Catalonia, coalitions of businessmen, skilled workers and government functionaries are formed within the context of an emergent bar culture, centered in major towns like Villafranca. In Western Sicily, until quite recently, the locus of similar coalitions was the latifundium. As yet, no clearly defined urban tradition has replaced this predominantly rural one

Profit as Social Rent: Embeddedness and Stratification in Markets

2019 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
pp. 162-183 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sascha Muennich
Keyword(s):  
Economic Theory ◽  
Income Inequality ◽  
Social Structure ◽  
Social Stratification ◽  
Main Part ◽  
Social Structures ◽  
Rent Extraction ◽  
Free Competition ◽  
The Social

This article shows how research on the social structure of markets may contribute to the analysis the growing income inequality in contemporary capitalist economies. The author proposes a theoretical link between embeddedness and social stratification by discussing the role of institutions and networks in markets for the distribution of economic profits between firms. The author claims that we must understand profit and free competition as opposites, as economic theory does. In the main part of the article the author illustrates six typical mechanisms of rent extraction from networks or formal and symbolic rules that embed markets. They emerge from material as well as symbolical access to and influence on the orientation of other market actors. Social structures in markets lead to unequal chances for rent extraction, even if actors produce them for coordination rather than for accumulation purposes. This is how market sociology and theory of capitalism can be linked more closely.

JULIJONA – LIETUVOS DIDŽIOJO KUNIGAIKŠČIO ALGIRDO ŽMONA IR JO VAIKŲ MOTINA

2019 ◽  
Vol 2019/2 ◽  
pp. 5-39
Author(s):  
Darius Baronas
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Method ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Primary Sources ◽  
Source Analysis ◽  
The Political ◽  
Historical Sources ◽  
Political Activities ◽  
Nature Of Information ◽  
Grand Duchy Of Lithuania

ANNOTATION. This article is the first attempt of the biographic research of Grand Duchess Uliana Algirdienė of Lithuania (d. 17/03/1392), based on the critical analysis of primary sources. It is also aimed at pointing out the reflection of the role of women in the pagan Lithuanian society. The research was carried out by means of the analytical and comparative method of historical source analysis with a view to separate as distinctly as possible the information derived from contemporary sources from the images imposed by later historiographic tradition. The article questions the stereotypes related to Uliana’s great political power in Lithuania’s political life that are well-established in modern historiography and present-day cultural memory. With this an attempt is made to draw attention to the problematic nature of information derived from historical sources as well as to more distinctly define the frames imposed by the political culture of pagan Lithuania which clearly marked the boundaries for the political activities of women representing the ruling dynasty. This article for the most part dwells on the issues related to the coverage of Algirdas and Uliana’s marriage and the period of their married life up to Algirdas’ death in 1377. KEYWORDS: Uliana, Algirdas, Simeon, Grand Duchy of Lithuania, Moscow, Tver, Rus’, women

DEMOCRACY AT THE SERVICE OF FOREIGN POLICY OF THE REPUBLIC OF SOUTH AFRICA

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. FREDDIE
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Transition To Democracy ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Activities ◽  
Foreign Policy Change ◽  
The Republic ◽  
Apartheid Regime

The article examines the place and role of democracy and human rights in South Africas foreign policy. The author analyzes the process of South Africas foreign policy change after the fall of the apartheid regime and transition to democracy. He gives characteristics of the foreign policy under different presidents of South Africa from 1994 to 2018 and analyzes the political activities of South Africa in the area of peacekeeping and human rights on the African continent.

The History of ‘the Reading Public’

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefan Collini
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Social Change ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Literary History ◽  
Reading Public ◽  
Reading Matter ◽  
History Of ◽  
Victorian Periodicals

This chapter argues that accounts of ‘the reading public’ are always fundamentally historical, usually involving stories of ‘growth’ or ‘decline’. It examines Q. D. Leavis’s Fiction and the Reading Public, which builds a relentlessly pessimistic critique of the debased standards of the present out of a highly selective account of literature and its publics since the Elizabethan period. It goes on to exhibit the complicated analysis of the role of previous publics in F. R. Leavis’s revisionist literary history, including his ambivalent admiration for the great Victorian periodicals. And it shows how Richard Hoggart’s The Uses of Literacy carries an almost buried interpretation of social change from the nineteenth century onwards, constantly contrasting the vibrant and healthy forms of entertainment built up in old working-class communities with the slick, commercialized reading matter introduced by post-1945 prosperity.

The Perils and Promises of Disability Biography

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kim E. Nielsen
Keyword(s):  
Social Change ◽  
Historical Narratives ◽  
Disabled People ◽  
Cultural Discourses ◽  
The Past ◽  
Helen Keller ◽  
Rigorous Study ◽  
Franklin Delano Roosevelt

Biographical scholarship provides a means by which to understand the past. Disability biography writes disabled people into historical narratives and cultural discourses, acknowledging power, action, and consequence. Disability biography also analyzes the role of ableism in shaping relationships, systems of power, and societal ideals. When written with skilled storytelling, rigorous study, nuance, and insight, disability biography enriches analyses of people living in the past. Disability biography makes clear the multiple ways by which individuals and communities labor, make kinship, persevere, and both resist and create social change. When using a disability analysis, biographies of disabled people (particularly people famous for their disability, such as Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Helen Keller) reveal the relationality and historically embedded nature of disability. In an ableist world, such acts can be revolutionary.

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