Social Science Information

This article aims to foster a deeper understanding of the current clashes between modernist republicans and Islamic conservatives in Turkey. Through an examination of the relation of conservatism to modernity, I argue that there exists a conservative goal of ‘overcoming modernity’, though in a paradoxical form, which is crucial for our comprehension of this conflict. Central here is the Islamic conservative resistance to the ‘cultural program of modernity’. Indubitably, it would be fallacious to impute to (neo-)conservatism an orientation that challenges modernity in toto. Indeed, one need only consider the economy and technology to see how far the modern has captured the conservative imagination. However, the culture of modernity is a different matter and this is the aspect I concentrate on here. After first examining the (old) conservative reaction against the great transformations of modernity, I consider the contention that Turkish society has recently become conservative, and end with an analysis of republican opposition to recent government acts.

This article approaches the concept of tendential modernity as a type of evolution towards principles and norms of modernity within societies with an insufficiently functioning capitalist economy. In these societies, there is a gap between faster institutional renewal and slower economic development. Consequently, cultural, political and intellectual modernity outrun economic modernity. Tendential modernity refers to the ideas and actions aimed at modernization which remain partial and not finalized. Modernity is more an aspiration, a societal developmental intention, a goal to be reached, but which is never fully realized. Due to the fact that modernity is merely a tendency that is never finalized, the transitions are never completed. Modernity moves slowly and with difficulty through the intricate network of socio-institutional structures of the patriarchal and traditional society. It is inlay modernity, not structured under a clear, dominant form. My thesis is applied to the study of Romanian society’s modernization through all its stages: the emergence of the national state, the period between the two World Wars, the communist period and the post-communist period. Even though these periods are not all homogeneous in their rate of development, tendential modernity characterizes the evolutionary process of modern Romania.

In recent years, the concept of multiple modernities has emerged to challenge the perceived Eurocentrism and unilinearity of traditional theories of convergence, and has led to renewed efforts to appreciate differing trajectories of contemporary political and social development. Its exponents’ key argument – that forms of modernity are so varied and contingent on culture and historical circumstance that the term itself must be spoken of in the plural – is particularly pertinent in an era where a preoccupation with modernity in societies around the world has not lately been adequately reflected in the academic literature. This article reviews the main principles of this approach, synthesizes its evolution and analyzes its strengths and shortcomings. The article finds that the notion of multiple modernities has been useful in widening the scope of study, and that it focuses on important questions that its rivals have not yet addressed. However, three challenges continue to pose problems for the theory: it has been reluctant to engage with the complexities and evolution of the modernization theory it critiques; it has not consistently delineated and defined its major unit of analysis; and it has not yet identified the ‘core’ of modernity itself in a way that allows for ideas, movements or societies to fall outside its remit. Although theorists have begun to address the unit of analysis problem by incorporating political dynamics into the study of civilizational difference, the selective incorporation of the empirical methodology and findings of Inglehart & Welzel’s value-based, path-dependent approach offers another means by which multiple modernities theory can overcome the challenges identified.

The question of social ontology is considered irrelevant to the economic debate on the genesis of the firm. This article aims to show that the ontological nature of the firm can be explained by stressing the need to: (1) go beyond simple individualism and reductionism; (2) analyze the firm as a (re)constitutive emergent entity; (3) understand the cohesive interrelations between the human constituents and the nonhuman resources; and (4) define the firm as an institutionalized organization.

The instability of political life in the Federal District is a curious research problem from a scientific standpoint. This article attempts to unveil the paradoxes underlying the difficulty of stabilizing this space of relations and competences. In so doing, it looks into the processes that led, in the mid-1980s, to the specialization of a political sphere peculiar to Brasilia and to its rapid but low-key institutionalization. The invention of a local political space appears as a process deeply marked by the specificities of the territorial problematic specific to the Brazilian urban configuration. The author’s point of departure is the hypothesis that, in spite of its institutionalized rules and agencies, the political space of the Federal District tends to produce a more flexible structure than the political spaces found in the other units of the Brazilian federation.

This paper offers a methodical review of the scientific literature of the last decade that concerns itself with online services offering supportive advocacy for anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa (‘pro-ana’ and ‘pro-mia’). The main question is whether these studies reproduce the traditional divide in the study of eating disorders, between clinical and social science perspectives, with limited mutual exchanges. Having first identified a specific body of literature, the authors investigate its content, methods and approaches, and analyse the network of cross-citations the components generate and share. On this basis, the authors argue that the scientific literature touching on pro-ana websites can be regarded as a single transdisciplinary body of knowledge. What’s more, they show that the literature on computer-mediated sociabilities centred on eating disorders displays different structural characteristics with respect to the traditional, non-Web-related research on eating disorders. In the latter, the social sciences have usually provided a critical counterpoint to the development of a health sciences mainstream. In the case of Web-related research, however, the social sciences have taken the lead role in defining the field, with the health sciences following suit.