The anthropology of modernization and the modernization of anthropology

John J. Poggie, Jr. and Robert N. Lynch, eds. Rethinking Modernization. Westport: Greenwood Press, 1974. xii + 405 pp. Tables, illustrations, maps, figures, bibliography, and index. $15.95.     

A new sociology of nationalism: The sociology of property and nation

In this essay, I will reflect upon what has been sociology's contribution to understanding the emergence and development of nationalism and how sociology can contribute to understanding nationalism's present and future through a property rights perspective. The essay will discuss, in particular, how historical sociological analysis of property rights and property rights regimes may be central to understanding nationalism past and future. After a general and brief discussion on the current, so‐called return of nationalism, the essay starts with discussion of some late enlightenment proto‐sociologists, suggesting that these writers actually analysed some crucial early dynamics of property and sovereignty which is central to understanding nationalism. The essay then moves on to suggests why a property rights focus might be a useful perspective to understanding nationalism in the 21st century.     

Advances and impasses in Fred Halliday's international historical sociology: a critical appraisal

How did Fred Halliday recast International Relations (IR) theory as international historical sociology? This article explores Halliday's intellectual trajectory across this terrain and suggests that the notion of ‘capitalist modernity’, derived from an amalgamation of neo‐Marxian and neo‐Weberian historical sociology, functioned as the strategic master‐category, which anchored his thought on International Relations throughout his work. This category was successively reconceived and complemented to generate four, partly contradictory, analytical frameworks at a lower level of abstraction: ‘global conjunctural analysis’; a neo‐Weberian ‘sociology of the inter‐state system’; ‘international society as homogeneity’ and ‘uneven and combined development’. The article identifies the advances and impasses in each intellectual move and exemplifies the limits of Halliday's approach in relation to his analysis of revolutions. It suggests that while Halliday was instrumental in reconnecting IR with historical sociology, providing crucial openings and correctives to mainstream IR theory, his theoretical emphases remained ultimately too syncretistic and additive to shift the debate on firmer ground. While this can be read as a failure, there is also evidence to understand this anti‐formalism as a deliberate intellectual choice. The article concludes by suggesting that the very term international historical sociology, predicated on a distinct modernist vocabulary, may itself preclude a full historicization of categories of analysis, restricting its use as a general framework for capturing the historicity and sociality of geopolitical practices across time and space.     

中国现代化的结构剖析及其历史任务

中国现代化属于后发型现代化,其特殊的运行过程必然存在着两大不可忽视的问题：一是缺乏与现代化相对应的枉会规范,二是现代明中的化精神明显滞后。现代化建设必须使行政性规范、契约性规范和道德性规范协调统一。才能最终实现预期的目标,决不可偏废其一。     

“局”与晚清的近代化

"局"为应对19世纪中叶以来的新兴政务而设,因此从局的发展和变迁,可以看出晚清近代化的步伐.局大体经历了三个发展阶段:第一阶段为局的初步兴起.为了应付1853-1874年间的王朝叛乱,筹款和军需之局在战事中大量兴办.第二阶段为民政事务的局大量兴起.战后,为了恢复地方秩序,局由战事转为民事,其维护了地方社会的发展,造成了上海、汉口等初兴城市的地方自治.第三阶段,局成为国家官僚体系的组成部分.戊戌维新后,局在兴办农工商事务中的作用日益显著;清末新政改革,正式以局为国家官制改革的核心.局的兴办模式也随着发生了变化,由最初的军幕制度到委绅设局,再到科层管理,局的成熟终于成为现代文官制度确立的标志.     

The modernization paradigm based on monistic multi-linear theory: a response to some comments

Long before 1979, Chinese historical research had been dominated by the theory of the Five Modes of Production , according to which the whole Chinese history as well as the other parts of the world had been developed from the first MOD to the last one by one. The modernization theories prevailed during the 1950s and the 1960s, bringing about another uni-linear model of historical changes. For example, W. W. Rostow designed a five-stage process as a universal frame work of economic development, based on which each society could find its position in this uni-line. The task of the less developed societies is just to introduce modernity from the modernized societies so that they can make some developments. Thus modernization is a uni-direction movement as well as a uni-linear process. After 1979, modernization as a new paradigm has been accepted by an increasing number of Chinese historians. The increasing depth and breadth of the academic researches have encouraged such an acceptance, but, admittedly, as a new conceptual system that corresponded to the historic breakthrough and the new direction towards modernization in China. This acceptance also showed the crisis of paradigm , that is, the contradiction between the new themes and the old ones that had dominated Chinese humanities and social sciences. The modernization paradigm based on monistic multi-linear theory considers modernization as a unique breakthrough in history, a great transformation around the whole world, and a historical process that does not have a given ultimate aim and value but different models and routes. The monistic multi-linear theory on historical development is open and all-embracing in historical studies. A variety of historical paradigms is favorable to prosperity of Chinese history.     

Review article: Religion,modernization and Zionism

Ehud Luz, Parallels Meet: Religion and Nationalism in the Early Zionist Movement (1882–1904), Philadelphia, Jewish Publication Society of America, 1988 (Originally published in Hebrew — Tel Aviv, Am Oved, 1985), xix + 365 pp.

Yosef Salmon, Religion and Zionism — First Encounters: Essays (Hebrew), Jerusalem, Hassifriya Hazionit, 1990, 366 pp.     

Devolution and the modernization of local government: Prospects for spatial planning

The creation of devolved administrations in Scotland and Wales, coupled with the proposals for the English regions are creating new operational environments for local government in different parts of the UK. This paper reviews both the key factors affecting these new environments and their relationship with local government. The paper assesses the factors influencing the context for change, and considers these comparatively within England, Scotland and Wales. Attention is focused on emerging forms and practices of spatial planning within the devolved countries at the local level, caused by sub-national, local and community institutional change. Spatial planning is utilized as an example of the changing nature of central–local government relationships within the UK. The article concludes that there is evidence of convergent and divergent trends occurring at different speeds within the three countries and that the new local government relationships in Scotland and Wales may be more defined as a direct consequence of devolution. In England, by contrast, the new relationships between local government and central government appear more complex, not least as a result of the emerging picture of governance being brought about by regionalization. This leaves the future structure and powers of spatial planning within English local government more uncertain at the present time.     

陈独秀与中国马克思主义社会学的开创

陈独秀是中国早期的马克思主义者,在宣传马克思主义的过程中比较系统地阐述了马克思主义的社会学思想,为建立中国马克思主义社会学奠定了理论基础.他还就社会学的研究方法、个人与社会关系、社会运行规律、社会自杀问题、马尔萨斯人口论等社会学的学术问题进行研究和分析,为中国马克思主义社会学的产生提供学术的基础.陈独秀的社会学思想以中国社会为研究重点,注重研究中国的社会组织、社会阶级结构、社会阶层等理论课题,这为开创阶段的中国马克思主义社会学奠定了研究的框架体系.陈独秀是中国马克思主叉社会学的先驱,在中国马克恩主义学术发展史上具有重要的地位.     

The problem of harm in world politics: implications for the sociology of states-systems

Martin Wight's Systems of states is renowned for setting out a grand vision of the sociology of states-systems which has undoubted importance for contemporary efforts to build connections between historical sociology and international relations. Wight's interest in the fate of conceptions of the unity of humankind in different states can be developed in a study of the impact of cosmopolitan harm conventions in states-systems. What is most interesting from this point of view is how far different international systems regarded harm to individuals as a problem which all states, individually and collectively, should strive to solve. A central question for such an approach is whether the modern states-system has progressed in making unnecessary suffering a moral problem for the world as a whole.