Recent theories of political development have emphasized redistributive demands as the main drivers of democratic transitions and consolidation. The authors employ Cox duration models to evaluate a number of economic, institutionalist, and sociological theories of regime transition, using global data from 1970 to 1999. This study suggests that demands for redistribution are insufficient explana...

Many theories of religion tend toward a naturalistic, sociological, Durkheimian framework. While these theories have pointed out important dimensions of religious experience, they risk reducing the human experience of religion to a purely social or psychological phenomenon, without taking seriously the claims of religious adherents themselves. How can we begin to work toward a unique theory of ...

In this essay I focus on the problems and promises of how the East can make contributions to sociological theories. In the currently pervasive dominance of “received theories” derived mostly from Western experiences, discrepant evidences from other societies are often questioned for their generalizability or treated as contingencies. For paradigmatic theoretical contributions by the East to be ...

Anthropological, sociological, and psychological theories suggest that religious symbols should influence motivational processes during performance of goal-relevant tasks. In two experiments, positive and negative religious (Christian) symbols were presented outside of participants' conscious awareness. These symbols influenced cardiovascular responses consistent with challenge and threat state...

Linking sociological theories of vocabularies and institutions with Neo-Whorfian perspectives from cognitive science, this paper develops a theoretical framework and propositions on how specialized vocabularies structure cognition and action in organizations. We propose that vocabularies of organizing are socially constructed systems of linguistic categories that provide organizational members ...

T INTR he food system is undergoing profound changes, at the level of production and consumption models. Economic theory on the one hand, and sociological and anthropological theories on the other, give different interpretations of the changes, but these often do not confront each other. Moreover, within sociology, with regard to food, ‘(a) curious, if implicit, division of labour seems to have...

Leaves from a Russian Diary—and Thirty Years After by Pitirim A. Sorokin (Beacon Press: Boston, 1950; originally published in 1924) [LDR] Contemporary Sociological Theories by Pitirim A. Sorokin (Harper and Row: New York, 1928, 1958) [CST] Social and Cultural Dynamics by Pitirim A. Sorokin (revised and abridged in one volume by the author, Transaction Books: New Brunswick, 1957, 1985; originall...

The aim of this study was to show the interaction between the society, applicants and medical schools in terms of medical student selection. In this study, the trends to implement social factors in the selection process were highlighted. These social factors were explored through functionalism and conflict theories, each focusing on different categories of social factors. While functionalist th...

This paper argues that our sociological explanations of the historical advent of gender stratification in the Occident has given too much attention to techno-economic causes and too little attention to religious, cultural and ideological causes. Evidence for this claim is taken from archeology, mythology and anthropology for the relevant historical period (4500 and 3000 BC) in Eurasia. I assert...

What about the security of Information Society itself? We examine what are the most prevalent statements related to this system level. Subsequent to analyzing these, we will try to find out what constitutes the ‘knowledge sociological/theory of knowledge’ domain in which current theories are formulated. After that, we will attempt to comprehensively justify that the discourses dealing with the ...