Between the twelfth and the eighteenth centuries Italians frequently joined "confraternities" that made them symbolic brothers and sisters to one another. These kin groups launched extensive charitable programs, directed civic and religious rituals, and socialized members in class and gender roles. These essays examine how medieval religious and political values shaped early ritual kinship, how sixteenth-century social change and religious reform transformed confraternities, and how these altered groups became key agents in achieving the more rigid social order of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

The long tradition of Western political thought included kinship in models of public order, but the social sciences excised it from theories of the state, public sphere, and democratic order. Kinship has, however, neither completely disappeared from the political cultures of the West nor played the determining social and political role ascribed to it elsewhere. Exploring the issues that arise once the divide between kinship and politics is no longer taken for granted, The Politics of Making Kinship demonstrates how political processes have shaped concepts of kinship over time and, conversely, how political projects have been shaped by specific understandings, idioms and uses of kinship. Taking vantage points from the post-Roman era to early modernity, and from colonial imperialism to the fall of the Berlin Wall and beyond this international set of scholars place kinship centerstage and reintegrate it with political theory.

Annotation. This collection of essays provides an analysis of the dynamics of Civilizations. The processes of globalization and of world history are described from a comparative sociological point of view in a Weberian tradition. These essays were written between 1974 and 2002 by one of the most eminent sociologists of today.

This volume explores the relationship between Thucydides and ancient Greek historiography, sociology, and culture. Drawing on modern anthropological enquiries on kinship and the sociology of ethnicity and emotions, it argues that inter-communal kinship has a far more pervasive importance in Thucydides than has so far been acknowledged.

"Imperial Ambition in the Early Modern Mediterranean Genoese Merchants and the Spanish Crown. This book examines the alliance between the Spanish Crown and Genoese merchant bankers in southern Italy throughout the early modern era, when Spain and Genoa developed a symbiotic economic relationship, undergirded by a cultural and spiritual alliance. Analyzing early modern imperialism, migration, and trade, this book shows that the spiritual entente between the two nations was mainly informed by the religious division of the Mediterranean Sea. The Turkish threat in the Mediterranean reinforced the commitment of both the Spanish Crown and the Genoese merchants to Christianity. Spain's imperial strategy was reinforced by its willingness to acculturate to southern Italy through organized beneficence, representation at civic ceremonies, and spiritual guidance during religious holidays. Celine Dauverd is Assistant Professor of History and a board member of the Mediterranean Studies Group at the University of Colorado Boulder. Her research focuses on sociocultural relations between Spain and Italy during the early modern era (1450-1650). She has published articles in the Sixteenth Century Journal, the Journal of World History, Mediterranean Studies, and the Journal of Levantine Studies"--

This is Volume I of eighteen in a series on the Sociology of Development. Originally published in 1960,this is a book about caste in a village of Central India and its surrounding region.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1960.