These original articles relate to major themes in the comparative study of the dynamics of cultures, modernization, and social and political change. The authors, ranking scholars in their fields, provide fresh and important insights to the study of topics such as the interface of anthropological and sociological theory, the dynamics of Latin Americ

Personal pronouns have a special status in languages. As indexical tools they are the means by which languages and persons intimately interface with each other within a particular social structure. Pronouns involve more than mere grammatical functions in live communication acts. They variously signal the gender of speakers as parts of utterances or in their anaphoric roles. They also prominently indicate with a range of degrees the kind of social relationships that hold between speakers from intimacy to indifference, from dominance to submission, and from solidarity to hostility. Languages greatly vary in the number of pronouns and other address terms they offer to their users with a distinct range of social values. Children learn their relative position in their family and in their society through the “correct” use of pronouns. When languages come into contact because of population migrations or through the process of translation, pronouns are the most sensitive zone of tension both psychologically and politically. This volume endeavours to probe the comparative pragmatics of pronominal systems as social processes in a representative set from different language families and cultural areas.

Darwin famously described special difficulties in explaining social evolution in insects. More than a century later, the evolution of sociality - defined broadly as cooperative group living - remains one of the most intriguing problems in biology. Providing a unique perspective on the study of social evolution, this volume synthesizes the features of animal social life across the principle taxonomic groups in which sociality has evolved. The chapters explore sociality in a range of species, from ants to primates, highlighting key natural and life history data and providing a comparative view across animal societies. In establishing a single framework for a common, trait-based approach towards social synthesis, this volume will enable graduate students and investigators new to the field to systematically compare taxonomic groups and reinvigorate comparative approaches to studying animal social evolution.

Social Dynamics: Models and Methods focuses on sociological methodology and on the practice of sociological research. This book is organized into three parts encompassing 16 chapters that deal with the basic principles of social dynamics. The first part of this book considers the development of models and methods for causal analysis of the actual time paths of change in attributes of individual and social systems. This part also discusses the applications in which the use of dynamic models and methods seems to have enhanced the capacity to formulate and test sociological arguments. These models and methods are useful for answering questions about the detailed structure of social change processes. The second part explores the formulation of the continuous-time models of change in both quantitative and qualitative outcomes and the development of suitable methods for estimating these models from the kinds of data commonly available to sociologists. The third part describes a stochastic framework for analyzing both qualitative and quantitative outcome of social changes. This part also discusses the sociologists' perspective on the empirical study of social change processes. This text will be of great value to sociologists and sociological researchers.

When John Harsanyi came to Stanford University as a candidate for the Ph.D., I asked him why he was bothering, since it was most un likely that he had anything to learn from us. He was already a known scho lar; in addition to some papers in economics, the first two papers in this vol ume had already been published and had dazzled me by their originality and their combination of philosophical insight and technical competence. However, I am very glad I did not discourage him; whether he learned any thing worthwhile I don't know, but we all learned much from him on the foundations of the theory of games and specifically on the outcome of bar gaining. The central focus of Harsanyi's work has continued to be in the theory of games, but especially on the foundations and conceptual problems. The theory of games, properly understood, is a very broad approach to social interaction based on individually rational behavior, and it connects closely with fundamental methodological and substantive issues in social science and in ethics. An indication of the range of Harsanyi's interest in game the ory can be found in the first paper of Part B -though in fact his owncontri butions are much broader-and in the second paper the applications to the methodology of social science. The remaining papers in that section show more specifically the richness of game theory in specific applications.

"Over the past two decades the study of social movements, revolution, democratization and other non-routine politics has flourished. And yet research on the topic remains highly fragmented, reflecting the influence of at least three traditional divisions. The first of these reflects the view that various forms of contention are distinct and should be studied independent of others. Separate literatures have developed around the study of social movements, revolutions and industrial conflict. A second approach to the study of political contention denies the possibility of general theory in deference to a grounding in the temporal and spatial particulars of any given episode of contention. The study of contentious politics are left to 'area specialists' and/or historians with a thorough knowledge of the time and place in question. Finally, overlaid on these two divisions are stylized theoretical traditions - structuralist, culturalist, and rationalist - that have developed largely in isolation from one another." http://www.loc.gov/catdir/description/cam021/2001016172.html.

Sociology, emerging in the 19th century as the study of national societies, is the intellectual product of its time, power relations and social imaginaries. As a discursive practice that was enmeshed in the meta-narratives of modernity, the discipline of sociology bears the inherent capacity to shape socially shared concepts and construct collective identities. This book examines the relationships between sociology and projects of national identity construction, and presents a critique of Shmuel N. Eisenstadt, the prominent Israeli sociologist known as the "father of Israeli sociology". The book focuses on Eisenstadt’s sociology of Israel as a case of knowledge construction within an ideological system and examines the relationships between his various sociological analyses of Israeli society and the Zionist imaginary, namely the deeply entrenched political myths and historiographical narratives that constitute Israel’s hegemonic national identity. By emphasizing the interrelation between textuality, identity, and loaded language, the volume seeks to demythologize Eisenstadt’s sociology of Israel. Three major concepts in Eisenstadt’s scholarship are specifically thematized: integration, civilization, and modernities. In each of these foci, the author shows how Eisenstadt’s sociological conjectures reproduce dominant Zionist historiographical representations of the past, rationalize prevalent social hierarchies, reify the boundaries of a national collective "Self", and render legitimacy to Israel’s governing ethnocratic tendencies, underlying the premises of the Zionist settler-colonial project. Sociological Knowledge and Collective Identity will appeal to those interested in the interconnectedness of sociology and political memory, as well as in a radical postcolonial reconstruction of sociology.

This book provides a unique mosaic of the most recent processes and phenomena which explains Israel factually as well as theoretically. It offers a new conceptual framework for analysing the relationships between state and society, contrasting social boundaries with social frontiers. It also discusses the problems that arise when Zionist ideology confronts reality in contemporary Israel.

Through the Lens of Israel illuminates Israeli history through the use of the author's unique state-in-society approach, and, at the same time, refines, develops, and expands that approach. The book provides a window for the formation of Israeli state and society during the twentieth century, while using the Israeli experience to ask how social scientists can better investigate and understand other societies as well. Three central themes of Israeli history are at the core of the analysis—state formation, society formation, and the mutually constitutive roles of state and society. By analyzing how Israel's state and society continually reconstruct one another, Migdal addresses larger questions with resonance far beyond Israel: How do particular societies and states end up with their distinctive character? How are the rules that shape everyday behavior determined? Who gains from these rules and who loses? And how and when do these rules and patterns of privilege change?

This unique collection examines the experience of lesbians in Israel, providing insight into some of the institutions that have helped shape that experience. The book analyzes and interprets how culturally specific political, ideological, and social systems construct lesbian identities, experiences, and dilemmas, and it also explores how a specific society is seen, understood, and interpreted from a lesbian perspective. Written by scholars, professionals, and grassroots activists representing different sectors of the Israeli political spectrum, this book provides a broad perspective of the lesbian experience in Israel.