This is a comparative study of the interaction between monasticism and society in Theravada Buddhism and medieval Catholicism. Building on Weber's classical analysis of religious virtuosity on one hand, and opposing recent comparative historical sociology's neglect of structures of meaning on the other, the author demonstrates the combined impact of religious orientations, macrosocietal structures, and virtuoso radicalism in shaping the ideological power of religious elites in the historical framework of the Great Traditions.

Twentieth-century Jerusalem is doubly divided. It is a holy site for both Judaism and Islam. Additionally, secular Israelis and Palestinians alike ground their respective national identities within the city, sharing it with each other and with those of their own faith who yield to a higher divine law rather than a secular democratic one. To Rule Jerusalem is a historical and ethnographic account of how Jerusalem has become the battleground for conflicts both within and between the Israeli and Palestinian communities. Based on hundreds of interviews with powerful players and ordinary citizens...

Professional specialists have come to dominate public communication, and the modern public of the Enlightenment has been replaced by a "New Public," subject to mass persuasion through systematic advertising, lobbying, and other forms of media manipulation. Leon Mayhew examines this sociological development in terms of discourse and social influence, offering an original theory that bridges Talcott Parsons and JUrgen Habermas. He concludes that the present social order is unstable because good-faith, two-way discourse has been undermined.

This book challenges the myth that individualism necessarily weakens commitments to the common good. It examines environmental and other activist groups in which individualism sometimes enhances political commitment. Rather than criticize individualism and favor a return to "traditional" values, Paul Lichterman examines the untraditional, personalized politics of many recent social movements and invites us to rethink common understandings of commitment, community, and individualism in a post-traditional world.

This book offers an original combination of cultural and narratological analysis with an empirical study of identity and political action. A powerful critique of rational choice theory, it also provides a solution to the historiographical puzzle of why Sweden intervened in The Thirty Years' War. Arguing that people act for reasons of identity, more fundamental than reasons of interest, Erik Ringmar shows the Swedish intervention to have been an attempt on behalf of Swedish leaders to gain recognition for themselves and their country.

Taking a "cultural pragmatic" approach to meaning, the contributors suggest a new way of looking at the continuum that stretches between ritual and strategic action. They do so by developing, for the first time, a model of "social performance." This volume offers the first systematic and analytical framework that transforms the metaphor into a social theory and applies it to a series of facinating large-scale social and cultural processes--from September 11 and the Clinton/Lewinsky Affair, to the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission and Willy Brandt's famous "kneefall" before the...

Where American sociologists once spurned culture, they embrace and explore it today. This introduction to some of the best theorizing in contemporary cultural sociology focuses specifically on questions of power, the sacred and cultural production. Including a major theoretical introduction defining the field's internal structure and contributions from recognized scholars, the text presents a representative range of currently available cultural analysis.

Davina Cooper addresses major questions currently facing political and social theory, particularly in relation to debates about diversity. These questions concern how we identify the boundaries of legitimate forms of difference, and understand equality and inequality as well as the challenges of sustaining differing progressive practices. Cooper links theoretical discussion to specific conflicts over social and cultural issues, such as religious symbolism, lesbian and gay marriage and cigarette smoking.

Over the last two decades soccer has become a major institution within the popular culture of the Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel. They have attained disproportionate success in this field. Given their marginalisation from many areas of Israeli society as well as the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict, such a prominent Arab presence highlights the tension between their Israeli citizenship and their belonging to the Palestinian people. Bringing together sociological, anthropological and historical approaches, Sorek examines how soccer can potentially be utilised by ethnic and national...

Civic groups are said to be the fount of democracy, but these vivid portraits of American life reveal an intriguing culture of political avoidance. Nina Eliasoph accompanied volunteers, activists and recreation club members, listening to them talk--and not talk--politics, in a range of private and public settings. Unlike interview-based studies of political participation and civic culture, Avoiding Politics shows how citizens create and communicate political ideas in everyday life, and the hard work it takes to produce apathy in a democracy.