'Reconsidering the classics' is the theme of this selection of papers, from the 1997 Cologne conference of the International Institute of Sociology. This does not imply going back to their answers, but to their topics. Some of the issues covered in this volume are: freedom of societies; the privatisation of belief, ethnicity, and globalisation; East-West relations; and institutional rehabilitation. The book includes articles by major contemporary sociologists, including Raymond Boudon, Samuel Eisenstadt, William D'Antonio, Saskia Sassen, Pierpaolo Donati, Eugeen Roosens, Nikolai Genov, Mattei...

Professions are central to any political sociology of major associations, organizations and venues in civil society underpinning democracy; they are not a subset of livelihoods in a mundane sociology of work and occupations. Professions in Civil Society and the State is at once elegant and startling in its directness and the sheer scope of its implications for future comparative research and theory. Not since Talcott Parsons during the early 1970s has any sociologist (or political scientist) pursued this line of inquiry. Sciulli's theoretical approach differs fundamentally from...