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Academic debates on the role and position of civil society organisations (CSOs) in welfare states largely refer to policies and practices outlined at the national level. They therefore fail to recognise variations within nations. Based on a comparative case study of three Swedish metropolitan cities, this article illustrates the importance of local, contextualised analyses. Through the concept of local civil society regimes, the study identifies three regime types, namely liberal, corporatist and social democratic. The key distinguishing factor between them relates to their different ideological positions regarding the role of CSOs in the marketisation and privatisation of public social welfare represented at the local level. The article argues for the need for further analysis to explore the implications of decentralisation from the perspective of local CSOs and their constituencies.

There recently was a highly emotional debate in Germany regarding what to teach children about sexual plurality; different actors accuse each other of wrongful indoctrination. This paper presents a computational model based on the results of the SINUS youth study 2016 indicating that the dynamics of ado-lescents finding their own stance towards sexual plurality are resilient towards external pressure by clerical or government activities. Instead, civil society plays a strong role in the process of children developing their own opinions. This un-derlines that values in society can be reproduced between generations.

From the 1920s to the early1940s, the American Society of Mammalogists and the Ecological Society of America became involved in efforts to preserve natural conditions on protected land areas, and to conserve predatory and other wildlife. Members vigorously disputed how active a scientific society should be in advocating for conservation. Charles C. Adams and Victor E. Shelford served as leaders in two major efforts aiming to shape federal policy, notably the preservation of natural landscapes and the protection of predatory animals. Their unique argument for conservation highlighted preserved landscapes with their original compliments of wildlife, emphasizing the outstanding scientific value and potential for future scientific study of protected places. Through their work on committees of their professional societies and the National Research Council, Adams, Shelford, and many of their colleagues illustrate the various avenues utilized by scientists in efforts to preserve the very essence of their research. Scientific societies took risks as members and the organizations themselves played critical roles in conservation advocacy, while the politics of science became intermixed with the politics of nature preservation.

One of the concerns Europeans have held since the eighteenth century regarding the universe of the peoples of Asia has been to demonstrate in comparison to the European world whether human freedom existed in Asia. This concern was fitting to that universal age never witnessed before modernity when human society had been perfected. Numerous inquiries into China's past and present were born of this concern, and these studies exerted a powerful influence upon the intellectual worlds of both China and Japan. What would the future bring China, having just ended over two thousand years of despotism in the early twentieth century? What was the chance that her past and present prepared her for it?

It is important to include civil society in the purview of the sociology of professions because many professionals and professions interact not just with the state and the market but also with civil society actors. Moreover, members of professions engage in civic action and political activism not just as citizens or single professionals but also as the (founding or regular) members of their professional associations. They also establish think-tanks, research and counseling centres, consortia, and on occasion even citizen initiatives or social movements. Professional life can be explored more comprehensively when these professional interactions and activities are included in the analysis. The text provides a standard definition of professions, argues for considering professions' role in civil society, defines civil society, and draws on US research on civic and political lawyering to buttress its arguments. Some examples from other professions are also offered.