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First published in 1973, this is a reissue of John Urry's important and influential study of the theory of revolution. Part 1 offers a detailed discussion of the concept of the reference group, tracing its development from the symbolic interactionist tradition and then showing how it came to be used in ways which emasculated some of the suppositions of that tradition. Part 2 sets out a theory of revolutionary dissent, in which Dr Urry emphasizes the interconnection between analyses on the level of the social structure and the social actor. The final section dem.

AbstractThis paper shows how oil has been central to the mobile civilisation that developed around the world during the twentieth century. Various aspects of this oil civilisation are examined, including the development of centres of high carbon living such asDubai. This paper explores the probable peaking of oil and its problematic consequences. It is shown how this has already had major economic and social consequences. New forms of indebtedness were directed to new kinds of property purchaser and the parcelling up of these debts into new financial packages. From the 1980s onwards many newAmerican suburbs were built distant from city centres but rising oil prices led to the collapse of the mortgages of those living in oil‐dependent suburbs and finance during 2007‐8 onwards. Some writers consider whether a more generalised 'peaking' is now occurring at least in the global north, of oil, gas, food and water.

This paper is based on a talk given at the BSA Presidential Event, held on 8 February 2010 at the British Library London, on 'How to put "Society" into Climate Change', chaired by John URRY.

This article explores aspects of travelling times. First, it is argued that there is something about contemporary times in which travelling assumes a greater significance within many people's lives, even at a time when more communication devices are readily 'at-hand'. Also, it is shown that there are multiple kinds of time involved in the process of travel and not just the measured clock-time that people seek to minimize in getting from A to B. It is further shown that the problem for travellers and, indeed, for non travellers is coordinating multiple and inconsistent times through complex communications and scheduling tools. Thus travel time involves sets of activities that require examination since the time is not always wasted, dead or empty. These points are demonstrated with regard to walking, train travel and even car journeys.

Da eine adäquate theoretische Erörterung der systemischen Eigenschaften der Globalisierung nach Meinung des Autors noch aussteht, unternimmt er den Versuch, den Charakter des Globalen mit Hilfe der Komplexitätstheorie zu erschließen. Er konzeptualisiert die Globalisierung als eine Serie ko-evolutionärer und selbstregulierender Systeme, die sich durch Unvorhersehbarkeit, Irreversibilität und Nicht-Linearität auszeichnen. Er unterscheidet vor allem zwei Haupttypen globaler Hybride, für die es keine rein physischen oder sozialen Erklärungsmuster gibt: globale Netzwerke, z.B. komplexe und berechenbare Verbindungen zwischen Menschen, Technologien und Objekten, und globale Fluide - z.B. das Geld, das Internet, digitalisierte Informationen oder Touristen. Deren paradoxe systemische Eigenschaft besteht darin, als "entterritorialisierte Bewegung" überall und nirgends anwesend zu sein und durch endlose Iterationsprozesse dennoch ihre eigenen Kontexte zu schaffen. Der Autor zeigt in seinem Beitrag, inwieweit globale Komplexitäten auf die Veränderung von Rolle und Funktion des Staates einwirken, und diskutiert die Vorzüge eines analytischen Zugriffs jenseits von akteurzentrierten Machttheorien. (ICI2)

RÉSUMÉ Seront examinées dans cet article les mobilités, du point de vue des systèmes qui structurent, organisent et permettent des mobilités multiples. Double, l'étude porte à la fois sur les aspects historiques du phénomène et sur ses manifestations dans le siècle en cours. Au XXI e siècle, les systèmes de mobilité numériques interdépendants se situent au cœur même des sociétés contemporaines. Plus généralement, il sera aussi montré que l'étude des mobilités joue, sans conteste, un rôle central dans le décryptage des contours essentiels de la vie dans un monde qui conjugue liberté exceptionnelle (du moins pour certains en certaines occasions) et dépendance des systèmes exceptionnelle. Méthodes et théories doivent constamment se remettre en question afin de rendre compte de l'évolution des nouveaux systèmes de programmation individuelle ainsi que de la structuration et du contrôle des systèmes.

Abstract In this article I explore the increasing overlaps between 'sociology' and 'physics' through analysing recent contributions to the social network literature concerned with exploring and explaining the so‐called 'small world' phenomenon. I show that this new social network literature, while very provocative, is insufficiently sociological and insufficiently complex. With regard to the former it is demonstrated that a key issue is that of meetingness and hence of travel in order to effect meetingness. Networks have, in other words, to be performed, and they have to come together from time to time, especially to talk. I further show that the small worlds literature is insufficiently complex. Social networks often involve combinations of mobilities and highly structured material immobilities. I conclude the article with an analysis of how a new 'social physics' based around the notion of 'network' might be established in an era in which time and space seem increasingly warped, bent and twisted into strikingly new topologies.

This article seeks to show that theories of complex Systems are relevant to deciphering the nature of global relationships. Such analyses are especially relevant to hybrids of social and physical relations that seem especially significant in the contemporary world. The article begins with an introductory account of complexity theory as applied to social phenomena. The bulk of the article then considers one particular hybrid utterly central to 'globalisation', the car system and how it is to be theorised via complexity notions. Notions of path dependency are deployed in examining this global car system as a leading example of 'global complexity'. Automobility is taken to be an 'island of order' as analysed by Prigogine. Complexity is also the starting point for examining how this global system that seems .so unchangeable, so stable, may through small changes, if they occur in a certain order, tip it into a post car mobility system (via the analysis of tipping points), I thus consider some ways of theorising how exactly the car system will in the course of the twenty first century become extinct.