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This article proposes to analyze the idea of organism and other closely related ideas (function, differentiation, etc.) using a combination of semantic fields analysis from conceptual history and the notion of boundary objects from the sociology of scientific knowledge. By tackling a wide range of source material, the article charts the nomadic existence of organism and opens up new vistas for an integrated history of the natural and human sciences. First, the boundaries are less clear-cut between disciplines like biology and sociology than previously believed. Second, a long and transdisciplinary tradition of talking about organismic and societal systems in highly functionalist terms comes into view. Third, the approach shows that conceptions of a world society in Niklas Luhmann's variant are not semantic innovations of the late twentieth century. Rather, their history can be traced back to organicist sociology and its forgotten pioneers, especially Albert Schäffle or Guillaume de Greef, during the last decades of the nineteenth century.

This paper is about the re-establishment of a professional, that is, a neutral perspective on terror; most research on terrorism is partisan in terms of biased culturalist studies on the 'index patients' of an international conflict. At the same time, there is very little research on the forms and functions of so called anti-terror measures which are commonly treated as acts of self-defence. In contrast to this, from a sociological point of view we find that it takes two to make the terror: an act of violence, and an act of labelling this violence as terror, too. Thus, we argue that Western societies should take full responsibility for their own perceptions, attributions, and actions within an international conflict system, instead of continuing to externalize these. Finally, we state that sociology has a demand for research on the applicability of the concepts of systemic therapy on the field of the intervention into stable inter-cultural conflict systems.

This third volume in the World Society Studies series focuses on a central theme: how market mechanisms can correct the world welfare deficit and also resolve the environmental crisis through processes of sustainable development. The two editors trace how such objectives have been addressed since the 1960s, and describe the parameters of the debate. Conflicts and New Departures in World Society contains original research on confluences and fissures in emerging world society, in both international and domestic arenas.The sixteen contributors offer an unusually wide range of perspectives. Topics include peace and war, core-periphery situations, and social and labor conflicts. Marek Thee traces the quest for a demilitarized and nuclear-free world. Johan Kauf-mann analyzes the role of the United Nations in the post-cold war era. Jill Crystal concentrates on the human rights environment in the Arab World. H.C.F. Mansilla comments on the destruction of the tropical forests in Bolivia. Other contributors include Bruce Russett, Christian Suter, John Foran, Beverly Silver, and Georg Kohler.Conflicts and New Departures in World Society gives intellectual substance to the still nebulous notion of a world society. It does so not by advocacy, but by indicating parallel social, economic, and political conditions that compel new interactions between advanced and developing lands. This books will be of interest to sociologists, environmentalists, and political theorists and scientists.

The Chicago school, dating from the 1920s, proposed a scientific methodology for the study of international relations that contrasted the traditional wisdom position. A textual interpretation of historical writings of the Chicago school identifies how its methodological prototype mediates present social science methods. The Chicago school drew from its own social context with debates on evolution, social Darwinism, & pragmatism. The Chicago school reduced social problems into a city problem, & in an evolutionary interpretation, extended it to the global community. It also employed conceptions of modernity similar to present society models. Its approach is an argument for a unified base for policy studies. Its assumption that fundamental social harmony was attainable is at odds with present-day conceptions of a competitive, market-oriented world order. 1 Figure, 38 References. Adapted from the source document.

This is a study of the theory and history of international norms. How does international society come to adopt certain norms in particular? This book shows how ideas of international legitimacy have evolved, and makes us rethink the nature of international society.

"Die besondere Natur der Weltgesellschaft zeigt sich auch in einem sehr besonderen Verhältnis zur primären resp. als primär geltenden Natur. Neben - und in Verbindung mit - der allgemeinmenschlichen und insofern unvermeidlich 'formalen' Rationalität ist eine so verstandene Natur nämlich der wichtigste universelle Bezugsrahmen eines alle Menschen einschließenden und verbindenden Kommunikations- und Handlungszusammenhangs, und zwar in Gestalt der allgemeinmenschlichen Natürlichkeit (Leiblichkeit/ Sinnlichkeit/ elementare Emotionalität) einerseits, der natürlichen 'Umwelt' andererseits. Dies erklärt, warum Ernährung und Nahrungsmangel, Gesundheit, Krankheit und medizinische Versorgung, Sexualität und Sport ebenso zu vorherrschenden Themen der welt-gesellschaftlichen Kommunikation geworden sind wie ökologische Probleme und Naturkatastrophen. Der Prozess der Herausbildung einer erdumspannenden Weltzivilisation erweist sich insofern tatsächlich, und aus einsichtigen Gründen, als ein Prozess der 'Naturalisierung des Menschen'. Ob damit, wie Marx annahm, eine 'Humanisierung der Natur' einhergeht, erscheint fraglich. Jedenfalls ist unklar, was 'Humanisierung' bedeutet, wenn der weltgesellschaftlich existierende, also allgemeine Mensch sich selbst als Naturwesen auffasst - und auffassen muss." (Autorenreferat)

In the disciplinary history of the study of international relations, the methodological experiments of Charles Merriam, Quincy Wright, Harold Lasswell and others in the University of Chicago since the early 1920s argued for a scientific approach as distinct from the traditional wisdom outlook. Textual interpretation of the Chicago School's writings is intended to show how these early conceptions may be mediated in the methodological fabric of the present research orientations. In analysing the historical meaning of these early texts, the organizing concepts and epistemic codes are related to their contemporary contexts and discursive practices. The Chicago School absorbed methodological principles from current debates concerning evolutionary theories, Social-Darwinism and Pragmatism. Their principal research object was urban community and the evolutive relationship between personality, society and environment. This scheme was supposed to apply from local communities to world-wide structures. In this sense, the Chicago School argues for a unified base for policy studies. In the history of international relations as a discipline, the Chicago School represents early attempts to define international relations in terms of reductive methodologies, participatory research, democratic institutions and pluralistic conceptions of politics. The textual interpretation shows that the Chicago School is mediating to the present two fundamental methodological issues: (a) as a research outline it takes for granted some social and political setting, a context of interpretation and prescription; (b) the scholar must imagine a position and justification for his own activities between this context and the organized body of knowledge he is supposed to represent in contemporary discourses.

The capitalist world-economy, which began in the sixteenth century & mushroomed in the eighteenth, has been effectively challenged only in this century; however, none of its fundamental characteristics has changed: the system consists of long-term, continuing features. Too much denial of consumption interferes with the system as much as too little denial; & a constant inequality of exchange exists that relies on marginal, largely subsistence sectors of the world. In the world economy, the enormous "skipped over" Ru populations can be seen not as capitalism's problem, but rather as a major solution. Plantation economies in Eastern Europe & Latin America during the sixteenth & seventeenth centuries led to "inversions" when markets shrunk, but these were merely modes of reducing costs within the system. Famine is the result of the same operation; undeveloped countries are ill-equipped now to deal effectively on a mass scale with the problems of their own agricultural development & potential -- for the most part technology introduced to such areas has only resulted in a decreased mortality rate. In the future, Ru areas will not develop to any great extent, but the capitalist economy will have exhausted its ability to expand, & a new world order will be constructed of a more socialist nature. B. Hubinger.