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The historical process of modernisation of western European countries culminates in a specific form of relationship between collective identity and political legitimacy. This article is an attempt to analyse the particularities of the Spanish case. The author uses the analytical instruments provided by the social differentiation theory and historical sociology, which allows removing any teleological pretence from the secularisation theory. In relation to the Spanish case, the author shows: the late but swift character of the population's subjective secularisation; the unfinished character of the separation between Church and State; and finally, the contemporary coincidence of the last process with the loss of the cultural religious roots of the autochthonous population and with the arrival of population whose religion is not so differentiated from their culture.

This handbook articulates how sociology can re-engage its roots as the scientific study of human moral systems, actions, and interpretation. This second volume builds on the successful original volume published in 2010, which contributed to the initiation of a new section of the American Sociological Association (ASA), thus growing the field. This volume takes sociology back to its roots over a century ago, when morality was a central topic of work and governance. It engages scholars from across subfields in sociology, representing each section of the ASA, who each contribute a chapter on how their subfield connects to research on morality. This reference work appeals to broader readership than was envisaged for the first volume, as the relationship between sociology as a discipline and its origins in questions of morality is further renewed. The volume editors focus on three areas: the current state of the sociology of morality across a range of sociological subfields; taking a new look at some of the issues discussed in the first handbook, which are now relevant in sometimes completely new contexts; and reflecting on where the sociology of morality should go next. This is a must-read reference for students and scholars interested in topics of morality, ethics, altruism, religion, and spirituality from across the social science

Abstract.  This paper argues that Weber's outline and research program is only of limited relevance for present‐day economic sociology and heterodox economics because Weber had a rather narrow and static understanding of rationality and the economy. Uncertainty, both as a basic fact of economic life and in the interpretation of what rational action means in specific contexts, is missing in his approach. After a short discussion of the secondary literature on Weber's methodology, the paper focuses on the most important writings of Weber on methods and economics (e.g., his outline and some parts of Economy and Society). The result of our investigation is that Weber shared a rather narrow, neoclassical understanding of the Austrian variant of economics. His important construction of goal‐oriented behavior as the major methodological advice to analyze human action presupposes the idealized assumptions of perfect knowledge. His understanding of the market exchange process, price setting, and the functioning of full competition are rather conventional and elementary. Weber's genius did not materialize in the field of economics, but in his sociology of religion and law and in his sociology of domination.

Cover -- Contents -- Acknowledgements -- Preface -- Introduction Bryan S. Turner: Building the Sociology of Islam -- Introduction to Section I Classical Approaches - Understanding Islam -- 1 Islam, Capitalism and the Weber Theses -- 2 Origins and Traditions in Islam and Christianity -- 3 State, Science and Economy in Traditional Societies: Some Problems in Weberian Sociology of Science -- 4 Conscience in the Construction of Religion: A Critique of Marshall G.S. Hodgson's The Venture of Islam -- Introduction to Section II Orientalist Debate - Positioning Islam -- 5 Orientalism, Islam and Capitalism -- 6 On the Concept of Axial Space: Orientalism and the Originary -- 7 Orientalism, or the Politics of the Text -- 8 Leibniz, Islam and Cosmopolitan Virtue -- Introduction to Section III Islam Today - Sociological Perspectives -- 9 Sovereignty and Emergency: Political Theology, Islam and American Conservatism -- 10 Class, Generation and Islamism: Towards a Global Sociology of Political Islam -- 11 Religious Authority and the New Media -- 12 Women, Piety and Practice: A Study of Women and Religious Practice in Malaysia -- 13 The Body and Piety: The Hijab and Marriage -- 14 Islam, Diaspora, and Multiculturalism -- 15 Shari'a and Legal Pluralism in the West -- Appendix Further Readings by Bryan S. Turner on the Sociology of Religion/Islam -- Index.

Within the sociology of religion there has emerged a discourse on spirituality that views contemporary developments as involving the assertion of individuals' self-authority.This perspective's theoretical roots have been persistently criticized for their conceptualization of agency; in contrast, this article draws on Bourdieu's concept of strategy to examine action in an English religious network of the sort often classified as `New Age'. In particular, one informant is discussed in order to provide focus for an understanding of what Lahire calls sociology at the level of the individual. Her actions, better explained as strategic improvisations than as choices made on the basis of self-authority, help to illuminate the peculiarities of this religious setting, which is characterized in terms of `nonformativeness'. By emphasizing social contextualization, this approach addresses people's meaningful actions in a way that may be applied not only more widely within the religious field but also in other fields of action.

Based on analyses of the essays written by Max Weber on China, India, ancient Judaism and also on the dispersed material about Islam, Eastern Christianity and Occidental Christianity, this book examines the economic ethics of Asian and Christian traditions and their corresponding legal systems. Drawing also on Weber's methodology (particularly the concept of adequate causation), the author reveals that the nature of Asian religions as well as the nature of customary and other not formally rational laws in Asian cultures could not lead to modern capitalism out of their own sources, although capitalism could be adopted from the outside. The culture of the Occident, upon which capitalism is based, is revealed to consist of a double rationalisation: the formal rationality of the exterior circumstances of life (administrative and legal) and the innerworldly practical rationality of the inner motivations of the Protestants, supported by a goal-oriented rational technology.

International audience This article aims at giving an overview about the four main collections of problems and studies that have structured over the last four decades what could be called the French school of rural sociology: from the rural exodus to the "rural renaissance"; the question of social change and innovation in agriculture; the working conditions, living conditions, professions in agriculture, and the alternative initiatives and paths away from productivism; politics and organisations in agriculture. In the last section, perspectives to understand splintering and coexistence of new forms of production organisation and agricultural trade in a context of globalisation are formulated.