Focuses on Middle Eastern Muslim majority societies in the period from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries. This work contains papers which highlight the scope and variety of religious authorities in Muslim societies.

First published in 1989, this book examines the work, careers and politics of French engineers and technical workers employed in traditional and high-technology settings. In the process, it critically evaluates several theories of social change and advocates a unique approach to class theory and the comparative analysis of nations. Neither owners of productive property nor wage workers performing routinised labour. Engineers occupy an ambiguous social position that has elicited a good deal of controversy about trends in their situation and ideology. Where theories of professionalism anticipate occupationally based challenges to the legitimacy of bureaucratic authority, Marxian and neo-Marxian analyses foresee class-based opposition to capitalism. Yet all these theories share a preoccupation with the effects of technology and the division of labour on social values and group identities. This book maintains that such a preoccupation obscures the significance of career situations and the distinctively national institutions that shape them. The book presents a fresh view of the interplay of occupation, class and nation.

This informative bibliographic study provides the most thorough survey available of the literature on voluntary associations. The authors first sketch major theories on the origin, growth, and functions of voluntary associations and discuss the place of associations in political theory, viewing especially the unproven assumption that voluntary associations are beneficial to a democratic society. They then survey the findings on the role of voluntary associations in the political and social structure (abroad as well as in the United States). The specific organizations themselves are covered and the final chapter views a recent development in the field--volunteers in government service, such as the Peace Corps. The final section of each chapter is an annotated bibliography of works cited in the text or related to its subject; over 600 items are listed.

A social theorist's perspective on how private governance of corporations is weakening the basic institutions of democratic civil societies, especially as demonstrated in the wave of hostile takeovers in the 1980s. Focuses on when and how the courts mediate the consequences of corporate governance in the US, as well as their counterparts in Europe and Japan, examining the connection between specialized literature of corporate law with literature of civil society. Sciulli (sociology, Texas AandM U.) attempts to draw an alternative to legal conservatives' rhetoric of corporate contract as well as to liberals' corporate social responsibility. c. Book News Inc.

In this forthright challenge to relativist economic recipes for growth and culturalist-incrementalist views in institutional economics, Heller draws on Weber, Schumpeter, and Hayek to present a new universalistic vision of capitalism's depersonalized institutions as well as the ideological policies needed during constructed capitalist transitions.