Review: Thomas Crosbie on The Culture of Military Innovation

Dima Adamsky. The Culture of Military Innovation: The Impact of Cultural Factors on the Revolution in Military Affairs in Russia, the US, and Israel. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2010, 248 pp. $US 25.95 paper (978-0-8047-6952-5), $US 65.00 hardcover (978-0-8047-6951-8)

Dima Adamsky’s The Culture of Military Innovation is an account of how one intellectual paradigm, called the Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA), rose and fell in the militaries of the USSR, USA and Israel. Adamsky characterizes it as an empirical and theoretical contribution to the third, constructivist wave of strategic culture scholarship. This subdiscipline has made various attempts to identify culture, instead of rationality, as “the pivotal intervening variable” in military development. The study distinguishes itself within its subdiscipline for its excellent sources (archival material from all three countries and interviews in Israel), skillful argumentation, and very intelligent case selection. Read more

Review: Danielle Soulliere on Re-Thinking Men

Anthony Synnott. Re-Thinking Men: Heroes, Villains and Victims. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2009, 306 pp. $US 124.95 hardcover (978-0-7546-7709-3)

Re-Thinking Men aims to broaden the traditional conceptualization of gender and gender relations through a lens of binary opposites through a more comparative perspective which reconsiders how men and women are more alike than different. Synnott addresses what he rightly perceives as a glaring gap in both feminist and masculinist research and scholarship, offering a humanist perspective on gender and gender relations. He concludes that this more balanced perspective is good for both women and men, moving us closer toward achieving true gender equality and justice. … Read more

Review: Randolph Haluza-DeLay on Organizing Urban America

Heidi J Swarts. Organizing Urban America: Secular and Faith-based Progressive Movements. Social Movements, Protest, and Contention Series, volume 28. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2008, 336 pp. $US 25.00 paper (978-0-8166-4839-9), $US 75.00 hardcover (978-0-8166-4838-2)

With the election of a former community organizer as President of the United States, the time is ripe for scholarly attention to local community organizing. Organizing Urban America is important for two reasons. First, it focuses on the local, whereas much social movement research has been at larger geographic scales. Second, Swarts highlights culture, with an expansive conception that shows how central it is to understanding movements’ dynamics, effectiveness, and links with political opportunities and the mobilization of resources. … Read more

Review: Zohreh Bayatrizi on Suicide, Foucault, History and Truth

Ian Marsh. Suicide: Foucault, History and Truth. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010, 264 pp. $US 34.99 paper (978-0-521-13001-1), $US 95.00 hardcover (978-0-521-11254-3)

Ian Marsh’s Suicide: Foucault, History and Truth chronicles the process through which suicide, similar to motherhood, became pathological at the hands of the ‘psy’ disciplines, psychiatry in particular. Here too, hormonal imbalances and mental illness are often seen as the main culprit. Marsh’s Suicide, written in the style of a “history of the present,” begins with “mapping a contemporary ‘regime of truth’ in relation to suicide,” where the author examines how a “compulsory ontology of pathology” is produced and reproduced in professional accounts of suicide, how authority is established, objects and subjects defined, and truths disseminated.  … Read more

Review: Marion Blute on Cultural and Social Selection

W. G. Runciman. The Theory of Cultural and Social Selection. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009, 266 pp. $US 27.99 paper (978-0-521-13614-3), $US 75.00 hardcover (978-0-521-19951-3)

W. G. Runciman (Walter Garrison Runciman, 3rd Viscount Runciman of Doxford, Commander of the Order of the British Empire and Fellow of the British Academy) is an historical and comparative sociologist and social theorist. Along with Anthony Giddens and Margaret Archer, he is arguably one of the three most distinguished British social theorists of his time. He has a number of honourary degrees including from Oxford, he served as President of the British Academy from 2001-2004, and he is a Foreign Honourary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. As both an abbreviation and an extension of his three volume A Treatise on Social Theory (particularly of the second volume), The Theory of Cultural and Social Selection is a welcome addition to Runciman's corpus.  … Read more

CFP: CJS Special Issue: “Counting and Contemporary Governance”

Special Issue of The Canadian Journal of Sociology on: “Counting and Contemporary Governance”

Guest Editor:
Michael Haan, University of New Brunswick

In 1801, one of the first modern censuses in the western world was launched in the United Kingdom, motivated in part by Prime Minister Pitt's fear that Malthus's predictions about population outstripping resources signaled impending doom. At the time, only a full headcount could settle the score, helping to establish the practice of turning to numbers to solve an issue of governance. This link still exists today, which is why nearly every country counts its population.

More recently, Canada’s Conservative government stopped collecting what had previously been the mandatory long-form census data with a voluntary National Household Survey. Prime Minister Stephen Harper justified the decision as a move to increase individual liberty; detractors say that the loss of information will affect us all.

This move and the attendant political fallout has created a space for sociological reflection on the interplay between population data collection, modern governance and the politics of numbers.

Subject Coverage

Motivated by the abolishment of the long-form census, this special issue of Canadian Journal of Sociology invites contributions that address, but are not be limited to:
• What is the role of large-scale enumerations? Are they less important today than they used to be?
• Does abolishing one data collection exercise simply encourage other forms?  Do these other forms already exist?
• How does data collection limit governments? Does reliance on census data, for example, constrain governance?
• Can the Harper government's decision to abolish the long-form census be read alongside a re-negotiation between Canadians and their government? Does this signify a new social contract, or a fulfillment of the original one?
• What are the implications of the change to voluntary survey for Canadian sociology?
• What political factors motivated this change in policy?

Please note that the question of whether the shift to a voluntary survey in Canada is good or bad does not appear in the above list. Authors might inevitably touch on this question, but the purpose of this special issue is to provide a space for social scientists to use this development concerning the long-form to engage in a more reflexive dialog on how or whether data collection fits into the modern governmental episteme.

Notes for Prospective Authors

Papers for this special issue will be assessed in a two-step process. First, interested authors should submit an abstract to the guest editor for consideration. Only successful authors will be asked for a full manuscript. These papers should not have been previously published nor currently be under consideration for publication elsewhere, as they will undergo a peer-review process. An invitation to submit a full paper to CJS is not a guarantee of acceptance.

Important Dates

Abstracts are requested from interested parties by December 1, 2010, and the editor will then invite for a full paper with final manuscripts expected no later than: 1 July 2011

Editors and Notes

Please email (mhaan@unb.ca) or mail your abstracts to:
Michael Haan
135A Carleton Hall
Department of Sociology,
University of New Brunswick
Fredericton, NB E3B 5A3

Compte rendu: Vers la république des différences

Sophie Guérard de Latour, Vers la république des différences. Toulouse, Presses Universitaires du Mirail, 2009. 313 p., 24 € ISBN 978-2-85816-935-1

Le livre de Sophie Guérard de Latour, extrait d’une thèse de philosophie politique (Université de Bordeaux III), bousculera certainement les termes du débat intellectuel en France. Il pourra aussi contribuer aux débats internationaux sur le multiculturalisme. La question est la suivante : comment défendre « la possibilité d’un multiculturalisme républicain » ? Dans cette discussion, l’auteure ne tarde pas à choisir son camp. … lire plus