After Durkheim: An Agenda for the Scoiology of Business Ethics

Over the last twenty years the organization of business activity appears to have shifted from an emphasis on bureaucratic organizations toward an emphasis on market structures. Economic self-interest has acquired a new social legitimacy, and the force of traditional moral authorities has waned. In these circumstances the work of Emile Durkheim on the problematics of business ethics and the impact of a culture of self-interest on the stability of society, work that has hitherto been neglected by the business ethics community, acquires a new relevance. In this paper we review Durkheim's problematization of business ethics, establish its relevance for the contemporary world, and use it to develop an empirical research agenda for the contemporary sociology of business ethics.     

What's in a frame? Social organization,risk perception and the sociology of knowledge

A central problem in the sociology of knowledge has been to show that sane people can intelligibly have quite different alternative understandings of the same problem, such as a kind of risk, without abandoning the idea that there is a real problem about which to disagree, and to show the social basis of both plurality and viability. In recent decades, attempts to make this problem tractable have focused on the idea of a ‘frame’. Theories of frames offer accounts of the range of content, as distinguished from theories of processes of diffusion, of which risk amplification theory is the best known example. In this article, several theories of frames – those of Goffman, D'Andrade, Moscovici, Gamson, Schön and Rein, and of prospect theory – found are to be inadequate, because of their lack of clarity and plausibility in their answers to four key questions: ‘what is the relationship between sense‐making and bias?’, ‘how are frames to be individuated?’, ‘where do frames come from?’, and ‘how far and how can people move between frames?’. The article makes the case for a neo‐Durkheimian institutional theory developed by Douglas and others. This approach derives frames as concrete applications to specific contexts from thought styles, which are in turn the product of solidarities or institutional styles of social organization, because it can offer clear, testable, parsimonious hypotheses with which to answer these four questions. The theory therefore provides an account of the institutional logic of framing, and presents reasons for preferring this to non‐institutional approaches such as the various kinds of cognitivism. The article offers three conceptual innovations with which to develop the neo‐Durkheimian theory, in order better to deal with the crucial fourth question about the scope for mobility between frames. These innovations and some specific hypotheses about the scope for mobility between frames are supported by consideration of some exploratory qualitative empirical research on privacy risk perception. The theory provides a more satisfactory strategy for tackling the core problem than most others, by showing plurality to be limited, by showing clear and specific social bases for plurality of frames, by neither wholly endorsing nor wholly rejecting any basic bias, and by showing that their conflictual and systemic interdependence is what makes for viability.     

Economic Growth,Happiness and Socialism: Durkheim’s Critique of Economic Reason and Beyond

The paper argues that Durkheim’s positions on happiness and socialism are relevant in today’s neoliberal and post-affluent societies. Durkheim dissociates happiness from economic progress and makes it contingent upon the relationships between the individual and society. An important component of Durkheimian happiness is the dynamic equilibrium between desires and means. Therefore, his friendly criticism of the socialist project is that it promises to fulfil the desires that were released by a disembedded market economy. Durkheim’s point helps us to understand why the social democratic promise was broken and how the neoliberal imperatives of competition and unlimited wants sow unhappiness.     

试析迪尔凯姆的社会性别思想

作为古典时期的社会学大师,虽然迪尔凯姆没有对社会性别进行过专门研究,但他在对自杀、劳动分工以及宗教的社会学研究中却体现了其社会性别思想.通过对性别与自杀、性别与劳动分工以及性别与宗教信仰关系的探讨,对迪尔凯姆的社会性别思想进行阐述.     

Religion and the sociological critique of political economy: Altruism and gift

Abstract

This article shows that there is a strong connection between the religious component of French sociology and the critique of political economy. In the first section, I consider how selfish behaviour, or egoism, became treated as a major threat endangering the creation of industrial society by those concerned about the diffusion of political economy. I then summarise the methodological critique set forth in the Cours, before connecting this critique to the economic content of the Système and the concept of altruism. In the following section, Spencer's view of altruism is contrasted to that held by Comte, and then I consider the reaction of French political economists, defending the moral value bought about by their science. In the final section, I explain how the Comtean approach was re-enacted by Durkheim and then by Mauss, at the head of the “sociology of religion” section of L'Année sociologique, the Durkheimian journal, to give birth to the theory of gift-giving behaviour that Mauss used to critique political economy in the 1920s.     

Value, Business and Globalisation – Sketching a Critical Conceptual Framework

Value is a basic concept in economics, ethics and sociology. Locke made labour the source of value, whereas Smith referred to an ideal exchange and Kant specified that commodities only have a market price, no intrinsic value. One can distinguish two modern concepts of value, an economic one trying to explain value in terms of utility, interest or preferences, and an ideal one considering values as ends in themselves. On this basis, Durkheim constructed his theory of value, which was developed by his followers Mauss and Bouglé and further by Bataille. Their line of thought makes it possible to develop a conceptual framework, which can be used to criticise neo-liberalism, big business and the effects of globalisation, while at the same time defending the moral value of business and giving an interpretation of the anti-globalisation protests.