A theoretical model is presented that aims to explain the generative mechanisms of educational stratification. The rational educational choice of the Ego is supposed to be influenced by the choices of others. The model explores various forms of direct and indirect interdependent choices between actors. In order to demonstrate the empirical consequences, use is made of an artificial society built upon a “multi agents” computational approach. The dynamic of this virtual society is proved to fit well with empirical French and Italian data from an absolute point of view (distribution of diplomas) as well as a relative one (educational opportunities).

What makes testimony trustworthy? Based on fieldwork at a Holocaust museum, we argue that testimonies are trustworthy that because they make implicit and explicit truth claims. We argue that confidence is formed by interdependent institutions that vouch for these claims, as well as institutions that produce other cultural objects with comparable meaning, such as museums and films. These claims of truth exist in the testimony act in itself, as well as in explicit claims of truth made by the testifiers. Holocaust testimonies make explicit truth claims through assertions of institutionally legitimated information, personal experiences, and societal remembrance. After considering the creation of trust in testimony, we discuss how it can be generalized to the courtroom.

This article investigates discourses on inheritance law and legal development in France, Germany, and the United States since the revolutions of the late eighteenth century. I argue that in each of the three countries a different set of normative and functional issues relating to the bequest of property has dominated and expressed itself in nationally specific discursive fields. The respective “repertoires of evaluation“ were formed in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries and show a surprisingly stable pattern that can be recognized even in today's debates on the issue. This I refer to as the longue durée of inheritance law. The distinct discursive fields exercise a dominant influence over the perception of problems associated with the transfer of property mortis causa and the strategies deemed feasible to solve them. Moreover, I argue that the different cultural frames matter for the institutional development of inheritance law. My aim is to contribute to institutional theory through investigation of a socially and economically important realm of legal regulation that has received little attention in recent sociological scholarship. The analysis is carried out within a multidimensional theoretical framework that acknowledges the influence of culture and ideas, but also considers changing socioeconomic conditions, as well as actor interests.

For over seventy years the sociology of professions has revolved around empirical generalizations drawn from four modern exemplars of nineteenth century Britain and United States: law and medicine, science and engineering. We identify qualities constitutive of professionalism in an occupation during the ancien regime, on the Continent, and in a field unrelated to the four just noted: seventeenth century French painting and sculpture. These constitutive qualities point to the significance of a distinctively structural and institutional approach to the sociology of professions.

This essay analyzes the writings of the prominent sociologist S. N. Eisenstadt on Israeli society, since the late 1940s until today, in comparison with his explorations into General Sociological themes. SNE was the founder of contemporary Sociology of Israel, and for decades stood as a dominant figure in Israeli Sociology. The essay explores how he started with a rigid functionalist approach and passed to search for more flexible paradigms, and how from an entirely uncritical acceptance of the hegemonic-ideological description and analysis of the Israeli society and Zionism, he had moved toward a limited critique of them, absorbing partially the approaches of Critical Sociology.

In the course of cultural evolution, both attitudes and beliefs are continuously modified by heritable variation and competitive selection. For Raymond Boudon, this process is exactly the same in the two cases, since in both axiological and practical reasoning consensus depends on a shared acknowledgement that the agreed conclusions are the products of “strong” reasons. His argument is, however, open to objection on psychological and sociological as well as philosophical grounds, and is vulnerable to the traditional rhetorical device known as paradiastole.