The aim of this paper is methodological, not substantive. In the first section I shall discuss the familiar problem of how ‘religious’ beliefs can, if at all, be usefully distinguished from beliefs of other kinds (1). In the second, I shall try to suggest what constitutes an adequate sociological explanation of beliefs in general. In the third, I shall illustrate my argument by a direct comparison between Max Weber and fimile Durkheim (2).

Es ist unnötig, das Wahlverhalten von Arbeitern, die sozialdemokratisch wäahlen, ausführlich zu erklaren. Ihre Parteinahme erscheint uns «normal», da wir im allgemeinen davon ausgehen können, daß die politischen Fronten in der Wählerschaft die soziale Schichtung widerspiegeln. Wie aber erklärt sich, daß die SPD in der Bundesrepublik nur 60 Prozent der Arbeiterstimmen erhält, daß ein Drittel aller Arbeiter mit großer Konstanz ihre Stimme der CDU geben?

Modes of succession to high office in Africa today present the same problems for study as most other institutions in that continent; we have to analyse and understand both ‘traditional’ and ‘modern’ practices. The two terms imply time-depth and it is of course true that we can pinpoint, for example, the recent entry of the extensive electoral procedures which follow a European model, whereas the kind of hereditary system by which offices circulated between segments of royal dynasties was there long before. But today ‘traditional’ and ‘modern’ exist side by side and from one standpoint the insistence upon this division carries some dangers if it leads automatically to the idea that, as time goes on, ‘modern’ practice is necessarily going to completely oust ‘traditional’ methods. In the first place, the two systems may continue to operate in different spheres of social life, the ‘traditional’ for local chiefs, the ‘modern’ for national politicians. Even when this is the case, both types of leadership occur within one socio-cultural field, which, however highly differentiated it may be, is bound to modify the behaviour of the interacting individuals, roles and institutions. The mode of selecting an Ashanti chief is certainly not what it was before the advent of first colonial over-rule and secondly independent nationhood. The style of choosing representatives for local and national government is in turn influenced by the norms of chiefship. One continues to modify the other because both exist side by side.

A General theory of secularisation is closer to realisation in the sociology of religion than might be expected, in spite of the field being poorly developed. However, the sociology of religion has the advantage of being able to draw in a synthesising manner on neighbouring areas which are more developed, and in so doing will be able in return to suggest broad schemata of interpretation for use in those fields, especially political sociology. No doubt the notion of a general theory of secularisation remains premature, but premature statements do elicit more precise or even alternative formulations incorporating and subsuming wider ranges of material. In any case what follows is less a complete statement of a general theory than a specification of some of its components. Yet in another sense it is a theory, since it could be reduced to sets of overarching propositions and their integrally related sub-propositions, with appropriate qualifications and marginal rubrics.

Viewing a movie can often be a powerful experience, leaving a deep impression. Particularly when that experience is worrying or upsetting, it may challenge people's values. This leads one to question what values movies have, where they acquire them, and whether they are (e.g. inadvertently) making propaganda for violence.

There is now increasing interest in the study of ideology in anthropology. We are disenchanted with community studies. They are obviously useful; but they provide a flat, two-dimensional picture; they are essentially a relic of the times when anthropologists were exclusively interested in primitives and when it was deemed possible to study an entire ‘tribe’ single-handedly. Turning to study the Tamils, Sinhalese, Turks, Kurds, or Circassians, if the anthropologist digs himself into a small peasant village, it is likely that most of the important and significant issues facing these cultures at that time will be lost.

Black students in North American Universities calling for ‘soul’ courses and the official recognition of dialect speech; small underdeveloped nations fearing the cultural encroachment of ‘Americanization’; policy makers wishing to protect village traditions of handicraft from the technology of factory production; planners advocating decentralization and the preservation of regional or neighbourhood groups; minority ethnic group leaders attempting to maintain their religious customs, language and arts—all share one assumption, namely, that folk societies with their characteristic symbolic cultures are viable (1). Some go further and see in these small, homogeneous, proximate groups the last hope that advanced industrial secular societies can be held down to a human scale, can resist the multiple pressures to become, in the pejorative sense of the word, ‘mass societies’ (2).

The original attempt to interpret the post-independence tribal unrest was first published in the European Journal of Sociology in 1962 (1). Its evidence was drawn primarily from the first half decade of Moroccan independence. It sought to explain certain oddities of Moroccan political life of the period.

The comparative sociological study of the countries of the Middle Eastern culture area for the nineteenth century can scarcely be said to have begun. But such studies can do much to help us come to a more precise estimate of the functions which particular institutions might fill, and the weight they could be required to bear in different parts of the Middle East during the critical period of the onset of modernization. It is the purpose of this article to begin to make some of the kinds of distinctions which set off different parts of the Middle East one from another, using the case of late nineteenth century Morocco. It is hoped that the analysis which follows will stimulate the same kind of critical examination of the institutions of other segments of the Middle East culture area. Even if it does not accomplish this objective, such an exercise may be useful if in studying the Moroccan modifications of some of these basic institutions, it can shed light on why Morocco was significantly different and therefore perhaps on the nature of these institutions themselves.

In this essay two sociological perspectives are used to examine aspects of the mass media. One is derived from Marx's theory of capitalism and the forces and relations of production that determine its structure and development. According to this perspective, the mass media are part of a capitalist society and the content of the media is analysed in terms of class interest and class conflict. The second perspective is derived from Tocqueville's theory of democratic society. In Democracy in America Tocqueville uses two ideal types—of aristocratic and democratic society—to analyse American society and to compare it with European society.

1. The influence of the media has frequently been handled, particularly from a sociological perspective, with the concept of ‘myth’ in mind. The concept, however, has been invoked in a pejorative sense. The target of the word becomes whatever the speaker does not consider ‘his reality’. TV, for instance, is taken as ‘a myth world’ which is sharply divorced from the real world.

The origins of the modern Sicilian latifundium go back to the early nineteenth century when feudal land was transformed by law into private property. In what is called the Risorgtmento, a rising rural bourgeoisie gradually replaced the traditional feudal elite by acquiring most of the land that came on the market. Although the peasants had become legally free, they obtained their freedom at the cost of title to the land they held under feudal conditions. The common use rights of gleaning and pasturage, which the peasants exercised on the former fiefs, guaranteed them the fundamental means of living. But arbitrarily excluded by the avid bourgeoisie from a share in the land that should be given out to them as a recompense for the lost use rights, the Sicilian peasants emerged from social servitude only to fall into economic and political dependency. A growing rural proletariat was the necessary concomitant of the partly feudal and partly capitalist enterprise that was the latifundium.

To understand and evaluate the cultural orientation of youth in Czechoslovakia today—the structure of their cultural interests, etc.—is impossible in the absence of an understanding of the fundamental social and political changes that have taken place in Czechoslovakia in the post-war period. These have left their impact on the character of each of the generations of this period. Our purpose is not, nor can it be, to present any profound analysis of these changes in the present study, and we can therefore only confine ourselves to giving a rough outline of the more important trends.

Much of the substance of the contemporary debate on the nature and consequences of ‘mass culture’ in Britain is to be found in the work of four English literary critics: T. S. Eliot, F. R. Leavis, Richard Hoggart and Raymond Williams (1). Their work is in the Utopian tradition of social and aesthetic critical thought that has been termed “the English Dream: the ideal of the collective, unalienated folk society, where honest men work together and create together” (2); the ideal of the organic community, in short. Such a society is seen as composed of homogeneous, self-sufficient, stable and tradition-dominated communities, comprising a population which shares a common language and culture, and which is typified—but not exclusively bound—by a mentality attached to the tangible, local and known (3).