This chapter discusses the conceptual foundations of the notion of social justice during the Enlightenment before surveying the volume’s achievement in historicizing twentieth-century European proposals. Social justice presupposed the invention of the “social,” in and through the insight into informal cultural and institutional ordering. And while social justice was coined earlier in the nineteenth century, the concept became unavoidable later in the century as both left liberals and Roman Catholics responded to individuals and laissez-faire, in part by innovating a new ‘social science’. This chapter concludes by speculating about the future trajectory of claims on the notion of social justice.

Chapter one introduces the topics of the book, describes how I analyse them and outlines how the work is structured. It shows that there are many books on uncertainty as a philosophical issue but they do not deal with the problems and solutions of warfare. Conversely, there are many books on surprise and strategy in war but none that connect these problems to philosophical discussions on uncertainty, ontology and predictability. Many sociologists see our time as characterized by uncertainty but they overlook the dominance of ideologies of certainty and systems of predictability. I also argue that modernity is a civilization, not just a historical period; a theory that emphasizes that societies have always created predictability through law, norms and science but in different ways. Predictability and unpredictability should be seen as properties, existing in degrees, in different social systems. On the basis of this theory and drawing upon Machiavelli, Hume, Dewey and Luhmann, I argue that searching for certainty is not only dangerous but also unnecessary. We will always face shocks and surprises but through knowledge, collaboration and trust these will fade away with time.

Chapter seven has two tasks. First, it summarizes the argument and the broad themes of the book. Second, it discusses the character of modernity. My argument is that we should view modernity as a distinct civilization, rather than as a period. This civilization is caught in a complex interplay and tension between the confrontation with uncertainty and the strivings for certainty, unfortunately often conceptualized as ontological absolutes. Although ontologies of uncertainty and certainty are co-constitutive, our culture tends to see the world in either–or terms, which explains the tendency to oscillation between hubris and despair and the difficulty of pragmatic and balanced accounts to enter into mainstream world views. Third, I propose a modest remedy for these modernist tendencies: namely, drawing inspiration from non-dualist traditions and classical virtue ethics.

A particularity about the literature on the meaning of work is that the concept of meaning is discussed extensively and deeply, while the concept of work is hardly debated at all. Tackling this shortcoming, we start out by taking up contradictions in the social science debate on definitions of the concept of work. Four such contradictions stand out: (1) Subjective vs. objective definitions; (2) a single vs. several work concepts; (3) certain activities in themselves vs. any activity within specific social relations are to be regarded as work; and (4) empirical vs. ontological basis of the concept. In investigating them, we take help from what are often said to be the three most important classics of social science: How have Émile Durkheim, Max Weber and Karl Marx handled the concept of work? Specifically, can we get inspiration from them to take stands concerning the contradictions? The answers to these questions lead us to suggest this definition: Work is any activity performed in internal social relations that structure the sphere of necessity. Finally, we discuss the three suggested explicit conceptualisations of ‘work’ that we have found in the meaningful work literature.

How to explain the curious movements in which people of the past engaged? Critique of interpretivist approaches – cultural theory and post-modernism. Movements as intentional acts are best described by means of cognitive theory and phenomenology. Movements as a matter of attuning oneself to the mood of the situation one is in. All meaning is grounded in such fundamental movements. The history of movement is a history of the world that we made.

This chapter argues for the need for both history and law to recommit to the broad tradition of social theory, in order for either to make progress on its own, let alone for one to plausibly reorient the other. From the perspective of this argument for common need rather than crossdisciplinary largesse, it is not going to be good enough to suppose that contemporary historiography is already well-positioned for relevance to other fields. In the last fifty years, it has lost touch with the tradition of social theory, thanks to the linguistic and cultural turns and a certain fetishization of contingent outcomes that have been emphasized in critical and genealogical sorts of history. The chapter proceeds to map three ongoing quandaries in social theory, since it is only within the discussion of each that the relationship of history to law takes on its significance. These are the 1) the dilemma of representations versus practices; 2) the reconciliation of contingency and determination; 3) and the assessment of the normative and the political, both as something to explain in diverse past settings but also what might motivate and orient present inquiry in the first place.

Fertility counselors see an array of clients who may be diverse in terms of countries of origin, ethnicity, race and/or cultural background. This chapter identifies principles to guide this conversation. These principles include understanding how we consider race, ethnicity and culture, and emphasize the importance of not essentializing race, ethnicity and culture. The chapter continues with a brief overview of the meaning and consequences of infertility in various places worldwide and among migrant and racial minorities in particular, how this can affect access to, use of and experiences with fertility treatments and assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs). Finally, we offer considerations for racially and culturally sensitive clinical approaches in fertility counseling.

This introductory chapter outlines the problem of social order and the main argument of the book: that the question of what holds complex and diverse societies together has become – and has remained – a philosophical puzzle in modern political science, a presupposition that has been built into our concepts, theories, and normative commitments. Having outlined the argument, the contents and the structure of the book, the chapter then provides a short background for the problem of social order in political science. The chapter recalls how this problem emerged as such in modern social and political discourse in the evolution of the modern concepts of state, nation, and society and discusses how the relations among these concepts provided nineteenth-century political thought with a solution to the problem of social order predicated on a fusion of nationality and statehood.

This chapter describes the development of social concepts within psychiatry and the mental services between 1960 and 2010. This occurred against the backdrop of the emergence of new social theories concerned with psychiatry, medicine, science and other institutions of liberal democracy from the very beginning of the period. Attacks on the legitimacy of psychiatry came from postmodernists on the left and neoliberals on the right and coincided with a distancing between psychiatry and sociology. Organised psychiatry reacted defensively to most, but not all, of its critics and had difficulty assimilating even those new social theories that appeared neutral with regard to the professional and scientific status of psychiatrists. In the last decade of the period, empirical evidence regarding social determinants of mental health, together with the failure of biomedical technology to deliver on promises of better treatments, led to the beginnings of a revival of interest in social factors within academic psychiatry.

Presents the main arguments of sociological neoinstitutionalism in the areas of organizations, states, and identities.Illustrates the arguments with empirical research conducted through the year 2000.

The post-Enlightenment evolution of models of national society and state.The development of ideas of individual and collective actorhood, and the corresponding peripheralization of the concept of culture.

A new basic introduction to “sociological neoinstitutionalism,” placing the line of thought in intellectual context, and discussing the linkages of the core ideas to empirical research.