After Communism

The Editors: Carol Harrington is an assistant professor in political science at Central European University, Budapest. She has published papers in Women's Studies International Forum and New Zealand Sociology on the links between intersubjectivity, social identity, social networks and political power.
Ayman Salem is completing a Ph.D. thesis in social theory at University College, London. He is a guest lecturer in sociology at Tbilisi State University in Georgia and the editor of A Question of Method: Teaching in the Social Sciences at Post-Soviet Universities (2002).
Tamara Zurabishvili is completing a Ph.D. thesis in media studies at Moscow State University on nationalism and national stereotyping in the mass media. She is a senior lecturer in sociology at Telavi State University, Georgia.

Freed from direct political constraints, many sociologists from former Communist countries have sought to maintain a clear distinction between research and politics through an attachment to objectivity, conceptual clarity and methodological rigour. Yet they have often sidestepped the critique of epistemological certainties which has become orthodoxy in much 'Western' thinking, and which has implicated sociology in the very structures of power it describes. This collection of writings, based on the 2002 Critical Sociology Conference held at Tbilisi State University in Georgia, was produced by sociologists working as members of or visitors to post-Communist states. As such, it reflects the tension between the desire for scholarly distance and an acknowledgement that the construction of knowledge is always a political act and a product of hierarchical social relations. Whether considering the issue of political legitimacy in Kyrgyzstan, the political nature of discourse about Eastern Europe, or problems of institutionalisation in Georgia, the authors all seek to avoid the scepticism about the effects and ethics of sociology common in much Western social theory without falling back upon the positivist approaches apparent in much of the former Communist bloc and in important pockets of Western academia.

Contents: Carol Harrington/Ayman Salem: Introduction - Eduard Kodua: Notes on the function of sociology - Salome Asatiani: On one version of hegemonic strategy: a Gramscian insight into John Rawls's thought - Ayman Salem: Aspects of Talcott Parsons's sociology - Attila Melegh: Floating East: Eastern Europe on the map of global institutional actors - Carol Harrington: Prostitutes and peacekeepers in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo - Iago Kachkachishvili: Anthony Giddens's structuration theory and some pecularities of Georgian society - Tatiana Yarkova: Applying the concepts of legitimacy and trust in Kyrgyzstan - Donnacha Ó Beacháin: Power without passion: the institutionalisation and de-radicalisation of political parties - Ivan Chorvát: Sociology between order and chaos - Markus Mueller: Can empirical research produce critical results? The case of urban sociology - Balihar Sanghera: After the cultural turn, a return to the moral economy - Lynne Alice: Kosovo in transition: an insider-outsider doing social research on Kosovo's present and future - Ayman Salem: Advertising First World culture: civic education in the former Communist bloc - Ingrida Geciene: Democracy and the middle class: Western theoretical models in a post-Communist context - Sarah Amsler: 'From truth in strength to strength in truth': the reconstitution of power/knowledge in post-Soviet Central Asia sociology.