Ernest Gellner's theory of nationalism is founded on a simplistic and deceptive materialistic reasoning, masking the tension between functionalist postulates and historicist inclinations. Various methods are used to resolve this tension. Initially, idealism is introduced into the body of the analysis. When this becomes too visible, the nature of the materialism displayed is discretely modified. Relational materialism — a dynamic articulation between relations to the means of production and relations between classes — gives way to substantialist materialism — based on a mechanical opposition between the means of production and ethno-linnguistic attributes. The use of a consistent vocabulary obscures the elision between the two: ‘structure’ and ‘culture’ are alternatively defined in relational or in substantialist terms. Gellner then returns to relational considerations which make his explanation all the more unclear.

This article examines the debate on the developmental impact of foreign direct investment (FDI). While the most frequent finding within sociology is that FDI is harmful or at least less beneficial than domestic investment, most who study the transition from socialism or make economic policy in the region consider FDI to be a major motor of development. This paper examines the impact of FDI with a novel methodology. Rather than employing the standard analytic strategy that uses state-level macroeconomic data in a crossnational comparison, this article direcdy compares the performance of foreign owned firms to domestically owned firms. In the analysis six hypotheses derived from this debate on the role of FDI are tested with logistic regression on two large random sample surveys of Hungarian firms The findings support the position that foreign direct investment is beneficial for the recipient country. In addition, they support the idea that foreign owned firms are more beneficial than domestically owned firms.

Empirical life course research is based on prospective or retrospective longitudinal micro data and nationally representative samples of birth cohorts or larger populations. This field of research has developed since the 1970s as one of the major social science instruments of studying the dynamics of both individual lives and societies. The paper reviews critically the contributions of life course studies by comparing the initial expectations with practices and results during the last twenty years.

This paper proposes a liaison —‘middle-range realism’—between two long standing explanatory strategies in sociology— ‘middle-range theory’ and ‘realist social theory’. Each offers what the other lacks. Middle-range theory carries an acute sense of the function of theory within empirical inquiry but has left undeveloped any notion of its appropriate explanatory form. Realist social theory has propositional precision but has been unable, in the most part, to descend from a critical domain to the empirical plane. Middlerange realism thus offers a research strategy of the appropriate form and scope to lead and to federate empirical inquiry. Examples are provided of how middle-range realism can be applied to improve research using two different strategies (survey methods and evaluation research) in two contrasting substantive areas (voting behaviour and offender rehabilitation).

The concept of Beruf, variously translated as ‘calling’ or ‘vocation’, refers to the pracdce of systematic self-control in pursuing constant goals or purposes, which Weber, in The Protestant Etbic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1905), found in both Calvinist religious practice and capitalistic entrepreneurship and labour. But the term is not confined to these applications; it is also central in Science as a Vocation (1917) and Politics as a Vocation (1919). The general significance of the idea of Berufis that it accounts for the mechanisms required to realize in action the quality of rationality, another of Weber's characteristic terms. The connection between rational activity and calling is constant in Weber's discussion. In his early statement of the argument, however, practices of Beruf achieve rationality through the suppression of emotion. In his later discussion, Beruf is achieved through and expresses passion and emotions.