This article is built on a close reading of the use of the term 'calculation' by Max Weber. On the basis of this reading, I argue for a deeper understanding of Weber's views on uncertainty in the Calvinist ethos, and for a new approach to some key issues in the moral and discursive world of financial capital today, in which accounting, accountability and profit-making have become dangerously delinked from one another.
Other Times, Other Worlds
Archaeology, Ritual, and Religion
Marc Verhoeven
This article is an introduction to the emerging sub-discipline of the archaeology of ritual and religion. It addresses the question of how archaeologists can approach these fields: what are the challenges and opportunities? Using theory and methodology, ritual and religion are explored in the archaeological record by means of so-called framing, and an interpretation is attempted through analogy and 'ethos'. Selected Neolithic sites from the Near East that have yielded rich and important data regarding ritual and religion serve as examples.
Reinhold Loeffler
The case of a remote tribal village in southwest Iran demonstrates the circumstances conducive to positive rural development. My research suggests that since the founding of this village around 1880, its people - led by a progressive, literate young chief - successfully defended their realm against incorporation into the neighbouring chiefs' reigns of lawlessness and warfare; introduced and modernised irrigation agriculture and fruit cultivation then unique in the whole region; and embraced formal education. Discussing such adaptive strategies, I argue that a strong ethos of progress and achievement, including civic awareness, motivated local people from the beginning to pursue new ways to improve their livelihood.
Amal Jamal
In 2006-2007, several Arab nongovernmental organizations in Israel, led by a group of politicians and intellectuals, published future vision documents that summed up the needs, aspirations, hopes, and desires of Arab society in Israel. Despite the fact that the documents did not introduce any new ideas that were not on the Israeli political stage already, this article argues that the fact that the documents were a result of collective effort shows the deep changes that have been taking place among Arab society in general and its leadership in particular. The documents mark the rising tide of frustration and self-confidence, and as a result of oppositional consciousness among leaders and intellectuals of Arab society in Israel. The documents seek to redefine the relationship of Arab society with the Israeli state, demanding the transformation of Israel from an ethnic to a democratic state and calling the Jewish majority for a dialogue. The fact that several documents have emerged is a clear indication that the internal differences within Arab society are still stronger than the uniting forces within it.
Eluding the Esculacho
A Masculinities Perspective on the Enduring Warrior Ethos of Rio de Janeiro's Police
Celina Myrann Sørbøe
article views as a hypermasculine and militaristic “warrior” identity and ethos in the police occupational culture, drawing on the literature on warrior-based masculinity in favelas ( Zaluar 1994 , 2004 ) and in police cultures ( Brown 2007 ; Gripp and
Christopher Howard and Wendelin Küpers
of existence, 10 we conclude by suggesting an ethos of Gelassenheit for cultivating a more place-responsive and responsible approach to traveling and living. Research Background and Context The empirical material presented here is based on a mobile
Building Dignity?
Tracing Rights, Discretion, and Negotiation within a Norwegian Labor Activation Program
Erika Gubrium, Leah Johnstone, and Ivar Lødemel
participants. Our aim is to explore how the presence of a labor activation ethos within social assistance shapes and changes the balance of rights, discretion, and negotiation that are available to and mark the interactions between service providers and program
Osnat Roth-Cohen and Yehiel Limor
that of the Labor movement pioneer. Advertising thus expanded the concept of pioneering, without limiting it to a single ideal type ( Shavit 1983 ). Advertisements were nicknamed Reklame 10 and echoed the values of the hedonistic ethos, emphasizing
The Art of Capture
Hidden Jokes and the Reinvention of Animistic Ontologies in Southwest China
Katherine Swancutt
) or the notion that ‘every being has a soul’ (Ch. wanwu youling 万物有灵), and it is currently being propounded as a cosmological-cum-ecological ethos capable of mobilizing widespread environmentalist sensibilities. The official Chinese take on animism
Israel's Ground Forces in the Occupied Territories
Policing and the Juridification of Soldiering
Eyal Ben-Ari and Uzi Ben-Shalom
ethos. To adapt, the IDF has created a hierarchy of ‘logics of action’ in which actions closer to ‘real’ soldiering, such as handling potentially violent encounters (terrorist attacks or fierce demonstrations), take precedence over other forms of