(1985). Incorrigibility laws: The state's role in resolving intrafamily conflict. Criminal Justice Ethics: Vol. 4, No. 1, pp. 11-19. doi: 10.1080/0731129X.1985.9991767.

This article explores the elective affinities between Actor-Network Theory (ANT) and the sociology of critical capacities. It argues that these two research programmes can be understood as symmetrical twins. We show the extent to which the exchange between Bruno Latour and Luc Boltanski has influenced their respective theoretical developments. Three strong encounters between the twin research programmes may be distinguished. The first encounter concerns explanations for social change. The second encounter focuses on the status of objects and their relationship to (...) places. The third encounter is about the concept of critique. Drawing on their long-term mutual readings, we gain insight into how pleas for symmetrical analysis raised in response to Bourdieu’s theory of fields have evolved within both ANT and the sociology of critical capacity. We conclude by relating the development of the respective research programmes to the issue of disciplinary boundaries. (shrink)

How has sociology framed places of knowledge production and what is the specific power of the laboratory for this history? This article looks in three steps at how sociology and Science and Technology Studies (STS) have historically framed the world as laboratory. First, in early sociology, the laboratory was an important metaphor to conceive of sociology as a scientific enterprise. In the 1950s, the trend reversed and with the emergence of a ‘qualitative sociology’, sociology was seen in opposition to laboratory (...) work. With the ascent of laboratory studies, the laboratory perspective was again applied to many fields, including sociology itself. Based on a definition of a laboratory as aiming at placeless knowledge and being inconsequential this article argues that the two waves of laboratorization were metaphorical and did not really turn the world into a laboratory. Instead, two alternative concepts, those of the unilatory and the locatory, are proposed to gain a more precise understanding of some of these metaphorical uses of the term ‘laboratory’. (shrink)

In immisgration policies the use of genetical parental testing has become a common procedure to decide which applicants have a legal claim for family reunification. Many scholars argue that this introduction of DNA analyses establishes a biologically biased understanding of family relationships and undermines a social concept of family. This paper reflects on the underlying concepts of the relationship between family and the state in this field. Referring to Hegel it can be shown that even today family is conceived as,presocial‘, (...) as the constitutive other of the social sphere. This assumption helps to explain the privileging of the nuclear family in national and international legislation. The main logic and intention of family rights is neither to protect incomparable emotional ties between individuals nor biological blood bounds. It is not about saving loving relationships as such, but rather about trying to govern them and to legitimate the State itself. (shrink)

ZusammenfassungMan zeigt zuerst, dass man eine finitistische und operationelle Interpretation der Hierarchien der Ordinal‐ und Kardinalzahlen der hlengentheorie geben kann, ohne einen wesentlichen Punkt der Theorie fallen lassen zu mussen. Dieser Standpunkt hat grosse Vorteile gegenuber einer streng formalistischen Interpretation der Mengenlehre. Als Folge zeigt man einen Weg, der es erlaubt, das Problem der unerreichbaren Zahlen global zu behandeln.

Reflecting on the knowledge of God in the Old and the New Covenant offers us anew way to address the theological status of the philosophical proofs for theexistence of God. In the treatise De Deo Uno of the Summa, Aquinas discusseshow the intellect experiences its natural capacity to know God. The “five ways”are inseparable from one another. In the prologue to the Lectura on Saint John,Aquinas‟s last Gospel commentary, the Doctor Angelicus praises the depth of theevangelist‟s contemplation by comparison with (...) pagan philosophical knowledgeof God, relating it to Isaiah‟s vision of God in the Temple in Jerusalem .“I saw the Lord on an elevated throne” . . . . Saint John‟s vision focuseson the authority and power of the Word: “I saw the Lord,” on hiseternity: “the Lord was seated;” on the excellence and nobility of hisnature: “I saw the Lord seated on a throne;” on his incomprehensibletruth: “an elevated throne.”2Bringing to light the unity of the knowledge of God in the Old and the NewCovenant, Aquinas continues: “It is through these ideas that the ancientphilosophies rose to knowledge of God.” Thus pagan philosophies becomeconnected with the Evangelist and with the Prophets. Indeed one can recognize inthe fourfold articulation of the contemplation of the Prophet and the Evangelistthe central axis of the “four ways” by which “several philosophies arrived atknowledge of God;” God as the intelligence governing nature ; as theunchangeable principle of all motion ; as supreme cause of being; as intelligence and infinite truth . Aquinas briefly developseach of these ways and concludes with a line of Scripture taken from Isaiah, apsalm, or the New Testament. He then adds: “Such was the contemplation of John who because he had seen the Word in its regulatory authority, its eternity,its excellence, and its incomprehensibility, wanted in his Gospel to transmit to ussomething about his contemplation.”3Here, unlike in the commentary on Hebrews 11: 6,4where Aquinasaccents the difference between philosophical knowledge of God and faith,Aquinas emphasizes the unity of the motion of the intellect seeking God, whetherit is philosophical or theological. These two ways of emphasis do not contradicteach other. The natural knowledge which a human being has of God receivesconfirmation and fulfilment in the revelation given to the prophets and to theapostles in the Old and the New Covenant. The fulfilment of the knowledge ofGod by philosophers transforms their “proofs” of God‟s existence by witnessingto the motion by which the human intellect is naturally drawn toward God itscreator. For natural knowledge of God, the intellect leads itself to the conclusions and, in a certain way, “walks forward” to encounter faith. Divine revelation transforms the “proofs” into “ways” toHim, who in reality manifests Himself by drawing to Himself the intellectthrough the infinite action by which he creates it. This natural motion is soimportant for Aquinas that in the prologue he suggests that the readers of hisbiblical commentary verify it for themselves. May we not consider that the “fiveways” of Question 2 of the Summa Theologica, the hinge between the definitionof sacra doctrina and the treatise De Deo Uno, play a similar role of theologicalself-verification? (shrink)

Volume 12 in the edition of the complete Jerusalem Talmud. Tractates Sanhedrin and Makkot belong together as one tractate, covering procedural law for panels of arbitration, communal rabbinic courts and an elaborate construction of hypothetical criminal courts supposedly independent of the king's administration. Tractate Horaiot, an elaboration of Lev. 4:1-26, defines the roles of High Priest, rabbinate, and prince in a Commonwealth strictly following biblical rules.