The formation and evolution of multiculturalism and hybridization belong today to the leading research priorities of social sciences. These developments assumedly forward a kind of new or next society features of which seemingly emerge and may be captured in processes taking place in given partial structures. We think especially of subsystems that, at the origin, concretized utopic orientations that were abandoned over time to leave room to new ambitions. One such subsystem consists of the kibbutz that was for long viewed (...) as one of the most successful utopia that was both rigorous and performing, and which illustrates today an appropriate example of next-society emergence. The general validity of this assumption resides in this setting’s multigenerational survival through far reaching structural, cultural and ideological changes. A model of communitarian collectivity at its start that now is best defined by the oxymoron of “individualistic community”. (shrink)

We draw from Eisenstadt’s (2002) conceptualization of multiple modernities which he pro­posed to analyze processes marking modernity and their different versions in contemporary societies. These processes do not delete all pre-existing orientations, value affinities and social arrangements, and while modernity is recognizable everywhere, modern societies also differ at other respects. We formulate a similar contention for globalization. We point to three interacting and intermingling movers of social reality—globalization, multiculturalism and the national principle—which concretize everywhere, and according to contexts and a (...) priori features, specific models qualifying for the notion of multiple globalizations. Beyond the variety of multiple globalizations, this notion underlines the newness of our time and hints the “next society”. (shrink)

(1993). Integrating cooperation and conflict: Comments on Raymond Boudon's paper. International Studies in the Philosophy of Science: Vol. 7, No. 1, pp. 29-31.

The numberless unprecedented situations attached today to the concept of transnational diaspora arise the debate of whether or not this phenomenon signals a new era. Our own contention is that it does represent a factor of new kinds of heterogenization of both the societal reality and of the diasporas themselves, as worldwide entities. It is in this dialectic perspective that we describe transnational diasporas as causes of discontinuity in our world and point out to the qualitative change in the social (...) fabrics that they represent. Among other aspects, dual or threefold homeness that is bound to the transnational condition signifies for diasporans a slipping away from the totalistic character of the commitment and view of the nation that the nation-state requires of its citizens. When viewed in its multiplicity, the cohabitation under the same societal roof of a priori alien socio-cultural entities yields a configuration that is not uniform in every setting, but which still responds in its essentials to the new reality experienced by many a contemporary society.To illustrate this approach, this paper compares four well-known contemporary transnational diasporas—namely, the Muslim, African, Hispanic and Chinese. (shrink)