Separating the wheat from the chaff: a textual history of Turgot’s letters on the grain trade

Classical political economy emerged in the 18th and 19th centuries and became the basis of modern economic theory, focusing on the relationship between the economy and society. The founder of this trend is Adam Smith, whose 1776 work An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations has become a classic text in economics. In his book, Smith introduced the concept of the ‘invisible hand’, which describes the mechanism by which individual aspirations for personal enrichment lead to the general welfare of society. This concept emphasises the importance of free competition and free trade, which, according to the scientist, are essential for economic development. Adam Smith argued that free competition allows entrepreneurs to make the most efficient use of resources, which leads to increased productivity. The scientist emphasised that monopolies and government intervention in economic processes are harmful, as they impede innovation and improve the quality of goods and services. Free trade, according to his theory, provides access to a wider market, which in turn stimulates economic growth. Classical political economy covers the distribution of wealth and income, social justice and the role of the state in the economic process. Other representatives of this trend, such as David Ricardo and John Stuart Mill, developed Adam Smith's ideas, adding their own views on the problems of political economy. In particular, Ricardo developed the concept of comparative advantage, which explains why countries should specialise in the production of goods in which they have advantages and trade with each other. Classical political economy laid the foundations for the development of economic theory that continues to influence contemporary economic debate. Today, Adam Smith's ideas on free competition and free trade remain relevant as they spark debate on the role of the state in the economy, globalisation and social inequality. Classical political economy, as a field of knowledge, not only studies the mechanisms of market functioning, but also tries to find ways to achieve a more equitable and sustainable development of society. Thus, the study of classical political economy and the legacy of Adam Smith is extremely important for understanding modern economic phenomena and processes. An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations not only forms the basis of economic science, but also serves as an important tool for analysing social and economic changes in the globalised world.

Reviewed by: De la continuité dynamique dans l’univers confucéen: Lecture néoconfucéenne du Zhongyong (中庸): Nouvelle traduction du chinois classique et commentaire herméneutique by Diana Arghiresco Christian Soffel (bio) De la continuité dynamique dans l’univers confucéen: Lecture néoconfucéenne du Zhongyong (中庸): Nouvelle traduction du chinois classique et commentaire herméneutique (Of dynamic continuity in the Confucian universe: A Neo-Confucian reading of the Zhongyong: A new translation from the classical Chinese and a hermeneutical commentary). By Diana Arghiresco. Paris: Les Éditions du Cerf, 2013. Pp. 416. €35, isbn 978-2-204-10026-7. When delving into traditional Chinese philosophy, it is tempting to search for an “original meaning” of the classical scriptures. However, this is a futile task for several reasons: First, we are confronted with a complex textual history, lacking a reliable “Urtext” version; much less can we rely on sufficient contextual information. Second, modern recipients—consciously or unconsciously—are prone to be influenced by orthodox interpretations, which have been dominating the discourse for several centuries. A good way to solve this dilemma is to take a close look at the most prevalent standard commentaries from the middle and late imperial era. This way we can not only increase our awareness for developments of the classical tradition, but also unlock its full epistemological potential for contemporary philosophical discussion. In view of its reliable textual foundation and its prominent position in the living tradition in East Asia, it is striking that scholars have been hesitating so far to fully translate Zhu Xi’s 朱熹 commentary to the Four Books (Daxue 大學, Zhongyong 中庸, Lunyu 論語, and Mengzi 孟子), the basic compendium of Confucian learning, which has served as the standard for elementary education and civil service examinations since the fourteenth century. In spite of their special importance, Western scholars interested in the Four Books’ wisdom have concentrated on the classical texts and used Zhu Xi’s extensive notes mostly as a stepping stone in order to uncover the “original meaning” of the canon. The new book by Diana Arghiresco, De la continuité dynamique dans l’univers confucéen: Lecture néoconfucéenne du Zhongyong, [End Page 615] deliberately takes a more profound approach, combining a full translation of the Zhongyong and Zhu Xi’s commentary with a hermeneutic analysis of these two textual layers. Not only does her “traduction pensante” (Heidegger) encompass the quest to approach the central message of the texts, but her examination of the Zhongyong (including Zhu Xi’s commentary) serves as a foundation upon which she builds a discussion of relevant Confucian and Daoist scriptures. Additionally, the author builds a bridge from Zhu Xi to classical Greek philosophy, thus going beyond Chinese indigenous thought. By adding another rich layer of background information on Chinese philosophy, Arghiresco delivers a compendium for classical Confucian thought in the context of other schools. In particular, she quotes numerous passages from the Lunyu (including Zhu Xi’s commentary), delivers countless references to other quotes from classical texts concerning the Zhongyong’s central topics (like zhong 中 or he 和), demonstrates the coherence with the Laozi and the Yijing, introduces key personalities (e.g., Emperor Shun or Confucius’ disciples), and explicates particular concerns in Zhu Xi’s thought (e.g., his religious ideas). As the subtitle suggests, the author delivers a “Neo-Confucian reading” of the classical Zhongyong text through the eyes of Zhu Xi. Thus, it can serve as a foundation to discuss alternative points of view from the Chinese tradition itself, such as the Zheng Xuan 鄭玄 commentary from the late Han (second century a.d.). For example, while discussing the famous term “watchfulness over oneself” (shen du 慎獨) (Zhongyong chapter 1), one can show that Zheng Xuan’s stance offers an alternative, concentrating more on physical “aloneness” and deviating from Zhu Xi’s focus on self-cultivation. A more problematic instance, where the author seems to adhere strictly to Zhu Xi’s view, is the question of dating and authorship. For Arghiresco, the Zhongyong is a book from the fifth century b.c. authored by Zi Si (pp. 12, 372). Furthermore, she accepts the traditional daotong perception (p. 21). In this regard, some interaction with more critical approaches from recent secondary literature...

How do classical texts, such as Hwangdi Neijing and Shanghanlun, continuously play significant roles in medical practices in the history of East Asian medicine? Although this is a significant question in interpreting the position of written texts in the medical history and even for understanding the structure of East Asian medical knowledge, it has been conspicuously underexamined in the studies of East Asian medicine. In order to explore this underrepresented question, this study focuses on currents of tradition in contemporary South Korea. Drawing on anthropological fieldwork at three Donguibogam (Treasured Mirror of Eastern Medicine) currents, it delves into the interaction of text and practice in East Asian medicine. Even though all three currents (Hyun-dong, Byeong-in, Hyung-sang) are based on Donguibogam, their ways of reading the text and organizing clinical practices are diverse. Each current sets up a keyword, such as pulse diagnosis, cause of disease, and appearance-image, and attempts to penetrate the entire Donguibogam through the keyword. This means that the classical medical text is open to plural approaches. This study found that there is a visible gap between a medical text and the reader of the text in East Asia. Masters and currents of tradition are the actors who fill up the gap, continuously interpreting and reinterpreting classical texts, and guiding medical practices of new readers. Adding the history of practice to the body of literature that have focused on the history of written texts, this study will contribute to the history of East Asian medicine.

The subject of this commentary is the complex interrelationship between abortion and contraceptive use in the control of fertility. While both are interventions designed to manage unwanted pregnancy, there are significant differences between the 'preventive' and 'curative' approaches. The significance stems from abortion being a procedure that provokes fundamental and contentious questions about human life, such as when life begins, as well as highlighting the rights of the mother versus the rights of the foetus, and the obligation of governments to protect the unborn child (1).There is sufficient historical evidence to conclude that no societies have achieved low fertility without recourse to use of some form of contraception together with abortion. So, an important and topical question that arises from this inter-relationship is whether the provision of high-quality contraceptive services can reduce or substitute for abortion. A recent Lancet article based on data from the ICDDR,B fieldsite in Matlab supports the substitution argument, at least in the context of Bangladesh (2). These findings are discussed below.A broader related issue here is whether all societies passing through the demographic transition follow a similar pattern. Such a pattern might hypothetically involve an initial stage where growing awareness of the concept of fertility regulation results in increasing contraceptive use and increasing use of abortion simultaneously, and fertility levels decline from high to intermediate levels. In the second stage of the fertility transition, contraceptive practice becomes more widespread and more efficient (reflected in fewer contraceptive failures), and the resort to abortion decreases, although it may never be completely eliminated.This hypothesis assumes that the majority of couples would prefer to prevent unwanted pregnancies through contraceptive use rather than through abortion. An alternative hypothesis might be that if abortion is freely accessible, couples would have little incentive to practise responsible contraception. This raises the question of whether the balance between use of abortion and use of contraception depends on the availability of these two interventions.It is instructive to review what the experiences of developed countries-both European and Asian-reveal about this issue of the balance between these two interventions. In fact, several patterns have been described by Potts et al. in their classic text (3). In periods of economic hardship in the late 19th and early to mid- 20th centuries, a number of Western and Northern European countries, the United States, and Australia, experienced fertility declines nearly to replacement level well before effective modern contraception was available. The mechanism included resort to illegal abortion and remarkably effective use of inherentlyinefficient contraceptive methods, such as withdrawal (coitus interruptus), in a social context of nuclear families and late marriage.In the more eastern countries of Western Europe, such as Romania and Bulgaria, the effective practice of withdrawal had never been widespread, and abortion played the dominant role. In the former USSR-the first country to permit legal abortion (in 1920)-up to 3 of 4 pregnancies were being aborted, at least in Moscow. However, this pattern was not confined to the period prior to the availability of modern contraceptives. In the early 1960s, there were 14 abortions for every delivery in the largest obstetric hospital in Romania. As occurred earlier in the former USSR, the Romanian government restricted the liberal abortion law in 1966. Unfortunately, they also simultaneously restricted access to modern contraception. Consequently, the birth rate tripled from 13 to 40 per 1,000 in less than one year. As is often the case, the restrictive law was bypassed, and skyrocketing resort to illegal abortion brought the birth rate back to 20 within two years.In Asia, the experience was more similar to that in Western Europe than in Eastern Europe. …

Since its commercialization early in the 20th century, indentation testing has played a key role in the development of new materials and understanding their mechanical behavior. Progr3ess in the field has relied on a close marriage between research in the mechanical behavior of materials and contact mechanics. The seminal work of Hertz laid the foundations for bringing these two together, with his contributions still widely utilized today in examining elastic behavior and the physics of fracture. Later, the pioneering work of Tabor, as published in his classic text 'The Hardness of Metals', exapdned this understanding to address the complexities of plasticity. Enormous progress in the field has been achieved in the last decade, made possible both by advances in instrumentation, for example, load and depth-sensing indentation and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM) based in situ testing, as well as improved modeling capabilities that use computationally intensive techniques such as finite element analysis and molecular dynamics simulation. The purpose of this special focus issue is to present recent state of the art developments in the field.

Permanent magnet materials have one of the longest histories of any technological phenomenon, stretching from before 4000 BC to now. The early history of lodestones (naturally occurring magnets), their applications and their use to make artificial magnets is described. The early work of the Chinese and European magnet users culminated in the classic text ‘De magnete’ published by William Gilbert in 1600. The developments of the next two centuries were based on Gilbert's work until the development of the electromagnet enabled steels to be magnetised without recourse to a lodestone. The improvements in the magnetic properties of permanent magnets then took place gradually, by the development of steels and by optimising alloy compositions and heat treatments. In the 20th century, three major families of permanent magnet materials (metal, ceramic and rare earth) have been developed. The composition, properties and the method of manufacturing these metal (aluminium-nickel-cobalt-iron), ceramic (barium or strontium ferrite) and the three generations of the rare earth (RCo5, R2Co17 and NdFeB) magnets are described, and the possible applications of permanent magnetic materials are briefly tabulated. Finally using performance indicators that have been defined earlier, it is shown that the performance of permanent magnet materials have increased two-hundred-fold in the 20th century. The past and future of these important commercial engineering materials is permanent.

Mouralis, Bernard. Littératures africaines et Antiquité: redire le face-à-face de l’Afrique et de l’Occident. Paris: Champion, 2011. ISBN 978-2-7453-2174-9. Pp. 220. 19 a. Mouralis’s examination of the African writers’uses of Classical literature is a long overdue work of scholarship. Drawing on the research of previous scholars and his own work on literary giants like Senghor, Beti, and Mudimbe, he investigates ways in which Classical culture contributes to a fuller understanding of African aesthetics, history, and philosophy.As a result, this expansive inquiry enters into new territory in its complex, nuanced reconsideration of this relationship. The thematically organized study opens with a definition of what constitutes ‘la bibliothèque antique.’ Mouralis illustrates that the great disparity in the Classical corpus used by African writers is due to their varied educational experiences. He concludes this chapter by hypothesizing that the elusiveness of Classics in African letters might also be a consequence of the intellectual developments of the âge classique (39). While the conclusion is not surprising, the description of the educational environment in colonial Africa and the extensive cataloging of works that describe the role of Classics in twentieth-century African education render this chapter especially rich. Additionally, those who wish to investigate further the role of particular Classic texts in colonial education will find the bibliographic references most useful. Mouralis devotes the remainder of his study’s attention to fleshing out specific examples of Classical literature’s application, which he categorizes in the following three chapters as: “Usages rhétoriques et esthétiques de la bibliothèque antique”; “Usages historiques de la bibliothèque antique”; “Usages philosophiques de la bibliothèque antique.”As readers who are familiar with Mouralis’s previous scholarship might expect, these chapters provide thoughtful analysis of key passages in an array of important Francophone African works. For example, in the second chapter on rhetorical and aesthetic usages, Mouralis examines Senghor’s keen ability to incorporate into his own poetics the linguistic principles of Classical language as a system which subsequently forms an important component of Senghorian poetics (52). Despite fewer direct citations of Classics, the third chapter convincingly illustrates how Antiquity has advanced academic discussion of African history. In particular, Mouralis shows that C.A. Diop, Senghor, and Mudimbe cultivate a productive polemic on such fundamental theories as Afrocentrism and Négritude precisely because of the knowledge that each possesses of Classical historical texts. Little by little, he broadens the reader’s understanding of the ways Classical civilization connects to Africa. In the fourth chapter, Mouralis tackles the challenging philosophical concepts of being, epistemology, politics, and the nature and function of philosophy in representative African writers; each of which manifest evidence of an inescapable return to a Classic cultural inheritance. He concludes the study by illustrating further “intersections” (chapter 5) between African letters and Antiquity through four themes, which readers will recognize as key to postcolonial studies,i.e.,anthropology,colonization,bilingualism, and the Other. The thought-provoking examples of intersections in this final chapter offer some of the most compelling evidence for his thesis; which is to say, that the 238 FRENCH REVIEW 87.2 Reviews 239 concerns of Classical civilization are indeed universal and relevant to studies of contemporary Africa. Mount St. Mary’s University (MD) Marco D. Roman Read, Kirk D. Birthing Bodies in Early Modern France: Stories of Gender and Reproduction . Farnham: Ashgate, 2011. ISBN 978-0-7546-6632-5. Pp. xiv + 205. $99.95. Birthing Bodies demonstrates the benefits of engaging a variety of genres in the discussion of a topos that can be read both literally and figuratively, for the birthing bodies in question are corporeal and textual. Further, by including theorists ranging from Thomas Lacqueur to Mary Daly to Judith Butler, Read deftly explores the intersections of gender, sex, sexuality, and performance in this corpus. As he examines a broad range of texts—poetry, novels, medical treatises, satires, polemics, travelogues— Read“dismantl[es] received ideas about gendered bodies”(12) and exposes the unease women’s bodies generate as well as how other bodies, male or hermaphroditic, appropriate the process of generation. Chapter one,“Spying at the Lying-in,” highlights the...

In 1686, King Karl IX appointed a legal commission to assemble all Swedish legislation into a single codex – the Law of 1734. The commission’s work can be followed in protocols which include a number of discussions which suggest various solutions to linguistic problems, including the substitution of several words. In this article 75 of these words are compared to three Swedish dictionaries from the 18th century, with the purpose of investigating to what extent the new words could be considered idiomatic and suitable for the Swedish language of the day. The result shows that the Law and the dictionaries are quite similar, which could be seen as proof of the quality of the dictionaries as well as of the commission’s work.

Old Scratch.

Book Reviews The Ethiopian Borderlands: Essays in Regional Historyfrom Ancient Times to the End of the 18th Century Richard Pankhurst. Lawrenceville, N.J.: Red Sea Press, 1997. Pp. xii, 489; illustrations, tables, bibliography , index. Paper, $24.95. This volume of history on the Ethiopian "borderlands" is a study covering the areas outside the historical core of the Christian highland state. It is based on a large array of historical texts of Ethiopia, like reports of antique inscriptions, royal and eye-witness-chronicles and the rich travel literature on Ethiopia and the Horn. The narrative is derived from the author's unsurpassed knowledge of this corpus, especially of the travelers' literature. Due to this emphasis, it is also a study of premodern perceptions and interpretations of Ethiopia and its surrounding regions by these (mainly European) visitors and observers, although it is not always clear what exactly is the opinion or interpretation of the author and that of the sources used. This book may serve as an essential introduction for the general reader, for historians and other scholars interested in Ethiopian society and history. The chronicles and literature of travelers on which it is largely based are still fascinating and in many respects historically valuable. They have had a considerable influence in shaping the themes and interests of Ethiopian historiography, and remains an inevitable source to consult or check in any historical study Professor Pankhurst has provided yet another contribution to the opening up and putting to good use of this vast body of early testimonies. As the author states in the Introduction, the coverage of the borderlands is unbalanced due to the "unequal availability" of sources, and the text thus ". . . reflects the historical records at our disposal," not the ". . . actual importance"©Northeast African Studies (ISSN 0740-9133) Vol. 5, No. 2 (New Series) 1998, pp. 135-143 135 136 Book Reviews of the various places (ix). Considering the size of this book and the nature of the information presented, the borderlands are, however, not an uncharted or unknown area. The author has used several classic texts, like the chronicles of the great emperors, the chronicle of Chihab ed-Din on the Gran period and the text of Bahrey on the Oromo (both 16th century). It certainly cannot be said that the subject of the "borderlands" has hitherto been neglected in Ethiopian historiography. In the work of many Ethiopian historians (both in M.A. theses and in several Ph.D. theses and books), the borderlands and their relation to the state-forming political "core" have been addressed in rich detail.1 Furthermore, in modern social anthropological studies, of course, these areas and their cultures have also been analyzed in depth, partly on the basis of previously unrecorded oral traditions.2 The material surveyed is arranged in six parts, on ancient times, on the early medieval period, on the era of emperors Zär'a Ya'eqob and Libne Dingil, then one long part on the era ofAhmed Gran and on the time of emperor Galawdewos and Sers'e Dingil, to end with a part on the Oromo migrations and the Gondarine monarchy, taking the story up to ca. 1800. These periods are surveyed in (often too much) detail, largely by region and hence with partiy overlapping chronological sequence, and closely following the sources. Each part is concluded with a summarizing chapter caded "The borderlands and the interior." Throughout the text, interesting illustrations are provided, from old maps to portraits and landscapes . The account has an emphasis on matters of war, as the author underlines (ix), but also on economic relations. Economic factors were of course closely intertwined with the perennial fight for power and dominance pursued by all parties in the Horn, from the Christian state to the Afar and Somali sultanates and other state-forming peoples (Oromo, Kafa, Hinnario, etc.) in the east and south. One of the conclusions of the author is that the borderlands "... were far from isolated from the central Ethiopian core" (443). We might indeed say that in many respects they were one of its essential preconditions. Already early in recorded history, the peoples and policies on the Ethiopian highland massif were partly economically dependent on products...

A two-volume study of political thought from the late thirteenth to the end of the sixteenth century, the decisive period of transition from medieval to modern political theory. The work is intended to be both an introduction to the period for students, and a presentation and justification of a particular approach to the interpretation of historical texts. Quentin Skinner gives an outline account of all the principal texts of the period, discussing in turn the chief political writings of Dante, Marsiglio, Bartolus, Machiavelli, Erasmus and more, Luther and Calvin, Bodin and the Calvinist revolutionaries. But he also examines a very large number of lesser writers in order to explain the general social and intellectual context in which these leading theorists worked. He thus presents the history not as a procession of 'classic texts' but are more readily intelligible. He traces by this means the gradual emergence of the vocabulary of modern political thought, and in particular the crucial concept of the State. We are given an insight into the actual processes of the formation of ideologies and into some of the linkages between political theory and practice. Professor Skinner has been awarded the Balzan Prize Life Time Achievement Award for Political Thought, History and Theory. Full details of this award can be found at http://www.balzan.it/News_eng.aspx?ID=2474

Neural network NLP models are vulnerable to small modifications of the input that maintain the original meaning but result in a different prediction. In this paper, we focus on robustness of text classification against word substitutions, aiming to provide guarantees that the model prediction does not change if a word is replaced with a plausible alternative, such as a synonym. As a measure of robustness, we adopt the notion of the maximal safe radius for a given input text, which is the minimum distance in the embedding space to the decision boundary. Since computing the exact maximal safe radius is not feasible in practice, we instead approximate it by computing a lower and upper bound. For the upper bound computation, we employ Monte Carlo Tree Search in conjunction with syntactic filtering to analyse the effect of single and multiple word substitutions. The lower bound computation is achieved through an adaptation of the linear bounding techniques implemented in tools CNN-Cert and POPQORN, respectively for convolutional and recurrent network models. We evaluate the methods on sentiment analysis and news classification models for four datasets (IMDB, SST, AG News and NEWS) and a range of embeddings, and provide an analysis of robustness trends. We also apply our framework to interpretability analysis and compare it with LIME.

Bhavana (impregnation) and Swedana (boiling) are the processes used in Ayurvedic pharmacy for preparation of formulations containing the drugs of metallic, mineral and poisonous origin to make them safe and potent for internal administration. Drugs of herbal origins are primely used for the Bhavana process. Bhanga(Cannabis sativa Linn.) a drug with great medicinal potency has been highlighted for its Deepana(digestive stimulant), Pachana(digestive), Ruchya (Taste promoter), Madakari (intoxicant),Vyavayi(short acting),Grahi(withholds secretions),Medhya (memory booster), Rasayana (adapto-immuno-neuro-endocrino-modulator) activities were used as a processing media in many formulations. In 19th century, it is included in narcotic group of plants and its use, as a drug, has been restricted. In 21st century again, the drug is gaining attraction from scientific communities due to its wide pharmacological properties. However, there is no collective information available at a glance regarding the use of Bhanga in various processing techniques of classical formulations. Hence, it is the need of the time to present the comprehensive information on cannabis, as quoted in classical texts with probable research co-relation, so as to bring the drug again in to limelight. The present review aims to compile all the information about the use of cannabis as a activity potentiater so that it can be further practically utilized in pharmaceutics and clinics with legal permissions. A thorough review, from available 41 Rasagranthas (text related to Indian alchemy) and 26 classical texts was carried out to compile the information about formulations where Bhanga is used as process media. The review shows that; Bhanga has been used, as a pharmaceutical processing agent, in 157 formulations being indicated in 40 different disease conditions. Among them, in 154 formulations, it is used as Bhavana media and in 3 formulations as a Swedana media. The present observation could help the future researchers to explore the drug for therapeutic utilities.

The article aims to trace the evolution of medical geography, from its ancient foundations to the contemporary domain of health geography. The study constitutes a comprehensive review of scholarly literature and classical texts in medicine, geography and epidemiology, aiming to reconstruct the principal stages in the development of the discipline. Particular emphasis is placed on paradigm shifts in the conceptualisation of the relationship between geographic space and health – beginning with Hippocratic humoral theory, through the emergence of disease cartography in the 19th century, to the incorporation of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and Big Data analytics in the 21st century. Special attention is devoted to methodological transformations and the progressive broadening of the research agenda – from infectious diseases to considerations of well-being, health inequalities and mental health. The article highlights the significance of interdisciplinary approaches and the growing relevance of medical geography and health geography in the context of contemporary global challenges.

Classical sociological theory is usually viewed as an account of the changing world in the long 19th century. It theorizes the great transformation from the agrarian, feudal to the industrial, capitalist mode of production (Marx), from Gemeinschaft to Gesellschaft (Tonnies), from traditional to rational social action (Weber). Like the late medieval theory of transition from nomadic pastoralism to urbanization or civilization by Ibn Khaldun (d. 1406), all but one of these theories are structural, and consider social change without direct reference to conscious human intention and motivation. The one exception is Max Weber, who formulated his theory with reference to the (conscious) purpose and meaning of social action, and included consideration of the epochal social change set in motion by the transcendent vision and objectives of the world religions. In a provocatively revealing recent statement, Stephen Turner (2004) considers social theory an autonomous and self-sufficient academic field with its own internal conversation based on a series of commentaries on classical texts. The marriage of social theory and empirical sociology, which was to be consummated in an ever closer approximation to theoretical closure with the accumulation of empirical findings, is, in his view, the result of ‘the great instauration of 1945’. It lasted abnormally long because of the unprecedented expansion of universities and the academic market from 1945 to 1970. But with the retirement of the generation of social scientists produced in this period, ‘the mutual irrelevance of empirical sociology and social theory’ is increasingly evident. Turner (2004: 159) admits, however, that social theory ‘scrutinizes its concepts and considers the world in the light of the problems of applying its concepts in new settings’. My argument, by contrast, is that the lodestars – value-ideas – that guide such conceptual reinterpretation and theorizing also set the