Peter Fischer
Historische Soziologie hat in Deutschland keinen großen Stellenwert. Sie erscheint allenfalls als „arme Stiefschwester“ der Geschichtswissenschaft. Dies verwundert aus mindestens zwei Gründen: zum einen war die „Idee“ der Gründerväter der deutschen Soziologie bereits mit einem Konzept von historischer Soziologie verbunden, zum anderen erfährt die historische Soziologie in den USA seit gut zwanzig Jahren ein verstärktes Interesse. Der Aufsatz fragt nach der gegenwärtigen Bedeutung von historisch-generativer Soziologie und erkennt Gemeinsamkeiten in der Programmatik der deutschen Kultursoziologie und der neuen amerikanischen historischen Soziologie. Historische Soziologie wird daher als theoretischer und methodischer Schlüssel zur Erklärung geschichtlicher Prozesse verstanden, der gemeinsam von Kultursoziologie und historischer Soziologie angewandt werden kann.
A Theory of Socially Neutral Money 
Tero Auvinen
Despite money’s tremendous capacity for self-transformation, social sciences often continue to seek monocausal explanations for the nature of money. Adopting a variant of Goodhart’s law for money, this paper argues that the sociology of money should aim to develop a benchmark of socially neutral money against which the social footprint of actual monetary systems can be judged. Such socially neutral money would maximize the freedom of social agents to define, contextualize and tailor monetary relationships with the desired mixtures of meaning with minimum structural interference from established monetary social hierarchies. It is argued that the distribution of the monetary media rather than the dominant view on the nature of money determines the limits of social agency.
Did the Treaty of Lisbon Need a European Version of the Federalist Papers? 
Timothy S. Boylan
The Treaty of Lisbon, successor to the failed Treaty Establishing a Constitution for Europe (TCE), is now before the Member States of the European Union for ratification. In the aftermath of the Irish “no” vote in June of 2008, the European Union has been thrown into a new period of uncertainty and turmoil. While critics complain that the Lisbon Treaty retains more than 90% of the TCE’s content, there are clear and significant differences between the two documents. Changes have been made to the new text, which enhance democratic accountability at both the institutional and federal levels. However, these shifts to greater substantive democracy have not been matched with a promotion of procedural democracy via referenda. Proponents of the Treaty of Lisbon hope it can quietly move through the ratification process without public attention, debate, or involvement. However, the Treaty of Lisbon remains vulnerable to the same misperceptions and criticisms that scuttled the TCE. This paper analyzes these factors, and suggests that an effort be made to promote and explain the new treaty: A European version of the Federalist Papers that helped ratify the American Constitution.
Brand New and Revisited
Kultur der Kontrolle der Kontrollkulturen? 
Patrick Präg