Ralf Dahrendorf is dead. He died last week at the age of 80. Why telling about? He was one of the first sociologists I read when I started with sociology. And he tried to answer the foregoing question by using power. The (only) book by him I read was "Homo Sociologicus" which is about a hundred pages long and in its 16th(?) edition since the mid 60s. In there he develops on the concept of social role but in a normative context. Why people act as they do and use three levels of expectational norms directed to them: can, should, must. Each of these has different courses of action and sanctions attached.
Hm, I'm not entirely sure where this post is really going or what I want to say at all. It's just that the news of his death made me a little upset. I'm not even sure why, maybe it's because it was one of those books you will never forget, the books that give you a certain spin. I remember going on to Goffman afterwards. And then seeing the "house", also conceptualised by Dahrendorf. He was Marxist but sought to find another mode of class distinctions. So, instead of poverty he used power and today German academics of social structure and inequality use "layers"/milieu instead of pure class. And then Dahrendorf is technically the same generation as Habermas or Luhmann, even though all three experienced it differently. Within a very short time of a year, people will have quite varying life courses; meaning, all three were 15-17 in the last year of WWII and thus may have or may not have served. Anyhow, I will certainly read the little book again and venture on to some of his other books.

I don't have anything to say about jacko except that it was probably the best for him; he was completely fucked up and maybe it was the best for him to live on as a "mythos/legend/genius/ambivalent character/fallen celebrity/whacko/.../.../" than as a wreck.

Just bubbling on... :D