Contents -- Preface -- SECTION ONE: THE MORAL FABRIC OF CONTEMPORARY SOCIETIES: TWO PERSPECTIVES -- Morality in Contemporary Society -- The Moral Fabric in Contemporary Societies: Some Remarks on the Paradigm Shift in Sociological Theory -- SECTION TWO: TRUST IN CONTEMPORARY SOCIETIES -- Trust: A Cultural Resource -- Some Observations on Problems of Trust in Modern Societies: Construction of Trust, Collective Identity, and the Fragility and Continuity of Democratic Regimes -- SECTION THREE: PROMISES AND DISAPPOINTMENTS: EASTERN EUROPE AFTER COMMUNISM SEEN FROM WITHOUT AND WITHIN -- Parables of Hope and Disappointment -- Everyday Democracy in the Czech Republic: Disappointments or New Morals in a Time of Neo-Normalization -- The Genealogical Search Initiative and Its Soviet Legacy -- SECTION FOUR: DIVIDED WORLD-FACES OF INEQUALITIES -- Dimensions and Processes of Global Inequalities -- Postsocialist Transformations and Various Faces of Inequalities in the Divided World -- SECTION FIVE: COPING WITH CORRUPTION -- Is a Sociology of Corruption Possible? -- The Paths of Italian Corruption -- Trust-Mistrust in European Democracies -- SECTION SIX: THE MORAL SENSE OF MODERNIZATION -- The Moral Dimensions and Tensions of Modernity -- The Cultural Constitution of Modernity -- Modernity, Tradition and the Shi'ite Reformation in Contemporary Iran -- Literature and the Moral Imagination of Modernity -- SECTION SEVEN: TERROR, GENOCIDE, AND VIOLENCE -- The De-Civilizing Process -- "Women, Children, Older People": Genocide, Warfare, and the Functional Differentiation of Society -- Society as a "Morality-Silencing" Force: Primo Levi, Existential Power, and the Concentration Camp -- Answers to Atrocities -- AFTERWORD -- The Moral Fabric: Diverse Textures in the Postmodern World -- List of Editors and Contributors.