 Subjects -> SOCIOLOGY (Total: 553 journals)
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- Should Sociology be Normative'
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Abstract: Abstract This article critically examines recent arguments by Andrew Abbott, Jensen Sass, and Tariq Modood proposing a normative sociology, one that not only adopts an evaluative stance towards the phenomena it investigates, but also makes explicit and seeks to justify the values on which its evaluations rely. I argue that, while these proposals are to be welcomed in some respects, they fail to address two key issues: On what reasonable basis can it be assumed that there are single correct answers to value questions'; and What distinctive intellectual authority can sociologists claim to be able to discover those answers' I also point out that these recent advocates for a normative sociology pay insufficient attention to the opposing position, a commitment to ‘value-neutrality’, as proposed most notably by Max Weber. I argue that, while this is frequently ignored or dismissed out of hand, it represents a much more coherent and cogent view, even if its advocates have rarely fully lived up to its demands.
PubDate: 2023-11-20
- Writing, Reading, and Interpreting a Rorschach Text
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Abstract: Abstract A rejoinder to the papers on A Joyfully Serious Man. The Life of Robert Bellah (AJSM) written by Andrew Abbott, Federico Brandmayr, Charles Camic, Andrea Cossu, Jean-Louis Fabiani, Laura Ford, Harlan Stelmach, and Rhys Williams. Conceived as an exercise in self-reflection, the paper addresses five wide areas: specific critiques of AJSM; an assessment of the relationship between AJSM and the research project whence it came; the connections between author and critics; a clarification of some fact regarding the main character of AJSM, that is, Robert Bellah; and the analysis of particular experiences which the author, Bellah, and his critics share as sociologists.
PubDate: 2023-11-20
- Sociocultural Context, Reference Scholars and Contradictions in the Origin
and Development of Sociology in Italy-
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Abstract: Abstract The beginnings of sociology in Italy correspond more or less to those of the birth of sociology as an autonomous science in France by Durkheim (considered the founding father of the discipline except for the term that, as is well known, was coined by Comte). Its origins, therefore, can be traced back to the second half of the 19th century and its development substantially follows the socio-political development of Italy, which can be substantially divided into three historical phases (the Savoy monarchy between 1861 and 1922; the authoritarian fascist regime with totalitarian characteristics between 1922 and 1943, and the period of the democratic republic from 1946 onwards can be considered as the “rebirth” not only of Italy but also of sociology). This article aims to outline these phases through an in-depth examination of some of the Italian sociologists who, in the different phases (up to our contemporary times), have had greater relevance and influence, even outside the Italian context.
PubDate: 2023-11-18
- Correction to: Transcending the Liberal Grammar of Critical Sociology: The
Theoretical Turn in Israeli Sociology-
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PubDate: 2023-11-17
- Sociological Aesthetics, or How to Make Sense of Symbolic Forms
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Abstract: Abstract This articles questions some of the basic assumptions of sociological aesthetics. Taking the “linguistic turn” with Susanne Langer, it assumes throughout that art is a social phenomenon that involves body, emotions and symbolism. To understand the experience of art today, it takes an articulation between phenomenology, hermeneutics and critical theory. The synthesis of Georg Simmel, Talcott Parsons and Theodor Adorno can only work if the social forms are explicitly brought into the cultural system and meanings and power are not evacuated.
PubDate: 2023-11-17
- Bortolini’s Bellah and Bellah’s Bortolini: A Reading of an
Ethical Biography-
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Abstract: Abstract An ethical biography entails assessing four major elements, the narrated author, the narrating author, the text and the reader. In each instance of engagement, fidelity to the truth of the other is essential. It is at these interpretive moments that ethics becomes an issue in terms of interpretative awareness, faithfulness and the impact on the interpreters. Is it inevitable in an ethical biography that personal transformations will occur' Using theoretical work on the genre of biography by Frédéric Regard, the author illustrates Regard’s theories by applying Bortolini’s A Joyfully Serious Man (AJSM). To accomplish this, he takes a personal approach. Personal in how he gives evidence of Bortolini’s journey with the writing of AJSM. Personal, in how he appreciates Bortolini’s ability to write about Bellah’s life as grist for Bellah’s theoretical work. Personal in how his reading of the biography affected him. The author seeks to portray biography as a complex scholarly art that advances ideas and the human project itself.
PubDate: 2023-11-16
- (Why) is the Sociology of Religion Marginalized' Results from a Survey
Experiment-
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Abstract: Abstract By several metrics, the sociology of religion subfield and its specialists are marginalized within academic sociology. Though various reasons for that marginalization have been ventured, systematic evidence is limited. This study used a 2022 survey experiment to assess how academic sociologists perceive the sociology of religion and its specialists and the potential biases influencing their evaluations. Sociology faculty and trainees (N = 536) were randomly assigned to evaluate one of six sociology subfields and their respective specialists. Sociology of religion was rated as the least mainstream, but was rated middle-of-the-pack in scientific rigor, need within sociology departments, and interest to undergraduates. Though sociologists of religion were rated comparably to specialists in other subfields on characteristics indicating intellectual rigor, they were more often characterized as “religious” and “conservative,” and participants who characterized religion specialists as such downgraded the subfield on nearly every metric. Additional analyses show lower ratings were not due to generalized negativity toward “me-search.” And secular sociologists were more likely than religiously affiliated ones to downgrade the religion subfield when its specialists were perceived as “conservative.”
PubDate: 2023-10-06
- Argumentative Delphi Surveys: Lessons for Sociological Research
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Abstract: Abstract This contribution explains new variants of Argumentative Delphi surveys that can also be used in sociological research, some examples and the learnings from and limits of argumentative surveys with feedback. Argumentative Delphi surveys are not new. As Christian Dayé explains in his book, the early expert surveys and especially the Delphi surveys used explanations and arguments for exchanging knowledge - but always without direct interation (Dayé, C. (2020). Experts, Social Scientistss and Techniques of Prognosis in cold war of America. Socio-Historical Studies of the Social and Human Sciences, palgrave McMilan, Switzerland:41, see also Cuhls, K. (1998). Technikvorausschau in Japan. Ein Rückblick auf 30 Jahre Delphi-Expertenbefragungen. Physica. [Technology Foresight in Japan]). The very first approaches of Delphi surveys did not only make use of expert knowledge in judging issues under uncertainty or were trying to make accurate predictions with statistical analysis, but there were also tests in groups of students. In some of them, the groups did not only choose and tick boxes, but gave reasons or comments for their judgments. Modern Argumentative Delphi surveys do ask for comments AND use a variety of open questions for adding information to the statistical findings. This way of performing a Delphi survey gets more and more ground and can be analysed in a fast way by new means of text mining and Delphi software tools. But they have their limits - especially as they are very demanding for the participants and the analysts. If many people participate, many arguments are given, and they can quickly go beyond the limits of the participants‘ understanding and their time availability. Some lessons learned from recent Delphi projects are reported. This is closing the cycle to Dayé’s description of expert knowledge inclusion in policy-making - a way of integration of expert opinion without direct interaction.
PubDate: 2023-09-27
- Editor’s Introduction: Perspectives on Bortolini’s Bellah
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PubDate: 2023-09-19
- Correction to: C. Wright Mills in Copenhagen: Collaboration, Politics, and
the Making of 'The Sociological Imagination-
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PubDate: 2023-09-11
- An Invitation to the Sociology of Religion: Important Questions Answered
by Scholars in the Field-
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Abstract: Abstract What are the most important questions in the sociology of religion' And how would scholars answer them' This article explores what people consider the most important questions in the field. Sociologists tend to study what we can readily answer with data, but the questions that elicit the most interest turn out to be quite different. They are bigger, broader, and harder to answer empirically. A crowd-sourced poll identified what people consider the most important questions in the sociology of religion, which were then posed to scholars in the field. They provided nuanced and complex answers revealing a diversity of approaches involved in the study of religion. This unorthodox article invites the reader to listen in on dynamic conversations that bring scholars into dialogue with one another, revealing points of consensus, ongoing debate, areas where there are more questions than answers, and directions for future work.
PubDate: 2023-09-01
- Sociology of the Digital Space, Social Research and Emotions
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Abstract: Abstract The objective of this essay is to reflect, from sociology, upon the digital world, emotions and the ways of building knowledge about these elements. Supported by the proposal in the book Emotions in a Digital World. Social Research 4.0, emotions, as ways of interpreting and transforming the world, organized and shaped in each context, constitute an object of study that brings us closer to the modes of social structuring. In turn, these forms of structuring -crossed today by information and communication technologies- organize new ways of feeling. The text is an opportunity to reflect on central issues of the sociological profession, such as the ways of observing, recording, and analyzing the manners in which we interact; how to see the transformation processes we are immersed in and how to approach them, with what strategies and techniques, paying particular attention to their fields of deployment. Given the above, this essay recovers some ways of conceptualizing emotions and society 4.0, to restore the importance of reflecting on the spaces of inquiry, as well as different qualitative techniques developed in its approach to the virtual digital world.
PubDate: 2023-08-22
DOI: 10.1007/s12108-023-09593-0
- Old and New Questions for Sociology: The Global Importance of the
Sociology of Emotions-
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Abstract: Abstract This essay presents the sociology of emotions as a device to search for answers to the questions that the post-pandemic reality triggers. To achieve this goal, the essay takes the central idea of the book “The emerald handbook of the Sociology of Emotions for a post-pandemic World. Imagined Emotions and emotional futures”. This work displays a diversity of ideas that cover the current situation of emotions in relation to the world of the pandemic. Taking their contributions, and from the question about the action of the subjects, we elaborate a proposal that allows us to configure a vision about the experience/bodies/emotions today, based on the past, but thinking about future possibilities. The present text is an opportunity to call attention to the importance of the sociology of emotions in the elaboration of questions that allow us to build a social analysis in a new world, so complex and diverse that it is impossible to apprehend it in a unique way. Thus, seeing the effects of the pandemic, but from a sociology of emotions perspective, allows us to observe both individual bodies and the social processes that shape emotions based on their ties and the various locations they constitute.
PubDate: 2023-08-07
DOI: 10.1007/s12108-023-09592-1
- Predictive Knowledge Infrastructures and Future-related Expertise Before
the Cold War-
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Abstract: Abstract Experts, Social Scientists, and Techniques of Prognosis in Cold War America convincingly demonstrates the importance of RAND’s Delphi method and political gaming as techniques of prognosis that were central to the construction of Cold War futures expertise. The book begins from the premise that although expertise in various forms of prognosis, prediction, and forecasting predated the creation of RAND, different modes of interaction among experts at RAND defined a new form of future-oriented expertise during the Cold War. This visual essay will use this premise as an entry point into other, earlier historical examples of interaction, albeit in different forms, that also produced expert knowledge about the future: 1.) nineteenth-century meteorological knowledge infrastructures and what Aitor Anduaga has described as “epistemic networks,” 2.) agricultural statistics and cooperative bureaucracy, and 3.) early twentieth-century business forecasting and what Seth Rockman has identified as the “paper technologies of capitalism.” This visual essay examines three images that illuminate earlier historical examples of expert interaction in predictive knowledge infrastructures in the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century United States. The essay employs historian Paul Edwards’s definition of knowledge infrastructures as “robust networks of people, artifacts, and institutions that generate, share, and maintain specific knowledge about the human and natural worlds.” An infrastructural framework, as Edwards observes, shifts away from “thinking about knowledge as pure facts, theories, and ideas” and instead “views knowledge as an enduring, widely shared sociotechnical system.” The visual essay format makes visible the material components of a knowledge infrastructure as well as its symbolic meanings, and it also reminds us to ask what is not pictured and why. This essay focuses on how these knowledge infrastructures have combined data, information, judgment, and opinion to produce expert knowledge about the future, and it asks us to consider how future-oriented expertise has emerged historically and who counts as an expert. It will explore three main questions: How has interaction among experts historically taken place at a distance and in person' How did knowledge infrastructures, bureaucracies, and paperwork shape the production of expert knowledge about the future before the Cold War' How has expert foreknowledge historically relied on various forms of “futurework” as labor'
PubDate: 2023-08-04
DOI: 10.1007/s12108-023-09582-3
- Consensus vs. Situated Constitutive Practices: Mapping Developments in the
Role of the Expert at RAND After WWII onto Key Issues in Sociology-
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PubDate: 2023-07-27
DOI: 10.1007/s12108-023-09590-3
- C. Wright Mills in Copenhagen: Collaboration, Politics, and the Making of
'The Sociological Imagination-
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Abstract: Abstract American sociologist C. Wright Mills is one of the most important and controversial sociologists of the post-war period. Of Mills’ works, one book stands out: The Sociological Imagination, published by Oxford University Press in 1959. Little known is that Mills drafted his book during a 12-month Fulbright visit to University of Copenhagen 1956-1957. In the rich biographical literature on Mills this is mentioned only in the passing, or not at all. Based on hitherto unused archival material, this paper offers the first detailed account of his Copenhagen-visit during the Cold War. Bringing together this bulk of new historical traces sheds new light on the year Mills himself referred to as a “pivotal moment.” These 12 months in Copenhagen, amid the Cold War, was formative for Mills in two ways: First, Copenhagen was an entrepot to European center-left thinking both east and west of the Iron Curtain. Second, the stay in Copenhagen offered a ‘space of selfhood’, allowing Mills a necessary respite to develop his critical thinking. He did so in close cooperation with like-minded colleagues in Copenhagen. In the mid-1950s, the discipline was in the making in Denmark, and the visit of a prominent US scholar like Mills offered opportunities for Danish sociologist to further the discipline – and their standing within the discipline.
PubDate: 2023-07-25
DOI: 10.1007/s12108-023-09585-0
- How I Became an Expert—and Came to Understand Its Limits
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Abstract: Abstract For more than 35 years, I have given media interviews about my research on Halloween sadism (contaminated treats distributed to trick-or-treaters). I have been unable to locate any evidence that any child has been killed or seriously injured from a treat received during trick or treating. I believe mine is the only systematic research on this topic, and the media treat me as an expert. At the same time, I have discovered the limits of expertise: many people doubt my findings or continue to worry about Halloween sadism. This example offers larger lesson, particularly for those interested in the social construction of social problems. Expertise is a social status localized in particular social worlds, Within those worlds, experts’ constructions are regarded as having some value, but they never obliterate opponents that refuse to ratify the experts’ judgements. Challenges to expertise inevitably occur across time and space.
PubDate: 2023-07-22
DOI: 10.1007/s12108-023-09591-2
- Creating Sociological Knowledge and the Next Generation of Sociological
Thinkers in Faculty-Directed Research with Undergraduate Research
Assistants-
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Abstract: Abstract Undergraduate research in sociology departments provides opportunities for student engagement and faculty development. Although undergraduate research in the natural and physical sciences and graduate mentoring have been extensively studied, there are few systematic studies of the process of extracurricular undergraduate research in sociology from the perspective of both faculty and students. We carried out semi-structured qualitative interviews with 23 faculty and undergraduate research assistants (RAs). Our results outline the dynamics of faculty-directed research collaborations in sociology departments. We first detail the tasks regularly performed by undergraduate RAs and then describe the development of RA-faculty partnerships, including hiring and training. Faculty-RA teams work together on faculty-directed research through mechanisms of accountability, regular meetings, and communication. Finally, we describe how relationships transform and partnerships end. We find that faculty generally have one of two outlooks on undergraduate research: they either seek RAs as facilitators of their research or they aim to develop and mentor junior colleagues. We discuss the implications of these outlooks for student learning, professionalization, and holistic development.
PubDate: 2023-07-21
DOI: 10.1007/s12108-023-09589-w
- How to Become Intimate with a Book You Did Not Write
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Abstract: Abstract While there is ample recognition that intellectual work is - to some degree - relational and cooperative, most narratives of production focus on how intellectual supporters aid the author and the crafting of a work. In this contribution, I adopt a perspective centered on intellectual work as “dialogue and draft” among triads - the author, the work in progress, and the supporter - with a particular attention to the relationship that intellectual supporters develop with the work and the author. Through an archival analysis of personal correspondence that covers the years 2005–2021, drafts, and interventions, I tell a story of A Joyfully Serious Man as an ongoing project that shifted shape at critical junctures and in which not only the object and the author, but also the supporter were transformed. In the concluding remarks, I offer some potential questions for advancing the historical and sociological study of how intellectual self-concepts change in the context of asymmetric, yet very intimate, relations with work carried out by others.
PubDate: 2023-07-08
DOI: 10.1007/s12108-023-09587-y
- Sociological Film: A Medium to Promote Sociological Imagination
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Abstract: Abstract This paper examines the idea of sociological film that encourages sociological imagination, which refers to the capability to recognize the intersection of biography and history. The paper identifies six key dimensions of sociological film through a thematic analysis of different classic approaches to sociological imagination: sociological life, structure-actors relationship, critical perspective, academic awareness, fluidity of meaning, and promotion of sociological imagination. This paper provides concrete examples to demonstrate the distinctive features of sociological film and how it relates to, and differs from, other films that address social issues, including documentary films. The paper argues that sociological film is essential in fostering sociological imagination by offering a unique lens for analyzing and understanding social phenomena. Sociological film has the potential to inspire social change by increasing awareness about significant social issues and promoting critical thinking and reflection. The paper concludes by emphasizing the significance of collaboration between sociologists and filmmakers in advancing sociological imagination through the medium of sociological films. It highlights the importance of actively engaging with the public in visual research methods.
PubDate: 2023-07-06
DOI: 10.1007/s12108-023-09586-z
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