 Subjects -> SOCIOLOGY (Total: 553 journals)
| A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z | | The end of the list has been reached or no journals were found for your choice. |
|
|
- Sociological Faith: Reflections on the Life and Legacy of Robert
Bellah-
Free pre-print version: Loading...
Rate this result:
What is this?
Please help us test our new pre-print finding feature by giving the pre-print link a rating.
A 5 star rating indicates the linked pre-print has the exact same content as the published article.
Abstract: In Matteo Bortolini’s elegant and thoughtfully-written biographical account of Robert Bellah, we are given the opportunity to study an arc of development in U.S. sociological theory over the course of the 20th Century, in contact with several of sociology’s most influential shapers. This means that, to grapple with Bellah’s life, as presented by Bortolini, is to grapple with the ways that a broad range of social movements in American history, perhaps most powerfully the 1960’s “counter-culture,” have shaped contemporary American sociological theory and cultural life, particularly in the area of religion, but also in the area of politics. It is difficult, perhaps impossible, to remain neutral about such developments, and therefore about the character of Bellah himself, as Bortolini presents him. And yet Bortolini manages to achieve an admirable even-handedness in his treatment of Bellah, albeit through a rhetorical strategy that carries risks, as this essay illustrates. In this essay, I accept Bortolini’s welcome and important invitation to grapple with Robert Bellah’s life and legacy. Unlike Bortolini, I am unable to be even-handed, but I do strive to be fair. While I acknowledge the ways in which Bellah enriched sociological theories of culture, my overall assessment of Bellah’s legacy is very negative. In Robert Bellah’s religiously-tinged politicization of sociology, and in his relentlessly hostile attacks on political and religious positions with which he disagreed, I see prescriptions for the terribly intensified culture wars of today.
PubDate: 2023-05-27
- An Invitation to the Sociology of Religion: Important Questions Answered
by Scholars in the Field-
Free pre-print version: Loading...
Rate this result:
What is this?
Please help us test our new pre-print finding feature by giving the pre-print link a rating.
A 5 star rating indicates the linked pre-print has the exact same content as the published article.
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: 2023-05-26
- Bellah, American Civil Religion, and the Dynamics of Public Meanings
-
Free pre-print version: Loading...
Rate this result:
What is this?
Please help us test our new pre-print finding feature by giving the pre-print link a rating.
A 5 star rating indicates the linked pre-print has the exact same content as the published article.
Abstract: Bellah's 'Civil Religion in America' (1967) caught a moment in the American academy. It quickly became a much debated concept and although interest in the concept has periodically waxed and waned, the explication and contention continue fifty years later. It was both a great success and an albatross for Bellah himself, as the debates about the concept frustrated him to the point where he stopped using the phrase. In his consideration of Bellah’s work, including civil religion, Bortolini’s book provides a useful case for thinking about the dynamics of authorial intention, scholarly debates, and public interpretations.
PubDate: 2023-05-20
- Academic Ambition
-
Free pre-print version: Loading...
Rate this result:
What is this?
Please help us test our new pre-print finding feature by giving the pre-print link a rating.
A 5 star rating indicates the linked pre-print has the exact same content as the published article.
Abstract: This essay uses the life of Robert Bellah to pose questions about the unfolding of ambition in academic settings with explicit, quasi-universalistic ranking. A crucial moment in all careers is the moment when one recognizes that there are many more talented than oneself. This moment is likely to come earlier for those in elite tracks, which enables such people to prepare various defensive strategies, which can prove advantageous at later and possibly more significant competitions.
PubDate: 2023-05-18
- Editor’s Introduction: Intellectual Property, Disciplinary History,
and Love-
Free pre-print version: Loading...
Rate this result:
What is this?
Please help us test our new pre-print finding feature by giving the pre-print link a rating.
A 5 star rating indicates the linked pre-print has the exact same content as the published article.
PubDate: 2023-05-03
- A Stranger in His Own Field' Bellah’s Radical Critique of
Science-
Free pre-print version: Loading...
Rate this result:
What is this?
Please help us test our new pre-print finding feature by giving the pre-print link a rating.
A 5 star rating indicates the linked pre-print has the exact same content as the published article.
Abstract: Over the sixty years of his career, Robert Bellah has occupied an enigmatic position in the field of American sociology. Despite his triumphant academic career and his standing as a prominent advocate of sociology in the public sphere, he felt increasingly dissatisfied with the direction of sociology and believed he was underrecognized and misinterpreted by many of his peers. Drawing on Matteo Bortolini’s A Joyfully Serious Man, this article reviews various biographical circumstances that may account for Bellah’s ambiguous status as a sociologist. It then argues that the most significant source of tension with the sociological profession was Bellah’s aversion to science as manifested in many of his writings, where he engaged in a relentless critique of positivism and scientism. This negative side of Bellah’s epistemology, i.e. what he defined as bad or dangerous knowledge, is often overlooked both by Bortolini in his book and by commentators who try to derive a usable epistemology from Bellah’s oeuvre.
PubDate: 2023-05-03
- Moral Panic Studies, Normative Reductionism, and the Problem of
Paradigmatic Rigidity-
Free pre-print version: Loading...
Rate this result:
What is this?
Please help us test our new pre-print finding feature by giving the pre-print link a rating.
A 5 star rating indicates the linked pre-print has the exact same content as the published article.
Abstract: Moral panic studies embodies a stubborn paradox. On the one hand, the field is characterized by a steady accumulation of conventional paradigmatic research. The central limitation of paradigmatic research is that it hinges on reductively negative normative judgements to denounce ostensibly regressive moral panics. On the other hand, a growing number of revisionists is laying the groundwork for a paradigm shift. They are doing so by deconstructing and reconstructing the conventional paradigm’s normative orientation. Although revisionists propose ways to move beyond naïve forms of normative reductivism in the conventional paradigm, they have been unable to completely reconcile the normative tensions running through moral panic studies. To organize the normative aspects of moral panic studies in a way that lessens the distance between the two perspectives, this article sketches the parameters for an overtly normative framework. Owing to the fact that moral panic studies is, as it has always been, a normative field of inquiry, an explicit but reflexive two-pronged normative framework is proposed to help moral panic studies respond to overlapping charges of normative reductionism, paradigmatic rigidity, and, ultimately, analytical irrelevance.
PubDate: 2023-04-27
- For a new Sociology of Social love
-
Free pre-print version: Loading...
Rate this result:
What is this?
Please help us test our new pre-print finding feature by giving the pre-print link a rating.
A 5 star rating indicates the linked pre-print has the exact same content as the published article.
Abstract: Love is a theme at the centre of all our lives, including those of sociologists and social scientists. It has been widely addressed and described in literature and poetry, extensively depicted in the pictorial arts, sung about in music. Even philosophy, from its very beginnings, has devoted beautiful and intense pages to this theme. For reasons difficult to understand, the founding fathers of our discipline have been reluctant to enter the analytical realm of love. They touched this theme, but only marginally. It is only relatively recently that more insightful and focused discussions have come from some key figures of contemporary sociology in works by Niklas Luhmann, Anthony Giddens, Ulrich Beck and Elisabeth Beck-Gernsheim, Zygmunt Bauman and, more recently, Eva Illouz that demonstrate the profoundly social nature of our most intimate feelings and convey how the transformation of love and intimacy is related to wider social changes. In this sense, this collection edited by Silvia Cataldi and Gennaro Iorio aims to fill a major gap, while fuelling the debate on social love and its implications as a transformative force in an era characterised by multiple crises. By bringing together scholars from across several countries, not only it collates the fruit of years of research, but it also launches new developments in the debate on social love and set a new research agenda.
PubDate: 2023-03-29
- Towards a Sociology of Vestiges
-
Free pre-print version: Loading...
Rate this result:
What is this?
Please help us test our new pre-print finding feature by giving the pre-print link a rating.
A 5 star rating indicates the linked pre-print has the exact same content as the published article.
Abstract: This essay has the purpose of underlying how an analytic approach about traces, marks and footprints is an important contribution to sociology at digital era. To achieve this goal, the essay takes the central idea of the book “What People Leave Behind Marks, Traces, Footprints and their Relevance to Knowledge Society”, like sources to show a first presentation of a sociology of vestiges to elaborate one vision of experience in the sociology of emotions endeavours. We have followed the ideas of this book as an open door to understand how absences, symptoms and messages are the possibility of constitution a sociology of vestige in a digital world. The main argumentative structure is (a) we briefly present the place of trace on social analysis, (b) the epistemic power of etymology of the terms is synthesized, (c) we show the use of traces in classical social research, (d) vestiges as absences, symptoms and messages are schematized, and finally a door towards a sociology of experience through vestiges is open. This essay is an opportunity to draw attention to the importance of elaborating an analysis of the vestiges to understand the human experience in the framework of a sociology on digital emotions.
PubDate: 2023-03-22
DOI: 10.1007/s12108-023-09571-6
- The Rise and Decline of Prognostics. Futures Studies, Ideology and the
Sociology of Knowledge in the German Democratic Republic-
Free pre-print version: Loading...
Rate this result:
What is this?
Please help us test our new pre-print finding feature by giving the pre-print link a rating.
A 5 star rating indicates the linked pre-print has the exact same content as the published article.
Abstract: From the beginning, a science-based approach to questions of the future and – more precisely – thinking in alternative futures was in latent conflict with the official ideology of the German Democratic Republic, according to which East German society (and indeed, the whole humankind) was heading towards a communist future. During the 1960s, however, prognostics – the socialist type of futures studies – fitted well into the ambition of political leaders to foster economic development by promoting scientific-technological progress and adopting new management systems of the national economy. Prognostics was to a certain extent institutionalized and obtained in parts a cybernetic underpinning, but ideological constraints on knowledge never vanished. Moreover, prognostics had to distinguish itself clearly from “late-capitalist” futurology. With the reorientation of politics after Walter Ulbricht lost power, prognostics was cut back as was its cybernetic underpinning. As the official belief in the communist future eroded during the 1980s, there was no longer any room for governmental foresight. Futures thinking was taken up by the dissident movement.
PubDate: 2023-03-20
DOI: 10.1007/s12108-023-09570-7
- Hope and Paradox in Contemporary Chinese Society: A Moment for Cultural
Transformation'-
Free pre-print version: Loading...
Rate this result:
What is this?
Please help us test our new pre-print finding feature by giving the pre-print link a rating.
A 5 star rating indicates the linked pre-print has the exact same content as the published article.
Abstract: China in the midst of great changes has both changed and remained unchanged. Chinese society is full of hope but also faces many challenges. In particular, there is a paradox about the hope of the Chinese people. On the one hand, most of them are confident about the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation, on the other hand, in the face of their own personal future, they are in a gloomy mood. How to make sense of this situation' This article carries on the analysis from five aspects. First of all, it reveals the objective context for the formation of hope by showing the structural changes of Chinese society since the reform and opening up. Secondly, it discusses the evolution of Chinese people’s spiritual world around individualism and consumerism, which is related to the subjective schema of hope. Third, the Chinese Dream is viewed in terms of the supply of social meaning and the construction of a community of hope. Fourth, it analyzes the mental order from the moral deficiency and structural tension in Chinese society. Finally, it examines the situations and hopes of the major social classes in the platform economy. Chinese culture is not bothered by paradoxes, but is used to living with them and looking for opportunities to break through them. Culturally speaking, China’s greatest hope lies in its spirit to strive for self-improvement unremittingly through intergenerational dynamics.
PubDate: 2023-03-14
DOI: 10.1007/s12108-023-09568-1
- A ‘Yankee Savage in Radical Clothing’: The Contribution of Latin
American Intellectuals to Irving Horowitz’s Critical Sociology-
Free pre-print version: Loading...
Rate this result:
What is this?
Please help us test our new pre-print finding feature by giving the pre-print link a rating.
A 5 star rating indicates the linked pre-print has the exact same content as the published article.
Abstract: This article discusses the circulation of knowledge in sociology through a case study based on the transnational exchanges between North-American sociologist Irving L. Horowitz and Latin American sociologists and intellectuals in the sixties. We explore his letters with three figures who played pivotal roles in the institutionalization of sociology in Latin America: Gino Germani, an Italian born sociologist who became a pioneer figure for establishing scientific sociology in Argentina; the Mexican sociologist Pablo González Casanova, who performed a similar role in his country; and Arnaldo Orfila Reynal, a prestigious editor in the region, who headed two of the most powerful publishing houses in the Latin American market for the social sciences and humanities in the 1960s and 1970s - Fondo de Cultura Económica (FCE) and Siglo XXI. We argue that while these exchanges happened under unequal conditions produced by the structural inequalities of the global system of knowledge production that emerged after World War II, the works of Latin American intellectuals were relevant for Horowitz’s project of critical sociology for two main reasons: they provided intellectual sources for radical theorization on development and modernization, and they represented strategic assets for Horowitz present himself as a mediator between Third World problems and North-American audiences.
PubDate: 2023-03-10
DOI: 10.1007/s12108-023-09565-4
- The Power of Secret Knowledge: The RAND Corporation, Ignorance Studies and
Sociology-
Free pre-print version: Loading...
Rate this result:
What is this?
Please help us test our new pre-print finding feature by giving the pre-print link a rating.
A 5 star rating indicates the linked pre-print has the exact same content as the published article.
Abstract: The following contribution is concerned with the relation of Dayé’s work on the RAND Corporation during the Cold War and the field of ignorance studies. In doing so, I aim to emphasise the interconnection of three central themes that pervade Dayé’s work: secrecy, ignorance, and power. In an era of Cold War insecurity, marked by strategic attempts by both sides to obscure their own capabilities, a largely secretive organization emerged as a reliable source of knowledge, helping to guide decision-making in uncertain times and to generate policy recommendations. This not only raises significant questions about the power of certain groups or individuals to define what counts as policy-guiding knowledge, it also points to a form of ignorance that is highly productive. It not only affords the creation of new knowledge practices, but it becomes a force in itself that mobilizes the creation of further ignorance. While these connections are implicit in Dayé’s work, this study seeks to bring them to the forefront and to explore them in dialogue with classical sociological literature and in the context of seminal contributions to the field of ignorance studies. In order to do so, I will start with a brief elaboration on the secrecy that surrounded the work conducted at the RAND corporation, alongside a brief discussion of the notion of secrecy and elite power in the canon of classical literature in sociology, to then introduce the field of ignorance studies. From this angle, I will explore how a particular form of ignorance lies at the core of the workings at RAND and how ignorance studies might help to better understand the developing influence and rule of experts.
PubDate: 2023-03-08
DOI: 10.1007/s12108-023-09567-2
- American Sociology in A “De-Civilizing” Moment: The End of
“Normalcy”'-
Free pre-print version: Loading...
Rate this result:
What is this?
Please help us test our new pre-print finding feature by giving the pre-print link a rating.
A 5 star rating indicates the linked pre-print has the exact same content as the published article.
Abstract: This book examines changes in the “content and status of sociology” in the United States in the present and recent past. The author understands the present as an era in which relatively organized capitalism has “given way to the disorganization, “de-civilizing,” and “wilding” of post-modern post-normalcy. Sociology in the previous period was oriented toward reinforcing the sense of normalcy both epistemologically and substantively. A “normal science” of repetition, teleological modernization, and value-free science resonated with the experience of “social normalcy.” In the more recent period, crises have proliferated throughout social space, with implications for sociology, undoing its metaphysical foundations and throwing into question all the disciplinary divisions upon which normal science had been organized. In response, sociology has seen the emergence of two new variants: a hyper-normalized sociology that doubles down on “statistical prowess” and “the application of quantitative techniques to novel domains”; and a post-normal sociology that rejects positivism and value-freedom and that is aligned with particular social movements and identities. This post-normal sociology, Thorpe argues, complements rather than contradicts corporate neoliberalism and works together with hyper-normal sociology in marginalizing critical sociology. In response, I argue that Thorpe mischaracterizes academic freedom and understates its importance, underestimates the heterogeneity within US sociology today, and overstates the historical unprecedentedness of the present condition of “postnormal” polycrisis.
PubDate: 2023-03-04
DOI: 10.1007/s12108-023-09566-3
- Is a Sociology of Hope Possible' An Attempt to Recompose a Theoretical
Framework and a Research Programme-
Free pre-print version: Loading...
Rate this result:
What is this?
Please help us test our new pre-print finding feature by giving the pre-print link a rating.
A 5 star rating indicates the linked pre-print has the exact same content as the published article.
Abstract: The societal changes of the last century, especially in the aftermath of World War II, have led thinkers to imagine philosophical anthropology centred on the concept of hope. From very different perspectives, authors such as Ernst Bloch, Erich Fromm, and Hannah Arendt understood that hope is deeply connected with the condition and destiny of humanity. Various sociologists have developed concepts closely linked with hope: action, social change, utopia, revolution, emancipation, innovation, and trust. However, a coherent and systematic analysis is yet to emerge. Taking up the threads of this rich but fragmented reflection, this paper intends to outline the traits of a “sociology of hope” as a tool for critically interpreting today’s society and the processes of change crisscrossing it, starting from some crucial questions: Who are the actors and historical bearers of hope' What are the main socio-historical forms of hope' What social, political, and cultural conditions favour the emergence and strengthening of this disposition' What are the effects and consequences on personal and social life'
PubDate: 2023-03-01
- The Emotions of Hope: From Optimism to Sanguinity, from Pessimism to
Despair-
Free pre-print version: Loading...
Rate this result:
What is this?
Please help us test our new pre-print finding feature by giving the pre-print link a rating.
A 5 star rating indicates the linked pre-print has the exact same content as the published article.
Abstract: The concept of hope has become a topic of growing interest across many areas of sociological research and theory, motivated in part by the widening perception of an uncertain future given the deterioration of the social fabric of contemporary societies. Hope has been theorized to be primarily a cognitive assessment of a goal-intention, a state of mind based upon the prospect that some desired objective, outcome, or situation will be realized, and where obstacles, obstructions, and unforeseen circumstances, even fate, can determine success or failure. The cognitivist theory of hope as necessarily involving agency and planning is critically evaluated, and it is argued that hope, while not itself an emotion, is an affect-laden phenomenon. Hope theorists have not systematically investigated the specific emotions that might be involved in hope. To address this lacuna, a sociological theory of the emotions of hope is presented. This conceptualization utilizes basic-emotion theory and the author’s hierarchical classification of primary, secondary, and tertiary emotions. As whatever is hoped for is seen with increasing optimism or pessimism, opposite clusters of emotions––the tertiary-level emotions of sanguinity and despair––emerge at the valenced poles of hope, hopefulness and hopelessness. Sanguinity includes in its meaning the primary emotions acceptance, joy–happiness, and anticipation, and the secondary emotions optimism, fatalism and love. But if pessimism ensues from plans unravelling and obstacles becoming unsurmountable, a sense of hopelessness comes to include an opposite set of emotions, consisting of the primary emotions disgust, sadness, and surprise, and the secondary emotions loneliness, disappointment, and shock. Sanguinity is a positive resource, but can become pathological if based on an unrealistic sense of over-confidence. The phenomenological nature of despair is explored in terms of the collapse of one’s social resources and social involvements, the demise of one’s social world, and a disintegration of self-representation. The ambiguous nature of hope is discussed, as what is hoped for is apt to be abstract and ill-defined, so that the reality of a hope, realized, can differ from what was imagined, and can involve self-deception concerning the sociomoral reality of what has actually happened.
PubDate: 2023-03-01
- From Spatial Forms to Perception: Reassessing Georg Simmel’s Theory
of Space-
Free pre-print version: Loading...
Rate this result:
What is this?
Please help us test our new pre-print finding feature by giving the pre-print link a rating.
A 5 star rating indicates the linked pre-print has the exact same content as the published article.
Abstract: Among the founders of sociology, it was Georg Simmel who provided the most thorough analysis and theory of space. This paper aims to reconstruct Simmel’s spatial theory and his observations of spatial relations. The German sociologist engaged with spatiality in a threefold way. First, he tried to provide a systematic social theory of space; second, analyzing spatial relations was important for his diagnosis of modernity; third, he dealt with the subjective constitutions of space in his shorter, essayistic writings. This paper argues that the importance of the third strand for a sociological understanding of space has seldom been recognized in sociology. In addition, it also shows that despite the diversity in perspectives, there is an underlying coherence to Simmel’s theory of space. As a result, it becomes evident that Simmel was not only ground-breaking in conceptualizing space from a sociological point of view, but that his theory of space continues to be inspirational and relevant to this day for interpreting the entanglement of social and spatial relations.
PubDate: 2023-03-01
- Preregistration and Registered Reports in Sociology: Strengths,
Weaknesses, and Other Considerations-
Free pre-print version: Loading...
Rate this result:
What is this?
Please help us test our new pre-print finding feature by giving the pre-print link a rating.
A 5 star rating indicates the linked pre-print has the exact same content as the published article.
Abstract: Both within and outside of sociology, there are conversations about methods to reduce error and improve research quality—one such method is preregistration and its counterpart, registered reports. Preregistration is the process of detailing research questions, variables, analysis plans, etc. before conducting research. Registered reports take this one step further, with a paper being reviewed on the merit of these plans, not its findings. In this manuscript, I detail preregistration’s and registered reports’ strengths and weaknesses for improving the quality of sociological research. I conclude by considering the implications of a structural-level adoption of preregistration and registered reports. Importantly, I do not recommend that all sociologists use preregistration and registered reports for all studies. Rather, I discuss the potential benefits and genuine limitations of preregistration and registered reports for the individual sociologist and the discipline.
PubDate: 2023-02-11
DOI: 10.1007/s12108-023-09563-6
- The Future of Historical Consciousness in Sociology
-
Free pre-print version: Loading...
Rate this result:
What is this?
Please help us test our new pre-print finding feature by giving the pre-print link a rating.
A 5 star rating indicates the linked pre-print has the exact same content as the published article.
Abstract: This article examines the peripheral position and future of historical consciousness in sociology. While many sociologists consider meta-historical research to be purposeless and self-indulgent, I argue that preserving the historical imagination can improve sociology by fostering disciplinary coherence, avoiding intellectual regurgitation, and understanding the previous intellectual battles out of which current scientific discourse came. Despite these advantages, meta-historical knowledge is severely undervalued in contemporary sociology and, as I demonstrate by presenting data from both the American Sociological Association (ASA) and department websites, such knowledge will likely continue to dissipate more than it already has. Some scholars have taken note of the current lack of historical curiosity in sociology, though this observation has only been grounded in impression. For this reason, this article provides this impression with an empirical basis, and presents indicative support for the expectation that historical consciousness will further deteriorate in sociology’s future. This unpromising future for the history of sociology has received little attention in recent discourse, though this article gives reason for sociologists to deliberate over the potential consequences that would come along with the continued withering of historical consciousness. Disciplinary implications concerning the death of the historical imagination are discussed.
PubDate: 2023-01-13
DOI: 10.1007/s12108-022-09558-9
- Hope in the Sociological Thoughts of some Founding Fathers
-
Free pre-print version: Loading...
Rate this result:
What is this?
Please help us test our new pre-print finding feature by giving the pre-print link a rating.
A 5 star rating indicates the linked pre-print has the exact same content as the published article.
Abstract: Not all hope is equal. For the Christian religion, hope is a theological virtue, and refers to the expectation of future life, beyond death. With the transformation of European society in a secular sense and the rise of individualism between the 17th and 18th centuries, hope becomes a program of political and social transformation, aimed at this world. In my contribution I trace the emergence of the concept of hope in social thought and, then, in sociology. My analysis begins with the Philosophie sociale (Paris, 1793) by Moses Dobruska (1753–1794), a pioneering and largely overlooked text that founds a new vision of social science. After Dobruska, I then devote my attention to the great thinkers of the early nineteenth century, Henri de Saint-Simon (1760–1825) and Auguste Comte (1798–1857), and then I move on to the work of Émile Durkheim (1858–1917). It is a historical perspective that has been neglected until now, and that allows us to appreciate the construction of an idea of hope that frees itself from religious determinants and is oriented toward society and the individuals who live in it, and that anticipates the utopias and failures of the social ideologies of the 20th century.
PubDate: 2022-12-10
DOI: 10.1007/s12108-022-09555-y
|
Hybrid journal (It can contain Open Access articles)
