bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Ethnography
Authors: Craddock Emma
Published: December 2017

This entry explores the research method and perspective of ethnography. It begins by defining the concept, outlining the historical background of the method and its development over the past 100 years. It then considers the epistemological underpinnings of the method and various methodological debates surrounding the topic across disciplines, with a focus on anthropology and sociology. There is an emphasis throughout on the importance of reflexivity during the research process. The entry concludes with a discussion of some ethical considerations relating to ethnography and potential future developments of the method.
Explanation
Authors: Ylikoski Petri
Published: December 2017

An explanation is an answer to an explanation‐seeking
why
or
how
question. Explanation is interest‐relative in the sense that which
why
questions are asked depends on the interests and background knowledge of the audience, but what is the right answer to the posed question is an objective matter. Explanation provides information of relations of dependence. Typically, this dependence is causal, but there are also constitutive explanations. Intentional and functional explanations are subspecies of causal explanation.
Fabianism
Authors: Weiner Richard R.
Published: December 2017

Fabianism is a social democratic political ideology that is synonymous with gradualism. It has two characteristics: (1) avoiding direct confrontation with capital, while persistently wearing down capitalist hegemony; and (2) steering clear of doctrinal rigidity and dogmatic certainty concerning political ends. The term derives from the Fabian Society launched in London in 1884, after its namesake the Roman general Fabius known for his tactics of attrition. The Fabian Society joined with the Trade Union Congress in founding the British Labour Party in 1900, with which the society has remained affiliated ever since.
Fascism
Authors: Outhwaite William
Published: December 2017

Fascism can be narrowly defined as an early twentieth‐century extreme right political movement and regime form or, more broadly, as a continuing tendency and a threat to democratic societies.
Feyerabend,Paul
Authors: Fuller Steve
Published: December 2017

Paul Feyerabend (1924–1994) was an Austrian philosopher of science who spent most of his working career in the United Kingdom and United States, most notably at the philosophy department of the University of California, Berkeley, during the long period of student unrest of the 1960s and 1970s. Feyerabend's writing was wittier, often scathing, and typically more erudite than that of most of his peers, and due to his self‐description as a “methodological anarchist,” many radical causes took him to be a kindred spirit, often mistakenly, except in the case of the Green movement with which he openly associated in his later years.
Foucault,Michel
Authors: Garlitz Dustin
Published: December 2017

Michel Foucault (1926–1984) was a French social theorist, philosopher, and historian of ideas. His scholarship has been associated with the intellectual movements of structuralism and poststructuralism. Accordingly, his work has been appropriated by disciplines such as history, philosophy, sociology, as well as by interdisciplinary endeavors such as the human sciences and cultural studies.
Green Movements
Authors: Lawrence Jennifer Leigh
Published: December 2017

Green movements are particularly concerned with the ways in which social and political values are realized in the natural world. They seek to have political influence that will result in environmental protections and improvements. Many strands of environmentalism support beliefs that all life on Earth exists in an interconnected ecosystem. Acting as green movements, environmentalists assert that the very biosphere that enables life ought to be a foundational ethical concern in political life, economic decisions, and social policies. There are many “shades” of green along the continuum of contemporary environmentalism, most of which have an undercurrent of activism that pushes for a transformational politics that more equitably addresses issues of human rights, poverty, and democratization as these relate to the environment.
Grounded Theory
Authors: Moonesirust Elham
Published: December 2017

Grounded theory is a research methodology concerned with generating theories from systematically and purposefully collected and analyzed data. It was first introduced in 1967 by Glaser and Strauss in their book
The Discovery of Grounded Theory: Strategies for Qualitative Research
and became one of the major forces in establishing qualitative research as a field of inquiry in its own right. Grounded theory advocates theoretical sampling and simultaneous data collection and analysis. Through conducting the constant comparative method in all the stages of the research and the development of analytical categories, the researcher is able to formulate a theory grounded in the data.
Guilt and Shame Cultures
Authors: Mele Vincenzo
Published: December 2017

In anthropology a guilt culture, or guilt society, is a society in which the main mechanism of social control is based on the creation of an inner feeling of guilt associated with certain condemned behaviors, practices, or thoughts. A guilt culture is distinguished from a shame culture, in which the concepts of pride and honor are the most important emotions driving individuals' behaviors. Classical and contemporary sociologists moreover view the emotions of guilt and shame as central to the analysis of modern personality, social interaction, and the process of civilization.
Hermeneutics
Authors: Navarro María G.
Published: December 2017

The word
έρμηνϵία
(
ermeneia
) means expression and interpretation of a thought, from which the word “hermeneutics” comes. Some authors maintain that the name of the Greek god Hermes subsequently came from the same root. Hermes was the brother of Apollo and Athene and the son of Zeus and Maia, from which it could be deduced that he is paired by family lineage with images of light on the one hand and darkness and opacity on the other. Both metaphors remind us that the expression and interpretation of thoughts may follow either a rational or an irrational order. The fact that most authors agree that it was after the expansion of Greek culture that the problem of interpretation acquired such marked prominence gives us an idea of the connection between hermeneutics and otherness.
Historicism
Authors: Morar Florin‐Stefan
Published: December 2017

Historicism refers to theories of history and historical interpretation. The usage of the term in English is confusing as it covers fundamentally different approaches. Karl Popper gave a first important sense of historicism in his critique of the theories of history of Plato, Marx, and Hegel, which sees developments in society as being determined by laws similar to the laws of nature. Historicism in English obscures the difference of this approach with what in German is called
Historismus
, a theory of history based on hermeneutics also opposed to classical historicism, which emphasized the importance of institutions, differences across time and space, and the analytical relevance of context. New historicism, a twentieth‐century movement of historians and literary critics, also critiques classical historicism, focusing especially on its pretense to objectivity and singular narratives.
H
usserl,
E
dmund
Authors: Scalambrino Frank
Published: December 2017

Edmund Husserl (1859–1938) was most noted as the founder of the philosophical movement known as “phenomenology.” Husserl showed an initial interest in a project grounding mathematics in psychology. His eventual rejection of such a project, identified pejoratively as “psychologism,” led him to his understanding and articulation of phenomenology.
Hypothetico‐Deductive Method
Authors: Martini Carlo
Published: December 2017

The hypothetico‐deductive (HD) method is the term that philosophers and methodologists of science use to refer to the scientific practice of validating theories by means of formulating hypotheses (premises), and deriving and testing conclusions. According to an early proponent of the method, John Stuart Mill, political economy must be investigated by first postulating a number of general definitions and laws about the behavior of the objects that we are investigating, and then, from those, we may derive conclusions about specific and observable facts. Some of the main issues with the HD method are the problem of alternative hypotheses and the Duhem–Quine problem, in light of which a number of alternatives to the HD method have been proposed, such as Carl G. Hempel's account of confirmation, probabilistic, and Bayesian accounts of confirmation, Karl R. Popper's falsificationism, and Milton Friedman's instrumentalism.
Idealism
Authors: Reider Patrick J.
Published: December 2017

The term “idealism” represents some of the most important philosophical movements of the Western world. The majority of views called by this name are complex and concern different philosophical traditions such as Platonism, Berkeley's immaterialism, German idealism, and British idealism. “Idealism” is thus a family of philosophical views and traditions – some of which bear little to no resemblance to other traditions bearing the same name. This has led to much confusion as to what this term concerns. This entry seeks to clarify some of this confusion by offering a historical overview of a variety of influential idealists and their beliefs.
Induction
Authors: Sigsbee Dustin M.
Published: December 2017

Logic can be described as a systematized way of analyzing argument type and structure. Within philosophical logic there are different types of arguments: deductive, abductive, and inductive. Deductive arguments attempt to guarantee the truth of the conclusion, whereas abductive arguments attempt to provide some explanatory hypothesis for some proposition. Inductive arguments, on the other hand, attempt to make either a universal or statistical generalizations from a set of premises – this is called enumerative induction. Although enumerative induction is used frequently, it is plagued with a very well‐known problem – the problem of induction. This problem identifies, as justification for the conclusion, an inductive principle called the principle of the uniformity of nature (PUN). Recent enunciations of enumerative induction using Bayesian mechanics have attempted to sidestep this problem and the PUN with tenable results.
Kuhn,Thomas
Authors: de Oliveira Mendonça André Luís , Reis Verusca Moss Simões dos
Published: December 2017

Thomas Kuhn (1922–1966) was one of the most influential and controversial authors of the twentieth century. His most famous work,The Structure of Scientific Revolutions(1962), led the way to new trends in the philosophy of science and in the social studies of science, and also helped to construct a new conception of science.
Liberalism
Authors: Chaves Elisabeth
Published: December 2017

Liberalism is the political doctrine and set of practices anchored by the concept of individual liberty. Beginning around the early nineteenth century, liberalism's advocates sought the protection of individual rights as freedom from interference by public power exercised through the state. For liberals, the coercive rule of the state was to be supplemented, although not replaced, by the consensual ordering of the market. The expansion of legal and political equality and representative democracy in the nineteenth century supported liberalism's growth and progress. An expanding private sphere that favored economic action over political action paved the way, in the late twentieth century, for a radicalized version of liberalism, known as “neoliberalism,” which seeks to further liberate individuals by distancing markets from what is believed to be pernicious state interference.
Mass Media, Theories of
Authors: Lemos André
Published: December 2017

This entry explores the major theories in the field of mass communication. It indicates the main authors, from the analysis of mass phenomena and the public in the nineteenth century, passing through the rise of journalism studies in the 1920s, to the emergence of the Internet and new digital media. Theories such as the Chicago School, the American functionalist research, the Frankfurt School, cultural studies, political economy of media, and the Toronto School are highlighted.
Mobile Communication
Authors: Bialski Paula
Published: December 2017

Mobile communication here is defined as the ability to communicate with others when on the move using communicative devices that connect wirelessly to public communication networks, which can be supported by an electric, cellular, or radio infrastructure. Such technologies can include mobile phones (also called cellular phones or cell phones), as well as, more recently, other Internet‐based devices such as smartphones, laptops, and iPads. In order to understand mobile communication, an understanding of the sociotechnical context is needed – both the history of the device that mediates such communication and the social impacts of such communication devices on human interaction.
Nihilism
Authors: Gare Arran
Published: December 2017

Nihilism, the view that life has no meaning, had been identified as a problem before Friedrich Nietzsche; however, Nietzsche is taken as the reference point for characterizing, explaining, and striving to overcome the condition. Nietzsche explained nihilism as the will to power turned against itself. Later, Martin Heidegger explained it as the forgetfulness of Being. Existentialists, embracing an active nihilism, argued that it could be overcome through commitment. Deconstructive postmodernists, neoclassical economists, and reductionist psychologists have effectively capitulated to passive nihilism, which accepts the destruction of the ecological conditions of civilization as unavoidable. Each of these diagnoses, proposed solutions, and responses are examined. Also examined are philosophers who have identified scientific materialism as the problem leading to nihilism, and tried to provide new metaphysical foundations for the sciences. The most important cultural struggle today, it is suggested, is between passive nihilists, and Nietzscheans, Heideggerians, speculative philosophers, and scientists aligned with the Green movement.
Orientalism and Occidentalism
Authors: Chua Peter
Published: December 2017

Orientalism and occidentalism are sustained intellectual projects organized by historians, policy experts, Christian theologians, and humanist and social science scholars which study and appraise the “Orient” and its “Eastern” arts, sciences, histories, faiths, cultures, peoples, and nations in contrast to the “West.” Cultural theorist Edward Said and newer scholarship from cultural, feminist, and anti‐imperialist scholars criticize its objectionable racialization, exoticization, and cultural abstraction. These critics object to orientalists' claims of objective knowledge such as topics related to Islam and Middle Eastern affairs. They charge that orientalism and occidentalism assist in imperialist restructuring and domination of the “Orient” through its denials, distortions, and suppression of people's lived experiences and its claims of Western and Christian superiority in knowledge, commerce, gender relations, and ways of life.
Peasantry
Authors: Krier Daniel
Published: December 2017

“The peasantry” defines a class of agrarian laborers who live upon the very land they work. Toiling with hoe and plow, peasants have remained a constant of human societies since the Neolithic revolution. Social theorists have viewed the peasantry from diverse positions. Marx viewed the peasantry as a mass of agrarian households who toiled to produce use‐values for their own consumption without labor specialization, scientific agriculture, or social cooperation. Gramsci also viewed the peasantry as political reactionaries, especially those in capitalistically backward nations with feudal economies and authoritarian psychologies. To Durkheim, peasant villages were social segments spreading over large territories without organizing, specializing, or cooperating. Weber viewed peasants as a degraded stratum enmeshed in magic. The category of peasantry is still useful for grasping structures and dynamics of agrarian populations on the periphery of the capitalist system and understanding peasantry is crucial to our time.
Phillips Curve
Authors: Hage Jerald
Published: December 2017

The Phillips Curve describes the relationship between inflation and unemployment, which forms the basis of contemporary monetary policy. Current economic thinking assumes that it works only in the short term and expectations are an important part of the theory. Sociological thinking about this trade‐off has emphasized the current causes of structural unemployment as well as the institutional factors that can reduce the pain for the unemployed. Current research findings indicate that the standard formula should take into consideration the kinds of institutional differences studied by sociologists.
Popular Culture
Authors: Mele Vincenzo
Published: December 2017

Popular culture can be defined as the ideas, values, norms, practices, goods, and artifacts shared by the majority of people in a society. In industrial societies popular culture is associated with the culture spread by mass media for commercial and entertainment purposes. The idea that a culture be “popular,” in the sense that it is produced and potentially shared by the majority of people, has several implications. One stems from that fact that culture has not always been popular, in the sense of “generally accessible.” This implies that two orders of culture may exist: a “high” or elite culture, and a “low,” vulgar culture. Despite its pretense to universality, culture reflects, if not directly or automatically, the hierarchy and inequality existing in society in terms of differences in power, status, and class.
Progress
Authors: Owen David S.
Published: December 2017

The idea of progress refers to an interpretation of history that involves both descriptive claims about the shape of history, and also normative claims about the goodness of the historical change. Progress is typically understood to be a specifically modern idea, developing and fully flourishing during the European Enlightenment. World historical events from the nineteenth through the twentieth centuries led to deep criticisms of the idea of progress, and its usefulness has waned. Some social theorists have attempted to reconstruct the idea in order to ground critical, normative analyses, but these efforts have not gone unchallenged.
Reductionism
Authors: Guerra Corinna
Published: December 2017

We often find the theme of reductionism linked with reflections on the mind or on social behavior. This entry tries to clarify the idea of the complexity of reductionism, because it is, at one and the same time, a cognitive methodology, a philosophical concept, and a method of scientific research. After a few reflections on the importance of the use of reductionism in an operative approach, which is sometimes “physicalism” (whereby everything that exists in the concrete world is physical, that is, composed of physical entities), it is suggested that, in general, reductionism can be seen as a heuristic strategy applicable to scientific research since the time of Galileo.
Ricoeur,Paul
Authors: West Mark Douglas
Published: December 2017

Paul Ricoeur (1913–2005) was a French philosopher whose work, found in numerous books and articles, influenced Jacques Derrida and Maurice Merleau‐Ponty, as well as some Anglo‐American philosophers who moved away from more traditional philosophy toward more textual and interpretive approaches. His first‐person study of the structures of consciousness as texts was influenced by Heidegger, Gadamer, and de Saussure, and has had a substantial influence on philosophy and literary criticism, particularly in continental circles.
Social Closure
Authors: Flemmen Magne
Published: December 2017

Social closure was a concept coined by Max Weber to refer to monopolization of privileges. It was further developed by Frank Parkin and Raymond Murphy into a full‐fledged theory of class and stratification.
Social Constructionism
Authors: Kostova Iva
Published: December 2017

Social constructionism proposes that knowledge and truth are never stable or universal but rather evolving products of social relations. The advancement of a social constructionist thinking over the last century has contributed greatly to the development of the social sciences and humanities. Many scholars adopt social constructionist views as a means for exploring the processes of the social and for understanding how collective ideas emerge as part of their historical and cultural settings. Social constructionism therefore represents and constitutes a major movement in sociology and the social sciences. The main premise of social constructionism is that reality does not exist as an objective and consistent setting independent of human involvement. Instead social constructionism proposes that “reality” and our knowledge of it is constructed in the interactions among individuals, is built upon by the experience of individuals, and culminates in collective understandings and shared experiences.
Social Epistemology
Authors: Fuller Steve
Published: December 2017

Social epistemology is a naturalistic approach to the normative questions surrounding the organization of knowledge processes and products. The need for social epistemology is captured by an interdisciplinary gap between philosophy and sociology: Philosophical theories of knowledge tend to stress normative approaches without considering their empirical realizability or political consequences. Sociological theories suffer the reverse problem of capturing the empirical and ideological character of knowledge, but typically without offering guidance on how knowledge policy should be conducted. Social epistemology aims to consolidate the strengths and eliminate the weaknesses of these two approaches.
Social Mobility
Authors: Kerbo Harold
Published: December 2017

Throughout history, humans have always been concerned about improving their standard of living and that of their offspring. And this has especially been so with what can be called modern industrial societies when such improvements in citizens' standards of living and those of their offspring have become possible. For a nation as a whole, the beliefs citizens have about their chances of a better life or not have major consequences for the political stability of a country. With beliefs that standards of living will fall or are falling, both left‐wing and right‐wing movements are likely. Compared to many other modern industrial societies today, unfortunately, the rate of social mobility in the United States has been falling.
Social Stratification
Authors: Kerbo Harold
Published: December 2017

Social stratification refers to a ranking of people or groups of people within a society. But the term was defined by the earliest sociologists as something more than the almost universal inequalities that exist in all but the least complex of societies. Social stratification refers to a system with predictable rules behind the ranking of individuals and groups which theories of social stratification are meant to uncover and understand. The existence of a system of social stratification also implies some form of legitimation of the ranking of people and the unequal distribution of valued goods, services, and prestige. Without belief systems justifying the inequality and unequal ranking it is unlikely a stratification system would remain stable over time. Beyond agreement on a definition of social stratification, however, the classical sociological theorists agreed on little else. From this classical period of sociology we have, in fact, a triple legacy of social stratification theories from the works of Karl Marx, Émile Durkheim, and Max Weber.
State Crime
Authors: Grewcock Michael
Published: December 2017

State crime encompasses activities such as genocide, war crimes, torture, kidnapping, arbitrary detention, forced displacement, and large‐scale corruption that are organized or committed by governments, state agencies, or other entities (such as paramilitary organizations) acting on their behalf. These constitute the most serious and devastating forms of crime and often impact on entire communities. Criminologists traditionally have focused on the behavior of socially marginalized individuals or groups but there is now a rapidly growing body of criminological literature on state crime including a dedicated journal and growing research collaboration.
Tarde,Gabriel
Authors: Toews David
Published: December 2017

Gabriel Tarde (1843–1904) was a founder of sociology. Attentive to differences and repetitions as revealed in statistics, sociology was to represent, in his view, a higher evolution and universalization of scientific method that would finally expel ontologized conceptions of community and reject what Bergson, following Tarde, would later term “intellectualism”: the tendency to build analysis on reifications. In the end, Tarde's vision was denied by colleagues who asserted that the moral evolution of human social life elevates human relations into a special category of relations requiring sociology to be limited to a compartmentalized discipline. Beginning in 1999, the first wave of revival and republication initially pressed Tarde into the service of Deleuzian and Latourian remonstrations against anthropocentrism and neo‐Kantianism. Recently, a second wave characterized by the operationalization of Tarde's twenty‐first‐century reception, resonating with views of society as fluid and networked, has produced new empirical work based on Tarde's thought.
Total Institutions
Authors: Rubin Julius H.
Published: December 2017

Erving Goffman developed the concept of total institutions that characterizes the social organization of mental hospitals and other carceral societies. He examined these bureaucratic institutions that formed residential communities where staff exerted considerable power over inmates' lives, resulting in their identity transformation and resocialization. Recent scholarship has critiqued the ahistorical and formal concept of the total institution with historical and contemporary studies that have reexamined the dimensions of power, identity, and separation from versus engagement with the surrounding social order, and voluntary versus involuntary participation of inmates.
Underclass
Authors: Kerbo Harold
Published: December 2017

The concept of an “underclass” is an attempt to put a name on the very poor within the United States and describe supposed common characteristics among people at the bottom of the class structure. Thus, along with the upper class, middle class, and working class, there is an underclass, often characterized much as Marx described with his concept of thelumpenproletariat. The term “underclass” was popularized in the second half of the twentieth century in a book by Ken Auletta (1983) which attempted to analyze what needed to be changed among this group to raise them out of poverty and how this could be done. This label of underclass, however, attempts to describe a category of people – we can call them the poor – that have even more diverse characteristics than those who are classified as upper, middle, and working class.
Value Neutrality and Value Relevance
Authors: Fuller Steve
Published: December 2017

These terms derived from the philosophy of science of the German sociologist Max Weber. Value neutrality was advocated by Weber as a recommendation that sociology should adhere to a position of neutrality without denying the relevance of their research to values.
White‐Collar Crime
Authors: Smith Kenneth
Published: December 2017

The concept of a white‐collar worker derives from sociology rather than criminology. In sociology a white‐collar worker is, generally speaking, a relatively low status clerical or administrative employee. The concept of white‐collar crime within criminology derives from the work of the pioneering criminologist Edwin Sutherland. It is argued that Sutherland's use of the term “white‐collar crime” is somewhat at odds with the use of the term “white‐collar worker” in sociology in that Sutherland's concept explicitly refers to offenders with relatively high social status. It is argued that what Sutherland calls “white‐collar crime” would be better described today in terms of the concept of “corporate crime.”
W
illiams,
R
aymond
Authors: McGuigan Jim
Published: December 2017

Williams was a scholar in the humanities yet his work is hugely relevant to the social sciences. In effect, he moved during his career from literary criticism and cultural history to social and political theory. Williams formulated a general methodology for the sociological analysis of signifying practices in their real circumstances of production, circulation, and consumption that he named, “cultural materialism.” It is a variant of Western Marxism. His key concepts, among several others, are selective tradition, structure of feeling, and mobile privatization.
M
oral
E
xclusion
Authors: Pilecki Andrew
Published: December 2017

Moral exclusion refers to the perception that a person or group exists outside the scope of justice, which is a psychological boundary encompassing those to whom moral consideration is extended. Morally excluded groups are more likely to be viewed as legitimate targets of harm or prejudice. Moral inclusion, in contrast, can foster community‐building relationships. Research has found that perceived threat, utility, similarity, and deservingness are all factors influencing whom is to be included or excluded from the scope of justice. Peace education interventions, particularly those emphasizing perspective‐taking and/or human rights may promote moral inclusion, but social and political support are also crucial.
Cultural Imperialism
Authors: Inglis David
Published: December 2017

Cultural imperialism refers to situations where cultural forms created by, and expressive of, a dominant power are imposed upon people in a less powerful area, with the effect that the indigenous culture, values, and identities are undermined, transformed, or destroyed. This is usually understood as involving the mass media and the forms of popular culture which they carry. The idea of cultural imperialism was put forward by a range of Marxist‐inspired media theorists in the 1970s. In the 1980s, it was subjected by cultural studies scholars to criticisms about its alleged simplification of processes of media reception. By the 1990s, it seemed a less plausible way of understanding contemporary global cultural flows than the term “globalization.” But it remains in use by those wishing to mount radical critiques of corporate media power and inequalities in communication and information.
Praxis School
Authors: Perović Milenko A.
Published: December 2017

This entry describes the humanistically oriented Yugoslav Marxist philosophical school which existed in the 1960s and 1970s. The Praxis School was one of the major currents in Marxist humanism.
Social Psychology
Authors: Anderson Irina
Published: December 2017

Social psychology has been defined by Allport as the scientific study of how “the thoughts, feelings, and behaviors of individuals are influenced by the actual, imagined, or implied presence of others.” Social psychological topics permeate all aspects of social life. The main focus of this discipline has been scientific and positivistic – studying what is, for the most part, observable and measurable, with an emphasis on empiricism. This entry examines the sociohistorical events in American and British social psychologies, which helped to create the discipline's scientific basis. It also considers some well‐known experiments in the history of social psychology, the “crisis” years, and concludes with the current status of social psychology as a discipline where social cognition and social neuroscience, evolutionary social psychology, collectivist/cultural, and discursive theories are popular explanations for social behavior.
Terror Management Theory
Authors: Solomon Sheldon
Published: December 2017

Terror management theory postulates that the uniquely human awareness of death gives rise to potentially paralyzing terror that is managed by the belief that one is a person of value in a world of meaning, and thus eligible for literal and/or symbolic immortality. People are consequently motivated to uphold faith in their cultural worldviews and maintain a high level of self‐esteem, and will respond defensively when their cherished beliefs or self‐esteem are challenged, or when existential concerns are aroused.
Asianization
Authors: Chang Kyung‐Sup
Published: December 2017

The so‐called rise of Asia trend involves not only political economic empowerment of (some) Asian nations in the world order, but, more critically, fundamental qualitative changes in the way Asia is internally associated and (re)constructed among vastly diverse groups of peoples, nations, cultures, and political economies in the region. Asia isbecoming Asia, orAsianizing. Asia's refuted existence as an arbitrary geo‐administrative category for the convenience of Western epistemology and hegemony is increasingly replaced or complemented by the dramatic intensification of intra‐Asian interactions and flows in industrial, financial, demographic, sociopolitical, cultural, and ecological spheres. This grand process has required the disembedding of Asian nations from the Euro‐America‐dictated order of bilateral dependencies and controls and then their (re)embedding into the neoliberal global system of capitalist political economy whose parameters are still dominated by Euro‐America.
Kyoto School
Authors: Masakatsu Fujita
Published: December 2017

Kyoto School is an intellectual network that was established by Nishida Kitaro and Tanabe Hajime, the founders of philosophy as a scholarly discipline in Japan, as well as by scholars under strong academic and personal influence of Nishida and Tanabe. Within this school, those who first became interested in social philosophy were Miki Kiyoshi and Tosaka Jun, who worked under heavy Marxist influence. Tanabe Hajime also showed a strong interest in issues related to society and the state, and created a unique philosophy called “the logic of species.”
Minjung
Authors: Lee Namhee
Published: December 2017

The concept of
minjung
as constituting those who are oppressed in the contemporary sociopolitical system but who are capable of rising up against it – factory workers, farmers, the poor, and those who were politically persecuted and socially marginalized – arose in the context of the military dictatorship and the rapid industrialization of South Korea from the 1960s. As the democratization movement the 1970s and 1980s developed further
minjung
became reconceptualized as the subject of historical development and the rightful owner of the future democratic society. The ethos of
minjung
also spread to academic community, giving rise to the emergence of
minjung
‐oriented scholarship such as
minjung
history,
minjung
theology,
minjung
education,
minjung
economy,
minjung
sociology, and
minjung
art.
Ie
(
J
apanese Family System)
Authors: Rajkai Zsombor
Published: December 2017

The
Ie
is popularly viewed as Japan's traditional stem family system. Debates about the
Ie
played an enormous role in Japan's modernization and had a great impact on the formation of various theories among Japanese intellectuals. Theories favoring the
Ie
paradigm tend to argue against the prevailing postwar unilineal nuclearization theory of the Japanese
Ie
and emphasize the hybrid character of the postwar Japanese family system as both modern and traditional.
World‐Systems Theory
Authors: Chase‐Dunn Christopher
Published: December 2017

The world‐systems perspective is a strategy for explaining institutional and sociocultural change that focuses on whole interpolity systems rather than single politics. The main insight of the world‐systems perspective is that important interaction networks (trade, information flows, alliances, and fighting) have woven politics and cultures together since the beginning of human sociocultural evolution. These interpolity interaction networks were rather small when transportation was mainly a matter of hiking with a backpack or using small boats. However, globalization, in the sense of the expansion and intensification of larger economic, political, military, and information networks, has been increasing for millennia. The world‐systems perspective explains institutional change in regard to these interpolity systems (world systems).
Clash of Civilizations
Authors: Köchler Hans
Published: December 2017

“Clash of civilizations” is the keyword of a theory of social and political conflict that was introduced by Samuel Huntington shortly after the end of the Cold War. It implies that, under the conditions of globalization, differences between cultures and civilizations are the main causes of tension between states. The paradigm has gained new worldwide attention in the wake of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 in the United States, and has had considerable influence on debates of relations between the Western world and Islam.
Compressed Modernity
Authors: Chang Kyung‐Sup
Published: December 2017

Compressed modernity is a civilizational condition in which economic, political, social, and/or cultural changes occur in an extremely condensed manner in respect to both time and space, and in which the dynamic coexistence of mutually disparate historical and social elements leads to the construction and reconstruction of a highly complex and fluid social system. Compressed modernity can be manifested at various levels of human existence – that is, personhood, family, secondary organizations, urban spaces, societal units (including civil society, nation, etc.), and, not least importantly, the global society. At each of these levels, compressed modernity necessitates people's lives to be managed intensely, intricately, and flexibly in order to remain normally integrated with the rest of society. Compressed modernity is thereby subjected to a mutual escalation effect among the different levels.
Eastern Spirit, Western Instrument
Authors: Yoon Seungjoo
Published: December 2017

In the late nineteenth century, modern state‐makers in East Asia invented a series of catchphrases that combined elements of “Eastern spirit” and “Western instrument” to cope with internal disorder from below and external threats from the industrializing West. The shared elements of binary slogans boil down to the quest for rapid industrialization and internationalization in the terms set by their East Asian practitioners through sustained militarization of both state and society in the increasingly adversarial contact with Westerners. Eventually, these efforts to fit new methods into old thought patterns became untenable in China and Korea due to the growing disadvantageous international conditions of the times. By contrast, Japan carefully exploited the binary concept to its advantage.
I
nnis,
H
arold
Authors: Burgwin Darryl
Published: December 2017

Harold Innis (1894–1952) was a Canadian political economist and media theorist who offered an historically informed understanding of the materiality of media of communication. For Innis, communication is not just about the meaningful content of a message but also the physical form the message takes and the means by which it is sent. The unique qualities of a medium of communication influence the content and extension of that knowledge in time and space and therefore the medium helps to shape the society in which that medium plays a significant role. For Innis, a medium cannot be reduced to the technological device but must be understood as a complex form of social organization that works on the axes of both time and space.
Slavery
Authors: Small Stephen
Published: December 2017

Slavery is a political, legal, and economic system under which people are treated as property. Slavery was typically institutionalized by the state. Slavery, we are often told, existed in all nations and at all times. From ancient Greece and Rome, to China and Korea; from medieval Europe to the Middle East, Africa and across the Americas. Many say that it still exists today in the form of so‐called “modern slavery.” The nature of slavery has varied markedly over time. Some systems accepted the humanity of the enslaved, assuming they had a soul, allowing legal freedom and social mobility once free; others assumed the enslaved's inhumanity, denying they had a soul, restricting access to legal freedom, and to opportunities once legally free. There were wide variations between what was specified by law and what actually occurred in practice.
D
errida,
J
acques
Authors: Mikics David
Published: December 2017

From the late 1960s on, Jacques Derrida, who died in 2004, has been one of the most influential critical theorists and philosophers of language. His impact on literary study has been especially noticeable. Both Derrida's method, labeled deconstruction, along with his idea that Western culture is fundamentally logocentric, have been hotly debated for decades in the humanities and social sciences. In his later work, Derrida adds prophetic claims about justice to his skepticism concerning human consciousness and intentionality.
Bhaskar,Roy
Authors: Outhwaite William
Published: December 2017

Roy Bhaskar (1944–2014) developed a philosophical position, critical realism, which has had a major influence on social theory.
Revolution
Authors: Outhwaite William , Frazer Elizabeth
Published: December 2017

The idea of revolution as a fundamental and usually irreversible change from one political regime or form of society to another has been a major theme of modern social theory. Revolutions with a domestic focus have coexisted with anticolonial revolutions since at least the time of the American Revolution of 1776, the French Revolution of 1789, and the Haitian Revolution of 1791, which led, like the American Revolution, to the establishment of an independent state.
Division System Thesis
Authors: Chang Kyung‐Sup
Published: December 2017

The (national) division system refers to a historical state of affairs in the Korean Peninsula characterized mainly by the following conditions: (1) the North–South Korea division is not just a (intra)national state of affairs but more critically a regional expression of the global political economic order (“the capitalist world system”); (2) the North–South Korea division has the self‐reproduced structural qualities of a system that are not reducible to various individual conditions and characteristics of North and South Korea or their mere combinations; (3) the traits and courses of many major political, social, cultural, and economic affairs in both North and South Korea are often critically shaped by the division system's mediating effect between the Korean Peninsula and the world system. While these historical conditions have been analyzed empirically in variously disciplines, a recent attempt at theoretical formalization has triggered lively debates on the systemic properties of the North–South Korea division.
Urry,JohnRichard
Authors: Turner Bryan S.
Published: December 2017

John Richard Urry (1946–2016) was a British sociologist who was a Distinguished Professor of Sociology at Lancaster University. His career at Lancaster lasted over 40 years during which time he served as head of department, dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences, and university dean of research. He was the director of the Centre for Mobilities Research and founding editor of the journalMobilities. He was also the founding co‐director of the Institute for Social Futures. Urry made a number of major contributions to sociology in such areas as tourism, consumerism, complexity theory, and global mobility. His work was part of the “spatial turn” that came out of geography, but he also referred to this development in terms of “the mobility turn.” His work was innovative and extended well beyond the normal framework of mainstream sociology. In that sense one might think that Urry was “post‐classical” in that his interests could not have been easily anticipated by the founders of sociology. This interpretation would be somewhat misleading given his editorship of the Routledge International Library of Sociology series from 1990 onwards. This series had been started by Karl Mannheim.
L
eptospira
Authors: Picardeau Mathieu
Published: December 2017

Lep.to.spi'ra. Gr. adj.
leptos
thin, narrow, fine; L. fem. n.
spira
a coil, helix; N.L. fem. n.
Leptospira
a thin helix or coil, referring to the morphology of the bacterium.

Spirochaetes / Spirochaetia / Spirochaetales / Leptospiraceae / Leptospira

Leptospira
are
long, thin, flexible rods, 0
.
1
μ
m in diameter and 6–12
μ
m in length
, with a regular right‐handed helical coiling pattern (Carleton et al., 1979). These bacteria are unicellular but may be observed as dividing pairs or short chains of three or more cells in actively growing cultures. Resting stages are not known, but long‐term survival in water with the appearance of aggregates has been described (Trueba et al., 2004). Spherically shaped cells form under unfavorable growth conditions. The envelope structure is similar to Gram‐negative bacteria, but due to the small diameter of these bacteria, they are not visible by bright‐field microscopy when Gram stained. Dark‐field or phase‐contrast microscopy is required for visualization of unstained cells. These are highly motile aerobic or microaerophilic bacteria. Optimum growth temperature is 28–30°C, with a generation time of 6–16 h, although
many primary pathogenic isolates may grow slower
. Chemoorganotrophic bacteria that consume long‐chain fatty acids and alcohols as primary carbon and energy sources, and carry out respiration with oxygen as the terminal electron acceptor. Optimal growth occurs in semisolid (0.1–0.2%) agar media. Growth on 1–2% solid agar results in the formation of clear to turbid surface or subsurface colonies. Colony formation is enhanced by the addition of pyruvate. Oxidase, catalase, and/or peroxidase‐positive. Some strains are β‐hemolytic. Some strains are pathogenic for humans and animals, while other strains are saprophytic and found in freshwater and marine environments.

The genus
Leptospira
forms a deep unique branch of spirochetes, separate from other genera based on comparison of 16S rRNA gene sequences

. Species are differentiated by DNA–DNA relative reassociation analysis,
in silico
genome‐to‐genome comparison, and by unique sequence polymorphisms in 16S rRNA.

DNA G + C content (mol%)
: 35–46.

Type species
:
Leptospira interrogans
(Stimson 1907) Wenyon 1926, 1281
AL
emend. Faine and Stallman 1982, 462 (
Spirochaeta interrogans
Stimson 1907, 541).
S
ilvibacterium
Authors: Lladó Salvador , García‐Fraile Paula
Published: December 2017

Sil.vi.bac.te'ri.um. L. fem. n.
silva
a forest; L. neut. n.
bacterium
, a small rod; N.L. neut. n.
Silvibacterium
a bacterium from the forest.

Acidobacteria / Acidobacteriia / Acidobacteriales / Acidobacteriaceae / Silvibacterium

Gram‐negative, strictly aerobic and acidophilic, nonspore forming and motile rods. Cells occur singly or in shapeless aggregates and lack an EPS external capsule. Oxidase negative and weak catalase activity. White translucent colonies, circular, convex, with entire edge. Capable of growth on ethanol, methanol, glycerol, sorbitol, and mannitol. Uses microcrystalline cellulose, xylan, and colloidal chitin.
d
‐glucose,
l
‐arabinose, xylose,
d
‐mannose,
d
‐galactose, and
d
‐cellobiose are utilized. Do not require NaCl for growth and tolerate 0.1%NaCl. Growth occurs at 20–30°C and pH 3–6. The major fatty acid is iso‐C
15:0
; significant amounts of C
16:1
ω7 and C
15:0
are also present. The major quinone is MK‐8. Members of the phylum
Acidobacteria
, class
Acidobacteriia
, order
Acidobacteriales
, family
Acidobacteriaceae
. Known habitats are acidic forest soils.

DNA G + C content (mol%)
: 58.2 (genome sequence).

Type species
:
Silvibacterium bohemicum
Lladó, Benada, Cajthaml, Baldrian and Garcia‐Fraile 2016b, 2464
VP
(Effective publication: Lladó, Benada, Cajthaml, Baldrian, Garcia‐Fraile 2016a, 18).