bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Gendered Enterprise
Authors: Kirton Gill
Published: September 2017

What do we mean when we say that enterprise or organization is gendered? As Acker (2003) argues, “to say that an organization, or any other analytic unit, is gendered means that advantage and disadvantage, exploitation and control, action and emotion, meaning and identity, are patterned through and in terms of a distinction between male and female, masculine and feminine.” However, the traditional approach to organizational analysis is criticized by a number of contemporary authors, including Acker, for its neglect up until the 1980s at least, of women and gender. This neglect occurred firstly because organizational research often focused on senior levels of the hierarchy where men predominate. Secondly, men dominated the academic research process and generally showed little interest in female employees or gender as a unit of analysis. Critics argued that within traditional organizational analysis men's experiences and interpretations of organizational life were taken as universal, producing gender‐neutral knowledge, which failed to recognize gender as a significant dynamic of organizations and rendered women invisible. Although some of the criticisms remain valid in regard to mainstream organization and management studies, there is now a significant and growing body of gender and organization literature, largely produced by women and often with women as the analytic focus, which sees organizations as important sites in which gendered meanings, identities, practices, and power relations are produced, enacted, and reproduced.
Gerontology
Authors: Powell Jason L.
Published: September 2017

Gerontology can be defined as the scientific and social analysis of aging. The discipline of gerontology is concerned with understanding age and aging from a variety of perspectives and integrating information from different social science and human science disciplines such as psychology and sociology. The concern of gerontology is in the definition and theorization of age. In western societies a person's age is counted on a chronological or numerical foundation, beginning from birth to the current point of age, or when an individual has died. Chronological aging is a habit we all engage in: birthdays and wedding anniversaries, for example. Counting age is a social construction because it is a practice underpinned by the development of industrial capitalism.
Global/World Cities
Authors: Paquin Jamie
Published: September 2017

“Global city” discourse posits and investigates the emergence of a small number of cities occupying commanding roles in a globalizing economic system. The emergence of global cities signals the shift in the organization of capital accumulation and economic production since the late 1970s and a corresponding shift in the nodal functions of some cities away from local, regional, or national contexts to more varied and uneven connections to other cities and regions in the world. Specifically, the designation “global city” is applied to those urban areas consisting of a disproportionate number of major economic headquarters and services, including corporate management, banking, finance, legal services, accounting, technical consulting, telecommunications, computing, international transportation, research, and higher education (Friedmann & Wolff 1982: 320). To the extent to which the hypotheses of this literature withstand scrutiny, numerous questions arise regarding the social implications of a greater disjuncture between proximity and connectedness in urban life.
Globalization, Education and
Authors: Inoue Keiko , Ramirez Francisco O.
Published: September 2017

The globalization of education refers to the expansion and increased interconnectedness of education‐related activity throughout the world. Much of the sociological research on this broad subject has focused on the following dimensions of the globalization of education: expansion of educational enrollments at all levels, nationalization of schooling, standardization of education, and the rise of an international educational sector. These studies are guided by functionalist, conflict, and institutional theories of education.
Gay and Lesbian Politics
Authors: Hidalgo Danielle Antoinette , Royce Tracy
Published: September 2017

Gay and lesbian politics in the United States have had a deep and long‐lasting impact on the twentieth and twenty‐first centuries, culminating in contemporary discourses and activist efforts surrounding issues such as family law, the military, and HIV/AIDS (see Brewer, Kaib, & O'Connor 2000: 401). Although the origins of US‐based gay and lesbian politics can be traced back as early as the 1890s (Shroedel & Fiber 2000), given space limitations, we direct our attention to the mid‐twentieth century onward. Further, our overview covers the US with some minor details of gay and lesbian politics beyond US borders. Finally, we focus on key shifts in the history of gay and lesbian politics that continue to impact how identities, practices, and beliefs concerning sexuality and intimate relationships are understood today.
Gay and Lesbian Politics
Authors: Royce Tracy , Hidalgo Danielle Antoinette
Published: September 2017

Gay and lesbian politics in the United States have had a deep and long‐lasting impact on the twentieth and twenty‐first centuries. Alongside their allies, gay and lesbian political actors have championed issues such as the removal of homosexuality from the
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Illness
, better treatments for people with HIV/AIDS, and the legal recognition of same‐sex marriages. Key developments in the history of gay and lesbian politics continue to impact how identities, practices, and beliefs concerning sexuality and intimate relationships are understood today.
Glocalization
Authors: Smith Melanie
Published: September 2017

The neologism “glocalization” has emerged in recent years in economic, sociological, and cultural theories in response to the proliferation of writings about globalization and its local implications. It might best be described as the relationship between global and local processes, which are increasingly viewed as two sides to the same coin rather than being diametrically opposed (e.g., Robertson, 1992). The age of global mobility has created more fluid and seamless relationships. For example, the work of Castells (1996) on the network society and Appadurai's (2001) discussion of flows gives some indication of how global mobility has affected local environments and their inhabitants.
Great Depression
Authors: Schmid Alfred Allan
Published: September 2017

On “Black Thursday,” October 24, 1929, the New York stock market dropped precipitously and then recovered. On Monday it dropped again but did not recover. Tuesday was the most devastating day in the history of the exchange, when everyone wanted to sell but there were no buyers. After nearly a decade of extraordinary growth, business leaders insisted business was still sound. Yet, a year later factories were shuttered, production fell, and upwards of 30 percent of the workforce was to be unemployed. It lasted for 10 years and was worldwide. Industry did not suddenly rust and become inoperative. Resources and knowledge did not evaporate. This was an institutional failure, not a technological one. It was a function of cognition, human organization and relationships, not one of physics. Years of corporate profits and rising expectations, greed, and a sense that it was possible to be rich without working turned to hopelessness and despair.
Groups
Authors: Bezdek William
Published: September 2017

The term “group” refers to at least two distinct forms of social cooperation. On the one hand, it refers to small groups where local patterns of order emerge from the abilities, needs, and interests of the members. On the other hand, it refers to formal organizations where order is imposed by formal rules and sanctions imposed by appointed authorities. Groups structured according to attributes of the group members are generally informal, face‐to‐face groups. Groups structured by rules and authorities are generally large‐scale business, service, and governmental organizations.
Growth Machine
Authors: Jonas Andrew E. G.
Published: September 2017

The growth machine concept first appeared in 1976 in an article published in theAmerican Journal of Sociology(Molotch 1976). It describes how in America city politics is generally a politics of growth. Although the concept in fact explains the systemic properties of cities, it has also been interpreted as referring to the presence in almost every American city of property‐dependent business interests actively engaged in local politics and civic affairs. This is so much so that the city itself can be seen, in its very essence, to be an instrument of profit for land‐based interests. Moreover, those involved frequently form coalitions with other players likewise dependent on local development, and mobilize to shape the policies and institutions of local government in a fashion such that future urban growth patterns and land use policies profit all participants; in this way, the city building process operates like a growth machine. Growth machine actors promulgate an ideology of growth, which often proves a potent force to such an extent that all other interests either become incorporated within the essential logic of the machine or face defeat.
Global Warming
Authors: Yearley Steve
Published: September 2017

Global warming refers to the belief – now very widely held in the international scientific community – that the earth's climate is undergoing change as a result of inadvertent human actions that have enhanced the “greenhouse effect.” Some people contest this view about the trend toward warming while others have reservations about the proposed explanation for the trend; the public debate around this issue is a vital sociological topic in its own right. But it is important at the start to note that there is little doubt about the greenhouse effect itself. The greenhouse effect is the reason why the earth is considerably warmer than the moon, even though both bodies are the same average distance from the sun. Every square meter of the surface of each body receives about the same amount of heat from the sun, but the heat energy that the moon gets from solar rays is dissipated into space while the atmosphere forms an insulating layer around the earth, leading the diffusion of heat energy to occur more slowly; this insulating action of the atmosphere is the greenhouse effect. Over millions of years both bodies have arrived at an equilibrium temperature, with the average surface temperature on earth around 15° and the moon's around −18°. The “greenhouse” makes us over 30° warmer than we would otherwise be.
Gerontology Key Thinkers:
M
atilda
W
hite
R
iley (1911–2004)
Authors: Foner Anne
Published: September 2017

In her long and productive career Matilda White Riley devoted much of her scholarly work to setting forth and elaborating a sociology of age.
Health Behavior
Authors: Cockerham William C.
Published: September 2017

Health behavior is the activity undertaken by people for the purpose of maintaining or enhancing their health, preventing health problems, or achieving a positive body image. While the health behavior of many people is intended to prevent sickness and injury, or to prolong their lives, other people may have other objectives. People with chronic diseases like heart disease and diabetes, for example, also engage in health behavior when they seek to control their disease through diet, exercise, and other forms of health‐related activity. Some people who are primarily motivated to enhance their bodily appearance and physical fitness through health‐promoting activities like diet and exercise likewise are engaging in health behavior even if the desire to look and feel good is more important to them than being healthy.
Health Locus of Control
Authors: Hinote Brian P.
Published: September 2017

Health locus of control refers to the degree of control that people believe they possess over their personal health. More generally, locus of control measures indicate the degree of control (internal or external) an individual has over a particular life situation. People reflecting an internal locus of control believe that they can exert control over their environment to bring about desirable consequences. Consequently, those possessing an internal health locus of control believe that their personal health‐related outcomes are for the most part determined by their own choices and behaviors. Conversely, people with an external locus of control believe that larger social forces, powerful persons or groups, or plain luck will determine their fate. Those displaying an external health locus of control consider their personal health‐related outcomes largely a matter of influences extending beyond their own control (Cockerham & Ritchey 1997; McGuigan 1999).
Health and Medicine
Authors: Clair Jeffrey Michael , Adam Wasserman Jason , Wolfe Joseph D.
Published: September 2017

Sociologists have had a long interest in health and medicine. Unlike other medical researchers, medical sociologists emphasize variation in social conditions and cultural attitudes to explain differences in health and medical care across societies. Research in medical sociology has helped develop meaningful ways of thinking about the complex social linkages between health and medicine, but many questions endure. This entry outlines the history of sociological insights in health and medicine and discusses prominent issues such as healthcare utilization and biomedical caregiving. It also reviews a number of unanswered questions in the literature and discusses future directions for research. Although medical sociologists know that health, medicine, and cultural dynamics shape population health and patient care, important research must be done before the relationship between society, health, and medicine can be completely elucidated.
Health and Race
Authors: Willis Leigh A.
Published: September 2017

Race interacts with health just as it does with other life‐determining, sociodemographic factors like class, gender, and age. Race is best understood as a shared set of cultural and social experiences common to people of the same skin color. Research has shown that the notion of distinct biological races is misleading because often more genetic variation exists within a defined “race” than between them. Therefore, we all belong to the human race and thus race is a social construction rather than a “true” biological distinction. Even though race is socially constructed (American Sociological Association 2002), the manner in which it influences social relationships suggests that race is a valid construct with “real” repercussions.
Hegemony and the Media
Authors: Harris Dave
Published: September 2017

Before becoming applied to academic analysis of the media, the term “hegemony” referred more generally to indirect political control, which often replaced the need for constant and direct military or political domination, of the kind exercised by, for example, colonial states over rivals.
Homans, George (1910–89)
Authors: Fararo Thomas J.
Published: September 2017

George Caspar Homans was a major theoretical sociologist whose lucid writings helped to shape numerous developments in basic sociological research. His ideas about theoretical principles in sociology were much debated and often rejected.
Homelessness
Authors: Snow David A. , Leufgen Jill , Cardinale Matthew
Published: September 2017

The sociological conceptualization of homelessness has pivoted on two dimensions: social disaffiliation and residential impermanence. The disaffiliation dimension, associated primarily with research on Skid Row alcoholics of the 1950s, emphasizes the interpersonal and institutional disconnection of the homeless. Although many homeless individuals lack the affiliative bonds that link most domiciled folks to various institutional structures, not all homeless are socially atomized. Many of them are connected interpersonally to other homeless, some maintain contact with relatives, and most are connected in various degrees to an array of street agencies and programs. Moreover, the majority of homeless individuals are not chronically homeless, as they cycle on and off the street and between street and mainstream agencies and institutions. Because there is considerable variation among the homeless along the atomization continuum, disaffiliation can be best regarded as a variable dimension of homelessness rather than the defining characteristic. Consequently, recent conceptualization emphasizes the residential dimension.
Homophobia and Heterosexism
Authors: Adam Barry D.
Published: September 2017

“Homophobia” is a widely understood term referring to antihomosexual attitudes and practices, but comparison of terms such as “homophobia,” “heterosexism,” and “heteronormativity” reveals how they rely on different ideas of what “homosexual” means, and where opposition to same‐sex relations originates. “Homophobia” typically denotes an irrational fear or a set of mistaken ideas held by prejudiced individuals; therefore, its alleviation is most likely to come through therapy or education. Popularized through George Weinberg's 1973 book,Society and the Healthy Homosexual, homophobia is a concept with strong roots in psychology. Its use tends to focus attention on individuals, to locate its origins in childhood socialization, and to conceive of it as a prejudice directed against homosexual persons. “Heterosexism” offers a more sociological notion that shifts analysis to the ways in which the social institutions of government, workplace, religion, family, and media are organized in ways that exclude or disadvantage same‐sex relations. Resolving heterosexism means reforming or reorganizing social institutions in ways that allow and support same‐sex bonding and sexuality. Finally, “heteronormativity” arises from analysis of how distinctions like heterosexual/homosexual are reproduced. For queer theory, the issue is not one of appealing for tolerance or acceptance of a quasi‐ethnic community of lesbians and gay men, but of shaking up the entire heterosexual/homosexual binary that fuels the distinction in the first place.
Howard, George Elliott (1849–1928)
Authors: Hill Michael R.
Published: September 2017

George Elliott Howard, a distinguished social scientist trained initially in history, rose to the presidency of the American Sociological Society in 1917. Howard earned the A.B. in 1876 at the University of Nebraska. Following two years of advanced study in Germany, Howard joined the Nebraska faculty in 1879. Howard's most prominent Nebraska student from this period, Amos Griswold Warner, later wrote
American Charities
(1894) – a standard classic in the field. Howard was named to the prestigious “First Faculty” of Stanford University in 1891.
Housework
Authors: Hunt Andrea N.
Published: September 2017

Housework, broadly defined, refers to all unpaid labor performed to maintain family members and/or a home. This includes cleaning, buying groceries, meal preparation, and laundry. Sociologists often frame the discussion of housework as part of the division of household labor, and this is where housework is situated within sociological literature. In most studies, housework is defined by its measurement and often excludes childcare, emotion work, and other invisible types of labor. However, sociologists do acknowledge that the construction of “housework” as a concept is a historical process and is thus contingent upon other factors.
Identity: The Management of Meaning
Authors: Coupland Christine
Published: September 2017

This description is an attempt to provide an informed understanding of classical and contemporary approaches to identity. Studies of identities aim to understand the ways we socially constitute ourselves while considering the link between society and self‐identity. The term “identity” was relatively unheard of in sociology and social psychology prior to 1940. Since then it has become the focus of vast amounts of research. Its theoretical, cultural, and empirical development has continued as academics apply, dispute, and discuss the concept. Precursors to the concept of identity developed in the disciplines of sociology, anthropology, and psychology. Importance was given within these early developments to self, character, and personality.
Idioculture
Authors: Hallett Tim
Published: September 2017

Idioculture is defined as “a system of knowledge, beliefs, behaviors, and customs shared by members of an interacting group to which members can refer and employ as the basis of further interaction” (Fine 1979: 734). Termed by Gary Alan Fine, idioculture respecifies the content of culture by focusing on the level of small groups and the social interactions therein. Developed before the sociology of culture gained popularity in the discipline and at a time in which macro, structural, political, and economic approaches were dominant and culture was seen as a vague, amorphous, fractured, “indescribable mist” (Fine 1979: 733), idioculture makes the culture concept useful by focusing on empirically observable group interactions as the locus of cultural creation. To reground culture in group interactions, Fine draws from the symbolic interactionist tradition and research on group dynamics.
Illness Experience
Authors: Scambler Graham
Published: September 2017

The term illness experience refers to the ways in which people define and adjust to perceived interruptions to their health. It is conventional in medical sociology to distinguish between illness and disease. Illness refers to people's “lay” or subjective definitions of health problems, while disease refers to “professional” or objective definitions of health problems based on signs and symptoms. The value of this distinction is that it allows us to acknowledge that people can be ill without having a disease, and can have a disease without being ill (Freidson 1970).
Intelligence Tests
Authors: Pallas Aaron M.
Published: September 2017

Intelligence is a concept whose meaning has been fashioned by the discipline of psychology. Psychologists view intelligence as a set of mental abilities that are inferred from an individual's performance on an intelligence test. In defining intelligence as one or more abilities, psychologists seek to demarcate it from the accumulation of specific knowledge to which only some individuals are exposed. In this view, intelligence is a broad cognitive capacity that, though often correlated with the acquisition of specific knowledge, is conceptually distinct from it.
International Gender Division of Labor
Authors: Bose Christine E.
Published: September 2017

The international division of labor, or the global assembly line, is gendered in many ways and the global growth in employment has many characteristics of women's unpaid household labor. Increasingly, it is feminized, flexible (part‐time, temporary, and seasonal), in the informal economy, involves reproductive or carework, and is considered unskilled (although it is not).
Interviewing, Structured, Unstructured, and Postmodern
Authors: Fontana Andrea
Published: September 2017

Interviewing is a methodology based on asking questions in order to gain information from the respondent. The interview may be structured, unstructured, and postmodern. Structured interview seeks information with an emphasis on measurement, unstructured interview stresses understanding the world of the respondent, and postmodern interview focuses on the negotiated interaction between interviewer and respondent.
Individualization (Beck)
Authors: Lair Craig D.
Published: September 2017

The German sociologist Ulrich Beck has raised anew a topic that has been central to social theory since its very beginnings: What role does the individual play in the social world? Beck (1992) has done this by putting forth what has come to be known as the “individualization thesis,” or the theory that the individual is becoming the central unit of social life. As Layte and Whelan (2001: 213) describe it, Beck “hypothesized that individual behavior was becoming less bound by traditional norms and values and sources of collective identity such as social class.” Instead, Beck argues that one's life is increasingly a reflexive or self‐steered phenomenon, something that one must accomplish oneself. Thus, in contrast to traditional times where social norms and regulations emanated from the collectivity, “[t]he decisive feature of … modern regulations or guidelines is that, far more than earlier, individuals must, in part, supply them for themselves, import them into their biographies through their own actions” (Beck and Beck‐Gernsheim 2002: 2).
Indigenous Movements
Authors: Clark D. Anthony Tyeeme , Brown Nicholas
Published: September 2017

Straggles for indigenous self‐determination have become a major worldwide human rights movement. Throughout the Americas and in settler colonies such as Australia and Aotearoa/New Zealand, as well as across the Pacific and in Asia and Africa and the Caribbean, indigenous peoples reject their treatment as disadvantaged citizens of settler states and instead demand to be recognized as political communities with distinctive rights. The proliferation of indigenous mobilizations – irreducible to a single, unified movement – reflects a shifting terrain of straggle. New strategies, operating simultaneously on multiple scales, have been deployed to confront new and evolving threats to the individual and collective rights of indigenous peoples. Despite noteworthy gains, indigenous peoples, in many cases, still are losing control over lands, waters, and other resources, and access to sacred sites. Market‐driven global processes, underwritten by dominant settler colonies such as the United States, are deepening environmental deterioration and increasing poverty, limiting the hope of sustainable futures for indigenous and non‐indigenous people everywhere.
Intelligent Design
Authors: Binder Amy
Published: September 2017

Although advocates of Intelligent Design distinguish their project from other styles of creationism, it is clearly the latest incarnation in an old tradition. Intelligent Design proponents argue that “the deep structures of life” cannot be explained by natural selection and random mutation – the hallmarks of evolutionary theory – and must be explained, rather, by some force of willful design (Behe 1996). Some living organisms, such as the inner workings of the cell and the complexity of the eye, are so intricate, according to this formulation, that they require a creative intelligent force to have set them in motion.
Institutional ethnography
Authors: Grahame Peter R. , Grahame Kamini Maraj
Published: September 2017

The term “institutional ethnography” has been used since 1987 to refer to an approach to social inquiry pioneered by Canadian sociologist Dorothy E. Smith (Campbell & DeVault 2011; Smith 1987). By the 1980s, Smith had become known internationally for studies in the social organization of knowledge with roots in the women's movement, Marx, phenomenology, and ethnomethodology. The central concerns of this approach included beginning with the standpoint of women, treating social actors as active knowers of their worlds, and examining the social relations of knowledge – especially the gender‐based divide between everyday worlds of local experience and the ruling forms of institutional organization in capitalist societies. Institutional ethnography both continues this project and refocuses it, placing emphasis on (1) ethnography as an approach to studying social organization and (2) a conception of institutional processes in which text‐based forms of coordination play a key role. Since the 1980s, a significant body of work in institutional ethnography has been built up, numerous institutional ethnography‐based dissertations have been undertaken, several international conferences on institutional ethnography have been held, journal special issues on institutional ethnography have been published, and institutional ethnography sections of the Society for the Study of Social Problems and the International Sociology Association have been established.
Japanese‐Style Management
Authors: Mouer Ross
Published: September 2017

Japanese‐style management (JSM) (
nihonteki kei‐ei
) is a loosely defined term used to indicate the way work is organized and employees managed in firms and other corporate bodies in Japan. Accordingly, its meaning changes as microeconomic realities change. At the same time, the term is used to distinguish those employment practices that are alleged to be uniquely Japanese (
nihonteki
) and to have a peculiarly Japanese cultural imprint from management practices in Japan more generally (
nihon no kei‐ei
or
nihon ni okeru kei‐ei
). Using the term to indicate the packaged set of practices which are described below, many acknowledge that such packages exist mainly in Japan's large firms. In this context, JSM was popularly used in the 1970s to delineate in an all‐encompassing manner a number of interrelated practices demarcating work practices in Japan from those found elsewhere. In reality the term described as an ideal arrangement for core employees in Japan's largest firms. Today, the term is less used as the tenured core labor force shrinks and attention shifts from the utility of JSM as a way of engaging employees in a collective effort for higher productivity to the role of JSM as a membership system which delineates a privileged set of core employees from those in the peripheral labor force.
Jihad
Authors: Azca Muhammad Najib
Published: September 2017

The word
jihad
(which derives from the verb
jahada
, meaning “to strive, to exert oneself, to struggle”) is one of the most prominent Arabic terms in the western world owing to its vital influence in Muslim society and its significant political role there. It is also one of the most crucial concepts in political sociology for understanding contemporary Muslim society, particularly with the emerging trend of Islamist movements in many parts of the globe.
Justifications
Authors: Everett Tiffani
Published: September 2017

Justifications are verbal strategies used to minimize unpredictable behavior or consequences. Justifications are half of Scott and Lyman's (1968) taxonomy of accounting behavior. Though early sociologists including Marx, Goffman, Sykes, and Matza examined how social norms were restored following interaction, Scott and Lyman were the first sociologists to provide an organized taxonomy of these strategies. Along with excuses, Scott and Lyman argued that justifications are a prevalent strategy used in redefining situations. When people make justifications for their behavior, they accept responsibility for the behavior, but deny any negativity associated with the behavior.
Khaldun, Ibn (732–808
ah
/1332–1406)
Authors: Alatas Syed Farid
Published: September 2017

Walī al‐Dīn ‘Abd al‐Rahman ibn Muhammad ibn Khaldūn al‐Tūnisī al‐Hadhramī was born in Tunis on 1 Ramadhan of the Muslim year into an Arab family which originated from the Hadhramaut, Yemen and subsequently settled in Seville at the beginning of the Arab conquest of Spain. His ancestors left Spain for North Africa after the Reconquista and settled in Tunis in the seventh/thirteenth century. Ibn Khaldun was a scholar, teacher, and judge but is best known from the nineteenth century as the founder of historiography and sociology. Ibn Khaldun received a customary education in the traditional sciences, after which he held posts in various courts in North Africa and Spain. After a number of unsuccessful stints in office he withdrew into seclusion to write his
Muqaddimah
, a prolegomenon to the study of history that was completed in 1378 and which introduces what he believed to be a new science he called
‘ilm al‐‘umrān al‐basharī
(science of civilization) or
‘ilm al‐ijtimā‘al‐insānī
(science of human society). Ibn Khaldun's chief works are the
Kitab al‐‘Ibar wa Dīwān al‐Mubtada’ wa al‐Khabar fī Ayyām al‐‘Arab wa al‐‘Ajam wa al‐Barbar wa man Āsarahum min Dhawī al‐Sultān al‐Akbar
(
Book of Examples and the Collection of Origins of the History of the Arabs and Berbers
);
Muqaddimah
(
Prolegomenon
);
Lubāb al‐Muhassal fī usūl al‐dīn
(
The Resumé of the Compendium in the Fundamentals of Religion
), being his summary of Fakhr al‐Dīn al‐Rāzī's
Compendium of the Sciences of the Ancients and Moderns
; and his autobiography,
Al‐Ta‘rīf bi Ibn Khaldūn wa Rihlatuhu Gharban wa Sharqan
(
Biography of Ibn Khaldun and His Travels East and West
).
Knowledge
Authors: Fuller Steve
Published: September 2017

Knowledge is relevant to sociology as the principle that social relations can be organized in terms of the differential access that members have to a common reality.
Knowledge Societies
Authors: Stehr Nico
Published: September 2017

The transformation of modern societies into knowledge societies continues to be based, as was the case for industrial society, on changes in the structure of the economies of advanced societies. Economic capital – or, more precisely, the source of economic growth and value‐adding activities – increasingly relies on knowledge. The transformation of the structures of the modern economy by knowledge as a productive force constitutes the “material” basis and justification for designating advanced modern society as a knowledge society. The significance of knowledge grows in all spheres of life and in all social institutions of modern society. The historical emergence of knowledge societies represents not a revolutionary development, but rather a gradual process during which the defining characteristics of society change and new traits emerge. Until recently, modern society was conceived primarily in terms of property and labor. While the traditional attributes of labor and property certainly have not disappeared entirely, a new principle, “knowledge,” has been added which, to an extent, challenges as well as transforms property and labor as the constitutive mechanisms of society.
Labor Process
Authors: McKinlay Alan
Published: September 2017

Braverman's
Labor and Monopoly Capitalism
(1974) was a craftsman's roar of indignation against the relentless deskilling of modern work. His starting point was explicitly Marxist: the distinction between labor power and labor. That is, all forms of management are not neutral forms of coordination and mobilization, but necessarily involve the transformation of the
potential
productivity latent in labor power into
actual
work and output. Exploitation is not an unfortunate lapse but inherent in the employment relationship in capitalist societies. From the industrial revolution onwards, management had skirted around the stubborn opposition of skilled labor by indirect means, such as the use of ramshackle incentive systems or craft supervisors to navigate between craft norms and managerial demands. Braverman argues that modern management, a management that did not accept craft methods as a given, was inaugurated by F. W. Taylor. Taylorism, for Braverman, consisted of three essential principles. First, that management must accumulate and then codify all the knowledge of tools, tasks, and techniques held by skilled labor. This both redressed the imbalance of working knowledge that was the historic weakness of management and allowed them to experiment systematically with alternative, more efficient production methods. Second, the separation of conception from execution, the first step in the rigorous fragmentation and recombination of
all
tasks. Refractory, wayward workers were to be orchestrated for maximum discipline, efficiency, and predictability. “Scientific management” offered not just efficiency and control, but also reduced labor to something entirely interchangeable, an activity with no purpose other than to complete the working day and which offered no intrinsic satisfaction. Such was the ideological appeal of this objective “science,” Taylor argued, that the worker would willingly accept her or his complete subjugation at the factory gates, and surrender all agency and knowledge to become a “mere appendage to the machine.”
This
was the hallmark of modern “scientific management.” Third, once management had wrested the necessary knowledge from skilled labor, tasks would be defined in advance and labor would now work according to the tempo set by management planning rather than craft norms. In part, Taylorism represented the accumulation, codification, and reordering of the craftsman's traditional knowledge in order to raise overall productive efficiency. No less important, however, Taylorism offered a powerful critique of early twentieth‐century American management, which had allowed the productive potential of major technological changes to be blunted by craft resistance. For Taylor, management had tacitly accepted its relative ignorance and was complicit with craft labor in maintaining inefficient working practices. The modern manager was to derive his authority not from the maintaining of output using established practices, but from his mastery of the theory and practice of Taylor's new science of work.
Latent Growth Curve Models
Authors: Christ Oliver , Schlueter Elmar
Published: September 2017

Longitudinal data offer the possibility for a systematic analysis of stability and change over time and thus are a powerful tool to examine processes underlying social phenomena and the causal relation between different constructs. One prominent and powerful method is latent growth curve models (LGM) as one variant of structural equation modeling. With LGM it is possible to analyze individual trajectories and interindividual differences in these individual trajectories. LGM can easily be extended by using multiple indicator latent factors to model measurement error, integrating predictors of change as well as mediators, and testing moderating influences of measures. An empirical example demonstrates the usefulness of LGM.
Law, Criminal
Authors: Time Victoria
Published: September 2017

Criminal law is a body of law that defines and grades crimes, and indicates corresponding punishments. These definitions and punishments are found in statutes and in criminal codes within each state, and within each country. Due to the dual system of government that obtains in the US, the federal government has its own criminal code different from that of the various states.
Law, Economy and
Authors: Stryker Robin
Published: September 2017

The law–economy relationship has been an important object of inquiry for sociologists. Classical theorists Durkheim and Weber promoted sociology as a discipline by offering theories of this relationship. Today, sociological research on law and the economy provides ideas and empirical evidence to help answer such key questions as: Where do firms and markets come from? How and why do they operate and evolve as they do? How do legislatures and courts shape inequalities of income and wealth? How do legislatures and courts affect the participation in paid labor markets, jobs, and earnings of people of different races, ethnic groups, religions, and genders?
Lazarsfeld, Paul (1901–1976)
Authors: Starks Brian
Published: September 2017

Paul Lazarsfeld, founder of the Bureau for Applied Social Research at Columbia University, was a pioneering empirical sociologist. Trained as a mathematician and initially self‐identifying as a psychologist, he only later came to recognize himself as a sociologist.
Liberalism
Authors: Gamble Andrew
Published: September 2017

Liberalism is the leading ideology of the modern era. During the nineteenth century it became associated with the principles of individualism, liberty, limited government, progress, and equality. At its core is a conception of society and human nature based on beliefs in the moral primacy of the individual; the equal moral worth of every individual regardless of class, nation, gender, or race; and the possibility of improving social conditions and reforming political institutions. Many liberal ideals have not been achieved in practice, but they have acted as a standard by which political regimes are judged. A belief in progress associated liberals with capitalism, rationalism, science, and secularism. As a political doctrine liberalism argues for the rule of law and limited government. As an economic doctrine it argues for economic freedom, but accepts a role for government, and much dispute within liberalism has been over where the line should be drawn. As a cultural doctrine liberalism is associated with tolerance of behavior and beliefs so long as they do not harm others. The emphasis upon the individual and upon reason continues to define liberalism, even if contemporary liberals manage to draw very different, and sometimes diametrically opposed, conclusions from these principles.
Logocentrism
Authors: Fincher Warren
Published: September 2017

Coined by Jacques Derrida in hisOf Grammatology, logocentrism refers to the tendency in western civilization to privilege the linguistic signifier (a spoken or written word) over the signified (the thing to which the word refers). The importance of the term resides in Derrida's critique of the philosophical tendency in western civilization to be logocentric. Derrida asserts that western discourses generally tend to impose hierarchies of power by defining certain concepts against necessarily subordinated alternatives. Extending this critique to logocentrism, Derrida notes the tendency in western philosophy and semiotics to value the signifier as opposed to the thing it signifies in what he calls a “metaphysics of presence.”
Magic
Authors: Pinna Tomasino
Published: September 2017

Magic is complex and difficult to define. Generally, it refers to ritual activity – usually without institutional supports – the execution of which, through words and actions considered powerful, intends to automatically induce changes of various types. There are good (white magic) or bad (black magic) aims relating to various human and natural events (health, sex life, reproductive activity, climatic events, knowledge of the future, social relationships, etc.) according to the desires of those who use it (magicians or their clients) and those who believe (magic also presupposes a system of beliefs, apart from rituals), so that the practitioner is able to bend to his or her will the powers on which the various aspects of reality depend.
Management Consultants
Authors: Fincham Robin
Published: September 2017

Interest in management consultants, in popular management media and academic study, has expanded enormously in the past decade, reflecting the growth of consultancy and increasing numbers of managers who experience working with consultants. The emergence of consulting as a growth industry has links with many modern conditions. Trends like the service economy, increasing “marketization” of sectors, and the development of new organizational and corporate structures have created huge demand for the expertise of “outsider” groups like consultants.
Management Discourse
Authors: Rhodes Carl
Published: September 2017

Management discourse commonly refers to the institutionalized ways that the management and organization of work are understood through language. The term discourse suggests that the culturally embedded linguistic patterns that people use to speak and write about management influence the possibilities for management action and decision‐making. Here words are not seen as being in opposition to action or practice, but rather it is through language that meaning is constructed and that the possibilities of practice emerge from that meaning. Studies of discourse examine how management knowledge develops in relation to the way that it is instantiated through particular uses of language in practice, and the way that such uses of language are informed by socially available and/or dominant ways of understanding.
Marcuse, Herbert (1898–1979)
Authors: Dandaneau Steven
Published: September 2017

Herbert Marcuse was a German philosopher and social theorist who immigrated to the US to escape Nazi persecution, becoming a naturalized US citizen in 1940. Marcuse is credited with having formulated a distinctive critical theory of society that combined a Hegelian reading of Marx with insights drawn from his masterful studies of modern and twentieth‐century philosophy and social theory. As the only member of the famed Frankfurt School's inner circle at ease with partisanship, Marcuse's highly visible participation in 1960s revolutionary activism led to his celebration as a New Left intellectual hero on a par with Jean‐Paul Sartre. His once‐considerable presence and notoriety worldwide notwithstanding, Marcuse's scant influence on institutionalized sociology since is largely attributable to the fact that his lifelong commitment to dialectical forms of critical social analysis places his otherwise rich oeuvre at loggerheads with predominantly positivist sociology.
Marriage
Authors: Morgan David H. J.
Published: September 2017

Dictionary definitions of marriage usually begin with something like “the legal union of a man and a woman in order to live together and often to have children.” Even in such a simple and limited definition, some key elements and some potential complexities are highlighted. First, we are dealing with a definition referring to legal criteria. However, since legal definitions differ, we can reasonably expect practices and understandings of marriage to differ. This dictionary definition is consequently a highly ethnocentric one, shaped by the cultural and historical conditions under which it is produced. Next, marriage is a way of identifying some particular kinds of ties between two, or sometimes more, people such that marriage is always something more than the characteristics of the individuals who compose it. There is also a suggestion of functionality; marriage exists in order to achieve something else.
Materialism
Authors: Katz‐Fishman Walda , Gomes Ralph , Scott Jerome
Published: September 2017

“It is not the consciousness of men [and women] that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness” (Marx & Engels 1986: 182).
Materialist Feminisms
Authors: Isvan Nilufer
Published: September 2017

A materialist feminist research program is one that places special emphasis on the material conditions underlying gender inequality. Scholars within this tradition may vary in their definition of the line of demarcation and conceptual relationships between material and ideological spheres, but most would agree that the organization of production is central to material reality. Although all feminist scholars acknowledge the importance of women's economic status, materialist feminist approaches are distinguished by the centrality and causal precedence ascribed to material forces over ideational ones in explaining women's oppression.
Maternalism
Authors: Chase Susan E.
Published: September 2017

Maternalism has three meanings. First, it refers to social practices grounded in women's concern for children, especially when those practices extend beyond the home into community and/or political arenas. Maternalism has been used particularly to describe the activities of Progressive‐era social reformers who shaped the emerging welfare states' policies concerning mothers and children. It has also been used to describe the activities of many women's clubs, associations, organizations, and social movements, from the nineteenth century to the present, that aim(ed) to improve the quality of children's lives. Second, maternalism refers to discourse that highlights women's connection to and responsibility for children and that emphasizes differences (which may be conceived either as biologically based or as socially conditioned) between men's and women's contributions to family and society. This discourse animates many of the social practices listed above, but it can also infuse institutions or systems, such as the welfare state itself. Maternal discourse often intersects with class, racial, national, or religious interests. Third, maternalism is sometimes used to describe feminist theory that critiques the cultural devaluation of mothering and that articulates the contributions of maternal practice to social and political life.