bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Critical Pedagogy
Authors: Dowty Rachel A.
Published: September 2017

Critical pedagogy challenges both students and teachers to channel their experiences of oppression into educating and empowering marginalized peoples. Critical pedagogues approach education as a process of social, cultural, political, and individual transformation, where social equity can be nourished or social inequity perpetuated. According to critical pedagogues, notions defining rational classification of people into categories that diminish their social affect and importance keep them oppressed. Oppressed peoples thus require not only awareness of inequities they suffer but also an understanding of ways that oppressive social mechanisms and beliefs endure, and of resistance strategies. Reflection on one's own experiences of oppression and the feelings of frustration, shame, guilt, and rage that accompany those experiences help shape practices of critical pedagogy. Critical pedagogues redirect these feelings that can incite violent acts, submission, and/or ongoing repression into dynamic dialogue that defines literacy in terms of participatory citizenship.
Critical Qualitative Research
Authors: Cannella Gaile S.
Published: September 2017

In the first edition of
The Handbook of Qualitative Research
(Denzin & Lincoln 1994), Kincheloe and McLaren (1994) begin by describing research and theory that could be labeled criticalist. Such work assumes socially and historically embedded power relations, “facts” as ideologically inscripted, language as both constructing and limiting consciousness, oppressions as multiple and interconnected, and research as producing and reconstituting (however unintended) systems of power. Further, criticalist research assumes the need for emancipatory actions that lead to increased social justice and social transformation.
Critical Realism
Authors: Kerr Marie , Morgan Jamie
Published: September 2017

Critical realism emerged out of debates in the philosophy of science in the 1970s (e.g., Harré and Madden, 1975; Bhaskar, 1997 [1976]). The initial argument focused on the significance of laboratory experiment and particularly on the development of ontology based on a transcendental argument for the distinction between theory and reality. Laboratory experiment creates a form of artificial closure in order to express and explore the conjunction between isolated elements of a more complex interacting reality. According to critical realism, modern understandings of science have tended to focus on the constant conjunction expressed in events as an adequate account of reality. However, it is the powers of entities that account for events, and those powers may not always be expressed consistently in events. If this were not so, laboratory science would not be necessary in order to induce constant conjunctions. It is therefore an epistemic fallacy to reduce reality to how it is known, and it is an error to focus on laws as constant conjunctions expressed consistently in events. Instead, critical realism positions itself as a solution, based on immanent critique, to recognized problems and contradictions of forms of idealism and materialist empiricism, including the dominant strain of twentieth‐century positivism and the work in the sociology of science of Imre Lakatos and Thomas Kuhn (Sayer, 1992 [1984]; Morgan, 2006a, 2006b).
Cross‐Sex Friendship
Authors: Monsour Michael
Published: September 2017

Friendships between males and females, hereafter referred to as cross‐sex friendships, are non‐romantic (but not necessarily non‐sexual), voluntary, non‐familial relationships in which both individuals label their association as a friendship. The distinguishing characteristic of a cross‐sex friendship is that the friends are of different biological sexes. Similar to other kinds of friendships, such as same‐sex friendships, interracial friendships, and friendships of sexual minorities, cross‐sex friendships are characterized by generic benefits in the form of mutual trust, loyalty, fun, enjoyment, and social support which manifests itself as aid, affect, and affirmation. From a symbolic interactionist perspective, however, cross‐sex friends also offer one another the unique benefit of providing an insider's perspective on how members of the other sex think, feel, and behave. The bestowing of insider perspectives between cross‐sex friends enables males and females of all ages to take the role of the other sex, thereby increasing their understanding of their friend and the gender their friend represents.
Cross‐Sex Friendship
Authors: Monsour Michael
Published: September 2017

Friendships between males and females, hereafter referred to as cross‐sex friendships, are non‐romantic (but not necessarily non‐sexual), voluntary, non‐familial relationships in which both individuals label their association as a friendship. Similar to other kinds of friendships, such as same‐sex friendships, inter‐racial friendships, and friendships of sexual minorities, cross‐sex friendships are characterized by generic benefits in the form of mutual trust, loyalty, fun, enjoyment, and social support as well as the unique benefit of providing insider perspectives on how members of the other sex think, feel, and behave. Historically, the distinguishing characteristic of a cross‐sex friendship has been that the friends are of different biological sexes and their internal gender identities match their physical bodies (i.e., cisgendered individuals). However, recent research argues for a broader definition of cross‐sex friendships that includes transsexuals (Monsour and Rawlins, 2014).
Crowd Behavior
Authors: McPhail Clark
Published: September 2017

Herbert Blumer was the most influential crowd sociologist of the twentieth century. To his credit, he recognized in mid‐career that “sociologists had done a rather miserable job in studying the crowd systematically because they had done little to assemble empirical accounts” (Blumer 1957). He attributed this to the lack of “a well thought out analytic scheme which would provide fruitful hypotheses and lead to more incisive observations.” But systematic study of “the crowd” proves to be impossible precisely because that concept, despite considerable cachet, is not a useful tool for investigating the phenomenon to which it purportedly refers. “The crowd” implies a homogeneity of actors and motives and, consequently, continuous and mutually inclusive action. Scholars who have taken a slightly different tack have produced extensive empirical evidence that refutes both those implications and their consequences.
Cults: Social Psychological Aspects
Authors: Shepherd Gary
Published: September 2017

The term cult has become, since the latter part of the twentieth century, one of the most controversial concepts in the social sciences. The term was originally employed by scholars of religion to signify a system of activities centering on an object of worship, but the concept has been gradually changed by sociologists to identify a particular residual type of religious group that fell outside the boundaries of recognized religious organization. Subsequently, scholarly attempts to redefine or specify the dimensions and implications of cult groups have proliferated, while at the same time the term cult has been appropriated for polemical purposes by opponents of unconventional religious organizations who characterize such organizations under the cult label as dangerous to both individuals and the larger society. The mass media in modern nations have largely adopted and disseminated these morally charged, negative definitions, and thus pejorative notions of the term cult and of the many groups to which it is uncritically attached have become virtually universal among the general public. Many contemporary religions scholars, especially sociologists, have now chosen to drop the term cult as a descriptor of a type of religious group, concluding that it is a conceptually polluted concept, and replaced it with a morally neutral term, such as new religious movement or alternative religious group. Others have argued that the term cult has a scientifically useful conceptual function and should be retained even though there is not yet a social science consensus on its essential definitional characteristics.
Cultural Capital in Schools
Authors: Weininger Elliot B. , Lareau Annette
Published: September 2017

One of the central goals of sociological studies of education has been to understand the role of schools in society. Do schools promote equal opportunity? Do schools help to recreate social stratification? In American society, where the ideology of meritocracy has taken root, American social science researchers have been preoccupied with issues of mobility and status attainment. The concept of cultural capital offers an alternative to the classic view of schools as the “great equalizer” which assesses students based on their raw talent or merit. Instead, the concept of cultural capital suggests that students’ performance in schools draws on students’ cultural resources where the habits, dispositions, and skills that children learn in the home are unequally valued by educators. For example, in this perspective children who learn classical music or other highly valued cultural practices at home may have an advantage in the educational setting compared to children who learn hip hop music or other cultural practices that are accorded lower social value. The profit yielded by cultural capital is linked to the value accorded to particular skills, dispositions, and habits by educators and other people in positions of power in dominant institutions. The concept of cultural capital plays a large role in arguments concerning social reproduction, in which schools are posited to play a key role in channeling individuals towards class destinations that reflect their class origins, and in legitimating inequality.
Cultural Critique
Authors: Kellner Douglas , Lewis Tyson E.
Published: September 2017

Cultural critique is a broad field of study that employs many different theoretical traditions to analyze and critique cultural formations. Because culture is always historically and contextually determined, each era has had to develop its own methods of cultural analysis in order to respond to new technological innovations, new modes of social organization, new economic formations, and novel forms of oppression, exploitation, and subjugation.
Cultural Diversity and Aging: Ethnicity, Minorities, and Subcultures
Authors: Dillworth‐Anderson Peggye , Boswell Gracie
Published: September 2017

Current US Census population projections (2004) clearly show a growing number of diverse racial, ethnic, and cultural groups in American society. Parallel to this increase in diversity, the number of older adults in America is increasing. Older adult members of society are increasing at a faster rate than any other subgroup in America, and among this aging population, the percentage of the population who are members of minority groups will grow, between 2000 and 2050, at an even faster rate than the white majority. In 2002 (US Census 2002), the older population numbered 35.6 million; this was an increase of 3.3 million or 10.2 percent since 1992. Minority populations are projected to represent 26.4 percent of the elderly population in 2030, up from 17.2 percent in 2002. Between 2000 and 2030, the white population 65 and older is projected to increase by 77 percent compared with 223 percent for older minorities, including Hispanics (342 percent), African Americans (164 percent), American Indians, Eskimos, and Aleuts (207 percent), and Asians and Pacific Islanders (302 percent). Accompanying this tremendous boom in population growth and ethnic makeup will be economic problems as well as promises of diversity. These economic problems and promises will be directly associated with living arrangements and health‐care needs of increasingly frail members of the population as well as the satisfaction of the supply and demand requirements for diversified goods and services of a vibrantly aging population (Angel & Hogan 2004).
Cultural Imperialism
Authors: Wolff Kristina
Published: September 2017

Cultural imperialism is the process and practice of promoting one culture over another. Often this occurs during colonization, where one nation overpowers another country, typically one that is economically disadvantaged and/or militarily weaker. The dominant country then forces its cultural beliefs and practices onto the conquered nation. This has happened since nations have been warring, beginning with the Greek and Roman empires to the French and British empires, the American Revolution and the rise of communist governments in China and the Soviet Union to present‐day changes in governments around the world.
Cultural Relativism
Authors: Weiler Bernd
Published: September 2017

Cultural relativism, a highly complex doctrine surrounded by various epistemological, political, and ethical controversies, can be broadly defined as the view that culture is the key variable to explain human diversity and that an individual's behavior, thought, emotion, perception, and sensation are relative to and bound by the culture of the group he or she belongs to. Within this frame of thought, culture is usually conceptualized as a holistic, historically grown entity with distinctive features and clear‐cut boundaries. The period of enculturation during early childhood is regarded as crucial. The autonomy of the individual is seen as more or less negligible, intragroup differences are usually minimized, and intergroup differences maximized. In the history of ideas, the emphasis on the cultural diversity, the cultural relativity, and boundedness of human experience has often been linked to and, at times, conflated with normative relativism, holding that all cultures are of the same “worth” and that an individual's ethical behavior ought to be judged in terms of the values of his or her culture (cf. Spiro 1986). Cultural relativist arguments have also often been employed to support moral skepticism and to criticize the values of one's own culture. Michel de Montaigne's (1533–92) famous essay “Of Cannibals” might serve as a famous example of the argumentative intertwining of the descriptive and the moral aspect of cultural relativism.
Cultural Reproduction
Authors: Franklin Adrian
Published: September 2017

Cultural reproduction is frequently considered to describe how cultural forms (e.g., social inequality, privilege, elite status, ethnicity) and cultures themselves are transmitted intact, from one generation to another. This idea emanates strongly from original work by Pierre Bourdieu in the 1970s on the role of the education process in reproducing class inequality and from such ethnographic classics as Paul Willis's
Learning to Labour
(1977) that showed how inequality could be reproduced culturally despite the best efforts of a benevolent education system. However, subsequent work on the concept of culture suggests that a concentration on class reproduction implies a very restricted sense of the term “reproduction,” and that more significant dimensions of reproduction inhere in the idea of culture itself (Jenks 1993). Indeed, Jenks shows how cultural reproduction lies at the heart of more traditions of sociology than Marxism and neo‐Marxism.
Cultural Studies, British
Authors: Storey John
Published: September 2017

British cultural studies works with an inclusive definition of culture. That is, it is a “democratic” project in the sense that rather than study only what Matthew Arnold called “the best which has been thought and said” (
Culture and Anarchy
, 1867), British cultural studies is committed to examining
all
that has been thought and said. To put it simply, culture is how we live nature (including our own biology); it is the shared meanings we make and encounter in our everyday lives. Culture is not something essential, embodied in particular “texts” (that is, any commodity, object, or event that can be made to signify); it is the practices and processes of making meanings with and from the texts we encounter in our everyday lives. In this way, then, cultures are made from the production, circulation, and consumption of meanings.
Culture Industries
Authors: Garnham Nicholas
Published: September 2017

Culture industries is a term which performs both a descriptive and conceptual function. It also has a history. Since the term was coined by Horkheimer and Adorno in their 1947 essay “The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception,” both what the term designates and its theoretical implications have undergone a number of shifts.
Culture, Nature and
Authors: Mukerji Chandra
Published: September 2017

Much recent work in the sociology of culture describes how cultural practices entail the participation of nature as well as of social actors. Some of the interest in nature and culture is inspired by the sociology of science and by writings on nonhuman agents in the production of culture. Other work addresses territoriality, looking at how landscapes are engineered for social and cultural effect. Still other studies look at material practices by artists and museums, expanding the production of culture tradition in sociology to include consideration of natural dynamics in things. Scholars in cultural sociology have helped explain how cultures are entangled with the natural world, developing distinct kinds of analysis and illuminating different parts of culture.
Culture, Production of
Authors: Peterson Richard A.
Published: September 2017

The production of culture perspective focuses on the ways in which the content of symbolic elements of culture are significantly shaped by the systems within which they are created, distributed, evaluated, taught, and preserved. The initial focus was on the production of expressive symbols such as art works, scientific research reports, popular culture, religious practices, legal judgments, journalism, and other parts of the culture industries. Now the perspective is also applied to many situations where the manipulation of symbols is a byproduct rather than the purpose of the collective activity (Peterson 1976; Crane 1992, Peterson & Anand 2004).
Cybercrime
Authors: Nunn Samuel
Published: September 2017

Cybercrime refers to the commission of criminal acts that target computers, use computers as an instrumentality to traditional crimes, or transmit illegal information using computer networks. One continuing form of cybercrime targets computers. So‐called hackers and crackers, through various means, gain access to closed computer networks in order to vandalize or otherwise damage databases or network software by introducing computer viruses or “denial of service” attacks. Denial of service refers to computer viruses or worms that create an overabundance of computer transactions, to the extent that entire systems will slow significantly or shut down completely.
Creative Destruction
Authors: Lair Craig D.
Published: September 2017

The phrase “creative destruction” was made famous by the economist Joseph A. Schumpeter. For Schumpeter, creative destruction “is the essential fact about capitalism” (Schumpeter, 1975 [1942]: 82) and is meant to highlight the dynamic nature of capitalist systems. In particular, it refers to how capitalism continuously revolutionizes itself as new products and business processes are created that render obsolete or simply destroy existing ones – as, for example, the creation of the automobile lead to the destruction of the horse and buggy industry. In other words, this concept stresses that the dynamic nature of capitalism stems from the dialectical relationship between creation and destruction. There are two important aspects of creative destruction that should be kept in mind.
Cyberdelinquency
Authors: Molesworth Mike , Denegri‐Knott Janice
Published: September 2017

Cyberdelinquency is a composite term that captures the recognition of new deviances or crimes related to the online behavior of young people. Although delinquency and juvenile delinquency often have specific legal definitions, the terms usually refer to antisocial behavior by minors that may include “petty” crimes such as theft or vandalism, or other behaviors such as bullying or drunkenness. Although similar behaviors may be observed in adults, they may either not be labeled as a crime, by virtue of the belief that adults make informed choices (e.g., to view pornography), or be considered as a more serious crime, as adults should “know better.” As a disruptive technology, the Internet produces new behaviors or changes to behavior. Amongst them are those that seem antisocial and/or that are, or are subsequently, labeled as criminal (Denegri‐Knott & Molesworth 2002; Denegri‐Knott & Taylor 2005). Such behaviors may be referred to as cyberdelinquency. However, the demographics of many young Internet users suggest that care should be taken with direct comparisons to other types of delinquency. Juvenile delinquency is often associated with poverty, yet the majority of young Internet users are likely to come from more affluent backgrounds.
Consumer Society
Authors: Sassatelli Roberta
Published: September 2017

The notion of “consumer society” emerged after World War II and was made famous by authors such as Marcuse, Galbraith, Packard, and Baudrillard (cf. Baudrillard 1998). It was used to suggest that the society in which we live is a late variant of capitalism characterized by the primacy of consumption over production. At that time, the label “consumer society” constituted an attack on so‐called “consumerism”: a continuous and unremitting search for new, fashionable, superfluous things, which were branded as causing personal discontent and public disengagement. Such a moralistic connotation masks both important differences and substantial continuities between our society and other social formations (Sassatelli 2007). Even in so‐called “tribal” societies people use objects as an important source of identity and a means of social relations, to distinguish themselves or mark alliances; even in these societies one can find forms of conspicuous consumption which mostly serve to reinforce social hierarchies (Douglas & Isherwood 1979). Still, our societies seem to be different in that material culture has grown enormously: it has become ever more differentiated and is increasingly produced and consumed via market‐mediated social relationships. In subsistence economies, work, consumption, and exchange were strongly integrated with one another: people used history‐thick objects of closer provenance in ways which were taken for granted and had straightforward significance. Production and consumption were not specialized and separated spheres of action, held together by an equally specialized sphere of exchange: the fundamental cultural dichotomy on which social order rested was that of sacred/profane rather than of production/consumption. In contemporary societies, because of the disentanglement of production and consumption, we find ourselves confronted with objects whose meaning is beyond our everyday life and yet we are mobilized as “consumers” to use these objects in meaningful ways.
Copyright
Authors: Klimis George‐Michael
Published: September 2017

Although the history of intellectual property rights begins with the grant of a patent for a recipe around 500
bc
in Sybaris, a Greek colony in Sicily, the starting point for the history of copyright occurs much later with the advent of typography. The need of printers and publishers to establish a monopoly on the dissemination of works under their control, combined with the need of the state to censor publications, led to grants of exclusivity for printing certain works in Venice and elsewhere in Europe, by decree, from the mid‐fifteenth century onwards. These grants were awarded only to publishers and printers or their companies, such as the Stationers Company in England, and never to the author. It was not until 1710 in England with the Statute of Anne, the first copyright law, that the author was recognized as the primary rightholder.
Copyright
Authors: Klimis George‐Michael
Published: September 2017

Although the history of intellectual property rights begins with the grant of a patent for a recipe around 500
bce
, the starting point for the history of copyright occurs much later with the advent of typography. In this entry, definitions and uses of copyright are discussed together with the main issues ranging from duration to the institution's survival in the digital age.
Cognitive interviewing
Authors: Noel HarmoniJoie , Ryan J. Michael
Published: September 2017

Cognitive interviewing is a qualitative method used to pretest survey questions before the survey is fielded so changes can be made to improve the questions if needed. It is among the most widely used means of pretesting survey questions, especially for government surveys.
Cinema and Film
Authors: Kellner Douglas
Published: September 2017

Film emerged as one of the first mass‐produced cultural forms of the twentieth century and cinema became one of its distinctive and highly influential industries. Based on new technologies of mechanical reproduction that made possible simulations of the real and the production of fantasy worlds, cinema provided a novel mode of culture that changed patterns of leisure activity and played an important role in social life. Early films were the inventions of technicians and entrepreneurs like the Lumière brothers and Méliès in France, and the Edison Corporation in the United States.
Death of the Sociology of Deviance?
Authors: Goode Erich
Published: September 2017

Over the past decade or so, the claim that the sociology of deviance is “dead” has become increasingly vocal Colin Sumner (1994), advocating an outspoken leftist agenda, dates the field's “death” to 1975. Unfortunately for his argument, he offers aphorisms, plays on words, and polemical assertions about the field's role in the political economy, but no empirical evidence to test his proposition.
Death of the Sociology of Deviance?
Authors: Goode Erich
Published: September 2017

Observers, critics, and pundits have often predicted the death of some field of study, institution, practice, or custom – even the death of an entire society. Some of these supposedly “soon to meet their demise” phenomena are the novel, God, the family, capitalism, history, western society, and – closer to our subject – sociology itself. It seems almost superfluous to say that the bolder and broader the prediction, the less likely is it that it will come to pass.
Debord, Guy (1931–1994)
Authors: Redmon David
Published: September 2017

The
Situationist Internationale
extended French avant‐garde social movements by identifying how the spectacle replaced the commodity as the dominating mode of social life. Guy Debord was perhaps the foremost thinker in this group of French intellectuals who were influenced by Dadaism, Surrealism, and the sociologist Henri Lefebvre. Debord was not an academic, yet citations of his works are included in numerous sociological texts. Debord never graduated from college, barely graduated high school, and lived the majority of his life as a drifter who roamed to and from different urban locations. He eventually settled down in a rural village where he committed suicide by shooting himself in the heart at the age of 62 (Merrifield 2005).
Deconstruction
Authors: Pavlich George
Published: September 2017

At first blush, placing a term like deconstruction in a sociology encyclopedia seems entirely incongruous. The wordencyclopediaderives from the Greek prefixen(in) andkúklos(circle), both conjoined withpaideíã, connoting education (Ayto 1990: 201). Together, the implication is this: encyclopedias encircle education by gathering general, but definitive, discussions on particular topics between the covers of one reference work. This activity undoubtedly runs contrary to the spirit of deconstructive practices that expressly involve undoing language where it gathers itself into closed circles – especially when it purports to reflect the necessary, essential, absolute, or fixed. By contrast, the prospect of reinventing encyclopedic traditions from within is certainly not counter to deconstructive thought. Without clinging to theen‐, one could, for instance, allude to the deconstructive potential of generally circling around educative meaning horizons.
Deindustrialization
Authors: Flynn Nimcole
Published: September 2017

Deindustrialization is a general term used to describe the shift in production from manufacturing to services beginning in the United States in the mid‐ to late 1960s. Although the transformation of the economy in terms of output is primary, the collateral changes are nearly impossible to separate. Changes in skills required for work and changes in the location of work stemming from the shift in output are often included as part of the concept of deindustrialization. Deindustrialization, or more optimistically industrial restructuring, is an expected development of advanced capitalism and a globalized economy. The implications of it, for both workers and industry, are debated by social scientists and economists.
Deinstitutionalization
Authors: Weinstein Raymond M.
Published: September 2017

In 1955 there were 559,000 patients in public mental hospitals in the United States, the highest there had ever been. At that time, patients were largely committed involuntarily and had long hospital stays. For more than a century, the number of patients at state institutions, historically the primary facilities for the treatment of psychiatric disorders, had been rising steadily. By 1980, however, this number had declined to just over 132,000, despite the fact that the national population grew considerably. In 2003, fewer than 53,000 remained. The 93 percent drop in the resident census of state hospitals was accompanied by the growth of outpatient clinics and community mental health centers as primary care facilities, the sharp reduction in patients' average length of hospitalization, and the shift to policies emphasizing more voluntary admissions.
Demographic Techniques: Decomposition and Standardization
Authors: Das Gupta Prithwis
Published: September 2017

Demographers are often interested in comparing rates (e.g., birth rates, mortality rates) in populations cross‐nationally and/or over time. Interpreting difference between rates requires an understanding of the various factors that comprise that rate. Crude birth rates, for example, depend not just on the fertility of women of childbearing age, but also the proportion of the population that consists of such women. In such cases, in which the overall rate of a phenomenon for a population depends on a number of factors, a detailed comparison of two such rates from two different populations can be made in two distinctly different but closely related ways. One way is to see how the overall rates would change if one of the factors varied as it did in the two populations, while the other factors were kept at the same levels. The rates obtained in this way are called the standardized rates with respect to the unchanged factors, and the process is called
standardization
. The other way of comparing the two overall rates is to break the difference between these two rates into additive components constituting the effects of the factors involved. The effects of the factors obtained in this way are called the decomposed effects and the process is called
decomposition
. These two processes of standardization and decomposition are closely linked because, if they are developed correctly, the difference between the two standardized rates from the two populations corresponding to the only factor that has changed should be equal to the effect of the same factor in the decomposition process. Authors who have contributed to this subject include Kitagawa (1955), Cho and Retherford (1973), Das Gupta (1978, 1991, 1993), and Kim and Strobino (1984)
Demographic Techniques: Time Use
Authors: Raley Sara
Published: September 2017

Time is a scarce, some would say increasingly scarce, resource. However, unlike other resources, time is equally distributed because everyone faces the same 24‐hour constraint as they make decisions about how to allocate their limited time to various and often competing commitments. Despite its apparent equality, time allocation is a major indicator of social differentiation and stratification. For example, people with high levels of human capital may be better able to afford to trade paid work time for leisure time as well as purchase time‐saving goods and services (such as prepared meals and house cleaning) than people with lower levels of human capital.
Demographic Transition Theory
Authors: Weeks John R.
Published: September 2017

Although it dominated demographic thinking in the latter half of the twentieth century, demographic transition theory actually began as only a description of the demographic changes that had taken place over time in the advanced nations. In particular, it described the transition from high birth and death rates to low birth and death rates, with an interstitial spurt in growth rates leading to a larger population at the end of the transition than there had been at the start. The idea emerged in 1929, when Warren Thompson gathered data from “certain countries” for the period 1908–27 and showed that the countries fell into three main groups, according to their patterns of population growth: (1) Northern and Western Europe and the United States had gone from high rates of natural increase to very low rates of natural increase, and were on the verge of depopulating at that time; (2) Italy, Spain, and the “Slavic” peoples of Central Europe showed some evidence of a decline in both birth rates and death rates but it seemed likely that the birth rates would remain higher than the death rates for some time to come; and (3) the rest of the world, where there was little evidence of control over either births or deaths. The populations of these latter countries, comprising about 75 percent of the world's population at the time, were living at subsistence levels and would likely increase in size if economic conditions improved enough for death rates to decline a bit.
Denationalization
Authors: Sassen Saskia
Published: September 2017

Denationalization is an emerging category for analysis that aims at capturing a specific set of components in today's major global transformations for which the typical terms in use – globalization, postnationalism, and transnationalism – are inadequate. These three terms all point to locations for change that lie outside the nation‐state. The effort behind developing a fourth category – denationalization – arises out of an as yet small but growing body of research showing that critical components of today's major transformations actually take place inside the nation‐state. The actual processes that constitute the transformation in this case have the effect of denationalizing what has historically been constructed as national. These processes are partial, often highly specialized and obscure. Further, they frequently continue to be coded, represented, and experienced in the vocabulary of the national, and hence can remain unrecognized and undetected. Thus this new category for analysis opens up a vast research and theorization agenda connected to global trends but focused on the nation‐state. Sociology is particularly well situated to develop this agenda because its theories, methods, and data sets have to a large extent been shaped by the fact of nation‐states. But while this new agenda can use and benefit from sociology's existing resources, it will require new interpretive instruments and framings.
Dependency and World‐Systems Theories
Authors: Chase‐Dunn Christopher
Published: September 2017

Dependency approaches emerged out of Latin America in the 1960s in reaction to modernization theories of development.Dependentistasattributed the difficulties of development in the global South to the legacies of the long history of colonialism as well as contemporary international power relations. This approach suggested that international inequalities were socially structured and that hierarchy is a central feature of the global system of societies.
Development: Political Economy
Authors: Boatcă Manuela
Published: September 2017

The emergence of the idea of development in western culture is closely linked to the evolutionary worldview that began to gain ground in Europe in the eighteenth century and has as such also been constitutive for sociology as a discipline. Like evolution, development has taken on a variety of meanings, the common denominator of which can be seen in the idea of continuous, orderly social change usually proceeding in several, clearly demarcated stages and entailing an improvement of living conditions. However, as will be shown in the following, while most evolutionary theories implicitly are theories of development, the reverse does not apply.
Developmental State
Authors: Williams Brad
Published: September 2017

The developmental state is one that strongly influences the direction and pace of economic development by directly intervening in the development process, rather than simply relying on market forces to allocate economic resources (Beeson 2003). American scholar Chalmers Johnson is widely credited with coining the term in his seminal work
MITI and the Japanese Miracle: The Growth of Industrial Policy, 1925–1975
(1982), although the notion of state intervention in the market to ensure growth was not necessarily new. Johnson's book subsequently triggered a boom in studies of the state's role in the economy.
Deviance, Constructionist Perspectives
Authors: Henry Stuart
Published: September 2017

Constructionist perspectives are ways of viewing reality as a human cognitive or social production. The extent to which reality is seen as having an independent existence outside the human mind or social processes distinguishes different versions of constructionist theory, as does whether the construction occurs individually or socially. Individual or personal constructionism refers to how humans make cognitive meaning of their experiences of their environment. Social constructionism is about how people interactively make sense of their world by defining it and categorizing it, by representing it through language, symbols, maps, etc., and by acting toward the representations as though they were real.
Deviance, Criminalization of
Authors: Hillyard Daniel
Published: September 2017

Imputations of deviance occur whenever there is stigmatization, condemnation, segregation, retribution, or rehabilitation. Criminalization refers to the process of applying the criminal law to certain behaviors. Criminalization reinforces the dominant standards in a society through threatened criminal penalties, criminal prosecution, and punishment. Not all deviant behaviors are criminal. Many scholars study the processes through which, and conditions under which, the criminal sanction is applied to particular deviance categories.
Darwin, Charles (1809–1882)
Authors: Sanderson Stephen K.
Published: September 2017

Charles Robert Darwin was an English naturalist most famous for having developed one of the greatest theories of all time, the theory of evolution by natural selection. After finishing his degree at Cambridge in 1831, Darwin signed on as a naturalist aboard the HMS
Beagle
, a ship that would sail along both coasts of South America with the purpose of measuring the coastline. His five years aboard the
Beagle
played a tremendous role in the development of his theory. Darwin became an evolutionist shortly after the completion of this voyage, when he began to reflect on the significance of the data he had collected in South America and the Galapagos Islands. Darwin apparently discovered his principle of natural selection in 1838 while reflecting on the significance of Malthus's “struggle for existence,” but he did not publish his great book,
On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection
, until 1859.
Deviance, the Media and
Authors: Altheide David L.
Published: September 2017

The mass media feature deviance as entertainment. It is as though deviance has become part of our popular culture and everyday lives. There are many reports about prostitution, pornography, gay rights – including marriage and having families – legalizing drugs such as marijuana, gang‐member initiation rites, and polygamy. Mass media reports about deviance and crime comprise a large portion of television and popular culture entertainment (Winick 1978). Most media messages rely on audience stereotypes about “weird behavior” and simply play back many of the moral messages in order to attract even larger audiences. Audiences learn to play with deviance by, on the one hand, sharing in stereotypes, being repulsed by certain conduct, and cheering on authorities who seek to eliminate deviance, while, on the other hand, celebrating deviance for its innovations and resistance to convention, and in many instances emulating deviant lifestyles. However, the mass media coverage of deviance, especially crime, has changed over the last 40 years.
Deviance, Normative Definitions of
Authors: Meier Robert F.
Published: September 2017

Sociologists tend to define deviance in one of two ways: by the negative reactions an act, the expression of a belief, or a physical characteristic generates, or by the violation of the norms or the rules that prevail in a given society or group. Reactivist definitions come in two varieties: the “hard” or strict reactivist definition, which defines deviance as acts, beliefs, or conditions that have already attracted a negative reaction from one or more audiences, and the “soft” or moderate definition, which defines deviance as behavior, beliefs, or conditions that are likely to generate negative reactions from audiences. In contrast, the normative definition identifies deviance as a violation of a norm held in certain social circles or by a majority of the members of the society at large. A norm is a standard about “what human beings should or should not think, say, or do under given circumstances” (Blake & Kingsley 1964). Put another way, a norm is a social expectation concerning thought or behavior in particular situations. Violations of norms tend to draw reactions or sanctions from their social audiences. These sanctions generate the pressure that most people feel to conform to social norms. However, even if the actor, the believer, or the possessor is not detected or chastised for a normative violation, the non‐normative act, belief, or trait is deviant nonetheless. To the normative definition, what defines something as deviance is a formal violation of the rules.
Deviance, Normative Definitions of
Authors: Meier Robert F. , Cain Calli M.
Published: September 2017

Sociologists tend to define deviance in one of two ways: by the negative reactions an act, the expression of a belief, or a physical characteristic generates, or by the violation of the norms or the rules that prevail in a given society or group. Reactivist definitions come in two varieties: the “hard” or strict reactivist definition, which defines deviance as acts, beliefs, or conditions that have already attracted a negative reaction from one or more audiences, and the “soft” or moderate definition, which defines deviance as behavior, beliefs, or conditions that are likely to generate negative reactions from audiences. In contrast, the normative definition identifies deviance as a violation of a norm held in certain social circles or by a majority of the members of the society at large. A norm is a standard about “what human beings should or should not think, say, or do under given circumstances” (Blake and Kingsley, 1964). Put another way, a norm is a social expectation concerning thought or behavior in particular situations. Violations of norms tend to draw reactions or sanctions from their social audiences. These sanctions generate the pressure that most people feel to conform to social norms. However, even if the actor, the believer, or the possessor is not detected or chastised for a normative violation, the non‐normative act, belief, or trait is deviant nonetheless. To the normative definition, what defines something as deviant is a formal violation of the rules. Although the wording of reactivists and normative definitions appear similar, each conceptualization focuses attention on very different aspects of deviance: the normative definitions focus on the person who engages in norm‐violating behavior while reactivist definitions focus on the social audiences that define deviants.
Deviance, Positivist Theories of
Authors: Meier Robert F.
Published: September 2017

Sociologists define deviance as the violation of a norm that, if discovered, typically results in punishment, scorn, or stigmatization of the offender. The normative violation can include acts, beliefs, and traits or characteristics. This definition opens two radically different though complementary missions or lines of inquiry: those that attempt to explain the causes and consequences of normative violations, and those that explore the dynamics underlying the social construction, accompaniments, and consequences of the norms, including laws and their enforcement. Sociologists of deviance – including criminologists – who adopt the first of these missions are usually referred to as “positivists”; those who adopt the second are called “constructionists.” Positivistic sociologists of deviance and crime nearly always study non‐normative behavior, while constructionists look at the full gamut of normative violations – behavior, beliefs, and physical characteristics.
Deviant Careers
Authors: Groenemeyer Axel
Published: September 2017

The concept of career has its origin in the sociology of professions, where it has been used since the 1950s with different meanings. Corresponding to everyday meaning, career refers to certain occupations and professions of high status and stable upward mobility. In this context career means a highly institutionalized social and cultural pattern of social positions in an orderly sequence or a system of sequences of positions with growing prestige and earnings within a bureaucratic organization. This definition was first applied in functionalist perspectives and was linked to the question of the social function of this patterned organization of professions for the integration of modern societies (Wilensky 1960).
Dialectical Materialism
Authors: Beamish Rob
Published: September 2017

The term “dialectical materialism” first appeared in Joseph Dietzgen's 1887 essay “Excursions of a Socialist into the Domain of Epistemology,” but only became a central concept within Marxism following George Plekhanov's 1891 essay commemorating the sixtieth anniversary of Hegel's death and his ensuing efforts to establish a monist view of history. Dialectical materialism became the dominant philosophy of Marxism during the Second International (1889–1917) and the official, formulaic philosophy of communist parties controlled by the USSR during Joseph Stalin's dictatorship (1929–53).
Diaspora
Authors: Remennick Larissa
Published: September 2017

The term “diaspora” originates from the Greek “dia” (over) and “speiro” (to sow). The Greeks understood diaspora as migration and colonization of new lands. In modern parlance the term diaspora usually refers to ethnic groups whose sizable parts have lived outside their country of origin for at least several generations, while maintaining some ties (even if purely symbolic or sentimental) to the historic homeland. The “classic” diasporas in terms of the ancient history of dispersion are Jewish, Armenian, and Greek; the more modern (and also more numerous) diasporas include the African (“Black American”) diaspora resulting from the forced migration of slaves to the Americas, and Irish, Italian, Polish, Chinese, and Indian diasporas resulting from voluntary migrations.