bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Education, Social Functions of
Authors: Kantzara Vasiliki
Published: September 2017

Education as an institution is related in multiple ways to organized society. The education system has been established recently in human history and, since then, has found itself in a reciprocal relationship with other societal institutions and with society as a whole. In the sociology of education, in particular, this relationship has been analyzed by employing the term “function.” The most important functions of education are socialization and qualification: New members of society are socialized into the mores and codes of the dominant culture and equipped with qualifications testifying to the knowledge and skills necessary for their subsequent social roles as citizens. At a broader scale, education contributes to social integration and cohesion and guarantees societal continuity, but it also helps to reproduce existing hierarchies and inequalities in future generations. Education, one could argue, oscillates between degrees of societal preservation and transformation.
Environmental Problems
Authors: Dunlap Riley E.
Published: September 2017

While long in existence, environmental problems became recognized as such in the 1960s, and the 1970 Earth Day in the United States and the 1972 United Nations Conference on the Human Environment transformed “environmental quality” into a major social issue both nationally and internationally. The nature of such problems and their evolution over time is analyzed by distinguishing among three functions that the environment (technically ecosystems) serve for human societies – supply depot, waste repository, and living space. Human overuse of these three functions generates problematic conditions and increasing competition between the functions. In recent decades the resulting problems have grown in geographical scale and complexity, illustrated by human‐caused global warming, and many analysts suggest that human use of the global ecosystem is now exceeding sustainable limits.
Electronic Markets
Authors: Klimis George‐Michael
Published: September 2017

Standard economic textbooks define markets as mechanisms for buyers and sellers to negotiate, price, and exchange goods or products and services. This mechanism is usually found in a marketplace (e.g., a stock exchange, an auction house, or the village bazaar). Electronic markets, on the other hand, operate in what Rayport and Sviokla (1994) define as
marketspaces
(i.e., information‐defined rather than physically defined arenas). Electronic markets can then be defined as digital infrastructures that facilitate transactions, in these spaces, in a market‐like fashion. Prominent examples of electronic markets range from those that use the auction mechanism to allocate goods and services between participants (e.g., eBay), to Internet‐based virtual stock markets used for predictions and innovation (e.g., Iowa Electronic Markets). They can be classified into two broader categories according to the capacity of the market maker/owner:
Efficiency and Innovation
Authors: Evangelia Pappa
Published: September 2017

In order to perform effectively in a dynamic and highly competitive entrepreneurial environment, enterprises have to meet new requirements. Their operations are not characterized by stability, continuity, and harmony as described by neoclassical theorists, but follow a circular course of incessant mutation of the use and exploitation of their intangible assets (Penrose 1959). In the knowledge economy the systematic transformation of these assets (creative ideas, knowledge, and information) into marketable possibilities is called
innovation
and creates added value, either directly to the enterprise or indirectly to the whole economy. Consequently, an efficient entrepreneurship involves setting targets for accomplishment in the short and long run, and it is reflected in the firm's ability to maintain and increase its share of both domestic and international commodity markets.
Entrepreneurship
Authors: Klimis George‐Michael
Published: September 2017

The term entrepreneur is generally accepted as having been coined by French economist Richard Cantillon, but it became prominent through Jean‐Baptiste Say's
Treatise on Political Economy
. The English translator of the treatise, C. R. Prinsep, interpreted
entrepreneur
as “adventurer,” noting that the meaning of the corresponding English word
undertaker
was limited.
Environmental Change
Authors: Rhomberg Markus , Stehr Nico
Published: September 2017

Many contemporary environmental issues such as climate change represent both global as well as regional phenomena. However, throughout much of history, human impact on the natural environment had only local or regional reach. In the past, the impact of nature on societies has been considerable. For many historians, philosophers, geographers and economists, the natural circumstances (for example, climatic conditions) shaped in an almost fate$@#*^%#@#hyphen;like manner the existential conditions of humankind. The perspective of geographical determinism is a major representative of such a view (e.g. Huntington 2003). More recently, geographical determinism has fallen into disrepute because at least with the onset of industrial society it became possible to write human history as the history of itsemancipationfrom natural variability and change. Significant populations of humans now live in all climatic zones of the world. Technological innovations (e.g. air conditioning, building design, crop varieties) and cultural innovations (e.g. patterns of socializing, diet) that at times evolved quickly or at other times more slowly represent capacities adaptive to a range of climatic conditions. Cultural change has opened more of the world to human habitation.
Embodiment
Authors: Shilling Chris
Published: September 2017

Human embodiment has become one of the fastest growing areas of sociological investigation since the mid‐1980s, involving an explosion of theoretical and substantive studies on the significance for social and cultural life of “the body” and its variable capacities, connections, needs, and frailties. Focused on such areas as consumption, work, sex and gender, sport, history, medical developments, aging, and disability, these writings reach beyond the flesh to explore how identities and actions are forged through the interpersonal and material mediation of bodily techniques, senses, emotions, and beliefs. In so doing, they have extended sociology into new areas, and mitigated the tendency for social theory to rely on discursive and textual approaches that render invisible the organic dimensions of human existence.
Facework
Authors: Bakker J. I. (Hans)
Published: September 2017

The concept of “facework” (or face‐work) was articulated by Erving Goffman in 1955 in his book
Interaction Ritual
. He provides a “subject–object” model of human symbolic interaction in which individuals interact with other individuals in terms of subjective perceptions. Whatever is “universal” about human beings, it is not – according to Goffman – something automatic. Instead, it is a matter of self‐regulation and the ritual recreation of “face.”
Factor Analysis
Authors: Thompson Bruce
Published: September 2017

Factor analysis is a statistical method for empirically identifying the structure underlying measured or factored entities (e.g., variables). The three purposes for which factor analysis can be used are (1) empirically creating a theory of structure (e.g., Cattell's Structure of Intellect model), (2) evaluating whether factored entities (e.g., variables) cluster in a theoretically expected way (e.g., construct validity evaluation), and (3) estimating latent variables scores (i.e., factor scores) that are then used in subsequent statistical analyses (e.g., MANOVA, descriptive discriminant analysis) in place of the measured factored entities (e.g., variables).
Families and Childhood Disabilities
Authors: Green Sara E. , Wilbers Loren , Darling Rosalyn Benjamin
Published: September 2017

Research over the past 50 years has documented many social barriers encountered by parents raising disabled children including difficulties obtaining diagnoses, accessing information and services, and managing stigma. Parents are often forced to embark on an individual search for information and appropriate services and to fight for scarce resources. Despite the challenges, parents highlight the benefits of raising disabled children.
Family and Community
Authors: Hilliard Betty
Published: September 2017

From the earliest days of sociology, family and community have been central concerns of the discipline. This entry traces the relationship between these aspects of society in simple and in modern societies at both a theoretical and an empirical level. It finds that the dense interpenetration of family and community associated with earlier societies is no longer an indispensable feature of community. Geographical and social mobility, the growth of individualism and the expansion of choice offered by the internet have impacted on the nature of engagement in family and community. Changing orientations in research into family and community are identified. Both family and community remain central values in western cultures, albeit with changing conceptualizations of each.
Family, History of
Authors: Hutter Mark
Published: September 2017

European societies during the nineteenth century underwent massive changes. The old social order anchored in kinship, the village, the community, religion, and old regimes was attacked and fell to the twin forces of industrialism and revolutionary democracy. The sweeping changes had particular effect on the family. There was a dramatic increase in such conditions as poverty, child labor, desertions, prostitution, illegitimacy, and the abuse of women and children. These conditions were particularly evident in the newly emerging industrial cities. The vivid writings of a novelist such as Charles Dickens in
Oliver Twist
and
Hard Times
provide startling portraits of a harsh new way of life.
Family Poverty
Authors: Rank Mark R.
Published: September 2017

Family poverty generally refers to households lacking a minimum amount of income. However, specific definitions and measurements of poverty vary widely across countries. In the US, family poverty is officially measured in terms of whether various sized households fall below specific annual income levels. In Europe, poverty is frequently defined as residing in a household that falls below one half of the national median income. In developing countries the standard is often that of living in a family earning less than a dollar a day. The underlying concept behind all of these approaches is that there is a basic minimum amount of income necessary in order for families to carry on their day‐to‐day activities adequately. Families that fail to acquire such income are considered poor.
Family, Sociology of
Authors: Powell Joel , Branden Karen
Published: September 2017

Sociology of family is the area devoted to the study of family as an institution central to social life. The basic assumptions of the area include the universality of family, the inevitable variation of family forms, and the necessity of family for integrating individuals into social worlds. Family sociology is generally concerned with the formation, maintenance, growth, and dissolution of kinship ties and is commonly expressed in research on courtship and marriage, childrearing, marital adjustment, and divorce. These areas of research expanded in the twentieth century to encompass an endless diversity of topics related to gender, sexuality, intimacy, affection, and anything that can be considered to be family‐related.
Family Structure
Authors: Allan Graham
Published: September 2017

Within any society there are more or less common ways of “doing” family relationships. That is, there are ways of organizing family relationships which are broadly accepted as appropriate and given legitimacy in that society. This does not mean that all family relationships are similar or that all follow the same societally imposed “rules.” There are always variations, exceptions, and alternative practices. Moreover, the more complex and diverse the society, the more variation there will be in the family practices given legitimacy by different social groupings within it. Indeed, one aspect of different family systems is the social tolerance given to divergent patterns of family relationships. Nonetheless, it is useful, at least heuristically, to ask questions about the dominant family structures existing in different societies, in part to facilitate comparison and understand the variations that arise. The types of questions posed by sociologists concerned with family structures involve such issues as the distribution of power and authority within families; the patterns of solidarity and obligation that arise between different family members; and the differential access to resources different family members have. A key prior question concerns the boundaries of family membership and belonging: Who is considered “family,” when, and for what purposes?
Family Therapy
Authors: Leslie Leigh A.
Published: September 2017

Family therapy is a clinical approach to treating mental health and relationship problems based on the assumption that dysfunction can best be understood and treated by examining the social context in which it exists. Emerging as an identifiable “field” in the 1950s, family therapy was, and continues to be, characterized by attention to the interaction and communication patterns existing within couples and families. Several precursors set the stage for what, at the time, was thought to be a dramatic and controversial shift in clinical treatment from a focus on individuals to families.
Fans and Fan Culture
Authors: Hills Matthew
Published: September 2017

Fans have become important to work in media sociology and cultural studies for a variety of reasons: they can be taken to represent a dedicated, active audience; they are consumers who are often also (unofficial, but sometimes official) media producers (Jenkins 1992; McKee 2002); and they can be analyzed as a significant part of contemporary consumer culture. Fandom – the state of being a fan – is usually linked to popular culture rather than high culture. People who appreciate high culture, often being as passionately partisan as pop culture's “fans,” are described as “connoisseurs” or “aficionados” rather than as fans (Jensen 1992). Whilst connoisseurship is typically deemed culturally legitimate, fandom has been analyzed as rather more problematic: the stereotype of “the fan” has been one of geeky, excessive, and unhealthy obsession with (supposedly) culturally trivial objects such as TV shows. Henry Jenkins has highlighted and opposed this negative fan stereotype, arguing that such portrayals of fandom should be critiqued, and that fans should instead be viewed more positively as building their own culture out of media products, and as selectively “poaching” meanings and interpretations from favored media texts. Jenkins, whose seminal workTextual Poachers(1992) helped to make fandom a viable object of academic study, suggests that the creativity of fans is downplayed in cultural common sense in favor of viewing fans as “cultural dupes” who are perfect consumers, always accepting what the culture industry produces for them. Against this narrative, depicted as belonging to the Frankfurt School of Marxist theorists such as Theodor Adorno as much as to forms of cultural common sense, Jenkins argues that fans discriminate keenly between and within their objects of fandom, developing an aesthetic sense of what counts as a “good” episode of television series such asStar TrekorDoctor Who(see Tulloch & Jenkins 1995).
Fascism
Authors: Berezin Mabel
Published: September 2017

Fascism as a historical entity began in 1922 when Mussolini came to power in Italy. As a political ideology, fascism defines many of the movements that were present in post‐World War I Europe from the British Union of Fascists to the Romanian Iron Guard. Fascism could have remained simply a characteristic of a group of historically specific political formations, but the term rather quickly developed a life of its own. Today, it serves as what Alexander (2003) has described as a bridging metaphor, that is, a term that one uses independently of historical or definitional context when confronted with acts of arbitrary violence or authoritarianism in political and, in some instances, social life.
Female Genital Mutilation
Authors: Hagood Lee Susan
Published: September 2017

Female genital mutilation (FGM) is the ancient cultural practice of removing portions of a girl's genitalia. It occurs extensively in northern Africa on girls from infancy to puberty, with significant negative medical consequences. Many Muslims believe that it is a religious duty. The procedure reduces sexual desire and the patriarchal groups which practice FGM consider it necessary to maintain a girl's good reputation for marriage. Uncircumcised girls are believed to be unclean and promiscuous. In response to political pressure from African women's organizations, 14 countries have banned the procedure. Nonetheless, it continues to be practiced and has become increasingly medicalized. Grassroots change efforts working within cultural norms have been the most successful.
Female Sex Work as Deviance
Authors: Weitzer Ronald
Published: September 2017

“Sex work” involves the exchange of sexual services or performances for material compensation. This entry examines research on pornography, strip clubs, and different kinds of prostitution.
Feminism
Authors: Lengermann Patricia , Niebrugge Gillian
Published: September 2017

Feminism is the system of ideas and political practices based on the principle that women are human beings equal to men. Feminism may be the most wide‐ranging social movement in history, effecting change in the institutions, stratificational practices, and culture of nearly all societies. Its impact on sociology is the focus here. A study of this impact shows that sociology as an intellectual discipline and as a professional organization is itself deeply gendered, located in and affected by the society it attempts to study, and that its gendered character changes only in response to changes in the gender dynamics within society – changes in part produced by the action of feminist sociologists.
Feminism and Science, Feminist Epistemology
Authors: Kerr Anne
Published: September 2017

Feminist scholars systematically began to focus upon the gender values in the biological and medical sciences in the 1970s, drawing upon and developing a radical social constructivism where facts were treated as social products rather than objective value‐free entities and knowers were seen to be part of communities rather than lone scholars. This work ran alongside other developments in social studies of science, but was shaped by political commitments to women's rights, in contrast to the intellectual agnosticism of the mainstream, predominantly male scholars of sociology of scientific knowledge.
Feminist anthropology
Authors: Johnson Helen
Published: September 2017

Feminism refers to the awareness of women's oppression and exploitation at work, in the home, and in society, as well as the conscious political action taken by women for progressive social and economic change toward equality and recognition of women's difference. Social anthropology has evolved from a dominant western discourse in which it explores cultural difference and uniqueness, while simultaneously seeking the similarities in human lived experiences. Feminist theoretical critiques entered social anthropology in the 1970s and are vital to ongoing theoretical and methodological developments. Feminist social anthropologists question many of the discipline's basic assumptions and have documented scholars’ failure to fully explore the human experience due to the neglect of the organizing categories of “women” and “gender” as significant dimensions of social life.
Feminist Criminology
Authors: Moe Angela M.
Published: September 2017

Feminist criminology stands as a critique of the sexist nature of theorizing within the discipline of criminology. The history of this movement extends back to the 1960s and 1970s when scholars began testing the application of traditional criminological theories and applying the philosophical tenets of the women's liberation movement (also known as the second wave feminist movement) to female criminal offenders. Until this time, very little attention was given to women or girls in the justice system, and that which did exist was discriminatory and narrow in application.
Feminist Disability Studies
Authors: Casper Monica J. , Talley Heather Laine
Published: September 2017

This entry traces the development of feminist disability studies (FDS), including its mutual emergence from feminist studies and disability studies. It explores tensions between the two fields and the ways that “disability” is often elided within feminist studies and “gender” and “women” are often left out of disability studies. Pointing to connections between feminist disability studies and fields such as critical body studies, symbolic interaction, critical race and ethnic studies, and fat studies, the authors show how FDS makes possible new analytical strategies and representations. Importantly, they explore how FDS can benefit from sociology, including attention to structural constraints on lived embodiments and representations. Encompassing both early and new feminist disability studies scholarship, the authors note potential connections and disjunctures between academia and activism. They also raise questions about new trajectories in FDS, including connections to queer theory and transgender studies.
Feminist Methodology
Authors: Naples Nancy A.
Published: September 2017

Feminist methodology is the approach to research that has been developed in response to concerns by feminist scholars about the limits of traditional methodology to capture the experiences of women and others who have been marginalized in academic research. Feminist methodology includes a wide range of methods, approaches, and research strategies. Beginning in the early 1970s, feminist scholars critiqued positivist scientific methods that reduced lived experiences to a series of disconnected variables that did not do justice to the complexities of social life. Feminists were also among the first scholars to highlight the marginalization of women of color in academic research and to offer research strategies that would counter this trend within academia (Baca Zinn 1979; Collins 1990). Feminist scholars also stress the importance of intersectional analysis, an approach that highlights the intersection of race, class, gender, and sexuality in examining women's lives (Crenshaw 1993). Some of the earliest writing on feminist methodology emphasized the connection between “feminist consciousness and feminist research,” which is the subtitle of a 1983 edited collection by Stanley and Wise. Over the years, feminist methodology has developed a very broad vision of research practice that can be used to study a wide range of topics, to analyze both men's and women's lives, and to explore both local and transnational or global processes.
Feminist Methodology
Authors: Naples Nancy A.
Published: September 2017

Feminist methodology has been developed in response to concerns by feminist scholars about the limits of traditional positivist methodology. Feminist social scientists have raised questions about separation of theory and method, gendered biases inherent in positivism, and hierarchies that limit who can be considered the most appropriate producers of theoretical knowledge. Feminist methodology includes an array of methods, approaches, and research strategies and offers a broad vision of research practice that can be used to study a wide range of topics and to explore everyday life and social processes and structures and multiple scales and sites of analysis.
Feminist Standpoint Theory
Authors: Naples Nancy A.
Published: September 2017

Feminist standpoint theory is a broad categorization that includes somewhat diverse theories ranging from Hartsock's feminist historical materialist perspective, to Haraway's analysis of situated knowledges, Collins' black feminist thought, Sandoval's explication of third world feminists' differential oppositional consciousness, and Smith's everyday world sociology for women. Knowledge generated from embodied standpoints of subordinates is powerful in that it can help transform traditional categories of analyses that originate from dominant groups. However, as many feminist standpoint theorists argue, it remains only a partial perspective. Given standpoint theory's emphasis on a process of dialogue, analysis, and reflexivity, the approach has proven extremely vibrant and open to reassessment and revision. As a consequence, standpoint theory remains an extremely important approach within feminist theory.
Fertility: Adolescent
Authors: Cooksey Elizabeth
Published: September 2017

Adolescent fertility rates have declined significantly throughout most countries of the world over the past few decades. Adolescent fertility still remains of concern, however, especially when girls in their early teens have babies. This entry presents information on the magnitude of recent declines, mortality and morbidity risks faced by adolescents who get pregnant and either abort or carry their babies to term, health and developmental risks to children born to young mothers, and some of the social and economic causes and consequences of early motherhood.
Fertility and Public Policy
Authors: Bongaarts John
Published: September 2017

Fertility levels vary widely among contemporary populations, from a high of 7.9 births per woman in Niger to a low of 0.8 in Macao (United Nations 2005). These levels are largely the result of decisions made by individual couples who are trying to maximize their families’ welfare. In the least developed countries, fertility is high because children are valued for the social and economic benefits they provide to their families and the cost of childbearing and rearing is typically low. In contrast, in the most industrialized countries, couples want and have small families because the value of children is relatively low and their costs are high. The fertility that results from this individual decision‐making is not necessarily optimal from a societal point of view, thus suggesting a potential role for government intervention.
Fetishism
Authors: Hekma Gert
Published: September 2017

A fetish is a more or less concrete object of sexual desire. It can be a part of the body, an object, a situation, or some abstraction. Breasts, buttocks, feet, hair, and genitals belong to the parts of the body; clothing, shoes, whips, dildos, uniforms, cars, or specific materials such as leather, silk, satin, velvet, and rubber are possible objects; situations can be cinemas, saunas, dark rooms, dinner tables, beaches, or prison cells; and more abstract examples of fetishism include youth, beauty, hospitality, power, submission, and humiliation. Ultimately, any part of the body, object, situation, or abstraction can become a fetish and, on the other hand, all sexual pleasure depends on fetishes. Naming or reading the word can be as exciting as the object to which it refers.
Fetishism
Authors: Hekma Gert
Published: September 2017

Fetishism was coined as a medical term in 1888 by Alfred Binet. The concept now most commonly refers to a sexual preference for certain body parts, objects, situations, acts, or abstractions. Under the contemporary framework of cultural studies, the concept is imbued with a power to break down conventional object–subject dichotomies when discussing sexuality, going beyond orthodox categorizations such as homosexual and heterosexual. While some scholars maintain that all sexuality is to some degree based in fetishes, surveys indicate that some 10–25 percent of respondents indicate enjoying fetishes, including those in the realm of sadomasochism.
Finalization in Science
Authors: Krohn Wolfgang
Published: September 2017

Finalization in science is a theory concerning the relationship between science and society from a historical and political perspective. It was developed in the 1970s by Gernot Böhme, Wolfgang van den Daele, and Wolfgang Krohn (Böhme, and van den Daele, 1976; Böhme, van den Daele, and Krohn, 1972, 1973, 1978). Its main thesis is that modern science has internal dynamics that allow it to absorb external goals of research on an increasing scale. The term “finalization” (from the Latin
finis
, “purpose,” “goal,” “end”) is meant to denote this tendency. This theoretical model is continuous with the paradigmatic view of Thomas Kuhn and with Imre Lakatos's methodology of scientific research programs but adds supplementary features concerning the social contexts of science. With respect to many fundamental disciplines of modern science, the model assumes a typical three‐phase development. The first – the explorative phase – embraces the period prior to the emergence of theories that would be strong enough to organize the field. At this point a research program internally determining the relevance and succession of problems is absent. Rather, all kinds of challenging problems can be experimentally analyzed and classified and serve to induce competing theories. Examples can be found in mechanics before Newton; in chemistry before the work of Lavoisier, Proust, and Dalton; in electrodynamics before Maxwell; in evolutionary biology before Darwin; and in genetics before the double helix model. Contemporary examples are neurobiology, research of chronic diseases, and cancer research. The exploratory phase allows for multiple, if contingent, couplings of external problems with scientific interests. These couplings are important because they carry the institutional and monetary support of the research fields.
Flânerie
Authors: Reible Heidi L.
Published: September 2017

Flânerie
, in a narrow sense, refers to the act of idle strolling in nineteenth‐century Paris, while visually collecting social artifacts of metropolitan life – the human sights and material culture of the urban crowd. In a wider sense, it is immersion in an anonymous, spectatorial gaze that gives license to wandering and observing.
Flânerie
engenders reflexivity as both an action and a process of observation that perceptively elucidates social phenomena. Text and sketches of the passing moment serve as witnesses to these random readings of the crowd.
Flânerie
embodies pleasure in the form of mobile observation. It is an aesthetic action, art form, and social phenomenon that resonate in masculine public space.
Football Hooliganism
Authors: Armstrong Gary
Published: September 2017

Combine masculinity, physicality, fantasy, and local pride, mix in sporting excitement and collective grievances, and the possible outcome, dating back to the formation of Association Football in the mid‐nineteenth century, has been disorder. Since the mid‐1960s, incidents in Britain involving football spectator disorder and violence have been labeled “hooliganism.” Lacking a precise definition or a legal status, “football hooliganism” has for some 40 years served as a receptacle for a spectrum of prejudices and attributes. Without a precise meaning, hooliganism can have no precise causes. The research process thus needs to examine both the
concept
(and its manifestation) and the
interaction
between definer and defined (Pearson 1983). Negotiations around the criminal justice system are crucial because definitions of deviance can depend on the demands of bureaucracies and the moral entrepreneurship of police, media, and the football authorities. The resulting boundary maintenance mechanisms result in stigmatizations and degradation ceremonies offered by courtrooms and media “name and shame” projects. The establishment of police databases, increasingly via the eye of a lens, provides the ever‐expanding roll call of “categorical suspicion” crucial to the construction and maintenance of a “social problem” (Armstrong & Giulianotti 1998).
Franchise
Authors: Bills David B.
Published: September 2017

Franchising is a business arrangement in which a parent company contracts with one or more smaller firms to grant or sell to them the right to distribute its products, implement its processes, or use its trade name. The recent development of franchising in the US and elsewhere is characterized by steady to rapid growth in the number of franchised establishments, their increased levels of employment and sales, and their proliferation beyond the restaurant and retailing sectors in which they have been historically most prevalent into virtually all areas of post‐industrial economies.
Frazier, E. Franklin (1894–1962)
Authors: Jo Deegan Mary
Published: September 2017

Groundbreaking scholar on the African American family, social classes, youth, and community, Edward Franklin Frazier was born on September 24, 1894 in Baltimore, Maryland. He was the son of a former slave, Mary Clark, and James Edward Frazier. His father died when he was 10 years old, and his mother and three siblings worked together to survive this familial and financial loss.
Freud, Sigmund (1856–1930)
Authors: Derné Steve
Published: September 2017

Sigmund Freud's pioneering focus on unconscious motives arising from infant experiences offers a distinctive approach to understanding human motives. His focus on how the super‐ego internalizes societal demands offered a way of understanding how social norms affect individuals. His approach has had an enduring influence in sociology, shaping important research especially in gender, family, and religion.
Friendship, Social Inequality, and Social Change
Authors: Allan Graham
Published: September 2017

While friendship evokes a good deal of interest in popular culture, there has until quite recently been little interest in it among social scientists. Sociologists in particular have failed to pay much heed to friendship, apparently accepting a conventional view that it represents an individual, and consequently idiosyncratic, relationship rather than one structured by social organization or having much social (as distinct from personal) consequence. Recently, though, this has begun to change, partly as a result of the rise of “the personal” in interpretations of the changes that are occurring in what has been termed late or postmodernity. In particular, changes in the demographic patterning of marriage and partnership, including the rising incidence of cohabitation, gay partnerships, and divorce, have led to sociologists showing increased interest in the ways informal ties of friendship are socially constructed and the part they play within contemporary social formations.
Friendship: Structure and Context
Authors: Adams Rebecca G.
Published: September 2017

Although since the days of Aristotle, Cicero, and Plato philosophers have been pondering the qualities of ideal friendship, proposing typologies of categories and functions of friendship, and analyzing the role of friendship in maintaining a stable society, very few sociologists conducted empirical research focused specifically on friendship before the late 1960s (for an exception, see Williams 1959). The friendship literature has thus developed during a scholarly period in which interdisciplinary collaboration has been more common than in the past. Nonetheless, cooperation on friendship research across disciplines has been rare, and while psychologists and communications scholars have mainly studied dyadic processes, sociologists and anthropologists have focused their research on network structure. Much of the early work in both of these traditions focused on individual variations in friendship patterns, but psychologists were concerned with how psychological disposition shaped what happened in friendship dyads, while sociologists were concerned with how social structural location affected friendship network structure. More recently there has been a general concern in the friendship literature about how context shapes relationships (Blieszner & Adams 1992; Adams & Allan 1998). Sociologists, then, have contributed to the friendship literature by examining how friendships vary according to individuals’ locations in the social structure, studying the structural characteristics of friendship networks, and theorizing about how friendships are affected by the contexts in which they are embedded.
Friedan, Betty (1921–2006)
Authors: Stults Lyndsey , Gilmore Stephanie
Published: September 2017

Betty Friedan was a feminist writer and activist in the post‐World War II women's movement for over forty years. She was best known for her first and most popular work,
The Feminine Mystique
(1963), which exposed the ill effects of rigid postwar gender roles that implored women to forgo careers and return or stay home to be housewives and mothers. To substantiate claims that women were fundamentally dissatisfied with these roles, she employed social scientific methodology and queried her Smith College cohort. The cause of women's discontent, Friedan suggested, resided in the legal, political, social, economic, and educational factors that mandated strict and polarized gender roles in American culture.
Fictive Kin
Authors: Johnson Denae
Published: September 2017

Fictive kin, also referred to as voluntary or honorary kin, is the informal adoption of close friends into one's family. It has been highlighted as a significant component of black American family life that arose as a result of the historical, cultural, and economic domination of black Americans. Today it persists as a form of extended kin, as a means of pooling resources, extending familial networks and extending social support. There are two types of fictive kin: one of self‐selected family, which is composed of unrelated individuals, and another that involves the incorporation of selected individuals into a biological or legal family.
Fustel de Coulanges, Numa Denis (1830–1889)
Authors: Inglis David
Published: September 2017

Numa Denis Fustel de Coulanges, French historian and proto‐sociologist, pioneered a structuralist analysis of social institutions which influenced subsequent sociologists, including Ferdinand Tönnies and Émile Durkheim. He is not usually counted as a contributor to globalization analysis, but his ideas can be discerned in the accounts of globalizing processes offered by Tönnies and Durkheim, who both drew on his account of social change in the ancient Mediterranean. Fustel de Coulanges's contribution to globalization studies is indirect and mostly unacknowledged, but it points toward how globalizing social tendencies produce novel forms of consciousness.
Gambling and Sport
Authors: Cashmore Ellis
Published: September 2017

There are two likely sources for the word gambling: the Old Saxon
gamene
, which became abbreviated to the contemporary “game”; or the Italian
gambetto
, source of “gambit,” a practice of sacrificing something minor in order to secure a larger advantage. Gambling now refers to playing games of luck or skill, using a stake, usually a sum of money, in anticipation of winning a larger sum.
Game Theory
Authors: Macy Michael W. , Van de Rijt Arnout
Published: September 2017

Game theory is a powerful mathematical tool for modeling conflict and cooperation that originated with von Neumann and Morgenstern's (1944) seminal work. A game consists of two or more
players
, each with a set of
strategies
and a
utility function
that assigns an individual
payoff
to each combination of strategies, such that payoffs for a given strategy depend in part on the strategies of other players. This
strategic interdependence
can be represented in several ways: as a payoff matrix (the “normal form,” where players act simultaneously), a decision tree (the “extensive form” for sequential moves), or as a production function (for
n
‐person games). Strategic interdependence allows two types of games. In
zero‐sum games
, a gain for one player is always a loss for the other, which precludes the possibility of cooperation for mutual gain. In
positive‐sum
games, everyone can gain through
Pareto efficient
cooperation, where some are better off and none are worse off, compared to other outcomes. If cooperation is Pareto efficient and both players are rational, why would cooperation ever fail? There are two reasons: the fear of being “suckered” by the partner and the temptation to cheat. These failures can be avoided through enforceable contracts that preclude “cheating” (“cooperative games”) or through collusion (in “non‐cooperative games”).
Game Theory
Authors: Diekmann Andreas
Published: September 2017

Game theory (
GT
) is a branch of mathematics to model strategic decisions of two or more actors. It is, so to say, the mathematics of social interaction and a “unifying language for the social sciences.”
GT
is an important tool for modeling the dynamics of social interactions in a precise manner. There are now many extensions to classical game theory, including a large variety of social dilemma games, games with incomplete and asymmetric information, signaling models, repeated games, evolutionary game theory, and behavioral game theory. These models are very helpful for theory development in sociology, the precise description of different types of social interactions, and policy‐related issues of institutional design.
Gay and Lesbian Movement
Authors: Valocchi Stephen
Published: September 2017

The gay and lesbian movement refers to the manifold collective efforts to benefit people with same‐sex desire. Although an organized movement first appeared in Germany in the late nineteenth century, this effort was shortlived. The first sustained activities, organizations, and network building for the positive recognition of lesbians and gays and the improvement of their social and political conditions appeared in the United States in the 1940s and 1950s with the establishment of three organizations: the Mattachine Society, an organization for men which devoted itself mainly to social support in a climate of profound public hostility; the Daughters of Bilitis, an organization that concerned itself with the unique challenges of women with same‐sex desire at a time when women were supposed to be dependent on men for economic and social support; and One Inc., which existed only as a monthly magazine and promoted the view that gay people, rather than psychiatrists or lawyers, are the most qualified to speak for themselves. With the exception of One Inc., these organizations stressed respectability and the desire to be accepted into mainstream society.
Gender Oppression
Authors: Patil Vrushali
Published: September 2017

Gender oppression is defined as oppression associated with the gender norms, relations, and stratification of a given society. Modern norms of gender in western societies consist of the dichotomous, mutually exclusive categories of masculinity and femininity. Developing in tandem with industrial capitalism and the nation‐state, they had particular consequences for women and men. While masculinity was to consist of rationality, autonomy, activity, aggression, and competitiveness (all qualities that made men the ideal participants in the emerging public sphere of economy and polity), femininity was defined in contrast as emotionality, dependency, passivity and nurturance – all qualities that deemed women's “place” in the private sphere. These naturalized views of gender categories were embedded in burgeoning disciplines such as biology and sociology. However, not only were they premised on a dichotomous conception of sex and gender, they were also premised on heterosexuality, middle‐class status, and European ethnic origin. As such, the gender oppression embedded therein is associated not only with the category with less power in the binary (femininity), but also with subjects that somehow deviate from either category.
Gender, Social Movements and
Authors: Whittier Nancy
Published: September 2017

Social movements are shaped by gender systems and they also are a source of social change in gender. Some social movements directly attempt to change gender relations; these movements, particularly women's movements, have been the focus of considerable scholarship. Increasingly, scholars also recognize the gendered nature of other social movements and the impact of systemic inequalities of gender on the opportunities, constraints, and forms of social movements in general.
Gendered Aspects of War and International Violence
Authors: Gerami Shahin , Lehnerer Melodye
Published: September 2017

Research has shown that gender is an integral element of violence (Tiger & Fox 1971; Elshtain & Tobias 1987; Goldstein 2001). Most cases of violence are committed by men against men. While women can be combatants in armed conflicts (Enloe 2000; Goldstein 2001), they are more likely to be victims than organizers and perpetrators of international violence. The intersection of social categories of gender, class, and nationality informs the effects of international violence for groups and individuals. Working‐class and peasant women pay higher prices, both directly and indirectly, for international violence. In violence between states, women of the South are victimized more often, more harshly, and pay higher costs during and after wartime. In fact, the benefits of peace reach them later and in smaller amounts.
Genealogy
Authors: Fuller Steve
Published: September 2017

The appeal to genealogy as a general historical method is usually attributed to Michel Foucault, who contrasted it with both teleology and his own preferred “archeology,” which suspends the search for causation altogether in favor of treating socio‐epistemic structures (or epistèmes) as superimposed space‐time strata, each of roughly coexistent events. (The palimpsest was thus Foucault's model for historiography.) Foucault's foil was Friedrich Nietzsche, whose
Genealogy of Morals
resurrected worries of legitimate lineage that had dominated the reproduction of social life prior to the constitution of the modern nation‐state. Replacing traditional legal concerns that political succession might be based on fraudulent documents, Nietzsche argued that contemporary morality might rest on forgotten etymologies, whereby “obligations” turn out to be strategies for the weak to inflict a sense of guilt on the strong, simply for being stronger. Here Nietzsche was explicitly siding with the survivalist ethic of Social Darwinists against socialists who argued that the rich “owed” their success to the collaboration of the poor.
Generational Change
Authors: Kohli Martin
Published: September 2017

In its most obvious sense, generational change means change occurring along succeeding generations, showing up in differences between them. In a more fundamental sense, it expresses the idea that social change needs to be understood in terms of the sequence of generations, and is to a considerable extent driven by their dynamics.
Genocide
Authors: Karstedt Susanne
Published: September 2017

Genocide has been termed the crime of the twentieth century and in many ways it epitomizes this “age of extremes” (Hobsbawm 1994). It was in this century that the word genocide was first coined, and it was legally defined and criminalized. The international community committed itself to the protection of threatened populations and to the prosecution and punishment of those who were responsible for mass killings, and was successful in a number of high and low‐ranking cases; at the end of the century, international intervention in cases of genocide started. Most importantly, it was the century of the archetypical example of genocide in modern times, the Nazi Holocaust of the European Jews and other groups, the most horrible single crime in human history. On most accounts, it is the century if not with the highest numbers of incidents, then the highest numbers of victims of genocide in the known history of humankind.