bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Entrepreneurial Familism
Authors: So Alvin Y.
Published: September 2017

Entrepreneurial familism is a concept formulated by Siu Lun Wong to challenge the modernization theorists' negative interpretation of the traditional Chinese family. Entrepreneurial familism has three components: paternalistic management (the use of the family metaphor to manage the company), nepotism (the hiring of the boss's relatives), and the family mode of ownership. Siu Lun Wong shows that these three components enable the family to act as the motor of economic development of Hong Kong in the post‐World War II era.
Ego
Authors: Heiskala Risto , Husso Marita
Published: September 2017

The origin of the word ego is the Latin first‐person pronoun
ego
, meaning “I.” In the current academic world, it is used mainly in psychology, social psychology, and microsociology. Its psychological use originates in Freud's structural model of superego, ego, and id. Several schools, of which ego psychology is the most influential, have developed it further. Microsociologists such as Goffman and social psychologists such as Mead have emphasized the social construction of ego identity in interaction. Although these lines of thought seldom meet, there are some synthetic attempts in the field of general social theory and feminist theory. The same sometimes occurs in studies of ego in relation to ethnicity and social class.
Organizational Sociology
Authors: Milian Roger Pizarro , Brown Nikki‐Marie
Published: September 2017

This entry provides an overview of the subfield of organizational sociology. It covers the main theoretical traditions, namely new institutionalism, population ecology, and network theory. It also provides commentary on niche areas within organizational sociology. An effort is made to provide a balanced understanding of developments in the sub‐discipline since the 1960s.
Mercenaries and Private Security Companies
Authors: Fitzsimmons Scott
Published: September 2017

Mercenaries are fighters who are primarily motivated by economic gain and bound by short‐term contracts. Unlike regular soldiers, they owe no allegiance to particular countries or regimes; rather, they choose where and when they fight and for whom. They fight and kill on behalf of their clients or train the client's regular forces to do the same.
Nonplace
Authors: Davis Teresa
Published: September 2017

Nonplace is defined by Augé in relation to “place,” as a space that does not have any historical, affective, or identity‐creating potential. It displays characteristics of extreme mobility, of excessive images, and of solitary individuality where everyone is at once at home and alone in the crowd. It is created under conditions of supermodernity and is a space of flows and of transition.
Coding
Authors: Sanders Carrie B. , Howells Stephanie
Published: September 2017

Coding is a process of categorizing, classifying, and sorting data and is the first step in making analytical interpretations of data. There are different approaches to coding that are dependent upon whether the researcher is using qualitative or quantitative data. Coding can occur deductively or inductively, and is dependent upon the researcher's methodological approach. There are various types of and stages to coding; some of the types are open coding, focused coding, axial coding, and theoretical coding.
Institutional Discrimination
Authors: Cunningham Jeanine , Light Ryan
Published: September 2017

Institutional discrimination refers to prejudicial practices and policies within institutions that result in the systematic denial of resources and opportunities to members of subordinate groups. This form of discrimination is maintained by the laws, organizational guidelines, or traditions of an institution. Institutional discrimination occurs in both direct and indirect forms. Direct institutional discrimination refers to explicit institutional or state‐level policies, such as Jim Crow laws, which can facilitate long term multigenerational patterns of disparity between dominant and subordinate groups. Indirect institutional discrimination consists of policies and practices that differentially affect subordinate groupswithoutan explicit intent to harm: Indirect institutional discrimination may be reinforced through the equal application of a given policy that engenders differential treatment or through the differential enforcement of policies that are seemingly neutral. Even if a discriminatory law is overturned or a longstanding tradition is challenged, changes in discriminatory behavior may not follow suit, particularly when legislation only addresses the symptoms of discrimination while ignoring the cause.
Foreign Direct Investment
Authors: Nakamura Masao
Published: September 2017

Foreign direct investment (FDI) refers to firms' investments in foreign countries where new production and other physical facilities are built in order to conduct new business operations, including selling and servicing the firms' products. Such foreign expansions are often demanded by the firms' growth‐seeking shareholders, as the firms' domestic markets saturate. The focus is on firms' FDI rather than on their overseas portfolio investments in financial assets (e.g., stocks, bonds). Discussed here are certain factors that characterize firms' FDI‐driven foreign operations vis‐à‐vis their domestic operations. These are political, economic, and other factors that affect the riskiness of foreign operations for those who own these operations (e.g., is the investing firm the sole owner of the operations?) and the implications of foreign operations for firms' home countries and for the countries that host their FDIs.
Food Justice
Authors: Alkon Alison Hope
Published: September 2017

Food justice refers to efforts to understand and combat the intersections between inequalities such as those of race, class, gender, national status, and the production, distribution, and consumption of food. Essential to the food justice movement is an analysis that problematizes the influence of race and class on the production, distribution, and consumption of food. Through food justice activism, low‐income communities and communities of color seek to create local food systems that meet their own food needs, as well as to dismantle racism and create opportunities for sustainable economic development in low‐income communities and communities of color.
Mobility Systems
Authors: Kharlamov Nikita A.
Published: September 2017

Mobility systems are systematic, organized patterns of movement in the social world. Classical sociological tradition associates these systems with vertical mobility across social statuses, such as established career tracks in corporations. The new mobilities paradigm proposed by Mimi Sheller and John Urry conceptualizes mobility systems as complex systems of movement of various material and virtual objects – such as humans, information, goods – that are rooted in technological infrastructures and are situated at various scales, from local to global. Seen in this light, traditional mobility systems also reveal their rootedness in complex sociomaterial constellations: for example, a promotion to upper‐level manager in a global corporation may come with significant demands on routine travel and mobile technology use as part of a person's work responsibilities.
Megacities
Authors: Fasenfest David
Published: September 2017

The world's population is increasingly urban; more people now live in cities than in rural areas. The growth of traditional cities is being eclipsed in Asia, Africa, and Latin America by the rapid population growth, the increase in the number of second‐tier cities, and the appearance of megacities with populations over 10 million people. Megacities pose problems of overcrowding, relegate the poor to living in slums, experience health and ecological degradation, and foster social and political unrest.
F
als
B
orda,
O
rlando (1925–2008)
Authors: Jiménez Jaime Eduardo Jaramillo
Published: September 2017

Orlando Fals Borda was one of the first professional sociologists in Latin America. Founder of the Faculty of Sociology of the National University of Colombia, one of the first of its kind in the subcontinent, Fals contributed to enriching rural sociology with his recognized fieldwork on Andean peasant communities and violence. In the mid‐1970s, Fals Borda became involved in educational and organizational processes in the Colombian Caribbean region. He created the participatory action research (PAR) methodology for producing new “horizontal” and “dialogic” knowledge together with groups of scholars and social leaders within a community, ethnic or regional group, thus contributing to the improvement of living conditions and greater autonomy. PAR has achieved international recognition among research groups in countries of North and South America, Europe, Asia and Africa.
State Feminism inChina
Authors: To Clara Wai‐chun
Published: September 2017

While state feminism in capitalist democracies refers to feminists' engagement with the state, state feminism in postsocialist China often refers to a top‐down approach to women's liberation sanctioned by the state. Early works on Chinese state feminism examined the extent to which the state has lived up to its pro‐women propaganda, and the subordination of women's interests to a national cause. Studies in the 1990s on the state‐sponsored All‐China Women's Federation (ACWF) accorded state feminists more agency by examining their strategies and success in influencing policy‐making favorable to women. Recent studies in the late 1990s and 2000s have turned to investigating the transformation and challenges of the ACWF and the rise of a new women's movement.
Misdemeanors
Authors: Myrick Amy
Published: September 2017

“Misdemeanor” is legal term for a grade of criminal offense under a criminal charging system that classifies crimes according to seriousness. Felonies are more serious than misdemeanors and carry more severe formal penalties. In many jurisdictions, the punishment for misdemeanors excludes incarceration in prison. The distinction between misdemeanors and felonies has implications in several areas of sociological inquiry, among them crime statistics, policing strategies, court studies, mass incarceration, collateral consequences including criminal records, and the moral and symbolic distinction between how the law treats major and routine criminal acts.
Anarchy: An International Relations Perspective
Authors: Holmes Marcus , Campbell Michael
Published: September 2017

In the context of international politics, “anarchy” designates the absence of a sovereign authority above that of nation‐states in the international system. The assumption of anarchy is often the starting point for theories of international politics. In the context of international relations, anarchy does not necessarily imply a lack of order or chaos inherent in the system, indeed the international system exhibits a tremendous amount of routine and stability over time, but rather a condition of the system with which nation‐states must deal. Because under anarchy there is no authority above that of states, each state enjoys sovereignty and has the ability to decide for itself and to take its own course of action.
Structural Adjustment
Authors: Bockman Johanna
Published: September 2017

Structural adjustment policies and programs are economic reforms that the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank require highly indebted countries to implement as a precondition for further loans. In 1980, in response to the emerging worldwide debt crisis, the World Bank extended its first structural adjustment loans, specifically to Bolivia, Kenya, Philippines, Senegal, and Turkey, which the International Monetary Fund supported through its own related loan programs. Sociologists, activists, politicians, and protestors worldwide have criticized structural adjustment for undermining democracy and for its social, political, and economic costs. Many sociologists view the profound restructuring of economies caused by these policies as a key building block of neoliberal globalization.
Popular Music across the Life Course
Authors: Adams Rebecca G. , Harmon Justin T.
Published: September 2017

Although popular music subcultures among youth have been studied extensively, and recently researchers have examined the continued involvement of these same fans in these subcultures as they age, a life‐course perspective has not been brought to bear on this topic. In this entry, the authors outline the questions that might be addressed by using a life‐course perspective to study music consumption and production. In so doing, the authors distinguish between the developmental and life‐course perspectives and between cohort and aging effects. Most research on the role of music in people's lives focuses on a specific age group: adolescents, young adults, midlife adults, young‐old adults, and old‐old adults. Here these findings are combined and used to describe what we know about the connection between music consumption and production with social relationship development and involvement, identity formation and maintenance, and the establishment of well‐being across the life course. In conclusion, the authors discuss future directions for research on popular music consumption and production across the life course including methodological issues, theoretical issues, and gaps in the literature.
Social Stratification
Authors: van Leeuwen Marco H.D.
Published: September 2017

Social stratification relates to a fundamental aspect of human societies: the way people are ranked, from high to low; how this varies between societies; and what determines the ranking. Such ranking is known to have enormous consequences for lifestyles and life chances from cradle to grave, and beyond – to the next generation. Stratification systems tend to be rather stable over time, even in the face of momentous political upheavals and social and economic transformations. After introducing the topic, the entry discusses why sociologists regard occupation as a means to observe social strata, and how they observe those strata, using a social class taxonomy, through measures of social status (prestige, socioeconomic, dual elite, and interaction), or by using microclasses. Also discussed are contrasting theories on the determinants of social stratification and its universality, in particular modernization and status maintenance theories.
McAdoo
,
H
arriette Pipes (1940–2009)
Authors: Dodson Jualynne E.
Published: September 2017

In the field of family studies, particularly research on African American life, Harriette Pipes McAdoo was an academic groundbreaker. She was University Distinguished Professor at Michigan State University and the first African American to be elected to membership on the Board of Directors of the Groves Conference on Marriage and the Family. Her transformative ideas centered on conceptualizing US African American families and other racial/ethnic families of color, beyond the standard “deficit orientation” that permeated most academic considerations of the topics. McAdoo's perceptive and skilled use of quantitative research, coupled with her prolific publications, countered that orientation and introduced academic communities to the strengths, and the social processes of strength, used by black families to protect, nurture, educate, and ensure the survival of their members. She helped provide a new, more reflective language for describing family life and furnished US social policy with a new vocabulary, including African American families' extended and kinship relational patterns and the gender inclusivity of parenting males and females. In so doing, she not only expanded the field of family studies but also contributed to sociology, psychology, education, social work, among others.
B
ogue,
D
onald (1918–2014)
Authors: White Michael J.
Published: September 2017

Donald J. Bogue was a leading figure in the field of demography. Whilst his scholarly work began with urbanism, he made notable contributions to the subjects of fertility, family planning, migration, and population distribution. His contributions to the field ranged from scholarly articles, to textbooks, to how‐to manuals for practitioners in low income countries, to the inauguration of the flagship journal in American demography.
Commons, Informational
Authors: Stalder Felix
Published: September 2017

Commons are resources managed by a community for joint use. Since the late 1990s, new types of commons have emerged online. The core of these informational commons is created in four overlapping settings at the center of the information economy: free software, free culture, access to knowledge, and open data. Commons differ sharply from market‐based or command‐based modes of production, not the least through the relative absence of exclusive property rights, and the emphasis placed on cooperation rather than competition as the main driver of development. Thus, informational commons is one of the highly dynamic and contested areas in the information society.
Bottom Billion
Authors: Collier Paul
Published: September 2017

Thebottom billionrefers to the populations of a group of countries at the bottom of the world economy. It challenges and disaggregates the concept of “developing countries,” arguing that countries such as Chad and China are no longer meaningfully similar. The entry summarizes the explanations offered for the divergence of the bottom billion from the majority of mankind and the proposed policy remedies, and discusses academic and policy responses.
Race and Mental Health
Authors: Cummings Jason L.
Published: September 2017

Medical sociologists have long been interested in the relationship between race and health, noting that racial minorities, relative to whites, experience a higher burden of disease, disability, and death. Despite racial inequities in physical health and mortality, however, differences in mental health/mental illness between whites and nonwhites are lower than expected and, in many cases, demonstrate either that minorities have better mental health or that there is no difference at all. Although our knowledge regarding race and mental health has grown over the past few decades, it remains limited in part because of a range of conceptual and methodological issues including but not limited to the lack of available data to monitor smaller minority populations and the extent to which discrete psychiatric measures and continuous mental health outcomes lead to conflicting conclusions regarding the nature of racial/ethnic variations in mental health. This entry highlights several key issues in the field of race and mental health, including modern conceptualizations of race/ethnicity and mental health; classic and contemporary findings regarding racial/ethnic variations in mental health; and central explanations for the observed disparities in mental health across race and ethnicity.
Accommodation
Authors: Dennis Rutledge M.
Published: September 2017

Accommodation was one of the four features of Robert Park and Ernest Burgess's model of social interaction. Though the concept illustrated racial and ethnic social changes taking place in the United States and the rest of the world during the last half of the nineteenth century and the first two or three decades of the twentieth, and for this reason lacks a certain relevance today, there are still aspects of the term, as defined by Park and Burgess, which might provide insights into specific patterns of racial and ethnic interaction and aid in our understanding of the dynamics of social change. Utilizing Simmel's model of dominance and its pivotal role in superordinate and subordinate relations, Park and Burgess describe accommodation as a procedure which limits conflicts and cements relations, in that groups and individuals recognize dominant individuals and groups as well as their positions within these super‐ and subordinate relations. On the surface, this logic appears to be one of “live and let live,” and appears to be grounded in an idea similar to that of social and cultural pluralism.
Accounts, Deviant
Authors: Goode Erich
Published: September 2017

Deviant accounts are linguistic devices intended to exonerate the narrator for putative wrongdoing. Sociologists have identified at least half a dozen types of deviant accounts, including excuses (a denial of responsibility), exceptionalization (denial that the act belongs to a generic class of wrongful behaviors), justifications (explaining why a generally wrongful act had to be committed and hence, why it is not so wrongful), and normalization (denial that an entire class of actions that are regarded as wrongful are wrongful at all). Though accounts are not causes of deviance, they comprise a fundamental and nearly universal feature of non‐normative behavior.
Action Research
Authors: Flood Robert Louis
Published: September 2017

Action research refers to participatory processes that are democratic in nature, in which action is undertaken in a social context that leads to improvements, having accommodated for the needs of all stakeholders, while, at the same time, the process facilitates social research about action for improvement through participation and aids social research in general.
Advertising
Authors: Langman Lauren
Published: September 2017

Advertising is the attempt to bring attention to a product or service using paid announcements in mass media that encourage people to purchase those goods or services.
Affirmative Action
Authors: Bills David B. , Kaufman Erin
Published: September 2017

The term affirmative action encompasses a broad range of voluntary and mandated policies and procedures intended to provide equal access to educational and employment opportunities for members of historically excluded groups. Foremost among the bases for historical exclusion have been race, ethnicity, and sex, although consideration is sometimes extended to other groups (e.g., Vietnam veterans, the disabled). Both the concept of affirmative action and its application have undergone a series of transformations and interpretations. These shifts have contributed to considerable ambivalence in levels of public support for and opposition to affirmative action policies.
Aging, Mental Health, and Well‐Being
Authors: George Linda K.
Published: September 2017

Social factors are strongly implicated in mental health and well‐being throughout life, including old age. Sociologists argue that mental health and subjective well‐being are powerful indicators of how well societies serve their members both individually and collectively. That is, effective societies not only meet the basic needs of their members, but also provide the conditions and opportunities that sustain emotional health and perceptions that life is good.
Aging and Social Support
Authors: Dykstra Pearl A.
Published: September 2017

Social support is a powerful predictor of living a healthy and long life. Large, well‐controlled prospective studies show that social support has an impact on older adults’ health independently of potentially confounded factors such as socioeconomic status, health risk behaviors, use of health services, and personality. This entry discusses social support and then how it is related to aging.
Al‐Biruni (973–1048)
Authors: Farid Alatas Syed
Published: September 2017

Abu Rayhan Muhammad ibn Ahmad al‐Biruni was born in the city of Khw¯razm (modern Khiva) in what is today known as Uzbekistan, but during his youth was part of the Iranian Samanid Empire. He spent his early years under the patronage of various rulers until finally becoming part of the court of Mahmud Ghaznavi (979–1030), the ruler of an empire that included parts of what is now known as Afghanistan, Iran, and northern India. Al‐Biruni went to India with the troops of Mahmud and remained there for many years. During this time, he studied Sanskrit, translated a number of Indian religious texts, and conducted research on Indian religions and their doctrines. Al‐Biruni was the first Muslim and probably the first scholar to provide a systematic account of the religions of India from a sociological point of view. Furthermore, his work is considered to be a vital source of knowledge of Indian history and society in the eleventh century, providing details of the religion, philosophy, literature, geography, chronology, astronomy, customs, laws, and astrology of India.
Alcohol and Crime
Authors: Sung Hung‐En
Published: September 2017

Alcohol is the most widely abused psychoactive substance in the United States. The term “alcohol‐related crime” refers to violations of laws regulating the sale or use of alcohol and also covers criminal activities that involve alcohol use. Underage drinking and drunk driving are the most prevalent alcohol‐specific offenses in the United States. There is a close association between alcohol and violent crimes. About 20 percent of violent crimes involved an offender who had been drinking according to victimization data. At the macro‐level, alcohol availability and alcohol consumption are associated with violent crime. Yet at the microlevel, alcohol increases the risk of violent behavior only for certain individuals and under some social situations or cultural influences. Alcohol use typically co‐occurs with domestic violence, but the role of parental alcohol abuse in the perpetration of child abuse has not been conclusively established. Alcohol is also a contributor to nuisance, loitering, panhandling, and disorderly conduct in open spaces. A particular alcohol‐organized crime connection was seen after 1919's constitutional ban of alcohol, which led to a corrupt and lethal market for bootlegged liquor. The mere co‐occurrence of alcohol use and violence does not prove that alcohol causes violence; the causal pathways remain to be determined.
'Asabiyya
Authors: Stauth Georg
Published: September 2017

'Asabiyya (of Beduin, pre‐Islamic, secular origin: from'asaba, to bind, to fold, to wind, and'asâba, the group of male relatives) is one of the most important concepts of the social history of the Arabs and of Islam. Meaning a basic form of social and material human relations, it is a concept which integrates biological, geographical, social, and cultural terms. It is central to Ibn Khaldun's (1332–1406) theory of civilization ('umran), as discussed in his famousMuqaddima(Ibn Khaldun 1967, I: 269–8, 313–27).'Asabiyyabecame one of the most daring sociological concepts. Today, it is of importance with respect to global issues and intracultural discourse between Islam and the West and about the “heritage” of political structures in Muslim societies.
Audiences
Authors: Alasuutari Pertti
Published: September 2017

The audience is a central concept in media research. Typically, the audience refers to a large, loosely connected mass on the receiving end of the media, and in most cases it is used in association with electronic media, such as radio or television. The concept's centrality in media research stems from the fact that as a notion it provides a link between academic theory, industry practice, and media policy. In public service broadcasting politics, the audience is the public whose freedom of speech and whose access to the public sphere are at stake, for whom high‐quality and educational programs are made, and in whose name laws controlling and regulating the media are passed. For commercial broadcasting, the audience ratings and the demographic features of a program's audience are of crucial economic importance. For academic research, the concept of audience is important in addressing these questions: the audience is the arena in which the effects of mass communications are played out, or the place where the meanings and pleasures of media use are ultimately realized. More recently, media research and theory have questioned the self‐evident character of the notion of the audience. The audiences are not natural things; they are constructed by audience‐rating techniques and by various notions of the audience. Different notions of audiences are part of the working of the media in contemporary societies. Developments in information and communication technology have also made the notion of audience in its traditional sense problematic and made media researchers question when it is sensible to speak of communication technology users as audiences.
Authenticity Criteria
Authors: Lincoln Yvonna S.
Published: September 2017

Authenticity criteria are criteria for determining the goodness, reliability, validity, and rigor of qualitative research. They may be contrasted with trustworthiness criteria on foundational grounds. Trustworthiness criteria were developed in response to conventional quantitative and statistical concerns for rigor, including internal validity, external validity (or generalizability), reliability (or replicability), and objectivity. Each of the four dimensions of trustworthiness parallels each of the four rigor dimensions of quantitative methods. Trustworthiness criteria, therefore, may be said to be foundational because they respond to the foundations of conventional scientific research.
Authority and Conformity
Authors: Konty Mark
Published: September 2017

A common phenomenon in social groups (some would say a requirement) is the existence of authority: the right or power to give orders and enforce standards. Authority is only meaningful if people comply with those rules and orders. Conformity, compliance with orders and standards, is the corollary to authority.
Adoption
Authors: Hamilton Laura
Published: September 2017

In the US and many industrialized nations, adoption is a legal act through which a child is placed under the permanent care and guardianship of one or more individuals who are not his or her biological parents. Through adoption, the parental rights and responsibilities of the child's birth parents are dissolved and transferred to the adoptive parents. Although adoptive parents have the same legal status as other parents in the US, assumptions about the importance of biological parents for children's well‐being are still embedded in much family law. Because adoption is governed by state law, there may be considerable variation in who is allowed to adopt. Laws are changing, but heterosexual, married couples of child‐bearing age are often privileged over others. In other countries adoption may take different forms. For example, in many African countries children may be exchanged to create social ties among families.
Anomic Suicide
Authors: Marsh Ian
Published: September 2017

The term “anomie” was first used by French sociologist Émile Durkheim to refer to situations where there was substantial disagreement over the appropriate norms and values that should govern social behavior. Durkheim's analysis of societies and how they are held together emphasizes the importance of an underlying value consensus, a “collective conscience” based on social guidelines (or norms) that most people adhere to and follow. When these values and norms are ignored or do not work so well, a situation of anomie is likely. Thus anomie occurs when aspects of a society are regulated inadequately. Durkheim's application of the concept of anomie in a social context is evidenced in his discussion of the anomic division of labor. One of the major issues that Durkheim focused on was the significance of the rise of individualism in modern industrial society. In his first major study,
The Division of Labour in Society
, which was originally published in 1893, he demonstrated how the rise of individualism exemplifies the emergence of a new type of social order – one that will increasingly transcend traditional forms of society (Durkheim, 1960). Durkheim argued that the function of the division of labor in modern society is the social integration of individuals, achieved through their fulfilling a range of complementary roles and tasks. Durkheim also referred to what he termed “abnormal” forms of the division of labor. For example, major social inequalities in society could lead to a forced division of labor that would be to the detriment of all society. The lack of a general and strong consensus encouraging interdependence between people could lead to a situation of anomie.
Bataille, Georges (1897–1962)
Authors: Presdee Michael
Published: September 2017

Georges Bataille was born in Billon, Puy‐de‐Dôme, in central France and converted to Catholicism on the eve of World War I, serving in the army from 1916 to 1917. Later he joined the seminary at Saint‐Fleur and spent a period with the Benedictine congregation at Quarr on the Isle of Wight in Britain. In 1922, Bataille became the deputy keeper at the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, a position he held until 1944, later becoming a librarian in Carpentras in Provence in 1949 and then in Orléans in 1951. Through his editorship of
Critique
, he gave space to new intellectuals such as Foucault, Barthes, Derrida, and Deleuze.
Bernard, Jessie (1903–96)
Authors: Williams Joyce E. , MacLean Vicky M.
Published: September 2017

Dubbed the “reasonable rebel” by many of her supporters, Jessie Bernard is internationally recognized for her contributions to sociology and to feminist thought (Lipman‐Blumen 1988). She was one of the most productive of female sociologists although her career developed during a time considered by many as hostile to women in the profession (Deegan 1991). She authored over a dozen books, and co‐authored almost that many, as well as over a hundred articles, book chapters, encyclopedia entries, and essays. Her impact on sociology spans more than six decades and includes the areas of marriage and family, gender and sex roles, community studies, the history of the discipline, sociology of knowledge, and social problems and public policy. Her greatest legacy emerged in the last 30 years of her life as reflected in the contributions made to the development of feminist thought and gender scholarship. Trained as a traditional sociologist, Bernard's intellectual journey progressed through social positivism, functionalism, and finally to feminism (Lipman‐Blumen 1979). Over time Bernard became a strong critic of the discipline, its dominant paradigms and masculine biases, and of broader public policies and practices. Bernard helped to found the Society for the Study of Social Problems (SSSP) in 1951, an act of rebellion against the American Sociological Association (ASA) and its timidity in leadership in such issues as poverty, inequality, racism, sexism, McCarthyism, and academic freedom (Bernard 1973). She served as president of SSSP in 1963. Her professional associations, activities, awards, and honors are many. The Jessie Bernard Award for outstanding scholarship in gender studies was established in 1976 and is presented at the annual ASA meetings. It is a living reminder of the debt the field owes to Bernard (Cantor 1988).
Bernard, Jessie (1903–1996)
Authors: Williams Joyce E. , Maclean Vicky M.
Published: September 2017

Dubbed the “reasonable rebel” by many of her supporters, Jessie Bernard is internationally recognized for her contributions to sociology and to feminist thought (Lipman‐Blumen, 1988). She was one of the most productive of female sociologists although her career developed during a time considered by many as hostile to women in the profession (Deegan, 1991). She authored over a dozen books, and coauthored almost that many, as well as over a hundred articles, book chapters, encyclopedia entries, and essays. Her impact on sociology spans more than six decades and includes contributions to the literature on marriage and family, gender, and sex roles, community studies, history of the discipline, sociology of knowledge, social problems, and public policy. However, the work that established her legacy in sociology emerged during the last 30 years of her life in her development of feminist thought and gender scholarship. Trained as a traditional sociologist, Bernard's intellectual journey progressed through social positivism, functionalism, and finally to feminism (Lipman‐Blumen, 1979). Over time she became a strong critic of the discipline, its dominant paradigms and masculine biases, and of broader public policies and practices. She helped to found the Society for the Study of Social Problems (SSSP) in 1951, an act of rebellion against the American Sociological Association (ASA) and its timidity of leadership in such issues as poverty, inequality, racism, sexism, McCarthyism, and academic freedom (Bernard, 1973). She served as president of SSSP in 1963 while also remaining an active member of the ASA. Her professional associations, activities, awards, and honors were numerous during her lifetime, and many young sociologists know her today because of the ASA Jessie Bernard Award for outstanding scholarship in gender studies. The award was established in 1976 and is presented annually as a living reminder of Bernard's contributions to the discipline and also as evidence of ASA's recognition, if somewhat belatedly, of feminist scholarship (Cantor, 1988).
Bilingual, Multicultural Education
Authors: Lutz Amy
Published: September 2017

The term bilingual education is used to refer to a variety of different language programs in schools with different goals and methods. These programs range from those that transition minority‐language students to the majority language as quickly as possible, to programs that build or maintain high‐level proficiency in a second language through teaching content area in that language. One of the ways of distinguishing different types of bilingual education programs by their goals and methods is to classify them as strong or weak forms of bilingual education (for more on forms of bilingual education, see Baker 1996). Weak forms of bilingual education are programs where the goal is monolingualism or limited bilingualism, whereas strong forms of bilingual education are programs where the goal is bilingualism and biliteracy. Weak forms of bilingual education include submersion or structured immersion programs in the majority language, programs that transition students into the majority language, mainstream education programs with foreign language teaching, and segregationist language programs. Strong forms of bilingual education – those programs emphasizing fluency in two languages – include immersion in a minority language, maintenance/heritage language programs, two‐way/dual language programs, and bilingual education in two majority languages in populations with two majority languages. Some bilingual education programs include or are a part of multicultural education. Multicultural education acknowledges the ethnic and cultural differences of a diverse student population and seeks to provide equal access to education for all students. While some have equated multiculturalism to cultural pluralism, the former differs in that it not only recognizes differences among groups, but also aims to provide equal access to institutions for all groups (for more on multiculturalism, see Goldberg 1994; Hollinger 1995; Mahajan 2002).
Blasé/Neurasthenic Personalities
Authors: Rojek Chris
Published: September 2017

The concept of blasé/neurasthenic personalities was coined by the German sociologist Georg Simmel to refer to distinctive psychological responses to modern, metropolitan life. In his masterpiece,
The Philosophy of Money
(1907), Simmel analyzed modern, metropolitan existence in relation to a variety of ubiquitous social effects. Among the most prominent are the fragmentation of relations; the increasing preponderance of technology in everyday life; the leveling effect of monetary exchange transactions; the separation of subjectivity from culture; and the recession of tradition. In these circumstances, Simmel argued, there are strong tendencies for men and women to adopt blasé or neurasthenic characteristics in their personality and interpersonal behavior. The blasé personality is punch‐drunk by the ephemerality and instability of modern conditions. They become indifferent to suffering and injustice. They retreat into a cocoon of purely subjective considerations and initiatives. The neurasthenic personality is wired by the impermanence and prolific possibilities offered by modernity. Their behavior is characterized by ceaseless anxiety and nervousness, which prevents them from fully committing to transcendent goals.
Body, Abominations of the
Authors: Gimlin Debra
Published: September 2017

Erving Goffman (1963) describes three types of “stigma,” or attributes that are socially discrediting: violations of accepted behavior or belief, membership in a despised national, religious, or racial group, and abominations of the body. The final category involves physical characteristics that compromise bodily appearance or functioning. Whether voluntarily or involuntarily acquired, abominations of the body can be regarded as a form of deviance. Like the other types of stigma, undesirable physical characteristics isolate some individuals, disqualifying them from “full social acceptance” (p. 1). Everything about the stigmatized person is interpreted in light of the negative trait, so that interaction with the non‐stigmatized is often awkward and uncertain. Tension is manifest in people's tendency to avoid eye contact, make guarded references to the stigma, or avoid everyday words that suddenly become taboo; it leads both parties to consider avoiding or withdrawing from encounters.
Boundaries (Racial/Ethnic)
Authors: Wimmer Andreas
Published: September 2017

The study of ethnic and racial boundaries is intimately connected to the constructivist view on race and ethnicity. Rather than individual ethnic or racial “groups,” their history, culture, and social organization, the boundaries between such groups and the mechanisms of their production and transformation move to the foreground. This implies a shift away from concerns with the given culture, identity, and social cohesion of ethnic groups toward strategies of boundarycreationand transformation as they relate to the strategies of other individuals and groups. Perceived cultural or racial similarity or historical continuity thus are now seen asconsequencesrather thancausesof the making of ethnic and racial boundaries. Such boundaries form a central dimension of the social organization of complex societies and their stratification systems.
Braverman, Harry (1922–1976)
Authors: Wood Stephen
Published: September 2017

Braverman is renowned for his
Labor and Monopoly Capital
, which reinvigorated a Marxist theory of the capital labor process in which deskilling was a concomitant of the division of labor within capitalism. The assembly line pioneered by Henry Ford represents the hallmark of this development. Braverman contested the claim that with new technologies and the increasing importance of the service sector the deskilling process would decelerate. Taylorism, as “the explicit verbalization of the capitalist mode of production,” would, he argued, continue to dominate, even as new technologies and industries developed. Conception would continue to be divorced from execution in the labor process. A major criticism of Braverman's deskilling thesis is that Taylorism's concern for managerial control of labor need not be an end in itself, but alternative strategies involving increasing autonomy and reskilling may serve capital's fundamental goal of maximizing profits. A legacy of Braverman, however, is that attention to Taylorism and deskilling has not been confined to historical studies. Low skilled jobs remain and recent attention has focused on call centers, fast‐food chains, logistics warehouses and the mass production of sandwiches and other ready‐made foods.
Bricolage
Authors: Milner Andrew
Published: September 2017

Bricolage is a French word, with no direct equivalent in British, North American, or Australasian English. In everyday usage, it describes the work done by a bricoleur – very roughly, but not quite, a cross between an odd job man and a handyman. In the 1950s and 1960s, though less so today, its meaning carried the sense of proceeding in an apparently disorganized and non‐rational fashion, but nonetheless producing effective results. It connoted the process of finding out how to make things work, not from first principles but from messing around with whatever materials were to hand. The term was introduced into the social sciences by the distinguished French anthropologist Claude Lévi‐Strauss to explain the “science of the concrete” developed in neolithic times and still present in some tribal cultures. It was taken up by the philosopher Jacques Derrida, who argued that all discourse is bricolage, and by the sociologist Michel de Certeau, who saw everyday reading as a form of bricolage. In each case, it actually functions as an analogy rather than a concept. More recently, postmodern cultural studies has tended toward the view that there is something distinctively contemporary and distinctively valuable about bricolage as method.
Bureaucracy and Public Sector Governmentality
Authors: Clegg Stewart , Johnston Judy , Shearer Christine
Published: September 2017

Bureaucracy is organization by rules, organized on hierarchical, centralized, and routinized lines. Increasingly, in public sector organizations, government by rules is being replaced by governmentality: forms of government that are more facilitative and less restrictive, and that rely on the constitution of a subject mentality by those who will govern themselves.
Burundi and Rwanda (Hutu, Tutsi)
Authors: Lemarchand René
Published: September 2017

No two other states in Africa have as much in common as Rwanda and Burundi in terms of size, social structure, language, and colonial experience; yet their trajectories since independence have been radically different. Both have experienced genocide, but the victims in each case belonged to different ethnic communities; they both went through the agonies of civil war, but emerged from this ordeal with strikingly contrasting political systems and approaches to ethnicity. A key issue in the reconstruction of their societies centers on how to reconcile the claims of the Hutu majority with the rights of the Tutsi minority. While Rwanda has outlawed public references to ethnic labels in an attempt to promote national unity, Burundi has institutionalized a power‐sharing formula based on the explicit recognition of ethnic identities. Rwanda's power holders are overwhelmingly Tutsi, unlike Burundi where power is broadly shared between Hutu and Tutsi. Yet elements of convergence should not be ignored: in the wake of recent presidential and legislative elections there is an unmistakable trend in both states toward authoritarianism and human rights violations.
Bureaucracy
Authors: Scaff Lawrence A.
Published: September 2017

The concept of bureaucracy typically refers to a particular way of organizing the administration of human affairs. It can refer either to a structure of offices, as when we characterize an organization as bureaucratic, or to a process of formulating and implementing policy, as when we say a decision is made by following bureaucratic procedures. As an organization and form of social action, bureaucracy always embodies power and is charged with making binding decisions. It thus conveys some of the original French meaning of the word
bureaucratie
, combining the idea of office and office holders (
bureau
) with the notion of rule or power (the Greek term
kratia
).
Bureaucracy
Authors: Scaff Lawrence A.
Published: September 2017

The concept of bureaucracy typically refers to a particular way of organizing the administration of human affairs. It can refer either to a structure of offices or to a process of formulating and implementing policy. As an organization and form of social action, bureaucracy always embodies power and is charged with making binding decisions. It thus conveys some of the original French meaning of the word
bureaucratie
, combining the idea of office and office holders
(bureau)
with the notion of rule or power (the Greek term
kratia)
.
Capital Punishment
Authors: Paternoster Ray
Published: September 2017

The death penalty has a long history in the United States. The first known execution took place in 1608 when Captain George Kendall was put to death by firing squad as a spy for the Spanish. While we cannot be certain of historical estimates, thousands of executions have been carried out in the United States since 1608.