bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Saraswati, Pandita Ramabai (1858–1922)
Authors: Sinha Vineeta
Published: September 2017

Pandita Ramabai Saraswati was born in the forest of Gungamal in the Indian state of Maharashtra. Her father, Ananda Shastri Dongre, was a learned Brahmin and a social reformer, who at the age of 44 had taken a second wife, Lakshmibai, of 9 years, in keeping with the custom of child marriage at the time. Shastri educated his wife in Sanskrit, a highly unorthodox move for the times, as girls were denied formal education and learning of sacred Hindu texts, the exclusive right and privilege of males. His unorthodox beliefs and practices led to his ostracization from the community. Consequently, he led a rather nomadic and secluded life, delivering religious lectures and sermons to support his young family. It was in such a context that Ramabai was born, the youngest of six children, but of which only three ultimately survived. Her formative years were spent in this rather drifting and atypical setting. She received early education in the Hindu scriptures from her mother, learnt Sanskrit, and could recite the Puranas proficiently from a young age. She was not married off as a child, but remained unmarried beyond age 10 and continued her learning. After the death of her parents between 1874 and 1877, she sustained their lifestyle and traveled across India with her brother, giving lectures in Sanskrit and engaging religious experts on a variety of social and spiritual matters. At the end of her travels, she arrived in Calcutta and spent a significant part of her adult creative life in this city. It was here that she was honored by Brahmins of Calcutta with the title “Pandita,” which translates as “eminent scholar and teacher,” on the basis of her command and knowledge of sacred Hindu texts. She was also seen as a modern‐day incarnation of Saraswati, the Hindu goddess of learning. The inclusion of these two titles produced the name by which she was to be subsequently remembered. In 1880, at the age of 22, Ramabai broke all conventions in marrying by choice a friend of her brother's, a man of a low caste and a non‐Brahmin of Shudra background. She had a daughter, Manorama, in 1881, but lost her husband to cholera the following year. She led a full life, intellectually and spiritually, and died in 1922, but has left a legacy of works that warrant closer academic attention than has so far been forthcoming.
Scapegoating
Authors: Mandes Evans
Published: September 2017

Scapegoating is the process of unjustly accusing or blaming an individual or a group for the actions of others not of their own doing. It is derived from the tendency to displace aggression toward a minority group. Typically, innocent individuals or groups receive the displaced aggression when others feel threatened by them. These targets of aggression are often perceived as “safe” targets because they are victimized and often powerless to fight back. They are frequently vilified, criticized, and rejected. In a non‐pathological sense, scapegoating may also be perceived as the natural outgrowth of stereotypes associated with race, religion, sex, gender, and ethnicity. This point of view, sometimes referred to as the exaggeration hypothesis, is based upon perceptual contrasts or cognitive processing limitations. The group conflict model, however, sees scapegoating in more motivational terms, where exaggeration grows out of individual or group conflict. Scapegoating can also be seen as the outgrowth of prejudice, which develops either in the personal sense where some group is perceived as a threat to one's own interests, economically, socially, or as a group endeavor where conformity becomes an issue. In order to conform, one's group expects you to express and support the view of the collective group.
School Choice
Authors: Davies Scott , Pizarro‐Milian Roger
Published: September 2017

School choice refers to a set of initiatives that afford parents a greater degree of discretion over where their children are educated. Such initiatives usually entail making available to parents a wider selection of educational options beyond the standard, local public school. There are multiple types of school choice initiatives, including charter schools, magnet schools, home schooling, voucher programs, and tax credits for private schools. While many parents exercise a “hidden” form of school choice via their selection of residential neighborhoods, school choice has stirred the most controversy in cases where it has entailed privatization, that is, the redirection of governing authority from a public body to parents and/or school staff.
School Climate
Authors: Crosnoe Robert
Published: September 2017

School climate refers to the general tone of social relations in and around schools: how people in the school relate to each other, the culture that emerges among these people, the norms that they construct. Quite simply, it represents the general “feel” of the school. This aspect of school context taps the informal processes that occur within schools. Like the more formal processes (e.g., instruction, delivery of curricula), these informal processes affect a wide variety of student outcomes and are important ingredients in the general functioning of schools themselves.
School Segregation, Desegregation
Authors: Mickelson Roslyn Arlin
Published: September 2017

The United States has a long history of providing racially segregated and unequal public education to its children. Racially separate and unequal public education was not an accident; it was created by public laws and policies enacted and enforced by state governments and local school systems. After a series of Supreme Court decisions eliminated the formal legal foundation for segregation, it was recreated through racially discriminatory practices in federal housing policies, lending for home purchases, employment, wages, and school assignment practices.
Schools, Charter
Authors: Wells Amy Stuart
Published: September 2017

In 1991, Minnesota passed the first charter school law in the United States, allowing state funds to support schools that operate autonomously from the public educational system. The charter school idea caught on quickly, with 40 states and the District of Columbia passing charter school laws between 1991 and 2006. By fall 2005, there were approximately 3,600 charter schools enrolling about 1 million students across the country.
Schools, Magnet
Authors: Langenkamp Amy G. , Austin Megan
Published: September 2017

Magnet schools are public schools defined by four principal characteristics: a distinctive curriculum or instructional approach, enrollment of students from outside designated neighborhood attendance zones, desegregation as their explicit purpose, and school choice by families. Magnet schools have been used for desegregation since the mid‐1970s. However, the concept of magnet schools as district specialty schools has been present since the 1900s. Currently, there are three major national studies of magnet schools.
Schools, Public
Authors: Owens Ann
Published: September 2017

For most nations, a free school system exists to provide all citizens with the basic skills needed to function successfully in society. Public schools teach basic literacy and numeracy skills and also socialize students into the incentive structure and power hierarchy of industry (Tyack 1974). From a functionalist perspective, many industrializing nations depended on workers with a basic education, requiring a universal system that could educate the workforce. Industrialization also required more specialized workers, and highly organized public schools were necessary for advanced curricula and training. In addition to the pragmatic need for public education in maintaining an ordered society of viable workers, some nations’ ideological goals also pervaded the creation and evolution of the education system. Public education is considered a tool for social mobility, a way for all children to obtain a common foundation for advancement, improvement, and success in society despite the background of their parents (Coleman & Hoffer 1987). Public schools teach a common curriculum and singular value system that allows students to effectively function in society and the economy. By equalizing the basic education all students receive, differences between community and family background characteristics can be minimized, alleviating stratification based on race/ethnicity or background resources. Education is also seen as fundamental investment in one's human capital (Becker 1993). Human capital is defined as investments one can make in oneself by pursuing training, knowledge accumulation, and health or medical care that will improve later well‐being and outcomes. The public school system provides a strong and universally available foundation for training and education, which serves as human capital that improves later financial gains and success.
Schools, Religious
Authors: Dronkers Jaap
Published: September 2017

Religion and education have a long common history, dating back to prehistoric times. Religion and religious practices require structures for the preparation, initiation, and training of new members and of priests and teachers. For that reason, religious groups in premodern societies sooner or later took the responsibility of organizing the socialization of their new members and of their religious specialists. This does not mean that all education in premodern societies was organized by religious organizations. Non‐religious authorities, including kings, lords, cities, and guilds, organized a part of the socialization of the new societal members (for instance, warrior schools, apprenticeships, and academies for the training of bureaucrats), but in most premodern societies the major part of education outside the family was organized by or on behalf of religious organizations. One can argue that most schools in premodern societies were religious schools. Education was organized and financed by religious organizations, the content of education was controlled by religious authorities, and, in most cases, teachers were incorporated into these religious organizations, e.g., as monks or members of rank. This was true not only for schools at a basic level, but also for higher levels of education.
Schütz, Alfred (1899–1959)
Authors: Hall John R.
Published: September 2017

Alfred Schutz was best known for his work on the sociological approach known as
phenomenology
. His first book provided a critique of Max Weber's interpretive sociology of meaningful action. He subsequently wrote a series of phenomenologically inspired essays as well as a second book,
Structures of the Lifeworld
, with Thomas Luckmann. Over the years of his life and beyond, Schutz influenced diverse sociologists. Social phenomenology remains an important stream of sociology and Schutz's insights and the analysis that he advanced have percolated through wider currents. The discipline as a whole has become more “phenomenological” as a result, most notably through the social constructionist approach and emphases on the concepts of lived action and embodiment.
Science Across Cultures
Authors: Rees Amanda
Published: September 2017

Science is often thought of as a western invention, a way of thinking about the world that originated in Europe during the “Scientific Revolution,” and which proved to be such an effective means of manipulating nature that its techniques and practices were readily adopted by the rest of the world, once other societies had had the chance to consider science in action. However, this version of events depends on the assumption that science and technology are objective, culturally neutral, ahistorical, apolitical, and asocial elements in society. The reality, however, is rather more complicated. Rather than being a neutral aspect of relationships between different cultures, science has had an active role to play in intercultural engagement, both historically and at the present day. Rather than being the sole product of European ingenuity, science emerged out the relationships that existed between Europe and the rest of the world; instead of simply being communicated to other societies as a more effective toolset for controlling the natural world, science was a key element in the processes whereby Europeans were able to dominate and to control other societies, both historically and at the present day.
Science/Non‐science and Boundary Work
Authors: Gómez‐Morales Yuri Jack
Published: September 2017

The problem of demarcation – how to identify the unique and essential characteristics of science that distinguish it from other intellectual activities – has been addressed both as an analytical matter mainly by philosophers and epistemologists, and as a practical matter by sociologists and historians.
Science, Proof, and Law
Authors: Sanderson Stephen K.
Published: September 2017

Science seeks to describe, explain, and predict features of the natural and social worlds. Scientists try to develop theories or explanations of phenomena by means of producing bodies of empirical evidence that play a major role in determining whether theories are accepted, modified, or rejected. In general, scientists seek theories that are logically consistent, empirically testable, well supported by available empirical evidence (and not too severely contradicted by other available evidence), parsimonious or simple, and that continue to be a source of new ideas and lines of research. Scientists also generally seek to produce theories that yield a unified understanding of the phenomena they study. For example, Wilson (1998) talks ofconsilience, and some physical scientists claim they are moving very close to a “theory of everything” (Barrow 2001).
Science and Religion
Authors: Bruce Steve
Published: September 2017

It is commonly held that the declining power and popularity of religion that we see in almost all modern industrial societies owes much to the rise of science; science and religion are competitors in a zero‐sum game, with the former being vastly more persuasive.
Science, Social Construction of
Authors: Eriksson Lena
Published: September 2017

In its simplest form, the claim that science is socially constructed means that there is no direct link between nature and our ideas about nature – the products of science are not themselves natural. This claim can be taken to mean different things and a distinction is often made between strong and weak interpretations of social constructivism. The stronger claim would not recognize an independent reality or materiality outside of our perceptions of it, or at least dismiss it as of no relevance as we cannot access it. This stance is, however, not a very common one. A weaker social constructivism tends to leave ontological queries to one side and instead focus on epistemological matters – how we gain knowledge about the world. What we count as knowledge is dependent on, and shaped by, the contexts in which it is created. Knowledge is thus made by people drawing on available cultural material, not preexisting facts in a world outside of human action, waiting to be uncovered.
Scientific Networks and Invisible Colleges
Authors: Bakker J. I. (Hans)
Published: September 2017

The notion that scientists and other scholars constitute a kind of community of scholars has frequently been asserted and discussed (Godfrey‐Smith 2003). The “invisible college” of natural philosophers is a seventeenth‐century idea (Price 1963). The phrasing is reminiscent of Adam Smith's later “invisible hand,” except that the scientists are real persons and it is only the “colleges” that are sometimes invisible. It stems from Robert Boyle's allusion to the importance to the founding of the Royal Society of Freemasons. An early driving force behind the society was Sir Robert Moray, a Mason who was not himself a natural philosopher (Lomas 2002). Jonathan Swift satirizes the Royal Society as “Laputa” inGulliver's Travels(Toulmin 1961), but the general consensus is that frequent communication among specialists is one of the hallmarks of modern science. A “scientometrics” approach makes it clear that the exponential growth in scientific fields and discoveries has resulted in various kinds of networks, including “networks of scientific papers” (Price 1986). It was only gradually over the course of the seventeenth century that the brief scientific paper replaced the book and Newton might well not have written hisPrincipia Mathematicahad there not been controversy about his papers on optics; “afterward he did not relish publication until it could take the [then] proper form of a finished book, treating the subject from beginning to end and meeting all conceivable objections and side arguments” (Price 1963: 64).
Scientific Productivity
Authors: Lee Sooho
Published: September 2017

Scientific productivity refers to the productivity of scientists in their research performance. In other words, the term concerns how much output scientists produce within a certain time period, or compared to the inputs that are utilized for the research. The major outputs from research are publications, patents, inventions, and product developments. However, especially in research institutions, productivity more directly refers to publication or publishing productivity since most research results are reported as forms of publication. Therefore, being “more or less productive” simply indicates that a scientist produces more or fewer publications than do others. Scholarly journal articles, books, conference papers, and monographs are included in publication counts. Among the publication forms, peer‐reviewed journal articles are most frequently used as a productivity measure.
Scientific Racism
Authors: Blatt Jessica
Published: September 2017

Science has a long and fraught history of entanglement with the social myth of biological race. The modern sciences of biology and physical anthropology were founded on the conviction that the human species was divided into discrete racial groups with distinct characteristics and capacities. Advances in these very sciences, however, have shown that, while human populations differ biologically, population‐level differences are both relatively trivial and impossible to map onto conventional racial divides. Genetic research, similarly, has yielded no statistically significant patterns of variation by race. However, this is not a simple story of scientific progress, in which bad ideas are systematically displaced by better ones. The rise and partial retreat of scientific racism is an eminently political story.
Secondary Data Analysis
Authors: Schutt Russell K.
Published: September 2017

Secondary data analysis is the method of using preexisting data in a different way or to answer a different research question than that intended by those who collected the data. The work of the secondary data analyst begins where the survey, experiment, or qualitative method that generates the data ends. The most common sources of data used in secondary analyses are social science surveys and data collected by government agencies, often with survey research methods, but it is also possible to reanalyze data that have been collected in experimental studies or with qualitative methods. Even reanalysis by researchers of data that they collected previously qualifies as secondary analysis if it is for a new purpose or in response to a methodological critique.
Sect
Authors: Swatos William H.
Published: September 2017

Although the term sect has played a role in both political sociology and the study of social movements at the hands of many Marxians as well as such early sociologists as LeBon, Sighele, Park, and Simmel, its primary continuing application has been among sociologists of religion in the context of church‐sect theory. The dominance of this use has led to its virtual abandonment in other sociological subfields. In this context, a sect may be defined as a voluntary religious association whose members enter it as a result of a personal decision to join, which decision is then subject to confirmation by the existing members of the association. It contrasts with a church, whose members are said to be “born” into it, either by nationality or ongoing familial commitment.
Secularization
Authors: Dobbelaere Karel
Published: September 2017

Secularization is a term used by sociologists to refer to a process by which the overarching and transcendent religious system of old is reduced in modern functionally differentiated societies to a subsystem alongside other subsystems, losing in this process its overarching claims over these other subsystems. This is the original meaning, but this process has consequences for the organizational and individual levels, which suggests that secularization needs to be analyzed on the societal (macro), the organizational (meso), and the individual (micro) levels.
Seikatsu/Seikatsusha
Authors: Seifert Wolfgang
Published: September 2017

Seikatsu
and
seikatsusha
are expressions in colloquial Japanese as well as technical terms in the discipline of sociology. As the meaning of the words differ widely, depending on their usage, a translation into any western language is difficult, although a very basic translation of
seikatsu
would be “everyday life” and
seikatsusha
a person who pursues it. To understand the use of these terms in Japanese sociological research, one must know their historical background and intellectual context.
Self
Authors: Charmaz Kathy
Published: September 2017

The concept of self is simultaneously social and subjective; the self exists in social life. Common definitions of the self, however, accentuate its subjective side: all those qualities, attributes, values, feelings, and moral sentiments that a person assumes to be his or her own. The social sources of self make subjectivity possible because the person's experience of feelings, images, and interpretations emerges and takes on meaning through social interaction.
Self‐Concept
Authors: Schieman Scott
Published: September 2017

Sociological interest in the self‐concept, rooted in the early writings of Cooley and Mead, has evolved into a multifaceted quest to describe the connections between social contexts and personal functioning. In his classic work,
Conceiving the Self
(1979), Rosenberg defines the self‐concept as all of the thoughts and feelings that individuals maintain about the self as an object. Gecas and Burke (1995) have expanded on the definition: the self‐concept “is composed of various identities, attitudes, beliefs, values, motives, and experiences, along with their evaluative and affective components (e.g., self‐efficacy, self‐esteem), in terms of which individuals define themselves” (p. 42). These processes involve reflexivity and self‐awareness; that is, a level of consciousness or awareness about one's self that emerges from the distinctly human capacity to be an object and a subject to one's self.
Self‐Control Theory
Authors: Gottfredson Michael R.
Published: September 2017

Self‐control is a concept used by sociologists to explain differences among people in the frequency of engaging in a wide variety of acts that cause harm to others (Gottfredson & Hirschi 1990). It is defined as the tendency to avoid acts whose long‐term costs exceed their momentary advantages. The costs include penalties from institutions such as schools and the criminal justice system, the loss of affection from family and friends, loss of jobs and advancements in employment, and bodily injury and physical pain. Individuals with relatively high levels of self‐control tend to have low rates of crime, delinquency, and substance abuse because these behaviors entail potential long‐term costs. They tend to have relatively high rates of school and employment success and lasting interpersonal relationships.
Self‐Determination
Authors: Conversi Daniele
Published: September 2017

Self‐determination is a principle in international law that a people ought to be able to determine its own future and political status free from external interference. It hence embodies the right for all peoples to decide their own political, economic, and cultural development.
Self‐Fulfilling Expectations
Authors: Bianchi Alison J.
Published: September 2017

A self‐fulfilling expectation (or as it is often referred to, a self‐fulfilling prophecy) is a person's anticipation about how a situation will end that prompts the person to behave in ways that cause the anticipated ending to come true. Individuals often have a sense that a situation's outcome is a foregone conclusion, even if the outcome is not necessarily inevitable. A person with this sense may be compelled to act in ways that encourage the presumed conclusion to happen in actuality. Hence, what the individual expects to occur often does occur because the individual has had a hand in producing the event. Thus, the self does indeed fulfill the promise of the expectation.
Semi‐Domestication
Authors: Torigoe Hiroyuki , Kada Yukiko
Published: September 2017

The notion of semi‐domestication originated to refer to a kind of plant that is in between wild plants and domesticated crops and has been extended to refer to a particular mode of interaction between humans and animals. Botanists and archeologists have been very interested in semi‐cultivated plants for their potential to reveal origins. Anthropologists, in contrast, have begun to accumulate field data that show the usefulness of such plants to local communities. For example, research in a village in the foothills of the Himalayas has analyzed the use of a particular kind of grass root called
Namitoa
which grows in semi‐cultivated areas. Although there are wild roots growing in the same area, these semi‐domesticated roots grow larger in size and produce more seed roots. According to the anthropologist, the semi‐cultivated roots are “gathered” rather than “harvested,” but in contrast to the cultivated roots that are planted in prepared fields, these semi‐domesticated roots do not grow as well under human control. It is also well known that in various regions of Asia, numerous semi‐cultivated plants are relied upon in times of pending famine.
Semiotics
Authors: Daniel E. Valentine
Published: September 2017

From the perspective of one who surveys the ever‐shifting and ever‐expanding field of modern semiotics/semeiotic, the long shadows of two dominant thinkers span the landscape: Charles Peirce and Ferdinand de Saussure. The history of the identification and use of signs as appropriate to certain culturally specified domains of knowledge and practice is, however, far richer and deeper. Such a history has been traced to divination and medicine in ancient Mesopotamia, extending to philosophy as well as in Greek antiquity, and by the first century
bce
to aesthetics and semantics in India (
Nyaya Sutra
). St. Augustine was the first thinker, however, to identify the sign (
signum
), in
De Doctrina Christiana
(ca.397–426), as a universal that functions in any and all contexts where significance (including information and meaning) of any sort is communicated from one living being to another. That is, he proposed a point of view that enabled us to see things exclusively in terms of their signs’ signifying function. By defining the sign, however, as “a thing, which, over and above the impression it makes on the senses, causes something else to come into thought as a consequence,” he made sense‐perception into a necessary component of the sign. In its application, he chose to narrow the sign's compass even further, to sacramental theology. Both choices served to limit the full analytic power of the sign right through the Latin period and well into the Renaissance.
Sex‐Based Wage Gap and Comparable Worth
Authors: Firestone Juanita M.
Published: September 2017

An extensive body of empirical literature has addressed the issue of sex‐based wage differentials in the United States. The fact that this gap persists over time means that a large body of literature exists on the topic. Most recent research suggests that while the gap may vary based on a variety of factors including type of job, years of experience, economic sector, etc., sex‐based wage differences remain. Comparable worth is a process that is supposed to address the sex‐based wage gap by objectively comparing dissimilar jobs in order to determine relative worth to the objectives of a particular organization. The process involves a complex system of fine‐tuning an entire compensation structure. The information required to engage in comparable worth is considerable: jobs must be ranked according to the worth to the employer. This implies measuring the value of each job and calculating degrees of difference between the values of different jobs. Thus, if two jobs require equivalent levels of skill, education, responsibility, etc., the two should also have equivalent salaries.
Sex Education
Authors: Epstein Debbie
Published: September 2017

The term sex education covers a multitude of approaches, meanings, and pedagogical strategies. It is highly contextual, with localized cultures and understandings making significant differences both to the purposes and practices involved. It is also often highly politicized.
Sex and Gender
Authors: Ryan Barbara
Published: September 2017

Often confused or used as if the terms were the same, sex and gender are in actuality different designations of human behavior based on physical capabilities and social expectations.
Sexual Cultures in Asia
Authors: Kong Travis S. K.
Published: September 2017

Sexual cultures in Asia refer to the ways of sexual life – the shared beliefs, values, meanings, and practices – that are common to members of Asian societies.
Sexual Cultures in Asia
Authors: Kong Travis S.K. , Lau Sky H.L. , Li Eva C.Y.
Published: September 2017

This entry first provides a brief history of the study of Asian sexuality in sociology, followed by an examination of four major aspects of sexual cultures in Asia: changes in marriage, love and sexuality; homosexuality; the sex trade; and the HIV/AIDS situations in countries across Asia.
Sexual Cultures in Latin America
Authors: Vidal‐Ortiz Salvador
Published: September 2017

A definition of “sexual cultures in Latin America” necessarily rests on a series of assumptions that need to be unpacked, thereby offering productive ways of thinking about what “sexual cultures in Latin America” means – and how to empirically engage with them in related research. First, the notion of “Latin America” is based on the disparate unification of many countries (from the rest of the Americas) through a perceived cultural homogeneity that ignores language variability, rival historical relations, economic and political differences, and national distinctions (including nationalistic discourses of difference between many of these countries). As well, Latin Americanist and ethnographic scholars debate what fits within the notion of “Latin America,” since there are often a variety of linguistic, geographic, and political reasons given in such scholarship to exclude or include nations or regions, as exemplified by the challenges in placing or excluding countries like Puerto Rico, Brazil, Spain, the English‐speaking Caribbean, and even the Southern cone.
Sexual Cultures in Russia
Authors: Healey Dan
Published: September 2017

The wholesale rejection of (or call to sublimation of) sexuality is an enduring feature of Russian intellectual life. Russia's hybrid condition, combining European and Asian geography, cultures, and histories, makes it a complex national tradition to study, and sexuality in Russia reflects that complexity. The country's often violent historical experience and its significant divergence from the familiar currents of European religious, cultural, and intellectual life have marked Russian approaches to sexuality.
Sexual Cultures in Scandinavia
Authors: Löfström Jan
Published: September 2017

Scandinavia as a social and cultural entity comprises the Nordic countries – Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Iceland, and Finland – plus the autonomous territories of Greenland and the Faroe Islands, which belong to Denmark, and the Aland Islands, which are part of Finland. The social and cultural distinctions of the countries notwithstanding, it is often justified to consider them in aggregate. For example, in terms of prevailing values and ideals the Nordic societies are more secularized and less traditional than most other western societies, and values pertaining to “self‐expression” (tolerance, post‐materialist values, etc.) are also relatively speaking very prominent in Nordic societies (Inglehart & Baker 2000). This has a bearing on various issues of sexual life and sexual norms.
Sexual Deviance
Authors: Tewksbury Richard
Published: September 2017

Sexual deviance, and what is defined as sexually deviant, is culturally and historically specific. This concept refers to behaviors where individuals seek erotic gratification through means that are considered odd, different, or unacceptable to either most or influential persons in one's community. As with most forms of deviance, sexual deviance is something that is defined differently by persons of different backgrounds, beliefs, morals, and locations. However, sexual deviance is also an idea about which most persons hold very strong views, and react in stigmatizing and ostracizing ways.
Sexual Identities
Authors: Plummer Ken
Published: September 2017

The term identity is derived from the Latin root
idem
, implying sameness and continuity, and helps to provide a sense of who we are and of who other people are. It serves as a crucial bridge in social life between human beings and wider cultures; it implies a sense of meaning and a sense of categorization and differentiation; and it marks out differences — between ourselves and others. The idea of identity speaks of locating a person within a personal and social category. It suggests answer to the question “who am I?” placing one's self and life within a framework of past (what kind of person I was and how I became it), of present (of who I am now), and future (guiding the sense of who one will be and how one is different from others). Sexual and gendered identities help to locate people within sexual and gender cultural frameworks.
Sexual Politics
Authors: Waites Matthew
Published: September 2017

Sexual politics was defined by the feminist Kate Millett in 1970 as encompassing the contestation of power‐structured relationships with respect to sex, gender, and sexuality, and in relation to the social system of patriarchy. Sexual politics thus politicized sociology in its approach to such inequalities, particularly in what was considered private or personal life. The women's liberation movement and the gay liberation movement brought new sets of concerns about power relationships into the social sciences. In more recent years sexual politics has broadened to encompass a range of issues including transgenderism, intersex status, pornography, sadomasochism, sexual violence and abuse, and pedophilia. Queer politics has emerged as one approach, with associated queer theory, focused on challenging the privileged status of heterosexuality. Globally sexual politics is increasingly structured by the effects of sexual nationalisms deployed by governments, which selectively deploy gender and sexuality. International organizations including the Commonwealth thus increasingly become sites of struggle for transnational activists and movements in sexual politics. However, some argue that homonationalisms in some more wealthy countries selectively affirm certain human rights, and engage international institutions, in ways which maintain inequalities of power between the global north and global south.
Sexual Violence and Rape
Authors: Kelly Liz
Published: September 2017

Rape attracted limited attention across the social sciences and humanities until it emerged as a key issue for feminists in the early 1970s. Most scholarship on the subject dates from this time, with the highest concentration appearing during the 1970s and 1980s. The first sociological study – Menachim Amir'sPatterns in Forcible Rape(1971) – addressed the victimology of rape. But it, along with most previous work, was subjected to intense feminist critique, including in Susan Brownmiller's prescientAgainst Our Will(1975), which, in “giving rape its history,” explored rape two decades before it became widely recognized. Rape was relatively invisible in feminist, policy, and research agendas during the 1990s outside the context of war/conflict. As we enter the twenty‐first century, shoots of renewed interest are evident with a series of books and major research reports addressing theory (Cahill 2001), reporting and belief (Jordan 2004), rape in diverse contexts (Barstow 2002), and prevalence and attrition (Kelly et al. 2005).
Sexualities and Consumption
Authors: Taylor Yvette
Published: September 2017

Sexuality and consumption are interlinked in powerful and significant ways, perhaps even more so in contemporary, even “postmodern,” times, shaping various material and subjective possibilities and impossibilities, as sexuality is displayed and regulated via consumption. Consumption refers to a wide variety of spending patterns and behaviors and is typically equated with “choice”; what we choose to buy, where and when, and how we choose to use purchasable commodities, ranging from mundane everyday goods and services to extravagant “one‐off” specials, which seemingly reinforce the uniqueness of our own individual consumer choice. Crane (2000) explores fashion and its various and shifting meanings, symbolically, culturally, and economically, across time and place, drawing on data from England, France, and the United States. Crane claims that class has become a less salient aspect of identity, with less effect upon clothing practices, consumption, and signification, which she describes as a shift from classed practices to those based around “lifestyles.” The concept of “subcultural” affiliation is invoked as a way of capturing the proliferation of clothing styles and choices, which, it is claimed, mark the changes from industrial class‐based societies to “postmodern,” “post‐industrial” societies. The manifestations of class and gender are seemingly replaced by an erasure of fixed hierarchies, a blurring of certainty which these categories once represented, and a diffusion of meaning across and between other axes of “difference,” particularly that of sexuality.
Sexualities and Culture Wars
Authors: Lucke Glenn
Published: September 2017

The term “culture wars” came to prominence in the early 1990s, referring to conflicts in US society over abortion, religion in schools, acceptance of homosexuals, pornography, the judiciary, and the arts. Many of the flashpoints in the culture war derive from competing cultural assumptions about the body, particularly various aspects of sexuality. Activists in the culture war struggle to define what Americans believe a human to be and how human life is to be rightly ordered.
Sexuality
Authors: Cronin Ann
Published: September 2017

A variety of different approaches to understanding sexuality have emerged over the last 150 years. One way of categorizing these approaches is to distinguish between essentialist and social constructionist models of sexuality. Essentialism prioritizes a biological explanation for sexuality and hence limits its definition of sexuality to the individual expression of human desire and pleasure. In contrast, social constructionism prioritizes the relationship between the individual and society to show that the meaning attached to sexuality is embedded in specific historical, political, and social practices. Attention is paid to the culturally and socially diverse ways in which sexual desires, practices, identities, and attitudes are conceptualized, categorized, deployed, and ultimately regulated through the social institutions and practices of different societies. Although sociology's historical silence on sexuality served to reinforce an essentialist and normative understanding of sexuality, contemporary sociologists of sexuality, while acknowledging the importance of biology, produce socially situated accounts of sexuality. Furthermore, sociology offers a critical analysis of essentialism. A diverse range of approaches are used to account for the social organization of sexuality, including, the sociology of homosexuality, feminist understandings of sexuality, queer theory, and an examination of the relationship between masculinity and sexuality. While each approach highlights different aspects of the debate on sexuality, there are many similarities and connections between the different perspectives. Furthermore, attention is paid to the interaction of sexual identity with other salient social identities, such as gender, race and ethnicity, class, age, and nationality.
Significant Others
Authors: Owens Erica
Published: September 2017

Significant others are those persons who are of sufficient importance in an individual's life to affect the individual's emotions, behavior, and sense of self. While in common parlance “significant other” has come to designate a romantic partner, sociologists' broader use of the term would include other relations such as family members and close friends or mentors. Through interactions with significant others, and perceptions of their responses to one's behavior, an individual gains a sense of who he or she is, and comes to understand how to act in a given context and role. Self‐concept is based largely on our perceptions – whether accurate or not – of who we are in the eyes of those whose opinions matter to us.
Simmel, Georg (1858–1918)
Authors: Kelly Russell
Published: September 2017

Georg Simmel was born in Berlin on March 1, 1858 and died in Strasbourg in Alsace on September 26, 1918. He is generally recognized as an important sociological writer and teacher in Europe around 1900. He is less well recognized as an important philosopher of the same period. While he was a friend and contemporary of the German sociologist Max Weber, he was also a colleague and fellow teacher with the eminent philosopher Wilhelm Dilthey. Among the students and correspondents influenced by Simmel, four major figures in American sociology attended his lectures in Berlin: Albion Small, later head of department at the University of Chicago and founding editor of the
American Journal of Sociology
, George Herbert Mead, University of Chicago philosopher, W. I. Thomas, Chicago sociologist, and Robert Park, founder of the US research tradition known best as ethnography. In the famous “Green Book,”
The Introduction to Sociology
, of 1921, Park and Burgess included more separate contributions from Simmel than from any other European sociologist. Simmel's influence from his teaching and his published papers on the development of sociology in the USA cannot be underestimated. Only his exclusion from Talcott Parsons's seminal
Structure of Social Action
cast a shadow for the period 1937 into the early 1960s. Since sociologists of the stature of Erving Goffman, Lewis Coser, and Kurt Wolff reclaimed Simmel's sociological work during the 1960s, his influence has been extended to virtually every area of the sociological spectrum.
Simmel, Georg (1858–1918)
Authors: Kelly Russell
Published: September 2017

Georg Simmel was born in Berlin on March 1, 1858 and died in Strasbourg in Alsace on September 26, 1918. He is generally recognized as an important sociological writer and teacher in Europe around 1900 but less recognized as an important philosopher of the same period. While he was a friend and contemporary of the German sociologist Max Weber, he was also a colleague and fellow teacher of the eminent philosopher Wilhelm Dilthey. Among the students and correspondents influenced by Simmel, four major figures in American sociology attended his lectures in Berlin: Albion Small, later head of department at the University of Chicago and founding editor of
the American Journal of Sociology
, George Herbert Mead, University of Chicago philosopher, W.I. Thomas, Chicago sociologist, and Robert Park, founder of the US research tradition known best as ethnography. In the famous “Green Bible,”
Introduction to the Science of Sociology
, of 1921, Park and Burgess included more separate contributions from Simmel than from any other European sociologist. Simmel's influence, from his teaching and his published papers, on the development of sociology in the USA cannot be underestimated. Only his exclusion from Talcott Parsons’ seminal
Structure of Social Action
cast a shadow for the period 1937 into the early 1960s. Since sociologists of the stature of Erving Goffman, Lewis Coser, and Kurt Wolff reclaimed Simmel's sociological work during the 1960s, his influence has been extended to virtually every corner of the sociological spectrum.
Simulacra and Simulation
Authors: Langman Lauren
Published: September 2017

For a number of sociologists, media theorists, and social critics, the current era, with its global market, advanced technologies, mass media and digital information, and the all‐present marketing of goods and politics, must be seen as radically different from the industrial age of machine‐based mass production. One of the central technological innovations of the industrial era was the capturing of visual images, sounds, and later media with both sound and picture. From the earliest photos, to records, and later movies and television, we have seen and heard endless reproductions. But, today, many argue that we live in a “postmodern” age dominated by an endless number of spectacular images, most of which are simulations, copies without an original source, imitations where the original never existed. With the proliferation of simulations, created images serve less to reproduce the reality that was seen or heard than to create various images that in turn create a new “reality” and new kinds of meanings. The “reality” of today, a world of fantastic dreams and images, is said to be largely a product of advertisers, marketers, and political consultants. They are the ones who create and disseminate the spectacles and simulations of “hyperreality.” At some point in the late twentieth century, the prevalence of artificial images, staged events, and socially constructed “realities” had become so prevalent as to be considered “normal,” “natural,” and hardly worth more than a yawn. In retrospect, we might now call our times the age of simulation.
Slavery
Authors: Coates Rodney
Published: September 2017

Slavery is defined as the forced labor of one group by another. The institution of slavery, in which the slave is considered merely a piece of animate property or chattel, was first developed by the Greeks. Brutality, including whipping, humiliation, and alienation, has been part of slavery from its inception. Stripped of their human dignity and title, slaves were forced to abandon their family, culture, and personhood, as their very being was owned by another. A direct result of European imperialistic expansion, the modern system of slavery employed even harsher methods of exploitation, humiliation, and degradation.
Slurs (Racial/Ethnic)
Authors: Moland John
Published: September 2017

A racial or ethnic slur is a remark or statement designed to defame, vilify, belittle, and insult members of a racial or ethnic group, usually by those who are not members of that racial or ethnic group (Rodale 1986: 1125). Examples of racial and ethnic slurs include expressions such as “miserly jew,” “gook,” “jap,” “red savage,” “mongrel,” “half‐breed,” “sambo,” “spook,” “nigger,” “coon,” and “kike.”