bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Apophatic reflexivity
Authors: Tsekeris Charalambos , Lydaki Anna
Published: September 2017

Apophatic reflexivity, a term coined within sociological theory by the leading Greek sociologist and prolific writer Nicos Mouzelis (1999), signifies a wholly different, less rational, and more spiritual way of theorizing the complex processes of self‐awareness, self‐experience, and self‐identity in the contemporary context of “late” or “high” modernity. More generally, it refers to ways in which spirituality might substantially contribute to current academic debates regarding the internal conversations of the social subject, as well as the emerging shift toward post‐secular and post‐materialist values.
Anzaldúa, Gloria (1942–2004)
Authors: Sibbett Megan
Published: September 2017

Gloria Anzaldúa remains one of the most important US feminists in the twentieth and twenty‐first century. Raised in the Río Grande Valley of south Texas, Anzaldúa's work attends to her experiences of growing up within a Mexican American family along the US‐Mexico border. Her feminist theory, which she largely derives from her personal experiences, focuses on inequalities and systemic oppression within the contexts of gender, race, sexuality, and class.
Ba
Authors: Kuwayama Takami
Published: September 2017

In Japanese,
ba
means “place” or “field.” It has, however, so many other meanings that it is difficult to find a single English word for it. Furthermore, it is associated with the Japanese belief that a person's behavior is induced or actually caused by the place in which that person is situated. Thus,
ba
not only indicates a physical space, but also illuminates the Japanese notion of accountability. When applied in the analysis of social relationships,
ba
explains how Japanese groups are organized.
Bankruptcy
Authors: Scholz Claudia W. , Firestone Juanita M.
Published: September 2017

Bankruptcy or insolvency is a legal status in which a debtor is deemed unable to meet obligations to creditors. Bankruptcy usually involves some combination of debtor asset liquidation, payment rescheduling, and the discharge of remaining debts. Legal frameworks governing bankruptcy around the world vary in the degree to which they seek to serve the interests of creditors, debtors, or society at large.
Base and Superstructure
Authors: Beamish Rob
Published: September 2017

The base and superstructure metaphor did not originate with Karl Marx – Scottish Enlightenment thinkers Adam Ferguson, Adam Smith, and others conceptualized different modes of subsistence, with particular structural characteristics, as foundational to societies – but Marx (1904), (1980) wrote the classic statement. Humankind distinguishes itself from nature and animals when it produces its means of subsistence – indirectly producing its actual material life. Production is substantial and eternal to human life; its form is historical. In the same year Darwin's
Origin of the Species
appeared, Marx (1980: 99) sketched the “guiding thread” to his work: humankind enters determinate, necessary social relations of production appropriate to a determinate developmental stage of the material forces of production. These two relations – comprised of real individuals, their activity, and the material conditions in which they live – constitute the “economic structure,” the real basis of the legal and political superstructure and determinate forms of social consciousness. Consciousness does not determine social being, being determines consciousness.
Bataille, Georges (1897–1962)
Authors: Hancock Black Hawk
Published: September 2017

Georges Bataille was a librarian, author, philosopher, sociologist, and a founding member of the College de Sociologie. His work was heavily influenced by Marx, Freud, Nietzsche, Kojeve, and the Marquis de Sade. His writings took on various genres and traversed a great number of themes from aesthetics, eroticism, and transgression, to philosophy, economics, and politics. Bataille was attracted to violence and the disruption it could cause capitalism and bourgeois values. He expressed this fascination through bodily “limit experiences,” such as cruelty, eroticism, transgression, subversion, sacrifice, and excess, that were beyond rational thought. For Bataille, these were all ways to gain personal “sovereignty,” where rationality was suspended as one abandons oneself to the objects of one's desires. While largely ignored during his lifetime, Bataille remains a central figure in French intellectual history for the influence he had on succeeding generations of scholars including Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, and Jean Baudrillard.
Bateson, Gregory (1904–1980)
Authors: Rawlins William K.
Published: September 2017

Gregory Bateson was a Cambridge‐educated anthropologist whose life's work spanned and influenced many academic fields, including anthropology, communication, education, psychotherapy, and sociology. Using cybernetic concepts to theorize human–environmental interaction in holistic and recursive ways, Bateson developed sophisticated and continually evolving accounts of reflexive relationships among culture, consciousness, communication, levels of messages, social and biological contexts, epistemology, and learning.
Behaviorism
Authors: Mandes Evans
Published: September 2017

Behaviorism was a dominant school of American psychological thought from the 1930s through the 1960s. Its principal founder, John B. Watson, clearly defined behaviorism as follows: “Psychology, as the behaviorist views it, is a purely objective branch of natural science. Its theoretical goal is the prediction and control of behavior. The behaviorist recognizes no dividing line between man and brute” (Watson 1914: 158). Other behaviorists following in Watson's footsteps included Clark Hull (drive reduction theory), Edward Chace Tolman (purposive behaviorism), and B. F. Skinner (radical behaviorism). The most successful of these was Skinner, who developed the dominant theory of behaviorism for 30 years, working on a more or less non‐theoretical basis, using only objective measures of behavior. He was squarely on the nurture side of the nature‐nurture controversy and on the deterministic side of the free will‐determinism issue. He disavowed favorite psychological constructs such as consciousness, freedom, indwelling agents, dignity, and creativity. In each case Skinner argued that these examples either represent constructs from one's own biological/environmental histories or are behaviors in which the antecedents (controlling agents) are not clearly understood (Skinner 1971).
Belief
Authors: Prandi Carlo
Published: September 2017

Popular dictionaries define the term belief in the following general terms: (1) a feeling of certainty that something exists or is good; (2) an opinion about which one feels sure. While the concept of belief is not, therefore, immediately associated with a religious context, it does not exclude it. When the “certainty that something exists” refers to a transcendent entity, then it is close to the idea of faith understood as a religious belief in a particular God. The semantic dichotomy between faith and belief originates and is developed especially in the historical context of western Christianity, when, beginning with the “confession of faith” established by the Council of Chalcedon (
ad
451), the concept of faith assumes an undoubtedly confessional character.
Bell Curve, the(Herrnstein and Murray)
Authors: Sanderson Stephen K.
Published: September 2017

Herrnstein and Murray'sThe Bell Curve(1994) is one of the most controversial and widely debated works of social science in the second half of the twentieth century. Almost instantly upon publication, the book set off a firestorm that took years to die down. What were the authors saying that was so incendiary? Their main arguments can be summarized approximately as follows. The US has increasingly evolved into a society stratified along the lines of intelligence. At the top of this stratification system is a cognitive elite of highly educated professionals, business managers, government officials, and the like who are increasingly set off from the rest of the population by their very high levels of intelligence. The cognitive elite has become increasingly separated from the rest of society by their attendance at elite universities, where they meet other highly intelligent individuals and intermarry, thus producing highly intelligent children who are likely to remain members of the elite intergenerationally. These consequences have resulted substantially from the fact that intelligence is highly genetically heritable, on the order of 40–80 percent. Intelligence is of great social importance. High intelligence is necessary for high levels of educational attainment, social status, and income. By contrast, low intelligence is associated with low levels of these outcomes, and also with a variety of social pathologies, such as higher rates of illegitimacy, poverty, welfare dependency, and crime. There are significant differences among racial and ethnic groups in intelligence, and these differences are largely genetic in origin. Such differences go far in explaining why blacks are overrepresented in the categories of social pathology mentioned above. The situation seems to be worsening, and thus the gap between the cognitive elite and the underclass growing, because of the tendency of poorer individuals of lower intelligence to out‐reproduce the more wealthy and more highly intelligent. Moreover, “Unchecked, these trends will lead the US toward something resembling a caste system, with the underclass mired ever more firmly at the bottom and the cognitive elite ever more firmly anchored at the top” (p. 509).
Big Science and Collective Research
Authors: Woods Brian
Published: September 2017

Although Big Science is a rather nebulous term, most commentators have used it to describe an array of perceived changes in science and scientific practice during and after World War II. Following Alvin Weinberg's
Reflections on Big Science
, the term has often been associated with the rise of a military‐industrial‐government‐academic complex, the use/production of huge machines, the investment of massive resources, and the growth of large techno‐scientific organizations. As such, Big Science is often compared against a pre‐war Little Science, usually characterized by lone or heroic scientists (typically, a Thomas Edison or Albert Einstein‐type figure) working in their makeshift laboratory. Yet large‐scale science is not a twentieth‐century phenomenon. Astronomy, for example, modeled itself on the factory system during the nineteenth century, with an increase in the hierarchical division of labor and a focus on large‐scale, mission‐oriented projects. These developments coincided with increased funding (mainly philanthropic) and the construction of ever‐larger telescopes, upon which the field of inquiry came to depend.
Biracialism
Authors: Roberts Alison
Published: September 2017

Biracialism is used to indicate a racial ancestry comprised of two “races.” The term generally refers to first‐generation persons of “mixed race” heritage, i.e., individuals who have parents of
socially defined
, distinct racial groups. Biracialism is sometimes used interchangeably with multiraciality or “mixed race.” Social scientists are concerned with the myriad meanings of biracialism in private and public spheres. Micro‐level analyses delve into the process of racial identity development and how biracial persons construct their racial identities in social interaction. Macro‐level analyses examine how race is measured and its role in demographic statistics, government policies, and state politics.
Birmingham School
Authors: Barker Chris
Published: September 2017

Birmingham School refers to the work of the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS), which operated as a research center at the University of Birmingham (UK) between 1964 and 1988. The Birmingham School represents a decisive moment in the creation of the intellectual and institutional project of cultural studies, as well as a “cultural turn” in sociology. The substantive focus of the Birmingham School was popular culture as explored through the concepts of ideology and hegemony. Indeed, the work of CCCS contributed to the legitimization of popular culture as a field of academic inquiry. Among the substantive topics of research undertaken by CCCS were the mass media, youth subcultures, education, gender, race, and the authoritarian state. The media were of special significance insofar as the texts of popular culture in the contemporary world are forged within their framework.
Black Urban Regime
Authors: Arena John
Published: September 2017

Black urban regime refers to large, majority or near‐majority black cities in the United States governed by black mayors. The first examples of a black urban regime were Carl Stokes' and Richard Hatcher's election in Cleveland and Gary, respectively, in the late 1960s. The majority of black urban regimes arose in the 1970s and later. In the late 1980s, 13 US cities were defined as black urban regimes, while in 2001 the number had risen to 19 (Bositis 2002: 11, 26; Reed 1999: 254).
Black Urban Regime
Authors: Byrnes Bill , Gillis Catherine
Published: September 2017

The term “black urban regime” (BUR) is used to describe a city that has a majority black population and is led by a black mayor and a majority black city council. BURs have two key components: a governing coalition comprised of black mayors and city council members, influential professionals from the black middle class, and white corporate elites; and an electoral coalition comprised largely of black working‐class voters (Reed, 1988; Arena, 2011). BUR theory poses several questions: What political, social, and economic circumstances led to the establishment of BURs? What unique constraints do black leaders face after coming to power? And finally, why do BURs deviate from their stated campaign goals of more equitable resource distribution, and instead focus on a procorporate agenda of urban governance?
Blockbusting
Authors: Orser W. Edward
Published: September 2017

Real estate blockbusting, pervasive in many American cities in the post‐World War II period, is the intentional action of a real estate broker to place an African American resident in a previously all‐white neighborhood for the express purpose of the excessive profit to be made by panicking whites into selling low, then in turn charging marked‐up prices to incoming minority residents (Helper 1969). The Civil Rights Act (Fair Housing Act) of 1968 declared it an illegal practice “for profit, to induce or attempt to induce” sales and rentals “by representations regarding the entry or prospective entry into the neighborhood of [a] person or persons of a particular race, color, religion, etc.” (Section 804 [e]). The 1968 Act, which declared discrimination in residential sales, rentals, or loans illegal, specifically outlawed blockbusting and indirectly barred other discriminatory real estate practices, including steering and redlining.
Blumer, Herbert George (1900–1987)
Authors: Morrione Thomas J.
Published: September 2017

Herbert George Blumer, tutored by his parents to be keenly observant of society, was early on a serious scholar of history and philosophy. He emerged from rural Missouri to study at Chicago under George Herbert Mead already enamored of the prospects for examining and explaining the interactions among human beings and the world. He was fortunate as an undergraduate at the University of Missouri to be able to work with Charles Ellwood, a sociologist, and Max Meyer, a psychologist, both of whom nurtured his progress toward Phi Beta Kappa recognition.
Boas, Franz (1858–1942)
Authors: Weiler Bernd
Published: September 2017

Franz Boas, born in Minden, Westphalia, is commonly regarded as the most influential figure of American anthropology in the first third of the twentieth century. Raised in an assimilated Jewish family, which had strong sympathies for the liberal ideals of the revolution of 1848, Boas studied natural sciences and mathematics at the universities of Heidelberg, Bonn, and Kiel, graduating in 1881. In a complex intellectual “odyssey” he abandoned his materialistic
Weltanschauung
and, under the influence of neo‐Kantianism, shifted his attention from the field of physics to Fechnerian psychophysics to Ratzel's anthropogeography, and finally, several years after graduating from university, to ethnology (Stocking 1982: 133–60). In 1883–4 he spent a year among the Inuit of Baffinland to examine the influence of the natural environment on the life of the people. Upon his return to Germany Boas published the results of his first fieldwork, obtained the docentship for geography at the University of Berlin, intensified his relationship with the leading German physical anthropologist, pathologist, and liberal politician R. Virchow, and worked as an assistant of A. Bastian at the
Royal Ethnographical Museum
at Berlin. Fascinated by the museum's collection of North Pacific Coast culture, Boas went to do fieldwork in British Columbia in 1886. The culture of the Native Americans of the Northwest Coast was to remain at the center of Boas's ethnographic research throughout his life. Returning to New York in 1887, Boas accepted the position as an assistant editor of the journal
Science
and, for political, professional, and personal reasons, decided to settle in the New World. From 1889 to 1892 he taught anthropology at Clark University, supervising the first American PhD in anthropology. From 1892 to 1894 he worked as an anthropologist at the
World's Columbian Exposition
at Chicago. While serving as a curator of the American Museum of Natural History (1896–1905) Boas organized the famous Jesup North Pacific Expedition, which set out to study the historical relationships between Asian and North American peoples. In 1896 he became a lecturer of physical anthropology and in 1899 was appointed the first full professor of anthropology at Columbia University, a post he held until his retirement in 1936–7.
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. Everything about the stigmatized person is interpreted in light of the negative trait, so that interaction with the nonstigmatized 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.
Bonfil Batalla, Guillermo (1935–1991)
Authors: Méndez y Berrueta Luis
Published: September 2017

Guillermo Bonfil Batalla was a Mexican ethnologist who studied at the National School of Anthropology and History (
Escuela Nacional de Antropología e Historia
, ENAH) and received his doctorate in anthropology at Mexico's National Autonomous University (
Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México
, UNAM). He is one of the most important representatives of the new generation of Mexican anthropologists who began to dominate the academic panorama after 1968. This generation was characterized by its strong criticism of the state's official
indigenismo
, which is understood as the set of state policies, institutions, and laws in relation to indigenous people. In light of both his theoretical reflections and his political work, Guillermo Bonfil Batalla is frequently considered one of the precursors in Latin America of the theoretical and ideological emergence of the autonomies of autochthonous peoples and of academic reflections on the consolidation of pluricultural states.
Bottomore, T. B. (1920–1992)
Authors: Outhwaite William
Published: September 2017

Tom Bottomore brought to British sociology a concern with social theory, especially (but by no means entirely) Marxist theory, with social movements, and with what came to be called the third world. He was one of the leading members of the generation of British sociologists who passed through the London School of Economics just after World War II. After a year's research in Paris on Marx and on the French civil service, he returned to LSE, where he taught from 1952 to 1965. Following two years at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver he took up a Chair at the University of Sussex, which he held until his retirement in 1985. He put into practice his thoroughly international approach in many years of patient work developing the International Sociological Association, of which he was president from 1974 to 1978; he was also president of the British Sociological Association from 1969 to 1971.
Bourgeoisie and Proletariat
Authors: Ultee Wout
Published: September 2017

Engels and Marx are regarded as the founders of a theoretical tradition in sociology called historical materialism. This perspective takes economic power as the prime dimension of social stratification and holds that the history of all hitherto‐existing societies is the history of class struggles. The main classes in the societies Engels and Marx studied most intensively were the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. More particularly, classical historical materialism postulated several trends supposedly characteristic of any society with private ownership of the means of production, such as machines and factories (capital goods) and free markets for capital, labor, and consumption goods. According to the “general law of capitalist accumulation,” the longer the capitalist mode of production prevails, the more capital will have accumulated, leading to both higher profits for capital owners (the bourgeoisie) and to worsening living conditions for the people who live by their labor (the proletariat). Although recognizing in the early phases of the capitalist mode of production the presence of small and large proprietors as well as skilled and unskilled workers, the persistence of the capitalist mode of production would lead to a disappearance of the middle classes. Small proprietors would become less common, as they lose out in the fierce competition from large proprietors. Workers skilled in using their hand tools would also become less common as proprietors replace them with cheaper unskilled workers operating machines. In addition, since the persistence of the capitalist mode of production is accompanied by ever deeper economic downturns, wages tend to fall while the percentage of unemployed workers rises.
Brand Culture
Authors: Schroeder Jonathan E.
Published: September 2017

Brand culture places brands firmly within culture to look at the complex underpinnings of branding processes. Much brand research emerged from the allied fields of management, marketing, and strategy, which traditionally favor positivistic models of brand “effects” driven by quantitative analysis. Recently, sociologists, anthropologists, and cultural studies researchers have looked at brands from historical, critical, and ideological perspectives, acknowledging the growing importance of brands in society (e.g., Brannan, Parsons, and Priola, 2011; Kornberger, 2010; Lury, 2004). An emphasis on brand culture forms part of a larger call for inclusion of sociological issues within the management research canon, joining in the contention that culture and history can provide a necessary contextualizing counterpoint to managerial views of branding's interaction with consumers and society.
Branding and organizational identity
Authors: Higgins Matthew
Published: September 2017

Branding and organizational identity refers to a process through which a pattern or a structure is ascribed to a group of individuals and recognized as unique, autonomous, and relatively stable in space and time. There are a number of aspects to this: the organizational identity, which is a concern withwhere do “we” come from,what and whothe organization is, andwhere “we” are going. In addition there is the branding, which is normally construed as a strategic concern with how the organization is represented and perceived by stakeholders.
Branding and Organizational Identity
Authors: Higgins Matthew
Published: September 2017

Issues of branding and organizational identity have traditionally straddled the business disciplines and have received increasing attention since World War II. Branding and organizational identity refer to a process through which a pattern or a structure is ascribed to a group of individuals and recognized as unique, autonomous, and relatively stable in space and time. Organizational identity is a concern with what and who the organization is, and branding is primarily concerned with how the organization is represented to key stakeholders.
Brown
V.
Board of Education
Authors: Bills David B. , Kaufman Erin
Published: September 2017

The 1954
Brown
v.
Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas
stands as the most significant Supreme Court decision in the history of American education, as well as one of the most important statements on racial equality and the relationship between various levels of American government. A half century later, the impacts and implications of
Brown
are still emerging.
Bureaucratic Personality
Authors: Allinson Christopher W.
Published: September 2017

An important factor in the development of human personality during adulthood is the influence of the work organization. A longstanding concern among social scientists in this respect has been the impact of bureaucracy. Max Weber, in his classic description of bureaucracy, observed that the individual may become little more than a cog in the bureaucratic machinery, a process explained by Karl Mannheim in terms of
functional rationalization
: the idea that a sequence of actions is organized in such a way that it leads to a previously determined goal with every action in the sequence receiving a functional role. This has important outcomes for the individual, as it eventually induces
self‐rationalization
or training to a specific psychological disposition. In extreme cases, this may amount to cognitive restructuring.
Burundi and Rwanda (Hutu, Tutsi)
Authors: Lemarchand René
Published: September 2017

There is more to Rwanda and Burundi than the arcane histories of two overpopulated (7 million each), poverty‐stricken micro‐states in the heart of the African continent: their minute size belies the magnitude of the tragedies they have suffered. The first will go down in history as the site of one of the biggest genocides of the last century, resulting in the systematic killing of an estimated 800,000 people, mostly Tutsi, in a hundred days from April to July 1994. The second lives on in the collective memory of the survivors as a forgotten genocide: who today remembers that in 1972, between 200,000 and 300,000 Hutu were massacred at the hands of a predominantly Tutsi army?
Baudrillard, Jean (1929–2007)
Authors: Kellner Douglas
Published: September 2017

On March 6, 2007, Jean Baudrillard died in Paris at the age of 77 after a long fight with cancer. Associated with postmodern and poststructuralist theory, Baudrillard is difficult to situate in relation to traditional sociology and social theory (for earlier takes on Baudrillard, see Kellner 1989a, 1994, 1995: ch. 8; Best & Kellner 1991, 1997: ch. 3). His work combines philosophy, social theory, and an idiosyncratic cultural metaphysics that reflects on key events of phenomena of the epoch. A sharp critic of contemporary society, culture, and thought, Baudrillard is often seen as a major guru of French postmodern theory, although he can also be read as a thinker who combines theory and social and cultural criticism in original and provocative ways, and as a writer who has developed his own style and forms of writing. He was an extremely prolific author who published over 50 books and commented on some of the most salient cultural and sociological phenomena of the contemporary era, including the erasure of the distinctions of gender, race, and class that structured modern societies in a new postmodern consumer, media, and high‐tech society; the mutating roles of art and aesthetics; fundamental changes in politics, culture, and human beings; and the impact of new media, information, and cybernetic technologies on the creation of a qualitatively different social order, providing fundamental mutations of human and social life.
Black masculinity
Authors: Ispa‐Landa Simone
Published: September 2017

Urban ethnography, which often examines the effects of living in concentrated poverty, has dominated studies of black masculinity. The picture of black masculinity that has emerged from this tradition is narrow and, some would argue, degrading (e.g., Duneier 1992; Young 2004). In
Slim's Table
, Mitchell Duneier speculates that the roots of the “collective ethnographic portrait” of black masculinity lie in sociologists' sampling methods and theoretical preoccupations:
Capital: Economic, Cultural, and Social
Authors: De Graaf Paul M.
Published: September 2017

The distinction between economic, cultural, and social capital has proven to be useful to explain the way in which parents pass their status on to their children, and to explain why there is individual variation in the status attainment process. One of the core questions in the sociology of social stratification is how status is attained within a given society, and how the determinants of status attainment vary over historical periods and over societies. An important part of the status attainment model, as developed by Blau and Duncan (1967), consists of the effects the family of origin have on offspring status. The key notion of the working of the different types of capital is that educational attainment, occupational achievement, and income attainment are affected by the resources an individual has at his or her disposal. Note that many sociologists in the field of social stratification do not use the word
capital
, but refer to economic, cultural, and social
resources
. Whereas the distinction between economic, cultural, and social resources has been developed to explain the effects of the family of origin on educational and occupational attainment, it has proven to be fruitful in other realms of the status attainment process as well.
Caste: Inequalities Past and Present
Authors: Jalali Rita
Published: September 2017

Societies all over the world are socially stratified but they vary in the ways in which inequality is structured. To categorize different forms of stratification systems sociologists most frequently examine the way resources such as wealth, power, and prestige are acquired in society. In some societies, such valued resources are acquired on the basis of achievement or merit. In others, these resources are accorded to individuals on the basis of ascribed, not achieved, characteristics. One is born into them or inherits them, regardless of individual abilities or skills. A person's position is unalterable during his or her lifetime. The idea of ascribed and achieved status is used to contrast caste systems with class systems. In class systems one's opportunities in life, at least in theory, are determined by one's actions, allowing a degree of individual mobility that is not possible in caste systems. In caste systems a person's social position is determined by birth, and social intercourse outside one's caste is prohibited.
Caste: Inequalities Past and Present
Authors: Jalali Rita
Published: September 2017

This entry defines the concept of caste systems of stratification, and how the system is practiced in India. It describes the historical changes in the caste system from precolonial times to the present focusing on the social, economic, and political changes and their impact on intercaste disparities in the country.
Castoriadis, Cornelius (1922–1997)
Authors: Ablett Phillip
Published: September 2017

Cornelius Castoriadis was a Greco‐French philosopher, economist, psychoanalyst, social theorist, and post‐Marxist revolutionary. Born in Constantinople (Istanbul) in 1922, Castoriadis grew up in Greece amid dictatorship, invasions, and civil war. Educated in philosophy, law, and politics at the University of Athens, Castoriadis fought the Nazis as part of the communist, and later Trotskyist, resistance. In 1945 Castoriadis went to study in Paris, where in 1948 he co‐founded the libertarian socialist group and journal
Socialisme ou Barbarie
(1949–67), many of whose ideas influenced the 1968 worker–student uprising. He was unable to obtain French citizenship until 1970 and led a revolutionary's double life by working professionally as a senior OECD economist. As the journal's preeminent theoretician, Castoriadis initiated a series of thoroughgoing internal critiques of the Marxist tradition. Against statist definitions of socialism as nationalization, Castoriadis advocated worker's self‐management, which he expanded into a project of human autonomy. After 1970, Castoriadis retrained as a psychoanalyst and became director of studies at the Écoles des Hautes Études.
Celebrity and Celetoid
Authors: Rojek Chris
Published: September 2017

Celebrity is the assignment of honorific or sensational status to an individual through the agency of mass communication. An important distinction in the field is between
ascribed
and
achieved
forms of celebrity. The former refers to the assignment of status on the basis of genealogy. For example, in Britain Prince William and Prince Harry possess ascribed celebrity on the basis of their bloodline. In the US the children of presidents such as Chelsea Clinton and Jenna and Barbara Bush fall into the same category. Ascribed celebrities tend to predominate in the power hierarchy of traditional societies in which rule is organized around monarchical or charismatic leaders. Achieved celebrity refers to the attribution of honorific or scandalous status by virtue of the accomplishments of an individual. This type of celebrity is common in modern societies attached to legal‐rational forms of legitimacy. Within celebrity culture there are institutionalized categories of sports stars, pop idols, artists, film stars, and politicians into which achieved celebrities can be positioned. Generally speaking, the transition from traditional to modern society involves the eclipse of ascribed celebrity and its replacement by the achieved form.
Celebrity Culture
Authors: Cashmore Ellis
Published: September 2017

Celebrity culture is characterized by a pervasive preoccupation with famous persons and an extravagant value attached to the lives of public figures whose actual accomplishments may be limited, but whose visibility is extensive. It became a feature of social life, especially in the developed world, during the late 1980s/early 1990s and extended into the twenty$@#*^%#@#hyphen;first century, assisted by a global media which promoted, lauded, sometimes abominated, and occasionally annihilated figures, principally from entertainment and sports.
Change Management
Authors: Dawson Patrick
Published: September 2017

Change management refers to the active process of introducing a change that moves an organization over time from established ways of doing things to new, desired ways of operating. A key aim of change management is to manage processes in a way that ensures the likelihood of a preferred future being attained. Planning and structuring change, establishing projects and engaging people, communicating intentions and trying to avoid technical or human contingencies are all part of a process that sets out to ensure smooth transitions in the successful implementation of change. But even when change is meticulously planned, the unexpected and unforeseen still occurs. Strategies for overcoming potential obstacles can be prepared for but the unanticipated happens. Changing towards an unknowable future is always going to have elements of unpredictability and this is part of the paradox of change management.
Chaos
Authors: Wasson Leslie
Published: September 2017

Chaos theory emerged over the past several decades in the physical sciences as an explanatory framework for processes that appeared disorderly, such as turbulence or weather patterns, but which had complex mathematical models behind their seeming randomness. Complexity theory developed as an offshoot of chaos theory. It seeks to explain, among other things, the diversification of biological systems using a parsimonious set of predictors.
Chaos
Authors: Wasson Leslie
Published: September 2017

Both quantitative and qualitative explorations of chaos and complexity theories have been proposed or attempted in social research. However, most applications of chaos theory are still conceptual rather than empirical. The most success seems to be had with social movement data, although it appears that other systems data could also be successfully explained using these frameworks. References are provided to illustrative theoretical and empirical works.
Charisma, Routinization of
Authors: Gordon Ray
Published: September 2017

Weber (1978: 241) notes that those attributed charismatic authority are considered “extraordinary and endowed with supernatural, superhuman, or at least specifically exceptional powers or qualities … regarded as divine in origin or as exemplary, and on the basis of them [qualities] the individual concerned is treated as a leader.” In this sense, the social relationships directly involved with charismatic authority are strictly personal and irrational in character. Weber points out, however, that if these relationships are not to remain a transitory phenomenon, they and the charismatic authority they are involved with “cannot remain stable; they will become either traditionalized or rationalized, or a combination of both” (p. 246). What Weber means is that, over time, either a bureaucracy vested with rational legal authority will supersede the charismatic leader or institutionalized structures will incorporate the charismatic impetus. This rationalization or institutionalization process is what Weber refers to as the routinization of charisma.
Child Labor
Authors: Morrow Virginia
Published: September 2017

Child labor refers to a form of child work. Child labor was first conceptualized as a social problem during industrialization in nineteenth‐century Britain, and the reasons were related to the need for cheap unskilled factory labor, and new moral concerns about childhood (Cunningham 1996). It is usually assumed that children in contemporary industrialized or post‐industrial societies do not work, and that child labor is a “problem” in developing or majority world countries, but many children are “economically active” in some way, and accordingly, there are many definitions of child labor. Economists Rodgers and Standing (1981) produced a typology of child activities and differentiate between the following categories of child work: domestic work; non‐domestic, non‐monetary work; tied or bonded labor; wage labor; and marginal economic activities.
Child Labor
Authors: Morrow Virginia
Published: September 2017

There is no agreed definition of “child labor” because the concept is a culturally relative construct, operable primarily in the original English and lost in translation to most other languages. Thus, “child labor” carries different meanings or connotations. In the social sciences, the term usually refers to work that is in some way harmful to children or impedes their development. There is also a legal definition of the term to refer to work that is undertaken below the minimum age set for employment, whether such work is harmful or beneficial to children; this definition is more concerned with labor‐force work. Western conceptualizations of “work” and “labor” equate work with paid employment, but sociologists and social anthropologists have long argued that work can be broadly understood as the performance of necessary tasks and the production of necessary values, and includes domestic work and unpaid family based labor.
Childcare
Authors: Brannen Julia
Published: September 2017

Childcare is a term which typically is applied to adults taking responsibility for younger children and looking after them on a daily basis in the private sphere of families and the home. In societies where women and men are employed outside the home, their under‐school‐age children may be cared for by kin or their care may be commodified, in which case care is provided through private markets, through quasi‐markets (childminding), or by the state. In the latter case, in western societies which have strong welfare states, childcare is provided in the public sphere for all children as a right as part of the social rights of citizenship (Leira 2002). In residual welfare states, the state and institutions step in only when children are deemed to be at risk or vulnerable because of abuse, neglect, or loss of both parents.
Childhood Sexuality
Authors: Corteen Karen
Published: September 2017

Children and sexuality are in their own right particularly sensitive areas. Bringing the two together is to end a dominant and ideological taboo (Jackson 1982). Consequently, within America and the UK the area of childhood sexuality is research arid, and the established literature is predominantly undertheorized and uncritical (Plummer 1991; Weis 2005). Childhood sexuality is a sensitive and controversial area and this is particularly the case when the issue of children's sexuality challenges heterosexual norms and highlights the rights of all children to make informed choices about their own bodies, sexual desires, practices, and identity (Levine 2002; Corteen 2003a). Evidently, it deals with issues that are both personal and private as well as public and political. The issue of childhood sexuality when approached holistically is concerned with children's lives and experiences, their physical health and their emotional well‐being. Thus, it is more than a theoretical and analytical endeavor. Discussions around and constructions of childhood sexualities, whether they are underpinned by a scientific developmental approach or a sociological approach, can result in the validation or invalidation, the sanctioning or condemnation of sexual desires, practices, and identities. The subject is socially, politically, ideologically, and academically awash with commonsensical ideologies regarding children, childhood, sexuality, and childhood sexuality.
Children and Divorce
Authors: Fine Mark A.
Published: September 2017

The issue of how children are affected by parental divorce has arguably evoked as much controversy as has any other topic in the social sciences. The controversy reflects the importance and timeliness of the topic – in the beginning of the twenty‐first century, Census Bureau data indicate that at least 50 to 60 percent of children in the United States will spend some period of time before they reach 18 in a home in which divorce has occurred (Harvey & Fine 2004). One‐third or more of the children in the United States will live in a stepfamily by the time they reach 18 (Coleman et al. 2000). Similar rates have been found in other western countries (Barber & Demo 2006). Further, when children experience the divorce of their parents, they become approximately twice as likely to divorce themselves as adults (Amato 2000).
Chronic Illness and Disability
Authors: Charmaz Kathy
Published: September 2017

Chronic illness lasts. A chronic illness has a lengthy duration, uncertain outcome, and unpredictable episodes, often with intrusive symptoms and intermittent or progressive disability. Having a chronic illness poses life problems such as following a medical regimen, managing ordinary responsibilities, and experiencing stigma and discrimination. A disease, in contrast, may remain silent for years without eliciting a diagnosis or causing noticeable symptoms and life disruptions. Experiencing chronic illness makes disease real. Sociological definitions of chronic illness start with the experience of disruption and impairment. Social definitions of disability start from the lack of societal accommodation to certain individuals’ needs, thereby disadvantaging them and discriminating against them. Such definitions of disability tend to presuppose that the people involved have static, visible conditions with predictable and sustained needs.
Citations and Scientific Indexing
Authors: Jack Gómez‐Morales Yuri
Published: September 2017

A classic analytical distinction between a citation and a reference reads: “if paper R contains a bibliographic footnote using and describing paper C, then R contains a reference to C, and C has a citation from R.” According to this, citation and referencing are relations among published texts. But whereas referencing is an intratextual relation between a written word, statement, description, or even an entire argument and a bibliographic reference, citation is an extratextual relation between a complete piece of scientific literature, namely a book or a journal article (just to mention classic forms) and many other pieces of literature of a latter publication date. A reader can easily see a reference by inspecting a text; after all, referencing is a technical standard for editing publishable texts. But a reader cannot see citation directly. Whereas referencing, when it happens, takes place within a singular piece of edited and published material, citation, when it happens, is something that takes place across a section of published literature and it becomes visible for a reader, so to speak, as long as some kind of bibliographic control of that literature can be exerted. This is the purpose that a citation index accomplishes. A citation index is a form to organize and display a body of bibliographical references. These references are collected from reference lists of journals' articles, books, and so on, and then organized alphabetically by author. Once this list is ready, under each of the entries one finds the record of published works that have cited them at some point.
Cities in Europe
Authors: Le Galès Patrick
Published: September 2017

The European city concept derives from Max Weber and historians of the Middle Ages. In “The City,” Weber characterizes the medieval western city – in modern language, western European city – as having the following features: a fortification, a market, and a specifically urban economy of consumption, exchange, and production; a court of law and the ability to ordain a set of rules and laws; rules relating to landed property (since cities were not subject to the taxes and constraints of feudalism); and a structure based on associations (of guilds) and – at least partial – political autonomy, expressed in particular through the existence of an administrative body and the participation of the burghers in local government. This combination of political autonomy, religious culture, specifically urban economy, and differentiated social structure, all surrounded by a wall, made the western city an original sociological category and a structuring element in the Europe of the Middle Ages between 1000 and 1500. This golden age of urban Europe reached its high point at the end of the Middle Ages, when feudal structures were gradually fading, but before the states had established their domination everywhere (Tilly 1990).
Citizenship
Authors: Barbalet Jack
Published: September 2017

Citizenship refers to membership in political community organized as a territorial or national state. The nature and content of citizenship varies with the form of state. Citizenship in the classic Greekpolis, for instance, provided membership to a political elite, whereas modern liberal democratic citizenship provides opportunity to vote once every 3 or 4 years in a political election cycle. Sociological theories, however, recognize that citizenship has more than a mere political dimension.