bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Attitudes
Authors: Haddock Geoffrey , Maio Gregory
Published: December 2017

Attitudes refer to our overall evaluations of people, groups, and other objects in our social world. Reporting an attitude involves making a decision concerning liking versus disliking or favoring versus disfavoring an attitude object. Attitudes are important because they impact both the way we perceive the world and how we behave.
Austrian School of Economics
Authors: Prendergast Christopher
Published: December 2017

This entry identifies the key figures and leading ideas of Austrian economics from its founding to the present.
Authoritarian Personality
Authors: Campo Enrico
Published: December 2017

Authoritarian personality may be defined as a system of individual attitudes and behaviors that have a certain stability and resistance to change and that creates an intensely strict and hierarchical vision of the world. In particular, subjects with an authoritarian personality demonstrate an automatic and mechanical adherence to traditional norms and values of their own community of reference. Along with an inflexible adherence to their cultural conventions, there is an unconditional deference, if not an actual submission, to the authoritarian figure – or figures – taken as a model. People who demonstrate such a personality tend to distinctly separate those who share their own system of values (in‐group) from those who do not (out‐group). This attitude translates into a prejudice toward the members of the out‐group that can give rise to blind hatred and aggressive behavior.
Bendix,Reinhard
Authors: Vera Hector
Published: December 2017

This entry sketches the main substantive and methodological topics present in Reinhard Bendix's better known works of comparative history (Work and Authority in Industry: Ideologies of Management in the Course of IndustrializationandKings or People: Power and the Mandate to Rule). It also emphasizes Bendix's role in bringing European sociology (particularly from Germany) to the United States in the 1960s and 1970s, and his efforts to popularize Max Weber's sociological thought (mainly through his celebratedMax Weber: An Intellectual Portrait).
Bioethics
Authors: Evans John H.
Published: December 2017

Bioethics refers to debates in the public sphere about the ethics of application of technology to the human body. There is also a distinct profession of “bioethics” whose members participate in bioethical debate. Over the past fifty years debates have broken into four components, each having its own institutional constraints, range of questions, allowable ethical perspectives, and participants. Social scientists have shown how and why the ethics used in these components differ from what the participants in these debates claim. Ethical argumentation has become more constrained as the bioethics profession has come to dominate these debates.
Biotechnology
Authors: Turner Bryan S.
Published: December 2017

Biotechnology (or “biotech”) is an umbrella term covering a wide range of diverse activities to modify living organisms for human purposes. The European Federation of Biotechnology defines biotech as the integration of natural science and organisms, cells, and molecular analogies for products and services. Biotech has been used in human societies for centuries in agriculture and brewing beer is an early example of its use. Biotech has been greatly enhanced in the twentieth century by such techniques as artificial selection and hybridization. The most important advance in understanding the genetic basis of human life was undertaken by the Human Genome Project which was completed in 2003. Biotech is now the foundation of a biotechnological civilization that is transforming social relations. Social sciences and specifically sociology have been slow to come to terms with these developments, in part because sociology has resisted the idea that human characteristics (such as race) and human behavior (such as homosexuality) can be explained by reference to human genes. Sociology has clung to the idea from the nature–nurture debate that human nature is socially produced and that our personalities are the product of socialization rather than natural inheritance. Much of the speculation about the social consequences of biotech has been undertaken by philosophers interested in the ideas of transhumanism and posthumanism. The controversial issue which is rapidly unfolding is the use of biotech to improve and upgrade human beings.
B
raudel,
F
ernand
Authors: Pumar Enrique S.
Published: December 2017

Fernand Braudel is one of the most creative social science thinkers of the twentieth century. A French national, his ideas transcended international boundaries and continue to do so today. Braudel revolutionized the fields of historiography and social theory with his account of the
longue durée
, an analytical tool that steered the study of societies to three dimensions of time across long cycles of history. His perspectives also inspired the voluminous world‐system paradigm.
Bureaucratic Authoritarianism
Authors: Heiss Claudia
Published: December 2017

Bureaucratic authoritarianism is a concept formulated by political scientist Guillermo O'Donnell to characterize certain civil‐military dictatorships as distinct from totalitarianism, populist, and oligarchic authoritarianisms. The main characteristics of these regimes were strong bureaucratic organization, technocratic decision‐making, demobilization of popular sectors, and the repression of political dissidence.
Business Cycles
Authors: Southwood Ben
Published: December 2017

Large fluctuations in inflation, output, and unemployment are a key feature of modern economies. Many claims that the business cycle can be controlled have proven false. Most recently, the UK government's claim to have abolished the boom‐and‐bust cycle turned out to be at best, premature. Viewed as avoidable departures from a trend, the fluctuations are detractions from economic growth and therefore living standards across society. There is no universally accepted explanation for why they occur, whether they are avoidable, or even whether they are always undesirable from the perspective of society.
Cambridge School of Economics
Authors: Garlitz Dustin
Published: December 2017

This entry focuses on the history and leading members of the Cambridge School of Economics. Emphasis is placed on the most important contributions of members Alfred Marshall, John Maynard Keynes, Arthur C. Pigou, Richard Kahn, Joan Robinson, Nicholas Kaldor, Piero Sraffa, and Henry Sidgwick, as well as John Neville Keynes and Herbert Somerton Foxwell, among other lesser known members. The influence of these figures on economics at Cambridge is highlighted, including the academic programs that they played a role in, the various colleges they taught at, and the different chairs that they occupied at the university over the course of their careers. Emphasis is placed on their leading publications, their interactions with one another, the economists that they influenced, and their counterparts in Cambridge philosophy who influenced their works at times.
Cargo Cults
Authors: Otto Ton
Published: December 2017

The concept of cargo cults refers primarily to millenarian and revitalization movements that have occurred in the Melanesian area in the South Pacific in the wake of Western colonization. In a more general sense, the term is used to criticize the millennial aspects of Western capitalist economy and to denounce misconceived ways of using methods and procedures in science and design that do not produce real results. Anthropological research has generated a rich archive of descriptions and analyses of cargo cult phenomena and has stimulated theoretical debate. Presently, anthropologists disagree whether the continued use of cargo cult as a descriptive term is warranted, especially because of its pejorative connotations, but there appears to be wide acceptance of the concept as a useful tool for cultural critique.
C
erteau,
M
ichel de
Authors: Chutter Jennifer
Published: December 2017

Michel de Certeau (May 17, 1925–January 9, 1986) was a French cultural theorist in the mid‐twentieth century whose work is used as a theoretical framework in academic disciplines. He completed degrees in classics and philosophy at the University of Grenoble, Lyon, and his doctorate in religious science at the Sorbonne, Paris, in 1960. He was ordained as a Jesuit priest in 1956 but pursued an academic career instead of his initial plan of becoming a missionary in China. De Certeau started off his career as an historian, but his scholarship interests were wide ranging and included anthropology, cultural studies, psychoanalysis, and linguistics.
Charisma
Authors: Adair‐Toteff Christopher
Published: December 2017

Charisma is the extraordinary and revolutionary power that is given to certain people during times of trouble. It is very rare, highly personal, and is often short‐lived. Originally it was thought to apply mainly to certain religious figures, but today its application is far wider.
Chicago School of Economics
Authors: Davies William
Published: December 2017

The Chicago School of Economics was a group of economists and lawyers who developed a wide‐ranging and politically transformative approach to the study of institutions and behavior, which is widely perceived to have been instrumental in the development of the “neoliberal” policy regimes that emerged in the late 1970s. Key characteristics of this school include an unshakable commitment to core tenets of neoclassical economics, both inside and outside of the market sphere; a skepticism toward state‐led social programs and interventions; a radically individualist view of decision‐making in which normative and political activity is ultimately reducible to private cost–benefit analysis, and sympathy for corporations. Key figures in the Chicago School included Milton Friedman, George Stigler, and Gary Becker. They were admirers and later colleagues of Friedrich Hayek.
Church‐Sect Typology
Authors: Richardson James T.
Published: December 2017

This entry briefly describes the historical development and meaning of the church‐sect typology. How the typology has been elaborated and how the meaning of some terms associated with the typology have evolved in a more negative direction is also covered, as are ideas about how organizational forms included in the typology can change over time. The work of Bryan Wilson has been especially important in understanding the typology and how it can be applied to modern religious phenomena.
Circumstantialism
Authors: Matsuo Hisako , Garcia Melissa J.
Published: December 2017

Circumstantialism is a school of thought which emphasizes an ambivalent nature of ethnic identity. Circumstantialism argues that ethnic identity fluctuates according to the situation or conditions surrounding individuals. The origin of the term “circumstantialism” combines historical and social evolutions of human beings to adapt to social change. Lower economic status and disadvantageous racial groups commonly promote ethnic shifts to compete for scarce resources. The ambivalence of circumstantialism asserts that it is possible to maneuver and successfully manage between identities.
Color‐Blind Ideology
Authors: Mueller Jennifer C. , Dunston Chloe
Published: December 2017

Color‐blind ideology has emerged as the foremost framework from which to analyze the current American racial paradox: while the civil rights movement affected change, structural racial inequality persists more covertly; this reality conflicts with views of progress employed to justify beliefs and behavior that continue to uphold white power, privilege, and wealth. Examining the work of critical race theorists and sociologists, this entry explores the origin and evolution of color‐blind theory and the historical transition to this dominant racial ideology.
Colorism
Authors: Zhang Wenquan
Published: December 2017

Colorism refers to the prejudicial treatment of people based on their skin color (cutaneo‐chroma). Other phenotypic characteristics, such as eye color and hair texture, may also serve as the basis of similar kinds of prejudicial treatment. However, skin color is by far the most important and frequently used criterion. Notwithstanding exceptions, colorism predominantly privileges lighter skin tone over darker. It manifests its effects in many areas of social life and adds a layer of complexity to the group hierarchy and both intergroup and intragroup relations in society. It is a worldwide phenomenon that is practiced by white and nonwhite people, majority groups and minority groups alike. The effect of colorism is achieved by associating positive or negative social meanings with skin tone gradation.
Commodity
Authors: Chang Gordon C.
Published: December 2017

Commodities are objects or products that are utilized by humans for exchange purposes. Although the phrase is most often associated with the context of market exchange, exchange of commodities predated the development of the so‐called free market economy. The idea of commodity carries special theoretical significance in Karl Marx's body of work, in which “fetishism of the commodities” plays an important role during the historical stage of capitalism. Contemporary theorists observe novel forms of commodification that endanger human relations and exacerbate power inequality. Diverging from these perspectives, some theorists see commodities as material cultures, the meanings and significance of which transform as they circulate in different sociocultural locations.
Constitutionalism
Authors: Moore Wayne D.
Published: December 2017

Constitutionalism is a rich, highly contested concept. At its core is a commitment to governance in accordance with fundamental political norms having higher authority than ordinary law. Modern understandings of constitutionalism identify it with written charters proceeding from the people's foundational political authority. These charters both delegate and limit governmental powers, including through their listings of judicially enforceable rights. Constitutionalism is also identified with self‐governance, especially through mechanisms of representative democracy.
Contract
Authors: Roose Joshua M.
Published: December 2017

Scholarly interest in contracts is both truly interdisciplinary, from law and economics to the social sciences (particularly politics, political theory, and sociology), and contested, with numerous competing perspectives on the social utility of contracts. An understanding of contract theory and practice provides important insights into how people and groups with often differing interests work together toward a mutually beneficial outcome.
Conversation Analysis
Authors: Hutchby Ian
Published: December 2017

Conversation analysis is an approach to sociology that investigates the sequential organization of talk as a way of accessing participants' understandings of, and collaborative means of organizing, natural forms of social interaction. As a method it has been widely applied not just to the analysis of conversation but to numerous forms of institutional interaction. A distinctive feature of this method is that instead of relying on participants' retrospective accounts of interactions derived from interviews, it gathers data of naturally occurring interactions as they unfold in real time using video‐ or audio‐recording technology.
Conversion
Authors: Obadia Lionel
Published: December 2017

In the twentieth and twenty‐first centuries, religious conversion has become a topical issue: its analysis reveals important dynamics shedding light on the modernization of religious behavior and the globalization of traditions. But this change in religious adherence and affiliation is a complex phenomenon, which abides by varying forms and processes depending on the time period and the cultural and religious context in which it takes place. It has therefore been conceptualized into very different theoretical models by behavioral sciences, psychology, history, and sociology.
Corporations
Authors: Nelson Dylan K. , Mizruchi Mark S.
Published: December 2017

The corporation is a legal entity constructed to facilitate economic cooperation between individuals. This mode of social organization emerged from European trading companies and evolved into massive manufacturing and service firms in the twentieth century, many with international reach. One branch of scholarship on the corporation has focused on relations within the firm, especially the mediation of owners and managers, the distribution of status and wealth, and the treatment of employees. Another branch has analyzed the effects of corporations and corporate elites on political decision‐making. Corporations are increasingly sites of contention for social movement groups, even as the number of US corporations has sharply declined. Recently, social theorists have focused on financialization, corporate social responsibility, and globalization as factors affecting corporate action.
Critical Race Theory
Authors: Durie Jane
Published: December 2017

Critical race theory emerged during the 1980s from critiques and resistances of (mainly) black African American students and academics to the racist assumptions and practices underpinning legal education in the Western academy and the practice of law in the United States of America. The resultant body of work and practice became known as critical race theory, reflecting two primary interests. The first of these was to examine and understand how the structure of white supremacy and authority and the oppression of people of color was maintained within the institution of the law. The second and critical interest was to challenge and change this structural inequality. Thus critical race theory as a body of work reflects the emergence of a critical theoretical standpoint and a call to action reflected in the work of its protagonists since its inception in the late 1980s.
Cult(s) and
NRMs
Authors: Richardson James T.
Published: December 2017

This entry discusses “cults,” the pejorative term used by some to refer to what scholars call new religious movements (NRMs), noting reasons why these groups were of concern, and methods used to exert social control over them. The controversy in Western societies and among various disciplines and organizations is also discussed.
Cultural Racism
Authors: Chua Peter
Published: December 2017

Cultural racism refers to the institutional domination and sense of racial‐ethnic superiority of one social group over others, justified by and based on allusively constructed markers, instead of outdated biologically ascribed distinctions. These culturally constructed markers have included language use, religious practice, immigrant status, social welfare dependency, and the profiling of criminal and terrorist behavior. Moreover, cultural racism is generally associated with more laissez‐faire articulations of “color‐blind” and supposedly race‐neutral state policies and a state that constructs an image of itself as a champion for racial equality. Instead, many emphasize how cultural racism perpetuates more hidden and insidious forms of racial exclusion and inequalities.
Cyber‐Religion
Authors: Obadia Lionel
Published: December 2017

Cyber‐religions result from the “digital revolution”: they bear the mark of the technological, social, and cultural changes that accompany the media's modernization and globalization, especially through the Internet. Subjected to new regimes of existence and deep transformations of their morphology, religions in the “cyber” world span from historical religions practiced or communicated online to new religions that are purely virtual. And cyber‐religions perpetuate both hypermodern and traditional religious forms.
Cybersexuality
Authors: Daneback Kristian
Published: December 2017

When the Internet became available to the general public in the early 1990s, cybersexuality, or rather cybersex, became part of the contemporary vocabulary. Soon thereafter it became the focus for researchers in several academic disciplines. However, 20 years later there is still no agreed upon definition and it is quite unclear to what the term refers – any sexual activity engaged in online or a distinct subcategory. Perhaps cybersex can be understood as a shared fantasy that has the potential to evoke sexually stimulating feelings and physical responses in the participants.
D
ahrendorf,
R
alf
Authors: Rössel Jörg
Published: December 2017

Ralf Dahrendorf (b.1929 in Hamburg, d.2009 in Cologne) was a German‐British sociologist, liberal politician, and public intellectual. His work combines theoretical and empirical contributions to sociological conflict theory with subtle analyses of contemporary society and politics. Dahrendorf developed his conflict‐theoretic approach based on a critical examination of Parsons's and Marx's theoretical approaches. In contrast to Parsons's consensus model of society, he suggested a conflict model as the more fertile alternative for the empirical study of sociological problems. In contrast to Marx, he did not perceive class conflicts as the necessary and all‐embracing type of social conflicts in modern societies, and thus developed a more general approach to different forms of social conflicts.
Deskilling
Authors: Friedson Michael Seth
Published: December 2017

The theory of deskilling draws on the Marxist concept of class conflict between workers and employers under capitalism. Deskilling is the process whereby employers exert control over production in ways that render it less dependent on workers' specialized skills. This entry describes the components of the deskilling process and explicates the motivations that lead employers to carry out deskilling. It examines two key consequences of deskilling for workers as a class, by drawing upon the concepts of the reserve army of labor and alienation. Finally, refinements are suggested for the deskilling hypothesis, based on an understanding of the political and economic contexts of skilled and unskilled work.
Diagnosis
Authors: Hinote Brian P.
Published: December 2017

This entry explores the transformational nature of medical diagnosis amidst broader forces of modernization and shifting epidemiological complexity in late modernity. Doing so helps emphasize the role that diagnosis played in the rise of modern medicine, along with its ubiquitous connection to treatment, medical education, and even reimbursement structures and healthcare policy in the modern period. But diagnosis is just as significant in late modernity, at a time when the structures of modern medicine have begun to falter. Still, diagnosis is fundamental to the definition and management of the socially constructed categories that we call disease even today, but when the boundaries and definitions of those conditions become less clear and increasingly contested, thus making their detection and management less straightforward and more tenuous, the ritual of discrete medical diagnosis is transformed into a series of diagnostic problematics that are of special interest to both theorists and practitioners today.
Diaspora
Authors: Remennick Larissa
Published: December 2017

The entry tackles the evolving notion of ethnonational diaspora from classical times to the current, postmodern era. It briefly defines the main kinds of diasporic communities, the historic reasons and venues for their emergence, and the mechanisms sustaining diasporic identity in successive immigrant generations. Complex relations with the historic homeland, real or imagined, are briefly described, illustrated with the examples of contemporary diasporas (Turkish‐German, Russian‐Jewish, Chinese, etc.). The reflections on the controversial status of diasporic minorities vis‐à‐vis their hosting societies, complicated by recent concerns about double loyalties and possible subversive activities of diasporic subjects conclude the entry.
Diet (Obesity)
Authors: Baker Elizabeth H. , Rutland Sarah B.
Published: December 2017

As obesity continues to cause concern as a national epidemic affecting one third of Americans, diet is one of the major considerations in explaining the rapid increase in obesity. Diet is a fundamental necessity to human life and development and is influenced by many factors such as physical environment, sociodemographic factors, and culture. Dietary behaviors from an early age are considered to have impacts on health in later age, causing diet and factors that influence diet to follow and affect humans throughout the life course.
Disability and Impairment
Authors: Liddiard Kirsty , Goodley Dan
Published: December 2017

This entry introduces the field of critical disability studies. The entry begins by providing a brief overview of the emergence of this field, acknowledging the ways in which disability and impairment differ as conceptual categories. It considers, first, the need to move between public and private understandings of these categories through a discussion of embodiment and the psychoemotional. Second, it examines an emergent approach – dis/ability studies – which interrogates the dual processes of disableism and ableism. Third, it focuses on a distinct aspect of life – sex and sexuality – and explores this in reference to dis/ability. The entry concludes with some ideas about generative social theory.
Discretionary Justice
Authors: Paik Leslie
Published: December 2017

Conceptualizations of discretionary justice often focus on individual justice actors' implicit biases about offenders that lead to different case outcomes. Despite its affecting people's views of the law as a legitimate, objective, or fair institution, discretion in the justice system is pervasive. Understanding discretionary justice requires situating those acts of discretion within the work practices of a particular justice agency – whether it is the police, prosecutors, defense, probation, parole, or the courts. Studying discretionary justice then provides a way to see the various levels through which the justice system generates, changes, and reproduces existing power dynamics and inequalities such as race, class, and gender in the larger society.
Discrimination
Authors: Smith Kenneth
Published: December 2017

The concept of “discrimination” is quite difficult to define. This is because discriminations can (a) sometimes be an okay thing to do (it is not always wrong to discriminate) and because (b) discrimination must always be distinguished from mere or simple disadvantage. To count as discrimination, however, we normally mean that someone is behaving in a way that is immoral. Direct discrimination is distinguished from so‐called indirect discrimination and it is argued that “indirect discrimination” would normally be better understood in term of social disadvantage rather than discrimination.
Discursive and Rhetorical Psychology
Authors: Billig Michael
Published: December 2017

Discursive psychology is a comparatively new approach to psychology using discourse analysis to recast traditional psychological questions. Rhetorical psychology is a part of discursive psychology and it stresses that thinking is often argumentative and rhetorical. Both discursive and rhetorical psychology developed as reactions against cognitive psychology and recommend the study of outward language rather than inner cognitive processes. Discursive and rhetorical psychologists see speakers as being more flexible than most attitude theorists do. Discursive psychologists have been using conversation analysis to study how speakers use “psychological language” in conversational interaction.
D
ouglas,
M
ary
Authors: Turner Bryan S.
Published: December 2017

An influential British anthropologist, Mary Douglas (1921–2007) made important contributions to the study of ritual impurity, the analysis of social structure through the concept of group‐grid, to the study of risk, the anthropology of consumption, and finally to cultural theory through her analysis of the Old Testament book of Leviticus. In retrospect it is now clear she contributed to the emergence of the anthropology and sociology of the body.
D
u
B
ois,
W. E. B
Authors: Dennis Rutledge M. , Dennis Kimya N.
Published: December 2017

W. E. B. Du Bois was among the early pioneers of sociology. He is also an acknowledged preeminent classical sociological theorist, as well as the founding father of the sociology of race and racism, the sociology of black America, and the sociology of ethnicity and the sociology of cultural pluralism. His profound and far‐ranging imaginative prescience has had unforeseen and far‐ranging consequences for subsequent studies of race and ethnic relations and their often unrecognized social, cultural, political, and economic impact on many nations and societies. He has also been in the forefront of attempts to define and characterize majority–minority relations as they pertain to theoretical concepts such as “the veil,” “masking (wearing the mask),” and “double consciousness.” This entry will conclude with a brief critique and analysis of double consciousness.
Economic Sociology
Authors: Adair‐Toteff Christopher
Published: December 2017

Economic sociology examines the social and cultural factors that condition economic behavior. Max Weber's analysis of the impact of Protestantism on capitalism is a classic illustration. Another example in modern sociology is network analysis. Although economic sociology is a recognized field in the social sciences, there is considerable overlap with the sociology of occupations, sociology of work and jobs, and institutional analysis generally. This entry traces the development of the subject from the early economic theories of Adam Smith to the present day.
Economics (Micro, Macro Theory)
Authors: Altman Morris
Published: December 2017

Definitions of micro‐ and macro‐economics are provided. The methodological backgrounds underpinning economics in general and micro‐ and macro‐economics specifically are also elaborated upon with their implications for economic analysis and public policy. Also outlined are the different and varied models that comprise the economics toolbox. These include traditional price theory, behavioral economics, institutional economics, Keynesian economics in its various manifestations, and classical theory.
Employment and Unemployment
Authors: Gangl Markus
Published: December 2017

Unemployment is a quintessentially modern economic risk, namely the inability to generate earnings from one's capacity for work that is available but chosen not to be put to use by other actors in the market. Thus, the existence of unemployment poses serious questions to a social theory of market economies. Seen as an economic problem, unemployment signals the existence of inefficiencies in the labor market and underutilization of productive capacity. Seen as a social problem, unemployment is a trigger event of poverty and economic deprivation, with possibly wider social repercussions such as family disruption, retraction from social and political life, and the breakdown of communities. Seen as a policy problem, the issue is how best to regulate labor markets in such a way as to minimize the incidence of unemployment, or at least to mitigate any adverse economic and social implications that it entails.
Entrepreneurship
Authors: Sandstrom Gregory
Published: December 2017

The entry distinguishes between business entrepreneurship and social entrepreneurship based on the priority system of a company's mission and whether or not profits can be distributed to shareholders or must be reinvested into the company. As a process of wealth creation, in addition to an occupation or vocation, entrepreneurship has been broadly defined as a kind of social lifestyle accompanied in a growing number of cases by coaches, mentors, hubs, laboratories, and co‐working spaces intended to help generate more entrepreneurs. Common characteristics of entrepreneurs include public speaking and business pitching, finding how to make more efficient use of resources, and risk taking. Entrepreneurs are generally viewed positively in societies around the world for being agents of practical change. Yet there is a downside too when entrepreneurship is restricted to markets and finance, capitalism and corporations legally defined as “persons,” which also creates a new class of corporate “societies.”
Epidemiology
Authors: Turner Bryan S.
Published: December 2017

Epidemiology comes from the Greek, meaning literally that which is on top of (
epi
) the people (
demos
), namely those things that affect the people from the outside. In modern terms, it is a branch of medicine involving the scientific study of the causes, distribution, and consequences of disease. It is the basis of public health to achieve preventive measures to contain the spread of disease, and requires basic statistical measures to understand the data produced by the spread of disease. In that respect, medical sociology grew out of epidemiology. Globalization has had an important impact on the rapid spread of disease from influenza to HIV/AIDS. Because disease does not respect political borders, efforts to control the spread of diseases such as the Ebola outbreak of 2015 in Africa require international cooperation.
Ethnic Mosaic
Authors: Driedger Leo
Published: December 2017

The analogy of the mosaic is useful in answering three questions: How are the tiles in the mosaic distributed? Do the tiles all have equal influence? What is the nature of each of the tiles in the total design? Ethnic mosaic applies this to the variety of ethnic and cultural groups in plural societies. Some think the model of mosaic is too boundary oriented and have suggested that we need to focus more on ethnic networks and social ties to link the diversity of ethnic groups in order to encourage cooperation and democratic working together.
E
vans‐
P
ritchard,
E. E
Authors: Zisook Jonathan J.
Published: December 2017

E. E. Evans‐Pritchard (1902–1973) was a distinguished British social anthropologist whose scholarship built upon and critiqued the work of his predecessors, including Durkheim, Lévy‐Bruhl, Malinowski, and Radcliffe‐Brown. Through his many essays and books on the Zande, Nuer, and other societies of East Africa, Evans‐Pritchard helped demystify and de‐essentialize the study of so‐called primitive social life. Evans‐Pritchard was influential in arguing that “primitive” modes of thought were far more rational than previously understood by anthropologists by demonstrating how the social institutions of witchcraft, oracles, and magic constituted an internally consistent system of thought that helped explain misfortune for the Zande people. Evans‐Pritchard's later work moved away from structural‐functional perspectives in favor of more humanistic approaches and, in turn, helped usher in a humanistic transition in Oxford anthropology during the second half of the twentieth century.
Evolutionary Theory
Authors: de Vries Geert
Published: December 2017

In contemporary social science, “evolutionary” may refer to any developmental or processual perspective on human society, such as modernization, individualization, rationalization, and globalization. Or it may refer to a developmental perspective with a Darwinian–Wallacian principle as its explanatory core, such as cultural materialism or ecological–evolutionary theory. This entry traces the history of developmental and evolutionary thinking on nature and society in general and its history in anthropology and sociology. It signals its importance in Big History, and it suggests that evolutionary thinking may be evolving into a unifying framework not only for social science but also for science in general.
Evolutionary Theory and Human Social Behavior
Authors: Sandstrom Gregory
Published: December 2017

Evolutionary theories have had a controversial history in the social sciences and humanities. Darwin was more zoologist than anthropologist. While the naturalistic approach he took toward humanity has been both popular and at the same time widely questioned, now the neo‐Darwinian paradigm in biology is also being openly challenged. Current work in evolution of human social behavior continues the naturalistic tradition in pursuing the emergence of niche construction and an “extended evolutionary synthesis.”
Family and Marriage
Authors: Lee Jaerim , Chin Meejung
Published: December 2017

The structures, functions, and meanings of families are diverse among cultures and have changed over time. Diversity is an important characteristic of contemporary families across the globe. Substantial changes have also occurred in the domain of marriage. Marriage has shifted from an institution to a companionship relationship, and its symbolic significance differs by culture. Due to the interdependence of family members and the holistic nature of families, the well‐being of individuals depends heavily on the economic and psychological functioning of the family. Social theories such as symbolic interactionism, family systems theory, the life course perspective, and gender perspectives have helped us understand the family and family lives.
F
anon,
F
rantz
Authors: Leonardo Zeus
Published: December 2017

Frantz Fanon was a French Martinican activist, psychiatrist, and public intellectual who analyzed the black colonial experience. He argued that blackness was overdetermined from the outside by whiteness, that in order to understand the inferiority of black people in society we must grasp the superiority complex of whites, and that colonialism introduced the role of violence throughout colonial society and may require violence in order to depose it. His critically acclaimed books,
Black Skin, White Masks
(published 1952) and
The Wretched of the Earth
(published 1961), unveiled the social, psychological, and political foundations of colonialism and became key texts in decolonization movements around the world.
Female Masculinity
Authors: Francis Becky
Published: December 2017

The concept of “female masculinity,” first applied by Judith Halberstam, is elaborated. The theoretical rationale for its application, and the strengths and limitations of the concept, are briefly explained. The concept's main contribution is a decentering of the body in productions of gender.
Feminist Psychology
Authors: Marecek Jeanne
Published: December 2017

Feminist psychology is a subfield of psychology concerned with gender, sex categories, and sexualities. It includes both academic researchers and practitioners (i.e., psychotherapists and counselors). Feminist scholarship is often fueled by a commitment to social justice. Feminist psychologists have challenged cultural beliefs about innate female nature, and also invidious stereotypes about various groups of women. It has brought to light the lives and experiences of women and girls across the social spectrum. Feminists have also examined the part that gender plays in the distribution of power in society. In clinical psychology, feminists have insisted on the connection between psychological suffering and social context, with some focusing on experiences of sexual abuse and intimate violence.
Feudalism
Authors: Bayar Tuğba Özden
Published: December 2017

Feudalism is a political, social, and economic system that dominated medieval Europe. In this system, the upper class administers the lands of the king and builds up a structure that facilitates communication between the king and the commons. Lords lease lands for cultivation and in return they receive military protection as well as tax and products. The lowest class is made up of workers, villeins, and peasants that are the poorest in this system. The right of each social class is in the rate of their ranking. Even though the lowest class is the most disadvantaged, they also have certain rights that distinguish the system from slavery.
Financialization of Capitalism
Authors: Settle Antonia
Published: December 2017

The significant growth in financial market activity since the 1980s has demanded the attention of political economists and, increasingly, sociologists, who have developed a conceptualization of global economic change as the financialization of capitalism. Resting on early political economy work, the interpretation of economic change as financialization has been bolstered by the global financial crisis and has developed into a broad‐reaching critique of social, political, and economic aspects of structural shifts in the global economy. The understanding of economic change as the financialization of capitalism ties the growth of the financial sector in to declining economic investment, labor market flexibilization, and the reorientation of citizenship toward individualized risk management. The financialization thesis thereby extends beyond an examination of quantitative financial flows to construct an interdisciplinary critique of the substantive meaning of the intensification of financial flows.
Fordism and Post‐Fordism
Authors: Prechel Harland
Published: December 2017

Fordism represents developments in the standardization, fragmentation, and specialization of the labor process that include bringing work to the worker via the assembly line, further separating conception from execution, and increasing the pace of work and control over labor. The spread of Fordism created hegemonic forces including the emergence of big firms, big states, big unions, and mass consumption. The economic crises in the 1970s resulted in a shift to post‐Fordism that required a higher degree of state intervention to balance production with consumption. The crisis also resulted in a greater degree of political capitalism where corporations mobilize to transform the political‐legal arrangements in which they are embedded. The emergent organizational and political‐legal arrangements ushered in the neoliberal phase of post‐Fordism where giant corporations and financial institutions accelerated globalization in ways that created more opportunities for corporations to engage in financial malfeasance, increased economic inequality, and shaped cultural and environmental obstacles that limit the realization of democracy.
Frankfurt School, The
Authors: Langman Lauren
Published: December 2017

Marx, notwithstanding his critique of Hegel's idealism, incorporated the active side of idealism (agency), the dialectical movement of history, domination, and alienation (estrangement and objectification) in his work. The importance of culture, ideology, alienation, and commodity fetishism were central moments of his critique of capitalism. But with the ascent of communist parties, and indeed the Bolshevik Revolution, by the time of the Second Internationale Marxism had become an orthodoxy that privileged the economic. Many scholars felt that this move ignored many of Marx's important insights. Lukács's work on reification inspired the formation of the Frankfurt School, scholars who sought to revitalize Marxist theory and make it relevant to the new era of industrialization, mass media, and indeed capitalist crises and fascism as the response. They incorporated Freud and Weber within the critique of domination and initiated explorations of authoritarianism, the adverse sides of rationality, mass media, mass culture, and aesthetics that continue to inspire progressive scholars in a number of disciplines.
F
reud,
S
igmund
Authors: Manning Philip
Published: December 2017

The entry gives a brief biographical sketch of Freud, followed by an account of Freud's topographic model that emphasizes the different ways that psychoanalysts can access repressed memories. There is also a discussion of the powerful role of transference followed by a discussion of Freud's later structural model that introduces the tripartite model of the id, ego, and superego. Freud's later work took a sociological turn by emphasizing the tensions between instinct and culture. Finally, there is a brief discussion of the ways in which Freud's ideas have influenced twentieth‐century social theory, particularly in the work of Chodorow, Obeyesekere, and Parsons.
K
ahn‐
F
reund,
O
tto
Authors: Weiner Richard R.
Published: December 2017

Otto Kahn‐Freund, like Franz Neumann, developed a critical sociology of law alongside the emerging Frankfurt School. His focus was the study of self‐binding practices as social pacts, as autonomous social law. Kahn‐Freund – in a heuristic model he termed “collective laissez‐faire” – initially looked to labor law as an institutionalizing force in establishing economic democracy. However, he came to appreciate these pacts as accommodations out of conflicting forces of society, as well as accommodations to the labor market. By the close of the 1960s, Kahn‐Freund came to grudgingly recognize the increasing functional role of government intervention, and the increasing systemic imperatives for functional control of labor market collisions and conflicts.
Functionalism
Authors: Turner Jonathan H.
Published: December 2017

Functional theorizing was sociology's first theoretical perspective, arguing that the analysis of social systems must always consider the survival needs or imperatives of the system that a particular subsystem meets. Functionalism emerged with Auguste Comte, and was further developed by Herbert Spencer and Émile Durkheim, but by the 1920s it had disappeared from sociology. It remained in biology, and in the 1950s was reborn in sociology, primarily under the direction of Talcott Parsons's work. However, the perspective is inherently flawed by a number of problems, including a conservative bias and a tendency to construct illegitimate teleologies and argue tautologically. As a result, it appeared to die again by the end of the twentieth century, only to reemerge in dramatically altered form in new forms of evolutionary sociology.
Fundamental Cause Theory
Authors: Poston Dudley L. , Marquez‐Velarde Guadalupe
Published: December 2017

Fundamental cause theory focuses on the relationship between socioeconomic status, health outcomes, and life expectancy. Socioeconomically advantaged individuals live longer and are healthier than the socioeconomically disadvantaged. The theory aims to provide a framework for examining health disparities.
Fundamentalism
Authors: Possamai‐Inesedy Alphia
Published: December 2017

An overview of the concept of fundamentalism is presented. Originating in the United States in the early twentieth century, fundamentalism has since developed into a sociological category that can now be applied outside Abrahamic faiths and even encompass a political dimension. Fundamentalism is presented as a response to the societal changes that occurred during early modernity, including the pluralization and privatization of religion. Fundamentalisms can be equally argued to be a response to the structural changes occurring within high modernity. This study on social and cultural responses allows greater sociological and political insights into the development and continued presence of fundamentalisms than only on an emphasis on a theological response.
G
adamer,
H
ans‐
G
eorg
Authors: Turner Bryan S.
Published: December 2017

Hans‐Georg Gadamer (1900–2002) was a German philosopher who made a major contribution to “philosophical hermeneutics” in his
Wahrheit und Methode
(
Truth and Method
) in 1960. His early work involved contributions to classical Greek philosophy, especially Plato. Gadamer suffered from polio and did not participate in either World War I or II. His personal experiences of illness and suffering are reflected in
The Enigma of Health
(1996). He was influenced by Martin Heidegger and has been accused of connections to German fascism, although the evidence for that connection is weak. Gadamer retired from his professorship at the University of Heidelberg in 1968 but continued to teach and publish until his death in 2002. He was awarded many honors during his lifetime, such as the Hegel Prize of Stuttgart in 1979, the Karl Jaspers Prize in 1986, the Hanns Martin Schleyer Prize in 1987, and the Antonio Feltrinelli Prize in 1995.