bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Public and Private
Authors: Turner Charles
Published: September 2017

The analytical distinction between public and private life has proved to be a useful tool for charting long‐term social change and in particular for understanding modern society. In classical Greece the equivalent distinction would be one between participation in the (public) life of the polis and the management of one's (private) household, within an ethical framework which saw the political life as higher and more self‐sufficient (Aristotle) than the life devoted to meeting mere material needs. In this world, privacy implies privation, the lack of something required for a full human life. This ideal of the polis, of politics as the highest form of human activity, has hovered over modern social and political thought since Machiavelli. But it has appeared ever more ethereal with the emergence of modern industrial society. For if in feudal society political power is the source of wealth, mature industrial society (or what Tocqueville calls “democracy”) makes possible the pursuit of wealth without recourse to politics, and the putting of self‐interest before the public good. The modern state becomes either the minimum framework necessary for the pursuit of individual self‐interest (liberalism) or a mechanism for the maximization of collective wealth (a possibility utilized by modern welfare states and by state socialism). In either case politics loses its status as the most self‐sufficient activity and becomes a means with which something else can be achieved. The most sustained intellectual assault on this development – in which, for instance, liberalism and Marxism are seen as two sides of the same coin – is found in the writings of Arendt, Oakeshott, and Wolin. Against this judgment stands the claim, popular with eighteenth‐century political economy, that it is precisely the pursuit of private gain in commercial society which opens individuals to the variousness and nuance of human affairs and which indirectly fosters the moral sentiments consistent with public virtues (Pocock 1985)
Positive Sociology
Authors: Stebbins Robert A.
Published: September 2017

Robert Stebbins, who coined the term “positive sociology,” defines it as the study of what people do to organize their lives such that those lives become, in combination, substantially rewarding, satisfying, and fulfilling (Stebbins 2009). This proposed new branch of sociology follows the lead of the only two fields in the social sciences, notably positive psychology and leisure studies, to move beyond the traditional concentration on life's many problems to focus intensely on how, why, and when people pursue those things in life they desire, the things they do to make their existence attractive, worth living. From this it should be clear that positive sociology has nothing to do with methodological positivism, which is a research approach, not a field of inquiry.
Prosumer
Authors: Esposti Peirgiorgio Degli
Published: September 2017

The term “prosumer” was first introduced by Alvin Toffler in 1980, to emphasize the blurring of the distinction between production and consumption: Prosumers consume what they produce and/or produce what they consume. Prosumption, as the activity of prosumers, focuses on both production and consumption simultaneously, rather than on either independently. Production and consumption are certainly two processes crucial and worthy of constant attention, but in focusing only on one or another we tend to lose sight of the fact that both can be better seen from the perspective of prosumerism. In other words, many activities closely connected with the concept of the production take place in the process of consumption and there can be no consumption without some form of production.
Psychologization
Authors: Prodromitis Gerasimos
Published: September 2017

The term “psychologization” comes from social psychology and specifically from the European perspective of the social influence literature. It refers to a special form of resistance to minorities’ influence and has been introduced by Papastamou's theoretical and experimental work. “By psychologization is meant the establishment of a causal link between minority behaviour and/or minority positions and psychological characteristics supposed to have prevailed in their actualization. In general, operationalization of psychologization is carried out by asking subjects to read the minority's position and to try to detect its psychological characteristics, a task they carry out subsequently with the aid of a series of judgement scales” (Papastamou & Mugny 1990: 86).
Popular Culture Forms: P2P
Authors: Rojek Chris
Published: September 2017

Peer to peer communication systems enable users to exchange files over the Internet. In the 1990s the spread of file‐exchange servers such as Napster, eDonkey, KaZaA, Morpheus, and Grokster because a
cause célèbre
in the recording industry. P2P exchange created a contraction in sales of sound recordings, especially singles.
Popular Culture Forms: Soap Operas
Authors: Franklin Adrian
Published: September 2017

Soap operas originated in 1930s American radio and are so named because they were programs sponsored by soap companies such as Proctor and Gamble who were seeking a means of advertising their domestic products to housewives (or, more precisely, women in the 18–49 demographic who combined bought a lion's share of the market). The format they chose (and many of the companies were owned by them) was similar to opera in that it was melodramatic, larger than life, and about the universal human condition.
Queer Theory
Authors: Meeks Chet
Published: September 2017

Queer theory is an interdisciplinary approach to the study of sexuality. Queer theory's insights derive from multiple sources: feminist scholarship, gay and lesbian studies, cultural studies, social constructionism, deconstructionist and poststructuralist social theory. In general, queer theory takes account of the cultural products (e.g., knowledges, films, television shows), social practices (e.g., dating and marriage), and institutions (e.g., the state) which together bestow on heterosexuality a sacred status and make it into a compulsory requirement. The origins of queer theory are themselves ambiguous; while as an academic movement queer theory is typically associated with the 1990s, its earliest articulations can be traced to the 1970s in the work of Michel Foucault (1978) and the 1980s in the work of scholars like Teresa de Lauretis (1987) and Gloria Anzaldúa (1987). As forerunners of queer theory, these scholars interrogated the way in which western social orders deploy rigid standards of gender and sexual intelligibility as a method of social regulation.
Qualitative Methods
Authors: Clair Jeffrey Michael , Wasserman Jason
Published: September 2017

Methodological debates in sociology are longstanding and pervasive. The tension between qualitative and quantitative methods is at the heart of much discourse about the state and direction of the discipline (see Blumer 1956; Denzin & Lincoln 2003, Hesse‐Biber & Leavy 2006; Karp 1999). This article (1) provides a definition and explanation of qualitative methods; (2) elucidates its contrast with quantitative methods; (3) explains underlying epistemological considerations that are at the heart of methodological disputes; (4) suggests that the fundamentally different pursuits of these methodologies nullify conflict; and (5) concludes by suggesting some future challenges that qualitative methodologists should attempt to address.
Race and Ethnic Etiquette
Authors: Jarmon Charles
Published: September 2017

Forms of etiquette exist in nearly every society where different racial and ethnic groups are separated by extreme differences in economic wealth, political power, or social status. They are most developed in caste or caste‐like societies, in which the lower‐status racial or ethnic groups are enslaved or belong to economically exploited or subjugated groups. In these situations the patterns of etiquette regulate interpersonal relations between the higher and lower‐status groups, functioning as codes of behavior designed to maintain the status quo (or a state of harmony within it) within which the more privileged groups benefit. Sociologists and other social scientists have studied the emergence, practice, and impact of these codes on population groups in countries around the world, including the US, India, Brazil, South Africa, Spain, Germany, Australia, and the countries of the circum‐Caribbean (Dubois 1899; Reuter 1927; Park 1928; Doyle 1937; Myrdal 1944; Cox 1948; Frazier 1957; Sowell 1983; Bell 1992; Marable 2005). In any given society, the unique complexity and changes in the codes must be understood in terms of its own history and the currents of broad social and cultural change affecting it both from within and without.
Racialized Gender
Authors: Few April L.
Published: September 2017

Racialized gender is a sociological concept that refers to the critical analysis of the simultaneous effects of race and gender processes on individuals, families, and communities. This concept recognizes that women do not negotiate race and gender similarly. For instance, white women's oppression has been linked with their privilege as white people, but they have not escaped the bonds of sexism. Black women's and First Nation women's oppression has been linked to the struggle of self‐definition, agency, and collective empowerment. Latina and Asian women's oppression has been linked more to sexism emerging from immigration and multigenerational experiences. Historical, social, and geographic context influence the expression, interpretation, and performance of gender relations over the life span of an individual. Multiracial feminists and ethnic scholars have written extensively about racialized gender particularly as it relates to social constructions of family and sexuality.
Racist Movements
Authors: Blee Kathleen M.
Published: September 2017

Racist movements are organized, collective efforts to create, preserve, or extend racial hierarchies of power and privilege. Such movements explicitly espouse the ideologies of white supremacism and/or anti‐Semitism (anti‐Judaism or hatred of Muslims or Arabs) that were consolidated in the western world in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Intergroup antagonisms in earlier times, even conflicts that cross what later would be regarded as racial lines, generally are not considered racial movements because these were not based in modern ideas of race as an essential, biological, polarized, and unchanging attribute of social groups. Denoting as racist only social movements that take place in western societies is a common practice in sociological research, as most scholars regard white supremacism and anti‐Semitism as the legacy of ideologies by which European colonists sought to exonerate their brutal conquests and occupations in the Americas and Africa. However, this restriction has been challenged by studies that use the concept racist (or racial) movements to describe subnational intergroup antagonisms in nonwestern societies, including China, India, Indonesia, and Russia.
Rational Choice Theories
Authors: Simpson Brent
Published: September 2017

Rational choice theories explain social behavior via the aggregated actions of
rational
or
purposive
actors. The actors are rational in the sense that, given a set of values and beliefs, they calculate the relative costs and benefits of alternative actions and, from these calculations, make a choice that maximizes their expected utility. Rational choice models assume that the range of alternatives open to actors is constrained by the environment or by institutions within which they make their decisions. In their purest form, these theories also assume that actors possess complete information about their values and the various courses of action through which they can pursue them. Actors collect, organize, and analyze this information prior to making a decision. Thus, rational choice theories are means‐end theories. That is, they describe the means or rational calculus through which actors go about obtaining their desired ends, or values.
Rationalization
Authors: Atalay Zeynep
Published: September 2017

It is likely that the concept of rationalization is most often linked with the work of Sigmund Freud on psychological defense mechanisms. However, while such usage is not unknown in sociology, the concept is most often associated with the work of Max Weber and his followers. For Weber, rationalization occurred only, at least to its fullest extent, in the modern West. Other parts of the world, for example India and China, failed to rationalize to any great extent because of barriers there such as basic idea systems and structures that were antithetical to rationalization. On the other hand, there was a series of factors in the West that expedited the development of rationalization in that region of the world. The best known of these factors is the role that the Protestant ethic played in the rise of rational capitalism, but Weber made it clear that this ethic was but one of many distinctive characteristics in the West that made rationalization possible. Furthermore, the rise of capitalistic society was only one of many manifestations of rationalization that also included the rise of the bureaucracy as an organizational form, and of the modern state, corporation, military, university, and church. While Weber saw all of these, and more, as undergoing a process of rationalization, he was careful to avoid a general model of rationalization and to outline the ways in which each of them rationalized.
Refugees
Authors: Loyal Steve
Published: September 2017

In international law “refugee” refers to individuals who are residing outside of their country of origin and who are unable or unwilling to return because of a well‐founded fear of persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion.
Religion
Authors: Cipriani Roberto
Published: September 2017

Religion is composed of interpersonal experiences with other humans and/or with one or more divinities. Such relations are made up principally of convictions (beliefs), sentiments (emotions), principles (values), and practice (rituals, i.e., cultural acts and also actions, whether they occur daily or on specific occasions), all of which are more or less coherently interconnected. Religion is expressed as a connection with the divinity, which gives humans unity, in the universal sense, by means of devotion toward a God, and the respect due to it. Religion is the manifestation of profound belief; it is professing one's faith; it is not necessarily critical, compared with those concepts of life which have a feature that is cogent and paradigmatic, and accepted almost unconditionally. Religion is fervor, dedication, ongoing practice, devout behavior; it is religiousness outwardly expressed through recollection, repentance, meditation, reflection, and silence.
Revolutions and Movements for Radical Social Change
Authors: Foran John
Published: September 2017

Although rare events, revolutions have helped define the modern age. They are significant as often inspiring, human‐directed attempts to refashion the world for the better; they have also typically fallen far short of the goals of their makers. Whether political or social, violent or nonviolent, the transformation of society by revolution has proved a complex and challenging field of study.
Robbery
Authors: Decker Scott H.
Published: September 2017

Robbery is the use or threat of force to take another's property. It is one of the most serious crime types in the United States. Robbery is one of the four crimes of violence (murder, rape, robbery, and aggravated assault) and is the second most prevalent of the four. In 2012 there were over 350,000 armed robberies in the United States, a rate of 113 per 100,000 citizens. Robbery is also a central component of the fear of crime, magnifying its impact particularly for women, the elderly, and suburban residents. Ironically, these groups are at lower rates of risk for being victims of robbery. As Conklin (1972: 4) has observed: “Although the public certainly fears murder and rape, it is probably fear of robbery … which keeps people off the street, makes them avoid strangers, and leads them to lock their doors.”
Rosenfeld, Rachel (1948–2002)
Authors: Moller Stephanie
Published: September 2017

Rachel Rosenfeld established herself as a leading figure in sociology through groundbreaking research on the diversity of occupational mobility patterns. Rosenfeld's interest in diversity emerged during her youth when she witnessed the effects of institutionalized school segregation in Little Rock, Arkansas. Her interests expanded during her undergraduate studies at Carleton College and graduate studies at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, where she learned more about the women's movement and gender scholarship (during the late 1960s and early 1970s).
Rural Sociology
Authors: Falk William W. , Lyson Thomas A.
Published: September 2017

Like nearly all major concepts in sociology,
rural
sociology has come to mean a variety of things and like all things social, there is a historical context for understanding what rural sociology is. Intellectually, rural sociology grew out of the same historical era and ferment as sociology more broadly, but whereas the discipline from whence it sprang was rooted heavily in liberal arts colleges, rural sociology – in America – was heavily indebted institutionally to the rise of the land grant university. This was a uniquely American initiative, deeding land to states specifically for establishing universities that consciously sought to link teaching, research, and service – in this latter case, in the form of another institution, the Cooperative Extension Service. The federal legislation which began this was the Morrill Act of 1862. This was a time when racial segregation still ruled the land. Ironically, in the South, all of the original land grant universities were black, but white universities quickly became the dominant ones in all states, including the Southern ones. The Morrill Act of 1890 provided the enabling legislation for a system of historically black colleges and universities, virtually all of which were Southern (for a wonderful source on rural sociology's history, see this web page:
www.ag.ohiostate.edu
).
Sacred/Profane
Authors: Swatos William H.
Published: September 2017

The significance of the sacred/profane distinction in sociology is to be most directly credited to Durkheim'sThe Elementary Forms of the Religious Life(1915), first published in France asLes Formes élémentaires de la vie religieusein 1912. The distinction had an enormous direct effect in the sociology of religion, but also powerfully influenced the broader sociological theoretical paradigm of functionalism, since in theForms, which was published at the culmination of a distinguished career, Durkheim saw religion as the bearer of the sacred and the sacred as maintaining social order or equilibrium. AsFormswas the capstone work of Durkheim's career, “sacred” became the capstone of social structure. Hence, although the sacred/profane distinction is the device that Durkheim used to make his point, in factsacredis the crucial concept within the distinction; that is, it is the concept of the sacred that makes the sacred/profane distinction theoretically powerful within functionalist sociology. Crucial to the widespread influence of Durkheim's specific paradigm was its integration into Talcott Parsons'sThe Structure of Social Action(1938), which became the foundational theory text for a generation of sociologists from the end of World War II until the mid‐1960s – although when Parsons came to reformulate Durkheim in his own writings he substituted “supernatural” for sacred, something Durkheim consistently avoided because of its theological bias.
Salary Men
Authors: Kurihara Tomoko
Published: September 2017

In contemporary Japanese society the term salary men refers mainly to white‐collar elites in multinational corporations (who represent approximately 20 percent of the total working population). As described in Beck and Beck'sA Change of a Lifetime(1994) salary men constitute a managerial class that occupies the top stratum of the business community and is accorded high status in society. Its members have almost exclusively obtained degrees from Japan's most prestigious universities. However, in practice, a wider use of and flexible self‐identification with the term is common. The term can therefore refer to both non‐elite white‐collar and occasionally blue‐collar workers. Such flexible usage is made possible by Japan's industrial structure – thekeiretsusystem – which links large corporations to medium‐sized and small subcontracting firms. The combination of English terms is used to signify, literally, a worker whose firm guarantees him a salaried income.
School Transitions
Authors: Frisco Michelle L.
Published: September 2017

School transitions signify students’ entries into new schools. They are important milestones that lead to both positive and negative events that affect young people's lives. There are two broad categories of school transitions: (1) normative school transitions (e.g., the transition into elementary school, from elementary to junior high school, from junior high to high school); (2) non‐normative school transitions or school transfers.
Schooling and Economic Success
Authors: Bills David B. , Rosenbaum James E.
Published: September 2017

The empirical association between schooling and economic success is one of the most secure findings in the social sciences. With rare exceptions, across societies and historical periods those with more schooling or particular types of schooling have held significant material advantages over those with less schooling. While not perfect, the empirical associations between schooling and economic success are high, persistent, and according to many accounts, increasing. Schooling in many societies is now generally regarded as the key to both individual and collective social mobility.
Schools, Common
Authors: Owens Ann
Published: September 2017

The rise of a common school system in nations around the world provides some evidence for a sociological theory of educational origins and expansion focused on socialization and social organization. While more functional arguments often point to the need for a well‐trained workforce as the driving force in the rise of public education, a more sociological interpretation argues that modernizing countries, facing increased social differentiation, must transfer the socialization task from families to an institution like schools (Dreeben 1968). Another aspect of this argument is that with modernization, increased individualism also occurs, and a common school system is needed to promote national citizenship and induction into a general collectivity (Ramirez & Meyer 1980).
Science, Commercialization of
Authors: Kleinman Daniel Lee
Published: September 2017

Neither science‐based industry nor university involvement with commercially relevant science is a new phenomenon. In certain sectors, US firms employed scientists in the late nineteenth century, and examples of university‐industry collaboration in the United States can be found in the early twentieth century. That said, the advent of the biotechnology industry in the late 1970s and 1980s substantially blurred the boundary between academic science and industry and prompted sustained policy attention to the commercialization of academic science. In more recent years, with slow economic growth worldwide and cuts to public funding for higher education and scientific research, in the United States especially, politicians and academic leaders have put further stress on the role of academic science in economic development.
Science/Non‐Science and Boundary Work
Authors: Gómez‐Morales Yuri Jack
Published: September 2017

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

Thomas Jefferson, quoted in Fischer's
Citizens, Experts, and the Environment
(2001), said that wherever the people are well informed, they can be trusted with their own government. But, nowadays, who can claim to be well informed enough about science to govern it except the scientists themselves? In 1959, Sir Charles Snow put forward the thesis in the Rede Lecture that there was what amounted to an opposition between literary intellectualism at one end, and proficiency in the physical sciences at the other. Snow dated his realization of this distinction to the 1930s. What we can say for certain is that there was a coming into common understanding that a reasonably well‐educated or cultured person could not, now, be expected to be normally able to comprehend both the sciences and the arts. This state of affairs is not by any means all the scientific community's fault, although science is guilty of creating, along with other forms of knowledge and understanding, elites. Elitism fosters disciplinization and subdisciplinization, and has given rise to mistrust and lack of understanding between the members of different disciplines and of science and scientists in general. The term “lay” was commonly used until the 1990s to describe those untutored in science, thus emphasizing the idea of a scientific priesthood or elite. For various reasons not dealt with here, this state of affairs is seen as being iniquitous, and so public participation in science, also known as public engagement in science, is seen as a means whereby that balance can be redressed.
Scientific Productivity
Authors: Lee Sooho
Published: September 2017

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

Science has a long and fraught history of entanglement with the social myth of biological race. The modern sciences of biology and physical anthropology were founded on the conviction that racial difference was real, fundamental, and key to understanding the proper relationships between human groups. Advances in these very sciences, however, have shown that race is in no way an objective, natural category. While there are certainly biological differences among human populations, these differences are both relatively trivial and impossible to map onto conventional racial divides. Genetic research, similarly, has yielded no statistically significant patterns of variation by race (Marks 2002). However, this is not a simple story of scientific progress, in which bad ideas are systematically displaced by better ones. The rise and (incomplete) retreat of scientific racism is an eminently political story.
Scientometrics
Authors: Gómez‐Morales Yuri Jack
Published: September 2017

Scientometrics is a methodological discipline and an administrative practice. In the first case, its major concern has been to identify regularities and relations among main lifelines of science supporting theoretical models for its cognitive and institutional development. In the second case, its concern is the identification of patterns in science and technology activities (communication in particular) conceived as an input/output productive system. In both cases the identification of patterns is quantitatively oriented and the interpretation of data has relied heavily on economic and sociological models and, in recent times, on informational models, too.
Secondary Groups
Authors: McGinty Patrick J.W.
Published: September 2017

Despite its centrality in the sociological perspective and its being an omnipresent theme, as well as an ongoing interest of sociologists in a variety of forms, the concept of a secondary group is rather poorly conceptualized within sociology. This is the case even though there is a fairly common understanding of the concept as referring to a social group that is formally organized around instrumental, or at least impersonal, interactions.
Self‐Esteem, Theories of
Authors: Owens Timothy J.
Published: September 2017

Self‐esteem refers to the overall positive or negative attitude an individual takes toward himself or herself. Understanding self‐esteem also requires awareness of related terms, especially
self
and
self‐concept
, along with an appreciation of their similarities and differences. Figure 1 illustrates how self, self‐concept, and self‐esteem are causally related, and the outcomes typically associated with self‐esteem. Although hierarchical in terms of abstractness and general causality, lower order concepts and outcomes can also influence higher order ones. (Note that
identity
and
ideal self
are listed to acknowledge that self‐concept is composed of more than self‐esteem, but the former, and related concepts, are beyond the scope of this entry.)
Sex‐Based Wage Gap and Comparable Worth
Authors: Firestone Juanita M. , Harris Richard J.
Published: September 2017

In 2012, the median annual earnings of full‐time, year‐round female workers was 77 percent of that for full‐time, year‐round male workers. Due to the persistent gap over time, an extensive body of empirical literature has addressed the issue of sex‐based wage differentials in the United States. Most recent research suggests that, while the gap may vary based on a variety of factors including type of job, years of experience, and economic sector, sex‐based wage differences remain. Comparable worth is a process that is supposed to address the sex‐based wage gap by objectively comparing dissimilar jobs in order to determine relative worth to the objectives of a particular organization. The process involves a complex system of fine‐tuning an entire compensation structure. The information required to engage in comparable worth is considerable: jobs must be ranked according to the worth to the employer. This implies measuring the value of each job and calculating degrees of difference between the values of different jobs. Thus, if two jobs require equivalent levels of skill, education, responsibility, and so forth, the two should also have equivalent salaries.
Sex, Gender, and Crime
Authors: McCarthy Bill , Carter Angela
Published: September 2017

For several decades, the study of gender and crime has generally eclipsed a focus on sex and crime. This change reflects new understandings of all three concepts – sex, gender, and crime. It also reflects a shift from a focus on males and the crimes they commit to one that includes females and their involvement in illegal behavior. This entry summarizes how sociologists of crime define sex, gender, and crime and discusses two broad categories of theories they use to explain how these concepts are connected. One body of theory suggests that male and female offending have the same origins and that gender differences in offending reflect gender differences in exposure to crime's causes. A second body argues that male and female offending may share some origins, but that each has unique causes.
Sexual Cultures in Russia
Authors: Healey Dan
Published: September 2017

Russia's hybrid condition, combining European and Asian geography, cultures, and histories, makes it a complex national tradition to study, and sexuality in Russia reflects that complexity. At the same time, the country's often violent historical experience and its significant divergence from the familiar currents of European religious, cultural, and intellectual life have marked Russian approaches to sexuality.
Sexual Practices
Authors: Sanderson Stephen K.
Published: September 2017

Sexual practices have varied widely across time and space. In the broadest terms, societies are eithersex‐positiveorsex‐negative, with the majority the former (Bullough 1976). The Trobriand Islanders of Melanesia were described by Malinowski as unusually sexually permissive. Sex life may begin for young boys as early as age 10 and for young girls as early as age 6. Polynesian societies were also renowned for their high levels of sexual permissiveness. For example, among the ancient Hawaiians, “a little girl's clitoris was stretched and lengthened through oral stimulation. The penis received similar treatment so as to enhance its beauty and prepare it for sexual enjoyment later in life” (de Waal 2005: 107).
Sexuality Research: Methods
Authors: Ericksen Julia A. , Ericksen Eugene P.
Published: September 2017

As Kinsey and others discovered to their cost, sex research is fraught with problems for researchers and must be managed carefully. In the US, Congress has cut or threatened the funding in recent decades for two national surveys of sexual behavior: a study of massage parlor workers and a study of sexual risk‐taking, among other topics. And those who publish research invite trouble, as the University of Minnesota Press found when it published Judith Levine'sHarmful to Minors.
Shopping
Authors: Zukin Sharon
Published: September 2017

As the public face of consumption, shopping includes an array of social, economic, and cultural activities connected with consumers' selection and procurement of goods and services. In contrast to consumption, which, historically, is synonymous with satisfaction of basic biological needs, shopping is a distinctly modern ensemble of actions, perceptions, and emotions. Shopping develops in a money economy, on a sophisticated industrial base, along with the integration of local places into larger markets providing a range of innovative, and often exotic, product choices. Choice is, indeed, a keyword of shopping, for the process of identifying needed or desired products and selecting among them magnifies the role of individual decision‐making and taste. But collective norms and pressures are equally important. Whether the parameters of a man's, a woman's, or, increasingly, a child's shopping are set by money, access to information, or the example set by their peers, shopping expresses both individual desires and collective dreams.
Sibling Relationships during Old Age
Authors: Mack Kristin Y.
Published: September 2017

Although siblings tend to have the longest lasting social relationships, there has been relatively little empirical research on them, especially during old age. This may be due to both theoretical and methodological challenges with the topic. Future research should extend what we know from studies on sibling relationships earlier in adulthood to provide clarification on the impact siblings may have on each other later in life.
Sick Role
Authors: Twaddle Andrew C.
Published: September 2017

The sick role was a formulation by Talcott Parsons that posited four institutionalized behavioral expectations that attached to people defined as “sick.” For about three decades, from the early 1950s to about 1980, it was the central focus of many sociologists who studied medical care. It received a large amount of criticism as well as uncritical use and became passé when Parsons's theory fell out of favor and sociology turned toward a more critical and conflict‐oriented approach to theorizing.
Social Epistemology
Authors: Fuller Steve
Published: September 2017

Social epistemology uses the resources of history and the social sciences to address normative questions surrounding the organization of knowledge processes and products. It seeks to provide guidance on how and what we should know on the basis of how and what we actually know. The subject matter corresponds to what John Dewey called “the conduct of inquiry” and what may appear today as an abstract form of science policy. Social epistemology advances beyond other theories of knowledge by taking seriously that knowledge is produced by agents who are not merely individually embodied but also collectively embedded in certain specifiable relationships that extend over large chunks of space and time.
Social Exchange Theory
Authors: Lovaglia Michael J.
Published: September 2017

Social exchange theory is an influential approach to the study of society, generating much recent research. Rather than a theory that explains precisely the nature of some social phenomenon, social exchange theory is an orienting strategy or perspective that shapes the way exchange researchers develop theories and conduct research (social conflict theory is another example of an orienting strategy). From the perspective of social exchange theory, society can be characterized as an exchange system in which social interaction consists of trade in valued resources. Resources exchanged can include any combination of consumable goods, money, affection, attention, and perhaps most basically, information.
Social Movements, Networks and
Authors: Diani Mario
Published: September 2017

Since the interest in social movements started to develop in the 1960s, networks have been analyzed from two main perspectives. On the one hand, they have been treated as important facilitators of individuals’ decisions to become involved in collective action, in the context of the debate inspired by Mancur Olson's seminal work on
The Logic of Collective Action
. On the other hand, analysts have looked at social movement networks as the structure of the links between the multiplicity of organizations and individual activists, committed to a certain cause. From this perspective, movement networks have been treated as the consequence, rather than the precondition, of collective action, a specific instance of the broader processes through which actors modify social structures through agency. More specifically, looking at the configuration of movement networks has provided observers with a clue to grasp the logics by which movement actors choose their partners, thus generating broader and complex organizational fields.
Social Movements, Nonviolent
Authors: Schock Kurt
Published: September 2017

Nonviolent social movements rely primarily upon methods of nonviolent action to promote change. Although most social movements concerned with personal transformation, lifestyle, and culture are nonviolent, those concerned with political, social, and economic change that directly challenge the interests of the elite may be violent, nonviolent, or a combination of the two. The focus here is on social movements that directly challenge elite interests, and that do so – by choice or due to limited options – only or primarily through methods of nonviolent action, such as protest demonstrations, marches, boycotts, strikes, and civil disobedience. Of course, any social movement that directly challenges the interests of the elite, whether it is nonviolent or violent, may be met with violence.
Social Network Analysis
Authors: Crossley Nick
Published: September 2017

Social network analysis (SNA) is a set of methods and methodological approaches for gathering and, more especially, organizing, storing, and analyzing data regarding relations (“relational data”). The networks analyzed typically take one of three forms: (1) whole networks, (2) ego‐nets, and (3) two‐mode networks. This entry offers an overview of SNA and an introduction to some of its key elements.
Social Problems, Politics of
Authors: Groenemeyer Axel
Published: September 2017

In the sociology of social problems, surprisingly little attention has been paid to the state and the political system. Given the central importance of social problems as public issues and claims for political action and public policy, and their role in shaping social and political change, this neglect seems all the more surprising. Especially in newer US versions of constructing social problems – very often seen as the only valuable sociological perspective on social problems – they have been defined either as “claims‐making activities” of collective social actors (Spector & Kitsuse 1987 [1977]) or as public discourses and rhetoric narratives (Ibarra & Kitsuse 1993). If the struggle for social problems were merely cognitive and symbolic, then the conflicts about their definition would have to be understood only as a system of contested narratives that result in new narratives. In these perspectives, references to power and conflict and to the political functioning of public issues and collective actors have attracted only little attention. But if the construction of social problems is based in the interests and values of collective actors, we have to ask how the struggle for public attention relates to the distribution of material, political, and symbolic resources. In this perspective, already the social construction of social problems by collective actors in society has to be analyzed as a social conflict, and in this sense as a fundamental political issue.
Social Support and Crime
Authors: Ven Thomas Vander , Funcheon Maria
Published: September 2017

Many contemporary criminologists argue that the provision of social support reduces crime within individuals and in social bodies. Social support, the provision of instrumental or expressive resources to individuals, may reduce crime by helping individuals to achieve desired goals or by reducing criminogenic risks in communities.
Socialization, Primary
Authors: Wasson Leslie
Published: September 2017

Socialization is the process by which humans learn the ways of being and doing considered appropriate and expected in their social environments. We call it primary socialization when the individual is a newly born member of society and is therefore experiencing this process for the first time. Primary socialization has the social psychological characteristic of primacy, meaning that its position as first in the acquisition of social knowledge renders it a filter and a foundation for the subsequent information internalized by the fledgling social being. Primacy also makes early socialization remarkably resilient, in that it is much more difficult to change primary habits and beliefs than those learned later in the life course.
Sociolinguistics
Authors: Chambers J. K.
Published: September 2017

Sociolinguistics is the systematic study of the social uses of language. It proceeds by observing the way people use language in different social settings. People adjust their vocabulary, sounds, and syntax depending upon who they are speaking to and the circumstances of the conversation. Such adjustments are often linguistically subtle and socially meticulous and largely subconscious. They are not taught or consciously learned, but are part of the innate linguistic competence of all normal people.
Sociological Imagination
Authors: Andrews Christopher
Published: September 2017

The term “sociological imagination” originates from the first chapter of the eponymous book by American sociologist C. Wright Mills (2000 [1959]) and describes an understanding of one's own social position and life experiences as being reflective of larger social and historical forces. Titled “The Promise,” the first chapter ofThe Sociological Imaginationoutlines how such broad forces shape the everyday circumstances of average citizens in ways that are often overlooked or misattributed, leading them to feel “trapped” by impersonal forces that seemingly operate beyond their control or understanding. Accordingly, the “promise” of the sociological imagination is in revealing the nature of such larger forces and how they influence the course and nature of people's lives.
Aging, Religion, and Spirituality
Authors: Atchley Robert C.
Published: September 2017

Our concern here is how religion and spirituality interact with aging – how aging affects religion and spirituality and how spirituality and religion affect aging. Aging generally increases the ability to perceive the spiritual elements of experience and also motivation to engage in intentional spiritual development. Most sages are elders. For most people, there is strong continuity of religious participation (whether nonexistent, sporadic, or frequent) throughout adulthood, but this general picture masks a significant minority who struggle with doubt, disillusionment and alienation concerning religion. Still others spend their lives uninterested in either spirituality or religion. The physical and mental declines of late adulthood are often accompanied by increasing attention to spiritual experience and religious practices, both of which can be very helpful resources for coping with physical, mental, and social loss. Spiritual growth and development continues to be an attractive opportunity far into old age. Religious communities vary enormously in the extent to which they support the needs of elders to continue their spiritual growth and participation in the life of the religious community.
Sport and the City
Authors: Schimmel Kimberly S.
Published: September 2017

At the turn of the twentieth century, sports were occasional and unregulated events played by members of local sports clubs. By the latter half of the century, small hometown rivalries gave way to regional and international urban mega‐events produced for global television audiences. As has been the case since the rise of sport in an urban‐industrial context, ethnic assimilation, class conflict, control of urban space, and race and gender relations are now inseparable from the promotion of contemporary sports.
Sport, College
Authors: Eitzen D. Stanley
Published: September 2017

Organized sport competition and institutions of higher education are inseparable in the United States. But the intertwining of the two as found in the US is not present in other countries. In European and Scandinavian countries, for example, intercollegiate sports competition is virtually nonexistent. Rather, there are club sports outside of the school system where young people in teams compete against other clubs. Canada fits somewhere between the European way and the American system. Jay Coakley and Peter Donnelly describe the Canadian system as one where interuniversity sports are a normal, but not highly significant, part of student life. There just are no parallels with the highly publicized “big‐time” sports programs in US universities. However, sport in the Canadian schools is akin to other levels of university sport in the US, such as the NAIA level of competition (2004: 453). In short, sports are social constructions. In this sense, sport and education can be organized and played in many ways.
Sport Culture and Subcultures
Authors: Donnelly Peter
Published: September 2017

Little research focuses specifically on sport and culture, although there is continued interest in fan culture, celebrity culture, and body culture in sports. Research on and theoretical approaches to sport culture and subcultures in the sociology of sport have focused more on sport subcultures. Sport subcultural research continues to shed light on the historical processes by which
a
way of playing a sport becomes
the
way of playing the sport and on the ways in which sport subcultures are involved in larger processes of resistance, social reproduction, and social transformation.
Sport and Social Class
Authors: Tomlinson Alan
Published: September 2017

Sport is a significant contributor to relations of social class in that people in elite groups have the resources to organize and maintain games on their own terms and in spaces inaccessible to others. This ultimately serves to reproduce social and economic distinctions and preserve the power and influence of those who control resources in society. The growth of modern sports cannot be fully understood unless this key influence and core dynamic is fully recognized.