bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Capitalism, Social Institutions of
Authors: Heugens Pursey P.M. A. R.
Published: September 2017

The concept of capitalism refers to the idea that societies should allow economic actors to rationally organize the social and financial capital at their disposal in pursuit of perpetually renewed profits (Weber 1989: 17ff). The particular organizational forms with which actors have chosen to organize economic transactions vary considerably, but an oft‐used classification distinguishes between formal organizations, markets for the exchange of commodities and capital goods, and organization‐market “hybrids” like interorganizational networks and alliances. As these organizational forms represent the core engines of production and exchange of consumer and capital goods in capitalist societies, these three discrete structural alternatives are typically referred to as the economic institutions of capitalism (Williamson 1985).
Caregiving
Authors: Drentea Patricia
Published: September 2017

This entry examines how caregiving is defined and the alternative concept of carework. It examines relevant issues with caregiving, body work, and typically what is considered and studied in the area of caregiving.
Castoriadis, Cornelius (1922–1997)
Authors: Ablett Phillip
Published: September 2017

This entry highlights the contribution to sociological theory of the work of Cornelius Castoriadis (1922–1997), the Greco‐French philosopher, economist, psychoanalyst, and post‐Marxist revolutionary. After growing up amid dictatorship and war in Greece, Castoriadis went to study philosophy in Paris, cofounding the libertarian‐socialist group and journalSocialisme ou Barbarie(1949–1967), many of whose ideas influenced the 1968 worker‐student uprising. As the journal's editor, Castoriadis initiated a series of thoroughgoing internal critiques of Marxist orthodoxy, advocating worker's self‐management, which he expanded into the radically democratic “project of human autonomy.” Castoriadis's mature work (exemplified inThe Imaginary Institution of Society), propounds an original ontology of indeterminate creativity to anchor his interdisciplinary and revolutionary critique of contemporary capitalist societies, offering a coherent alternative to both foundationalist social science and poststructural relativism. The interdisciplinary and political activist character of Castoriadis's writing has meant a slow reception in sociology but his conception of society as the contested institution of collective imaginaries in action has much to offer sociology's interpretive social action perspectives and critical theory. More recently, it has informed critical research in fields as diverse as sexual assault, civilizational analysis, urban social movements, aged care and mental health, disability, and the sociology of education.
Central Business District
Authors: Indergaard Michael
Published: September 2017

The central business district (CBD) is the downtown of the American city, which in the early twentieth century possessed two sorts of centrality: first, it was usually at or near the city's geographical center and, second, it hosted its most important economic functions. The term emerged as business districts were developing in outlying areas, but downtowns, with their skyscrapers, mammoth department stores, and movie palaces, remained dominant. However, after downtowns peaked in importance in the 1920s, policy debates and sociological discussions increasingly focused on (1) problems related to their decline and (2) organized attempts to bolster or reestablish their centrality.
Chance and Probability
Authors: Turner Stephen , Mccreery Gregory
Published: September 2017

Chance is an informal concept, sometimes meaning probability, sometimes meaning randomness. Probability is a formal mathematical concept expressed in its most simple form as dependent probability, which is a number between 0 and 1 that represents the likelihood that, for example, a person with one property will have another property. Thus the probability of a live birth being female is a dependent probability in which the two properties are “live birth” and “female.” Probabilities may also be assigned to beliefs. This kind of probability is known as subjective probability, and in this case the number represents the strength with which we think of a given belief to be true. Something is believed rather than known for certain because whether that thing is the case or not is merely probable. This is the kind of probability that one employs in making a bet with a friend about whether or not something is true.
Charismatic Movement
Authors: Freston Paul
Published: September 2017

Movements usually referred to as $@#*^%#@#ldquo;charismatic$@#*^%#@#rdquor; developed within Protestant and Catholic Christianity from the mid$@#*^%#@#hyphen;twentieth century, and especially the 1960s. Protestant versions are sometimes called $@#*^%#@#ldquo;neo$@#*^%#@#hyphen;Pentecostalism$@#*^%#@#rdquor; and the Catholic movement was initially styled $@#*^%#@#ldquo;Catholic Pentecostal,$@#*^%#@#rdquor; highlighting connections with the broader Pentecostal movement. Charismatic Christianity is usually considered to include: (1) renewal movements within established denominations; (2) independent charismatic churches and new denominations; and (3) charismatic parachurch organizations. The number of charismatics has steadily risen worldwide, and in 2000 probably represented some 10 percent of the world's Christian population.
Child Abuse
Authors: Polonko Karen
Published: September 2017

Throughout the world, literally hundreds of millions of children are victims of abuse, neglect, and exploitation. Restricting our focus to the US, over 3 million children are reported to official agencies for severe maltreatment in any given year (English 1998). While approximately 15 percent of children have been reported to agencies for maltreatment, surveys indicate that this figure grossly underestimates the true extent of the problem, as over a third of adults in the US report having experienced physical, sexual, emotional abuse and/or neglect as a child.
Children and Divorce
Authors: Legette Kamilah , Fine Mark A.
Published: September 2017

This entry provides an updated review of how children experience and respond to parental divorce. Scholars, particularly E. Mavis Hetherington and Joan Wallerstein, have reached quite different conclusions regarding how children adjust to divorce, and the entry begins with an attempt by Emery to reconcile the conflicting claims that scholars have reached. The entry provides new information on directions that divorce research has taken, including new trends emphasizing biological and genetic factors involved in children's divorce adjustment, gay and lesbian relationships and divorce, ethnic and racial differences in divorce adjustment, and the role that increased cohabitation rates have played in children's adjustment to divorce. The entry concludes with some suggestions for future research directions.
Chonaikai
Authors: Suzuki Yasushi
Published: September 2017

Chonaikai
refers to the neighborhood associations in modern Japanese cities. Although the name varies from city to city, with some called “self‐governing” associations,
chonaikai
seems to be the most common name. A
chonaikai
is principally composed of
all
households in a neighborhood, with sizes varying from about ten to more than a thousand households. They perform comprehensive functions including anti‐crime activities, traffic safety campaigns, fire and disaster prevention, sanitation, promoting mutual friendships, culture and leisure activities, mutual aid, transmitting information from city hall, and representing neighborhoods to local governments.
Civilizing Process
Authors: van Krieken Robert
Published: September 2017

The concept of the civilizing process arises from a particular approach to the idea of “civilization,” a word which first appeared in French and English in the eighteenth century, although there were earlier precursors. The understanding of “civilization” on which the conception of it being a
process
rests needs to be distinguished from other possible approaches. “Civilization” can be used in the
plural
to refer to particular assemblies of social, cultural, moral, political, institutional, and economic forms, to the historical emergence of civilizations and the interrelationships between them. Febvre referred to this as the ethnographic sense of the word, verging on being interchangeable with “culture,” but with an added material and institutional dimension.
Class Consciousness
Authors: Bottero Wendy
Published: September 2017

Deriving from Marxist class analysis, “class consciousness” refers to a developing process in which those sharing common objective economic relations (a “class‐in‐itself”) become aware of their shared class interests and work together to achieve common class aims, acting as a self‐conscious social grouping (a “class‐for‐itself”). In the classic Marxist formulation, class position leads to class consciousness, which in turn leads to class action. Karl Marx identified within society an underlying economic “base” which determines the social and political “superstructure,” arguing that the revolutionary class consciousness of the working class will emerge as the result of economic developments that make the conditions of class inequality increasingly clear and transparent.
Classification
Authors: Burrows Roger
Published: September 2017

Classification – the process of assigning objects (elements, cases, units, items, and so on) to classes or categories – is fundamental to cognition, language, and the construction of social structures. As such it has long been an important topic for sociological inquiry (Durkheim & Mauss 1963; Bowker & Star 1999; Olsen 2002). At the same time, more formal processes of classification – taxonomies, typologies, the construction of ideal types, and so on – are at the analytic heart of much of the sociological enterprise (Foucault 1970; van Mechelen et al. 1993) and, as such, they are also a central resource for the sociological imagination. Indeed, this distinction between classifications as both a substantive topic of investigation and, simultaneously, as an analytic resource for such investigations, forms the foundation for debates about what has come to be viewed as the issue of the “double hermeneutic” (Giddens 1976) in the discipline. This refers to a central conundrum in sociology in which the concepts and categories drawn upon by lay actors in their everyday practices are “explained” by sets of concepts and categories developed by sociologists that may (or more likely, may not) be recognized by lay actors themselves. On occasion these sociological concepts and categories are reappropriated by lay actors into everyday language and life (one thinks of “social class” and more recently “social capital,” “social networks,” “social exclusion,” and so on). But on other occasions the challenge is to demonstrate how and why the categories and classifications developed by sociologists are (in any sense) “superior” to those used by lay actors to explain their social actions. Which set of understandings possesses the greatest legitimacy – those provided by social actors in terms of their own lay “vocabularies of motive” or those provided by sociologists in terms of systematically constructed typologies of social action?
Cloning
Authors: David Matthew
Published: September 2017

Claude Lévi‐Strauss's (1978)
Myth and Meaning
discusses the cultural significance attached to twins in non‐literate societies. Twins are invested with ambivalent feelings, embodying abundance and loss, security and threat, natural and unnatural, good and evil. Twins also challenge the “identity” of being one thing or the other. The spliced‐lipped, incipient twin, hare, as messenger/transgressor between binary opposites, is also the mythical carrier of order and mishap. Being born feet first, wanting to move too fast, to get ahead of oneself or one's twin at the expense of mother and nature, is also invested with moral significance.
Collective Action
Authors: McAdam Doug
Published: September 2017

The term “collective action” is hopelessly broad. Taken at face value, it could plausibly refer toallforms of human behavior involving two or more people. Suffice it to say, consideration of such a broadly inclusive category would be well beyond the scope of this entry. But there is a far narrower subset of human action, to which the term has been applied and which will be the focus here. For our purposes, collective action will refer toemergent and at least minimally co‐ordinated action by two or more people that is motivated by a desire to change some aspect of social life or to resist changes proposed by others. By “emergent” I mean innovative lines of action that depart from taken‐for‐granted normative routines. “Co‐ordinated” simply means that the various parties to the emerging action are attuned to, and acting in awareness of, each other. Finally, the emphasis on change or resistance to change is intended to capture the adversarial or potentially contentious nature of “collective action.”
Collective Efficacy and Crime
Authors: Triplett Ruth
Published: September 2017

As described by Sampson et al. in 1997, collective efficacy describes a neighborhood‐level process that is important to understanding variation in crime rates across neighborhoods. Collective efficacy involves both the willingness of individuals in a neighborhood to work together toward a common goal, such as crime control, and mutual trust. Since the discussion of collective efficacy in the initial publication in 1997, collective efficacy has been an important new addition to criminology's understanding of the causes of crime across neighborhoods.
Collective Memory (Social Change)
Authors: Fowler Bridget
Published: September 2017

A group's most profound images and interpretations of the past constitute its collective memory. Memory – possessed and transmitted only by individuals – is nevertheless vitally framed by various social relationships. Individuals share their recollections with members of their group and rationally reorganize their stories of the past in accordance with others’ interpretations of events (Coser 1992: 43).
Collective Trauma
Authors: Sztompka Piotr
Published: September 2017

Social change may have adverse effects, bring shocks and wounds to the social and cultural tissue. This is true even if the changes are beneficial, expected, and defined as a victory by the people. The forerunner of this idea was Durkheim, who coined the famous notion of the “anomie of success.”
Community and Economy
Authors: Etzioni Amitai
Published: September 2017

Community and economy are two distinct realms of social life. In communities, we largely deal with one another as persons. We value people not only in their own right, but also as neighbors, friends, and those with whom we share a concern for the common good. In the economy, we largely deal with one another as buyers and sellers, as consumers and marketers, and as management and labor. In this realm we often seek to maximize our self‐interest. In Martin Buber's (1971) terms, the community is the realm of the I‐Thou, the economy that of the I‐It. The opposition is not complete. Some people will seek advantage in the realm of community; for example, they may seek to form business connections in the country club. Other people do develop relationships of friendship and loyalty at work. Still, there are basic differences between the two social realms that exist along the lines previously mentioned.
Connubium (Who Marries Whom?)
Authors: Bernardi Fabrizio , Comolli Chiara Ludovica
Published: September 2017

The question “Who marries whom?” refers to patterns of partner choice. The tendency to marry (or to enter a long‐term relationship such as cohabitation with) a person who belongs to the same social group, or who is similar with regard to certain characteristics, is also known as homogamy. Sociologists have traditionally been interested in three individual characteristics that can be important in the choice of a partner: race/ethnicity, religion, and socioeconomic resources. Studying patterns of partner choice is important because it allows us to evaluate the degree of openness of the boundaries of different ethnic, religious, and socioeconomic groups. The more frequent marriage between subjects who differ with respect to the characteristics of the group is, the more open the group.
Consumption, Urban/City as Consumerspace
Authors: Thomas Cook Daniel
Published: September 2017

The term urban consumption describes how the meanings of goods and commercially oriented experiences intermingle with space, place, and social identity in ways made possible by metropolitan life and are thereby specific to it. Urban consumption refers not just to purchases that occur within the confines of a city—as opposed to a suburb, or town or rural area. Rather, there is a character peculiar to the contexts of consumption which is both derived from, and is definitive of, urban culture. Urban life, to put it another way, is enmeshed with urban lifestyle.
Consumption, Visual
Authors: Schroeder Jonathan E.
Published: September 2017

Visual consumption characterizes life in the information age. The computer, the Web, and the visual mass media structure twenty‐first century lives, commanding time and attention, providing a steady stream of images that appear to bring the world within. Encompassing not only visual‐oriented consumer behavior such as watching television, playing video games, bird watching, tourism, museum going, and window shopping, visual consumption also introduces a methodological framework to investigate the interstices of consumption, vision, and culture, including how visual images are handled by consumption studies. Visual consumption constitutes a key attribute of an experience economy organized around attention, in which strategic communication – including advertising, promotion, websites, retail environments, and mass media – incorporates visual images designed to capture attention, build brand names, create mindshare, produce attractive products and services, and persuade citizens, consumers, and voters.
Control Balance Theory
Authors: Tittle Charles R.
Published: September 2017

Control balance is a general, integrated theory to explain deviant behavior by individuals or organizations, although it explains conformity and submission as well. Deviant behavior consists of acts disapproved by the majority of a group or that typically bring about negative social reactions. Since criminal behavior is usually deviant, the theory also explains most crime.
Conversation
Authors: Miller Dan E.
Published: September 2017

A conversation is an exchange of thoughts and ideas between two or more people. An instance of focused interaction, a conversation occurs when people cooperate with each other in order to introduce and sustain a single focus of attention by taking turns talking with each other. Conversations are the most natural, most frequent, and most universal of all forms of spoken language. Generally restricted to small groups, conversations involving larger groups tend to divide into several conversational groups. For example, even groups as small as four people tend to separate into two dyadic units.
Credit Cards
Authors: Klein Lloyd
Published: September 2017

Credit cards are a popularized economic instrument enabling the consumer acquisition of goods or services in exchange for assured merchant or provider payment through financial institutions. The resulting transfer of funds was enabled through a change in the cultural view of thrift and systematic savings. Much of the pattern was driven by a transformation from ideological values associated with savings into a culture focused on consumer acquisition. Max Weber's view of social change stressed an intensified neutralization of the “Protestant Ethic” into a more vigorous consumer orientation. In Weber's analysis, credit was viewed as more culturally acceptable beginning early in the twentieth century. This trend gave way to the “democratization of credit” and the increasing acceptance of consumer credit in the form of credit cards and other financial mechanisms.
Creolization
Authors: Cohen Robin
Published: September 2017

The words Creole and creolization have been used in many different contexts and generally in an inconsistent way. “Creole” was possibly derived from the Latin
creara
(“created originally”). The most common historical use was the Spanish
criollo
, which described the children of Spanish colonizers born in the Caribbean. The French transformed the word to
créole
. However, the racially exclusive definition, which confined the term to whites in colonial societies, had already been challenged in the early eighteenth century and referred also to indigenous people and other immigrants who had acquired metropolitan manners, cultures, and sensibilities.
Crime, Organized
Authors: Griffin Sean Patrick
Published: September 2017

Though the study of organized crime is primarily a sociological pursuit, the phenomenon is a subject of study in numerous other disciplines, including anthropology, economics, history, and political science. Despite, if not because of, this broad and varied inquiry into the topic, there is little consensus on what constitutes “organized crime.”
Crime, Psychological Theories of
Authors: Oleson J.C.
Published: September 2017

Psychological theories suggest that crime is caused by mental factors or conflicts. Like biological theories, psychological theories of crime deal with causes at the individual level, but instead of associating crime with observable phenomena such as brain abnormalities, psychological theories associate crime with abstractions such as mental illness, intelligence, or personality.
Crime, Social Control Theory of
Authors: Orcutt James D.
Published: September 2017

The social control theory of crime is fundamentally a theory of conformity. Instead of theorizing about the motivations for criminal behavior, control theorists ask, “Why do people conform?” Their answers to this question stress the importance of strong group relationships, active institutional participation, and conventional moral values in constraining and regulating individual behavior. When these controlling influences are weak or rendered ineffective, people are freer to deviate from legal and moral norms. Thus, in explaining conformity, control theorists highlight the conditions under which crime and delinquency become possible, if not likely, outcomes. Following this lead, a large body of criminological research inspired by social control theory has focused on how variations in the strength of individuals’ bonds to family, community, school, and other conventional groups and institutions relate to patterns of self‐reported and officially recorded deviant behavior.
Cultural Critique
Authors: Kellner Douglas , Lewis Tyson
Published: September 2017

Cultural critique is a broad field of study that employs many different theoretical traditions to analyze and critique cultural formations. Because culture is always historically and contextually determined, each era has had to develop its own methods of cultural analysis in order to respond to new technological innovations, new modes of social organization, new economic formations, and novel forms of oppression, exploitation, and subjugation.
Cultural Feminism
Authors: Wolff Kristina
Published: September 2017

Cultural feminism seeks to understand women's social locations in society by concentrating on gender differences between women and men. This type of feminism focuses on the liberation of women through individual change, the recognition and creation of “women‐centered” culture, and the redefinition of femininity and masculinity. Cultural feminism utilizes essentialist understandings of male and female differences as the foundation of women's subordination in society.
Cultural Studies
Authors: Long Elizabeth
Published: September 2017

Cultural studies is an interdisciplinary field that explores the linkages between society, politics, identity (or the person), and the full range of what is called “culture,” from high culture and the popular arts or mass entertainment, to beliefs, discourses, and communicative practices. Cultural studies has drawn on different national traditions of inquiry into these connections – from the Frankfurt School's studies of the mass culture industry, and of the psychological processes that undercut democracy in liberal and affluent societies, to French structuralist and poststructuralist critiques of ideology, constraining categorical frames, and a monadic and unified concept of the self. The branch of cultural studies that early drew the most attention from sociologists was that articulated by the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, perhaps in part because Birmingham scholars were inspired by some aspects of American sociology, especially the Chicago School tradition, which gave their work a recognizably social dimension.
Cultural Tourism
Authors: Smith Melanie
Published: September 2017

“Cultural tourism” could be defined as tourism that focuses on cultural attractions and activities as a primary motivating factor for travel. Notwithstanding the broad definitions of culture that abound within postmodern and populist writings, parameters need to be drawn around what is defined as “culture” in this context. It is therefore useful to break the concept of cultural tourism down into a number of subsets. As argued by Smith (2003: 29), “cultural tourism can no longer be considered as a special interest or niche sector, but instead as an umbrella term for a range of tourism typologies and diverse activities which have a cultural focus.”
Culture, Gender and
Authors: Press Andrea
Published: September 2017

The reproduction of our society's sex‐gender system has been a continuing puzzle for sociologists of gender. The history of western writings on gender has long included ruminations on the role of culture in constituting gender difference and privilege (Wollstonecraft 1978; Mill 2003; and especially de Beauvoir 1993). Yet during the last 40 years of the sociology of gender, material characteristics – in particular, women's position as paid and unpaid laborers – have received more attention than cultural factors (Hartmann 1980; Blum 1991). These findings have revealed large differences in the paid and unpaid work lives of men and women in our society, and they have led to a number of political reform movements and initiatives – Title IX, the comparable worth movement, lawsuits demanding equal pay for equal work – that have resulted in somewhat more equality in the workplace.
City Planning/Urban Design
Authors: Bures Regina M.
Published: September 2017

City planning encompasses the policies and processes that influence the development of towns, cities, and regions. Planning has occurred throughout the history of early cities, but it was not until the early twentieth century that city planning emerged as a distinct discipline. Like the early urban sociologists, early planners sought to address the physical and social problems that had arisen in the rapidly growing industrial cities. By the mid‐1950s, city planning had become a discipline that focused primarily on land‐use planning (Hall 1996). Today planners often take a more holistic approach, combining land use, transportation, and financial dimensions. Most city governments house a planning board or agency. Still, the emphasis of planning is primarily the physical structure of the city and the task of balancing social concerns and economic realities often falls on city and regional governments.
Community Gardening
Authors: Clement Matthew Thomas
Published: September 2017

The term “community garden” generally refers to an urban piece of land that is gardened/farmed collectively (Lawson, 2005). In sociology, research on “community gardening” has a very recent history. According to the database published by CSA Sociological Abstracts, Taylor (1993) was the first sociologist to examine social issues related to community gardening. Her piece was the only one published in the 1990s. Sociological research in this field really took off in the beginning of the twenty‐first century. The increased attention to community gardening coincided with more social scientific research on urban agriculture, community supported agriculture, farmers markets and local food systems in general. Nevertheless, the practice of community gardening long preceded academic interest. For instance, in the United States, a desire to integrate gardening into school curricula dates back to the end of the nineteenth century (Lawson, 2005). Also in the United States, Lawson (2005) dates a revitalized interest in community gardening to the 1970s. The American Community Garden Association was founded in 1979. “Confronted with poor environmental and social resources,” Lawson writes, “some urban dwellers began to rethink their living environment in light of greater self‐reliance at both the individual and neighborhood levels” (2005: 219). “Urban decline” and “the failing conditions of the city” (2005: 218) provided the socioeconomic context in which community gardening activism re‐emerged in the United States.
Cities in Latin America
Authors: Davis Diane E.
Published: September 2017

While the idea of what constitutes Latin America is relatively imprecise and continues to be defined by geographic correlates and cultural assumptions embedded in the history and power politics of the Americas, this entry will address the large cities of Spanish‐ and Portuguese‐speaking Central and South America, as well as Mexico. Today these regions are among the most urbanized in the world, making them an important site for the study of the worldwide trend toward higher rates of urbanization.
Consumption, Critical/Responsible
Authors: Sassatelli Roberta
Published: September 2017

Consumer practices in consumer capitalist societies are increasingly reflexively addressing mainstream circuits of commercialization, with consumers being voluntarily engaged in alternative, responsible, or critical consumption. Each of these labels tends to stress a particular aspect of consumer practices as being different from mainstream commercialism, showing consumers’ commitment to other people's welfare and nature and expressing consumers’ capacity to think critically about their lifestyle and the world of goods. In broader terms, critical consumption indicates protest initiatives such as boycotts and campaigns against multinational powers as well as affirmative initiatives such as various forms of responsible purchase, exchange, and lifestyle. The former, more typically labeled “negative political consumerism” (Micheletti et al. 2004), is often studied as demonstrating the widening of protest repertoires in contemporary alter‐global movements. The latter is more often addressed within the study of consumer cultures and their politics. Both these phenomena are becoming widespread especially in the West. The European Social Survey has shown that approximately one third of Europeans have boycotted certain goods or/and have bought goods for political and ethical reasons. In particular, positive critical consumption initiatives from ethically coded products such as Fair Trade goods or organic produce, and networks of provision and consumption alternative to mainstream, mass‐market relations such as farmers’ markets or box schemes, have been steadily on the rise for nearly two decades in late capitalist economies. At times this has entailed remarkable rates of growth – such as Fair Trade coffee growing a spectacular 67 percent per year in the US market (Arnould 2007; Harrison, Newhold, & Shaw 2005; Lyon & Moberg 2010).
Consumption, Critical/Responsible
Authors: Sassatelli Roberta
Published: September 2017

Consumer practices in consumer capitalist societies are increasingly reflexively addressing mainstream circuits of commercialization, with consumers being voluntarily engaged in alternative, responsible, or critical consumption. Each of these labels tends to stress a particular aspect of consumer practice as being different from mainstream commercialism, showing consumers' commitment to the welfare of others and to the environment and expressing consumers' capacity to think critically about their lifestyle and the world of goods. In broader terms, critical consumption indicates protest initiatives such as boycotts and campaigns against multinational powers, as well as affirmative initiatives such as various forms of responsible purchase, exchange, and lifestyle. Despite their many differences, an overarching cultural theme may be identified in critical consumption initiatives: Consumer choice is portrayed as neither universally good nor a private issue but as a matter of responsibility with political potential. We may consider critical consumer practices as hints that profit‐driven markets can be transformed to take into account collective goods and responsible pleasures, as well as mementos of how difficult such change may be, entailing not only consumer practices but also their political regulation and the organization of the economic structure at large.
Davis, Kingsley (1908–1997)
Authors: Hernandez Donald J.
Published: September 2017

Kingsley Davis, one of the most influential and eminent sociologists of the twentieth century, made major contributions to sociology, anthropology, and demography. A pioneer of sociological theory as it emerged during the 1930s and 1940s, he published prominent papers on the social and normative foundations of legitimate and illicit sexual behavior, marriage and divorce in contemporary societies, intermarriage in caste societies, and the place of children in the family and the broader social structure. Concerned with issues central to the structure and functioning of society, and therefore ideologically, morally, and emotionally charged, Davis's analyses were illuminating, but often perforce subject to extensive debate and controversy, sometimes the focus of challenge from conservatives and other times confounding liberals.
Death and Dying
Authors: Carr Deborah
Published: September 2017

Sociology of death and dying is the study of the ways that values, beliefs, behavior, and institutional arrangements concerning death are structured by social environments and contexts. Although death is a universal human experience, societal responses to death vary according to cultural attitudes toward death, as well as contextual factors including the primary causes of death, and normative age at which death occurs.
Decision‐Making
Authors: Vitt Lois A.
Published: September 2017

Decision‐making is the process by which individuals and groups identify, combine, and integrate information in order to choose one of several possible courses of action. In social psychology, research traditions involve the cognition, affect, and behavior that drive bothindividualdecision‐making (including attitudes, beliefs, values, and actions) andgroupdecision‐making (including group formation, group preference, performance and influence, social decision schemes, straw poll, social comparison, and groupthink).
Deference
Authors: Munroe Paul T.
Published: September 2017

Deference refers to the granting of influence, esteem, or simply the “right of way” from one person to another person, persons, or impersonal entities. When one defers, the interest is in the other with whom one is interacting. Deference is a necessary element of a status relation, and deference often characterizes a large portion of the interaction among close personal friends, intimates, and family members.
Deleuze, Gilles (1925–1995)
Authors: Binkley Sam
Published: September 2017

Gilles Deleuze was a significant twentieth‐century philosopher whose critiques of essentialism and rationalism made important contributions to theories of postmodernity and poststructuralism. The philosophical standpoint he elaborated was one which emphasized the immanent possibilities for change manifested in things themselves. Bodies, objects, ideas, and social formations all possessed potentials for difference and deviation inherent in themselves. This view contradicted that of his chief philosophical interlocutor, Hegel (and all those upholding a Hegelian dialectical tradition), in which change was viewed as the result of external encounters or “negations” imposed from without. Deleuze's philosophical project followed that of Nietzsche in emphasizing the affirmative property of things, and linking the agent with the act itself, denying traditional philosophical concepts of causality, will, and intention. Indeed, his philosophical oeuvre is defined by interrogations of the philosophical canon ranging from Plato to Nietzsche, Spinoza, Bergson, and Hume for conceptions of the world that emphasized such immanent properties of becoming and change.
Demographic Data: Censuses, Registers, Surveys
Authors: Mather Mark , Cortes Rachel
Published: September 2017

Population censuses, registers, and surveys are the primary sources of demographic data, including information about the size, composition, and characteristics of a population or population subgroups. A census is an enumeration of all households in a well‐defined territory at a given point in time. Population registers are systems of continuous registration, maintained by certain countries, to keep demographic records of individuals. Surveys are used to collect detailed data on a particular subject from a sample or subset of the population. All three sources of data – censuses, registers, and surveys – are often used to monitor changes in population size and composition. In recent years, technological advances have led to a rapid increase in the availability of demographic data from unofficial sources, especially through online social networks and other Web‐based applications. These “big data” sources provide many new opportunities for research and marketing, but also present challenges in terms of accessing the information, using it effectively, and protecting confidentiality.
Demographic Techniques: Life‐Table Methods
Authors: Schoen Robert
Published: September 2017

A life table describes the survival of a hypothetical group of persons from birth, through successive ages, to the death of the last member. In doing so, it shows the implications of a set of mortality rates for the probability of surviving from one age to another, and provides useful summary measures such as the expectation of life at birth. Beyond its wide use in studies of mortality, the life table has been used in analyses of marriage, divorce, contraceptive use, and many other topics where it is valuable to examine how rates of decrement reduce the number of persons in a closed group.
Demographic Techniques: Population Pyramids and Age/Sex Structure
Authors: Kahn Joan R.
Published: September 2017

Age and sex are among the most fundamental demographic characteristics of individuals. Viewed in the aggregate, age/sex composition forms the basic structure of human populations. It tells us the relative numbers of young and old as well as the balance of men and women at different ages. By characterizing the “raw materials” of human populations, the age/sex structure indicates the numbers of people “at risk” or “available” to engage in a wide range of behaviors that vary by age (e.g., going to school, getting a job, committing a crime, getting married, starting a family, buying a home, getting divorced, retiring, getting sick and dying). By itself, it does not tell us who will engage in any of these behaviors, yet it does help determine overall patterns and trends.
Demographic Techniques: Time Use
Authors: Raley Sara
Published: September 2017

Time, particularly in the United States, is often viewed as a scarce resource. Unlike other resources of interest to social scientists, however, time is evenly distributed in the sense that every individual faces the same 24‐hour constraint. Despite its apparent equality, time allocation is a major indicator of social differentiation and stratification. Social theorist Thorstein Veblen (1953) argued over a century ago, for example, that elites show their status partly by the way they spend their leisure time. Further, people with more income can afford to trade paid work time for leisure time as well as purchase time‐saving goods and services (such as prepared meals and house cleaning) than people with less income.
Developmental Stages
Authors: Schellebach Cynthia
Published: September 2017

The developmental stage approach refers to the socially or developmentally defined, age‐related sequence of stages individuals experience from birth through death. The assumption underlying the stage theories is that each stage represents a qualitatively unique period of development, indicating that the type of development is completely different and not reducible to earlier forms. That is, the developmental process occurs in an invariant sequence. The stage theory assumes that development is cumulative in nature and that development is based on each preceding step. It is expected that development proceeds toward increasingly complex levels of functioning. From a traditional viewpoint, the process of development proceeds in an irreversible sequence. Theoretically, one cannot return to an earlier form of development. The sequence of development is universal in nature. Development proceeds toward predictable end‐states. These end‐states may be influenced by maturational factors or environmental factors.
Developmental State
Authors: Williams Brad
Published: September 2017

Rather than relying solely on market forces, the developmental state strongly influences the course and pace of economic development by directly intervening in the development process. At the heart of the developmental state was the economic bureaucracy whose interventionist policies were credited with rapid economic growth in East Asia. The developmental state's reputation suffered following the Asian financial crisis of the late 1990s, exposing it to criticisms of corruption and cronyism. However, the developmental state's adaptive qualities, in the form of the People's Republic of China, helped it withstand the pernicious effects of the 2008 global financial crisis at a time of failure for neoliberal Anglo‐American capital.
Deviance, Positivist Theories of
Authors: Meier Robert F.
Published: September 2017

Sociologists define deviance as the violation of a norm that, if discovered, typically results in punishment, scorn, or stigmatization of the offender. Normative violations can include acts, beliefs, and traits or characteristics. This definition opens two radically different though complementary missions or lines of inquiry: those that attempt to explain the causes and consequences of normative violations, and those that explore the dynamics underlying the social construction, accompaniments, and consequences of the norms, including laws and their enforcement. Sociologists of deviance – including criminologists – who adopt the first of these missions are usually referred to as “positivists”; those who adopt the second are called “constructionists.” Positivistic sociologists of deviance and crime nearly always study non‐normative behavior, while constructionists look at the full gamut of normative violations – behavior, beliefs, and physical characteristics.
Dewey, John (1859–1952)
Authors: Jacobs Mark D.
Published: September 2017

John Dewey, perhaps the most prominent US public philosopher in the first half of the twentieth century, has cast a large shadow over many fields of sociology: social psychology, urban sociology, the sociology of education, the sociology of culture, political sociology, and public sphere theory, among others. Above all, he helped infuse much of American sociology with a spirit of pragmatism. In addition to his seminal contributions to the study of method and of ethics, his sociological works focus on the active nature of education, democracy as community, and art and experience – and their interrelations. His students and colleagues – George Herbert Mead, W. I. Thomas, Robert Park, and Jane Addams – helped spread his influence almost immediately over sociological research and practice; it is not accidental that the three universities to which he devoted the bulk of his faculty career – Michigan, Chicago, and Columbia – all nurtured elite departments of sociology, and that the New School for Social Research, which he helped found, has continually sharpened the critical‐normative edge of sociology.
Diaspora
Authors: Remennick Larissa
Published: September 2017

The term “diaspora” originates from the Greek
dia
(over) and
speiro
(to sow). The Greeks understood diaspora as migration and colonization of new lands. In modern parlance the term diaspora usually refers to a situation in which a sizable number of the members of an ethnic group have lived outside their country of origin for at least several generations, while maintaining some ties (even if purely symbolic or sentimental) to the historic homeland. The “classic” diasporas in terms of the ancient history of dispersion are Jewish, Armenian, and Greek; the more modern (and also more numerous) diasporas include the African (“Black American”) diaspora resulting from the forced migration of slaves to the Americas, and Irish, Italian, Polish, Chinese, and Indian diasporas resulting from voluntary migrations.
Discourse
Authors: Jacobsen Martin M.
Published: September 2017

The primary definition of discourse denotes a method of communication that conforms to particular structural and ethnographic norms and marks a particular social group by providing a means of solidarity for its members and a means of differentiating that group from other groups. It is, perhaps, more accurate and useful to regard this concept in the plural, that is, asdiscourses, thus encompassing its capacity not only for marking boundaries for the group and against other groups (using linguistic borders philosopher Kenneth Burke called “terministic screens,” which are essentially the points at which one discourse becomes distinct from another), but also as a method in many disciplines.
Documentary
Authors: Goldson Annie
Published: September 2017

Documentary has existed as long as film itself. The one‐reel actualitiés produced by the Lumière brothers in 1895 and the more complex films that followed these early experiments – for example,
Nanook of the North
(Flaherty 1922) and
The Man with a Movie Camera
(Vertov 1929) – were distinguished by their sense of a “historical real,” the depiction of real people and events (Renov 1986). This apparent ability to capture “reality” has continued to distinguish documentary from fiction; indeed, the genre, with its intimate connection to the physical world, appeals because of its truth claims, whether these exist at the level of fact or image. Documentary stimulates what Bill Nichols calls “epistephilia” or a “desire to know,” conveying an “informing logic, a persuasive rhetoric, or a moving poetics that promises information and knowledge, insight and awareness” (Nichols 2001: 40). The filmmakers above, however, would hardly have known they were making “documentary” at the time they were in production, as the genre had hardly yet been conceived.