bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Bifurcated Consciousness, Line of Fault
Authors: DeVault Marjorie L.
Published: September 2017

Dorothy Smith's influential feminist essay, “A Sociology for Women,” begins by calling attention to a “line of fault”: “a point of rupture in my/our experience as woman/women within the social forms of consciousness – the culture or ideology of our society – in relation to the world known otherwise, the world directly felt, sensed, responded to, prior to its social expression” (1987: 49). Insisting on the anchorage of consciousness in located bodily experience, Smith was pointing to the shift away from embodied experience into a governing conceptual, ideological mode of consciousness associated with the “ruling relations” of industrial capitalism (1999). She saw in most women's lives in that period a distinctive subjectivity, a “bifurcated consciousness” organized by women's household or reproductive labor and the supporting and applied tasks assigned to them, historically, in the occupational division of labor. As mothers, wives, community volunteers, nurses, secretaries, and so on, Smith argued, women engage with people where and as they actually live, “working up” individuals so as to fit them to the more abstract frameworks that organize institutional activity. Located thus, at the juncture of embodied specificity and ideological abstraction, women in such positions hold in their consciousness both ways of seeing and thinking. Typically, their movement from one to the other framework is achieved without conscious thought as an expert practice of everyday action. However, when attention is directed to this dual formation, the disjuncture can be seen as a “line of fault” which opens this organization of social life to analytic scrutiny, as an earthquake opens the earth's crust.
Biosociological Theories
Authors: Machalek Richard
Published: September 2017

Biosociological theories integrate biology into sociological explanations of human social behavior. They do so by incorporating theoretical ideas and empirical discoveries from various branches of biology including evolutionary biology (especially
sociobiology
and
behavioral ecology
), ecology, ethology, neurobiology, endocrinology, and population genetics. In sociology, most biosociological theories are emerging in a new specialty area known as
evolutionary sociology
.
Body and Society
Authors: Turner Bryan S.
Published: September 2017

Over the last two decades there has been growing interest in the sociology of the body, as illustrated by the publication of
The Body
(Featherstone et al. 1991),
The Woman in the Body
(Martin 1989),
Five Bodies
(O'Neill 1985),
The Body and Social Theory
(Shilling 1993), and
The Body and Society
(Turner 1984). Three philosophical works were particularly important in initially stimulating sociological analysis of the human body. First,
The Absent Body
(Leder 1990) was critical of Cartesian dualism that separates mind and body. Employing a phenomenological perspective, Leder studied the absence of the “lived body” in everyday life, and showed how disruptions of illness bring the body into focus. Second,
The Body in Pain
(Scarry 1985) explored the problem of physical pain in torture and war, and demonstrated the centrality of the body to contemporary moral issues. Third, Michel Foucault's historical studies of medicine in
The Birth of the Clinic
(1973) and sexuality in
The History of Sexuality
(1978) generated interest in the interaction between the body, medical practice, and systems of belief. Foucault opened up new ways of thinking about how bodies are imagined, constructed, and represented. Georges Canguilhem's important work on
The Normal and the Pathological
(1994) influenced Foucault's approach to the history of systems of thought, including our knowledge of the human body. Foucault has remained central to research on power and the body as a representation of society. For example, Thomas Laqueur's
Making Sex
(1990) demonstrated major historical changes in the anatomical representation of the sexual organs, reflecting different theories of gender. This general interest in the sociology of the body has seeped into medical sociology by suggesting innovative theoretical frameworks and new topics of empirical inquiry (Turner 2004).
Braudel, Fernand (1902–1985)
Authors: Wallerstein Immanuel
Published: September 2017

Fernand Braudel was the leading figure of the so‐called second generation of the Annales School or historiographic tradition, a tradition that distinguished itself from the outset by its emphasis on what it called “total history.” Within this tradition, Braudel's work is noted for four major emphases: (1) concern with the unit of analysis, and in particular with a construct he called a “world‐economy” (
économie‐monde
); (2) analysis of social temporalities, which he asserted to be multiple, and in particular that of the
longue durée
; (3) his insistence on interscience, which refers to his concern with breaking down the barriers between history and the other social sciences (sociology, geography, political science, and economics); and (4) an interpretation of economic life that drew a sharp and unusual distinction between the market and capitalism.
Built Environment
Authors: Devine Joel A.
Published: September 2017

At its most basic level, the built environment refers to all elements of the human‐made physical environment, i.e., it is defined in contrast to the natural environment. Dunlap and Catton's (1983) distinction between the “built,” the “modified,” and the “natural” environments is heuristically useful inasmuch as it more readily acknowledges the intermediate, mediative, and continuous possibilities of interaction and reciprocal relations between and among these divisions. Given its essentially contrast‐dependent definition, it is not surprising that the term has become increasingly in vogue in the era of environmental consciousness.
Built Environment
Authors: Devine Joel a. , Albright Ryan C.
Published: September 2017

Historically,
built environment
referred to all elements of the human‐made physical environment, i.e., it stood in contrast to the natural environment. Recognizing the limits of this once accepted duality, Dunlap and Catton's (1983) articulation of the distinction between the “built,” the “modified,” and the “natural” environments is heuristically useful inasmuch as it acknowledges the intermediate and potentially “fuzzy” possibilities of interaction and reciprocal relations across these dimensions.
Bosnia
Authors: Doubt Keith
Published: September 2017

Bosnia‐Herzegovina was a republic of Yugoslavia until 1992. The break‐up of Yugoslavia in the early 1990s resulted in a complex web of collective violence throughout the region. Unlike other communist countries in Eastern Europe, Yugoslavia under Josip Broz Tito had been an open society with progressive social values, albeit with sometimes oppressive politics. The country consisted of a federation of six republics – Bosnia‐Herzegovina (referred to hereafter as Bosnia), Slovenia, Croatia, Montenegro, Macedonia, and Serbia. In Serbia there were also two autonomous provinces, Kosovo and Vojvodina. In Kosovo, where the vast majority of the population was Kosovo Albanian, the Serbian population had significantly declined due to demographics and poverty and was less than 5 percent in the early 1990s. In face of the growing authoritarianism of Serbia's president, Slobodan Milosevic, who took power in the late 1980s, and a belligerent Serbian nationalism, Slovenia and Croatia seceded from Yugoslavia in June 1991. Their secession, permitted by the Constitution, was motivated in part by their own nationalist aspirations. In 2008 Yugoslavia's disintegration seems to be complete; Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia, Macedonia, Serbia, Montenegro, and even Kosovo are all internationally recognized independent states.
Burning Man
Authors: Chen Katherine K.
Published: September 2017

Burning Man, an annual weeklong event devoted to countercultural principles and art, offers a rich context for studying art, consumption, religiosity and spirituality, subcultures, collective action, and organizations. During the week leading to the Labor Day holiday, some 47,000 persons gather across five square miles, forming Black Rock City, one of Nevada's largest, albeit temporary, cities. Toward the week's end, the event's eponymous bonfire consumes the Man, a 40‐foot‐tall, neon‐decorated, wooden figure that stands at the city's center.
Capital, Secondary Circuit of
Authors: Hutchison Ray
Published: September 2017

For Marx, the second circuit of capital is the sphere of unproductive labor, where commodities are sold and money capital is created. David Harvey used the second circuit of capital to explain urban growth under capitalism, while Henri Lefebvre used the same ideas to study the production of space in capitalist society.
Captive Mind
Authors: Farid Alatas Syed
Published: September 2017

The concept of the captive mind was originated by the Malaysian sociologist Syed Hussein Alatas and was developed to conceptualize the nature of scholarship in the developing world, particularly in relation to western dominance in the social sciences and humanities. The captive mind is defined as an $@#*^%#@#ldquo;uncritical and imitative mind dominated by an external source, whose thinking is deflected from an independent perspective$@#*^%#@#rdquor; (Alatas 1974: 692). The external source is western social science and humanities and the uncritical imitation that influences all the constituents of scientific activity such as problem selection, conceptualization, analysis, generalization, description, explanation, and interpretation (Alatas 1972: 11). Among the characteristics of the captive mind are the inability to be creative and raise original problems, the inability to devise original analytical methods, and alienation from the main issues of indigenous society. The captive mind is trained almost entirely in the western sciences, reads the works of western authors, and is taught predominantly by western teachers, whether in the West itself or through their works available in local centers of education. Mental captivity is also found in the suggestion of solutions and policies. Furthermore, it reveals itself at the levels of theoretical as well as empirical work.
Captive Mind
Authors: Alatas Syed Farid
Published: September 2017

The concept of the captive mind was created by the Malaysian sociologist Syed Hussein Alatas; it was intended to conceptualize the nature of scholarship in the developing world, particularly in relation to western dominance in the social sciences and humanities. The captive mind is defined as an uncritical and imitative mind dominated by an external source, whose thinking is deflected from an independent perspective. The external source is western social science and humanities – source of the uncritical imitation that influences all the constituents of scientific activity such as problem selection, conceptualization, analysis, generalization, description, explanation, and interpretation.
Carework
Authors: Misra Joya
Published: September 2017

Carework refers, simply, to the work of caring for others, including unpaid care for family members and friends, as well as paid care for others. Caring work includes taking care of children, the elderly, the sick, and the disabled, as well as doing domestic work such as cleaning and cooking. As reproductive labor, carework is necessary to the continuation of every society. By deploying the term “carework,” scholars and advocates emphasize the importance of recognizing that care is not simply a natural and uncomplicated response to those in need, but actually hard physical, mental, and emotional work, which is often unequally distributed through society (Meyer 2000). Because care tends to be economically devalued, many scholars who study carework emphasize the skill required for care, and the importance of valuing care.
Carework
Authors: Malhotra Ragini Saira , Misra Joya
Published: September 2017

Carework refers, simply, to the work of caring for others, including unpaid care for family members and friends, as well as paid care. Carework entails taking care of children, the elderly, the sick, and the disabled, as well as doing domestic work such as cleaning and cooking. As reproductive labor, carework is necessary for human well‐being and the continuation of every society. Yet, because of its presumed “natural” quality, this work remains devalued in many parts of the world (Razavi, 2007; Folbre, 2001). By deploying the term “carework,” scholars and advocates emphasize that care is not simply a natural and uncomplicated response to those in need, but work that requires physical, mental, and emotional labor which is unequally distributed through society (Meyer, 2000). Scholars emphasize the skill required to perform this work and the importance of valuing care labor (Uttal, 2002; Tuominen, 2003; Macdonald, 2010; Stacey, 2011; Duffy, 2011). The scholarship on carework addresses several key issues, including provisioning and costs, the commodification of care, rights to care, and, as an overarching theme, inequality and care.
Caudillismo
Authors: Tamayo Sergio
Published: September 2017

Etymologically,
caudillo
comes from the latino term
capitellus
or
caput
, which means head. A political system or political regime based on
caudillaje
is named
caudillismo
and is under the mandate of a
caudillo
(political leader). C
audillo
means the boss or leader of an army at war. However, political and military leaders who lead emancipation or popular movements are also designated with the same word. Different authors have analyzed
caudillismo
from two main orientations: as a social movement or institutional regime, and as a reflection of the action of a leader or
caudillo
. It has been a phenomenon associated mainly with Latin American politics. Nevertheless, various movements or regimes have been recognized by the name of their
caudillo
(e.g., Peronism in Argentina, Cardenism in Mexico, Cesarism in Rome, Bonapartism in France, Bismarckism in Germany, Franquism in Spain,
Duce
to Mussolini,
Führer
to Hitler, etc.).
Charisma
Authors: Hunt Stephen
Published: September 2017

The term “charisma” is one of the most enduring conceptions in the annals of sociology. Its origin, meaning “gift,” as derived from the Greek, is close to Max Weber's understanding of the term which has subsequently passed into common vocabularies. The notion of charisma can be seen as one of Weber's core typologies, one related to the underlying basis of authority. Weber, in such works asThe Religion of China(1951), speaks of charismatic leadership not only in terms of group cohesion but also in terms of education (pp. 30, 190), virtue of dynasty (pp. 198f., 119f., 135) – the belief in the transfer of extraordinary endowments of religious, political, or military descendants – and as hereditary (pp. 140, 141, 164). Weber also uses the term “gentile charisma” with reference to such families (pp. 35, 167, 264). In a sociological sense, charisma refers to the qualities of those who possess, or are believed to possess, powers of leadership either as a virtue of exceptional personality or derived from some unusual inspiration such as a magical, divine, or diabolical source, powers not possessed by the ordinary person (Weber 1947). Since Weber's notion of charisma is closely related to the sacred, it has parallels in Durkheim'smana– a dynamic which may be socially disruptive and seems to be inherent in certain objects or persons in tribal societies, as evidenced in theorendaamong some North American tribes andmagain ancient Persia.
Childhood Sexuality
Authors: Corteen Karen
Published: September 2017

Children and sexuality are in their own right particularly sensitive areas. Bringing the two together is to end a dominant and ideological taboo (Jackson, 1982). Childhood sexuality is a sensitive and controversial area and this is particularly the case when the issue of children's sexuality challenges heterosexual norms and highlights the rights of all children to make informed choices about their own bodies, sexual desires, practices, and identities (Levine, 2002; Corteen, 2006). Evidently, it deals with issues that are both personal and private as well as public and political. The issue of childhood sexuality when approached holistically is concerned with children's lives and experiences, their physical health, and their emotional well‐being. Thus, it is more than a theoretical and analytical endeavor. Discussions around constructions of childhood sexualities, whether they are underpinned by a scientific developmental approach or a sociological approach, can result in the validation and sanctioning of sexual desires, practices and identities or the invalidation and condemnation of these important areas of an individual's life. The subject is socially, politically, ideologically, and academically awash with commonsensical ideologies regarding children, childhood, sexuality, and childhood sexuality.
Christianity
Authors: Oviedo Lluis
Published: September 2017

As a basic description, Christianity is the religious faith grounded on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. Beyond this point, the scholarly understanding of that concept has been the object of much discussion in modern times, particularly in the realm of the social sciences. Trying to put some order into the social, religious, historical, and ideological reality that corresponds to the term “Christianity,” a synthetic account may be offered, covering its history and its main features.
Church
Authors: Diotallevi Luca
Published: September 2017

Sociology, especially in its classic works, provides analytic perspectives for understanding specific ecclesiastic religious phenomena (i.e., churches and church$@#*^%#@#hyphen;oriented religions). But long before the birth of sociology $@#*^%#@#ndash; in its contemporary empirical version $@#*^%#@#ndash; modern philosophy, both Continental and Atlantic, was deeply engaged with the ecclesiological question (Olivetti 1992). This philosophical attention attributed special theoretical relevance to observation of certain socio$@#*^%#@#hyphen;religious phenomena. This was particularly true in the classical era of the philosophy of religion $@#*^%#@#ndash; in the specifically modern meaning of the term $@#*^%#@#ndash; especially from Hume and Kant through Hegel. This emerged in the attempt to consider and represent the tension between philosophical ecclesiology and theory of society (a tension that implies themes such as secularization, the relationship between church and state, the relationship between religion and morality, and the process of social differentiation and its limits). Thus the ecclesiological question, as a close relationship between the empirical and the theoretical sphere, plays a crucial role for that aspect of the crisis of ontotheological metaphysics known as philosophy of religion, regardless of the various solutions proposed by individual scholars. An exemplary case isReligionas the epilogue to Kant's transcendental program. Kant deals with the need to think and represent the church, but also with the contradiction of the more general assumptions this line of thought leads to. Another example is the classical (especially romantic and idealistic) theme of the opposition ofinvisibleandvisiblechurch.
Church
Authors: Diotallevi Luca
Published: September 2017

Sociology provides analytic perspectives for understanding specific ecclesiastic religious phenomena: that is, churches and church‐oriented religions. The first definition, dating back to Weber is that of church as a specific kind of religious organization which enforces its decisions by means of psychic coercion, granting, and withholding religious benefits (“hierocratic coercion”), in a regime of territorial monopoly. Over time, the sociological idea of church as a specific kind of religious organization has encountered problems and limits. The ecclesiological question appears characterized by both the need to – and the difficulty of – accounting for very high degrees of complexity and for the equally high degrees and multiple forms of differentiation. Finally, this question shows the double requirement of not ignoring the organizational dimension and not reducing church to this. This last point is assuming a more and more crucial importance. On the one hand, the changing climate of the church–state relationship and returning to a sort of moderate secularism asks that more attention should be paid to the renegotiations of the structural coupling of religion and politics. On the other hand, the new secularization trend implies ecclesiastical religious organizations have to face more dramatic challenges than other kinds of religious organizations.
Citizenship
Authors: Barbalet Jack
Published: September 2017

Citizenship refers to membership in a political community organized as a territorial or national state. The nature and content of citizenship varies with the form of state. Citizenship in the classic Greekpolisprovided membership to a political elite which controlled the state; modern liberal democratic citizenship provides opportunity to vote in a political cycle dominated by parties which attempt to manipulate and deceive the electorate. The subjective significance of citizenship lies in the benefits it provides: internally, for conditions and opportunities provided by the state's legal and distributive institutions; externally, in unconstrained and secure foreign travel and transit. After considering national citizenship, its global aspects will be examined.
City
Authors: Bairner Alan
Published: September 2017

Cities were a feature of all the great ancient civilizations. Relatively small by modern standards, they nevertheless facilitated a far more diverse range of activities than was possible in other forms of human settlement. The city and the urban way of life that accompanies it, however, inasmuch as they have interested sociologists, are of more recent origin and are closely linked to the rise of industrialism.
Civil Society
Authors: Ray Larry
Published: September 2017

Civil society is often understood as a defense against excessive state power and atomized individualism, which otherwise threatens to create conditions for authoritarianism. The term can be traced to Roman juridical concepts (
ius civile
), but its contemporary use to describe contractual relations, the rise of public opinion, representative government, civic freedoms, plurality, and “civility” first appeared in seventeenth and eighteenth‐century political philosophy. Thomas Hobbes's theory of the sovereign state (Leviathan) was premised on the existence of two branches of society – political and civil – tied by a “social contract” between subjects and the state. Surrender of sovereignty to the state protected society from the war of all against all. Although the political system was the dominant part, the civil and political were mutually sustaining systems, in which private activity, while governed by sovereign laws, was otherwise bound only by conscience and the rules of civic association. Disputing Hobbes's negative views of human nature, John Locke further enhanced the status of civil society as a space of association, contract, and property regulated by the law. When, for Locke, subjects entered a commonwealth of property they contracted authority to the state for their self‐protection, but they did so conditionally, and political rule is answerable to law derived from natural rights that inhere in civil society.
Civilization and Economy
Authors: Garner Roberta , Garner Larry
Published: September 2017

$@#*^%#@#ldquo;The economy$@#*^%#@#rdquor; is a social institution that is constructed and reproduced through human action, as human beings collectively produce their conditions of survival and well$@#*^%#@#hyphen;being. In sociological perspective, $@#*^%#@#ldquo;the economy$@#*^%#@#rdquor; is not reified as a thing or mechanism apart from human actions, interaction, and relationships.
Class and Crime
Authors: Chilton Roland , Triplett Ruth
Published: September 2017

There is a longstanding controversy over the importance of social class in the production of criminal conduct. Some argue that there is a strong relationship between social class and crime while others say there is little or no relationship. This controversy is often an argument over the the definition and measurement of crime, and the meaning of class.
Collective Action
Authors: McAdam Doug
Published: September 2017

The term $@#*^%#@#ldquo;collective action$@#*^%#@#rdquor; is hopelessly broad. Taken at face value, it could plausibly refer to
all
forms of human social action involving two or more people. Suffice 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
refers to
emergent and minimally coordinated 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 $@#*^%#@#ldquo;emergent$@#*^%#@#rdquor; is meant innovative lines of action that depart from taken$@#*^%#@#hyphen;for$@#*^%#@#hyphen;granted normative routines. $@#*^%#@#ldquo;Coordinated$@#*^%#@#rdquor; simply means that the various parties to the emerging conflict are attuned to one another and acting in awareness of this fact. Finally, the emphasis on change and/or resistance to change is designed to capture the adversarial or potentially conflictual nature of $@#*^%#@#ldquo;collective action.$@#*^%#@#rdquor;
Collective Consciousness
Authors: Wortmann Susan
Published: September 2017

Émile Durkheim sought to establish sociology as a discipline in its own right, distinct from psychology, and to understand and demonstrate the dependence of human beings upon their societies. These come together in Durkheim'sl'âme collective(collective mind). This concept, commonly referred to by sociologists as the “collective consciousness” or “conscience collective,” exemplifies the crucial role that society plays in human behavior. While theorists disagree about the ultimate role of the collective consciousness in Durkheim's oeuvre, it still provokes discussion, critique, and theoretical, empirical, and historical application.
Collective Trauma
Authors: Sztompka Piotr
Published: September 2017

Social change may have adverse effects – bring shocks and wounds to the social and cultural tissue – that result in trauma. This obviously happens when the change is harmful for the people, for example in times of war, famine, or earthquake; but this is true also of changes that are beneficial, expected, and defined as a victory by the people, as in the case of progressive reform, or successful revolution.
Collectivism
Authors: Badahdah Abdallah M.
Published: September 2017

Collectivism is a cultural orientation that emphasizes the importance of conformity, loyalty, social harmony, and preserving in‐group integrity. The construct of collectivism has a long history in the social sciences. Collectivism and its counterpart construct, individualism, are widely employed by contemporary social scientists.
Communism
Authors: Lovell David W.
Published: September 2017

Communism is examined in this entry in its two major guises: first, as a principle of social organization that has been advocated since at least the time of ancient Greece; and second, as a political movement and system of government that held power over a substantial part of the earth's surface during the twentieth century. Though communism may nowadays be most readily associated with the works of Karl Marx (1818–83) and his disciples, Marx grafted a historically specific project of socialism onto an idea of great antiquity. The core proposition of communism is that the private ownership of property must cease, because it is the major cause of social evils, including egoism, excess, and conflict. The ideal of a communist society substantially overlaps with utopia. However, the relationship between the communist ideal and the reality of communist states, by way of socialism, is not at all straightforward.
Community
Authors: Crow Graham
Published: September 2017

“Community” is concerned with people having something in common, although there is much debate about precisely what that thing is. The most conventional approach relates to people sharing a geographical area (typically a neighborhood), an idea captured in references to
local
communities. Place is central to such an understanding because of the assumption that people are necessarily brought together by the fact of living in close proximity. This view is contested by those who argue that shared place does not always promote social connections between people. It is an established axiom of urban sociology that modern city spaces can be characterized as anonymous and impersonal, devoid of the collective connectedness associated with the idea of “community.” Indeed, the theme of urbanization and increased geographical mobility leading to a loss of traditional patterns of community has been a very powerful one in sociological thought from the very beginning of the discipline. Against this background, the search for the basis of community has led other writers to highlight the importance of people being brought together by common interests or by common identities, neither of which requires co‐presence. Occupational communities such as the academic community provide one example of groups of people whose common interests derived from work‐based attachments may hold them together despite their being geographically dispersed, while religious communities illustrate the parallel point that a community of identity does not necessitate members being together in the same place. In this vein, Benedict Anderson has described nations as “imagined communities” whose members cannot possibly all have close, face‐to‐face connections.
Community
Authors: Crow Graham
Published: September 2017

“Community” is concerned with people having something in common, although there is much debate about precisely what that thing is. The most conventional approach relates to people sharing a geographical area (typically a neighborhood), an idea captured in references to
local
communities. Place is central to such an understanding because of the assumption that people are necessarily brought together by the fact of living in close proximity. This view is contested by those who argue that shared place does not always promote social connections between people. It is an established axiom of urban sociology that modern city spaces can be characterized as anonymous and impersonal, devoid of the collective connectedness associated with the idea of “community.” Indeed, the theme of urbanization and increased geographical mobility leading to a loss of traditional patterns of community has been a very powerful one in sociological thought from the very beginning of the discipline. Against this background, the search for the basis of community has led other writers to highlight the importance of people being brought together by common interests or by common identities, neither of which requires co‐presence. Occupational communities such as the academic community provide one example of groups of people whose common interests derived from work‐based attachments may hold them together despite their being geographically dispersed, while religious communities illustrate the parallel point that a community of identity does not necessitate members being together in the same place. In this vein, Benedict Anderson (1991) has described nations as “imagined communities” whose members cannot possibly all have close, face‐to‐face connections.
Community and Media
Authors: Cross Simon
Published: September 2017

$@#*^%#@#ldquo;Community$@#*^%#@#rdquor; and $@#*^%#@#ldquo;media$@#*^%#@#rdquor; are independent sociological terms that when combined in the notion of $@#*^%#@#ldquo;community media$@#*^%#@#rdquor; refer to adaptations of media technology for self$@#*^%#@#hyphen;directed use by a given community. They typically involve small$@#*^%#@#hyphen;scale media platforms serving the communication and information exchange needs of people who share a bounded geographical location such as a neighborhood, village, town, or even a city. However, since people no longer interpret their community allegiance solely by reference to the geographical place in which they live, this definition can be broadened to include computer$@#*^%#@#hyphen;based $@#*^%#@#ldquo;communities of interest$@#*^%#@#rdquor; where geographically dispersed individuals commune on topics of common interest, although they may never actually meet physically.
Compulsory Heterosexuality
Authors: Anderson Eric
Published: September 2017

Popularized by Rich (1981), compulsory heterosexuality is the cultural assumption that both males and females are biologically predisposed to heterosexuality. The assumption that biology excludes a naturalized explanation of homosexuality limits humans to only heterosexual attraction. Therefore, the operation of compulsory heterosexuality usually involves the hegemonic manner in which heterosexuality is reified and naturalized, while homosexuality is considered the product of either psychological dysfunction or personal deviant choice. From this understanding homosexuality is deviant because it is thought to go against supposed natural inclinations. Hegemonic understandings of heterosexuality have often been supported by the misconception that other animals are also exclusively heterosexual, even though Bagemihl (1999) has shown homosexuality, as temporary sexual behavior and as a form of long‐term relationship coupling, exists widely throughout the animal kingdom.
Compulsory Heterosexuality
Authors: Anderson Eric
Published: September 2017

Popularized by Rich (1981), compulsory heterosexuality is the cultural assumption that both males and females are biologically predisposed or otherwise preordained to total heterosexuality. The assumption that biology excludes a naturalized explanation of homosexuality or bisexuality limits humans to only heterosexual attraction. However, because some individuals are sexually attracted to members of the same sex, the operation of compulsory heterosexuality necessitates the hegemonic naturalization and reification of heterosexuality, while homosexuality and bisexuality are considered the product of either psychological dysfunction or personal deviant choice. From this perspective homosexuality and bisexuality are deviant, because they are thought to go against supposed natural inclinations. Hegemonic understandings of heterosexuality have often been supported by the misconception that other animals are also exclusively heterosexual, even though Bagemihl (1999) has shown that homosexuality, both as a temporary sexual behavior and as a form of long‐term relationship coupling, exists widely throughout the animal kingdom.
Comte, Auguste (1798–1857)
Authors: Orenstein David Michael
Published: September 2017

Auguste Comte named sociology and established the French
realist
approach to the subject. He was born Isidore Auguste Marie François‐Xavier Comte on January 19, 1798 in the French Mediterranean city of Montpellier during the aftermath of the great French Revolution. In his early teens he rejected the conservative Roman Catholic monarchist views of his parents and declared himself a republican and a free thinker. A prodigy in mathematics, at 15 he passed the nationally competitive entrance exams for the prestigious École Polytechnique, but had to wait a year until he met the minimum age of admission. A charismatic student leader, in April 1816 Comte was expelled from that school and Paris when a student demonstration was used as an excuse to purge anti‐monarchist students. Dropping his first name, he returned to Paris as Auguste Comte in July.
Conflict Theory and Crime and Delinquency
Authors: Williams Christopher R. , Arrigo Bruce A.
Published: September 2017

Much of the sociological and criminological mainstream assumes that society is organized around and characterized by consensus; however, conflict theorists place the process of discord at the center of cultural, institutional, and organizational dynamics. While a number of theoretical variations have emerged from within the general conflict tradition, they share a few basic assumptions. First, conflict theorists assume that in more complex, industrialized societies, values and interests diverge at certain points of social difference. Second, conflict theorists recognize that power and resources are differentially distributed. Consequently, some social groups are in a better position than others to have their own values and interests adopted in a formal capacity and subsequently embedded in the policies and practices of social institutions. Thus, matters of social and cultural significance are points of division and deep struggle rather than points of agreement and commonly shared interest.
Consciousness Raising
Authors: Ryan Barbara
Published: September 2017

Consciousness raising (CR) was a cornerstone of radical feminist organizing in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Many of the women involved in the anti‐war, New Left, and Civil Rights Movements were disillusioned by the end of the 1960s as they found themselves relegated to the role of providing services (including sex) to men, the official leaders of these movements (Evans 1980). In the Civil Rights Movement and in the New Left, many women became unwilling to assume a back seat to men. Instead, they began small consciousness‐raising groups to understand what had happened to them in male‐defined social movements, and how they could organize on the basis of sex (gender) to form their own movement for women's equality. They spoke of themselves as members of the women's liberation movement, rather than a women's rights movement (Echols 1989).
Consumer Culture, Children's
Authors: Cook Daniel Thomas
Published: September 2017

Children's consumer culture refers to the institutional, material, and symbolic arrangements which organize a young person's involvement in, and movement through, the early life course in terms of commercial interests and values. Children are both subject to and arise as subjects in consumer contexts. The meanings which adhere to commercial goods are at once imposed upon children, childhood, and their social worlds and are taken up by children as resources with which they create selves, identities, and relationships.
Consumer Movements
Authors: Mayer Robert N.
Published: September 2017

Consumer movements are the organized actions of individuals in pursuit of greater equality in the relationship between buyers and sellers. While consumer movements rarely resort to revolutionary violence or even civil disobedience in pursuit of their goals, these movements are engaged in life and death issues, like the safety of food, drugs, and automobiles. Consumer movements, once confined to affluent countries like the United States and Sweden, are now found in formerly socialist countries like Poland and Russia and less developed nations like Nigeria and Bangladesh.
Consumers, Flawed
Authors: Pugh Allison J. , Miller Candace N.
Published: September 2017

Flawed consumers is a term coined by Zygmunt Bauman to capture how ideas about the poor have changed as societies in the contemporary west transformed from production to consumer economies.This entry defines and explains the concept and explores its implications for scholarship on family consumption, inequality, and consumer politics. It concludes by suggesting ways in which the term can be refined and extended and identifying areas of profitable future research.
Consumption
Authors: Ryan Michael T.
Published: September 2017

Consumption has been defined by economists in utilitarian terms as individuals taking care of their needs and maximizing their utilities in market exchanges, with the act of consumption taking place for the most part in private life. Even Marx saw it this way when he conceptualized the production process in four moments: production, distribution, exchange, and consumption. He saw the first three moments as a socialized process determined by the social relations of property and production. While the shares of consumption for individuals were determined by property and production relations, the moment of consumption was a matter for individuals in their private lives. Veblen and Mauss were the first social theorists to detect and conceptualize a social logic of emulation and competition for prestige and power in consumer practices. Competition for prestige was not invented in market economies and societies; it could be found in the gift$@#*^%#@#hyphen;giving rituals that Mauss analyzed in tribal cultures. It could also be found in the idle pursuits of nobles in agrarian societies when useful work was considered ignoble and when indolence, warfare, sports, sacred activities, governing, and academic pursuits or devotion to the beaux arts were deemed appropriate because they were thought to have no practical significance, even if they actually did have social significance. So while acts of consumption are the acts of individuals, they also are organized through a social logic of emulation and competition for prestige and power.
Consumption, African Americans
Authors: Chin Elizabeth
Published: September 2017

The topic of African Americans and consumption is fundamentally engaged with slavery, US racial politics, social inequality, and Civil Rights activism. Central questions include the consumption
of
African Americans, and consumption
by
African Americans. Because much theory on consumption implicitly assumes a normative consumer who is white and middle class, consideration of African Americans and consumption has made important challenges to theories claiming to broadly account for all Americans or all consumers. Understood in the context of the structural inequalities of American society, African American consumption is not in and of itself different from normative (white, middle‐class) consumption. Rather, it is enacted within constraints, pressures, limits, and opportunities that give that consumption particular form and content. Put another way, it is only partly true that, for instance, a Barbie is a Barbie is a Barbie. The Barbie consumed by the poor African American girl in urban Detroit must be understood differently from that same Barbie, consumed by a well‐to‐do middle‐aged male Caucasian collector in Santa Barbara. The larger social and political context makes consumption and consumers intelligible and meaningful. This point is applicable to all consumption. However, the importance of social, political, and historical context in relation to consumption is powerfully evident in the case of African Americans and consumption.
Consumption, Cathedrals of
Authors: Ryan J. Michael
Published: September 2017

George Ritzer has critiqued and built upon Marx's definition of the means of consumption to develop his own definition as “the settings or structures that enable us to consume all sorts of things” (2005: 6). These “new means of consumption” (a term used interchangeably with “cathedrals of consumption” by Ritzer) are more generally related to a wider field of goods and services and tied to production, distribution, advertising, marketing, sales, individual taste, style, and fashion. They are concerned not just with shopping but also relate to the consumer's relationship with entertainment and consumption‐oriented settings such as theme parks, casinos, and cruise lines, and other settings including athletic stadiums, universities, hospitals, and museums, the latter of which are surprisingly coming to resemble the more obvious new means of consumption. Examples include shopping centers such as West Edmonton Mall or the Mall of America, themed restaurants such as the Rainforest Café, and “brandscapes” such as Chicago's Nike Town. Such settings are considered important not just for their changing role as consumption settings, but also for the ways in which they are altering consumption more generally and the role many of them play as powerful American icons in the world (Ritzer & Ryan 2004).
Consumption, Experiential
Authors: Falk Pasi
Published: September 2017

$@#*^%#@#ldquo;Experiential consumption$@#*^%#@#rdquor; refers to consumption patterns and practices in which the experiential aspect gains a central role, thus rendering the utilitarian and economic aspects a less significant status as the motivational factors of consumer behavior. The centralization of the experiential aspect implies an emergence of a consumer mentality which is oriented toward the realm of representations rather than mere need satisfaction. Consequently, the rise of experiential consumption is closely linked to the following three historical trends at work in the coming of the (western) consumer society, roughly from mid$@#*^%#@#hyphen;nineteenth century onwards.
Consumption, Food and Cultural
Authors: Blank Grant
Published: September 2017

Everybody eats to live but food is more than nutrition. Food is a powerful carrier of cultural meaning. Food touches many core issues in sociology and social life, like social stratification, poverty, and prestige, class, gender roles, consumption, nationalism, and globalization. These cross‐pressures generate rich collections of meaning. Local meanings as they are modified by culture, institutional context, class, politics, and history make food a rewarding research subject.
Consumption, Girls' Culture and
Authors: Best Amy L.
Published: September 2017

Modern girlhood can hardly be understood without attention to the influence of commodities and practices of consumption over modern constructions of self. For a large number of girls in modern America, participating in the consumer realm is a defining feature of life as a girl. Yet, the meaning of girls’ consumption has changed considerably over time. The explosion of the Internet, the emergence of segmented marketing as an alternative to mass marketing, the arrival of an organized feminist movement, and demands for external regulation by consumer advocacy groups all come to bear upon the distinct historical relationship between girls and consumption.
Consumption, Mass Consumption, and Consumer Culture
Authors: Belk Russell W.
Published: September 2017

Consumption, mass consumption, and consumer culture are a growing focus in contemporary life as well as in social science theory and research. Daniel Miller (1995) even suggests that consumption is replacing kinship as the central theme in anthropology. Consumption is the most basic of these concepts, but not the least contentious. From the Latinconsumere, to take up, consumption means to acquire. But other meanings include using up, burning, wasting, and decaying. In the first case consumption adds; in the others it subtracts. In current practice, the term may refer either to using an object or to both acquiring and using it. In the broader usage, consumption also includes such supporting activities as attending advertising, shopping retail displays, interacting with salespeople, engaging in word of mouth, and searching online for a good or service. This more common view holds that consumption consists ofactivities potentially leading to and actually following from the acquisition of a good or service by those engaging in such activities.
Consumption of Music
Authors: deNora Tia
Published: September 2017

Music consumption has been a central topic in music sociology over the past three decades. Pursued through quantitative (Bourdieu 1984) and qualitative (DiMaggio 1982) methods, classic work in the area has highlighted music's role as a medium of status distinction. In more recent years, the links between taste and status have been shown to be, in the American context at least, more complex, the highbrow/lowbrow divide modulating into an omnivore–univore model (Peterson & Simkus 1992).