bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Planetary Wave Characteristics in the Lower Atmosphere Over Xianghe (117.00°E, 39.77°N), China, Revealed by the Beijing MST Radar and MERRA Data
Authors: Huang Chunming , Zhang Shaodong , Chen Gang , Zhang Siyu , Huang Kaiming
Published: September 2017

Using observation data from the Beijing mesosphere‐stratosphere‐troposphere radar from December 2013 to November 2014, together with the Modern Era Retrospective analysis for Research and Applications data, the dominant planetary waves (PWs) in the lower atmosphere over Xianghe (117.00°E, 39.77°N), for example, quasi‐16‐day and quasi‐10‐day oscillations, were identified and investigated. These two kinds of PWs displayed similar seasonal and height variations, indicating that they may have similar generation sources and dissipation processes. For both of them, near the tropospheric jet, significant zonal amplitudes could be observed in winter and spring months; quasi‐constant phase or partial vertical wavelength larger than 100 km was present in the zonal wind in December, March, and April, indicating that they were quasi vertical standing waves near the tropospheric jet. The calculated refractive indexes of these two PWs were significantly negative in the lower troposphere (3.5–5 km) and near the tropopause (15–20 km), and the resulted strong wave evanescence or even wave reflection could explain the observed quasi standing structure of these two PWs and height variations of their wind amplitudes. Their estimated zonal wave numbers in every month both showed the prevailing eastward propagation. Furthermore, we investigated the impact of PWs on the background wind by Eliassen‐Palm fluxes and divergences, which indicate that both the quasi‐16‐day and the quasi‐10‐day PWs, especially the latter, may contribute significantly to the construction and maintenance of the tropospheric jet. We also found that the tropospheric jet magnitude and height were both intensively modulated by the quasi‐16‐day and quasi‐10‐day PWs.
Oedipal Conflict
Authors: Lamb‐Books Benjamin
Published: September 2017

Oedipal conflict is a distinguishing mark of Freudian psychoanalysis and Freudian social theory more generally. Oedipal conflict refers to the psychosocial antinomy between early polymorphous sexuality and the normative, tolerable sexual practices of society. During the Oedipal stage of development, the child feels intense sexual emotions of both love and hate toward his or her closest caregivers, feelings which the child comes to repress. The Oedipal crisis is only overcome through separation anxiety, triadic interpersonal conflict, and the formation of a superego.
Food Sovereignty
Authors: Ambalam Kannan
Published: September 2017

Food sovereignty is an emerging conceptual framework of global food politics, which not only challenges the fundamentals of the current food regime, but proposes a set of tangible policy directions to address contemporary food crises including starvation, hunger, and malnutrition. Food sovereignty is generally defined as the right of people to healthy and culturally accepted food produced through ecologically sound practices and sustainable production techniques. The peasants' movement
Via Campesina
played an instrumental role in the emergence of the concept of food sovereignty. Launched at the World Food Summit in 1996, food sovereignty encourages traditional methods and indigenous knowledge in agricultural production, protects rights of farmers related to natural resources to produce foods and upholds people's right to determine appropriate policy choices on agriculture and food. By advocating that small farmers should themselves have full control over the production system and natural resources, food sovereignty places small farmers and food production systems at the centre of the food regime. Further, it adopts agroecology principles, which focus on producing quality food products without negatively affecting the environment and natural resources. This is critical to ensure sustainable food production. The practical applicability of food sovereignty remains a major challenge for the developing countries.
S
un
B
enwen (1892–1979)
Authors: Xiaohong Zhou , Tong Yali
Published: September 2017

Sun Benwen (1892–1979) was a sociologist and educator who is considered one of the most influential figures in early Chinese sociology. He received his BA degree from Beijing University, his MA from the University of Illinois, and his PhD from New York University. From 1921 until 1926, Sun studied sociology in the United States with F.H. Giddings, R.E. Park, and W.F. Ogburn, so his sociological ideas were profoundly influenced by the psychological school and the cultural school. Back in China, Sun became a professor of sociology at Shanghai Daxia University and Fudan University from 1926 to 1928, when he moved to Nanjing and spent the rest of his life there teaching at the National Central University (renamed Nanjing University in 1949), establishing the Chinese Sociology Community, and editing
The Journal of Sociology
.
Postsecular Society
Authors: Dillon Michele
Published: September 2017

Postsecularism was construed by Jurgen Habermas to convey the new societal consciousness necessary to deal with the failures of, a now contrite, modernity. The construct recognizes that religion persists in secularized societies and has ethical resources that can be used to reroute the Enlightenment vision of social progress back on track. This entry notes the shift in Habermas's thinking from his earlier emphasis that religion has no place in the public sphere because it distorts communicative rationality, and discusses the normative obligations that postsecular society requires of religious citizens and secular citizens; the former, to translate their religious ideas into a secular vocabulary, and the latter, to meet religious citizens as their equals in civil society. Key tensions in Habermas's construal of the postsecular include his stark categorical differentiation between religious and secular citizens, and his explicit exclusion of nonmainstream religious traditions.
Autoethnographic methods
Authors: Anderson Leon
Published: September 2017

Autoethnography is a genre of qualitative research in which the ethnographer is a complete member in the social world or realm of experience that is being studied. While criticized by some scholars as lacking rigor, autoethnography has gained popularity in sociology, communication studies, and other social science disciplines since the 1990s. Evocative autoethnography adopts postmodern sensibilities and nontraditional social science writing styles. Analytic autoethnography embraces a realist ethnographic paradigm and a commitment to theoretical analysis. Field notes, analysis of personal documents, and interviews are common data collected by autoethnographers. Key features of autoethnographic inquiry: visibility of self, strong reflexivity, researcher engagement, vulnerability, and a rejection of closure. Autoethnographers predominantly publish on issues related to family life, emotional personal experiences, gender and sexual identity, occupational activities, and leisure participation.
Desertification
Authors: Ambalam Kannan
Published: September 2017

Desertification is land degradation in arid, semiarid, and dry subhumid areas resulting from various factors. It is a multifaceted phenomenon caused by complex interactions of a number of physical, biological, political, social, cultural, and economic factors impacting the socioeconomic conditions of millions living in the drylands. Desertification is one of the major global environmental as well as developmental issues largely because of its impact on agriculture growth, food production, and rural livelihoods. Though the phenomenon of desertification is very old, the scientific understanding of, and the efforts made to address it, are recent. Today, communities all over the world have taken various measures to combat desertification under the framework of the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD). Overall, there is insufficient evidence to show the extent of progress that has been made in combating desertification. In some of the areas, the progress, or lack thereof, has yet to be determined.
Boudon,Raymond (1934–2013)
Authors: Hamlin Cynthia L.
Published: September 2017

The French sociologist and epistemologist Raymond Boudon is best known for his defense of methodological individualism and liberalism, and his nonutilitarian notion of rationality in the explanation of social phenomena. He was the author of a vast body of work on diverse subjects, including education, social stratification, social mobility, the sociology of knowledge, and values and beliefs. Three closely related themes circumscribe Boudon's sociology: antideterminism, antiutilitarianism, and antirelativism. With Michel Crozier, Alain Touraine, and Pierre Bourdieu, Boudon was part of the second generation of French intellectuals who helped to solidify sociology as an academic discipline in France.
Downward Mobility
Authors: Wilson George
Published: September 2017

Trends and causes of downward mobility in the United States are discussed in general terms and along race and gender lines. Rates have been rising in the post‐2000 period, and structural causes such as deindustrialization and globalization, as well as dynamics associated with healthcare costs, marital status, and evolving human capital requirements, are identified as the culprits. Relatively high rates of downward mobility based on minority and gender status are also explained by continuing discrimination in the labor market.
Visual Research Methods
Authors: Pauwels Luc
Published: September 2017

Visual research methods in social science exemplify the view that valid and unique insights into culture and society can be acquired by carefully observing, analyzing, and theorizing its visual dimensions and manifestations: the visible behavior of people and aspects of material culture. This array of methods ranges from analyzing existing or “found” visual data from a variety of sources to the production of visual materials by the researcher (as intermediate data or as end products to communicate results). However, visual methods also include approaches that try to more actively involve the field under study through using visual materials in interview situations to trigger partly unanticipated factual information and projective comments (visual elicitation), or to prompt the subjects of research to become producers of their own visual data and views (respondent‐generated visuals) for scholarly or activist purposes. Visual approaches in social science do not just provide tools to collect or produce visual data but also embody opportunities to communicate insight into culture and society in novel ways (through data visualizations, visual essays, films, and multimedia products).
Sense of Place
Authors: Kharlamov Nikita A.
Published: September 2017

Sense of place refers to the phenomenological relationship between humans and collectives, and their environments. This relationship has been investigated in various ways. Humanistic geography focuses on the human phenomenological texturing of abstract space into meaningful places. Environmental psychology studies place evaluation and place attachment. Sociology and cultural anthropology emphasize the moral ordering of emplaced communities and the collective meaning of place, particularly in indigenous communities.
Plastic Words
Authors: Baehr Peter
Published: September 2017

“Plastic words” evokes a class of terms that are amorphous, misleading, pseudoscientific – and omnipresent. Comparable to George Orwell's Newspeak, plastic words possess a formulaic character that impedes independent thinking. The entry describes plastic words and applies the concept to the widespread use of “phobic” language (Islamophobia, homophobia, xenophobia, ecophobia, etc.).
Debunking
Authors: Baehr Peter
Published: September 2017

Debunking is a rhetorical style that challenges respectable mores and official definitions of reality. Ridicule and polemic are the defining features of debunking, though sociologists also seek to employ debunking in a more scientific way. This entry examines the American milieu that invented debunking, examines the debunking articulation of the American sociologist Peter Berger, and briefly mentions some criticisms of the debunking mode.
G
ehlen,
A
rnold (1904–1976)
Authors: Magerski Christine
Published: September 2017

Arnold Gehlen is one of the most controversial figures in German intellectual history. Gehlen's commitment to National Socialism is mostly seen in close connection with his theoretical focus on institutions. According to Gehlen, what man requires above all is order, that is, protection through institutions. However, the scope of Gehlen's sociology reaches beyond the necessity of order. Its strength lies less in the theory of institutionalization than in the attempt to comprehend change, that is, the conceptual clarification of the interplay between radical innovation and institutionalization.
Agential Realism
Authors: Shotter John
Published: September 2017

In placing the agential cuts – that is, the distinctions we make between subjective and objective “things” in different places at different times in our inquiries – we do not uncover pre‐existing facts about such independently existing “things,” we bring different versions of these “things” into existence.
Dyadic Imaginary
Authors: Hidalgo Danielle Antoinette , Royce Tracy
Published: September 2017

The dyadic imaginary is a theoretical framework that builds upon Chrys Ingraham's widely referenced heterosexual imaginary. Whereas Ingraham challenges feminist sociology to critically examine the institutionalized nature of heterosexuality, sociologists Danielle Antoinette Hidalgo, Kristen Barber, and Erica Hunter likewise call for a re‐evaluation of dyadism as the default, taken‐for‐granted norm for social scientific inquiry into intimate relationships. The dyadic imaginary is an ideology that conflates love and coupledom, obscuring and illegitimating nondyadic intimate and sexual relationships. Locating the dyadic imaginary entails noticing and critically analyzing how dyadism functions as an ideology, highlighting what is rendered invisible by the ideology, and challenging the naturalizing discourse that often attaches itself to discussions of love. Given the pervasiveness of the dyadic imaginary, nondyadic intimate and sexual relationships are often rendered invisible and unnatural in both academic and mainstream representations of love.
Gemeinschaft
and
Gesellschaft
Societies
Authors: Waters Tony
Published: September 2017

“
Gemeinschaft
and
Gesellschaft
societies” refers to definitions established by the German sociologists Ferdinand Tönnies and Max Weber, who described “community and society.” Both theorists drew contrasts between a modern society dominated by rational calculations in
Gesellschaft
(roughly, “market society”) and the traditional, affectual values of
Gemeinschaft
(roughly, “community”). Both saw a strong contrast between these two types of society and regarded the transition from one to the other as being at the heart of the Industrial Revolution of the nineteenth century. Tönnies viewed this shift as a positive development, in which
Gesellschaft
would eventually overwhelm
Gemeinschaft
. In contrast, Weber was of the view that, even as Gesellschaft became more important in the modern world, the two still coexisted while repelling each other. As society becomes more modern and focused by Gesellschaft, it also becomes more banal.
Water, Scarcity of
Authors: Hoekstra Arjen Y.
Published: September 2017

Worldwide, freshwater demands from the agricultural, industrial, and municipal sectors have been continually rising during the past century and are projected to keep increasing in the coming decades. Freshwater availability, however, is limited, constrained by precipitation patterns. Growing freshwater scarcity constitutes a major risk for the global economy, aggravated by the expected effects of climate change. Improving water allocation and use efficiencies will probably be insufficient to stabilize water consumption and will need to be complemented with policies aimed at the stabilization of the growing demands for water‐intensive commodities.
Fat Studies
Authors: Jennings Laura
Published: September 2017

Fat studies is a relatively new interdisciplinary field characterized by its critical approach to western society's views of fatness and fat people. Fat studies research projects vary widely but share some basic tenets. First, societies' attitudes toward fatness are socially constructed. Second, antifat constructions cause great harm to fat people and constitute discrimination against them. Third, some groups benefit from these constructions and actively work to maintain and spread them. Fourth, all claims and assumptions about fatness are suspect, as is any terminology coined as part of antifat constructions. Fat studies is therefore a political project as well as an academic field.
Credentialing
Authors: Brown David K.
Published: September 2017

Credentialing is defined first in its broader societal context, then in terms of its primary research locus in the sociology of education. The relative authority of third parties in producing credibility in social relationships of various kinds is critical to credentialing processes. The history of the sociological study of credentialing is traced through major theoretical and empirical contributions to the topic. Potential areas of future research are outlined.
Sexting
Authors: Simpson Brian
Published: September 2017

Sexting is an activity most commonly associated with young people that consists in sending sexual images of oneself or others via mobile communications. While it can be considered a form of sexual expression, sexting also raises issues of privacy, harassment, and harm, particularly when it is nonconsensual.
Proletariat
Authors: Beilharz Peter
Published: September 2017

“Proletariat” is a dead word – for some. Like others of its kind, it keeps coming back, as changing forms of inequality impress themselves on analysts and critics. The proletariat remains a feature of contemporary life even as its representations shift from industry and revolution (Marx) to casualized workers in service capitalism, where the new specter is that of the precariat. The world over, most people still are compelled to sell their labor power: here things both change and remain the same. The workers still toil on.
S
heng Chih

, Original Domicile
Authors: Wang Fu‐chang
Published: September 2017

This entry traces the historical meaning of
Sheng chih
, “original domicile,” in Chinese society before 1950 and its social and political functions in Taiwan after 1950.
Sheng chih
, which literally refers to one's ancestral native place in terms of province, not only has been important for personal identity since imperial times, but also became a basis of the state's institutional design of national power allocation and political representation in the Republic of China's Constitution, enacted in 1947.
Sheng chih
took on a new meaning in postwar Taiwan, however, and became an important source of tension between local Taiwanese and migrants from the Chinese Mainland, who relocated under the Kuomintang (KMT) regime after 1949. National political institutions representing all Chinese provinces were rebuilt in Taiwan to sustain the migrant regime's claim of being the only legitimate government of China, and this led to the Mainlanders' domination in Taiwan's national politics.
Sheng chih
eventually lost its political function as a result of the democratizing transition, which effectively eliminated past political discriminations on ethnic grounds. After the 1992 amendment of the Household Registration Act, one's original domicile was replaced by birthplace in the official registration.
General Social Survey
Authors: Schutt Russell K.
Published: September 2017

The National Opinion Research Corporation (NORC) at the University of Chicago initiated the General Social Survey (GSS), which is funded by the National Science Foundation's Sociology Program and other sources, to allow analysis of social trends by supplying replicated longitudinal measures over as many as 42 years (1972–2014) and to provide social scientists and their students with ready access to high quality data and the opportunity to propose their own research questions for inclusion in the national GSS survey. Administered annually until 1994 and in English until 2006, the GSS is now conducted biennially, in both English and Spanish versions. Since 2010 the GSS sample has used a three‐wave, rotating panel design: respondents participate in three waves of the GSS for a total of four years. By 2012 the GSS had collected extensive survey data on 57,061 individuals; it had an annual sample size of 1,500 through 1992 and double that upon its biennial administration, which began in 1994. The value of the GSS has been enhanced through survey questions that are also used in comparable survey programs in 57 other countries. GSS data are widely available to universities, instructors, and students. The value of the data set is reflected in thousands of publications.
Lustration and Transitional Justice
Authors: David Roman
Published: September 2017

Lustration encompasses a set of transitional justice measures, which use different methods to address the presence of persons associated with undemocratic regimes in the state apparatus of transitional countries. Three major lustration systems – exclusive, inclusive, and reconciliatory – are based on three specific methods –exclusion, exposure, and confession – that mirror three major clusters of transitional justice – retributive, revelatory, and reconciliatory. Lustration cannot be reduced to a mere instrumental process of transitional justice; it carries profound symbolic meanings in transitional societies, affecting both trust in government and interpersonal trust.
Ebayization
Authors: Madik Vladimir , Ahuvia Aaron C. , Izberk‐Bilgin Elif
Published: September 2017

eBayization
is an alternative theoretical lens to George Ritzer's McDonaldization thesis to describe the economic practices and consumer trends in today's information‐driven, postindustrial societies. While the McDonaldization thesis holds that many aspects of American society have become increasingly structured around principles of
efficiency
,
calculability
,
predictability
, and
control
that make society resemble a McDonald's restaurant, and lead to a culture characterized by homogeneity and predictability, Ahuvia and Izberk‐Bilgin suggest that today's postmodern form of economic and social organization is better characterized by the processes of
eBayization
. In this view, v
ariety
,
unpredictability
, and
market‐mediated control
rather than
efficiency
,
calculability
, and
predictability
seem to be the new organizing principles of postindustrial societies.
Suicide Bombing
Authors: Hassan Riaz
Published: September 2017

Suicide bombing is lethal violence involving the targeted use of self‐destructing humans against a perceived enemy to create fear and mayhem in order to undermine the state's ability to maintain public order. It is associated with endemic and protracted conflicts caused mainly by territorial occupation, dispossession, and citizenship rights. It is a weapon of the militarily challenged in asymmetrical conflicts between state and nonstate actors and is becoming a weapon of choice among terrorist groups because of its lethality and its effectiveness.
Ie
‐Society
Authors: Yonemura Chiyo
Published: September 2017

A society comprised of
ie
units, such as village communities, feudal clans in shogunate society, and the state is known as an “
ie
‐society.”
Ie
is usually translated as “a Japanese family or house”; however,
ie
has a broader meaning.
Ie
goes further than just a transient collectivity, and represents an institutionalized body that is believed to maintain its identity across generations. In this unit the perpetual endurance of the family name, family property, and family business have priority.
Ie
has, at its core, the stem family and also includes collateral members, such as adopted children and servants.
Ie
is the fundamental nucleus of Japanese society, in premodern and modern times, and is interlinked with other
ie
to form
ie
‐alliances. Likewise, the bonding principle of the
ie
also embraces the family business entity, the wider society, and the state.
One Laptop per Child (OLPC)
Authors: Ames Morgan G.
Published: September 2017

One Laptop per Child (OLPC) was a nonprofit initiative (active 2005–2013) that was established with the goal of creating and distributing educational devices for children in the global south. Based on research from the MIT Media Lab, OLPC oversaw manufacture of one laptop and developed specifications for several more. This approach of this controversial project has been critiqued as technologically deterministic, imperialist, and utopian. Its projects have struggled with breakage, lack of infrastructure, and disengagement.
Digital Labor
Authors: Gregory Karen
Published: September 2017

Digital labor is an umbrella term for a range of both compensated and uncompensated activities that take place in and through digital and mobile technologies. Digital labor may specifically relate to formally recognized work that takes place in the digital economy – work such as coding, programming, and platform development – as well as to the support economies that make such formal work possible. However, the phrase “digital labor” is also used in a more provocative manner, to point to a myriad of obscured or hidden value‐generating digital practices that have extended the experience, time, and space of work. In this regard, the term “digital labor” draws attention to digital practices that blur easy distinctions between work, nonwork, play, leisure, and even life itself.
Amazon Mechanical Turk
Authors: Irani Lilly
Published: September 2017

This entry describes Amazon Mechanical Turk (AMT), its uses, and how the systems have been analyzed from economic, managerial, and sociological perspectives on work. Amazon Mechanical Turk is also suggested as a diagnostic system for understanding the labor processes of entrepreneurial outsourcing, speculative innovation, and “big data” industries.
Internet Governance
Authors: Merrill Kenneth
Published: September 2017

Internet governance is generally understood as the coordination of technical resources, policies, and norms that determine how information is exchanged on the Internet. While the practice of Internet governance predates its study, the spread of the Internet globally and into seemingly every aspect of modern life has caused the field to become an arena where a much broader set of social, political, economic, and cultural issues are negotiated.
Cyberfeminism
Authors: Casanova Gloria
Published: September 2017

This entry provides a definition of and a historical perspective on cyberfeminism, the digital feminist movement that arose in Australia, Canada, and England at the beginning of the 1990s and expanded thereafter. This movement promoted the need for women to interact through the World Wide Web to achieve gender equality in the access and production of Web‐based content. However, cyberfeminism also embraced the broader context of women‐oriented technology, including the biomedical realm and its implications for the modification of the traditional conception of a woman's body and identity. The article also provides a concise summary of the main ideas put forward by Sadie Plant, Donna J. Haraway, and Virginia Berret, some of the major contributors to the development of cyberfeminist thought.
Symbolic Capital
Authors: Tlili Anwar
Published: September 2017

Bourdieu's concept of symbolic capital aims to capture and explain the unequally distributed symbolic resources in society that usually go by the names of social esteem, credit, and honour. Unlike other forms of capital theorized by Bourdieu, symbolic capital forms within the intersection of relations and perceptions. To that extent, nothing in itself constitutes symbolic capital; rather, it is generated when a property, trait, or aspect of lifestyle is recognized – within interpersonal and intergroup relations – as a sign of social esteem and credit, individual and/or collective. While Bourdieu's symbolic capital echoes and incorporates several influences from classical anthropology (Mauss and Lévi‐Strauss) and sociology (in particular, Weber and Goffman), its analytic originality and usefulness reside in its relational and polyvalent edge, which can track and uncover the subtle workings of symbolic power that can come in multiple misrecognized and mystified forms attached to various manifestations of inequality, power, and privilege.
Black Immigrant andAfricanAmerican Relations in theUnitedStates
Authors: Brewton‐Tiayon Shanna
Published: September 2017

Relations between black immigrants and African Americans are largely shaped by three elements: (1) the immigrants' country of origin which shapes their socialization about race, (2) the racial hierarchy in the United States that subjugates blacks, and (3) immigrant generation, which impacts early experiences with African Americans and social identity processes. The literature primarily discusses relations between black immigrants and African Americans as one of social distancing, competition, and division, however there is also evidence of solidarity and shared experiences.
Actor‐Network Theory, Actants
Authors: Fuller Steve
Published: September 2017

Actor‐network theory has been the dominant school of science and technology studies since shortly after the English publication of Latour (1987). It reflects the combined efforts of Michel Callon, an engineer turned economist, and Bruno Latour, a philosopher turned anthropologist, both of whom have worked since 1980 at the Center for the Sociology of Innovation at L'Ecole Nationale Superieure des Mines in Paris. Together, they have provided, respectively, the “hard” and “soft,” or “policy oriented” and “academically oriented,” versions of their joint intellectual standpoint. Actor‐network theory has flourished in the context of the changing status of academic knowledge production in the European Union, where states influenced to varying degrees by neoliberalism have increasingly forced a traditionally protected higher education sector to justify itself by establishing ties with external “users and beneficiaries.”
Addiction and Dependency
Authors: Wincup Emma
Published: September 2017

Terms such as “addiction” and “dependency” are frequently used to describe patterns of illicit drug use, but there are no universal definitions of these terms. Addiction tends to refer to dependence on a particular drug or drugs which has developed to the extent that it has a severe and harmful impact on an individual drug user. Drug dependency can refer to physical and/or emotional dependency, and drug users may experience one or both forms. However, as a result of the inconsistent use of the terms, it is difficult to estimate the number of drug users who can be described as addicted or dependent.
Adorno, Theodor W. (1903–1969)
Authors: Schulz Markus S.
Published: September 2017

Theodor W. Adorno, a German‐Jewish social theorist and cultural critic, is best known as a central protagonist in the development of the Frankfurt School's Critical Theory.
Age Identity
Authors: Settersten Richard A. , Gannon Lynn
Published: September 2017

Age is important for societies, groups, and individuals (Settersten 2003a). For example, age underlies the organization of family, educational, work, and leisure institutions and organizations. Many laws and policies structure rights, responsibilities, and entitlements on the basis of age. Members of a society may share informal ideas about age and the changes that occur between birth and death, and individuals use these ideas to organize their lives. Age also shapes everyday social interactions.
Age Prejudice and Discrimination
Authors: Bytheway Bill
Published: September 2017

Agism is often defined as prejudice and discrimination against older people on the basis of age. Women are disadvantaged and oppressed as a result of sexism. Black and minority ethnic groups are disadvantaged and oppressed by racism. In similar ways age is held against older people due to agism.
Aging and the Life Course, Theories of
Authors: O'Rand Angela M.
Published: September 2017

The life course perspective provides an orienting framework for identifying the mechanisms that link lives and social structures in historical time. It focuses on the intersection between biography and history (Mills 1959). Accordingly, the conceptualization of time is a central concern.Biographical timeis defined by the links between chronological age, psychophysical development and/or decline, and successive social statuses.Biographiesare variable sequences of social statuses across the life span, with some statuses (but not all) highly correlated with chronological age.Historical timealso has chronological and social components, with the latter tied to events or periods that exert differential influences on biographies.
Al‐Biruni (973–1048)
Authors: Alatas Syed Farid
Published: September 2017

Abu Rayhan Muhammad ibn Ahmad al‐Biruni was born in the city of Khwarazm (modern Khiva) in what is today known as Uzbekistan; during his youth this city was part of the Iranian Samanid Empire. He spent his early years under the patronage of various rulers until he finally joined the court of Mahmud Ghaznavi, the ruler of an empire that included parts of what is now known as Afghanistan, Iran, and northern India. Al‐Biruni went to India with the troops of Mahmud and remained there for many years. During this time he studied Sanskrit, translated a number of Indian religious texts, and conducted research on Indian religions and their doctrines. Al‐Biruni was the first Muslim and probably the first scholar to provide a systematic account of the religions of India from a sociological point of view. Furthermore, his work is considered to be a vital source of knowledge of Indian history and society in the eleventh century, as it provides details of the religion, philosophy, literature, geography, chronology, astronomy, customs, laws, and astrology of India.
American Dilemma, an
(Gunnar Myrdal)
Authors: Kivisto Peter
Published: September 2017

In 1944 the Swedish economist Gunnar Myrdal published a monumental study on the social conditions of African Americans. Encyclopedic in its effort to cover all aspects of black life,
An American Dilemma
was a volume of over 1,000 pages that included analyses of major demographic, political, economic, and cultural forces that shaped the black experience in the United States. Furthermore, it provided extended discussions of social inequality and social stratification and the persistent role of prejudice and discrimination. It examined the institutional structure of the black community, including an analysis of patterns of leadership and prospects for collective action aimed at redressing a long legacy of racial hostility and oppression. After presenting a vast body of data regarding the past and present circumstances of blacks, Myrdal provided tempered, but nonetheless generally optimistic, conclusions about the future.
American Sociological Association
Authors: Hill Michael R.
Published: September 2017

The American Sociological Association (ASA) is currently the largest and most influential membership organization of professional sociologists in the USA. The ASA began its organizational life in 1905 when a small group of self‐selected scholars representing several existing scholarly organizations (including the American Economic Association, the American Historical Association, and the American Political Science Association) proposed a separate and independent American Sociological Society (ASS) (“Organization of the American Sociological Society” 1906). The first ASS Annual Meeting convened December 27–29, 1906, in Providence, Rhode Island, with 115 members and a full program of scholarly papers. In 1959 the organization's name was formally changed from the American Sociological Society to the American Sociological Association. As of March 2008, the ASA reported 10,830 paid members (of which 3,247 were students) and had a portfolio of short‐ and long‐term investments of about $5.8 million, a significant proportion of which supports ongoing ASA programs.
Annales School
Authors: Hall John R.
Published: September 2017

The interdisciplinary history movement named for the journal now called
Annales: Histoire, Sciences Sociale
emerged in France in the early twentieth century. The Annales School connects radically different approaches, for example, geography, economics, sociology, and anthropology. It displaces traditional narrative history centered on political, military, and religious elites, and embraces wide‐ranging theories, methodologies, and sources of data. The Annales School poses a continuing challenge for historical sociology and for sociology more generally: how to conduct social
science
under (historicist) conditions in a world where enduring traditions, practices, social institutions, and structures of life frame both everyday and “historic” events.
Anomie
Authors: Deflem Mathieu
Published: September 2017

The sociological concept of anomie can generally be defined as the lack or ineffectiveness of normative regulation in society. The term traces its roots as far back as Greek antiquity, religious traditions associated with the Christian Bible, and late‐nineteenth‐century French philosophy (Orrù, 1987). In ancient Greek, the term ‘anomia’ was used to denote a lack or deregulation of norms and law. Discussed at a time generally marked by societal disturbances, the term was applied to both a social state of affairs and to people who exhibited a lack of a proper regard for norms. Biblical writings adopted this Greek term in translating multiple Hebrew words that referred to various forms of evil, transgression, depravity, and sin. Gradually, this religious use of “anomia” became more narrowly understood to refer to an undesirable state of society, rather than shortcomings on the part of the person. During the Middle Ages, the concept of anomia declined in usage, but a revival took place in sixteenth‐ and seventeenth‐century England where the Anglicized expression “anomy” was used to refer to a state of lawlessness as opposed to a state of religious and social order based on natural law.
Anova (Analysis of Variance)
Authors: Munroe Paul T. , Salkind Neil J.
Published: September 2017

Analysis of variance (or ANOVA) is a statistical technique that tests the difference between more than two sample means. It is one of the simpler of the techniques that fall within the larger category “general linear model.”
Anti‐War and Peace Movements
Authors: Wolff Kristina
Published: September 2017

Anti‐war and peace movements are social movements that concentrate on many issues related to war, armed conflict, and violence. Often, they focus on calling for an end to a specific conflict, the abolition of war, and the elimination of weaponry, as well as the creation of nonviolent mechanisms to solve conflicts. Historically, strategies for change have included violent acts such as assassination, self‐immolation, and/or the destruction of property. However, the vast majority of people participating in these movements utilize nonviolent tactics. These approaches include wide‐scale boycotts, protests and marches, sit‐ins, speeches, letter‐writing campaigns, education and outreach, and voting.
Art Worlds
Authors: Crane Diana
Published: September 2017

One of the most influential ideas in the sociology of art, the concept of an art world provides the basis for a sociological orientation for understanding the arts, in contrast to artist‐centered approaches favored in disciplines other than sociology. Art worlds have both social and cultural components. The concept of an art world implies that art is a collective activity rather than the product of solitary genius. The cultural bases for co‐operation among actors in art worlds are shared commitments to artistic conventions that define what is considered to be “art” in a specific period and how it should be produced.
Asceticism
Authors: Giordan Giuseppe
Published: September 2017

The concept of asceticism shows the unity of efforts through which an individual desires to progress in his moral, religious, and spiritual life. The original meaning of the term refers to any exercise, physical, intellectual, or moral, practiced with method and rigor, in hopes of self‐improvement and progress. Notwithstanding the great flexibility that characterizes the application of asceticism, the concept always alludes to a search for perfection based on the submission of the body to the spirit, recalling the symbolic distinction between exterior and interior life.
Asch Experiments
Authors: Kinney William J.
Published: September 2017

Solomon Asch (1907–96) conducted pioneering social psychological experiments on conformity in group settings, and the processes by which we form impressions of other people. His conformity experiments are of particular importance, in that they displayed how the desire to conform to social pressures may be so great that it overrides our own perceptions. Asch emigrated from Poland to the United States in 1920, completed a PhD at Columbia University in 1932, and worked for 19 years as a faculty member at Swarthmore College. In addition to his seminal research on conformity and person perception, he wrote the classic text
Social Psychology
(1952). This text had a profound impact on the early development of the field.
Authoritarian Personality
Authors: Pettigrew Thomas F.
Published: September 2017

The authoritarian personality is a psychological syndrome of traits that correlates highly with outgroup prejudice. Three personality traits in particular characterize the syndrome: deference to authorities, aggression toward outgroups, and rigid adherence to cultural conventions. Thus, authoritarians hold a rigidly hierarchical view of the world.
Autoethnography
Authors: Holman Jones Stacy
Published: September 2017

Autoethnography is a theoretical, methodological, and (primarily) textual approach that seeks to experience, reflect on, and represent through evocation the relationship among self and culture, individual and collective experience, and identity politics and appeals for social justice. In investigating these relationships, autoethnography fuses personal narrative and sociocultural exploration. Autoethnographic inquiry and writing has long been practiced by journalists and novelists, historians and biographers, travelers and journal writers. However, development of the theoretical, methodological, and textual concerns and conventions of autoethnography among researchers and scholars in the human disciplines is more recent.
Adolescent Sexual Health
Authors: Kendig Sarah M.
Published: September 2017

The sexual health of adolescents is an important and controversial topic among policymakers, social researchers, and the public both in the US and internationally. Even though one in every five people in the world is an adolescent, with 85 percent of adolescents living in developing countries (World Health Organization 2008), and sexual activity in adolescence is common, the sexual development of adolescents is often seen as problematic and often deviant, especially for girls.
Americanization
Authors: Marling William
Published: September 2017

The word “Americanization” has been in use since US colonial times, but its ideological meaning has changed repeatedly. Shortly after the Revolutionary War, it was used to describe two aspects of the new nation. On one hand, the united colonies needed to create a common culture and to embrace further self‐fashioning. Common denominators in law, weights and measures, currencies, and even building materials had to be agreed upon, and people had to adopt these standards, embracing the new and giving up the old. Even Benjamin Franklin underwent this process, as Gordon Wood details inThe Americanization of Benjamin Franklin(2004). But to “Americanize” was also an internal ideological dynamic of new citizens, carried forward by discussion, debate, and simple expediency. The Americans needed systems of governance, roads, trade, schools, and social conventions. What would these be? The strongest sense they had of themselves as Americans came from the contrasts they felt to their homelands (if they remembered them) and to newer immigrants, who were a serious problem. The latter soon became the major focus: How could the foreign‐born pouring into the country be naturalized? From 1790 onward, dictionaries tell us, to “Americanize” meant to acculturate foreigners.
Balkanization
Authors: Rizova Polly S.
Published: September 2017

The term “balkanization” has come to mean a process of dividing an area, a country, or a region into several small hostile units. It was first coined by the
New York Times
in the aftermath of World War I to denote the disbanding of the Habsburg Empire into small, antagonistic states. The name is derived from the region that comprises the southeastern part of Europe, the Balkan Peninsula. Because of its geographical location and historical situation on the boundary between the Ottoman and Habsburg empires, the various states in this area have been subjected to constant conquest and political manipulation by outside powers. The Balkans comprise the states of Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Greece, Republic of Macedonia, Romania, Serbia and Montenegro. Sometimes Slovenia and the European part of Turkey are also included.
Beccaria, Cesare (1738–94)
Authors: McShane Marilyn D. , Williams Frank P.
Published: September 2017

Cesare Beccaria was born Cesare Bonesana, Marchese di Beccaria, in 1738 in Milan, Italy. His writings became associated with the classical school of thought on crime and punishment. Many of his ideas laid the groundwork for the reform of courts and laws throughout the world as well as the enactment of constitutions and proclamations of individual freedoms in emerging nations like the United States.
Bell Curve
Authors: Bierman Alex
Published: September 2017

The bell curve, also known as the normal distribution, provides a foundation for the majority of statistical procedures currently used in sociology. It can be thought of as a histogram of a continuous variable, but with such fine distinctions between outcomes that it is not possible to differentiate individual bars, so that the histogram appears to be a smooth line in the shape of a bell. Beneath this line is 100 percent of the possible outcomes, with the
x
‐axis describing the range of possible outcomes and the
y
‐axis describing the proportion or probability for each outcome.
Benjamin, Walter (1892–1940)
Authors: Farrar Margaret E.
Published: September 2017

German literary critic and philosopher Walter Benjamin was born into an upper‐middle‐class Jewish family in Berlin. In 1912 he began attending the University of Freiburg and graduated
summa cum laude
. However, his Habilitation,
The Origin of German Tragic Drama
, was ultimately rejected by the University of Frankfurt in 1925, and thereafter Benjamin was unable to secure steady academic employment. (
The Origin of German Tragic Drama
would later be regarded as a classic of twentieth‐century literary criticism.) In 1917 Benjamin married Dora Pollak, and a year later had a son, Stefan. For many years, Benjamin supported himself and his family through his work as a critic for
Frankfurter Zeitung
and
Literarische Welt
.