bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Psychology
Authors: Ellis Basia , Stepnisky Jeffrey
Published: September 2017

As it understands itself, psychology is the scientific study of individual behavior and mental processes. Broadly, psychologists divide their work into pure and applied fields. Pure researchers have adopted the investigative methods of the natural sciences (i.e., positivist empiricism and variants) and study the fundamental processes that are said to undergird human behavior. Applied practitioners have pursued “in the world” applications of psychological research: clinical and counseling psychology, community psychology, health psychology, educational psychology, industrial psychology, and sports psychology, among others.
Phronesis and Phronetic Social Science
Authors: Hammersley Martyn
Published: September 2017

Phronesis
was a term used by Aristotle to refer to the kind of tacit wisdom that could be acquired through engaging in practical action, and reflecting on this, notably in governing states or households. It amounts to knowing what is good or bad, what can and should be done, and also how to do it. It differs from both philosophical and scientific knowledge (
episteme
) and from technical knowledge or know‐how (
techne
). By contrast with the first, it is practice‐focused – in other words, it is not just about what is true but also about what it would be good to do in given circumstances. It differs from technical knowledge in that it is concerned with evaluating and prescribing goals as well as with selecting means. Equally important, and more fundamentally, it is not equivalent to grasping some theory or having command over a set of skills – it is actually closer to a virtue, or a set of virtues, that is part of the character of a person. More recently, the concept of
phronesis
has come to be applied to the kind of practical expertise characteristic of experienced practitioners in professional occupations of various kinds. This usage has arisen, in part, as a reaction against moves to subject professional work to “transparent” accountability in the context of the “new public management” (Ferlie
et al.
, 1996; Pollitt, 1990). Thus, Dunne (1998) emphasizes the centrality of
phronesis
to good professional practice, contrasting it with any attempt to reduce the latter to technique that is governed by targets and subject to performance assessment. He traces interpretations of the concept through readings of Habermas, Gadamer, Arendt, Collingwood, and Newman, before explicating the relationship between
techne
and
phronesis
in Aristotle. In some respects “phronesis” is close in meaning to “reflective practice” (Schön, 1983), and also to those approaches to understanding professional expertise that draw analogies with art and craft (e.g., Fish, 1998). There is also a significant parallel with Polanyi's arguments about the role of tacit knowledge in scientific work (Polanyi, 1966). The concept of phronesis prompts questions about the role that the knowledge produced by social science can have in informing policy and practice. It is at odds, for example, with the idea that these can be “evidence‐based” (Hammersley, 2013).
Prestige
Authors: Kantzara Vasiliki
Published: September 2017

Prestige originates from Latin and it initially meant conjuror's tricks, marking in this way its illusory but mostly symbolic nature in human societies. In social sciences the notion prestige denotes symbolic value expressed as a quality of honor and esteem that individuals and social groups may attain on the basis of desirable traits and achievement. Individuals and groups who enjoy high prestige are usually respected, esteemed, admired, and/or deferred to. Prestige is related to status, and both concepts denote processes and outcome of social evaluation that define standing in society. As a social phenomenon prestige characterizes social relations positioning individuals on a symbolic scale of social worth, which in turn formsinter aliathe basis of social hierarchy.
Panopticon
Authors: Marsh Heather
Published: September 2017

The Panopticon, designed by English philosopher Jeremy Bentham in 1791, is a prison consisting of, among other things, a center tower and an annular building. Inside the tower, an observer has the ability to see into all of the cells inside the annular building. Each cell has two windows: one window faces the tower and the opposite window allows light to pass through the prisoner's cell. Backlighting allows an observer, located in the center tower, to see into the cells and observe the occupants. Since those inside the cells are unable to see into the center tower (its windows are covered), the prisoners can never tell if (and when) they are being observed. Yet despite these architectural and design elements, the Panopticon functioned as more than a house of incarceration. The Panopticon, typically portrayed as a prison to control prisoners, was designed to serve as a modern solution to social problems. It could function as an asylum to control illness, a workhouse to control workers, or even to control a school full of children. Through the mechanisms of control, surveillance, and self‐discipline, the Panopticon became a way of deploying state power through various institutions.
Producer Cooperatives
Authors: Darr Asaf
Published: September 2017

Producer cooperatives are a form of work organization that differs from traditional capitalist organizations in two key features relating to governance structures. Traditional firms in advanced Western economies are typically owned and controlled by a capitalist or by a large number of external stock owners. With producer cooperatives, membership is restricted to those who work in them, and, more importantly, they are both owned and controlled by all or by a large part of their workforce (Cornforth 1992; Cornforth, Thomas, Lewis, & Spear 1988). Producer cooperatives also tend to implement democratic rather than non‐democratic governance structures. These democratic features include the election of management by all the workers who are also owners. In some cases, workplace democracy includes the implementation of a separate judicial system such as an internal court system with elected judges (see Darr & Lewin 2001 for a discussion of democratic justice regimes in taxi cooperatives). Unlike other collectives where members share the authority over decision‐making, a producer cooperative is usually characterized by a division of labor between those who only work and those who also or only manage (Cornforth et al. 1988: 155). Stated differently, collectives such as different forms of communes tend to implement participatory, or direct, democratic structures, while producer cooperatives tend to institute a representative, or an indirect, workplace democracy, or sometimes different combinations of direct and indirect democratic procedures in decision‐making (see Greenberg 1986: 30–2).
Pedagogy
Authors: Halasz Judith R.
Published: September 2017

Pedagogy refers to the philosophy and method of teaching and, by implication, learning. There are numerous pedagogical techniques, including lectures, discussion, peer instruction, and online delivery. While sociologists, the contemporary professoriate, and other instructors use a wide variety of traditional and critical pedagogies, there is a growing tendency to analyze pedagogy sociologically and to develop and apply teaching and learning practices that reflect insights from sociological theory and research. The number of academic journals devoted to critical and sociologically informed pedagogy, such as
Teaching Sociology
and
LATISS: Learning and Teaching in the Social Sciences
, has also increased.
Preference Theory
Authors: Hakim Catherine
Published: September 2017

Preference theory seeks to provide an empirically based predictive explanation for the differentiated choices women make between paid productive work and unpaid reproductive work in affluent modern societies after the contraceptive revolution gave women control of their fertility for the first time in history, and after the equal opportunities revolution of the 1970s. Preference theory posits that women are heterogeneous in values, life goals, and central priorities, being divided into three distinct groups: a minority of work‐centered women, many of whom remain childless by choice (about 20 percent of the adult population); a minority of home‐centered women, who often have many children and do little paid work after marriage (about 20 percent of the adult population); and a majority of ambivalent women who seek to combine paid work in the labor market with child‐bearing and child‐rearing (about 60 percent of the adult population). The three groups espouse distinctive value systems: individual achievement and competitive values of the marketplace, family values of sharing and caring, or an ambivalent attempt to combine the two. Preference theory also states that the three groups differ qualitatively, for example, in their different responses to particular social and economic policies or environments, to the point where they have conflicting interests on many policy issues. The theory constitutes a break with sociological and economic theories that treat all labor as essentially homogeneous. It was built up from longitudinal evidence on women's life goals and values across their employment and family careers as well as cross‐national comparative data on these topics.
Postcolonialism
Authors: Ashcroft Bill
Published: September 2017

Postcolonialism (or, often, post‐colonialism) deals with the effects of colonization on cultures and societies. Unlike “colonialism,” this term is of much more recent provenance, emerging in the late 1970s to describe a range of literary and cultural analysis of colonized and formerly colonized societies. As originally used by historians after World War II in terms such as “the postcolonial state,” “postcolonial” had a chronological meaning, designating the postindependence period. However, since the late 1970s the term has been used by cultural critics to discuss the various social, political, and cultural engagements of colonized people with imperial power, as well as the more widespread effects of colonization. It now describes neither a historical period nor a fixed range of societies but is best understood as a discourse generating a specific reading practice.
Popular Culture Icons: Michael Jackson (1958–2009)
Authors: Cashmore Ellis
Published: September 2017

A global television audience of over one billion watched the memorial service for Michael Jackson in July 2009. It was smaller than the 2.5 billion television witnesses to the funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales, in 1997, but a gargantuan gathering nevertheless.
Race and Ethnic Politics
Authors: Small Mario L.
Published: September 2017

The sociology of race and ethnic politics examines the impact of political factors on the status of racial and ethnic minorities, and the impact of ethnicity and race on politics and public policy. The field has investigated political movements, voting rights, immigration laws, internal migration patterns, the judicial system, citizenship, and, recently, ethnic identity.
Race/Ethnicity, Health, and Mortality
Authors: Frisbie Parker , Hummer Robert A.
Published: September 2017

Few issues are of greater importance for a society than the health of its members. And, based on the US Department of Health and Human Services Healthy People 2000 and 2010 reports, few issues are of greater concern than race/ethnic differentials in health and mortality in the United States. Any discussion of this topic places us squarely at a crucial interface of sociology (especially social demography) and social epidemiology. Although health (or morbidity) and mortality clearly are biological phenomena, one point of general agreement across these disciplines is that race/ethnicity is properly conceived as a sociocultural construct, not a genetic one. That is, we assume that if all race/ethnic compositional differences could be controlled, race/ethnic disparities in health and mortality would vanish – or at least be greatly reduced. A useful definition of an ethnic group is “a collectivity within a larger society having real or putative common ancestry, memories of a shared historical past, and a cultural focus on one or more symbolic elements defined as the epitome of peoplehood” (Schermerhorn 1970: 12). It is from this vantage point that the American Sociological Association (ASA) has endorsed and encouraged the continuation of research on race disparities across a wide range of topics (ASA 2003, as cited by Takeuchi & Williams 2003).
Radical Feminism
Authors: Shapiro Eve
Published: September 2017

Radical feminism arose in the US, Canada, and Britain out of young women's experiences within the civil rights, New Left, and anti‐war movements of the 1960s. Drawing on De Beauvoir's concept of “sex‐class” from
The Second Sex
(1952), radical feminism – emerging from what was known in the late 1960s as the women's liberation movement – developed an analysis of women's inequality at the social structural level and was a revolutionary (as opposed to reformist) movement that called for fundamental institutional and cultural changes in society. There were three key beliefs guiding radical feminist analysis and activism. First and foremost, radical feminism argued that gender was the primary oppression all women face in society. Second, it asserted that women were, either essentially or due to social construction, fundamentally different from men. Third, it held that social institutions and norms rely on women's subordination, and consequently are constructed to maintain and perpetuate gender inequality in all aspects of life, including around deeply personal facets like sexuality and reproduction.
Radio
Authors: Crook Tim
Published: September 2017

Human social life depends upon the constant development and varied uses of modes of communication. Social existence also relies on shared and contested understandings of the world. This necessitates the systematic study of communication and culture, and of their mediation through a variety of channels. The sociology of radio concentrates on the role of the radio medium in this process. Radio is now embedded in a complex intermedia world. It is not a medium that has been substantially substituted by the subsequent development of alternative modes of communication. But the changing nature of communications technology has led to a change in style of content and social function of radio in human communities.
Rape/Sexual Assault as Crime
Authors: Beichner Dawn
Published: September 2017

Prior to the mid‐1970s, the crime of rape was defined by most state statutes in terms of the British Common Law and involved the “carnal knowledge of a female, not his wife, forcibly and against her will” (Bienen 1983: 140). Legislative reforms, designed primarily to reduce rape case attrition, redefined the crime of rape in sex‐neutral language and replaced the single offense of rape with a series of calibrated sexual offenses and commensurate penalties (Largen 1987). Definitional changes resulted in an expansive category of sexual offenses, relabeled in such terms as “sexual battery,” “sexual assault,” or “criminal sexual conduct” (Bienen 1983).
Rapport
Authors: King C. Richard
Published: September 2017

Rapport is best understood as a set of practices and problems in qualitative research describing how simultaneously to get along with one's informants and get information from them. Specifically, it refers to the establishment of good relationships between interviewers or ethnographers and their research subjects. Rapport covers a range of moral and methodological concerns at the heart of the social inquiry, including empathy, immersion, participation, friendship, honesty, collaboration, trust, exploitation, negotiation, and loyalty.
Ratings
Authors: Lealand Geoff
Published: September 2017

Ratings is a term with wide currency, used in activities as diverse as judgments about standards of hotel accommodation to judgments of the economic health of corporations or nations (such as the Standard & Poor's Financial Strength Ratings). In contemporary media, however, the term has more specific meanings, especially in respect of television, radio, and film, but there is also considerable ambiguity and confusion in its use and application.
Rational Legal Authority
Authors: Bunzel Dirk
Published: September 2017

According to German sociologist Max Weber, rational legal authority represents a form of legitimate domination, with domination being the “probability that certain commands (or all commands) from a given source will be obeyed by a given group of persons” (Weber 1947: 324). While this probability implies a certain interest on the part of those obeying in the effects of their compliance, such interest can be diverse, and individuals may act upon calculated self‐interest, habituation, affection, or idealistic orientations. For domination to endure, however, it depends on the belief in the legitimacy of the command and its source. Accordingly, Weber distinguishes three types of legitimate domination. Charismatic authority rests upon a belief in the extraordinary, sacred, and/or exemplary qualities of the person commanding, while traditional authority calls for submission to those who are privileged to rule by historical convention. In contrast, rational legal authority differs in its unique combination of impersonality, formality, and everyday profaneness (Alltäglichkeit). It rests upon “a belief in the ‘legality’ of patterns of normative rules and the right of those elevated to authority under such rules to issue commands (legal authority)” (Weber 1947: 328).
Rawls, John (1921–2002)
Authors: Rank Mark R.
Published: September 2017

John Rawls is generally considered the most significant moral philosopher of the twentieth century. His work has had a profound influence upon political philosophy, as well as political science, sociology, economics, social work, theology, and law. For much of his career he was a faculty member in Harvard's department of philosophy.
Realism and Relativism: Truth and Objectivity
Authors: Tudor Andrew
Published: September 2017

Although the doctrine of relativism has a lengthy pedigree in philosophy – conventionally traced to the 5th‐century
bc
sophist Protagoras and his “man is the measure of all things” – it was only in the twentieth century that its full force was unleashed. The “linguistic turn,” the “cultural turn,” and the “postmodern turn” all brought with them profoundly relativistic claims. Late twentieth‐century thought sought to relativize aesthetics, ethics, and even that last bastion of Enlightenment certainty, natural science. But relativism takes many forms, and relativists do not speak with one voice. This is especially apparent where conceptions of science are concerned, for a very wide variety of relativistic arguments have been marshaled against the conviction that science provides privileged access to the independent, objective, external reality of nature. These range from the various perspectival relativisms that increasingly undermined philosophy of science orthodoxy from within, right through to the far‐reaching social constructionist relativism of the sociology of scientific knowledge and the so‐called science wars to which it gave rise.
Realism and Relativism: Truth and Objectivity
Authors: Tudor Andrew
Published: September 2017

Although the doctrine of relativism has a lengthy pedigree in philosophy – conventionally traced to the fifth‐century bce sophist Protagoras and his “man is the measure of all things” – it was only in the twentieth century that its full force was unleashed. The “linguistic turn,” the “cultural turn,” and the “postmodern turn” all brought with them profoundly relativistic claims. Late twentieth‐century thought sought to relativize aesthetics, ethics, and even that last bastion of Enlightenment certainty, natural science. But relativism takes many forms, and relativists do not speak with one voice. This is especially apparent where conceptions of science are concerned, for a very wide variety of relativistic arguments have been marshaled against the conviction that science provides privileged access to the independent, objective, external reality of nature. These range from the various perspectival relativisms that increasingly undermined philosophy of science orthodoxy from within, right through to the far‐reaching social constructionist relativism of the sociology of scientific knowledge and the so‐called science wars to which it gave rise.
Reconstructive Analyses
Authors: Carspecken Phil
Published: September 2017

Reconstructive analysis refers to a specific method of analyzing qualitative data based primarily on principles from universal pragmatics and critical theory, but employing adapted insights from hermeneutics and structuralism as well. It is used to study meaning and symbolically structured forms of experience at many different substantive levels: from analysis of singular meaningful actions to the analysis of themes and discourses that distinguish an entire culture or subculture. It is a non‐empiricist, interpretive method because its object of inquiry – meaning – is not objective in nature. Participants’ intuitive knowledge is first grasped tacitly by the researcher through some combination of maeutic interviewing, participant observation, and/or stimulated recall. Analysis then proceeds based on hermeneutically guided understandings of the tacit knowledge routinely employed by participants, in order to reconstruct (put into explicit discourse) what was formerly implicit. The standard by which to determine successful or unsuccessful reconstructions resides in the intuitive knowledge of one's subjects, who should recognize the researcher's formulations as being accurate.
Reference Groups
Authors: Ajrouch Kristine J.
Published: September 2017

The term reference group denotes a cluster of social psychological concepts pertaining to the relationship between individual identities, social norms, and social control. Reference groups may constitute a group into which individuals are members, as well as those groups to which one does not belong. The utility of the term lies in its ability to provide an explanation as to how social groups influence individual values, attitudes, and behavior.
Reflexive Modernization
Authors: Zinn Jens
Published: September 2017

Ulrich Beck introduced the term reflexive modernity (also called second modernity) by explicitly demarcating himself from postmodern approaches which would imply that current developments go beyond modernity (Beck et al. 2003).
Reflexivity
Authors: Alvesson Mats
Published: September 2017

Reflexivity can be broadly defined to mean an understanding of the knowledge‐making enterprise, including a consideration of the subjective, institutional, social, and political processes whereby research is conducted and knowledge is produced. The researcher is part of the social world that is studied and this calls for exploration and self‐examination. A reflexive researcher “intentionally or self‐consciously shares (whether in agreement or disagreement) with her or his audiences the underlying assumptions that occasion a set of questions” (Robertson 2002: 786).
Reflexivity
Authors: Alvesson Mats
Published: September 2017

Reflexivity can be broadly defined to mean an understanding of the knowledge‐making enterprise, including a consideration of the subjective, institutional, social, and political processes whereby research is conducted and knowledge is produced. Reflexivity is about dealing with a sense of uncertainty and crisis as increasingly complex questions are raised concerning the status, validity, basis and authority of knowledge claims.
Refugee Movements
Authors: Robinson Courtland
Published: September 2017

Refugee movements are defined as the involuntary migration of people across international borders as a result of generalized conflict and disorder or more particularized threats of persecution and physical insecurity. The concept of “refugee” is generally treated as one category within a broader typology of forced migration, which includes involuntary movements both within and across international borders and encompasses other categories such as internally displaced persons (IDPs), development‐displaced persons, and trafficked persons. In mid‐2013, the number of refugees was estimated at 11.1 million people, the majority of whom were from Asia and the Pacific, Africa, and the Middle East. Of these, just under half are female and about 46 percent are under the age of 18. About 5 percent of refugees are older adults (60 and older), most of whom are women. While millions of refugees continue to live in camps and settlements, where many have lived in protracted situations for at least five years (and often far longer), two thirds of the persons of concern to UNHCR now live outside of camps and half live in cities.
Regulation Theory
Authors: Jessop Bob
Published: September 2017

Regulation theory, which is also known as the regulation approach or regulation school, is a distinctive paradigm in critical political economy. It originated in Europe and North America in the 1970s in response to the emerging crises of postwar western economies and has since been applied to many other periods and contexts. Its name derives from its French originators, who describe it asla théorie de régulationorl'approche en termes de régulation. Similar ideas were developed by other schools. The core concern of all such work is the contradictory and conflictual dynamics of capitalism considered in economic and extraeconomic terms. In highlighting the latter, regulation theorists draw on, and contribute to, other social sciences. Regulation theory was influential in economic, urban, and regional sociology in the 1980s and 1990s. It remains influential in economic sociology, and, following the Asian, North Atlantic, and Eurozone financial crises, has become influential in the sociology of finance. Its influence was initially related to its Marxist roots and is now related more to its links to institutionalism, the study of varieties of capitalism, renewed interest in economic and financial crises, and, finally, to its heuristic power in organizing research on a wide range of sociological themes.
Reification
Authors: Beamish Rob
Published: September 2017

Sociologists from several perspectives have critically addressed reification. In general, reification refers to the act (or its result) of attributing to analytic or abstract concepts a material reality – it is a misplaced concreteness. Through reification people regard human relations, actions, and ideas as independent of themselves, sometimes governing them. The abstraction “society” is frequently reified into something that has the power to act. Society does not act – people do. Reification is an error of attribution; it is corrected by eliminating the hypostatization of abstractions into things or agents.
Religion, Sociology of
Authors: Dillon Michele
Published: September 2017

The sociology of religion is a core component of the discipline. It is central to the substantive and methodological questions discussed in the classical theorizing of Max Weber and Émile Durkheim and it comprises one of the more researched areas of inquiry among contemporary sociologists. The sociology of religion is concerned with the multiple ways in which religion is part of human society and how it influences and is embedded in institutional, cultural, and individual practices across varying social, geographical, and historical contexts. A common typology is to differentiate betweensubstantiveandfunctionalapproaches to studying religion. The substantive is concerned with the symbolic contents or beliefs and meanings within a discrete religious tradition worldview and the functional with religion's purposes or functions in society. Weber's (1946 [1915]) wide‐ranging analysis of the doctrinal tenets of the major world religions (e.g., Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Confucianism, Hinduism) exemplifies the depth of substantive investigation. And as elaborated by Weber, for example, inThe Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism(1958 [1904–1905]), a substantive analysis probes how particular religious beliefs (e.g., Calvinism) give rise to specific concerns about God, transcendence, and otherworldly salvation and how they are understood, acted upon, and given meaning in everyday life.
Religions, African
Authors: Bernardi Bernardo
Published: September 2017

African religions are based on oral cultures. They represent the old tradition surviving within a context deeply influenced by monotheistic religions, mainly Christianity and Islam, not only through their various denominations but also by supporting the attack of modern secularism.
Resocialization
Authors: Morrison Linda
Published: September 2017

Resocialization is a process of identity transformation in which people are called upon to learn new roles, while unlearning some aspects of their old ones. The need to learn new roles may result from voluntary or involuntary changes in status. When the role requirements of the new status conflict with an individual's earlier or primary socialization, the process of resocialization may be necessary. This process often requires an unlearning of internalized norms, values, beliefs, and practices, to be replaced by a new set which is considered appropriate to the new role.
Restrictive Covenants
Authors: Krase Jerome
Published: September 2017

Restrictive covenants are deed restrictions on particular kinds of real estate. For example, they may restrict use of land in a subdivision to residential purposes only and define the maximum and minimum square footage of homes to be built. They might also place restrictions regarding construction of other buildings on the property, as well as control activities that take place within its boundaries, such as rentals. Real estate professionals argue that such legal restrictions give a development a more standard appearance and when enforced, protect property values. Racially restrictive covenants were legally enforceable contractual agreements between property owners and neighborhood associations that prohibited the sale, occupancy, or lease of property and land to certain ethnic and racial groups. While now unenforceable by the courts, racially restrictive covenants had been one of the primary ways by which access to housing had been blocked for racial and ethnic minorities.
Retirement
Authors: O'Rand Angela M.
Published: September 2017

Retirement has traditionally been defined as an age‐related and permanent transition from an income status based on employment to one based on transfers and assets at the end of the work career. The relationship of retirement to age has been defined more by state and market institutions that have provided age‐based incentives to exit the labor force than by the physical aging process itself. These institutions developed since the late nineteenth century to replace income from earnings with pensions and to support access to health care systems through public and private insurance systems, although they vary across countries in their eligibility criteria and share of public funding support. However, all countries now confront major fiscal challenges associated with population aging, economic restructuring at a global level, and changing family and household arrangements that are motivating the reorganization of income‐ and health‐support policies. As such, the institution of retirement is changing.
Retirement Communities
Authors: Streib Gordon
Published: September 2017

Retirement communities are residential areas designated by federal law requiring, for the purpose of excluding younger residents, that at least 80 percent of their occupied dwelling units must have at least one person of 55 years of age or older living there, and that the communities must publish and follow policies and procedures that demonstrate an intent to be 55 and older housing. This legal definition does not describe the wide range of communities housing older persons. There are two major kinds of retirement communities: (1) Planned Leisure‐Oriented Retirement Communities, and (2) Continuing Care Retirement Communities (CCRCs). A third type is called Naturally Occurring Retirement Communities. These do not need to meet the precise legal requirements, but their age‐dense populations qualify them as a type of retirement community. In addition, public housing projects primarily restricted to low‐income older persons are mostly for retirees, although some projects permit younger disabled persons to live there.
Revolutions
Authors: Foran John
Published: September 2017

Ever since the French Revolution of 1789, revolutions have helped define the modern age. Though rare events, they have been associated with the emergence of, and transitions to, democracy, capitalism, and socialism. They are significant as often inspiring, human‐directed attempts to refashion the world for the better; they have also typically fallen far short of the goals of their makers. Their complexity has challenged scholars and revolutionaries alike – just as consequences have been unforeseen and outcomes uncontrollable by actors, prediction has proven next to impossible for scholars, and even the more modest goal of explanation has opened up extensive debates about the causes, makers, and outcomes of revolutions.
Risk, Risk Society, Risk Behavior, and Social Problems
Authors: Bora Alfons
Published: September 2017

Modern society is undergoing a deep‐rooted structural change. This change concerns both the internal relations between all parts of society and external relations with nature. During the nineteenth century, the industrial and technological revolution shook up the structures of a society that had been shaped traditionally by crafts and agriculture. In the same dramatic way, the “second modernity” or “risk society,” as Ulrich Beck (1992) calls the period at the end of the second millennium, transforms the nucleus of the industrial society. New technologies confront society with problems that are connected to the term “risk” (Perrow 1987). This is not so much because the quantitative amount of dangerous situations has increased – this amount might have been relatively higher in earlier societies. However, what has significantly changed is the fact that social actors and institutions are being made accountable for those dangers. The new quality of the risk society consists of socially generated risks – or, at least, of the increase in assigning dangers to social behavior. Socially caused dangers will regularly produce more social conflict than inevitable natural disasters. In this sense, science and technology contain risks for each individual, for social groups, for contemporary society as a whole, and for future generations. The examples for this diagnosis are numerous. One may think of nuclear energy, IT technologies, biotechnology, or nanotechnologies, for instance. All these technological innovations are embedded in rapid social change, entailing growing individualization, patchwork‐biographies, significant changes in employment structures and occupational situation, and an accelerating transformation of many established institutions of the welfare state. They make clear that the issue of “risk” is a central category in societal self‐observation and self‐description.
Rizal, José (1861–1896)
Authors: Farid Alatas Syed
Published: September 2017

José Rizal, Filipino thinker and activist, may be considered the first systematic social thinker in Southeast Asia. While the bulk of his writings were not in the social sciences, it is possible to extract a sociological theory from his works. This would be a theory that explains the nature and conditions of Filipino colonial society, and the requirements for emancipation.
Rizal, José (1861–1896)
Authors: Alatas Syed Farid
Published: September 2017

José Rizal, Filipino thinker and activist, may be considered the first systematic social thinker in Southeast Asia. While the bulk of his writings does not fall under social sciences, it is possible to extract a sociological theory from his work. This would be a theory that explains the nature and conditions of Filipino colonial society and the requirements for its emancipation.
Role
Authors: Franks David D.
Published: September 2017

Social role is a critical analytical tool for sociology and social psychology because it provides the nexus between social structure and individual behavior. The term role is a metaphor that comes from the theater and Shakespeare's famous statement about people playing roles with entrances and exits throughout their lives. Social structures consist of roles or performance parts that provide vehicles for the organization of selves and social relations. People have many different sides, and different roles can produce very different behaviors from the same person. In the past century, role theory has evolved from a framework wherein “causation” flows down from preexisting roles shaping individual behavior, to a theory wherein “causation” also flows upward from social interaction to establishing a constant recreation of structure.
Role‐Taking
Authors: Dandaneau Steven P.
Published: September 2017

Role‐taking refers to social interaction in which people adopt and act out a particular social role. If, adapting Shakespeare, society is a stage, then people may be thought of as social actors performing roles, each the other's fellow player. Rendered more clinically, and following Ralph H. Turner, role‐taking is a process of anticipating and viewing behavior as motivated by an imputed social role. From the child playing at being “a mother” to the adult playing at being “a police officer,” role‐taking is a ubiquitous feature of social life. This initial definition belies, however, considerable theoretical and, even more so, empirical complexity.
Rustbelt
Authors: Hagedorn John M.
Published: September 2017

The Rustbelt historically refers to the Great Lakes and Northeastern regions of the US that had been hardest hit in the 1970s by the decline in manufacturing. The term uses as metaphor the “rusting” of the physical plants of factories to represent the economic and social decay of the older industrial cities and their attendant social problems.
Rhizome
Authors: Genosko Gary
Published: September 2017

In the mid‐1970s the concept of the rhizome was borrowed from plant science by French philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. It describes the open, horizontal growth of underground tuber systems like common weeds. In their hands, the rhizome became a kind of critical thought that was contrasted with arborescent thinking of the tree‐root type that has dominated all the western tradition. The botanical origin was not respected. It quickly spilled over into animals, books, nervous systems, networks, and subcultures. The concept thus acquired flexibility.
Rousseau, Jean‐Jacques (1712–1778)
Authors: Wernick Andrew
Published: September 2017

Jean‐Jacques Rousseau was a musician, composer, playwright, novelist, and autobiographer, but is best known today for his social and political writings, most notably
The Social Contract
with its concept of the “general will” and its ringing first line: “Man is born free but is everywhere in chains.’ He was and remains a controversial figure. Ridiculed by Voltaire as a nostalgic primitivist, denounced by De Maistre as an impious revolutionary, yet venerated by Kant, Rousseau was a major influence on Hegel and Marx, has been enduringly significant as a political and constitutional theorist, and was accounted by Durkheim an important forerunner of (his own) sociology.
Referendums, Sociology of
Authors: Qvortrup Matt
Published: September 2017

A referendum (plural: referendums) refers to a vote by the citizens on a proposed or already existing law. In the early Roman Republic, the citizens were entitled to vote on laws passed by the Senate. In modern times, most state and national constitutions entitle voters to veto or support constitutional changes (e.g., in all US state constitutions except Vermont). Some countries and states – additionally – allow voters to vote on ordinary legislation, either upon the collection of a specified number of signatures (e.g., in Switzerland) or when the legislature submits a bill to them (e.g., in Denmark and Britain).
Refusals
Authors: Everetts Tiffani
Published: September 2017

Refusals are the most aggressive form of accounting behavior. While other types of accounts (e.g., excuses and justifications) involve the admission of guilt or responsibility for a behavior, a refusal is the outright denial of responsibility and the negative nature of an event. This type of account is the least frequently used because of its aggravating nature; often social harm is not remedied, and the victim is left with a negative impression of the actor.
Ressentiment
Authors: Tzanelli Rodanthi
Published: September 2017

The term's Germanic origins make it compatible and contextually relevant to the thesis Norbert Elias later outlined in theCivilising Process(Elias, 1978, 1982), which covered both state monopolies of violence and the management of human manners and emotions. In Nietzsche's writingsressentimentrefers to feelings of imaginary vengeance powerless groups project onto powerful (collective or individual) sociocultural agents. Highlighting (mis)communications between feeling, emotion, fantasy, and action, but also psychological analysis, political planning, and sociological interpretation of the world, the term was borne out of a Franco‐German political conflict (1870–1871) that adumbrated later controversies over the alleged “clash of [Eastern‐Western] civilisations” (Huntington, 1993).
Sacred, Eclipse of the
Authors: Acquaviva Sabino
Published: September 2017

The thesis of the eclipse of the sacred, which is built on psychological experience of the sacred and measures of its decline, moves in a different space than many other theories of secularization that – according to the scholars who defend the eclipse – give less importance to the problem of the level of experience and therefore to the presence of the sacred and instead concentrate on cultural and structural analysis. The theory of the eclipse proceeds from the definition of the sacred as experience (which nearly all individuals have). Sacred experience exists when an aspect of the real is recognized as “radically other” compared to natural reality. In different cultures and societies there are different hierophanies of sacred experience. This experience, lived as individual psychological reality and as the central nucleus of religiousness and religion, is considered to be the center around which religiously significant social acts and facts orbit.
Sacrifice
Authors: Ghiaroni Simone
Published: September 2017

Sacrifice is a ritual practice that includes the removal of goods (objects, vegetables, animals, human beings) from profane use or their destruction in relation to a supernatural sphere, but not necessarily with an offer or dedication. Sacrifices that involve the killing of a victim and the shedding of blood are called blood sacrifices.
Sadomasochism
Authors: Hekma Gert
Published: September 2017

The word sadomasochism refers to sexual pleasure in physical or psychic pain or humiliation. The psychiatrist Richard von Krafft‐Ebing coined the word in 1891. It stems from the names of the philosopher Marquis Donatien Alphonse François de Sade (1740–1814) and the novelist Leopold von Sacher‐Masoch (1836–95). Both men were primarily masochists. Sociological research on sadomasochism, its practitioners and their subcultures, is rare. In the arts, the subject is abundantly available and both literary historians and philosophers have discussed it more than have social scientists. The life and work of the men who lent their names to this sexual variation have been the subject of many studies, especially the Marquis de Sade.
Sadomasochism
Authors: Hekma Gert
Published: September 2017

Sadomasochism or SM refers to sexual pleasure derived from pain or humiliation. Published discussions on the subject led it to being acknowledged as a psychiatric concept in 1891. SM received little attention from the social sciences until 2005, with only a few notable historical studies conducted. The number of studies since then has quickly grown, mainly with regard to “leather” sexual subcultures and communities. Main topics being discussed include gender, race, sexual orientation, sex work, power, violence, play, transgression, relation to mainstream culture in terms of pathology, prejudice, secretiveness, acceptance, and transgression.
Safer Sex
Authors: Shepard Benjamin
Published: September 2017

Safer sex emerged as a strategy to prevent the spread of disease with the advent of the AIDS epidemic in the early 1980s. Richard Berkowitz and Michael Callen, two gay New Yorkers, first outlined the theory and application of safer sex in their 1983 tract, “How to Have Sex in an Epidemic.” As an alternative to the confusing, all‐or‐nothing early approaches to HIV prevention, safer sex offered a practical strategy. People were going to have sex. As such, it was best to do it in a safe, mutually satisfying, caring manner. Berkowitz and Callen presented a harm‐reduction approach now recognized around the world as a model that allows for both intimacy and protection.
Said, W. Edward (1935–2003)
Authors: Alatas Syed Farid
Published: September 2017

Edward W. Said was born to an Arab Christian family in Talbiyeh, Jerusalem when it was under British control, but spent most of his teenage years with his family in Egypt and Lebanon. The creation of the State of Israel in 1948 resulted in Said living in exile from Palestine for most of his life. He attended high school and college in the US, obtaining degrees at Princeton and Harvard and then beginning his career in English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, where he became University Professor in 1992.
Same‐Sex Marriage/Civil Unions
Authors: Heaphy Brian
Published: September 2017

Same‐sex marriage refers to a union by two people of the same sex that is legally sanctioned by the state, where identical rights and responsibilities are afforded same‐sex and heterosexual married couples. The term “gay marriage” is popularly used to refer to same‐sex partnerships or cohabiting relationships that are formally registered in some way as a “civil union” (variously known as civil partnerships, registered partnerships, and registered cohabitation), although the latter are in fact legally distinct from marriage. The term is also sometimes employed to talk about unregistered same‐sex couple cohabitation or partnerships acknowledged through commitment ceremonies. Few states currently afford same‐sex couples the opportunity to participate in marriage (those that do include Belgium, Spain, the Netherlands, and Canada, but see the following websites for detailed information on changing status in different countries:
www.marriageequality.org;
www.samesexmarriage.ca;
www.stonewall.org.uk
). Civil unions, civil partnerships, and registered cohabitation, which include some exemptions from the automatic rights and responsibilities afforded heterosexual married couples, are the most common forms of legal recognition. They offer some of the symbolic and material advantages associated with marriage, but with more limited legal status. At a global level, most same‐sex partners must currently rely on “do‐it‐yourself” affirmation and commitment ceremonies, or seek religious blessings where available.