bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Colonial and Postcolonial Cities
Authors: Hugill David
Published: December 2017

Colonial cities are urban settlements produced through colonization, a sociospatial process of dispossession through which a group of outside actors asserts dominion over lands occupied by indigenous peoples, generally at the behest of an imperial state.
Concentric Zone Theory
Authors: Reiffenstein Tim
Published: December 2017

Concentric zone theory stems from Ernest Burgess's planametric model of early twentieth‐century Chicago. The spatial distribution of land uses and social structures are mapped as a series of five rings that radiate out from the central business district. Immediately beyond the core lies a transitional zone of industrial land uses that gives way to a mix of tenements and slums populated by the city's poorest residents, often recent immigrants. This inner city is characterized by Burgess as transitional in two senses as it sees workplaces give way to residential functions while also being the landing point for those immigrants who as soon as they could afford to move out did so to adjacent rings of working‐class apartments, single‐family homes, and progressively more affluent suburbs.
Eurasianism
Authors: Outhwaite William
Published: December 2017

Eurasianism is a diffuse set of ideas based around the geographical region of Europe and Asia and often includes the idea of a special position of Russia and other states in the region.
Firestone,Shulamith
Authors: Spencer‐Wood Suzanne M.
Published: December 2017

Shulamith Firestone is a renowned early leader of the radical feminist movement. She developed a feminist historical materialism that theorized women's and men's distinct biological roles in reproduction, which led to the division of labor into sex classes, a division that drove the development of patriarchal sex stratification and its legitimating sexist ideology, followed by the development of social stratification, inequalities, and struggles between classes and castes. Firestone theorized that sex roles – the traditional family with women confined to the domestic sphere supported by men's public labor – social categories, and divisions by sex, class, and race could be eliminated with technology allowing birth outside the womb and technology replacing men's physical labor. Firestone advocated replacing patriarchal nuclear families with larger community households where there was shared housework and parenting.
Friendship
Authors: Frazer Elizabeth
Published: December 2017

This entry examines the ethical and political significance of friendship in classical and modern political and social theory, in particular analyzing the paradoxical ways in which friendship can be associated with virtue and with corruption, and with healthy and unhealthy patterns of social relations.
Geddes,Patrick
Authors: Scott John
Published: December 2017

Patrick Geddes (1854–1932) was a Scottish biologist, sociologist, and urban planner. Working with Victor Branford through theSociological Societyin London he published works on the regional and environmental context of social life and fragments of a systemic social theory to underpin this. He pioneered the study of the environment and globalization but was largely ignored during his own lifetime.
Gender and the State
Authors: Ertan Senem , Bayar Murat
Published: December 2017

A gender‐oriented approach to conventional definitions of the state suggests that the state can no longer be defined as an institution with the monopoly on the legitimate use of physical force. This is because states have typically allowed patriarchs to use coercion in the private sphere. The public and private divide has long determined the state's construction of gender and the relations between genders where private issues such as family relations have largely been left out of state regulations. Furthermore, women, homosexuals, and transsexuals have not been represented in the establishment or the maintenance of state institutions, and their citizenship rights have been subordinate to those of men.
Gender Roles
Authors: Huppatz Kate , Dagistanli Selda
Published: December 2017

”Gender roles” are understood as social practices that relate to gender identity. Academic and popular debate focuses on the functionality of “traditional” gender roles as well as the meanings and implications of changes in gender roles. The concept has been used by feminists to perceive gender as social and identify social problems but its explanatory value has also been challenged.
Gender Theory
Authors: Salerno Roger A.
Published: December 2017

Gender theory and gender studies focus primarily on the distinctions drawn between men and women, boys and girls, masculinity and femininity. In the past, theoretical debates about gender were carried on in relationship to the influence of nature and nurture in explaining the behavioral and psychological differences between the two genders. However, with the rise of second wave feminism and the gay liberation movements of the 1970s, and with the emergence of the linguistic and cultural turns at that time, distinctions between sex and gender became central to theoretical discourse. This entry examines the development of gender theory along these lines.
H
ayek,
F
riedrich
A
.
Authors: Butler Eamonn
Published: December 2017

F. A. Hayek (1899–1992) was an Austrian‐British economist and political scientist, best known for his work on business cycles and on spontaneous social orders. He explained business cycles as market disruptions caused by monetary policy mistakes, giving investors the “false signal” of artificially cheap credit, causing them to lengthen the capital structure unsustainably. On spontaneous orders, he argued that many human institutions, such as language, the common law, and markets, evolve without conscious design. We may not fully understand the rules (e.g., grammar), and they can be more complex, and process more information, than any single mind could comprehend. This, he explained, is why the “fatal conceit” of trying to impose a plan on such orders can prove so disastrous.
H
obbes,
T
homas
Authors: Slomp Gabriella
Published: December 2017

Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) is widely considered to be one of the greatest political philosophers in the Western tradition and a founding father of modern political thought. His examination of sovereignty is famous both for its insight and its endurance. Many readers see in Hobbes's political writings the underpinning for orientations as diverse as absolutism in domestic politics, realism in international relations, liberalism in economics, and legal positivism in jurisprudence; the accuracy of such claims forms the basis for rich debate. Hobbes's most well‐known work is
Leviathan
, published in 1651 and regarded as a masterpiece in the English language.
J
acobs,
J
ane
Authors: Ley Lukas
Published: December 2017

The American‐Canadian author and activist Jane Jacobs was a strong critic of modernist urban planning and renewal. Her analyses of downtown life revealed the importance of urban complexity and density. While not holding an academic degree, Jacobs influenced how urban life is studied and conceptualized across various disciplines, such as geography and anthropology. Her seminal work
The Death and Life of Great American Cities
showed how modernist planning ignored the diverse ways in which people inhabit and fashion urban spaces. Besides her offering of intellectual criticism, Jacobs played a vital role in North American urban activism by defending and building on the social and economic intricacies of downtown neighborhoods.
Komarovsky,Mirra
Authors: Reinharz Shulamit
Published: December 2017

Mirra Komarovsky (1905–1999) was an influential sociologist of the mid‐twentieth century whose career was rooted in Columbia University and Barnard College in the United States. In studies of unemployed men, men in college, women in college, and blue‐collar marriage, she combined foci on class and gender to illustrate the deleterious effects of rapid social change on role clarity. Her analytic framework combined structural functionalism and conflict theory, with an emphasis on cultural lag.
Lefebvre,Henri
Authors: Vradis Antonis
Published: December 2017

One of the most important Marxist theorists, Henri Lefebvre (1901–1991) was nevertheless largely underrepresented in the English‐speaking scholarly world until recent years. Lefebvre was key in introducing a Marxist theory that extended beyond traditional units and structures of power: in his critique of everyday life, in his understanding of space as a social product that in turn produces social relationships and subjects, and in his call for struggles that would reach below and beyond traditional power structures – and that would rise up against them. Lefebvre's call rings eerily familiar today, at a time when these same structures he criticized are faced with a major crisis.
L
ocke,
J
ohn
Authors: Uzgalis William
Published: December 2017

This entry provides a brief and general account of the life and work of the great seventeenth‐century English philosopher John Locke, including brief descriptions of his major works and major events in his life.
Metropolitan Fringe
Authors: Chutter Jennifer
Published: December 2017

Located on the edge of the city or suburbs, the metropolitan fringe blends industrial and/or agricultural lands with residential development or informal settlements. The uneven development of fringe areas makes it difficult to compare locations in order to develop theoretical frameworks because the role of industrial developers and real estate agents, municipal politics, the surrounding geography, and the type of industrialization all have varying degrees of influence.
M
ichels,
R
obert
Authors: Stolting Erhard
Published: December 2017

Today, Robert Michels is still widely read for his work
Political Parties
in which he formulated his thesis of an “iron law” which causes the internal structure of any organization to become oligarchic and conservative, despite its founders and members intending it to be egalitarian and democratic. Inevitably, this thesis and its consequences for democracy were widely discussed both in organizational and political sociology. Michels was a prolific author and keen observer not only of the socialist, nationalist, and fascist movements of the early twentieth century but also of the general social and intellectual changes since the French Revolution. Apart from stressing structural constraints, he proclaimed the importance of ideas, of collective feelings, and of their evolution. His other topics included the formation of elites, political leadership, the social roles of intellectuals, changing gender relations, and the evolution of social theory itself.
Mill,John Stuart
Authors: McCabe Helen
Published: December 2017

John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) was one of the leading intellectual figures of the nineteenth century, and is a founding father of liberalism, feminism, economics, and utilitarianism. His arguments against paternalism and moralism and in favor of freedom of speech, thought, and action are still used today. Best known in his lifetime as a political economist, logician, and campaigner for women's rights, Mill was a political activist and social reformer all his life, and was MP for Westminster between 1865 and 1868, helping pass the 1867 Reform Act and trying (unsuccessfully) to ensure women were included in the newly extended franchise.
Motherhood
Authors: Moore Sara B.
Published: December 2017

“Motherhood” is a term used to describe the expectations, experiences, and social structures associated with being a mother. This entry describes the initial reluctance of feminist theorists to meaningfully explore the concept of motherhood, as well as the limitations of conceptualizing motherhood within a nuclear, middle‐class context. The entry also addresses the relationship between motherhood and social inequality in terms of race, ethnicity, social class, and age.
Mumford,Lewis
Authors: Luccarelli Mark
Published: December 2017

Lewis Mumford developed a pragmatic social theory driven by specific, though long lasting, issues that define complex urban societies. Mumford theorized history as a set of variables and events driven by key constellations of power. These social formations could be altered with the right combination of expertise and ethical‐moral perspective.
Neighborhood
Authors: Aalbers Manuel B.
Published: December 2017

Neighborhoods can be defined in many different ways, for example by their urban morphological, economic, or social characteristics, but even if one were to agree on which combination of characteristics defines a neighborhood, there would still be the questions of context, scale, emotional attachment, and change. Furthermore, the concept of neighborhood is often confused with the concept of community or local community – this entry is not about community. Rather than viewing neighborhood change as a natural process, this entry emphasizes the power of agents/actors, linking the structure of the real‐estate industry to the development of the neighborhood. Landlords and banks are not merely automata of the price mechanism that steer the natural operation of the market, but should be seen as producing, or contributing to, processes of neighborhood change.
Neumann,FranzL.
Authors: Kettler David
Published: December 2017

The German‐born political theorist Franz Leopold Neumann (1900–1954) was prominent among the exile scholars who brought the contested legacy of German social theory to American social and political science after 1933, especially in the study of modern democratic and dictatorial states. Neumann characterized himself as a “political intellectual.” His record suggests that he meant by this an active political agent who draws on the work of more academic theorists to address questions encountered in political life, rather than the systemic questions constitutive of the emerging disciplines. Those efforts in turn challenge academic studies. Despite important differences among his writings as social democratic labor lawyer, exile scholar, and university professor, they agree in combining work toward a state constrained by the rule of law with a fundamental commitment to socially democratic organization and public policy, with special attention to the political management of the discordances between these objectives under varying historical circumstances. His study of National Socialist Germany,Behemoth, is a classic, and his writings on political theory remain challenging.
New Urbanism
Authors: Rees Amanda
Published: December 2017

New Urbanism has been described as the most important architectural movement in the United States since Modernism. It embraces the concept of environmental affordance, the belief that the built environment can inform attitudes and behaviors. New urban practitioners are critical of much of twentieth‐century urban design that propelled large‐scale post‐World War I suburban sprawl, and Modernist architecture. Drawing on prewar urban planning, new urbanists argue that by recreating walkable, mixed‐use, mixed‐income neighborhoods with civic architecture and green spaces, social, economic, environmental, historical preservationist, and democratic benefits will ensue. New Urbanism has been variously defined as romanticizing and reactionary, utopian, neoliberal, postmodern, as well as an antidote to postmodernism. Beyond the United States new urban developments are found in Europe, Asia and the Pacific, Canada and Australia, South America, and Africa.
O
akeshott,
M
ichael
Authors: Barker Rodney
Published: December 2017

Michael Oakeshott contrasted tradition with radicalism and utopia, habit with rationalism, the rule of law with mission driven states and collectivism, and freedom with collectivism. His work supported an opposition to radical or visionary government and politics, and a disposition in favor of existing distributions of social, economic, and political status and advantage, but only if that were consistent with limited government, in response to the social democratic reforms that followed World War II. His manner of argument was by the juxtaposition of favorable and unfavorable descriptions and ideal types.
P
areto,
V
ilfredo
Authors: Thorpe Christopher
Published: December 2017

Vilfredo Federico Damaso Pareto was an Italian engineer, sociologist, and political theorist. Pareto's most significant contribution to political theory is his theory of “the circulation of elites,” published in Italian in 1901. In part a reaction to the ideologies of democratic theory on the one hand, and Marxist communism on the other, the theory states that in any large‐scale society, political power is concentrated and remains in the hands of a minority elite. As history progresses political regimes rise and fall, but the underlying processes and dynamics by which change takes place are unchanging and cyclical. During his lifetime Pareto's work was appropriated by Italian Fascist ideologues, although Pareto never considered himself a Fascist. Pareto's work remains an important contribution to late nineteenth‐century “elite theories” of political change as well as comprising a central plank in the conceptual basis of US sociologist Talcott Parsons's structural functionalist theory of society.
Pattern Language
Authors: Salingaros Nikos A.
Published: December 2017

Specific geometrical configurations, spaces, structures, and surfaces act as catalysts for human contact. Those special sociogeometric settings define design patterns, which generate a healing effect through geometry and connective frameworks. Patterns link people with the geometry of the built environment to generate well‐being through their interactions. Good patterns free people from environmental stresses that could be making us feel anxious and unwell. A pattern language is a combinatorial framework akin to a spoken/written language for using design patterns. Every design, even the simplest, necessarily combines several distinct patterns, and the coherence (hence utility) of the result depends upon their proper combination. A pattern language is a source of information based on collective experience for constructing psychologically responsive and healthy environments. Computer scientists have adopted pattern languages to help run our modern society through information and communications technology.
Peace Studies
Authors: Behr Hartmut
Published: December 2017

Peace studies as a Western discipline is divided into a social science and a humanities‐oriented stream which hark back to different philosophical traditions and become manifest in opposing, but increasingly negotiated, hybrid politics as represented mainly by the United Nations and the United States in the former, and by local and grassroots movements in the latter case. It is a future challenge for peace studies of whatever coloration to propel and strengthen intercultural dialogue and peace education in both immediate conflict and appeased settings.
Public Space
Authors: Freiler Alix
Published: December 2017

Public space generally refers to open outdoor areas accessible to all people. It can encompass publicly owned and managed areas such as sidewalks, plazas, squares, and other recreational areas. Historically, public spaces have been indicators of vibrant neighborhoods; places for political discussion, activism, relaxation, and socialization. Toward the end of twentieth century, new critical perspectives emerged on the trend to blend the delineation between the public sphere and the private sector.
Public Sphere
Authors: Mele Vincenzo
Published: December 2017

The public sphere is that realm of social life where individuals can freely discuss societal questions and thereby shape public opinion. It constitutes an intermediate area between the state and civil society, in its narrowest sense, that is, where social relations are regulated by the market. It encompasses different levels – from a spatial concept that indicates the social sites where social actors exchange meanings, to the philosophical concept of “public use of reason,” which characterizes the essence of enlightenment. The boundary between public and private, together with the relative weight of each in contemporary society, is highly contentious and depends on several economic, political, cultural, and technological factors. The recent advent of “virtual space” has raised the question of to what extent the Internet can provide the foundation for a new public sphere.
R
icardo,
D
avid
Authors: Turner Bryan S.
Published: December 2017

David Ricardo (1772–1823) is a founding figure in classical economics and political economy. He was involved in the major political debates of his time, such as the corn trade, and also made lasting contributions to both micro‐economics and macro‐economics. His work on the law of diminishing returns and the labor theory of value was admired by Karl Marx. Recognizing that technological improvements could reduce the need for labor if not displace it, he anticipated the modern sociological debate about the deskilling of labor. Nevertheless in economic theory, his major contribution was the theory of comparative advantage, which states that, given international competition, an economy should specialize. Ricardo was a champion of free trade and so‐called laissez‐faire economics. While Ricardo is highly regarded in economics, his contribution to sociology in his theory of social classes has been neglected.
R
ousseau,
J
ean‐Jacques
Authors: Frazer Elizabeth , Outhwaite William
Published: December 2017

Jean‐Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) is notable for his contributions to social and political theory, and is a political thinker for whom relations of government are entwined with individual education, social relations, and cultural context.
Second Shift
Authors: Cassano Graham
Published: December 2017

Arlie Russell Hochschild finds that in two‐partner, heteronormative households where both partners work in the formal economy, the husband tends to have more leisure time, leaving most household labor and childcare to the woman of the couple. This constitutes the woman's Second Shift. Hochschild's argument has shaped recent scholarship in the social and political economy of the family, focusing attention on the gendered use of time and the gendered division of labor within many heteronormative households.
Sex Roles
Authors: Tyler Meagan
Published: December 2017

The concept of “sex roles” is used to account for differences in male and female behavioral patterns, and it links individual behavior and social norms, providing an understanding that gendered differences are not the result of immutable biology but are, rather, socially and culturally constructed. Despite being criticized from a variety of perspectives, the idea remains popular, although it should be noted that the terminology of “sex roles” has now been almost entirely replaced with “gender roles” in most of the social sciences.
Smart Growth
Authors: Perrott Katherine
Published: December 2017

Smart growth is an urban planning approach that emerged in the late 1990s to prevent sprawl through the management of new development. Smart growth promotes development that is compact, high density, and conserves open space and farmland. Growth that is smart mixes residential, commercial, and institutional land uses and fosters a distinctive sense of place. Neighborhoods provide a range of housing and transportation options, encourage walking, and are serviced by transit. The smart growth policy approach has been adopted throughout the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. A wide range of places and organizations support smart growth in principle, yet implementation is a greater challenge.
Social Contract
Authors: Plotica Luke Philip
Published: December 2017

The social contract is a concept employed in Western political and social thought to provide an account of the origin and/or logical structure of political society and its governing institutions. Social contract theories vary widely in their formulations and objectives, yet they all employ the legalistic notion of a voluntary, reciprocal, and binding agreement among free and equal individuals in order to describe the nature, foundation, and scope of political authority and obligation.
State
Authors: Berberoglu Berch
Published: December 2017

The state, with its vast political power that gives it sole authority to rule, is the most important and decisive institution in society and social life. The state arose some six thousand years ago with the rise of social classes and class divisions in society, when those who gradually began to accumulate wealth and power established the state to protect their wealth and privileges to maintain order so as to advance their own interests, as against that of the masses. Over time the state evolved from its despotic/absolutist to feudal to capitalist forms, while always maintaining its class character in serving powerful dominant class interests. While performing a number of important functions in society and maintaining law and order, the state has always served the interests of one or another class that has succeeded in maintaining its privileged position in society, or has been replaced by a new one throughout the course of human history.
S
trauss,
L
eo
Authors: Thorpe Christopher
Published: December 2017

Leo Strauss was a German‐Jewish political philosopher and classicist whose work represents an important contribution to twentieth‐century political philosophy. Strauss is best known for his theory of reading, which develops from his view of the irreconcilable relationship between politics and philosophy. For Strauss, contained within certain great philosophical works are a series of multilayered “esoteric” meanings, which coexist alongside more “exoteric” meanings. The esoteric meanings are concealed because they call into question and subvert the political status quo. The task of the philosopher is to identify and unravel these esoteric meanings. Based at the University of Chicago for most of his career, Strauss's work is understood as providing the ideological underpinnings of neoconservatism in North American politics.
Suburbanization
Authors: Scerri Andy
Published: December 2017

Suburbanization –the dispersal of populations from relatively dense centralized or polycentric into low density devolved settlements – emerged first in the United States and then in other Anglo‐American settler societies in the second half of the twentieth century. The phenomenon has increasingly spread to Europe, South and East Asia, and to a lesser extent, Latin America and Africa. Settler society suburbanization was initially driven by several factors, notably pressure from fossil fuel related industries and a cultural history of preferential treatment for affluent “white” populations. In Europe, similar economic and cultural pressures led to different outcomes. There, affluent populations remained anchored in well‐serviced urban areas, pushing poor and immigrant communities into often isolated and under‐resourced outer suburbs. Recently, observers of the settler societies have noted a similar trend, whereby relatively affluent and well‐educated groups are returning to dense urban areas. This “gentrification” is pushing relatively poor and unskilled groups “out” into suburbs that, for historical reasons, lack the public transport and community service infrastructure that are available in urban areas. Less pronounced in the Global South, a similar dynamic of gentrification is at work.
Terrorism
Authors: Winter Aaron
Published: December 2017

This entry on terrorism examines the definition and problems defining the phenomenon, types, and typologies developed and used to understand terrorism, its history and different approaches to periodization, and finally its study. Specifically, it looks at the history and development of terrorism studies in the 1960s and 1970s as an interdisciplinary expert field, and its growth post‐9/11 and in the context of the war on terror. This is followed by a summary of criticisms of terrorism studies, and a short history and overview of critical terrorism studies. Finally, it looks at the limited but important contribution to the study of terrorism from sociology and social theory.
T
önnies,
F
erdinand
Authors: Adair‐Toteff Christopher
Published: December 2017

Ferdinand Tönnies is one of the founders of sociology and his reputation rests primarily on his famous distinction between
Gemeinschaft
(community) and
Gesellschaft
(society). The distinction is not as sharp as is sometimes suggested, but Tönnies's two concepts continue to play important roles in understanding both rural and urban sociology.
Urban Ecology
Authors: Heneghan Liam
Published: December 2017

Urban ecology, as a natural science, emerged as a subdiscipline of ecology in the late twentieth century. However, the term itself was employed first by sociologists of the Chicago School a half century earlier. Urban ecology, in its earlier manifestation, was the application of theoretical insights and terminology from the emerging discipline of ecology to an understanding of urban social dynamics. In more recent developments, urban ecology is both an extension of ecology to examine urban ecological patterns but also interdisciplinary blending of social as well as ecological analysis to understand contemporary urban phenomena.
Urban Sustainability
Authors: Pires Sara Moreno
Published: December 2017

Over the past decades, changes in cities related to population growth, rapid sprawl in urban areas, increasing resource consumption and waste production, and climate change events have challenged the concept of urban sustainability. Social theory critiques relating to urban development have emphasized the need to interconnect decoupled and dematerialized economic development with social justice, cultural diversity, and environmental impacts mitigation, demanding yet more integration of objectives and approaches and more effective city governance and planning. The diversity of social, political, economic, and environmental paradigms associated with urban sustainability invites an eclectic view of the city as a complex socioecological system and signals the need to understand the synergies and trade‐offs between different dimensions. Questions of how to transform cities in times of complexity receive growing momentum and open the door to innovation, from theorists and practitioners, political scientists and policymakers to urban and community planners, economists, philosophers, artists, and technocrats.
Urbanization
Authors: Kumar Ashok
Published: December 2017

Urbanization is the process of migration in and around cities leading to both physical and social changes. The process of urbanization is linked to industrialization and yet scholars have conflicting views on the predominant motivators for this relocation. Since the end of World War II, cities have seen a further outward expansion, or “suburbanization.” However, these flows have also changed in recent years leading to new forms of urban change, from gentrification and accumulation by dispossession to counterurbanization. Finally, it is critical to make note of the emergent “global cities” that have arisen in an era of “globalization” as key sites of capital accumulation, circulation, consumption, and agglomeration.
Whyte,WilliamFoote
Authors: Kivisto Peter
Published: December 2017

William Foote Whyte (June 27, 1914–July 16, 2000) was a prominent ethnographer who spent most of his academic life at Cornell University where, in 1948, he was one of the first hires for the newly formed School of Industrial and Labor Relations. Worlds of work, not surprisingly given this institutional setting, became the main preoccupation of his scholarly career.
W
irth,
L
ouis
Authors: Siemiatycki Elliot
Published: December 2017

Louis Wirth (1897–1952) was a key member of the renowned Chicago School of urban sociology in the early to mid‐twentieth century. Best known for his classic essay “Urbanism as a Way of Life,” Wirth might more broadly be appreciated as a social theorist interested in space, social organization, and human behavior. Wirth's main contribution to modern social theory was to foreground the role of the city in shaping human behavior.
Young,IrisM.
Authors: Nagel Mechthild
Published: December 2017

Iris Marion Young was a premier philosopher of feminist and political thought. Her work is widely read across the humanities and social sciences, especially her classic essay “The Five Faces of Oppression.”
Affluent Worker
Authors: Elger Tony
Published: December 2017

One argument about the significance of affluence among manual workers is that it propels them into the middle class. Another is that they constitute a distinctive segment of the working class, different from other manual workers
and
white‐collar workers. Finally, some claim that their contradictory experiences and orientations do not set them clearly apart from other manual workers.
Bloch,Ernst
Authors: Garlitz Dustin
Published: December 2017

This entry focuses on the life and work of German philosopher Ernst Bloch (1885–1977). His scholarship in ideology critique, critical theory, political theory, aesthetics, and the philosophy of music are highlighted. Bloch's formative influences are evaluated, including his early studies in neo‐Kantianism, and his early experiences and friendships with Max Weber, György Lukács, and Georg Simmel. The entry demonstrates is how Bloch's work has been compared with the work of the Frankfurt School by many leading scholars, especially how it has been credited as influential in the work of Theodor W. Adorno and Walter Benjamin. Finally, Bloch's influence among contemporary critical theory is evaluated, including how his work has been influential and appropriated in the work of Slavoj Žižek, Douglas Kellner, Fredric Jameson, and in postmodernism. Bloch's theological influences are examined, as are his leading theories of utopia, hope, and the future.
Bolshevism (Leninism)
Authors: Gane Mike
Published: December 2017

Bolshevism emerged as a faction within the Russian Social‐Democratic Party in 1902, and its theory was developed extensively by Lenin. Its vision of revolution as a combination of peasant and proletarian revolution demanded a centralized party machine capable of working clandestinely in the conditions of Tsarist autocracy. After the revolution in Russia in 1917 in which the Bolsheviks seized power, and Lenin's death in 1924, a struggle for power developed between Stalin and Trotsky. At the end of the 1930s, this struggle became fratricidal and many of the Bolsheviks who opposed Stalin's reign of terror perished under it. Russian Bolshevism collapsed with the USSR in 1989, but its model continues in other communist states, notably in China, and continues to inspire a strand of philosophical thought.
Border Control and Immigration
Authors: Pugliese Joseph
Published: December 2017

A nation's sovereign status is predicated on securing and preserving its territorial spaces and political autonomy. The practices of border control play a crucial role in realizing these goals; they are deployed in order to surveil, identify, and screen prospective immigrants that wish to enter a particular nation. In the contemporary context, a complex array of border technologies are being deployed in order to control the flow of immigrants well before they reach the border. These electronic, networked systems of border control are effectively working to situate a nation's border in extra‐territorial spaces that can be termed the “pre‐frontier.”
Caste
Authors: Sahoo Sarbeswar
Published: December 2017

This entry discusses the transformation of caste in the Indian context. The entry starts with a discussion of the Indological and anthropological accounts of caste and then examines whether “caste” is essentially unique to Hinduism. Furthermore, the entry discusses the possibility of mobility within the ritual hierarchy of caste. In the final section, the entry shows how caste, once described by the Christian missionaries and the colonial state as an irrational traditional institution, has transformed into a modern entity and become a vital instrument of democratic mobilization in contemporary India.
Celebrity Society
Authors: Evans Jessica
Published: December 2017

The study of celebrity is a significant interdisciplinary growth area with established concepts that account for the historical development of celebrity (celebritization); the powerful identifications audiences and viewers have with mediated celebrity personae (intimacy at a distance); and the economic imperatives for the formatting and branding of celebrity names in market society (celebrity‐as‐commodity). Celebrity personae provide a structure not only for the organization of all persons operating in public but for concepts of individuality and models of modern subjectivity oriented to the asset of recognition. Celebrity society is an analytic concept marking out a certain territory in contrast to “celebrity culture.” Critical of the latter's focus on representation and textual analysis, it emphasizes celebrity as a historically specific social form in its own right, yet underpinned by what it analyzes as systematic interdependencies of individualization, mediatization, democratization, and commodification. Focusing on various components of celebrity production, marketing, distribution, and consumption, it allows for key moments of discontinuity as well as the long‐term continuities marking the history of celebritization.
Communism
Authors: Babayan Nelli
Published: December 2017

This entry discusses the original ideas of communism and shows how those were revised by its further iterations. The entry focuses on the largest and formerly most powerful communist country, the Soviet Union. It traces the developments in communist ideology to different party leaders and discusses how the ideology of communism was adapted.
Conservatism
Authors: Plotica Luke Philip
Published: December 2017

Conservatism is a family of doctrines that emphasizes human imperfection, tradition, social holism, hierarchy, the particularity of each society, and the historicity, continuity, and conservation of social order. Emerging in Western Europe as a response to the Enlightenment and the social upheavals of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, conservatism has since become one of the dominant social and political ideologies. In the mid‐twentieth century, neoconservatism developed in the space between liberalism and conservatism, combining a conservative vision of social order with more ambitious domestic and foreign policy goals.
Consumerism and Consumption
Authors: Vujnovic Marina
Published: December 2017

Consumerism refers to excessive consumption of material goods and services. Scholarship has shown that the study of consumerism today should capture the experiences not only of those who consume, but also of those who produce and those who place products and services on the market. The fashion industry is most commonly associated with overproduction and overconsumption. It is often used as an exemplar of consumerism and it has been severely criticized for creating class divisions, gender stereotyping, and adversely affecting the environment.
Content Analysis
Authors: West Mark Douglas
Published: December 2017

Content analysis is a systematic method for the analysis of communicative materials. The materials to be analyzed may include written materials, images, audio or visual recordings, or other cultural items, and the approaches to content analysis may be qualitative or quantitative. An objective coding scheme for the content is employed, dependent upon explicitly formulated rules, made on the basis of some theoretical justification.
Corporate Crime
Authors: Tombs Steve
Published: December 2017

Corporate crime has been a contested and often loosely defined term, but covers a range of illegalities produced by corporate actors. Such crimes have considerable economic, physical, and social costs. That said, these crimes have been relatively marginal to criminology and most useful work has proceeded at the margins of or beyond the narrow confines of criminology, seeking to develop integrative forms of understanding of the production of corporate crimes. Regulation has been a major site of academic research, albeit that disputes in this literature tend to coalesce around what regulation is and can be.
Counterfactual
Authors: Fuller Steve
Published: December 2017

A counterfactual is a contrary to fact conditional statement, which is often said to describe a “possible world.” In contrast, a hypothesis is a conditional statement whose truth value remains unknown until it is put to a test. A falsified hypothesis is thus tantamount to a counterfactual. In this respect, a Popperian methodologist is dedicated to demarcating the merely possible (i.e., the falsified) from the actual (i.e., unfalsified), without inferring that the actual is somehow necessary (i.e., true in all possible worlds). For Popper, the invalid inference from what is actual to what is necessary is made by those wedded to an inductivist approach to inquiry that too quickly associates trends and correlations with scientific laws. He called the specific form of this fallacy prevalent in the social sciences “historicism.”
Creationism
Authors: Christian Alexander
Published: December 2017

Creationismis a family of religious doctrines that attribute features of nature to a supernatural force, that is, a divine creator. Contemporary variants include “scientific creationism”/“creation science” and “intelligent design,” both predominantly embedded in evangelical fundamentalism. Whereas the early scientific creationists (1960–1980) made strong claims based on a literal interpretation of biblical sources (young earth, existence of geological evidence for Noah's flood, creation of biological species, etc.), contemporary proponents of intelligent design (since late 1980s) advocate an antiselectionist stance toward evolutionary theory. The latter creationists doubt that evolutionary explanations based on natural selection can account for the occurrence of biological diversity and distribution – either in general or in particular cases. This supposed lack of explanatory power is seen as evidence for interventions by an intelligent agent. In philosophy of science and natural sciences, creationism is often criticized as an example of pseudoscience and religious activism disguised as science.
Critical Legal Studies
Authors: Gearey Adam
Published: December 2017

Critical Legal Studies (CLS) was a left‐leaning academic movement in American legal scholarship active between the late 1970s and early 1990s. It carried forward influences from both Legal Realism and New Left political radicalism. Intellectually promiscuous, CLS also borrowed from continental philosophy, social theory, Marxism, and critical theory. Although CLS dissolved into rival factions organized around feminism and critical race theory certain CLS themes continue into contemporary critical legal thinking.
Cultural Networks
Authors: Crossley Nick
Published: December 2017

This entry outlines the way in which networks are defined in social network analysis (SNA) and considers how “cultural” networks might differ. It is observed that networks are means for the generation/diffusion of culture and that nodes and ties can be culturally constituted. The entry also considers the role of cultural homophily in network formation.
Culture
Authors: Inglis Fred
Published: December 2017

It nowadays seems impossible to describe the most commonplace details of everyday life without using the word “culture.” A report by government inspectors upon a school may refer to “a culture of failure,” upon a prison to “a culture of secrecy”; sociologists, newspaper commentators, and moral critics may all happily refer to the “consumer culture” within which all of us equally live and move and have our being; anthropologists have for a century or more referred to the peoples they study as not just having but being “other cultures” – for some writers “primitive,” even “savage” (though
not
necessarily with a pejorative inflection), frequently self‐sufficient, or autonomous. This way of using the word has, under the pressures of a globe more and more conscious of its own globalization, found its way into the everyday conversation of, inevitably, the culture.
Decolonization
Authors: Kalyan Rohan
Published: December 2017

Decolonization refers to the political process through which countries gained independence from their colonizers. Decolonization has a long history and diverse outcomes, beginning with the American Revolution in the late eighteenth century and reaching its height in the middle decades of the twentieth century. Decolonization also refers to the cultural and political project of critique aimed at interpreting and challenging the lasting effects of colonial institutions and relations, even after formal colonialism in much of the world has ended.
Eco‐Centrism
Authors: Leigh Lawrence Jennifer
Published: December 2017

Eco‐centrism is a philosophy of ecological interrelatedness. It acknowledges the inherently dynamic nature of the world, seeing all organisms as not simply interrelated with their environment but as constituted by a synthesis of these relations. Eco‐centrism rejects a human‐centered (anthropocentric) outlook on the environment. Especially given its emphasis on biospheric egalitarianism, eco‐centrism informs a somewhat controversial form of environmentalism whereby all living things are said to hold intrinsic value and rights, regardless of their usefulness to other beings. More inclusive than alternatives such as biocentrism, technocentrism, or anthropocentrism, eco‐centrism offers environmentalists a nature‐centered political and ecological philosophy.
Embourgeoisement
Authors: Kerbo Harold
Published: December 2017

As a new middle class (or white‐collar workers) of more skilled and better educated workers began to expand in the mid‐twentieth century, the boundaries between the working class, or proletariat, and this new middle class grew more complex. This new middle class was not like the old middle class of independent professionals, or petty bourgeoisie, and mostly were employed in large bureaucracies where in many ways they were like higher skilled factory workers. At the same time, with new production technologies, more skills and education were required of manual laborers, or the proletariat. Also, with rising wages for working‐class jobs relative to white‐collar jobs from the end of World War II until the 1970s, working‐class standards of living were becoming like those of the middle class, or white‐collar workers. Thus, the concept of embourgeoisement of the working class became a widely discussed issue. In other words, in terms of consumption and lifestyle, the working class was becoming more like the middle class.
Estates
Authors: Wallace Andrew
Published: December 2017

The word “estates,” in a British housing context, tends to refer to concentrations of public housing built during the twentieth century. Seen as a vital pillar of collective welfare provision in the United Kingdom, what is popularly known as “council” housing was originally built and managed by local municipalities to house citizens and families in cities that were without adequate and affordable housing stock. Post‐1945, mass council housing, often clustered within “council estates,” became a dominant part of the British housing landscape and by 1979 approximately 40 percent of the British population lived in a council house. However, while council housing estates are often celebrated by left‐inclined scholars and politicians as cementing a form of class solidarity and for helping decommodify shelter, from the 1970s council estates have been systematically dismantled. Although recent struggles suggest council housing could be regaining its social and political currency, it remains a residualized and largely stigmatized tenure.