bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Culture: Conceptual Clarifications
Authors: Jenks Chris
Published: September 2017

Raymond Williams (1976) informs us that “culture is one of the two or three most complicated words in the English language,” which is a good place to begin. Despite the contemporary upsurge of interest in the idea – what Chaney (1994) refers to as the “cultural turn” in the humanities and social sciences – culture is a concept with a history. One compelling account is that the idea of culture emerged in the late eighteenth century and on into the nineteenth century as part of (and largely as a reaction to) the massive changes that were occurring in the structure and quality of social life – what we might also refer to as the advance of modernity. These changes at the social, political, and personal levels were both confusing and disorienting, and at least controversial. Such changes, through industrialization and technology, were unprecedented in human experience: they were wildly expansionist, and horizons were simply consumed; they were grossly productive, for good and ill; and they were both understood and legitimated through an ideology of progress. The social structure was politically volatile; being increasingly and visibly divisive. This was a situation brought about through the new forms of social ranking and hierarchy that accompanied the proliferating division of labor, being combined with the density and proximity of populations, through urbanization, and the improved system of communications. In one sense the overall aesthetic quality of life, compared with the previously supposed rural idyll, was threatened by the machine‐like excesses of industrial society. There was an increasing gap between the creative and the productive, formulated for materialism by Marx as “alienation,” and for the Romantic‐idealist tradition by Carlyle as a loss of the folk purity of a past era. The machine was viewed as consuming the natural character of humankind, a call to be later echoed in the work of the Frankfurt School, Benjamin's “Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” even Marcuse's sense of one‐dimensionality, and finally the
crie de coeur
of Baudrillard's evocation of postmodernism with its horror of simulacra. Whereas we began with “culture” mediating between humankind and Nature, it can now be seen to mediate between humankind and Machine. This provides us with several available “meanings” of culture.
Culture, Social Movements and
Authors: Williams Rhys H.
Published: September 2017

Culture is the symbolic and expressive dimensions of social life. This includes sets of symbols such as language, intangible, abstract “mental products” such as ideas, beliefs, values, and identity, and the meanings given to material objects such as clothing, decorations, art objects, buildings, and the like.
Creative Destruction
Authors: Lair Craig D.
Published: September 2017

The term “creative destruction” was made famous by the economist Joseph A. Schumpeter. For Schumpeter, creative destruction “is the essential fact about capitalism” (Schumpeter 1975 [1942]: 82) and is meant to highlight the dynamic nature of capitalist systems. In particular, it refers to how capitalism continuously revolutionizes itself as new products and business processes are created that render obsolete (i.e., destroy) those that are existing, as in the way the creation of the automobile led to the destruction of the horse and buggy industry, for example. In other words, this concept stresses that the dynamic nature of capitalism stems from the dialectical relationship that exists between creation and destruction. There are, however, two important aspects of creative destruction that should be kept in mind.
Cultural Citizenship
Authors: Stevenson Nick
Published: September 2017

This entry traces through the three main stages in the debate around ideas of cultural citizenship. In the first stage ideas of cultural citizenship were used to discuss the ability of citizens to participate in the cultural life of the nation. There was an explicit concern in the sociological and cultural writing of the 1950s that working‐class people (and others) had been excluded and that cultural institutions needed to be reformed to make them more inclusive. However, after the rise of postmodernism and poststructuralism there were increasing concerns that models of cultural citizenship were not complex enough to deal with issues of cultural difference. A range of social movements from black rights organizations to feminism and from gay rights to more ecological concerns began to ask questions around otherness and alterity in this regard. Finally, more recently questions of cultural citizenship have moved on to investigate the rise of neoliberalism and the erosion of the cultural commons. In this stage of the debate some of the concerns of the first stage have been recaptured as scholars look at the effects of privatization and the downgrading of public provision more generally.
Culture Turn
Authors: Best Steven
Published: September 2017

The “culture turn” is a dynamic process that since the nineteenth century has unfolded in the worlds of theory, art, and politics. The reference to a “culture turn” captures a widespread movement – played out differently in various disciplines, nations, and traditions – that emphasizes the importance of art and culture for education, moral growth, and social criticism and change. By the 1980s, this development led to an explosion in forms of “cultural studies,” “identity politics,” and “multiculturalism” in response to changes in the structure of capitalism and relationships among economic, cultural, and political institutions.
Cultural Colonialism
Authors: Amsler Sarah
Published: September 2017

The term cultural colonialism refers to the extension of colonial state power through cultural knowledge, activities, and institutions (particularly education and media) or the systematic subordination of one conceptual framework or cultural identity over others. The understanding that culture is a medium for political and economic power, and for resistance, predates postcolonial theory in social and political thought. The specific concepts of “cultural colonialism” and “cultural imperialism” emerged later, as part of wider critiques of colonial and neocolonial power in post‐World War
II
movements for national independence from Anglo‐European rule. Although less popular in academic sociology now than in the 1970s and 1980s, discourses and theories of cultural colonialism have continued to appear in public debate. New critiques of cultural colonialism have emerged from within both the World Social Forum and the Occupy movements. While the political and economic systems that initially gave rise to the analytical concept of cultural colonialism have been transformed through decolonization, new knowledge is being produced to explain both global inequality and the cultural dimensions of contemporary struggles for power, autonomy, and resistance.
Concessions
Authors: Everett Tiffani
Published: September 2017

Concessions are an account‐making strategy used by actors following a socially unexpected behavior. Early hints of concessions in account literature can be traced back to Goffman's notion of apologies, but concessions were not technically included in an account taxonomy until Schönbach's treatment. Concessions are broadly defined as an admission of guilt and responsibility for a socially undesirable act. In contrast to refusals, concessions are viewed as a way to mitigate social harm following an event.
Critical Race Theory
Authors: Hatch Anthony Ryan
Published: September 2017

Critical race theory refers to a historical and contemporary body of scholarship that aims to interrogate the discourses, ideologies, and social structures that produce and maintain conditions of racial injustice. Critical race theory analyzes how race and racism are foundational elements in historical and contemporary social structures and social experiences. In defining critical race theory, it is important to make a distinction between the deep historical tradition of critical theorizing about race and racism and a specific body of American legal scholarship that emerged in the 1970s and 1980s in response to the successes and failures of the Civil Rights Movement struggles for the freedom and liberation of people of color of the 1950s and 1960s. While this new school of legal thought coined the phrase “critical race theory” to signal a new critical analysis of the role of the law in propagating and maintaining racism, this movement is part of a broader intellectual tradition of critical theories of race and anti‐racist struggle that has political roots in the work of pioneering scholar‐activists like Frederick Douglass, Ida Wells‐Barnett, and W. E. B. Du Bois. Using this broader framework, critical race theory can be viewed as a diagnostic body of “intellectual activism” scholarship that seeks to identify the pressure points for anti‐racist struggle. Given the historical scope of critical race theories, this essay highlights several core themes that tie together this eclectic body of explicitly political theorizing.
Critical Race Theory
Authors: Hatch Anthony Ryan
Published: September 2017

Critical race theory refers to a historical and contemporary body of scholarship that aims to interrogate and change the discourses, ideologies, and social structures that produce and maintain conditions of racial injustice. Critical race theory analyzes how race and racism are foundational elements in historical and contemporary social structures and social experiences. In defining critical race theory, it is important to make a distinction between the deep historical tradition of critical theorizing about race and racism and a specific body of American legal scholarship that emerged in the 1970s and 1980s in response to the successes and failures of the Civil Rights Movement struggles for the freedom and liberation of people of color of the 1950s and 1960s. While this new school of legal thought coined the phrase “critical race theory” to signal a new critical analysis of the role of the law in propagating and maintaining racism, this movement is part of a broader intellectual tradition of critical theories of race and antiracist struggle that has political roots in the work of pioneering scholar‐activists like Frederick Douglass, Ida Wells‐Barnett, and W.E.B. Du Bois. Using this broader framework, critical race theory can be viewed as a diagnostic body of “intellectual activism,” scholarship that seeks to identify the pressure points for antiracist struggle. Given the historical scope of critical race theories, this entry highlights several core themes that tie together this eclectic body of explicitly political theorizing.
Committed Social Psychology
Authors: Papastamou Stamos , Prodromitis Gerasimos , Tsekeris Charalambos
Published: September 2017

In principle, the emerging conception of committed social psychology (CSP) implies that it is not easy to draw clear boundaries between social psychology and ideology, and more generally between social science and social action, facts and values, rational arguments and political beliefs, or “pure” and “applied” social research. Social psychology must not be regarded as “biased” just because it involves value presuppositions or ethical non‐neutrality (see Sloan 1990). On the contrary, this is a strong “natural” involvement that waits to be reflexively exposed and elaborated as a basis for action.
Decolonization
Authors: Go Julian
Published: September 2017

Decolonization typically refers to a shift in a society's political status from colony to autonomous state or independent nation. It can also refer to a shift from colonial status to full incorporation into the dominant polity such that it is no longer subordinate to the latter. While decolonization has occurred in many different places and times, typical usage of the term in the modern period refers to the decolonization by western colonial powers of dependencies in Asia, Africa, or the Americas. It is strongly associated with the fall of modern empires and the spread of nationalism and the nation‐state around the world. Decolonization has also been used to refer to a cultural or psychological process that may or may not correlate with formal political decolonization.
Definition of the Situation
Authors: Bakker J.I. (Hans)
Published: September 2017

The term “definition of the situation” has come to signify the “Thomas theorem” – the idea expressed by W.I. Thomas as follows: “If men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences.” That is, when the phrase is used, it usually carries with it the connotation of the whole theorem. However, the phrase “definition of the situation” predates Thomas's famous theorem. The more general conceptualization seems to be closely related to the concept of norms and culture. The interpretation of collective norms is important for all social action. It is only in certain situations where the agent chooses to redefine the norms. Park and Burgess cite a 1919 Carnegie study where the term is used to discuss the topic of assimilation to American society, especially in terms of “Americanization”: “common participation in common activities implies a common ‘definition of the situation.’”
Democracy
Authors: Sanderson Stephen K.
Published: September 2017

It is only within the past two centuries – and mostly within the past century – that genuinely democratic governments have flourished. What is democracy? Rueschemeyer et al. (1992) identify four main characteristics of the most fully developed democracies:
Demographic Data: Censuses, Registers, Surveys
Authors: Mather Mark
Published: September 2017

Population censuses, registers, and surveys are the primary sources of demographic data, including information about the size, composition, and characteristics of a population or population subgroups. A census is an enumeration of all households in a well‐defined territory at a given point in time. Population registers are systems of continuous registration, maintained by certain countries, to keep demographic records of individuals. Surveys are used to collect detailed data on a particular subject from a sample or subset of the population. All three sources of data – censuses, registers, and surveys – are often used to monitor changes in population size and composition.
Demographic Techniques: Population Projections and Estimates
Authors: Long John F.
Published: September 2017

Population projections and estimates constitute a core focus of demographic techniques. Both activities calculate the size and often the demographic characteristics of a given population in the absence of complete data such as might be available from a population census. Population projections and estimates play an important role in analysis of societal trends and in planning and policy decisions.
Demographic Techniques: Population Projections and Estimates
Authors: Long John F.
Published: September 2017

Population estimates and projection methods are key demographic techniques that provide information on population levels and trends by creative use of limited data. The more sophisticated methods analyze age‐specific data on population size and on births, deaths, and migration in modeling current and future change. This analysis may be based on modeling of past trends or by making use of other measured administrative data that vary with population. In recent years, stochastic forecasting methods have attempted to model the uncertainty surrounding the results of population forecasts.
Deterrence Theory
Authors: Stafford Mark C.
Published: September 2017

Deterrence is the omission or curtailment of a crime because of the fear of legal punishment. People may refrain entirely from crime because of the fear of legal punishment (absolute deterrence), or they may curtail or restrict their commission of it (restrictive deterrence). According to deterrence theory, people should be deterred (absolutely, restrictively, or both) if legal punishments are certain, severe, and swift. There are both objective and perceived legal punishments. Objective punishments involve what legal officials actually do in punishing offenders; perceived punishments have to do with people's perceptions of what legal officials actually do. This distinction is incorporated in different deterrence propositions, and research findings have been more consistent with some of these propositions than others. Finally, deterrence theory needs to incorporate nondeterrence variables that are also related to crime, such as extralegal punishments (e.g., stigma).
Deviance, Explanatory Theories of
Authors: Goode Erich
Published: September 2017

For thousands of years, humans have attempted to explain the behavior that members of their societies considered deviance, wrongdoing, or crime: “Why do some members of the society engage in serious normative violations?” Or: “What social conditions increase the likelihood that members of the society will engage in serious normative violations?” The answers theorists have given over the years have ranged from the maximization of self‐interests to neighborhood disorganization; from biological defects to poor parenting; from frustrated economic aspirations to hanging out with a criminally inclined crowd. The social and behavioral sciences do not, and probably never will, agree on the validity of a comprehensive, coherent, and consistent single explanation of what causes criminal, delinquent, and deviant behavior. It is possible that verifying such an explanation is impossible, since the domain of non‐normative behavior is so huge and diverse.
Deviance, Medicalization of
Authors: McGann PJ , Conrad Peter
Published: September 2017

Medicalization is the process whereby previously non‐medical aspects of life come to be seen in medical terms, usually as disorders or illnesses. A wide range of phenomena has beenmedicalized, including normal life events (birth, death), biological processes (aging, menstruation), common human problems (learning and sexual difficulties), and forms of deviance. The medicalization of deviance thus refers to the process whereby non‐normative or morally condemned appearance (obesity, unattractiveness, shortness), belief (mental disorder, racism), and conduct (drinking, gambling, sexual practices) come under medical jurisdiction. The tendency to see badness – whether immoral, sinful, or criminal – as illness is part of a broader historical trend from overtly punitive to ostensibly more humanitarian responses to deviance. Within this trend most scholars agree that medicalization has been on the increase. They disagree, though, as to why, to what degree, and with what consequences this is the case. It is clear, however, that medicalization processes are caught up in and complicate struggles to define and respond to deviance. Constructing deviance as illness confers a moral status different from crime or sin. As such, medicalization has implications for social control, power, knowledge, authority, and personal liberty.
Deviance, Moral Boundaries and
Authors: Lauderdale Pat
Published: September 2017

Through a variety of social mechanisms, most human diversity is categorized as normal variation and a varying fraction as deviance. This area of research asks how the moral boundaries of these categories are drawn, i.e., normal versus deviant, and what determines the placement of specific actors and acts within the categories (Lauderdale 1976; Ben‐Yehuda 1985). The sociologist, therefore, can examine how certain actions are defined as deviant from specific social reactions and the creation of moral boundaries that separate the varying definitions of normal from deviant ones. The creation of the boundaries and the placement of individuals as either normal or deviant are viewed as basic processes of social definition that often are found to be outcomes of political variables.
Deviance, Reactivist Definitions of
Authors: Pontell Henry N.
Published: September 2017

The sociology of deviance entails two major perspectives, both of which emphasize the relative nature of the phenomenon. The normative perspective, which most sociologists adhere to, views deviance as being located in customs and rules; deviance is the formal violation of one or more norms. The reactivist perspective, which has been associated with the labeling theory of deviance, takes a more radical approach to the relative nature of deviance, and views the existence and characteristics of deviance in how real behaviors, beliefs, or conditions are actually judged by relevant audiences (Goode 2001). Labeling theory has been marked by controversy since it arrived on the sociological scene in the 1960s. Two of its major proponents (Kitsuse 1972; Becker 1973) do not consider it a theory at all, and reject the term labeling, in characterizing what they view as the interactionist perspective. This term derives from the sociological perspective of symbolic interactionism, which sees all acts emanating from meanings that persons attach to social phenomena, with these meanings growing and changing through a continual interpretive process involving interactions with others (Blumer 1969). In a major review of labeling theory, Goode (1975) concludes that it “isn” t a theory at all,” and further relates that it might not even be a “general perspective,” but rather a way of considering specific aspects of deviance through the application of symbolic interactionism.
Deviance, Reactivist Definitions of
Authors: Pontell Henry N. , Ghazi‐Tehrani Adam , Burton Bryan
Published: September 2017

The sociology of deviance entails two major perspectives, both of which emphasize the relative nature of the phenomenon. The normative perspective views deviance as being located in customs and rules; deviance is the formal violation of one or more norms. The reactivist perspective takes a more radical approach to the relative nature of deviance, and views the existence and characteristics of deviance in how real behaviors, beliefs, or conditions are actually judged by relevant audiences. “Strict” reactivists claim that in order for deviance to exist, the act, condition, or belief must first be heard about or witnessed, and second, must be met with concrete social disapproval, condemnation, or punishment. “Soft” or moderate reactivists argue that categories of deviance exist, even if specific actors, believers, and possessors of non‐normative characteristics have not been concretely punished or labeled. More recent definitions of deviance integrate both the normative and reactivist approaches to deviance.
Deviance, Research Methods
Authors: Grills Scott
Published: September 2017

It is, in part, through their methodologies that sociological studies of deviance are distinguished from other disciplinary interests (e.g., biological, philosophical, legal). Questions of method are questions related to our theories of knowing: how we claim to know what we know, how we go about the work of supporting our knowledge claims, and how we construct the intersubjective realities we share. The process of doing research is, in and of itself, social action. The research act involves undertaking a critical assessment of our theories of the social world and adopting methodological positions or practices that allow for authentic representation of the empirical world.
Deviance, Sport and
Authors: Curry Timothy Jon
Published: September 2017

Sports may be defined as physical contests that are competitive, fair, and guided by rules, organization, and/or tradition. The roots of sport are ancient, and probably stem from hunting. Although modern sports have more symbolic quests than the choice cuts of meat available to the successful prehistoric hunter, the thrill of the chase is much the same (Carroll 2000). The rules and traditions of sport may or may not be codified, but they ensure that the ritualistic aspects of sport are respected. And the ritualistic aspects of sport, the before and after ceremonies and events, the coin‐toss that ensures a fair beginning, the awarding of trophies and medals, and so on, are every bit as important as the game itself.
Deviance, Theories of
Authors: Rock Paul , Downes David
Published: September 2017

“Deviance” and its companion words, deviant and deviation, have their roots in Latin and point to a straying from thevia, road or path. Some of its variants have a long history: the thirteenth‐centuryRomance of the Rose, for example, talks of “deviant” in the sense of being out of the way; “deviation” appeared in publications in the sixteenth century; and Durkheim powerfully foreshadowed its sociological usage inLes Règles de la méthode sociologique(1895), where he took deviance (which he did not name as such but rather awkwardly referred to as crimes against religion, ceremony, etiquette, tradition, “and so on”) to be the pivotal concept for what turned out to be his founding theory of functional analysis. (Durkheim contrasted his own approach with a more limited notion of crime he somewhat misleadingly attributed to Garofalo'sLa Criminologie, 1890.) But “deviance” itself is a neologism with multiple meanings. TheOxford English Dictionarytraces its first appearance in English to a piece written in 1944 by the psychologist Gregory Bateson, who presented it as a corollary of “standardization” (and see Bateson 1972). The English sociologist Walter Sprott employed it ten years later to refer to departures from culturally expected rules of conduct (Sprott 1954). And the most celebrated, if not the most elusive, description was offered nine years later still in 1963 by Howard Becker. In a passage that avoided exact definition, but which would have the greatest impact, he insisted on the social character of deviance: deviance, he said, “isnota quality of the act the person commits, but rather a consequence of the application by others of rules and sanctions to an ‘offender.’ The deviant is one to whom that label has been successfully applied; deviant behavior is behavior that people so label” (Becker 1963: 9).
Deviant Beliefs/Cognitive Deviance
Authors: Perrin Robin D.
Published: September 2017

Sociological discussions of deviance typically focus on non‐normativebehaviors. Cognitive deviance, on the other hand, refers to deviantbeliefs. The study of cognitive deviance “reveals that social rules apply not only to how one behaves but also to how and what one thinks” (Douglas & Waksler 1982: 366). Beliefs are deviant if they fall outside the norms of acceptability and are deemed wrong, irrational, eccentric, or dangerous in a given society or by the members of a particular collectivity within a given society. Deviant beliefs are important to study because they reveal basic social processes and affirm the belief structure on which the culture of a society is built. In addition, the study of deviant beliefs is important because deviance is often the first step toward social change. Today's deviant idea may well be tomorrow's norm.
Disability as Social Problem
Authors: Waldschmidt Anne
Published: September 2017

Common sense takes disability as a simple natural fact, but the sociology of disability emphasizes that disability has to be differentiated from impairment. Not every chronic health condition is acknowledged as disability. There are cultures in which the social fact of disability does not exist (Ingstad & Whyte 1995). Disability as a social problem has evolved as a product of the modern welfare state. With the beginning of modernity and, above all, during the period of industrialization, a line was drawn between “the disabled” and other poor and unemployed people. In the course of the twentieth century disability became a horizontal category of social stratification. Even today the ascription process is ambivalent: it includes rights and benefits as well as discrimination and segregation.
Disciplinary Society
Authors: Krasmann Susanne
Published: September 2017

Talk about the disciplinary society is frequently linked to the idea of a society of total surveillance and adjustment. However, in his seemingly most popular and at the same time highly complex book
Discipline and Punish
, Foucault (1977) describes the disciplinary society not as a social reality but as a
program
of disciplining individuals. Thus it was the “dream” of the old authoritarian police to establish a society organized along military lines, functioning like the cogs of a machine. This aspiration did indeed have historical configurations: in the “social disciplining” (Gerhard Oestreich) of an administrative and regulatory organization of society, already being instituted in early modern times, aimed at producing obedient individuals; and in an unprecedented process of rationalization of power, provoking Weber to speak of the “iron cage” of bureaucratic rulership in modern societies. Foucault's intention, however, is not to point out historical continuities and general principles shaping society, like “capitalism,” “modernity,” or “rationalization.” Rather, the disciplinary society is the effect of micro mechanisms of power and has itself to be distinguished from a type of power that donated the name:
discipline
does not refer to an institution, but designates a technology of power. It is unacquainted with a ruling center as it unfolds beyond the state. It is a mechanism of power localized amid society: the “productivity of the norm” (Macherey 1991), operating in occidental societies since the seventeenth century. It thus differs from the juridical sovereign power of the
ancien régime
legitimized by the implementation and enforcement of law.
Distanciation and Disembedding
Authors: Henning Christoph
Published: September 2017

Modern society is based on a functional differentiation of different social systems. Therefore, face‐to‐face interactions lose their significance in everyday life, as modern media such as money or more recently the Internet step in between. The consequence for individuals is the process of distanciation. It has both a spatial and an emotional side: people who feel a sense of belonging can live far away from each other, and people sharing the same neighborhood may not even talk to one another. Social interdependence is ever more mediated and behavioral patterns often adapt towards a mutual ignorance. The consequence for societal subsystems is that they are increasingly disembedded. They follow their own logic only, without reflecting upon social concerns or society as a whole.
Distributive Justice
Authors: Jasso Guillermina
Published: September 2017

Every day, and in all walks of life, the sense of justice is at work. Humans form ideas about what is just; and they make judgments about the justice or injustice of the things they see around them. Both the ideas of justice and the assessments of injustice set in motion a train of individual and social processes, touching virtually every area of the human experience. Thus, in the quest to understand human behavior, understanding the operation of the sense of justice is basic. And justice is central across the subfields of sociology.
Division of Labor
Authors: Ryan Michael T.
Published: September 2017

The concept of the division of labor is used both by structural functionalists (the students of Durkheim) and conflict theorists (the students of Marx), but the meaning of the concept differs. For Durkheim and his followers, it means the occupational structure, and it also includes a new form of social solidarity, organic solidarity, that integrates the members of industrial societies in contrast to the mechanical solidarity of traditional societies. Durkheim saw this as a weaker, more precarious form of solidarity that was still in the process of development in the early twentieth century. For Marx and his followers, it means a double division of labor, the technical division of labor in the enterprise and in a particular industry that broke down the production process into a sequence of tasks and the social division of labor among enterprises, industries, and social classes that was mediated through commodity exchange in market relations. While the social labor of the enterprise was rationally organized, Marx saw contradictions and class exploitation and domination in the social division of labor.
Drugs, Drug Abuse, and Drug Policy
Authors: Wincup Emma
Published: September 2017

The term “drug” has been both broadly and narrowly defined. At its simplest, it is reserved for substances which are prohibited under criminal law. Deploying this definition, the range of substances classified as drugs varies across time and across jurisdictions. However, typically, it refers to substances such as heroin, cocaine, ecstasy, and amphetamines. At the other extreme, more inclusive definitions of the term have been adopted. In addition to outlawed substances, in these instances, drugs can refer to alcohol and tobacco, plus substances such as solvents, prescribed medication, and over‐the‐counter remedies used illicitly. When developing policies, countries are most likely to utilize a narrow definition and focus attention on illegal drugs.
Durkheim, Émile (1858–1917)
Authors: Warfield Rawls Anne
Published: September 2017

Émile Durkheim, often referred to as the founder of sociology, was born April 15, 1858 in Épinal, France. Appointed to the first professorship of sociology in the world, he worked tirelessly over three decades as a lecturer and writer to establish sociology as a distinct discipline with its own unique theoretical and methodological foundation. After an illustrious career, first in Bordeaux and then after 1902 in Paris at the Sorbonne, Durkheim died in November 1917, still a relatively young man, never having recovered from grief after most of the young sociologists he had trained, including his own son André, were killed in World War I.
Ecology
Authors: Sanford Marc M.
Published: September 2017

Ecology generally refers to the scientific study of an organism or community of organisms and their relationship to each other as well as to the environment. The ecological framework is used in biological sciences, social sciences, botany, zoological sciences, and other research areas and is applied to myriad subareas including human ecology, cultural ecology, organizational ecology, plant ecology, population ecology, spatial ecology, and more. Early writings on ecology were influenced by the works of Malthus and Darwin. This can be seen in ecology's use of natural selection and the presence of other competing species in the race for survival.
Economy, Networks and
Authors: Walker Gordon
Published: September 2017

The intersection of economic and social behavior has long been an interest of sociologists. Since Simmel's (1955) seminal work on affiliation, it has become clear that the extent, kind, and structure of relations in a society have a potentially crucial impact on how well it functions, and by implication, how much wealth it creates. Two current research programs are outlined here, small worlds, and interfirm networks, which are related broadly to market creation and robustness. Both of these research programs capture core aspects of Granovetter's (1985) concept of embeddedness and suggest new directions for examining the sociological roots of economic behavior.
Emotions and Economy
Authors: Pixley Jocelyn
Published: September 2017

Emotions drive economy in many directions. This driving force and power of our collective but wildly diverse sentiments is mostly because the future cannot be known in advance. If I said this about democratic politics where uncertainty is usually taken for granted, no one would blink. Reason can guide emotional responses toward feelings of anxiety, hope, or caution, although everyday conjectures are quite a pastime. We have a love–hate relationship with uncertainty, with one exception: most economists grandly exclude their “predictions.” Few are candid about the uncertainties not from politics but from economic relations in which emotions are necessarily involved. More to the point, economic leaders demand certainty over these relations, an unreasonable and irrational demand. In this dangerous if not despotic sense,homo economicusis an escape from reason but never from emotions. And there are emotions specific to modern economies from competition and opportunism, unlike the emotions of fatalism or sharing in other economic arrangements. Along with imagination and values, emotions have given capitalism its dynamism, its restless energy, and interminable conflicts. The questions then are which emotions and what is economy?
Empire
Authors: Cox Lloyd
Published: September 2017

In its broadest transhistorical sense empire refers to a large‐scale, multi‐ethnic political unit (usually with a state at its core) that directly or indirectly rules over, and therefore encompasses, smaller political units that were previously independent. Hence, empire always involves relations of domination and subordination between core and peripheral areas and their populations, which are most often established by conquest and maintained, in the last instance, by the exercise or threat of force. Nevertheless, empire may fall short of direct colonial rule and instead be implemented through informal mechanisms of political control based on indigenous elites and indirect methods of cultural domination and economic exploitation. These formal and informal practices of empire, and the ideologies that justify them, constitute
imperialism
. Both terms have their etymological roots in the Latin
imperium
.
Employment Status Changes
Authors: Layte Richard
Published: September 2017

The three decades that followed the end of World War II are often referred to by social scientists as the “Golden Age of Capitalism” in Europe and North America. This period of relative peace was marked by rising living standards and high levels of employment within societies where the “traditional” family structure still held sway. In this environment, individual employment status changes were fairly few – into a job or career following education and retirement sometime around age 60, with women moving out into full‐time motherhood at the birth of their first child. This “Golden Age” began to unravel in the 1970s as widespread changes in attitudes changed behaviors and high oil prices increased inflation and constrained growth. By the early 1980s, the labor markets of western industrial nations were very different from earlier decades, with high levels of structural unemployment and an increasing “feminization” of the labor force as women sought to combine marriage and childbirth with a job or career. In this new environment, simple models of a homogeneous “life cycle” were replaced by more complex and dynamic understandings based on the “life course,” where uncertainty and instability were the norm and individuals experienced multiple employment status changes across their life.
Environmental Movements
Authors: Rootes Christopher
Published: September 2017

Environmental movements are networks of informal interactions that may include, as well as individuals and groups who have no organizational affiliation, organizations of varying degrees of formality (including even political parties, especially Green parties) that are engaged in collective action motivated by shared identity or concern about environmental issues. Such networks are generally loose and uninstitutionalized, but their forms of action and their degree of integration vary. However, environmental movements are not identical to organizations or episodes of protest. It is only when organizations (and other, usually less formally organized actors) are networked and engaged in collective action, whether or not it involves protest, that an environmental movement exists (Diani 1995: 5; Rootes 2004a).
Ethics, Fieldwork
Authors: Zeni Jane
Published: September 2017

Ethics in social sciences fieldwork draws on the perspectives of philosophy, law, and psychology to guide decision‐making by researchers and policymakers. Ethics can be defined as “the study of right and wrong; of the moral choices people make and the way in which they seek to justify them” (Thompson 1999: 1). Consciously or otherwise, field researchers make ethical decisions whenever they gather, interpret, or present their data. There is a growing consensus that ethical practice in fieldwork cannot simply be guided by the rules that govern biomedical or psychological research in laboratory settings.
Ethics,Research
Authors: (Hans) Bakker J.I.
Published: September 2017

An undergraduate or graduate research project involving a survey questionnaire does not necessarily constitute a great risk to participants. Nevertheless, all research has to be vetted by institutional review boards (IRBs) in the United States. In Canada, a similar approach is maintained by research ethics boards (REBs), with similar concerns. Confidentiality involves the data only being used for the explicit purposes for which permission had been granted. It also requires further consent prior to disclosure to third parties. Recontacting participants in order to obtain consent for secondary use of data requires further approval. Whenever a human being is vulnerable it is highly likely that ethical approval should not be granted, especially if it is clear that their compromised position makes such persons manipulable. It can be argued that the principle of distributive justice requires that the burdens and benefits of all forms of research should be distributed among all sectors of the population. A pragmatic balance between methodological and practical concerns continues to be an elusive goal and the enormous variety of types of research undertaken make straightforward generalizations highly problematic and sometimes contested.
Ethnic Enclaves
Authors: Lin Jan
Published: September 2017

The ethnic enclave is a subeconomy that offers protected access to labor and markets, informal sources of credit, and business information for immigrant businesses and workers. Ethnic enclaves offer entrepreneurial opportunities and earnings for immigrant owners and managers through the exploitation of immigrant labor in poor working conditions. They are phenomena that advance our understanding of the changing experience of immigration and social mobility in America. The enclaves of Asian and Latino immigrants emerging since the 1960s are comparable to the enclaves of Jewish and Italian immigrants at the turn of the twentieth century. They present a route for economic and social mobility by promoting positive returns on human capital for immigrants in the labor market. During the decades of immigrant restriction, ethnic enclaves were shunned in the US as economic and spatial barriers to the successful assimilation and upward mobility of immigrants to American life. Since the 1960s, however, ethnic enclaves have been increasingly seen as agents for economic and social mobility. Ethnic enclaves are proliferating in both the cities and suburbs of contemporary immigration gateway cities such as New York, Miami, Houston, and Los Angeles. They constitute and convey the process of globalization as nodes of trade and transaction in flows of ethnic labor, capital, commodities, and cultural products across trading regions. There are costs as well as benefits that come with the insertion of ethnic enclaves into the complex social dynamics of contemporary global cities.
Ethnic and Racial Division of Labor
Authors: Lichter Michael
Published: September 2017

An ethnic or racial division of labor exists in a society in which ethnic or racial groups have distinctive concentrations or specializations in particular lines of work. Ethnic/racial divisions of labor may arise through relatively benign labor market sorting processes, or they may be the result of systematic acts of bigotry and discrimination, often with state sanction. Regardless of how they arise, ethnic/racial divisions of labor can be observed and traced over time, and they can have measurable effects on social and political dynamics within societies.
Ethnomethodology
Authors: Maynard Douglas W. , Weathersbee Teddy Elizabeth
Published: September 2017

Ethnomethodology is an area in sociology originating in the work of Harold Garfinkel. It represents an effort to study the methods in and through which members concertedly produce and assemble the features of everyday life in any actual, concrete, and not hypothetical or theoretically depicted setting. Ethnomethodology's proposal – one that is incommensurate with respect to other sociological theory (Garfinkel 1988) – is that there is a self‐generating order in concrete activities, an order whose scientific appreciation depends upon neither prior description, nor empirical generalization, nor formal specification of variable elements and their analytic relations. Moreover, raw experience – the booming buzz of William James – is anything but chaotic, for the concrete activities of which it is composed are coeval with an intelligible organization that actors already provide and that is therefore available for scientific analysis. Members of society achieve this intelligible organization through actual, coordinated, concerted, procedural behaviors or
methods
and
practices
.
Evolution
Authors: Rees Amanda
Published: September 2017

The concept of evolution has a vexed and often misunderstood history as far as the social sciences are concerned, and one that has consistently been mired not just in intellectual and scientific debates, but also in political and economic confrontations and conflicts, ranging from the eugenic policies practiced by many western nations at the beginning of the twentieth century, to the execution and exile of Soviet biologists unwilling to toe the Lysenkoist party line in the 1950s, to the decision of the Kansas Board of Education in 1999 to delete the teaching of evolution from the state's science curriculum. There are a number of reasons why this concept – which at its simplest can be defined as the way things (people, societies, ideas, environments) change over time – has been bogged down in so many confusions and conflagrations, most of which can be found in the particular contexts and purposes in which evolutionary ideas are and have been expressed.
Exchange Network Theory
Authors: Walker Henry A.
Published: September 2017

Exchange network theories focus on the processes through which network structures affect power distributions, power exercise, and benefits gained in exchange. Sociologists use the term exchange network theory to describe several theories, models, and research programs. The field grew out of research in social exchange theory – an orienting strategy that traces its roots to Aristotle and other philosophers of classical antiquity. George C. Homans's
Social Behavior
(1961, 1974), John Thibaut and Harold H. Kelley's
The Social Psychology of Groups
(1959), Richard M. Emerson's paper on “Power–Dependence Relations” (1962), and other contemporaneous works are responsible for reinvigorating exchange research in the late 1950s and early 1960s.
Exchange Network Theory
Authors: Walker Henry A. , Emanuelson Pamela
Published: September 2017

Exchange network theory explains how structure affects actors’ behavior in exchange networks – social systems with two or more connected exchange relations (Emerson, 1972). A–B–C is an exchange network formed by connecting the A–B and B–C relations at B. Larger networks are formed by connecting additional exchange relations. The exchange network tradition includes several distinct theories that have numerous similarities. All predict the effects of network structure on power exercise, the distribution of power, and the distribution of benefits received through exchange. They differ in their assumptions about the processes linking structure to power, their scope (e.g., the numbers and types of network connections to which their analyses apply), their procedures for identifying the power of network positions, and their predictions of exchange outcomes.